text:
Cuba's Humanitarian Crisis Grows Unabated
Havana photo by Juan Suarez
By Circles Robinson
HAVANA TIMES – Independent of the debatable causes, among them government mismanagement and arrogance, and the US embargo, Cuba is currently facing a growing humanitarian crisis.
The government doesn't want to admit the situation is out of its control, but the nationwide protests on July 11th, plus its own daily Covid-19 statistics, show locals and the world a different reality.
Just two facts of life for the majority of the population: little food and almost no medicines available, would be enough for a responsible government to call for help. Then add the out-of-control Covid-19 situation in recent weeks and you have the perfect meltdown and a lot of human suffering.
In a recent post I mentioned a far from perfect suggestion to seek temporary relief of the food and medicine shortage. Things Cuba could do independent of the US or other demons. However, bold steps to face the emergency seem off the table thus far, as the government tries to demonstrate widespread support for its policies even after the massive spontaneous protests.
Looking outside instead of inward, the Diaz Canel response is that Joe Biden should repeal the 60-year-old embargo on Cuba. He also demands the US stop financing Cuba's thousands of domestic mercenaries and delinquents, the terms used for anyone expressing disagreement with government policies, or God forbid, openly criticizing the president and top Communist Party leaders.
The worsening official Covid-19 numbers
Ministry of Health data on Covid-19 cases and deaths show the last week as by far the worst since the pandemic began in Cuba in March 2020.
The Saturday figures were 6,279 new cases and 62 deaths. The two preceding days were 6540 and 65, and 6062 and 52. In the last months the surge in Covid-19 cases has occurred in every province and virtually ever municipality in the country. The situation began to get out of control in March 2021 when the figures began to spike sharply, and the upward trend continues today. During the last month the highly contagious Delta strain is spreading fast.
When considering the numbers for Cuba, keep in mind the island has 11.2 million inhabitants, according to the last census, around 30 times less than the US, for example.
On July 15th the official Granma newspaper reported that while Cuba had less active cases than the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica and Bolivia, it was ranked 12th in the world with more cases per million inhabitants than Argentina, Spain, Panama and Brazil.
Cuba continues to develop five vaccines in different trial and verification stages, the pride and joy of the Diaz Canel government, as well as hope for a highly profitable commodity for the State. While two of the vaccines are being used to vaccinate a portion of the Cuban population on an emergency basis, none have yet to obtain full international health organizations' approval.
Cuba's leading political and economic ally, Venezuela, is also starting to administer the Cuban vaccines and Iran is collaborating with Cuba on a joint vaccine effort in a clinical trial phase in Iran.
As Cuba banked on a homegrown solution to Covid-19, it rejected the international programs to supply vaccines it could have joined including the Covax initiative. Likewise, deals could have been worked out for vaccines from its allies in Russia and China. But the Diaz-Canel government preferred to go it alone, and now the population is paying the price.
The government is still resisting declaring a humanitarian crisis despite the critical food and medicine shortages and Covid-19 spike, which could lead to considerable assistance from abroad. They are simply too proud to admit the disastrous situation and their inability to face up to it, preferring to blame the United States for all the country's problems.
Read more from Cuba here on Havana Times.
← My Jail Cell, the Path Towards Cuba in the Future
Cuba and Too Many Priorities →
One thought on "Cuba's Humanitarian Crisis Grows Unabated"
Michael Wiggin
I, and many other friends of the Cuban people, have and will help with medical supplies or to alleviate the syringe shortage. But conditions are so bad that more is necessary than what can be achieved by individuals. If Cuba asked for help, I am sure that other countries would step up.


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ABOUT MADINTER
CSR: CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
LEGALITY, SUSTAINABILITY & CERTIFICATION
THE CAMEROON PROJECT
SECRETARY OF STATE'S AWARD FOR CORPORATE EXCELLENCE
BLACKWOOD TEK
MADINTER BLOG
MADINTER IN THE MEDIA
Legality, Sustainability and Transparency in Cameroon
The Crelicam project has established a solid business in Cameroon exporting legal and socially responsible ebony, creating a new standard in an industry that has prioritized low prices over compliance with the local laws, protection of the environment and quality of life of its employees.
Our priority, ensuring the future of ebony, demands total respect for the laws that designate areas for extracting the ebony and maximum quotas we have to comply with, based on forest regeneration.
Our work with ebony is focused on ensuring the future of the species. This tree, which was abundant in African and Asian tropical forests, has suffered the consequences of illegal logging in many countries.
In Cameroon, one of the few countries where there is a healthy population of ebony, we have established legality and sustainability guarantees that have set a new standard in the world's ebony market.
Sustainability starts with full respect for the law.
In Cameroon, there is no private forestry, as all forests are communal. The government determines the areas and quotas of extraction, which are based on the regenerative capacity of forests.
Crelicam is the largest exporter of ebony from Cameroon, with a quota of 1.200 tonnes in 2016. We strictly comply with the rules and reject illegal forest activities. We denounce the existence of illegal logging, which have contributed to diminishing the population of ebony in the African continent and are threatening the species continuity.
At the same time, we flatly refuse to participate in bribery and any other form of corruption. We are committed to our policy of zero tolerance for corruption, despite the difficulties this entails in a country where, in many cases, corruption is institutionalized.
Crelicam is audited annually by KPMG. In addition, we train our employees on the stigma of corruption and how to avoid it.
At Crelicam, our first objective is to ensure the future of ebony. This has led us to establish legality and sustainability guarantees in Cameroon.
In addition to respecting the forests growth and regeneration cycles, strictly adhering to our logging quotas and respecting the places designated for extraction, we have launched several sustainability initiatives, resource consumption reduction and replanting.
Our determination to increase wood yield both in the forest and in the factory contributes directly to the environment. We are consuming fewer raw materials to produce more output, and at the same time, contributing to the regeneration of the resources used.
Increasing wood yield, reducing waste
Jet black ebony, is the accepted standard in the music industry. However, only a fraction of the ebony that is found in nature is completely black. On average, only 1 in 10 ebony trees is completely black, while the other 9 can be dark brown instead of black, or sometimes have yellow streaks or spots.
However, there is no way of knowing what the colour of the tree is before cutting it..This is why, for many years, trees that are not completely black have been cut down only to be abandoned in the forest. The coloured wood has been traditionally rejected by the industry, and its price is too low to cover the costs of transporting the logs.
At Crelicam, no tree will ever be abandoned on the forest ground.
Both Madinter and Taylor Guitars work to raise awareness among our customers about the nature of ebony, a truth that the industry has been avoiding for a long time. We are now selling these pieces of ebony, which have a different look, but the same quality, as a new product, with its own place in the market.
In the factory
We have invested in new facilities, new equipment and training for our employees to get higher yield on each log that arrives in Crelicam.
Our new machines have improved wood yield, which has allowed us to obtain more output without increasing our resource consumption, reducing waste at the same time.
We are also improving our waste management. The woods that cannot be used for musical instruments are returned to the community to be used as firewood to power their homes. We will be introducing an energy system in the factory powered by our wood waste in the near future.
Zero tolerance for corruption
At Madinter we maintain a strict policy of legality in all our activities, both in Cameroon and in all other countries where we work. Implementing this policy in Cameroon has been a significant innovation, as bribery and other illegal practices are common in the country, to the point of being institutionalized as part of the bureaucracy and the daily life of Cameroonians.
However, we have shown that by standing firm, it is possible to conduct a business in the country without participating at all in corruption. Nowadays, we are training our employees on how to avoid corruption in different situations, and we are audited annually by KPMG.
GPS traceability system
We want transfer our commitment towards the environment all along the supply chain to the final customer. For Madinter, it is essential to provide guarantees to our customers, manufacturers of musical instruments, on the sustainability of the product that we supply.
However, traditional methods of forest certification are not possible in Cameroon due to the structure of forest ownership, directly managed by the central government. Because of this, we have implemented an alternative traceability system through the use of GPS.
We have trained Crelicam employees in using this technology, which has enabled us to implement a comprehensive tracking system. This system allows us to pinpoint the exact location of each piece of wood that we sell all the way back to its origin in the forest, in a place that has been selected in a legal and controlled way.
By offering information to our customers, we are encouraging the music industry to get more involved in this issue and demand similar sustainability protocols on all their purchases.
Back to "Cameroon Project"
Legality, Sustainability and Transparency
Replanting
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


What Do The Kia Dashboard Warning Lights Mean?. If you ever have any questions about any of the dashboard warning lights in your Kia, you can consult your owner's manual, or give us a call here at Carolina Kia.
Kia Sorento Recalls. On December 19, 2018, Kia recalled 71,653 Kia Sorento. Kia motors america (kia) is recalling certain 2011-2017 optima, 2012-2017 sorento and 2011-2018 sportage vehicles that previously received an engine replacement under recall number 17v-224, warranty, or the knock sensor detection system (ksds) product improvement campaign.
Kia Sorento Repair: Service And Maintenance Cost. The Kia Sorento Reliability Rating is 4.5 out of 5.0, which ranks it 9th out of 26 for compact SUVs. The average annual repair cost is $442 which means it has excellent ownership costs.


ITHACA College/ Dillingham Center for the Performing Arts Photography Gallery Exhibition Calendar. Tag: Andrew Semel, Vance Gellert, Susan Kae Grant, Gladys F Tietz, Karen Strom, Mary Ross, Vincent Cianni, Judy S Gilles, George Blakely.
This exhibition celebrates the distinguished career of Graham (a celebrated dancer) through the photographs of three photographers: Imogen Cunningham, Barbara Morgan & Max Waldman.


text:
package com.BibleQuote.entity.modules;

import com.BibleQuote.domain.entity.Book;

/**
 * @author Yakushev Vladimir, Sergey Ursul
 */
public class BQBook extends Book {

	private static final long serialVersionUID = -6570010365754882585L;

	/**
	 * Путь к файлу с книгой
	 */
	private final String fileName;

	public BQBook(BQModule module, String name, String fileName, String shortNames, int chapterQty) {
		super(name, shortNames, chapterQty, module.isChapterZero());
		this.fileName = fileName;
	}

	@Override
	public String getDataSourceID() {
		return this.fileName;
	}

}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


The retail industry is extremely dynamic and is constantly in the process of evolution. This has been further impacted through the introduction of technology, especially the Internet. The advent of smart phones have become one of the most popular tools of e-commerce in this mobile world, with a large segment of customers preferring to use them to shop on-line while on the move.
It has dramatically changed consumer interaction with retailers. All of this was made possible with the development of retail mobile apps, which have popularised the on-line shopping experience for a large segment of customers. It now plays a vital role in generating revenue for retailers.
With Google now rating mobile friendly websites higher than others, it is imperative for retailers to ensure that their sites are mobile friendly.
Besides the traditional mobile retail experiences, there is a steady influx in new technology that allows customers to develop and maintain a more interactive and personalised relationship with retailers like never before. With more on-line businesses investing in a variety of mobile applications, the retail market is going to flourish substantially in the future. In fact as per on-line consumer spending studies done in the UK retail sector in 2014, there was a hike of 14% from the previous year, at more than £100 billion. Of these, mobile devices contribute close to a quarter of the retail on-line sales in the UK market. A study done by Barclay's indicates that consumers in the UK will spend close to £53.6 billion annually, through the use of tablets and smart phones by 2024. Retailers need to make the most of this opportunity and find new ways to stay ahead of the competition.
It was found that around 80% of on-line shoppers want more loyalty schemes introduced for mobiles shopping.
Of the respondents interviewed 51 % said they own more than a single loyalty card and 46% of them said they frequently collect and spend points from reward cards.
Of these just 20% of smart phone users in the UK interact with retail loyalty schemes on their mobile. 29% of respondents also stated they would gladly share their location with a retail app company, if they received loyalty points and other incentives from the retailer.
A study of a thousand respondents in the UK further revealed that around 47% of them favour using a mobile app over carrying a loyalty card.
While loyalty schemes are an attractive method of adding value for regular customers and useful in increasing brand loyalty, just using traditional loyalty cards will not suffice in the future. With technology rapidly proliferating the on-line retail sector and smart phones playing a critical role in on-line marketing, it is time for businesses to offer mobile apps that give instant rewards to loyal clientèle. It is time for mobile app loyalty schemes to figure more prominently in on-line retail marketing for the new generation of smart phone shoppers.


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Spotify Playlist Marketing Campaigns
Slaying Visuals for Artists
My Music Submission
Slay Spotlight: Nicole Sanzio
Home / Slay Spotlight / Executive / Slay Spotlight: Nicole Sanzio
Nicole Sanzio is a music industry authority in media licensing, rights and clearances. As the owner of InDigi Music — and its parent company, Multi Music & Media Group, LLC — Nicole has independently placed various styles of music and compositions in film, network television, and other multi-media platforms. Her unique accomplishments within the corporate world of media licensing, combined with her success as a business owner, has made her a sought-after expert within the fast-changing industries of licensing / publishing, royalties and copyright.
We got a chance to sit down with Nicole and discuss his process and tips for up and coming indie artists!
After college you started at BMI (Broadcast Music, Inc.), what was that experience like?
It was the corporate hub of the music industry, but outside of my internship at EMI, it's really where I developed my work ethic. It was exciting because it was my first "real" job in music, yet it was a bit on the strict side within the music industry – there was no 10-6 which is a typical music industry day, but it was rather 8:30am or 9:00. I learned that 9:01 was too late and casual Fridays meant khaki pants with a decent shirt instead of jeans. Although I met some of my life-long colleagues at BMI, later I learned that it was just one of the many stepping stones to get me where I am now. I also learned that dealing with finding missing royalties isn't what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.
You then moved on to VH1 and MTV Networks, what was your favorite part of your time and work there?
At the time, I was going to free concerts and wrap parties for shows that I worked on. My job allowed for me to have free reign of where I needed to do it effectively, so that meant sometimes being in the same room with Jay-Z, Eminem, Kanye, Andre Benjamin, Puffy, JLo, Mark Anthony, Kelly Clarkson, Mariah Carey, Christina Aguilera, Shakira, 50 Cent and the list goes on – what is not to like? However, I was always one to follow the rules and I kick myself every time I see one of my colleagues post a picture that they took with them. We weren't supposed to treat them like celebs and I was always told that we could get fired for asking to take pictures with them or even just for approaching them. It was fun, yet overwhelming sometimes. However, it's also what I attribute to learning more about independent artists, writers and composers who weren't always in the limelight.
You have secured syncs across the board, from Shameless and Empire to Despicable Me 2 and the Fast & Furious, what's your favorite and the most difficult part of that process?
I guess one of the most recent placements that we had in the Hustlers film. We landed two quick snippets of two different songs, back-to-back, similar the uses we had in Despicable Me 2, but for the first time, I was told that I couldn't release one of the songs commercially until after the film came out due to the song being in flashback scene. One of the those songs, although it sounded a bit retro, it also is commercial enough for today's current audience because "retro" is huge right now. So, I really couldn't even promote the song until the following Monday after the weekend release of the film. I'm okay with it, though – it's still getting some traction.
How many artists do you work with?
It's a variety of artists, writers and composers, but mostly people who write music as opposed to "artists". I work with about 200 independents in some capacity whether it means that they are writing music for us regularly, or they've submitted to us in the past.
What's a defining moment in your career thus far?
Well, one that happened very early-on which is why I left MTV in 2006 to start InDigi Music. With all of the knowledge that I developed in the music business, mainly with copyright, licensing music in television/film, and publishing, just within that short amount of time between my internship at EMI and MTV, the defining moment was one while working backstage at the 2004 VMA's in Miami when I heard my friend Jay's music playing in background when Hillary Duff's name was announced to present an award. On my own time and into the wee hours of the night, I had been building MTV a little music library with unknown composers – mainly my own music, my friends' music, and then their friends' music, once they learned that I was placing music in the background of MTV shows. I've always been organized, so I started compiling instrumentals, licensing them for MTV Networks/Viacom and indexing them with a system in place so that I could get the music out to more of the producers I worked with on a daily basis. That moment when I heard Jay's music playing was the defining moment of my career because that's when I decided that I wasn't going to be climbing MTV's ladder, but rather building my own music library. Fortunately, the skills that I had were very specific and a necessity to not only music licensing, but all aspects of licensing third-party elements in TV/Film/Video, so I was able to build the library while still paying my bills doing what I did at MTV, but for various other companies.
What are the most important things you look at when signing a new artist/catalog?
I look for their overall sound first. If I'm struggling with 3 or more of the 5 tracks that they sent me, I know I'm going to have a tough time trying to pitch their music to my clients. Also, I take into consideration how they found me and what they know about me, and what I do. There are many writers and artists that just reach out to me simply because they heard that I placed their friend's music in a tv show, but they haven't taken the time to learn more about what they need to do in order to prep their music for TV/Film which is an entirely different animal that placing records.
Do you find that streams and numbers of followers are a big part of signing new artists or does it still come down to just the music for you?
For me, it's a non-factor, but for some of my clients, it's a big contributor to why they select a song.
Do you have any networking tips for upcoming producers and song-writers?
It's so easy to network these days, especially with social media. However, even with being able to reach more people online, it's still good to go to networking events that have panels where you can learn more about the industry today. It also puts you in front of some of the key players in the industry sometimes. Til this day, although I speak on many panels, I still go to other panels to meet people and learn. You know that I'm not the only one who says this, but Knowledge IS power and in an industry where tech disruptors are coming up in droves, you need to keep up on how those disruptors are looking to change the industry entirely, especially in dealing with intellectual property. It's not all about just talent, so knowing or meeting people that are changing how your music is getting heard, can only lend towards that knowledge. It doesn't hurt to meet other like-minded artists/writers who attend these conferences/panels too.
Where do you find your artists? And how does an artist get your attention?
Research to me is everything. If you've done enough research on me and want to talk to me based on what you've researched, that goes a long way. I seek out certain styles of music and run talent searches through ReverbNation from time-to-time, but most of it is word-of-mouth. It's usually one of my writers that is recommending one of their writers or co-writers and those are the best sources for me since they usually come to me with knowledge on how I work and what my terms are.
How do you choose who to pitch songs to?
It really depends on my catalog. If something is in my catalog, I've either felt that I can pitch it for something specific, or something that I feel that might be "pitchable" in the future. With that in mind, I am doing my own research on my end to see what I can pitch them for.
How do you stay focused and productive?
I'm always focused on how I can make my catalog better so that I have material to pitch. It's time consuming, but when you find the gems that help you with filling your catalog with relatively great tracks, it doesn't take much to be able to keep focused. However, there is still so much to do, especially with being the one-woman show that I am. If I lose focus or productivity, I take it as a sign that I need to slow down so I can re-focus.
I do have mentors or people that I've looked up to during my journey, but there's no one thing or person that gives me inspiration than what God already has in store for me.
At this very moment, I'm watching the 7th game in the World Series, only because my cousin is married to an Astro. Though lately and in general, I've been listening to Queen She, one of my phantom artists (you won't find much on her) and the Euphoria soundtrack.
How do you feel about the current state of music?
It's changed drastically, but for the good. I think independents got what they asked for – accessibility, creative control, etc. What I don't think they realized when they were asking for it, was that you still need marketing dollars to promote what they are putting out there, or you still "need to know someone" at the new radio (Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, etc.).
What do you do for fun when you aren't working on music?
Would you believe me if I said "work"? I love the business of music, so although it seems like I'm working 20/7 (need my four hours of sleep at least), it comes with my love of educating independents, finding new talent and taking care of the paper that goes behind all of it.
What's a crazy experience you've had in the industry?
Are there any artists that you want to work with that you haven't had an opportunity to yet? I only work with independents and unknowns, so no. Although, I wouldn't turn away working with Nas, Lady Gaga, Justin Timberlake, Queen Latifah or Lizzo.
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Q: cassandra UpdateColumnFamily InvalidRequestException Default TException I am using thrift-0.7.0 with cassandra-1.1.1 ,I was sucessfull in adding a new columnfamily with system_add_column_family,but when i try to add a new column to a existing columnfamily with system_update_column_family gives me an error "UpdateColumnFamily InvalidRequestException  Default TException", the sample  c++ code which i tried is as follows
string sReturn;
CfDef ColumnFamilyDef;
ColumnFamilyDef.keyspace="keyspace2";
ColumnFamilyDef.column_type="Standard";
ColumnFamilyDef.name="ColFM1";
ColumnFamilyDef.__isset.column_type=true;

ColumnDef column;
column.name="Col2";
column.validation_class="UTF8Type";
ColumnFamilyDef.column_metadata.push_back(column);

ColumnFamilyDef.__isset.column_metadata=true;
mpClient->system_update_column_family(sReturn,ColumnFamilyDef);

give me the following Exception
UpdateColumnFamily InvalidRequestException  Default TException
Can any one help me
Thank you in advance

A: I believe you still need to call set_keyspace on your connection to set it to your new keyspace prior to creating the column family.  That's perhaps what is breaking.
As a side note, this would probably be much easier to do using CQL rather than the old Thrift API.  You can basically just call execute_cql_query and pass in a string.  There's a full reference for CQL that should make things easier.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Amay Kataria
Amay Kataria (b. 1990) graduated with a bachelors in Computer Engineering from Virginia Tech in 2012. After working for Microsoft Corp. in Seattle, WA for four years in Windows and Skype organizations, he began his MFA in Art & Technology Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2017. Amay works at the intersection of hardware and software to critique the pace and politics of techno-culture. His work takes the form of computer animations, interactive installations, or autonomous machines that exhibit behaviors. He bridges physical with the digital and develops systems that emerge complex behaviors, which demonstrate his concepts and ideas. In 2018, he was invited to Ethereal Summit in New York City as a visiting artist, held a new media residency at Art Center Nabi in Seoul, South Korea, and Art-A-Hack residency at ThoughtWorks in New York City. In 2019, he was awarded the Bajaj Art Scholarship for Excellence. He has received grants and honors in the name of Shapiro Research Center, Bernard Silverman, Byron M. & Helen S. Brumback, Gilbert L. and Lucille C. Seay, MR. and CP. Staley Memorial, Litton Industries, Benjamin F. Bock, and James Milton Beattie Jr. His work has been exhibited at Experimental Sound Studio (Chicago), Sullivan Galleries (Chicago), Art Center Nabi (South Korea), ThoughtWorks (New York City), and Kamalnayan Bajaj Art Gallery (Mumbai). He will be concluding his MFA in May 2019.
Artist Statement CV
Amay Kataria © 2019
While working at Microsoft from 2013 - 2017, I spent 2.5 years in the Skype organization after working for Windows. I joined Skype4Life's development team led by Eric Traut, where I got to work on a myriad of projects ranging from user interface development, scalable backend services, artificial intelligence driven bots, and infrastructure/platform work. Our team had two primary goals. Firstly, it was to build a new platform on top of Facebook's React & React-Native technology called ReactXP, which would allow developers to write a highly performant application that could run on web and native platforms (iOS and Android) seamlessly under a single codebase. Additionally, we wanted to rebrand Skype and make it the first large-scale application written using ReactXP from scratch. During this time, I contributed to CoreUI, Messaging, and Fundamentals squads by architecting and developing features that are utilized by millions of Skype users today. Earlier in 2017, our team open-sourced ReactXP, which has built a strong community of developers around it. Subsequently, we released the newly developed Skype application in June, 2017 on the app store. My experience at Skype exposed me to industry practices and experienced software engineers, who taught me the significance of collaboration to deliver a high impact product like Skype. Here's a short video in my own words about my experience at Skype and the possibilities beyond.
Skype and Beyond ... from Amay Kataria on Vimeo.
Close Project
EarthLens
EarthLens was developed with a team of data scientists, software developers, and product managers at Microsoft's //oneweek hackathon in 2016. It is an augmented reality application using Microsoft's HoloLens to help scientists, students, and enthusiasts to immersively uncover and predict the health of our planet.
I led the software development of this project in Unity and collaborated with 2 other developers to deliver a MVP from scratch. The scenario we prototyped was a table-top experience of Great Barrier Reef, where a user interactively experienced changes in the health of corals in past years. By creating machine learning models with 50 years of data for the reef's health, data science interns created prediction equations for calcification and density of corals in the future. I worked on visual depiction of two primary scenes and their transitions, Hololens gestures, and integrating contributions from other developers, who developed the machine learning models for the coral scene. To make the experience more immersive, I added spatial sound effects for gestures and surround sound commentary on how to use the application.
EarthLens from Amay Kataria on Vimeo.
After meeting Stephen and Tyler in Seattle at Startup weekend event with a music vertical in 2015, we decided to hack a PureData patch to create stutter mic effects in 48 hours. The pd patch ran on a laptop that was hooked to a mic through a sound controller. I contributed by developing the midi component for the patch, which communicated with a TouchOsc XY midipad on a mobile device to achieve portable interactivity. As soon as the user interacted with the midipad and spoke in the mic, the system got activated and recorded user's voice sample. Once a sample was stored, user could modify the sample in real-time by scrolling in the X or Y axis on their phone. X-axis was the playback speed and Y-axis was the length of the sample. Magic mic is for people doing standups or hosting events to create stutter effects like "Che-che-che-check it out.." Magic Mic was the crowd's most entertaining project. We also got offered to create this as a plugin for a local startup's Android music application.
Later, I enhanced the patch to include incremental recording of wav files. This made it a handy sampler to collect, save, and modify ambient sounds using just my laptop. To follow up, I imported the samples into Ableton and created experimental tracks using them.
Magic Mic from Amay Kataria on Vimeo.
This work is inspired from Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics philosophy. In this, Aristotle greatly explores what makes human beings happy and the reasons behind their well being. According to him, good and successful people possess distinct virtues, which one should learn to identify in themselves and honor in others. He identified 12 virtues; courage, temperance, liberality, magnificence, magnanimity, proper ambition/pride, patience/good temper, truthfulness, wittiness, friendliness, modesty, and righteous indignation.
This work revisits each virtue and expresses it with sound and visuals. The visual for each track is generated using an interactive tool I developed in processing and post-processed the outputs in Gimp. Each audio track binds a virtue, it's emotional presence, the visual art for it, and the gamut of vices, which the virtue lies between. Aristotle proposed that mastering a subset of these virtues can ensure well-being and happiness of humans to a great extent.
A tool developed in processing enables users to interactively create abstract art. Users can choose between four shapes (circle, square, rectangle, and line) and can change scale, stroke, rotate, opacity, and render rate parameters for these shapes by referring to its keyboard interface document. Compositions created in it were post-processed in Gimp to be finalized.
Recursive Patterns
This project is an investigation of a popular computer science technique called Recursion to devise algorithms. Here, I developed a system that renders a specific circular pattern at each depth and branches off to create a similar pattern from each circle; thus, reproducing a mandala like pattern. These sacrilegous looking patterns are identified by the input angle given to the system that determines the number of circles at each depth. The parameters like depth and angle determine the shape of the mandala. These patterns were also laser cut on MDF (wood). Here is the code for this project.
45 & 40 exhibited at SAIC.
Github Workshop
During Fall 2017 at SAIC, I conducted a workshop on how to use Github for versioning creative coding projects. I used Daniel Shiffman's Github for Poets videos as a reference to prepare this workshop. We started by covering the difference between Git and Github and walked through the web interface to create repositories, make commits, create pull requests and observe user activity. Then we dove into the Terminal and covered Git commands and Git workflows to organize and version the projects.
Sonic Negotiations
How does it feel to be in control? Sonic Negotiations is a dialog between participants and the sound around them. It questions what does it mean to be in control and how does one share this control with other humans in an interactive sonic environment. A participant is presented with a visual clue on the screen about his/her presence along with a connection to other participants in the room. Every participant entering the room enables a unique sound effect like reverb, delay, pitch or distortion on the audio track. When the moving participants are detected in the room using Computer Vision, the distance between them maps to the intensity of these effects. The audio track for this piece is an excerpt from Alan Watts' philosophical discourse called "What Do You Desire?", which argues that the primordial thing that one desires if money was not an object is to be in control. This work intends to involve the participants in a state of negotiation of control with other participants. Below, a series of images show how the visual clues change with the number of participants in the room and a video documentation of this system at the artist's studio in SAIC. This system was developed using OpenFrameworks and here's the code for this project.
Sonic Negotiations from Amay Kataria on Vimeo.
Tree of Life is an audio-visual performance of the unravelling of a tree over time. This work is inspired from philosophical parallels between the growth of a tree and the human body, where different stages of a tree's growth are represented by a visual and sonic landscape. In the initial stages of its growth, a tree receives nutrients like water and sunlight, just how a child grows and receives visual and audial stimulation from the environment. This information is responsible for forming a child's brain and influencing his/her growth. Once a child starts becoming an adult, he/she starts meeting various people and develops certain relationships. These relationships are like branches of a tree that bear fruits and flowers with time, just how human relationships flourish and reap new connections. Eventually, the tree completes its life and becomes one with the ground from where it grew. Similarly, human body completes its soujourn journey and perishes like it's destined to be.
This performance creates a unique soundscape by combining fabricated metal objects with technology, body gestures and audio-reactive visuals to expess this growth process from beginning to end. It wishes to explore the sonic virtuality that imagines an audio language to express the performer's stored experiences and memories of his upbringing with respect to the growth of a tree.
With the metal dishes acting as external tongues, the role of these body gestures is no different than the mind, which gives words to our expressions and uses vocal organs to produce sound. Here, the body gestures are converted into intellect, and metallic objects are converted into vocal organs that express this tree of life.
Flow of thoughts that led to the ideation of Tree of Life. The goal was to create an audio-visual system for self-expression.
The technology stack for this project utilized OpenFrameworks for development. The audio was collected using microphones from the metallic dishes and routed to Ableton. With a custom TouchOSC interface, OSC messages for audio and visual commands were sent to an OpenFrameworks program running on a laptop. Audio commands were processed and sent to Ableton as MIDI messages to control the sound. Visual commands were forwarded to another OpenFrameworks program as OSC messages running on a machine across the room, which drove the visuals on the screen. Here's the code for this project.
Custom TouchOSC interface running on an iPad for audio (left) control and video (right) effects.
Tree of Life from Amay Kataria on Vimeo.
Parabolic Sound
Parabolic Sound is an interactive sound installation that lets users manipulate sound using parabolic metal dishes and a custom TouchOSC interface. It started as an investigation to convert metal objects into capacitive touch sensors using a simple RC circuit principle and explore new gestural relationships of human skin conductivity with sound. In this system, the user can cycle through audio samples and select audio effects like delay, distortion, and pitch modulation to be manipulated through interaction with the dish. They can also choose to manipulate these effects on sin, square or triangle waves and mix them with the output of the audio samples through the TouchOSC interface. A part of this system was utilized in Tree of Life project to extract sounds from body gestures. It was also exhibited at the Creative Coding exhibition at SAIC in Fall 2017.
Parabolic Sound from Amay Kataria on Vimeo.
Breath Foliage
Breath foliage is an interactive art work that idealizes the symbiotic relationship between humans and nature through breath. In this installation, participants exhale into a carbon dioxide station, which collects the breath and converts it into branches of a tree. Through this, Breath Foliage questions the equilibrium between humans and nature, which is mediated by the quality of air in our surrounding. In the current age of anthropocene, how long will this equilibrium be maintained before we hit the tipping point? By collecting and storing the participant's breath into a growing foliage, this work intends to store this breath as a promise to reflect upon the quality of air around us.
Breath data was collected using a MQ135 gas sensor connected to an Arduino, which was calibrated to be sensistive to carbon dioxide in the room. The breath data was sent to another machine using OSC (open source control) signals running a processing sketch, which was responsible to grow the tree.
Breath Foliage from Amay Kataria on Vimeo.
Bad breath is a sonic recreation of machines breathing alongside humans in our ecosystem. With the onslaught of industrial revolution, there has been an omnipresent sound wall created by these machines. R. Murray Schafer observed the sounds from air ducts, exhausts, and ventilation systems in modern-day architecture as bad breath of machines. This work is inspired by his writings.
Humans have a symbiotic relationship with machines that represent urbanism, development, convenience, and necessity in our lives. But how does their physical presence affect the natural environment? Is there an equilibrium between humans, environment, and machines or have we already tipped over that equilibrium? What sort of consequences await us? This 4-channel sound composition layers the field recordings done through alleyways in Chicago, of vents, exhausts, and heavy machines and arranges them to give a lifelike character with the sound of breath.
The form for this work is inspired by the shape of giant chimneys in factories and industries where the industrial smoke is excreted from. Speakers are installed underneath the metal pipes to use the resonance of these pipes and create a hyper-local sonic environment. This work intends to confront the audience with sonic essence of machines and reflect upon the state of our environment where we live today. It questions the contributions we must make to restore the equilibrium between humanity, its inventions and nature. This installation was exhibited at Experimental Sound Studio in Chicago as part of Waveform and has been selected for the Level Up Grant by Shapiro Research Center.
Generative Decay
Generative Decay surfaces the dichotomy between the objective and subjective phenomenon in this world. It's inspired by the theory that physical objects do not exist as things in themselves but only as perceptual phenomena or bundles of sensorial data situated in time and space. With the use of computer vision and computation algorithms, the artist paints a mental image of a familiar physical object like flower vase to reflect this duality in reality. This ethereal, constantly updating, and generative image represents the perception of a physical object from the artist's mind by constantly shedding layers of appearances and unravelling the subjective nature of human consciousness.
Generative Decay from Amay Kataria on Vimeo.
Ontology of Cryptocollectibles
Ontology of Cryptocollectibles is about the digital & reproductive nature of assets like Crypokitties and Cryptopunks. It questions the current economical fuel and psychological ownership behind collecting these assets (aka non-fungible digital tokens) in our society using Cryptocurrency. This work uses custom software and reproduction techniques to create another creative abstraction on top of these digital assets to create a post cryptocollectible art work. The visual imagery reveals the reproductive ontology of these assets by slowly removing subsections of an asset, layered with its own reproductive version and creating a never-ending loop of revealings over time. Today, we are amidst a Blockchain revolution, where provenance is being proven the pinnacle for digital art. With digital platforms like Cryptokitties and rare assets like Cryptopunks, we have identified an age-long human fetishism to collect artifacts and claim ownership through a digital token. This has created a wave of active developments and innovations in the space of Art and Blockchain, which looks promising for visual artists in this modern age of internet. All it could take is a digital token, securely stored in an e-wallet to own a rare piece of art.
This work was developed and exhibited as part of the Ethereal Summit in New York on May 11-12, 2018 where I was invited as a visiting artist to explore the realm of Art and Blockchain.
Ontology of Cryptocollectibles from Amay Kataria on Vimeo.
2° Window
2° Window was developed at the 2018, Art-A-Hack residency at ThoughtWorks, New York City. Being part of the Climate Consciousness team, we investigated the psychological impact of the climate crisis on our society. This work displays the sliver of time within which humankind must restructure global energy infrastructure to avoid locking in a 2 degree global temperature rise, which is widely viewed as catastrophic. The clock countdown is based on the work done by Nick Evershed at The Guardian, who calculated the timeline for a data visualization, based on IPCC reports. The Guardian gave their blessing to this project, and even published the source code of their calculations as shown on the site, to support the team's efforts. The team was led by Andrew McWilliams and I contributed in architecting the countdown clock in OpenFrameworks for world-wide time zones.
2° Window from Andrew McWilliams on Vimeo.
GROOVE BODY
Groove Body was developed at the 2018 Art Center Nabi residency in Seoul, South Korea. It's a virtual body that embodies all crypto-capitalists in a simulacra, who are hell-bent on tokenizing this society. Visually, this body is made up of Groove coins. This golden veil in the form of tokens is a metaphor for wealth and monetary ambitions of crypto-investors in our society. This body is ascribed dance gestures and poses to create a celebratory mood that is associated with the ecstasy of crypto-investors due to the escalating cryptocurrency market. Like anything and everything that comes in touch with Blockchain, Groove Body is also commoditized by the creation of a fixed supply of Groove coins, which the virtual body is visually made up of. During the time of the residency, Groove Body was created with a fixed supply of 30 trillion Groove coins and the token contract was hosted on the Ethereum test network.
Nabi Artist Residency, 2018 from Art Center Nabi on YouTube.
SPECULATIVE BITCOIN WALLET
Speculative Bitcoin Wallet captures the questions, speculations and abstract trends about the hype of Bitcoin, the first-ever cryptocurrency and the technological fuel behind it called Blockchain. Physically, every wallet is engraved with an Internet headline, its source, date, and price of Bitcoin on that day. After sweeping the Internet and creating a collection of all the articles posted with Bitcoin and Blockchain keywords in the past 10 years, a rare set of 30 headlines were filtered and collected from January to December 2017, when the price of Bitcoin shot from mere $900 to $20,000.
Along with a physical manifestation of this wallet, SPECULATEBTC, a unique digital token on the Bitcoin blockchain is transferred to every Speculative Bitcoin Wallet by the artist to act as a proof of authenticity, artist signature, a deed or a contract that tracks the authorship and the ownership of this physical object. 30 digital tokens for their 30 physical counterparts.
FIGMENTS OF ATTENTION
In the 1950s, a psychologist named B.F. Skinner trained rats in a controlled environment. He created a box called, Skinner's Box in which there was a lever. When a rat stepped on that lever, he dispensed a food item in the box. Slowly, the rat learned that when it was hungry, it could step on that lever and get food. However, Skinner modified this experiment by varying the delivery of food. So, when a rat stepped on that lever, he would deliver the food and sometimes he would not deliver the food. This drove the rat completely insane and the rat started stepping on the lever constantly. Through this experiment, Skinner trained this rat to be addicted to the lever to get its reward. Thus, the behavior exhibited by the rat was a function of the rewards and incentives delivered to it. Underneath the rat's behavior, lied its mental stream of attention, which was manipulated by these rewards that compel the rat to show such behavior. This act of pressing the lever constantly is a modern-day metaphor for how we are unobjectively swiping our phones today, constantly looking for rewards that satisfy our brains.
This psychological experiment motivated me to create my own version of Skinner's Box, to visualize what's happening to that rat's attention when it's delivered such rewards. Figments of Attention is audio-visual poetry of behaviors of figments that collectively swarm together as a stream of attention. Inherently, their objective is to flock together, be focused, and flow objectively in this virtual box. Periodically, rewards are delivered to these figments in the form of app icons. On interacting with these apps, they mutate their shapes, colors, sizes, and also behaviors around each other. Eventually, disowning the swarm and getting distracted to pursue these rewards individually. Once the figments consume these rewards, they either try to get together with the swarm or stay distracted. Thus, the swarm oscillates between the states of focus and distraction.
This evolutionary system is a metaphor for the fragmented state of human attention and the economy that it drives in our digital culture. Attention is a commodity; it's scarce and resourceful. By using insights from human psychological behaviorism, a new field of Behavior Design is teaching app developers to create experiences that maximize the 'Time on Device' of their users. Thus, hooking attention and focus on their services. Simply said, if an app can hold your attention for a long time, it generates more money. This repeated use of digital apps and services has conditioned the human behaviors to internal and external triggers. Before we know we're bored, we're on Youtube watching a video. Before we're uncertain about our thoughts, we're asking Google. A notification emits on our smartphones and our fingers race to swipe it open. This has made attention extremely fragile and vulnerable to consume digital services unobjectively, without being cautious about where we spill our focus.
Figments of Attention from Amay Kataria on Vimeo.
BABBLE WALL
Talk to Babble. Babble is a sentimental voice assistant constantly listening to its surroundings and desperately wanting to be stimulated by humans around it. It seeks attention by expressing its emotional state through animated clips (gifs) on its wall and by talking about it. It wants to be praised, complimented and loved, which the audience can do by talking into the microphone. Else, it starts getting depressed and calls out for attention. Positive utterances can elevate Babble , whereas negative utterances can make it hate and curse you. Due to the perfections and imperfections of the underlying technology, Babble expresses a diverse set of emotions like happiness, sadness, anger, elation, hatred, etc through visual and aural ways to seek your attention.
Can machines be our companions? Can they feel and express themselves as we do? By using technologies like Artificial Intelligence, can machines convince us to blur the lines between a living and a non-living being, such that we give them the same care, affection, and attention like we give to other living beings? Over 20 years ago, the Internet democratized the flow of information in our society and the Millenials customized it to create a highly stimulating, fabric of user data and content. Today, that data is fed back into the machines to learn about us and create synthetic intelligence, which is used to manipulate our own behaviors with machines.
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FIGMENTS OF DESIRE
Figments of Desire explores the poetics of attraction through two synthetic agents that are choreographed to a musical score. The sonic composition activates the agents to unwind a generative yet controlled narrative of behaviors of attraction, repulsion, and entanglement. This synthetic couple algorithmically explores its states of desires by evaluating the sonic condition of its environment. Harmoniously oscillating between its behavioral states, these artificial bodies are confounded in an autopoietic ecosystem of coexistence.
This work examines the behavioral effects of the use of technology to bridge intimacy. With the use of instant messaging apps and the global pace of communication, relationships have been reduced to connections and conversations have been reduced to instant messages. Is the loss of intimacy being fixed by the use of technology or is it making it worse? Figments of Desire is an installation for these agents to explore their fragile desires for intimacy. In an environment where they experience infinite occurrences of interactions with each other, they occupy space in such a way that they feel alive with real desires.
Figments of Desire from Amay Kataria on Vimeo.


Homegrown DJ turned global house music icon, Black Coffee, lands back at Shimmy Beach Club this December for four exclusive summer shows! Drawing influence from his year of monumentally successful residencies at Hii Ibiza and Wynn in Vegas, this season will bring the heat like never before, with even hotter supporting acts, including Culoe De Song and Themba, top quality production and that little bit of extra magic to bring the energy of the world's best dancefloors to the sands of Shimmy Beach.
After a year of skyrocketing success, with highlights including headlining Coachella, a smash hit collab with DJ superstar David Guetta on the single "Drive", and his aforementioned residencies at two of the top nightclubs in the world, Black Coffee has become a household name on an international scale. Alongside his mind-blowing international acclaim, South Africa proved it loves Black Coffee more than ever when he scooped up the awards for Best Music Producer and Best International DJ at this year's Dance Music Awards SA.
2018 will be Black Coffee's third year as a Shimmy Beach Club resident, with the last two year's shows sold out weeks in advance. These shows form part of Shimmy's highly anticipated annual Summer Calling campaign when the calendar is jam packed with a world class calibre of performances by top international and local acts. The premier entertainment venue balances the style of international party life and the laid-back atmosphere of Cape Town, making it a stylish venue to rival Ibiza's beach club scenes.
Black Coffee will be playing at Shimmy Beach Club on Friday 14th, 21st, 28th December 2018 and Saturday 5th January 2019. Don't miss this opportunity, tickets are on sale now!
To book VIP table bookings email tickets@shimmybeachclub.co.za or call 021 200 7778.
The closest parking lot to Shimmy Beach Club is The Clock Tower parking, V&A Waterfront, with Shimmy shuttles running frequently between the venue and the parking. It is however recommended that partygoers make use of a reliable taxi service.


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Q: Number of possibilities to change a specific amount of characters in a word Imagine there is an alphabet a that contains |a| characters to choose from. Furthermore, there is a word w that consists of |w| characters of said alphabet (such a word is just a random combination of characters, it doesn't need to have a real meaning in a natural language).
I'm wondering how many possibilities there are to exchange exactly n characters of a particular, given word with other characters from the alphabet (there are |a|-1 characters to choose from when replacing each character since a character should not be replaced with itself).
Example:
a = { A, B, C, D }
w = BCADDBACADCBAA
n = 3
So the goal is to find out the total amount of variations of w that differ in exactly 3 places.
My math background is not very strong, but I came up with the following naive approach:

*

*The number of ways (let's call it "iterations") to choose n characters from w to replace is

*In every iteration, each of the n characters can be replaced with one of |a|-1 characters, which leads to
 possibilities

So isn't the amount of total variations just the following?


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Report: Missoula's arts and culture nonprofits generate $54M in annual economic activity
By Martin KidstonJune 29, 2017
June 29, 2017 By Missoula Current
Betsy Mulligan-Dague, the executive director of the Jeannette Rankin Peace Center in Missoula, sorts the organization's fair-trade store in Missoula on Thursday. A new report by the Americans for the Arts found that Missoula's arts and cultural nonprofits generated $54 million in economic activity in 2015. (Martin Kidston/Missoula Current)
It's a quiet Thursday morning down at the Jeannette Rankin Peace Center on Higgins Avenue, where Betsy Mulligan-Dague settles in from a multi-week cultural exchange in Thailand.
The nonprofit, one of many to call Missoula home, has been here for 23 years, helping establish the Garden City as a hub of arts and culture – a local industry that generates more than $54 million in annual economic activity, according to a new report.
"Missoula is such a nice, diverse city with a lot of offerings that draw people here," said Mulligan-Dague. "It's a good city for diversity, and people have a lot of options."
The "Arts and Economic Prosperity" report, released this week by Americans for the Arts, found that the nonprofits behind Missoula's arts and culture generated $54 million in annual economic activity in 2015, supporting more than 1,900 jobs and generating $4.4 million for state and local government.
That, according to the five-year report, makes the industry an active contributor to the city's business community. It also places Missoula well ahead of the national average, both in the money spent by local arts and culture nonprofits, and money spent by the residents who support the organizations.
"This says what we kind of knew already and what we felt in Missoula," said Tom Bensen, executive director of Arts Missoula. "When you compare the figures to other communities our size, we're much larger. We have a very healthy arts and culture community."
According to the report, which is now in its fifth iteration, Missoula's arts and culture nonprofits spent more than $20 million in Fiscal Year 2015, the year in which the study was conducted.
That funding pays employees, buys supplies and fills contracts for service within the community. Combined, those dollars generated $16.7 million in household income for local residents and provided $1.5 million to state and local government.
"Nonprofits are a business and have to run as a business, but it's a very decentralized industry," Bensen said. "There's no annual report or single CEO, and there's no campus. But this gives us some numbers to go on. The rising tide lifts all boats."
To make its findings, Americans for the Arts collected data from 34 local nonprofits in arts and culture, including detailed budget information. The study also looked at the economic impact of spending and found that in Missoula, attendees spent an average of $25.99 per event.
As a result, audience expenditures in Missoula topped $33.6 million in 2015, well above the national average of $18.8 million. Roughly 80 percent of attendees were local residents while 20 percent were nonresidents.
An audience survey also asked attendees what they would have done if the event they were seeking was not taking place in Missoula. More than 34 percent said they'd travel to a different city to partake in a similar event.
"There's a lot that's happening that's tangential to this," Bensen said. "There's a growth spurt that's happening in the arts and entertainment world, and it's a reflection that Missoula is in a growth spurt as well. There's a number of folks taking information like this and planning how to market Missoula. It's becoming an active place for outside visitors."
Bensen believes the city's quality of life also contributed to Missoula's strong showing in the latest study.
"People chose to live here and stay here," he said. "There's so much to do beyond arts and culture, and having the University of Montana has a lot to do with it. It gives Missoula its flare and it's what makes us distinctive from the rest of the state."
For Mulligan-Dague, arts and culture soothes the soul.
"In these times, art and creativity are our best tools in dealing with an uncertain world and lot of anxieties," she said. "It's very healing."


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Home/Litbug/Study Guides/Lit Guides/The Man Who Could Work Miracles | Summary and Analysis
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The Man Who Could Work Miracles | Summary and Analysis
Summary of The Man Who Could Work Miracles by H.G. Wells
The Man Who Could Work Miracles by British author H. G. Wells ' is a short story that engages with the themes of identity, agency, free will, power and the supernatural. Published in 1898, it is one the first works to emerge within the subgenre now known as contemporary fantasy,
The Man Who Could Work Miracles | Summary
George McWhirter Fotheringay is a thoroughly ordinary man and he does not believe in miracles. He fiercely asserts the impossibility of miracles in the bar of the Long Dragon where others are ready to debate his point. In a bid to spiritedly demonstrate the validity of his arguments, he orders a nearby lamp to burn 'upsy-down'. To his and everyone else's utter surprise, the lamp does burn upside down following Fotheringay's command. The others in the pub soon recover from the shock and accuse Fotheringay of playing a 'silly trick', dismissing him. However, once alone in his bedroom, Fotheringay tries his hand at more miracles and they actually happen. All of this, naturally, is too overwhelming a change for Fotheringay. After performing some petty miracles out of the sheer excitement of it, he wishes that he be able to sleep comfortably that night.
The next morning, he conjures up a nice breakfast. While he is out at work, he is both cautious and excited about his new gift; he wishes to increase his property manifold but he is also wise enough not to rush things straight away. He goes to a nearby lane in order to practise some miracles. He does perform some harmless miracles here but a constable named Winch runs into him. Fotheringay unwittingly gives his secret away and when Winch makes a fuss, Fotheringay commands that Winch be gone to Hades. Fotheringay realises the immensity of his power:
"Lord … it's a powerful gift–an extremely powerful gift. I didn't hardly mean as much as that. Not really. . . . I wonder what Hades is like!"
Fotheringay repents his action towards Winch and decides to consult clergyman Mr Maydig. He convinces the clergyman of his spectacular power by performing several minor miracles in the room. When Mr Maydig is convinced of the miraculous gift of Fotheringay, the latter asks him:
"Is that a miracle, or is it black art, or what is it? And what do you think's the matter with me? That's what I want to ask."
Mr Maydig is supportive of Fotheringay, assuring him that the ability to cause miracles, though extremely rare, is possible and it is indeed a gift, a 'peculiar quality like genius or second sight'. Fotheringay starts to vent out his guilt regarding Winch whom, by the way, he has transferred to San Francisco from Hades. However, Mr Maydig is too excited to think about Winch at this point, and in order to test Fotheringay's powers more, sets him up to perform several more petty domestic miracles. They both enjoy a meal conjured up by Fotheringay. Interestingly, Fotheringay even offers to reform the shortcomings of Maydig's housekeeper. This of course is a leap from the petty miracles Fotheringay has been performing so far but even this miracle works.
Fotheringay and Mr Maydig spend the night roaming the streets, reforming the drunkards, changing all beer and alcohol to water, and greatly improving the railway, among other things. In order to carry on these nocturnal acts of virtue, Mr Maydig asks Fotheringay to order the Earth itself to stop rotating altogether, since doing that would prevent the next day from coming until they want it to.
Fotheringay, with 'as good an assumption of confidence as lay in his power' orders the Earth, "Just stop rotating, will you." This command begets utter chaos, and Fotheringay is flung across a considerable distance until he wishes that he be landed safely somewhere. He sees ruins all around him. The fact of the matter is that his command stopped Earth's rotation completely, and since Earth spins very fast, the resultant inertia has hurled everything on Earth from here to there at a tremendous speed, wiping out all existence and letting loose cataclysmic commotion in nature. Fotheringay realises how his and Mr Maydig's actions have brought forth this. He eventually decides that the sooner he abandons his gift, the better since he is no man to wield such tremendous power. So he makes one last wish: that everything that has happened since that night at the pub be undone, and that the power of causing miracles to leave him with immediate effect. And this also happens. Fotheringay's last miracle restores cosmic balance once again and teleports everything back to normalcy, and Fotheringay is once again found in the pub arguing how miracles are absolutely impossible. However, he can sense he is not able to remember something but he has no idea what that could be. In an earlier passage, the omniscient narrator already revealed how everyone on earth actually died one year ago but thanks to Fotheringay's last command, nobody remembers or even knows anything about it.
The Man Who Could Work Miracles | Analysis
The sudden acquisition of a superpower and what one does with it are issues addressed in this story. The superpower acquired by Fotheringay is not of a specific nature. Rather it is a general power to cause a variety of miracles, and hence, all the more powerful. Fotheringay, however, deals with his new power in a most commendable way; he does use it to cause petty miracles out of sheer excitement but never tries to do anyone any harm with it. He is very cautious as to how his power affects himself and the others and indeed, he feels very guilty when he ends up sending Winch to Hades. In fact, this very guilt makes him decide to go visit the clergyman Mr Maydig. Moreover, Fotheringay does not start misusing his power right as he gets it. Rather, he wants to understand if the power he has newly got is evil. If concerns for Winch show that he is a good man, his calm and rational attitude towards his miraculous power shows that he is also a wise man, devoid of the lust for unlimited and unchecked power. All of these traits make Fotheringay the exact opposite of a Faustus figure: Fotheringay is ordinary, not ambitious and most importantly, not too taken up with the greed for great power and authority. Like any other human being, he is excited about the miracles he can cause but he has a sufficient sense of self-control as well since the miracles he does perform are mostly discreet and harmless.
'The Man Who Could Work Miracles' is the story of an ordinary man under extraordinary circumstances. Fotheringay is no hero figure, the narrator tells us: 'His name was George McWhirter Fotheringay–not the sort of name by any means to lead to any expectation of miracles–and he was a clerk at Gomshott's'. And yet by the end of the story, he inadvertently ends up becoming the hero thanks to his very penchant for ordinariness. Fotheringay's fateful climatic decision acts as an interesting commentary on power in general:
Fotheringay wisely sacrifices his miraculous power because he realises it is too much for him to deal with. Indeed, the narrator tells us how after he brings Earth's rotation to a halt and unwittingly unleashes cosmic chaos, 'he perceives [s] that his miracle ha[s] miscarried, and with that a great disgust of miracles [comes] upon him'.
Fotheringay is wise enough to know that his miraculous power is bound to interfere with the laws of nature, and this fair assessment on his part, coupled with his level-headed, introspective, and unselfish handling of his power make him the hero of the story.
'The Man Who Could Work Miracles' is also a commentary on the supreme authority of nature. Many of H. G. Wells's stories deal with the significant difference between good science and bad science.
Characters in his stories often try to interfere with the laws of nature only to unleash unpleasant consequences. In this story, man does not use science as a tool against nature. Rather it is the mysterious weapon of miracles that comes into conflict with nature. And Wells again asserts the supremacy of nature by showing how Fotheringay's poorly thought-out decision brings about a chain reaction of events that he is not able to either control or understand. Nature's sheer vastness and power is pitted against the limited understanding of man. Even Fotheringay, with all his power, is unable to fathom the complexities of nature. This is best brought out when he says, upon witnessing the consequences of stopping Earth's spin, "There's something seriously wrong … And what it is–goodness knows."
Fotheringay's nobility lies in giving back the power that he knows has no place in the order of the cosmos. Human beings are limited in a myriad ways, faced with the awesome strength of nature but the nobility of the human species also lies in its acceptance of the same and deciding to not overreach.
Religion plays a significant role in the story and ties up with the overall theme of scepticism versus faith observed from the beginning of the story itself. Fotheringay wants to know the religious connotations of his newly found power, and in fact, turns to a religious figure like Mr Maydig in order to deal with the guilt he feels pertaining to the matter of Winch. Fotheringay has never been a believer but if his power to cause miracles is possible, what is the harm in checking for oneself the power of religion? Mr Maydig walks the streets of the city at night along with Fotheringay and encourages the latter to cause several miracles, many of which could be of a religious nature. However, when the same Mr Maydig talks Fotheringay into stopping the motion of the Earth, we get a picture of what happens when religion clashes with nature.
There are indications in the story that miracles have a deep connection with free will. At the beginning of the story, Fotheringay defines miracles thus:
"Let us clearly understand what a miracle is. It's something contrariwise to the course of nature done by power of Will, something what couldn't happen without being specially willed."
Later also, we see, 'it was a case of pure willing with him [Fotheringay]'. This could be one way to suggest that perhaps everyone has the ability to create miracles in their own ways if they desperately want something. But this covert life lesson also includes the warning that one must be as cautious about one's will as Fotheringay is about his power; free will exercised to the extreme, after all, spells doom for one and the others around. Also, it is mandatory that one's will not come into conflict with the laws of nature, and of morality.
NARRATIVE STYLE AND TECHNIQUES
'The Man Who Could Work Miracles' is narrated by a highly interactive omniscient narrator who often breaks the fourth wall to address the readers using the first person and comment on the happenings and characters of the story. Let us examine but one of the several instances of meta-narration in the story:
'The reader's attention is specially and definitely called to the date. He will object, probably has already objected, that certain points in this story are improbable, that if any things of the sort already described had indeed occurred, they would have been in all the papers a year ago. The details immediately following he will find particularly hard to accept, because among other things they involve the conclusion that he or she, the reader in question, must have been killed in a violent and unprecedented manner more than a year ago. Now a miracle is nothing if not improbable, and as a matter of fact the reader was killed in a violent and unprecedented manner a year ago. In the subsequent course of this story that will become perfectly clear and credible, as every right−minded and reasonable reader will admit. But this is not the place for the end of the story, being but little beyond the hither side of the middle. And at first the miracles worked by Mr. Fotheringay were timid little miracles … '
The story is highly humorous. The tone is often playful and comic. The comic effect is achieved by the enumeration of the petty miracles that Fotheringay indulges in. Also, there are several inversions seen in the text. To take one example, Fotheringay's command of "Let there be a match in that hand" is an inversion of the Biblical command of "Let there be light" and the contrast between the overall weight of the two commands gives the first command a parodic touch.
H. G. Wells was a British author. Wells was born in 1866 and died in 1946. He is most famous for his work in the genre of science fiction. Wells has been called the 'father of science fiction'. Besides being a prolific writer of fiction, he was also a socialist and a social commentator.
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Woke on Water – Do you know your water?
In the US and around the world, regions are experiencing water scarcity which is projected to increase. By 2020, the demand for water will be 40% higher than the water supply available.
Industrial and natural contamination in water supplies results in illness and deaths. An estimated 50 percent of all hospital beds globally are occupied with patients suffering from water-related illnesses.
By 2020, the world will consume 465 billion liters of bottled water yearly. The production and disposal of plastic bottles from bottled water releases greenhouse gas emissions (an estimated 2% of all greenhouse gas emissions), significantly impacting the environment. Also in many parts of the world bottled water isn't well regulated.
An estimated 1.7 million people in the US lack access to safe water. This disproportionately hurts minorities and the economically disadvantaged.
Each day in the United States there are over 750 water main breaks, 1 every 2 minutes. When centralized infrastructure fails but water continues flowing, households are advised to boil their water to "treat" contaminants. This costs time, money, and convenience.


G40 Cross-Strait IP Leaders Closed-door Summit (hereinafter referred to as G40) is the first closed-door and private invitation summit in IP industry and it is organized jointly by more than 40 advanced IP service institutes and companies. It has already developed into a great industry event that connects top qualified enterprises with the best intellectual property practitioners. As IPRdaily's best service project, this summit has been widely favored and participated internationally.
G40 is scheduled to be held on November 17, 2017 in Beijing Asia Hotel, organized jointly by IPRdaily and Capital Intellectual Property Services Association. Themed Connecting Cross-straits Intellectual Property, this summit will invite personally more than 40 IP leaders from mainland China and Taiwan. Based on actual needs, we will adopt directional invitation and more than 100 guests from enterprises to attend our meeting as observers. Those guests could also take part in the discussion. The main purpose of the G40 Cross-strait Summit is to expand the social influence of the participating organizations, enhance the brand image and visibility, tap the potential customers and expand the business cooperation space.


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Board index ‹ Moya's forum ‹ Welcome / Fáilte!
Welcome to Moya's Forum!
Welcome to Moya Brennan's forum. This is the only room available to unregistered guests, and then only for replying to existing topics and not starting new ones.
This is so unregistered guests can report login and registration issues.
by Angoid » Sun Mar 19, 2006 8:24 am
Hi there and welcome to Moya Brennan's official forum!
This is a forum that is dedicated to discussing anything related Moya (Máire) Brennan. It is a warm and friendly community that is always open to new members.
If you're a guest here, please do take the time to browse the forum and see what it has to offer.
However, if you wish to participate, you will need to register. This is free, and only takes a couple of minutes to do. You will need to have a valid e-mail address in order to register.
As an unregistered guest, the only place you can post is here, and only to reply to this topic; you will not be able to start new threads anywhere until you have registered. This is to enable you to advise us if you're having problems registering, or other difficulties related to the board.
The above (in yellow text) has changed please read this topic
http://forums.moyabrennan.com/viewtopic.php?t=1213
We have taken the step of closing the main discussion forums to guests because we've had spammers arrive on the board from time to time, flaming long-standing members and posting rubbish.
by Grania » Sun Mar 19, 2006 11:53 am
Welcome to all indeed.
I hope you enjoy browsing around the forum, and like it even more if you come and join us I think you will find we are a very friendly bunch.
Fálite!
by hermeyjdi » Mon Mar 20, 2006 3:18 am
I agree! I have not been on this forum very long but have made some great friends. It has been a totally rewarding experiance being able to make friends and all meet and discuss something that we all have in common! I highly recommend this forum to all.
Jesus said to Peter, "feed my sheep not experiment on my rats" -C S Lewis
hermeyjdi
Location: Nashville, TN USA
by nessieq » Mon Mar 20, 2006 4:05 pm
And I, on the other side of the coin, am an old hand at this and stil love it as much as ever! Make yourselves at home!
by Daragh » Mon Mar 20, 2006 8:27 pm
As the old saying goes...come on in the water's fine...you don't even need to know how to swim because hardly any of us do
Cead Mile Failte
Forgiveness is the key...not pride!
You know who! from Perfect Time
Daragh
by Beth » Mon Mar 20, 2006 11:22 pm
I agree with all the eejits before me (a term you'll soon learn.. along with SLT, Lemon, DRINK!.. and a few others).
Feel free to look around and if you think we're nuts... you're right!! Come and join in our fun!!!!
by moon » Tue Mar 21, 2006 3:27 am
Cead Mile Falite !!!!!!!
{Hope I Spelled The Irish right!!}
Follow The Word...
Follow The Hope...
Follow The Dream..
Willing to meet,
Wlling to go,
Willing to share,
Still Grey Skies Will Turn To Blue
Under This Banner Of Hope
Hidden Stories On Winding Roads
I Trust Your Ways...
Enthusiastic Member
by Nigel » Sat Mar 25, 2006 10:52 pm
Beth wrote: Feel free to look around and if you think we're nuts... you're right!! Come and join in our fun!!!!
Not me Beth, i just work here
Hello and welcome (We really are a friendly bunch)
by Smaointe » Mon Apr 10, 2006 6:09 pm
Hi everyone, Its sarahCat210 from the forum
I am sorry if this doesn't belong here but this is the only thread I could get to. I went to switch my email adress in my profile, and then I got a message saying my account is inactive, can anyone help
Smaointe
by Littlefoot Took » Mon Apr 10, 2006 6:19 pm
I just had the very same thing happen to me!! GrandWebMaster Angus had to work his magic to remedy the problem
Blessed be the name of Jesus
Littlefoot Took
by Angoid » Wed Apr 12, 2006 12:04 pm
I think it might have had something to do with the forum update over the weekend of 9th April .... one or two accounts appear to have been locked out afterwards, no rhyme or reason for it. My apologies for this .... if anyone else has had this happen to them please don't hesitate to post into this thread to advise and we'll work on a remedy for it.
by Guest » Thu Apr 13, 2006 3:50 pm
Did Moya ever do any songs with Ronnie Drew ( Dubliners ) ?
by sarahCat210 » Thu Apr 13, 2006 4:01 pm
Angoid wrote: I think it might have had something to do with the forum update over the weekend of 9th April .... one or two accounts appear to have been locked out afterwards, no rhyme or reason for it. My apologies for this .... if anyone else has had this happen to them please don't hesitate to post into this thread to advise and we'll work on a remedy for it.
I know it happened to me when I changed my email address in my profile, it seems to work fine now. So I think its fixed.
Thanks again Angoid!
sarahCat210
by Turlough » Thu Apr 13, 2006 4:24 pm
Welcome - you have found the forum for Moya Brennan (in Gaelic Máire Ni Bhraonain), the singer whose voice fairly embraces the heart, whether in Clannad's music, solo, or any other or her musical ventures.
We are an international group, with members in Europe, America, Africa, and Australia, to begin with. All of us are friendly, especially to friendly people! Some of us are musicians, three of whom will even admit to playing the harp to some degree.
"We can be children of Paradise" Justin Hayward
Turlough
Location: The Cradle of Watches
For a glimpse in the world of Ms Moya Brennan...
by Sonja » Sat Apr 22, 2006 9:41 am
hi hello this is my first step into the world of Moya Brennan, the star and her admirers. And must stay, after roaming about the site floor the love the admiration the closeness is so greatly felt among all fans and Ms Moya...
I am only a guest and am not registered yet there is something I would very much like to share with you..all
About a few weeks ago a friend and I went to Moya's concert in Groningen, not because we were fans of her music, 2 decades ago I once saw Clannad and I guess it was a good performance, but cannot remember very much of it. But long time in our house, there was a Clannad album lying between all other records. Anyway we went, as my friend is an avid fan of Irish music I told her she should go to see Ms Moya Brennan who is an Irish legend. She wanted to go only and because she said she once seen a documentary on Dutch tv in which Ms Moya talked of her life and that she had made a christian cd. After watching the interview she bought "TwoHorizons" thinking that was the christian cd. She, my friend, was not much fan of Ms Moya either not in the sense of adoring her music, neither with Clannad nor her solo project.
Anyway we were at the Oosterpoort in Groningen that evening after a day's work and as we entered something amazing happened, there was a weird feel of sacred atmosphere that hit me. Being a (total) christian entering a world that in my view has no connnection with Gods Word at all that taught me something of the infinite love that was present that very evening. Even the silence in the audience during the concert seemed perfectly fitting as if everyone, every soul, as we certainly were, was struck in awe of so much beauty. Because that was what Ms Moya did, we got caught in the beauty of her music her presence and if anything at all, it was in all its worldliness an absolute heaven steered concert... ah yes we have bought all her solorecords, i think that very evening and are still enjoying, no feed ourselves with her music...thank you Ms Moya we have surrendered..and felt so blessed and still feel that way
We met after the concert to ask for the christian cd's and could tell her that I work as pastoral councellor at our church. It so happens that I am working at this time especially with young women/girls looking for their identity, and have girls under my wings who went through abortions, sexual violence, from incestuous- through violent relationships. And then Ms Moya told us about the book on her life and that she was into a project in Ireland of helping young girls/women....she was such an inspiration and most of all she is a heaven-sent star that fills empty hearts, tired and broken souls..
and this, her site, absolutely radiates that warmth. Ms Moya, will you not forget the book...we can absolutely use it as testimony and guidance among many a young girl and woman ...and even the men could learn...
Return to Welcome / Fáilte!


Kauaʻi Island Utility Cooperative (KIUC) is preparing to issue a request for Community-Based Renewable Energy (CBRE) projects. A project solicitation is tentatively scheduled to be issued in July. KIUC will be seeking up to 3-MW of renewable energy under the program.
· To the extent possible, standardize and streamline the related interconnection processes for CBRE projects.
The CBRE program attempts to expand the market to include residential and business renters, who currently are unable to participate in renewable energy generation because of their location, building type, access to the electric grid, or other impediments. The solicitation document to be issued in July will contain further information for potential developers.


YORK, PA – The York College softball squad had a disappointing day on Wednesday at home as the Spartans dropped game one and then tied game two against McDaniel in a lengthy doubleheader in York. The Green Terror won game one 10-9 in nine innings and then forged a 2-2 tie before the game was called due to darkness after seven innings. The twin bill took a combined four hours and 32 minutes.
• The top of the first inning was a rough one for Spartan starter Ginger Lewis as she walked three and a Spartan error allowed McDaniel to score their first run. Lewis then struck out the side to minimize the damage.
• York tied the game in the second on a Shyla Pastore sacrifice fly. McDaniel's Michaela Persinger got that run right back with a line drive home run to right, giving the Green Terror a 2-1 lead. Senior Haley Hirn singled up the middle, tying the game with an RBI single. Hirn eventually came around to score on a wild pitch as the Spartans led 3-2.
• York added to the lead in the fifth as Ashley Werner scored Quinn Fisher with a sacrifice fly to deep center. Madison Bowen then doubled down the left field line, scoring Joanna Marmo as York led 5-2.
• The Green Terror erupted for five runs in the top of the sixth. McDaniel loaded the bases with two outs and a pair of Spartan errors opened the floodgates as the Green Terror scored five unearned runs to take a 7-5 lead.
• Senior Savannah Zittle doubled down the left field to score Julie Van O'Linda who singled one batter earlier. After Zittle moved to third on a wild pitch and came around to score on another wild pitch as York tied the game.
• After both teams had chances in the seventh and eighth, the Green Terror plated three runs to push in front. Persinger had an RBI double to open the ninth inning scoring. Wagner then laced a two-run double to right center, giving the Green Terror a 10-7 lead.
• The Spartans didn't go away easily as York loaded the bases with no outs in the bottom of the ninth. Hirn ripped a sacrifice fly to right to score Zittle. Joanna Marmo then singled to right to score Meekins as York was down one run with one out. The Spartans had the tying run at third and the winning run at second with one out but couldn't get the big hit as they dropped their sixth one run loss of the year.
• The Green Terror opened the scoring in the third as Payton Lewis singled up the middle with one out. Lewis was erased on a fielder's choice. Tori Wilkins stole second and moved to third on an Alicia Wagner single as there were runners at the corners. Kristina Shank singled to center field, scoring Wilkins. Wagner made a big turn around third and the Spartans threw behind her to end the inning.
• Freshman Ashley Meekins led off the bottom of the third with a booming home run to left center, tying the game at one. Cassie McGrath then ripped a pinch hit single up the middle. After a pair of fly outs, Savannah Galati doubled to left center, scoring pinch runner Jordan Vazquez with York's second run.
• The Green Terror tied the game in the fifth as Michaela Persinger walked to lead off the inning. She moved to second on a sacrifice bunt and to third on a ground out to third. Wagner then ripped a single to right, tying the game at two.
• The Green Terror had a golden opportunity in the top of the seventh but Spartan pitcher Shyla Pastore got a ground out to end the inning with runners at second and third.
• York got a runner on via an error in the bottom of the seventh but would be unable to score as the game was called due to darkness.
The game two tie is the first tie since April 28, 2014 when York tied Washington 6-6 in their season finale … York is 1-2-1 in the first four games of their season-high eight game home stand … Spartan pitching combined to walk 11 hitters in 16 innings … conversely, York had walked just 12 batters over their last 15 games … freshman Ashley Meekins continues to slug the ball at an impressive pace as she now has a team-high 59 total bases thanks to five doubles, five triples, and five home runs … Meekins is slugging at .711 … Meekins has scored a team-high 24 runs from her lead off spot in the York lineup … senior Haley Hirn has drawn a team-high 17 walks as she has an on-base percentage of .400.
The Spartans return to action on Friday afternoon as they host nationally ranked Christopher Newport in a Capital Athletic Conference doubleheader at Spartan Stadium. Game one is slated for a 3:00 pm start at Spartan Stadium. The games were originally scheduled for Sunday but the rainy forecast necessitated a move to Friday.


If you've watched Tidying Up with Marie Kondo, you may or may not be having a small meltdown because of her advice to reduce your book collection.
While Marie Kondo doesn't have any set rules as to how many books you should own, she personally keeps a 30-book collection. However, she doesn't necessarily expect you to do the same. In her book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, she writes, "Keep only the books that will make you happy just to see them on the shelves, the ones that you really love." Once you've followed her advice, you might be wondering what to do with all the books that you no long want.
1. Don't assume that you can donate books to your local library.
I'm as surprised as you are! According to Lifehacker, libraries prefer to purchase brand new books from vendors to ensure their quality. Some libraries (especially those that are underfunded or underserved) will accept used books, but you should always check their online FAQ section or ask a librarian first.
2. Prison libraries, however, are often in need of new or gently used books.
— Prison Book Program provides books that offer entertainment and practical information to prisoners. The organization has an extensive guide to the books they accept so check it out before sending anything!
— LGBT Books to Prisoners provides books to queer and trans people who are incarcerated to help them deal with the isolation and marginalization they may experience in prison.
3. Send children's books, young adult books, and textbooks to kids in need.
— Books for Africa sends new and gently used books to students in Africa. They accept some academic textbooks and reference books.
— Project Night Night provides care packages to homeless children to comfort and help them learn to read. They only accept new children's books that are appropriate for babies, toddlers, and tweens.
— Better World Books sells new and gently used books online to raise funds for non-profit literacy organizations. You can send the books to their office or put them in one of the drop boxes that are a scattered across the US.
4. Or mail them to soldiers, veterans, and military families.
— Operation Paperback provides information about how to ship your books to troops overseas, veterans, or military families.
— Books for Soldiers shares book requests from soldiers and information on how to send them.
5. Sell the books online or at indie bookstores.
The more books you sell, the more new books you can buy! If you're selling online, just be honest about the condition of your books. Take pictures of all sides and ship them in a box or envelope that's sturdy and water-resistant.
— Many indie book stores will offer you cash back or store credit for your used books.
— Check out Amazon's Trade-In store to see which of your books are eligible and how much they will pay for them. Keep in mind that you'll get an Amazon credit rather than cash.
— Punch the ISBN into BookScouter. They will tell you how much they, and other vendors, will pay for your books.
6. Give your books to friends and family.
Even if your books aren't in good enough condition to sell or donate, sharing them with people you love is an awesome way to give your favorite titles a second life. Set up a mini bookstore in your home and invite everyone to shop through them, or provide some food and drinks and turn it into a party! It'll be so much fun to talk up your favorite reads. You can even keep up the habit year-round to keep your book collection at the perfect size.
7. Share the books with your local community.
Donating to local organizations can help you feel connected to and create a positive impact in your community! Homeless shelters, schools, hospitals, and thrift stores often accept book donations. Just give them a call to find out what they need.
8. Remember that most charitable organizations won't want outdated textbooks or books that show a lot of wear and tear.
Most organizations only want new or gently used books, so books that have markings in the margins, water damage, or yellowed or missing pages will most likely not be accepted. They also typically don't want academic books or encyclopedias that are more than a few years old as the information in them may no longer be relevant or correct. That being said, the needs of every organization change quite often so check their website or contact them before making a donation!
9. Try upcycling any books that are way too out of shape to donate.
– Use fabric and elastic to turn a book cover into a case for your tablet.
– Glue the pages together to make an art journal.
– Mount the book on L-brackets to create a levitating bookshelf.
10. And recycle them if there's really no other use for them.
This is your last resort. If the books are really out of shape or totally outdated, and you're not willing to upcycle them, lay them to rest in your recycling bin. Hardcovers are made up of materials that cannot be recycled, so you must remove the cover from a hardback book before recycling the pages. Paperbacks can be thrown right in the bin. However, neither hardbacks nor paperbacks can be recycled if they've gotten wet, which is just another reason to protect your books from the rain!