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Kelly—a dolphin with a big "personality"—has been in show business for about four decades, most recently at the Atlantis resort in the Bahamas. Photo courtesy of Atlantis
Kelly, the Sassy Dolphin
What can one brash dolphin teach us about personality?
by Rose Eveleth
October 2, 2018 | 4,400 words, about 22 minutes
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The Atlantis resort in the Bahamas is an imposing place. It sits just north of downtown Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas, on its own little stretch of sand dubbed Paradise Island. The main building has two high towers, over 20 stories each, connected at the top by a broad, arched walkway that's dotted with giant statues of marlin and other sea creatures, both mythical and real. The main entrance is marked by a huge statue of golden Pegasi arranged to look like they are in mid-flight, suspended in the air above a series of fountains. To check into the hotel, guests walk past the gilded Pegasus launch pad and over a bridge that's flanked by gigantic nautilus-shell-shaped fountains that pour into a marina full of private yachts. Ted Turner, the vice president of the resort's Dolphin Cay, is giving me a tour, and he lists off the guests who have stayed recently: P. Diddy, the Chicago Blackhawks, Harvey Weinstein. "Many, many famous and rich people come through here," Turner says. The entire hotel is coral pink.
Atlantis sprawls over 692,000 square meters (slightly bigger than Washington, DC's National Mall) and features, among other things, a 2,800-square-meter marina, a nightclub, thousands of rooms, a casino, a 75-million-liter water park, and 50,000 animals from over 250 marine species, including more than 100 sharks and 42 bottlenose dolphins.
I'm at Atlantis on a warm Monday in June to see one of those dolphins, a 44-year-old female named Kelly. When I arrive at Dolphin Cay, the sun is finally banishing the last of some storm clouds, and Kelly is across the far side of the pool, doing what's called a "shallow water interaction" with guests. From ground level, Dolphin Cay looks like one big space. But beneath the water, there are gates and pens—keeping the dolphins separated from the guests and one another. When it's their time to shine, a set of dolphins is released into the large area that leads up to the beach. The guests, all in matching Atlantis wetsuits provided for the occasion, stand in about a meter of water while Kelly and a handful of other dolphins, swimming out in deeper water past a drop-off, entertain them with tricks. As I walk to the edge of the pool, a crowd starts chanting "Kelly! Kelly! Kelly!" Linda Hammerton, the director of marine mammal operations at Dolphin Cay, laughs. "There goes Kelly, about to show off." On cue, Kelly leaps out of the water in a graceful arc, and the crowd goes wild. She's still an acrobat, despite her advanced age—bottlenose dolphins in the wild only live 15 to 20 years. "She's my inspiration because everybody thinks at 44 you're kinda over the hill—no you're not! Kelly's great," Hammerton says.
The honeycomb-shaped features are Dolphin Cay, where Kelly and her cohort cavort for audiences at the Atlantis resort in the Bahamas. Video by VideoBlocks
I already know Kelly is great because I've spent the past several months in a deep, winding rabbit hole about her life. I've tracked her from the permit that allowed for her capture from the wild, to a brief stint in an Oklahoma zoo, to her harrowing escape from Hurricane Katrina, to the legal battle that followed, to the long flight from Philadelphia International Airport to Paradise Island in Atlantis. Along the way, I've met people who still remember Kelly a decade or more after meeting her and can spend all day telling stories of her tricks and antics. By now, I feel like I know Kelly like I know a distant relative. I can pick her out of photographs, tell people what she's like, what she hates and loves, her quirks and tricks. But does Kelly the dolphin truly have a distinct personality? Or is every story I've heard about her a product of anthropomorphism and wishful thinking? This question divides even the people who work with and study dolphins every day. The science on whether dolphins have personalities is still murky at best, but Kelly herself might help researchers find their way through.
Kelly was captured in June 1978, netted in the warm waters off Florida when she was four or five years old. After being captured, she lived and performed at Marine Life Oceanarium in Gulfport, Mississippi, for over 20 years, save for a brief stint in the 1980s when she was rented out to the Oklahoma City Zoo. In Oklahoma, already a bit of a trickster, Kelly surprised her caretakers with an early April Fool's Day prank: on March 20, 1988, at 4:20 p.m., she gave birth to a one-meter-long, 20-kilogram daughter. The trick wasn't the time or size of her baby, it was that her keepers had no idea she was pregnant in the first place.
Her Oklahoma days were short though, and soon Kelly returned to Gulfport, where she entertained crowds daily—leaping out of the water, giving high fives, tossing balls back and forth with visitors. Of course, this kind of captive dolphin show is not beloved by everyone. Like all facilities that house captive dolphins, Marine Life was also the focus of activists who believe that housing marine mammals in small enclosures and asking them to perform for humans is cruel. Perhaps the one saving grace of keeping marine mammals captive is that we've learned so much from them, we're beginning to ask questions about their inner lives and rethink how we treat them in the first place.
Kelly's first home was Marine Life Oceanarium in Gulfport, Mississippi, where crowds and trainers alike were fascinated by her antics. Photo courtesy of Tim Hoffland
In Gulfport, a city just an hour northeast of New Orleans, Kelly gained a reputation as the show-off. Tim Hoffland joined Marine Life in 1991 as the director of training and live animal rescue and spent the next 15 years working with Kelly and her friends under the facility's iconic blue metal roof. "She was very smart, even compared to the other ones," Hoffland says. "When you're training a new behavior, it's like the light bulb goes on and they understand exactly what you want them to do." Kelly was always one of the first to master a new behavior or trick—leaping 4.5 meters out of the water to touch a ball strung from the top of the stadium or doing a backflip. And not only did she learn quickly, she innovated too.
In a lot of enclosures like Marine Life, dolphins are trained to retrieve trash or stray objects in their pools in return for fish. "People are careless, they drop everything in the pool," Hoffland tells me. "Batteries, cameras, pacifiers. So these guys were really good, and they would find anything." Some days, he would walk by the pool and Kelly would be waiting patiently with some piece of something in her mouth—a flip-flop, a paper program, a plastic bag—ready to exchange her find for a tasty fish reward.
Eventually though, Kelly realized something. No matter how big the piece of trash she brought to her trainers, she always got the same amount of fish. Big trash, small trash, they all seemed equally valuable. So she did what any enterprising, crafty creature might: she gamed the system. Whenever she found trash and a trainer wasn't around to reward her for it, she started stashing her finds, hiding garbage beneath a rock in the enclosure and bringing small pieces to the trainers whenever she saw them, maximizing her rewards by earning them more often with less work.
Kelly never ceased to amaze Marine Life trainer Tim Hoffland with her abilities, such as grabbing a 10-centimeter-long fish from his mouth after jumping close to five meters in the air. Photo courtesy of Tim Hoffland
It took the team at Marine Life a while to figure out exactly what Kelly was up to, but they knew something was off. Unlike the rest of the dolphins who would scope out the pool for bits to retrieve, Kelly often went straight for the bottom of the pool. "Like she knew exactly where they were," Hoffland says. Eventually, the Marine Life team decided it was time to replace some of the glass on the side of the pool. It was only then that they found Kelly's stash. "We had to completely drain the pool and that's when we found it, under the rocks, there's a pile of garbage there that she stashed."
Anecdotes like this are impressive because they seem to suggest that these animals have a variety of high-level cognitive processes going on. Kelly figured out not just planning and delayed gratification—putting off a reward now to get more reward later—but she also understood enough to suspect that she should hide this strategy from her trainers and fellow dolphins. The fact that Kelly was the only dolphin to figure this out, and the fact that her trainers weren't surprised in the slightest that she was the only one to figure it out, made Kelly seem not just smarter than her pool mates, but craftier and more cunning. And soon, all of Kelly's traits would be put to the ultimate test.
On August 23, 2005, a storm started brewing in the warm waters southeast of the Bahamas. Two days later, it made landfall in Florida. After sliding over Florida, the storm hit the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico and grew into a mighty hurricane named Katrina that slammed into southeast Louisiana on August 29. What happened next you probably remember: complete devastation.
Marine Life, situated right on the water in Gulfport, was not spared. There was no time to evacuate all the dolphins before the storm hit. Hoffland and his team trucked six dolphins to hotel swimming pools just seven kilometers north along Highway 49. But the other eight would have to stay at Marine Life, in the 2,271,247-liter, six-meter-high main tank, and ride out the storm. Kelly was one of those eight dolphins, along with her six-year-old son, Noah. (Her other son, Brewer, was relocated to a swimming pool.) When the staff of Marine Life left the aquarium on the 29th to hunker down in their own homes, they simply hoped for the best.
The best did not happen. Like so much else in the Gulf, Marine Life was completely ravaged by Katrina. The aquarium's iconic metal roof was sheared clean off. Metal beams split and stretched and scattered across the entire footprint. The concrete amphitheater seating that surrounded the main tank was torn apart and piled up on itself, entire rows of seats flung from the bottom to the top of the theater. From the air, the facility looked as if someone had taken teal Silly String and sprayed it across the property, but instead of foam, the teal strings were the metal beams twisted around in the wind and surge. Marine Life staff could barely even get to the site (one had to use an ATV), as the roads were covered in debris from houses, boats, cars, and everything in between.
Hurricane Katrina devastated Marine Life, a marine park in Mississippi. Photo by David Purdy/KRT/Newscom
As staff approached the huge main tank where they had left the dolphins, they held their breath, hoping to see little heads pop up out of the water. The concrete ring of the tank itself appeared to have held up, but when they got closer, it became clear that the nightmare was only beginning. "There were no animals in the park at all," Hoffland says, "which meant they were out there somewhere." And he was going to try to find them.
The Gulf of Mexico post-Katrina was its own unique nightmare zone. The hurricane had broken and washed out to sea entire towns and cities, and their remains were floating in the water off the coast. The surge had pulled sewage, food, and bodies into the water, creating a gruesome soup. Sharks had closed in, drawn to the chicken that had spilled from cargo containers torn open in the storm. If the dolphins were still alive somehow, and still in the area, they were in danger of getting sick or injured. But the water was dangerous to traverse, and as much as the team wanted to get out there in boats as soon as possible, they had to wait for permission from the US Coast Guard.
Twelve days after Katrina hit Gulfport, Hoffland and his team were finally allowed into the Gulf to look for the dolphins. One group took off in a helicopter, the other went out on a boat. The helicopter team flew eight kilometers from the helipad out to the coast, over the wreckage of Marine Life, past the port authority cargo berths, and out over the Gulf, scanning the sea for any sign of dolphins. After flying above the water for less than a kilometer, shocking even the most hopeful members of the search party, they found them. All eight dolphins, alive and still together, just about 900 meters from where their pool stood.
From the boat, Hoffland called to his dolphins. "I got up there and I double blew my whistle, which means, 'Stop what you're doing come to station,' and one of them popped up and then pop, pop, pop—all eight of them. They were right there." Hoffland couldn't believe it.
Finding the animals was only the beginning. Now, the team had to figure out how to get them out of the water and back into captivity—and it wouldn't be easy. After living in captivity, the dolphins were too familiar with human tools—too net savvy to try to bring them in that way. Instead, Hoffland and his team came up with another plan: they would train the dolphins to offer themselves up for capture.
After Hurricane Katrina smashed into the Gulf Coast, trainers searched for the dolphins they left behind at Marine Life. All eight were found, less than a kilometer from their coastal pool. Photo by Tim Isbell/KRT/Newscom
Using a couple of gray floating mats chained together and anchored to the seafloor, the rescuers created a training platform. Four times a day, they went out to the mats and taught the dolphins a new behavior: beaching themselves onto the mats on command. The trick was a familiar one—the dolphins were already trained to beach themselves onto the deck of the Marine Life theater. Hoffland and the other trainers simply had to teach them the same thing, but in a new place.
As usual, Kelly learned quickly. And despite all the chaos of the past week that had both the dolphins and the crew exhausted, it worked. One by one, all eight dolphins learned the trick and started beaching themselves reliably onto the mats. Over the course of about a week (including several harrowing days when three of the dolphins disappeared only to be found 25 kilometers away), all eight dolphins offered themselves up, were wrapped up into special slings, and relocated to a navy base in Gulfport, where temporary containers had been set up for them.
Kelly and seven other dolphins, swept out to sea when Hurricane Katrina hit their home in Gulfport, were caught and transferred to temporary saltwater pools as they awaited transportation to their next home in the Bahamas. Photo by PJF Military Collection/Alamy Stock Photo
How had these dolphins survived and stayed together? Hoffland thinks it was thanks to Kelly and her pod-mate Jill. Researchers who later reviewed the accounts of the recapture, noted that Kelly and Jill, ever the leaders, constantly positioned themselves four or five meters behind the others, watching for sharks and any other dangers. "We knew from past experiences that Kelly was a leader," wrote late dolphin researcher Stan Kuczaj in a paper about the rescue. "She would always be the one to lead the other animals in perceived dangerous situations." Kelly likely kept the younger dolphins in line and kept the group together. In fact, Kelly's capture and removal from the group had prompted the remaining three animals to bolt, forcing the rescue team to scramble to relocate them.
Throughout the rescue mission, local news hailed the dolphins as a symbol of light in a time of extreme darkness in the Gulf. They had stuck together, supported each other, and survived. The dolphins were turned into proxies for the recovery efforts in the region. But while the dolphins were safe, they were still homeless. Marine Life was destroyed. What followed was a legal battle over the future of the dolphins. Marine Life was run by two men, president and CEO Moby Solangi and owner Don Jacobs. Solangi wanted to rebuild and keep the dolphins. Jacobs didn't. (Solangi didn't respond to a request to comment, and Jacobs died in 2011.)
The ensuing argument was ugly. Solangi filed an injunction to block the sale of the dolphins. Jacobs then fired Solangi from his position as president of Marine Life and pushed ahead with the sale. Ultimately, a Mississippi state judge ruled that the dolphins could be sold to Atlantis. Solangi and Jacobs settled their other disputes out of court with undisclosed terms, and on January 5, 2006, the dolphins were loaded into trucks and driven up to Philadelphia, where they boarded a plane bound for Nassau. Kelly's berth was in the middle, over the left wing. If she could have looked out a window, she would have seen Gulfport receding into the distance and the blue water of the Bahamas (ironically, the exact place where Hurricane Katrina was born) coming into view.
Ted Turner, the vice president of Dolphin Cay, shares the story of how Kelly and her seven companions survived a hurricane and settled into their new home in the Bahamas. Video by Atlantis
Tim Hoffland hasn't seen Kelly since she boarded that flight. I meet him at the Ocean Adventures Marine Park, a brightly colored and brand-new facility in Gulfport. It's May, and the air is warm and moist. The US $15-million, 3,000-square-meter facility is 15 kilometers northeast of where Marine Life once stood, but the premise is the same. Ocean Adventures opened to the public in late March. The signs for the bathroom are still pieces of paper, taped to the glass doors. Hoffland is working with eight new dolphins, and the trainers coach the animals while we sit in the facility's amphitheater, intermittently interrupted by dolphin chatter.
Even though he hasn't seen her in over 10 years, Hoffland says he could pick Kelly out of a tank immediately. "She looked different than every other dolphin we had. She had a really light color to her, a very marbled head, very light shades of gray. She was very pretty." Then I ask Hoffland if I should pass on a message to Kelly when I see her, and he pauses. "Tell her I miss her," he says. When I ask if he's ever thought about visiting her down in the Bahamas, he shakes his head no. He's been busy, he says, but there's another reason too. "I don't want to have to say goodbye to her twice."
At Atlantis, the trainers (or behaviorists, as Atlantis calls them) who work with Kelly each have a story about her. "She has one of the strangest little tongue waves that she does," Hammerton says. "She'll swim past you and just look up and like …" Hammerton cocks her head to the side and darts her tongue out of the side of her mouth like she's imitating a gecko. "It's weird because it's the slickest little …" she does the motion again, "and I don't know if I should report this to HR, I don't quite know how to feel about this." She laughs.
Charles Jones, one of the behaviorists at Atlantis, says if you're not on your game, Kelly will take every inch she can get. "Sometimes she'll figure ways to modify the behaviorist's behavior," he says.
Jones calls Kelly and her Katrina cohort his Destiny's Child girls. "They're survivors, they're better than Destiny's Child."
Hammerton compares Kelly's sassiness to an older woman. "She's my Betty White."
Linda Hammerton, an animal behaviorist at Atlantis, admires Kelly and what we humans might call her chutzpah. Photo courtesy of Atlantis
But not everybody describes Kelly in such human ways. Turner, the vice president of Dolphin Cay, is quick to point out that nearly everything I've written in this article so far highlights the dangers of anthropomorphism. By describing dolphins as tricksters, comparing them to television stars, and guessing at what they might be thinking, we impose our own human ideas about behavior onto other animals. And Turner hates anthropomorphism. Each time I ask him a question about Kelly's personality, I get a gentle rejection. If Kelly does something, it's because the behavior was reinforced. If she doesn't, it's because the behavior was not properly reinforced. It's that simple, he says. Turner explains that he's an animal behaviorist, before launching into another explanation of operant conditioning, a term coined by the inventor of the Skinner Box, psychologist B. F. Skinner whose research became a 1950s meme. Every question about an animal's personality, Turner answers by talking about operant conditioning. What I describe as an indicator of personality, he says is simply a call and response. "It's a manifestation of that reinforcement history and that conditioning process."
It turns out that this is a heated debate in animal psychology: do animals even have personality to begin with? For centuries, scientists refused to use the term to describe animal behaviors. The word itself indicates the reason: you can't spell personality without the word person. Instead, researchers talked about temperament and behavioral syndromes and reward systems.
But in the past 15 years, more and more scientists have started entertaining the idea that animals might indeed have their own distinct and stable personalities. "It makes evolutionary sense," says Lauren Highfill, who's written several papers on animal personalities. "You wouldn't really want to have all dolphins in a social group behave in exactly the same way." You need a bold one, for example, who's willing to go check things out and give the all-clear. But a group full of fearless types, swimming right into shark-infested waters without a care in the world, would be an evolutionary disadvantage. "Just like with humans, it's nice that we have different personalities," Highfill says.
And she has evidence to back up her claims. In one study, Highfill compared personality ratings by trainers before and after dolphins went through a big life change to see if the dolphins got the same scores. Without distinct and stable personalities, you'd expect that between one scoring session and another, the animals would wind up with different ratings. But instead, Highfill found that the trainers who scored each dolphin on traits, such as openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism rated each dolphin consistently across time and space. And here's the big reveal: the dolphins in Highfill's study were Kelly and her pod. The big life change was Hurricane Katrina and their subsequent relocation to the Bahamas. Highfill had worked with the dolphins in Gulfport and had the trainers at Marine Life score the dolphins on those same traits before Katrina hit. Once they got settled at Atlantis, she asked the new caretakers to repeat the survey to see what happened.
There are other studies suggesting that Kelly and her cohort have distinct differences. In another paper, researchers documented the different mothering styles of seven dolphins including Kelly. That study found that Kelly had a more hands-off parenting style than the other dolphins—she was less likely to correct her offspring and herd them, and she spent less time with her offspring. Other mothers were far more doting and stuck by their calves constantly—helicopter parents, to anthropomorphize even further.
At the Atlantis resort in the Bahamas, dolphins—including those rescued from the Gulf after Hurricane Katrina—charm visitors at Dolphin Cay. Video by VideoBlocks
But not everybody who studies dolphin behavior is comfortable committing to the idea that dolphins have personalities. Well-controlled studies on dolphin personality are still few and far between, says Holli Eskelinen, the assistant director of research at Dolphins Plus Marine Mammal Responder in Key Largo, Florida, who has collaborated with Highfill on dolphin personality studies. Eskelinen's work has shown that some of these behaviors—like the ones Highfill scored Kelly and her cohort on before and after Katrina—are inconsistent across different situations. Some dolphins, for example, show different "personalities" when they're interacting with people than when they're interacting with other dolphins.
The problem with much of the work on dolphin personality, Eskelinen says, is that it's too anthropomorphic—it assumes that the same personality traits we see in humans might show up in dolphins and that we can test for those traits in the same way we test humans. Even the terms they're testing for—openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism—are human ones. But dolphins live in an entirely different physical world from us. "When you study primates, they're anatomically so similar to us, Eskelinen says. They're also a terrestrial species. Dolphins, anatomically, they're completely different. Their eyes are where our ears are." Eskelinen finds herself somewhere between Turner and Highfill, not fully convinced that dolphins have personalities in the exact same way people do, but also not willing to go full B. F. Skinner.
But how can we possibly avoid confounding these studies? We are, after all, human beings, and really only know how to engage with the world as humans. The reason the public wants to know how smart dolphins are is because they want to know how to relate to them—as humans. And that's not just limited to the public either. "I work at the university, even the most research-minded person, they want to know how smart they are. Are they as smart as my dog, my three-year-old child?" Eskelinen says. Our motivations are as fallible as our methods, and that corruption bleeds into the research. She thinks that eventually, as the research gets more developed, we'll come up with new terms to more accurately describe the individual differences between individual dolphins.
Kelly was one of eight dolphins lost from a marine park in Gulfport, Mississippi, when Hurricane Katrina devastated the area in 2005. Photo courtesy of Atlantis
Eskelinen admits that even she's not immune to wanting dolphins to be more humanlike than they might actually be. One of the dolphins living at Atlantis, a male named Makai, she raised from birth at Dolphins Plus. "I wanted him to remember me so bad on my first visit down there," she says, "even though you're a research scientist you want that almost … aha moment to occur." And of course she would, it would almost be heartless not to. So did he? Eskelinen couldn't say. "I am not certain if he recognized me, but I was able to sit with him for a bit with his new caretakers," she tells me. "He remembered some of his old hand signals and was attentive." In the end, she describes it as "all just anecdotal fun."
Turner sees most of this as silly wishful thinking. Everything I described as an indicator of personality, Turner reiterates is simply a call and response. He thinks the same about you, too, by the way. I ask him whether he applies this kind of analysis to the humans in his life, and he confirms that indeed he does. "The principles are all the same, whether you're talking of a pigeon or a lowland gorilla or a human being or a PhD," he says. Turner does at least recognize that this kind of behavior analysis does not win him friends, dolphin or human. "You can't get into those kinds of discussions with people because they're going to be like, 'You're boring and my feet work.'"
At Atlantis, I sit at the edge of the pool and watch Kelly perform for guests for a few hours. When her visitor interaction time is up for the day, she swims over to me, probably wondering if I have any fish to give her. When no one is looking, I lean down toward the water and feel a strange need to whisper what I am about to say. "Hi, Kelly, Tim Hoffland says he misses you," I say. She doesn't respond, in fact, she probably doesn't even hear me since dolphins hear in a different frequency than humans speak. The whole thing feels very silly. But I'm still glad I did it.
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Rose Eveleth is a writer and producer who explores how humans tangle with science and technology. She's the creator and host of Flash Forward, a podcast about possible (and not so possible) futures, and has covered everything from fake tumbleweed farms to million-dollar baccarat heists.
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Cite this Article: Rose Eveleth "Kelly, the Sassy Dolphin," Hakai Magazine, Oct 2, 2018, accessed January 20th, 2020, https://www.hakaimagazine.com/features/kelly-the-sassy-dolphin/.
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Why Twin Peaks: The Return Was One of the Most Groundbreaking Hypnotic Masterpieces Ever - Free Press Daily News
Home Sports & Entertainment Why Twin Peaks: The Return Was One of the Most Groundbreaking Hypnotic...
Why Twin Peaks: The Return Was One of the Most Groundbreaking Hypnotic Masterpieces Ever
Chad Allen
In 1990, Mark Frost and David Lynch created one of the most bizarre "mystery box" television shows – a term coined by director JJ Abrams during a Ted Talk about his smash hit show Lost. Unlike Lost, Twin Peaks' success was short-lived, canceled after only two seasons, but over time it developed into a massive cult-classic hit.
Lynch has always been one of the most daringly unique directors in the history of the film and television mediums with bizarre outings like Eraserhead, Blue Velvet and Mullholland Drive that ranges from grotesque and freakish to downright peculiar and bizarre.
Picking up 25 years after the end of his original semi-hit show – in the show and in real life – was the 3rd season release, Twin Peaks: The Return, but this time hailed on Showtime rather than ABC. And one thing was abundantly clear in the first ten minutes of the premiere episode – that Lynch and Frost could take this series to limitless bounds because it was on Showtime – taking their story to rating-defying places they clearly could not go due to network television constraints, like censoring Goodfellas or Scarface on TNT.
Twin Peaks: The Return was a massive reunion with nearly all of the original cast returning like Kyle MacLachlan (playing several characters), Sheryl Lee, Miguel Ferrer, Kimmy Robertson, Russ Tamblyn and many others, but there were some outstanding new casting additions that included Robert Forster, Laura Dern, Naomi Watts, Jim Belushi, Tim Roth, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Matthew Lillard. But this latest season was no picnic and so much wildly different than the original seasons.
Sean T. Collins of Rolling Stone Magazine had an excellent analysis of the show hailing it as "the most groundbreaking TV series ever." He wrote, "To explain why, it's worth digging deeper than the obvious ways in which the season broke ground: its wild shifts in mood and style, its avant-garde editing and effects, the atom bomb of an hour that was Episode Eight," Collins wrote. He added, "But just as importantly, this 18-part movie/series/whatsit fits beautifully in Lynch's overall filmography. Indeed, the more of his work you've seen, the better equipped you'll be to handle what he's throwing at you here. Particularly in its final episodes, The Return relies on a recursive, Möbius-strip structure, in which events echo and loop rather than proceed in straightforward fashion; these repetitions and reflections are distorted and gap-ridden enough, however, to keep the pattern intoxicatingly opaque."
Lynch's filmmaking style through lighting, sound design, music, camera technique, mood and texture, are exclusively unique to him, like a chef's signature cuisine. And you would be hard-pressed to find any filmmaker who comes remotely close to his style.
Nowhere is Lynch's uniqueness more obvious than in Twin Peaks: The Return. The storyline was befuddling to even the most loyal Lynch fans – just enough to baffle while just barely keeping together the cohesive binding fabric of the main plot's through line – if there even was one. But what was truly remarkable, groundbreaking, unprecedented, was how Lynch and Frost infused the gamut of tone and genre into these storylines.
Lynch and Frost successfully blended drama, comedy, horror, and thriller into this one season, while tonally touching on farcical, slapstick and preposterously goofy comedy – then adding intense violence, brutal horror, melodrama and oddball absurdity – moments that will certainly make the viewer, at some point say to themselves "what in the hell just happened?" Any seasoned filmmaker will tell you that tone has to be consistent, otherwise it jarringly sucks you out of the experience, but you can excuse Lynch and Frost from that law of physics defining formula because those rules apparently don't apply to them.
What Lynch seems to know better than any other filmmaker is that "weird" is an art form all in itself – it's everlasting. To give you a prime example that embodies this is that some of SNL's most cherished sketches follow this concept that too strange to comprehend is unforgettable. For instance, two of the most memorable sketches recently were Peter Dinklage's "Space Pants," and Tom Hanks' "David S. Pumpkins." It was so bizarre that even the characters in the sketch had no idea what was happening. But SNL has a long history of that. Who could forget Phil Hartman's "Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer?"
But it's through "weird" that Lynch and Frost are able to accomplish their greatest feat, mixing all of these tonal and genre elements like master magicians. Through all of these elements, I believe Lynch and Frost's intent was to specifically mess with the viewers' senses through disorientation.
Twin Peaks: The Return features approximately 25 storylines that run the gamut of tone and genre, and when the episode ends, it's as if their intention was to use these techniques to leave the audience in complete cognizant disarray. And the only way to achieve that is by disorientating the senses in the same way a hypnotist meddles with your subconscious.
When have you ever seen that before?
~ By Chad Allen
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Chad Allen is a Los Angeles resident with an extensive background in the entertainment industry as a production company executive and as a screenwriter. He is also the publisher and managing editor of Free Press Daily News.

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The incidence of first seizures, new diagnosis of epilepsy and seizure mimics in Cork city and county during the calendar year 2017
Name: Thesis Submision ...
Access: Access to this thesis is restricted until 2024-05-20
Maloney, Eimer M.
Copyright: © 2020, Eimer M. Maloney.
Restriction lift date: 2024-05-20
Citation: Maloney, E. M. 2020. The incidence of first seizures, new diagnosis of epilepsy and seizure mimics in Cork city and county during the calendar year 2017. PhD Thesis, University College Cork.
Supervisor(s): O'Reilly, Eilis; Costello, Daniel
Introduction: Epidemiologic studies of epilepsy are necessary to define the full public health burden of epilepsy within a population and to set public health and health care priorities. Standardisation of epidemiologic methodology, detailed reporting of results and further studies from geographic regions lacking data have been called for. Furthermore, recently updated International League Against Epilepsy (ILAE) definitions of seizures and epilepsy have not been incorporated into any whole population study. Finally, no study has systematically investigated the occurrence of 'seizure mimics' within any population. Methods: Using multiple overlapping methods of case ascertainment, all first seizures, new diagnosis of epilepsy, and seizure mimics occuring in the defined geographical area (population 542,868 adults and children) between 1st January 2017 and 31st December 2017 were identified. Seizures and epilepsy were defined and classified according to the most recent ILAE definitions. Seizure mimics were defined as patients in whom a working diagnosis of seizure was considered, but where an alternate diagnosis was subsequently reached. An area-level relative deprivation index based on 10 indicators from census data was assigned to each patient according to address on record for the purpose of investigating the association between the incidence of each of the four diagnostic categories and relative socioeconomic deprivation. Results: The incidence of all first seizures and of seizure mimics was 102 per 100,000 (age-standardised 123) and 94 per 100,000 (age-standardised 111), respectively. When applying the 2014 ILAE definition of epilepsy, the incidence of new diagnosis of epilepsy was 62 per 100,000 (age-standardised 74) compared to 41 per 100,000 (age-standardised 48) when applying the 1993 definition, and the difference was more pronounced at older ages. The most frequently diagnosed aetiology of epilepsy was structural (54%, n=182). Almost half (n =71, 45%) of all recorded acute symptomatic seizures were related to alcohol (38%) and/or illicit drug use (n=13, 7%). The most frequently encountered seizure mimic was syncope. With regard to socioeconomic deprivation, the annual incidence of first unprovoked seizures, first provoked seizures, new diagnosis of epilepsy and seizure mimics was highest in the most deprived areas compared to the least deprived areas (incidence ratios of 1.79 (95%CI 1.26, 2.52), 1.55 (95%CI 1.04, 2.32), 1.83 (95%CI 1.28, 2.62) and 1.30 (95%CI 1.00, 1.69), respectively). Conclusions: This thesis presents the first epidemiologic study in Ireland investigating the incidence of first seizures, epilepsy and seizure mimics within the geographically defined area of Cork city and county, in accordance with international guidelines for epidemiologic studies and up-to-date international definitions and classifications of epilepsy, in order to address gaps in knowledge and to investigate the effect of updated international definitions on the epidemiologic study of epilepsy. The published results present the first international data on the effect of the updated 2014 ILAE definition of epilepsy on whole population incidence of epilepsy. Furthermore, by applying ILAE classifications to individual cases, this thesis presents detailed data on the aetiology and classification of seizures and epilepsy within the studied population. Finally, this thesis provides further support to international evidence that relatively higher socioeconomic deprivation is associated with an increased incidence of seizures and epilepsy, and presents novel data regarding the association with specific aetiologies of epilepsy and relative socioeconomic deprivation.
College of Medicine and Health - Doctoral Theses [342]
Medicine - Doctoral Theses [82]
Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as © 2020, Eimer M. Maloney.


Counter Logic Gaming Europe was formed in December of 2011 as an extension of the North American organization, Counter Logic Gaming. Taking consistent top place finishes throughout Season 2, CLG.eu has been hailed as one of the strongest European teams. One year after their acquisition, on December 28, 2012, the CLG.eu roster parted ways with Counter Logic Gaming after deciding not to renew their contract with the organization, and one month after was acquired by Evil Geniuses.
On December 20, 2011, Counter Logic Gaming and Absolute Legends announced a merger between the two organizations, with a roster that included Wickd, Froggen, Snoopeh, Krepo, and yellowpete.
However, on January 30, 2012 the two organizations decided that the partnership would not work, and in the separation the European team decided to stay with Counter Logic Gaming.
The team's first major appearance would be at the Kings of Europe online tournament, which held from January 27 to January 31, 2012. In the group stage, CLG EU would place first and go 3-0, defeating FnaticRC, Sypher, and against All authority. In the semi finals of the playoff, CLG EU would defeat Team Mistral 2-0, advancing to the grand finals, where they would face Moscow Five. Against the Russian team, CLG EU would come out victorious 2-1, taking home first place in the tournament.
On April 1, 2012, Counter Logic Gaming EU would place first in the Absolute Pro League: March. Placed into Group B, Counter Logic Gaming would finish off group stage in second, going 2-1 by defeating Millenium, and TCM Gaming, while falling to against All authority. In the playoffs, CLG.EU would take out Mousesports 2-0 in the quarterfinals and Absolute Legends 2-1 in the semifinals to advance into the grand finals. There, CLG EU would defeat aAa 2-1 to take home first place.
A few days later, CLG EU would participate in the RaidCall PLAY Cup 1, where they were able to place first by defeating NoobHeroes, Western Wolves, MeetYourMakers, and FnaticRC.
On May 14, 2012, CLG EU would place second at the online Solomid EU Tournament Circuit. At the event, Counter Logic Gaming EU would take out Sypher 2-0 in the first round, but would fall to Natus Vincere 1-2 in the second round, dropping to the loser's bracket. There, CLG EU would defeat aAa 2-1, Sypher 2-0, and Team Solomid 2-1 to advance to the finals. At the grand finals against Natus Vincere, CLG EU would take the first set 2-1, but would fall 0-2 in the second and final set of the tournament, taking second place.
On June 16, 2012, Counter Logic Gaming EU would fly out to Jönköping, Sweden to participate in the DreamHack Summer 2012 LAN tournament. CLG EU would qualify for DreamHack Summer by participating in their BYOC qualifiers, taking first at the qualifier by defeating Millenium. In the group stage, CLG EU would place first by going 3-0, defeating Moscow Five, Absolute Legends, and Mebdi's Minions. In the playoffs, CLG EU would defeat FnaticRC 2-0 in the semifinals to advance to the grand finals where CLG EU would face off against Moscow Five. There, CLG EU would come out on top 2-0 against M5, taking home the grand prize and first place.
Counter Logic Gaming EU traveled to Los Angeles in October of 2012 to compete in the Season 2 World Championship. In the group stage, CLG EU looked dominant while taking games off of Team Dignitas and Saigon Jokers. Although they dropped one match against NaJin Sword, they advanced out of Group B as the second seed and went on to face Team WE in the round of eight. CLG EU's quarterfinal match was marred by technical issues; the series was tied 1-1 after two grinding games, but the third had to be postponed due to power failures and connection problems. In the deciding third game, CLG EU once again pulled out a slow and methodical victory in an extremely close showing. CLG EU maintained their form through the first game of their semifinal against Azubu Frost, but were outmatched in games two and three, losing out 1-2. They finished in 3rd-4th place and took home $ 150,000.
Counter Logic Gaming EU would attend IPL 5 in Las Vegas on the 29th of November. They would start the tournament with a four game winning streak against NA teams, taking out CLG Prime and Team FeaR in the group stages, and sending NA powerhouse TSM in to the losers bracket with a 2-0 sweep. Their winning ways would end once faced with the eventual winners of the tournament, Team WE. The Chinese team denied them their chances to make it to late game, and built large advantages throughout the early and mid game. CLG EU would fall 0-2, dropping them to the losers bracket. There they would face Taipei Assassins. After winning a rather fast game one, the Assassins would comeback and take the 2 remaining games of the set, eliminating CLG EU from the tournament. They would place 5th-6th along with their NA counterpart CLG Prime, and take home $2,500 in winnings.
On December 28, 2012, one year after their acquisition, the Counter Logic Gaming EU roster, having decided not to renew their contract, parted ways with the Counter Logic Gaming organization. On January 25, 2013, the team would be picked up by Evil Geniuses.
January 30, Absolute Legends separates from Counter Logic Gaming. The team stays with the Counter Logic Gaming organization.
January 31, 1st place in Kings of Europe.
April 9, 3rd place in Gamers Assembly 2012.
May 16, 1st place in Corsair Vengeance Cup.
June 10, 5th place at 2012 MLG Pro Circuit/Spring.
June 18, 1st place at DreamHack Summer 2012.
July 29, 2nd place at European Challenger Circuit: Poland.
August 19, 3rd place at Season 2 European Regional Finals.
September 8, 2nd place at Azubu The Champions Summer 2012.
October 10, 3rd-4th place at Season 2 World Championship.
November 4, 3rd place at 2012 MLG Fall Championship.
December 28, CLG EU decides to not re-sign with the Counter Logic Gaming organization.
December 20, Absolute Legends merges with Counter Logic Gaming and forms a European team. Froggen, Snoopeh, Yellowpete, Krepo, and Wickd join.
↑ Kings of Europe Day 1 Groups A&B VOD "youtube.com"
↑ Kings of Europe Day 2 Semi-finals VOD "youtube.com"
↑ Kings of Europe Final VOD "youtube.com"
↑ 4Players.de All or Nothing Tournament "4players.de"
↑ PLAY RaidCall LoL Cup CLG.EU Win "play.fnatic.com"
↑ Gamers Assembly 2012 Brackets "binarybeast.com"
↑ Corsair Vengeance Cup Match Results "vengeance-cup.corsair.com"
↑ in2LOL Kickoff EU VOD: CLG.EU vs Eclypsia "in2lol.com"
↑ in2LOL Kickoff EU VOD: CLG.EU vs Na'Vi "in2lol.com"
↑ in2LOL Kickoff EU VOD: CLG.EU vs FnaticRC Game 1 "in2lol.com"
↑ in2LOL Kickoff EU VOD: CLG.EU vs FnaticRC Game 2 "in2lol.com"
↑ Esports Heaven Medion Challenge 2012 Brackets (INCOMPLETE) "esportsheaven.net"
↑ MLG Anaheim 2012 League of Legends Bracket "majorleaguegaming.com"
↑ Official Season 2 EU Regionals Bracket "tournaments.leagueoflegends.com"
↑ Azubu The Champions Summer 2012 Tournament Results "ognlol.com"
↑ AbsoluteLegends - Back to the Roots"absolutelegends.net"
↑ AbsoluteLegends is merging with Counter Logic Gaming!"absolutelegends.net"
This page was last edited on 29 July 2018, at 19:38.


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14 VCs discuss COVID-19 and London's future as a tech hub – TechCrunch
By Cleo Ames on July 9, 2020
The UK has created 63 tech unicorns in the past decade (according to Dealroom), and it almost goes without saying that the vast majority of those companies were based out of London, the country's largest tech hub.
Famously, London's DeepMind, an AI startup, was acquired by Google in 2014 for $500 million, but it has resolutely refused to move to Silicon Valley; founder Demis Hassabis says the city's diversity of talent meant the powerhouse needed to stay put.
London has produced fintech upstarts like Revolut, Monzo and Starling and attracted early Skype team members who went on to create TransferWise. In 2019, London's startups received $9.7 billion in venture capital funding, more than Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam and Madrid combined.
Furthermore, last year Pitchbook found that up to $4.4 billion worth of deals had involved at least one U.S.-based investor, with London receiving over $12.5 billion from American investors in the previous five years – almost twice as much as Berlin (on $6.5 billion of investment from U.S. VC firms).
Brexit uncertainty may impact startups' ability to recruit and sale, and the UK government's points-based system for immigration is unlikely to satisfy the industry's voracious appetite for talent. But London is a tech supertanker that other European cities are unlikely to be able to match any time soon, Brexit or no Brexit.
But in the era of COVID-19, will major hubs like London still be able to attract future tech unicorns, and will these be in the same sectors as before? Will geography be replaced by mere time zones?
We surveyed many of London's top VCs to get their insights. Here's who we heard from:
Ruth Foxe-Blader, partner, Anthemis Capital
Yana Abramova, partner, Pretiosum Capital
Leila Zegna, co-founding partner, Kindred Capital
Rob Moffat, partner, Balderton Capital
Nic Brisbourne, managing partner, Forward Partners
Sean Seton-Rogers, general partner, PROfounders Capital
Simon Murdoch, managing partner, Episode 1 Ventures
Nenad Marovac, founder and managing partner, DN Capital
Andrei Brasoveanu, partner, Accel Partners
Jan Lynn-Matern, founder and partner, Emerge Education
Rob Kniaz, founding partner, Hoxton Ventures
Harry Briggs, partner, OMERS Ventures
Hussein Kanji, partner, Hoxton Ventures
Eileen Burbidge, partner, Passion Capital
Ruth Foxe-Blader, Anthemis Capital
How much is local investing even a focus for you now? If you are investing remotely in general now, are you filtering for local founders?
Neither our investment thesis, nor our geographic focus has changed: we are a global investor, focused on the US, UK and Europe. We are filtering, even more, for the best founders, as geography feels less important in lockdown.
From that, what do you expect to happen to the startup climate in London longer term, with the shift to more remote work (post COVID-19), possibly from more remote areas. Will London stay a tech hub or will the ecosystem become more dispersed across the country?
As a global financial hub with substantial infrastructure (including capital) designed to support emerging technology, London will remain a critical node in the fintech ecosystem.
Long-term, do you expect to be more or less locally focused, especially in light of COVID-19 or in other ways?
We're anticipating a pretty substantial change to working norms, at least over the near term (6-12 months). The long-term impact is likely to level the playing field for great founders operating outside of established tech hubs. Remote assessment of companies, while challenging, has the potential to create more equitable investment practices.
Will there be tech hubs post-COVID-19? What is a tech hub now, by your definition?
To the extent that culture, regulation and capital play a large role in favoring certain types of economic activity, I expect existing tech hubs to remain important bastions of innovation. That said, I think we will see the rise of complementary tech hubs, as well as teams "in the middle of nowhere" emboldened to start great companies.
Are there particular industry sectors that you expect to do uniquely well or poorly, locally?
Given the proximity to the City and the heritage in financial technology innovation, the London tech ecosystem will continue to produce great fintech and insurtech companies.
Cleo Ames
cleo.a@zmrmarketnews.com
Cleo has an enormous experience in finance and business analytics which gives her an accurate and thorough overview of market trends. Cleo has hands-on skills in statistics and numeric, which gives her a title as "statistics personality". She also deals with a number of decisive surveys and interviews with industry experts, professionals and various organizations. She is the true follower of yoga and meditation, making her a very patient and calm personality on the floor.
Published in Technology
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Magnetis raises $11 million for its automated wealth management and brokerage service for Brazil – TechCrunch
Just 48 hours left on early bird passes to Disrupt 2020 – TechCrunch
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AYC was founded in 1886 as an informal canoe club. Today the Club's mission is to encourage and support a wide range of boating activities and to maintain facilities for the recreational and social use of its 2000 members. Members and guests enjoy the spectacular view from the Clubhouse deck from where they can see all the Club's facilities on Spa Creek in Annapolis Harbor.
The Annapolis Yacht Club is a full service, year-round premier private yacht club that provides high-quality programs for its members. These include sailboat racing, cruising for sailors and power boaters, a vigorous junior sailing program, fun and educational winter activities, social events, and first class dining and banquet facilities.
AYC is a prominent fixture in Annapolis, is a good corporate citizen, and provides select opportunities for non-members such as its Junior Sailing program. In addition, AYC's Race Committee supports club racing and world-class regattas and international championships. AYC members are pleased to welcome these competitors and other visiting yachtsmen to the Clubhouse and sailing facilities.
The Annapolis Yacht Club Foundation (AYCF) was established by the Annapolis Yacht Club to provide an opportunity for its members to act collectively to foster local excellence in national and international amateur sailing competition, contribute to maritime-related charitable and educational organizations in the Mid-Chesapeake Bay region, and support charitable and educational activities undertaken by the Club.
Annapolis Yacht Club has been a gathering spot for its members for over 130 years, and it also has served many decades as a beacon of generosity throughout Annapolis and its surrounding communities.
Throughout the holiday season, AYC's Thanksgiving Food Drive feeds dozens of local families, while the Club members' participation in the Salvation Army Angel Tree program provides toys to about 150 local children. AYC is about much more than just donating money and toys — the Club's members donate ideas and elbow grease toward the Club's philanthropic endeavors, and Club staff take a hands-on approach to distributing toys to the children at Salvation Army.
AYC is devoted to giving back to the people in the community living with developmental and physical disabilities. The Club hosted Warrior Sailing Program participants for a three-day Basic Training Camp in September 2016 and 2017, helping introduce wounded, ill, and injured military service members and veterans to the sport of sailing.
Annually, AYC hosts Chesapeake Region Accessible Boating (CRAB) for the CRAB Cup, a regatta featuring sailors who suffer from developmental and physical disabilities. AYC hosts the regatta and handles the operations so competitors can enjoy spirited competition free of charge. The winner receives the coveted Don Backe Memorial Trophy, named in honor of the founder of CRAB.
The Club members and staff at AYC take pride in giving back to the community — not just as a buzz phrase, but as a way of demonstrating what it means to be a good neighbor and promoting the sport of sailing.