text:
1905 births, 1943 deaths, Buried at Little Hangleton graveyard,
Deaths by Killing Curse
English individuals
Forcibly-married individuals
Horcrux victims
Killed by Lord Voldemort
Return of Lord Voldemort participants
Widowed individuals
Tom Riddle Senior
"Point me!"
This article is about The Dark Lord's father. You may be looking for his son or someone else with the same first name.
August[4], 1943[3] (aged 37/38)
Riddle House, Little Hangleton, England, Great Britain
Muggle[6]
Physical information
Dark[1][2]
Pale[2]
Relationship information
Thomas Riddle[3] (father) †
Mary Riddle[3] (mother) †
Merope Riddle (née Gaunt)[5] (wife) †
Tom Marvolo Riddle[6] (son) †
Delphini (granddaughter)
Marvolo Gaunt[5] (father-in-law) †
Morfin Gaunt[5] (brother-in-law) †
"Within a few months of their runaway marriage, Tom Riddle reappeared at the manor house in Little Hangleton without his wife. The rumour flew around the neighbourhood that he was talking of being 'hoodwinked' and 'taken in'... He left her, never saw her again, and never troubled to discover what became of his son."
—The circumstances of Tom Riddle, Snr's marriage[src]
Tom Riddle, Snr (1905 – 1943) was an English affluent Muggle who lived in the village of Little Hangleton located in Yorkshire. He was the son of wealthy Muggles Thomas and Mary Riddle, who raised him to be snobbish and rude.
Tom was coerced into marrying Merope Gaunt by means of a love potion. He left her once she stopped giving him the potion, sometime before the birth of their son, Tom Marvolo Riddle, who would grow to become the Dark Wizard Lord Voldemort. Tom Riddle, Snr was very handsome and this was what attracted Merope Gaunt.
Sixteen-year-old Tom Riddle, Jr later murdered him and his grandparents. This was in retaliation for what Tom, Jr saw as his father's abandonment of his family. While neither his death nor that of his parents was notable among Muggles, as few Little Hangleton residents grieved, it would be pivotal in Wizarding history. His murder was used to make his father-in-law's ring into a Horcrux. In 1995 his bones helped his son return to full power.
"She likes looking at that Muggle. Always in the garden when he passes, peering through the hedge at him, isn't she? And last night — hanging out of the window waiting for him to ride home, wasn't she?... I got him as he went by and he didn't look so pretty with hives all over him, did he, Merope?"
—Merope's obsessive infatuation with Tom Riddle[src]
The Riddle house, where Tom grew up and spent his adult years
Born to Thomas and Mary Riddle in 1905,[3] Tom Riddle Snr lived in a luxurious manor house not far from a run-down cottage that was home to the Gaunts, a wizarding family descended from Salazar Slytherin and Cadmus Peverell, outside the Muggle village of Little Hangleton. Merope Gaunt, who led a miserable life of poverty and abuse at the hands of her father and brother, became infatuated with Tom, watching him ride by on his horse, sometimes in the company of a woman named Cecilia. Tom, on the other hand, looked on with disdain on her brother for his mental instability and her father for his reputation of being arrogant and violently antisocial towards the Little Hangleton people.[5] However, Tom himself was rather snobbish and rude due to his upbringing, and along with his parents, the Riddle family was most disliked by the townspeople.[7]
When her brother Morfin noticed her interest, he hexed Tom with hives. The Ministry of Magic discovered this, among other incidents, and also arrested Morfin and Marvolo Gaunt for attacking Ministry officials. Both wizards were sentenced to Azkaban. While they were gone, Merope and Tom got married.[5]
Main article: Wedding of Merope Gaunt and Tom Riddle Snr
Albus Dumbledore: "Can you not think of any measure Merope could have taken to make Tom Riddle forget his Muggle companion, and fall in love with her instead?"
Harry Potter: "The Imperius Curse? Or a love potion?"
— Tom and Merope's forced marriage[src]
It was speculated by Albus Dumbledore and Harry Potter that Merope used the Imperius Curse on Tom, but they decided that it was more likely she used a Love Potion to attract him. A Love Potion would have been much more romantic in her eyes than the Imperius Curse. In any case, the two married, despite public disapproval over "the squire's son running off with the tramp's daughter." At some point in their relationship, Merope became pregnant with a boy.[5]
It was believed that Merope eventually stopped whatever enchantment she had used on Tom in the hopes that he had truly fallen in love with her since, or would at least remain with her for the sake of their unborn child.[5] She was wrong on both accounts, as he had reacted quite badly when the enchantment was lifted and discovered the truth as well.[5]
Return to Little Hangleton
"Tom Riddle left her while she was still pregnant... I believe that Merope, who was deeply in love with her husband, could not bear to continue enslaving him by magical means. I believe that she made the choice to stop giving him the potion."
—The tragic end of Tom and Merope's manipulated relationship[src]
Once Merope's enchantment was removed, Riddle came to his senses and no longer wanted anything to do with her, and thus fled back to his parents' house in Little Hangleton, and never bothered to find out even about his unborn child, let alone Merope.[5] He claimed to have been "taken in" by Merope, which may have been an allusion to her being a witch.[5] He did not state specifically that she used magic to seduce him, for the fear of being thought insane. Rumours in the town claimed that Merope had lied about being pregnant in order to induce Riddle to marry her.[5] Riddle's son himself came to believe that his father abandoned Merope solely because he discovered she was a witch.[8]
After Riddle left, Merope was left impoverished, despondent, and alone in London. Soon after, she gave birth to a son she named Tom Marvolo Riddle, after the baby's father and Merope's own father, Marvolo Gaunt. Merope died shortly after giving birth rather than live for the baby and the child was left in the care of a Muggle orphanage.[9]
Main article: Murder of the Riddle family
"Meanwhile, in the village of Little Hangleton, a maid was running along the High Street, screaming that there were three bodies lying in the drawing room of the big house: Tom Riddle Senior and his mother and father."
—A maid finds the bodies of the Riddle family[src]
In 1943[3] sixteen-year-old Tom Marvolo Riddle, who would later take on the alias Lord Voldemort, ventured to Little Hangleton to investigate his heritage. He learned the details of his parents' union from his uncle Morfin Gaunt and sought revenge on whom he saw as the man who abandoned him before his birth. Tom Marvolo Riddle murdered his father and paternal grandparents with the Killing Curse and framed Morfin for the crime.[10] His corpse was described as having a "look of terror upon his face."[7]
"You stand, Harry Potter, upon the remains of my late father. A Muggle and a fool... very like your dear mother. But they both had their uses, did they not? Your mother died to defend you as a child... and I killed my father, and see how useful he has proved himself in death..."
—Lord Voldemort regarding the murder of his father[src]
Bone of the father, unknowingly given, you will renew your son
Tom Riddle Snr was buried in a Little Hangleton graveyard along with his parents, and their deaths were not at all mourned by the townspeople due to being very unpopular.[7] Tom's murder was used by his son to transform Marvolo Gaunt's Ring into his second Horcrux.[11] Voldemort seemed to see this murder as retribution for the miserable existence his father had condemned him to in his abandonment, as well as his own triumph over his "filthy Muggle" heritage.[8] Voldemort made use of his father's murder again in 1995 when Peter Pettigrew used a bone from Tom Riddle Snr's grave to make the potion that resurrected him.[12]
Although unpopular and not mourned, the townspeople of Little Hangleton were more concerned about how Tom died, fearing the possibility such a murder could happen again. They were particularly concerned that Riddle and his parents seemingly dropped dead for no reason, a highly improbable scenario. Frank Bryce, the Riddle family's gardener, was arrested because he was suspected for being the only one to have a key to the house but was released due to lack of evidence on the Riddles' otherwise healthy corpses.[7] To this day, the Muggle authority have no idea how Tom and his parents died.[10]
Tom Riddle Senior was a very handsome dark-haired man.[1] His son, Tom Marvolo Riddle, was noted to be the spitting image of him in his early years, which suggests that the older Tom was also tall, pale, and dark-eyed.[2]
Personality and traits
Cecilia: "My God, what an eyesore! Couldn't your father have that hovel cleared away, Tom?"
Tom Riddle Snr: "It's not ours. Everything on the other side of the valley belongs to us, but that cottage belongs to an old tramp called Gaunt, and his children. The son's quite mad, you should hear some of the stories they tell in the village... Good lord, you're right! That'll be the son, I told you he's not right in the head. Don't look at it, Cecilia, darling."
— Tom's snobbish and rude personality, a byproduct of his upbringing[src]
Owing to his privileged upbringing, Tom Riddle Snr was something of a snob, and could also be callous and arrogant.[5] When he and Cecilia were riding by the Gaunt shack on one occasion, Bob Ogden ran out, having been terrorised by the Gaunts, and stumbled into Riddle's horse. Both Riddle and Cecilia "roared with laughter" at Ogden's bumbling and his ridiculous manner of dress.[5] Very handsome and wealthy, Riddle boasted to his companion about how much property his family owned. Riddle showed disgust at Morfin's violent behaviour, reacting with revulsion to seeing a dead snake nailed to the Gaunt shack's door, and urged Cecilia not to look at it.
He was shown to be snobbish, describing Morfin Gaunt and his father as "tramps" for their insanity and actions towards others (which was true). However, he was less hostile to them. Considering Tom's social status and the time period, he was actually rather polite in that statement, especially when considering the Gaunts were social pariahs among Muggles.
By the 1940s, Tom was described as being ruder and more snobbish than his parents, who were both very snobbish as it was. This made Tom immensely unpopular in Little Hangleton, and the villagers were not sorry for his demise.[13] Whether Tom's personality changed after his ensnarement by Merope is unknown.
Tom's relationship with his parents was most likely a good one since all three of them shared the few types of things the Riddle family was described as Muggles, wealthy, rude, and snobbish. Despite his scandalous marriage with Merope, his parents nevertheless welcomed him back home when he escaped his wife and returned to the village, under the claim he has been "taken in".
Tom originally looked down on and feared Marvolo and Morfin Gaunt because of their poverty, insanity, and open hostility to the community. His thoughts on Merope, in particular, are unknown, though it's known that Merope was able to get him to drink a Love Potion, suggesting he may have been willing to tolerate her company to an extent. Merope, an unhappy woman, became deeply enamoured with Tom, often watching him in secret as he passed by the manor. Her unhealthy fixation with Tom grew to the point where she conceived a plan to ensnare him by means of a Love Potion or the Imperius Curse.
Merope forced Tom to leave Cecilia and marry her under the influence of either a Love Potion or the Imperius Curse. Merope eventually became pregnant with Tom's child. However, as Albus Dumbledore had theorised, Merope, who was deeply, truly in love with her husband, could not bear to continue binding him to her by magical means and made the choice to stop giving him the potion, convincing herself that he might have truly fallen in love with her of his own accord, or even if he had not, that he would stay with her for their child's sake. When the potion wore off and Tom came to his senses, he left the pregnant Merope and returned to his parents' home, telling the townspeople of Little Hangleton he had been "hoodwinked" and "taken in".[5] Merope was left in despair and lost her will to live as a result, and later died giving birth to Tom's son, naming him after her lost love, wishing that he would look like his father.[9]
Marvolo and Morfin Gaunt
It is unknown if Tom Riddle Snr had met Marvolo Gaunt and Morfin Gaunt in person. However, based on his conversation with Cecilia about them, it is known that Riddle considered Marvolo and his son "tramps," and saw them as mentally disturbed, an opinion shared by most of the village. The Gaunts, in return, considered Tom to be a piece of filth because he was a Muggle, and despised him, even more, when Merope Gaunt (Marvolo's daughter and Morfin's sister) married him. Morfin once attacked Tom by hexing him for attracting Merope's attention.
Tom Marvolo Riddle (Lord Voldemort)
"You think I was going to use my filthy Muggle father's name forever? I, in whose veins runs the blood of Salazar Slytherin himself, through my mother's side? I, keep the name of a foul, common Muggle, who abandoned me even before I was born, just because he found out his wife was a witch?"
—Tom Marvolo Riddle, after revealing himself as Lord Voldemort to Harry Potter[src]
During Tom Marvolo Riddle's time at Hogwarts, he originally believed that Tom Snr was a wizard. He later found out that it was his mother, not father, that had magical abilities.[10] He grew to harbour a passionate and ultimately deadly hatred for his father, believing that he had abandoned his mother after discovering her to be a witch, rather than fleeing her after she stopped giving him Love Potion. (Ironically, up to this point he had been more accepting of his half-blood status when under the impression he had a wizard father, showing a long-time double standard). His hatred led him to resent the entire race of Muggles.[8] He tracked down his father one summer, during his Hogwarts years, and murdered him and his family. The blame was placed on Morfin Gaunt.[10] Tom Jr used this death to make Marvolo Gaunt's ring a Horcrux.[11] After that, he cast aside the name of his "filthy Muggle father" in order to fashion a new name to spare himself of the shame of having such a father.
In a sense of irony, Tom Riddle's Muggle blood, despite being reviled, and his genes were extremely beneficial to his son. The teenage Tom Marvolo Riddle had a natural sense of calm and gentlemanly qualities (in public) which he had likely acquired from the inwardly aristocratic demeanour of Tom Riddle Senior. The father's good looks had also passed to his son, making Tom Marvolo Riddle a subject of admiration for many girls, witch and Muggle alike. This was in stark contrast to the rough-cut looks and boorish demeanour of the Gaunt men on Riddle's matrilineal side. Of course, Tom Marvolo Riddle eventually cast much of these aside, his once handsome visage warped from years of extensive Dark Arts experiments, his personality becoming much more dominating and short-tempered.
In 1995, Tom Senior proved useful to his son a second time. One of his bones was used to help revive his son's body.[12]
Both Tom Senior and his son were obsessively loved by pure-blood witches. Tom Senior was loved by Merope, who became obsessed enough to use a Love Potion on him. Tom M. Riddle was obsessively loved by one of his Death Eaters, Bellatrix Lestrange. Bellatrix was so eager to please him that she would "prune" her "family tree" by murdering her niece.
Near the conclusion of the 20th century, Tom Riddle posthumously became a grandfather when his son sired a daughter, Delphini. It was unknown how Delphini viewed her paternal grandparents, although it seems that given her love for her father, she may have held posthumous love for Merope and Tom Riddle.
In a further twist of irony and hypocrisy, Tom Marvolo Riddle became the exact type of absentee father he believed his father to be. Although he died when Delphini was very young, he did not exhibit any obvious signs that he was now responsible for an infant daughter, such as attempting to avoid Dumbledore's Army and the forthcoming fight that would result in his ultimate demise. Also, like Tom Riddle Senior, he outlived the woman with whom he sired the fruit of his loins.
"...don't look at it, Cecilia, darling."
—Tom's affection towards Cecilia[src]
Cecilia was a Muggle who was heavily implied to have been Tom's sweetheart. Tom used terms of affection to her and comforted her when she was shocked by Morfin's dead snake. It can be presumed Tom lost her when Merope Gaunt forced him to marry her.[5]
Little Hangleton residents
Tom was a snobbish and rude aristocrat during his life in Little Hangleton. In the 1920s, Tom appeared to be caught up with the town gossip on the Gaunt Family. By the 1940s, Tom Riddle was noted to be more snobbish and rude than his already arrogant parents. The Riddle family thus was highly unpopular by the 1940s, and none of the town's residents even bothered to pretend to mourn for Tom's death. Instead, they were more concerned as to how he died, due to the lack of physical evidence.[13] The mystery became the talk of the town partly out of fear it could happen again.
Tom's flashback scenes were cut from the film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
For the time period of the 1920s when the class system was more prominent in Great Britain, Riddle's snobbish attitude was not unusual, nor was his disdain for the criminally insane.
Tom Marvolo Riddle thought that Tom left Merope because he hated magic and left her after she revealed herself to be a witch, which is the reason Tom Marvolo Riddle hated Muggles.[8] He never learned the real reason why Tom left Merope.[14]
Oddly, the replica of the Riddle family grave at The Making of Harry Potter lists Tom Riddle Snr with the name of his son (Tom Marvolo Riddle), and also places his date of birth at 1915, ten years after the version used in the final film. To further add to confusion, the replica gravestone lists Thomas and Mary Riddle as having died in 1913, two years before their son is listed to have been born, and a full thirty years before the birth of their grandson and killer, Tom Marvolo Riddle (the final film correctly mentions their deaths as taking place in 1943).[15]
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (First mentioned)
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (film) (Mentioned only)
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (video game) (Mentioned in PS1 version)
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Mentioned only) (Name appears on tombstone)
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (film) (Mentioned only) (Name appears on tombstone)
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Mentioned only)
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (First appearance) (Appears in flashback(s))).
LEGO Harry Potter: Characters of the Magical World (Mentioned only)
↑ 1.0 1.1 Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Chapter 10 (The House of Gaunt) - "Ogden hurtled up the path and erupted onto the main lane, his arms over his head, where he collided with the glossy chestnut horse ridden by a very handsome, dark-haired young man."
↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Chapter 13 (The Secret Riddle) - "There was no trace of the Gaunts in Tom Riddle's face. Merope had got her dying wish: He was his handsome father in miniature, tall for eleven years old, dark-haired, and pale." Tom Riddle Senior's appearance must be alike to his son's.
↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (film)
↑ In the Riddle House in the 1990s, there is a calendar - (see this image) - for 1943, which is still set on August, implying that was the month Thomas, Tom and Mary all died
↑ 5.00 5.01 5.02 5.03 5.04 5.05 5.06 5.07 5.08 5.09 5.10 5.11 5.12 5.13 5.14 Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Chapter 10 (The House of Gaunt)
↑ 6.0 6.1 Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Chapter 13 (The Very Secret Diary)
↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Chapter 1 (The Riddle House)
↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Chapter 17 (The Heir of Slytherin)
↑ 9.0 9.1 Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Chapter 13 (The Secret Riddle)
↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Chapter 17 (A Sluggish Memory)
↑ 11.0 11.1 Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Chapter 23 (Horcruxes)
↑ 12.0 12.1 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Chapter 32 (Flesh, Blood and Bone)
↑ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named GF1
↑ Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Chapter 35 (King's Cross)
↑ See this image
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Buried at Little Hangleton graveyard


Access Law LLP Solicitors Your business? Error?
Air Accident Investigation Branch The Your business? Error?
Bell Pope Your business? Error?
Dunningwood Associates Your business? Error?
Fogg Bryon Your business? Error?
Hatcher Rogerson Your business? Error?
Hopkins Legal Costs Your business? Error?
In Home Legal Services Your business? Error?
James Alun & Co Your business? Error?


So, here is the story. My 89 year-old Mom died about 6 weeks ago (RIP Mom). She saw a real window of opportunity late in her life to help others, and she definitely took advantage of it.
Mom was a smoker for many years. She blamed smoking for her COPD (aka emphysema), her several bouts with mouth cancer and her macular degeneration. She spent the last 10 years of her life helping others quit smoking in on line chat rooms. She loved to play pool when she could still see and she would threaten to beat them with her pool stick. It worked! Many stopped and they give her full credit.
I became friends with a few of them, mostly after Mom's death, and we still keep in touch on line. One is Bell, who lives in Canada. She is very talented with her little photoshop tool, and has kept our family cheered up royally with her creations. Now, she even has ME washing windows.
Me wash windows? Fat chance Bell, I hire a professional!
Oh boy, it is almost time for my hummingbirds to return. I love hummingbirds and we have many in our backyard every year. Every morning when I take my walk I listen to Seals and Croft's 1970 something song HUMMINGBIRD in anticipation for those first scouts to show up and make sure we still have feeders and flowers outside of my sunroom windows.
A friend of mine from way back (thanks Joani) sent me this wonderful link this past weekend. At least watch the short version. But the full episode is so worth it!
Watch the longer one instead of renting a movie. You will be glad you did.
Two days of blue sky morning has convinced me to post the original WHAT WINDOWS WANT. Hopefully, you are chomping at the bit this weekend and are ready to check out your windows. My almost ready to publish website is for window coverings, but why bother to dress up any window if it is not able to look great naked. So, what do windows want?
I will cover cleaning in a few, but there are 3 other things you need to check out as well. Worn out screens need to be replaced as they really detract from appearance. Water spots caused by misdirected sprinklers look bad and eventually damage the glass. (Will cover more on that in a later post.) Make sure fully-armed plants such as rose bushes are cut back so they do not scratch the glass.
The cleaning part is so easy. Hire a professional. Okay, I know some of you will never do that. Then buy a great quality squeegee and DO NOT USE ANYTHING but a mild wetting agent (liquid dish soap in very small amount). Oh, and make sure you tackle this without direct sunlight.
Best tip…HIRE A PROFESSIONAL. They are not expensive and it really does improve your outlook on life!
What they really want is SPRING, and not just per the calendar. This it the second day this week we see snow flurries outside our windows. Geez, will it ever end? I want at least 14 days of pure sunshine in a row. Afterall, I live where that is usually the case.
What Windows Want Part 2 will follow later with the tale I wanted to tell originally before it started snowing, and it is guaranteed to give you more than a weather report.
No hidden agenda here. I originally started this blog because I was instructed to. That statement is long on honesty and a bit short on purpose at this point. Let me explain.
I am launching a website soon. It will offer simple solutions to purchase quality cheap window coverings on line at affordable prices, sort of a "window decor for dummies" theme. However, I see another purpose evolving already; I finally get to eat an elephant. I love to write and have always wanted to confront writing a book. But, a book is bigger than an elephant, which I have been told you can eat one bite at a time. Maybe one blog at a time a book would be possible, providing I decide what to write about.
In the meantime, I will dedicate this blog to WINDOWS: dirty windows, clean windows, broken windows and uncovered windows. I might even talk about windows on your computer screen, windows that get hit by sprinklers, windows that need tinting, windows of opportunity and even windows with hummingbirds outside of them. And, I will not forget to discuss, now and then, customer service issues that come up when you are in the window business as I have been for almost 30 years.
Okay, I delivered four babies, naturally, with almost less pain than I endured starting this blog's life. It can't walk or talk yet, but it is screaming to be heard. And, like with a baby (or babies since I delivered twins the last time) it can never return to where it was.
I love light and that means lots of windows (take that metaphorically too!). My sunroom/office has 20 usually clean, and also naked, windows. It is my favorite room with its undressed windows, but I do appreciate that some windows need to be "dressed up". Little baby Blog, learn how to speak clearly fast! And, make it all about WINDOWS.


Storyline: Machine depicts the story of racing enthusiasts , who meet each other under mysterious circumstances. As their bond becomes stronger, they eventually fall in love. However, new things begin to unfold, which change their lives forever.
Review: The mind boggles at the thought of movies like these, that actually get written, shot, publicized and manage to hit the theaters. Does no one with an ounce of objectivity intervene at any point? Anyway, here we are, and here it is.
Ransh (Mustafa) is a machine (the heroine's words, not ours), who has no heart. He is made to fall in love with girls, then made to kill them and steal their money. Sarah (Advani) becomes his victim and but is soon resurrected to bring down her sly lover when he's on his next hunt. Her saviour? The twin brother of a friendzoned Romeo who dies at the hands of Ransh earlier. If the existential crisis hasn't set in yet, give it time. Two hours and 28 minutes, to be precise.


text:
Dave MacLeod (born 17 July 1978) is a Scottish rock climber, ice climber, and climbing author.  MacLeod is best known for being the first climber in the world to climb in free solo style (without rope) a  route (Darwin Dixit in Margalef, in 2008), and for climbing one of the hardest traditional climbing routes in the world (Rhapsody on  Dumbarton Rock, graded E11 7a, in 2006).

Climbing career

Rock climbing
In April 2006, MacLeod established the climb Rhapsody on  Dumbarton Rock which, at a grade of E11 7a, was possibly the hardest trad climbing route in the world.  Rhapsody is the true finish to the line of Requiem, graded E8 6b. Requiem was climbed in 1983 by Dave Cuthbertson and was one of the hardest rock climbs in the world at the time. It follows a crack-line that fades out to a seam at half height. Requiem follows a flake heading rightwards to finish, while Rhapsody climbs the line of the crack all the way to the top. The top half of the crack gives 8c+ climbing and takes no more protection. MacLeod took many long falls from this runout, three from the last move in which he fell 70 feet and injured himself by hitting the rock at the end of the fall. In 2008 Steve McClure made the third ascent of Rhapsody and confirmed the grade. The ascent of Rhapsody is the subject of the movie E11 (2006) directed by Paul Diffley and produced by Hot Aches Productions. MacLeod has since featured in several more climbing films by Hot Aches Productions.

In 2008, MacLeod became the first climber in history to free solo a route graded  (Darwin Dixit in Margalef).

In 2008, MacLeod completed the traditional rock climb, Echo Wall, an extreme and as-yet ungraded rock climb on Ben Nevis, which took two years of preparation. MacLeod described Echo Wall as harder than Rhapsody but left the route ungraded in a possible attempt to avoid the earlier controversy surrounding the E11 grade.

In addition to his achievements in traditional rock climbing, MacLeod has also successfully created and completed sport climbing routes and projects up to the grade of  (A Muerte at Siurana, in 2007) and has established bouldering problems up to the grade of  (Natural Method on the Skeleton Boulder at Glen Nevis in 2012).

On 28 August 2010, MacLeod and Tim Emmett established the route The Usual Suspects on Sron Uladail on Harris, provisionally graded E9 7a, in an ascent broadcast live on BBC Two Scotland. As part of their preparation, MacLeod and Emmett successfully established five new routes on five Hebridean islands (counting Lewis with Harris as two separate islands) in five days, an achievement documented in the BBC Scotland series 5 Climbs, 5 Islands (later released on DVD as Triple 5). MacLeod has continued his association with BBC Scotland, filming The First Great Climb (broadcast on 22 November 2011), in which he replicated a successful 1876 attempt on the Stack of Handa using the type of equipment that would have been available at the time, and Climbing – No Limits! (broadcast on 12 April 2012), establishing new routes in the Yorkshire Dales and the Peak District.

Mixed climbing

MacLeod has also established hard routes in mixed climbing with ice axes and crampons, climbing Good Training for Something with Canadian climber Will Gadd at a grade of M12. In 2005, he established the hardest traditional mixed climbing route in the world at the time, The Hurting in Coire an t-Sneachda, Cairngorms. The route has been repeated a few times and has a Scottish winter grade of XI,11 (M9+/M10) with hard, technical climbing over very poor protection.

Writing

In December 2009, Macleod's book 9 Out of 10 Climbers Make the Same Mistakes: Navigation Through the Maze of Advice for the Self-coached Climber was published. In 2015, Macleod's book Make or Break: Don't Let Climbing Injuries Dictate Your Success was published.

Bibliography

See also
History of rock climbing
List of first ascents (sport climbing)
Johnny Dawes, British traditional climber
Sonnie Trotter, Canadian traditional climber

References

External links
 Dave MacLeod MacLeod's official website
 Blog MacLeod's official blog
 Online Climbing Coach Blog MacLeod's coaching blog
 E11 – the movie
 Profile on climbing.com
 Profile on blackdiamondequipment.com

1978 births
Living people
Sportspeople from Dumbarton
Scottish rock climbers
Scottish mountain climbers
Free soloists
Ice climbers

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


It was a special day ! A day rarely happens in our lives.
I got a chance to visit an old house of ours where my children spent their childhood. Being an army wife I must have stayed in more than twenty houses by now but I seldom got a chance to visit a house where we had stayed previously. Good memories of those houses are still fresh in my mind, revived time to time through photos.
Last month we drove down to a city, we were posted 14 years ago, to attend a get together of my husband's course mates. We stayed there for two days. Third day we were supposed to visit our old neighborhood. I got ready wondering how the house would be looking after so many years, In the meantime Tarun came announcing that we had to leave urgently for home as his old pal was visiting us in the evening so we had to reach home soon. We were driving back within no time.
Within minutes we were in front of the house. I was overwhelmed. I took out my camera and clicked few pictures. The officer staying there saw me getting down from the car with camera and got inquisitive. I approached towards the gate. He came out to know the reason of us being there. Tarun introduced and shook hands with him. The gentleman was looking comfortable now and offered us a cup of tea. We met his wife and son. My children walked around the bungalow to revive the old memories. All in all a memorable day for the family to cherish some moments of past. I thanked Tarun for this beautiful 180 degrees turn.
Previous Three Lamas walk into a bar…..
What a lovely house. I'll bet you had lots of good memories made there. Thanks for sharing.
Yes, my son no. 2 was born here. He started walking in this house. Glad to share it with you.
It really IS a beautiful house.
I've been thought a suspicious character because I was taking pictures of something near a house, like flowers or a tree. Everyone seems to think everyone else is "out to get them" or steal their stuff. Given the obvious age of Garry and I, and there YOU were with children, I should think it would be obvious we weren't planning a heist.
That was understable, thankfully chances of stealing & theft are comparitively less in cantt area. The colony looks likes forest itself. Beautiful surroundings.
And in the process new friends were made !
Yes of course ! A reason to feel happier.
now that was a happy reversal.. thank for the sharing of it.
It was such a special day. Thanks.
It is such a beautiful house…I am sure you had a lot of wonderful memories attached to it… It must have been a nostalgic experience indeed…..
Yep, ti was. Even the mango trees were full of raw mangoes. I used to make mango pickle then.


text:
Last 12 months (1)
Eighteenth-Century Music (3)
Yet Another Galant Schema: The Dominant Pedal Accompanied by a Chromatic Descent
Ewald Demeyere
Journal: Eighteenth-Century Music / Volume 19 / Issue 2 / September 2022
Print publication: September 2022
It is now well established that stock voice-leading patterns were an essential component of eighteenth-century compositional and improvisational practices both in Italy and abroad. In this article I focus on one of those patterns, which, as far as I am aware, remains unscrutinized: a dominant pedal point in the bass with a paradigmatic upper voice that descends chromatically from scale steps 5 to 2. In the first two sections, I deal with this pattern successively in eighteenth-century music pedagogy, with special emphasis on the teaching of the Neapolitan maestro Fedele Fenaroli, and in actual galant repertory, thereby exploring both its voice-leading and its syntactic possibilities. In the third section, I compare how this dominant pedal relates to other, already identified pedal-based patterns.
ON FEDELE FENAROLI'S PEDAGOGY: AN UPDATE
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 October 2018, pp. 207-229
Although Fedele Fenaroli's partimento and counterpoint pedagogy has been the subject of a number of recent publications, several aspects of its organization and contents require further research. Thanks to the recent discovery of multiple manuscripts, I am able to elaborate on two of them in this article. First I deal with Fenaroli's partimento curriculum. As several manuscripts illustrate, Fenaroli appears to have maintained a progressive method consisting of four parts (or books) almost throughout his entire career. A partimento student had to work through the first three books successively, which served as Fenaroli's basic partimento course. When these three books had been satisfactorily assimilated, the student could proceed with book 4, which was clearly intended by Fenaroli as his advanced partimento course. Secondly, I engage with Fenaroli's views on dissonance treatment and place them in the broader context of eighteenth-century Neapolitan pedagogy, and thoroughbass and music theory treatises in general.
ON BWV1080/8: BETWEEN THEORY AND PRACTICE
Journal: Eighteenth-Century Music / Volume 4 / Issue 2 / September 2007
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 September 2007, pp. 291-299
The application of rhetoric to music had special significance in the seventeenth century and in the first half of the eighteenth century. The discipline of classical Greek oratory, originally dealing with how to make and execute a speech, formed the basis for the rules of composition and performance, especially in German-speaking lands. During this period the influence of rhetorical principles on all parameters of music was commonplace; not only did a vast number of treatises on rhetoric in music emerge, but the central educational programme taught in the Latin schools and the universities included both musica and rhetorica among the seven artes liberales. That rhetoric was also a fundamental part of Bach's music-making is shown by the following testimony from Johann Abraham Birnbaum (1702–1748), Professor of Poetics and Rhetoric at Leipzig: 'He so perfectly understood the resemblance which the performance of a musical piece has in common with rhetorical art that he was listened to with the utmost satisfaction and pleasure when he discoursed of the similarity and agreement between them; but we also wonder at the skilful use he made of this in his works'.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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text:
On Being Great Again, Or Good
Quote of the Week: Patriotism is proud of a country's virtues and eager to correct its deficiencies; it also acknowledges the legitimate patriotism of other countries, with their own specific virtues. The pride of nationalism, however, trumpets its country's virtues and denies its deficiencies, while it is contemptuous toward the virtues of other countries. It wants to be, and proclaims itself to be, "the greatest", but greatness is not required of a country; only goodness is. –Sydney J. Harris
Donald Trump shocks Americans by telling them that he wants to make our nation "great again," implying obviously that the United States had some greatness that is now lacking. It is easy to associate this clearly unpatriotic lack of faith in America with racism and xenophobia (implying, for example, that the US was great, until it went ahead and elected one of "those people" as its president for eight years). It is easy to do this because of Trump's heartless criticism of Mexicans and Muslims (and of the latter's faith, Islam). It is easy to do this because of the numerous Nazis, Klansmen, and fascists of all colors (so to speak) who have come out in open support for Trump. It is easy to do this because, notwithstanding the candidate's willingness to tweet and speak about all sorts of people on the cuff and without any "due diligence," it took him something like 48 hours to disavow one of America's leading white supremacists. Attacking ethnic groups, dissidents, and women is not something the candidate needs to take any time to consider properly; but disavowing the country's leading white supremacist was something that needed closer study, not being any kind of "no brainer" for our little Orangearschenfürher. All of this shows what most Americans need to know about what "greatness" is missing and how to restore it.
But for those of us not raised from birth to hate "those people" or to misogynize at our morning Tea Party, it is clear that what we need is not for our nation to be "great again," but for our country to be good again, like Sydney J. Harris suggests. We need to remember John Winthrop's exhortations to us to build the City on a Hill by embracing the liberal imperative to care for the poor, to house the homeless, to feed the hungry, and moreover to use the wealth of those at the top for that explicit purpose. We need to remember that politics should be about caring for those needing medical care, not about politicizing issues. When we attack Planned Parenthood for performing a legal operation (and doing so using only private funds, and not anyone's taxes), and use the government to punish the organization – and the many women and men it cares for in other ways, using both public and private funds for the purpose – for offending a minority of Americans, we are not "good," and we are not the nation that Winthrop called upon us to be. When we attack people for not speaking English "properly" (ignoring the multitude of uneducated bigots who themselves have a limited grasp of our grammar and syntax, though it be their only language), we are not "good," and we are not the nation that was built on the labor and the blood, sweat, and tears of immigrants, indentured servants, slaves, and refugees.
Our parents, grandparents, or other ancestors (those that came here willingly, anyway) came to this nation not because of its military strength, and not because we pick on the weak and leave the dying to meet their end. They came here because we are a nation that has always promised to be better than that. They came here because we offered them something better than the empires of the past, great only for their ability to kill and to disenfranchise others. Coming to our shores for our "goodness," rather than for our "greatness," they built this nation – together with those who simply had no choice in the matter – into a nation that was able to grow past its dark side, and embrace the better angels of our nature. We became a nation born of slavery that (later than most) discarded slavery; a nation dominated by men who (later than some) embraced suffrage; and a nation dominated by white Christians who (through a mountainous struggle) embraced the "Others" and welcomed them into our community as builders and partners.
To be "good" again, we need to put Trump, and his supporters, back into whatever corner of our national psyche we dragged them out of. We need to put them back into the box in which we keep our pictures of "Whites Only" and "No Jews" signs, pictures of slaves' backs striped with whip scars, pictures of the Trail of Tears, and of schools forcing Indian children to adopt white, Christian ways. We need to mark that box "Ugly Things From the Past We Promise Not to Do Again." And we need to put that box into high-school history books with long lessons about how and why we got over those evil tendencies, how we are a better nation because we moved past the need to do these horrific things, and how we embraced our promise to be a nation of many peoples, many faiths, many languages and cultures, and many ideals. We need not to worry about our "greatness"; but only about our "goodness."
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An Education for the Future
Quote of the Week: It has always seemed strange to me that in our endless discussions about education so little stress is laid on the pleasure of becoming an educated person, the enormous interest it adds to life. To be able to be caught up into the world of thought — that is to be educated. –Edith Hamilton
Recently, I was reading some remarks from a former teacher who posted onto Diane Ravitch's blog, and the teacher was lamenting about (among many other things) the failure of educators to teach the value of education, and of learning, in and of itself. This resonated with the words of Edith Hamilton, author of one of the most widely read books there is on European mythology. Is it good or bad that we attempt to get children motivated to learn by emphasizing how hard it will be to get a job in the 21st century without an advanced education?
On the one hand, as poor as the education system is growing (and as miserly as our largely Republican-led school districts are about public education, and as powerful as corporate for-profit "education" is becoming in the place of public education), we need students to understand that they have to be proactive in learning, in taking their education seriously. Students need to orient their learning toward modern skill sets – computer skills, math and science, and foreign languages (especially those to become significant in the upcoming decades, like Chinese, Farsi, Arabic, Spanish, and Portuguese). But we cannot overvalue education as merely a meal-ticket. Anti-intellectualism has long been a powerful force in our country, and is one that in this new century must either be overcome finally, or will overcome our nation once and for all. Anti-intellectualism questions what value there is in education beyond what it can do to put food on your table; and fails to see the value in learning about culture, learning social sciences, and learning philosophy and aesthetics.
We are entering a new century in which social media is predominant in shaping thoughts: the 140-character tweet in place of the twenty-page manifesto. The single line of response on Facebook to a two-phrase smarmy meme, as opposed to a full discussion on "20/20." The Instagram replacing the fully-researched and vetted New York Times article. We are entering a world in which thinking is inconvenient and discouraged, particularly if its manifestation requires more than a sentence or two. Complicated thought, and a fuller understanding of whatever subjects we are entering, is becoming a lost art and in its vacuum we are building a new venue for populist politics. When pundits ask from whence this new Trump phenomenon comes, the answer is in part with this very problem. We applaud a simple and ill-spoken man for "speaking his mind," as he uses quick and easily fact-checked distortions of reality to convince an entire audience untrained and unused to complicated thought, and unprepared to live in a complex, globalized, and multicultural world.
The United States is losing the ability to train minds for the next century, and to transfer useful skills to the next generation. We are entering a new world, in which global relationships are becoming more complex, more decentralized, more culturally aware and diverse, and more technical, all at once. Engineering, languages, art and music, math and computer languages, and awareness of the climate effects of technology, are all going to be the main driving forces in determining who can compete in the next few decades; who can get the kind of job that supports a family, and who goes hungry and goes poor. We need to prepare students for the new century not just with technical (STEM, or science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education, but with art, social science, languages, and cultural education.
As we prepare students for the new century, realizing that most of the old jobs found by our parents to raise us are no longer going to be the drivers of the new economy, we must also train our children – all of them, and most especially the poor – to value education not merely as a step to a paycheck, but as a value in and of itself. We must teach the value of forming and arguing complicated thoughts; of reading complicated tracts; of considering arts and aesthetics beyond the things we may be exploiting for whatever work we seek. If our nation is going to make it in the more competitive environment of the new century, our children need to be able to use computers; but they also need to be able to understand other cultures, people born into different environments, and complicated relationships between the human species and the global environment. Our children need to understand art history and the concept of music. Our children need to understand the difference between rhetoric and argument. Our children need to understand the difference between verified fact and popular opinion. And they need to understand that "scientific theory" does not mean merely someone's vague and subjective guess, but an established explanation that has passed the basic test of experimentation and validation, and is an accepted understanding of the phenomenon explained. They need job skills, and they need the ability to have a lengthy conversation in a coffee shop about Sartre.
To teach skills needed not just by individuals, but by our nation as a whole, we need to generate an enthusiasm for learning that goes beyond the job description. We need to generate a population able to converse and compete with others globally, on subjects technical and aesthetic, objective and subjective. We need students who seek learning because it makes them better people, not because it makes them (briefly) more seemingly employable. Otherwise, we lose the strategic edge in competing globally, as greater human skill-sets are used to determine job security, as corporations move past simple requirements to greater social values (factors more easily implemented by human resources departments in an increasingly digitized and information-driven world). Once we lose that strategic edge, we will have lost our ability to compete and we will have lost the economic foundation that enables us to have a stable political environment. Once we lose that edge, our nation will plummet ever more quickly into populism, extremism, violence, and authoritarianism. We will seek, ever more, the safety promised by "strong leaders" who ask only that we surrender our freedoms. But we do not have to go down that road; and the alternative path begins with education, and with infusing into our children, and into our population as a whole, an enthusiasm for learning, for reading, for writing, and for thinking. We need, once again, to be caught up in a world of thought.
The 2016 Primaries, Round Three
Now that we are past Semi-Super Tuesday (March 15, that is; not its official designation, of course), it is time again to look ahead to the next round of the primaries, and to consider the greater context into which the primaries are playing out. First of all, if you are new to this process, and have not read Spark!'s earlier posts on the subject, you can see all of our blogs on the primaries (three so far) by going to the Elections 2016 Category. We have covered thus far the process in general (in "Primer on the Primaries"); the "First Round of the Primaries" (covering the beginning of the primaries, up through Super Tuesday, March 1); and the "Second Round of the Primaries" (from late February, through March 15).
The primaries will continue into June, and of course are intended to select delegates for both parties' conventions in July (the Republicans in Cleveland, July 18-21; and the Democrats in Philadelphia, July 25-28). For the purpose of this blog, we are designating "Round Three" as taking us through the end of April. May and June will constitute at least "Round Four;" and possibly more if needed to cover events as we move forward.
As of this writing (March 18), there are still some delegates yet to be apportioned from states that have voted, but which have not completed counting the votes. Delegate counts are still somewhat unofficial, and are projections based on reports from states and voting districts. As a result of confusion between the various state parties' rules and other irregularities, various reporting agencies have minor differences in their delegate counts. Real Clear Politics' projections of March 18 allot the following:
Democratic Race: 2,382 delegates needed to win [out of 4,763]
Hillary Clinton: 1,614 delegates (needs 33.5% of remaining delegates to win)
Bernie Sanders: 856 delegates (needs 66.6% of remaining delegates to win)
Republican Race: 1,237 delegates needed to win [out of 2,472]
Donald Trump: 673 delegates (needs 52.5% of remaining delegates to win)
Ted Cruz: 413 delegates (needs 76.7% of remaining delegates to win)
John Kasich: 143 delegates (needs more delegates to win than are uncommitted)
Marco Rubio: 169 delegates, and out.
Before moving forward, we can see, then that both Democratic candidates still have a viable path to the nomination; but that Clinton's path is a far easier one than is Sanders's. On the Republican side, no candidate has yet a decisive edge for the first ballot in July. Trump is by far the closest; but he still needs a greater percentage of the remaining delegates than he has shown himself able to secure thus far. There is good news and bad news ahead for the Trump campaign. The good news for Trump (and the bad news for the GOP and for the rest of the nation) is that the "winner takes all" states have now started voting. In those states, Trump only needs to secure a plurality to get all of their delegates; and he has shown himself clearly able to accomplish that. The bad news for Trump (and the good news for the rest of us) is that the Republicans are becoming increasingly hostile to him, and may manage to pull out enough key victories in states where Trump is weak to keep him from achieving the delegates threshold for the first ballot at the convention. From there, things get a lot more interesting – and Trump may yet manage to secure a victory in Cleveland, so a brokered convention is not necessarily a Trump defeat.
None of the other Republican candidates has a viable path to first-ballot nomination. Cruz needs an impossibly high percentage (over 76%) of the remaining delegates, and has nowhere been able to come anywhere close to such a victory, let alone achieving that nationally. He would basically have to win many major winner-takes-all states to achieve that. John Kasich, earning recently his first state victory in his home state of Ohio (a "winner takes all" state giving him the entire Ohio delegation), has so few delegates to his name that even if he were to win every single remaining delegate at this point – a 100% victory in every state, requiring nothing short of divine intervention – he would still come in 18 delegates short of a first-ballot win. Marco Rubio, of course, has suspended his campaign, although his ghost may resurrect at the convention for second or subsequent ballots.
The next round of primary events include:
Thursday, March 10: Virgin Islands (R). The caucus has already taken place; but no results have been announced yet. 9 Republican delegates will be apportioned, on a winner-takes-all basis.
Tuesday, March 22: Arizona and Utah will both hold dual-party events (primaries in AZ, and caucuses in UT). The Republicans in American Samoa will hold an open convention; and the Democrats in Idaho will caucus.
Arizona is a winner-takes-all state for the Republicans. Polls on Tuesday (March 15) showed Trump leading Cruz, 31% to 19%; but there were also 30% undecided respondents among the Republicans. Clinton had a decisive edge on Sanders, 50% to 24; but that also puts 26% of Arizona Democrats into the undecided category and up for play. Arizona could be a huge Clinton win; or a marginal Sanders victory. Arizona has 58 Republican delegates to offer; and 75 Democratic delegates (plus ten super-delegates).
Utah has not been polled recently; but back in February both Cruz and Rubio had slight edges over Trump. Bush, Carson, and Fiorina were still in play back then; and while Bush voters are unlikely to reach for Trump, Carson voters are more likely. With Rubio gone, it may be easy to suggest that his voters support Cruz; but the two are widely different species of the Republican order, and Rubio supporters may go for Kasich or even Trump instead. Some 42% of February's respondents supported candidates no longer running; and so Utah has the chance to offer some nasty surprises. February polls also showed Clinton leading Sanders 50% to 44 (with Sanders up a few points from January); and Sanders's viability may well have been strengthened by his recent performance, so Utah is going to be a big fight for the Democrats as well. Utah has 40 Republican delegates, 33 Democratic delegates, and 4 Democratic super-delegates.
Idaho's caucus is currently presumed to be a modest Sanders win, giving both candidates roughly half of its 23 delegates. Idaho and the other primaries and caucuses that day will give the Republican candidates a total of 107 more delegates; and the Democrats a total of 131 more, not including 18 super-delegates.
Saturday, March 26: Democratic caucuses in Alaska, Hawaii, and Washington state. Polling on these states is meager at best, and not up to date. Together, they will allot to the candidates some 142 delegates, and 30 super-delegates.
April 1-3: Republican state convention in North Dakota, which will nominate delegates to the July convention in Cleveland. 28 Republican delegates will ultimately be sent to Cleveland from North Dakota.
Tuesday, April 5: Wisconsin open primary for both parties. Wisconsin has no recent polling, but Trump held a significant advantage in February, when the field had more players. Although the "middle states" have been forming a strong Cruz bastion, it seems unlikely that Trump's advantage will have lessened; and it is a winner-takes-all state offering Trump (or whichever Republican wins it) all of its 42 delegates. On the blue side, Clinton and Sanders were running neck and neck at the beginning of the year; so its 86 Democratic delegates make it a significant battleground state.
Saturday, April 9: Wyoming's Democratic caucus for its 14 delegates. Following this caucus, from April 14 through the 16th, Wyoming Republicans will hold a state convention to select the 15 remaining delegates selected by the party (there was a caucus on March 12; but it only had 11 delegates selected by that process). Three more Republican delegates from the state are super-delegates, as every Republican state party is allotted three such slots. Polling data on Wyoming is lacking; but Ted Cruz blasted Rubio and Trump out of the water there last Saturday, taking 9 of the 11 selected delegates.
Tuesday, April 19: New York's closed primary for both parties. The most recent polls showed Clinton with a whopping advantage (71% to Sanders's 23) for its massive allotment of 247 Democratic delegates; however previous polls showed far less of an advantage (55% to 34 at the end of February), so either the recent Emerson poll is skewed, or Clinton's success on March 12 has helped to shift New York more substantially in her favor. Trump has a similar advantage there by the same polling firm (64% to Cruz's 12; Kasich has a mere 1%), but previous polls by other firms had his numbers in the mid-40s. The Republican party allots New York's delegates as "winner takes most"; so as long as he has the plurality, he gets the bulk of delegates, but Cruz could still come out with delegates. The trick to New York, however, is that it also has a 20% inclusion threshold; only candidates gaining at least 20% of district votes get any delegates from them. Neither Cruz nor Kasich have been approaching those numbers in New York, so it is looking like an almost automatic Trump victory. Cruz will likely rue the day he criticized "New York values" on April 19.
Tuesday, April 26: "Mini-mini-Super Tuesday" (I presume that only I am calling it that). Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island will all hold dual-party closed primaries, a huge battle for the Old Colonies. Some 172 Republican delegates and 384 Democratic delegates are up for grabs. While there is useful polling data for Maryland and Pennsylvania, the other three states have not been adequately polled since November, 2015 (when almost all of the original 17 Republican candidates were still running). A lot of voters have shifted to Sanders from Democratic undecided respondents since then, so only relatively recent polls are useful. However, the entire region has been continually found to be more favorable to Trump than to other Republicans; and is largely more favorable to Clinton. Delaware and Maryland have winner-takes-all Republican primaries; and Connecticut has (like New York) a 20% inclusion threshold as well as a 50% winner-takes-all threshold, so it may be a full Trump victory as well.
Total delegates, Round Three: 444 Republicans; and 1,004 Democrats (plus 184 super-delegates to be decided separately).
Based on the polling data available, Spark! projects the following for Round Three:
Hillary Clinton will gain another 520 delegates, giving her 2,134. At that point, Clinton will need only 18.3% of the remaining uncommitted delegates to win the nomination.
Bernie Sanders will gain 417 delegates, giving him 1,273. He would then need 82% of the remaining uncommitted delegates to win the nomination. If our projections come anywhere close to the events, then by the end of Round Three, while Sanders will have come even closer to Clinton's numbers, Clinton will have achieved enough superiority to take the nomination at the first ballot of the convention with ease.
In the meantime, Donald Trump will gain another 346 delegates, for a total of 1,019. He would need to get 34.1% of the remaining delegates to win the first ballot in July.
Ted Cruz will gain 71 delegates, bringing his total to 484. He would need more additional delegates than are available; and therefore could not get a first-ballot nomination.
John Kasich will get another 18 delegates, bringing him up to 161. He already has no chance for a first-ballot nomination.
The key states to watch during this process are Arizona (for both parties), Washington (for the Democrats), Wisconsin (for both parties), and New York (for both parties). Collectively, the statistically uninformative Old Colonies battling it out on April 26 will also host a major contest for substantial delegates and for new numbers.
The Low Road and the High Road
Quote of the Week: He who would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself. –Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine's words give us a lens with which to look at two diverging routes taken by American political forces. On the one hand, we have the conservative low road, sinking our nation to its lowest depths of racism, xenophobia, and bigotry, taking us ever further away from our shining City on a Hill and the establishment of a liberal community of prosperity and care. On the other, we have the liberal high road to the City, to using our wealth (as leading Americans since John Winthrop in the 1630s have urged us) to care for the poor, sick, and unemployed. Paine informs us that while the low road allows us to apply our Constitution and other national principles only minimally, and only for established American citizens, the high road to the City requires a liberal application of constitutionality to all human beings, regardless of national status.
We have too long allowed our government (even under President Obama's moderate hand) to traverse the conservative low road. We have allowed our government to imprison, without charge and without any intention to prosecute, foreign nationals for an unlimited duration. We have allowed our government to encourage other governments to torture and to evade American principles of legality and morality through machinations like extraordinary rendition. We have allowed our government to target American citizens believed to be aiding foreign hostile forces, without providing the required basic constitutional protections to those citizens. So it should come as no surprise when our government wants ever more invasive tools of espionage and oppression, as indicated by the latest court battle with Apple over cell-phone encryption. It is no surprise that, allowing our government to forget our constitutional principles (and allowing the government to limit constitutional protections to established US citizens – and not even all of those), we now have an entire Republican party hostile to foreigners – immigrants and refugees, the very types of people who (together with slaves) built this country in the first place. It is no surprise that a Republican candidate is having audiences replicate the Nazi salute as they swear allegiance to their Orangearschlochführer and as they loudly urge him to protect them from Mexicans and Muslims. This is where the low road is taking us – away from our City on the Hill, and toward an ideological parking lot; empty, barren, and open for sale.
Instead, Paine urges us to take the high road. Paine pushes us to build Winthrop's City, a liberal community of care and ethics, and of prosperity and wealth. Paine urges us to apply our Constitution to all human beings, not just established US citizens. Paine urges our politicians to treasure all citizens – not just those supporting them at rallies (and unlike those like Trump openly mocking anyone not buying the cheap dime-store make-up job he wants to put on our national legacy and principles). Paine urges us to remember that when foreign nationals at Guantanamo are denied constitutional protections, we are building precedents for our government to weaken and remove our protections here at home. Paine urges America to remember its revolutionary principles. Those principles can only truly shape our polity at home and the rest of the world abroad when we apply them as liberally as we can. We must guarantee basic constitutional protections to all people, and not ask first where they were born, what language they speak, what faith they profess, or what citizenship they hold.
The Republicans, and extremist forces like Trump, will continue to take the low road away from our City on a Hill, and strive to tear our City down in favor of a parking lot. We Americans must fight them at every step, and drive forward on the high road, to the City, to a greater community of care and wealth and social justice. Else we establish a precedent that truly denies protection not just to some loosely defined "outsider," but to our ideals, to our communities, and to ourselves.
March 13, 2016 May 1, 2016
Do We Watch, Enter, or Just Talk?
[After spending a week with some biological ick of some kind, I am just now returning to my writing, with this entry for Three Line Tales. See Sonya's latest post for rules and photo.]
Do we watch the circus of politics?
Or do we dare enter the arena, wrestling suit and mud in hand?
Or should we just talk amongst ourselves?
Photo by Samuel Zeller. Concept for "Three Line Tales" by Sonya, and her blog Only 100 Words.
The Honor of Teaching, and Responsibility of Citizenship
Quote of the Week: In a completely rational society, the best of us would be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something less, because passing civilization along from one generation to the next ought to be the highest honor and the highest responsibility anyone could have. –Lee Iacocca
The one-time chairman of GM (and president of Ford before that) would certainly be appalled to discover the condition of the Detroit Public Schools today, the very opposite of the high pedestal upon which he preferred education to be hoisted. With teacher "sick-outs," and protests against Governor Snyder's emergency management controls over DPS, and with schools closed and budgets out of money, the conservative approach toward privatizing and profiteering our education system (and a financial "bottom-line" focus rather than a student-centered approach) has wrecked our communities, and the prospects of our next generation. Instead of being able to compete globally with children educated for the 21st century, Detroit school-children under the Republicans' oversight are almost entirely doomed to lives of dependence, poverty, and crime.
When Republicans claim to represent "family values," they are hard pressed to explain how policies which damn entire families to perpetual poverty and servitude support modern American families. "Family values" should focus on the long-term sustainability of the family as a unit, including most importantly the economic prospects of the children. Republicans merely use the term "family values," however, to promote the interests of those at the top (and, of course, the racial composition of the elite) against potential competitors from the middle and bottom. Therefore, in the Republican view, teachers should not get the best pay and our schools should not be revered as temples of learning. Instead, teachers are "eating off the public dole." Schools are merely used as areas to test a new permissiveness in gun rights, and as opportunities for the corporations supporting Republican candidates to run for-profit, low-achieving charter schools.
There is a simple solution to this problem; but that solution has been available and avoided for years, especially in the state of Michigan. It can be done, but it is difficult; and our citizens have long avoided implementing it. That solution is a return to the City on a Hill, the building of a community of care and welfare, based on the financial strength of our wealthy (and a tax basis determined to use that wealth for the public good, as argued by John Winthrop in his sermon on the nature of a Christian nation in the 1630s). That solution must be implemented either by the Democrats or by more progressive parties, as the Republicans are increasingly hostile to the formation of Winthrop's vision of a Christian nation, of a City on a Hill, and of a community working together. That solution requires liberals and progressives to vote, often and always; and to participate in the political process constantly (through letter/email writing, calls to officials, and self-education on issues and candidates). That solution requires work, and an admission of individual responsibility for our community (something more than a "hobby," more than an "interest in politics," but an obligation of citizenship in a democratic society). We can build Iacocca's pedestal for education; but only if we choose to work for it.
Headline image: "Colin Powell Academy in Detroit, Michigan, one of the many schools abandoned since 2009." Caption from rt.com; photo © Joshua Lott / Reuters.
Riding Uber into the Jobless Future
Professional taxicab drivers are fighting for survival in a new economy which is looking hungrily to replace them with other means of transporting customers. New business models like those of Uber and Lyft are threatening drivers, customers, and bystanders alike; while at the same time offering potentially lower fares (outside of peak business hours) and wait-times. However, cab drivers are joining a long list of people replaced by new technologies: grocery-store clerks, dockworkers, retail employees (especially from book, music, and video stores), etc. As the twenty-first century proceeds, it is replacing jobs with apps; and concentrating more and more wealth at the very top. The "trickle" of wealth to the lower classes by way of employment is rapidly drying up, as global information networks insulate the wealthy from the working classes through new lower-wage and even jobless models of business. There are three problems at work, which are creating a new jobless economy, and are associated with, respectively, the business models of Uber, Wal-Mart, and Amazon.
The Uber Problem
The first problem with our transitioning economy is the Uberization of the work force and of our business models; replacing well-paid, full-time, professional workers (and the labor organizations that protect them) with lower-paid amateurs. While Uber drivers bring in somewhat more revenue per hour for short shifts than do cab drivers (who make much more money per hour for long shifts than for short ones), they are also entirely self-financing (car, gas, insurance, maintenance, etc.), unlike most cab drivers (who depend on their companies to provide some or all of their operating costs). Such jobs are often intended by car-owners to supplement other income, or while looking for a better job, rather than (as for most cab drivers) serving as a long-term profession. The Uber model of transportation has been deconstructing the regulatory environment designed to keep us safe, allowing drivers to work without undergoing local police investigation (generally required in most places for cab-driving licenses). They also drive cars that are not inspected by any authority, in contrast to expensively inspected taxicabs. Uber drivers have been involved in many physical and sexual assaults on passengers and bystanders, an ugly reality that existing regulations for taxi companies (which do not apply to new app-based amateur driving companies) have until now helped to prevent.
Unfortunately the dangers posed by Uber to our communities are not limited to the immediate physical dangers posed by improperly licensed and unvetted drivers, operating uninspected vehicles, and with no police intervention in the employment of potentially dangerous individuals (with criminal backgrounds, or with high accident rates). Uber is also teaching passengers that any idiot with a car can replace a professional driver operating an expensively fitted, inspected, and insured vehicle. Uber is teaching us to disrespect professional means of income-earning, and to prefer a cheap but dangerous alternative. Uber is teaching us to prefer a less effective and less prosperous economy, and offers us discounted car rides in return for our safety, our jobs, and our souls. As the Uber model passes (as it ultimately will) to cargo transport and other business sectors, our economy will replace more full-time jobs with low-pay, part-time work. Wealth will be created for the designers of Uber, Lyft, and other services. But such services are also transforming middle-class jobs of the 20th century into lower-class jobs of the 21st century. Uberization is driving our income inequality to new heights, concentrating wealth and diminishing jobs as drivers themselves make less money and consume less, driving demand and production down as well.
Uber is not alone, nor is it the first manifestation of this problem. From the 1950s through the 1980s, grocery-store clerks and cashiers earned income levels closer to the middle class. Such workers had to memorize many prices and categories of products, and operate complicated registers. They required training and experience to do their jobs properly; and could only be fired at the expense of the investment in training a new employee. However, the development of bar-codes and scanners enabled grocery and retail stores to hire lower-paid workers, and to deploy new workers with little training and experience (enabling bosses to replace more easily those wanting raises or organizing for benefits). A career profession became merely an entry-level job for adolescents; and a job capable of supporting a small family became a minimum-wage job pushing the professional into looking for work elsewhere.
A similar phenomenon took place in the 1960s, when factory farming began replacing family farming. Factory farms employ low-wage workers with little to no experience (often illegal immigrants, including young children), and provide consumers with cheap food that also pushed family farm workers into seeking work elsewhere (perhaps becoming grocery-store clerks, or cab drivers). While few would argue that high food prices are good for a population, the path from that step led to the replacement of other middle-class professions with part-time and/or lower-class pay rates, such as our retail workers and cab drivers. Uber is merely the latest nail in the coffin of the middle-class worker, a coffin we have been building since the middle class first expanded so successfully in the middle of the last century.
The Wal-Mart Problem
Another effect impacting our economy is its growing Walmartization. Wal-Mart has sought to provide low-cost products to consumers by encouraging (some have said, "forcing") American manufacturers to push manufacturing jobs to overseas locations. In order to gain customers, Wal-Mart has deliberately deconstructed the American middle class by shipping overseas the jobs on which we depend. Consumers giving their money to Wal-Mart pay for the privilege of exporting and eliminating our jobs, our economic security, our union rights, our tax revenues, and our social services.
As with Uber, Wal-Mart is of course not acting alone. Since the 1990s NAFTA has helped to globalize American manufacturing. And the US has been bleeding manufacturing jobs for decades, as foreign nations have seen increases in educational levels, technical familiarity, physical health, and political stability; while also remaining below US rates of income (all things encouraging ever more investment in new overseas plant capital). However, Wal-Mart developed a specifically targeted plan for pushing manufacturing overseas, and at the same time earned opprobrium for keeping its own workers at low wages (forcing many to seek government-funded welfare and social support), and for combating workers in their attempts to organize. The company has not only exported middle-class American jobs; but also maintains pressure on the labor market to keep wages at or below poverty levels. The company's workers become absolutely dependent on companies like Wal-Mart for their cheap food and products, the only products they can then afford. Wal-Mart cooperates with Uber and other sectors in deprofessionalizing the labor market (by continuing to push retail wages lower), and in depressing wages and income. Wal-Mart has been steadily converting the middle class into the lower class (driving down consumption and demand and production); and the working class into the unemployed.
The Amazon Problem
The final effect driving us toward universal unemployment is the Amazonification of business; and the related automation of all work areas. Amazon has amassed an enormous financial empire by replacing "brick and mortar" businesses with instantaneous touch-screen or keyboard shopping by computer, phone, or tablet. In the process, the "Amazon Effect" has put out of business bookstores (including major chains like Borders), record stores (also killed by iTunes and other music-sharing technologies), and video stores (with an even more forceful shove by businesses like Netflix). These impacts have hurt large companies and family-owned businesses alike; and they have killed off more jobs than the growing empires of Amazon and other such companies have created. Amazon's deconstruction of "brick and mortar" retail operations did not merely (like Uber) push middle-class jobs into the lower class; or (like Wal-Mart) push middle-class jobs overseas. Instead, the jobs lost to the Amazon business model (and to data services that replace stores providing books, music, and video) are lost completely, and forever. For example, Netflix has effectively replaced video stores across the nation; and yet it currently employs fewer than 4,000 people (Netflix has also, in contrast to Wal-Mart, been lauded for its exemplary treatment of its employees; but that is a standard that only a relative few can enjoy).
Some businesses have survived the scorched earth left by the "Amazon effect" by emulating the workerless e-commerce model (like Barnes and Noble, which while still maintaining physical book-stores sells a great deal of its merchandise through its automated online ordering system). Other businesses have survived by becoming tributary fiefdoms of the Amazon empire, selling their products through Amazon's order processing service (which provides small businesses with a potentially global clientele). But the failure of 20th century, labor-intensive retail to compete with 21st century, information-intensive business models tells the full story. Even though some businesses have held on by bowing to the inevitable, the inevitable has killed far more business opportunities and actual jobs than it has created. Those opportunities created on the information super-highway have largely been monopolized by a few powerful corporations like Amazon, Netflix, Apple, etc.
As with Uber and Wal-Mart, Amazon did not create this phenomenon, but jammed its foot down on the accelerator of the process already underway. Other technologies have also helped to decimate the work force while creating – and concentrating – wealth for those at the top. In the 1960s, for example, the development of the now ubiquitous "TEU" ("twenty-foot equivalent unit") steel shipping container revolutionized cargo transportation (especially at the links connecting road, rail, and sea transport). Since the container was first used, sea cargo traffic has exploded, carrying a vastly greater tonnage of cargo across the seas than ever before – and has literally decimated the dockworkers as a work force, replacing hundreds of thousands of manual laborers with about a tenth of their number of automated crane specialists and software engineers. Some of the income changes from the container revolution have strengthened the middle class; the few longshoremen working today are very well paid. But roughly nine times that number have had to retire or find other work. A great deal of wealth has been concentrated into a smaller population by the containers, which helped to trigger globalization, as the costs of ocean shipping fell to preposterously low levels. Wal-Mart could never have pushed manufacturing overseas without the container's effect on almost eliminating shipping costs from the equation. But that wealth has also been insulated from the lower classes by the container revolution of the 1960s; and by the information systems of the 21st century.
The container revolution and the "Amazon effect" are the results of automation and the improvement of technology and software. Grocery stores also automate and eliminate jobs by using self-checkout lanes (enabling a smaller work force to manage larger numbers of customers and products). Apps replace workers and specialists. Expensive farming technology pushes small farms into larger, automated corporate farms employing less than 2% of the US labor force. Computer-controlled 3D "printers" are projected in the next two decades to replace many current manufacturing models – as well as the workers employed by them. Expanding technologies are going to increase also the number and diversity of jobs lost to automation and applications, including many previously seen as "untouchable" (requiring too much dexterity, skill, creativity or intuition, etc.; all of which are now being surpassed by better technologies and software).
In the next decade, self-driving cars are going to replace many of today's cars. The self-driving car will launch the next work-force revolution. Customers frustrated by sketchy and unstable Uber drivers (who by then will have out-priced cab drivers into obsolescence) will enjoy new services which simply send them self-driving car-bots. Owners of self-driving cars will realize that having their car sitting in the driveway, or in the parking lot at work, is a lost opportunity to have the car make money. New apps will enable owners of such cars to release their cars to leasing services until they need them back. Fewer and fewer people will own (and buy) cars, as it becomes easier and cheaper to simply share cars through such systems. And fewer people will make them. Soon, no one will be driving cars for a living. And in the meantime, the information revolution will find other, new ways for the rich to make money without having to share profits with pesky employees.
Into the Jobless Economy We Go!
These three effects are combining to create the new, jobless economy of the 21st century. Uberization and related effects are helping to deconstruct middle-class incomes and our respect for middle-class professions. Walmartization is transferring ever more jobs overseas, and maintaining ever more poor people on low-level incomes that force their dependence on government assistance. Amazonification and automation are reducing and eliminating the work force entirely, insulating wealth from the need to employ people at all. These effects are progressively transforming capitalism from a labor-intensive means of generating wealth (which "shares" at least a portion of the wealth with the working classes responsible for actually creating it) into an information-intensive model no longer requiring workers. Conservatives have longed argued against the maintenance of welfare systems, insisting that the poor are somehow encouraged to avoid work and stay poor if such supports are available. They conclude that the poor should instead be encouraged to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" through productive employment. This argument is rapidly approaching the same obsolescence faced by dockworkers, retail workers, and cab drivers, in an economy hemorrhaging jobs as rapidly as it concentrates its remaining wealth at the top.
The jobless economy also inhibits the formation of small businesses by those without inherited or pre-established wealth. Small businesses cannot compete on the information superhighway with major corporations able to make and exploit new applications and technologies (and economies of scale) which push their operating costs below those of local businesses. Local businesses are dependent on many other large businesses to move outside and attract global clientele. As the century progresses, both work and entrepreneurial opportunities are going to be increasingly monopolized at the top, and are going to be increasingly absent at the middle and bottom.
Ultimately, there are three places these effects can lead us. The first is the realization that, if people are not going to have either work or business opportunities available to them, then the state is just going to have to provide them with food, clothing, housing, medical care, etc. This will create the conservatives' ultimate nightmare: the total welfare state. An uglier option is a dystopian future of mass hunger, disease, suffering, and death – as well as controls by the state of reproduction, to keep the useless unemployed from breeding. Finally, a third path takes us through violent revolution by the hungry masses; although that option will likely still lead to one or the other of the first two (welfare state, or dystopia of hunger and death). Are you ready to explore these exciting new vistas? Then, hop into an Uber car, load up your Kindle, and enjoy the ride!
Headline image from ClubZone, "Uber vs Taxi vs Driverless Cars?"


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Everything you need to know about the new £1 coin and £10 note - and what to do with your old ones
Here's everything you need to know about the new monies and what to do when they come into circulation.
The First World War Aviation £2 coin, Sir Isaac Newton 50p coin, the Jane Austen £2 coin, and the twelve-sided £1 coin (Image: PA)
The new £1 coins arrive in March - and you have until Sunday, October 15 to spend or bank your old ones, after which they cease to be legal tender.
The round pound was first introduced in 1983 and replaced the £1 note. Since the release of the coin Royal Mint has produced more than 2.2 billion of them.
When the 12-sided £1 comes into circulation soon, don't be surprised if you don't see it straight away as it will take time for it to filter into general use.
The rare £2 and 50p coins which are worth much more than their face value
Why is the new £1 hailed as the most secure coin in the world?
According to the Royal Mint the new coin has a number of features that make it much more difficult to counterfeit.
It's 12-sided – its distinctive shape makes it instantly recognisable, even by touch.
It's bimetallic – which means it is made of two metals. The outer ring is gold coloured (nickel-brass) and the inner ring is silver coloured (nickel-plated alloy).
There's also the latent image – an image like a hologram that changes from a £ symbol to the number 1 when the coin is seen from different angles.
The new coin also has micro-lettering on the lower inside rim on both sides of the coin, and milled edges, or grooves on alternate sides.
On top of all that, there's a hidden high security feature built into the coin to protect it from counterfeiting in the future.
When will we see the new Bank of England £10 note?
The Bank of England is keeping tight-lipped about the official release date of the new tenner.
We do know it will be made from polymer - the same material used to make the £5 - which came into circulation in September last year (following on from the Scottish polymer fiver).
It will be smaller than the current £10 note but larger than the new fiver.
There are also plans for a new £20 note in 2020.
Rare £5 note up for sale on eBay for £300,000 - here's why
What happens when the old £10 goes out of circulation?
As we don't have an official release date of the new note it's difficult to say when you need to spend your old ones by.
However you will have a few months, to either spend or bank them, when the polymer note comes into ciruclation.
If your bank, building society or Post Office is not willing to accept your old notes you can exchange them with the Bank of England in London by post or in person.
Other new money set for release in 2017
This year there will also be two new £2 coins - one commemorating Jane Austen and the other a First World War Aviation coin. There will also be a Sir Isaac Newton 50p piece.
However, the new coins will not be replacing the 50 pence pieces and £2s you currently have - they will simply be added to the circulation of coins already out.
New £5 notes could make you hundreds of pounds - but NEVER do this to one
West EndA look at Windows In the West - one of the most iconic depictions of life in GlasgowWe look at the story behind the painting that is a fixture in the homes of many Glaswegians and which captures a snapshot of tenement life in the city like no other.