February 4, 2019: Now that Super Bowl LIII is history, people are looking toward the next big day of celebrating, spending, marketing, buying food and drink and being together — Valentine's Day.
Fewer people in the U.S. will be sharing the love on Feb. 14, 2019 than in recent years, but those who are participating plan to spend a record $20.7 billion on jewelry, flowers, candy and other gifts to loved ones and friends.
They also will be spending a record $161.96 per person, good news for retailers, according to a new survey from the National Retail Federation, Washington, DC.
That is nearly $6 billion more than people spent on Super Bowl LIII — $14.8 billion — and some $5 billion more than the record spend during Super Bowl 50 in 2016, according to the NRF.
"Valentine's Day means different things for different people," Phil Rist, vp-strategy for Prosper Insights & Analytics, which conducted the survey for NRF, said via the group.
The $20.7 billion spend is an increase of 6% over last year's $19.6 billion and breaks the previous record of $19.7 billion in 2016.
By comparison, people spent a record $23.1 billon for Mother's Day in 2018 (an average of $180 per person); and during November-December 2018 spent upward of $720 billion.
The number of people who will be participating in Valentine's Day, 51%, is down from 55% in 2018 and down 12% from the 63% in 2009.
However, the average $162 spend predicted this year in up 13% from last year's $143.56 and an average of about $16 per person over the previous record of $146.84 in 2016.
It is also up some $60 over the $102.50 average spend ten years ago in 2009.
Among those celebrating, the most money will be spent on jewelry, $3.9 billion, which was cited by 18% of people surveyed.
That was followed by the $3.5 billion spend on an evening out, named by 34%.
The biggest category, though, is greeting cards, where 44% of people said they would spend $933 million.
Concurrently, people plans to spend $2.1 billion on clothing (18%), $1.9 billion on flowers (35%), $1.8 billion on candy (52%) and $1.3 billion on gift cards (15%).
Gifts for pets are popular — purchased by 20% — with spending expected to total $886 million. That would be up $519 million since NRF said it first asked in 2008.
Gifts that fall into the category of "experience" such as tickets to an event, a trip or a spa are wanted by 40% and planned to be given by 25%.
People said they would spend an average of $29.87 on other family members, $9.78 on friends, $8.63 on children's classmates or teachers, $7.78 on co-workers, $6.94 on pets and $5.72 on others.
And people do not forget about themselves on Valentine's Day, with 11% planning to treat themselves to such gifts as clothing and jewelry and 9% making time to get together with other single friends or family.
As in past surveys, men are the biggest spenders, an average of $229.54, which is up 20% from last year.
That's more than double the $97.77 women said they would spend, which is actually down 1% (and is within the survey's margin of error), per the NRF.
"Both groups typically have more people to buy for including children and children's classmates or teachers," according to the NRF.
As to where people get their gifts, department stores are the most popular Valentine's Day shopping destination, visited by 35% of shoppers, followed by discount stores (32%), online (27%), specialty stores (18%) florists (16%), small or local businesses (14%), jewelry stores and specialty clothing stores ( 9% each).
"A 2017 flash poll conducted by NRF found the top reasons consumers chose not to celebrate Valentine's Day were that they considered it over-commercialized, didn't have anyone to celebrate with or simply weren't interested anymore," Katherine Cullen, director, industry and consumer insights for NFR, said via the group.
According to Dunkin', on Feb. 9, (11 AM-3 PM local time), Dunkin' will be taking over Sure Thing, a Wedding Chapel by Flora Pop, in Las Vegas, "where the first 100 couples that stop by will be given an exclusive Dunkin' donut bouquet for their ceremony, or just as a unique Valentine's Day gift.
Dove Chocolate also has a marketing push, including a TV spot, "Daisy," from BBDO NY.
• Minor League Baseball team Pensacola (FL) Blue Wahoos are offering a Valentine's Day Game Day Experience that includes delivery of balloons, candy, a Valentine's gift, a Blue Wahoos hat, tickets to five games and the opportunity to throw out the first pitch at a Blue Wahoos game.
• California Pizza Kitchen (based in Los Angeles) and Jet's Pizza (Sterling Heights, MI) are among those serving heart-shaped pizzas on Feb. 14 (participating locations while supplies last); Auntie Anne's will have heart-shaped pretzels; Krispy Kreme is offering heart-shaped Valentine Conversation Doughnuts ("All the Feels," "Be Mine," "DM Me").
• Hallmark is expanding its collection of Vinyl Record Cards with new cards featuring songs from such Warner Music Group artists as Bruno Mars, Michael Bublé and Kelly Clarkson. Each card includes an exclusive 7-inch vinyl record with two songs from each artist built into a sleeve on the card's cover. "Just remove the record, put it on any record player and enjoy the music."
Among other brands with dedicated Valentine's Day marketing campaigns are Teleflora, anchored by a 90-second spot, "Love Out Loud, A Silent Film"; and Pro Flowers, with Pro Football Hall of Famer Troy Aikman (pictured above), "Order Like A Pro."


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By Dr. Ken Nordberg
[The following is the another of many older articles that will appear on my website. This is article was first published in Midwest Outdoors in December of 2008. Please share what you learn from these articles with your whitetail hunting friends.]
Doc's son Ken with a modest buck. (2008, 6-pointer)
One of my favorite sayings is, "The best parts of deer hunting are thinking about it beforehand and talking about it afterwards. The part in between is mostly hard work." Well here I am, scratching my head wondering what I should write about. You see, at this point in time (an annual enigma) my mind is overwhelmed with thoughts of heading north (in about a week) to set up deer camp, but by the time you read this, Minnesota's 2008 firearm season will be long over. Thus, though I am currently having trouble sleeping because of the "beforehand" part, it wouldn't be fitting to write about that part long after you and I are only interested in the "afterwards" part. One of the thoughts that keeps swirling in my head is the fact that two of my grandchildren will be first-timers in deer camp this year (I took one, a granddaughter, to the shooting range yesterday). Both are thrilled to death and are now likely sleeping far less than I am.
This is probably the reason the "afterwards" part of my very first deer hunt comes to mind.
We were well into our second drive of opening morning during that long-age hunt (63 years ago) [This was about 1944/45, Doc was about 10/11] — the gang including my father, two uncles, three similarly-aged cousins and I (11 in all) — when I spotted a red-clad figure ahead. The hunter, on stand, was my uncle, Jack. As I stepped near, a sudden crashing of brush on our left drew our attention. Then, only about 30 yards away, a big doe appeared in full flight, tail up.
After it disappeared into the spruce bog behind us, Jack turned to me and asked, "Why didn't you shoot?"
"I don't know," I answered. "All I could think about was it was beautiful."
Later, after the gang gathered together again, I heard Jack say, "He just stood there, frozen. Worst case of buck fever I ever saw."
The snickers and grins that followed were unbearable, especially those of my cousins, and the words, "buck fever," seem to creep into every conversation throughout the rest of that day; malicious grins often giving way to an uproar of laughter. It was the very worst day in the life of that tender young lad, but he somehow endured it, holding back tears, quietly grinning in response.
Our first drive the following morning began shortly after first light, three miles west of my uncle Jack's farm. I, of course, was demoted to being a driver only, a person with much reduced odds of taking a deer. It would be foolish to waste shooting opportunities at deer on me. Our standers, including my father, lined up along an ancient logging trail a mile south. About 45 minutes into the drive, I clearly heard my father speaking to someone ahead. As I eventually discovered, my dad's voice had the unusual quality of being easily heard great distances in the woods. Four deer — and adult doe, a yearling doe, one fawn and an eight-point buck — also heard Dad speak. Thus realizing human hunters were less than 100 yards south of them (downwind), more rapidly approaching from their rear (upwind), the moved swiftly east, searching for a way to escape this perilous situation.
The halted in a small clearing 50 yards north of a young lad with an enormous lump in his throat and a brand new, fully loaded, Model 94 Winchester carbine in his hands. Upon remembering to cock his gun silently, as he had bee taught, he raised it to his shoulder, struggling to quell the quivering in his arms and knees. Determined to avoid repeating the ghastly mistake of the previous morning, he finally pulled the trigger, hoping to hit a deer. Wondrously, one fell.
The three others, apparently convinced the shot originated from the south where the human voice was heard, whirled and began bounding north, directly toward the young hunter. His next two shots kicked up splashes of snow well beneath deer at the zenith of their great bounds, but undaunted, the boy continued to lever in new rounds and fire.
Then a second deer fell.
A third, the fawn, now in the lead was only 10 yards from the boy when he fired again. Mortally hit, the deer hit the ground and slid into the boys shins, knocking him to his back in the snow.
Quickly jumping up, the boy took aim at the fourth deer, the big buck, as it bounded past only 10 feet away. This time, however, the only sound that came from his carbine was a metallic click. His magazine was empty.
"Who shot?" someone hollered.
"Me!" I answered, "Kenny!"
A few minutes later someone else hollered, "Where are you?"
"I'm trailing a big buck!" I yelled back.
"Come back," he responded. "You can't catch that deer!"
As I approached the circle of hunters surrounding the fallen fawn, my emotions finally under control, I saw my uncle Jack pointing at the snow-covered ground.
"Look here," he said. "He was lying on his back with his feet under this deer and his empty cartridges are scattered all around this spot only. Obviously, he had been shooting in self defense."
Everyone had a good laugh, but after that they all shook my hand and congratulated me. I was now a tried and respected member of the gang, being treated like a grown-up (a rite of passage). The best part was, never again did anyone ever even hint I was a hunter likely to suffer the shame of being stricken by buck fever.
Good Luck Hunting,
[Dr. Nordberg is the author of nine deer hunting instruction books, Whitetail Hunter's Almanac, 1st through 9th Edition (1st, 2nd, 6th and 7th Editions are currently out-of-print). Based upon three decades of unique, scientific, hunting related research with wild deer over much of North America, some wolf-inspired, these books provide everything you need to know to become regularly successful at hunting with gun or bow one of the most elusive of the world's big game, adult white-tailed bucks. They greatly improve success when hunting other deer as well. For information on how to get your own copies of Dr. Ken Nordberg's products, see the information below.]
Dr. Nordberg has written nine, long popular whitetail hunting instruction books based on more than three decades of scientific, hunting-related studies of wild deer over much of North America. Each covering different subjects, his books introduce several new and much improved hunting tactics, one wolf inspired, developed to make you regularly successful at hunting mature bucks (and other deer) with gun or bow.
Additional information for
Dr. Ken Nordberg's Whitetail Hunter's Almanacs
1st (out of print),
2nd (out of print),
3rd,
4th,
6th (out of print),
7th (very limited copies),
& 9th.
(You can still get autographed copies of available Almanacs
by mailing this order form directly to Doc.)
Dr Ken Nordberg is semi-retired. For example, he no longer gives his famous Buck Hunting School in the spring. However, during the last two years he gave his school, his son John videotaped the classes, and transformed them into DVD. These masterful presentations on hunting trophy-class whitetails bucks and black bears are available to you now. Your Buck Hunting School will arrive on 10 information packed DVDs. Your Bear Hunting School will arrive on 2 information packed DVDs. For more information, click on the images below.
Buck Hunting DVDs eBay.
Bear Hunting DVDs eBay.
(See Doc's Store for availability information.)
Back to Dr Ken Nordberg's Buck and Bear Hunting Articles

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Barnes & Noble's NOOK Color and NOOK Tablet products are tablets designed to run a customized version of the Android operating system. You can use them to read books, stream music and movies, play games, and do much more.
But while B&N offers an app store and eBook store, up until now users have had to rely on third party services like Netflix or Hulu Plus to stream videos.
Now B&N is getting ready to launch its own video store.
NOOK Video will launch in the US this fall, allowing users to purchase or rent movies and TV shows. It will also hit the UK in time for the holiday season.
Barnes & Noble has signed deals with HBO, Sony, STARZ, Warner Brothers, Disney, and other studios. Titles that will be available at launch include The Avengers, The Amazing Spider-Man, The Artist, Harry Potter movies, Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones. Videos will be available in standard definition and HD.
NOOK Video won't only be available on NOOK tablet devices. The company says you'll also be able to access content on tablets, smartphones, and televisions using NOOK Video apps or DVD or Blu-ray players which support UltraViolet.
Much like Amazon's instant video service, NOOK Video is primarily a streaming service. Your content is stored online and streamed to your device, so you can buy once and stream to any device that has a NOOK Video app.
Tablets are progressing and both the Nook and Kindle Fire HD are premiering "Video Services" but one question is why aren't they providing HDMI in Full 1080p HD ? – like the new Android tablet the Novo 7 Flame does, which goes for $189 at the U.S.electronics site called TabletSprint – overall, there's a lot of features missing on the Nook, Kindle and Nexus 7 tablets – the most complete tablet is already here though but it's a lesser known brand — compare Ainol Electronics Novo 7 Flame – it has dual cameras – (5 MegaPixel Rear camera & 2MP Webcam), Hi Res 1280×800 IPS Capacitive screen, Wifi, Bluetooth & an option for 3G — and HDMI easy Plug and Play to download movies to your tablet and watch on TV in full Broadcast Quality… why can't the big players give us more?


When you are looking for a good casual restaurant in Beaverton, Tom's Pancake House comes to mind. Bright and sunny inside, the menu naturally has great breakfast items but also features steaks, Mexican food and what most folks would consider comfort food. Open seven days a week from six AM to 8 PM, Tom's is a great place to find good solid food at affordable prices. It's not fancy, but it is well kept up, clean, and you will feel comfortable in casual or formal clothing. Tom's is so well known other businesses use it as a reference when directing people to their business with statements like "just two doors down from Tom's".
One of the oldest restaurants in the Beaverton area, Tom's doesn't really change. Oh, they will add & subtract items from the menu from time to time but in the main, you can be assured of what you will find every time you visit. There are trendy restaurants that come and go, but Tom's is like an old faithful friend. Small clubs have been meeting at Tom's for years. It's affordable and good. What more can you ask?


Soleio Cuervo has been thinking about how to tailor technology to users for almost a decade. And he's had a pretty unique vantage point. As one of the very first designers at Facebook (and reported creator of the famous "Like" button), he was instrumental in the creation of many of Facebook's early products and features. Now leading design at Dropbox, he spends his time thinking of new ways for products to understand our needs and wants in real time.
"Personalized streams are everywhere we look now: Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn," says Cuervo. And that's not even delving into the new movement toward predictive technologies like Google Now that serve up information before you even know you need it. But personalization doesn't have to be the provenance of massive companies. Startups can take advantage of the same principles to build deeply engaging experiences.
After years of firsthand work and observation, Cuervo has seen four ingredients emerge that power personalized products. At First Round's recent Design+Startup event in San Francisco, he explained each one and how newer and smaller companies can put them together to not only build great products but accelerate progress for everyone.
Cuervo is a firm believer that you need to know where you've been before you can decide where you're going. In this case, it's important for founders to understand how product personalization in computing has evolved and where it is today so they can decide what their next move should be.
It may be hard to believe that the concept of personalization is as old as personal computing itself, but that's what skeuomorphic design was all about on the early Macintosh: Folders and files were fashioned to look and operate like their real-life counterparts to ease early adopters into digital work. Obviously since then there's been a massive jump.
Over the past ten years, consumer technology has gotten to know our names, where we're located, what we're interested in, and who we're connected to —both socially and implicitly. It was at the start of this transition that Cuervo entered the scene, joining Facebook right as algorithms were making it possible to give individual users tailored experiences.
But there's still a long, long way to go, he says. "Thousands of iPhones are built and shipped every hour around the world, but every single one delivers essentially the same onboarding process —every new owner of an iPhone goes through the same first-run experience no matter who they are." In the future, he believes every device will conform to your identity the moment they are unboxed (not unlike the operating system in the movie Her).
So how can companies take all of these past learnings, recombine them and push them further to create paradigms beyond the feed? Already, Cuervo says, the startup ecosystem is presenting new opportunities for personalization, and the data and technology are largely there. This is where his four ingredients come in. If a startup can properly integrate each into their roadmap, they have a shot at doing something that will change the way millions of people interact with their products and each other.
Your identity is at the core of any personalized experience in this new age. It extends beyond your name, profile picture and the information you've filled out in your account. It's a robust entity that evolves as you make decisions and take actions across multiple devices and platforms.
To clarify and define people's identities, Facebook tweaked existing products and shipped new ones designed to do exactly that. When they first introduced photo tagging, for example, the feature was inherently social and created value not just for the person uploading the photo but also the subjects tagged in those photos. A photo tagged with multiple people not only contributed to the profile of the author but of the subjects as well; it also created a teaching moment for every person who received a notification that they were tagged in a photo. Friends taught friends about the feature organically — and that's just one example of the many ways Facebook encouraged people to connect and express themselves.
It's equally important to recognize that people don't have just one identity online like they do in the real world. Data shows that people define themselves sometimes very differently across services —they'll have a different persona on LinkedIn than they do on Instagram than they do on Facebook and so on. Sometimes they want to project a professional identity. Sometimes they want to project an artistic, creative identity. Your product has to cater to the identity that serves your company's goals best.
At Dropbox, Cuervo is part of the team working to serve identities for work and personal contexts. After launching as a consumer-facing service, the company is branching into the enterprise in a big way with Dropbox for Business. This means that users need to be able to distinguish their personal accounts (and personal identity) from their business accounts. It's also motivated Dropbox to ponder the elements of people's professional identities.
The takeaway for startups is that you should actively manage people's identities in ways that encourage the behavior you want —whether it's getting people to buy something or converse more with each other or share media. The features on your roadmap should bring out these aspects of your users' identities whenever possible. And if engagement is your goal, your product should take cues from how people are organically identifying themselves on your platform.
The first hashtag ever tweeted.
When people hear the word "graph," they immediately think of their personal social network. The term has been popularized to describe everyone's system of relationships as a communal asset. Your social graph doesn't belong solely to you, it belongs to everyone in it. And the more people who join the network, the more valuable the graph becomes, Cuervo says.
Today, there are many graphs across many different platforms. Just like people have a variety of identities spanning the digital world, they are also members of a growing number of groups, communities and networks that may have nothing to do with the people they know in real life. They belong to interest groups, follow celebrities (Kim Kardashian has 15.9 million followers on Instagram), connect with professional contacts, tap into media sources for their news, and more. All of these systems of structured relationships act as graphs that can be used to deliver tailored experiences to individuals.
To leverage this data, Facebook introduced Facebook Connect, allowing users to log in to completely different services and products using their Facebook credentials. "The idea is that now you can take all of your friendships and travel across the web with them to see what they're doing in the context of a third-party service," Cuervo says.
Some key examples include apps like Runkeeper, Lift, and Duolingo, which let you import your friends and see if they are also interested in running, self-improvement, or learning new languages. If so, these apps benefit by letting you track your progress together, compete and share —basically getting you more deeply engaged.
Mobile has added a whole new layer to the mix. Smartphones and tablets let users broadcast where they are, communicate on the go, and use products across a host of different contexts. Suddenly, it's not enough to offer just one product —you have to create distinct experiences for every context that makes sense.
Touchscreens like the one in Tesla's Model S will become increasingly common and customizable.
"You can look across the most successful companies that are out there today, and they are the ones doing exciting things across multiple platforms and devices." Pandora is a prime example as an early entrant to the automotive space that has also focused on creating thoughtfully different web and mobile experiences. Similarly, winners in the enterprise sector will be those that embrace the way people establish workflows across multiple device types, he says.
This can sound boundless and intimidating, but we're just at the beginning of this trend. Startups looking to launch personalized products should fix their sights on how tasks and needs vary across different devices over the course of a given day.
Experiences like this have enjoyed the label 'automagical' —when predictive technology is so right on the money that you get what you want before you even know you wanted it. But not everyone is on board. Just as Facebook was inundated with complaints when News Feed launched in 2006, new technologies that seem to be too smart or too prescient have turned some people off. Entrepreneurs interested in working in this space will need to be able to address and assuage these attitudes.
What tools are you investing in that allow you to personalize your product experience as you're prototyping it? How are you sharing designs with peers and stakeholders for feedback?
"Sharing a quick screenshot isn't going to cut it much longer. Make sure you can create prototypes that pull in your stakeholder's graph data and personalize the experience for them. That way they can really see the experience from the perspective of a user," says Cuervo. At both Facebook and Dropbox, when his team rolls out a new feature to colleagues for internal testing, they create personalized sandboxes for them to see how the thing will actually work in the wild. This is how you get the best feedback: When stakeholders experience the prototype through their personal lens.
Also, capitalize on the existing work of other companies that have come before. Resources and APIs like Facebook Connect can give startups a huge boost in the realm of personalization. Here, Cuervo points to a delightful app called Timehop that connects to your Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Instagram, and Foursquare accounts to build a personal time capsule for every day. By pulling in all of the photos and content from elsewhere, it allows users to revisit old moments seamlessly.
Just remember that there are dozens of data firehoses out there, Cuervo says, and the way to capture the activity you need may be to depend on others. Don't assume that relying on one or more of these platforms will keep you from building something special.


SEPULTURA - NATION (CD) | Online Shop | Wizard LTD.
- Q magazine (5/01, p.118) - 3 stars out of 5 - "A clutch of crowd-pleasingly brutal anthems...with a return to the more exploratory approach of old....the faithful will not be disappointed."
- Alternative Press (5/01, p.63) - 4 out of 5 - "There are plenty of touchstones to [their] days of headbanger hegemony....[new singer] Derrick Green's heightened tunefulness along with the broadened emotional resonance...should relate to an enlarged fanbase."
- NME (3/31/01, p.31) - 6 out of 10 - "Fiercely political and uncomprimisongly direct....it's taut and tense and if you buy it quick you'll get to hear their logic-defying cover of Bauhaus' 'Bela Lugosi's Dead'."
Nation is the band's second album with singer/guitarist Derrick Green. Nation features guest appearances from such notable artists as Hatebreed singer Jamey Jasta, Dead Kennedys singer Jello Biafra, Ill Niсo singer Cristian Machado, Bile frontman Krztoff, and Apocalyptica.
According to the official site, a video for One Man Army was scheduled to be filmed at the end of August 2001. However due to a lack of support from Roadrunner Records, the video was unfortunately never made.
The album saw generally better reviews than Against, but sold fewer copies than it. Sepultura blamed Roadrunner Records for not promoting the album enough, and left for SPV Records in 2002. Nation has sold over 80,000 copies in the USA , and went gold in Brazil.


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New Film for Ryan Reynolds, Same Old Favourite Jacket for Ryan Reynolds
If it's not broken, don't fix it - especially when it's olive, and suede, and very nice to touch
By Murray Clark
Ryan Reynolds has a thing for jackets. That's because he's only human. But more than that: he respects jackets. He keeps them, well aware that a skilfully selected layer can make a really great look of a middling one. "I have an old Rick Owens leather jacket that's been with me all over the world," he told Esquire back in 2019 (past life, how we long for thee). "It's got a patina you couldn't replicate; it's been through thunderstorms, hail, rain, lightening, snow, brutal sun all over the world on five continents. I got it sixteen years ago. At the time I'd never even heard of Rick Owens. It was just the perfect motorcycle jacket: a bit more expensive, but worth the investment."
See. He means it. Because that's not just lip service. Nor is it an 'oooooooh, look at me with my niche designer brand' humble brag. It's fanboying, appreciation, and a sentiment that extends to another jacket in Reynolds' rotation: an olive green thing of wonder by French purveyor of simp-luxe staples, Officine Générale.
2016: same green jacket!
Raymond Hall
As part of a Netflix preview reel released last night, Reynolds appeared with Gal Gadot and Dwayne Johnson to plug Red Notice: an upcoming action-comedy that sees Interpol enlist the help of wanted criminals to hunt down other wanted criminals, because international law enforcement agencies do that all the time. And the 44-year-old enlisted a move we've seen before in a look we've seen before – many, many times.
That means said green jacket above navy knitwear and navy chinos, or at least something that appears to be very similar. Not only is the bluest of blue the best colour for lockdown (a time when we want to make an effort whilst having zero effort in the tank), an all too familiar move from Reynolds is actually pretty refreshing. Very Famous Men often loan pieces for these such campaign trails, thus perpetuating the idea that you need new exciting stuff for new exciting events. Not so. Reynolds trusts in the universe as to what looks good. Which, granted, is an easy thing to do when you've got mega brands just hanging in the wardrobe. But find your own equivalent, and there's every reason to wear it again and again. And again. Or, at least, invest in a tried-and-tested model.
Especially when it's suede. Like Reynolds' Rick Owens motorcycle diaries, the softer alternative from Officine Générale will develop a own unique patina, and become unique to you. It's probably the only menswear piece, within reason, that afford guys such a skill.
So the next time you're stuck on an outfit when things start moving again (and they will), go with your gut. That old favourite jacket still looks great.
Yes, You Are A Leather Jacket Guy
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I take a special kind of delight in producing feature articles. The meticulous research needed and the careful selection of each word to present maximum impact for minimum effort is a great challenge and one that I rise to with alacrity. I have delivered credible and interesting articles on practically any topic you can conceivably write about and have enjoyed each one. So whether it's a short punchy piece on your latest project or a lengthy communication on a topic dear to your heart, I will invariably ensure that your audience not only hears your message but responds with positive enthusiasm.


Our fibers for carded through air bonded nonwovens use bicomponent technology for high strength to meet the needs of modern high speed carding equipment. The polyethylene sheath has a low bonding temperature. A polypropylene or PET core maintains the fabric's structural integrity.


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Yo Gotti Talks Losing $500K in Blackjack Hand with Jay Z, Having 5 Cars in High School & FaZe Clan Investment
'Hip-Hop Evolution': How Three Canadians Made the Emmy-Winning, Definitive Docuseries on Rap
Stretch and Bobbito on Their Debut Album 'No Requests' and the Current State of Hip-Hop
Moneybagg Yo On Helping Migos In A Brawl, Never Repeating Clothes & Album "Time Served"
Benny, Conway and Westside Gunn Talk The History of Griselda Records
Travis Scott on Kid Cudi: 'Some People Think Jay Z Is the Best Rapper, I Feel Like He Can Compete With That'
ByJoe Price
I slap my hands on my pants when the ice cream store is closed @BackwoodsAltar
There's no denying Kid Cudi's influence on the world of hip-hop. From Kanye West to Kevin Abstract, Cudi has had a lasting impact on countless musicians young and old. To celebrate Cudi's legacy, Beats 1 aired a special dedicated to him which featured some of his best work and praise from some of the artists he's left a big impression on.
Speaking about Cudi during the episode, Travis Scott explained, "I idolize Kid Cudi a lot. That's like, my favorite artist." Scott has always been vocal in his appreciation for him, and during the Beats 1 special he very much reiterated how important his work has been. "I think he can go bar to bar—like some people think Jay Z is the best rapper. I feel like he can compete with that and still have his own wave. I f*ck with him, because he always had his own lingo. He created a world for kids like me, who wasn't just like, the ultimate like drug dealer. He created that vibe and that planet, where you can mack on bitches and still be smooth, and still feel like you're the king scientist. Not everyone is as real as their music is. That artist comes once every decade."
POST CONTINUES BELOW
Cudi has also had a lasting impact on some of the newer waves of rappers, too, with Brockhampton's Kevin Abstract being a key example. "I love how he incorporated melody into his raps," Kevin explained. "A kid like me would say, like, Kid Cudi saved my life."
During the show, Logic also spoke about how Cudi's music inspired him to open up about mental health in his own music. "He was the dude that was like, 'It's okay to be sad. It's okay to talk about these things, and go through these things.' Especially now, because like I've said, I've been made to feel terrible or this or that about being emotional, or whatever the case may be, which is, to me, it's almost like a Neanderthal. It's such a backwards way of thinking. I had that just through his music, in general."
Lil Yachty also offered up a comment about Cudi's impact, claiming he's "one of the biggest Kid Cudi fans of all time." He says, like Logic, that Cudi's music helped him realize that rap could talk about emotions more up-front. "He was one of the only artists making the music at the time for like, emotional people going through something, or just taking dream journeys. Like, the real creative kids who are in the world."
Listen to the whole show, which also features interviews with Sheck Wes, Pharrell Williams, and Raury, here.
NewsVideosKid CudiPharrell WilliamsTravis ScottraurylogicKevin AbstractComplex VideoLil YachtySheck Wes


Pearson, G.S. (2003). Preparing for the First Meeting of the States Parties, II: Security & Oversight of Pathogenic Microorganisms and Toxins. Bradford, Bradford Disarmament Research Centre, Department of Peace Studies, University of Bradford. BTWC Briefing Papers: 2nd Series, No. 9.


Valentine's Day is fast approaching and so what better time to consider how we build, develop and maintain the important relationships in our lives. Whether these are business or personal relationships, it seems that some people are just so much better at it than others.
Not a natural networker? Me neither!
Yep believe it or not; I am the shy retiring type. One who is more than happy to analyse data in preference to standing up and presenting in front of a crowd. Yet, I have been networking professionally (meaning I get paid to do this) for over six years now.
1. Focus your complete attention on the person you are talking to. Repeat their name; be interested in what they do and find out whom, and what you have in common. One high touch relationship is worth 20 speed networking contacts!
2. Friends may come and go but enemies accumulate. Therefore, make lots of friends and forgive your enemies. Be grudge not and certainly not in public.
3. Be generous with your knowledge and expertise, even if you sell this for a living. Learn how to give feedback positively and correct not others in public.
4. Keep in touch. Remember the birthdays, anniversaries, and other special days of those who are special to you. Remember high days and holidays to all. Send useful pieces of information and ask how their projects are going.
5. Smile always; say thank you – and truly mean it.


In hopes of setting in motion conversations around why and how to build a more inclusive profession, Diversity Among Architects is a set of essays and lectures presented over a twenty-year span that challenges the homogeneity of architectural scholarship and practice. The edited collection covers a wide range of topics that have traditionally been the privy of an overwhelmingly white and male architectural culture only. The informative critiques and ruminations on such wide-ranging subjects as history, music, pedagogy, practice, aesthetics, urbanism, social justice, racial and spatial theory, as well as professional responsibility contained within are all penned from an African American perspective; a small but no less vital point of view that has been missing from the discipline for far too long.


text:
Q: Creating a simple setup where I can design with live updates/reloads of my browser So far I have setup a very basic setup using npm:
npm init
node install bootstrap@4.0.0-beta.3

So my package.json looks like:
{
  "name": "n2",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "description": "",
  "main": "index.js",
  "scripts": {
    "test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1"
  },
  "author": "",
  "license": "ISC",
  "dependencies": {
    "bootstrap": "^4.0.0-beta.3"
  }
}

I see nodemon is used, but from what I understand this won't automatically reload my browser when I make a change correct?
Do I need to create a index.js file and have nodejs code in it?

A: Node assumes the main file listed in package.json file of the directory as the entry point. It's up to you where you put your code just use the right filename while running it. I will assume your code to be in server.js
For using nodemon you will need to install it either globally or as devDependency. Once that is done you can configure your package.json.
Refer to this page installation and usage section for updated documentation on using nodemon.
{
    "name": "n2",
    "version": "1.0.0",
    "description": "",
    "main": "index.js",
    "scripts": {
        "start": "nodemon ./server.js",
        "test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1"
    },
    "author": "",
    "license": "ISC",
    "dependencies": {
        "bootstrap": "^4.0.0-beta.3"
    }
}

Then you can simply run the following command to run your server.
$ npm start

A: You could you use livereload to reload the page on file change.
Example
Install livereload globally:
npm install -g livereload

Add this script to your index.html:
<script>
  document.write('<script src="http://' + (location.host || 'localhost').split(':')[0] +
  ':35729/livereload.js?snipver=1"></' + 'script>')
</script>

package.json:
{
  "name": "app-name",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "description": "",
  "main": "index.js",
  "scripts": {
    "start": "node index.js"
  },
  "author": "",
  "license": "ISC",
  "dependencies": {
    "express": "^4.16.2"
  }
}

index.js:
var express = require('express');
var app = express();
var path = require('path');

app.get('/', function(req, res) {
    res.sendFile(path.join(__dirname + '/index.html'));
});

app.listen(8080);

Now if you run the livereload command in the app folder, the page will refresh whenever a file is changed.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


After having read Eros Riccio's answers to the interview questions on his defending his title twice, I am proposing a few changes to the final match.
I wish to make it clear that this is not in any way an attack on any person. They can only play to the rules set and try to use those rules to their advantage.
My issue is with the rules themselves.
I would like to propose a new format for the final match, because I think it is ridiculous that any player can defend their title with short draws and make no real attempt to prove that they are superior than their opponent.
Of course if the challenger is happy to draw all eight or twelve games, then that is their 'fault' as well.
After eight games, if neither player has won a game, then the match continues for another four games.
In the first eight games, if both sides have won at least one game each, then the result is a drawn match and the champion keeps their title.
In the tie breaking four games, as soon as one player wins a game, the match is over.
I think the current rules are weighted way too much in favour of the champion, which as we have seen from these two games, the champion does not even have to try to prove that he is better than the challenger, but can just draw all eight/twelve games and retain the title.
Thib, please change the rules for this upcoming cycle.
Very interesting proposal Garvin,and I see the point, but I think there is a problem with: "In the tie breaking four games, as soon as one player wins a game, the match is over." A lost position may be continued to avoid the first loss.
Maybe the tiebreak games must be played in faster time controls, and so on, like tiebreaks in OTB chess.
>A lost position may be continued to avoid the first loss.
I had carefully considered this possibility. I will take an example from transfer/bughouse. When one player is about to be mated, they will stop playing that game, allowing their time to run out, in the hope that their partner will be able to mate the opposition before their own time runs out.
If both games in transfer reach a mate in one position, the side with less time on their clock with their turn to move loses as they will run out of time first.
How does this apply to the WCH?
Well, yes a player could stall on a game they think is lost, but then they would also be required to win another game to make up for it.
This could be a bit silly, but better than other options.
At least there is a sufficient reward for trying to win a game, which is the main objective of all this, to try and get the players to try and win as many games as possible.
>Maybe the tiebreak games must be played in faster time controls, and so on, like tiebreaks in OTB chess.
Not realistic on here. The faster the game , the more it becomes like freestyle/advanced chess and less like correspondence. Also, as is shown in otb, some players would prefer to try and win in rapids, so the solution of having rapid games could in fact increase the short draw odds because the players think, I would rather play a few rapid games, rather than a years worth of long correspondence games.
I'm not sure if there can be a real debate on this issue (but we can try of course)... all opinions are in the nature, when I created FICGS I had in mind the original FIDE WCH and I'm still a huge fan of this system. Now fact is FIDE WCH does not mean anything anymore (its champions as well) after numerous bad changes and I feel FICGS chess WCH makes sense more and more.
12 games is enough to fight for a win IMO and I'm sure that there are a few players able to beat Eros in such a match (doesn't mean it would happen anytime though :)), I'm just too impatient to watch the next ones. Eros is building his name in correspondence chess in multiple places at the same time, and the fact that it happened here so quickly after he joined us makes me think that the system is good! I see nothing to change, the result of his match with Alberto was fully explained by Eros, the score has no importance at the end... and he deserves his other title in the other cycle even more by not having to play the final match... just my opinion of course, as I can understand all systems (ICCF etc.), just a question of personal taste at the end.
Thib: I think your analysis or love with the old style world champ format contains a flaw in relation to playing on here.
In the old style world champs, games are played one at a time. On here, all the games start at the same time.
Secondly, with the old style world champs, the matches were over 24 games, so the equivalent would be to play the final match over 24 games.
The current world champ cycle suffers from the same effect as the ficgs final match does, the match is too short, resulting in lots of draws because one loss is devastating.
If you do not want to change the rules to encourage players to try for wins, then lengthen the match to 24 games.
Otherwise you are just like quite a lot of organisers who just love the past (tradition) and are not prepared to make the players actually try to win games, rather than bore their viewers to death with short draws.
Of course this correspondence chess championship is very different from FIDE WCH, but it seems to me that 12 games is still enough (24 games would be quite inhuman by the way), the score in the latest final matches was not significant on the draws issue, particularly now that we all know how Eros deals with it (in a smart way that can be compared to Kramnik's strategy in his match vs. Kasparov: draw with Berlin's defence, fight with White if no risk). IMO the champion has nothing to prove as he made it in a whole cycle and by beating the previous one, while a challenger should at least be able to win one game out of 12.
Actually the real evolution should have been towards freestyle chess, but it has no success enough to organize a whole cycle and it looks like Eros is the king as well. Also I don't like the idea to melt different time controls like FIDE does. The whole challenge is about one thing, not 3 or 4 differents kinds of games.
I love the past tradition not because it is a tradition, but because I really think it is the best system so far! If a new system proves to be better to me (there will always be a question of taste though, of course) then we would have to discuss it here.
The only way to encourage players to try for wins is to go towards the ICCF format, that has other issues that I wanted to avoid at any price. And why to do the same?
I would like to apologize for some of my over-heated comments from my previous post. I get rather annoyed when I see any format that encourages short draw chess as I believe short draw is anti-sport and not in the best interests of chess in general.
No problem, I understand your concern... well I believe that these short draws are just a problem instead of another, at least we have a clear champion! What will happen when round-robin WCH tournaments (ICCF format) will be decided by Soderborn or whatever because of several winners with 6,5 or 7 out of 12 points, as it seems to happen in some tournaments... Though there is no better way to encourage players to win than RR tournaments.
Certainly both the challenger and the defender should have equal ..
In this context i like Garvin's proposal..
The defender should not have draw odd..
Neel, I have no particular issue with draw odds. Being corro, it is not possible to organise anything that might be still decent corro, but is at a more rapid time control to get a tie break going.
My issue is that as Eros's comments have shown, he was not even slightly forced to try and win any of the games.
So I think the rules should be made more attractive to try and get players to win games (and yes put on a show too).
Another idea could be to start eight games, if the champion is ahead, the match is over and if still tied, start games 9 to 16.
If the challenger is ahead after game 8, games 9 to 16 are still played, and now the champion would have to go all out to win a game to at least draw level.
I don't want to enter the Wch due to rating bias in the groups. So until that is fixed I am only interested in FICGS World Cup.
Ratings bias? The total ELO in each group is probably as close to the same as possible. Naturally groups are seeded. Is this what you mean by bias?


text:
In the end, although Project RACE's political advocacy facilitated other multiracial groups' participation in the OMB discussions for the 2000 census, [Susan] Graham was eventually shut out of the process. Her position as a white woman campaigning for multiracial interests proved to be unappealing to too many, and her uncompromising stance distanced her from more flexible multiracial groups. The political alliances she made and her unwillingness to sympathize with monoracial civil rights groups' concerns lost her the support both of monoracial people of color and multiracial activists. Graham's passion and loyalty to the original racial designation voted upon by her constituents served her well in the public sphere, but her continual reliance on white privileged forms of advocacy and expression were her political undoing. Although Project RACE remains one of the more active inter- or multiracial organizations in the U.S. (many dissipated after the 2000 census victory), it also still remains connected to a white privileged perspective and racially unreflexive forms of advocacy.
Alicia Doo Castagno, "'Founding Mothers': White Mothers of Biracial Children in the Multiracial Movement (1979-2000)," (Undergraduate Honors Thesis, Wesleyan University, 2012), 98.
(Re)mapping the Borderlands of Blackness: Afro-Mexican Consciousness and the Politics of Culture
Posted in Anthropology, Caribbean/Latin America, Dissertations, History, Media Archive, Mexico on 2014-01-16 19:53Z by Steven
Talia Weltman-Cisneros
Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Romance Studies in the Graduate School of Duke University
The dominant cartography of post-Revolutionary Mexico has relied upon strategic constructions of a unified and homogenized national and cultural consciousness (mexicanidad), in order to invent and map a coherent image of imagined community. These strategic boundaries of mexicanidad have also relied upon the mapping of specific codes of being and belonging onto the Mexican geo-body. I argue that these codes have been intimately linked to the discourse of mestizaje, which, in its articulation and operation, has been fashioned as a cosmic tool with which to dissolve and solve the ethno-racial and social divisions following the Revolution, and to usher a unified mestizo nation onto a trajectory towards modernity.
However, despite its rhetoric of salvation and seemingly race-less/positivistic articulation, the discourse of mestizaje has propagated an uneven configuration of mexicanidad in which the belonging of certain elements have been coded as inferior, primitive, problematic, and invisible. More precisely, in the case of Mexicans of African descent, this segment of the population has also been silenced and dis-placed from this dominant cartography.
This dissertation examines the coding of blackness and its relationship with mexicanidad in specific sites and spaces of knowledge production and cultural production in the contemporary era. I first present an analysis of this production immediately in the period following the Revolution, especially from the 1930's to the 1950's, a period labeled as the "cultural phase of the Mexican Revolution." This time period was strategic in manufacturing and disseminating a precise politics of culture that was used to reflect this dominant configuration and cartography of mexicanidad. That is, the knowledge and culture produced during this time imbedded and displayed codes of being and belonging, which resonated State projects and narratives that were used to define and secure the boundaries of a unified, mestizo imaginary of mexicanidad. And, it is within this context that I suggest that blackness has been framed as invisible, problematic, and foreign. For example, cultural texts such as film and comics have served as sites that have facilitated the production and reflection of this uneasy relationship between blackness and mexicanidad. Moreover, this strained and estranged relationship has been further sustained by the nationalization and institutionalization of knowledge and culture related to the black presence and history in Mexico. From the foundational text La raza cósmica, written in 1925 by José Vasconcelos, to highly influential corpuses produced by Mexican anthropologists during this post-Revolutionary period, the production of knowledge and the production of culture have been intimately tied together within an uneven structure of power that has formalized racialized frames of reference and operated on a logic of coloniality. As a result, today it is common to be met with the notion that "no hay negros en México" (there are no blacks in Mexico).
Yet, on the contrary, contemporary Afro-Mexican artists and community organizations within the Costa Chica region have been engaging a different cultural politics that has been serving as a tool of place-making and as a decolonization of codes of being and belonging. In this regard, I present an analysis of contemporary Afro-Mexican cultural production, specifically visual arts and radio, that present a counter-cartography of the relationship between blackness and mexicanidad. More specifically, in their engagement of the discourse of cimarronaje (maroonage), I propose that these sites of cultural production also challenge, re-think, re-imagine, and re-configure this relationship. I also suggest that this is an alternative discourse of cimarronaje that functions as a decolonial project in terms of the reification and re-articulation of afromexicanidad (Afro-Mexican-ness) as a dynamic and pluri-versal construction of being and belonging. And, thus, in their link to community programs and social action initiatives, this contemporary cultural production also strives to combat the historical silence, dis-placement, and discrimination of the Afro-Mexican presence in and contributions to the nation. In turn, this dissertation offers an intervention in the making of and the relationships between race, space and place, and presents an interrogation of the geo-politics and bio-politics of being and belonging in contemporary Mexico.
Chapter One: Mapping Blackness Elsewhere: Mestizaje, Anthropology, and the Coloniality of Knowledge
1.1 Mestizaje and the Mapping of Blackness Beyond the Borders of Modern Mexicanidad
1.2 Gonzalo Aguirre Beltran: The Production of Knowledge and the Anthropological (Dis)placement of Blackness in Post-Revolutionary Mexico
1.3 Recuerdos del Jarocho: The Museumification of Blackness
1.4 The Coloniality of Knowledge and the Dis-placement of Blackness
Chapter Two: Forjando Patria: Framing and Performing Blackness in the "Golden Age" of Mexican Culture
2.1 Memin Pinguin: Dis-locating Blackness
2.2 Angelitos negros: Absorbing Blackness and Saving the National Family
2.3 Al son del mambo: Discovering and Modernizing the Primitive Place of Blackness
2.4 On Framing Blackness and Popular Culture as a Racialized Regime of Representation
Chapter Three; Cimarronaje Cultural: Towards a Counter-Cartography of Blackness and Belonging in Mexico
3.1 Articulating the Place of Blackness in the Costa Chica
3.2 Understanding Cimarronaje Cultural as a Counter-Cartography of Blackness and as a Place-Making Narrative
3.3 Cimarronaje Cultural: Towards a Counter-Cartography of Blackness
3.3.1 El Centro Cultural Cimarron
3.3.2 Naufragio and the Work of Aydée Rodriguez Lopez
3.3.3 Cimarron: La Voz de los Afromestizos
3.4 Conclusions: Cimarronaje as a Decolonial Project
Chapter Four: Towards a Re-mapping of Blackness and Belonging in Mexico
4.1 México Negro and the Encuentro de los Pueblos Negros: From Pluri-versal Networks to Social and Political Action
4.2 Nomenclature, Identity in Politics, and the Re-thinking of Afro-Mexican Consciousness
Figures One-Six
Figure 1: Mural Painting, Centro Cultural Cimarrón
Figure 4: Naufragio, Aydée Rodriguez Lopez
Read the entire dissertation here.
Tags: Afro-Mexicans, Afromexicans, Duke University, Talia Weltman-Cisneros
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Home is Where the Hurt Is: Racial Socialization, Stigma, and Well-Being in Afro-Brazilian Families
Posted in Brazil, Caribbean/Latin America, Dissertations, Media Archive, Social Science on 2014-01-09 03:25Z by Steven
Elizabeth Hordge Freeman
Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Sociology in the Graduate School of Duke University
This dissertation examines racial socialization in Afro-Brazilian families in order to understand how phenotypically diverse families negotiate racial hierarchies and ideologies of white supremacy. As an inductive, qualitative project, this research is based on over fourteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil in fifteen poor and working-class Bahian families and 116 semi-structured interviews with family members and informants. Findings suggest that one of the most prominent features of racial socialization is the pervasive devaluation of black/African influences, which is conveyed through implicit and explicit messages as well as concrete practices (including rituals) that promote the stigmatization of negatively valued racialized physical features. The study reveals a pattern of unequal distribution of affection based on racial appearance (phenotype), which is evident in parent-child, sibling, extended family, and romantic relationships. Findings suggest that negative appraisals of racial phenotype may significantly compromise affective bonds in families and have social psychological consequences impacting self-esteem and sense of belonging, while also eliciting suicidal ideations and anxieties. These outcomes are most pronounced for Afro-Brazilian females. Racial socialization also conveys the "strategically ambiguous" logic of color and racial classification, uncritically exposes family members to racist messages, jokes, and stereotypical images of Afro-Brazilians, and encourages cultural participation that superficially valorizes Afro-Brazilian culture and fosters nationalism, rather than racial identity. In contrast to traditional findings of racial socialization in the U.S., messages valorizing racial heritage are rare and efforts to prepare family members for bias rely on universal terms. Families do employ counter-discourses and creative strategies of resistance; and so, racial socialization is characterized by practices that reflect both resistance and accommodation to racial hierarchies. I conclude that racial socialization in families is influenced by and sustains racialization processes that maintain the broader system of white supremacy. Contrary to how racial socialization has been framed as having a purely protective role in families, this study illustrates how it may disadvantage blacks vis-à-vis whites and uniquely stigmatizes the most "black-looking" family members vis-à-vis those who more closely approximate an idealized (whiter) somatic norm. Future studies should triangulate data on racial socialization from other regions of the Americas.
1.1 "The Face of A Slave"
1.3 Case Selection
1.3.1 Community Site
1.4 Data and Methods
1.5 Methodology
1.6 "Second Sight" or Double Vision? My Subjectivity in the Field
1.7 Organization of the Dissertation
2.1 Crafting a Social Order: Race and Racialization
2.1.1 Towards a Phenotypic Continuum
2.2 Blinded by the White: Whitening and Racial Socialization in Families
2.2.1 Studying Families in the U.S. and Brazil
2.2.2 Mothering in Families
2.3 The Stigmatized Body and Well Being
2.4 The Family Systems Paradigm and Emotions
2.5 Conceptual Framework
2.6 Theoretical Framework
2.7 The Racial Rubik: Salvador, Bahia, Brazil
3. "All in the Family": Implicit and Explicit Racial Socialization
3.1 Chapter Preface
3.2 "Strategic Ambiguity" and Color Inconsistencies
3.2.1 Family Interventions in Racial Classification
3.2.2 Will the real white person please stand up?
3.2.3 There are no whites, We are all black!
3.3 Race and Space
3.3.1 Todo no seu Lugar – Everything in its Place
3.4 "Explicit Socialization Messages?.
3.4.1 Educação é Salvação: Education is Salvation
3.4.2 Reading Bodies, Not Books
3.5 Racially (Mixed Messages) and Quotas
3.6 What is racism?
3.7 Media and Culture
3.7.1 Novelas
3.7.2 Re-Telling National Tales
4. What's Love Got to Do With It? : The Stigma of Racialized Features, Affect, and Socialization in Families
4.2 The Hand That Rocks the Cradle: Mother-Child Relationships
4.2.1 Harbingers of Racial Socialization: Babies
4.3 Like a Good Neighbor
4.4 Mama's Baby is Daddy's Maybe
4.5 Racial Roulette and Sibling Rivalry
4.6 She's just my (pheno)Type: Romantic Love
4.6.1 Race and Romance
5. Black and "Blue": Racial Stigma and Well being
5.1 Incog-negro: Abandoning Blackness
5.2 When Racial Roulette is Violent
5.3 Depression, Trust, and Trauma
5.4 Pretty Please?! Beauty and Self-Esteem
5.5 We (Don't) Belong Together
6. Pigments of the Imagination: Beauty, Body, and Racialization
6.1 The Bodies Exhibit
6.2 Hands, Feet, and Ears, Oh My!
6.3 Hair-itage
6.3.1 The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
6.4 The Roots of Resistance: Afro-Aesthetics
6.4.1 Hide My Roots! Afro-Aesthetics and Cultural Movements at Home
7. "Where There is Power, There is Also Resistance
7.1 Nascimento Family Values
7.1.1 Racial Names.
7.1.2 Race and Privilege
7.1.3 Beauty
7.1.4 Racial History
7.1.5 Internalized Racism
7.2 The Santos Family
7.2.1 Racial Rituals
7.3 The de Jesus Family: The Brazilian Black Panthers
7.3.1 Brief Life History of Pantera Negra
7.3.2 Explicit Socialization
8. Conclusion – The Ties That Bind
8.1 Limitations and Future Directions
Appendix C
Appendix D
Appendix E
Table 1: Color Categorization by Percentage
Table 2: Summary of the color terms used in interviews and observations
Table 3: Summary of responses to the question: What is your race?
Table 4: List of all color or racial nicknames used by informants
Tags: Duke University, Elizabeth Hordge Freeman
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Schwarzsein, Weißsein, Deutschsein: Racial Narratives and Counter-discourses in German Film After 1950
Posted in Dissertations, Europe, Literary/Artistic Criticism, Media Archive, United States on 2013-08-13 01:53Z by Steven
Michelle René Eley
Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Carolina-Duke Program – German Studies in the Graduate School of Duke University
This dissertation uses film to explore shifts in conceptions of race, cultural identity and national belonging in Germany from the 1950s West Germany to contemporary reunified Germany. Through the analysis of several German productions featuring Black characters in major narrative or symbolic roles, it identifies narrative and cinematic techniques used to thematize and problematize popular German conceptions of race and racism and to utilize race as a dynamic and flexible symbolic resource in defining specific identity borders. The dominant discourse around the concept of race and its far-reaching implications has long been impeded by the lack of a critical German vocabulary. This gap in mainstream German language is in large part a consequence of the immutable association between "race" (in German, Rasse) as a term, and the pro-Aryan, anti-Semitic dogma of National Socialist ideology. As Germany struggles to address racism as a specific problem in the process of its ongoing project to rehabilitate national identity in a post-colonial era indelibly marked by the Second World War, the films discussed in this work—Toxi (R.A. Stemmle, 1952), Gottes zweite Garnitur (P. Verhoeven, 1967), Angst essen Seele auf (R.W. Fassbinder, 1974), Die Ehe der Maria Braun (R.W. Fassbinder, 1979), Alles wird gut (Maccarone, 1998) and Tal der Ahnungslosen (Okpako, 2003)—provide evidence of attempts to create counter-discourses within the space of this language gap.
Using approaches based primarily in critical race and film studies, the following work argues that these films' depictions of racism and racial conflict are often both confined by and add new dimension to definitions of Blackness and of conceptions of race and racism in a German context. These attempts at redefinition reveal the ongoing difficulties Germany has faced when confronting the social and ideological structures that are the legacy of its colonialist and National Socialist history. More importantly, however, the films help us to retrace and recover Germany's history of resistance to that legacy and expand the imaginative possibilities for using poetic politics and communities of coalition to affect social change.
Read the entire thesis here.
Tags: Alles wird gut, Angst essen Seele auf, Die Ehe der Maria Braun, Duke University, Germany, Gottes zweite Garnitur, Michelle Eley, Michelle R. Eley, Michelle René Eley, Tal der Ahnungslosen, Toxi
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Left of Black S3:E9 | Racial Passing and the Rise of Multiracialism
Posted in Census/Demographics, Media Archive, Passing, Social Science, United States, Videos on 2012-11-14 14:50Z by Steven
Left of Black
John Hope Franklin Center
Mark Anthony Neal, Host and Professor of African & African American Studies
Marcia Alesan Dawkins, Clinical Assistant Professor of Communications
University of Southern California, Annenberg
Habiba Ibrahim, Associate Professor of English
Left of Black is a weekly Webcast hosted by Mark Anthony Neal and produced in collaboration with the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke University.
For many African Americans, the practice of 'Passing'—where light-skinned Blacks could pass for White—remains a thing connected to a difficult racial past. In her new book, Clearly Invisible: Racial Passing and the Color of Cultural Identity (Baylor University Press), Marcia Dawkins, a professor in the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Southern California provides a fresh take on the practice arguing that passing in the contemporary moment transcends racial performance.
Dawkins talks about her new book with Left of Black host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal, via Skype. Neal is also joined by University of Washington Professor Habiba Ibrahim for part one of a two-part interview about her new book Troubling the Family: The Promise of Personhood and the Rise of Multiracialism (University of Minnesota Press) in which she links the rise of Multiracialism in the 1990s to the maintenance of traditional gender norms.
Tags: Duke University, Habiba Ibrahim, John Hope Franklin Center, Left of Black, Marcia A. Dawkins, Marcia Alesan Dawkins, Marcia Dawkins, Mark Anthony Neal, Tiger Woods
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ROMST 200.01: Critical Approaches to Mestizaje
Posted in Course Offerings, New Media, United States on 2012-01-07 02:03Z by Steven
Claudia Milian, Andrew W. Mellon Assistant Professor of Romance Studies; African & African American Studies
This seminar will examine critical theories of mestizaje, miscegenation, mixed race, and hybridity as articulated in Latino, Latin American, and African-American projects of racial identification and classification. In particular, the course aims to study the theories, rhetoric, and assumptions of racial and cultural inclusion, while analyzing frameworks that propose mestizaje, hybridity, or "mixedness" as oppositional and transgressive concepts that highlight an emancipatory potential. The seminar will investigate the following questions: What does it mean to have hybridity as the foundation of an identity that is most often associated with Latinas and Latinos? In effect, who are the "mestizos?" In what ways does a mestiza consciousness speak to twenty-first century articulations of the increased prominence of mixed race in the United States? What possibilities can mestizaje offer through its multiple locations of cultures and races in both countering purist constructions of racial ideologies and in building alliances with other "contact zones" of mixtures that remain to be discursively mapped in the critical language of mestizaje? The course will draw from wide ranging theoretical, literary, and historical approaches to notions of mixture as a mode of inquiry that charts new identities, social practices, and knowledge production.
Tags: Claudia Milian, Duke University
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Into the box and out of the picture: The rhetorical management of the mulatto in the Jim Crow era
Posted in Dissertations, Literary/Artistic Criticism, Media Archive, Philosophy, United States on 2011-08-24 03:41Z by Steven
Publication Number: AAT 3250085
Jené Lee Schoenfeld
Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English in the Graduate School of Duke University
Contemporary conventional wisdom maintains that anyone who has any trace of black ancestry is black. This precept, known as the "one drop rule," was not always so widely accepted; in fact, from 1850 to 1920 an intermediate racial category—mulatto—appeared on the United States Census. Visibly "both/and" in a society of "either/or," the ambiguous body of the mulatto had the potential to obscure the color line and thus the system of racial hierarchy predicated on the division it marks. Therefore, the limited tolerance under slavery of an intermediate racial status became untenable during Jim Crow. In my dissertation, I argue that the fiction of the Jim Crow era helped the one drop rule gain hegemonic status.
Through sustained close readings of texts by Frances Harper, Thomas Dixon, Nella Larsen, Charles Chesnutt, Mark Twain, and William Faulkner, I argue that the biological determinism of the one drop rule is inadequate to explain what makes their characters—who are often physically, culturally, and even socially aligned with whiteness—"truly" black and suggest that in mulatto fiction, self-identification emerges as the fundamental basis of racial identity. I argue that fiction facilitated the containment of racial indeterminacy by "rhetorically managing" the mulatto into choosing blackness for herself through characterizations of those who remained racially liminal as tragically marginal and generally despicable, and contrasting characterizations of those who chose to identify as black as noble, privileged, and supported by the embrace of their families and their communities. The possibility of choosing one's racial identification, however, undermines racial ideology's essentialist pretense to racial authenticity. Therefore, choice must be supplemented by demonstrations of racial allegiance, such as "intraracial" marriage, which preserves at least the illusion of biological and cultural racial continuity, and seamless performances, of blackness or whiteness. Finally, I examine the relative authority—asymmetrical because of the construction of whiteness as pure and exclusive—of self-identification with respect to whiteness and blackness, and the near impossibility of self-identification outside this binary.
1. "What are you?" And why it matters
2. "Genocidal Images" or "Imagined Community": Converting the Marginal Mulatto into a Light-Skinned Elite Black
3. Keeping Race in the Family: Marriage as Racial Pledge of Allegiance
4. Indeterminacy on the Loose! Invisible Blackness and the Permeability of the Color Line
The mulatto figure in American fiction is too often treated by critics as though she is static, both within individual texts and over the course of American literary history. Critics tend to assume that the most famous version of the mulatto figure—the antebellum tragic mulatto, whose near-whiteness was used to evoke white readers' sympathy for the abolitionist cause is the only significant template for the mulatto figure. Moreover, they take for granted the mulatto's essential blackness, explaining away her apparent whiteness as solely a concession to white racism. My dissertation models an approach to the mulatto figure that is attentive to the figure's development.
On the scale of American literary history, I argue that the representation of the mulatto is inextricably bound up with the (United States') political context. Though I am also interested in the way that racial indeterminacy is represented in contemporary texts, in what I think of as the post-mulatto moment, I decided quite early on that this was better saved for a future project. I focus instead on representations of the mulatto during the Jim Crow era and how those representations differ from antebellum representations of the mulatto. At its heart, this project is fundamentally a literary one, but as I sought to explain why the mulatto was represented differently in the Jim Crow era, I became interested in the relationship between those representations and a broader social and political context.
Accordingly, I offer an interdisciplinary hypothesis that literature concerning the mulatto—what I call "mulatto fiction"—was instrumental in facilitating an historical shift in the racial structure of the United States from an antebellum racial system with some possibility of a third racial category (labeled "mulatto") to a system that is much more rigidly a binary of black and white. The effect of this historical shift was that the mulatto "became" black. While I believe that this may be true, I want to qualify this as a provisional claim. I can and do offer (mostly in chapter one) concrete evidence that such a historical shift occurred. For example, "mulatto" appeared as a category on the United States' census from 1850 to 1920, but from 1930 onward, mulattoes were moved into the box marked "Negro," and thus rendered invisible as mulattoes. It is to this shift that my title, "Into the Box and Out of the Picture," refers. To establish the causal relationship between mulatto fiction and the historical shift that I describe, at this stage I can only offer a theory about why other, more obvious, forms of racial discipline, such as the law, might have had limited power to control the mulatto's racial identification.
I would also qualify my related claim that mulatto fiction is invested in facilitating the development of the binary racial system through the disappearance of the mulatto. Additional research into authorial biography would allow me to make that claim more forcefully, however, I stand by that claim as a description of a trend in fiction of the early Jim Crow era (in the years shortly after Reconstruction). Some of the most interesting works of mulatto fiction—those by Faulkner and Larsen, for example—are critical of the binary racial schema. Those texts, however, tend to appear later in the Jim Crow era, when the binary is already well-established. Even in those texts, as I argue at length in the body of my dissertation, the critiques are limited by the existing terms of the discourse. In Quicksand, for example, Larsen locates the "problem" of the mulatto in the system—not in her mulatto protagonist, Helga—yet she cannot imagine any positive resolution to the situation. Though Helga eventually marries a black man and settles in the most apparently "authentic" black setting—among the folk of the rural South—almost as soon as she arrives, Helga is (as usual) looking for a way out. Despite Larsen's critique of the racial system that so confines Helga, there is no way out for her. As in earlier works of mulatto fiction, Helga must fully embrace a black racial identity or die.
Another way in which my dissertation seeks to broaden the context in which we interpret the mulatto figure is by expanding the scope of the texts we might include. I argue for the consideration of what I call "mulatto discourse," which, in addition to literary texts, includes representations of the mulatto in such fields as law and (pseudo)science. The mulatto, especially in the Jim Crow era, is a site of contestation over the establishment and location of the color line. That is to say, the mulatto figures centrally in arguments about where whiteness (along with "legitimate" access to white privilege) ends and blackness begins. Indeed, this is a question explored in the literature I discuss, but it is a battle fought in other contexts as well. Regarding the literature, I argue that authors on both sides of the color line, and from both racist and antiracist perspectives, are invested in the racial identification of the mulatto figure. The motivation behind such an investment differs; racists, obviously, are interested in supporting racial hierarchy, whereas antiracists may hope that a strategic cssentialism will create a richer base from which to mount challenges to that hierarchy. Similarly, racists and antiracists represent the mulatto differently with respect to the question of racial identity. Racists tend to emphasize the mulatto's degeneracy, thereby suggesting that the mulatto should not exist. Antiracists tend to push the mulatto away from racial liminality by representing the tragically marginal mulatto negatively, while drawing the mulatto into blackness by representing the "light-skinned" member of the black elite positively. Despite these variations, these approaches are part of a common discourse. What all of the fictional texts under analysis in my dissertation have in common is an interest in the possibilities (in some cases, even the necessity) and the limits of self- identification for the mulatto.
Self-identification is particularly important in mulatto discourse because of the difficulty of using the external evidence of the mulatto's phenotype to assign the mulatto a racial classification in accord with the rules established by racial ideology, in particular, the one drop rule, which dictates that anyone with a trace of black ancestry is to be considered as unequivocally black. My work focuses on the mulatto figure, exemplified by Frances Harper's Iola Leroy, whose phenotype suggests a white racial identity; the most "problematic" figure from the perspective of those invested in racial hierarchy. (I deliberately do not say "who could pass for white," because then I, too, would be assuming the mulatto's essential blackness, which I do not.) This mulatto's apparent whiteness often contradicts her legal status as a black. (I say "often" because in some cases the mulatto is not legally black.) Racial ideology developed and deployed a set of narratives in various fields to support its insistence on the mulatto's essential blackness despite the potentially contradictory "evidence" of phenotype, legal status, or even social acceptance in white communities. Though some texts in mulatto discourse frame their exploration of the contradiction embodied by the mulatto as a critique of the "logic" of racial ideology, the driving force of mulatto discourse during the Jim Crow era seems to be an impulse toward containment of racial ambiguity.
The ramifications for Jim Crow of the problem of the mulatto's ambiguous body were both practical and ideological. The mulatto presented a practical problem for segregation because she could move out of the places designated for her without being detected. In other words, she could access white privilege without (according to racial ideology) being legitimately entitled to it. Furthermore, the mulatto—whose body is a concrete reminder of intimate relationships between blacks and whites—presented an ideological problem for segregation, a form of racial hierarchy that sought to institute maximum distance between the races.
Because the mulatto's blackness does not register visually, I argue that agency assumes a greater role in the mulatto's racial identification than it otherwise might. Racism is implicated in the stakes of how the mulatto identifies racially, but because she is not visually identifiable as black, she may not be personally subjected to racism unless she identifies as black and publicly expresses this identification. For example, in Iola Leroy, set shortly after the Civil War, Iola takes a job in a Northern white establishment as salesperson. She informs the manager that she is "colored," and he hires her, but cautions her not to tell her fellow employees. Iola does promise this, but she does not go out of her way to broadcast her racial identification either. Then one day, a coworker is where I go." Confused by her own reluctance to make the connection between Iola's church attendance and her racial identification—thereby admitting that she has been working with a "colored" woman without knowing it—the other salesperson asks why Iola attends a colored church. Iola finally makes her meaning plain: "Because I wished to be with my own people" Comprehending at last, the (presumably "legitimately") white salesperson "looked surprised and pained, and almost instinctively moved a little farther from her." By the end of the day, the entire staff knows about Iola's racial identification and they insist that Iola be fired, which she is. This is a very clear example of the way in which agency plays a unique role in the apparently white mulatto's racial identification and attendant experience (or lack thereof) of racism. If she had been characterized by more obvious phenotypic cues suggesting blackness, Iola would probably never have been hired, not even by the manager inclined to give a colored girl a chance. Yet if Iola had simply lied about her church (and other personal details that may have come up), the salespeople and their customers would have continued to assume that she was "legitimately" white, and she would not have been fired…
Purchase the dissertation here.
Tags: Charles Chesnutt, Charles W. Chesnutt, Charles Waddell Chesnutt, Duke University, Frances Harper, Jené L. Schoenfeld, Jené Lee Schoenfeld, Jené Schoenfeld, Mark Twain, Nella Larsen, Thomas Dixon, William Faulkner
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Mulatto Theology: Race, Discipleship, and Interracial Existence
Posted in Dissertations, Media Archive, Religion, United States on 2011-08-08 03:54Z by Steven
Brian Keith Bantum, Assistant Professor of Theology
Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Religion in the Graduate School of Duke University
To exist racially "in-between," being neither entirely of one race nor another, or more simply stated being a mulatto or interracial, has been characterized in the outlook that tends to mark existence in the modern world as a tragic state of being. It is from this outlook of loneliness and isolation that the term the "tragic mulatto" emerged. The dissertation Mulatto Theology: Race, Discipleship, and Interracial Existence will theologically interpret these lives so as to interrogate the wider reality of racialized lives that the mulatto's body makes visible. As such, mulatto bodies are modulations of a racial performance in which all are implicated. The mulatto's body is significant in that it discloses what is most pronouncedly masked in modern (and particularly white) identities.
Culture, identities (individual and communal) are not only interconnected, but they are mixtures where peoples become presenced in the lives and practices of other "alien" peoples. This mixture requires careful reflection upon the formation of all identities, and the ways in which these identities become visible within the world. Given this arc of identity any reflection upon Christian identity must articulate itself within the inherent tensions of these identities and the practices that mark such identities within the world. Through this work I hope to show how European theology itself has failed to account for its own dominant enclosure of identities, but also how Christian reflection itself might find a way out of this tragic reality.
In examining the formation and performance of mulatto bodies this dissertation suggests these bodies are theologically important for modern Christians and theological reflection in particular. Namely, the mulatto's body becomes the site for re-imagining Christian life as a life lived "in-between." The primary locus of this re-imagination is the body of Christ. A re-examination of theological reflection and Scripture regarding his person and work display his character as uniquely mulatto, or the God-man. But not only is his identity mulatto, but his person also describes the nature of his work, his re-creation of humanity. So understood Christian bodies can be construed as "interracial" bodies—bodies of flesh and Spirit that disrupt modern formations of race. The Christian body points to a communal reality where hybridity is no longer tragic, but rather constitutive of Christian discipleship. This new, hybrid and "impure" way of existing witnesses to God's redemptive work in the world.
Part I – Renunciation: Racial Discipleship; or Disciplining the Body
Chapter 1 – I Am Your Son White Man! The Mulatto and the Tragic
Chapter 2 – Neither Fish Nor Fowl: Presence as Politics
Part II – Confession: Christ, the Tragic Mulatto
Chapter 3 – What Child is This? or How can this Be? The Mulatto Christ
Chapter 4 – I Am the Way: Mulatto Redemption and the Politics of Identification
Part III – Immersion: Christian Discipleship; or The New Discipline of the Body
Chapter 5 – You Must Be Re-Born: Baptism Mulattic Re-Birth
Chapter 6 – The Politics of Presence: Discipleship and Prayer
Tags: Brian Bantum, Brian K. Bantum, Brian Keith Bantum, Duke University
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French110s: From Haiti to New Orleans
Posted in Anthropology, Caribbean/Latin America, Course Offerings, History, Louisiana, Media Archive, United States on 2010-12-13 02:10Z by Steven
Deborah Jenson
Haiti Lab: Undergraduate Opportunities
The first Humanities Laboratory at Duke, one of the key goals of the Haiti Lab is to bring innovative, interdisciplinary research more fully into the undergraduate experience at Duke and, indeed, to invite undergraduates to participate as researchers themselves.
The Haitian Revolution (1791-1804) was a successful revolution against slavery, leading to the defeat of the French armies of Napoleon Bonaparte and the establishment of the first black republic in the New World. During the revolution, many Creole planters (white and of mixed race) and their households, including slaves, sought refuge elsewhere; by 1809, the population of New Orleans actually doubled with this "Haitian" influx. How did the culture and literature of nineteenth century New Orleans reflect Haitian influences? We will read fascinating Francophone New Orleans literature about the socio-racially complex cultures of slavery, the bourgeoisie, and the planters' "aristocracy" in Louisiana. Did you know you could learn about the U.S. Civil War through French-language New Orleans novels that also integrate Creole poetry from colonial Saint-Domingue? Or that the first African-American short story was written in French, about Haiti? We will read about the drama of the historical Haitian maroon slave and poisoner Macandal, and about the Haiti-influenced libertine culture that bound together white men and women of color in the common law structure of plaçage. Students will do cultural research projects on subjects such as the cultural roots of Creole and Cajun cuisine, the Quadroon Balls, or the "voodoo queen" Marie Laveaux. In this course on French literature in our own historical and regional "backyard," students will also explore the Haitian inspiration of Durham's historic black "Hayti" neighborhood. Course taught in French.
Tags: Deborah Jenson, Duke University, Haiti, Louisiana, New Orleans
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History: (Avengers: The Initiative#12) - Freedom Force, joined by their newest recruit, recent Camp Hammond graduate Cloud 9, saved the inhabitants of a burning building in Billings, Montana.
(Avengers: The Initiative#18) - When confronted by the remnants of the Skrull Kill Krew and a ragtag group of Initiative heroes, Equinox revealed himself as a Skrull, injuring Challenger and Think Tank. He quickly defeated Spinner and the other heroes, before being shot in the head by Cloud 9. Spinner and Cloud 9 joined up with the others to purge the Initiative of Skrulls, leaving Challenger and Think Tank for the paramedics.
(Avengers: The Initiative#28) - Freedom Force (Challenger, Cloud 9, Equinox, Think Tank) participated in an attack alongside the Force of Nature (Aqueduct, Skybreaker, Sunstreak, Terraformer), the U-Foes (Ironclad, Vapor, Vector, X-Ray) members of the Shadow Initiative (Badd Axe, Ringer (Keith Kraft), Warbow), and other trainees (Brother Grimm, Griffin, Scorcher, Razor-Fist) on the rogue Initiative team the Heavy Hitters. The Heavy Hitters Nonstop and Telemetry were saved by the Avengers Resistance, though Resistance member Night Thrasher was captured. Heavy Hitters member Prodigy chose to remain behind and make a final stand for himself and was defeated as well.
(Fear Itself: Youth in Revolt#1) - When the Serpent (Cul) began his reign of terror on Earth, Steve Rogers commissioned Prodigy to reassemble the Initiative to handle the fear-induced rioting that was spreading across the country. Action Pack's Think Tank and Spinner were among the Initiative members who gathered in Washington DC to rejoin.
Challenger seems to be the leader of Freedom Force - the Initiative entry in volume 5 of the All-New Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe A-Z hardcovers confirms this.. He doesn't show up in #18, but Cloud 9 refers to her wounded "teammates", plural, so Challenger was presumably there off-panel.
Think Tank should team up with Martha Johansson and the "Belgian Brain" to form, like, Disembodied Floating Brain Force.
And they could all fight time-travelling WW2 villains including Otto von Schmittsder, Werner Schmidt and the Japanese Head.
I didn't realize it until LV! pointed it out to me, but the Equinox impersonator has the powers of Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends.
(Avengers: The Initiative#18 (fb)) - At some point in time, a Super-Skrull abducted and replaced Terry Sorenson. This Skrull was chosen by Criti Noll, a Super-Skrull impersonating Yellowjacket, to be a member of Montana's Initiative team.
(Avengers: The Initiative#12) - "Equinox" used his ice powers to cool the flames of a burning building.
(Avengers: The Initiative#18) - Exposed by the Skrull Kill Krew and a motley crew of Initiative operatives, the Equniox impersonator assumed his true form and disabled Challenger and Think Tank. He froze Ryder, Riot, and Hardball in a slab of ice, threw Spinner into Nonstop, and exploded his ice-slab to injure Jocasta, Gravity, and Komodo. Striking down the 3-D Man, he had all of his attackers at his mercy, until he was killed by a sniper shot from Cloud 9.
In addition to his Skrull shapeshifting powers, the Equinox impersonator also possessed the abilities of Spider-Man, Iceman, and Firestar.
(Avengers: The Initiative#12) - Currently in possession of super-strength, Spinner held up the collapsing building, but found herself affected by the heat, as she had been in possession of superhuman endurance the day before.
(Avengers: The Initiative#18) - Initially overwhelmed by the revelation of a Skrull in their midst, Spinner soon turned her speed power against the Equinox impersonator, but was thrown into Nonstop. With the Skrull defeated by Cloud 9, Spinner joined her and the other heroes in journeying to Philadelphia, where they battled the Skrull which had infiltrated the Liberteens as the Revolutionary, recruiting Whiz Kid in the process. They next ventured to Georgia, where they defeated the Thor Girl impersonator of the Cavalry. Moving on to South Dakota, Spinner, Whiz Kid, and Nonstop were given explosives and sent to destroy the Negative Zone gates of every Initiative base in order to prevent the Skrulls from destroying the planet.
(Avengers: The Initiative#19) - After assisting the Spaceknights battle Skrulls in Chicago, Spinner met up with Whiz Kid, then sped to Hawaii, where she found a small army of Skrull soldiers. Her twenty-four hours up, she gained the power of flight, but was unable to reach the Initiative base. In desperation, she activated her explosives and blew herself up along with the Skrulls. Unfortunately, one dying Skrull was able to activate the Negative Zone gate before expiring.
(Fear Itself: Youth in Revolt#1) - When the Serpent (Cul) began his reign of terror on Earth, Steve Rogers commissioned Prodigy to reassemble the Initiative to handle the fear-induced rioting that was spreading across the country. Spinner was among the Initiative members who gathered in Washington DC to rejoin.
Spinner rotated through a set of superpowers, receiving a different one every twenty-four hours. At the end of that day, she lost that power and received a new one. These powers have included superhuman strength, endurance, speed (which she received only infrequently), and flight.
(Avengers: The Initiative#12) - Think Tank levitated the occupants of a burning building in Billings, Montana to safety, despite the heat causing him some discomfort.
(Avengers: The Initiative#18) - Think Tank's braincase was shattered by the Skrull who had replaced Equinox. Gravity took him away from the scene of the battle, but was left for the paramedics with Challenger.
(Avengers: The Initiative#28) - Think Tank participated in the Initiative's attack on the rogue Heavy Hitters team and helped capture Night Thrasher, of the Avengers Resistance, and Prodigy, though the other Heavy Hitters escaped with the Avengers Resistance.
(Fear Itself: Youth in Revolt#1) - When the Serpent (Cul) began his reign of terror on Earth, Steve Rogers commissioned Prodigy to reassemble the Initiative to handle the fear-induced rioting that was spreading across the country. Think Tank was among the Initiative members who gathered in Washington DC to rejoin.