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Home / All Coins / 2007 Milwaukee, WI (ANA) Signature Coin Auction Auction #444 / Lot #2121
1877 $50 Fifty Dollar, Judd-1547, Pollock-1720, Low R.7, PR63 Gilt NGC....
1877 Half Union Pattern, Judd-1547, PR63 Gilt
Perhaps the Only Gilt Specimen Available to Collectors
1877 $50 Fifty Dollar, Judd-1547, Pollock-1720, Low R.7, PR63 Gilt NGC. A William Barber design with a large head of Liberty facing left. Liberty wears a coronet that is inscribed LIBERTY, the top of the coronet is ornamented with small beads. Thirteen stars surround the border with the date below. The reverse generally follows the design for the Type Three double eagle. Struck in copper and gilt with a reeded edge. The gilt is complete over both sides, which gives one the idea of what this massive pattern would look like when struck in gold. The gilt has even taken on a slight reddish patina on each side, just as a 90/10, gold/copper-alloyed coin would. Each side is lightly hairlined, which explains the PR63 grade (a PCGS PR63 insert accompanies also). The only mentionable surface defect is a hairline-thin scratch (not deep enough to expose the underlying copper) that is located in the field behind the head of Liberty pointing toward star 12.
The story of the origin of this extraordinary piece has been told many times, but never completely. The specimen itself came to the numismatic market in the early years of the 20th century, by trade from the national coin collection, held in U.S. Mint archives. That much is familiar to relevant collectors. Beyond that, writers and catalogers have generally gone on to examine the coin itself. All have proclaimed its beauty, but few if any have ever questioned its existence. The plain fact is that it never should have been made. The answer to the question of "Why not?" lies in the history of the times.
Commentary for patterns of the year in the ninth edition of Judd's reference book (on page 211) contains this telling sentence: "Somewhat similar to the situation for 1876, the pattern coins of 1877, although extensive in variety, are exceedingly rare, as such pieces were made as numismatic delicacies, not for distribution to congressmen, numismatists, or other outsiders." Garrett and Guth, on page 544 of their gold encyclopedia, simply list the gold version as unique and note that William Barber designed it. Their color illustration demonstrates its exquisite appearance. Nothing could be more valid than calling this beautiful piece a "delicacy" lacking in any commercial intention. While this and many of the other patterns of 1877 are gorgeous in execution, most of the larger pieces (of the era, not just of 1877) came into being under the excuse that they were examples of coinages that might be needed should the United States enter into metric trade with Europe. That does not apply to either version (Large or Small Head) of the 1877 half union.
Both the storied Large Head and Small Head gold versions of these patterns are unique, and firmly ensconced in the Smithsonian Institution where they are unavailable to collectors. According to www.uspatterns.com, the copper Judd-1547 patterns number less than a dozen extant specimens, but several of these, as well, are locked up in museum collections, including the Smithsonian, the Connecticut State Museum, and the Bass Foundation. That website further mentions that only "a couple of the known copper examples have been gilted." If that is indeed so, this copper-gilt piece is perhaps the only such piece available to collectors.
The year in which this piece was created had its conflicts, and in some of them may be seen the reason that no excuse could be made to justify this coin's existence. The only other time in our history previous to 1877 when a fifty dollar coin was minted was in the mid-1850s, in California during the Gold Rush. There was so much ore, and inflation was so rampant in the boom towns, that a coin of this value and size was useful. Not so in 1877, and not so ever again either. In 1915, commemoratives of this denomination were minted for sale at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, but even then most of the struck pieces went unsold and were melted. In 1915, the average income for Americans was in the range of $1,500 a year. In 1877, it was even less, in fact considerably less. There was no need for a circulating coin of this value in 1877, and none was forthcoming.
It was, as we said, a year of conflict, and much of it was ugly. Rutherford B. Hayes entered the White House in January, after a stinging political battle known as the Compromise of 1877, which brought an official close to the era of Reconstruction following the Civil War, but also ratified Hayes as president despite the fact that his opponent, Samuel L. Tilden, had won a majority of the popular vote in the presidential election of 1876. Throughout the year, disaster upon disaster struck the American natives as the infamous Indian Wars resulted in deaths and losses of land and their inherent freedom: Crazy Horse and his Oglala Sioux fought the U.S. Cavalry in Montana but soon surrendered to avoid starving to death, Sitting Bull herded his Lakota tribesmen to Canada to avoid being decimated by the military, the Nez Perce Indians who refused to move onto a reservation defeated the cavalry in Idaho at the Battle of White Canyon but two months later were defeated at the Battle of Big Hole River in Montana, and by autumn Crazy Horse lay injured in an Army stockade at Fort Robinson, Nebraska. The defeated chiefs would soon be paraded down Pennsylvania Avenue, in Washington, D.C., in disgrace, having finally surrendered their lands and their dignity.
Even harsher, however, was the government's treatment of American workers when The Great Railway Strike of 1877 erupted in July. The infamous bank panic in the fall of 1873 dragged the nation into a depression that steadily worsened through the decade. Breadlines, wage cuts, evictions, and small strikes occurred in many cities. Unions could not compete against the reality of fewer jobs. By 1877, a quarter of the work force of some 12 million were out of jobs, and wages had fallen, for many who still had work, to as little as one dollar a day. On July 16, railroad workers exploded with rage at forced pay cuts and greatly increased work schedules for fewer hours of pay, against their wealthy employers, who showed no sympathy, and much contempt, at their plight. Immigrants were blamed for scabbing, and the capitalists who owned the railroads feared the ensuing rage and street fights of their workers. They called upon President Hayes to bring in the Army to quell disturbances.
The railway strike stretched from coast to coast but paralyzed certain Eastern and Midwestern cities. The worst riot took place at Martinsburg, West Virginia, when workers stalled the trains and left them standing still on tracks, bringing all rail movement to a halt. Fifteen hundred freight cars stood still. The governor of the state responded to pressure from the railroads and he called President Hayes, who sent federal troops armed with both rifles and Gatling guns to Martinsburg on July 19. So many strikers had been shot to death in other actions, at earlier strikes, that the workers relented. It ended with the railroads restoring some of the wages they had taken away, and with workers determined to unionize more strongly in the coming years. The great strike and the clashes of strikers with federal troops underscored the desperation of the times, centering on the year 1877.
Could there, then, have been any real need for a gold coin of fifty dollars in value, in an America struggling to come out of depression, and when the average annual income for millions was only several hundred dollars? The half union patterns of 1877 perhaps underscore the growing disparity between America's rich and its masses of laborers. It was not a pretty year, 1877, but this coin is a sort of symbol of its time, a copper piece lightly coated in gold--a base metal of ordinary purpose, but gleaming on its surface. Students of our history could want little more, in point of fact, than an emblem such as this.
From The Pacific Rim Collection.
Coin Index Numbers: (NGC ID# 2AEW, PCGS# 61891)
View all of [The Pacific Rim Collection ]
8th-10th Wednesday-Friday
E-mail David Mayfield or call 1-800-872-6467 x1277
Thanks to Heritage I realized a handsome profit for my coin submissions and intend to send most of the remainder of my collection to Heritage Auction Galleries for future auctions.
Terrance Syrek


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The Confederation of Danish Industry (DI) is Denmark's largest business organization (chambers of commerce) and employers' organization. DI's members are 18,000 private enterprises in manufacturing and the service industry, from virtually all sub-sectors. Also, a number of sectoral employers' associations and branch federations are included in DI's framework, being integrated in part or in full in DI. Moreover, the members of DI in each county constitute a regional federation dealing with regional policy as well as educational issues. The organization represents its members in public discussions of new political ideas, and it comments on current events in Denmark. The DI director general and CEO is Lars Sandahl Sørensen.

History
The first employer association in Denmark was established in 1885 by companies within the iron industry in Copenhagena as Foreningen af Fabrikanter i Jernindustrien i København. A national organisation with the name Sammenslutningen af Arbejdsgivere inden for Jernindustrien i Danmark was established in 1902. In the 1980s, it changed its name to Jernets Arbejdsgiverforening. Other companies within the manufacturing industry were organized in Arbejdsgiverforeningen Industrifagene. These two employer associations merged on 1 January 1990 under the name Industriens Arbejdsgivere.

In 1992 Industriens Arbejdsgivere merged with Industrirådet under the name Dansk Industri. On 1 May 2008, Dansk Industri merged with  HTS Handel, Transport og Service under the name DI.

Governance
The confederation is financed and owned by its members and governed by a council and executive committee elected by the annual general assembly. DI's management oversees the daily activities of 600 employees.

COWI A/S-CEO Lars-Peter Søbye succeeded Lars Mikkelgaard-Jensen  as president of the executive committee in September 2017.

Activities
The confederation's activities can be categorised as follows:
• Policy advocacy - at local, national, and international level.
• Membership services - information, advisory services, and consulting.
• Network relations - between members and with society at large.

See also
 Industriens Hus

References

External links
Official homepage

Employers' organizations in Denmark
Business organizations based in Denmark
Organizations based in Copenhagen
Economy of Denmark
Organizations established in 1992
1992 establishments in Denmark

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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Q: CSS3 animation issue with z-index I have two elements in this jsFiddle. Each expands on mouseover with a :hover transition.
I want the blue animation to match the red one. Right now the red one expands over top of the blue one on mouseover, but the blue one expands under the red one. I would like each to animate over top of the other. This could probably be done by changing the z-index on :hover but that didn't seem to work very well.

A: Since you are animating all properties, the z-index animates and steps from 0 to 1 at the end of the animation.
Just animate the properties that you need and it works:
#a, #b {
    width: 100px;
    height: 100px;
    position: absolute;
    top: 0;
    -webkit-transition: width .6s ease-in-out;
    -moz-transition: width .6s ease-in-out;
    -o-transition: width .6s ease-in-out;
    -ms-transition: width .6s ease-in-out;
    transition: width .6s ease-in-out;
}

http://jsfiddle.net/duopixel/hfM7E/

A: Try adding this to the CSS (and remove the z-index modifier in #a:hover, #b:hover {...}):
#a {
    background: #55a;
    left: 0;
    z-index: 1;
}

#b:hover {
    z-index: 2;
}

Example: http://jsfiddle.net/h6ztv/3/

A: Try setting initial z-index value to '0'

#a, #b {
    width: 100px;
    height: 100px;
    position: absolute;
    top: 0;
    -webkit-transition: all .6s ease-in-out;
    -moz-transition: all .6s ease-in-out;
    -o-transition: all .6s ease-in-out;
    -ms-transition: all .6s ease-in-out;
    transition: all .6s ease-in-out;
    z-index:0;
    }

#a:hover, #b:hover {
    width: 600px;
    z-index: 1;
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Rapper Dizzy Wright comes to Vinyl Music Hall on Friday at 9:30 p.m.
Dizzy Wright, born in 1990 as La'Reonte Wright, is the nephew of Layzie Bone and Flesh-N-Bone from the hip-hop group Bone Thugs -N- Harmony.
Seeing the success of his uncles, at the age of 8 he started a group called DaFuture with his brother and a friend. His mom also shaped his early interest in performing by penning the amateur rappers' songs.
The Las Vegas-based artist teamed up with Jarren Benton, Audio Push, Demrick, Emilio Rojas, Reezy, DJ Hoppa, and Kato for the album "One Week Notice" released in January. Recorded in Austin, Texas, in December, updates on its progress were captured on Instagram. Dizzy Wright provides lyrics for 12 of the 13 tracks.
Dizzy Wright has released four solo albums and four EPs prior to "One Week Notice" and has also reached audiences through several mixtapes. The 2013 indie release "The Golden Age" found its way on Billboard's Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart.
Reezy, Tee Will, and Murky Creeks open the show on Feb. 23. Doors open at 9:30 p.m.
Tickets start at $20 and can be purchased at the Vinyl box office and online through ticketfly.com. All ages show. An additional $5 charge for attendees 20 and under.
Visit vinylmusichall.com and dizzywright.com for more information.


Haiti 5 is a piece of digital artwork by Michelle BarlondSmith which was uploaded on January 13th, 2010.
A series of Cards. All sales and proceeds will go to American Red Cross for support of Haiti.
I will donate all sales of this artwork to the Haiti Fund at the American Red Cross - If you do not need art - please donate !


We love skinny belts! Add elegance and interest wearing over a dress or shirt for work or a LBD (little black dress) in the evening. Like most belt styles you can wear them just below the bust line, on the waist or below, or in belt loops on trousers / jeans / skirts (especially high waisted). Very on trend now, often worn with long tail in a knot or over coats.
Yes it's true. Now skinny belt lovers have even more choice from just one thin belt strap and skinny buckles chosen to go with it, easily swapped over with poppers.


This is the first video in a series about Azure Automation Desired State Configuration.
In this video I'll introduce you to the Automation Account and tell you about the basic controls to start utilizing the DSC service.
can't wait for part 2. well done.


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What makes a person creepy
In «Silence of the lambs» Anthony Hopkins played one of the most memorable and terrifying villains in cinema, Hannibal Lecter. When you see this anti-hero, you realize that there is in it something terrible, inaccessible and forbidden. While famous lover of the human brain says in a soft voice, politely and almost friendly, he is well-read and cute, but we still understand that we face a real monster. Where does this understanding?
When it comes to movies, you can refer to the music, the acting, the script, the events and even the work of the operator. But life presents us with exactly the same «Letterof» — they look good guys, but we are afraid of them. Why? We don't know, however a recent study by Francis Bailey of the University Knox found the answer to the question: «what makes a person creepy?»
Francis Bailey, before we announce the results, repeated several times that the word «terrible» — the term unscientific and empirical definition of it will never find. He gathered a large group of volunteers (1341 people) who put 44 questions. Bailey asked the focus group to rate a person's appearance, his behavior and intentions on a scale from 1 to 7, where number 1 meant complete safety, and figure 7 is a total nightmare and horror. The researcher also asked volunteers to rate professions and Hobbies on a scale of fear. As a result, we received objective data that can be interpreted in the following way.
Terrible can be both women and men, but more fear cause men. To explain it simply — the presence of high physical and sexual danger. Rapes of women occur naturally, but some guys believe such an incredible display of luck. Correlation by sex is extremely high, but more and more people attach importance to behavior that goes beyond social conventions. For example, if you stand too close during conversation, often lick their lips or unpredictable laughing, of course, you're scary.
Unusual physical characteristics also play a role. People with a peculiar smile, greasy hair, long fingers and pale skin with more likely to be rated as terrible. That is, if your appearance is not the same as notions of normality, then you will be afraid. This can be explained from an evolutionary point of view, it is better to be safe than to be polite. The legacy of our instinct, which is used to produce the fear reaction to an unnatural situation.
Certain professions and Hobbies also become the embodiment of fear. The highest level of anxiety the focus group gave the clowns, they are followed by servants, funeral agencies, taxidermists and hosts intimate shops. If we talk about the «scary» capture a lot of people said the art of photography. In fact, nobody likes it when you take pictures on the sly, — this leads to unhealthy thoughts.
If you put the Stephen king novels aside, no one has yet proved the connection between a clown and a serial killer. And your wonderful laughter don't make you a maniac, as your long, pale fingers. But our subconscious mind perceives bad facts and reasoned arguments — it wants to protect us. When it comes to our instincts, they, without thinking twice, is injected into our brain crushing fear, and we'll get out from that may contain potential danger.
Hints of danger can be quite harmless. They are usually of body language that we use during social interactions. Body language is a category that is understandable to all, but when people deviate from the normative set of behaviors, we feel that something went wrong. If «something» is really wrong, we gradually filled his mind with anxiety.
If you do not understand simple rules of social interaction, for example, when to laugh, how close to stand, how to use eye contact, then your partner is not open to you the soul, will begin to suspect something. The behaviour may be innocent, but this is only the tip of the iceberg of our perception, we think up the rest themselves.
For example, a genuine interest in birds might look pretty dangerous, because none of your friends running around the woods with a camera and takes pictures of Raven for five hours straight. We closely monitor the behavior of a stranger, especially when he stands out of the ordinary.
Lack of understanding of the motive
Back to the birds. Observation does not seem dangerous, if it is in the circle of watchers. But for the layman such activity can become a driver of fear. Scary is not the fact of birding, and our speculation, born from not understanding the motives of the person walking around with binoculars in his hands. «This guy really watching the birds or he does something more sinister, looking for a new victim?»
The survey also showed that the focus group believed that some people deliberately choose to take the path of evil and dress in terrible clothes, starting to behave strangely. Horror is a manifestation of something internal, often social ineptitude. However, sometimes your instincts are not lying, that is a lot of crime news.
According to the materials of Francis Bailey

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


What makes a Great Leader? How is Leadership different than Management? How does a team lead exact individiaul accountability?
"Leadership" is the most written about topic in history. However, in IT, most team leaders who advance into middle management lack formal leadership training.
Our 2 day course is designed to build management and leadership foundational concepts and skills for new managers in IT. We'll discuss personal leadership, leading teams, team forming dynamics, team building, earning respect, employee development, interacting with peers, and managing up. We'll discuss various formal management styles, and patterns practiced by noteworthy leaders like Vince Lumbardy and Jack Welch.
How is Leadership different than Management?
Bob Chapman's "People Centric Leadership"
IMPACT: Management, Leadership & Accountability Posts From Our Blog . . .


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Huobi launches brokerage platform as attracting institutional investments becomes priority
Thai SEC Expects to Approve Country's First ICO Portal This Month
Thailand's Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has reportedly revealed that it expects to approve the country's first portal for initial coin offerings (ICOs) this month, with ICO approvals to follow. According to the country's crypto regulation, a portal's role is to examine companies planning to launch an ICO.
The Thai SEC expects to approve the country's first ICO portal this month and the first ICO next month, local media reported on Thursday. Rapee Sucharitakul, secretary-general of Thailand's SEC, was quoted by the Nation as saying:
At least one ICO portal is expected to gain approval by the end of November … the approval process for ICO is expected to begin in December.
The news outlet explained that an "ICO portal service acts as a financial adviser to companies planning to launch an ICO. Its role is to examine the purpose of an ICO launch and the business plans of the companies planning these offerings." According to the Thai crypto regulation, ICOs must be examined by an ICO portal prior to gaining approval from the regulator.
Rapee added that "The key for an ICO approval lies in providing clear and easy-to-understand information to investors," the news outlet conveyed. He insisted that currently "fundraising through an ICO is still illegal." The Thai SEC has issued several warnings against unauthorized tokens.
The Nation further quoted Rapee revealing:
All processes for issuing licenses to up to five operators of digital assets exchange have been presented to the finance minister.
According to the Thai SEC's website, six exchanges have been granted temporary approval to operate in the country while their applications are being reviewed.
The exchanges are Bitcoin Co. Ltd. (Bx), Bitkub Online Co. Ltd., Cash2coins, Satang Corporation (Tdax), Coin Asset Co. Ltd., and Southeast Asia Digital Exchange Co. Ltd. (Seadex). Currently, Coins Th. is the only company that has been temporarily approved to operate as a cryptocurrency dealer.
J Ventures Ltd., a subsidiary of Jaymart Plc., has been moving forward with various projects related to its token jfincoin. Jaymart Plc. is listed on the Stock Exchange of Thailand. The company operates in the wholesale and retail sectors for mobile phones and technology accessories.
Thanawat Lertwattanarak, the CEO of J Ventures, said his company is "accelerating the creation of a Jfin: decentralized digital lending platform" which has four phases including P2P lending, Prachachat reported on Oct. 21. In addition, the news outlet added that he unveiled the Jfin wallet which allows customers to use jfincoin at Jaymart stores such as for buying coffee and exchanging mobile phones.
#EXCHANGE COMMISSION (SEC)
#THAILAND


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Q: Slicing string made up of digits sometimes returns variable lengths I'm working my way through Project Euler using python and I'm currently working on problem 8. I've encountered a problem with the first way I tried solving the problem. My initial solving method is below
num = '''7316717653133062491922511967442657474235534919493496983520312774506326239578318016984801869478851843858615607891129494954595017379583319528532088055111254069874715852386305071569329096329522744304355766896648950445244523161731856403098711121722383113622298934233803081353362766142828064444866452387493035890729629049156044077239071381051585930796086670172427121883998797908792274921901699720888093776657273330010533678812202354218097512545405947522435258490771167055601360483958644670632441572215539753697817977846174064955149290862569321978468622482839722413756570560574902614079729686524145351004748216637048440319989000889524345065854122758866688116427171479924442928230863465674813919123162824586178664583591245665294765456828489128831426076900422421902267105562632111110937054421750694165896040807198403850962455444362981230987879927244284909188845801561660979191338754992005240636899125607176060588611646710940507754100225698315520005593572972571636269561882670428252483600823257530420752963450'''

#print(stringNumber)
seriesLen = 13
firstIndex = 0
lastIndex = seriesLen
topValue = 0
topSeries = ''

while lastIndex < len(num):
    lastIndex = firstIndex + seriesLen
    number = int(num[firstIndex:lastIndex])
    print(firstIndex, lastIndex)
    lastIndex = firstIndex + seriesLen

    if len(str(number)) != lastIndex - firstIndex:
        print(lastIndex - firstIndex)
        print(len(str(number)))
    firstIndex += 1
#    print(number)

What this code is supposed to do is go through the entire 1000 digit number given in the problem 13 digits at a time and print those 13 digits. But, for some reason it doesn't always print 13 digits and I cannot figure out why. Sometimes it takes as few as 10 digits instead of 13. I've tried this with several different strings too and it does the same thing. I've talked to my Prof about this and she is quite certain the slicing is correct so I figured I'd post this issue here.
For those who know the problem I'm talking about here I am aware that this doesn't give me the answer to the problem - it's just a MWE to demonstrate my issue.

A: This happens because you convert the sliced digits to an int here:
number = int(num[firstIndex:lastIndex])

This removes any leading zeros from the string, which is why you get variable lengths sometimes. Just remove this, and your code should work as expected.
number = num[firstIndex:lastIndex]


Are Real Estate Companies Like Opendoor Hurting The Housing Market Or Helping?
It Is A Hot Real Estate Market For Dallas Realtors! Home Values Are At Record Highs!
Dallas Real Estate Experts Say That Home Values Have Not Yet Peaked This Year!
Best Dallas TX Real Estate Agents and How To Price A Home Properly To Sell Fast!


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Stuff Crush
We Heart
Dispatches • Technology
Casinos, Connectedness, and Design
Community, connectivity and design; what digital businesses can learn from the buoyant successes of the online gaming industry...
Francesca Soler • 13 December, 2019
Among the online industries old enough to have survived the famous dot-com bubble, few would go on to match the success of online casinos. Thriving to a level where the industry is now worth billions, the online casino world has spread its fingers far and wide; existing in a self-sustaining circle of evolution and growth.
While some have been content enough to sit back and assume that it is the base appeal of these games which gives the industry such legs, many believe that it is their collective efforts around community and connectedness which sets them apart.
One of the more popular examples of this can be seen through their work on social media. Through mediums such as Facebook and Instagram, these services consistently keep players abreast of big prizes, upcoming competitions, and new releases. This may be a basic ingredient common to many online businesses today, but their constant and relentless attention via these avenues still goes well above and beyond what most manage.
A less common form that illustrates their reach can be seen through their use of top-site lists like ones concerned with the top Canadian casinos. Operated not by the casinos themselves, but by external companies with a comprehensive understanding of online casino popularity, these sites draw in customers by aggregating the best bonuses, biggest sites, and widest array of games.
In this, such sites connectivity and positive relationships with the casino websites pay off dividends for both; demonstrating a level of cooperation which is rare in any industry.
Another major factor, and one which has seen considerable evolution over its long lifecycle, comes from mobile phone adaption and design. Ahead of the curve in this regard, online casinos were heavy investors in the mobile gaming market; even while traditional video game developers and publishers hesitated.
Initially these investments took the form of apps, which early phones required as a matter of necessity more than anything else. Since then, further technological evolutions regarding HTML and CSS have allowed these casinos to operate on mobile straight from their websites. This did require mobile-centric redesigns and expansions, but attention and investment within these areas made these translations hugely successful.
Aiding in base popularity is the market attention that online casinos have paid regarding live casino gaming. In effect, this newer type of iGaming streams dealers from various locations directly onto a player's computer screen or smartphone; effectively creating a realistic physical casino feel with all the convenience of at-home play.
Taking lessons from online casinos is naturally not going to be possible across all different forms of business. There are, however, individual components that illustrate standout tactics that might be adapted over a wide range of other industries.
Mobile adaption, for example, was always a strong-suit of online casinos, and this turned out to be more important than almost anyone predicted. The same can be said about their relationship with social media, and the significant part that would play in the new age of advertising.
Even if you don't play online casino games yourself, their influence and regard for design and expansion mark some of the most successful efforts in online history. Influence and inspiration for your own business can be anywhere, it's just a matter of seeing the world through the right lens.
Gaming, Business, Technology
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Seoul named as one of the finalists at World Smart City Awards held in Barcelona
Press Releases Registration date 11/22/2019 WriterSMG views1119
Seoul was named as one of the finalists in the City Award category at the '2019 Smart City Expo World Congress (SCEWC'), the world's largest smart city event
Among a total of 450 entries from cities and organizations, Seoul was selected for the Data Driven Smart City initiative
With winning the City Award at SCEWC this year, Seoul continues to maintain its status as the world's leading smart city beyond the best e-government chosen at a global survey conducted by Rutgers University
SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA, November 22, 2019 – Seoul was named as one of the finalists in the City Award category at the '2019 Smart City Expo World Congress (SCEWC)', the world's largest smart city event.
SCEWC is an annual event that takes place in November in Barcelona, Spain. Last year 1,000 companies and 25,000 experts from more than 700 cities in 146 countries around the world participated in the event. This year it was held at Barcelona Gran Via Venue from November 19 to 21.
The Seoul Metropolitan Government said that Seoul was finally selected as one of the winning cities in the City Award category of the 'World Smart City Awards' that was held on November 20. Among a total of 450 entries from cities and organizations, six cities including Seoul have been named in the City Award category. They are Seoul (Republic of Korea), Bristol (UK), Curitiba (Brazil), Montevideo (Uruguay), Tehran (Iran), and Stockholm (Sweden).
As a part of the events of SCEWC, the World Smart City Awards are presented annually to the most excellent smart cities and innovative projects and ideas of smart cities where cutting-edge ICT technologies converge. The "City Award" is awarded to cities that present advanced urban strategies that combine research and initiatives related to smart cities and implementations into actual policies.
Seoul previously won the "Project Award" for its "mVoting" service in 2015 and the "City Award" in 2016 as well.
Seoul was highly praised for analyzing urban phenomena and civic actions based on the world's best smart city infrastructure and public data, and for establishing a cooperative system that solves city problems with citizens.
Meanwhile, the Seoul Metropolitan Government has been selected as the top-ranked city in the performance of municipal e-government for the seventh consecutive time among 100 world cities at a global survey, conducted jointly by the E-Governance Institute, School of Public Affairs and Administration at Rutgers University-Newark. With winning the City Award at SCEWC this year, Seoul continues to maintain its status as the world's leading smart city beyond the best e-government.
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Ryan Celsius (stylized as R y a n C e l s i u s °) is the pseudonym of a Washington, D.C.-based music curator, disc jockey, video artist, music producer and YouTuber.

His YouTube channel features visual mixtapes, combining underground hip hop, phonk and lo-fi tracks with nostalgic anime and movie visuals. Trappin in Japan, which began in 2017, is among the channel's most popular series.

Career

Based in Washington, D.C., Ryan Celsius began producing music and making videos in 2005. The same year, his production hardware was stolen, and he lost all the music and videos created. Celsius stated that the event made him stop producing music for eight years.

In the early 2010s, Celsius got interested in the vaporwave culture, including vaportrap and simpsonwave. He opened his YouTube channel in 2011 as a "personal project".  The channel's video mixtapes combine underground phonk, trap and hip hop music with nostalgic visuals from popular anime clips and movies. Most of Celsius' tracks come from independent artists.

The Trappin in Japan series, which began in 2017, is among the channel's most popular, featuring visual mixtapes with first-person footage of people driving or walking through Japanese streets, coupled with clips from nostalgic films such as Akira, and imagery from The Simpsons. He cites YouTube channel Emotional Tokyo as an inspiration for the series. The series, among others, was key to popularizing the phonk genre. Celsius' channel also holds 24/7 live streams of visual mixtapes.

In January 2019, Celsius was hired by indie record label Amuse to build their lo-fi music division. In summer 2019, Celsius' YouTube channel was demonetized and several videos were "shadow banned" due to "misleading thumbnails" in his videos. Celsius stated: "the YouTube policy team cannot understand the link between Japan, trap music, anime, The Simpsons, so since they don't understand my content it must be misleading".

In 2020, Celsius worked with Westbrook Media to create a lo-fi mixtape for Will Smith's YouTube channel. In 2021, he performed with Flying Lotus in New York, and was the visualizer maker for the official music video content of the TV series Yasuke.

References

Date of birth missing (living people)
Living people
Place of birth missing (living people)
American YouTubers
Music YouTubers
YouTube channels launched in 2011
American DJs
American video artists
Record producers from Washington, D.C.
Phonk
Unidentified people
Year of birth missing (living people)


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First Look for 2018's Batman Ninja Anime Film Released!
December 2, 2017 Farid-ul-Haq
The upcoming Batman Ninja anime film was first announced in October 2017. Now, the first footage has been released and it looks amazing!
An exclusive poster accompanied the announcement of Batman Ninja during New York Comic Con in October this year. The premise alone was enough to get fans talking about the collaboration between Warner Bros. Japan and DC Entertainment.
Check out the newly released trailers to get a sense of what's in store!
Story writer Kazuki Nakashima (Kill La Kill) and character designer Takashi Okazaki (Afro Samurai) have worked together to bring a fresh spin to iconic characters in Batman Ninja. Jumpei Mizusaki serves as director. I'm a fan of the new looks!
According to current details, Batman and the Bat Family, along with a number of Gotham's criminals, get transported through time and space all the way back to Medieval Japan.
Director Jumpei Mizusaki has said that the upcoming animated film is meant to show how Japan sees the Caped Crusader rather than how Bruce Wayne sees Japan.
The film stars Kōichi Yamadera as Batman, Wataru Takagi as the Joker, Rie Kugimiya as Harley Quinn, and Ai Kakuma as Catwoman.
More plot details, complete voice cast, and a specific DVD and Blu-ray release dates for Batman Ninja are yet to be revealed. However, you can expect it to be released in Japan sometime in 2018. Warner Bros. Home Entertainment will be handling distribution.
Other films fan can look forward to next year include Scooby-Doo! & Batman: The Brave and the Bold and Batman: Gotham by Gaslight.
Batman and a couple of characters from the franchise were also given an anime-makeover in an enjoyable animated short. 2008's Batman: Gotham Knight also played around with a similar anime-art style.
Are you excited about Batman Ninja? What do you think of the art style? Let us know.
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Thanks to its modern design Conik®Access Wall adds a gentle technological finish to your premises interior outlook. The integrated sound and light signaling makes it easier for consumers to scan a fingerprint.
Conik®Access Wall is connected via DriverControl® to the Biodit Management Software with RS485 interface with a maximum distance of 1 km.


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Elminius  est un genre d'arthropodes du sous-embranchement des crustacés.

Liste d'espèces
Selon   et  :
 Elminius kingii King, 1831
 Elminius modestus Darwin, 1854

 reconnait également :
 Elminius plicatus Gray, 1854

Notes et références

Liens externes

Sessile (nom scientifique)
Balanidae


Bangladesh Development Bank Managing Director Manjur Ahmed poses for a photo with participants of a training course at its training institute in the capital on Saturday.
Bangladesh Development Bank Limited (BDBL) organised a training course on "BACH-II" at its Karwan Bazar training institute in the capital on Saturday.
Managing Director, Manjur Ahmed, inaugurated the course as chief guest, said a press release.
Head of training institute Deputy General Manager Mohammad Nuruddin and concerned officials of the bank were also present on the occasion.


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Home > Fyi
Source: West Memphis PD
If the West Memphis Three Are Innocent, Who Are the Real Killers?
By Amber Garrett
In August 2011, Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley, Jr. were released from prison after serving over 18 years for a crime they almost certainly did not commit. While the three, better known as the West Memphis Three, entered an Alford plea and are therefore not innocent in the eyes of the law, DNA evidence suggests someone else is responsible for the 1993 murders of James Michael Moore, Stephen Branch, and Christopher Byers. So if the West Memphis Three aren't the real killers, who is?
Who are the real killers in the West Memphis Three case?
Because the West Memphis Three all accepted Alford plea deals, which means they assert their innocence but concede there is sufficient evidence for a jury to convict them, technically in the eyes of the state of Arkansas, the case is closed. However, most people, including the parents of the victims, do not believe the true killer was ever brought to justice. In that respect, they feel their little boys are the forgotten West Memphis Three in this whole tragedy.
Since the investigation focused so early on Echols, Baldwin, and Misskelley, it's possible key evidence was discarded or overlooked and early witness testimony was not given the scrutiny it deserved. Based on what is known about the events before the boys' disappearance, the evidence that has been cataloged, and statements made in the years following the trial, there are a few suspects under consideration by armchair sleuths if not necessarily within an active investigation.
A couple clues point to Stevie Branch's stepdad, Terry Hobbs.
Testing of DNA evidence found at the scene did not match with any of the three men who were tried and convicted of murdering the three 8-year-old boys, belonging instead to an unidentified person. However the DNA found within a hair tangled in one of the victims' bindings was found to be "not inconsistent with" Stevie Branch's stepfather, Terry Hobbs.
Another hair, found on a tree stump, contained DNA consistent with a friend of Terry's, David Jacoby. While that doesn't necessarily mean the men are guilty — as a parental figure to one of the victims, it's not too unusual if Terry's hair were found on Stevie or one of his playmates, though the Jacoby hair is harder to explain.
Hobbs has consistently denied any involvement, but others, including Stevie's mom, Pamela, don't seem sure. In 2009, she made a declaration to the court that she and her sister had found a pocket knife belonging to Stevie in Terry's nightstand. which Pam asserted "Stevie carried with him constantly and which I had believed was with him when he died."
Source: Sony
When the knife wasn't found with her son's body, Pam "assumed that my son's murderer had taken the knife during the crime," which added to her disbelief when she found it in her husband's nightstand. "He had never told me that he had it," her declaration added.
Pamela further claims her sister witnessed Terry washing Stevie's clothes, curtains, and bed linens "at an odd time around the time of the murders." Both Hobbs and Jacoby deny any involvement and dismiss the hair evidence and no charges were ever brought nor were they named suspects.
Early leads on two other teen suspects, Chris Morgan and Brian Holland, weren't pursued.
Before authorities focused on the West Memphis Three, they looked into two other teens who had some connections to the victims and who left suddenly for California a few days after the murders. Morgan and Holland were arrested in Oceanside, Calif., and given polygraph exams by police.
Source: Oceanside PD
Both their charts indicated deception when asked if they were involved in the murders. Under further questioning, Morgan said he often would black out or lose time due to drug and alcohol use and "might have" killed the boys, but he immediately walked that back and denied involvement.
Though blood and urine evidence was collected by California investigators and sent to West Memphis PD, there's no indication they were ever fully investigated by the local authorities to exclude them as possible suspects.
Then there's the bloody man in the bathroom at Bojangles.
Another lead that armchair sleuths often cite comes from a statement given by the manager of a Bojangles fried chicken restaurant located near the woods where the boys were found. After several employees reported a black man with blood on him had been in the ladies room of the restaurant and seemed mentally disturbed, the manager called it in as a possible lead to the murdered boys.
Though blood evidence was collected from the bathroom where the man had presumably brushed against the tile wall, the scrapings collected were never processed and a detective testified later the sample was lost. A hair belonging to an African American male was found on a sheet wrapped around one of the victims.
Sadly, we may never know if any of these possible suspects warranted further investigation. Because police focused exclusively on the West Memphis Three, the families of the "forgotten West Memphis Three" — Stevie Branch, Michael Moore, and Chris Byers — may never truly receive justice.
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Lawmakers plan to meet this month to discuss misconduct complaint against Boulton
The meeting date, scheduled days before Christmas, could settle complaint against Boulton before lawmakers return to the state Capitol next month.
Lawmakers plan to meet this month to discuss misconduct complaint against Boulton The meeting date, scheduled days before Christmas, could settle complaint against Boulton before lawmakers return to the state Capitol next month. Check out this story on desmoinesregister.com: https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/politics/2018/12/11/iowa-senate-lawmakers-review-complaint-democrat-nate-boulton-sexua-lmisconduct-ethics-committee/2283569002/
Brianne Pfannenstiel and Barbara Rodriguez, Des Moines Register Published 8:01 p.m. CT Dec. 11, 2018 | Updated 2:50 p.m. CT Dec. 12, 2018
Sen. Nate Boulton said he won't leave the Senate months after stories of inappropriate sexual conduct forced him to suspend his gubernatorial campaign. Des Moines Register
Nate Boulton, democratic candidate for governor, gives a speech during the annual Progress Iowa Corn Feed fundraiser on Sunday, Sept. 10, 2017, at the Simon Estes Amphitheater in downtown Des Moines.(Photo: Kelsey Kremer/The Register)Buy Photo
An Iowa ethics committee plans to meet a few days before Christmas to review a sexual misconduct complaint filed against Sen. Nate Boulton, a scheduling move that could settle the issue before lawmakers return to the state Capitol next month.
The Senate Ethics Committee is set to meet Dec. 20, according to an email obtained by the Des Moines Register.
The email, sent Tuesday by Senate Secretary Charlie Smithson, states the meeting is scheduled Dec. 20 at 10 a.m. It doesn't list a location. It also indicates some on the committee, made up of three Republicans and three Democrats, could participate by phone.
Two lawmakers on the committee also told the Register that they had made preliminary plans to meet next week.
It had been unclear whether the existing ethics committee, chaired by Sen. Jerry Behn, R-Boone, would review the complaint or if it would be up to Sen. Mark Costello, R-Imogene, the incoming chair. The Republican-controlled Legislature will convene in January.
The committee is expected to discuss a complaint filed last month by Des Moines attorney Sharon Wegner against Boulton, a Des Moines Democrat.
Wegner's complaint outlines what she told the Des Moines Register in a report published in May: That Boulton allegedly touched her buttocks repeatedly during a social outing in November 2015.
Two other women told the Register that Boulton touched them inappropriately when Boulton was in law school more than a decade ago.
Boulton, who dropped his bid for governor one day after the Register report was published, said he did not recall the incidents.
Months later, Boulton said he was making progress with an alcohol addiction but he wouldn't step down from the Iowa Senate.
Senate Minority Leader Janet Petersen, a Des Moines Democrat who had called on Boulton to resign, announced last week that she would defer on assigning Boulton to any legislative committees until the ethics committee completed an investigation into Wegner's complaint.
Boulton wants Wegner's complaint dismissed, according to paperwork filed Monday to the Senate by his attorney. The response argued the committee doesn't have the jurisdiction to consider alleged behavior before Boulton was elected to the Senate in 2016.
Boulton also claims his alleged behavior doesn't violate the Senate's code of ethics because those provisions don't deal with a senator's private conduct unconnected to his duties or colleagues.
Boulton's response to the Senate also appeared to question Wegner's claims, though he noted through his attorney that he "cannot say with absolute certainty" that he never touched Wegner because he was drunk. One of Boulton's co-workers at a law firm submitted an affidavit claiming she witnessed Wegner flirting with Boulton at a social gathering earlier in 2015.
Wegner criticized Boulton's response to the committee.
"While Sen. Boulton attempts to utilize his associate to victim-blame and misdirect the conversation to an incident that did not occur, I will not let him hide behind smoke and mirrors, and I respectfully request that the Senate Ethics Committee does not allow it either. I merely ask that Senator Boulton be held accountable for his actions," she said.
The committee can take several actions:
Take no further action
Dismiss the complaint
Issue an admonishment to advise against the conduct that formed the basis for the complaint
Issue an order to cease and desist the conduct that formed the basis for the complaint
Make a recommendation to the Iowa Senate that the person subject to the complaint be censured or reprimanded
Request that the Iowa Supreme Court chief justice appoint an independent special counsel to conduct an investigation
Read or Share this story: https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/politics/2018/12/11/iowa-senate-lawmakers-review-complaint-democrat-nate-boulton-sexua-lmisconduct-ethics-committee/2283569002/


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The Advantages And Disadvantages Of Fiber Optic Cable
Advantages And Disadvantages Of Fiber Optic Cable - Fiber optic cable is a type of cable made of glass fiber which is very fine and small compared to cables in general. Its size can even be likened to a strand of hair. Optical fiber can be used to transfer data or data signals using light from one place to another. This cable usually uses a light source from an LED or laser. This cable is also about 120mm in diameter.
Cables with fiber optic technology have also begun to be widely used in internet and telephone networks in Indonesia. One of them is the Telkom Indonesia company which is used in Indihome Fiber products. But not all areas have fiber optic services like this. Because the price is still quite expensive, sometimes local networks to be able to share resources still use UTP cables.
Advantages of Fiber Optic Cable
Fiber optic cable has many advantages compared to other cables. the following is a summary.
Fiber optic cables can transfer more data and at very high speeds, even reaching Gbps, the bandwidth is also getting bigger.
It has a small size and light weight compared to other cables.
Minimal interference, because fiber optic cable is not affected by radio and electromagnetic signals.
It is safer, because optical fiber does not conduct electricity and is not flammable.
Fiber optic cables can transmit data signals further than copper cables.
Non-conductor, no sparks and electric power.
It doesn't rust because it's not iron or copper.
Disadvantages of Fiber Optic Cable
Everything must have a weakness, except God Almighty over all things. Let's look at the disadvantages of fiber optic cables.
Repair and maintenance are difficult, this is because if there is damage to this cable, you must call someone who is an expert and experienced in handling the fiber optic cable.
The price of fiber optic cable is expensive, compared to the price of UTP cable, this fiber optic cable is much more expensive.
Fiber optic cable cannot be bent with sharp bends or forming a sharp angle.
By using this optical fiber technology, the resulting data transfer speed will be very fast compared to cables made of iron or copper. You need to know that the latest cabling technology on the internet network is fiber optic cable.
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In 1890 — just 25 years after the Civil War ended in the United States — Black Diamond started making strings. That's quite a history.
All of that history and experience goes into its banjo strings, which are nickel wound and light gauge. Try a set today and let us know what you think by leaving a review!
Have a question about Black Diamond banjo strings? Call 800-513-8271 to talk with our friendly music, strings, and gear experts or contact them online. They're available Monday-Thursday from 9 a.m.-3 p.m. EST and Friday from 9 a.m.-4 p.m.


Colourful watches are not new, since the 80's and the fever of the Champion they exchanged the bracelet of plastic or the various models of Swatch, each with its own theme, we see this kind of accessory is becoming pop in from time to time.
In fact it all has to do with "timing", after all we now have the wave "preppy" spreading color nautical accessories, bracelets for men taking to the streets and the man each time more connected into the details that can leave your visual cool, in a scenario like this it seems obvious that the clocks can be between the functional and the decorative, adapting to the new times, since its primary function (to mark the hour) loses space for the gadgets, such as smartphones and the like, that do this and much more.
A positive point watches with bracelet in canvas is that, unlike the traditional options (leather and metal) makes it easy to create an identification of the accessory with your style and even use it in conjunction with other accessories, functioning as more of a prop for visual, but taking care not to overdo it on the amount of appendages, and in color, in addition, make sure that the effort to give one up in the look has to do with the said person, save this type of feature to use with casual clothes and/or sports.
Respect your production and book this type of watch for looks/casual sports.


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On being trampled to death by the crowds at Walmart on Black Friday.
On black Friday there was a trampling death of a "sales associate" in a small Long Island strip mall qua village called Valley Stream. The Valley, I suppose is still there but I'm sure the stream is PCB-d over.
Almost thirty years ago I was a cub copywriter for the in-house agency at Bloomingdale's. Bloomingdale's was quite a store at the time and we had quite a good advertising department. Many of the people I worked with went on to bigger and better. Every year, I guess around November 1, there was a competition to come up with the words that would adorn each ad and which would be on in-store signage. Invariably my cohorts forwarded words like "Believe," "Tis the Season," "Love."
I was from the Carl Ally/Ed McCabe school of advertising even then. I believed advertising should punch you in the gut and hit you right between the eyes. As Carl Ally famously said, "Advertising should afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted."
The New York Times then and now fills the bottom of short columns during the holidays with a short imperative, "Remember the neediest!" they exhort. I took that thought and twisted it--these were the Raygun (Reagan)/Gordon Gekko early '80s. The line I came up with was simple, poetic, satiric and rejected:
"Remember the greediest."
It worked then. It works now.
More on my morning walk.
One of the places I stopped this morning was one of the last independent bookstores in the world--a good little shop where the sales help can read. I bought nothing today but will probably go back tomorrow to buy Gary Wills new translation of "Martial's Epigrams."
Martial was a pretty wild guy and wrote some scathing and erotic little poems that remain of interest today. Here are two that I like:
A Tonsorial Question
You cut off your remaining hair to hide your baldness, Laurence;
how will you conceal your impotence?
On Impolitic Virtues
When a politician's praised for honour, decency and such,
it's a sure bet he never accomplished much.
A pre-Depression walk on the Upper East Side.
I finished a short and labored run and decided to walk home from the park. I began meandering along Madison Avenue. First I stopped in Villebrequon. They make high-end swim trunks that cost between $185 and $265 a pair. Perhaps in the scheme of women's swim-wear that ain't a lot, but it's a heckuva lot more than the cut-off Levi's I've been wearing.
"Tink of dem as an invessmen," the exotic sales clerk purred. "An' dey coom vit a vallet to hol yur tings," she said handing me a vinyl ziplock bag.
Next stop a men's store with a $365 leather baseball cap.
Final stop, the pinochle of posh. In a "gourmet" food shop, a small batch of only 75 jars of apricot jam, each jar signed and numbered by the jammer. I almost gagged on the handful of cashew nuts I had stolen and had begun to scarf down.
All this makes me think of Jean Renoir's "Rules of the Game," a movie many critics consider the best ever made. It's a scathing critique of the French aristocracy fiddling while Paris is about to burn--or at least be occupied.
I'll close with a nice little couplet from the flick:
Robert de la Cheyniest: Corneille! Put an end to this farce!
Corneille, le majordome: Which one, your lordship?
The measure of all things.
Orwell's "Newspeak" and "Thought Police" do all they can to limit the sheer number of words. By limiting their number and their "nuance," you limit sophistication, debate and finally thought itself. I wonder if this is what has already occurred in America.
It seems more than ever that money, not man, is the measure of all things. We flock to movies because they grossed more than any other. We know exactly how many dollars a candidate has raised--we know more about that than about his ideas. We know the contracts of athletes, the cost of a luxury box. We know the results of Black Friday and Cyber Tuesday. We know the salaries and severance packages of Wall Street big wigs. We know what Nardelli walked away from Home Depot with. As I like to kibbitz, we follow the Nikkei more ardently than we follow the Knicks.
Yes, in Amoneyca money is the measure of all things. No one says, "What has he done?" They say, "How much does he make?" No one asks, "Is the movie any good?" They say, "It grossed twenty-seven trillion last weekend."
This is what drove us down. Because someone paid himself $120,000,000 per annum and awarded billions in bonuses, we assumed there was some legitimacy there. We assumed that because a ballplayer earns $100,000 per home-run hit that their accomplishments are legitimate regardless of the drugs they took so that they could bang those homers.
We have reduced all things to a financial measure. We have assumed more is better. We have lost the plot. We have forgotten about rich men and the eye of the needle. We have ignored Biblical imprecations about the love of money and evil.
No, in Amoneyka money is the measure of all things. Calvinistically we equate wealth with goodness and need with badness. This is why we are in a sump and will remain in a sump. We don't think about what these measures mean. We gobble on in the conviction
that more is the measure of all things.
Buick and Tiger Woods break up.
Imagine the shouting and fighting and cussing and all tha' and all tha' going on in the Tiger Woods' household right about now.
Mrs. Woods: "You what! You gave up your endorsement deal with Buick! You mean I have to give back my Enclave--the car of my dreams."
Tiger: "My dear, I'm sorry. I know how much you and I drive that Buick Enclave. It's amazing how much I personify the brand. I don't know what came over me."
Did the marketing people at Buick, did their advertising agencies really believe that anyone anywhere really believed that Tiger Woods drove a Buick? It's kind of like Daniel Craig endorsing the "Shecky Green School of Comedy." It just doesn't add up. It does more than strain credulity. It is laughable in its stupidity.
Well, I gotta go. I'm going out for a run around the reservoir with Dom DeLuise.
Thus I aver.
Anyone who shows up at Kohl's tomorrow morning at 4AM for their Early Bird Thanksgiving Sale has a screw loose.
The great American swill machine.
I just watched the new James Bond movie "Quantum of Solace" and I fear I am the one in need of solace. Listen, when you get kicked in the head, fall twenty flights and land on your kidney, get shot at repeatedly by automatic weapons, you get hurt. The wholesale dismissal of consequences in this move is staggering. Then there's the editing, seemingly done by stopwatch. Every 2 minutes 30 a car must blow up. Every 4 minutes and 27 seconds a sweaty troop of cleavage bounces into frame. Every 8.27 minutes Judith Dench appears looking haggard and disconsolate about her rogue blue-eyed killing machine. The cuttiness of the chases and the fights is so rapid that sequence and linearity matter not a whit. It's like the whole mess was directed and cut by an old-time Broadway choreographer but instead of "kick, kick, kick, turn, kick, turn, kick," it's "punch, grunt, axe, punch, grunt, grunt, punch."
Plot, character development, humor: zip.
Blood, gore, rape-fantasies: 1,000.
Entertainment value: void.
If you want to see a fight scene, go rent John Sturges' "Bad Day at Black Rock" and watch one-armed Spencer Tracy knock the daylights out of Ernest Borgnine. Or take five minutes and watch it here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwkBYDjcUaY&feature=related
Sorry. This Bond movie sucked. But it will gross enough to pay a Citibank bonus so we're sure of another one.
Swill.
The comedy that is all around us.
I took another day off today and so this morning took a short run and a long walk. As Yogi Berra might have said, "you can see a lot just by looking." You are subject to a lot of stimulus walking around New York City, and I guess I'm blessed, because a lot of what I see makes me laugh.
My first laugh this morning was the poster for Guns N' Roses' new album. The headline reads "The Most Anticipated Album Ever."
I'm no fan of Guns N' Roses but I find that hyperbole difficult to fathom. Of course at my age, I listen not to Guns N' Roses but "Gums and Cirrhosis."
My second laugh was a poster in the window of the neighborhood Bra Store, Victoria's Slutty Secret. There the headline emblazoned over a pair of breasts the size of an 18-wheeler's Michelins read: "Cleavage like this could only be a miracle."
Perhaps I'm naive but I always thought that part of the deal with Christmas was that Christians celebrated the miracle of Christ's virgin birth. If you believe in that sort of thing, that's a miracle. Cleavage is lovely, fine, enjoyable, but miraculous? Nah. Let me leave it at this: if you believe your cleavage is miraculous, put on a v-neck, come on over and let ME be the judge.
That's it, I think, except for Sleepy's, "The Mattress Professionals" being named one of "New York's top places to work in 2007."
Introducing a new geo- demo- and psycho- graphic category.
My wife and I called in dead this morning, fired up the Lamborghini and took a trip to the country. We drove about two hours north of the city, got off the highway and made our way to our destination.
Now, I'll admit I have a less than charitable view of the ex-urbs. The teeth seem bad, the goiters ready to burst and the general populace seem a little broad in the beam. We drove down the main drag in a small burg and I saw a bar with a neon sign on top, "Exotic Dancers," it said. I wondered, what kind of exotic dancers do you get in a town called Sloatsburg?
It was then that it hit me.
There's the Sun Belt, the Borscht Belt, the Snow Belt, the Rust Belt. But bi-coastal ad-guys like me-self don't live in such places. We live in something I have now officially dubbed "the Svelte Belt." It's a land inhabited by the fairly wealthy, fairly educated and, of course, the fairly fit.
It's not a bit like America.
And one more thing.
From "Duck Soup."
Minister of Labor:
The Department of Labor wishes to report that the workers of Freedonia are demanding shorter hours.
Firefly(Groucho):
Very well, we'll give them shorter hours. We'll start by cutting their lunch hour to twenty minutes.
The above is a prelude to something I've heard approximately 97 times just today. This week is not a short week. This week has seven days. What we are having is a short work-week.
Stop it. OK?
Another post about spam.
I rarely take days or even time off. And when I do, virtually the first thing I do when I leave the dentist or the parent-teacher conference is check my email. This happens almost every time. I see an email from a name that sounds familiar, so I open it up. Almost invariably it is someone trying to sell me off-priced boner-enhancing drugs.
I do need a drug.
One that would enable me to check my email less often.
Happy penny-stock Thanksgiving.
I bought my apartment just over ten years ago thanks partly to the shares of Interpublic stock I had amassed through the years which had reached $84/share. On Friday IPG's stock closed at just over $3.50.
Bailing out Citibank.
Throughout the years--years that seem like eons now--I've worked on various bank or financial services accounts, so, you get to know people on the client side.
When you work for a bank and you get fired, my experience tells me, you get about a month of severance for every year you work. In an agency, again my experience tells me, when you get the inevitable axe, you get a week for every year. In other words, bankers get, according to my un-official survey, 425% more severance than ad people.
No great point here. We're not going to see Omnicom Bank and Trust anytime soon. It's just something to think about.
Sometimes I think about Viktor Frankl.
Viktor Frankl was one of the great psychological thinkers of the 20th Century. He was a Viennese Jew who survived Auschwitz and later went on to publish an extremely important book called "Man's Search for Meaning." It's worth reading.
After I read "Man's Search for Meaning," I read a continuation of his autobiography called "Recollections: An Autobiography."
Here's the bit that really got me:
In 1942, at the age of thirty-seven, less than one year after being married, Frankl was granted a visa from the United States Consulate in Vienna. Emigration to the United States would allow him to escape Nazi Europe. Frankl had waited years for the visa. Getting it meant he would be able to leave for America and continue his work.
The one thing that emigration would not allow him to do, however, was to help his family. He would have to leave them to fend for themselves in Vienna.
Frankl doesn't know what to do. He walks home during Kristallnacht--the state-provoked pogrom that destroyed thousands of Austrians synagogues and lead to scores of deaths. He walked through the embers of his local synagogue which had recently been desecrated and burned by the Nazis and while there picked up a shard from the marble depiction of the Ten Commandments. The shard contained one letter which Frankl realized was from the Talmudic imperative: "Honor thy father and mother." The moment he saw the inscription, Frankl knew exactly what he had to do.
Within a few short months, he and his family were deported to the camps.
Working in an agency, when you keep it in perspective, isn't that bad.
Art imitates agencies.
This is an installation at the Saatchi Gallery in London. It's called "Old People's Home" by Chinese artists Sun Yuan and Peng Yu.
It reminds me of the EVP offsites I've had to attend in my past. Or life in certain sclerotic agencies that used to employ thousands and now employ hundreds.
"As a Vice President of Marketing, Paul was tasked with..."
This sentence fragment above came to me in an email.
My skin was immediately tasked with crawling and my blood was tasked with boiling.
I was also tasked with paying no attention to the rest of the email because the writer had been tasked, I assume, in school with learning the difference between a noun and a verb but decided to ignore the "lessoning" he received.
If you speak English, please speak it properly, unless you use slang or a colloquialism or a broken phrase for effect.
A screen-writer called Irving Brecher.
Irving Brecher died earlier this week at the age of 94. He was the comedy writer Groucho Marx called "the Wicked Wit of the West." And that's good enough for me.
The last line of The New York Times' review really got me--and made me think about some of the people I've worked with in the past. The line was slung at Brecher's 75th birthday celebration by Milton Berle, back in 1978.
"As a writer, he really has no equals," Berle said. "Superiors, yes."
A question for the times.
Is it just me or does it seem that these days Friday comes later in the week?
Business today.
WIFE: (ON SEEING HER HUSBAND AFTER WORK) How's your headache?
HUSBAND: Oh, it's fine. It doesn't bother me at work, only when I think.
Will the world become Detroit?
As usual from The New York Times. This time a photo of the port of Long Beach, California, the nation's second largest port where hundreds of millions of dollars worth of un-sold cars languish. Meanwhile, the port's largest export--old cardboard boxes we ship to China that they then used ship back with consumer electronics inside also keeps piling up.
Flash! Detroit is out of business.
Yes, I know I suffer from a surfeit of synapses--synapses that fire, at times, like a Russian Katyusha rocket launcher.
The Big Three, who, if we weren't xenophobes we would call the "The Medium Three" or "The Inconsequential Three," are all but gone. As the dog-whisperer Mitt Romney says in today's Times, a bailout will only delay their eventual demise.
Monday it was announced that BBDO has lost its flagship account of 48-years, Pepsi.
Do these two paragraphs belong in the same post? I think so. I can't recall a time my head turned with callipygian motivation to look at an American car. I can't recall a time I've said to myself that's a nice GM ad or a nice Chrysler spot. No, Heidi Klum could shill one naked and I wouldn't take heed.
Likewise Pepsi. It ain't that their commercials suck. It's just that outside of three or four moments during the year--the Super Bowl, the Oscars, I just don't see commercials. BBDO--that great TV Uber Alles agency--has maintained that attitude and has thus made Pepsi, like Fords, inconsequential.
Suppose you shot with Pytka and nobody watched.
The old model is dead.
I've always been a sucker for W.C. Fields
Because I like to laugh, I like W.C. Fields. Kino, the film curators, restorers and issuers have just released a five-DVD set called D.W. Griffith's Masterworks, Volume 2.
One of the films contained in the set is a 1925 Field's/Griffith flick called "Sally of the Sawdust." That got me thinking about Fields. Here are the names of some of the characters he portrayed in a few of his movies. They make me laugh.
•Mr. Postlewhistle
•Egbert Sousé
•Cuthbert J. Twillie
•Larson E. Whipsnade Frothingill
•Professor Eustace P. McGargle
•Ambrose Wolfinger
•Harold Bissonette
•Mr. C. Ellsworth Stubbins
•The Great McGonigle/Squire Cribbs
•Sam Bisbee, Optometrist
•Nuggetville Sheriff 'Honest John' Hoxley
•Augustus Q. Winterbottom
•Cornelius O'Hare
•Prof. Henry R. Quail
•Mr. Dilweg
•Mr. Snavely
•Rollo La Rue
•Bela Toerrek
•J. Effingham Bellweather
•Richard Whitehead
•Gabby Gilfoil
•Elmer Finch
•Pa Potter
•Samuel Bisbee
•Elmer Prettywillie
•Professor Eustance McGargle
Let them eat shoe-repairmen.
In the last economic boom everyone who makes something or fixes something or cleans up something have been forced out of the best of neighborhoods and replaced by people who sell something we don't need.
I work in Soho. I cannot get a watch battery, a heel put on, or a $12 haircut. I can easily buy a $400 pair of shoes, a $16 martini, or a $2300 handbag.
Does that strike anyone as perverse?
What old movie was it, was it the 1935 version of "A Tale of Two Cities," starring the great Ronald Colman where the barons and counts and dukes were forever galloping at full-speed in their carriages over limping peasants, stooped washer-women, and crippled orphans? Isn't that who we have become? A city of Bentleys and Benzes and BMWs run amok?
The importance of taking an extra second to read over your work.
An email I received today.
"Geo,
Thanks for coming through with that ad. It was very cleaver."
You know you're about to have a bad day when.
The state of American retailing.
There are large, bundled-up black men standing on various corners throughout my neighborhood holding day-glo yellow signs that are emblazoned with a Circuit City logo. The signs say "30% off," "closing this store" and, predictably "everything must go." (When must everything NOT go? The idea that some things may stay is an affront to both capitalism and the natural order of things.)
I decided to head to Circuit City---which I call Circuitous City--to check out all bargains great and small. There's a fevered frenzy that hits all of us in America when we hear something is on sale. The hopped-up bender of over-consumption takes over--we must go, we must shop, we must buy!
Circuit City was one of those stores where you could never get either sales help or a straight answer. Ask for information about a product and you got surliness in return. Still, the heroin-tinged rush of a bargain was pulsing through my veins. Maybe I can buy a new portable hard-drive, I calculated, or a new laptop, or a new Flip, or a flat-screen TV. I found, once inside the fluorescent big-box cellar every DCV and every CD on sale. I quickly scooped up five second-rate flicks I will never watch. No hard-drives--all sold out. No Flips. So I wrestled my way to the flat-screens. Ah, my built-ins permit a TV that is 35.8-inches wide. "Have you a tape-measure?" I asked three sales-people. "No," they answered without the slightest concern. "How do I know if the TV will fit in my home?" I asked. "I dunno," they shrugged and went on with their word-jumble. And so I left that fresh linoleum hell having bought nothing.
I guess from a Macro point of view, this isn't about the state of American retailing at all. It's about the state of everything. After all, who in government, health- care, education, work, gives you answers to what should be simple questions? Who gives you help? Who has a spiritual tape-measure? Who serves? Who makes things better?
No, as a nation, as a society we are enmeshed in a giant world-wide Inventory Clearance sale. We have turned into a "Shrugocracy." If there's a problem, a question that requires thought--shrug.
Cartoon classic.
Click to make it legible.
And now, a metaphor.
When I was an early teenager--13 or 14, I loved Steinbeck's book, "Of Mice and Men." Also, there was a 1939 movie of the same name starring Burgess Meredith as George and the hulking Lon Chaney Jr. as George, the simpleton. Aaron Copeland composed the music.
In one of the seminal scenes in the book, Whit, an old man, is persuaded by Curly, a cad, to let Curly shoot Whit's old dog--to put the dog out of its misery. Whit relents and Curly executes the aged canine. Whit angry at himself for giving in to Curly--angry at his own cowardice hears the single pistol shot and remarks: "I ought to of shot that dog myself, George. I shouldn't ought to of let no stranger shoot my dog."
I read Mark Harris' classic novella "Bang the Drum Slowly," about eight years after I read "Of Mice and Men." In the story Bruce, a journeyman catcher, is suffering from Hodgkin's Disease, a terminal illness. Henry, his friend and the star of the team, is Bruce's protector. Their team, the Mammoths, goes on to win the World Series, and Bruce goes on to die. Henry is the only one from the team to go to Bruce's funeral. Henry (via Harris) writes this after Bruce dies. "In my Arcturus Calendar for October 7 it says, 'DeSoto visited Georgia, 1540.' This hands me a laugh. Bruce Pearson also visited Georgia. I was his pall-bear, me and 2 fellows from the crate and box plant and some town boys, and that was all. There were flowers from the club, but no person from the club. They could of sent somebody."
Those are my thoughts for the day. When something nasty has to be done. Do it yourself. In person. No matter how much it sucks.
One of the great cosmic jokes of our times.
When one gets fired these days we rush to offer them a chance to continue their health insurance shrouded in something called the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act.
The Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act is also called COBRA. I find this a remarkable example of government-inspired gallows humor. Cobras--for the non-Herpetologists in my vast readership--are both vicious and venomous. They are the world's largest poisonous snake. What is more, some cobras can even spit venom. And that projectile venom as Bob & Ray might have said, "can render a man senseless" on contact.
We name that which helps protect us in our unemployment after a deadly reptile. Nice marketing.
The ways of looking at problems.
I just recently finished a merry little book by an English historian called John Hatcher. The book is titled "The Black Death: A Personal History".
As you may or may not know, the black death was a scourge like no other in the history of man. In fact it wiped out--depending on whose estimate you cotton to, between 30% and 70% of the population of Eurasia and Europe.
Hatcher's account studies records from one small town, Walsham, England. Walsham was a town of about 1500 people that was struck by the plague in the summer of 1349, back when I was just knee-high to a cockroach.
One of the interesting things about the plague was that people knew it was coming. Though there was no radio or television and most people couldn't read, news of disasters always travels in internet time--even 650 years before the internet. So people learned through sailors, traders and merchants of the plague's impending arrival and the devastation it caused in the regions it hit.
Here's what I find interesting--a glimpse at the character of the world, politics, our industry. By and large people responded to doom in one of two ways.
1.) They fornicated with everything they could. They spent every last coin they had. They lived like there was no tomorrow.
2.) They believed that despite the wrath of god, life will go on. These people helped others, prayed, helped their community.
I suppose I have a point buried in here somewhere. Maybe it's this. Crap happens at work. With your family. With your friends. In your country. Nothing is going to change that.
How you respond to crap is the measure of man.
If you were a boy at the turn of two centuries ago.
If you were a boy 100 years ago, you read Rudyard Kipling. He was the most popular writer in the English-speaking world. "Gunga Din," the movie based on his poem was a huge hit when it came out in 1936. (How could it not be--it starred Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Cary Grant, Victor McGlaughlin and Sam Jaffe.)
Kipling has fallen out of favor over the last 50 years or so. Too much "White Man's Burden," colonialism, and the racism and sexism that then infected the English-speaking world is present in his work.
Nevertheless, a certain turgid profundity is there too.
Last night, given the state of so many things, in my agency and out I read the poem below and sent it to my daughters as well.
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
And treat those two imposters just the same;
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;
And never breath a word about your loss;
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!
Do you suffer from E.D.?
We all work with myriad people who suffer from the embarrassment and pain of E.D.
No, not erectile dysfunction. E-mail dysfunction.
They cc everyone and his cousin. They don't proofread. The matter of their email is trivial. And the worst--they send an email when they should have a conversation.
E.D. is killing our business.
Don't ask your doctor.
Some wisdom from Norman Mailer.
I am lucky enough to have been blessed with a peripatetic mind. I can take in a lot of information and know a lot of things and can make a lot of connections. Of course this upsets clients who prefer people who think in manner depicted by the directional chevrons you find in powerpoint and act as if the world were an orderly and logical place.
This morning I somewhat randomly picked up Norman Mailer's reportage of the 1968 Republican convention in Miami Beach. You can find all this in his book on the 1968 conventions, "Miami and the Siege of Chicago."
Here's a passage I particularly enjoyed. "Unless one knows him well, or has done a sizable work of preparation, it is next to useless to interview a politician. He has a mind which is accustomed to political questions. By the time he decides to run for President, he may have answered a million. Or at least this is true if he has been in politics for twenty years and has replied to an average of one hundred-fifty such queries a day, no uncharacteristic amount. To surprise a skillful politician with a question is then approximately equal in difficulty to hitting a professional boxer with a barroom hook."
I read a lot. From Virgil and Euripides to Maureen Dowd to body copy. Mailer's words above are some of the best I've stumbled across in a long time.
A burning question.
What stock do we use in order to look different?
I meant to put this in powerpoint.
Will somebody please tell me differently?
Is there an agency anywhere--anywhere--that spends as much time creating work as it spends creating decks?
SFX: ONE HAND CLAPPING.
That being said, for now on creative girls and boys, I propose just running the deck. No, I'm serious. A 30-second spot should accommodate about four slides, so a campaign of six spots will get you through about 24-pages. OK, I know that ain't ideal--24 pages is only about 1/4 the length of most decks, but that, friends, is why we supplement out broadcast efforts with a robust print campaign. Imagine an eight-page insert which contains the entire deck, plus a "call to action" that sends you to our website where you can download the entire presentation--in color!
Now you're saying Ad Aged is being stupid. "Decks aren't 'customer facing.'" Well, if that's the case and we're in the customer communications business, why does decksturbation dominate our days and nights?
So maybe it all comes down to this--some Seth Godin/Malcolm Gladwell-esque pronouncement. Advertising is dead. Deckvertising has replaced it.
I took a new route to work this morning.
Uncharacteristically I left my apartment late this morning--in a rotten mood I was going to defy the man! I was going to get to work AFTER nine--like 9:07. That'll show 'em.
As a consequence the subway was unusually crowded. So instead of my usual leisurely ride on the local, I took the express, and I took it about three stops south of where I usually get off. I walked to work via a different route.
What a joy.
Part of living lives of quiet desperation is never noticing the beauty around you. Never noticing the cast iron columns adorned with cast iron swirling vines. Never seeing the grandeur of the Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank building. Never seeing the store-front of Mr. Skewer--a Brazilian restaurant, and a nickname I wish were mine.
One of the things I noticed this morning was the broken copper-clad clock and thermometer on the old New York Sun building. You can't read the ornate letters in the photo above but they proclaim: "The Sun It Shines For All." Ah, I felt like I was on the set of "Citizen Kane." I felt for a moment I was in a different world where the sun did, or at least might have at one point, shined for all.
Here's my advice now and forever. Get lost. You will probably find something that keeps you from getting lost.
Amid the greatest economic downturn of the last 80 years.
I was in Bloomingdale's yesterday--they were having a "1-day only Home Sale," and everything or nearly everything, by the time you were done with the asterisk, was 40% off.
It was a rainy day in New York and the store was mobbed--maybe it was just foreigners who wanted out of the rain--or maybe the "economic meltdown that's hitting Wall Street and Main Street both" (as they say on the nightly news) is as hyped and exaggerated as Winter Storm Watch 2008 when we were supposed to get eleven feet of snow and be besieged by the second coming of the Mastodon. Maybe the economic forecasting is as measured and intelligent as the Doppler 9000 radar which assures us every time there's a low pressure area two-thousand miles from land that we had better start building an ark. Or maybe it will be Depression II, just when you thought it was safe to go back into Charles Schwab.
My wife and I needed new towels. First I saw bath-sheets (those over-sized bath towels) for $57, and I said, 'how can that be.' But then I went to the next display and saw bath-sheets for $75 each. Then to another display where they were marked $93.
At that price, buying five costs more than the average family takes home in a week.
My wife and I settled for some discontinued towels from Ralph Lauren which cost $14.99 a piece less the 40% they took off at the register. I think they will work as well as the $93 ones.
Call me cynical (you won't be the first one) but part of me feels that this great economic crisis is just another made-for-tv adventure. It's bigger, badder, louder and worser than anything that's ever gone before. We will never extricate ourselves from the interwoven, international mess--at least that's what they tell us and on we go.
In my lifetime.
Bat Mitzvah Barbie.
Occasionally I steal.
This I stole from a website called http://www.thisfuckingelection.com/
click on the image to make it larger.
Typos.
Years ago, oh maybe fifteen, before all the banks in America consolidated, subsumed or merged into three or four, there was a local institution called the Dime Savings Bank.
I thought of that this evening as I crossed over the Brooklyn Bridge from Brooklyn into the city.
The Dime Savings Bank building on the Manhattan side used to have a large red neon sign on top saying, as I suppose you've guessed, Dime Savings Bank. Only somewhere along the way the "e" had burned out. So it read "Dim Savings Bank."
Martin Luther King. Barack Obama. Advertising Agencies.
In my last few jobs I've been hired in senior positions to teach old dogs new tricks. To help traditional agencies learn to leave the 1980s. Or to help an interactive agency become something more than a technology and infrastructure vendor. Or to help a non-traditional joint learn the intelligent discipline and creative bigness most often associated in traditional marketing.
This is a damn difficult and dispiriting job. Especially when the economy tumbles or someone's stock price goes down 47% or accounts are lost or new business isn't won. Because change, like principles, are easy to stick to until they cost you money.
Today Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times in writing about Mr. Obama recalled a speech made Dr. King. As Kristof says, "it's an apt description of the idea of America today: 'Lord, we ain't what we want to be; we ain't what we ought to be; we ain't what we gonna be, but, thank God, we ain't what we was.'"
I guess that's what those of us in the change business have to remember: "we ain't what we want to be; we ain't what we ought to be; we ain't what we gonna be, but, thank God, we ain't what we was."
Walter Rathenau.
I don't mean to be a downer but I suppose it comes naturally to me--the result being raised Kaspar-Hauser-like by wolves in the wilds of 1960s Yonkers, NY.
For the past few years I have likened 21st Century America to Weimar Germany. A decadent, frivolous world, riven by extremes, prejudices and hate. A time of tumult, hope and despair. A time of upheaval in the world (the wake of WWI, the Bolshevik revolution in Russia) and a time of economic uncertainty and calamity.
Walter Rathenau, a Jew and the head of AEG (Germany's General Electric) was elected German Foreign Minister in February, 1922. He was a wise, conciliatory voice in an increasing factionalized and strident nation. In June, 1922 Rathenau was assassinated by members of the nascent Nazi party. And Germany began its fast and steep descent into hell.
Its economy collapsed. Germany was isolated on the world stage. And the politics of hate and intolerance prevailed.
I told you I was gloomy.
Two new words..
Given my previous post, I am herewith proposing two new words for the racial amalgamation represented within the President elect.
White + black = Whack.
Black + white = Blite.
Last night and disappointment.
The victory of Obama is being hailed in many quarters as a triumph over the racism that has riven this country since the first slaves were dragged to this continent in the 16th Century. This notion of Obama as a black or African-American or person-of-color President is, in and of itself, a sign of racism.
I say this because as a nation we are still subscribing to notions of blood or racial differences and we have decided that a person who looks a certain way is, according to their appearance, their self-definition or the definition imposed by those around them belongs to a certain racial or ethnic category. In Louisiana, until recently, a black person was defined as anyone who had a drop of "black blood" in them, no matter how infinitesimal the amount. The metaphor that was used was simple, a can of white paint is no longer white if a speck of black is mixed in.
Plain and simple as a society we are sticking to eugenic notions of racial purity.
What makes Obama black as opposed to white, after all, he is as "white" as he is "black"? What we should be celebrating is the triumph of heterogeneity over homogeneity.
I suppose my problem with all this is we are upholding dangerous racist notions of blood and race. What happened last night wasn't a black man defeating a white man. It was a triumph of inclusion against exclusion, of liberal versus illiberal.
Jumping on the band-wagon.
Vote and Starbucks will give you a free cup of coffee.
Vote and Ben & Jerry's will give you a free cone.
Vote and I will personally write you a free ad, TV or radio spot.
At 5:50 this morning.
My wife and I stood in a line of about 100, twenty-yards away from another line of about 100. By 6AM the lines were down the block and around the corner. Upper East-siders elbowing each other, squeezing past folded-up lunch tables in a public school gymnasium to get into the half-functioning voting machines that date, I guess, from Eisenhower's first term.
A neighbor was first to vote--he arrived at 4:45 and having voted hustled off to a Starbucks to grab his free coffee. Later to Ben & Jerry's for a free cone. And then to Pinky Nails for a free Brazilian.
The helicopters chopped overhead, who knows why? Traffic watch, intimidation, surveillance, news crews?
Absent the giant visage of Comrade Stalin looming above, it all reminded me of my young boyhood in Moskva. The out-dated machinery. The mechanism of propaganda. The crumbling infrastructure. The naive hope that we, the people, could effect change through the ballot. My father, Stanisliv Irvinovich, would grip my hand and impart his cryptic wisdom as we shuffled slowly ahead in the snaking line. "My son," he intoned, "a man's vote is like a donkey in the breeze. Up close you can ride it. But from a distance, it smells."
My younger daughter.
My 17-year-old, Hannah, is about 79% smarter than the smartest people you'll find in an advertising agency. That makes me glad because it means I'll never find her inside an agency.
This is a photo of a bar in our neighborhood. You can't really see the sign but underneath the name of the bar it says "DRINKING CONSULTANTS SINCE 1998." Every time Hannah sees their sign she asks why anyone would want to drink consultants. I couldn't agree more--for the most part, I don't even want to have lunch with them.
Yet another reason I am not a football fan.
I cannot even conceive of what a Nose Tackle is, what he does or why he does it.
On being trampled to death by the crowds at Walmar...
Introducing a new geo- demo- and psycho- graphic c...
"As a Vice President of Marketing, Paul was tasked...
The importance of taking an extra second to read o...
If you were a boy at the turn of two centuries ago...
Amid the greatest economic downturn of the last 80...
Martin Luther King. Barack Obama. Advertising Agen...


Facebook's former Director of Engineering Jocelyn Goldfein recently sat down with Femgineer, an education resource for tech professionals, to discuss how to prioritize competing goals when creating products.
Technologists want to build products that are friendly, fast, beautiful, reliable, secure, and scalable. But the reality is that time and resources can be limited, and not everything can be rolled out at the same time. What's an engineer to do?
Be sure to watch the interview below and check out more helpful resources on the Femgineer blog!