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Tag: northcarolina
Cataloochee Valley
It is the beginning of autumn here on the East Coast. I can feel it in the softness of the sunshine and in the nippy breeze that flows in and out of our home; 'tis in the hint of colour as the leaves on some trees in the park have started to flame out into brilliant reds, others have graduated to lime green, the rest are plain ol' slowpokes holding onto their sheaths of green; I can feel the change in the simple pleasure of walking a couple of miles to the library, which might not be too a distressing figure at all, but smack in the middle of summer and winter, oh it feels far far away; there's also the leonine golden retriever who sits with his old master everyday in the park and seems to have turned a deeper russet to welcome the season. Maybe it's just my fancy, but he looks as happy as I feel. Now how the scenes would change if we were on the high ridges of the Great Smoky Mountains, where the woods are dense and human footfall rare, where it is the rutting season for the elks.
As warmer colours seep into the foliage around them, primal instincts (and love?) take over the workings of the animal kingdom in the valley called Cataloochee, where even as I write, the bull elks must find themselves bugling to the cows.
Cades Cove despite its lush beauty and picturesque meadows started to feel like a tourist's thoroughfare when we hit the dirt roads that winded higher and higher up through Cataloochee that scooches within two main valleys, Big Cataloochee and Little Cataloochee, soldiered by 6,000 foot high ridges. We found a place of gravel roads, switchbacks and old steel girder bridges which together stitched up divides, ridges and narrow valleys.
All in all, it was a cathedral of silence around us. Not a single soul to be met as we passed by water power stations and old country stores, brooks and mountain cemeteries.
We were in 'Gadalutsi' of the Cherokees. They hunted and fished here just as they did in Cades Cove. The fertile land around the creeks here attracted the attention of European settlers who trickled in during the mid-1800s and bought the land from the tribes. They started calling it Cataloochee, possibly their stuttering take on the Cherokee name which referred to the straight-backed conifers lining the ridges. It is said to have been an amicable arrangement. The settlers mastered the Cherokee tongue and they co-existed peacefully with the tribes. Some even helped out those Cherokees who did not set out on the infamous Trail of Tears (in 1838 the tribes were forced to move across 1,200 miles on foot to present-day Oklahoma).
It seems fitting then that the descendants of those Cherokees, who clung to their land, should live on a reservation nearby today. At the Oconaluftee Indian Village they showcase their old ways of living to gaping tourists. We caught a whiff of it when we saw a wizened man there jump around in a towering headdress upon his head, a war bonnet. I have no doubt that his audience watched him with rapt attention.
But let me not veer from the Cataloochee which in the late 1800s to early 1900s had a community of just above a thousand people. It was the most lived-in place in the Smoky Mountains. Those pioneers grew corn for a living, set up grist mills, reared cattle for beef, sent their children to two-room schools, crafted shoes out of felt hats, sang of faith and participated in revivals with the arrival of autumn, brewed some 'wicked' moonshine, and generally, they lived the rustic life. When tourists discovered the beauty of these mountains and came knocking on their doors, these families boarded and charged them to fish trout in the creeks adjoining their land.
We found abandoned log houses in the valley, their rooms forlorn and empty of everything except for the fireplaces of bricks, bits and pieces of newspapers still sticking scrappily to the walls and reminding us that this was the humble life where people used paper for insulation. You could easily set up home within because you could see that the wood was sturdy.
Yet these people had abandoned their perfect little homes.
It turns out that they were asked to vacate their lands by the authorities when the Great Depression set in in the '30s. For years, lumber companies had indiscriminately destroyed batches of old forestation with their dastardly business of logging. The mountains were in a bad way. Naturalists like Horace Kephart campaigned for the preservation of this beautiful part of the world, paving the way for the creation of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which also translated into jobs for young men. It was by 1934 when President Franklin D. Roosevelt granted it national park status that a whole mountain community had also lost their homes.
That is how we left it behind, the land which seems to exist on another dimension, as if no one had ever set foot within it except for the legacy of those early settlers which tell a different story. The voice in the video with its Transatlantic accent states succinctly: "National Parks are not built. God made them in the beginning." But the preservation of this national park would not have got anywhere, it seems to me, without the sacrifice of these Cataloochee folks who could not have found it easy to let go of their beloved mountains.
P.S.: As usual there was no elk sighting in store for us. Not even a bear, and bears love showing up in the valley, they say. Just a fresh pile of bear doo-doo for us.
Waterville Power Station in Cataloochee
Waynesville in North Carolina
Country store, Waynesville
Pigeon River
Gravel roads in the Cataloochee Valley
Driving through Cataloochee
Fresh bear scat
Bridges and brooks
Cataloochee Overlook where the ferns grow waist high and the mountains flow into one another in smoky blue waves
Homes of the early settlers
What would it be like to live here? Just give me a library and coffee shop nearby and I would be a happy bee.
Bunkhouse where the Palmers put up tourists who came fishing in their creek
The Palmers' barn
Peeking inside the barn
You have an an iconic American architectural style right here in the Palmers' house. The dogtrot style where a passage divided the home into two sections: with kitchen and dining area in one and living quarters in the other half. In those early times of no electricity, it allowed the passage of breeze through the house.
Way before we drove into Salem, part of the hyphenated metropolis of Winston-Salem, my mind had travelled before my body. It had daydreamed about The Salem of the witch trials. The prospect of chancing upon stories of witchcraft, swirled in my thoughts, of the detail being in the devil just as in the case of the Pendle Hill witches of Lancaster. Could the famed Lancastrian occultists have given their Salem counterparts a run for their money, who knows (it's such tosh anyway).
In Salem the absence of the bad girls were notable. Where were they? Adi shrugged, saying: "I was hardly interested in the history of any place before you came into life, was I?" Yeah Watson, we should have headed to New England.You might be an an ace at the memory game, but my mind is a sieve, dear reader. On an important aside, there are 26 Salems in the US.
Salem of North Carolina did not have the witches of its Massachusetts namesake, but it had the Moravians. Good old people of the faith with a solid moral compass, whose single men and women lived in the Single Brothers House and the Single Sisters House, respectively. The staid nature of their lives must have been challenged by the wilderness of North Carolina in which they found themselves when they arrived here in 1766, all the way from Pennsylvania. I think of them as adventurers who built a town from nothing, because there was no Winston then. It was just Salem.
After we had left behind the tall official buildings in Winston and its modern high street along with its brick town hall, it was as if we crossed an invisible wall into another time. Old clapboard houses, brick and dark timber-framed houses turned up along a leafy street, signs of tradesmen hanging from the eaves of some.
All of this linked to an event from the early 1400s. Years before Martin Luther, there was Jan Hus in Bohemia who daring to challenge the practices of the Roman Catholic Church was naturally burnt at the stake. His followers, who called themselves the Unity of Brethren, left the land and travelled to Saxony (Germany). Some took off to England. The rest of the Moravians, as they were called in England, moved to the New World.
Now the pity is that we had to vamoose. Our end game was a secluded cabin up in the Great Smoky Mountains. Tennessee was a four-hour drive from Winston-Salem, including stops. More if you slept in a McDonald's car park after the torpor induced by a locally brewed ale from Salem (we are hard-pressed to pass up on liquid gold). As a result, we did not have time to wander into the living history museum of Old Salem, where they have tradesmen going about their various trades, for the sake of the curious visitor. Bakers, blacksmiths, tinsmiths, gunsmiths, carpenters operate within the walls of Old Salem, in a bid to forget the modern world.
What we had instead was a gander at the charming architecture around us, thinking that this was the kind of town we should have seen bathed in the warm glow of gas lamps. Met a woman sauntering down the road in her old Germanic dress of embroidered bodice and waistcoat, long skirt and pinafore, her hair masked in a white cap. Somewhere from afar the clip-clop clip-clop sounds of a horse carriage reaching our ears in the tranquility of the night.
However, it was not too bad, what we ended up with. Actually no, it was nothing less than an esoteric triumph. Pumpkin muffins (oh yes, I have had my headstart on autumn) slathered (a touch too) greedily with honey butter, and a scrummy pecan pie, following Adi's un-Moravian meal of beef burger and mine of a traditional chicken pie smothered in a thick broth. All ravished at a historic tavern where George Washington had dined during his tour of the Southern states in the spring of 1791.
The Colours are Gold & Black at Winston-Salem
My connection to the southern town of Winston-Salem in North Carolina is my husband. He lived and studied in this sweet sleepy place, laid out by a cigarette baron and his philanthropic wife. It is the town where they till late handed out cigarettes for free in offices, even at the university that the same baron funded in the mid-1800s. Shocking? Hell yeah, but you see how the world has changed for the better, even though we might carp about it from time to time.
In more ways than one, the story of tobacco tycoon R.J. Reynolds and his wife Katharine Reynolds is intertwined with the story of this institution that is sprawled over 300 acres of the couples' property. Wake Forest University where Adi completed his masters in business administration. Three golden years of his life, he maintains, because it is here that he sprouted wings. He was living away from home for the first time, making friends who would last him a lifetime, meeting people from diverse cultures and professions. Truck drivers, military officers, biologists …you get the drift. It was suddenly so that he discovered the irresistible tug of living life on his own terms, inculcating the lesson of independence which we all need and prize at some point in life.
Eight years after passing out, he found himself back upon the rolling campus of his university, exactly a week ago. I do not need to spell out what he was experiencing because we all have our own bank of emotions to tap into. The kinds that well up our throats palpably upon return to beloved places that have been part and parcel of the formative years of our lives.
On a toasty hot Sunday, we were walking around its massive grounds. Adi taking me with pride to his familiar stomping grounds. The beautiful brick buildings built with flourishes of of colonial architecture; the ash trees in the compound draped in toilet paper, a beloved and curious tradition, the students refer to as 'Rolling the Quad', and in which they find self-worth in 'tossing like a boss'; the photogenic chapel with its green steeple reaching for the skies where personalities such as Dr. Martin King Luther Jr., and former presidents Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush, delivered discourses and addresses, to what I imagine to packed audiences, and which years and years later hosted Adi and his batch's hooding ceremony; the cafeteria where Adi grabbed lunch, when the cook would rustle him up an indulgent plate of aglio e olio, it not being part of the menu. The black and gold colours of the school. It was rather a heady rush for my sweetheart.
Such were our rambles made of last Sunday. Peppered by a surplus of stories and memories.
All because hundreds of years ago, the power couple of their day, the Reynolds induced the college that Wake Forest once was, before it was elevated to university status, to move to Winston-Salem from a bucolic little town called Wake Forest a 100 miles away.
As it drizzles away this soggy Sunday, I think of this son of a tobacco farmer from Virginia who moved to Winston (then Winston and Salem were separate towns), innovated packaged cigarettes because at the time men were used to rolling their own tobacco, married Katharine Smith of Mount Airy, and used her sound business acumen to cement the fortunes of his tobacco company. Directed by her goodwill, R.J. allowed himself to be channelled into acts of goodness about town. And hundreds of years later, there was my husband and his band of friends, touched by the legacy of this man whose grandson went on to become an anti-smoking activist for a smoke-free America.
Isn't life just the most fascinating and amusing business, made up as it is of emotions, of beginnings and ends, of ends and beginnings, wrapped in boxes of paradox?
Meeting Adi's friends from Wake Forest University. A warm and fantastic lot, with wives and tiny tots now. Thanks Heidi and Sachin for making us so comfortable in your beautiful home, and Bharath and Jyothi, for the splendid night of drinking and reminiscing at your place, with a generous amount of buttery popcorn and stirring debates. I don't know why we did not take more photographs that night except for this dull, dark one.
When three friends meet after 8 long years at the cool dark bar of one.
The town of Winston dominated by the tallest building in town at 100 North Main Street
Winston is the home of BB&T Bank
The day was enveloped by dramatic clouds. The cloud-catcher in me was mesmerised.
Wait Chapel
The Wake Forest Logo — and in the backdrop is Hearn Plaza
Wandering through the many corridors of the various buildings
At the former building for business studies where he sat imbibing lessons that were life changing
Adi's former home in Wake Forest that he shared with his friend, Sachin.
Stories abound here. The most prominent being of a woman who washed her car in the shortest of shorts on weekends. I could picture the boys' faces.
When the years come rushing back, because let's face it, there is no joy like letting nostalgia wash over you with abandon, and awe at the changes that time does wreak.


text:
#pragma once

#include <VoxieBackend/VoxieBackend.hpp>

#include <VoxieBackend/Component/ComponentTypeInfo.hpp>

#include <VoxieBackend/IO/Importer.hpp>

namespace vx {
template <typename T>
class SharedFunPtr;
class PropertyBase;

namespace io {
class VOXIEBACKEND_EXPORT ExtensionImporter : public vx::io::Importer {
 public:
  ExtensionImporter(const QString& name, const FilenameFilter& filter,
                    const QList<QSharedPointer<PropertyBase>>& properties);
  ~ExtensionImporter() override;

  // throws Exception
  QSharedPointer<OperationResultImport> import(
      const QString& fileName, bool doCreateNode,
      const QMap<QString, QVariant>& properties) override;
};

VOXIEBACKEND_EXPORT QSharedPointer<vx::io::ExtensionImporter> parseImporter(
    const QJsonObject& json,
    const vx::SharedFunPtr<QList<QSharedPointer<PropertyBase>>(
        const QJsonObject&)>& parseProperties);
}  // namespace io

template <>
struct VOXIEBACKEND_EXPORT ComponentTypeInfoExt<vx::io::Importer> {
  static const char* jsonName() { return "Importer"; }
  static QSharedPointer<vx::Component> parse(
      const QJsonObject& json,
      const vx::SharedFunPtr<QList<QSharedPointer<PropertyBase>>(
          const QJsonObject&)>& parseProperties) {
    return vx::io::parseImporter(json, parseProperties);
  }
};
}  // namespace vx

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


For those of you who follow my Facebook Page, this will be a duplicate but even so – still important to share and understand. We need our girlfriends.
I cannot begin to fathom what my life would be like "post divorce", or post any relationship, if I had not had the support of my girlfriends.


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Now Reading: Texas Lawmakers Took on Sexual Assault this Session, but Largely Ignored Sexual Harassment
Texas Lawmakers Took on Sexual Assault this Session, but Largely Ignored Sexual Harassment
The state added more than $75 million toward services for sexual assault survivors, but failed to improve protections for workers after pushback from the business lobby.
Activists at a sexual assault legislation rally outside the Texas Capitol. Kate Groetzinger
Kate Groetzinger May 30, 2019, 6:00 am CST
During a press conference at the beginning of the legislative session in January, state Representative Victoria Neave praised women for speaking out about sexual assault and harassment on social media and promised to pass legislation to help them.
"We are ready to make history again," the Dallas Democrat said. "We are in a special time right now that has created an environment where women have found the bravery to speak out. We understand when people say 'Me Too.'"
Now that the session is over, advocates and lawmakers say Neave and others who prioritized sexual assault legislation followed through on that promise. That's largely thanks to increased awareness of issues such as the rape kit backlog, as well as a rare bipartisan consensus and a large surplus in the state budget.
"This is the most significant session I've experienced, in terms of budget investments and smart, strategic bills related to sexual assault," said Chris Kaiser, policy director for Texas Association Against Sexual Assault. "It exceeded our expectations in every way."
All told, lawmakers put more than $75 million in new funding toward helping survivors of sexual assault and passed bills overhauling how the state handles the collection and storage of sexual assault evidence, extending the amount of time survivors of childhood sexual abuse have to bring charges, requiring special training for law enforcement, and strengthening Title IX policies at public and private schools.
State Representative Victoria Neave, D-Dallas, speaks at a January press conference about sexual assault legislation at the Capitol. Kate Groetzinger
Kaiser, who has been with the advocacy group for 10 years, said some of the success this session was a result of Neave's work over the last two years. Neave convened a task force in April 2018 to study systemic issues related to sexual assault and harassment, then filed legislation based on the findings. The solutions in her bills range from expediting payments to hospitals that provide sexual assault exams to increasing legal protections for people who are vulnerable to sexual assault. But the most important bill she passed, according to Kaiser, is House Bill 8.
HB 8 extends the statute of limitations for cases in which sexual assault evidence exists but has not been tested or matched with a suspect, sets strict timelines for the testing of rape kits and requires a new audit of all backlogged rape kits in the state. The legislation builds on the work of former state senator Wendy Davis, who brought attention to Texas' rape kit backlog in 2011. Since then, lawmakers have had mixed success pushing for reforms to ensure kits are tested more promptly, such as increasing funding for state crime labs and setting timelines for testing. But none of these were as comprehensive as HB 8, nor come with as much funding. As of 2017, more than 2,000 rape kits were still collecting dust in Texas while victims waited for justice.
"Last session the budget office thought they had this issue solved," Kaiser said, "As we peeled the layers back, we realized it was a bigger problem than we thought."
In total, the state budget includes over $55 million in new funding for rape kit testing. Neave worked with Representative Donna Howard, D-Austin, and Senator Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound, to secure $50 million in new funding for the Department of Public Safety to invest in doubling the capacity of its crime labs, which test rape kits for a large portion of law enforcement agencies in the state. The budget also includes $5 million for the University of North Texas to conduct rape kit testing, as well as $1.8 million for Sam Houston State University to train new toxicology lab techs.
"This is the most significant session I've experienced, in terms of budget investments and smart, strategic bills related to sexual assault."
In addition to funding rape kit testing, lawmakers boosted statewide access to sexual assault nurse examiners, who perform rape kit exams at certified facilities and hospitals. Howard, who is on the House Appropriations Committee, secured $6 million to create a grant program to incentivize hospitals to offer sexual assault exams. Nelson, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, passed a bill and secured $1 million to create a telehealth center that will allow some sexual assault exams in underserved areas to be done remotely.
Howard also successfully passed a bill and attached $1.3 million to create a sexual assault task force in the Governor's Office to oversee the improvements at state crime labs, as well as to collect data and make legislative suggestions about other ways to improve services for survivors. This work follows Howard's efforts in 2017 to find long-term solutions to issues related to sexual assault, including passing legislation last session to create a statewide system to track rape kits that is set to launch this September.
House Speaker Dennis Bonnen and state Representative Donna Howard, D-Austin, on the floor during budget debate in March 2019. Kolten Parker
"This was the time that it all came together," Howard said. "Having additional dollars to work with this session made that possible, as did having such a raised consciousness among legislators."
While these bills sailed through both chambers with bipartisan support, legislation addressing sexual harassment was met with less enthusiasm. Almost as many bills were filed to help victims of sexual harassment as survivors of sexual assault, but fewer passed. Advocates say that's likely because many of the harassment bills sought to increase protections for workers — a tougher political ask.
"Any time you try to amend the labor code to increase worker protections, you're going to run up against the business lobby," said Kaiser. "There are more natural opponents in that area than in the area of sexual assault."
Neave filed eight bills related to harassment, none of which passed. The solutions in the bills ranged from outlawing employers' use of nondisclosure agreements to increasing the maximum amount employers can be fined in harassment lawsuits. Though some of the bills were voted out of committee, they failed to reach the House floor. Neave confirmed that this was due to pushback from the business lobby.
"I think we have to have a serious conversation and get them at the table, because this is not acceptable," she told the Observer.
The most important harassment bill of the session died in the House after it was not brought up for a vote before the midnight deadline on May 21. Senate Bill 46, which had more than 50 co-sponsors, would have allowed workers at businesses with fewer than 15 employees to file sexual harassment claims with the Texas Workforce Commission. Currently, such small businesses are immune from these claims, meaning nearly 300,000 workers in Texas have limited legal recourse against workplace sexual harassment.
Freshman state Representative Erin Zwiener, D-Driftwood, who carried the bill in the House, said she was disappointed House leadership didn't prioritize the measure, which she plans to refile next session.
"I find it extra frustrating, because while we did do some good work this session around sexual assault, we didn't do that much about sexual harassment," she said. "And so much about the #MeToo movement was about sexual harassment and how prevalent that is in the workplace."
Kate Groetzinger was a legislative fellow at the Texas Observer. She is a graduate from the master's in the journalism program at The University of Texas at Austin, where she focused on audio reporting and podcasting. Kate now serves as a reporter at Utah's NPR station, as a Report for America Corps Member. A native Texan, Kate hails from Waco and has lived in Houston, San Antonio and Austin.
Read More: Donna Howard, From Instagram, sexual assault, sexual harassment, Texas Legislature, Victoria Neave, women's rights
New lawsuits by transgender people challenge bans on name changes for those convicted of crimes. by Beth Schwartzapfel

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


A round of applause is deserved.
It's hard to get the images of the Humboldt Broncos tragic bus crash out of your head. Ever since it happened the images have been everywhere, social media, newspapers and on TV.
The tragedy especially hit the global hockey community extremely hard. Even NHL players know what it's like to have to spend a long night on the road driving in between games.
Now one of those NHL players is stepping up to send the community of Humboldt a very special gift. And this isn't just any NHL player reaching out, it's Sidney Crosby, who for years has been seen as one the of greatest players to ever put on a pair of skates.
After seeing images and hearing stories from the bus crash Crosby asked the head equipment manager of the Pittsburgh Penguins to make a customized jersey to send to the community.
The name plate on the back of the jersey reads "BRONCOS" and is signed by every single member of the Pittsburgh Penguins.
You can see an image of the jersey below.
Crosby also signed some photos specifically for the survivors of the bus crash with the message "Stay strong. We're thinking of you," according to the Penguins twitter account.
All of it is now on the way to Humboldt.
The Penguins also donated $20,000 to the GoFundMe page set up to support the victims and families of those involved in the crash.
So good on Sidney Crosby and the Penguins for stepping up and giving the Humboldt community the support they need during this obviously difficult time.


text:
Is Jim Carrey insufferable?: The Court hears the arguments.
For the prosecution, enter the attorney, Sir Poncey Impeccable, Esq. For the defense, Sr. Olaf "Ace" Ipkiss.
Mr. Impeccable begins the inquiry by citing the numerous breaches of good taste Mr. Carrey has perpetrated upon the public, to wit: when he "as Ace Ventura, bent over, hands on rump, ventriloquiz[es] through parted butt cheeks," not to mention assorted other indignities, many of them in Dumb and Dumber.
Barrister "Ace" rejoins, protesting that Mr. Carrey's comedic gifts are enormous, and not limited to the physical bravado he displayed even in some of his earliest work on In Living Color as Fire Marshall Bill and that one guy who used to leap across the background in various sketches. His face is a rare instrument (more laudatory blah blah blah--the pathos of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Truman Show, and the amazing range he exhibited in the underrated Farrelly Bros. masterpiece of crassiosity Me, Myself, and Irene. You get the picture.).
His Majesty of Good Taste Sir Impeccable sniffs that Carrey not only displays chronically poor taste in his choice of roles and in his playing of them, he also exhibits the delusions of grandeur of the actorly parvenu. Exhibit A: The Riddler in Batman Forever, a piece of overreaching (although Impeccable concedes that the problem there was as much director Joel Schumacher as Jim Carrey); Exhibit B: The Majestic.
Dragging a big fat red herring across the closely woven argument, Mr. "Ace" shamelessly introduces the claim that Mr. Impeccable would not know a comedy if it bit him in the ass. With spectacular aplomb, he presses further that Impeccable only deigns to laugh when a comedy is both in good taste and when it carries its comic conceits through to an aesthetically sound conclusion, which is to say, he never laughs. Or perhaps once a quarter century, which is, statistically, never.
Sir Impeccable spies an argumentative opening, because while his standards for comedy may be high (the claim that he "wouldn't know a comedy if it bit him in the ass" is risible and, moreover, itself in very bad taste, especially in a courtroom, the temple, after all, of justice), Mr. Carrey's work provides many occasions to examine the unfunny comedy. For example: How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Bad, bad, bad. Don't even try to weasel out of that one, Ace.
With great swagger, Mr. Ipkiss draws his big guns--his ace in the hole, as it were--out for the finish, an appreciation published recently in The Atlantic Monthly, "Existential Clown":
Yes Man, out this month, is Carrey's latest existential parable. If, as has been speculated, Hans Christian Andersen and Søren Kierkegaard shared a libertine moment in the salons and cellars of 19th-century Copenhagen, they could have brainstormed this movie over drinks. Carrey plays Carl Allen, an office drone and cautious Cuthbert who abruptly starts saying "Yes!" to everything—Korean lessons, cans of Red Bull, love, and life itself. This impulsive assent to existence is characteristically presented in the form of a gift/curse, laid upon Carrey, in this case, by a New Age positivity guru played by Terence Stamp. (The tie-in with Red Bull is a brilliant stroke, of course—no other legal product so generously extends the promise of turning you, if only for half an hour, into Jim Carrey.)
Ipkiss continues with an incisive citation from a recent interview with Larry King in which Carrey notes that comedy "helps you transcend whatever state of pain you're in. Now, everybody has a little bit of something going on. So I believe that movies are made by people in pain for people in pain." Such insight! Such humanity!
Finally, delivering the coup de grace, Ipkiss returns to the Atlantic piece:
Carrey is the single performer at his level who seems as though he'd be as happy in a Samuel Beckett play as in a summer blockbuster. Beckett would have dug him, I think—the wintry Irishman liked his clowns, the more existential the better. Mask-faced Buster Keaton turned down the role of Lucky in a 1956 production of Waiting for Godot, but nine years later Beckett managed to corral him into an almost-silent film called Film. It's a bleak little work, not unexpectedly—Keaton scurries rodent-like by city walls, his porkpie hat in place but his face scarved and averted, ducking from the glances of passersby and pausing only to take his own pulse. Rare is the Carrey movie that doesn't feature some comparable scene of evasion or solitary, self-diagnosing crisis.
And what a Lucky he would make! One can see him shuffling, hangdog, compressed, with the rope around his neck, then erupting out of nowhere into Lucky's famous semi-Pentecostal speech: "… A personal God quaquaquaqua with white beard quaquaquaqua outside time without extension who from the heights of divine apathia divine athambia divine aphasia loves us dearly with some exceptions …" "Mêlée, final vociferations," wrote Beckett in the stage directions. It's Carrey in excelsis. Perhaps he could deliver it out of his ass.
In conclusion, Yes Man is pretty darn funny with the plus of Zooey Deschanel; moreover Jim Carrey is a treasure--a treasure which may not be to your exact delight, but a treasure nonetheless. Says me, Ipkiss, and the historian. We laughed.
Posted by Lisa B. at Friday, January 09, 2009
Labels: courtroom drama, Fire Marshall Bill, indignities, insufferable or no, Jim Carrey
Bravo. Bravo. Very funny. La Lissa and I will see it.
Dr Write 7:21 PM
I thinking blogging was invented so that you could entertain me. Seriously.
Isn't there a version of "Waiting for Godot" with Steve Martin? Or did I imagine that? I saw it in Seattle with a physical comedian in one of the roles and it wasn't good. Played for too many laughs. If Carrey could rein himself in, it might be good. But I'll see Yes, Men.
And, for the record, I actually liked "Ace Ventura."
DiaNe 7:49 PM
My favorite actors are chameleons; ones who can shift into different roles in movies with different moods. Carrey is a chameleon--one who did not become such until his comedic persona was drilled into American's minds. But then, we got Truman Show, Eternal Sunshine, The Number 23... it shocked me in such a pleasant way, now I can't take my eyes off of him.
He's a gem.
A short list of books I have on my shelves that I ...
Fun stuff because I love y'all.
Lost and found.
Analog error.
Oh my gosh, no internet.
Conversation with singing son.
Writing writing writing writing writing: a report.
Agenda for this week.
The historian, it's your birthday, happy birthday,...
Elizabeth Alexander explains what poetry is to Ste...
It is time to lie down,
A moment and some words.
Things that make you feel better.
Sleep clinic.
Fine cinema.
The tome: a consideration, and other items.
You say it's your birthday.
This will fix what is wrong with your life.
The facts about today.
Poem vs. me: round 1357.
Movie reviews, sorted.
Is Jim Carrey insufferable?: The Court hears the a...
So begins a tale unequaled in fantasy literature.*
The Organize Yourselves, Prepare Every Needful Thi...
Snow day.
Thrill seeker.
Back to work.
Glistening.
The week in movies.
2009 FAQ.


text:
Hit Parade Slate
Hit Parade: Rolling in God's Royal Uptown Road Edition
How memes, streams, and crossover dreams drove the hits of the 2010s.
All decades of pop music swing between trends and fads—but the 2010s was swingier than most. From the maximalist EDM of the early '10s to the downbeat hip-hop of the late '10s, the pop pendulum oscillated more widely than you may remember. The same decade that gave us Adele's stately balladry, Katy Perry's electro-froth, and Taylor Swift's country-to-pop crossover also gave us the Weeknd's bleary indie R&B and Drake's moody rap. And Bieber! So. Much. Bieber.
With just weeks to go before the end of 2019, Hit Parade walks through the last decade of the Hot 100, year by year, and asks: What was that? Arguably, what drove pop in the '10s wasn't just the production sounds of dance music or hip-hop but the technologies we used to consume music, as the shift from downloads to streams changed the contours of chart success. And in the end, one multigenre queen navigated these shifts better than most, finding pop love in a hopeless place.
Podcast production by Justin D. Wright.
Content retrieved from: https://slate.com/podcasts/hit-parade/2019/11/the-decade-in-charts-2010-to-2019.
← The Bridge: Genre vs. Generation, '80s to '10s
Post Malone Might Finally Be Getting His Wish to Escape Hip-Hop →


For graduates looking to enter, or re-enter, the world of work, it is no longer enough to just have the theory about how things are done. Hiring managers know that, without real-life experience under your belt, it can be tough to navigate challenges and find a solution when things don't go according to plan.
At Cranfield School of Management, we are committed to helping our students to gain practical experience alongside academic business theory, to give them the best chance of success in the real world. We use our long-standing links with industry to ensure every student on our Management MSc is offered the chance to undertake an industry internship as part of the course, thereby allowing them to put their skills into practice and gain the exposure they need to grow.
Jonas Geelhaar interned at semi-conductor firm Arm Holdings in Cambridge during his Management MSc at Cranfield and now works as a consultant with PwC in his native Germany. Tim Ballard is general manager at engineering services firm Finning – one of the companies that currently hosts Cranfield MSc students.
While Jonas' internship experience didn't translate into a full-time job right away, it offered him the chance to experience working in the UK and allowed him to broaden his business knowledge and experience ready for the diverse consulting role he really wanted at PwC.
Jonas said: "The internship underlined the relation between theory and practice throughout the program. You get three months to go out and put into practice what you've learned. This is linked with your thesis, so you have your client and you solve a problem and write about that.
"For me, as a foreigner, it was a great opportunity to combine my educational experience in the UK with work experience in the UK, and fantastic preparation to later start my career at a UK company.
Several of Jonas' Management MSc classmates went on to join the companies they interned with as employees, and it wasn't just them that profited from this. Companies offering placements to Cranfield students benefit from having high-level, fresh talent with new ideas working for them for a three-month period and can use it as a testing ground.
Tim's company hosts Cranfield students every year, and he cites the quality of candidates and the opportunity for the company to learn something new as two of the major reasons for continuing to do so.


text:
Q: Read datetime value from CSV file into teradate I fairly new to teradata. I'm trying to read a csv file which has create_date column as datetime, trying to import the file into teradata temp table but unable to succeed. Please help me to resolve the issue. I have attached the sample script i have developed which working fine with date value
HandleTmpTable()
{
    bteq <<ENDSQL
        .LOGON $TARGET_DB/$TUSER,$TPWD;
/* Drop the temporary tables */
        DROP TABLE ${TTMPDB}.test;

/* Create the temporary table test */
        CREATE TABLE ${TTMPDB}.test,
            NO FALLBACK,
            NO BEFORE JOURNAL,
            NO AFTER JOURNAL
        (
        NUMBER  VARCHAR(35) NOT NULL,
        NAME            CHAR(4) NOT NULL,
        PROGRAM             VARCHAR(20),
        CODE            CHAR(4),
        C_NAME          VARCHAR(255),
        CO_NAME     VARCHAR(50),
        CREATE_DATE         date format 'YYYY/MM/DD',
        UPDATE_DATE         date format 'YYYY/MM/DD',
        EXCLUDE_IND         CHAR(1) ,
        NUMBER          VARCHAR(40),
        FLAG            SMALLINT,
        NG_FLAG     SMALLINT
        );
        .IF ERRORCODE <> 0 THEN .EXIT ERRORCODE;
        .QUIT 0;
ENDSQL
    if [ $? -ne 0 ]
    then
        Error "Unable to create the temporary table"
    fi

    Log "Temporary tables created successfully"
}
ImportFiles()
{

   bteq <<ENDSQL
        LOGON $TARGET_DB/$TUSER,$TPWD;
    DROP TABLE ${TTMPDB}.test_err1;
        DROP TABLE ${TTMPDB}.test_err2;
ENDSQL
   fastload <<ENDSQL
        .SESSIONS ${TFLSESS};
        .ERRLIMIT 1;
        .LOGON $TARGET_DB/$TUSER,$TPWD;
        SET RECORD VARTEXT ",";
        DEFINE
        file_NUMBER      (VARCHAR(35)),
                file_NAME                 (VARCHAR(4)),
                file_PROGRAM                         (VARCHAR(20)),
                file_CODE                    (VARCHAR(4)),
                file_C_NAME                    (VARCHAR(255)),
                file_CO_NAME         (VARCHAR(50)),
                file_CREATE_DATE                     (VARCHAR(10)),
                file_UPDATE_DATE                     (VARCHAR(10)),
                file_EXCLUDE_IND                     (VARCHAR(1)),
                file_NUMBER                   (VARCHAR(40)),
                file_FLAG                  (VARCHAR(6)),
                file_NG_FLAG         (VARCHAR(6))

        FILE=test.csv;

        SHOW;

    BEGIN LOADING ${TTMPDB}.test
    ERRORFILES ${TTMPDB}.test_err1, ${TTMPDB}.test_err2
    CHECKPOINT 25000000;
    INSERT INTO ${TTMPDB}.test
        (
        :file_NUMBER,
        :file_NAME,
        :file_PROGRAM,
        :file_CODE,
        :file_C_NAME,
        :file_CO_NAME,
        :file_CREATE_DATE ,
        :file_UPDATE_DATE ,
        :file_EXCLUDE_IND,
        :file_NUMBER,
        :file_FLAG,
        :fileNG_FLAG

          );

    END LOADING;

ENDSQL
    if [ $? -ne 0 ]
    then
        Error "Unable to Load the temporary table"
    else
    rm -f test.csv
    fi

    Log "Temporary tables loaded successfully"
}

sample data:
FC-A,FC,Fraud,AA,AAAA,,17JAN2019:00:00:00,17JAN2019:00:00:00,N,,,
FC-B,FC,Fraud,BB,BBBBB,,17JAN2019:00:00:00,17JAN2019:00:00:00,N,,,
FC-C,FC,Fraud,CC,CCCCC,,17JAN2019:00:00:00,17JAN2019:00:00:00,N,,,
FC-D,FC,Fraud,DD,DDDDD,,17JAN2019:00:00:00,17JAN2019:00:00:00,N,,,
FC-E,FC,Fraud,EE,EEEEE,,17JAN2019:00:00:00,17JAN2019:00:00:00,N,,,
FC-F,FC,Fraud,FF,FFFFF,,17JAN2019:00:00:00,17JAN2019:00:00:00,N,,,

Let me know how read adn write the datetime value for create_date and update_date column from csv to teradate table

A: Using the same script, below things should change for the datetime:
(1) The column type should be timestamp. Timestamp(0) would do base from the sample data.
(2) In the fastload DEFINE, the field should have a length of 18.
(3) In the fastload insert, you can use below code:
:file_CREATE_TS(format 'DDMMMYYYY:HH:MI:SS')

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
/**
 * Webpack config
 */
const path = require('path');
const webpack = require('webpack');
const ClosureCompilerPlugin = require('webpack-closure-compiler');
const config = require('../config');

const webpackConfig = {
	entry: config.js.entryPoints,
	output: {
		path: path.resolve(`${config.statix.dir}${config.statix.assetsDir}${config.statix.jsDir}`),
		publicPath: path.resolve(`${config.js.distDir}/`) + '/',
		filename: '[name].js',
	},
	devServer: {
		inline: true,
		port: 3000,
		stats: 'errors-only',
	},
	module: {
		loaders: [
			{
				test: /\.js$/,
				exclude: /node_modules/,
				loader: 'babel',
			},
		],
	},
	plugins: [],
};

if (process.env.RELEASE) {
	webpackConfig.plugins.push(
		new webpack.optimize.DedupePlugin(),

		// Reduce React builds by using the production flag
		new webpack.DefinePlugin({
			'process.env': {
				NODE_ENV: JSON.stringify('production'),
			},
		}),

		new ClosureCompilerPlugin({
			compiler: {
				language_in: 'ECMASCRIPT6',
				language_out: 'ECMASCRIPT5',
				compilation_level: 'ADVANCED',
			},
			concurrency: 3,
		}),

		new webpack.BannerPlugin(config.misc.banner, {
			raw: true,
		})
	);
} else {
	webpackConfig.devtool = 'cheap-module-source-map'; // Source maps
}

module.exports = webpackConfig;


text:
Privacy Badger Protects You from Online Tracking
Firefox/Chrome: You already know that everyone is out to track what you do on the internet, and there are tons of great tools to protect yourself. Well, the Electronic Frontier Foundation is jumping into the fray with Privacy Badger, an new add-on that analyzes and blocks third-party tracking automatically.
Privacy Badger is similar to tools like Disconnect, Ghostery, and Adblock Plus, but it takes a slightly different approach (and tries to combine the best of all of those add-ons into one.) Instead of maintaining a blacklist services that track you, call home to advertisers, and keep tabs on what you're doing around the internet, Privacy Badger blocks any and all uniquely identifying cookies (those that collect data of pages you visit across sites, information about your system, or call home to advertising networks) automatically based on their behavior.
The add-on also does this without breaking the sites that you visit, so if you visit Lifehacker.com, for example, it'll screen out any tracking cookies or cookies deposited by advertising networks without disrupting the flow or keeping it from loading. The EFF notes that Privacy Badger isn't an ad-blocking extension, but you'll also notice a number of ads vanish when it's installed as well (since they fall into the category above.)
Privacy Badger is currently in alpha, and you can test it out for Chrome or Firefox at the link below. Once installed, you can click the icon in your toolbar at any time to see the things it's allowed (green), blocked (red), or things on its own whitelist that are necessary for the site to work—but have still been blocked from tracking you (yellow).
Privacy Badger | Electronic Frontier Foundation via The Next Web
TechInternet


text:
Major voting problems scant despite ominous warnings
November 9, 2016 3oliver
AP Photo/Jim Cole
WASHINGTON (AP) — Election Day came and went with no obvious signs of the catastrophic problems some had feared, including large-scale fraud, intimidation or hacking.
Voters across the country instead encountered the types of glitches that arise in every election – long lines, occasional broken machines, discrepancies in voting rolls and some hot tempers.
The scattered problems included malfunctioning voting systems at polling stations in Texas, computer trouble in North Carolina that forced officials to rely on a paper check-in process and triggered long lines, and arguments and skirmishes between supporters of Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump, including one reported to have involved pepper spray.
There were reports in some states of voters waiting in line for hours to cast a ballot.
Among them was Heather Merrick, who waited for hours to vote at a firehouse in Jersey City, New Jersey. She lamented that she didn't bring snacks.
"I think that the energy and general vibe was really upbeat," said Merrick, 33, who was voting in New Jersey for the first time after moving from New York. "I started to sense a little frustration once we got close enough to see the machines stuck in the line and it was moving so slowly."
Yet there were no immediate indications of any snags large enough to alter the vote count in any meaningful way.
"The biggest surprise is how uneventful things have been with this large a turnout," said Illinois State Board of Elections spokesman Jim Tenuto. "Everyone was expecting more problems than this – and nothing."
The voting unfolded amid repeated but unsubstantiated claims from Trump that the election would somehow be rigged. His exhortations to followers to watch for fraud at the polls gave rise to fears of vigilantism and harassment.
He continued to raise the specter of election fraud on Tuesday, telling Fox News, "It's largely a rigged system." He would not say whether he would accept the outcome of the election.
"We're going to see how things play out today and hopefully they will play out well and hopefully we won't have to worry about it," he said.
In Philadelphia, one of the places Trump had suggested were ripe for fraud, District Attorney Seth Williams said that as of the afternoon, there were no substantiated reports of voter fraud or intimidation, and "no walking apocalypse of zombies voting around town."
State officials, meanwhile, had been working for weeks against any attempt by hackers to breach their computer systems. It was a particular concern given the U.S. intelligence community's assertion last month that the Russians had attempted through hacking to interfere with the electoral process.
But there were no major reported problems. The federal government offered help to states looking to patch their networks to prevent intrusions.
Cybersecurity experts said because of the nation's decentralized voting system, with people casting ballots in 9,000 jurisdictions and more than 185,000 precincts, it would be difficult for a hacker to have any sizable effect on the vote.
Associated Press writers Diana Heidgerd in Dallas; Ron Todt in Philadelphia; Michael Tarm in Chicago; and Desmond O. Butler, Ben Nuckols, Stephen Braun and Tami Abdollah in Washington contributed to this report.
← The Latest: Japan sends envoy to US to meet new leaders
California, Massachusetts approve recreational marijuana →


text:
Home > All islands > Comoros
Comoros: The economic citizenship program in favour of Kuwait, subject of sensitive and controversies in the heart of the archipelago
The possible revival of economic citizenship program for the Emirate of Kuwait with strong provokes stir in the Comorian politics and several controversy in the Comoros.
The project, launched in 2007, had as its aim to be "under a tree to finance income-generating projects," as claimed by the former President Ahmed Abdallah Mohamed Sambi.
Henceforth, the vast majority of opinion leaders in the Comoros are very actively seeking for the definitive cancellation of this program because they believe that projects a bad image of the Comoros outside.
Thus, according to the opinion leaders of the archipelago, we can fund otherwise the coffers instead of auctioning the Comorian citizenship even that there is a real danger that this windfall will be used only for personal means, as reported by the comores-actualites.com site.
On its part, the lawyer and politician, Fahmi Said Ibrahim, today necessitates the transparency Comorian authorities on this sensitive issue and calls on the elected representatives Comoros to sign a petition to Kuwait asking them to give up the program, which is "against the interests of the Comorian people."
Umee Ruhomally
Tuesday, June 19th 2018 - 05:37	Turkish Airlines starts flights to Moroni
Friday, September 8th 2017 - 12:20	A vice-president on all fronts
Turkish Airlines starts flights to Moroni
A vice-president on all fronts
Comoros: Three generators sets up soon
Comoros: Economic growth of Archipelago reviewed downwards
Comoros: An agricultural house established before the end of the year 2015
Comoros: The international stage of Malouzini all set in November 2018
Comoros: Inauguration of the new operating theater of the El-Maarouf hospital of Moroni funded by a foundation of Abu Dhabi
05/26/2014 - Anli Saendou
Comoros: The President Ikililou Dhoinine conducting a major cabinet reshuffle, with six new ministers
Comoros: A delegation of the CGT on a working visit to Moroni
Comoros: 4 dengue cases recorded in the archipelago in recent weeks
The Indian Ocean Commission signs an agreement with the European Union for the sustainable development of its Member States
Comoros: Businessmen in Burkina Faso in economic prospection in the archipelago
Comoros: The tourist office of the archipelago in site visit on the island of Grande Comore


This website is a public resource of general information concerning our Firm. The results documented in this website's news section do not guarantee similar results in future cases. This website is an advertisement. The lawyers identified on this website are licensed to practice law in the state of California and nowhere else. The Firm does not intend to represent anyone desiring representation in a state where this website fails to comply with all laws and ethical rules of that state.


Fashion and furniture designer Gioia Meller Marcovicz has created the Monolith table and chairs.
When not in use, the stainless steel table and chairs can fold up into a compact unit, but when needed can transform to dine ten people.
Visit the website of Gioia Meller Marcovicz – here.


text:
Sarah Gray was a member of the Quadruple Sculls Women that placed 7th at the London 2012 Olympic Games after missing out on the Olympic final due to an oar breakage
Sarah secured a bronze medal on her New Zealand debut in the quadruple scull at the Junior Rowing World Championships in 2008 in Linz. She went on to compete with the Under 23 women's quadruple scull in 2010 and into the senior women's boat in 2011.
She secured a third place finish at the World Cup regatta in Hamburg before taking a bronze medal at the World Rowing Championships in Bled, securing Olympic qualification. She secured two bronze medals in World Cup regattas in the boat in 2011 as well.
Sarah was selected into the women's quad in 2013, 2014 and again in 2015. In 2014 the quad won bronze at the World Cups in Aiguebelette and Lucerne.
Birth Place: Raetihi
Sarah's Games History
Rowing (Quadruple Scull - Women)
Final B 6:56.46
Repechage 1 6:48.71 FB
Heat 2 6:20.22 R
Placed 7 of 8
The Road to Tokyo Episode 13: Rowing
Alpine ski racers and snowboard athlete named to New Zealand Team for Lausanne 2020 Winter Youth Olympic Games
Ratcliffe back and better than ever
Freeski athletes named to New Zealand Team for Lausanne 2020 Winter Youth Olympic Games
Mahe Drysdale
Juliette Haigh
Accuracy: Hamish Bond and Eric Murray


Eaton offers a full range of innovative, reliable surge protection solutions to protect against the damaging effects of lightning, utility switching, switching electric motors, and more. Each product is independently tested and backed by the largest engineering and technical support in the industry. Eaton offers a free surge protection site evaluation to help guide you through the process of protecting your critical electrical equipment.