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Snickering through museums: How we managed to enjoy Renoir: The Body, The Senses
While hunting around for some images from the Renoir: The Body, The senses exhibit, I came across this review in The New Yorker, which begins, "Who doesn't have a problem with Pierre-Auguste Renoir?"
I skimmed, I skimmed. The upshot seems to be that Renoir was a misogynist because boobs, but we should halfway forgive him, because art. And that's why I live at the P.O.
We did make the drive to the Clark Art Institute to catch the exhibit in person before it left town. Here's how we managed to have a wonderful time, despite how problematic everything is:
We do actually have some issues to overcome when we spend exclusive time with art. Damien calls it "museum anxiety:" that terrible fear that you're missing out on something exquisite and important; that you're not "getting it." In the past, I have recommended bringing kids along with you — not just for their own sakes, but because we can follow their lead and skip right over the pretensions and anxieties so many adults labor under.
Even if you don't have kids with you, you can imitate their approach, and it will dissipate that stifling museum fog. I did this when I had the rare opportunity to spend 45 minutes alone in the Princeton Art Museum. I went for the ancient art gallery, and decided I would let myself laugh out loud at anything that struck me as funny — and there was a lot of it.
After about the fourth room at the Renoir exhibit, I got softened up, and recalled I had no obligation to try to impress the other grave, whispering museum-goers with their complicated necklaces and flowy linen pants. I actually went a little overboard, and when I saw yet another elderly gentleman soberly studying a set of rosy, glowing ass cheeks, I had to stifle the urge to sneak up behind him and emit a falsetto, "Niiiiiice!" like Peter Venkman. But seriously, Renoir: quite the ass man. And why not? They pretty.
Letting myself snicker a bit breaks down my head garbage and leaves me much more open to stuff that's not funny at all, but just plain beautiful. This one hit me right between the eyes and made me cry, and I can't even remember why.
I think I was just glad to be alive, with eyeballs.
They had some thought-provoking pairings at this exhibit, which included not only Renoir but Degas and Cezanne and other contemporaries, as well as later artists influenced by Renoir. One interesting set was a Renoir "Woman Combing Her Hair" (which really doesn't narrow it down much) and a Degas also showing a half-nude woman combing her hair (which I can't seem to find anywhere).
Here's where I have to admit that I know what the guy was talking about in the New Yorker. The two paintings were of similar subject, but Renoir had buttered his gal up to a light-filled sheen, and the entire world faded into a hazy chorus rejoicing in the loveliness of women's backs. But Degas approached the woman from above, and you got the impression she had a book propped awkwardly on her thighs to while away the time while she was painted. You felt the strain in her muscles; whereas Renoir's gal would probably be content to stay there forever, endlessly brushing in the golden sun. This is no knock on the Renoir. It was just different, that's all. Both women were real flesh, really real flesh (and Renoir apparently got dinged by critics by showing too much fat and including too many colors); but I got the impression Degas was more aware that they were human, too.
It's strange how you see something better once you have something to compare it to. Like Richard Wilbur says:
I said the trees are mines in air, I said
See how the sparrow burrows in the sky!
And then I wondered why this mad instead
Perverts our praise to uncreation, why
Such savour's in this wrenching things awry.
Does sense so stale that it must needs derange
The world to know it?
I take Wilbur's answer to the question "why this mad instead?" to be "it just do." If it works, it works. My senses do stale, and I'm just glad there's a remedy, whether it's juxtaposing art, or just snickering.
I actually enjoyed the rest of the museum more than the special exhibit. It's a world-class collection, well worth the trip on its own, but small enough that you can see everything without dashing around like a maniac. The Clark does a good job with its labels, providing little bits of information you might not pick out on your own, but without dictating too narrowly what you're supposed to think of a particular piece.
Among some Degas studies was a quote about how an artist should practice a composition over and over again, hundreds or thousands of times, so that nothing must appear to be by chance. I could see that was how he did it — there were the many, many studies, right before my eyes — but the end result was that it did appear to be by chance. Even when you know it's a grindingly hard-won skill honed over thousands of hours, it does feel like the artist just happened to casually snag some familiar arc of the arm or angle of the elbow or weight of a thigh. Pff, Degas, what does he know about art.
There are a number of Renoirs in the permanent collection, including this one, which struck me for the first time as something of an inside joke for artists: Here is this gal, dressed to the nines to sit in her garden and embroider.
She's surrounded by lush, boisterous foliage and blossoms, and what is she making so intently?
A little handkerchief with a little, delicate, stylized floral pattern on it.
I don't know, I just thought it was funny. Flowers vs. floral. Art! What are we even doing? I don't know, but we can't seem to stop.
Many Renoirs showed women with their fingers working closely together, with something lovely flowing out from between them like a waterfall.
Women are like that, I guess.
Damien and I both adored all the John Singer Sargents. The Clark has the slightly silly but entirely successful Fumée d'Ambre Gris, which you should be required to study before you can buy white paint.
and several others. The Portrait of Carolus Duran really grabbed us.
You want to use words like "deft" and "confident" with John Singer Sargent, but that's so inadequate. Check out these hands and cuffs:
Look at those shadows! Look at that ring! And you know these are just little phone pictures. You really need to see it.
Same thing with the portrait of Mme. Paul Escudier.
You could almost get a paper cut on the edge of that ribbon plopped on top of her head, but then you get really close and what do you know? It's just paint. I don't know how he did it, except that he believed in himself! Ha.
We kept coming back to A Venetian Interior.
This is where I want to find and murder the guy who recently suggested that museums are obsolete, since we now have digital photos of all art and can just go look at it whenever we want. You have to see it in person. We both felt very strongly that that one streak of yellow wasn't actually paint, but was actual light, and it's probably why he decided to paint this scene.
They also have several Winslow Homers, which is always a treat. Wear a jacket, because some of them are brisk.
Speaking of brisk, I think some people sneer a little over Frederick Remington, because it's American White House horsey art. Maybe I'm making that up. Anyway, check out this shadow of a horse on the snow in the moonlight, and then get back to me:
This is from "Friends or Foe?"
A few other random things that caught my eye:
This fond, doting Mary from the Netherlands:
This is from Virgin and Child with Saints Elizabeth and John the Baptist. Quinten Massys, 1520.
And these terrible children with a cat who has just about had enough:
And that's why this cat lives at the P.O.
One final note: They had another special exhibit downstairs: Ida O'Keeffe, the lesser-known sister of Georgia O'Keeffe. Apparently there were three artistic O'Keeffe sisters, and when the other two started showing some inclination toward art, Georgia swatted them down pretty savagely, because you can only have one Artist per family. One sister meekly abandoned her ambitions, but Ida struggled to make her own name; so Gerogia cut her off. Sheesh!
So before we went into the gallery, I mentioned to Damien that Ida wanted some way to set herself apart from the more famous Georgia and her famous . . . flowers. He says, "Well, that's easy. All she had to do was paint penises, instead." I snickered, but you know what? We walked into the room, and this is what Ida did:
Talk about a "mad instead." (She also painted some banana plants.)
Anyway, go see a art! Cut yourself some slack, let your mouth hang open like a yokel, and just see what there is to see. Don't forget to laugh at the funny ones.
You can probably skip the museum cafe, though. That really is there just to impress you and make you feel like you can't complain when it's terrible; but nobody in the world needs to pay $16 for a microwaved grilled cheese, even if it is called "croque monsieur."
Author simchajfisherPosted on September 23, 2019 September 23, 2019 Categories UncategorizedTags art, artists, Degas, Ida O'Keeffe, John Singer Sargent, museums, naked vs. nude, nudes, painting, Renoir, The Clark11 Comments on Snickering through museums: How we managed to enjoy Renoir: The Body, The Senses
Catholic Artist of the Month: Neilson Carlin
Here is the third installment in a series: Catholic Artist of the Month. Rather than constantly kvetching about mediocre, sentimental art by Christians, I'll be featuring artists who are doing it right.
This month, I'm delighted to present Neilson Carlin, whose Holy Family image, commissioned for the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia in 2015, was recently unveiled by Archbishop Chaput.
Carlin's work has been widely exhibited. He specializes in commissioned sacred work, and has been training art students for many years at Studio Rilievo in Kennett Square, PA.
Although he was raised Lutheran, Carlin says that when he was young that he wanted to be a priest. But it wasn't until he was preparing for his marriage that he really considered joining the Church. Here is the conversation we had earlier this week. My questions are in bold.
Tell us about your conversion to Catholicism.
My parents became involved with Evangelical Christianity, and I believed a lot of stereotypes about Catholics: Mary worship, idol worship, that the Mass was nothing more than vain repetition, that it was a dry, dead, man-created religion.
After college, I started going to Mass with my wife[-to-be], because I wanted to hang out with her. The parish was authentic, with on-fire Christians. There was a profound spirituality. The year before we got married, I went into RCIA, not to become a Catholic, but because we were going to raise the children Catholic. I wanted to at least get from the horse's mouth what I was vowing to do.
Was there any one issue that especially bothered you about the Church?
The authority issue was the last hurdle. The parish priest was an accountant, and the deacon was a lawyer. The two of them had the right background for my personality. They would systematically, in a cool, rational fashion, answer anything about history, and send me looking to read more, never sending me off without something. They took me to the end of reason where faith begins.
Two weeks before Easter 2000, my heart had to finally break. I had to get down on my knees and get over it, get beyond the issues I had with the Church. My head was in the Church ten years before I ever joined. I didn't realize that the things I wanted to do as an artist had a place in the Church.
You had established a career as an artist by this point already?
Yes, I've been a professional artist since 1992. After doing nine years of commercial illustration, I recognized I had big gaps in my skill set. I was confident I had the ability to draw, with pen and ink — I had wanted to be comic book illustrator. I had oil paintings in my head, but didn't have the technical ability, so I opted for watercolor.
I met with a teacher in the West Side of Manhattan, Michael Aviano. I took a class, and within thirty minutes I knew this was what I was looking for. Now I teach classes based on what I learned from him.
It's the Atelier movement, an old-school intensive curriculum that takes you through all the basics. You come into someone's studio and work directly under them, rather than getting that four-year degree. I spent five years with Aviano, learning painting and composition. The training made me confident I could move into other areas.
Like portrait commissions, the gallery market, larger scale oil paintings. Also, in the mid-90′s, there was a shift in the illustration market. The entire commercial field took a hard turn toward the computer. But I like the smell of turpentine.
By the end of the millennium, I had transitioned out of illustration and into gallery work and teaching. When I got some time, I would do sacred work that meant something to me. Portraits of Christ, paintings of the Eucharist.
A lot of your gallery pieces are not overtly religious, but they look pretty incarnational to me. Some of your still lifes, especially, are really sensual.
I thought, "Hide the kids; that is one sexy melon!"
Then there is "Sacrifice," with juicy meat and some very cruciform bones. To my Catholic eyes, it's obviously a Catholic painting. What was going on there?
I've had great relationship with secular galleries, but I felt like I had to be in the closet with paintings.
They didn't think there was a market for religious art. They wanted floral paintings, still lifes, and landscapes.
I was making a living, which was better than some, but I didn't want to end up being 65 years old and still doing this type of work. As much as I loved illustration, there were other things I wanted to do. And part of me still wanted to be a comic book artist, with full-scale, multi-figure, narrative paintings.
Speaking of which, let's talk about the Holy Family icon for the World Meeting of Families.
The faces of the adults are full of apprehension and worry, but Jesus looks very determined, and His foot is off the stone, as if He can't wait to get going.
I was trying to convey the centrality of Christ in the family. I don't care for maudlin, smiling representations of the Holy Family. Joseph and Mary were real people with real concerns. They were concerned about Him, but He was the rock. They had to look to their son for the promise of what He would do. All the elements of the painting bring you back to Him. He's the center of the piece.
How did you choose the models?
Mary and Jesus' faces were the one thing I felt some stress over, getting it just right. Some people are saying that they look too Jewish, and some people say they look too Northern European.
I guess that means you did something right!
Technically, I knew I could carry it off. The Bishop was happy with the design, the architecture of the cathedral was incorporated. But I had some sleepless nights because I wanted to make sure they were presented in a way that was respectful. A student of mine does icon writing. She said to pray about it, and allow it to come forth.
Is there a lot of pressure when you're doing a religious painting? You don't want to convey something spiritually misleading.
That's where I rely on the priest I'm working with. I haven't been raised in the Catholic tradition. Who can follow 2,000 years of history? Once I presented a sketch of Christ the King. I had looked at all these paintings, but it didn't click with me that the hand of blessing was always the right hand. The liturgical design coordinator had to correct me.
When you're doing a commission for a church, you must be thinking, "People are going to be looking straight at this for a whole hour, week after week."
Oh, yes. The current piece I'm working on has twenty saints in twelve individual panels, in preexisting marble niches, six on the left of the tabernacle, six on the right. It's going to show the Communion of Saints. I'm trying to create a porch where they're existing.
It's a difficult design challenge. I want it so that, when someone comes up for Communion, the perspective is gauged for that. The perspective will make sense once the Host is in your mouth, so that all the saints are joining in the feast of the Lamb with you.
For the Holy Family portrait, I wanted people to feel like, when you're in the cathedral, they're sitting there with you. There is a high degree of realism in the fabric and especially in the hands where they touch each other.
But I didn't want people to look at the figures and find them so real, you could meet them at the gas station. I'm always trying to separate the model from the painting.
I know you've done a lot of portraits of saints, though, that are supposed to be recognizable. But I've seen saint pictures that are just slavishly accurate copies of photos, and they aren't art, exactly. How do you handle this?
I arrange the figures in original compositions, get them costumed, and then use a photograph [of the saint] and put that head on the model's body, and reconfigure the lighting in my head. I get a good, solid line drawing, and then put the photo away and work from the line drawing. I don't try to make it look like a photo.
If the photo is in front of me, I'm going to try to get every last thing in it, but that would anchor the piece too much in matter. If I put the photo away, that allows me to find some balance between the ideal in my head and representing what's in the photo.
I think the current interest in photorealism, cultivating the ability to copy everything within your visual field, has its root in a revival of 19th-century materialist philosophy. But I'm cultivating an incarnational aesthetic. I used to think that being able to copy what was right in front of my visual field was the peak. But you get there, and you think, "What now?" A whole lot of people can be trained to do that. I'm looking for more.
The Baroque period resonates with me the most: that Caravaggiesque dirt under the fingernails. He painted those figures from someone, but you don't feel like it's a model. It's real, tangible, and exists in space, but it's not slavishly copied from what's in front of him.
For instance, most of the art depicting Gianna Molla and Miguel Pro are straight up copies of photos. Instead, I tried to create a narrative, show them engaged, show some of their attributes.
Do people sometimes get things out of your paintings that surprise you?
All the time. People find things that I didn't intend. Like any work of art, a painting isn't journalism. It's poetry.
Who are you favorite artists now?
Right now? Guercino, Guido Reni, and Tiepolo. Michelangelo, of course. Raphael, of course. They get back to my roots as a comic book illustrator. The first time I went to the Met in New York, I saw a Guercino, "Sampson Taken by the Philistines," with that muscular back. It was loaded with figures, so much action, and oodles of figures and colors.
The first thing I thought was, "It looks like a comic book panel."
How about artists working right now? Who do you like?
For secular artists, a young guy named Adam Miller, a superior draftsman who does a lot of multifigure work. His compositions are extraordinary.
Steve Huston does beautiful figure work.
Donato Giancola does top tier illustration. He's a painter and designer extraordinaire.
For sacred art: Anthony Visco is a sculptor from Philadelphia. He's the whole nine yards in one bundle, a real renaissance man: architect, teacher, sculptor.
For painters, Raul Berzosa is my new superhero. He completed a ceiling I couldn't believe. He's such a young guy at such a high level. It's mind boggling.
Cody Swanson is another contemporary secular artist, another powerhouse.
Any advice for artists who would like to work for the Church?
Make sure what's in your portfolio is what they will want to see! I had only a few pieces of sacred work in my portfolio, but it was enough to catch the eye of Cardinal Burke. That's what allowed me to take it to the next level.
A gallery of Carlin's work, information about commissions, and more can be found at his website, NeilsonCarlin.com.
This is the third in a series of interviews with Catholic artists. Previous installments:
Matthew S. Good
Timothy Jones
Are you a Catholic artist, or do you know one who would be available for interview? Send me a tip at simchafisher[at]gmail[dot]com. I am especially looking for sculptors, photographers, architects, and painters who are doing non-representational work.
Author simchajfisherPosted on October 3, 2014 Categories UncategorizedTags art, artists, beauty, catholic art, catholic artist of the month, neilson carlin, painting, world meeting of families2 Comments on Catholic Artist of the Month: Neilson Carlin
Catholic Artist of the Month: Matthew S. Good
Here is the second installment in a series: Catholic Artist of the Month. Rather than constantly kvetching about mediocre, sentimental art by Christians, I'll be featuring artists who are doing it right. Last month (okay, it was two months ago! June was . . . rough), I had a wonderful conversation with Timothy Jones.
This month, I'm featuring Matthew S. Good, 31, who lives and paints in Hickory, North Carolina. His paintings are moody and intense, reminding me of Rembrandt, and it took several weeks to find a time when he was available to talk. I was somewhat nervous, expecting a reticent, brooding artist type. Instead, I was delighted to find myself chatting with a cheerful, self-deprecating fellow with a quick wit and a thick Southern accent.
Good has been apprenticed under Benjamin S. Long IV for several years.
Good's work can be found at matthewsgood.com, and he blogs sporadically, mostly about the technique of painting. He has a large collection of studies in storage, and intends to list more of them on eBay.
Here is part of our conversation. My questions are in bold.
Have you always known that you wanted to be an artist?
I've always drawn. When I was about twenty, I saw Raphael and [Flemish Baroque painter Anthony] van Dyck, who are heroes of mine. I bought a bunch of pigment for oils, and made about three hundred terrible paintings. I had no formal training; it was just trial and error.
What is the thing you've struggled with most as you improve as a painter? What did you really need to learn?
An understanding of anatomy. Drawing is all about how light hits the form. If you don't understand the form you're looking at, you can't understand what's going on.
That's a big thing [Long] pushes: learning anatomy, and just drawing. A lot of great painters that hardly draw anymore. Even if you go to restaurant, you should draw people when they're not looking. Draw, draw, draw; practice, practice, practice; patience, patience, patience.
It looks like most of your training has been private.
I never went to art school. I'm in a personal apprenticeship with Benjamin S. Long IV. He's renowned for his true frescoes. The first one was in Italy, in Lucignano, where he lives half the year. It was a memorial to one of his friends.
There are thirteen or fourteen frescoes here in North Carolina. It's the highest concentration of frescoes outside of Europe. The one I helped him with was three years ago. I helped grind colors, get the plaster ready, clean brushes.
How does that work, being an apprentice?
I work with him on a weekly basis with oils and drawing. He doesn't tell me how to do anything . It's helpful to work on your own as much as you can; but it's really helpful to have him there when you get into a bind. "Look at this, see how bad I am!" His whole thing is that you never use photographic references; use models.
I notice that a lot of your models don't look like privileged people. They look like they just got off work, or just stepped out of a bar. They have tattoos.
They're all my friends! It's important to me to paint my friends. There's a whole variety of people I paint, and I don't choose one type or another.
Well, they look like lovely, wonderful people! But I mean that you show all of your subjects with a great amount of dignity.
That's very important to me. Rembrandt is the top. One thing I really love about his work the psychology in his paintings. Peasant, aristocrats — he painted them all with dignity. No person is more important than the other.
That emphasis on people's dignity seems very Catholic to me. You are Catholic, right?
Yes, I am. I've done commissions for churches, but I don't put a lot on my website about liturgical art. I love my faith, but I am a sinner. I struggle with my faith. This is the big thing: I believe in loving absolutely everybody. Some of my deepest friends are from all faiths and walks of life. I don't select only Catholic for friends.
Is there any particular kind of religious art that you especially enjoy?
I love all religious art. It's in a public space, you don't have to go into someone's hallway to see it. And there's a narrative to religious art, which is just the pinncacle of art, for me.
Is your family artistic?
No, I don't know where it came from. I drew with my friends as a kid all the time. Michelangelo is the first artist I really loved.
What did your parents think when you said you wanted to be an artist?
They love it. A lot of my artist friends' parents hate the idea, but my parents are very proud of me. My parents are both Protestant, very humble religious people. They have never tried to tell us we have to make a lot of money to be successful.
I've been making a living as an artist for five years now. I scrape by. I do travel to Italy!
Who are some of your favorite artists who are working now?
My favorite living painter, Ben Long, paints the life around him. He does large frescos, multi-figured paintings, and he doesn't doctor it up. He paints life solely from observation, and he has a humble approach to the world around him.
I also love Steven Assael, who is not religious.
And I've never met him, but Neilson Carlin does religious work on a great scale, very beautiful work.
Do you see any kind of return to the kind of art that you enjoy? It seems like people are getting tired of ugly and bland things and are thirsting for beauty.
Believe me, my fingers are crossed. John Paul II and Benedict have talked about bringing back art into the Church. It does seem like there's a growing interest.
A lot of us are very anxious to return to the traditions of the church. I'm not militantly opposed to Vatican II, but traditional settings more reverent. Modern spaces aren't thought through the way they used to be. "Traditional" doesn't necessarily mean repeating the past word for word, but I don't see why we have to disregard thousands of years.
What kind of work would you most like to be able to put your name on?
Any sort of narrative from scripture or from the saints. This is something I would really like to get into. It's hard doing it on your own. I don't have much resources for models. Just doing paintings for churches would be my dream job.
But you weren't raised Catholic.
I was raised Lutheran. In high school, I didn't know if I believed. It must have been when I was 19, I went on a little journey: Presbyterian, Methodist, Episcopal. I wasn't even sure if I could go to Mass, but I went, and I could see something special was going on. I got some library books on Catholicism, and appreciated the theology.
Ten years ago I converted. It's a beautiful. I love the Catholic Church. You don't hear much about sacraments in protestant churches, but it's the most important thing we've got here.
Are you a Catholic artist, or do you know one who would be available for interview? Send me a tip at simchafisher[at]gmail[dot]com.
Author simchajfisherPosted on July 17, 2014 Categories UncategorizedTags art, beauty, ben long, catholic artist of the month, drawing, fine art, matthew s. good, paintingLeave a comment on Catholic Artist of the Month: Matthew S. Good
Catholic Artist of the Month: Timothy Jones and the Art of Gratitude
Today begins a new series: Catholic Artist of the Month. Rather than constantly kvetching about mediocre, sentimental art by Christians, I'll be featuring artists who are doing it right.
I am delighted to begin with Timothy Jones, an award-winning American realist whose photorealistic oil painting "Tempus Fugit" was just named a finalist in the BoldBrush Painting Competition. He graciously spent an hour talking to me while he was still in the throes of final exams at Chesterton Academy, the private Catholic high school in Minneapolis where he teaches art.
My questions are in italics. All the paintings featured, and more of Jones' work, can be found at his online studio and at Fine Art America, where many pieces are for sale.
So, what's your favorite color?
For the longest time it was blue, but recently I realized it had changed, and now I prefer green — a natural, mossy green. I don't know what that says about me. I grew up in Alaska, which is very cold, blue, and kind of stark, beautiful in romantic landscape way. But moving to Arkansas as a teenager, there was just a wall of green. I didn't really appreciate that at first. It took a while to settle into that. And it was just steaming hot.
How long does it take you to finish a painting?
I don't keep close track of the hours. It takes from a few days to a week, depending on how thing go and how much time I have.
A lot of it is just kind of staring at it. You kind of collect yourself, let things suggest themselves, or just walk away from it for a while, then come back and see what you have.
Do you work on more than one painting at a time?
I should! It would be a good system, because I do work in layers. But I focus on one painting at a time.
It would be great for my production, to do more than one at a time. Collectors like to see consistency. They like to group things thematically. But I always feel like I'm just learning to paint, because I'm trying out different things.
What's something new you've tried recently?
The last couple of paintings have been done in a style that's been around for a few decades, called hyperrealism. I'm not sure how I feel about it, but I wanted to try. There are certain aspects of it that appeal to me — strong shadows; detailed, meticulous work.
In a lot of circles, what's popular now is impressionism. You do more with color, you appeal to the emotions, use expressive brushwork. I love that.
Water Lilies at Moonrise
Winter Mist
Hyperrealism — is that the raspberries
and the chokeberries?
Those take more of a macro view, with a more contemporary composition I was trying out. The response has been terrific.
But it seems like a classic composition is what you keep coming back to — the straight-on view, a glass, a piece of bread, a piece of fruit . . .
Blue Vase with Plums
I feel like I've been learning to paint all this time. By using this traditional structure, I can work with and can try things inside that, and feel like I have some confidence and change one thing. For instance, I was in the habit of using a dark background,
and it was a little leap to use a lighter background.
Beer has this beautiful color, but you can't see it well with a dark background. I paint a lot of beer!
Mug of Beer
It's been good to work out some how I deal with light, things like these last couple I've done, like some eggshells.
Nascent
Another was "Tempus Fugit," [see above] which is made up of a lot of things that remind me of the passage of time. I didn't set that up intentionally; there was some stuff in a box, and I decided to paint it, and it turned out they were all themed.
One painting that my sons loved was the hamburger. You've done a few hamburgers.
Suzy Q Double Cheeseburger
I was happy with it. It ended up in a show. Everyone thought it was great, but then it stayed around forever. Nobody bought it.
Is there a struggle between wanting to paint something and having to make a commercial decision?
I did some orange paintings that sold while they were still wet.
Orange Peeled
The gallery guy said, "Go home and paint about twelve more oranges." But this weird little thing in my brain says, "I can't paint an orange now, because it's been requested! I'm switching now to submarines!
But I have a genuine interest in everything I paint. You spend a lot of time lying in bed thinking about what you want to paint next. I haven't always had a really clear idea of what direction I want to go in, but I have had a clear idea of what I don't or shouldn't want to do.
There's the temptation of doing something that's going to sell well: kitschy, sentimental stuff, might have worked out. My family might have wanted me to do some of that! But I always really had to paint things that I was interested in. I find beer really beautiful. A lot of the setups are trying to create an atmosphere of fellowship or camaraderie.
Pewter Stein and Pipe
Speaking of an atmosphere of fellowship, you teach classical art in a private high school, Chesterton Academy. How did that come about?
I went to a Chesterton conference with a painting and a drawing of Chesterton,
Astonished at the World
and the head of the Chesterton Society came up and said, "We've started a school. Would you like to move to Minnesota?" Now I'm finishing my second year there. If there's one thing that could drag me away from painting, it's that.
The school is in its fifth year. They started with eight or nine students, and now they have 115. The school has this character of a little, crazy school – a private, Catholic classical high school – and the spirit of Chesterton plays a big part in that. It's a joyous, thankful approach to Catholicism, a very human Catholicism. We have the greatest conversations in the faculty lounge. The kids all take drama, and they all take four years of art – studio art, and art history. It's kind of a luxury for me to delve into those books again.
A lot of the kids are surprised to learn that there are steps to making a work of art. They think you just come out of the womb with this talent, that you pick up a pencil and it's magic. There is an element of that, but there are also a whole lot of ways to systematically help yourself. The kids open up in a way that is gratifying, and fun, to see. They surprise themselves.
After I teach them, they can go on and paint like Picasso if they want to. I try to keep things positive and not bash that kind of art. But I want them to be aware of all this beautiful stuff.
Last year, the juniors and seniors took a field trip to Rome. (I couldn't afford to go; moving had done such wonderful things to my budget!). You don't have to convince them that Caravaggio or St. Peter's Basilica is great. It changes a person. Compare that to the absurdity of some modern art movement . . . it's not anything you really have to spell out.
And you have been through some spiritual changes yourself, as a convert to Catholicism?
It's all Jimmy Akin's doing. He and I were friends in college. In our thirties, my wife Martha and I lived close to him and his wife. It was a great time. He has one of the quickest minds I've ever seen. I can't keep up with him, but it was fun to try. Also, he's just an honest person. Wherever the logic takes him, he'll go. He began to help me start learning to think. One thing led to another and here we are.
What sort of art have you been looking at recently?
I just saw a bunch of painting from ancient Rome, nature studies on their walls. Still life. They were just doing the same thing: "Isn't this great, we have these fish!" I think that's part of Chesterton's writings: this love and gratitude for the material world, a reaction against the puritan suspicion of the physical world, or the gnostic suspicion.
What do you mean, "gnostic suspicion?"
I see currents of gnosticism in modern art. Suspicious, antagonistic to dull reality, to life, to the rocks in the street. We don't wanna paint things that are all around us, we have to transcend that! But for me, the transcendence comes through the experience of things. Explore this, talk about it . . . that's what I love about art. That's what art, especially original art, not reproductions, is: this tremendous dialogue. Someone painted this a thousand ago, and I'm reading his mind. I like this idea of this dialogue, fellowship over a bird or a plant.
Your art strikes me as very Catholic, even the ones that aren't explicitly religious, like "Immaculate Heart" is.
I'm glad to hear that! I try to think sincerely what I should be painting. What can I do to move people toward the truth? I try to think of things I can show my own gratitude for. The essence of art is the artist saying, "Look, I have something to show you. I saw this plant, I saw this bird!"
Author simchajfisherPosted on May 23, 2014 Categories UncategorizedTags art, beauty, catholic artist of the month, chesterton, fine art, painting, timothy jonesLeave a comment on Catholic Artist of the Month: Timothy Jones and the Art of Gratitude


Founded in 2006, Thomas & LoCicero PL assists with numerous legal challenges, including Entertainment Law and Sports Law issues. From our office in Fort Lauderdale, the firm's attorneys deliver exceptional counsel and service to Broward County clients.
Jon is one of the most analytically brilliant lawyers I have ever dealt with. He is also an elite talent in written advocacy.
I am in-house counsel for one of Mr. Philipson's clients. I find Mr. Philipson to be an extremely intelligent, diligent and thoughtful lawyer, and a pleasure to deal with.
Intelligent, highly ethical, professional, hard worker, driven and compassionate.
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Select case type... Advertising and Marketing Alternative Dispute Resolution Antitrust and Trade Regulation Appellate Practice Arbitration Business Law Business Litigation Commercial Law Commercial Litigation Communications and Media Copyrights Entertainment Law Intellectual Property Internet Law Libel, Slander and Defamation Litigation Privacy Law Sports Law Technology and Science Trademarks Unfair Competition Other Case type is required.


- Publisher In the process of becoming like Christ, there is one essential element that is often overlooked. Because we never get to the place where we no longer sin against God and against one another, forgiveness is essential to maintaining forward motion. In a very real sense, each of us is God's 'great work,' and He continues to work to make us better likenesses of Christ, both as individuals and together as the Body of Christ. But God's 'problem' is that we aren't always as eager for that likeness as He is, and so we drag our feet. Some people even refuse to let Him start the process with them. This book is an attempt to help us understand what is involved in forgiveness, with a view to enriching our lives with God and with one another.
In the process of becoming like Christ, there is one essential element that is often overlooked. Because we never get to the place where we no longer sin against God and against one another, forgiveness is essential to maintaining forward motion. In a very real sense, each of us is God's 'great work,' and He continues to work to make us better likenesses of Christ, both as individuals and together as the Body of Christ. But God's 'problem' is that we aren't always as eager for that likeness as He is, and so we drag our feet. Some people even refuse to let Him start the process with them. This book is an attempt to help us understand what is involved in forgiveness, with a view to enriching our lives with God and with one another.


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Ratings: Making Healthy Media Choices
Why do we need ratings?
Research has shown that children are influenced by what they see and hear, especially at very young ages. To help parents make informed choices about what their children see and hear, many entertainment companies use ratings systems. Ratings give parents more information about the content of television (TV) programs, movies, music, or computer and video games. Read on for more information from the American Academy of Pediatrics about ratings and how you can help your children make healthy media choices.
Your children will be exposed to all forms of entertainment and media at a very young age. One role you have as a parent is to help your children develop the skills to question what they see and hear in the media. Using these skills, they can learn how to pick media that has positive influences and avoid media that has negative influences. The following tips can help your family use ratings to select media:
Ratings, when available, can be useful tools but should only be used as a guide. It also is important to watch and listen to media with your children. This allows you to talk with them about the content and meaning of the shows they watch, music they hear, or games they play.
Look for ratings and warning labels. Ratings can help your family choose movies, shows, videos, music, Web sites, and computer and video games that are appropriate for their ages and interests.
Beware of products that have no ratings. When products have no ratings, find out more about them before letting your children watch, play with, or listen to them. Keep in mind that companies do not have to use ratings.
Apps do not have ratings, but you can find reviews of many apps on the Internet. Until a rating system becomes available for apps, reviews from trusted sites, such as www.commonsensemedia.org, can help your family pick apps that are appropriate for their ages and developmental stages.
About ratings
Most entertainment companies provide ratings for their products. Ratings are usually based on the amount of violence, sex, nudity, strong language, or drug use your children will see or hear. Here is a summary of different rating systems.
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) rating system is the oldest, most well-known, and most widely used rating system, but ratings should only be used as a guide. You should find out as much as you can about a movie before letting your children watch it. Take time to watch it first to make sure it is appropriate. You can also read reviews, check the Internet, or ask other parents, but remember that each child is different.
Most big screen movies are rated, even though it is not required.
MPAA movie rating system
General Audiences. All Ages Admitted.
Contains very little violence and no nudity, sex, or drug use.
Parental Guidance Suggested. Some Material May Not Be Suitable For Children.
May contain some profanity, violence, or brief nudity. Does not contain drug use. Parental guidance suggested for more mature themes.
Parents Strongly Cautioned. Some Material May Be Inappropriate For Children Under 13.
Contains more intense themes, violence, nudity, sex, or language than a PG movie but not as much as an R movie. May contain drug use.
Restricted. Under 17 Requires Accompanying Parent or Adult Guardian.
Contains adult material. May include graphic language, violence, sex, nudity, and drug use.
Adults Only. No One 17 and Under Admitted Children.
Contains violence, sex, drug abuse, and other behavior that most parents would consider off-limits to children.
NOTE: Children younger than 17 years should not be allowed to view R-rated movies. Even though the rating system seems to suggest that younger children may watch an R-rated movie when a parent is present, it is not recommended they watch at all. Also, no child 17 years or younger should be allowed to watch a movie rated NC-17.
The TV Parental Guidelines rating system was created to help parents choose programs that are suitable for children. The ratings are usually included in local TV listings. Remember that ratings are not used for news programs, which may not be suitable for young children.
All TVs 13 inches or larger made in the United States after 2000 are required by federal law to have a V-chip. The V-chip allows parents to block programs based on ratings or times or to block specific shows.
For more information, go to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Parents' Place Web site at http://reboot.fcc.gov/parents.
TV Parental Guidelines rating system
TV-Y All Children Appropriate for all children. Not expected to frighten younger children.
TV-Y7 Directed to Older Children For children 7 years and older. Themes and elements may include mild fantasy or comedic violence or may frighten children younger than 7.
TV-Y7-FV Directed to Older Children—Fantasy Violence Same as TV-Y7, but programs may be more intense than TV-Y7.
TV-G General Audience Most parents may find this program suitable for all ages. Contains little or no violence, no strong language, and little or no sexual dialogue or situations.
TV-PG Parental Guidance Suggested Parents may find material unsuitable for younger children. Contains one or more of the following: moderate violence (V), some sexual situations (S), infrequent coarse language (L), or some suggestive dialogue (D).
TV-14 Parents Strongly Cautioned Parents may find some material unsuitable for children younger than 14. Contains one or more of the following: intense violence (V), intense sexual situations (S), strong coarse language (L), or intensely suggestive dialogue (D).
TV-MA Mature Audience Only Designed to be viewed by adults and therefore may be unsuitable for children younger than 17. Contains one or more of the following: graphic violence (V), explicit sexual activity (S), or crude indecent language (L).
NOTE: The American Academy of Pediatrics discourages TV watching and other media use by children younger than 2 years and encourages interactive play. For older children, total entertainment screen time should be limited to fewer than 1 to 2 hours per day.
The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) is the nonprofit, self-regulatory body that gives ratings to video games and apps so parents and other consumers can make informed choices. Almost all video games that are sold at retail in the United States and Canada are rated by the ESRB.
The following ratings information and a complete list of Content Descriptors and Interactive Elements are published on the ESRB Web site at www.esrb.org. The ESRB ratings are trademarks of the Entertainment Software Association.
ESRB ratings have 3 parts: rating categories, content descriptors, and interactive elements.
Rating Categories suggest age appropriateness (see chart).
Content Descriptors indicate content that may have triggered a particular rating and/or may be of interest or concern.
Interactive Elements inform about interactive aspects of a product, including users' ability to interact, the sharing of users' location with other users, or the fact that personal information may be shared with third parties.
ESRB ratings
Rating Categories
eC (Early Childhood) Content is intended for young children.
E (Everyone) Content is generally suitable for all ages. May contain minimal cartoon, fantasy or mild violence and/or infrequent use of mild language.
E 10+ (Everyone 10+) Content is generally suitable for ages 10 and up. May contain more cartoon, fantasy or mild violence, mild language and/or minimal suggestive themes.
T (Teen) Content is generally suitable for ages 13 and up. May contain violence, suggestive themes, crude humor, minimal blood, simulated gambling and/or infrequent use of strong language.
M (Mature) Content is generally suitable for ages 17 and up. May contain intense violence, blood and gore, sexual content and/or strong language.
Ao (Adults Only) Content suitable only for adults ages 18 and up. May include prolonged scenes of intense violence, graphic sexual content and/or gambling with real currency.
RP (Rating Pending) Not yet assigned a final ESRB rating. Appears only in advertising, marketing and promotional materials related to a game that is expected to carry an ESRB rating, and should be replaced by a game's rating once it has been assigned.
The Recording Industry Association of America has a Parental Advisory Label Program that is not required but often used. Each record company uses its own guidelines to decide which recordings will be labeled with a parental advisory.
If a record company decides to use the advisory, a standard black and white logo that says "Parental Advisory: Explicit Content" must be displayed on the front of the music packaging. The logo or a similar notice for parents may also be available on online and mobile products or services that allow users to download music for personal use.
Before allowing your children to listen to or purchase music, you may wish to listen to the lyrics first. Many music stores will allow you to listen to music before buying it. Also, most record companies and recording artists have their own Web sites that may post song lyrics or samples of the songs.
Coin-operated video games
All new coin-operated video games are labeled with a Parental Advisory Disclosure Message. This message appears in the artwork of the game or on a sticker on the machine. It comes in the following colors: Green (Suitable for All Ages), Yellow (Mild), and Red (Strong). The yellow and red messages also break down the content into 1 of 4 categories: animated violence, lifelike violence, sexual content, and language.
Internet companies are still in the process of creating a universal ratings system for online material. Until a system that everyone uses is created, the following tips can help parents create a safer online experience for their children:
Search the Web with your children. Keep in mind that anyone can set up a Web site and post information on any topic. You might be surprised at how easy it is for your children to stumble across or find information that contains graphic sex, violence, or drug use.
Put the computer in a room where you can monitor your children. Computers should never be placed in a room where a door can be closed or a parent left out of the activity.
Use tracking software to help you keep track of where your children have been on the Web. But keep in mind that nothing can replace adult supervision.
Install software or services that can filter or block offensive Web sites and material. Be aware, however, that many children are smart enough to find ways around the filters. Also, you may find that filters may be more restrictive than you want.
Find out what the Internet use policies are at the school your children go to or at your library.
For more information visit the official AAP Web site for parents, www.HealthyChildren.org, or the Web site of the AAP Council on Communication and Media, www.aap.org/COCM.
Listing of resources does not imply an endorsement by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). The AAP is not responsible for the content of external resources. Information was current at the time of publication.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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You can read the information of HandHeld Mandoline Slicer, for the deciding on a purchase.


T&A Survey | Why geothermal energy?
Geothermal energy originates from the center of the earth, where temperatures are as high as 2.000 to 8.000 ˚C. The closer you get to the earth's crust, the lower the temperatures. The heat is transformed in energy. The outer 6 kilometers of the crust contains 50.000 times as much energy as all the oil and gas reserves worldwide.
Geothermal energy is the use of the earth's heat for generating heat of electricity. For the installation of a geothermal plant drillings are made to deep groundwater reservoirs or aquifers. In the Netherlands these reservoirs can be found at a depth of 1.5 to 4.0 kilometers. In other countries, either deeper or shallower drillings are required depending on the geological and geothermal subsurface conditions.
To extract the water a well consisting of two bore holes is needed: one for production and one for injection. The production well pumps the water to the surface and leads it to the geothermal plant. The injection well is used to pump the cold water back into the earth. This way the water level in the reservoir remains stable. This is called a geothermal doublet.
From about 1,8 kilometers beneath the surface the aquifers in the Netherlands are hot enough to produce water of 70 ⁰C or more, which is enough to supply tap water of heating for buildings or greenhouses. From about 3 kilometers the temperatures are high enough for electricity production. As a consequence of the heat radiating from the center of the earth, the temperature of the earth increases with 3 ⁰C every hundred meters.


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Q: Does TCP's MSS hide a mismatched intra-LAN MTU? I'm trying to understand how mismatched MTUs behave in a network.
Suppose two hosts are able to talk to each other through an Ethernet-based network. The network and host A are configured for jumbo frames up to but not including a switch on the LAN host B lies on and host B itself. From what I understand regarding TCP, the three-way handshake at the beginning of every TCP session advertises each respective host's MSS to the other host. Given that host B will advertise a 1460-byte MSS after subtracting the IP and TCP headers, and since they will use the lower of the two advertised MSSs, will any TCP conversation between these two hosts work without issue?
On the flip side, since UDP doesn't have an MSS, will large unfragmented UDP packets sent by host A be dropped by host B?

A: TCP does path MTU discovery to avoid fragmentation which can result in increased packet loss. Applications using UDP have two choices.
They can just permit their datagrams to fragment. In that case, they won't get dropped, but if any fragments happen to get dropped, the entire datagram will not be received. This can magnify packet loss rates.
They can also do their own path MTU discovery by setting the "don't fragment" bit in their datagrams. They'll have to detect datagram loss and handle the possibility that the path MTU changed.
Typical UDP applications just keep their datagrams below 1,500 bytes total and allow them to fragment if necessary. This will result in no fragmentation on the most common links and no need to do path MTU detection.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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Dissenting Statement of Commissioner Dan M. Berkovitz on Volcker Rule Amendments – Final Rule
Congress adopted the statute commonly known as the "Volcker Rule" in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis to prevent banks that benefit from federal depository insurance or other government support from taking excessive risks that could lead to future taxpayer bailouts. The Volcker Rule prohibits proprietary trading and the owning of hedge funds and private equity funds by banks and their subsidiaries ("banking entities"), with certain exceptions and exemptions. In 2013 the Commission and other financial regulators adopted regulations to implement the Volcker Rule. The final rule before the Commission today ("revised Volcker Rule") substantially weakens these implementing regulations.
The revised Volcker Rule eliminates or reduces a variety of substantive standards in the current rule. The revised Volcker Rule will render enforcement of the rule difficult if not impossible by leaving implementation of significant requirements to the discretion of the banking entities, creating presumptions of compliance that would be nearly impossible to overcome, and eliminating numerous reporting requirements. The revised Volcker Rule also substantially reduces the bank trading activity covered by the rule. Finally, the revised Volcker Rule includes a number of changes and additions not contemplated or adequately discussed in the notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act ("APA") requirements for public notice and comment for rulemakings.
For these reasons, I dissent.
Weak Regulation and Enforceability Concerns
Nearly every amending provision of the revised Volcker Rule adopts the weakened provisions from the NPRM, further weakens the proposed changes, or makes new changes that weaken or eliminate existing requirements and standards. New presumptions of compliance favoring the banking entities, regulatory determinations left to the banking entities, and reductions in reporting requirements by the banking entities will make the revised Volcker Rule more difficult to enforce. The cumulative effect of this myriad of changes is a set of regulations that is ineffective and unenforceable. Although a single chip off a sculpture, by itself, may not create a noticeable blemish, widespread chiseling will disfigure the object. Such is the result here.
The "trading account" definition and related regulatory exclusions in the 2013 rule determine which financial transactions are subject to the restrictions on proprietary trading. Financial transactions of banking entities are subject to the Volcker regulations if they fall within certain "prongs" established in the trading account provision. The revised Volcker Rule rejects the "accounting prong" proposed in the NPRM and effectively jettisons the existing "short-term intent prong" for most entities.[1] In addition, there are a number of newly created outright exclusions of whole types of transactions and broadening of existing exclusions under the revised Volcker Rule.
FDIC Commissioner Martin Gruenberg provided an analysis of how these changes will significantly reduce the banking activity subject to Volcker oversight. "By excluding these financial instruments from the Volcker Rule, the final rule . . . opens up vast new opportunity –hundreds of billions of dollars of financial instruments – at both the bank and bank holding company level, for speculative proprietary trading funded by the public safety net."[2]
The 2013 Volcker rules define the "trading desk" as the "smallest discrete unit of organization" that purchases and sells financial instruments. The revised Volcker Rule removes the quoted text, and instead provides four broad criteria for designating a trading desk. The rule then allows the banking entities to designate the trading desks for purposes of Volcker.
The new trading desk designation criteria appear to be broad enough that a "trading desk" could include whole business lines, divisions, or an entire swap dealer. The opportunities for undertaking greater amounts of proprietary trading expand significantly when the limits (which are set by the banking entities themselves), the desk-specific positions being hedged, and reporting requirements are applied to much larger trading portfolios. Because the revised Volcker Rule effectively presumes that these trading desk designations by the banking entities are valid, it will be more difficult for the applicable regulator to reign in proprietary trading undertaken by more expansively designated trading desks.
How much proprietary trading can occur under the market making exemption in the revised Volcker Rule will be determined by the risk limits set for each trading desk. The risk limits are to be established at the discretion of each banking entity and, as noted above, the scope of a trading desk also will be determined by the banking entity within broad criteria. "Reasonably expected near-term demand" ("RENTD") of customers is included in the Volcker statute to establish the level of market making permissible. While the RENTD concept is still in the revised Volcker Rule, a presumption has been added that the RENTD levels set by each banking entity are correct.
Because these determinations will be established by the banking entity and presumed to be compliant, it will be difficult for any regulator to challenge them or take any enforcement action – even if a banking entity experiences large losses from proprietary trading – so long as the trading is found to be within the set limits.
These concerns about enforcement and oversight are exacerbated by the reduced metrics and other reporting, documentation, and compliance requirements. Numerous changes are made both as proposed and added on in this final rule. To name a few, stressed value at risk, daily risk factor sensitivities, and risk limit breaches need not be reported. In some cases, changes to reporting requirements make sense if experience shows a metric has little or no regulatory value. But most of these changes in the revised Volcker Rule are purportedly justified because they reduce the burden on banking entities and the cumulative effect on the ability of a regulator to monitor for compliance and potential significant issues is not addressed.
Logical Outgrowth Concerns
The revised Volcker Rule includes a number of new rules and amendments that were not mentioned or adequately described in the NPRM. The APA requires that a proposed rulemaking be published in the Federal Register and that interested persons be given an opportunity to comment.[3] A "notice of proposed rulemaking must provide sufficient factual detail and rationale for the rule to permit interested parties to comment meaningfully."[4]
In comparing the revised Volcker Rule to the NPRM, there are a number of changes that were either not addressed in the NPRM or at best are based on comments received in response to general questions. For example, the NPRM included a proposal to replace the short-term intent prong with what is commonly referred to as the "accounting prong." In the revised Volcker Rule, the accounting prong was rejected, but the short-term interest prong also is eliminated for most banking entities.[5] While replacing the short-term intent prong was discussed in the proposal, effectively eliminating the prong without a replacement was not proposed. Similarly the option for certain banking entities to now elect to comply with the market risk capital rule prong rather than the short-term intent prong was not discussed as an alternative. Nor was the replacement of the rebuttable presumption of proprietary trading for positions held shorter than 60 days with the opposite presumption that positions held longer than 60 days are not proprietary trading for purposes of the Volcker Rule. Agencies cannot "pull a surprise switcheroo" in the rulemaking process.[6]
Furthermore, the NPRM appears to not even contemplate excluding government bond assets and liabilities, mortgage servicing rights hedges, or financial instruments that are not trading assets or trading liabilities from counting as proprietary trading. Other changes, such as the elimination of incentive compensation limits, the matched derivatives transaction exclusion, and elimination of risk factor sensitivity metrics reporting appear to be based on general questions in the NPRM. In each case, no draft rule text or adequate discussion of such amendments was provided that would allow the public to have anticipated those amendments. Rather, many of these changes appear to be based on de novo comments made by banks or their trade organizations. "[I]f the final rule 'substantially departs from the terms or substance of the proposed rule,' the notice is inadequate."[7]
Self-regulation failed us in the early part of this century. Dodd-Frank, including the Volcker Rule, has helped this country rebuild a strong and better managed financial sector. To maintain a robust financial sector that benefits the American people, we must maintain strong standards and vigorous oversight. Otherwise, it is only a matter of time before the memory of the huge losses and resulting pressures for a taxpayer bailout fades and excessive risk taking comes home to roost. While the Dodd-Frank regulations may not be perfect and modest adjustments may be appropriate, the wholesale revision of regulations that greatly weaken the enforceability of those regulations such as we have before us today will, in the long run, weaken the financial sector and pose risks to the American public.
[1] While the short-term intent prong remains for a limited number of banks not subject to the market risk capital rules in banking regulations, compliance with the short-term intent prong is now optional if those banking entities instead elect to comply with the market risk capital rules for Volcker compliance.
[2] Statement by Martin J. Gruenberg, Member, FDIC Board of Directors, The Volcker Rule (Aug. 20, 2019) at 3, available at https://www.fdic.gov/news/news/speeches/spaug2019b.pdf.
[3] 5 U.S.C. 553(b) and (c).
[4] Honeywell Int'l, Inc. v. EPA, 372 F.3d 441, 445 (D.C. Cir. 2004) (internal quotation marks omitted).
[5] Firms subject to, or which elect to be subject to, the market risk capital rule prong are no longer subject to the short-term intent prong.
[6] Environmental Integrity Project v. EPA, 425 F.3d 992, 996 (D.C. Cir. 2005).
[7] Chocolate Manufacturers Assoc. of the United States v. Block, 755 F.2d 1098, 1105 (4th Cir. 1985) (quoting Rowell v. Andrus, 631 F.2d 699, 702 n.2 (10th Cir. 1980).
CFTC to Hold an Open Commission Meeting on September 16


Ryno's parents added a new member to their family this weekend. They picked up a sweet little Boston in Georgia and named her Bella. We can't wait for Elton to meet his new puppy friend and we can't wait to meet her too! Isn't she the cutest?


Since American barbecue began its movement to full-blown renaissance, more and more food enthusiasts have become aware of the South's four major barbecue regions, as well as the forms of barbecue that have come to represent them. While serious smoke hounds might warn against oversimplifying the geography of the food, it's tough to deny that certain parts of the country are effectively synonymous with very particular strains of barbecue.
Sure, Texas is home to Mexican-style barbacoa and a fair share of pork ribs, but what grabs hold of most memories is great smoked brisket and sausage along the barbecue belt surrounding Austin.
And while Memphis has produced some of the tastiest pork shoulder sandwiches around, it's still touted far and wide as home of the iconic dry-rubbed rib.
The Carolinas are fragmented along the subtlest of edible fault lines, but they are infamous as a region for their hog-only approach to the smoky arts.
In Kansas City, a historic meatpacking and music hub of the Midwest, a broad array of meats and the popular rise of a certain household barbecue sauce make it hard for one regional specialty to dominate the chatter. Still, if you ask anyone who's paid this 'que capital a visit, you'll probably hear tales of its own eminent domain: burnt ends.
Burnt ends, like much of American barbecue, aren't a labor of design as much as a brilliant form of adaptation. As beef barbecue became more common, pitmasters would set aside the tougher, drier, oddly-shaped end pieces of their briskets as they sliced them.
Many cooks declined to serve the fattiest parts of the brisket, so many burnt ends were drawn from this portion, ultimately served as appetizers, thrown into stews or handed to customers as scrap. Unlike rib tips, burnt ends can capture just as much melted-down fat as smoky, crunchy bark, producing an all-around incredible bite in the process. When done right, they make one hell of a culinary exclamation point.
I dream of those burned edges. Sometimes, when I'm in some awful overpriced restaurant in some strange town—all of my restaurant-finding techniques having failed, so that I'm left to choke down something that costs $7 and tastes like a medium-rare sponge—a blank look comes over my face: I have just realized that at that very moment someone in Kansas City is being given those burned edges free.
Pitmasters took note, and burnt ends (whether they are truly the refuse of a whole brisket or simply chunks of brisket cut exclusively to be re-smoked and served as such) are now a staple menu item in Kansas City. My first glorious taste of burnt ends was delivered at the hands of LC's Bar-B-Q, a relative newcomer to the barbecue capital. I haven't been able to make it back since that fateful day in 2008, but two prominent New York restaurants, RUB and Daisy May's BBQ USA, make a point of serving this Kansas City favorite as an imported delicacy.
RUB, which has already made Serious Eats' pages for their St. Louis style ribs, offers a meaty rendition of the dish that is so popular that it often sells out by dinnertime. Cut from all ends of the brisket, this offering from barbecue baron Paul Kirk and pit master Scott Smith includes just as much lean as fatty, and it is seriously saturated by the taste of wood smoke.
Some ends—namely, the ones with the most crisp, savory bark and succulent fat—are entirely thrilling on their own. Drier pieces cry out to be completed by a Kansas City-style barbecue sauce, which RUB is all too happy to offer. Purists may gasp at the first pour of such a sweet and heavy concoction, but it's a combination true to regional roots. The piercing smokiness of burnt ends can hold its own against a smart amount of sauce; that's why these formidable scraps of barbecue are such a perfect addition to southern baked beans.
Do these particular burnt ends hold a candle to their Kansas City forebears? They're not as revelatory as the ones I was lucky enough to taste at LC's, but Paul Kirk's K.C. reputation is safe here. If RUB can serve a solid plate of burnt ends in Manhattan, I can keep on dreaming that we will all one day be able to enjoy the meal that Calvin Trillin immortalized in their hometown.
Where have you had some great burnt ends? Do you have any tips for making perfect burnt ends at home? The Serious Eats Barbecue Bureau wants to know!


I'm looking to purchase a good, decent, or othwise acceptably functional digital camera. I thought about getting one new, however I don't have a problem picking one up that's been used.
If anyone here on CA has a used one that they are willing to part with (provided that it is operational, has all of it's parts that it came with, and doesn't have anything wrong with it) I'd be willing to take it off of your hands depending on the price.
Art: What Digital Camera Should I GET?


Pretty 3-4 bedroom villa set on the beachside of Cancelada in a quiet residential street. A comfortable family home with 3 large bedrooms and a spacious attic that can be used as a fourth bedroom, office or children's play area.
Mature garden with plenty of fruit trees, swimming pool and tiled terrace makes the most of the outside space.
Within a very short walk you will find the fine sandy beaches of Saladillo, a lovely promenade and fabulous views over the Mediterranean and a choice of restaurants and chiringuitos for relaxed dining in the sun.
Only minutes walk from the beach.
Close to schools, transport, golf courses, shops, supermarkets, restaurants and the towns of Estepona, San Pedro, Puerto Banus and Marbella.


Highlight the code you want to run.
Press the 'exec inline' button on the toolbar.
Wrapper around compilation retyped from dstang2000's DynamicCompileAndRun project.
And help with getting the currently selected text from the IDE, retyped from Kevin McFarlane's VS Csharp Macros page.
I deliberately re-typed, rather than copying and pasting their code, so that I'd have to really look at what was going on in every place.
The code you select gets wrapped inside it's own class (unless it contains a class of its own) and then an entry point is added to this class. A bunch of common imports (i.e. include) statements are added, just in case.
It's compiled using System.CodeDom.Compiler which is remarkably easy to do.
If the code doesn't compile -- then I display a mini window, showing the generated code, and what compilation errors there were. This gives you a chance to alter the code and get it to work.
If there's a runtime exception, then I display the same window, along with the exception that occurred.
I don't have enough time to work on this project. So it's on the backburner, alongside ShinyPower Analyzer, WSCG v4, Crank, SimpleTests, and everything that isn't TimeSnapper or Advantech.
Writing this add-in was actual just a detour along the way toward writing a SimpleTests add-in, which I'm still kicking around in the back of my mind.
The steps and decisions involved in getting that puppy to fly are all too many.
Regarding exec immediate: Source code currently is VB only (since the PC i first developed it on didn't have C# installed). Once I've made it work for both languages, I'll post the project up.


Recycling and household waste sites across Leicestershire are being returned to county council control.
Bringing the 13 tips - including Barwell - in-house is expected to save the cash-strapped authority £290,000.
Management of the sites was transferred to Environmental Waste Controls Ltd in 2006.
The contract ends in 2017 and thanks to a reduction in opening hours and introduction of new charges the authority believes it can make a significant saving by operating the centres through its own waste department.
The changes come into play next year and impact all recycling and household waste sites except for Whetstone, which is run by Suez Environmental.
Some £900,000 is being set aside from a budget underspend to invest in the required new haulage vehicles for the service.
Councillors agreed the move at a recent cabinet meeting subject to the director of environment and transport being satisfied the transfer is supported by an external review of assumptions and costings.
The authority is aiming to make savings of £400,000 from its waste budget by 2018/19.


Today, we seem to feel the effects of transition, transformation and change much more than ever before. In the time of our grandfathers, and even of our fathers, perceptible change would take decades, sometimes centuries; then time seemed to move much more slowly. Now, it is as if we are living in an accelerated pace, and things that happened only two years ago seem like ancient history. Technology provides a partial explanation for this, but there is more.
Changes involved in growth and development, are essential to the very definition of life. Not only do we need such changes; our lives depend on them.
Nevertheless, transition may be frightening or wrought with danger. The status quo gives us the illusion of safety, of known-ness. When there is movement and shifting about, however, things may break, or collapse, or simply be less predictable.
In any process of change from one stage to another, there is a moment that is indeterminate, an apparent void that has within it unlimited potential. This period is one of great risk, for in it, anything can happen. It can be quite brief, but if one hesitates, it becomes prolonged and, potentially, even more ominous. This happens, for example, in the short instant between walking and swimming. There is an either-or moment, in which one is no longer standing on anything firm, but is not yet swimming either.
The ability to transform is also the ability to learn new things. If we stick too firmly to our old notions, we will never be able to learn anything or to progress. When we learn something new, we must suspend some of our prior knowledge, in order to be able to integrate new information. Perhaps this helps explain why children are so good at learning languages: they have far fewer preconceived ideas. The human eye offers a metaphor for this notion: the only part of the eye that sees is the pupil, which has no color (i.e., no pre-set ideas); the iris, which has its own color, sees nothing.
Our ability to learn and change is also what enables us to do teshuva, to repent. Repentance is a transition that is effected in thought, in word and in deed. It is a transition from one world to another, one that has been created anew.
We know the power of Divine Words, for it is through them that the world was created. It was through the amalgamation of specific sounds that the reality of earthly existence was accomplished. And even though our words are the words of humans, they too, can effect true change.
Repentance begins with thoughts and feelings, but words are the first external sign of repentance: the words of selichot, of the Ten Days of Repentance, and of Psalm 27, L'David, HaShem Ori veYishi, which we recite until Simchat Torah. The words are the opening to the void, to the nothingness that contains the possibility of anything, to the turning point whereby we can transform ourselves.
This time in general, and the time of the upcoming High Holy Days in particular, is filled with uncertainty and awe, and so it should be. The Almighty created the world in order that it be changed, and it is no accident that He has given us the ability, the desire, and the measure of insanity required to make those changes. Although all of God's creatures are products of the Divine Utterance, only we have the ability to respond, to answer in word and deed, and to bring about the transformation and perfection the world so very much requires.
In so doing, we can participate with God in the continuous creation of the world.


text:
SUSTAINABLE SPACE
WHAT ON EARTH IS GOING ON? DIGGING INTO SUSTAINABILITY AND WHAT IT MEANS TO OUR FUTURE
Nuclear energy and waste
Nuclear Waste Dump Jury
Nuclear National Consent Absent
Nuclear Untold Facts
Nuclear Waste Dump or Bust?
Bizarre Nuclear Dream or Panacea
Opportunities and Threats
Agriculture & NRM
Economic "development"
Urban & Transport
Raise the wildfire profile
Wildfire, Devastation, Need for Change
Environmental Wakeup
Carbon Conundrums
Failure of The Carbon Farming Initiative
Three Fossils Coal-Oil-Gas
SA Climate Change Strategy
A STATE ON THE EDGE
Landscape and Biodiversity
A Proposition For Change
Deficient policies
The agricultural economy
Roadblocks to landscape change
Agricultural landscapes recovery
Scope for landscape change
Sustainable Rural Development
Agricultural Land Condition
NoSpeciesLoss Report overview
Report on Condition of Ag Land in SA 2004
About Landscape Change
New Direction for Farming
Landscape and Mindset
Soil-Discussion-Paper
Waters and Rivers
Significance of Murray River
An Action Plan with no action
Final Climate Change Adaptation Report for South Australia
Commentary on CC Adaptation Framework March 2011
Draft CC Adaptation Framework-1
More Comments on the CC Adaptation Framework
Submission on the Draft Climate Change Adaptation Framework
Pollution and Waste
The Plastics Identification Code
THE LOCAL EYE
Beginning or end for Martindale Hall
5 Big Ideas For Clare Valley
Regional Action
6 Pillars for Regional Revival
Low carbon technologies and the climate?
A Share of Mining Royalties
Ideas for a small town
National Tree Day events
2013 National Tree Day troop
Transition Action Group
Out Of Our Own Backyard
Environmental action policy
Review Local Strategic Plan 2009-2013
SA Strategic Plan
Case Study in Planning Decision-making
Clare Residential Study
Submission Clare Strategic Directions Study
About Waste
A Waste Problem Persists
Plastics Recovery
Still no action on Armagh waste
Ad hoc priorities on waste
Climate Change Adaptation Framework Aug 2012.pdf
A Historical Snapshot
To understand what's happening in the Murray River system today we need to look at history, of a time long ago and of the time since
European settlement. Here is a very brief overview.
The Murray River has existed for more than 60 million years.
6 million years ago Swan Hill would have been a coastal town; the sea had covered large areas of continental Australia.
By about 2 million years ago the sea had retreated leaving behind sediments. Also ancient river streams discharged into a very large lake - Lake Bungunnia - that stretched from Euston to Mannum. This lake persisted until about 500,000 years ago.
By about 900,000 years ago, the sea had retreated to a level about 130 metres lower than it is today. The Murray cut through deposited sediments - 65 metres deep at Lake Alexandrina - and all the way out to the edge of the continental shelf.
Uplift at sections along its course have caused re-routing of the Murray. The Cadell Fault between Echuca and Deniliquin occurred about 25,000 years ago.
The Murray generally oscillates about 4 km across its journey downstream, except for a narrow gorge - the "Murray Gorge" - that stretches from Overland Corner to Mannum.
Sea level rise at the end of the last glacial period - 17,000 to 6,000 years ago - caused the Murray to deposit sediments for half the gorge depth.
Humans have occupied the river valley for about 40,000 years.
Europeans began using the Murray River commercially a little more than 150 years ago when the first paddlesteamers were used for trade.
Victoria began irrigation from the Murray in the 1870s.
Disputes about irrigation versus navigation between Victoria and South Australia, and the involvement of NSW and the fledgling commonwealth government, resulted in the River Murray Waters Agreement in 1915, but only after 13 years of argument and negotiation. Has anything changed today?
The Agreement provided for water-sharing, water storages, 26 locks and weirs extending up to Echuca, but was amended in 1924 and 1934 respectively to allow for 14 locks and weirs, flood diversion weirs on the Murrumbidgee, and 5 barrages near the Murray mouth.
Menindee Lakes storage, Hume Dam, and the Snowy Mountains Scheme were all constructed in the years after 1949, and concluded with the opening of Dartmouth Dam in 1979.
Construction of the barrages was a concession to South Australia for the exclusion of some of the original 26 locks and weirs, so as to prevent ocean intrusions into the lower lakes thereby making them fresh-water bodies for land development and irrigation purposes.
In the space of a few decades the Murray became a totally regulated system.
Source : "The Murray", Murray-Darling Basin Commission, 1990
Impacts of Man on the Murray
The next link in understanding the Murray River's condition today is about how natural flows have been changed and the consequences that have resulted.
Major impacts include :
native vegetation clearance throughout the Basin catchment, including in South Australia, where in many areas rising groundwater has resulted because of the diminished interception capability from vegetation loss
diversion of water to irrigation channel systems - first diversions began in 1870 at Kerang in Victoria, and have continued right up to the present day
a "Cap" on water extractions was introduced in 1994 with the agreement of NSW, Victoria, and SA
reservoirs and dams affect the flow regime, and locks and weirs have caused artificial water levels that have resulted in flooding and death of large areas of redgum
irrigation water diversions have reduced river flows substantially; the effects have been almost catastrophic in recent years years as witnessed by the impacts of the long drought on thge Lower Lakes of the Murray
storages and weirs have resulted in the reversal of natural seasonality of flows
the frequency of natural mid-range flows has diminished by up to 5-fold
feral fish species have resulted in the decimation of the native fish species
South Australia - A Dry State
In the drought years to 2009, falling water levels in Lake Alexandrina and Lake Albert exposed acid sulphate conditions in the bottom of the lakes.
One response was to allow the return of the estuarine system with sea water, however the problem with this approach would be to destroy the existing freshwater ecosystem that had been favoured since the installation of the barrages in the 1920's.
Average rainfall in the MD Basin is 480 mm/year; in SA the average rainfall along the Murray River corridor varies between 275mm and 400mm annually.
Average annual inflow into the Murray is 508,000 GL/year. Compare this with potential evaporation of 1,968 mm/year or 2,070,000 GL/year
Reduced rainfall produces much greater reduction in run-off (possibly in the order of a 3 times reduction)
During the long drought ending in 2009, the period 2004 –2006 produced rainfall and runoff lower than long-term means almost everywhere in the Basin. The mean annual rainfall was 384mm, significantly lower than long term mean, and mean annual runoff at 16.7mm was 39% lower than long term mean of 27.3mm.
Very little runoff enters the Murray River in the SA section of the Basin; most runoff that enters the River is produced in Queensland, NSW, and Victoria.
During the period 1997 – 2006, mean annual rainfall declined to 440mm, 4% lower than the long-term mean of 457mm. Mean annual runoff was 21.7mm, 21% lower than the long-term mean 27.3mm.
Runoff in the southern portion of the Basin during 1997 – 2006 was unprecedented in the historical record, and was much lower than similarly dry ten-year periods in the past.
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Frenemy personality concept. Render illustration of 'frenemy' script on head silhouette, with cloudy sky as a background. human personality concept.
Render illustration of 'FRENEMY' script on head silhouette, with cloudy sky as a background. Human personality concept.
Render illustration of MISERLINESS script on head silhouette, with cloudy sky as a background. Human personality concept.
3D illustration of 'Self Help' title on pill bottle, isolated on white. Personality concept.
3D illustration of 'Personality Ethic' title on pill bottle, isolated on white.
Render illustration of 'POETIC PERSONALITY' script on head silhouette, with cloudy sky as a background.
Render illustration of Avoidant Personality title on head silhouette, with cloudy sky as a background.
Render illustration of 'PERSONALITY UPGRADE' script on head silhouette, with cloudy sky as a background.
Render illustration of 'PERSONALITY ETHIC' script on head silhouette, with cloudy sky as a background.
Render illustration of NAIVE PERSONALITY title on head silhouette, with cloudy sky as a background.
Render illustration of 'SOLITARY PERSONALITY' script on head silhouette, with cloudy sky as a background. Human mind concept.
Render illustration of SENSITIVE PERSONALITY script on head silhouette, with cloudy sky as a background. Human brain concept.
Render illustration of 'HIGHLY MOTIVATED' script on head silhouette, with cloudy sky as a background. Human personality concept.
Render illustration of 'SELF DISCIPLINE' script on head silhouette, with cloudy sky as a background. Human personality concept.
Render illustration of 'EGOMANIA' title on head silhouette, with cloudy sky as a background.


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