text:
Next Step Realty is a real estate brokerage firm based in New York City, New York. The agents help young professionals rent and buy apartments in New York City. Many of their clients are recent college and post-graduate alumni relocating to New York City, as first-time New York City renters.

In 2015, ABC Family announced that a business-based docu-series would be created to follow Next Step Realty and their clients, in an unscripted, original format. It was not renewed after its only season.

History
Blair Brandt and Belton Baker co-founded Next Step Realty, following a soft launch in 2010. After working in the real estate market in Florida, Brandt noticed an opportunity to assist young professionals in finding their first urban homes and in particular a lack of ethical, customer-friendly rental services in New York City.

Brandt moved to New York City, following a $100,000 capital infusion from angel investor Jason Briggs, who was then elected to be chairman, becoming a day to day presence 'offering a more experienced perspective', and Brandt's primary partner. The soft launch led to the company expanding quickly, and Brandt, aged 23, was listed as the featured real estate entrepreneur in Forbes annual 30 under 30.

Shortly after the launch of the company, the founders distributed a mailshot to peers and other college friends. Within the first month, the company had 100,000 visits to their website. In late 2012, the company announced the acquisition of one of their competitors in the New York City realtor market, Post Graduate Apartments.

Locations
In 2014, the firm opened its first two storefront locations in New York City, in the East Village & Upper East Side of Manhattan. In March 2015, Next Step opened its third storefront location, and new flagship office, in the West Village of Manhattan, at the former townhouse of famed preservationist Jane Jacobs.

Business model
One of the entry routes to the market for the company was to increase the range of amenities offered to customers while also charging a lower percentage of the broker fee, a dynamic made possible by the firm's high customer conversion rate.

The staff was predominantly made up of people in their mid-20s, who had experienced similar trials to their clients. In the company's first year, they grew to a staff of around 40 people.

During the same year, the company also announced a seed investment of $1 million to help expand the business to other cities in the United States.

Next Step Realty: NYC
In April 2015, Disney announced the launch of a new show, Next Step Realty: NYC. The show would air on ABC Family, premiering Tuesday August 11, 2015 at 9pm ET on the cable network.

References

Companies based in New York City

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
To Live How We Believe (About)
Press! (Interviews, publicity, etc)
40: Merry
39: Kim
38: Koko
by Chris Vola
There's a mist hanging over the forest. Darker and heavier than the drizzle-gray sky, thickening around the bowels of the largest trees, obscuring the path. At least that's the way I want it to look, posted up a couple blocks from where a massive plastic chimney rises from an open manhole and pumps steam vapor above pedestrian areas and into the boughs of the pigeon-spooge park that lines one side of the avenue, where the vapor joins with cigarette smoke from three raisin-eyed brown-baggers seated at the base of a statue depicting the gout-riddled wife of a robber baron environmentalist. "Parks are an ideal convergence point for potential donors, especially right after the close of normal business hours," is the kind of shit that Robbie, regional coordinator at Community Crusades, Inc., likes to write in his emails, like I haven't been temping for the dork for the past two years.
It's almost six and I've barely seen any other people on the street during the two-mile hike from where I parked my on-its-deathbed Honda Civic, lugging the binder containing stacks of same-sex marriage statistics or water quality data, whatever progressive cause I'm supposed to be championing today. I forget. If I was smart I would have called the office this morning and told them I wouldn't be coming in. Robbie's kind of squeamish, records Big Bang Theory re-runs, potentially a fan of the dudes. All I would have had to say was that I had extra-gnarly cramps, maybe mention a non-specific, yeast-related condition and I'd be home, no questions. But it's too late for that now. I wipe some raindrops from the collar of my florescent polo, skim the contents of the first pamphlet on top of the pile – a non-profit that sends backpacks to kids in a Serbian economic oppression zone (good thing I'm wearing my entire rainbow of awareness bracelets) – and wait for the human downpour.
Chances are you've seen me, or someone like me leering at you from the most awkward center of the sidewalk. Young, energetic, possibly dreadlocked (and probably white), clipboard in hand, happy to disrupt your commuter solitude and assault your moral sensibilities. "Excuse me, sir? Do you support a woman's right to choose?" "Ma'am, do you have a moment to talk about sustainable agriculture in South Sudan?" And if you're like most people, you don't have a moment. You'll avoid eye contact (or praise yourself for remembering shades), you'll plaster your phone to your skull like it's the only thing keeping it together, or you'll pretend you can't hear me over the Norwegian black metal bumping in your ear buds when you're really listening to shit that's so light they wouldn't play it in elevators. My favorites are the hoodied futures-of-America who find it acceptable – no, necessary – to explain that AIDS is great for population control, or to scream "god hates fags and clipboarders!" at a five-foot-two, 105-pounds-after-a-burrito size chick.
You're all PIN numbers that haven't expired yet, bodies I can use if you're dumb enough to listen.
I watch the light disappear, take out a handful of complimentary pens – featuring the same sad multi-ethnic child's face – from my cargo pocket, adjust my non-threatening ponytail and side-swept bangs, listen for the first sounds of movement from the cubicled infirmaries that line both sides of the street, hovering over first-floor retail façades. I pull out the tips of pamphlets so they're easily accessible. The first off-the-clock worker exits a building, scowl illuminated in phone glow. The pace quickens in a matter of moments, as I have anticipated, becomes a hail storm of seasonally toned galoshes and laptops wrapped in plastic bags, the stink of happy hour salivation.
Something uncommon, a rookie move. Maybe it's the stress from still being so far below my projected savings for this quarter, maybe I'm tired. Either way, I allow myself to be hypnotized by the rapid beat of transit. I press the binder to my chest, close my eyes for barely a few seconds. I take a breath, feel water droplets pooling on the crow's feet that the Park Ranger called my "smile lines."
I open my eyes. Two business-casual fucktards – one flicking a music player, one struggling to zip the man purse at his hip – are bee-lining, oblivious, toward the awkward center of the sidewalk and their inevitable confluence.
I brace for the collision. The impact knocks me back a foot or two, I scatter pens. The drops trickle and run down my face. Resist the urge to curse, remain sightless, allow the sensation to engulf me. I flick out my tongue, try to catch the scent of the perpetrator. I taste the sting of sludgy precipitation.
"UhhwoopsyouOK?" Purse Boy asks. I've brushed the water away and he's scooping pens off the pavement. He mumbles what sounds like "Lyme-disease-free-yoga," presses the pens into my hand and walks away fast. It's better that way. Pity talkers are the worst. It's like I get it, you feel bad that you bumped me, that it's cold and my metabolism makes it look I haven't eaten in a while, that your girlfriend told me she'd rather take bong rips of pesticide than discuss the plight of the Northern Spotted Owl, whatever. But to spend forty-five seconds pretending to be interested in the contents of what I'm schlepping isn't doing either of us any good.
Solicitors, the good ones, don't have the vaguest interest in the causes we promote. The real idealists – energized, new-adult faces with genuinely pleading eyes – never last. They'd rather spend their formative years scraping organic matter off the walls of a drained dolphin rehabilitation tank than hustling yuppies and guilty college kids who have discovered social consciousness as a side effect of a two-day coke hangover. And that's cool. Because it is a hustle. Community Crusades, Inc. is a for-profit company, meaning that nonprofits pay us millions of dollars a year to run fundraising drives on their behalf, funds that tend to vanish – after expenses. I'm required to begin my spiel by explaining to you that I'm a "paid fundraiser for grassroots campaigns," but all that stuff Robbie tells us to spew about "100 percent" going to the nonprofit is exactly what it sounds like: dolphin shit.
The position didn't require a resume. I wouldn't have known what to put on one. Two-and-a-half degree-less years at a state school with a moderately storied basketball program? As far as extracurriculars go, getting raped and ODing isn't particularly noteworthy or uncommon, although I guess it doesn't usually happen in that order.
Under the Required Skills & Experience section in Community Crusades' Craigslist ad all it said was that they were looking for local candidates "who enjoy interacting with people, are stable, have a great attitude, and care about our planet!" Bonus points for customer service experience, the "ability to overcome objections," and weekend availability. The correct combination of Xanax and Starbucks solves all the world's problems and my interview with Robbie went stellar, mostly due to my embarrassing knowledge of contemporary major-network sitcoms – thanks Mom and Dad's Netflix! We spent way more time discussing the inherent pathological slant in each of the major character dynamics in Modern Family than whether I could convince some ADHD-stricken fool on the street about the imminent perils of ozone depletion.
But yeah, pity talkers. No bueno. The only one I ever really let get the better of me was the Park Ranger. He has a name, a fake one he told me once, but I never think of him as anything less than the total sum of what he was, or what he believed himself to be.
He told me he loved making broken things beautiful.
The first words he said to me, over a year ago when I was out canvassing for a group that plants saplings in deforested wetlands: "I love making broken things beautiful."
From a potential donor standpoint, that's a cue to start scanning the street for the nearest law enforcement personnel. As a pick-up line it was creepy but unique. Plus I'd already secured three or four commissions and time was closing in on me not giving a fuck. We went to a falafel spot and had coffee and he started talking, a bunch of random life trivia. Growing up in North Carolina in a woodsy pit-stop town near a major hiking thoroughfare. Encountering a massive whitetail deer in rut the first time he got stoned off his ass and how he knew he'd found his "animal spirit guide." His current job cleaning up after hikers and repairing trail shelters in the mountains of New Hampshire. He kept tugging at this gingerbread beard that reminded me of a kind of out-of-control lichen that would grow on the trees at the lake upstate where my family used to camp sometimes. Meaning, sort of cute. I didn't ask what he was doing in the city or why he was still wearing his beige and olive National Park Service uniform.
"There are small moments," he said out of nowhere. "And sometimes I think that's all there is."
I was like, "Cool, so are you having any good ones now?"
He sipped the latte he'd bought and made weird grimace/smiles that looked like he had a low tolerance for coffee or was wrapping his mind around something that had been a long time coming, jumper-cabled in irregular bursts and starts. He told me he had to catch a bus, had to get back to work. I got his number (didn't ask for mine) and was sidling up for an awkward goodbye and he shrugged back, took out a small, wilted brochure from his pocket, pressed it into my hand. An illustration of a guy who looked kind of like him but with a backpack and walking stick, wearing shorts and standing in the foreground above a valley with waterfalls, pixelated sunset, generic nature clipart. "I like your smile lines," he said. "They remind me of a stream bed that's never tasted acid rain. Great biodiversity."
He left the restaurant.
I stood there for a while, uhhhh.
I looked at the brochure. Thinking about how many like it I'd stuffed into commute-sweated palms, how many I'd seen tossed seconds later into sidewalk receptacles, how many I'd actually read beyond the cover.
I bought another coffee, sat down.
It was a beginner's guide to the Appalachian Trail. Figured. But the more I forced myself to skim, the more I found myself getting into it, even though the pages were mostly just maps. I traced the 2,200 miles from Springer Mountain in Georgia to Mount Katahdin in Maine, passing through 14 states in wilderness with the occasional trail town, road, and cross river. The text boxes about section-hikers, thru-hikers, purists who follow the white blazes (tree markings that denote the official trail), blue blazers who take mostly negligible shortcuts, and the yellow blazers, gentrified pussies who try to hitchhike whenever things get a little rough.
The more I read, the more I kept getting visuals, kind of like tripping, but really clear snapshots – a patchwork of light-slivers through pine boughs illuminating a root-gnarled trail twisting around a bend to nowhere, mud-wrenched legs hugging a precipice overhanging a cobalt snake-skin river, a flame-bright meadow of flowers refracted and expanding in a dewdrop's mirror. The feeling of being welcomed by a vastness, a bird-flung other-world drowned in the pleasant ache of a sleeping bag, spiking and fading within a clock-less biorhythm of slumber and movement, the absence of anything besides my thoughts, my lungs, the land.
Meaning, not having to approach assholes and near-dementia retirees on the street.
I burned through Wikipedia articles, websites of various conservancy groups, digital backpacker magazines, personal blogs and Tumblrs. I figured out how much it would cost to do the entire trail in one season, what kind of sleeping and cooking gear I'd need, preparatory cardio regimens, proper poop disposal. I bought maps and marked the trail towns where I'd need to re-up on food and take a shower. Where to buy high-energy snacks, water filters, flashlight batteries, first-aid stuff, a whistle (three blasts is the international signal for help). Most of the cold-weather stuff I'd take from the room that used to be my sister's.
I made a list of everything that could go wrong, researched fatality statistics, looked at pictures of compound fractures and gangrene fingernails and rotting abscesses caused by spider bites. Heat stroke, lightning strikes, diarrhea, foot blisters, biting flies, and tick-borne diseases, all the negligible hazards. Pretending to be a gung-ho millennial martyr is a lot like getting mauled by a bear, only much more wasteful. As a meat product one hundred percent of my energy would go directly toward sustaining life.
It felt good to have a goal, an end-point, one that might kill me before I reached it.
That made me feel better.
I called the Park Ranger a couple weeks later during a lunch break. What was I was going to tell him? That his giving me the brochure had catalyzed what was starting to become a potentially unfeasible obsession? That I'd developed hiking fever and could he help me feed the flame? That I wanted to apply for the National Park Service and call dibs on a personal lean-to where I could cook Ramen noodles and canned hash every night and listen to the delicate, non-human majesty of bullfrog mating rituals?
"I'm back in town," he said, after I reminded him who I was (she of the exceptional biodiversity). He was staying at a friend's apartment a few blocks from where I was canvassing. I asked him if he wanted to do something later and if it would be cool if I could just come over to his friend's place after work and drop my shit off so I wouldn't have to go back to my car.
The building was a gray-brick, six-storey walk-up, a little gross. Non-existent buzzer, walked right in, the blunt-gut and Cheetos-dust stairwell, aromas of curry and something that struck me as vaguely Caribbean. The fourth floor rumbled with the bass-fracking and booze-hoots of someone's day off, adjacent to the apartment where the Park Ranger told me he'd be. He opened the door, scowled.
You know how when you walk into a place or a situation where something is off, where it feels like you've stepped into an oblong distortion of the reality you expected, that cartoon shit should happen where the needle scratches off the record and everything freezes and goes silent. Meaning, at the very least your fight-or-flight should kick in to the point where you realize you need to make a decision and act on it.
Maybe I'd been so inundated with googled hiking propaganda and my visions of what my personal journey would look like that the studio apartment, lit only by a popular LED lantern model I'd thought about purchasing myself, didn't faze me as much as it probably should have. There was no TV, sofa, table. Any refrigerator or microwave had been ripped from the windowless back wall long ago. Most of the ceiling was covered in garlands of dried wildflowers. I recognized bluets, jewel weed, columbine, and lady's-slipper. Fallen petals carpeted the hardwood floor. Huge trail map print-outs on multiple walls, different colored tacks marking who knows. Posters and photos of whitetail does and fawns, beaver dams, swimming moose, hourglass-banded copperheads, undulating ridges capped with snow, tunnels of greenery and autumn-scarred scenic overlooks, orgasms of nature.
The Park Ranger – same uniform, beard still nest-like – motioned me to where someone had set up an MSR Hubba two-person tent (highly recommended by veteran trail enthusiasts) and adjacent to it, a portable cooking stove and pot system surrounded by a semi-circle of what looked like lacquered tree stumps.
"Take a seat," he said. He disappeared into the tent and reemerged holding a pair of mugs.
I was trying to figure out how to fit the majority of my ass on a chunk of wood that appeared to be stolen from a kindergarten classroom. The mug he handed me was blue with writing that said Keep Calm and Think of Mountains. A brownish green teabag inside. The Park Ranger flicked a lighter and the stove ignited, flames stroking the underside of the lidded metal pot.
I noticed a large, flowerless gap on the ceiling, directly above the ring of stumps. Black burn marks in a circular pattern.
"Is this set-up covered by your renter's insurance? Your super must love you."
"Chamomile," he said, squinting at his mug.
I still couldn't tell if he was truly autistic or if this was his preferred style of fucking around with near-strangers. Either way, the appeal had almost evaporated. But I had trail-related questions, stuff I couldn't find online, and he was the closest thing to an expert I had.
"So I want to do a thru-hike next summer," I said, "the entire trail, one season."
His brain fog lifted, injection-quick, an excited beard tug. "You liked the brochure? I thought you might connect with it. Did you have any questions?"
I started spitting them out while I had his attention, tried to ignore the spoiled fruit smell wafting from the tent and the absence of an obvious bathroom. I asked him how expensive the trip would actually be (way more than the budget I'd allotted, of course), the towns and states with the cheapest resupply stores (Tennessee's Smoky Mountains and the Grayson Highlands in Virginia were apparently populated by generous souls while Connecticut was understandably "rife with thievery"), the ideal ratio of carbs-to-protein based on my body-mass index. When it came to less concrete, opinion-related fodder, like what was his favorite type of rock formation to dry off on after a particularly sweaty stretch or to warm up on during a sunrise, he was nebulous but weirdly inspirational: "It's true that you become what you absorb, but you have to remember that your heart is stronger than anything you take from the sky."
As we were talking the pot started making bubble sounds. The Park Ranger poured steaming water into my mug, then his. My nostrils gorged on a sweet, crisp brightness, wild herbs hidden beneath a moonlit treescape.
He sipped. "So, who's your partner?"
"I'm single."
He snickered. "OK, but who is going to be hiking with you?"
No one. That was the point. I hadn't really considered that most people wouldn't want to be totally alone in the woods for more than half a year. That pit stops at communal shelters and trail towns were probably looked at more as sanity-sustaining re-immersions into the hobbit-stink matrix of mountain society than ordeals to be relished with the fondness of a root canal. Even the Park Ranger had at least one likeminded friend, whoever's place this was.
I sipped. The tea was strong. Those two words in my throat sweetened it.
"Well if it's your first time and you're going solo," the Park Ranger said, "you're going to need some trail magic."
"Trail magic."
"It can be anything really," he said, "big or small, sometimes a beer, a bottle of water, maybe your blisters are acting up and there's a tube of bacitracin someone's left for you at an abandoned fire site. An act of kindness from one true hiker to another when you didn't know you needed one. Happens all the time. Maybe you sprain your ankle and out of nowhere someone out on a day trip shows up with a set of car keys and GPS to find the nearest clinic. That's a trail angel. You'll want to meet a few of those."
He finished the tea in a gulp, the runoff forming tributaries down his face, his eyes lidded, heavier.
I took another sip. Other faces and randomly appearing plastic products had been pleasantly absent from my trail visualizations. The idea that reliance on handouts wouldn't stop once I quit Community Crusades started working its way down my esophagus, corroding. "So you're saying there are all these littering Samaritans lurking everywhere, who get off on just abandoning supplies that they might actually need themselves? I call B.S. When you want to pretend to care you give money, it's quick and a tax write-off. There has to be some other motivation. How many angels are really just looking for a thank-you blowie in a pastoral setting?"
I followed the Park Ranger's gaze to the back of the apartment, to a red and white gingham shirt I hadn't noticed nailed to the wall, its sleeves crucifixed and unraveling. A smudge of undecipherable rust-colored crud obscuring the left breast pocket. Above, where a person's head would be if they were wearing the shirt, hung a pair of deer antlers wreathed in either dried grass or really blonde hair or maybe some other kind of tinder.
I took a sip of tea, crossed my legs.
"I found her when I first started clearing trails and working on shelters in New Hampshire," he said. "A couple college students had called into the station, reported her creeping around where they'd made a campsite. My supervisor told me to check it out, probably a harmless tweaker lost in the woods, wanted me to make sure she didn't have any kids or anything, if we needed to send up some EMTs. I hiked to where she was supposed to be, an area that had been mostly cleared and mulched, and she was there, wrapped in a filthy once-white sundress, hugging herself under a large dogwood that was in an almost identical state of wilt. It was September in northern New England and rain was coming. I called out and she spooked, rabbit-fast, took off into the trees. It was surprised to see something so small and skinny run like that. I left my jacket and a couple oranges. I came back the next day and she was sitting in the same spot, wearing the jacket and tossing an orange between her palms. I approached and she took off again, but this time I could see her peering at me behind some undergrowth a few yards away. Hair wild and shining, eyes large but clear. This went on for weeks. I'd bring shirts, sweaters, boots, a tarp, kindling when it got colder, jerky, water bottles, granola. The food she wouldn't touch – there was a growing pile of wrappers and plastic under the tree – but she'd take everything else. Where, I don't know. It got to the point where I'd almost be able to hand her the packages before she sprinted off, could smell her, could touch her breath. One day she didn't run. She was waiting, holding the antlers. 'Never lose it,' she said when she placed them on the ground in front of me and backed away into the trees. I couldn't believe it at first. How she could know how important the deer, the idea of what the antlers meant, was to me? But walking back to the station I began to understand the truth she had taught me. When you give pieces of yourself to the forest, you become the forest. You become part of something bigger, something that feeds you, heals you. You don't lose it. I only saw her once more after that."
"That's, uh, nice."
I looked into the mug, the teabag pulsating in the gunk that remained. A slight thud in my chest, a thickness. Then a buzzing that was both auditory and physical, like being bathed in a high-pitched white noise strong enough to make the hair on my arms pucker.
Unexpected but not unfamiliar.
"It's why I chose you," he was staring at me but his eyes were kind of rolling around, spindly. "Because I knew you needed it. The trail. But also because I knew your spirit was beautiful enough to want to reciprocate. You'd want to become a part of the forest."
"Chose me?"
I tried to steady myself, tried to swing my neck around a little, tried to focus on something I'd just noticed in one corner of the room: a pile of beige and olive pants and shirts, thrift-store-beaten, an open shoebox containing what looked like various park service patches and different nametags, sewing needles, several spools of black thread.
"I have something for your trip," the Park Ranger was saying as he stagger-crawled into the tent, clumsy and failing to zip up the door flap all the way. "Don't look yet."
Above the increasingly louder buzzing, the sound of metal on metal, a vague pressurized release.
It doesn't matter that, as far as I know, the Park Ranger didn't try to follow me down the stairwell. That it took me two hours to find my car and another hour of pulling the trigger and heaving until I felt clearheaded enough to drive. That the name he'd given me wasn't in any National Park Service employee database or that the apartment wasn't registered with the city's housing division. That I didn't eat for three days and came tantalizingly close to getting fired. That I couldn't stop thinking about the red shirt with the smudge, the antlers.
Because it's been over a year and it's past happy hour and I'm still standing near the awkward center of the sidewalk clutching the binder, my hair sagging with moisture against the collar of my florescent shirt.
Because nobody, including me, gives a shit about Croatian orphans or whoever I'm supposed to be championing.
Because I still haven't saved close to enough money for a proper thru-hike and my car is about to die.
Because Robbie's idea of being a competent regional coordinator includes sending dozens of text messages every day like the one I just got: "Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm – Winston Churchill."
Meaning, fuck.
More rain droplets roll from my forehead into the corners of both eyes. I'm unable to prevent them from entering, from dancing across my corneas in defiance, turning the flickering shapes on the street into a mass of tiny horned creatures that want nothing more than to bury their jaws into my skin. I crash into one as I try to fight my way to the edge of the sidewalk and she curses and I'm rubbing, shaking, slapping, and continuing to do so until the shock of contact has been removed.
But the damage has been done. Squinting the liquid off my face, I feel the venom surging through my body, the years of tiny bites, so close together, so sunk in with time that I imagine red lines have been etched beneath my arteries. My marrow starts to burn with these parallel and perpendicular lines, with lines intersecting to create a prism that's only red, closed, no chance for any other colors to enter.
I need a beer, a bottle of water, a tube of bacitracin.
Anything to stop the burning.
A tall shape extracts itself from the howling din, pauses, steps toward me. Smiling, calm, his yellow hair illuminated in a street light's halo. Blue and white checkered shirt.
"Hey, ah, Marissa?" He's skinnier than I remember, older, healthy 401(k) gleam, no more fake-diamond ear studs.
The same too-thick wrists.
And the name's wrong, though he's close.
"Marissa in Kappa, right? You lived with Kelsey Donovan freshman year? Didn't –"
I fling my binder, start running toward the park, the belching plastic chimney, the bums. Remembering the brochure the Park Ranger gave me, I try to follow the main path, the white blazes. But it's totally dark now and the mist keeps getting thicker. And it keeps raining bodies, so many bodies between here and where I need to be.
Chris Vola is the author of Monkeytown, a novel. He lives in Manhattan where he tends bar, plays slow-pitch softball, and regularly escapes near-death situations on his longboard. Find him at @ChrisVola or at smalldrunkencog.blogspot.com.
–Art by Marina Ćorić
Sports News | Official Images Of The Air Jordan 4 University Blue WMNS Shimmer Bronze Eclipse DJ0675-200 , Fitforhealth

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Bastian Wick (auch Sebastian; † 1571 in Dresden) war ein Dresdner Ratsherr und Bürgermeister.

Leben
Bastian Wick erwarb 1555 das Dresdner Bürgerrecht und wurde zwei Jahre später in den städtischen Rat aufgenommen. Gemeinsam mit Anton Thurler war er 1558 am Erlass der ersten Feuerordnung der Stadt beteiligt. Diese legte eine Aufteilung der Stadt in Viertel fest, wobei jedes dieser Viertel einen "Viertelsmeister" hatte, der für die Einhaltung der Bestimmungen und die Organisation der Löschtruppe bei Bränden verantwortlich war. Im Notfall mussten alle im Stadtviertel ansässigen Bewohner mit ihren Löschgeräten zur Brandstelle kommen. Für den Transport von Wasserfässern zum Unglücksort waren die Pferdebesitzer verantwortlich.

Zur Bürgermeisterwahl 1568 bat der nach Ratsordnung als regierender Bürgermeister vorgesehene Christoph Kentman Kurfürst August, ihn "wegen seines Alters und Leibeszustandes" vom Amt zu befreien. Bereits zwei Jahre zuvor hatte August eine Wahl Kentmans wegen dessen hohen Alters abgelehnt. Unter Druck des Kurfürsten wurde schließlich Bastian Wick in dieses Amt gewählt. Drei Jahre später verstarb er in Dresden.

Literatur
 Sieglinde Richter-Nickel: Der ehrwürdige Rath zu Dresden, in: Dresdner Geschichtsbuch Nr. 5, Stadtmuseum Dresden (Hrsg.); DZA Verlag für Kultur und Wissenschaft, Altenburg 1999, ISBN 3-9806602-1-4.
 Otto Richter: Verfassungs- und Verwaltungsgeschichte der Stadt Dresden, Band 1, Verlag W. Baensch, Dresden 1885.

Einzelnachweise

Bürgermeister (Dresden)
Politiker (16. Jahrhundert)
Deutscher
Geboren im 15. oder 16. Jahrhundert
Gestorben 1571
Mann


text:
Q: extract information from mysql query in NodeJS I have the following function that i use to extract information from my DataBase
exports.getSinglePrice=  function(dbConnection, uid, tableVariable ,table, callback){
    var myQuery = 'SELECT ' + tableVariable + ' FROM ' + table + ' WHERE uid= ' + uid;
    var query = dbConnection.query(myQuery, function (err, row, result) {
        //console.log(query.sql);
        if (err) {
            console.log("getSinglePrice error");
            console.error(err);
            return;
        }

        var price= row[0].tableVariable;

        console.log("\n\nprice is : " , price);
        callback(price);
        return;
    });
};

i have 3 tableVariable, that i need to extract. the problem i have is with the following line:
        var price= row[0].tableVariable;

i cant use tableVariable, cause i dont get any information back, but have to give the exact name of the variable, for example in my case:
    var price= row[0].MoneyForPrivacy;

or
    var price= row[0].MoneyForLocation;

or
    var price= row[0].MoneyForEnvironment;

any ideas how i can generalize my function.

A: the answer is to do the following:
price= row[0][tableVariable];

when tableVariable is a String.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
.. _quickstart:

Quickstart
==========

.. currentmodule:: pomp.core

Pomp is fun to use, incredibly easy for basic applications.

A Minimal Application
---------------------

For a minimal application all you need is to define you crawler
by inherit :class:`base.BaseCrawler`

.. literalinclude:: examples/minimalapp.py

Item pipelines
--------------

For processing extracted items pomp has pipelines mechanism.
Define pipe by subclass of :class:`base.BasePipeline` and pass
it to :class:`engine.Pomp` constructor.

Pipe calls one by one

Example pipelines for filtering items with length less the 10 symbols and
printing sentence::

    class FilterPipeline(BasePipeline):
        def process(self, crawler, item):
            # None - skip item for following processing
            return None if len(item) < 10 else item

    class PrintPipeline(BasePipeline):
        def process(self, crawler, item):
            print('Sentence:', item, ' length:', len(item))
            return item # return item for following processing

    pomp = Pomp(
        downloader=UrllibDownloader(),
        pipelines=(FilterPipeline(), PrintPipeline(),)
    )

See :ref:`contrib-pipelines`

Custom downloader
-----------------
For download data from source target application can define
downloader to implement special protocols or strategies.

Custom downloader must be subclass of :class:`base.BaseDownloader`

For example downloader fetching data by requests_ package.

.. literalinclude:: examples/customdowloader.py

Downloader middleware
---------------------

For hook request before it executed by downloader or response before it
passed to crawler in pomp exists middlewares framework.

Middleware must be subclass of :class:`base.BaseMiddleware`.

Each request will be passed to middlewares one by one in order it will passed to
downloader.
Each response/exception will be passed to middlewares one by one in
reverse order.

For example statistic middleware::

    from pomp.core.base import BaseMiddleware

    class StatisticMiddleware(BaseMiddleware):
        def __init__(self):
            self.requests = self.responses = self.exceptions = 0

        def process_request(self, request, crawler, downloader):
            self.requests += 1
            return request

        def process_response(self, response, crawler, downloader):
            self.responses += 1
            return response

        def process_exception(self, exception, crawler, downloader):
            self.exceptions += 1
            return exception

.. _requests: http://docs.python-requests.org/

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Geek'd Con
Download the 1130 the Tiger App!
1130 the Tiger on Google Home!
1130 the Tiger on Alexa!
LSU News
Must See Videos!
Tim Fletcher
Steve Graf
Hook N' Up and Track N' Down
1130 The Tiger App
Den Support
The Herd with Colin CowherdThe Herd with Colin Cowherd
Games Independence Bowl Fans Should Watch Tomorrow
Greg Atoms
The final week of College Football's "Bowl Season" is here. There isn't a large menu of games this weekend, but there are some really big matchups. A lot of Conference Championship games will play into the College Football Playoff picture, but other games will have post-season implications as well.
BUY INDY BOWL TICKETS HERE
For football fans in the Ark-La-Tex, we'll be paying attention to games that will have an impact on the Walk-On's Independence Bowl.
Since Walk-On's came into the Indy Bowl picture, there's been a lot of added interest and excitement. Couple that with the extras the Indy Bowl has been adding (like a big, free concert with the Toadies in Downtown Shreveport), and you've got a lot of people who might have been ignoring the bowl for a few years, back into the game.
So let's try to catch everyone up on what is normally a pretty easy game to predict the participants of.
But this year, because there are a lot of moving parts, it can be hard to keep up with who's in-play for an Independence Bowl bid. With two main Conference partnerships, and two secondary partnerships, it can lead to a lot of weird scenarios...like this year.
The main agreements with the Walk-On's Independence Bowl are with the SEC and ACC. However this year the SEC will not be able to supply a team due to the number of bowl eligible teams they have vs. the number of bowl agreements on paper. The ACC will be able to provide a team, but at this point, it's tough to say who that will be. We'll get to that in a second.
The secondary agreements for the Walk-On's Independence Bowl are with Conference USA and the American Athletic Conference. Back in 2015, the last time a main conference couldn't supply a team, the Indy Bowl got Tulsa from the American Athletic, so it would only be fair if Conference USA got the nod this year. Which puts A BUNCH of teams into play as well.
So with so many ACC and Conference USA teams up in the air, who should we be looking at?
Let's start with the ACC, the team on everyone's mind is Florida State, but there's a lot of uncertainty there.
First of all, they need to win against ULM tomorrow just to become bowl eligible. So they're not even a post-season lock yet.
But then you have to look at how many other teams the ACC will be sending to bowls. Including the Playoffs, there are going to be 10 teams from the ACC playing in the post-season if FSU gets that 6th win. So the seeding will be important, which will be further complicated with all of the 6-6 teams being 3-5 in-conference. Meaning there's some negotiating to be had. But first things first, they have to beat ULM (sorry Warhawks fans).
Now we have to look at the other half of the mix, Conference USA. Which has a similar problem to the ACC...too many teams.
But with Conference USA, things get sketchy, because instead of seeding out their bowl placements based on record, they allow teams to pick-and-choose where they want to go. So this one might take more conversation than the bottom-end of the ACC. One of the top teams in Conference USA that could look to Shreveport is North Texas.
The Mean Green will play this weekend in the Conference USA Championship game against Florida Atlantic University. If the Mean Green beat FAU, they could have first pick at a game, and choose Shreveport due to proximity. But at the same time, the Armed Forces Bowl will be just down the road from them in Fort Worth, and the New Orleans Bowl is also available.
Just keep North Texas in mind when you're thinking about the Indy Bowl.
As we stay in Conference USA, we need to look at the other side of the Conference USA Championship game...
First off, two word: Lane Kiffin.
Yup, that guy. Lane Kiffin is the head coach at Florida Atlantic (for now) and would be very entertaining for the Indy Bowl. The guy will bring attention, and coverage from all over the college football world. Mostly because he might not be the FAU coach long after their bowl game.
Kiffin might be hired at another, bigger, head coaching gig pretty quickly. But based on his Twitter feed, he might be enjoying not having anyone more powerful than he is at Florida Atlantic.
Duke, Wake Forest, Virgina, and Boston College
We have to jump back to the ACC, because all of these teams are still in-play, but they won't be playing tomorrow, so there's nothing they can do to increase, or hurt their chances. These teams will be all about Florida State, and negotiation.
OK, let's get interesting. Could the Bulldogs come to Shreveport, yes they could, but it will take a lot.
There are 10 bowl eligible teams in Conference USA too, and they have 7 bowl agreements, including the Indy Bowl. Some of the teams might be able to snag "at large" bids to other games, but there will be more teams eligible for bowl games across college football than there are bowl games. Let that sink in...with the explosion of bowl games, there's still not going to be enough slots for the amount of 6-win teams out there.
But, with the set-up of bowl game agreements that Conference USA has, it might make sense for Louisiana Tech to come to the Indy Bowl. Florida Atlantic and Florida International have the Gasparilla Bowl and Boca Raton Bowl both in-state. North Texas and UTSA could look to stay close to home with the Armed Forces Bowl in Fort Worth. Marshall, Middle Tennessee, and Western Kentucky could also look to the Florida games if the other teams pass on them. Plus UAB has already accepted an invite to the Bahamas Bowl.
But let's not ignore that Louisiana Tech might prefer the New Orleans Bowl over the Indy Bowl, or that Southern Mississippi might want the Indy Bowl and have the first shot at it. This isn't a slam dunk, but it is a possibility.
So it comes down to this, what games tomorrow will play into the Independence Bowl Selection?
Here they are, ranked in order of interest:
Florida State vs. UL-Monroe (FSU needs to win for bowl eligibility)
North Texas vs. Florida Atlantic - Conference USA Championship (either could choose the Indy Bowl bid)
Clemson vs. Miami - ACC Championship (If FSU wins, Clemson would likely need to win to help facilitate an FSU Indy Bowl bid)
It all seems so easy, right?
Filed Under: Independence Bowl, Louisiana Tech, North Texas, Walk-On's Independence Bowl
Categories: College Football, Shreveport News, Sports
Coaches, Players Bailing National Champ LSU
2020 1130 AM: The Tiger, Townsquare Media, Inc. All rights reserved.


Berkeley Pascal is designed for interactive instructional use and runs on the 11/780"" VAX 11/780. The interpreter px executes the Pascal binaries generated by the Pascal translator pi.
The PX Implementation Notes describe the general organization of px, detail the various operations of the interpreter, and describe the file input/output structure. Conclusions are given on the viability of an interpreter based approach to language implementation for an instructional environment.
These PX Implementation Notes have been updated from the original 11/70"" PDP 11/70 implementation notes to reflect the interpreter that runs on the 11/780"" VAX 11/780. These notes consist of four major parts. The first part outlines the general organization of px. Section 2 describes the operations (instructions) of the interpreter while section 3 focuses on input/output related activity. A final section gives conclusions about the viability of an interpreter based approach to language implementation for instruction.
The PXP Implementation Notes give details of the internals of the execution profiler pxp; parts of the interpreter related to pxp are discussed in section 2.10. A paper describing the syntactic error recovery mechanism used in pi was presented at the ACM Conference on Compiler Construction in Boulder Colorado in August, 1979.
This version of px is a 11/70"" PDP 11/70 to 11/780"" VAX 11/780 opcode mapping of the original px that was designed and implemented by Ken Thompson, with extensive modifications and additions by William Joy and Charles Haley. Without their work, this Berkeley Pascal system would never have existed. These notes were first written by William Joy for the 11/70"" PDP 11/70 implementation. We would also like to thank our faculty advisor Susan L. Graham for her encouragement, her helpful comments and suggestions relating to Berkeley Pascal and her excellent editorial assistance.
** The financial support of the National Science Foundation under grants MCS74-07644-A03 and MCS78-07291 and of an IBM Graduate Fellowship are gratefully acknowledged.
*** The financial support of a Howard Hughes Graduate Fellowship is gratefully acknowledged.


Head Medical is currently recruiting for Psychiatry Principle House Officers and Registrars to work in a modern, main referral hospital on coastal Queensland, Australia.
These opportunities would suit Doctors who are at least PGY4 level and above and keen to develop their experience within the areas of mental health or alcohol and other drugs.
These are 12 month contracts (with the possibility of extension) and will commence in August 2019.


text:
Late-night TV talk show hosts, comedians and critics remember Joan Rivers
Posted by Sean L. McCarthy | Sep 5, 2014 | TV, Uncategorized | 0 |
Almost every comedian I know shared a photo and/or an anecdote about Joan Rivers tonight in the wake of her death at 81, a week after she suffered cardiac arrest and stopped breathing during throat surgery. (Read the obituary of Joan Rivers here) Looking at all of these photos shows just how many lives and careers Rivers had touched just in the past 10 years. How many other comedians have done that, let alone after turning 70?!
But considering Rivers legendary and now mythic status as still the only woman to host a network TV show in late-night — some 27 years after her Late Show with Joan Rivers left the airwaves on FOX — it's worth noting, too, how the current crop of white men in late-night TV stopped what they were doing to praise and honor her.
Jimmy Fallon, who welcomed Rivers back to The Tonight Show this spring, ending a 28-year ban enacted by a resentful Johnny Carson when Rivers became his competition in 1986, offered up a few words from behind his desk. "She is fearless," he said. "She would just come out and say what you were thinking but you wouldn't say it. You would stop, but she wouldn't stop. She would just say it." He called her "a class act" who could take a joke just as well as she would dish it out.
So, too, did David Letterman. Letterman had staged a walkout on Rivers when she guested on his Late Show in July, in a nod to Rivers walking out on a CNN interview this summer. Tonight, he noted that 81 didn't seem that old "when you're 67."
"Here's a woman, a real pioneer for other women looking for careers in stand-up comedy," Letterman said of Rivers. "And talk about guts — she would come out here and sit in this chair and say some things that were unbelievable, just where you would have to swallow pretty hard … but it was hilarious … the force of her comedy was overpowering."
Jimmy Kimmel spoke about Rivers in his monologue, and also had his ex-girlfriend Sarah Silverman as his first guest. Earlier Thursday, Silverman had Tweeted this about Rivers:
My heart is torn in half. She wasn't done. #Joan http://t.co/XH87wAT4Mb
— Sarah Silverman (@SarahKSilverman) September 4, 2014
In his monologue, Kimmel said: "Besides being a pioneer for women in comedy, for everyone in comedy, Joan was a very lucky person because she loved her job so much, she never wanted to stop. And she didn't have to stop because she was still great at it."
Over on TBS, Conan O'Brien and Chris Hardwick shared their stories about Rivers. Hardwick had visited The Tonight Show as a child and seen Rivers with Carson; in adulthood, Hardwick and Rivers became friends. O'Brien recalled watching Rivers guest host for Carson and said anytime she did so, it was an event.
Seth Meyers recently enjoyed having Rivers as one of his Late Night guests in July, when she was promoting her latest book. Tonight, Meyers offered a joke that he thought Rivers would have approved.
Craig Ferguson, meanwhile, said: "We lost Joan Rivers today, one of the all-time greats. Yes, I know, it's terribly sad. I just hope that when Joan meets the man upstairs he is wearing something she can insult."
On cable, Jon Stewart offered his Moment of Zen to Rivers. But before that, Stewart said: "There are very few people in my business who you could saw are actually groundbreaking talents. Joan Rivers was one of them. Unfortunately, she has passed away. We send the very best to her family."
Many of the comedians inspired by or mentored by Rivers also took to Twitter to pay tribute. Among them:
A legend, a friend, a mentor, an icon, and wildly funny. One of a kind. RIP #JoanRivers @joan_rivers pic.twitter.com/jnAC5G4AQo
— Kathy Griffin (@kathygriffin) September 4, 2014
Joan Rivers will always be a pioneer. She paved the way for a lot of comedians. I'm very sad she's gone. pic.twitter.com/i1uE9fyHMh
— Ellen DeGeneres (@TheEllenShow) September 4, 2014
My fav joke in "A Piece if Work" looking at the wine's vintage and saying "May" Relevant and funny all the way to the end. Thank you Joan.
— Amy Schumer (@amyschumer) September 4, 2014
I MISS YOU. joan_rivers and @jewdygold, talking about our careers! #RIPJOAN https://t.co/EIZtfJ2cub
— Judy Gold (@JewdyGold) September 4, 2014
SEE "A PIECE OF WORK" if you haven't and see why this person is a legend LEGEND rest in peace Joan Rivers absolute trailblazer and hero
— Chelsea Peretti (@ChelseaVPeretti) September 4, 2014
I really hate you right now God. I love you Joan. Thank you for being in my life this year. Look fabulous in the beyond.
— Jen Kirkman (@JenKirkman) September 4, 2014
Here are a few written memorials worth your time and reading education.
Julie Klausner wrote for Rivers, and for Vulture, found her to be funny and fun to be around, and also gracious to her fellow comedians.
We called her a throwback when she was actually ahead of her time. We used the internet to call her mean. Everybody made fun of her face, as though any of us were ever given a choice to look like Angelina Jolie at birth but just checked the wrong box. She took jobs that weren't cool, and her only reward was more work. She was never — EVER — given her due.
Caissie St. Onge wrote for Joan, too.
I adored writing for her because she was so much ballsier than anyone I'd ever met and so ready to say things I wish I had the brass ovaries to say. I got the chance to be more outspoken through her. I know a lot of people found her humor to be mean. Could she be wildly politically incorrect? Sure. But I think she valued a comedian's right to take a risk and let the audience decide whether or not it had paid off. And she took the piss out of herself harder than anyone else. You have to be pretty self-deprecating to do a bit about how you mistook your fallen vulva for a gray bunny slipper.
Nell Scovell wrote a piece in Vanity Fair about how Rivers redefined comedy for women and inspired the next generation of female comedians. Scovell found that Silverman's advice — "Be undeniable" — applied so aptly to Rivers.
"I can't think of a better description for Rivers. She could not—and would not—be denied. She wanted to be seen and heard and she found a way through writing sketches for Topo Gigio, through guest hosting on The Tonight Show, through hosting her own show on Fox, through writing movies (like the awesome Girl Most Likely To), through selling earrings, through writing books, through skewering fashion, and through what she did best of all—standing on a stage with nothing but a mike and her mouth."
Hannah Rosin, founder of Slate.com's Double X, recalled the impact Rivers had on both her and her mother, making jokes about anything and anyone, in language that in no uncertain terms could be outright mean, filthy and sometimes both.
"She could have been remembered as the woman whom Johnny Carson rejected, or whose husband killed himself, or who turned herself into a plastic surgery freak show. Instead, she will be remembered as the woman who, no matter what, always found the punch line."
And Hank Stuever, TV critic for The Washington Post, wrote an essay headlined: "Loving Joan Rivers meant never having to say you're sorry." Rivers would never apologize, never go away, never shrink from the spotlight.
"Oh, Jooooannn, people were always saying — on her fashion critique show, on her reality show, during her guest appearances on other people's shows or from the back of the audience during her constant schedule of stand-up comedy shows. OMG, Joan. She had performed onstage the night before she went to a Manhattan doctor's office last week for a throat procedure, during which she reportedly suffered cardiac arrest and never recovered. At that last show, there had to be at least one person in the audience who thought: I can't believe she just said that."
A true original. Love her or hate her, you couldn't ignore her. Everyone else who does what she did is a pale imitator. And now, just like that, she's gone.
PreviousRIP Joan Rivers, dead at 81 (1933-2014)
NextLeslie Jones on Late Night with Seth Meyers
TV Land's "Hot In Cleveland" gets an animated episode with Steven Tyler, and LeBron James?!?
The lineup for season 3 of Gabriel Iglesias Presents Stand-Up Revolution on Comedy Central
Pat McGann on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
Ain't technology great?


text:
//-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
// <copyright file="AssemblyInfo.cs" company="WheelMUD Development Team">
//   Copyright (c) WheelMUD Development Team.  See LICENSE.txt.  This file is
//   subject to the Microsoft Public License.  All other rights reserved.
// </copyright>
// <summary>
//   Assembly information for the WheelMUD.Utilities project.
// </summary>
//-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

using System.Reflection;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;

// General Information about an assembly is controlled through the following
// set of attributes. Change these attribute values to modify the information
// associated with an assembly.
[assembly: AssemblyTitle("WheelMUD.Utilities")]
[assembly: AssemblyDescription("Contains general utility code that is used throughout the WheelMUD Server.")]

// Setting ComVisible to false makes the types in this assembly not visible
// to COM components.  If you need to access a type in this assembly from
// COM, set the ComVisible attribute to true on that type.
[assembly: ComVisible(false)]

// The following GUID is for the ID of the typelib if this project is exposed to COM
[assembly: Guid("d64fbee8-5def-4816-b0c3-811342419d86")]


Yarrowyck, a suburb of Sydney in New South Wales is beautifully located 23 kilometers north west of Uralla on Thunderbolts Way and about 31 kilometers west of the city of Armidale. The population of Yarrowyck is approximately 136 people. Best places to be in Yarrowyck is Yarrowyck Crossing Reserve. Some suburb around Yarrowyck are Torryburn, Boorolong, Invergowrie, Abington, Rocky River, Dumaresq, Balala and Saumarez Ponds.
Why Yarrowyck should compare energy prices using Econnex?


text:
DND to ferret out bin Laden, Taliban
No word yet from Harry Potter on controversial plan
More Academic Probation
With warnings from the Pentagon of a long and drawn out conflict with the Taliban, the Canadian military is devising alternative strategies to combat this new foe. In an attempt to think "outside the box," General Leon Pantaloux has put together a task force of the nation's leading military minds, whose purpose is to devise a method of gaining the advantage in the rough terrain of Afghanistan.
Among the reported methods discussed, the following were believed to be the most promising and will be allocated the bulk of this project's research and development budget.
The FLLF plan: Ferrets, Lots and Lots of Ferrets
These furry little creatures are ideal for burrowing in caves, and are widely feared when aggravated. It is also believed that whether or not these creatures can scare bin Laden out of hiding, the stench of so many of these animals would be enough to force the surrender of most of the cave dwelling population. Variations of this tactic include the more aggressive variations of BLLB (Badgers, Lots and Lots of Badgers) or WLLW (Wolverines, Lots and Lots of Wolverines).
The ALA plan: Annoying Leftist Activists
The ALA tactic involved changing the location of the Group of Eight summit to Kabul, and then arranging for all the heads of state to have head colds. As such, there would have been nothing but anarchists and protesters filling the streets of Kabul. This plan had two rather appealing aspects to it. Firstly, the Taliban would be forced to deal with this rather volatile bunch, and at the same time, if they did find a way of dealing with the problem, it would have saved the RCMP any trouble over security here at home and any G-8 summit in the future. Although the Taliban's retreat from the Afghan capital led to the demise of this plan, DND oYcials have indicated that it may be resurrected if the Northern Alliance does not comply with UN rebuilding plans.
The TSK plan: Trojan Sea King
No, this plan doesn't involve free condoms, but rather "forgetting" where we left our military equipment in hostile territory, and not giving it a second thought. In theory, the terrorists will hijack the equipment and suffer more casualties from mechanical failures than we would if we actually mounted an all-out land offensive. This plan is particularly attractive to the military as it leaves room for new--and hopefully operational--equipment in next year's budget.
The AQU plan: Al-Qaeda Union
As we all know, nothing makes a system more bureaucratic and inefficient than a union. And so, in the hopes of crippling the al-Qaeda terrorist network, the AQU plan remarkably resistant to such efforts. If properly adapted, they could provide the crippling blow the allies need to emerge victorious in the months ahead, especially given the fact that wage and workplace safety negotiations would be carried out immediately after release.


text:
Litt Brings "Dead Boy Detectives" to Life in New Vertigo Ongoing
by Jeffrey Renaud
– on Sep 24, 2013
With "The Sandman Overture" #1 arriving in October, Neil Gaiman's sequential art opus is returning to comics in a very big way, and the mythos will grow even larger when Vertigo launches a new "Dead Boy Detectives" series in December. Created by Gaiman and artists Matt Wagner and Malcolm Jones III in 1991, the Dead Boy Detectives debuted in "The Sandman" #25. Gaiman revived the characters in 1993 for "The Children's Crusade" -- Vertigo's first-ever crossover event.
Co-written by novelist Toby Litt and Mark Buckingham, and featuring art by Buckingham and Gary Erksine, "Dead Boy Detectives" continues the adventures of Edwin Paine and Charles Rowland, a pair of ghosts who take it upon themselves to solve supernatural mysteries between space and time, including their own untimely deaths which occurred nearly 75 years apart at St. Hilarions School for Boys.
Litt shared his thoughts on the series, explaining that he and Buckingham received Gaiman's blessing to make "Dead Boy Detectives" their own and revealing that not only does the title tie into the greater Sandman universe, but also that Edwin and Charles may not be solving mysteries as a dynamic duo for too much longer.
CBR News: In the Vertigo one-shot anthologies "Ghosts" and "Time Warp," you started a story with Charles and Edwin titled "Run Ragged." Is the third part still coming in an anthology, or will the story you've started dovetail into your new ongoing series?
Toby Litt: The third part of "Run Ragged" -- "Gone to the Dogs" -- will come out as part of "The Witching Hour" anthology. This was always the plan. But that story now leads directly in to the beginning of the ongoing series.
For those who may have missed those stories, and shame on you if you have, can you bring us up to speed on what the boys have been up to?
Things haven't been easy over at the Dead Boy Detective Agency -- or tree house. Cases just haven't been coming the boys' way. In fact, they've been reduced to that lowliest of detective activities: Searching for a lost cat. Okay, so that cat is a ghost cat. And the clients who hired them, two girls called Maddy and Libby, are also ghosts. Of course, Charles -- as he always does -- has fallen for Maddy. Edwin has done his best to keep the investigation on track.
However, whilst in pursuit of their quarry, the boys are captured by the spirit of a demented Victorian schoolmaster named Mr. Locke, who has been running a 'Ragged School' since 1844. Ragged Schools really did exist. They were for the poorest of the poor, for orphans and street children. The Dead Boy Detectives, assisted by a couple of Mr. Locke's pluckier students, have managed to escape, but Mr. Locke whistles up all the savage hounds that inhabit the Isle of Dogs to chase Charles and Edwin and to tear them to pieces. When we left them last time, the boys were desperately trying to escape by climbing a crane. Mr. Locke was right after them, though.
Charles and Edwin are dead, boys and detectives, but what else can you tell us about them? What strengths -- and weaknesses -- do you feel each one brings to the partnership?
Charles and Edwin met at St Hilarion's school. Both were killed by a trio of extremely psychotic bullies. In the usual run of things, Charles would have been paid a friendly little visit by Death, and would have gone wherever he was destined to go. However, because things were getting a little confused with the afterlife at that point, and because Death was running late, had more important things to do and because she thought the boys were kind of sweet and amusing, she let them carry on as ghosts -- promising to return and gather them up one day. These events were narrated by Neil Gaiman as part of the "Season of Mists" run of "Sandman." All through the planning of the comic, we've gone back again and again to Neil's original story. It seems to set up so many fantastic possibilities.
The boys have very contrasting characters. Charles follows his heart, whereas Edwin tries to use his head. They are both obsessed with being detectives, but of very different kinds. Edwin models himself on Sherlock Holmes. Charles' hero is Philip Marlowe. The main thing that separates them, however, is that Edwin has spent many years in hell. He's a darker character than Charles, though he keeps this hidden a lot of the time.
What is about the dynamically dead duo that you think works and why do you think the characters have what it takes to carry their own series?
What's great about the boys is, I think, their friendship. They don't have anyone else in the world -- and they want to do something to help people. They're good-hearted idealists and ghosts who can pass through walls or swoosh from one part of the world to another in an instant. So, who better to solve those tricky supernatural mysteries that no-one else can?
Will you be resurrecting and reimagining classic adventures of Charles and Edwin, or are these all new adventures?
These are all new adventures, but they will be taking Charles and Edwin back to some familiar locations, allowing them to conclude some long-neglected business. For the most part, though, they are going to be encountering a much vaster universe of trouble. Our ambitions are to have the boys continue to pursue individual cases, but there are some much bigger things at stake than lost cats -- even extremely cute and feisty lost cats.
Will these individual cases be done-in-one adventures like the Hardy Boys, or will you be telling larger stories over longer arcs through multiple issues?
I'm hoping it will be a combination of both. The discrete cases will bring out aspects of the ghost world that the boys have inhabited without really investigating. Charles, in particular, wants to test his own limits. What can and can't ghosts do?
Can you give us a tease of what's ahead in the first six to twelve issues? Storylines? Villains? Supporting characters?
I don't think it's any secret that the boys don't stay as a duo for too much longer. And, like I said, they're going to be drawn back to where they have unfinished business.
What? They're not staying together as a duo? Can you explain?
Well, that's certainly a game-changer. Will Mr. Locke continue to play a role beyond "The Witching Hour," because he is one of my favorite new bad guys of late.
Thank you. He is extremely horrible, and was great fun to write for. And, yes, it's quite possible he'll make a return appearance. But there are even badder guys on the horizon.
You're also adding a new supporting character to the mythos. What can you tell us about Crystal?
Crystal is the tech savvy daughter of a washed-up Britpop star and a media-obsessed Young British Artist, who is no longer so young. She's thirteen years old, and into detective mangas and a particular MMORPG. More than that, I'm reluctant to say.
When we last spoke, you shared that you received feedback and even signoff from the Boys' creator, Neil Gaiman. Has he had any input this time around?
Yes. I was able to ask him all the questions I needed to, about the boys, their relationship to Death, what he intended for "The Children's Crusade." He's been following the development of the stories. Mainly, though, he gave us his blessing to go and make it our own. That's definitely what we're doing.
Obviously, it's an exciting time for Mr. Gaiman and the "Sandman" Universe with the upcoming release of "The Sandman Overture." Will your series tie into that series at all? Are you excited to be a part of the franchise as Neil prepares to make his return?
There are tie-ins with the Sandman universe. But if Hell is the underworld, and the Endless an overarching superstructure, then the boys will be exploring some vast, shifting spaces left in the gaps. For instance, they'll be traveling down the ghost roads only passingly mentioned in "The Children's Crusade."
"Dead Boy Detectives" #1, written by Toby Litt and Mark Buckingham and featuring art by Buckingham and Gary Erskine, goes on sale December 31.
Tags: vertigo, neil gaiman, mark buckingham, sandman, dead boy detectives, toby litt


text:
Breaking Up With Bobby Jindal
Former Louisiana Republican operative and New Media Director to the 2011 Bobby Jindal campaign, Taylor Huckaby recalls the birth, life, and death of his confidence in the Jindal brand.
When I was 19, I babysat Governor Bobby Jindal's three children.
Yes, changing diapers and making sure all the broccoli was fully eaten would be the opening salvo of my career in government and campaign communications. Each day after classes back in 2008, a female friend and I would make our way to the Governor's Mansion gate and do our best to help First Lady Supriya Jindal and a few state troopers wrangle the kids. We'd had the good fortune of attending the same church as then-Chief of Staff Timmy Teepell, who offered us the gig one Sunday after services. Naturally, we leapt at the opportunity.
I'd always found myself in a love affair with politics, being particularly drawn to the conservative brand from a young age. Whereas my friends would spend their days playing Xbox or chasing cheerleaders, I would find myself charting out a pilgrimage to President Bush's Crawford Ranch or making plans to attend Sean Hannity's newest book signing.
So it came as no surprise to anyone that I, then a freshman student in the LSU political communication track, would be thrilled to become a part of Team Jindal— even if it were in less-than-glorious capacity. He had just been elected to his first term, and as a kid who thought of himself as a highly intellectual Christian conservative, I then believed Jindal would be my express ticket to the heights of politics.
And the babysitting gig did indeed open doors. A few short months later, I found myself working for the Louisiana GOP, churning out content for their website and writing speeches for Chairman Roger Villere. Down the road, when Jindal ran for reelection, Teepell brought me onboard the campaign as New Media Director. I ran Jindal's social media accounts, wrote press releases, edited opinion pieces, and crafted reams worth of letters to the editor. In fact, if you received a newsletter from the Jindal campaign in your email inbox during the campaign, there's a good chance yours truly wrote it.
Yet as time wore on, my conservative fervor waned. I was exposed to arguments and ideas I had not previously considered, and faced a growing disconnect between my sexuality and the official stance of the Republican Party– to say nothing of Jindal's on-the-record remarks about gay people.
By 2012, I could no longer square my chosen career in Republican politics with my personal beliefs, and left Louisiana feeling as though I had wasted four years. I still count many members of Team Jindal as close, personal friends — I came out as gay sitting in the Teepells' kitchen, for crying out loud — but I had become irredeemably disillusioned and cynical about the message we were selling.
Today, in 2015, not even the slightest vestige of the Bobby Jindal I had once believed could occupy the White House remains.
Jindal now fashions himself more as a producer of Duck Dynasty than the wonkish political wunderkind I had once admired. He seems to be on an endless quest to prove something to America, though at this point, I'm not quite sure what.
He constantly wheedles to anyone with an open ear about pulling his state through repeated crises with little more than a star-spangled gleam in his eye and a generous helping of down-home guts and gumption. Any hint of gubernatorial malpractice he papers over with dark exhortations against the Obama presidency, patently false explanations involving falling oil prices, or the more generalized threat of liberals doing… things.
The Jindal recipe for public policy and governance is, in short, a magnificently bald-faced façade. To mix a bunch of metaphors, he's an unraveling tapestry on display within a house of cards built on a swamp below sea level in the path of a hurricane.
Since Jindal's ascent to the Kingfish's throne in 2007, Louisiana has lurched from one budgetary catastrophe to the next— but these budget woes are as manufactured as the belt buckles he wears on tour in Iowa. It is a simple, time-tested political calculus which allowed Governor Jindal to perennially wreak havoc on Louisiana, escape the blame, and then be the hero all at once—but the limit exists, and now there's no place for him to escape.
To gain political points from these budget disasters in years past, Jindal's office shrewdly overstated the damage resulting from self-inflicted cuts. Then, the administration welcomed state institutions with open arms when they came crawling before him, begging for mercy as their budgets evaporated.
Efficiencies were then always summoned from the ether; favors doled out, programs shuffled here and there, and state property sold off in fire sales. Lo and behold, Jindal again had plugged the budget and saved the day with ever-tightening fiscal belt adjustments—never mind the hundreds of millions in tax payouts to corporations, the wholesale abandonment of the bipartisan Stelly Plan, or his flip-flop refusal to take federal revenue for medical care. Just ignore all that and remember: four legs good, two legs better, taxes bad. Taxes baaaaaaad.
When I was part of the Jindal political machine, we unanimously believed this strategy was not only viable for the length of two full terms but also supremely clever.
See, the yearly budget crisis would induce loud, apocalyptic prophecies from the liberals, which then provided the Jindal-controlled state Republican Party apparatus with the perfect opportunity to sneer back at them when boy-wonder Bobby came along with ever-more-novel sources of money. Plus, as an added bonus, it snapped any wayward education folks right back in line: curry favor with the administration, or face the end of your job (or, if you get uppity, your institution itself; sincere apologies to UNO).
Presidential aspirant Bobby Jindal plays a really, really mean game of hardball, folks. Think Frank Underwood's understudy.
So what makes this year's budgetary woes different than any other flavor of the now-expected yearly crisis?
In short, Jindal appears to have miscalculated the sustainability of his fiscal shenanigans. One may only sell off state assets, cut revenue, and cut programs so many times before the shell game necessarily has to end. We, back in our heyday, thought it would last the full eight years– but it looks like seven could be the maximum (less sincere apologies to David Vitter; you're on deck, buddy).
The tell, in this particular year, is Jindal's unprecedented capitulation on taxes. For the four years I worked in the Louisiana Republican machine, "NO NEW TAXES!" was the siren song to which the electorate was held in thrall. Deviation from this script was anathema— let me illustrate.
Back in June of 2011, I paced in a nondescript office across from the capitol, caught up in a heated discussion with my fellow Jindal colleagues. Timmy Teepell was there, as was his brother-in-law Matt Parker, then campaign manager for Jindal's reelection effort after a nepotism-tinged stint as the Republican Party of Louisiana's executive director. Also present was Curt Anderson, whom I believe to be the ghostwriter of Jindal's first and only memoir, Leadership in Crisis, along with a few other communications folks.
The subject? The cigarette tax.
Whether the 4-cent tax was an existing tax or a new tax was a topic of much nuance and intrigue, and I had firmly come down on the pro-tax side of the argument considering we had A) renewed the tax before without so much as a peep, and B) the tax provided Louisiana a desperately-needed injection of tens of millions of dollars in direct and federal matching funds for its abysmally underfunded Department of Health and Hospitals.
We had been arguing for a while at that point, considering it would be me who had the thankless job of writing one of the governor's public statements proclaiming the not-new-tax as a new-tax, and I'd had enough of the back and forth. I was the youngest person in the room by almost a decade; the kid with an acid tongue, but I'd at least earned a place at the table.
"This just flat out isn't what's best for the people of Louisiana!" I remember shouting.
"What's best for the people of Louisiana," Matt Parker shot back, "is getting Republicans elected. So shut up and do your fucking job, Huckaby."
I stared at their smiles. The rest of the team nodded sagely in agreement.
Now I genuinely love Matt Parker and had enjoyed many a beer-and-pizza night with him, but I was stunned into silence at the sheer naked political honesty of his statement. I backed out of the room and shut the door behind me.
The cigarette tax was not renewed; revenue fell, and along with it quality of care.
This exchange marked the exact moment I knew I could no longer work for Bobby Jindal or Republican campaign politics. That willingness, even eagerness, to gut funding from one of the most vulnerable state departments in an effort to score political points made me ill. Thus, when I read in a recent New York Times article that Jindal was entertaining a motion to raise the cigarette tax, I knew things had gotten really, really bad for him.So in conclusion, let this story serve as a warning to those who would follow Governor Jindal: don't let his folksy mannerisms and aw-shucks posture lull you into thinking for one second that he is anything but a manipulative, calculating political avatar for the most extreme elements of the conservative movement.
This is the type of man who hires a career political consultant to help write his book on leadership, the type of man who forcibly silences criticism from the Louisiana State University system even as he holds a knife to its throat year after year, the type of man who travels around the state handing out comically large checks backed with federal stimulus dollars while taking credit for providing the money.
Bobby Jindal sold Louisiana down the river for four cents on a pack of cigarettes back in 2011, and his team would do it again to anyone or anything standing in his way. Politics is the real portrait of the Jindal administration; actual Louisianians were never in the picture to begin with.
Posted in Social Activism
Prev Bill Cassidy, LSU, and the Louisiana Media's Abdication of Duty
Next An Open Letter to Kevin Boyd of The Hayride
Robert Mann says:
Reblogged this on Something Like the Truth and commented:
An explosive, behind-the-scenes look at Bobby Jindal and his cynical aides by a former Jindal staffer.
Tom Aswell says:
An extraordinarily revealing look at the emperor with no clothes. "What's best for Louisiana is getting Republicans elected." That about says it all for this administration. Thanks for peeling back the layers and giving us a peek.
bigwriter says:
Nice, honest piece.
That cigarette tax was renewed, but as a Constitutional amendment that Jindal couldn't veto
wildwildwest says:
Wow, but I didn't expect anything better from Piyush. Thanks.
Guy Mayer says:
Bob, thanks once again for shining a spotlight on Jindal's many failures. Taylor Huckaby's article is well-written and provides a deep view into Jindal's operation. It's an interesting, yet sad story for the people of Louisiana. My best to you and Taylor in your efforts to hold Jindal's feet to the fire.
earthmother says:
Piyush unveiled. This piece needs the widest possible national distribution, to finish off the delusional quest for better than nine tenths of one percent of the vote. Mr. Huckaby, thank you for your courageous post, for telling the unvarnished, naked truth. Now if we could just be rid of Jindal's malignant presence and the evil, third rate operatives surrounding him we could begin the decades-long healing process that will bring our beloved state back to our cherished place in the 19th century.
Fredster says:
Taylor Huckaby said:
I came out as gay sitting in the Teepells' kitchen, for crying out loud
Oy! I cannot imagine that scenario. Did they offer you conversion therapy?
All I can in regard to your political conversion is thank goodness you woke up.
Excellent article Taylor.
I've read no better example of what it means to drink the koolaid.
gjrushing says:
What actually happened to Teepel anyway? Did he see the hand writing on the wall and jump ship?
Taylor's article took guts. Seems he has given up completely on Republican politics because he is toast now. They don't forgive.
CarrolltonRivers says:
Excellent! Spread the word indeed. Get this in the national media.
GREG FOREMAN says:
Pathetically, even Parker's admonish that "what's best for Louisiana…is getting Republican's elected" is a lie. Jindal and his "snake oil salespersons" exist for one reason and one reason alone-the furthering of their political careers and aspirations. If this pathetic group were "truly" concerned with, as Parker stated, getting Republicans elected, Jindal's administration would have been and would be more concerned and considerate of "John and Jane Doe" Louisiana citizen and not their professional(and I use that word loosely) advancement. What we've seen these past few years is the foundation for the second "Louisiana Hayride" which will come through the effort of and at the hands of his on political party. The Republican Party considers Bobby Jindal the equivalent of a hemorrhoid. A hemorrhoid that all the Preparation-H on the face of the earth can't alleviate.
Jeffrey Perry says:
The complacency of the Louisiana electorate is one of the wonders of the modern age.
"…an unraveling tapestry on display within a house of cards built on a swamp below sea level in the path of a hurricane." Indeed.
ulyankee says:
I've tracked back on my blog as well. http://www.lahigheredconfessions.wordpress.com
I thought I was mad before.
This verifies everything that I had already guessed five years ago when the travesty that is GRAD Act was unleashed on us in higher education. I actually thought this was the year it would all blow up, not next, which it did.
I am a wonk.
With a conscience.
And nothing to lose but my job.
Everyone else in higher ed leadership may still be crawling toward him.
There were a couple pots of data that I have that I was very reticent about holding back because they are not publicly available, even though they prove without a shadow of a doubt that what Mr. Huckaby is saying is true at least with regards higher education.
Until this morning.
Higher ed is in a crisis that Jindal created. He exploited our weaknesses to their fullest. And created quite a few more weaknesses all by himself.
Mr. Huckaby, thank you. You have justified everything that I've been seeing and saying within higher ed circles for years. And for years few wanted to believe me. Until now.
Thaddeus Stevens says:
The comments so far say it all. What is so sad is the disillusionment. You just hope this young man can recover and bet he will. You know in a previous century this was enough to incite radical politics. As in the real radical Republicans. Dave Treen was the first modern Republican governor and would not recognize this guy or the state party. Maybe just maybe the Legislature has had enough?? Come on Lance , we need a Populist Republican.
There are no populist Republicans left. That is a foreign concept to today's Republican party. Anyone who attempts to run as a populist or a centrist for that matter gets chewed up and spit out by the right wing Republican machine that is controlling the party and the money today. Sign the pledges or else! What I see are a lot of folks who still vote for Republicans under the mistaken assumption that the Dave Treens of the world still exist.
Kenny Patterson says:
this was a great read…it needs to be circulated…and I will do my part to make it gets done…Jindal is the ABSOLUT worst gov. in Louisiana history


text:
Ryder Cup bubble boys: 8 players overlooked for the U.S. Ryder Cup team
By: Zephyr Melton September 8, 2021
Patrick Reed has been a Team USA staple in recent Ryder Cups, but he will watch from home this year.
After much deliberation over the past several months, Steve Stricker released his captain's picks for the Ryder Cup during a press conference on Wednesday at Whistling Straits. His six picks of Daniel Berger, Harris English, Jordan Spieth, Tony Finau, Scottie Scheffler and Xander Schauffele round out the team that will represent the U.S. in Wisconsin later this month.
Those six will join Dustin Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau, Collin Morikawa, Patrick Cantlay, Justin Thomas and Brooks Koepka on Team USA, as the Americans look to win back the Ryder Cup after a 17.5-10.5 beatdown at the hands of the Europeans three years ago.
Stricker said he feels confident in his picks and believes he has a strong team heading to Whistling Straits, but there were several strong players left off the team with legit cases for being selected. Here are eight hopefuls who were left off the 2021 Ryder Cup team.
Patrick Reed has been a staple of Team USA since making his first appearance in 2014, but that experience was not enough to get a nod from Stricker. While Captain America brings plenty of spark in team events, he also brings plenty of controversy. His criticism of Jim Furyk after the 2018 Ryder Cup likely didn't help his chances, and his recent form has not been the best either. Reed has not registered a top-10 finish since early June, and he had a scary bout with double pneumonia just two weeks ago. "It wasn't an easy one," Stricker said, "but I think it was just the uncertainty of his health, and really the lack of play that led to our decision down the stretch."
Kevin Na
Kevin Na wasn't on anyone's Ryder Cup radar for most of the summer, but a recent hot streak thrust him into the conversation. Starting in early July, Na registered four top-eight finishes in six starts, and he carded the low 72-hole score at the Tour Championship, which gave his Ryder Cup candidacy a late lift. However, ranking 170th in driving distance likely didn't help his cause. It was a case of too little, too late for the veteran.
Will Zalatoris
Stricker didn't hesitate to fill out his team with rookies, but he didn't go so far as to go with a trendy pick of Will Zalatoris. While the 25-year-old ball-striking machine was a consistent force on Tour this season — including a runner-up finish at Augusta — his woes on the greens likely doomed his chances. He ranked 122nd on Tour in SG: Putting last season, and in an event that is won and lost on the putting surface, that deficiency was just too much to overcome.
Webb Simpson
Webb Simpson, 13th in the Ryder Cup standings, didn't make it to the Tour Championship but had six top 10s and 13 top 25s in 21 starts last season. With just three missed cuts on the season, few players are more consistent than the three-time Ryder Cupper. But in a year when Team USA went young, there just wasn't a spot for Simpson on this team.
Sam Burns
Sam Burns had a breakout season in 2021, earning his first Tour victory and notching eight top 10s in 26 starts, but his Ryder Cup candidacy never got as much buzz as some of his fellow countrymen. Stroke-gained analytics favor Burns — eight in SG: Putting, 14th in SG: Total — but he also struggled in big-time events. He made just one cut in majors in 2021 (T76 at The Open), and he racked up many of his high finishes, including his win at the Valspar, in events with weaker fields. If he wants to represent Team USA, he'll have to perform a bit better on the biggest stages.
Jason Kokrak had one of the strongest seasons of his career in 2021 as he earned two wins and 12 top 25s in 27 starts, but recency bias did him no favors. According to Data Golf's Ryder Cup rankings, he was 24th over the last three months prior to selections, and his lack of any team-golf experience was also a ding on his resume. His game is a perfect fit for Whistling Straits, but there were too many better options on the table for Stricker this year.
Billy Horschel boosted his Ryder Cup resume in the spring with a win at the WGC Match Play in Texas, but after the victory he didn't quite do enough to merit a selection. His lack of prior Ryder Cup experience was also a glaring hole in the resume for the 34-year-old.
Kevin Kisner
Kevin Kisner has proven himself to be a tough out in match play competitions during his career, but his form in 2021 never gave him much of a chance at making this team. Outside of ranking 32nd in SG: Putting, Kisner did not have another strokes-gained category where he ranked inside the top 80. He did earn a win just a few weeks ago at the Wyndham Championship, but his ball-striking deficiencies over the last 18 months sunk his chances.
Zephyr Melton is an assistant editor for GOLF.com where he spends his days blogging, producing and editing. Prior to joining the team at GOLF.com, he attended the University of Texas followed by stops with Team USA, the Green Bay Packers and the PGA Tour. He assists on all things instruction and covers amateur and women's golf.
Tour Confidential: Hideki Matsuyama's jaw-dropper, Netflix, funky courses
Kevin Na is ripped by fellow pro for slow play, and Na trolls back
Why playing Jordan Spieth for money is 'sketchy,' according to Kevin Kisner
Sony Open leaderboard: Who's leading after Round 1
'It's too political for me': Kevin Kisner sounds off on Ryder Cup snub
Webb Simpson opens up on 'emotional' Ryder Cup viewing from home
Patrick Reed is 12 under through his last 26 holes. Here's what fueled his turnaround
Easiest hole on PGA Tour once again living up to its softball reputation
Kevin Na, Jason Kokrak birdie 12 of final 13 holes (!) to win QBE Shootout


Share the holidays with someone special.
Give them an Ornament by WHD our newest collection of 2-sided ornaments.
They come on a Vintage inspired backer card and placed into an organza bag.
Remember those near to us all. 2 Sided Ornaments with Red Ribbon.


text:
Calif. Initiative Carries Long Political Coattails
How affirmative-action measure sways other races
By Daniel B. Wood Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
The push to dismantle affirmative action is finally coming to a shove in one of Election 1996's most volatile and important campaigns.
The California Civil Rights Initiative (CCRI), now known as Proposition 209 on the November state ballot, sparked unprecedented public and media response when it was announced last year. The contentious measure seeks to end decades-old government programs that give preference to minorities and women for jobs, promotions, contracts, and college admissions.
Now, with eight weeks left before voters go to the polls and sentiment against the measure growing more vocal, Proposition 209 has become a potential election-year minefield, particularly for Republicans.
The candidates are treading lightly on the issue (President Clinton is officially against it, Bob Dole for it), while state, local, and congressional officials are coming down on all sides with varying degrees of vehemence.
Sentiment on the issue could sway enough votes to influence the fight for control of the state Assembly, the US House, and California's bonanza of 54 electoral votes. And if the measure passes, it has the potential to trigger a remake of social policy from statehouses nationwide to Congress.
"Politicians from here to Washington are holding their breath to see what happens to another big California initiative," says Alan Heslop, director of the Rose Institute at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, Calif. "This has the potential, like the Prop. 13 tax revolt and Prop. 187 immigration measure, to set new national norms on a vital national issue."
The initiative is heavily favored by voters (2 to 1 in most polls), prompting Mr. Clinton to keep quiet about his opposition for fear of alienating white men, a key voting bloc. Mr. Dole's support for 209, once considered a boon in a state he badly needs to carry, has become problematic, partly because of vocal opposition, partly because of similar federal legislation that he introduced then dropped, and partly because of strong attacks once heaped on Dole's antiaffirmative-action stances by Jack Kemp, now his running mate.
But despite Dole's desire to avoid stumbling on the issue, Republicans, among others, have pushed it to center stage in recent weeks. In the lead up to this week's state Republican convention, Gov. Pete Wilson and House Speaker Newt Gingrich called 60 of the state's corporate leaders, asking for strong support for the measure in the face of growing anti-209 sentiment.
"From my vantage point [CCRI] is vital because we have to be competitive in California to keep control of the House," Gingrich told the corporate leaders. Analysts say a strong showing by Clinton in California could influence other races down the ticket, helping Democrats to pick up as many as four seats in the House and reverting the state Assembly to their control.
"If [CCRI] is still ahead by a dramatic margin," Gingrich continued, "Clinton [will have] to take time and money out of the Midwest to put in California....I think this is as important as any single resource in the campaign."
The Wilson/Gingrich appeal was seen as necessary to counter a growing backlash that could hurt Republicans if anti-209 voters vent their displeasure at the polls. Women's and minority groups have recently staged demonstrations. TV ads criticizing the measure are beginning to appear. Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, a Republican, has come out against 209, calling it "divisive ...[taking] one of our greatest assets, our diversity, and [turning] it into a liability." The Los Angeles Times lauded his remarks, saying they brought "clarity to a controversial and deeply misleading ballot initiative."
Critics charge the initiative is misleading because the words "affirmative action" appear nowhere in its language. The key section reads: "Neither the State of California or any of its political subdivisions or agents shall use race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin as a criterion for either discriminating against, or granting preferential treatment to any individual or group."
"The key pollsters have found over and over that if you word it this way, people are in favor of it," says Pat Ewing, director of 'No on CCRI.' "But if you tell them that this will cut affirmative action for women and minorities the [for-against] numbers are dead even or even somewhat reversed."
Some analysts lament that emotion rather than rational discussion has dominated the campaign. "When rumblings about rolling back affirmative action started over a year ago, both sides said they welcomed the public dialogue," says Sherry Jeffe, an analyst at the Claremont Graduate School. "But it still hasn't happened yet."
Opinion When character counts in choosing a president
Prop. 37: Will California be first state to label genetically modified food?
Opinion After Super Tuesday: How damaged is Mitt Romney to run against Obama?


Low Taek Jho – better known as Jho Low– achieved infamy in 2015 when officials began investigating 1MDB as a front for illegal transactions and money laundering. It ended up being revealed as one of the biggest scandals in recent history, involving multiple countries around the world, including the US. Low, now 36, is widely believed to have been the financier in control of 1MDB's capital, and has been accused of stealing hundreds of millions from the development.
Low was charged yesterday in absentia with five counts of fraud under the country's Anti-Money Laundering and Anti-Terrorism Financing Act, based on his alleged funneling of more than $1 billion from 1MDB through his own company, Good Star. He now faces seven charges in total in Malaysian courts, having already been charged in August.
Four others involved in the 1MDB scandal were also charged in absentia yesterday, with the five fugitives facing a total of 13 new charges altogether.
Jho Low, who has been brought up on charges in Malaysia, Singapore, and the United States, has long been believed to be hiding out in China, though Chinese officials continue to deny his presence in the country.
"If they truly have him, China won't give Jho Low up so easily," political scientist James Chin told the South China Morning Post.
Tom Wright, co-author of a recently released book detailing Jho Low's illegal exploits, said in an interview with CNBC that he has reason to believe China is intentionally keeping Low away from trials that could, once underway, reveal illegal or unsavory Chinese activity in Malaysia.
"Billion Dollar Whale", co-authored by Pulitzer Prize winners Wright and fellow reporter Bradley Hope, was released just two months ago as an "epic true-tale of hubris and greed". The account documents Low's most outlandish financial exploits, including his purchase of real-estate, extravagant yachts, and million-dollar jewels.
It also details how Low funneled 1MDB funds into a US film production company, Red Granite Pictures, which produced the film "Wolf of Wall Street" – a popular western movie that depicts the lifestyle of a high-living, corrupt businessman.
"The irony is amazing" that Low, who is alleged to have committed financial fraud, was involved in a movie about exactly that crime, a Malaysian analyst told the South China Morning Post.
According to reporter Wright, who has spent the past year focusing on investigating Jho Low's alleged offences, Low – who came from an affluent Malaysian family and had extensive opportunities to legally expand his wealth – is a "a very hard character to figure".
While Malaysia continues to pile charges onto Low's list of alleged crimes, officials in the US are also focussing their efforts on rooting out the tens of millions of dollars Low allegedly funneled into the country through false loans and bank statements. On 1 December, a civil forfeiture claim filed in the US revealed that the US Department of Justice had seized $73m from American bank accounts linked to Low.
Since allegations regarding 1MDB were initially made, Low has maintained his innocence. Speaking through his attorneys, Low responded to the recent charges with a statement that claims he cannot expect a fair trial in Malaysia, where a national election earlier this year saw Prime Minister Najib Razak ousted and consequently hit with charges relating to his own involvement in the 1MDB scandal.


text:
FK Metalac és un club de futbol de Kraljevo, Sèrbia.

Enllaços externs
 Lloc web oficial

Metalac Kraljevo


The sealing performance of any elastic metal seal is based on the relative high specific contact load between the seal and the mating surface. This linear load or seating load is generated by the reaction of the seal (with or without spring) against its deformation by compressing the seal to a well-defi ned groove depth.
The graph on this page represents the compression and decompression characteristics of a standard spring energised C Ring. The curve "A-B-C" gives the increasing linear load by compression rate, whereas the curve "C-D-E" represents the reduction of linear load when the seal flanges separate and compression is reduced.
The curve shows a plastic deformation of the metal seal. Point "B" on the compression curve is the transition point between elastic and plastic deformation. In this example almost 80% of the max. linear load is achieved. Point "C" indicates the point of maximum compression (min. groove depth). Metal seals should be compressed approximately 20%, as higher compression can lead to seal failure.
The total spring back or elastic recovery is situated from point "C" to "E". As a rule of thumb, the spring back varies between 4 and 6% of the original cross section of the seal. It will be clear that as soon as the flange separation equals the spring back, the seating load will fall back to zero. At that point the sealing performance will be highly questionable. Therefore it is strongly advised to design flange and bolts in such a manner that the flange rotation at the seal location is smaller than 1/3 of the total spring back. The latter is outlined with the green coloured section of the decompression curve.
For safe operation the seal has to be maintained in the green section (line C-D) of the decompression curve. Depending on the number of variables it might be required to move point "D" upwards, i.e. reducing the useful spring back.