text:
The Mythical Right to Decency
The Supreme Court passes up a chance to overturn the FCC's unconstitutional speech restrictions.
Jacob Sullum | 6.27.2012 7:00 AM
Pity the poor speech regulators at the Federal Communications Commission, who are charged with sifting through complaints about TV and radio programs in a farcical attempt to determine which references to "sexual or excretory organs or activities" are "patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards for the broadcast medium." Last week the Supreme Court declined to rule on the constitutionality of this charade, thereby forcing the FCC's butt coverers and word bleepers to contemplate a backlog of 1.5 million or so complaints.
"The FCC must now enforce our right to decency on the public airwaves," declared Morality in Media President Patrick Trueman. Unpacking that statement reveals the intellectual and constitutional bankruptcy of this whole censorious enterprise.
Trueman's "right to decency" is, in essence, a right not to be offended, which sits rather uneasily with the right to freedom of speech. The First Amendment would not amount to much if it extended only to inoffensive utterances.
And what about the right to indecency? Profit-driven broadcasters do not air things that offend Patrick Trueman out of a perverse desire to upset him; they do so because they are trying to attract viewers, who evidently have different tastes. Why should Trueman's idea of good television trump theirs?
Here is where the concept of "the public airwaves" comes in: The government graciously allows broadcasters to use a precious public resource and therefore has a right to impose conditions on them. That was the Obama administration's position in the case decided last week, where the Supreme Court overturned three FCC indecency actions on narrow due process grounds but dodged the broader First Amendment issue.
Notably, this view of the airwaves as a public resource was not the basis for the 1978 ruling in which the Court first upheld the federal government's authority to regulate TV and radio content. That decision hinged instead on the premise that broadcasting was "uniquely pervasive" and "uniquely accessible to children"—neither of which is true now that programming is widely and readily available via cable, satellite, Internet, DVD, and DVR.
Unlike broadcasting, none of those media is monitored by the government for naughty words and images, and the Court has made it clear that any attempt to do so would violate the First Amendment. Yet there is no constitutional basis for this distinction, no matter how many times professional puritans like Trueman call the airwaves "public."
After all, satellite TV, cellphones, and the Internet also use "the public airwaves," but that fact does not subject them to content regulation. I used the public airwaves, through a WiFi connection, to transmit this column, but that does not mean I have to worry about being fined if I happen to offend the FCC.
Extending the concept only slightly, coaxial and fiber-optic cables follow public rights of way, periodicals are delivered via public roads, and every speaker's voice is both powered and transmitted by the public air. Does Patrick Trueman have a right to decency in these media as well?
It's true that the government treats broadcasting as a privilege with strings attached, as opposed to a transferable property right, but that decision does not justify itself. If the government has the authority to regulate broadcast content because it controls the airwaves and licenses TV stations, why can't it regulate newspaper content by nationalizing printing presses and licensing journalists?
In addition to violating the First Amendment, the ban on broadcast indecency undermines the rule of law because it is so hard to predict what will offend the FCC. A glimpse of bare buttocks (which are not, technically speaking, "sexual or excretory organs") may be deemed indecent in a cop show but not in a war movie. Four-letter words that can trigger multimillion-dollar fines may be tolerated if the FCC deems them artistically or journalistically justified. Such embarrassingly subjective, unjustly arbitrary, and unconstitutionally speech-chilling judgments are unavoidable as long as the government insists on protecting the mythical right to decency.
Jacob Sullum is a senior editor at Reason and a nationally syndicated columnist. Follow him on Twitter.
NEXT: Brickbat: That Will Teach Him
Jacob Sullum is a senior editor at Reason.
PoliticsNanny StateCultureCivil LibertiesPolicyIndecencyFCCSupreme CourtTelevisionFree SpeechConstitution


text:
Study links rising heroin deaths to 2010 OxyContin reformulation
Author: Patrick Gibbons
Efforts by Purdue Pharma in 2010 to make its blockbuster prescription opioid painkiller OxyContin less prone to abuse did nothing to reduce the number of drug overdose deaths across the nation. In fact, according to researchers at the University of Notre Dame, the reformulation of OxyContin instead fueled a heroin epidemic that continues to claim lives at an increasing rate.
In a working paper circulated by the National Bureau of Economic Research, researchers at Notre Dame and Boston University studied the rise in heroin death rates since 2010 in relation to the reformulation of OxyContin, a prescription opioid introduced in 1996 to treat acute or chronic pain. They found that while prescription opioid consumption stopped rising in August 2010, heroin overdose deaths began climbing the following month, and the rate of growth was greater in areas with greater pre-reformulation access to heroin and opioids.
"A key component of the federal government's response to the opioid epidemic has been encouraging the development of abuse-deterrent formulations of drugs," said William N. Evans, co-author of the study and Keough-Hesburgh Professor of Economics at Notre Dame. "Our work suggests that as long as there are readily available substitutes for prescription opioids, such as heroin, reformulating painkillers will do little to mitigate the effect of the crisis."
When used as directed, prescription opioids offer an effective treatment for acute and chronic pain, but they are known to be addictive and have been associated with a rapid rise in prescription drug overdoses and deaths. OxyContin became popular for recreational use and abuse because the drug offered much more of the active ingredient, oxycodone, than other prescription opioids and the pills could easily be manipulated to access the entire store of the active ingredient.
In early August 2010, the makers of OxyContin, Purdue Pharma, pulled the existing drug from the market and replaced it with an abuse-deterrent formulation that made it difficult to manipulate. However, the researchers discovered the reformulation led many abusers to simply shift to readily available and cheaper substitute — heroin.
"Although the abuse-deterrent formulation for OxyContin reduced prescription opioid mortality," Evans said, "the movement to heroin as a result of the reformulation meant there was a one-for-one substitution of heroin deaths for opioid deaths."
The NBER paper was co-authored by Ethan Lieber, assistant professor of economics at Notre Dame, and Patrick Power, a graduate student at Boston University.
Contact: Jessica Sieff, assistant director of media relations, 574-631-3933, jsieff@nd.edu
Originally published by Patrick Gibbons at news.nd.edu on April 09, 2018.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


When it comes to the reputation of Yale, it would be hard for anyone to say they don't trust them. The largest reason that you can't take a shot at Yale is that they are widely considered to be the creators of the modern day pin tumbler lock. That means that all the technically better brands are standing on the shoulders of these giants. No matter if you are using a Kwikset or a Medeco, they all owe their design to the work of Linus Yale, Jr. and Henry R. Towne. This is to say, if you trust the locks you are using on your door, or would trust any brand on this list, you are also trusting the work of Yale. Yale locks themselves are well constructed and often come with two or so spool pins. These locks have become more popular on in the UK in recent years, and eventually, Yale became the colloquial term for household keys and lock, similar to the way that facial tissue is referred to in the States as Kleenex. When a name brand becomes the shorthand for the entire range of products, you can be sure people trust it.


text:
AstroBicocca
The University of Milano-Bicocca is one of the top universities in Italy and it is located in the modern and international city of Milan. Below you can find more information on how to study with us (Master and PhD courses in English) and on job opportunities to work within our group.
We offer an international Master Course in Astrophysics and Space Physics. The master lasts for two years and all lectures are held in English. The last 8 months are dedicated to working on an original research project leading to a master thesis to be defended in front of a committee. Information on how to get admitted can be found here.
Every summer a number of PhD fellowships is offered for enrolling in the PhD in Physics and Astronomy (starting on November 1st of each year). The call is published in May on the Doctoral School web page. The selection is based on the candidate CV and on an interview. The interviews are typically held in July and the results of the selection are published at the beginning of September. More information on how to apply can be found here.
We currently do not have openings for postdocs or faculty positions in our group, but there are national and European calls that can provide you with a fellowship to work with us:
Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship (for post-doc positions)
Rita Levi di Montalcini (for tenure-track positions)
We also remark that holders of ERC grants may also get a position as associate (for starting grants) or full professor (for consolidator and advanced grants) in our group. The overheads in the budget are typically almost completely returned to the PI as the university of Milano-Bicocca retains only a small fraction of them. The typical cost for hiring a 2-year postdoc is approximately 80 k EUR and 50 k EUR for a 3-year PhD student.
This website was designed, developed and maintained by UFFICIO WEB - AREA SISTEMI INFORMATIVI
Copyright © 2022 AstroBicocca All rights are reserved.
Privacy	| Accessibility	| Accessibility Statement


text:
Glonass-M satellite readies for launch
Next in a series of Glonass-M navigation satellites designed and built by Information Satellite Systems – Reshetnev Company has been delivered to the Plesetsk cosmodrome.
Glonass-M №53 left ISS-Reshetnev's facilities on April 22. Accompanied by the company's technical team and housed in a dedicated high technology container, it was shipped to the Yemelyanovo Airport of Krasnoyarsk and then flew to the Plesetsk cosmodrome aboard a cargo aircraft IL-76.
Soon ISS-Reshetnev technicians will begin preparing the satellite for its launch which is expected to take place in late May.
Glonass-M №53 will be placed into orbit as part of the program aimed to maintain the orbital constellation of Russian global satellite navigation system GLONASS.


text:
package badger

import (
	"github.com/akhenakh/oureadb/store"
	"github.com/dgraph-io/badger"
)

// Reader implements bleve/Store/Reader interface
type Reader struct {
	itrOpts badger.IteratorOptions
	s       *Store
	txn     *badger.Txn
}

// Get fetch the value of the specified key from the store
func (r *Reader) Get(k []byte) ([]byte, error) {
	item, err := r.txn.Get(k)
	if err != nil {
		return nil, nil
	}
	return item.ValueCopy(nil)
}

// MultiGet returns multiple values for the specified keys
func (r *Reader) MultiGet(keys [][]byte) ([][]byte, error) {
	return store.MultiGet(r, keys)
}

// PrefixIterator initialize a new prefix iterator
func (r *Reader) PrefixIterator(k []byte) store.KVIterator {
	itr := r.txn.NewIterator(r.itrOpts)
	rv := PrefixIterator{
		iterator: itr,
		prefix:   k,
	}
	rv.iterator.Seek(k)
	return &rv
}

// RangeIterator initialize a new range iterator
func (r *Reader) RangeIterator(start, end []byte) store.KVIterator {
	itr := r.txn.NewIterator(r.itrOpts)
	rv := RangeIterator{
		iterator: itr,
		start:    start,
		stop:     end,
	}
	rv.iterator.Seek(start)
	return &rv
}

// Close closes the current reader and do some cleanup
func (r *Reader) Close() error {
	return r.txn.Commit()
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
package ca.mcgill.ecse429.conformancetest.statemodel;

public class State
{

  //------------------------
  // MEMBER VARIABLES
  //------------------------

  //State Attributes
  private String name;

  //------------------------
  // CONSTRUCTOR
  //------------------------

  public State(String aName)
  {
    name = aName;
  }

  //------------------------
  // INTERFACE
  //------------------------

  public boolean setName(String aName)
  {
    boolean wasSet = false;
    name = aName;
    wasSet = true;
    return wasSet;
  }

  public String getName()
  {
    return name;
  }

  public void delete()
  {}

  public String toString()
  {
	  String outputString = "";
    return super.toString() + "["+
            "name" + ":" + getName()+ "]"
     + outputString;
  }
}


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You can initiate a return for new and unopened items within 15 days of delivery for a refund. To qualify for a refund, items must be in new and unused condition with all original materials and/or accessories. If a return is not received at our processing facility within 30 days, it may be subject to a partial refund. You will be responsible for return shipping costs. However, if the return is a result of a fulfillment error, product defect, or damage incurred during shipping, we will refund the full cost of the merchandise. We will provide a pre-paid return shipping label for Non-Buyer's Remorse returns. All returns are subject to inspection, and if found not to be an error on our part, the return shipping costs will be withheld from your refund.
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Lestat de Lioncourt ❤. . Wallpaper and background images in the Lestat club tagged: photo lestat de lioncourt vampire interview with a vampire movie tom cruise gif.
What if there is no hell?
The actor's part - Why the hate on Stuart Townsend?


text:
en down
Become a UN Volunteer
Volunteer in your country
Engage a UN Volunteer
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United Nations partners
UNV funding partners
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UNV and the private sector
Volunteerism and the Global Goals
About UNV
Our mission: Mobilize volunteers
Our mission: Promote volunteerism
UN Community Volunteers foster the economic development of their communities with UNDP
UN Community Volunteer Denis Simah collecting taxes from Bagassi residents in southern Burkina Faso.
UNV, 2021
Mariam Sanogo, UN Volunteer Communication Specialist
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In Burkina Faso, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) recruited 20 UN Community Volunteers in 2019. Why? To improve the performance of local governments in reducing poverty through support to citizen participation, decentralization and local development. Denis Gnoumou Simah is one of them. He assists the Bagassi commune located in one of the poorest regions of the country.
To address the commune's difficulties in mobilizing resources, Denis recommended a new strategy to the local council: to engage non-resident nationals to recover taxes and strengthen economic development.
"The commune of Bagassi had the lowest mobilization resources rate in the region in 2019. As local economic development depends on the capacity of communities to improve their revenues, I, therefore, suggested that we focus our efforts on non-resident nationals, to improve recovery of taxes (e.g. property tax, micro-business contributions and residence tax).
With the support and full participation of local actors, Denis explains that he first contacted the local agents of the treasury and taxes to identify the types of taxes to be collected and potential taxpayers outside the commune. Then, he held individual meetings to raise awareness among the population, showing the value of their contribution to local development. Once the communities joined the initiative, he carried out a mission to collect the various taxes.
The success of Denis' initiative is immediately perceptible and measurable through the doubling of the commune's revenues despite the Covid-19 pandemic: from 12.36 per cent in 2018 to 27.86 per cent in 2020.
Denis' support to the commune of Bagassi was not limited to tax recovery. He collected more than US $3,600 from a mining company for a sanitation project benefiting the Bagassi women's association. He also trained 30 young people and women from the Vocational Training Center in entrepreneurship and developed five business plans for applicant cooperative societies. Denis' actions inspired the City Council of Bagassi, which wants to fund a position at the end of his UN Volunteer assignment, in order to build on his achievements.
The commune has benefited from the services of our UN Community Volunteer Denis in several areas, including resource mobilization. He has been a great support to civil registration, allowing us to considerably reduce the delay in delivering certificates from 14 to 3 days. In addition, he is the manager of our website, which helps us to share our results with the whole world. So naturally, our wish is that he continues to work with us. --Mr Nougtara Somwaoga, Secretary General of the Bagassi Commune
The fact that I was assigned within my commune allowed me to have easy contact with the taxpayers, then a participatory approach with the different actors to get these results. I hope that the Bagassi commune will capitalize on these achievements and engage the diaspora to mobilize even more.
UN Community Volunteers
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text:
Vulture Lists
Vulture Insiders
Vulture Festival
cameos Oct. 29, 2014
Neil Patrick Harris and David Burtka Will Be on American Horror Story: Freak Show
By Lindsey Weber
Now imagine them in scary clown outfits or something. Photo: Neilson Barnard/Getty Images
After a bunch of not-so-subtle hints pointed directly at American Horror Story creator Ryan Murphy, Neil Patrick Harris will make a cameo on this season's Freak Show. Woo-hoo! Turns out, if you're famous and make a good enough argument (read: "Please"), then you can pretty much cameo on whatever you want. Neil will bring along his husband David Burtka in the show's final two episodes "as a chameleon salesman." Burtka will appear in the show's season finale, TV Line reports, as part of "a sexy storyline with Jessica Lange's batty chanteuse."
Will Neil Patrick Harris Appear on American Horror Story: Freak Show?
david burtka
Neil Patrick Harris Will Be on AHS: Freak Show
Game of Thrones, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel Lead 2019 Emmy Nominations
Emmy Nominations 2019: The 24 Biggest Surprises and Snubs
New on Netflix: July 2019
The Bachelorette Recap: Breaking Faith
The 100 Best Movies on Netflix Right Now
summer forever! Yesterday at 5:12 p.m.
Peter Parker's Summer Euro Trip Was Okay, But Lizzie McGuire's Was Better We must pay our respects to the once and future queen of summer school-trip shenanigans: Miss Elizabeth Brooke McGuire.
casting call Yesterday at 5:09 p.m.
Harry Styles in Talks for The Little Mermaid's Prince Eric, Isn't That Neat? He might kiss the girl.
now streaming Yesterday at 5:00 p.m.
The 30 Best Action Movies on Netflix Right Now Triple Frontier, The Terminator, The Dark Knight, and more.
emmy awards 2019 Yesterday at 4:12 p.m.
Fleabag's Sian Clifford on Her First Emmy Nomination: 'I Hit the Floor and Wept' "Find your champions, because Phoebe Waller-Bridge is mine."
Mandy Moore Will Not Let a Rattlesnake Ruin Her Emmy Nomination "My husband's like, 'There's a snake outside.'"
t4or Yesterday at 3:22 p.m.
More Thor in Store, Taika Waititi to Direct Thor 4 But his Akira adaptation has been put on hold.
Emmy Nominations 2019: The 24 Biggest Surprises and Snubs Yay, Fleabag! But really, no Rhea Seehorn?
All of the Best TVs on Sale for Amazon Prime Day All of the best TV deals from Amazon's Prime Day sale in one place.
HBO Takes Back the Emmy Nominations Lead From Netflix With a Record-Setting Haul Both networks had their best-ever year for nominations, but Game of Thrones' record-setting 32 nods helped put cable's premium pioneer back on top.
trailer mix Yesterday at 2:23 p.m.
Storm Reid Has to Solve Her Own Murder in the Don't Let Go Trailer And David Oyelowo is going to help her.
sketch comedy Yesterday at 2:14 p.m.
Sketch-Comedy Team Astronomy Club Is Headed to Netflix With some help from Kenya Barris.


How To Actually Find Really Unique Things To Do In London | From Europe and beyond.
The English language is like London: proudly barbaric yet deeply civilised, too, common yet royal, vulgar yet processional, sacred yet profane – Stephen Fry.
If we're being honest then London is a pretty bloody great City isn't it? You can do something different every night of the week for a year and still not run out of new places to go and new things to do.
For a travel blogger I'm pretty bad at getting out and going to new places, even though I always say I will try somewhere new I end up sticking in my comfortable zone of the same places to go to with my friends. So every now and then I have to give myself a big old kick up the arse and force myself to find something new and fun to go to.
So without further adeu here are my not so secret ways to find some fun and quirky new things to do in London.
This isn't exactly the biggest secret, but it is still one of my favourite websites to find new things to do.
I imagine the Timeout team to be some of the coolest people you've ever met who sit on a table together drinking overpriced coffee and discuss the latest kooky openings that they're going to that week in a very Mean girls "you can't sit with us" type way.
They really do know the good places to go and check out though and everyone has heard of Timeout so sometimes it's worth checking the established stuff.
Ever since I bought a ticket for an event through this website I've been signed up to a mailing list where I receive an email every week with the top events for that week. It's the one mailing list that I actually don't mind being on as it's actually a super helpful email with anything from pop up restaurants and bars, to comedy, brunches, markets etc.
This is how I find a lot of the stuff I'm gonna try out in London like a 1920's themed event at a secret venue that I'm going to next weekend.
There are some pretty great London Instagrammers who post about places that you've never been to before. Here are my faves.
He's got a keen eye for details that you've never noticed yourself. He's a restaurant and bar hopping dude who works in kid's TV and quite possibly swallows Timeout every morning.
Her page just honestly makes me wonder what I've been doing with my life. It's gorgeous and will remind you why London is one of the best cities in the entire world.
I am probably one of the biggest haters of mornings. Especially in the winter months, so this account pops a big ol' smile on my face and makes me feel like everythings okay.
Sometimes I like to just search 'London' on facebook and it fills my feed with all the latest things posted there. I don't necessarily find 'quirky' events to head to and attend but I'll quite often see pictures of new viewpoints that I've not experienced myself yet.
Bloggers, magazines etc are always getting invited to new openings and stuff. We really are quite in the know and if you have any writing ability and are able to send samples of your work then you could have a chance of getting in on them too.
The really well known ones will have more invitations then they can physically attend themself and so are always looking for help and people who may be able to attend and write about it for them!
Groups like Girls Love Travel and Travel Addiction have hundreds of thousands of members and so are always being posted in about new places. It's worth joining them and searching them specifically for posts on London or asking in the group for people to hit you with their best off the grid places to visit.
Again, this is hardly a secret.
But Buzzfeed seems to be absolutely obsessed with London and write about it frequently, which is no surprise as they have an office there. You can search it for posts specifically about London and you will find anything from the best gin bars, to where to go to spend a night at a Harry Potter themed hotel!
How do you find things to get up to in London that wouldn't be in a Lonely Planet book?
Stepping Through A Time Machine To The 1920's At Candlelight Club, London | From Europe and beyond.


You know it is the month of August when the days are sunny and warm, but the nights remind us that it won't be long till the leaves turn yellow and orange. This is the time to harvest the fresh, delicious vegetables the soil has produced over the summer. On our Summer Get Away, we travelled to Lislerud farm to do just that.
The birds and the bees, farmers and business. Why viable agriculture is important for soil, society and you. Never in history have so few produced so much. Successful streamlining you may think? But what effect does this have on our food? And what is in our food, actually? What do we really know about the complex context in which our food grows?
October 2011 we visited Nordgard Aukrust Farm in Lom. The invitation to experience the offerings of autumn, as well as a cooking course with Maaemos' Esben Holmboe Bang tempted Food Studio to Nordgard Aukrust Farm during the past harvest season.


UFC legend Demetrious Johnson stole the show after having his 13-fight win streak controversially ended, with an act of class that had fans in awe.
'Mighty Mouse' Johnson and Henry Cejudo produced one of the great fights on Sunday (AEST) in the co-main event of UFC 227 at Staples Center.
It was a brilliant performance by Cejudo, who was stopped in the first round when he first met Johnson at UFC 197.
After a loss to Joseph Benavidez that he believed he won, Cejudo defeated Wilson Reis and Sergio Pettis to earn another crack at the only champion the division had known.
However the majority of praise for the match was given to the fallen champion, 'Mighty Mouse', who responded to his shock loss with an act of 'pure class'.
While a majority of fighters in the UFC argue the scoring, and refuse to accept a tight loss such as this one, Johnson appeared completely content with the decision, even while his own fans blew up.
While Cejudo's team erupted in jubilation upon hearing they'd won, Johnson genuinely applauded the new champion.
This classy act wasn't missed by fight fans and expert, with dual UFC champion Daniel Cormier leading the charge, saying every UFC fighter could "learn from" the example set by Johnson.
I wake up this morning and first thought is wow how crazy was it to watch @MightyMouseUFC handle losing that fight. Every fighter can learn from that. DJ you are a champion in every sense of the word. Great fight, great champion. Ur the man DJ!
Mighty Mouse was quick to thank Cormier for his kind words, as thousands of fans backed up the assertions of Cormier.
@MightyMouseUFC @DominickCruz the classiest fighters in losing their belts I've seen. I can see both reclaiming them very soon too!
A class act from an amazing champion. Can't wait for your return DJ.
Pure class from two of the best of all time.
The bout was extraordinarily close and was probably determined by the judges' view of Cejudo's takedowns.
He took Johnson down five times in the bout and had his best sequence at the end of the fourth as he was landing some ground-and-pound on the elusive champion.
Cejudo, though, had said prior to the fight that the only thing that had beaten him in the first fight with Johnson was his lack of experience, and he showed that on Saturday. When he needed it most, he was able to get some offence on Johnson as the fight went down the stretch.


text:
BlackRock Gets Green Light to Start Offering Mutual Funds in China
The U.S. money manager is among the first foreign firms to reach the milestone in China
BlackRock has made expansion in China a priority.
Photo: Jeenah Moon/Bloomberg News
Quentin Webb
@qtwebb
quentin.webb@wsj.com
BlackRock Inc. won approval from Chinese regulators to begin operations at its wholly owned mutual-fund business in the country, paving the way for the New York-based asset manager to start selling funds to individual investors in China before the end of this year.
The go-ahead is the latest in a series of steps taken by China to allow U.S. banks and investment firms, such as JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc., greater access to its markets following last year's trade accord between Washington and Beijing.


text:
'Mahabharat' actor Praveen Kumar Sobti, who played Bheem dies at 74
Praveen Kumar Sobti was also an athelete and represented India across various athletic events in hammer and discus throw and even won four medals at the Asian Games, including two gold medals in 1966 and 1970.Praveen Kumar Sobti was also an athelete and represented India across various athletic events in hammer and discus throw and even won four medals at the Asian Games, including two gold medals in 1966 and 1970.
Previous: Mahesh Babu's film 'Sarkaru Vaari Paata' first song 'Kalaavati' to release on Valentine's Day
Next: 'Parmatma ka diya bahut hai,' when 'Mahabharat's' Praveen Kumar Sobti dismissed news of facing financial woes


This Science Day we learned all about Keeping Healthy. We designed and made healthy fruit smoothies, we discussed and created how to make a healthy pizza. We talked about how to keep our bodies clean, fit and looked after, Mrs Burgess even made us get our hearts racing with a big work out! We discovered bones we never knew we had and matched up x-rays to a huge skeleton. Mr Kershaw brought in one of his x-rays for us to look at. We talked about our Five Senses and how special they are, we did a blindfolded taste test where we used our sense of smell, touch and taste to decide what was in our mouths! We also made fruit kebabs with Miss Baldwin, they were delicious!
A very educational couple of days!
To all the Reception parents and carers, the children love you berry much!
On Friday the Nursery children got to show off their fantastic singing to their parents and carers in their Mother's Day concert.
The children worked SO hard learning all of the songs and it was the first time they had ever been on the stage in front of anyone. All of the children behaved exceptionally well and gave a brilliant performance.
If you missed the performance or simply want to re-watch, then take a look below.
Can you can spot Week 4 of the 9 rhyme challenge – Jack and Jill?
As part of our Art week this week, 4 Edison decided to head outside. We are looking at the paintings of Henri Rousseau. Rousseau's paintings are all based on nature and the natural world. After looking at some of his works, we took our sketch books and sketching pencils and headed outside. We looked at the nature around school and sketched some of the patterns and shapes we could see. After that, we came back and added to our sketches. Rousseau is famous for using his imagination to create paintings so we tried this technique too. Rousseau is famous for saying that no one taught him to paint, nature taught him to paint and we really enjoyed being out in nature to test this idea out.
Take a look at the video's and see what you think.


text:
Home News Crime Ato Essien heads to the Supreme Court
Ato Essien heads to the Supreme Court
SOURCEDailyguide
Founder of defunct Capital Bank, William Ato Essien
The embattled founder and Chief Executive Officer of defunct Capital Bank, William Ato Essien, has taken his fight to the Supreme Court seeking to temporarily halt his trial pending the determination of his appeal.
His lawyer has filed an appeal against the decision of the High Court to admit an audio recording of a confrontation between the accused and the Special Investigative Team into evidence, arguing that that admission of the tape will be injurious to his case.
He tried to convince the court to stay its hands while the Court of Appeal determines the matter, but the application moved by Baffour Gyau Bonsu Ashia, counsel for the accused, was dismissed by the court presided over by Justice Eric Kyei Baffour, a Court of Appeal judge sitting as an additional High Court Judge.
His lawyer has now filed two applications at the Supreme Court, with the first seeking leave of the court to file the application for stay of proceedings and the second is the substantive application for stay of proceedings. Both have been fixed for today.
The court last Thursday dismissed an application filed by his lawyer to stay proceedings pending the determination of his appeal against the court admitting an audio recording into evidence.
The court on June 9, 2022, admitted into evidence an audio recording which captured a confrontation between Ato Essien and the Special Investigations Team during his interrogation as part of investigations.
The audio was tended by Rev. Fitzgerald Odonkor, one of the two persons standing trial alongside Ato Essien for allegedly stealing from the GH¢620 million given to the defunct bank by the Bank of Ghana as liquidity support.
Ato Essien is on trial with the defunct bank's former Managing Director, Fitzgerald Odonkor, as well as Tetteh Nettey, a former Managing Director of MC Management Services owned by Mr. Essien, for conspiracy to steal and stealing charges.
Mr. Ashia argued that the motion raises serious legal issues to be determined at the appellate court, adding that it also raised special circumstances to warrant a grant of the application to stay the trial pending the determination of the appeal.
Justice Kyei Baffour, in his ruling held that "the content shows that he was cautioned before he spoke, and that he spoke in the presence of a lawyer and a state attorney. The claim that the interlocutory appeal raises serious issues of law cannot be correct. I dismiss the application as totally without merit."
ato essien
Court accepts Ato Essien's GH¢90m repayment terms
Martin Kpebu commends judge for rejecting Ato Essien's settlement with State
Ato Essien, 2 others face judgement on Nov. 17
Supreme Court throws out Ato Essien
Capital Bank trial: High Court dismisses Ato Essien's Stay of Proceedings


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'Abd al-Hamīd ibn Turk - Arabisch wiskundige
 Abdülhamit I - Ottomaanse sultan van 1774 tot 1789
 Abdülhamit II - Ottomaanse sultan van 1876 tot 1909
 Abdul Hamid (politicus) - politicus uit Bangladesh
 Abdul Hamid (1927) (1927-2019) - Pakistaanse hockeyspeler
 Abdul Hamid (1942) (1942) - Pakistaanse hockeyspeler
 Omar Karami, voluit Omar Abdul Hamid Karami - president van Libanon 1990-1992

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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Voting continues in Village Council elections
Download Game Killer Latest Version For Android
Company selling real estate in Belize accused of scamming millions
Published by Chris Garcia at June 11, 2016
Posted: Saturday, June 11, 2016. 3:13 pm CST.
Posted: Saturday, June 10, 2016. 3:14 p.m. CST
By BBN Staff: A real estate company, DreamScapes Belize, operated by several foreigners with questionable backgrounds has come under scrutiny and been slapped with several lawsuits after being accused of scamming buyers out of millions of dollars in a case of real estate fraud.
DreamScapes has also been linked to two firms named in the "Panama Papers" leak from the Mossack-Fonseca firm several months ago.
DreamScapes allegedly collected over US $10 million from American and Canadian investors who wanted to buy dream homes in Belize. DreamScapes advertised lots for up to US $30,000 and promised model homes, access roads, a potable water supply, waste treatment facility, a school, police and fire stations, an 18-hole golf course, clubhouse and a marina facility with dockage, none of which exist.
The site where the properties were supposed to be built is in the Stann Creek district. There has been no development of the area apart from a DreamScape sign which has been there from 2008, according to litigants who brought the suit against DreamScape.
Mixed up in the dispute are a pair of offshore companies set up by Mossack Fonseca, the Panamanian law firm at the center of the Panama Papers scandal, and a Florida-based skin-care company that is now defunct. It's not exactly clear what role the offshores played in the drama, although one of them — registered in the Bahamas — was a holding company for the Belize properties, according to a Mossack Fonseca file. More could come out in pending litigation.
The shareholders involved in the DreamScape drama includes a disbarred lawyer whose penny stock offering ran afoul of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, another disbarred lawyer who went to prison for scheming with mobsters, and two Palm Beach County-based company directors — one past, one present — each of whom blames the other for the project's troubles.
The lawsuit names director and founder Clifton Goodrich and Kenneth Dunn, among others. Dunn is a lawyer with a troubled past. In 2009, he pleaded guilty to a racketeering conspiracy charge in connection with a money-laundering scheme orchestrated by the Florida branch of the Bonanno crime family.
Dunn, who blamed a cocaine habit for his transgressions, would be sentenced to 43 months in prison and surrender his law license.
Goodrich said he hooked up with Dunn after the disbarred lawyer served his time. They connected with previous lot buyers and convinced some to ante up an additional $50,000 to build model homes. In exchange for letting the homes be used as a showcase for one year, the buyers got discounts on the retail price.
Colm King, the current chief executive officer of the DreamScapes project and a defendant in the buyers' lawsuit, said the developers are in negotiations over financing and expect to be ready to begin construction in 60 days. He blames the current problems on Goodrich, who was forced out of DreamScapes in 2013.
According to the files, both King and Goodrich had or have ties to the offshore companies. One offshore, DreamScapes Holdings of Belize, was incorporated in the Bahamas in 2008. The other, DreamScapes of Belize, was incorporated later in the Seychelles, a popular offshore haven in the Indian Ocean.
Reginald Young stabbed by male companion


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Home>Management and Operation>Marketing
Michaels Wilder Offers Free Whitepaper on Customer-Service Excellence in Self-Storage
TAGS: Customer Service News
Today Michaels Wilder, a Phoenix-based marketing and talent-management services company, launched a free whitepaper through InsideSelfStorage.com titled, "Recipe for Customer-Service Excellence: Find With Care, Hire With Care, Retain With Care Repeat." The whitepaper focuses on the importance of customer service in the self-storage industry and how facility owners and operators can provide the best service possible.
The quality of a company's customer service directly impacts its current and future financial stability and potential. Since the single greatest influence over customers' experience is the quality of customer-facing staff, it's imperative to find, hire and retain top-quality talent for front-line staff and management positions.
The whitepaper addresses:
How customer service affects the financial stability of small, mid-size and large companies
How to find and hire top-quality talent for a company's customer-facing staff positions
How to retain quality customer-service staff and what to do when a key employee leaves
The whitepaper can be downloaded for free at www.insideselfstorage.com/Whitepapers.aspx.
Michaels Wilder, which provides Internet, mobile, print and broadcast advertising solutions, has been in business for more than 20 years. Serving large and small clients across a wide range of industries, the company is also a Certified Marketing Representative for Yellow Pages advertising and offers recruitment and human resources consulting.
For more than 20 years, Inside Self-Storage (ISS) has provided informational resources to self-storage owners, managers, developers and investors. Its educational offerings include a monthly magazine, bi-annual tradeshows, an extensive website, an education institute and Self-Storage Talk, the industrys largest online community.
Rejuvenating Your Digital Marketing for 2021: 5 Things Self-Storage Operators Must Do
Time to Update Your Facility Promos! See How Nona Self Storage Puts Its COVID Efforts on Camera


It's a papercraft activity in English for students at Primary School, in order to introduce them to British Traditional Fish and Chips. The activity introduces craft verbs as 'glue', 'cut', 'fold' and specific vocabulary as 'fish', 'chips'... The activity includes a brief history about these kind of shops and explanation about this traditional British Food.
The present downloadable handout is recommended for elementary school students at Elementary (A1) and Pre-intermediate (A2) level. It is great for consolidating Verbs: Action verbs in English, and was designed for honing your groups' Speaking and Reading skills. It is focused on the theme of Food.


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Home › Book Showcase › Let's Get Ready for Bed by Michael W. Smith – Book Showcase
Let's Get Ready for Bed by Michael W. Smith – Book Showcase
I received a copy of "Let's Get Ready for Bed" ($12.99 value) in exchange for this promotion. Any opinions expressed here are honest and my own. This post may also contain affiliate links. This means that when you click on a link and make a purchase, our blog receives a small commission. Thank you for your support!
Let's Get Ready for Bed is the second book from Nurturing Steps, an infant and toddler series founded by multi-Platinum, three-time grammy Award winning artist and best-selling author, Michael W. Smith.
This picture book is a cute, quick, bedtime story for little ones. In this story, Sleepy Puppy's friends watch him prepare for his usual bedtime routine as he gets ready to go to sleep…bathing, jammies, brushing teeth, prayer time, reading a book, etc. But when he finishes his checklist, he's wide awake. His friends then step in to serenade him to sleep.
Even though it is a cute story, but it can seem odd at times as the book doesn't incorporate parents and the peeking friends might seem a big strange, but all in all it reinstates the bedtime routines and preparing.
Little ones will also enjoy the illustrations and will be able to relate to their own important bedtime routines.
Let's Get Ready for Bed can be purchased at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
Michael W. Smith has been releasing new music regularly and performing around the world to sold-out crowds for the last 30+ years. During his storied career, he's written 32 No. 1 singles, been honored with three Grammy Awards and 45 Dove Awards, was inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame and has sold more than 15 million albums. His most recent USA Today, Yahoo! Music and Billboard-acclaimed studio album A Million Lights and Parade, Good Morning America – featured live worship album Surrounded have together become his 30th and 31st Top 10 hits on billboard's Top Christian Albums chart, more than any other solo artist in history. He's also given back to the global community. Michael has raised funds to battle AIDS in Africa; started Rocketown, a safe haven for young people in Tennessee to meet and find hope; and has helped more than 70,000 children through Compassion International. He has also written several best-selling books, including Old Enough to Know and Friends are Friends Forever. He and his wife, Debbie have five children and live in Nashville.
Mike Nawrocki is a co-creator of the popular series VeggieTales. Acting as the voice of Larry the Cucumber and several other VeggieTales characters, he also wrote and directed dozens of episodes including the brands, two feature films: Jonah and the Pirates Who Don't Do Anything. He further created, wrote and directed most of the popular "Silly Songs with Larry" segments, including fan favorites "His Cheeseburger" and "The Hairbrush Song." In addition, he has authored many VeggieTales books and CD projects and is currently focused on developing new children's properties centered around fun characters, engaging storytelling and wholesome values. Nawrocki resides in Franklin, TN with his wife and two children.
For more information, go to www.nurturingsteps.com.
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Categories: Book Showcase, Books, Children's Books
Tags: book promotions, Books, Children's Books, parenting
Hello, World! Ocean Life and How Do Apples Grow? – Book Promotions
The Book of No Worries – Book Review


The IT industry is one of the most dynamic industries where companies are under constant pressure to keep up with the rapid pace of technological advances and trends. However, information databases on IT companies aren't always up-to-date. Therefore, navigating the IT channel to find potential channel partners to take a product to market is often a formidable challenge.
According to the latest IT spending outlook from Gartner, worldwide IT spending is projected to grow 3.1 percent over 2013 levels to reach $3.8 trillion in 2014. In 2013, spending on devices (including PCs, smartphones, mobile phones and tablets) contracted 1.2 percent to $669 billion while spending on enterprise software grew 5.2 percent to $300 billion. Small and mid-sized businesses have also become massive customers of IT products and services.
However, finding the right channel partner to tap into this $3.8 trillion IT market is a huge challenge. Database companies like DiscoverOrg and Fossa LLC have done a good job of developing specialized databases of IT buyers, but they offer no solution for breaking into the IT channel partner market.
In 2012, I met Henry Schuck, co-founder of DiscoverOrg, an IT buyer-focused information database. Their product is geared to support technology vendors who sell into large, midsized, and small businesses. IT decision makers for each company are made available with their respective organizational charts, along with direct dial phone number, e-mail address, job description, and exact job title. They also provide a verified contact list as well as a verified background report. The background report covers what technologies the company uses (for example, SharePoint, Exchange, SalesForce, etc.) and real time projects and initiatives at the company. Founded in 2007, DiscoverOrg ramped up to revenue of $14 million in 2012. The company is 100 percent bootstrapped.
But what about the other end of the spectrum? How does an IT company find a potential IT channel partner that can sell its products?
In the 1M/1M program, I came across a company that is looking to do just that. Fossa LLC was founded by Clark Richter, who has spent over 20 years in channel development, sales management, and marketing roles at Check Point Software, Citrix Systems, Hitachi and Websense. Clark knows the channel development problem at a visceral level, and has lived and breathed the issue of identifying, qualifying and engaging channel partners.
To his frustration, traditional databases were inadequate to address the needs of channel managers like himself. In addition, they are outdated. An IT value-added reseller (VAR) or system integrator company dealing with a certain technology a decade ago probably specializes in some other technology today, but the database would still profile its earlier business. Also, there would be inadequate detail as to the specialization of the company, whether it was in security, cloud computing, or analytics.
While IT-focused databases like DiscoverOrg focus on the IT buyers at larger companies, broader databases and new models like InsideView, NetProspex, and Jigsaw/Salesforce.com are crowdsourced, with a lot of contacts but little detail on the companies to be able to address channel development needs.
To plug the gap in the market, Clark worked with his brother, a database developer, to build a comprehensive and up-to-date database of IT channel companies with detailed profiles of relevant terminology and vendor relationships. After working for two years on the idea, they launched the Channel Navigator database in February 2012. It was on track to achieve revenue of $100,000 in 2013.
The Channel Navigator database includes 25,000 companies, 80 percent of which are SMBs with fewer than 20 employees.
Currently, the company has 33 active customers, including Alcatel-Lucent and McAfee. Its customers are primarily channel marketing organizations that pay licensing fees and channel sales organizations that use the online tools. The company also sells to earlier stage companies that primarily want the data or consulting services rather than ongoing access. Its top IT industry target segments are companies selling SMB solutions, security, cloud services, and solutions targeted at managed service providers.
Trends like cloud hosting and platform ecosystems enable startups to build businesses rapidly. When it comes to penetrating the market with these solutions, entrepreneurs need to start thinking about building effective channel partnerships.
Channel Navigator is a strategic tool that ought to be in the arsenal of all channel managers working on building far reaching channels for their products.
Nice piece on Fossa — I hadn't heard of them until a previous blog you wrote a few weeks ago. Thank you for putting them on my radar.
– Jigsaw/SFDC — The service was renamed Data.com several years ago. While the contact data is UGC, the company data is licensed from D&B, a traditional database vendor.
– InsideView — They aren't a UGC vendor but an aggregator of licensed content most of which comes from traditional vendors (Equifax, Reuters, BusinessWeek). Only a small percentage of their licensed data is UGC (NetProspex contacts). Where InsideView excels is in social media tracking (Buzz), sales triggers, and a LinkedIn like connections tool.
– NetProspex — They conduct both traditional licensing and UGC acquisition of their contact records which are then separately validated via email, phone, and social verification (their CleneStep process). NetProspex offers a vendor / platform service called TechProspex. They also recently launched a cloud hygiene service (Workbench) which performs marketing database cleansing and appending.


Grants are available to University of Delaware faculty and instructional staff members to support research and scholarly activities designed to promote equity in teacher education.
The deadline to apply for the 2018 grants is 5 p.m., Monday, Nov. 6.
The new program is a collaboration between UD's Center for the Study of Diversity in the College of Arts and Sciences and the Delaware Center for Teacher Education in the College of Education and Human Development.
The Promoting Equity in Teacher Education collaboration developed by the two centers aims to support—in the form of small grants of up to $2,500—faculty and staff who are interested in exploring a line of inquiry, climate-related issues or curriculum innovation focused on equity, diversity and inclusion for education stakeholders.
Stakeholders are defined as preservice teachers, pupils, families, school community members, teacher preparation faculty and teacher instructional staff.
With the grants, the centers hope to facilitate a wider understanding of the social and academic impacts of diversity, while also supporting equitable practices within the teacher preparation community.
The centers are seeking proposals that are focused on some aspect of teacher preparation relating to UD or local schools in which preservice teachers and University faculty and staff work.
The grants will support projects in the areas of public scholarship and community engagement, research and date analysis, policy analysis and research, and curriculum and education programming innovations.
In awarding the grants, priority will be given to the projects that further the mission of the Center for the Study of Diversity.
For more information about the collaborative grant program and how to apply, visit the website.


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Q: How get data of single user's in own_reactions using stream_python? In order to fetch a feed using stream_client the documentation says.
feed = stream_client.feed('feed_group', 'some valid id')
feed_data = feed.get(enrich=True, reactions = {'own':True})

In this case, own_reactions contains data of more than one users.
How can I filter the own_reactions by only one user while fetching the feed?

A: You shuould specify user_id when doing feed.get like so:
feed_data = feed.get(enrich=True, reactions={'own': True}, user_id='jelte')

This is also shown in the docs here: https://getstream.io/docs/python/#reactions_read-feeds

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Kathy Griffin has explained that she doesn't really have a problem with US singer and former X Factor judge Demi Lovato, despite the row that erupted between them last month.
Griffin cited the starlet when asked on Twitter to name the biggest "douche" celebrity she's ever met; prompting a barrage of hate and death threats from the 'Heart Attack' singer's fanbase.
She also defended herself by saying that she may be "douchey" to celebrities, but she never doles out any explicit death threats.


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Actors in Sin City's Animated Fantasy: Avatars, Aliens, or Cinematic Dead-ends?
Posted on August 31, 2011 August 10, 2012 by Timo Linsenmaier
Pierre Floquet - Actors in Sin City's Animated Fantasy
The ontological existence of animated-film characters depends on the whim and inspiration of their creators, which entails two major components. Firstly, the animator will explicitly appear in the cartoon and interfere within the animation, such as Emile Cohl's or the Fleischer Brothers' hands. Or else, in Tex Avery cartoons, references to the script are repeatedly intruding into the film, as meant interruptions or narrative punctuations in the drama. Secondly, the relation animator / character (who could then be spelt: char – actor) can be staged with distance, or even denied: so cartoon characters "pretend" to own their existences, self, will power, free will. For example, still in Avery cartoons, the repetitive asides to the public have a double impact: they first focus upon the pragmatic distance that is usually and implicitly established between the actors and their audience. Second: the same distance, together with the awareness to play a part, underlines a prefilmic existence of the character: Averian creatures give the illusion they are actors, both questioning and enhancing the essence of cinema, that is to say: "the illusion of life".
Such virtual and fantasized power of self-determination, offered to some cartoon characters as a reflection on the parts of live actors, is these days put to the test in recent features. The connections or interactions character / animator find their equivalent, or their balance, in the creative relation that a director will establish both with his actors and the medium. (One may think of Buster Keaton's, Avery's, Woody Allen's reflexive films within the filmsi) Indeed, at a time when animation and live-action are more than ever two aesthetic components in one single art form, that is cinema, what happens to actors and the parts they play within digital environments? While there are numerous recent examples to draw on, this paper will leave aside the oft-discussed Avatar, and Burton's Alice in Wonderland. Rather it will focus on Sin City, 300, The Spirit, as they all stem from another strongly connoted art form, which is graphic novels; and more, they are one way or another related to the same Frank Miller.
At this stage, three more elements have to be taken into account. To begin with, Walter Benjamin's (1931) statement, that: "eventually the quality of photography is always issuing from the close connection between the photographer and his technique"ii, can easily apply to animation as well. Indeed Aardman's Peter Lord suggested his understanding of animating at a recent festival, while describing craftsmanship in animation: an animator will have a character move; a good animator will get a character to live; a great animator will enhance a character's thoughts. The point here is not to question the intrinsic artistic quality of X or Y. It is rather to put inspiration and creation in perspective with technology. As an example, the relative shortcomings of Ang Lee's bouncing green giant in The Hulk (2003), or of Tom Hank's digitally frozen face in The Polar Express (2005) vividly witness the dramatic evolution in motion and performance caption, as well as in special effects, over the past few years.
Second: the issue of part versus persona will entail questioning the impact of live actors on the films they play in. For example, in The Assassination of Jesse James (2007), one can still question what / who one is actually aware of watching on the screen. To what extent does the audience actually look at the famous outlaw? Do not they place Brad Pitt, and his pre-filmic existence as a renowned star "be-fore" his interpretation of Jesse James? What they are watching is a famous actor playing a part, and it is up to each of them to focus or not on, to be aware of, to be 'fooled' by the fictitious character (who himself existed in a past real pre-filmic time).
Third: pushed to its utmost limits, the manifold interaction live actor / persona / animation character opens up in Tim Burton's string of films with actors Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter. As he also directs animation features, Burton essentially embodies this extreme hybridity. His favorite actors actually function as one of his creative threads. Indeed, one can easily recognize Depp and Bonham Carter respectively as Victor Van Dort and Corpse Bride (as they give their voices to the puppets) in Corpse Bride (2005) (though traits of Bonham Carter can be seen in the Bride, the female character was already budding in Sally, created after actress Lisa Marie, in Burton's 1993 animated The Nightmare Before Christmas). Burton displays his animated representation of live actors alive, yet keeping a safe distance between the puppets and their models: he does not directly confront them with the virtual surroundings, sets, nor partners. Prior to Alice in Wonderland, Burton's actors are not required to comply with the dramatic and spectacular metamorphosis CG animation would entail.
Such metamorphosis actually is at the heart of the matter. How can actors adapt to what Paul Wells (2008) calls the "post digital contemporary feature cinema"iii, that is: the cross section of traditional live action theatrical performance and computer processing?
Such is the issue with films as The Spirit, 300, and mainly Sin City. All the more so as these features are directly issued from graphic novels, consequently adding one layer of genre specificity, or maybe a merger. The term "issued", and not "adapted", is chosen on purpose; director Robert Rodriguez considers Sin City more like a "translation" than an "adaptation"iv, which justifies the absence of screenwriting in the credits. Frank Miller is mentioned as the creator of the graphic novels, and indeed the panels and frames of the original books have been extensively used as the storyboard prior to shooting the film. More over, the latter is also self-referring. The cover of the book Booze, Broads, and Bullets, can be seen periodically throughout the movie. Its most notable appearance is on the cover of the matchbook that Hartigan picks up to locate Nancy; it is also seen in the background of the strip club in the very next scene as Hartigan first enters.
Sin City was one of several films around the world to be shot on a completely "digital backlot" (that is to say: with all the acting shot in front of a green screen, and the backgrounds added during post-production). Only three hand-built sets were used: Kadie's bar, Shellie's flat, and the hospital corridor in the epilogue.
As the directors move away from the hyper-real representations that characterize other special effect films, they still benefit from a side effect of such an aesthetic and technological choice. It enables them to offer a very stylized vision of violence. The latter indeed is excessive; it is deliberately omnipresent. And yet violence can be watched, because of the very same excess of it, and because of the denial of any hyper-real component. For example, blood may splash over the screen, yet it is white, which prevents any over-identification process from the part of the public. (On the very few scenes when Rodriguez temporarily wishes to suggest more pathos towards positive or humane characters, then their scratches or slight injuries will be tainted red.) In the philosophical perspective of the Right of Nature, according to Walter Benjamin (1921), "violence is part of Nature, to some extent a raw material the use of which – when not diverted to serve unfair goals – is quite acceptable"v. So in Sin City, violence may well be thrown at the faces of spectators and remain bearable, but not because it would serve the Right within the diegesis, which it actually does not. Rather, because excess and iconographic stylization creates the sufficient distance which shrouds violence into an aesthetic halo.
In the film, live actors, some of them with the status of stars, are confronted by a double challenge: be true to the graphic pre-existence of their characters, and resist the impact of digital processing upon their personae, not to say their ego. Although several of the actors already looked similar to their characters, some of them underwent make-up and prosthetics to more strongly resemble their Frank Miller-drawn likenesses, including Bruce Willis, Mickey Rourke, Benicio Del Toro, and Nick Stahl. Actually, Benicio Del Toro was not meant to wear make-up, but he had Robert Rodriguez change his mindvi. One may wonder whether Clive Owen's embodying of Dwight is level with his partners' performance in the film; yet the actor is hardly wearing any make-up, so this may explain that! The hybridity of their appearances, and consequently the ambiguity in their personalities, are enhanced as early as in the credits sequence: their names appear next to the graphic novel characters' faces, and not together with pictures of what they actually look like in the film.
The point here is to question what the actors project of themselves into the diegesis, within the pragmatic connections their images will establish – or not – with the audience. Do characters still exist with the full fictional psychology and identity the graphic novel author has imagined? Or else, do actors still impose their live envelope beyond the masks of make-up and digital editing? In Sin City, one can actually witness a merger including drawings, animation, and live action – if it is not a collapse of the distinctive three elements. Gilles Deleuze writes: "The cinema can, with impunity, bring us close to things or take us away from them and revolve around them, it suppresses both the anchoring of the subject and the horizon of the world. […] It is not the same as other arts, which aim rather at something unreal through the world, but makes the world itself something unreal or a tale [récit]."(1983, p.59)vii Miller and Rodriguez's aesthetic choice reinforces such phenomenon, as well as it plays with it, in their own way questioning the existence of the actor within a diegesis, as Tex Avery did years before. If cinema actually turns the world into some unreal thing, and sometimes mirrors its own existence while displaying its own tricks, then Sin City over emphasizes the process through the medium of various digital devices, and black and white seldom enhanced by selected patches of bright colours.
And yet one is still watching live actors. In such an environment, they embody, they in-carnate, they display their human flesh through the digital screen, so that they literally animate – that is: give life to – graphic characters. Sin City can then be called a "cinemato-graphic-novel", as it both claims its drawn origin and digs deep into the codes of filmic representation. If the movie is so efficient in telling a story, this is indirectly due to the persistence, the resilience of the live actor within the hybrid creature on film (something that, so far, very few genuine digital characters have managed to achieve). Jacques Rancière, describing James Stewart in Antony Mann's The Man from Laramie, writes: "This hero, in a hardly heroic posture, firstly behaves as the man in charge of the drama. He may scarcely speaks, his whole body instead is like a narrative voice that gives the story its texture" (2001, p.113)viii. Characters in Sin City rarely express themselves, or when they do so, they mostly speak to themselves – and consequently of course to the audience, in the traditional pragmatic use of the voice over. Their comments on their acts and feelings lead the public along onto the story as they punctuate the diegiesis. But mainly, Sin City characters take the audience with them into a body choreography (or a "character-graphy"), that the digital settings make even more conspicuous. The narrative impact of the original novel perpetuates throughout the film: the drawings themselves are repeatedly inspired by very wide angle-shots, extreme low or high angle-shots from a close distance, as if the graphic novel from the start had been designed for the screen. The harsh and raw use of black and white, together with the audacities of make-up, remove the actors from reality into some in-between fictional turmoil, in which they are both the tools of an animated graphic story and the subjects of a live performance. In this perspective, the "actorial" positions of Del Toro, Rourke, Willis and others demonstrate the interwoven interactions of reality and its representation in animation. They exemplify Paul Wells' view that, "animation legitimised the social and political ambivalence of narratives by simultaneously approximating some of the conditions of real existence whilst distancing itself from them by recourse to the unique aspects of its own vocabulary"ix (1998, p.21). Very acutely, the live actors in Sin City actually embody such ambivalence. And simultaneously, the film claims the specificity of cinema at large: images refer to the real, and at the same time question the essence of reality, which may well include questioning their own iconographic reality.
The question is: how does such a successful aesthetic option apply to other features? Making the 300 book (2006), Frank Miller is responsible for story and drawings, and has left colouring to Lynn Varley. As with Sin City, their book IS the storyboard to the film directed by Zack Snyder. The whole film is in hues of brown and sepia, which is the most obvious iconographic variation from Sin City. Indeed, the former bears strong similarities with the latter: it is dark, with patches of bright red, whether as details in the picture or as the colour of the font on the poster. The narrative thread is enhanced by a voice over, a recurrent component both in Sin City and The Spirit.
There remain differences of course: as it is a 21st century peplum, 300 rather looks back at such films as Gladiator as a filiation. The film was less successful than Sin City: this may be partly due to less distance and humour both in the discourse and the direction of actors. Indeed, people get some basic machist or sexist connotations that the historical context will not explain alone. More, the use of the digital backlot is no longer assessed nor claimed as it was in Sin City. Yet, it is so prominent that it reduces the physical and semantic spaces the actors may evolve in. The gate the soldiers fight for is narrow indeed! CG images, whether background or special effects, miss the oneiric (or nightmarish) dimension they conveyed in Sin City. However, in 300, going one more step further away from hyper-realism, some shots near the appearance of a painting: for example, at the end of the battle (103rd minute), the camera zooms back up from Leonidas's corpse in the middle of his dead soldiers. Computer generated effects play with the complexion of their skin and the colour's range, so as to, together with the layout of the bodies, enhance the aesthetic gap with reality. The picture no longer has the granularity of a photograph. The viewers are given the suggestion of a work of drawing and colouring: the reverse process of rotoscoping, that aims at distorting a real-life shot into an animated trope. Zack Snyder uses his medium as a director, a painter, and an animator; the result is blurred, as the aesthetic may be pushed close to its limits.
Moreover, contrary to Sin City, apart from Scott Glenn and Aaron Eckhart, 300 does not display any major stars to give more texture to the presence and resilience of the characters. An attempted CG fresco celebrating mythological heroes, the film is close to a video game turned into an epic, in which actors fade into pseudo animated creatures, and spectacular images dilute any attempt at creating emotion.
What about The Spirit, that is released two years later? In 2008, technology can no longer be held solely responsible for any shortcoming (this topic could itself form a larger paper but is not considered further here as it is of less importance to the overall argument). In a nutshell, Frank Miller fails as a director where he has previously succeeded as a scriptwriter. As in Sin City, there are stars galore in the cast: Samuel Jackson, Eva Mendes, Paz Vega, Scarlett Johansson, to mention only a few of them. And yet, the graphic and aesthetic originality of Sin City, here, fails to carry the audience away into what eventually is but a slack story, lacking humour and punchy dialogue. Indeed, the original Will Eisner graphic novel was in black and white, and its violence and pathos were balanced at times with some distance in its discourse; however it does not sustain the strain of an adaptation to the iconographic environment which made Sin City into a success. Eisner's eponymous main character bears strong similarities with a typically imagined super hero, and is a match to his contemporaries. The Spirit may belong to stories that range from comedy to noir, he keeps strongly connoted to the narrative stereotypes of the 1940's and 50's. So, when transposed into the New York / Central City of 2000, he has nothing in common with the desperate suicidal losers who prevail in Sin City. The film's supporting parts, their overdone behaviours, their bland extravagances simply mirror both the heavily didactic dialogues and voice over, and the thinness of the main character, who, by the way, quite significantly conceals his shallow personality behind a mask! Stars in Sin City impose their parts as plausible avatars haunting the diegesis. Those in The Spirit remain alien to a would-be double celebration of graphic novels and Miller's cinematographic skills.
Would it mean Sin City's iconographic option is a dead-end? Some people may foresee the end of animation in the collapsing borders between animated and live footage, witnessing the disappearance of a dinosaur genre, the collateral casualty of the major impact of digital effects. Rather, as is the case in Sin City, both actor and character originate from a drawn creature, and they fade, mix into one hybrid digital entity. Not only are we facing intertextual labyrinths, but we are also facing representation mazes in the midst of fictional nightmares, some odd 21st century freak-show. Hybridity is then the result of interconnected inventive storytelling resources. The part played by the bodies and personalities of the actors / char-actors in the process of film making, their skills, their abilities to trigger and inhabit drama, express pathos, and eventually convey meaning to their public are hanging over unfathomable possibilities. In that, they repeat and pay tribute to their elders, either gothic and horror films in the 1920's, or films noirs of the 1940'sx. Deep into cinematic experimentation, in Sin City, as a one-off celebration of the medium, one should rather consider live action and animation together asserting the revival and perpetuation of the cinema of the origin.
i Buster Keaton: Sherlock Junior; Avery: Northwest Hounded Police ; Woody Allen: Purple Rose of Cairo.
ii My translation : "Et pourtant, ce qui juge en définitive de la photographie, c'est toujours la relation du photographe à sa technique." ("Petite histoire de la photographie", 1931, p.309, in Walter Benjamin, Œuvres II, Folio essais, Gallimard 2000).
iii Paul Wells, conference given at Utrecht's HAFF, November 2008.
iv Ref. : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0401792/trivia
v My translation : Walter Benjamin, "Critique de la violence", 1921, in Œuvres 1, 1972, Paris, Gallimard, Folio essais, 2000, p.211 : "La violence est un produit naturel, en quelque sorte un matériau brut dont l'utilisation, sauf détournement abusif en faveur de fins injustes, ne pose aucun problème."
vi Ref. : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0401792/trivia
vii Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 1 The Movement Image, London, Continuum, 2005, p.59 (Editions de Minuit, 1983, p.84).
viii My translation. Jacques Rancière, La Fable cinématographique, 2001, Paris, Le Seuil, p.113: "Ce héros si peu héroïque dans sa posture a d'abord la constance de celui qui a en charge l'action du film. Et s'il parle avec parcimonie, c'est qu'il fait de tout son corps l'équivalent d'une voix narrative qui donne au récit sa chair".
ix Paul Wells, Understanding Animation. London, Routledge, 1998, p.21.
x Just to mention a few examples, Sin City displays shots which recall Robertson's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1920) and Murnau's Nosferatu (1922), or Wilder's Double Indemnity (1944) and Siodmak's The Killers (1946).
Benjamin, W. 1921. "Critique de la violence", in Œuvres 1, Folio essais, Paris, Gallimard 2000.
Benjamin, W. 1931. "Petite histoire de la photographie", in Œuvres II, Folio essais, Paris, Gallimard 2000.
Deleuze, G. 1983. Cinema 1 The Movement Image, London, Continuum, 2005.
Rancière, J. 2001. La Fable cinématographique Paris, Le Seuil.
Wells, P. 1998. Understanding Animation. London, Routledge.
© Pierre Floquet
Posted in Pierre Floquet - Actors in Sin City's Animated FantasyTagged avatars, rotoscope, Sin City, video


In 1903, Mark Twain, the legendary American author, expressed the virtues of this unique self-filling fountain pen. After becoming the official spokesman for The Conklin Pen Company®, Mark Twain discovered yet another benefit to Conklin's Crescent Filler™ stating, "Also, I prefer it because it is a profanity saver' it cannot roll off the desk".
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Statistical Leakage and Timing Optimization for Submicron Process Variation. Yuanlin Lu and Vishwani D. Agrawal ECE Dept. Auburn University Auburn, AL 36849, USA 20 th International Conference on VLSI Design Bangalore, January 9, 2006. Previous Work and Problem Statement.
Lu and Agrawal, "Leakage and Glitch Minimization for Power-Performance Tradeoff," JOLPE, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 1-10, December 2006.
Problem Statement: to minimize the leakage and glitch power (not included in this paper) considering process variation.
Overall nominal delay, process variability and statistical timing yield are specified.
Leakage power is a dominant contributor to the total power consumption.
Large variations in process parameters can cause a significant increase in leakage current because of an exponential relation between the leakage current and some key process parameters.
S. Borkar, et al., Parameter variations and impact on circuits and microarchitecture, DAC 2003.
Subthreshold is most sensitive to the variation in the effective gate length.
Global variation has a stronger effect on the leakage distribution.
R. Rao, et al. "Parametric Yield Estimation Considering Leakage Variability," DAC 2004.
A. Davoodi and A. Srivastava, "Probabilistic Dual-Vth Optimization Under Variability," Proc.ISLPED, 2005.
Delay and subthreshold current of every gate are assumed to be fixed and without any effect of the process variation.
Minimize the total leakage, keeping the circuit performance unchanged.
Treat delay, timing and leakage as random variables with normal distributions.
Minimize the total nominal leakage, keeping a certain timing yield (η).
Leakage power reduced by deterministic approach normalized to 1 unit.
0.65 unit and 0.59 unit leakage power achieved by statistical approach with 99% and 95% timing yields, respectively.
Lower the timing yield, higher is power saving.
With a further relaxed Tmax , all three curves will give more reduction in leakage power.
A mixed integer linear programming method statistically minimizes leakage power and eliminates glitch power in a dual-Vth design under process variations.
Experimental results show 30% more leakage power reduction by this statistical approach compared with the deterministic approach.
Impacts of process variation on leakage power and circuit performance are simultaneously reduced when a small yield loss is allowed.
西部管道密封培训 -. johncrane tech(tianjin) co.,ltd. 培训内容概述. 密封基础知识 密封系统知识 密封的安装要求 密封的失效大致判断 与客户技术人员进行交流. 机械密封基础 第一部分.
Code Tuning and Optimization -. doug sondak sondak@bu.edu boston university scientific computing and visualization. outline. introduction example code timing profiling cache tuning. introduction. timing where is most time being used?
Server Time Protocol z/OS Considerations -. agenda. timing network and timing mode perspectives z/os timing and synchronization modes clockxx parmlib member display information z/os messages when the operating system does not support stp.


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Netizens question Singapore's safety after foreign worker charged for raping student near Kranji War Memorial
by Rubaashini Shunmuganathan
in Comments, Current Affairs
Nearby forested area between Singapore Turf Club and Kranji War Memorial. Photo Credit: Google Maps
Indian national Chinnaiah Karthik will be seen in court in June to face an aggravated rape charge as he attacked and raped a female university student in Kranji.
On 4 May, the 21-year-old foreign worker purportedly approached the 23-year-old student along Turf Club Avenue at around 1.30am, according to Chinese daily Lianhe Wanbao.
Although it was reported that the student tried to defend herself and fight back, but the perpetrator retaliated by attacking her.
Following that, he brought her into a forested area between the Singapore Turf Club and Kranji War Memorial, and raped her. This was revealed based on the report and court documents.
However, it is not certain if the victim was jogging or walking home during the wee hours, or if the attack was actually pre-planned.
After the attack, police managed to identify Chinnaiah based on the images recorded via the surveillance placed in the area, which included a camera that was attached to a lamp post in the vicinity.
As such, Lianhe Wanbao reported that the man was apprehended the following day during a police ambush near his place of living. The Chinese daily also added that he is currently being remanded and investigations are ongoing.
Chinnaiah was charged in court on 7 May and his case will be heard on 3 June in the High Court. If he is found guilty, he could face a jail sentence of between eight and 20 years, and at least 12 strokes of the cane.
After reading this news, many netizens wrote on ST's Facebook page stating that Singapore is no longer safe for women to walk around freely. They noted that with more foreign workers entering the country, the city-state is not as safe as it used to be as they are threatening the safety of women here.
In addition, online users are calling for a harsher or maximum punishment given to the accuse. This is so it teaches him and other foreign workers a lesson and not to take Singapore for granted.
However, others had warned ladies to not walk alone at places that may seem secluded, especially late at night. They also suggested them to bring someone along if they need to go out late at night, adding to not take safety for granted.
Thai court jails activist for 28 years jail for royal defamation
KKH's lack of continuous monitoring baby's vital signs "was not ideal", said State Coroner
Dozens of COVID protesters still behind bars in China: HRW
8 dead, including 6 Chinese nationals, after ship sinks near Japan
Nurse disabled permanently after vaccine injury and sacked by SGH; Did the hospital advise her to apply for VIFAP?
Man and 2-year-old daughter fell into hole in bridge at Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve, "seconds away from drowning"
AGC asked to explain purposes of 68 private letters of inmates illegitimately forwarded to prosecutors


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Home|Achaemenids, Ancient: Prehistory – 651 A.D., Anthropology, Cultural News and Events, Culture, Cyrus the Great, Eurocentricism, Eurocentrism, Heritage, Iran and Caucasia, Iran and Central Asia, Iran and China, Iran and Europe, Iran and India, News, Parthian, Parthian Military History, People of Iran and Origins, Pre-Achaemenid, Revisionism, Sassanian Military History, Sassanians, Scythian, Shahnameh, The Kurds, Women of Persia, Zoroastrianism|The 2,000-year-old Wonder Women of Iran: Inspiration for the Comic and Hollywood Movies
The article "The 2,000-year-old Wonder Women who inspired the comic" was written by Kimiya Shokoohi on January 11, 2021 for the BBC. The article addresses a key issue of attribution to the warrior ethos of Iranian women since the dawn of history. The version printed has been edited from its original version. Kindly note that all the pictures and captions posted below did not appear in the original BBC report.
Kimia Shokoohi's article also challenges the Eurocentric narratives of ancient Iran, notably with respect to the women of ancient Iran. For readers further interested in the women of ancient Iran, kindly consult the following:
Women of Ancient Persia
The Amazons
Zoroastrianism, Women and Education
Farrokh, K., & Karamian, Gh. (2018). Weapons in the tombs of Parthian Era Women in Northern Iran: A Preliminary Report. Fezana Journal (Publication of the Federation of Zoroastrian Associations of North America), Vol. 32, No.3, Fall/September, pp. 18-21. – For more on the weapons found in the graves of Parthian women fighters in the graves at Vestmin consult pages 67-68 in: Karamian, Gh., Farrokh, K., Kiapi, M.F., Nemati, H. (2018). Graves, crypts and Parthian weapons excavated from the gravesites of Vestemin. HISTORIA I SWIAT, No.7, pp. 35-70.
The contemporary superheroine, Wonder Woman, has a backstory inspired by Greek mythology, which in turn was inspired by real-life ancient warrior women of Iran and other ancient civilizations such as China and India. The concept of truth is central to Patty Jenkins' film, Wonder Woman 1984, the second in her superheroine franchise. Truth-seeking compels us to ask complex questions about history and cultural memory – and relates to the inspiration for Wonder Woman's own origin story. Wonder Woman (2017) takes place in Europe during World War One, exploring the traumatizing effects of warfare on humanity; its successor is situated in Washington DC, 70 years later. Both films contain brief early sequences, told in flashback, where we find a young Diana Prince on her birth island of Themyscira, competing alongside veteran woman warriors in tournaments of Olympic proportions.
LEFT: American actress Lynda Carter poses for a Hollywood promotion photo on August 17, 1976 in support of the "Wonder Woman" TV series that ran from 1975-1979 (Source: Public Domain); RIGHT: Israeli actress Gal Gadot-Varsano, star of the "Wonder Woman" and "Wonder Woman 1984" movies (released in 2017 and 2020 respectively) speaking at the 2018 San Diego Convention Center in San Diego (Source: Gage Skidmore in Public Domain).
These are mere blink-and-you'll-miss-it nods to Prince's Amazonian backstory. Contemporary audiences may recognize the character of Wonder Woman – as played by Gal Gadot in Jenkins' films, or perhaps US actress Lynda Carter, star of the 1970s ABC and CBS TV series, or as the original comic book character, which first appeared in the US in 1941 – more than the stories that inspired the character. The Amazons of Greek mythology and the real-life warrior women that led to this iconic modern-day Wonder Woman might, in fact, have their roots in ancient Persia – modern-day Iran.
Iranian women from Malayer (near Hamedan in the northwest) engaged in target practice in the Malayer city limits in the late 1950s. The association between weapons and women is nothing new in Iran; Roman references for example note of Iranian women armed as regular troops in the armies of the Sassanians (224-651 CE).
As noted by Adrienne Mayor, (scholar at Stanford University and author of The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women Across the Ancient World):
"There have always been stories of Amazons and Amazon-like women; sometimes they have circulated hidden under the surface and other times, like today, they break through into popular culture…it is no longer possible to deny the reality behind the myths of Amazons."
Female Scythian horse archer (Source: Osinform). The Sarmatians who succeeded the Scythians on the steppes and the Ukraine region were similar to their cousins in Persia where Romans made references to female fighters in the Sassanian army for example. Weapons have also found to be buried in the graves of Parthian females in northern Iran – for more see:
While the story of a race of warrior women first appeared in Greek mythology, excavations across the north and east of the Black Sea region have revealed that warrior women like the Amazons existed in real life. In December 2019, the graves of four female warriors from the 4th Century BC Sarmatian region were found in the village of Devitsa, in what is now Western Russia. The Sarmatians were a people of Iranian heritage, with men and women skilled in horsemanship and battle.
Excavations within the modern borders of Iran have revealed the existence of female warriors. In the northwestern Iranian city of Tabriz, 109 warrior graves were unearthed. Archaeologist Alireza Hejebri-Nobari confirmed in a 2004 interview that the DNA found in one belonged to a woman. DNA testing was due to take place on other warrior graves, 38 of which are still intact, but according to Mayor's contacts in Iran, that DNA research was halted in August 2020 due to a lack of resources.
The real (but unrecognized) Iranian Wonder Women of history: A reconstruction by Cernenko and Gorelik of the north-Iranian Saka or Scythians in battle (Cernenko & Gorelik, 1989, Plate F). The ancient Iranians (those in ancient Persia and the ones in ancient Eastern Europe) often had women warriors and chieftains, a practice not unlike those of the contemporary ancient Celts in ancient Central and Western Europe. What is also notable is the costume of the Iranian female warrior – this type of dress continues to appear in parts of Luristan in Western Iran.
The great rivalries of the ancient Greeks and Persians are well documented in Greek art, history and mythology, so much so that historians of Ancient Persia rely on the Greek interpretation of the region to unlock its history. Experts have identified depictions of the women in battle with Greek men on vases and other ceramics as dressed in Persian-style clothing: the Kandys cloak, the Anaxyrides trousers, the Persikay shoes. By the 470s, the Greeks began to refer to portrayals of the Persians as the Amazons, turning their real-life adversaries into mythological folklore. Even the word "Amazon", meaning "warrior", is likely rooted in the Iranian language.
A reconstruction of a female Achaemenid cavalry unit by Shapur Suren-Pahlav.
Real-life warrior women existed far beyond the Scythians and Sarmatians, however. As noted by Mayor:
"Many ancient cultures besides Greece told exhilarating stories of warrior women – such tales are found in Persia, Egypt, Rome, Caucasus, Central Asia, Mongolia, India, and China …"
The painting "Gathering Gems of Beauty (畫麗珠萃秀)" which provides a depiction of Hua Muhlan, a female cavalry commander from the northern Wei dynasty (4th-6th centuries CE) of ancient China (Source: Public Domain).
And history reveals countless examples of real-life female warriors, like Cynane, half-sister to Alexander the Great, who came from a tradition of warrior women and was taught the same military skills as the young Alexander. Pantea Arteshbod, a female Persian commander during the reign of Cyrus the Great, was integral to maintaining law and order after Cyrus's Neo-Babylonian conquest. The Arab queen Zenobia, of the Palmyrene Empire in Syria, rebelled against Rome to conquer the eastern third of the Roman Empire. And Joan of Arc, the most famous warrior woman in European history, in turn inspired others across Europe: Spain's Isabella of Castile, granddaughter of Mary Tudor of England and a warrior in her own right, is said to have kept a chronicle of Joan's life on her bookshelf.
Lur woman in a local competition in Luristan province in Western Iran, partaking in a shooting contest on horseback (Source: Wisgoon.com). Images such as these are rarely (if ever) displayed in mainstream Western media and news outlets, even those purporting to be liberal and supportive of human rights. Eurocentricism with regards to ancient Iran continues to have a dominating influence on academia, news, cultural and entertainment outlets.
Wonder Woman may have become an all-American feminist icon of popular culture, but it is important to recognize her ancient roots – and the warrior women who came before her. Modern women in Iran, for example, who are unlikely to find films like Wonder Woman playing in theaters, have found their stories and identities missing in mainstream Western film and television – but nevertheless could they find inspiration in the Iranian roots of this warrior woman story? As the fictional 21st Century Wonder Woman uses her most important weapon – the truth – in the fight to bend the arc of the moral universe towards justice, by extension that should include the many generations of warrior women around the world who came before her.
Fezana Journal article on Ancient Iranian Women
Two New courses for Fall 2018
Presentation on Parthian-era Warrior Women in Eleventh Annual ASMEA Conference Nov 1-3, 2018
Fall 2019 Iranian Studies Initiative Lectures at the University of British Columbia
Grave of Female Scythian Warrior Found in Ukraine
New Course: The Silk Route-Origins and History
UBC Lecture (November 29, 2019): Civilizational Contacts between Ancient Iran and Europe
Sheda Vasseqhi PhD Study: Positioning of Iran And Iranians In Origins Of Western Civilization
Spanish Military History Journal Interview with Kaveh Farrokh
Journal Article: Caucasian Albanian warriors in the armies of pre-Islamic Iran
By Dr. Kaveh Farrokh|2021-04-04T11:54:37-07:00April 4th, 2021|Achaemenids, Ancient: Prehistory – 651 A.D., Anthropology, Cultural News and Events, Culture, Cyrus the Great, Eurocentricism, Eurocentrism, Heritage, Iran and Caucasia, Iran and Central Asia, Iran and China, Iran and Europe, Iran and India, News, Parthian, Parthian Military History, People of Iran and Origins, Pre-Achaemenid, Revisionism, Sassanian Military History, Sassanians, Scythian, Shahnameh, The Kurds, Women of Persia, Zoroastrianism|Comments Off on The 2,000-year-old Wonder Women of Iran: Inspiration for the Comic and Hollywood Movies