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The Labyrinth Library
Category Archives: identity
Books about establishing or discovering identity.
Lost in the Stacks 6: You Keep Jesus, I'll Take Hal Jordan
You know who else sacrificed himself saving the world? And then rose again?
Everyone needs role models growing up, and in a time of crisis everyone needs to turn to someone who is better than themselves. Some folks turn to religion, others turn to fiction. [1] As much as we use the real people in our lives – our parents, teachers, community leaders, I've found that fictional characters have imparted great lessons to me which have shaped the kind of person I've become.
How do fictional characters shape us, and why? What makes them so different from real people in terms of being a role model? Listen along with me and find out!
And of course, I'd be interested to hear from you – what fictional characters have made you who you are? What lessons did you learn from books, from TV or movies that have helped you become the person you want to be? Leave your story in the comments and join the conversation.
[1] Assuming, of course, that there's a difference.
Filed under comic books, DC Comics, Green Lantern, identity, Lost in the Stacks, personality, role models
Tagged as fiction, fictional characters, growing up, identity, role models
Review 128: Soul Music
Soul Music by Terry Pratchett
"Music is my life."
How many times have you heard that? From bona fide rock stars to teenage wannabes, there's something about music that occupies us, that possesses us and just won't let go. Even if you're not a big music lover, there are probably songs which can ease your mind, pull you out of a dark mood, or set your heart to racing. There's music that'll lift your heart and make you think the world is a better place than it really is, and songs that will convince you that the dark heart of the world is just as decayed and corrupt as you always thought it was. Music has a kind of magic in it that can reach to the very core of who we are as thinking – and more importantly, feeling – beings.
That magic is dangerous enough on our world, where magic doesn't actually exist. Imagine how powerful it would be on one where magic really was real. Like, say, to pick one out of thin air, the Discworld.
Sometimes, even more horrible things would emerge....
Of course, the Discworld has had its share of trouble with popular entertainment before. Acting troupes brought about an Elf invasion in Lords and Ladies and the Horrible Betentacled Things of the Dungeon Dimension nearly escaped thanks to the Disc's proto-cinema in Moving Pictures. There's just something about the arts in Discworld that leads to trouble – usually the world-ending kind.
In this case, though, the introduction of rock and roll – better known in Ankh-Morpork as "Music with Rocks In" – is only really dangerous to one person, the young Imp y Celyn. Just eighteen years old and already one of the best bards of Llamados, he wants to make something of his life. He wants to be more than just another bard, and in a mysterious shop that has only recently always been where it was, he finds his chance. Or rather, his chance finds him. A guitar-like instrument that does what no guitar should do – it whines, it growls, it sends out noises that run straight down your spine and make your nerves run with fire. It's clearly not of this world, and it wants nothing more than to live. For that, it needs to change Imp's fate, and by extension the fate of hundreds in Ankh-Morpork.
Soon, Imp and his band – The Band With Rocks In – are the most famous thing in the city, and the strange magic of this music is being felt everywhere. Even the wizards are helpless against it. Normally this would result in the aforementioned Horrible Betentacled Things, but in this case it's more of a reversion to teenage years that never were. Still, Archchancellor Ridcully knows that there's some force acting on people that shouldn't be there, and nothing good ever comes of that.
Keith Death (art by Soulstripper on DeviantArt)
As if that weren't enough, Death has decided to get existential and tries to figure out how he can make himself forget for a while. Why he decides to do this is not clearly explored, but it results in him leaving his duty. In his place comes his young Granddaughter, Susan, who would be great for the job if she didn't think the whole idea of personifying a force of nature was just romantic woolly thinking. And it would be even better if she knew what her connection was to the doomed musician Imp y Celyn.
This book can be seen as a companion to the earlier Moving Pictures as an examination of and homage to popular culture. By transplanting it to the Discworld, Pratchett is able to look at rock music from the point of view of people who've never even thought about such a thing before, and who can more easily see the magic of it. And of course, it's his big chance to make as many music jokes, puns and references as humanly possible, from the translation of Imp's name ("Imp" meaning "small bud" and "Celyn" meaning 'of the holly") to some proto-heavy metal musicians trying to make leopard skin pants from a cat that has some severe hearing difficulties.
It's a sort of love letter to rock and roll and all that it has brought us. From teenyboppers to punk to the horrible misuses of leather and spandex, it holds a mirror up to the way that rock music has influenced our modern culture. But it does not mock, oh no. It shows great attention to and reverence for this young art form that has done so much to change the world. To list all the references made in this book would be nearly impossible, but the amount of work and thought that went into making it is quite clear.
We're not here to judge.
More importantly, though, the book addresses some questions that are a little deeper than the simple rock and roll jokes. Like Death's question: "WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT? SERIOUSLY? WHEN YOU GET RIGHT DOWN TO IT?" Probably since the beginning of music, people have tried to find meaning in it. People have connected to music and to musicians in ways that they could never connect to other people, even family and friends. People find meaning in music, which then gives meaning to their lives, and the more you give your life to something, the harder the crash when that thing goes away. Imp discovers this in a very literal sense, but out here in the real world that is just as true.
People mourned for Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley, Kurt Cobain and other superstars as if they knew them. And in a way, I'm sure they thought they did. Like so much else in the world, though, music doesn't have any meaning but what we give to it. The truly great musicians, the ones we always lose too soon, give everything they have. They manage to say to us what we've been saying to ourselves, but could never really figure out how to put into words. Music is the voice our emotions could use if our brains didn't get in the way so often, and the best people lucky enough to be able to create it gain a kind of immortality.
Not the literal kind, unfortunately.
If you love music – especially rock music – then this is a book you should pick up and read. Even if you're not a Discworld fan, you'll probably enjoy it.
This was music that had not only escaped, but had robbed a bank on the way out. It was music with its sleeves rolled up and its top button undone, raising its hat and grinning and stealing the silver…. It made you want to kick down walls and ascend the sky on steps of fire. It made you want to pull all the switches and throw all the levers and stick your fingers in the electric socket of the Universe to see what happened next. It made you want to paint your bedroom wall black and cover it with posters.
– from Soul Music by Terry Pratchett
Soul Music on Wikipedia
Terry Pratchett on Wikipedia
Soul Music on Amazon.com
Terry Pratchett's Homepage
L-Space Annotations on Soul Music
Filed under death, Discworld, fantasy, humor, identity, music, rock and roll, satire, Terry Pratchett, wizardry
Tagged as book reviews, Discworld, music, rock and roll, Terry Pratchett
Review 124: The Night Watch
The Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko
This review has been approved for distribution as conducive to the cause of the Light. – The Night Watch
This review has been approved for distribution as conducive to the cause of the Dark. – The Day Watch
Imagine a world where magic is real. A place where people known as Others are born with powers they don't understand. Their destinies are unwritten until that fateful day when they first become an Other – when they discover the strange, shadowy and powerful world known as the Twilight – and have to make a choice: will they stand with the Light or with the Dark. Will they dedicate their lives to Good or Evil?
Maybe it ain't what it used to be, but it's still dramatic.... (art by mirerror on DeviantArt)
It's not an easy decision to make, by any means. Joining either side has its limitations and its rules, for the battle between Good and Evil isn't what it used to be.
Long ago, it was simple – Good fought Evil, Dark fought Light, and blood was shed on both sides. It was a vicious, unending war that threatened to decimate the world. Finally, the two sides reached an agreement. A Treaty, well deserving of the capital letter. There would be a truce between the two sides, a balance that would be maintained at all costs. Any act of evil would be balanced by an act of goodness, and vice versa. Neither side is to have an advantage.
Part of the Day Watch Auxiliary Brigade
Making sure the peace is kept is the job of the Watches – the Night Watch, staffed by elites of the Light to guard against advances by the Dark, and a Day Watch, staffed by the elites of the Dark to guard against excesses of the Light. We begin our look at the Others of Moscow with a young adept named Anton Sergeeivich Gorodetsky, a wielder of magic and an analyst forced into the more exciting realm of field work. His job is to find out who a pair of vampires are illegally attempting to seduce and stop them. In the process of doing that, and saving the soul of a young Other named Egor, he stumbles upon something that threatens the entire city of Moscow, if not all of Russia. A young woman has a curse upon her head, so horrible and so powerful that the forces of the Light may have no chance to disperse it. If she dies, the city will die with her. If she lives, even worse may befall the world.
There are three stories in this book, somewhat independent but entirely connected. The first details the discovery of Egor and the cursed Svetlana. In the second, an Other of the Light, a maverick who doesn't know about the rest of the Others, or the Treaty between Light and Dark, is murdering Dark adepts. Somewhat alarmingly, Anton is being framed for the murders. In the third book, Moscow is gripped in a heat wave. In the midst of this, the leaders of the Light are attempting to change the world. Whether it ends up being for the better or the worse, no one can know. But Anton is convinced that it must not come to pass….
Team ANTON!!!!!
It's a gripping fantasy, in a very complex world. It's compared to Rowling's work, and justly so (although I don't think there's much of a case to be made for an attempt to ride on Rowling's coattails – Night Watch was originally published in 1998, only a year after the release of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone). There are substantial differences, of course, making Night Watch a much more adult book than the Potter series. There are very few children, and the few that are there are not in very substantial roles. There's far more drinking, smoking and sex in this, of course. But the world that Lukyanenko has created is every bit as deep and complex as the one Rowling has made. There are any number of roles that could be played, and an almost infinite number of situations that could be built on the fairly simple rules that are set up by the Light-Dark Treaty.
The biggest difference, of course, is in the complexity of the world. Rowling's world is fairly definitive in its divisions between good and evil – there is good, there is evil, and there is no question of which is which. The evil characters are definitively evil, and the good characters are definitively good, and the reader doesn't have to worry too much about who's on which side, Snape notwithstanding.
The Others of Moscow, however, are not nearly so clear-cut. Yes, the Light is trying to do the work of the Good, to make the world a better place. But their machinations and their plots don't always go as planned. See the Russian Revolution and World War II for examples why. They ignore the Law of Unintended Consequences and the horrors it can unleash. By trying to do Good, they unleash great evil upon the world.
He's just a big softie, really....
And how about the Dark? Yes, they're populated by werewolves, witches and vampires, but they are advocates of utter and total freedom. They do not destroy for the sheer joy of destruction, but because they want to increase the personal freedom of the world. They're not interested in making humanity "better," or making a better world. They simply want to live in the world as it is, free from restraints – both internal and external.
While it may be pretty clear who is on the Light and Dark side, it's not entirely clear who is doing Good or Evil at any given time. And, more importantly, it is almost impossible to know who is actually right.
It's a great read – full of anguish and self-doubt and torture, like any good Russian novel should be. Anton knows that the Light doesn't live up to the standards that it preaches, but he knows that he needs to be on the right side. He picks apart the intricate, decades-long plot of the Night Watch and very nearly figures out how to foil it. But even in revealing the truth, he does not manage to save the world from the doom of the Light.
Or does he?
We'll have to read the next book and find out….
"You accuse us of cruelty, and not entirely without reason, but what's one child killed in a black mass compared with any fascist children's concentration camp?"
– Zabulon, of the Day Watch, The Night Watch
The Night Watch on Wikipedia
Sergei Lukyanenko on Wikipedia
Sergei Lukyanenko's website (in English)
The Night Watch at Amazon.com
Filed under ethics, fantasy, good and evil, horror, identity, made into movies, morality, philosophy, politics, Russia, Sergei Lukyanenko, short stories, society, USSR, vampires, werewolves, witches, wizardry
Tagged as book reviews, fantasy, good and evil, horror, magic, Moscow, Russia, Sergei Lukyanenko, vampires, werewolves
Review 122: Anansi Boys
Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman
When I started in on this book, I knew there were certain things I could expect from Neil Gaiman – insight, clever twists on literary assumptions, a good perspective on the nature of our reality. And, I must say, he delivered in full. This story draws from some of the most ancient of human tales and reflects on the most ancient of human needs – the need to have a story of one's own. It's a book about purpose and destiny, and other very deep subjects.
Yes - this man is hilarious.
What I didn't expect was to spend most of the book laughing out loud and disturbing the people around me.
Seriously, there were some times when the other teachers in the staff room would stop whatever conversation they were having because they'd been interrupted by my cackling. Or the staff would come over and ask what was so funny, and I'd try to explain – which doesn't really work when you're trying to cross languages and literary traditions. People in Japan don't really laugh out loud at their books, and can't quite understand why I do. But I laugh. I snicker, I giggle, I cackle, and I never expected that from Neil Gaiman.
The book was, needless to say, wonderful. While by no means a sequel to Gaiman's previous bestseller American Gods, it inhabits the same universe. This is a world where the gods exist – they've been called into existence by us and, in turn, shape our lives.
The book follows the unfortunately nicknamed Fat Charlie, whose life has been ruined by his father's death across the Atlantic. This wasn't the first time his father had ruined his life – it had happened many times before in many terrible ways. For Fat Charlie, however, dying in the middle of a karaoke hall just seems to be a final slap in Fat Charlie's face.
Fat Charlie isn't his real name, of course – his real name is Charlie Nancy, which isn't much better. Fat Charlie is only a nickname given to him by his father. He tried to shake it in his life, asking people to call him Charlie or Charles or Chaz, and he wasn't even fat – just a little soft around the edges. But his father gave names that stuck like gum to the underside of a school desk, and no matter where he went, Charlie Nancy inevitably became Fat Charlie.
You would think this would raise eyebrows in the delivery room....
The reason for this phenomenon, of course, is that Fat Charlie's father is a god. He is Anansi, the Spider, a trickster god who managed to steal all the stories from Tiger back when humanity was young, and who managed to trick, deceive, swindle and humiliate nearly every other god and spirit there ever was. He was good at it, and there was nothing he wanted that he couldn't get.
Fat Charlie was, in very many ways, a disappointment. Where his father was debonair, Fat Charlie was a klutz. Where his father could command the respect of men and women, Fat Charlie was a doormat. Where his father was the embodiment of confidence, Fat Charlie was a crumbly mess. I suppose it's normal, really, being the child of a god, and not really his fault, even if he didn't know it until his father was dead.
He didn't know about his brother, either. His brother is Spider, a young man who is so cool that he can convince an entire L.A. party that they can walk on water. He can do real magic, step in and out of the world with ease, and carries his own bedroom with him. When Spider comes into the picture, everything goes horribly, horribly wrong. Think The Odd Couple, except that Oscar Madison has divine powers and absolutely no sense of consequence.
The story is a lot more than two brothers who don't know how to get along. It's a story – about stories. In the stories of Anansi and Tiger that are laced throughout the book, we learn that once, long ago, all stories were Tiger's stories, and they were stories of fear and blood and hunger. When Anansi took them, the stories became about cleverness and trickery and resourcefulness. So in a way, the victory of Anansi over Tiger is the story of humankind's emergence from barbarism.
Speaking of someone whose story has been re-written over and over. Anansi would like Spidey, though....
It's about personal stories as well, and that's a theme that's far more important to us as individuals. We are the stories we tell about ourselves. Fat Charlie didn't need to be the tightly-wrapped ball of embarrassment that he was. But that's who he told himself he was, and, so, that's who he became. Once he starts to accept his heritage and his responsibility to his family, once he starts to re-tell his own story, he changes himself. The same is true for Spider – he's written his own story as a rake and a charmer, but he finds that that story is lacking. It's a story that needs some editing, and he's better off for it.
This is a funny, funny book that reminds me in places of Dave Barry, though that might be a side effect of the Florida settings. There's also a few footnote jokes, so I suspect that Neil has been hanging out with Terry Pratchett recently. Despite the laugh-out-loud general tone of the book, there's a lot of Meaning to be found as well – the meaning of story and song, of family, and why you should always be nice to spiders. And birds. Definitely be nice to birds.
The ultimate message of the book, though, is that you can always re-write your story. The weak little spider can become a conquering hero, and the fearsome tiger can be a timid coward. No story is set forever. So if you don't like the way your story is turning out, get out your red pen and start editing. Anansi would approve.
"People respond to the stories. They tell them themselves. The stories spread, and as people tell them, the stories change the tellers."
Anansi, Anansi Boys
Neil Gaiman on Wikipedia
Anansi Boys on Wikipedia
Anansi Boys on Amazon.com
Neil Gaiman's homepage
Filed under brothers, childhood, coming of age, death, family, fantasy, fathers, gods, humor, identity, Neil Gaiman, quest, sons, spiders, story
Tagged as Anansi, book reviews, brothers, family, gods, humor, Neil Gaiman
Review 121: Shatnerquake
Shatnerquake by Jeff Burk
In the introduction to this book, the author states that he truly admires William Shatner – he states that Shatner is a man who has made a career out of caricaturing himself, remaking himself over and over again with no looking back, no shame and – as far as we know – no regrets. He finishes by kindly asking William Shatner not to sue him.
I don't think he has too much to worry about, really. This book is a quick, fun read that, while not necessarily painting William Shatner in the best of lights, certainly pays homage to his long and varied career.
The story goes as follows: William Shatner is on his way to the very first ShatnerCon, a convention celebrating his life and works. It is a convention mobbed with fans, devotees who are there to see their idol, whether he caught their hearts as T.J. Hooker, Captain Kirk, or the host of Rescue 911. In the new Cathode-La convention center, tribute can be paid in full to William Shatner, a man who has changed so many lives.
But there are those who do not adore Shatner. They don't like him or even tolerate him. They are the Campbellians, known by the bloody stumps where their right hands used to be and each known only as Bruce. They hate William Shatner with a passion that borders on madness, and seeing him dead is not nearly enough for them – they want his entire body of work to never have existed. Their weapon is a Fiction Bomb, a metaphysical WMD that can erase stories from existence. No one remembers them, no one knows they ever existed. Should the Fiction Bomb succeed, William Shatner's entire body of work would cease to be. And so, in short order, would he.
Shatner!
But what if a Fiction Bomb should go wrong? What if that interface between fiction and reality should be breached, spilling its contents into what we commonly call the Real World? In that case, dozens of William Shatners – every character the man had played – would emerge in our world, with only one thought on their minds: Destroy the real William Shatner!
This book is a very quick read – only eighty-three pages – but it certainly packs in a lot of action, and as works of fan-fiction go, it isn't too bad. Because that is most assuredly what this book is – fanfic. Burk has a very basic concept here – get all of Shatner's characters out to kill him. Simple. Add lots of blood and gore and guts, because that's always fun, and you have some entertaining reading. This is the very best kind of fanfic, really – you know it's just a send-up, never intended to be a serious work of literature. Sit back and enjoy the ride.
It suffers from some serious editing problems, though, and Mr. Burk would have done well to have hired a good proofreader. There are some very basic grammatical mistakes, dropped plurals and a few sentences that just don't make sense. To a regular reader, it might not be important, but to someone whose bread and butter is the proper use of English, it's kind of glaring. But then my expectations weren't all that high – I went into this expecting a rollicking adventure and that's what I got. Complaining about the grammar in a book like this is like complaining about the quality of the vegetables in your Big Mac.
SHATNEERRRRR!!!!
Still, there are some redeeming points to it, above and beyond the weirdness of the whole thing. The beginning of the book does a very good job at setting up a real dreamlike atmosphere – a building that covers a hundred city blocks and has a parking lot that stretches out as far as the eye can see. Upon reaching the convention center, Shatner finds out that he is already late, and is led through a maze of hallways that result in almost instant disorientation. He has to sign hundreds of photographs for hours on end, and ultimately faces off with his own doppelgangers. Burk has reached into the bag of common nightmares and put together a scenario that is both familiar and disarming, which propels you through the rest of the book. After all, if you're struggling to keep up with events, think about how Shatner must be feeling?
And of course, one can't help but wonder if this is a commentary on the very nature of the actor/fan dynamic. Who is William Shatner, after all? Depending on who's looking at him, he could be Kirk or T.J. Hooker, Denny Crane or Buck Murdock, the guy who saw gremlins on his plane or the guy trying to sell you cheap airplane tickets. On top of that, Shatner has another character to maintain – Shatner as a public figure, the guy who goes to conventions and book signings and does guest spots on TV shows.
Shatners?
Who is the real William Shatner? Who are any of us, really? In this age of online presences, there could be electronic doppelgangers of ourselves all over the internet. The person that your Twitter followers believe is you is not necessarily the same person that the people on your Mad Men slash fic forum know. You present a different face to your Facebook friends than the people you know in your World of Warcraft game, and like Shatner in this story, you ultimately have no control over the different renditions of you that other people see.
The good news, of course, is that those different Yous are unlikely to rise up and try to kill you.
Ultimately, this book has no over-arching message about the nature of identity in a world where different versions walk around without our knowledge or consent. I don't think that it was ever Burk's purpose to write a treatise on the modern concept of identity, but rather to write a quick, bloody thriller about William Shatner. So, it has no real lessons to teach us other than that if you see a deranged Captain Kirk approaching with a lightsaber (and how that got in there, I'll never know – a little artistic license for the sake of awesomeness) you run away. Very fast.
"I'm a… professional. I can deal… with anything."
– William Shatner, Shatnerquake
Jeff Burk on Wikipedia
Jeff Burk's website
Shatnerquake on Amazon.com
Filed under adventure, doppelgangers, fans, horror, humor, identity, Jeff Burk, science fiction, William Shatner
Tagged as book reviews, fans, identity, Jeff Burk, William Shatner
April 7, 2011 · 5:00 am
Review 117: I Will Fear No Evil
I Will Fear No Evil by Robert Heinlein
One of the things I enjoy about Heinlein is that he likes to play with Big Ideas. While he did dip into the well of action and adventure, especially for his juvenile stories, he treated his readers like they were only slightly intellectually inferior to him, and so explored concepts that required a lot of heavy thinking. The need for war, the inevitability of messiahs, revolution, life, death, immortality – he's not afraid to look at some of the greatest philosophical topics that reside in the human heart, and this book is no exception.
Johann Sebastian Bach Smith is a very old, very sick, very rich man. He built himself up from nothing and rose to financial prominence in what is a little more than a regular human lifetime. Smith had it all – a rich and exciting life, complete financial security, good friends and good memories in a world that had, frankly, gone to hell. He had very nearly everything a person would want to have.
Photo by openDemocracy
What he didn't have was time. He lived in daily pain, kept alive by only two things: an ever-increasing number of machines and a plan to release himself from the geriatric horror his life had become. He knew that this plan would probably fail. He knew that he was facing death no matter what happened. He knew that it was crazy, and not necessarily crazy enough to work. But it was all that stood between him and suicide.
That plan was, in theory, very simple: transplant his healthy brain into the body of a healthy young person. By doing so, he would gain a whole extra lifetime to enjoy the fruits of his first lifetime's labor. Not being a monster, he was prepared to do this in a legal and ethical fashion. With his legal, medical, and judicial contacts, he made arrangements with a medical advocacy group to get the body of a healthy young person who died due to some massive brain trauma. And – and this is important – who consented to having their body used for medical experimentation. Everything would be above-board, legally sound and ethically certain. All Smith had to do was stay alive until a body became available.
Now just put the two of them together... IF YOU DARE!
When it did, however, he was in for a double surprise. Not only was the healthy, youthful body that of a female, it was that of his healthy, youthful, beautiful secretary, Eunice Branca. Eunice had been murdered, but her body was in excellent condition. She had the right blood type, and had consented to have her body used for Smith's experiment. The one doctor in the world who could perform the surgery was brought in to perform it, and against all odds, it worked. Johann Sebastian Bach Smith was reborn as Joan Eunice Smith, and her new life began.
But she was not alone.
By some means, Eunice's mind survived to live with Joan, and tutor her in all the ways of being a woman. Joan dove happily into her new life, exploring her new femininity and sexuality as best she could.
In that sense, this whole book is an exploration of sexual identity. Here we have a man who is now a woman, even though that was never his intention. He soon finds himself thinking like a woman, though, bringing up the question of whether gender is determined by a person's mind, or by the body it inhabits. If you put a male mind into a female body, with the vastly different hormones and sensory inputs, will that male mind start to act like a female? And even if it does, should it?
Smith makes a decision to, with Eunice's help, be the best woman he can be, mostly because he feels that is what is expected of him. After a lifetime of conforming to male societal roles, Smith wholeheartedly embraces the female ones, up to and including seducing his best friend of many decades. Gender identity in this book is a tangled mess of biology and intention, and it looks at being female from a distinctly male point of view.
It was a different time....
Which brings me to my first problem with this book: the casual misogyny. I know it's a pretty loaded word to throw around, and it's not entirely accurate, but it was the one that kept coming to my mind. While Heinlein is certainly capable of creating strong and independent female characters, and emphasizes over and over again that both Eunice and Joan are actively choosing the lives they lead, those lives are almost entirely dependent on and revolve around men. One of Smith's first actions when he goes from Johann to Joan is to latch on to a man – her old friend Jake Saloman. She views her identity as a woman as incomplete without a man to base it on, and spends most of the book trying to figure out who she is in relation to men – Jake, her security guards, Eunice's widower, and more. She repeatedly mentions how helpless she is without a Big Strong Man in her life, and all of this culminates in what is possibly one of the most misogynist moments I have ever read in sci-fi: a spanking scene.
And not a sexy one, either. In a moment of adolescent pique that Jake won't sleep with her when she wants him to, Joan throws a fit, disrupting their dinner plans. Jake proceeds to throw her over his knee and give her a spanking because, and I'm quoting here, "You were being difficult… and it is the only thing I know of which will do a woman any good when a man can't do for her what she needs." Joan accepts the spanking meekly, not only thanking Jake for his spanking, but also claiming that she had her first orgasm while he did it.
Wow. That's nearly as bad as the other major female character, Winnie, who talks about a gang rape experience with what can almost be imagined as fondness.
Oddly enough, this is not my biggest problem with the book. I mean, it was written in the late '60s, and it reflects the thinking of that era. For all his progressive beliefs, Heinlein was still a man of his time, and it really shows here. Legend [1] has it that he was really sick when he wrote this book, and that may have had something to do with the fact that no matter how many complex hot-button issues he touches (gender roles, homosexuality, same-sex marriage, overpopulation, government overreach), the fact remains that there is no story in this book.
This picture contains more conflict than this book
Let me explain. A story needs conflict. It needs not only a protagonist that is trying to achieve something, but obstacles that impede that achievement. There were so many potential goals and obstacles to be explored in this story – a man's brain in a woman's body – but Heinlein manages to artfully dodge all of them. The story of Smith's inner struggle to resolve the gender he grew up with with the gender he now possesses would have been fascinating. But it didn't happen. Smith pretty much accepts the change right away, with few if any reservations. Even so, he could have struggled with how to live as a woman – should he adopt the identity that a patriarchal society would confer upon him as a woman, or forge his own as a uniquely gendered person who has gone from the privileged to the unprivileged sex? Unfortunately, the conflict doesn't even occur to Joan. She decided to be the best woman she can be, constantly asking others what that entails, rather than asking herself.
Or how about the concept of Identity itself? Smith is an old brain in a new body, so is he legally the same person he was before the surgery? That would be an amazing story as he tries to prove that Johann has become Joan, and that even though Eunice's body is still walking around, she's actually dead. But no – Smith has some powerful legal friends with ironclad arguments, and the legal proceedings are pretty much a foregone conclusion.
Or how about rejection by society? Regular transgendered people have a hard enough time getting society to accept the modification of the body they were born with – what about when someone takes on an entirely new body? Joan could have struggled to get her friends and family to accept who she has become, to stand before the world with her head held high. But no…. She has enough money that she doesn't really need society's approval, none of her friends have any trouble with what she's become, and even Eunice's widower has only a moment of uncontrollable emotion before accepting that his wife is dead, but still walking around. And he might get to sleep with her again.
Imagine this in your head ALL the TIME.
One last one – the soul. Joan hears Eunice's voice in her head, but it's unclear whether it is really Eunice or if it's just Joan's imagination. What's more, they never fight. They never have a serious disagreement and have to resolve their differences so that they can continue to occupy the same skull. Eunice and Joan live together like wisecracking sisters and never have to deal with the problem of living with someone you can't get rid of, even if you're not sure if they're real.
In other words, there's no there there. It's a long, talky, philosophical exploration of some fascinating topics, but as a novel, it's incredibly dull. You keep waiting for the blow-up, for the accident, for the Big Problem that Joan and Jake have to struggle to overcome, and it never arrives. Everything works out either through money or force of will or Heinlein's trademark Sheer Damn Reasonableness. Between that and the constant thought of, "He did not just say that," I found this book rather stressful to plow through. It offers up a lot of big ideas to think on, raises some very important questions, and Heinlein's gift for dialogue makes some fun conversations, but I think I would have liked it more if it had been completely different.
"Sir, if you want to give me a fat lip, I'll hold still, smile happily, and take it. Oh, Jake darling, it's going to be such fun to be married to you!"
"I think so too, you dizzy bitch."
– Joan and Jake, I Will Fear No Evil by Robert Heinlein
[1] Wikipedia
Robert Heinlein on Wikipedia
I Will Fear No Evil on Wikipedia
I Will Fear No Evil on Amazon.com
Filed under afterlife, bad, death, existentialism, friendship, gender, gender roles, ghosts, homosexuality, identity, Robert Heinlein, romance, science fiction, sexuality
Tagged as book reviews, gender, identity, Robert Heinlein, science fiction, sexuality
Review 114: The Ghost Brigades
The Ghost Brigades by John Scalzi
The book that preceded this one was Old Man's War. It was Scalzi's first novel and I loved it. It had everything – high-end science fiction, philosophy, cool battle scenes and a protagonist whose sense of humor reminded me a lot of many of my friends. The book's premise was very simple – why do we use young people to fight in wars? Because they have the bodies that work best for the task – strong, fast and generally resilient. But young people can also be rash, impulsive and generally ignorant of a whole lot of life's complexity. If their physical capabilities were not an issue, then who would we want? Why, old people, of course. They have the life experience, the patience and the perspective to be better soldiers.
So, it's The Future. Mankind has spread out among the stars, and the Colonial Union is the political organization that keeps them together. Any government needs a military, so the Colonial forces make sure they have the best recruits, all brought from Earth. With some pretty high-tech jiggery-pokery, the senior citizens from Earth's richer nations are made into lean, green fighting machines, capable of performing in ways that make the Marines of our day look like palsey victims. Their minds are transferred from their old, decrepit bodies and put into new ones, grown from their own DNA, but altered to make them better soldiers. It's all very exciting and cool, but at some point, I suppose Scalzi asked himself a question: what happens when someone signs up at age 65, but doesn't make it to age 75 when they're supposed to start their service?
Well, we have all this DNA just sitting there, right? We can't let it go to waste, can we?
That brings us to the Ghost Brigades, the rather morbid nickname for the Colonial Union's Special Forces. Their bodies are grown from DNA whose previous owners have expired, and are modded in more extreme ways than the regular defense force soldiers. Then, when the body is ready, they're woken up. An amazing piece of biotechnology called, rather whimsically, a BrainPal prepares their brains for consciousness, acting as a kind of bootstrap for the emergent personality. It tells them what they're supposed to know, so they don't have to go through the tedious process of learning it all. And, of course, much more. The Special Forces do what the regular Defense Forces can't, and act in ways that their more "ordinary" soldiers couldn't understand. In Old Man's War the Special Forces only came in at the end. In this book, as you might have guessed, they play a much more central role.
I'll show them! I'LL SHOW THEM ALL!!!
Charles Boutin is a traitor to humanity. For reasons known only to him, he has sold out the Colonial Union to its enemies, a troika of alien species that would be more than willing to wipe us off the map. The Defense Forces would love to find him, of course, but he's hidden himself among the enemy. So they got the next best thing: a copy of his own mind that Boutin had made while researching the BrainPal.
In theory, it should work: put this mental backup copy into a "clean slate," a body that has no mind of its own. A Special Forces body.
And so, Jared Dirac was born. Decanted. Whatever. It was hoped that when he opened his eyes, he would be Charles Boutin in a new body, and could promptly be interrogated. But it isn't that easy. Jared Dirac is a normal Special Forces soldier, a blank slate who is ready to do the job he was, literally, born to do: keep humanity safe.
Art by Vincent Chong
He's sent off to training, with the expectation that he would be just another Special Forces soldier. But he is, of course, much more than that. As his brain matures, the memories and personality of Charles Boutin come with them, and Dirac starts to understand more of what made the man turn traitor to his own species. This information could lead the Defense Forces to their ultimate goal, or to their destruction….
It's a great book. Tons of fun, although the exposition is a bit heavy-handed in the beginning. There's a whole lot of reminding about what you learned in Old Man's War, and I didn't really need it. That's the thing about recap, though: if you avoid it altogether, you can confuse people who haven't picked up the previous book in a while. Slather it on and you bore the people who have good enough memories.
Once you get past that, though, it's straight on fun, with some pretty serious questions folded into it. One of the major questions raised in this book is that of identity – who is Jared Dirac? How can a being who is brought to full consciousness by an implanted computer be properly called "human?" It's clear that he is, but a fuller look at the Special Forces – especially the squad known as the Gamerans – really does push the definition of "human" to its limits.
The Japanese cover to Ghost Brigades
It's a very thoughtful book in many places, exploring the grey areas of not only humanity and "human-ness," but also of the role of humanity among the stars. Explaining his reason for turning traitor, Boutin asks us to consider the entire purpose of government itself – how it operates, how much power it has and how much it should trust its citizenry. He fundamentally disagrees with how the Colonial Union goes about its business, and will do whatever he has to in order to set it on what he believes is the right path. And in the middle of all this is Jared Dirac, who has to actually start making choices in his life – something that Special Forces soldiers were never bred to do.
As with Old Man's War, this is a great book to read, and I look forward to the other books set in that universe. You should too.
"We don't mind when the other guy brings a gun to a knife fight. It just makes it easier for us to cut out his heart. Or whatever it is that he uses to pump blood."
Lieutenant Jane Sagan, The Ghost Brigades
The Ghost Brigades on Wikipedia
John Scalzi on Wikipedia
The Ghost Brigades on Amazon.com
John Scalzi's Blog
Filed under adventure, aliens, ethics, existentialism, fiction, friendship, identity, John Scalzi, military, morality, philosophy, science fiction, technology, transhumanism, truth, war
Tagged as aliens, identity, John Scalzi, revenge, science fiction, transhumanism, war. book reviews
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Scheloribates barbatulus är en kvalsterart som beskrevs av Mihelcic 1956. Scheloribates barbatulus ingår i släktet Scheloribates och familjen Scheloribatidae. Inga underarter finns listade i Catalogue of Life.

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Home News Fermi Spots the Biggest, Baddest Gamma Ray Blast Ever Seen
Fermi Spots the Biggest, Baddest Gamma Ray Blast Ever Seen
The first Gamma Ray Burst (GRB) to be seen in high-resolution from NASA's Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope is one for the record books. The blast had the greatest total energy, the fastest motions and the highest-energy initial emissions ever seen.
"We were waiting for this one," said Peter Michelson, the principal investigator on Fermi's Large Area Telescope at Stanford University. "Burst emissions at these energies are still poorly understood, and Fermi is giving us the tools to understand them."
Gamma Ray Bursts are the universe's most luminous explosions. Astronomers believe most occur when exotic massive stars run out of nuclear fuel. As a star's core collapses into a black hole, jets of material -- powered by processes not yet fully understood -- blast outward at nearly the speed of light. The jets bore all the way through the collapsing star and continue into space, where they interact with gas previously shed by the star and generate bright afterglows that fade with time.
This explosion, designated GRB 080916C, occurred at 7:13 p.m. EDT on Sept. 15, 2008 in the constellation Carina. Fermi's other instrument, the Gamma Ray Burst Monitor, simultaneously recorded the event. Together, the two instruments provide a view of the blast's initial, or prompt, Gamma Ray emission from energies between 3,000 to more than 5 billion times that of visible light.
Nearly 32 hours after the blast, Jochen Greiner of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany, led a group that searched for the explosion's fading afterglow. The team simultaneously captured the field in seven wavelengths using the Gamma Ray Burst Optical/Near-Infrared Detector, or GROND, on the 2.2-meter telescope at the European Southern Observatory in La Silla, Chile. In certain colors, the brightness of a distant object shows a characteristic drop-off caused by intervening gas clouds. The farther away the object is, the redder the wavelength where this fade-out occurs. This gives astronomers a quick estimate of the object's distance. The team's follow-up observations established that the explosion took place 12.2 billion light-years away.
"Already, this was an exciting burst," said Julie McEnery, a Fermi deputy project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "But with the GROND team's distance, it went from exciting to extraordinary."
With the distance in hand, Fermi team members showed that the blast exceeded the power of approximately 9,000 ordinary supernovae, if the energy was emitted equally in all directions. This is a standard way for astronomers to compare events even though gamma-ray bursts emit most of their energy in tight jets.
Coupled with the Fermi measurements, the distance also helps astronomers determine the slowest speeds possible for material emitting the prompt Gamma Rays. Within the jet of this burst, gas bullets must have moved at 99.9999 percent the speed of light. This burst's tremendous power and speed make it the most extreme recorded to date.
One curious aspect of the burst is a five-second delay separating the highest-energy emissions from the lowest. Such a time lag has been seen clearly in only one earlier burst.
"It may mean that the highest-energy emissions are coming from different parts of the jet or created through a different mechanism," Michelson said.
NASA's Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope is an astrophysics and particle physics partnership mission, developed in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy and important contributions from academic institutions and partners in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden, and the United States.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GLAST/news/high_grb.html
http://www.astromart.com/news/news.asp?news_id=898
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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These dolls were the first in the designer line and was announced at the D23 2011 expo. You were able to preorder the set at the expo as well as purchase the exclusive silver Cinderella which had an edition size of only 250 worldwide.
This is the first and only designer set that has varying edition sizes amongst the dolls. Along with the dolls Disney released other items including a limited edition set of pins limited to 150 worldwide (exclusive only to the expo), a set of 10 mugs and journals, various clothing, cosmetics and apparel utilising the designer princess artwork.
When released the dolls retailed at $59.50 plus tax (£60 in the UK) each, there was a presale of the entire set available at the expo for $595.00. The dolls were scheduled to be released weekly, one at a time every Monday starting from August 22 2011. However due to the popularity of the the first five dolls (Cinderella, Ariel, Belle, Mulan and Snow White) and numerous complaints about the inability to purchase them the remaining five dolls Tiana, Jasmine, Rapunzel, Aurora and Pocahontas were released at the same time on October 17 2011 in store and October 18 2011 online. It was during this release the term dollmageddon was coined due to the issue with the website consistently crashing and people trying for hours to get the dolls in their cart but not being able to checkout due to a website malfunction and the excessive traffic on the site.
The Disney Store website crashed repeatedly during the online release of Designer Snow White on September 19, 2011. In addition the doll was oversold online, leading to cancellations of orders that had been confirmed by email from the Disney Store. This lead to the postponement of the next scheduled release, from September 26 to October 17-18 2011. In addition it was decided to release all five of the remaining dolls at once, in stores on October 17, and online in the morning of October 18 (9am PST).
Disney Limited Edition Dolls | History | News | Limited Edition Dolls | Designer Dolls | Designer Princess Collection (2011) | Designer Villains Collection (2012) | Designer Fairytale Collection (2013) | Designer Fairytale Collection (2014) | Designer Fairies | Designer Fairytale Heroes & Villains (2015) | Designer Fairytale Collection (2015) | Current Market Values | Gallery | Doll Care | FAQ | Contact Us


Partypoker. Where is the Nearest Walmart Store to the Las Vegas Strip, and How Do You Get To It?
Whether you need to restock on groceries, aspirin, beer or t-shirts to replace the ones you got sick on, you'll be glad to know there are two Walmarts nearby the Las Vegas Strip.
The nearest one to you will depend on which part of the strip your hotel is situated.
In general however, when staying on the south end of the strip (by the airport), the store at 3075 E. Tropicana Boulevard, is the nearest Walmart to the Strip, at 3.5 miles away (or 5.6 kilometers). This is figured when starting from the intersection of Las Vegas Boulevard and Tropicana Avenue.
This is the extremely busy intersection that is home to four of the largest casino/hotels in Las Vegas: the Excalibur, New York – New York, MGM Grand, and Tropicana Hotel and Casino. It would take you about 10 minutes to drive to Walmart from this intersection.
As for non-Strip hotels, it's just a 2.7 mile drive from the Hard Rock to this Walmart.
This Walmart Supercenter is east of the strip, going towards, (and past), the airport. Once you're on Tropicana Boulevard from the Strip, it's a straight shot, with the store being on your right, exactly 3.5 miles from Strip.
As a side note, while the Tropicana Walmart is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the pharmacy is open from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Friday, and 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Saturdays. On Sundays, the pharmacy is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
The main phone number for this Walmart is (702) 433-4267.
The other Walmart close to the Las Vegas Strip is the Walmart Supercenter at 4505 W. Charleston Boulevard. This is on the west side of Interstate 15, east of the Strip (towards the Rio). It's the closest Walmart to hotels and casinos on the north part of the Las Vegas Strip.
Having measured it personally, the cutoff point is both Caesars Palace and the Flamingo, by which I mean, if you are staying at a hotel south of Caesars Palace or the Flamingo, go to the Tropicana Boulevard Walmart.
However if you're staying at a hotel north of Caesars Palace and the Flamingo, go to the one on Charleston Boulevard. Either way, Caesars Palace and the Flamingo are both approximately an 11 minute drive to either Walmart.
To get there from most hotels on the Strip, the quickest way is to hop on I-15 going north, getting off at the Sahara exit.
Take a left on Sahara and go 1.6 miles west, taking a right on Arville Street. From there, the Walmart will be just one mile up on your left.
A simpler, but longer route for most hotels mid-strip is to just stay on Las Vegas Boulevard (the Strip) going north, taking a left on Charleston Boulevard. Once on Charleston, it's about 2.5 miles, where the Walmart will be on your left.
FYI, Circus Circus to the nearest Walmart (Charleston) is a 4.1 mile drive, or about 10 minutes. Those of you staying at the Westgate can expect a drive just slightly longer, at 4.2 miles.
This Walmart's main phone number is (702) 258 – 4540, while the pharmacy's direct number is: (702) 258 – 5075.
Overall rating page: 3.32/5 left 27117 people.


Does Reiki Have any "Side-Effects"?
When we use the term side effects, we refer to a phenomenon that is not very pleasant. Many medicinal drugs and conventional treatments are known to have side effects. Though unpleasant, these side effects cannot be avoided and are accepted as part of treatment.
What about Reiki? Being a natural method of healing, does it have side effects too? Yes it does. Are the side effects pleasant at least? Not always! But they can still be labelled "happy side effects." This is because though they are unpleasant on the surface, the side effects of Reiki ultimately bring amazing benefits. And the side effects are not just limited to the physical. They can also include mental, emotional and life altering ones.
Once attuned, healers periodically experience the side effects of Reiki for the rest of their lives. However, they are most prominent following a Reiki attunement.
• Pain and sensations in different parts of the body, often in the heart and head.
• Life changes- relationships, career, location etc.
It is not necessary for everyone to experience all of these side effects. Each individual is different and healing happens in a way that is right for them.
Every cell in our physical body carries imprints of all our experiences spanning several lifetimes. A lot of these imprints are negative, self sabotaging and karmic. Most of us were not even aware that we carried such a heavy load prior to experiencing the healing touch of Reiki. We were like dingy dark rooms, perfectly content in our limited worlds. When sunshine enters a dark room, there is no more room for darkness to stay. Similarly, the Reiki attunement makes us channels for light. As light floods our being, all the darkness stored in our cells has to leave. This is part of the healing process.
As this process takes its course, we experience the happy side effects of Reiki. This is often a long process as healing occurs in stages. Every time we heal and release one layer of darkness from our auras, we may experience some side effects. Then there is a break. Then we are guided to release the next layer and then we may experience different side effects. The body gradually flushes out every bit of toxicity stored in our cells before paving the way for greater wellness and a higher quality of life.
So, the next time you get attuned to a higher level of Reiki or experience side effects as part of periodic cleansing, welcome it!
Read also: Can Reiki do Harm?
Cold & sore throat is something that I have experienced every single time I got attuned, and was doing my 21-day cleansing process. I so agree with that, Haripriya.
Good to know that even 'Emergence of unhealthy old mental-emotional patterns' can be expected as a part of healing. Everytime this happened, I wondered as to why the long forgotten thoughts that I had dealt with and closed, were coming up again. I guess it was only my assumption that they were closed. They come up again, because they were buried somewhere deep down, but never concluded or healed.
Are hallucinations a part of side effects (if you have had them before reiki)? Or do they continue after reiki sessions…?
I am looking for common side effects for my clients when they ask. I know of the few that people have shared with me after receiving Reiki; tired, thirsty and one person fell asleep, woke speaking of a vision but didn't remember any of it once we were done. Are there more fairly common symptoms people receiving Reiki are experiencing? Thanks!
I experienced a swollen ankle after one of my first reiki sessions as well as drainage of my left ear. The Second session I experienced drainage in my left ear immediately. Then I noticed I was going to the restroom more than usual. I think this is all a good sign that my body was releasing all the harmful toxins/ blocks that were holding me back. I Would highly recommend it, even with the side effects.
I usually get digestive issues within a few hours.
I have been a practitioner for little over a year,I have given Reiki to a gentleman three times, the first time he felt wonderful the next day, he has some unique health problems.the last twice he has felt ill the next day. He feels disappointed.am I right in thinking the effects are the release of negative energy ? Can I minimise these effects, he wants to continue receiving reiki.
I have received three reiki treatments and have just had a very difficult week. My husband fell down some stairs and broke his knee cap badly which causes significant practical and financial difficulties in our household. 6 months recovery time is predicted. My daughter was sent home from school with severe stomach pains – she is never ill. A red warning light came on in my car warning of engine electronic difficulties and the opening mechanism on my back door sheered off leaving me unable to open it. I haven't had such a bad week for a long time. Is it possible that this could be an effect of reiki?
i am a practioner and have given reiki to a number of clients who have felt ill even vomited the next day after treatment the first session. Subsequent treat meant shave made them feel wonderful. I gave a treatment to the wife of one of my clients because she saw the benefit that her husband received but after she left and went shopping she had a huge tummy upset and was very distressed whilst out shopping. It has put her off completely.i have explained that this can happen but she unwilling to try another treatment which is a shame because she was so relaxed initially after her treatment.
PAT, why do you continue if it makes you sick? How about this: hungry spirits with no life in them act like vampires, and feed off your life and the life of others who submit to them. Who are those spirits. God gives you life and you give it away.
reiki doesn't help, destroy your bond with God, feeling sick it's just a sign your body gives you to make you understand that this is wrong. I suggest to all of you to find another way to get better, such as praying God.
God bless you all and protect your uncertain and lost future.
It's interesting to note your reply. The truth is, and I speak from my own personal experience, that Reiki provides a pathway to God Itself.
The last thing religion wants however is a nation of individuals who have realized the power of God shining through them.
I pray your ignorance doesn't stand in your way of truly finding God yourself.
you are being sucked dry of your life energy. Have you seen spider webs with a fly on the web, and only a shell of the fly has remained – the fly was sucked dry. For its own good?
Is this a good thing, or not – you decide.
Hi there, i received 3 Reiki sessions so far and I got great benefits for my stress headaches and emotional pain, the first 2 sessions I hardly felt anything but on the 3rd one I had chest pain, I felt that every breath I took came out with pain, the pain remained 2 days after, I did not mind it because it made me believe that Reiki works, i feel much calmer and very less aggressive after this 3rd painful session!
I had reiki done for the first time on Wed. I received it after a deep tissue massage. I felt very relaxed but weird at the same time. i had felt like I had been drugged (which I had not been). I have not been able to shake this feeling since. Is it possible to do reiki wrong to garner such a long term negative effect from having it done? Is this normal? What can I do to help myself feel better?
Is it possible that you People have lost your mind – you see clear signs that your body is getting sick, your body is talking to you, screaming to you for help, but you ignore it. Why? In order to trust something someone told you. If you got those symptoms unrelated to reiki, would you not think something is wrong? Would you not seek medical help? – what made you think it's ok to get sick in order to gain health ?
Like Reiki, Kundalini can also be dangerous. Both are awakenings and remove filters our brains cannot handle. It's best to stay away from any holistic type of healing. For more information I'd suggest reading a book from Michael Newton on past life regressions/memories of the afterlife.
Since my first reiki session I have flu like symptoms… Sore throat, aching limbs, very bad headache etc. 3 days on and I still have these symptoms, how long do they normally last? I have another session in 3 days and don't want to feel ill for another week! Please help someone.


Each of the 3 bedrooms has dramatic ocean views. The upper bedroom features a king size sleigh bed with a Tempur-Pedic mattress, real bamboo floors and a vaulted ceiling. The lower bedroom has a king size Ernest Hemingway bed with an 18' thick Serta pillow top mattress. Floors are French terra cotta tiles. The third bedroom is situated in a separate pavilion in the courtyard. It features a California king size bed (4' longer) with Serta pillow top mattress. It has a massive glass and pebble bathroom and shower. Each bedroom has LCD TV's, satellite with all the premium channels, air-conditioning in all bedrooms, and our course, dramatic ocean views.
Three luxurious bedrooms, each with private bathroom. One features a California king, the other two, king size beds.
- Flat screen TV in all bedrooms with satelitte TV (200+ channel including premium movies channels).
- DVD's in all bedrooms.
- Bose sound system plus four Bose outdoor speakers in the pool courtyard.
- A/C in each of the three luxurious ocean view bedrooms.
- Extensive and very eclectic book library.
- DVD movie collection (classics and new movies).
- Binoculars 7 X 50.
- Outdoor lounge furniture for the private villa swimming pool.
- Viking 41″ outdoor gas grill with side burners.
- 20KW generator for uninterrupted electrical power.
- Ceiling fans located throughout.
- A safe for valuables.
- Clothes washer and dryer.
- Three Hair dryers, one curling iron, one set of steam rollers.
- Viking professional gourmet gas stove with indoor grilling.
- 48″ Sub-Zero stainless steel side by side refrigerator/freezer with ice maker and water dispenser.
- Coffee maker and bean grinder.
- Complete set of quality pots, pans, dishes, cutlery, glasses.
- Blender and electric mixer.
- Villa Papillon is situated within a small, exclusive, gated neighborhood on the north side of St. Thomas.
will be glad to assist you in any way possible.
The closest St Thomas beach is Magen's Bay (rated by National Geographic as one of the worlds ten best beaches!) which is located 5 minutes from Villa Papillon by car.
Mahogany Run Golf Course, is only 9 minutes away. You can see the spectacular 14th hole from the deck of Villa Papillon.


Absolutely Simple WebServers that will save your time!
At times you would want to run a simple web server to serve static pages for trying out somethings. To run such web server on Windows we have two simple options.
Here we have passed the port number as an additional parameter.
However, it can only server files from the current directory. You could modify the python script to accept the directory name as a parameter but that is out of the scope of this post.
We are installING the Node module globally here using the '-g' option. This allows us to run it from the command line.
Then, we can start the web server using the following command.
Here we have passed the directory name as first parameter and the port number is passed using '-p' option.
For a complete details about this module visit this.


As part of a miniature series, IFES staff interviewed elected Political Leaders with disabilities throughout Nepal. The third Q&A, highlighting Gori Darji, which has been lightly edited for clarity, is available below.
When I lost my right leg, I became shattered and had lost hope in life. However, one day while I was listening to the radio, there was an announcement on a prosthetic leg distribution campaign organized by Plan International Nepal. Having received an opportunity to use a prosthetic leg, I felt like my life came back. It was then that I realized I have do something in life, something good. And that is when I started volunteering with various civil society programs (CSOs) in my community. I realized that to make change happen and do something good for my community, I have to enter politics.
I didn't encounter any challenges in becoming a candidate. Previously, I was engaged with local CSOs. I knew some party people at the local level. One day, the party asked if I wanted to get nominated. Initially I was a bit confused about whether to enter politics or not. But then I thought to myself that this is a very good opportunity for me and I can be an honest and a good leader. So, I finally signed up.
Persons with disabilities are facing a lot of challenges and many are being locked inside their houses due to their disability. Now it's high time for media, political parties and other related organizations to take an appropriate step to address this issue and to assure their civil and political rights.
Blind and Deaf persons are not allowed to open bank accounts. This is a very basic right of any citizen. I will start with working on this issue and slowly touch upon their other rights.
For youth who want to be a politician, my suggestion would be to not hide your disability, there are other persons who are more vulnerable than you. Come into the frontline and work towards raising awareness, you can do it.


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Reviewed by Henry Anderson on Apr 7 2019.
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c2008. Sunstone Press, x, 148 p. : ill. ; 23 cm.
c1958. F. Stanley, x, 148 p. ; 22 cm.
Thomas Edward "Black Jack" Ketchum was executed for an attempt to hold up the C. S. train between Des Moines and Folsom in the northeastern corner of New Mexico. Ketchum was to be made an example in an effort to prevent further robberies, however his misplaced bravery outshone the more widely known Billy the Kid.
ils:.b10061174|Book|Books||English|F. Stanley,|c1958.|x, 148 p. ; 22 cm., ils:.b13368072|Book|Books||English|Sunstone Press,|c2008.|x, 148 p. : ill. ; 23 cm.


text:
Will AI and Automation Be the New Trend in Academic Transcription
When it comes to a career in transcription, there are plenty of things you need to get the job done. Aside from being tech-savvy and having quick fingers when it comes to typing and accuracy, there are many more skills necessary to work in transcription. After all, the many fields of transcription have industries where the slightest mistake could have severe ramifications. For example, the medical fields make use of transcription often, and accuracy is king when it comes to the legal industry.
That said, in the field of academic transcription – and many more out there – times are changing. Due to the demand for speed and accuracy when transcribing documents, it has opened up the opportunity for university transcription through the use of advanced AI.
The push for automation
What perfect automation will mean
Will AI and automation be the new trend?
While many people with a career in transcription have a challenging time accepting AI as a legitimate solution in the field of academic transcription, it can be an excellent testbed. After all, when it comes to the legal industry, it would not be a good idea to make use of untested technology, as the mistakes come with consequences. On the other hand, academic transcription does not suffer from the same zero-tolerance mindset.
The push for automation has been easier in academic transcription as it remains a great foundation for trendsetters to advance their AI further. It can result in plenty of progress, which in turn will open the opportunity for other fields.
While many can still thrive with a career in transcription, the landscape will likely change drastically when transcription software begins to take off and edge out the rest of the competition. General transcription will likely not change, as there will always be plenty of demand – whether it happens to be automated transcription or not. On the other hand, the fields that truly benefit from automation such as law and medicine are likely to make full use of the new tech. It is undoubtedly an exciting prospect that can mean a higher chance of success no matter the scenario.
Perhaps the better question would be whether or not AI and automation will become more than just a trend. After all, trends tend to die out after a while, outliving its usefulness in an ever-changing industry. However, if there is enough success in the field of AI transcription, it is likely that it will push through the boundaries of trends and into the mainstream for years to come. It might take some time for AI to realize its true potential when it comes to academic transcription, but it is well on its way.
While there are undoubtedly pros and cons to making use of automated transcription, the fact that you can even use it in the first place is astounding. Technology is progressing at a fascinatingly quick pace, which means only time will tell whether or not AI will be the next best thing in academic transcription!


Honeysuckle Finds offers items that are treasures that have been loved & lived with for generations. The imperfections you see means the item has been cherished for many years.
Please don't expect items to perfect! The charm they have gained over the years & the stories they tell are part of the attraction.
Located in Newburgh, Indiana, we look forward to seeing you at our store and sharing our treasures with you.


We have this excellent cartoon courtesy of Bishop Hill . Unfortunately it is too true!
Beautiful and as is often the case with clever cartoons, the message is meaningful not just for what it says, but also for what remains unsaid. Note the lack of a referee!


How did you first get into miniatures?
I think I was born to make miniatures. I started when I was 5 and 6 years old. I would create tiny little things out of Play-Doh and plasticine.
In first grade, I made a little elephant and my teacher was blown away. The teacher insisted I show the elephant to her colleagues.
Throughout my teenage years, I focused my miniatures on a lot of cartoons, including Disney, Asterix, and Giles cartoons. At that time, I was using Fimo clay. When I was about 15 years old, I discovered polymer clay. A few years later, in my 20s, I began mold making and reproducing works in resin.


Jet.com is an American e-commerce company and online marketplace specializing in quality retail for discount prices. Jet offers a diverse product range across categories including: Health and Personal Care, Beauty, Fashion, Home and Furniture, Office Supply, Computers and Electronics, Grocery and Household, Toys and Gaming, and much more. Jet is dedicated to finding the consumer savings through their real-time pricing algorithm. Prices are generated and adjusted in cart based on the optimization of packing and shipping conditions. As you shop and add contents to your cart, watch in real-time as individual product prices drop when grouping certain items, stocking up on items, or opting out of free returns on the necessities. Create your own deals as you plan and strategically organize each purchase order to maximize savings.
back from your Jet purchase with Honey.
Use your debit card at checkout to automatically apply an additional 1.5% discount on your order.
If you're buying something that you're certain you won't need to return—like toilet paper or your favorite cereal—opt out of free returns to further reduce the price.
The more items in cart that can be shipped together, the further each item's price is reduced, and buying multiple of the same item will further reduce the price per item. So, group similar items and stock up on the necessities to create your own best deal with every order.
Jet has its own Warehouse Shop page where you can buy bulk sizes on the items you love for even more savings.
Refer your friends to Jet where they'll receive $10 off their first order and you'll receive $10 in JetCash for the first 5 eligible referrals that make a purchase over $50. You'll earn $12 on each of the next 5 eligible referrals, and $15 per referral after that up to a total of $500 JetCash. JetCash can be spent like money on Jet.
Jet offers free returns within 30 days from delivery on nearly everything sold. Items should be returned in original condition, including all packaging and tags. Opting out of free returns enables you to pay less on items in your order, though you'll still be able to return these items with an applicable surcharge.
Jet is currently only able to accommodate shipping within the 48 contiguous United States. Free 2-5 day shipping is offered on all orders over $35. Free 2-day shipping is also offered on thousands of eligible items with a purchase order over $35. A $5.99 shipping fee will be surcharged on purchase orders under $35. Items shipped as freight may take longer than 5 days to arrive.


In our local craft beer landscape, Destihl Brewing has long been an oddity.
Started in 2007 as a brewpub in Normal by home-brewing lawyer Matt Potts (who has since stopped practicing law), Destihl embarked on an ambitious sour beer program that won a host of fans at the 2011 Great American Beer Festival in Denver, where Destihl arrived as just another small-town brewery, but left with coast-to-coast admiration.
The acclaim has only grown, and includes author Joshua M. Bernstein contending in his forthcoming book, "The Complete Beer Course," that Destihl's sour beers are "brilliant" and "some of America's most interesting wild and sour ales."
But if it wasn't odd enough that one of the nation's great sour beer programs is based in Normal, even stranger is that we've been unable to get these beers 130 miles north, in one of the nation's largest and thirstiest craft beer markets. Destihl has routinely popped up at Chicago beer festivals, often generating some of the longest lines in the room, but that was generally the extent of Destihl's presence.
Fortunately, that's about to change. This week, Destihl begins distributing in Chicago. Potts said both his year-round and special releases will be available, including Strawberry Blonde Ale, which won a bronze medal in the fruit beer category at last year's GABF.
Unfortunately, a mere three barrels of the lauded sour ale will be available in the short term, all of which will be tapped at introductory events during the next couple of weeks (more on that below). But, Potts said, plenty more is aging, and we should see a steady supply in about a year. Destihl will only be available on draft at first, but Potts said he hopes to start canning in about nine months.
Equally important, he said, was recent legislation passed by the Illinois Assembly that allows a craft brewery to self distribute while making up to 30,000 barrels. The previous limit was 15,000 barrels. The 30,000 figure was the result of intense negotiation between the Illinois Craft Brewers Guild and the Associated Beer Distributors of Illinois.
The Guild wanted a cap of 200,000 barrels, but, Potts said, the compromise at 30,000 allows him to grow while continuing to self distribute, which his company does close to the brewery. If still capped at 15,000, Potts said, he likely would not have expanded distribution in Illinois, partly for practical reasons and partly for the principle.
The practical: Even though Chicago Beverage Systems will distribute Destihl in Chicago, Potts said he didn't want to surrender the right to also self distribute. If still capped at 15,000 barrels, he said, he wouldn't have been able to grow as widely as he wants and still self distribute.
The principle: he didn't want to grow in a state that doesn't support a brewery's ability to self distribute.
"We reserve the margins for ourselves when we drive it across the street," Potts said. "To a small brewery, that's important."
In addition to Chicago, Potts plans to distribute in the rest of Illinois, Michigan and much of Indiana before the end of the year. He also said a third brewpub is likely at some point — maybe in Chicago — but likely not soon.
"If there's an opportunity we can't say no to, it's possible something might pop, but I almost don't want that distraction right now," Potts said. "We're about to give the production brewery some focus right now."
Kickoff events for Destihl's arrival in Chicago will be Monday at Paddy Long's (1028 W. Diversey Parkway) at 7 p.m. and Tuesday at Hopleaf (5148 N. Clark St.), also at 7 p.m. Three to four Destihl beers will be available at both events, including one of the brewery's sour beers.


On Thursday, August 2, 2012, the United States Senate agreed to a three-year reauthorization of the EB-5 Regional Center Program, as well as three other programs included in S.3245, with unanimous consent. The bill, presented by Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Charles Grassley (R-IA) on May 24, 2012, now waits on the House, which is on recess until early September, for full approval.
The legislation seeks to grant permanent status to the EB-5 Regional center Program, among other job-creating endeavors. Established by Congress in 1990, the EB-5 Regional Center Program has successfully facilitated immigrant investments toward economy-boosting and community development campaigns across the country. As the program was scheduled for review in September 2012, the current bill sought to oppose any cessation of this economically impactful program.
In addition to the renewal of the EB-5 investor visa category, the bill seeks to continue the E-Verify program, a workplace verification system used to determine whether a job applicant is legally present in the country. The proposal also extends certain medical professional and religious worker visa categories.
The bill is expected to pass quickly through the House in September, as the matter will be taken up via suspension of the rules, meaning there will be no floor debate.
Over the past two decades, the EB-5 Visa program has created 65,000 jobs through $3.1 billion in investments. If permanent status is granted through Leahy's bill, the numbers will continue to grow. As of March 2012 statistics from the USCIS reported 2,364 EB-5 Visas were issued during the first quarter of the year. At the current rate of acceptance, the 10,000 limit on EB-5 Visas will be met by year's end. The extension of this program will ensure immigrants will continue to be able to invest in real estate development projects that are beneficial to the US economy.
*This story is brought to you by Florida Regional Center.
Florida Regional Center was established as an agent of the 1990 Congress-approved EB-5 Regional Center Program. Based in Palm Beach Gardens and representing development projects in the South Florida area, Florida Regional center works with foreign investors to obtain EB-5 Visas and permenant residency in exchange for community-developing and job-creating investments. Other projects Florida Regional Center is using EB-5 Visa funding for include the Water Pointe Project, ESI Jupiter Technology Park Project and the Tequesta Village Center project.
For more information on EB-5 Visas and the EB-5 Visa Program, to learn about Florida Regional Center or to speak with a representative from Florida Regional Center, visit www.visaeb-5.com.


text:
#ifndef MILL_SLIST_INCLUDED
#define MILL_SLIST_INCLUDED

/* Singly-linked list. Having both push and push_back functions means that
   it can be used both as a queue and as a stack. */

struct mill_slist_item {
    struct mill_slist_item *next;
};

struct mill_slist {
    struct mill_slist_item *first;
    struct mill_slist_item *last;
};

/* Initialise the list. To statically initialise the list use = {0}. */
void mill_slist_init(struct mill_slist *self);

/* Terminates the list. Note that all items must be removed before the
   termination. */
void mill_slist_term(struct mill_slist *self);

/* Returns 1 is list has zero items, 0 otherwise. */
int mill_slist_empty(struct mill_slist *self);

/* Returns iterator to the first item in the list or NULL if
   the list is empty. */
struct mill_slist_item *mill_slist_begin(struct mill_slist *self);

/* Returns iterator to one past the item pointed to by 'it'.
   If there are no more items returns NULL. */
struct mill_slist_item *mill_slist_next(struct mill_slist_item *it);

/* Push the item to the beginning of the list. */
void mill_slist_push(struct mill_slist *self, struct mill_slist_item *item);

/* Push the item to the end of the list. */
void mill_slist_push_back(struct mill_slist *self,
    struct mill_slist_item *item);

/* Pop an item from the beginning of the list. */
struct mill_slist_item *mill_slist_pop(struct mill_slist *self);

/* Insert the item after the item pointed to by 'it' argument. If 'it' is
   NULL the item is inserted to the beginning of the list. */
void mill_slist_insert(struct mill_slist *self, struct mill_slist_item *item,
    struct mill_slist_item *it);

#endif

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub