text:
It's 9PM on Christmas Eve and you arrive at Tae's door with a six-pack of Guinness, a phone charger, and a pair of fleece-lined pajamas. Her studio is a third-story walk-up, located halfway between a billiards bar and a 24-hour bodega on the Lower East Side. From the outside, it has the kind of dense granite façade that could almost require a doorman, but inside, the stairs creak, and the peeling paint on the banister has gathered in a pool of pastel green on the landing.
"Hope you don't mind, but I got bored waiting," Tae says, motioning to the bottle of scotch on the counter when you open the door. She is wearing a pair of checker-print shorts and a loose-fitting sweater that reaches her thigh. Her long hair is tied up in a bun, and she fixes you with a look that suggests neither excitement nor displeasure at your presence. "Glasses are in the cabinet. Knock yourself out."
Tae is a friend of a friend. You've seen each other on a handful of occasions and get along fine but until now have never hung out on your own. Had it not been for Christmas, and the unhappy fact that you are both alone, you would hardly have any reason to see her now. But there are few emotions more compelling than misery, in a city – bewitched by winter mirth – that is even less forgiving during the holidays.
"Thanks," you say as you step inside, setting down your bag and shoes by the door. Her apartment is small in a way that suggests closeness and a sincere lack of belongings. The front door opens directly into the kitchen; her fridge, upon a quick scan of its contents, doesn't have enough ingredients to make an omelet.
"I'm not much of a cook," Tae says, intuiting your response before you can speak. You think about taking each bottle of beer out of the cardboard sheath and giving it its own place on the shelf, but decide against it. There is an unassuming, no-nonsense charm about Tae. She grew up in a suburb of Minneapolis and moved to Manhattan after college. When you asked her a few months ago why she chose New York, she said that she was tired of constantly fielding questions from people who had never met an Asian person before.
"It was like having to represent all Asian people, everywhere, all the time," she told you, at a birthday dinner for a mutual friend at Fontana's in the fall. "This may sound really fucking idealistic but I just thought I'd find more people here like me."
It sounded so much like a dozen other "Why New York?" stories you'd heard that you could practically fill in the rest of the details yourself: daughter of Korean immigrants, only Asian American in her high school class, full ride to state college. In reality, your own story is pretty similar, having grown up the only son of a Puerto Rican mother in Cincinnati. But the reason why you came to New York is far more naïve, and you were thankful in that moment that Tae didn't think to ask.
"I only applied for jobs here, and when I got one, I bought a one-way ticket and never looked back," Tae said. The lights at Fontana's dimmed in anticipation of the post-dinner crowd. You and Tae were crowded at the end of a long table. Outside of the host, you didn't recognize anyone else at the restaurant. Tae propped both her elbows up and looked lazily at the ceiling. She wasn't self-conscious about not wearing any make-up, but you noticed her features right away. There was a terse directness to the way she spoke; having spent so long being questioned, she didn't seem to care what other people thought of her.
"I wanted to stop pretending to be someone I wasn't," she said, staring straight into your eyes. She stretched her arm out across the table and took your hand in hers. "I just wanted to be."
"Sorry the trains took forever," you say, as you close the fridge and open a beer.
"It's a holiday for Christ's sake," she says. "It's a miracle they run at all."
Inside Tae's studio, it is remarkably warm despite the weather. You are still wearing your coat, which is not warm enough for December, but too warm for the kitchen, so you take it off and place it in Tae's outstretched arms, who slumps it, along with her sweater, over the lip of the couch.
"Shall I give you the grand tour?"
Out past the kitchen is a small bathroom. In front of you, a black leather couch and a coffee table. And directly to your left, Tae's bedroom. She props the door open and you poke your head into the unlit room. In the dark, you can see the outline of a wardrobe, a made bed, an old window screen she repurposed to hold jewelry. The bed is piled with pillows that nearly enclose it on four sides like a sandbox. You feel a knot in the pit of your stomach, like looking at something you shouldn't see.
Tae takes a seat on the sofa in the living room and props her legs up on a chair. As she slides down, her shirt rides up to reveal a band of tawny skin just above the waist. She doesn't offer you a seat and you don't want to appear impatient, so you sit down, gingerly, like you are submerging into hot water.
"What shall we watch?" she asks, as she places a laptop on the coffee table and takes a sip from one of your beers. You decide on a James Bond movie she has already seen ("Like I need an excuse to watch Daniel Craig"). She smiles, and you notice for the first time that one of her teeth is chipped. You suspect it might be a point of embarrassment, the same reason she used to introduce herself as Tyra and not Tae when she was younger, so you say nothing. You shift your weight on the couch but still arrange yourself next to her like two pieces on a chess board—adjoining squares incapable of touch.
The week before when you called it was unseasonably warm, so you were at Bryant Park with your phone out and no gloves. You were doing the thing you always do when you get bad news: walk. You made it to Midtown from Harlem already and only stopped there to use the bathroom. Inside the park, there were dozens of holiday shops selling scented candles, knit scarves, picture frames, New York kitsch. The ice rink was lit up, and couples were bracing against each other and laughing, skating around the outer ring near the wall.
You forgot when you had even exchanged numbers with Tae, so when she picked up the phone, you were both a little surprised. You skipped the small talk and told her that you and Raquel had broken up. You said that your plan to spend the holidays with her family in Westchester had fallen through, and that it was too late now to buy a ticket to Cincinnati. It all came out much calmer than you expected, like you were narrating the plot to a story. You didn't really know why you were telling her any of this. Your lips were moving but it felt like you were watching yourself talking into the phone from somewhere else.
Tae had never met Raquel, and there weren't many people you knew in the city to begin with. You could almost hear the gears turning in her head, trying to figure out how to respond. The last time you saw her at Fontana's, Tae was wearing a white blouse with the collar undone, a braid of hair wrapped across her neck. You pictured her now, her eyes skimming the menu, the camber of her lips, the way her hand slid over yours at the restaurant. All at once, you asked her what she was doing for Christmas. For a moment, the receiver was cold.
"Bring a change of clothes," she said, finally. "You can spend the night."
By the time you're close enough to touch, James Bond is tied to a wooden chair in the middle of a large, empty room. He had escaped from a train chase only to be captured by a group of men and brought to an abandoned warehouse. As he is being held inside, you feel yourself sinking into the leather plush of the couch. You glance at Tae out of the corner of your eye and forget for a minute what it is you're doing there. Tae is on her second beer and you trade in yours for a glass of scotch. There is a part of you that is anxious, worried for his fate, even though after so many movies you can predict the ending before it happens.
When Tae sits up abruptly on the couch and cranes her neck toward you, you think that this is the moment she is going to kiss you. You have been preparing yourself for this, in spite of the fact that you have been sitting in near silence for a half-hour and still haven't made contact with any part of her. You turn toward her instinctively, like a flower facing the sun, steadying your arm against the back of the couch. But instead she leans in to your ear, like she is about to tell you a secret.
"I should tell you now that my bedroom is like a college dorm," Tae says, as matter-of-factly as reciting a grocery list. "The walls are so thin that I can hear everything that my next-door-neighbor does, and vice-versa." A grin appears across her face, and you realize that it is meant more for your peace of mind than her own.
You think of your own apartment then, the two-bedroom you share with three other guys in Harlem, like boarders, and how you were too embarrassed to ever let Raquel see it. It was the only place you could afford when you moved to New York six months ago. There is no heat in your room and when it rains you have to put buckets underneath the ceiling to catch water. But you figured you would be spending most of your time at Raquel's anyway, so you didn't really think much about it. You remember Raquel's apartment in Chelsea with the marble counters and the hard-wood floors, the queen-sized bed with a headboard, the fridge full of organic produce.
The villain in the Bond movie is shouting something now, and you tilt your head to try to make out the words. Tae slides the coffee table back and gives you a firm look, like she means business. You're still weighing the pros and cons of being there, when she starts in abruptly.
"It can make situations like these uncomfortable," Tae says. She motions to her bedroom and then again to the couch where you both are still sitting. "So we're just going to have sex out here."
You don't know if you've feigned surprise or are genuinely caught unaware. The scotch has a strong effect on you, and it takes you a minute to process what she said. You are still wearing your bewilderment plainly on your face, and Tae seizes on it immediately.
"Well, honestly, what did you expect?" she asks, placing her hands on her hips. "You really didn't think we were going to fuck?"
You lament, for a moment, the days before college, when just going over to a girl's house was an accomplishment. You had to make up some excuse to your mom – that basketball practice ran late or that you had to meet for a group project – and at best you could do it once a month, so that she didn't start to get suspicious. The girls you liked in high school lived in ranch houses in the suburbs, away from the petty crime and the projects, and drove their dad's SUVs to school. They liked to ask you questions, like whether or not you knew how to salsa, and how to pronounce words for them in Spanish. You liked them because they wore lip gloss in flavors like cherry and root beer, and had parents who always seemed to work late.
You spent hours with them, applying all your wit and charm to look enticing, hoping it might lead somewhere. And then, there were the times when you were actually alone with a girl, your mind racing the whole time. Maybe she hadn't started talking about another guy yet, but she hadn't shown you any special interest either. Your eyes kept shifting around the room, taking in the antique Armoires, the gilded-edged rugs, the silk blinds.
You asked yourself the question are we going to do something with such monotony you could have sworn you were keeping time. If you were lucky, you might make out on the couch until you heard the sound of a car pulling into the drive, and then start in on grammar drills like you were one of her tutors. Your clothes stayed on and the cushions hardly budged; there was a certain thrill to it, a perverse sense of denial.
You are not prudish about sex, despite the fact that you grew up in a Catholic household and for a long time believed you would save it for marriage. At Ohio State, half the girls never considered sleeping with you because you're brown, and the other half came on so strong you could have sworn you were Mario Lopez. But even now, you sometimes feel like you have to be more complicit than you are. Most of your friends wouldn't think twice about sleeping with a girl they had just met. But you knew early on that you were too meek to be a lady-killer. More often than not, you have to act the part, like a tough guy on a soap opera. Something always holds you back.
Tae is shuffling around the living room now, converting the leather couch into a single horizontal slab, like a dark plank in the sea of her apartment. She is ferrying bedding and pillows from her bedroom, the corners of the sheets dragging along the floor. Not only is Tae's bedroom not soundproof, you realize, but neither is the rest of her apartment. With the movie off, you can hear Christmas music pouring in clearly from the bodega downstairs, the melodies of Nat King Cole and Doris Day, one after the other, in the dimly-lit room.
You used to watch holiday movies with your mom on Christmas Eve in Cincinnati – Rudolph and Charlie Brown and the Snow Miser on primetime network marathons. It was never anything special, but even in college, you would never miss coming home for the holidays. The two of you would eat empanadas on plastic trays, on the lumpy green futon in the living room with the space heater wedged between you. The TV antenna was broken a lot, so sometimes the shows would come in fuzzy or in black and white or with the sound turned off. It hardly mattered how many times you'd seen them, it felt like you could watch those movies forever.
"What does it matter if we don't have a tree," your mom used to say, "or that the kids in the movies always have two parents?" She'd sometimes say it in English, too, for emphasis. "I know that you're going to figure it out," she said. "With a wife and kids, what it means to be a family."
Tae finishes adjusting the sofa bed and lies down sideways on it, her head propped up on a pillow. She stares at you now with a look that suggests both self-assuredness and impatience, like she's the swim team captain and you're the last person to get in the pool. Your response comes off more puzzled than excited. Still looking at the white wall behind her that used to be a backrest, there is a part of you that wonders what she sees in you.
She motions you over with a flourish of her legs. It has already been a week since Raquel called to break it off, but it seems to hit you all at once. You want to have sex at this moment the same way you did when you first lost your virginity – to prove in some stupid, insignificant way that you are wanted.
Raquel was the first girl you met in college. She was in your freshmen English seminar, and you talked after class about Sandra Cisneros and Junot Diaz, and how you wished that there were more Hispanic writers in the mainstream. Before you met her, you didn't think there was such a thing as a bookish Latina – her in the horn-rimmed glasses, a Bel Canto novel tucked under her arm. But at the same time, she could pull off a crop top and leggings, sing along to every verse of Selena. One minute she was talking power to the people and the next about the best wine pairings with cheese. She made it look so effortless, having a foot in each world.
It was a quality unlike anything you'd ever known, and yet, you had spent your whole life trying to find it. That's when you knew. You courted her for months, didn't give up even when she told you she had a boyfriend back home in New York who could bench-press you in his sleep. You started getting meals with her after class. You surprised her just because, left flowers for her when she came back from break. You wrote messages on slips of paper that you left underneath her door, starting off with just a few words, gradually ballooning into letters, hot and fast as confessions.
She was different from the girls you used to like in high school. She made you her grandma's pollo guisado recipe in the tiny kitchen in her dorm room. She talked like you did, in two tongues, hardly aware when one ended and the other began. The first time you made love, she pressed her hips into you and arched her back, bracing her arms against your shoulders. You wanted to say something, how invincible you felt in that moment, but her eyes were closed and her body tensed, her limbs softly easing into yours.
"I don't really like kissing," Tae says, as you touch your lips to hers. "You'd be surprised how many people have no idea what they're doing." She has a calm kind of detachment, like she knows what she wants but has little riding on the outcome. You are still waiting for a sign that anything you're doing isn't wrong. She reaches her hands down the length of your torso and undoes the buckle on your belt. You concede, and only when you close your eyes again do you realize that you're still thinking about Raquel.
On weekends, you and Raquel used to drive out to watch movies in Cedar Park. It was forty minutes from Columbus, but felt exactly like the white neighborhoods you sometimes visited in high school with its verandas and fountains, the paved carriageways lined with plants. Raquel had grown up in Westchester and found the whole area comforting. It always surprised you a little bit, to know that someone like her could still call a place like that home.
You let yourself dream sometimes about settling down in New York with her, of buying a brownstone in Brooklyn with a front yard and a wrought-iron fence. You had never been to New York, but at the Regal in Cedar Park they sometimes showed movies like When Harry Met Sally and You've Got Mail. You agonized over how the streets looked, wanted to know them intimately, like New York was a place you belonged. You thought about how these perfect strangers, in spite of all the chaos and spectacle of the city, had managed to fall in love, and how one day you would go to New York with Raquel and fall in love too.
Tae pulls her shirt over her head and climbs on top of you. She is wearing a black bra with a clasp at the front that holds her small frame in place. She is holding you now through the thin layer of your boxers and you reach for her too, starting with her waist, along the softness of her stomach, and settle on the smooth recess just beneath her chest. You touch her body for the first time, as if navigating a new city.
"Do you have a condom?" she asks, as you slide your hand inside the ridge of her bra. You make a mental note of the items in your bag by the door and shake your head. You fantasize for a moment about how your kids might look, cocoa skinned and almond eyed, if Tae were pregnant with your child.
"Sometimes I don't even know why I try," Tae sighs, twisting herself off of you and wrangling up her bra straps. "My friends keep telling me not to bother with hopeless men."
You wonder why she doesn't have any condoms herself but quickly forget it. You decide to overlook this slight, in the same way you choose to ignore comments about your accent or the way cops seem to single you out for routine stops in your neighborhood in Cincinnati after dark. Your mind goes blank, and all you can hear is the sound of "Silver Bells" filling the silence in the room.
"The bodega should sell them," you suddenly say out loud.
Lying on your back, you map out the proposed journey in your head. You put on your jacket and walk the three flights downstairs. The cold air stings your face and the lights of the East Village are just visible in the distance. A decade ago you'd run the risk of getting mugged or worse, but now there's just empty chatter and the dull glow of the bodega's red and yellow awning on the corner.
You slip through the clear plastic curtains and scan the aisles. The area behind the counter sells cigarettes, toiletries, and lottery tickets, and there is a fridge full of popsicles by the front. You glance over the packages, craning your neck so as not to appear anxious, and eventually settle on a bright red package that claims to be made for "His and Her Pleasure." For minutes after, you stare intently at a shelf of Famous Amos and Wrigley's, like you came in for something else.
When you set the condoms on the counter, the man who rings you up laughs so hard you think that you picked up a box of Tampons by mistake. When you look up, you realize that he is the same cashier, dressed in a beater and Levi's, who sold you the six-pack of Guinness less than an hour ago.
"Fues rápido, vato," he says, shooting you a wide grin. "What, was she just up there naked like that, waiting for you?"
When you buzz in and walk back upstairs, you set the box of condoms down at the foot of the sofa. You take off your shirt and lie down on the couch, but something feels different. The living room is bare and unfamiliar again and you are full of doubt. You imagine Raquel, who loved making out to Amelie, who wanted you to touch her so slowly it nearly killed you, and realize how little you actually know about Tae. Out of the corner of your eye, you see the laptop on the coffee table. You think about James Bond, trapped somewhere in that warehouse, and suddenly worry if he will ever make it out.
"What's wrong?" Tae asks you, with a mix of concern and frustration, and you know that you can't tell her the things that would probably make you less of a man in her eyes.
You are staring hard at your reflection in the bathroom mirror. You look at the thin scar along your right eye, the shiny blackness of your hair, the flush of red in your cheeks. Those parts are all yours, and yet nothing feels quite right, like you are standing in a fun house. The floor is fitted with white and black checkered tiles; the hand towel matches the gray of the rug. You look at the drain in the sink. You see a rubber stopper in the water and pull it up until it empties, just to make sure it still works.
For a long time, you think about leaving, about not saying a word to Tae and taking off right through the front door. You want to walk as far away as you can, to disappear completely. You are just about ready to go when something catches your eye. Against the far wall of the shower is a vinyl curtain fashioned out of a subway map. The island of Manhattan is blown up in the center, but you can still make out the other boroughs – the inlet of Staten Island, the conjoined twins of Queens and Brooklyn, the bulbous crown of the Bronx – each with its crisscross of colored subway lines leading into and away from the city.
You remember the dog-eared map you used to carry around with you everywhere you went, and how it was only native New Yorkers, you were told, who could understand the conductors when they announced service changes over the intercom. You pore over the curtain like a relic, tracing with your finger your route from Harlem to the Lower East Side. The vinyl is smooth, and seems to embody the antithesis of an actual train's path, swooping gracefully, unerringly from one stop to the next.
As you wind your finger down the map, you stop at Union Square, where you used to transfer to the L to go across town. You think about how many nights you had made that trip, taking the train to 8th Avenue, and then walking the six blocks to Raquel's apartment. When you arrived in New York, it was the middle of the summer, when the whole of the city seemed to shift outdoors. There was something so novel about it – businessmen walking out of work at 3PM, elevated subway cars strewn with beach chairs and sand buckets – that you couldn't let yourself think about how distant you and Raquel had grown.
Every time you saw her, it was about how exciting the city was. It was why you put up with everything – the crowded trains, the long commute – like no sacrifice was too great. You were captivated by the fantasy of New York, and yet, at the same time, blinded from the reality: that you were not part of the life Raquel saw for herself in it. For months, you ignored the signs, found solace in the fact that she was as ignorant of your life in Cincinnati as you were of hers in New York. You should have known when she didn't want you to move in with her that she was trying to hedge her bets. The whole time you lived in New York, you had none of your belongings at her place: not a scrap of clothing, not a toothbrush.
But it still doesn't feel real to you yet. You think about Raquel coming back from Westchester after Christmas and you taking the train to meet her in Chelsea, just like you had before. You wonder if everything in her neighborhood – the dry cleaners, the Farmer's Market, the Barnes & Noble – will suddenly become off-limits to you, how you might hardly be able to go anywhere in the city without thinking of her.
With your finger still on Union Square, you follow the path to Tae's house, continuing down the Lexington Avenue line and stopping at Astor Place. You think about making the journey in reverse, following your finger up to Union Square, and going right past it, riding the train all the way back to Harlem. You measure the distance with your hands. You consider how far you've gone and how far you still have to go.
By the time you get out, Tae has moved all of the bedding back to her bedroom. She is lying down on the mattress, facing the window. Her bedroom looks different than you imagined it earlier: the dresser is teak and looks Victorian, there is an L-shaped desk in the corner decorated with seashells, and the window screen with jewelry is nowhere to be found. It's like New York in a way. You wonder how long you have to be somewhere before you stop feeling like a complete stranger to a place.
Tae is not yet asleep; the blankets rise and fall irregularly with each breath. You draw back the covers and lie down next to her, your chest facing the ceiling. For a moment, you doubt whether or not you should be there, but Tae slouches toward you with her back, and you edge close to her, like a lover, forming a seal against your chest.
"I've thought about this for a while," she says, her face still turned toward the window. "Even before I knew about you and Raquel." Tae has never mentioned a boyfriend to you, so you guess that none of them worked out, but not for lack of trying. She lets out a deep breath and arches her back. You nod timidly, knowing it was what you thought you wanted too.
"You never did tell me why you moved to the city," she says, and you're not sure for a second if she really said it or you made it up in your mind. You close your eyes and steady your breathing, pretending to be asleep, but she turns around to face you.
"It's a reminder for me," she says. "New York has a way of disappointing you." She is looking at you but her eyes seem to sail past yours to the door behind. "Every day is this series of bad dates and missed stops and delays. But it's where I live, and sooner or later, you learn to live with it." You think about why Tae first came to the city and whether or not she found what she was after.
"So what's your reason?" Tae asks again. "Why did you decide to move here?" The ceiling fan whirrs overhead. You think about the small disappointments, the tiny failures that made up every day, and wonder why you endure them too.
"I wanted to fall in love," you say, still staring at the wall in front of you.
You are both silent for a time, and your gaze shifts to the window by the side of the bed. Outside, the moon is shining bright against the night sky. You think about waking up on Christmas morning when you were a kid, how you used to will yourself to stay awake by counting stars from outside your bedroom window. Even long after you knew better, there was still a part of you that wanted to believe: the full stockings, the presents gathered around the stove. Christmas day, by comparison, always came as a letdown. You didn't want to fall asleep because you liked the anticipation, the infinite possibilities of what might be.
Tae turns away from you now, and, instinctively, you stretch out your arms, nestling one under Tae's neck and the other around her torso. You think about how sad it is that yours was the best company she had managed to find and yet how, in the months and years that would follow, there would probably be worse, men who smoked and drank, who gambled or picked fights. You wonder how long we let ourselves keep trying in spite of failure, to still believe in a fantasy that we know to be false.
You are lying beside Tae when she falls asleep. You try to count stars, but the light is too bright, and there are none that you can see outside the window anyway. You wrap your arms around her and close your eyes. Maybe you didn't know any better then. Maybe you still don't.
Tags New Haven
← Blood BankJiro Dreams of Winchester →


Perform penetration testing . Naked Images.
Penetration tests are typically performed using manual or automated technologies to systematically compromise servers, endpoints, web applications, wireless.
Description:List of penetration testing companies Here are a few of the companies offering penetration testing services: Which named individual s will carry out the penetration testing? As the scholars Deborah Russell and G. Danger is around every corner.


A long essential oil diffuser necklace with a Swarovski crystal. Simply put a few drops of your favourite oil on a diffuser pad and place inside the locket. Comes with 6 diffuser pads.
All long necklaces come on a chain that is approximately 30 inches long. To request a custom length leave a note when you checkout.


There was an awful lot of chocolate.
A TANKER TRUCK turned a stretch of road into Poland's sweet spot when it spilt 12 tonnes of liquid chocolate after crashing through a traffic barrier.
Local police said it was unclear why the truck belonging to a sweet maker slammed into the central reservation on the A2 motorway between the western towns of Wrzesnia and Slupca.
After flipping over, the tanker came to rest across lanes and the chocolate barred traffic in both directions.
The driver was hospitalised with a broken arm.
Passing vehicles left chocolate tire marks across several kilometres before authorities closed down the motorway.
"It will take several hours," local firefighter chief Bogdan Kowalski told TVN24 television.
Email "Truck crash spills 12 tonnes of liquid chocolate onto Polish motorway".
Feedback on "Truck crash spills 12 tonnes of liquid chocolate onto Polish motorway".


text:
OPTOGENETICS IN INDIA
Prof. Engert (second from left) and Dr. Abeanu (right) with a few students from the course.
Dr. Albeanu (left) and Prof. Engert making an adjustment to the microscope.
Prof. Murthy modifying the pattern of illumination onto a mouse brain.
What do you get when you put two Harvard professors in India?
Wrong answer: A Nature paper on the non-linear dynamics of snake charming.
Right answer: Crazy and fun science!
As a part of the Harvard-Bangalore Science Initiative (HSBI), Prof. Venkatesh Murthy's brainchild, a rigorous summer course on the exciting and upcoming field of Optogenetics was organized at the National Center for Biological Sciences in Bangalore (NCBS), India. Profs. Venki Murthy and Florian Engert were joined by Dr. Dinu F Albeanu, who graduated from Prof. Murthy's lab in 2008 and is now a fellow at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and by several faculty members from NCBS, including Profs. Sumantra Chattarjee, Vijayraghavan, Satyajit Mayor and Sudipto Maiti.
To study brain activity, scientists generally stick electrodes into neuronal tissue and record electrical signals they pick up. There are a few disadvantages to this strategy: most of the time, the recording is done in a blind fashion i.e., there is no targeting of a particular cell type to assess its function in a neuronal circuit and traditional techniques are quite invasive. This is where the rapidly developing field of Optogenetics is pushing experimental neuroscience by helping it overcome these challenges.
The term Optogenetics was coined for the latest tools in neuroscience, which enable researchers to control or read activity in neurons that express specifically engineered proteins that are sensitive to light. When the expression of these proteins is driven by promoters specific to certain neuronal cell types a high degree of specificity in the control or monitoring of neuronal activity can be achieved.
The Optogenetics course ran from 6th-18th of July in the beautiful campus of NCBS, Bangalore. The participants were a mix of graduate students from several leading institutes of scientific and medical research in India (NCBS, the Indian Institute of Science, National Institute of Mental Health and neurosciences, and the All India Institute of Medical Science). A typical day in the course was structured to have an in-depth lecture in the morning session, followed by a laboratory session in the afternoon and a paper discussion section in the evening.
Dr. Albeanu kicked-off the proceedings with a lecture in basic optics and microscopy, which the students appreciated immensely. This was followed by Dr. Maiti's talk on multiphoton microscopy, a technique that uses longer wavelength light to achieve non-linear excitation of fluorescent molecules. After these talks on basic and advanced optics, the students were gung-ho to get their hands dirty in the laboratory. With guidance from the instructors, the students first assembled a compound microscope, but then went on to make use of their tremendous creativity and courage to convert this into a confocal laser scanning microscope. One key component that was missing turned out to be a galvanometric mirror for scanning, which was promptly fabricated out of a piece of aluminium foil and a cassette player.
The transition from optics to genetics was made by Prof. Murthy, who spoke about all the tools developed in the past decade to optically control neuronal activity, the most famous one being channelrhodopsin (ChR2), a light gated cation-specific channel. There were also talks given by the other participating faculty about how optogenetic tools are being applied in different model systems to ask intriguing questions. These talks were bolstered by demonstrations of the use of optogenetic tools in the laboratory. In one such demonstration, ChR2 was expressed in the sweet taste receptors of a fly. When blue light was shone on the fly, its sweet taste receptors were giving the signals of something sweet being in the vicinity of its mouth. It immediately thrust out its proboscis, thus giving the students the satisfaction of making light taste sweet! There were also other demonstrations with worms, mouse brain slices and zebrafish.
As a grand finale to the laboratory component of the course, Dr. Albeanu and the students built a macroscope, consisting of a CCD camera and a combination of lenses one would normally use for photography. This was fitted with a projection system so as to project at the focal plane arbitrary patterns drawn on a computer. Thus patterns of blue light were used to stimulate the olfactory bulb of a transgenic mouse expressing ChR2 in its glomeruli.
The course was not only academically rigorous but also very entertaining for everyone participating. Apart from exploring the local cuisines and culture, Prof. Engert and Dr. Albeanu went on a trekking trip with students from the course in the lush hills of Wayanad, in the state of Kerala. The highlights of the trekking trip were Prof. Engert entertaining the students with his renditions of opera pieces and teaching them how to play poker. In a nail-biting overnight poker session that lasted till nine in the morning he managed to lose a lot of money to a graduate student he had just taught how to play!
The feedback from the students was outstanding, with comments such as: "The course was one of its kind in India", and "Fantastic lectures, good lab exercises, fantastic interactions". Engert and Murthy are looking forward to the next year already!
Prof. Engert (right) giving poker lessons.
View Florian Engert's Faculty Profile
View Venkatesh Murthy's Faculty Profile

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
The Ravens' 48-3 victory over the lowly Detroit Lions may be getting downplayed because of the level of competition, but Sunday's game embodied a trend that might mean a second consecutive playoff appearance under head coach John Harbaugh.
With Harbaugh at the helm, the Ravens have consistently won against clubs over which they are favored.
Not once during Harbaugh's tenure has Baltimore lost to a non-playoff team, a pattern the Ravens hope continues as they face three teams with sub-.500 records to close out the regular season.
Last year, the Ravens dropped battles with the Pittsburgh Steelers (twice), Tennessee Titans, Indianapolis Colts and New York Giants. All four of those opponents advanced to the postseason. The Ravens defeated two other playoff qualifiers in the Philadelphia Eagles and Miami Dolphins, while they were a perfect 9-0 against teams that didn't play in January.
And that carried over to the 2009 campaign, where the Ravens' six losses – against New England, Cincinnati, Minnesota, Indianapolis and Green Bay – have all come against division leaders and likely playoff representatives.
"I just think that comes back to the simple rules of the game of football," said linebacker Ray Lewis . "Win the games that you're supposed to win at home, split the games on the road and beat the teams that you're supposed to beat."
The Ravens' attention to detail currently has them just outside of an AFC wild card, behind the 7-6 Denver Broncos and Jacksonville Jaguars. But, if the Ravens continue to beat who they're supposed to, January football could easily be a reality.
Next week, the Ravens face a Chicago Bears team that has disappointed many, even though the Bears do feature dangerous quarterback Jay Cutler. Then, it is a second matchup with the Steelers before a finale in Oakland.
Rest assured, the Ravens will take all those opponents – against whom they are likely to be favored – seriously.
"We understand and realize that we from this point on, we're on a three game playoff, and we have to win these three games so we're going to enjoy this [win] but get back to work," said wideout Derrick Mason. "We understand that we can't have any letdowns. Yes, it was great to go out there and score 48 points and shut that team down to three points and have all these yards, but we understand that it means nothing if we can't come back and duplicate it the next following week."
Harbaugh and his coaching staff consistently work to ensure that the players take all rivals seriously, which has guarded against the classic trap game.
No matter that the Lions were coming off a winless 2008 and limping down the stretch without a hapless offense and a defense without any teeth.
The Ravens went out and manhandled Detroit in all aspects, tying a franchise record with 48 points and nearly posting a shutout.
Conversely, the Steelers, who are hovering on the playoff bubble at 6-7, have run into their share of traps this season, losing to the Cleveland Browns (2-11), Kansas City Chiefs (3-10) and Oakland Raiders (4-9).
Harbaugh said there was no special message in the Ravens' ability to take care of business. Instead, practice is the key.
"It's not a message that we really say, 'OK, now this is a team that everybody thinks we're supposed to beat, so let's make sure we beat them,'" Harbaugh noted. "I think it's a message that you go out, you practice hard, and you try to put your best foot forward against everybody you play. Our guys, one thing about our guys thus far, they haven't let down in any week.
"There are better performances some weeks than other weeks, but I don't think you'd ever say that our guys haven't gone out and played tremendously hard and fought right down to the end for two years now. That's something that's a credit to them. It's a credit to our coaches, and it's a credit to our players. If that's the result of it, then so be it, but we want to beat everybody we play, and that's always the goal."
Inside the locker room, the Ravens had the utmost respect for the Lions.
"You've got to respect every team," said linebacker Jarret Johnson. "This is the NFL. If you think this is college and you're Alabama playing Carson-Newman, it doesn't work out like that. Everybody's got talent, and you've got to prepare the same way every week."


text:
Magnapop is an American rock band based in Atlanta, Georgia. Formed in 1989, the band has consistently included songwriting duo Linda Hopper as vocalist and Ruthie Morris on guitar. Magnapop first achieved recognition in the Benelux countries of Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg through the festival circuit and have remained popular in Europe throughout their career. After modest success in the United States in the mid-1990s with the singles "Slowly, Slowly" and "Open the Door" and a series of albums produced by Michael Stipe, Bob Mould, and Geza X, the band went on an extended hiatus due to the dissolution of their record label. They returned with a new rhythm section in 2005 on the Daemon Records release Mouthfeel. The band has continued to perform and record since this reunion and have self-released two more albums. Magnapop's musical style is noted for blending the pop vocals and melodies of Hopper with the aggressive, punk-influenced guitar-playing of Morris and her back-up vocal harmonies.

History

Formation and self-titled debut (1989–1993)

Linda Hopper—a native of Marietta, Georgia—was a member of the late 1970s/early 1980s music scene in Athens, Georgia, where she befriended fellow University of Georgia student Michael Stipe in an art design class. Stipe went on to form R.E.M. and Hopper joined him in the experimental music group Tanzplagen along with Stipe's sister, Lynda, and other local musicians. After the group folded, Stipe and Hopper formed Oh-OK, whose line-up later included Matthew Sweet and David McNair. That project ended in 1984 and Hopper briefly belonged to a Washington, D.C. band named Holiday, who released their only EP in 1987.

In 1989, Ruthie Morris had recently moved to Atlanta from West Palm Beach, Florida—where she played a few shows as the guitarist for The Pockets. She attempted to play with local male musicians, but did not feel comfortable with any of them. Hopper and Morris were introduced by a mutual acquaintance and became fast friends; they wrote their first song together at Hopper's apartment the day they met. The duo had a difficult time finding collaborators to form a complete band (as Hopper described it, "We had to beg people to come and play with us.") The duo eventually recruited bassist Tim Lee and McNair on drums in March 1990. Lee left the band after a brief tenure and was replaced by Shannon Mulvaney, whom Morris met at a record store. The musicians named themselves Homemade Sister after a line from the film Baby Doll and released their first single—"Rip the Wreck"/"Merry"—on Safety Net Records in 1990. Displeased with their name, the band was briefly renamed Swell, before they found out a San Francisco band had the same name and then billed themselves as Swell Dopa.

In 1990—while named Swell—they made their public debut at a show in Athens that Michael Stipe attended. He approached the band afterward and offered to produce some demos for them in John Keane's Athens studio in December. Their first high-profile show was at the July 1991 New York New Music Seminar along with three other bands that were introduced by Stipe. At that event, Morris gave out two demo tapes—one to American rock journalist James Sullivan and the other to Tom Engelshoven and John van Luyn of the Dutch music magazine Muziekkrant OOR. The band proceeded to pass the tape to a promoter in The Netherlands who gave the band some club dates as well as a spot at the side stage of the 1991 Rotterdam Festival. After the positive response they received, they were promoted to the main stage the next day. In The Netherlands, Magnapop was signed to Play It Again Sam Records, who released the Sugarland EP and Magnapop demo album in 1992. Their self-titled first album included four of the 1990 Stipe demos, and was released on Caroline Records in the United States. A music video for the single "Merry" was shot and aired in Europe.

Magnapop was featured on a variety of various artist compilations. Their first commercial recording other than their independent single was their 1992 cover version of "Pleasant Valley Sunday" for Here No Evil – A Tribute to The Monkees. The band was also featured on other various artist tribute albums, including "Ear" (a different recording from the one on Magnapop) for Delicacy & Nourishment – Lyrics by Ernest Noyes Brookings Vol. 3 in 1992 and 1993's recording of "Every Grain of Sand" for Outlaws Blues Volume Two – A Tribute to Bob Dylan with violinist Mamie Fike. The band also recorded the Kiss My Mouth EP with Ted Niceley and released it in Europe. Around this time, the band was so fraught from booking recording sessions, that they briefly considered breaking up.

Magnapop established their fan base in the early 1990s through touring and the festival circuit—particularly in central Europe, where they first broke through to the mainstream. It was only after they had established a fan base in Europe and received positive press in the United Kingdom that the band first became recognized in the United States, including their native Atlanta. By the end of 1992, they were getting positive write-ups in American press such as The New York Times and supported Juliana Hatfield on tour. The group made appearances at Rocking Kolonia Festival in Maastricht in 1992, Pukkelpop in 1992, Transmusicales in 1992, A Campingflight to Lowlands Paradise in 1993, and the Reading Festival in 1993. They also recorded a John Peel session on September 2, 1993 and a Black Session on February 25, 1994.

Mainstream success (1994–1997)

Bob Mould of Hüsker Dü had seen the band at a show in New York City's CBGB as well as in Rotterdam—he called the latter show their "turning point"—and invited the band to tour with his new group Sugar in Europe and the United States in 1992–1993. The band asked Sugar bassist and fellow Athens musician David Barbe produce their major label debut album. When he refused, Mould offered to record with the band, taking them to Pedernales Recording Studio, in Austin, Texas in August 1993. The sessions would result in the album Hot Boxing, which was released by Play It Again Sam in Europe and Priority Records domestically on July 5, 1994. Releasing an album by Magnapop was a radical departure for Priority who had previously focused on rap music.

The album produced two singles: "Slowly, Slowly", which spent seven weeks on the charts, peaking on September 10, 1994, at 25 on the U.S. Modern Rock Tracks, and "Lay It Down", which topped the 1993 De Afrekening poll. The band toured the United States supporting The Lemonheads in 1993 and played at the 1994 Phoenix Festival and Marktrock to promote the album and created music videos for "Lay It Down", "Slowly, Slowly", and "Texas". The promotional EP Big Bright Cherry was released in 1994 and included three tracks from the Hot Boxing recording sessions as well as three self-produced songs.

In 1995, the McNair and the band parted ways, with neither party giving a definitive rationale. Hopper explained "We had a hard time recording Hot Boxing, because our drummer had a lot of things in the way ... Nobody wants to hurt anyone, or to cut them out, but it was just like four adults getting a divorce, and their child is the band." She has alternately explained that the split was due to the "alternative lifestyles" of McNair and the rest of the group and that McNair's musicianship was not as competent as the other members. The remaining trio recruited session drummer Josh Freese and engineers Sandy Solomon and Bernie Zwass to record a cover of Tom Waits' "Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis" at Plus Four Recordings Studios, in Sherman Oaks, California in June 1995 for the compilation album Step Right Up: The Songs of Tom Waits. Freese joined the group in November–December of that year in Los Angeles, California to record Rubbing Doesn't Help. Mould was unavailable, so the band relocated to Los Angeles and worked with producer Geza X at his home studio in attempt to make a more "eclectic" album that would represent the diversity of their songwriting. After hearing some demos, the band decided to hire him to produce the actual album and moved to Los Angeles for recording. The album produced the singles "Open the Door" and "This Family" (the former also had a music video), as well as the EP Fire All Your Guns at Once. The band immediately set out to tour in promotion.

Los Angeles musician Mark Posgay auditioned for the band in 1995 and became the group's permanent drummer. In July of that year, Magnapop supported R.E.M. on their Monster World Tour and continued playing in the United States and Europe, including an appearance at X-Fest in 1996. They also played their first dates in Australia and Japan in 1996 and hosted 120 Minutes on July 7 of the same year. In late 1996, Mulvaney left the group, citing problems of distance—Hopper and Morris had relocated permanently to Los Angeles—as well as a desire to focus on his family. He continued playing bass guitar and stand-up bass with Atlanta groups The Hots, The Lugosis, and Anna Kramer & The Lost Cause. Boston native and former Queers bassist Greg Urbaitis replaced him after replying to an ad in The Recycler and the band continued to play live shows through 1997, including supporting Throwing Muses on their farewell tour. Posgay quit that summer and he was replaced by former Lifter drummer Johnny Rozas and this line-up recorded six demos at a recording studio in Orange County. This version of the band was short-lived as Magnapop was informed while on tour that their record label's rock division ceased to exist and they did not have any funding for future touring or recording. Compounding matters further, the band members were still under contract to their old record label and were legally disbarred from using the name "Magnapop" until their contract expired seven years later.

Hiatus, reformation, and independent releases (since 1998)

Hopper and Morris continued to play a few acoustic live shows as a duo into 1999, occasionally with accompaniment (such as Philadelphia bassist Billy Warburton and drummer Lance Crow) and attempted to record an EP for record label Vital Cog with a drum machine as backing, but ended up putting Magnapop on an indefinite hiatus. During this time, Morris also moved to Seattle, where she recorded a 2002 single with drummer Curtis Hall as The New Candidates. Hopper, Morris, Hall, and a group of Seattle musicians also demoed some Hopper/Morris songs during this period. Hall would also drum with Hopper, Morris, and Mulvaney for a few Magnapop shows in 2002–2003. The band officially re-formed in 2003 with bassist Scott Rowe and drummer Brian Fletcher to tour the European festival circuit and record an album. In The Netherlands, Hopper also performed vocals on R.E.M.'s cover of "Favorite Writer" at two of the group's concerts on June 21 and 22.

The following May, the band entered Zero Return Studios in Atlanta with drummer Curt Wells as producer for their first album in almost a decade. On January 25, 2005, Magnapop released Mouthfeel on Amy Ray's record label Daemon Records and supported it with a tour through the United States. By 2005, Fletcher had left the group, and drummer Chad Williams had been recruited to replace him on two weeks prior to the first show on the Mouthfeel tour that included an appearance at South by Southwest. One of these performances was recorded for the band's first live album—Magnapop Live at Maxwell's 03/09/2005—which they released independently through online music distributors including eMusic, the iTunes Store, and Rhapsody. In May 2006, the band completed a tour of Belgium and The Netherlands and returned to Atlanta to begin work on the followup to Mouthfeel. They continued touring Europe in 2007 and completed writing and recording for a new album sometime prior to 2008, with the album initially slated to be released in summer 2009. These sessions recorded with Brian Paulson were released as Chase Park on September 4, 2009, through digital distributors by the band's own, newly created label, The Kraft Records.

The band has continued to intermittently tour since the release of Chase Park and on September 13, 2011, Creative Loafing announced that Mulvaney had attempted to re-form the original line-up of Magnapop to perform a benefit concert for local independent music store Criminal Records. The benefit was later scheduled for October 15, and the band announced that they would be performing their self-titled debut album in its entirety, along with some songs from Hot Boxing. Mulvaney was motivated to support Criminal due to the store carrying their early releases in the Atlanta area. The original line-up became permanent after the 2011 reunion.

Between touring with Magnapop, bassist Scott Rowe also performed in Luigi from 2003 through 2008 with former Magnapop drummer Brian Fletcher as well as Bad Magic Number with current drummer Williams. The former has released two albums—2003's Vamonos and Found on the Forest Floor in 2005. Williams began drumming for Dead Register in 2014.

In September 2016, Magnapop announced a February 2017 tour of Belgium, the Netherlands, and the UK, accompanied by the album The Circle Is Round, released in 2019.

The band announced a tour of Belgium and the Netherlands in November 2021; these dates were rescheduled from 2020, when COVID-19 restrictions forced their postponement.

Musical style

{{Listen
| filename = Magnapop - Slowly, Slowly.ogg
| title = Slowly, Slowly
| description = The chorus of "Slowly, Slowly" is illustrative of Ruthie Morris' aggressive guitar playing and the harmony of her backing vocals with lead vocalist Linda Hopper. This song became their first charting single—reaching 25 on Billboard'''s Modern Rock Tracks.}}
Magnapop have been defined genre-wise as power pop by multiple rock critics, and their performances have drawn comparisons with punk, new wave, and surf rock. Reviewers have commented on the band's pop-influenced songwriting, specifically their employment of guitar hooks and simple chord structure. To that end, they have been compared to Mould's previous work as a member of Sugar and Hüsker Dü, as well as fellow Georgia-based rock acts such as Guadalcanal Diary and Let's Active and alternative rock pioneers Pixies and The Replacements. The album Rubbing Doesn't Help represented a stylistic shift for the band away from their more pop-inspired material toward more guitar-oriented rock, but their comeback with Mouthfeel returned to the more pop-inspired sound of Hot Boxing.

Morris is known for her particularly aggressive guitar-playing and its interaction with Linda Hopper's pop-influenced vocals. In addition, the vocal harmony between the two singers has defined the band's sound, especially on later releases such as Rubbing Doesn't Help that feature more of Morris' vocals. Critics have compared Morris' guitar-playing to punk acts like Johnny Ramone of Ramones as well as alternative rock musicians such as Johnny Marr.

Covers and tributes

"Open the Door" has been covered by Eels as the B-side to "Flyswatter"—it would later be collected on Useless Trinkets: B-Sides, Soundtracks, Rarities and Unreleased 1996–2006. Eels performed the song several times on their Electro-Shock Blues Show tour in support of the album Electro-Shock Blues. Karaoke versions of the song were released by Stingray Digital through the iTunes Store on January 15, 2008. "Favorite Writer" was covered by R.E.M. as a B-side to "Bad Day" in 2003 and was played live during the 2003 tour to promote In Time: The Best of R.E.M. 1988–2003.

In 1993, Juliana Hatfield wrote "Ruthless" in honor of the band's guitarist after the two had a conversation about Camille Paglia while touring in 1992 ("We're all gushin', but I swear we really mean it, man/We're all sucking up to Ruthie.") It appeared as a B-side on the Juliana Hatfield Three singles "Spin the Bottle" and "My Sister".

Band members

Linda Hopper – lead vocals
Ruthie Morris – backing vocals, guitar
David McNair – drums
Shannon Mulvaney – bass guitar

DiscographyMagnapop (1992)Hot Boxing (1994)Rubbing Doesn't Help (1996)Mouthfeel (2005)Chase Park (2009)The Circle Is Round'' (2019)

See also

Magnapop discography
List of Magnapop band members
List of songs recorded by Magnapop
Oh-OK
 The Complete Recordings (Oh-OK album)
Music of Athens, Georgia
Daemon Records

References

External links

1989 establishments in Georgia (U.S. state)
1997 disestablishments in Georgia (U.S. state)
2002 establishments in Georgia (U.S. state)
Alternative rock groups from Georgia (U.S. state)
American pop punk groups
American power pop groups
Caroline Records artists
Daemon Records artists
King Records (Japan) artists
Michael Stipe
Musical groups from Atlanta
Musical groups disestablished in 1997
Musical groups established in 1989
Musical groups reestablished in 2002
Musical quartets
PIAS Recordings artists
Priority Records artists
Safety Net Records artists
SideOneDummy Records artists
Articles which contain graphical timelines

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


I've always loved photography and it's been a hobby of mine on and off since I graduated from high school. I love researching all the cameras and photography-related artifacts in the museum's collection. Since one of our upcoming exhibits is on cameras and photography in Edmond, I wanted to take some time to highlight one of my favorite cameras that will be featured in the exhibit. One of the oldest cameras in the exhibit will be this 1A Pocket Kodak camera that dates to the late 1920s or early 1930s.
Today, hauling this camera around and going through all the necessary steps to get a decent photograph might seem like an excessive amount of work compared to pulling your iPhone out and pushing a couple of buttons. But, 90 years ago it was extremely convenient. Kodak manufactured this camera model from 1926 to 1932. Kodak added an "iridescent" finish, which ours has, to the camera in 1929. The "A" in 1A stands for autographic, which means that the camera uses autographic film. What is autographic film? In short, autographic film allowed the photographer to write a short note about the subject being photographed directly on the film itself with a small metal stylus through a small window in the back of the camera, serving as an early labeling system of sorts. Kodak introduced autographic film in 1914, but the film never really caught on with the public and Kodak discontinued it in 1932.
An early ad for Kodak's autographic cameras and film; note the short description at the bottom of the negative.
So how did autographic film work?
The film contained a thin layer of carbon paper between the film and the paper backing. When the photographer used the metal stylus to write on the film, pressure from the stylus left the carbon layer translucent enough to allow light to expose the now-translucent portion of the carbon layer without exposing the rest of the carbon layer. The result is a short, handwritten note visible in the margin of the developed photograph.
What about the actual camera? Where's the lens? How the heck do you open it? And once you get it open, what's with the accordion looking thing?
As its name implies, this camera was meant to be carried in one's pocket – well, jacket pocket anyway. It was introduced in 1926 at a cost of around $20 ($276 today), which put it in the middle of Kodak's line of cameras. Once the camera is open, the lens slides out on rails until the arms on each side are fully extended and snap into place. That accordion-looking contraption that expands as you pull the lens out? Those are the bellows and they are made of leather.
Why are the bellows needed and what do they do?
The bellows are what make the camera a "pocket" camera; without the collapsible bellows, the camera would have been much larger and nowhere near "pocket" size. Without getting too technical, the flexible bellows allows the lens to move slightly to properly focus on the subject being photographed. The photographer would move the bellows out to focus on objects closer to the camera or move the bellows in towards the camera to focus on something farther away. So how do you move the bellows once you've extended them and the support arms are locked into place? There is a small knurled screw on the right side of the slide plate that the photographer turns to move the bellows, and lens, slightly forward and backward. On the left side of the slide plate is a scale showing the photographer what the correct distance to the subject should be in order to take a properly focused photograph.
Notice the small stylus to the left of the lens, viewfinder on top of the lens, and screw to adjust the bellows below and to the left of the lens.
The back of the camera, showing the "window" to write on the negative.
Once you have the camera open, the bellows extended, the bellows positioned properly based on the distance to your subject, and you've chosen the correct aperture and shutter speed…now what? This camera, and most "portable" cameras from the first half of the 20th century, has a waist-level viewfinder – not an eye-level viewfinder like those found on more modern cameras. In this instance, the waist-level viewfinder was cheaper and easier to produce. With older cameras like this one, that have slower shutter speeds, holding the camera steady was very important to avoid blurred photographs. Resting the camera against your waist or on a table accomplishes this better than holding the awkward camera to your eye.
Interested in cameras or photography? Be on the lookout for upcoming blog posts and plan to visit the museum to see the new exhibit in the spring.


The words "perfect ten" come to mind when viewing this pet friendly (one dog ortwo cats) bright, spacious, top floor corner suite located in beautiful White Rock. Inside the suite this renovation of all 977 SF from the floor up will not dissapoint even the most discerning buyer. The updated kitch. features new full sized fridge & stove, d/w, countertops, tile backsplash & cabinets. The huge mbdrm feat. new lighting fixtures, carpet, paint & is lrg enough to fit both a king sized bed &seating area! Both the lvgrm & dinrm boast new lamin. flooring, light fix. & fresh paint. Top it all off with new locks and a bonus secret insuite storage space. Outside the suite,the building offers 1 full sized storage locker. Over 55 building.


text:
A server problem has occurred. Please try again a little later or contact us by e-mail info@trigon-film.org or by phone at +41 (0)56 430 12 30
The request failed. Please make sure you are connected to the Internet and try again. If this does not help, we will be happy to support you by e-mail at info@trigon-film.org or by phone at +41 (0)56 430 12 30
about trigon-film
Find a Film
Films ▼
4 trigon movies
2021 Otar's Death
2014 Corn Island
2013 Blind Dates
2010 The Other Bank - Gagma napiri
Order by Year Title Director
Otar's Death
Ioseb Soso Bliadze – 2021
Keti (36) and her son Nika (16) find themselves in a precarious situation when Nika hits an old man in a car accident. The victim's family promises to refrain from pressing charges against Nika if he compensates their loss in cash. Within a single day Keti has to raise a large amount of money to prevent her son Nika from being imprisoned. An unexpected turn gives the drama a tragicomical air.BONUS: More
Corn Island
George Ovashvili – 2014
Told through captivating imagery and visuals this long-awaited movie from a renowned Georgian filmmaker is an unusual psychological drama that demonstrates just how unnecessary dialogue can be for creating maximum audience effect. An old peasant and his innocent 16-year-old granddaughter sow corn on an island in the middle of the Inguri River dividing Georgia from Abkhazia. The intense bond between nature and the two individuals is disturbed, however, by the arrival of the border police. More
DVD Corn Island
Blind Dates
Levan Koguashvili – 2013
Sandro is a forty-something teacher and still lives with his parents, who constantly meddle in his private life. He shows little interest in the blind dates his friend Iva pressures him to go on. On an outing to the Black Sea, he falls in love with the hairdresser Manana. When her husband Tengo is released from jail early, Sandro's predicament takes on absurd dimensions. He gets caught up in wild family disputes and feels compelled to move Natia, pregnant with Tengo's child, into his parents' home. More
DVD Blind Dates
The Other Bank - Gagma napiri
Twelve-year-old Tedo lives with his young mother in Keto in an isolated hut on the outskirts of Tiflis. Tedo and Keto are refugees from Abchasia. The civil war has claimed everything they ever owned, including Tedo's and Keto's hopes for a bright future as an intact family unit. Tedo was just four years of age when they were obliged to flee from Abchasia. At the time, they had to leave behind Tedo's father – his weak heart made it impossible for him to take on such a strenuous journey. More
DVD The Other Bank
Subscribe now for the trigon-film newsletter and stay up to date on new dvd releases. For our German or French newsletter with news on all cinema, vod and dvd releases, please change to the respective site and sign up there.
> Find a Film
> Films on DVD and Blu-ray
> Cinema Screenings
> Interactive World Map
> Documents for schools
> Organise a movie night
Good movies are made all over the world. trigon-film is a non-profit film distributor from Switzerland that has been dedicated since 1986 to the selection of unique movies from Latin America, Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe, making them available in cinemas, on dvd and online, all the while supporting independent filmmakers.
> Become a member


text:
Європейський маршрут E901 — європейський автомобільний маршрут категорії Б, що проходить по території Іспанії і з'єднує міста Мадрид і Валенсія.

Маршрут
  Іспанія
 E05, E90 Мадрид
 E15 Валенсія

Посилання
 Карта Е-доріг
 Міжнародна мережа доріг
Дороги Іспанії
Європейські маршрути