Anyone do a 3D gender assessment ultrasound?
I saw my OB today and she gave me the req form for the anatomy scan. They won't do it at this place until 19-20 weeks, which means I made my appointment literally 2 days before Christmas. They said everyone wants to know gender before Christmas and if my baby is hiding, I won't know until after the New Year...we really want to do a gender reveal for Christmas for our families, so I booked a 3D gender assessment ultra sound with 3D Baby Vision for tomorrow morning!
Had it done with both my pregnancies before 16 weeks. Both accurate!
Yes doing mine this weekend! Finding out Christmas as a Christmas gift!
I did it at 16+5. It was accurate. Two later ultrasounds confirmed it was a still a girl. Lol.
I've been told by a few people that 3d ultrasounds are more accurate than the 2d ones. The tech switched between 2d and 3d for confirming the gender with my previous pregnancy! She was confirmed as a girl and was born a girl!


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Lavan, Hebrew for "white," is a dark film that carries univeral themes of isolation, cruelty, guilt, bravery and utter madness.
Lavan is a 30-minute film by two Tel Aviv University graduates, Guilhad Emilio Schenker and Yossi Meiri. The film premiered at the 34th edition of the World Film Festival in Montreal this past weekend.
The film will also be screened in Bombay, Moscow and St. Petersburg.
The main character of the film is held hostage in a male prison run by women. The protagonist is confined in a white square cell and is only fed white rice and milk. This method of punishment is known as White Torture. The prisoner does not know the reasons why he is there.
The film invites you into an unusual institute of powerful middle-aged women and barbaric methods of punishment, which will leave you with conflicted emotions on the punishers and the punished.
With little dialogue, the scenes are full of violence and sexuality and at times very hard to watch. This is not a feel-good movie but will certainly put you in a place that many will never experience.
A real prison in Iran that performs this method of torture inspired the producers. Schenker and Meiri hope the movie will expose what happens to people who are captured and then subjected to torture in these private prisons.
Lavan was not intended to be political, or to raise awareness on the issues in Iran or the Middle East. Instead, the movie is centered on a man's journey who is without information and contact from the outside world.
Packed with intricate scenes and lasting images, it is with little surprise that you learn that Lavan took four years to complete.
This article originally appeared in The Link Volume 31, Issue 04, published September 7, 2010.


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This Kerala Student Fixed A Security Hole In WhatsApp, And Entered Facebook's Hall Of Fame
Home > Technology > News > This Kerala Student Fixed A Security Hole In WhatsApp, And Entered Facebook's Hall Of Fame
Major tech offerings like Facebook obviously employ a number of coders and testers for their products.
However, it's still very possible for some glitches and vulnerabilities to slide through the cracks. That's why bug bounty hunters are so important.
Image courtesy: Mathrubhumi
Now, it looks like Facebook is recognising the contributions of a local bug bounty hunter, and one still in college that too. The company is honouring 19-year-old KS Ananthakrishna, a BTech student at Pathanamthitta Mount Zion College of Engineering College in Kerala, for spotting a major flaw in WhatsApp.
Reports indicate Ananthakrisha informed Facebook of the bug, which allowed a hacker to completely extract files on the messaging app without the user's knowledge. He also suggested a possible fix, which the company took into consideration.
Now, two months after studying and fixing the bug, Facebook has reportedly decided to award the student $500 (approximately Rs 34,000) for his find, as well as a spot in their bug bounty hall of fame.
WhatsApp & Telegram Can Expose Your Saved Photos To Hackers, Here's How To Fix The Bug 147 SHARES
12 Influential People Who Hate Facebook And Feel Mark Zuckerberg Needs To Do Better Job
Over 4 Lakh People Have Agreed To Break Into A US Military Base, And Rescue Hidden Aliens 1.4K SHARES
Trump Hates Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency, Because They 'Facilitate Illegal Activity'
'Storm Area 51,' The Facebook 'Ambush' Event That 550,000 People Have Already RSVP'd To
According to reports, Ananthakrishna is quite talented when it comes to coding. He's reportedly also working with the Kerala Police Cyberdome, a research and development centre for the local police.
Meet FaceApp, The Aging App That's Taken Over Social Media Recently

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Can real-world data really replace randomised clinical trials?
Sreeram V. Ramagopalan1,
Alex Simpson2 &
Cormac Sammon3
Classically, randomised controlled trials (RCTs) are considered the gold standard for demonstrating product efficacy for the regulatory approval of medicines. However, as personalised medicine becomes increasingly common, patient recruitment into RCTs is affected and – sometimes – it is not possible to include a control arm [1].
Real-world data (RWD) are data that are collected outside of RCTs [2]. They are gaining increasing attention for their use in regulatory decision-making. The United States twenty-first Century Cures Act mandated that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) should provide guidance about the circumstances under which manufacturers can use RWD to support the approval of a medicine. More recently, investigators from the European Medicines Agency (EMA) detailed their views on this topic [3].
RWD for regulatory approval: opportunities and challenges
Eichler et al., from the EMA, state that, "the RCT will, in our view, remain the best available standard and be required in many circumstances, but will need to be complemented by other methodologies to address research questions where a traditional RCT may be unfeasible or unethical." Thus, the gauntlet has been laid down for RWD to be used to support European regulatory approval. Indeed, RWD has been used by the EMA to approve several medicines for rare/orphan indications [4]. Eichler and colleagues, however, highlight that RWD methods must be critically appraised before they can be more widely accepted. They suggest that this appraisal can be undertaken via prospective validation of any proposed method with a pre-defined protocol.
Why the need for validation? Studies of the concordance between the results of RCTs and RWD studies investigating the same research question have given mixed results [5, 6]. It has been suggested that this discordance can be attributed to differences in the populations being investigated, or bias in RWD studies as a result of lack of randomisation.
Using an example of cancer risk in statin users, Dickerman and co-workers attempted to understand why RWD studies have shown a protective effect and RCTs showed no effect on neoplasm incidence [7]. One of the key principles of an RCT is to assess patient characteristics at baseline to check study eligibility based on inclusion/exclusion criteria. If eligibility is met, the next task is to randomise subjects into groups and, subsequently, to provide treatment as assigned for each group. Dickerman et al. operationalised a similar 'target trial' approach using RWD and followed up trial-eligible new and non-users of statins to compare rates of cancer between these groups. Performing the analysis in this way enabled the researchers to illustrate that results from RWD were in acquiescence with those from RCTs. Furthermore, previously reported differences were largely a result of two avoidable issues: immortal time and selection bias caused by the inclusion of prevalent statin users (prevalent users had to have survived without cancer up to baseline, leading to artificially lower rates of cancer in the statin group), rather than being attributed to the lack of randomisation per se.
As Dickerman et al. acknowledge, a limitation of the outcome they studied is that confounding by indication (whereby the reason for prescribing a patient medication is also associated with the outcome of interest) is unlikely to have a major role. Where the outcome is more likely to be affected by confounding by indication, then – to mimic the randomisation element of an RCT and appropriately compare treatment groups – RWD studies must carefully adjust for all baseline confounders. In this regard, Carrigan et al. recently report results exploring a research question more likely to be affected by confounding by indication [8]: whether control groups generated from RWD could approximate the control arms used in published RCTs in non-small cell lung cancer. In 10 of the 11 analyses conducted, hazard ratio estimates for overall survival derived from comparing RWD control arms with the intervention arm from the RCT were similar to those seen in the original RCT comparison. However, the analyses showed that a simple 'target trial' alignment of the RWD arm with the trial inclusion/exclusion criteria could not fully replicate the RCT effect estimate; additional adjustment to control for confounding using propensity scores was required. The single non-concordant analysis was thought to be associated with a biomarker that was likely enriched in the RCT but was not present in RWD and therefore could not be adjusted for. This exception to the overall consistency between RWD and RCT findings highlights the importance of needing RWD with information available on all possible confounders to avoid generating inaccurate results.
These two recent studies show that analytical methods and approaches are in place to enable consistency between RCT and RWD results. Further evidence will arise from the FDA-funded RCT DUPLICATE project, which will investigate RCT–RWD concordance on a larger scale [9]. In light of this, the question arises: how many examples are required before regulators can begin to accept RWD for regulatory decision-making? Eichler et al. state that the answer is unlikely to be simple: decision-makers should perhaps first accept RWD analyses for situations in which there is a relatively small impact (e.g. label expansion) and then gradually expand acceptability as confidence in the method grows.
Accumulating evidence suggests that appropriately conducted RWD studies have the potential to support regulatory decisions in the absence of RCT data. Further work may be needed to better illustrate the settings in which RWD analyses can robustly and consistently match the results of RCTs and, more importantly, the settings in which they cannot match them. After careful consideration of the potential for bias, regulators can then determine when they would unequivocally accept RWD in place of an RCT. If studies based on RWD are ever to replace RCTs, regulators may need to accept that the cost of accelerating patient access to treatment carries a higher level of decision-making uncertainty than that with which they are familiar.
Moscow JA, Fojo T, Schilsky RL. The evidence framework for precision cancer medicine. Nat Rev Clin Oncol. 2018;15:183.
McDonald L, Lambrelli D, Wasiak R, Ramagopalan SV. Real-world data in the United Kingdom: opportunities and challenges. BMC Med. 2016;14:97.
Eichler HG, Koenig F, Arlett P, Enzmann H, Humphreys A, Pétavy F, et al. Are novel, nonrandomised analytic methods fit for decision-making? The need for prospective, controlled, and transparent validation. Clin Pharmacol Therapeut. 2019. https://doi.org/10.1002/cpt.1638.
Cave A, Kurz X, Arlett P. Real-world data for regulatory decision making: challenges and possible solutions for Europe. Clin Pharmacol Ther. 2019;106:36.
Anglemyer A, Horvath HT, Bero L. Healthcare outcomes assessed with observational study designs compared with those assessed in randomized trials. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2014;4:MR000034.
Hemkens LG, Contopoulos-Ioannidis DG, Ioannidis JP. Agreement of treatment effects for mortality from routinely collected data and subsequent randomized trials: meta-epidemiological survey. BMJ. 2016;352:i493.
Dickerman BA, García-Albéniz X, Logan RW, Denaxas S, Hernán MA. Avoidable flaws in observational analyses: an application to statins and cancer. Nat Med. 2019:1–6.
Carrigan G, Whipple S, Capra WB, Taylor MD, Brown JS, Lu M, et al. Using electronic health records to derive control arms for early phase single-arm lung cancer trials: proof-of-concept in randomized controlled trials. Clin Pharmacol Ther. 2019. https://doi.org/10.1002/cpt.1586.
RCT DUPLICATE. Projects. Effectiveness research with Real World Data to support FDA's regulatory decision making: A Real World Evidence demonstration project. https://www.rctduplicate.org/projects.html. Accessed 21 Nov 2019.
No specific funding was received for this work.
London School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton St, London, WC2A 2AE, UK
Sreeram V. Ramagopalan
Bristol-Myers Squibb, Sanderson Road, Uxbridge, UB8 1DH, UK
Alex Simpson
PHMR, Berkley Grove, London, NW1 8XY, UK
Cormac Sammon
Search for Sreeram V. Ramagopalan in:
Search for Alex Simpson in:
Search for Cormac Sammon in:
SVR wrote the first draft of the article. All authors contributed to subsequent drafts and the final manuscript. All authors read and approved the final version of the manuscript.
Correspondence to Sreeram V. Ramagopalan.
SVR has been an employee of pharmaceutical and life science consultancy companies. AS is an employee of Bristol-Myers Squibb. CS is an employee of PHMR.
Ramagopalan, S.V., Simpson, A. & Sammon, C. Can real-world data really replace randomised clinical trials?. BMC Med 18, 13 (2020) doi:10.1186/s12916-019-1481-8
Real world data
Randomised clinical trials


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Survivor night: outwit – outplay - outlast
By Chris Archibald - Press Service International
My youth group recently held a 'Survivor Night' and it was a huge success. Just like the popular reality TV show, we were broken up into tribes and competed in a series of challenges to determine the winner. Before the night began, us leaders got to church around two hours beforehand to set up and prepare for the night ahead.
My task was to assemble a sort of 'spiders tunnel' to be a part of the obstacle course and using metal stakes, fabric mesh, string line, and a handful of cable ties I had managed to create a 1 metre x 1 metre square tunnel that was about 15 metres long. It reminded me of the one of the 'Great Escape' tunnels from the popular book/film about a WWII breakout of a POW Camp, only it was above ground and between each pair of posts hung string line like a web that made crawling through difficult – perhaps too difficult as I myself got caught when my tribe had to crawl through!
The other challenges we had were battleship, sock wrestling and the obstacle course. But before we could start we had to have our 'Tribal Ceremony' to split off into our four tribes. Just like the show we had bandanas of four colours (blue, red, yellow, green) and one by one each person would randomly pick from a bowl to get sent to a team.
Bring out the war paint
Once everyone had been sorted into tribes we had to put on our war paint. I went for a 'Uruk-Hai' hand across the side of my face and others had the simple stripes on the cheeks. There was a few 'William Wallace' stripes and one or two Tonto eye paint – we were now ready to go.
With battleship, it was just like the board game, two teams lopping water bombs to the other side while we sat like ships as a single, two or three groups and once we had been hit according to our ship size we were sunk.
After this it was sock wrestling; only it was held on a tarp that was covered in soapy water. The contests were quite intense as people wrestled to take off the other persons sock, one of our leaders who is quite tall lost to one of the younger guys. It was like a David v Goliath battle, if ever I saw one, and history did end up repeating itself.
The obstacle course
Our final challenge was the obstacle course and it pushed us to the limits; we had to go through the play equipment, under some tarps, through a tunnel, over and under some 'saw horses' then crawl through my spider tunnel to end on a tarp covered in soapy water. Lucky I bought a change of clothes for the ride home.
All in all it was a great night and a nice break to do something very different that we hadn't done before, now on to planning for the next Survivor Night!
Christopher Archibald lives in Sydney and is a Youth Leader at New Life Christian Church in Blacktown. A voracious reader, he ploughs through many books in a calendar year, with a bookcase that is constantly being rearranged to accommodate new additions.
Christopher Archibald's previous articles may be viewed at
www.pressserviceinternational.org/christopher-archibald.html
Christopher Archibald lives in Sydney and is a Youth Leader at New Life Christian Church in Blacktown. A voracious reader, he ploughs through many books in a calendar year, with a bookcase that is constantly being rearranged to accommodate new additions.Christopher Archibald's previous articles may be viewed at www.pressserviceinternational.org/christopher-archibald.html


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Frederick Edward McWilliam
United Kingdom 1909 - 1992
Sculpture, Surrealism
Bojan Zlatkov
Bojan is an author for Widewalls. He is currently an undergraduate student at the University of Belgrade, majoring in English studies. He is particularly interested in English linguistics and culture. Bojan is also interested in Photography and Digital Art.
Frederick Eedward McWilliam was a British surrealist sculptor, born in Banbridge, County Down. He worked chiefly in stone, wood and bronze. He studied for a time at the Slade School of Fine Art in London, where he later ended up teaching. During the first year of the Second World War he joined the Royal Air Force and was stationed in England where he was engaged in interpreting aerial reconnaissance photographs. McWilliam exhibited at Waddington Galleries, London, and had a major retrospective show at the Tate Gallery in 1989. In 1964 he was awarded an Honorary D.Litt. from the Queen's University Belfast. In 1966 he was awarded a C.B.E. and in 1971 he won the Oireachtas Gold Medal. McWilliam is represented in many public collections, including MOMA (New York) and Tate Britain.


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George Best documentary All By Myself aims to chart football legend's life and loves, all lost to alcohol
In the new film, the hero's ex-wife Angie recalls how he became so damaged by drinking she mistook him for a homeless man
ESTHER MCCARTHY
It's one of the saddest stories about a footballing legend and a poignant tale of talent lost to alcohol.
In a new documentary about George Best , his ex-wife Angie recalls how he became so damaged by drinking she mistook him for a homeless man.
The film tells how Angie was driving their sick baby son Calum to the GP one night when she saw a man hunched over, walking in the middle of the road in the rain.
It was only as she reached him she realised it was her husband.
She recalled: "I just thought, 'I'm done. I'm done'. And I just kept on driving."
Her tale is one of many contributions from the women who loved him most and knew him best and also includes accounts from second wife Alex and his first serious girlfriend Jackie Glass.
They are among the many family and friends taking part in the detailed account of the life of the Belfast boy which lays bare his selfishness and bad behaviour – but also outlines his genius on the sporting pitch.
Manchester United footballer George Best celebrates the opening of his fashion boutique with a few glasses of champagne on September 14, 1967
George Best: All By Myself, which premiered at the Audi Dublin International Film Festival last night, goes on nationwide release next Friday.
Director Daniel Gordon, who previously worked on an acclaimed documentary about Hillsborough, said the women gave insight into soccer's first superstar at different stages of his life.
The film-maker told the Irish Sunday Mirror: "They give three different sides to George, and three different eras of George.
"Jackie Glass, his first girlfriend, and so many people at the time, so many contemporaries, really wished that they'd stayed together because they seemed to be so in love, so well matched.
"She was very intelligent and didn't need him or his football, wasn't in awe of him.
"So many people really wished they'd stayed together. You do wonder what might have been."
George Best in the 63/64 season (Image: Colorsport/REX/Shutterstock)
Some of the darkest accounts of George's alcoholism come from Angie, who says she had to go looking for him in bars to tell him she was pregnant and that he would disappear for weeks at a time.
She said: "You keep thinking you can fix it with a home-cooked meal," adding that fame didn't help his drinking.
"If 70,000 people wanted to have a drink with George Best, they had one drink, but George had 70,000."
Gordon said Angie was a "great character" to have on screen.
George Best's ex-wife Alex tells This Morning she's being HAUNTED by the footballing legend's ghost
He added: "That would have been a very interesting relationship that they'd have had. A very beautiful couple together, clearly very volatile together as well, and a fiery relationship. It's clear that there's still love there, in spite of everything that happened.
"And then you have Alex, who takes the mantle for the latter years of his life. Although she is still very upbeat about it all, she also was dragged through hell in the prime years of her life."
Alex Best (Image: Getty)
The comprehensive film also features detailed accounts from footballers Mike Summerbee and Paddy Crerand and close pal Malcolm Wagner.
It shows how the young Best – described as the best player in the world by Pele – helped boost Manchester United in the years following the Munich air disaster.
His prowess on the pitch and good looks made him the sport's first megastar.
The director explained: "No one was ever subjected to that kind of scrutiny, and he had no idea how to cope with it, Man United had no idea how to cope with it.
"He was the first, and I hope when you watch the film you get a deeper understanding of the consequences of being the first."
Plans revealed for George Best themed hotel in Manchester
And Gordon added that he blamed fame for Best's downfall. The star – who received a liver transplant in 2002 – died in November 2005 aged 59.
He said: "Even in the end, some people who were with him in his 50s, and he'd still be asked for autographs, and he'd still be excited about signing them.
"He had this aura, attraction, that people still wanted to know.
"I guess the sideshow off the field added to everyone's interest in him, beyond what he did on the football field. I didn't realise that his truly great years were over by the time that he was 22.
"Fleetingly you saw the magic come up again, but it was only fleetingly."
The film also features rarely-heard interviews with the star.
Gordon explained: "What I wanted to do from the very beginning was to give George a voice, even though he's obviously no longer with us, and that was quite a painstaking search for as many interviews we could possibly find.
"There were some interviews where he was quite sober, and, I guess, ready to be honest, and those were quite key and critical to telling his story honestly.
"For me, only people who knew him well were going to be interviewed.
"What I needed from them was for them to be honest about their true feelings for George, the whole character.
"He wasn't a whole saint and he wasn't a whole sinner, but there are shades of grey in between.
"You forget also how beautiful he was as a man. He sort of had this attraction to everyone."
George Best biopic's Belfast premiere and cinema date announced
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May 25 2022 IPTC at CEPIC Congress 2022
Attendees at the table area of CEPIC Congress 2022, held in Mallorca, Spain.
The IPTC took part in a panel on Diversity and Inclusion at the CEPIC Congress 2022, the picture industry's annual get-together, held this year in Mallorca Spain.
Google's Anna Dickson hosted the panel, which also included Debbie Grossman of Adobe Stock, Christina Vaughan of ImageSource and Cultura, and photographer Ayo Banton.
Unfortunately Abhi Chaudhuri of Google couldn't attend due to Covid, but Anna presented his material on Google's new work surfacing skin tone in Google image search results.
Brendan Quinn, IPTC Managing Director participated on behalf of the IPTC Photo Metadata Working Group, who put together the Photo Metadata Standard including the new properties covering accessibility for visually impaired people: Alt Text (Accessibility) and Extended Description (Accessibility).
Brendan also discussed IPTC's other Photo Metadata properties concerning diversity, including the Additional Model Information which can include material on "ethnicity and other facets of the model(s) in a model-released image", and the characteristics sub-property of the Person Shown in the Image with Details property which can be used to enter "a property or trait of the person by selecting a term from a Controlled Vocabulary."
Some interesting conversations ensued around the difficulty of keeping diversity information up to date in an ever-changing world of diversity language, the pros and cons of using controlled vocabularies (pre-selected word lists) to cover diversity information, and the differences in covering identity and diversity information on a self-reported basis versus reporting by the photographer, photo agency or customer.
It's a fascinating area and we hope to be able to support the photographic industry's push forward with concrete work that can be implemented at all types of photographic organisations to make the benefits of photography accessible for as many people as possible, regardless of their cultural, racial, sexual or disability identity.
May 22 2022 Archives, synthetic media, NFTs, rights and much more: IPTC Spring Meeting 2022
Side by side: a game-rendered and a realistic-looking "deepfake" version of Cristiano Ronaldo. Created by Chris Ume to demonstrate the capabilities of modern generative media models. As shown by Henrik de Gyor in his session on synthetic media.
Where else can you hear about the difficulties of examining photo metadata in NFTs, see a lifelike image of a human being generated from pure data before your eyes, see how Wikidata can be used to take semantic fingerprints of news articles, and discover that an hour is nowhere near long enough to discuss simplifying machine-readable rights? Nowhere but the IPTC Meeting, of course! And this year's Spring Meeting was the venue for all of this and much more.
We held the meeting virtually from Monday May 16 to Wednesday May 18th, and attending were over 70 people from at least 45 organisations across more than 20 countries.
Along with our usual Working Group updates and committee meetings, we invited speakers from several fascinating startups, services and projects at member companies. Here's a quick summary of their sessions:
We heard from Kairntech who are working on a classification system based on extracting entities from news stories and building a "semantic fingerprint" which can be used for cross-language classification, search and content enhancement
The New York Times' R&D Lab presented PaperTrail, a project to enhance the quality of the Times' print archive through the use of machine learning to improve on basic OCR techniques (they're looking for collaborators, more info coming soon!)
Bria.ai showed us how an API can be used to enhance and create images and videos through the use of a custom GAN model trained in a "responsible AI" method
Margaret Warren talked us through her efforts in creating and selling an NFT, looking at the process view the perspective of a photo metadata expert
Consultant and author Henrik de Gyor talked us through the latest in synthetic media, which will be helpful in helping us to finalise our Digital Source Type vocabulary for synthetic media
Laurent Le Meur from EDRLab presented his project's recommendation on a Text and Data Mining Reservation Protocol, which can be used by publishers to restrict the rights of data miners in scraping any content for the purpose of analysis or building a model
We heard from Dominic Young of Axate on his approach to offer pay-as-you-go payment options on paywalled news sites based on a simple pre-paid wallet mechanism.
We also had many announcements and discussions around IPTC standards, many of which we will be revealing in the coming months. One notable update is that the Standards Committee approved ninjs version 1.4 which we will release soon.
Thanks to all the IPTC members, Working Group leads, committee members and guests who made this member meeting one to remember.
May 9 2022 NAB 2022 report from Pam Fisher, IPTC Video Metadata Working Group lead
IPTC member delegates Phil Avner (AP), Pam Fisher (Individual Member / The Media Institute), Alison Sullivan (Individual Member / MGM Resorts) and Mark Milstein (Microstocksolutions / VAIsual) at NAB 2022 in Las Vegas.
The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Show wrapped up its first face-to-face event in three years last week in Las Vegas. In spite of the name, this is an internationally attended trade conference and exhibition showcasing equipment, software and services for film and video production, management and distribution. There were 52,000 attendees, down from a typical 90-100k, with some reduction in booth density; overall the show was reminiscent of pre-COVID days. A few members of IPTC met while there: Mark Milstein (vAIsual), Alison Sullivan (MGM Resorts), Phil Avner (Associated Press) and Pam Fisher (The Media Institute). Kudos to Phil for working, showcasing ENPS on the AP stand, while others walked the exhibition stands.
NAB is a long-running event and several large vendors have large 'anchor' booths. Some such as Panasonic and Adobe reduced their normal NAB booth size, while Blackmagic had their normal 'city block'-sized presence, teeming with traffic. In some ways the reduced booth density was ideal for visitors: plenty of tables and chairs populated the open areas making more meeting and refreshment space available. The NAB exhibition is substantially more widely attended than the conference, and this year several theatres were provided on the show floor for sessions any 'exhibits only' attendee could watch. Some content is now available here: https://nabshow.com/2022/videos-on-demand/
For the most part this was a show of 'consolidation' rather than 'innovation'. For example, exhibitors were enjoying welcoming their partners and customers face-to-face rather than launching significant new products. Codecs standardised during the past several years were finally reaching mainstream support, with AV1, VP9 and HEVC well-represented across vendors. SVT-AV1 (Scalable Vector Technology) was particularly prevalent, having been well optimised and made available to use license-free by the standard's contributors. VVC (Versatile Video Coding), a more recent and more advanced standard, is still too computationally intensive for commercial use, though a small set made mention of it on their stands (e.g. Fraunhofer).
IP is now fairly ubiquitous within broadcast ecosystems. To consolidate further, an IP Showcase booth illustrating support across standards bodies and professional organisations championed more sophisticated adoption. A pyramid graphic showing a cascade of 'widely available' to 'rarely available' sub-systems encouraged deeper adoption.
Super Resolution – raising the game for video upscaling
One of the show floor sessions – "Improving Video Quality with AI" – presented advances by iSIZE and Intel. The Intel technology may be particularly interesting to IPTC members, and concerns "Super Resolution." Having followed the subject for over 20 years, for me this was a personal highlight of the show.
Super Resolution is a technique for creating higher resolution content from smaller originals. For example, achieving a professional quality 1080p video from a 480p source, or scaling up a social media-sized image for feature use.
A representative from Intel explaining their forthcoming Super Resolution library and FFmpeg plugin for video upscaling
A few years ago a novel and highly effective new Super Resolution method was innovated ("RAISR", see https://arxiv.org/abs/1606.01299); this represented a major discontinuity in the field, albeit with the usual mountain of investment and work needed to take the 'R' (research) to 'D' (development).
This is exactly what Intel have done, and the resulting toolsets will be made available at no cost at the company's Open Visual Cloud repository at the end of May.
Intel invested four years in improving the AI/ML algorithms (having created a massive ground truth library for learning), optimising to CPUs for performance and parallelisation, and then engineering the 'applied' tools developers need for integration (e.g. Docker containers, FFmpeg and GStreamer plug-ins). Performance will now be commercially robust.
The visual results are astonishing, and could have a major impact on the commercial potential of photographic and film/video collections needing to reach much higher resolutions or even to repair 'blurriness'.
Next year's event is the centennial of the first NAB Show and takes place from April 15th-19th in Las Vegas.
– Pam Fisher – Lead, IPTC Video Metadata Working Group
May 3 2022 Agenda announced for IPTC Spring Meeting, May 16 – 18 2022
Lúí Smyth from Shutterstock presenting at IPTC Spring Meeting, Lisbon, April 2019, back when we had in-person meetings!
With less than two weeks to go, we are pleased to announce the full agenda for the IPTC Spring Meeting 2022.
The IPTC Spring Meeting 2022 will be held virtually from Monday May 16th to Wednesday May 18th, from 1300 – 1800 UTC each day.
IPTC member representatives can view the full agenda and register at https://iptc.org/moz/events/spring-meeting-2022/
Highlights of the meeting include:
Updates from all IPTC Working Groups, including Photo Metadata, Video Metadata, NewsCodes, Sports Content, NewsML-G2 and News in JSON
Updates from the IPTC PR Committee and the IPTC Standards Committee, including votes on proposed new versions of IPTC standards
Invited presentations from:
United Robots, presenting their "robot journalism" system built for media companies
Axate's micropayments system for publishers
Kairntech presenting their content classification system used by Agence France-Presse among others
Bria.ai's image generation and manipulation API backed with cutting-edge artificial intelligence
Consultant Henrik de Gyor speaking on the latest developments in synthetic media
Laurent Le Meur from EDRLab discussing the W3C Text and Data Mining Community Group's recommendation for a Text and Data Mining Reservation Protocol
Member presentations:
Recently-joined IPTC members will have a chance to introduce themselves and their organisations to the IPTC membership
The New York Times presenting their "Papertrail" system used to target advertising based on content metadata
Margaret Warren from ImageSnippets discussing what she learned when creating NFTs from her artwork
Member discussions:
IPTC members will be discussing how we might be able to simplify rights management with a cut-down basic set of rights assertions, possibly creating a simpler alternative to RightsML
IPTC members will also be discussing the News Architecture and how we can better utilise the key data model that underlies both NewsML-G2 and ninjs
Attendance to the 2022 IPTC Spring Meeting is free for all delegates and member experts from IPTC member organisations.
Invited speakers are welcome to attend the day on which they are speaking.


text:
Peer Reviewed Neuropathology Journals
Neuropathology using immunohistochemistry, molecular biological and genetic methods can achieve a diagnosis or classification in up to 95%, using homogenous and harmonized definitions and standardized inter-laboratory methods, standards for the assessment of nervous system lesions, and considering exact clinical data. In addition, detection of NFTs, cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA) and granulovacuolar degeneration in the absence of amyloid plaques suggests that these lesions may precede Aβ deposition and may represent a pre-amyloid stage of pre-AD not yet considered in current recommendations for the neuropathological diagnosis of AD. The goal of peer-review is to assess the quality of articles submitted for publication in a Scholarly Open Access Journals. Peer-reviewed articles provide a trusted form of scientific communication. Although OMICS Group is an open access publisher, it provides subscription based journals called Scitechnol journals.
Last date updated on July, 2014
Gerontology & Geriatric Research Journal
Psychiatry Journal
Addiction Research & Therapy
Brain Disorders & Therapy
Child and Adolescent Behaviour
International Neurorehabilitation Journal
Neurology & Neurophysiology
Sleep Disorders & Therapy
Sleep Disorders : Treatment and Care


text:
Are lyrics offensive
Minstrel Shows, Part Two (81)
Are racist, but traditional, songs OK? (377)
What is the etymology of 'Pattyroller'? (40)
Slavery-Era Song, 'Run, ======, Run' (83)
Steamboat coonjine songs (64)
'Coon Songs' Revisited (13)
Lyr Add: Minstrel Coonjine Songs (6)
Offensive lyrics- edit? (54)
(origins) Origins: Free at Last/I Thank God I'm Free at Last (8)
Lyr Req: Give That Nigger Ham (Parker/Woolbright) (23)
Chord Req: Josh White - Run Mona Run (4)
Tune Req: Fiddle tune 'The Patter Roll' (6)
Lyr Req: Oh, Mona (24)
'Coon Songs' Your Thoughts About Them (145)
(origins) Origins: Run, Nigger, Run (92)
Ethics for Performers (35)
Tune Req: I'd Rather be a Nigger than a Poor White (11)
Singing In Dialect (70)
Racist songs .... arghhhh! (115) (closed)
Minstrel Shows (117) (closed)
Advice Please? - use of offensive words in songs (113)
Trad lyrics that are not PC (17)
Preserve Politically Incorrect Songs??? (73)
Is 'Piccaninnies' Non-PC ? (94)
'Offensive' words in song lyrics (73)
darkeys - offensive term, or not? (49)
Lyr Add: Run, Jimmie, Run (4)
GUEST,Ireland 28 Sep 02 - 10:24 AM
Bill D 28 Sep 02 - 10:47 AM
DonMeixner 28 Sep 02 - 11:10 AM
Leadfingers 28 Sep 02 - 11:14 AM
Amos 28 Sep 02 - 11:24 AM
Joe Offer 28 Sep 02 - 12:54 PM
Bill D 28 Sep 02 - 01:12 PM
Clinton Hammond 28 Sep 02 - 01:26 PM
M.Ted 28 Sep 02 - 01:42 PM
McGrath of Harlow 28 Sep 02 - 01:53 PM
GUEST,Taliesn 28 Sep 02 - 02:12 PM
alanabit 28 Sep 02 - 03:22 PM
GUEST,Ireland 28 Sep 02 - 04:36 PM
Little Hawk 28 Sep 02 - 04:51 PM
Liz the Squeak 29 Sep 02 - 02:43 AM
alison 29 Sep 02 - 03:14 AM
Ned Ludd 29 Sep 02 - 03:25 AM
alanabit 29 Sep 02 - 03:41 AM
Gurney 29 Sep 02 - 04:36 AM
McGrath of Harlow 29 Sep 02 - 11:05 AM
Leadfingers 29 Sep 02 - 12:19 PM
dick greenhaus 29 Sep 02 - 12:44 PM
Amos 29 Sep 02 - 01:20 PM
Dead Horse 29 Sep 02 - 03:19 PM
DonMeixner 29 Sep 02 - 05:04 PM
wilco 29 Sep 02 - 06:58 PM
Thomas the Rhymer 29 Sep 02 - 08:35 PM
GUEST,Boab 30 Sep 02 - 01:54 AM
GUEST,Guest: Oshawa 30 Sep 02 - 02:30 AM
Kaleea 30 Sep 02 - 02:42 AM
Big Tim 30 Sep 02 - 03:56 AM
belfast 30 Sep 02 - 08:30 AM
wysiwyg 30 Sep 02 - 09:21 AM
Wolfgang 30 Sep 02 - 02:19 PM
Jimmy C 30 Sep 02 - 03:21 PM
Grab 30 Sep 02 - 04:21 PM
wysiwyg 30 Sep 02 - 05:05 PM
Subject: Are lyrics offensive
From: GUEST,Ireland
Date: 28 Sep 02 - 10:24 AM
Should people take offence at lyrics, what would people see as taboo? For example would this cause offence?
Don't bury me in Irelands fienian pastures
take me home to Ulster let me die
And on my grave just wright a simple message
here lies a soldier of the UDR (any regiment or organisation can be substituted)
I read on this mb about folk singers telling the (paraphraseing) way it is, being the voice of the community etc.
Can such lyrics cause division within the music world or are they seen just for what they are songs?
Subject: RE: Are lyrics offensive
if you were to search the archives, you would see that anything about the Irish problem will upset someone...why did you doubt? (We have many LONG threads about Ireland ...please do NOT refresh them!)
anything that is controversial will cause offense to someone......
From: DonMeixner
Don't worry about being offensive to some unknown. Write an honest song and stand up for it. Just be prepared for the heat. If the lyric is honest and truthfully stated, no criticism can stand before it.
Are the songs the Wolf tones sing offensive, do folk singers have the right to claim they are the social conscience of the music world, bearing in mind the lyrics of the song.
Before the troubles started again in 69 there were a lot of good chorus songs being sung about the Irish situation. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me, to sing a song about the IRA if some of your audience have family or friends being shot at by them.I havent sung Dublin in the Green for thirty years in case I offend someone. Controversy is one thing, but be careful what you are singing and where you are singing it.
I agree Don.
From: Amos
Offense is a matter of individual choice. There is no categorical "offense". People get pissed whent hey choose to, for myriad webby reasons.
The question is whether a song is honest or not.
My friend sings in all areas of N.I. she was worried one night while singing in a protestant club. The song requested The Chapel on the Hill?? Worried about offence she changed the words from Chapel to Church, boy did she get it wrong, the older people ribbed her all night(jokingly) for not staying to the true wording.
Not a folk song but an honest one, popular among all.
From: Joe Offer
Date: 28 Sep 02 - 12:54 PM
My son the punk rocker writes songs for the specific purpose of offending people, and then he's taken aback when people are offended or repulsed.
Yes, lyrics can offend people. Some lyrics offend some people and not others, and some are more universally offensive - you have to second-guess your audience on that. If causing offense is what you want to do with your lyrics, then you ought to be prepared to accept the fact that some people may dislike you for it.
On the other hand, causing offense with lyrics may be a good way to get people thinking.
Goddamn, self-righteous prigs....
-Joe Offer-
His songs are 'offensive', your songs are 'controversial', my songs are 'poetic truth'
with apologies to the memory of the great Sydney J. Harris, who constructed hundreds of similar examples of human thinking.
From: Clinton Hammond
Everything even vaguely interesting is offensive to someone... somewhere...
,-)
From: M.Ted
With due respect, Amos, it isn't really always an individual choice--In some situations, there are two sides, and, though you might not take a side, you also have to avoid putting yourself in the line of fire--
From: McGrath of Harlow
Well, I suppose that particular little ditty would be likely to start people raising points of order about the implication that there are only six counties in Ulster.
From: GUEST,Taliesn
(quote )"My son the punk rocker writes songs for the specific purpose of offending people, and then he's taken aback when people are offended or repulsed."
Well I suppose we can all thank the degenrate celebrants "Sex Pistols" for making the next wave of Punk all the rage.
(quote) " Yes, lyrics can offend people.... ...On the other hand, causing offense with lyrics may be a good way to get people thinking."
If only actual intellecual processes were in evidence , let alone addressed , in the screed-scrawl that passes for lyrics in Thrash-Rap & Gangstah Rap ,the next devolutionary slide down. Sorry ,but inciting anger and agression feeds on all of this and the culture of local politics , however eloquently or truthfully sung , is where it begins.
Those that have done so honestly have to reflect and take into account how much of this method has been corrupted purely for the *sake* of getting an audience's reptilan *rocks off* as an end in itself.
To misquote one famous ( and *knighted* ) graduate from the Royal School of Economics. " Iiiiii know....It's only horroshow but I like it ,like it, Yes I do".
From: alanabit
It is all about context really. I am not offended by either bare breasts or pigs, but I would not choose to stick up posters of them outside a mosque. I think it is possible to justify shocking people but not deliberately giving offence. There is a difference.
Chrisy Moore write's songs from his perspective some are offensive to many who do not share his ideals. But in the end if he was to stop because some prod did'nt like what he does we would all lose out.
Mc of H that ditty has nothing to do with counties of Ulster, Donegal has it's Orange parades and its part of Ulster, the Kingdom that is.
From: Little Hawk
There have been several popular styles of music in which it was obligatory to write lyrics deemed "offensive". If no one got offended, these musicians would be deprived of a reason for performing, and possibly even of a reason for LIVING! Think about that, you insensitive, hard-hearted people!
What are angry, alienated, sex-starved teenagers supposed to do, if they or their heroes can't offend someone???
"I'm like...get REAL!" "Doh..." "Whatta buncha losers!"
- LH
Does Orielly have a point with his attack on the rappers etc.
Should parents be responsible for the music children are listening to? And if we follow Mr O's example who should children listen to. Every new gengre has its critic's most obvious Elvis, Jerry L. Lewis should they have been banned?
And wouldn't Donegal be classed as one of "Ireland's Fenian pastures"?
The thing about being offensive is that, if you are saying something you believe in, in the way that is natural for you to say it, and it happens to offend people to hear you say it, that's one thing.
If you are saying something you don't particularly believe in, and saying it in a way that isn't your natural way, but is intended to be offensive to other people, that is quite a different thing.
Of course determining which is which is not too easy, and the person saying and the people hearing it might sometimes disagree on this point.
I think it's always best,if the ideas in what you are saying might be offensive to some people, you ought to avoid phrasing it in a way that could be taken as verbally offensive - it muddies the waters, and provides an excuse for them to avoid the real issue. One thing at a time.
McG of H, you seem fixated with scoring cheap points on Irish issues, the song was an example, nothing more just an example to illustrate my post.
But if you want to argue about Ireland I'm willing to indulge you.
ER.... Elvis WAS banned - at least from the waist down...
From: alison
Hi Ireland,
we have had plenty of "discussion" on "the troubles" and "rebel" songs (from both sides)..... some quite civil discussions some very heated... if you look you'll find them....
here are a few of the past ones
which Irish troubles songs are offensive
my little armalite
back home in Derry
there are heaps more...
... (see Bill I didn't refresh them just pointed to them..... *grin*)
I am Irish, but I'm still very careful to choose what I sing...because you don't always know who your audience is...... fair enough if you play in a republican / loyalist club you'll know it is probably fine to sing republican / loyalist songs....
From: Ned Ludd
Many songs can be offensive to some people or they would not be interesting(Liz that was his lower half ,not his lyrics,though many of them are offensive!)However the Irish discussion is about singing songs in the prescence of people you have wronged and expecting them to smile.
May I just correct Taliesn's earlier post. Sir Michael Jagger, for I believe you were referring to him, is a former undergraduate of the London School of Economics.
From: Gurney
Yes they are, to someone. Especially bigots and the politically correct. Worry about them. There are more and more of them every year.
Naah, I'm not into arguing about Ireland on this thread - the remark was a peripheral bit of pedantry. Sorry of it offended anyone.
A lot of the time offending, or being offended, is about power and territory really. If you challenge the limits on what is accepted in a particular space, you are going to be seen as asserting some kind of claim to that space. And similarly, if you object to what is said, you are resisting that claim.
I worked for a while with a guy (South Londoner)who used every now and the be overcome by the urge to sing 'The Sash My Father wore',which usually got me replying with that lovely song with the first line 'One Sunday morning as I was going to Mass.I met bloody Orange man,I killed him for his pass'.Sometimes we got a laugh from the crowd but never a fight,thank God.
From: dick greenhaus
Sid Kipper recently announced that he was forming a new organization: Bigots against Tolerance
Leadfingers, I think that is a laugh, taking the pee out each other, I love it when those who "should not" sing the Sash or the Soldiers song do.
It is when people like the Wolgtones use songs to incite hatred and violence that offends especially when your on the receiving end of a beating when such songs boil the blood.
Being offended by something is an act of will; it requires the deliberate denial of understanding of the whole context and viewpoint from which the offense, elected as such, emanates.
For my part, I find taking offense often is offensive to me. :>)
Alison, I wish that I had left the discussions alone, then I would not have read the absolute shite Big Mick wrote. He surely is a misinformed yank.
But then you get situations where the offensiveness is an act of bullying - people who make racist or sexist remarks as a way of showing who is in charge, and that kind of stuff.
It's not a simple matter of people unreasonably taking offence at things that are really fair enough. Context is everything. A word can be like a blow in the face sometimes.
Was there any songs wrote praising the actions of Jeffry Dhalmer?? the Oaklohoma bomber?
Would lyrics glorifying the murderer be seen as offensive?
I should have said Timothy Mc Veigh.
From: Dead Horse
One mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter. So it goes and will continue as long as there is percieved injustice.
But to get away from that issue, hows about the fact that hardly any sea shanties can be sung as they were intended, without the singer being too concious of being seen as racist, sexist, or downright rude? I have, and will always sing about *niggers* and not accept substitute words, but gauging my audience, I might give an explanation beforehand, or even afterwards, just to set the context. Same goes for sexist or political verses when they crop up. The ruder verses are left for discriminating folks in extreme cases, the milder ones for when children are not present.
It's a case of audience awareness, once again.
But you wouldn't be singing with the object of causing offence, but in the knowledge that you will be, and that's a different thing.
Amos,Being offended by something is an act of will.
Your putting the onus on the offendee not the offender. What aree you saying, if some one writes a song glorifying the 911 deaths, would the victims family be wrong by being offened?
Does some sort of social conscience not come into this, would a song glorifying the act of rape be offensive or just the problem of the victim?
No, a song glorifying rape would be stupid, and offensive to evrybody I can think of. But you have the right to write one. Whether a song is offensive should not be a part of your right to create it. Only a part of your smarts as to whether or not to sing it.
Actually I think I'd put it, "You've no right to write it, but I've no right to stop you writing it".
And I think I'd have the right to object to you singing it. And whether I've the right to or not, I'd still do so.
If someone wrote an honest song saying why they thought the deaths of 9-11 were in some way glorious, I would listen to it without offense if I could understand what they were trying to say.
Granted, that is a pretty big "if"! :>) It is perfectly possible to tolerate a point of view with which you do not agree, and running around hoping not to have anyone disagree with you is hopeless and self-destructive.
If someone wrote a bunch of negative crap glorifying death which they did not honestly mean I expect a lot of people would be offended. I feel that way about rap music, largely -- it communicates in order to offend, and although I find it irritating acoustically, all it tells me is that some ounk is trying to pull my chain, which I decline to have pulled, thanks.
Being offended by X is a two sided transaction. There's no law that says you have to hand your emotional state over to some ass hole and allow him the provelege of making you be offended. You get to design what you will and will not react to. So of course, the event of person A being offended by person B is entirely a matter of subscription and intent by both parties.
It is interesting to get the views of people who get involved in the music industry,it gives me a better understanding of what makes musicians tick.
My two boys are into music in a big way, I would be remiss if I was to expose them to a way of life, without first talking to people who have been there and done it. I do appreciate your replies as they can be used as a talking point with my boys who come home with some wierd stuff from their guitar and music lessons. Sometimes people can see harm where there is none.
From: wilco
Do you want your music to be social commentary, history, entertainment, edification, education, or something else? I don't like to be "preached at," and I hope that I don't "preach at" others.
Amos - I agree entirely with your comments on Rap music (most of it). It emanates from and is directed toward what I would term a very low and negatively inclined mentality...one that glories in its lowness or secretly hates itself for being both what it is and what it is not. I don't believe that has anything to do in the ultimate sense with any given race, by the way, I think it has to do with powerlessness, ghettos, poverty, lawlessness, racism, "victim" psychology, the drug trade, and despair, all masquerading as a super-macho arrogant "attitude"...all of which the music marketing system is only to happy to harness in its endless search for a quick buck.
That being said, I will say that there is some genuinely good and creative rap...like one minute out of a given 9 hours...but there is some. And there are plenty of talented rappers, no doubt. I wish their talents were put to better use.
From: Thomas the Rhymer
Many people do not feel alive untill they have felt offended. People who go out of their way to be offended are trouble from the outset... Nothing like Meth and Alcohol to spice up a conversation... Patriotism mixes volitilely with these substances, and if you throw in a little religion, ...look out! Why do people spoil for a fight? Well, maybe they just recently lost one... I have witnessed offense being taken to most anything one could think of...
Really, though the need to fight for something is rather banal, it would appear that leaning against the status quo can bring about positive change... But change makes people nervous, and irritable people take offense easily...
"Whether we give offense or take offense,... just as much pain is brought into the world"
People who go out of their way to be offended are trouble from the outset...As are people who go out of their way to offend.
And what's really happening a lot of the time is people trying to defend territory and people trying to acquire it. Metaphorically, or actually.
try this series of threads Ireland.. I think you'll like them.....
offensive to some initially, but definately tongue in cheek and became a masterpiece.....
Campsite at Drumcree
From: GUEST,Boab
Once wandered thro' Glencolumcuil [somebody put my spelling right? Ta!] at dusk. Passing a local pub, I heard the lively sound of an Irish jig come breezing out the door. Ah---that was for me! In I went--a door to the right, and one on the left. The glad sound was coming from the right. It was jam-packed---no way in. I disconsolately turned and entered the room on the left. It was gloomy dark, with only the tv throwing a flickering light. All were watching intently; the Orange parades, Ian Paisley and all--in Ulster! I didn't fancy sitting in the dark, so I moved back out into the evening air of Saint Columba's birthplace. I looked up at the swinging pub sign; the Red Hand of Ulster ! A funny old world------
From: GUEST,Guest: Oshawa
Aren't songs really just about telling stories? Stories aren't obligated to be objective, just to be well told. What annoys me is when songs manipulate the lowest common denominator, whether in the sappiest pop song or in violence-inciting rap or rock and roll. That's up to the artist. It is SO easy to manipulate the listener but that's not what a good story is about. A good writer is not afraid to offend the reader/listener as a consequence of telling a good story but neither do they offend as a substitute for learning how to write. It's an ancient argument really. Sorry... just visiting... and blathering.
From: Kaleea
Define "offensive." I recall that the late Nat King Cole was considered to be demoralizing & polluting the minds of the nations' teens with his "rock & roll!" (How unforgetable that is to me!) Elvis' pelvic moves were nothing compared to today's hbo & cinemax. When I was teaching in the public school system of a midwestern capitol, I found the actions of the administration to be offensive. Another teacher & I were warned that if we suspected a certain 3rd grader to be physically abused, we would not report it to any authorities--under penalty of being fired, as they did not want any lawsuits!! I also found the behaviour of students & their parents to be offensive. When I called a parent to report that the 6 year old was urinating all over the walls of the restroom & refused to cease, she replied "I have the same problem with his Daddy & all of his brothers."
From: Big Tim
Boab: re Red Hand - we've touched on this before. The symbol is an ancient one for the whole of Ulster, 9 counties, not Northern Ireland's 6 only. It appears on the O'Neill Coat of Arms. "Great" Hugh O'Neill was, arguably, one of Ireland's first and greatest nationalists, with his battle success at Clontibret in 1595(!) History goes back a long way in these parts. For me, the Red Hand will remain a symbol of the whole of Ulster, including Glencolumbcille ("valley of Columba's prayer cell or church") in Donegal (where I was born) even though 10% (at most) of 66% of the geographical area have tried to appropriate it, and quite successfully too.
Re kids going into the into music business (this is for you LH!): Bob Dylan, who's forgotten more than most of us will ever know about it, wasn't too keen on his son becoming a "rock star", but he did anyway. Kids will usually do their own thing and parents will always worry about them!
From: belfast
It is sometimes hard to know exactly where the offence lies. When Christy Moore recorded "The Time Has Come" it received extensive airplay on RTE. When someone told them that it referred to the last meeting between Peggy O'Hara and her son, the hungerstriker Patsy O'Hara, they banned it. The words of the song had not changed.
On the other hand "one Sunday morning as I was going mass etc" mentioned earlier is simply and obviously offensive to anyone catholic, protestant or atheist. Is this being politically correct? Perhaps. It's also stating the obvious.
What's REALLY offensive is having someone else decide what I ought or ought not to feel offended by, because I failed to read their mind correctly on intent. That compounds offensiveness beyond one's own boundaries, and repeatedly violating someone else's boundaries is beyond offensive.
~S~
Christy Moore really P.'s me off, but that's the twisted Irish in me, on the otherhand he tells a story and to ban that would be offensive. I'm on the otherside wrt the hunger strikers, but do admire them for sticking to their convictions. Their story should be told, its up to us to take out of it what we want, inspiration or offence.
Now there's an opinion I did not have before!
No, you can't read people's minds, as WYSIWYG says. As a rule of thumb, I feel it is always best to give people the benefit of the doubt - if they offend, assume that they aren't doing it just to offend; and if people claim to be offended, assume that they genuinely are.
If you're wrong in that assumption, it normally becomes pretty clear soon enough. But if you do it the other way round, and assume malice or bad faith, and you are wrong, the chances are you will never find out the truth, because the way you react will mask it.
From: Wolfgang
Ireland,
I'm curious, will you give us the original lyrics of the verse you started your argumentation with, eventually? My bet is the last line is
here lies a soldier of the IRA
Or am I mistaken?
Wolfgang, to add IRA at the end would make no sense as the song indicates the territory of "ulstermen", for an IRA man to be buried in Ulster he is still in his home land if you know what I mean.
There is another song No pope in Rome? Tune of home on the range. No pope in Rome No chapels to shine in my eye, No nuns and no Priests and no rosary beads Every day is the 12th of July.???
These songs are brought out around the start of July, they only cause offence and instill hatred. My friend is catholic as he is older than me he takes the mick out of the situation, you know prod v cath, mixing the Soldiers song with the sash, goes over my sons head but I think it's funny.
My point I suspose is this,if my children are not exposed to this crap there is one less way of filling them full of bigoted crap the ruins a great country. And if they are exposed to it I rather have the situation protrayed for the joke it is.
I had meant of course that the other lines had to be adapted as well. But your response shows I was dead wrong thinking this was originally an IRA song.
Singing Kevin Barry to the tune of The Sash, and the other way round, is sometimes done. You can get away with the same chords, so if anyone had the nerve they could have the two going on at the same time, and it might sound quite good - harmonising.
From: Jimmy C
I know quite a few Irish songs and would never intentionally offend anyone, However if I went into a "Orange" club I would expect to hear certain songs and if I went into a "Nationalist" club I would expect to hear certain songs as well. I am not going to be offended when I know in advance what to expect.
The difference is whether the song offends your moral values, your nationality, your religion or your sexual orientation etc. I am a catholic nationalist but there are certain rebel songs I would not sing because I know by the lyrics that they cross the line of acceptance. I do sing many songs that are pro-irish rather than anti-english. I find that the majority of "orange" songs for example are not anti-irish as much as they are anti-catholic and are very offensive.
I once sang " Over the Sea to Skye" at a Scottish function and was warned not to sing it again because it was a Catholic Jacobite song. This was in Toronto in 1988. It's a judgement call, and really there are lots of great songs around that there is no need to offend anyone. If in doubt don't include it in your set.
I have heard of people having problems by ordering the wrong brand of Whiskey.Jamesons is Catholic ,Bushmills is protestant.Is that ridiculous,or what???
I've heard of whiskey becoming a religion in extremis but this is the first time anyone tried to tell me that a religion had a whiskey as a parishioner!! LOL!
Guinness is ecumenical, I believe.
From: Grab
Amos, I disagree. You can be offended by anything, and what offends you depends on the beliefs and values you hold. It doesn't even take any skill or communication - about the easiest way to offend is to chew your food and then hang your mouth open in front of someone!
That's why I find "artists" who say that they're offending to communicate to be idiots. Being offensive takes no skill or talent, and shows no intelligence or motivation on the part of that person beyond the desire to do something generally considered unacceptable.
What you *can* do is not to get het up about it. If the person doing it doesn't know it's offensive to you, then don't shout about it, and don't blame that person. For instance, if I sang "Pretty Polly" and only later found that someone in the audience had recently had a daughter murdered, I would feel bad that I could have chosen a more appropriate song. And if that person had left the room, I wouldn't be surprised when I found why. But I *wouldn't* expect them to want a written apology from me, or for anyone to get on my case about it, if I simply didn't know. If I did know and sang it anyway, to get that person pissed off, then I could rightly expect them to dislike me for it. Whether that song is offensive *to me* or not is one issue, whether the singer/writer is intending to *be* offensive is another issue altother.
So if someone sings a pro-IRA or pro-UDA song in a club I'm in, they won't get much applause from me bcos I don't like those songs, but that's it. But if they come up to me afterwards and try to pick a fight with me for being in favour of Brit soldiers shooting the little kiddies, they have deliberately chosen to be offensive to me personally, and that's a different matter.
I would really rather ppl sang what they want and we all tone out what we don't personally like, than that we have limits imposed. Wysiwyg's point is true - political correctness should just mean that you don't *intend* to cause offense, not that you take a focus group from every corner of the world and produce something which is so vague, you can't tell what it's supposed to mean anyway!
Graham.
Fields of Athenrye (?) is a song that is anti-English, but it is about how people were sent to Australia both Catholic and Protestant met the same fate, so I understand the anti-English songs, but hate the way people hijack it for political reasons.
I have said the Wolftones bug the *&"^ out of me before, but when I consider what has been said about the songs you sing and why, it has changed my opinions a bit.
I agree that the anti-catholic songs of the orange order are very offensive, it shows an ignorance and ingratitude that does nothing but stir it up.
I know I started from an Irish perspective I'm interested in songs that offend in general, I do not want to relate every thing to Ireland.
Religous songs can be pretty near the knuckle.
QUite right -- You can be offended by anything, and that depends on your beliefs. And, let us not forget, your beliefs are the result of your own decision to assume them. You can also be NOT offended by anything. Pay yer money, take yer cherce! :>) In my experience, the more offense one arounds taking from the environment, the less productive and helpful they are, as a general rule of thumb.
When Geldof brought out "I don't Like Mondays", was the family who took offence justified in trying to take him to court and have the record banned?
When they (Boomtown Rats) wrote the song, were they more interested in making money at the expense of the girl the song was about
At the functional level of everyday life, it's real simple. People simply vote with their feet when they've had more than they are willing to have. What happens in between the offense and the vote is where it gets sticky.
A virtual clarion, as usual, Susan!
I can't see anything "anti-English" in the Fields of Athenry, and I've never met any English person who saw it that way. Rebelling against "the Crown" is something a lot of English people have felt called to do at various times, and have seen as their patriotic duty.
Maybe that's a quibble - there are songs which would qualify. But the relevance of making that quibble is that it's quite easy to identify songs as partisan, and they get used in a partisan way, when they aren't in themselves partisan at all. Singing a particular hymn can be seen, and can be intended as, a provocative and sectarian act - and then you find it's in a hymn book of the other religion anyway, used in another part of the world.
There's stuff which is intentionally and explicitly sectarian or racist or whatever, and anyone singing it except in a special kind of quasi-academic context, is setting out to make a sectarian or racist statement, and maybe laying down a territorial claim of some kind. And there is stuff which gets taken up and used as some kind of banner, when the content is in no way offensive ("I'm for Ever Blowing Bubbles" becomes a way of expressing support for West Ham, and could even get your head kicked in.)
It's easy enough to say "don't be offended" and if its a question of something that might be aimed at you or yours, that's probably something to aim for. But there's the question of how to react if it's aimed at someone else - I don't think there's anything particularly admirable in keeping quiet when some bigot is throwing insults at Black people or Jews or Arabs. Or Catholics, if you're a Protestant, or Protestants if you're a Catholic, if you're in a part of the world where those kinds of insults carry weight.


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text:
Aon Purchases JLT Affinity Division
Aon said the combination of resources of the two would enhance technology-enabled service, especially in e-commerce, and provide market leverage and product diversity for the JLT associations. Affinit
By Staff Writer | Updated on May 15, 2006
Aon's subsidiary, Affinity Insurance Services Inc., has acquired a division of JLT Services Corporation, specializing in program administration for association-sponsored insurance programs.
The Chicago-based insurance brokerage firm said the JLT division has 50 employees in offices in Chicago and Latham, N.Y. Most are expected to join Aon, the firm said.