text:
Winebulance
1) I ran out of wine. 2) I posted an excerpt from the journal of EIL founder Chris Al-Aswad over at Escape Into Life that amazingly matches the, uh,...plot of Middletown. I may have to pull a Librarian and read it to the cast... It's Good Friday?
Librarians for Marriage Equality
It's Thor's Day in the blog: I'm for marriage equality, and I love libraries. I'm not a librarian, but I play one on tv stage. I realized yesterday that I had played a librarian as Sara, who is also a poet, in Earth and Sky, by Douglas Post. And, of course, Marian the Librarian in The Music Man. Not to mention, um, though I just did, the Librarian in Middletown.
I was in Earth in Sky at the Theater of the Open Eye in New York, founded by Jean Erdman, a dancer and choreographer and theatre director, who was also the wife of Joseph Campbell, mythology guy I love! I remember reading the plaque on the wall when we were rehearsing and realizing where I was!
What I realized today is that Jean Erdman danced The One Who Speaks in Letter to the World with Martha Graham's dance company--that is, Emily Dickinson! Who gnu? So, definitely, it's also a Random Coinciday in the blog! OK, also? Jean Erdman and I have the same birthday!! This makes me inordinately happy.
Thanks to good old Wikipedia for everything and to derekkeats in particular for the dancing gnu, aka black wildebeest.
Labels: Random Coinciday, Thor's Day
I always feel like one of the lucky ones in life: I am loved. I can love. I do love. Know what I mean?
Yes, I'm a melancholic. But we have a deep capacity for joy, too. In case you were wondering.
Anyhoo, I always feel lucky when I find the artist to match the poet in our Escape Into Life poetry features. The new poet up today is Luisa A. Igloria, who has been writing a poem a day for a really long time over at Via Negativa. But she had some poems to spare! So I snapped them up.
In pairing her with an artist, I was looking for color, especially yellow and blue and green, and for transparency, and I found them all in Markus Åkesson. You can go see, but here's an example: the first stanza of "Dragon."
It's said luck follows those
born in the year of the fire-breather,
a time blue with the sticky, fluted
scales of rain-moths.
See the rain moths?! See what I mean? Synchronicity out the wazoo. As I like to say.
As for me, I was born in the year of the cock (rooster) and am headed toward osteo-porosis, but I still feel lucky. Spring is coming, then summer, with lap swimming. And before that, April, the "cruellest month," with plenty of poetry, more art, and more swimmers.
Till then, floating along, eyes on the skies.
Big Poetry Giveaway 2013
Speaking of getting my ducks in a row for National Poetry Month, I'm doing the Big Poetry Giveaway again, this year hosted by poet Susan Rich. If you are a poet/blogger, you can sign up here, at her blog, The Alchemist's Kitchen. If you like to read poetry and want to win a free book, you can participate whether or not you blog or write! Just leave a comment about which book you'd like to receive, and, in early May, I'll pull two names out of a basket, announce the winners, and mail a book to each. (You can send your mailing address by email; see Contact Info tab above.)
I'm giving away a copy of my most recent chapbook, Nocturnes (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2012). It contains "night songs" and lyric poems, some published previously in After Hours, Blue Five Notebook (Blue Fifth Review), Fifth Wednesday, Poetry Porch, and Poems & Plays. Many thanks to these and other journals, and to Margaret Bashaar of Hyacinth Girl Press!
Another winner will receive They Say This, edited by one of my favorite poets, Richard Jones. This is a double issue of his journal Poetry East that constitutes an anthology of poems, essays on poetics, and short essays by contemporary poets praising books of poems they loved. They Say This contains poems by Mary Oliver, Sharon Olds, Thomas Lynch, Tess Gallagher, Gary Metras, Sam Hamill, and Hayden Carruth, and essays by Denise Levertov, Alice Fulton, Olga Broumas, Lucia Maria Perillo, and Gregory Dunne.
They Say This brings together pieces from previous issues, including the out-of-print first Origins issue (#43) that I keep on a shelf over my writing desk, along with #55, a later collection of Origins: Poets on the Composition Process.
Soon, I can add another Origins issue, coming out this Spring! It will contain one of my own poems, "Damage," from Broken Sonnets, and a brief essay about its genesis.
I'm tickled pink.
Or, today, red. For Human Rights and Marriage Equality.
OK, so just comment below if you'd like a chance to win a free book. And say which, if you have a preference.
Posted by Kathleen at 11:04 AM 18 comments:
Labels: Fat Tuesday, Poetry Someday
In the Bleak Middle of Why...
...oh why isn't it spring yet? (Background music: "In the Bleak Midwinter") Yes, we were dumped on. By 7-9 inches of snow, or, if you look at the picnic table heaped with snow in the back yard, about a foot. The roof is prettily drifted, like a swirled cake top. The driveway, however, was like a sheet cake. For a giant.
Not complaining, really. It's been a mild winter, and high temps are predicted, and this will melt and water the earth. My tulips are on their way up, day lilies, iris.
My pink and white begonias bloomed all winter long in pots in the house. All winter long!
That's Christina Rossetii. She wrote the poem that became the hymn, "In the Bleak Midwinter." Thank you again, Wikipedia.
Back to Middletown...
Whew! Busy lately. Have started rehearsing Middletown, by Will Eno, for Heartland Theatre. It's a beautiful, beautiful, funny, quirky play. About being human. I am the Librarian. And you know I love books.
I am tickled that my first real role was Marian the Librarian in The Music Man, and this, I hope and imagine, will be my last role. "Middletown. We've got you coming and going" is one of my lines in the play! And I have to memorize it by Monday. So, um, goodbye.
It's Slattern Day, but I have tidied up my office just a bit. To be able to survive the next six weeks acting again. I got my ducks in a row for April, National Poetry Month, over at Escape Into Life, and I did the laundry. OK?
But I have some more memorization to do. And I'm not as quick a study as I was when I was younger. And for some of my lines, I am supposed to be reading. So I will have to actually be reading the actual lines, because it's sort of impossible for me to look at one set of sentences in a book and appear to be reading other ones out loud. I know. I'm supposed to be acting. But...my eyes, my eyes!
Supposedly (well, actually), it was World Poetry Day on Thursday. But, because my brain is muddled in Middletown (and generally), I missed it. Only, I sort of didn't. By failing to post my poetry book review at Escape Into Life on Wednesday, during my "elastic week," I actually did something poetic when I posted it on Thursday, March 21, 2013, World Poetry Day!
Elastic Week
It's true, I missed a day. I was so busy on Wednesday, it disappeared completely from my memory, and for a moment I thought today was it, Wednesday, the Hump of the Week, "poetry Wednesday" (my day over at Escape Into Life), not Thursday (Thor's Day in the blog), but, it's true, I got to exercise class, which is on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays (oddly), not on Wednesdays, so some part of my origami brain was briefly working.
Anyhoo, it's still Women's History Month in the USA and over at Escape Into Life, so I posted a review of Ren Powell's book An Elastic State of Mind: D.L.D.'s Autobiography in Poems. Dorothea Lynde Dix (1802-1887) was a real woman from real history, and Powell has imaginatively re-created her. And how about the elastic face on that book cover?
The art in the EIL piece is by Nancy Pirri, and I knew I had found the right pairing of art and text when I found her Aphrodite in the EIL Store, after quoting Powell's line, "On a hard night I wake as Aphrodite" in the review. Synchronicity.
(You can own this! If you have $750.)
OK, Thursday is really busy, too, and I've got to get on it. It will soon turn into Friday and disappear.
Labels: Hump of the Week, Poetry Someday, Thor's Day
What We Witness
Today, a sunny one, driving home from exercise class in my Scatter Joy baseball hat with a good brim, I witnessed what was nearly a disaster. This is to calm you in advance, to scatter joy (weal, instead of woe). As I came up to the train tracks, the signal lights began flashing, and the striped bars came down. I saw the light of the engine car as the passenger train approached the crossing.
And then, on the slight hillside beside the tracks, a man in a black winter coat walked straight toward the tracks, and on them, running a little as he touched the ties. The train was slowing and stopped.
The man was in black, not orange, like one of the manual signal workers, and not near the signal at all. He seemed a pedestrian, but in those few moments in which I leaned forward in fear for him, gasping, he was a potential suicide. I was feeling for the driver, too, wondering if his heart stopped. There was no awful screeching of brakes. The brakes had already been applied. But still...
A door opened, and a conductor stood there for a while, looking. He was too far away for me to tell if he was concerned, or talking to the man in black. Or what.
Then the lights stopped flashing, and the bars went up. It was safe to cross the tracks in our cars, and the train would pull into the station a little while later. Once home, I listened for and heard the horn.
I told my husband all about it, and he listened patiently, as a priest listens to confession. We've been dealing with a suicide that touched the family. Our hearts are open.
Then, eating my delayed brunch, I read a short story in the December issue of The Sun, something I had somehow missed when it arrived. "A Good Idea," by Craig Hartglass, about one man saving another from suicide. That wasn't a spoiler; you'll know right away. You can read it here.
What a great name, "Hartglass." Like a glass heart. Or a glass hart.
More Weal, More Woe
I had the pleasure on Sunday to meet with a couple people to discuss poetry--and this was on top of the pleasure of having my son home for the weekend! There was plenty of family wamily conversation at meals, cuddle time, giggle time, serious planning. It all connects, because there is what can be said and what can't be said. With family, it, the ineffable, is conveyed through love and hope and small services we perform for one another. With poets, we know we are engaged in the activity of expressing the inexpressible.
Or, as Marilynne Robinson would say, about all kinds of serious reading and writing, we are engaged in "demonstrations of the extraordinary power of language to evoke a reality beyond its grasp, to evoke a sense of what cannot be said." Yes, I am still reading and loving her book of essays, When I Was a Child I Read Books. A little later in her essay called "Imagination and Community," she says, "We live on a little island of the articulable, which we tend to mistake for reality itself." That seems so often and so clearly true to me.
It's like that picture of the iceberg, used to illustrate what goes on in the theatre, just to articulate a play to an audience.
Here's something she says to which I powerfully, viscerally, connect: "I seem to know by intuition a great deal that I cannot find words for, and to enlarge the field of my intuition every time I fail again to find these words. That is to say, the unnamed is overwhelmingly present and real for me."
I feel this way all the time now--overwhelmed and thus tremulous and fragile in the world--but also floating on a sea of awe, my natural home. Since there is so much I sense but cannot articulate to others, I sometimes feel adrift (see iceberg), disconnected from the major land mass, endangered, and, perhaps, perceived as dangerous (again, see iceberg), but I am not intending to wreck any ships, and, by the way, I am in the process of melting.
It is reassuring to read Robinson's provisional definition of community: "I would say, for the moment, that community, at least community larger than the immediate family, consists very largely of imaginative love for people we do not know or whom we know very slightly. This thesis may be influenced by the fact that I have spent literal years of my life lovingly absorbed in the thoughts and perceptions of--who knows it better than I?--people who do not exist...I think fiction may be, whatever else, an exercise in the capacity for imaginative love, or sympathy, or identification." Robinson is a fiction writer, in addition to being an essayist, professor, and great reader, steeped in all kinds of knowledge. She knows that her community includes characters she has created in books, met in books, and, of course, all the authors of those books, most of them now dead.
I, too, belong in her community. "I love the writers of my thousand books," says Robinson:
"It pleases me to think how astonished old Homer, whoever he was, would be to find his epics on the shelf of such an unimaginable being as myself, in the middle of an unrumored continent. I love the large minority of writers of the writers on my shelves who have struggled with words and thoughts and, by my lights, have lost the struggle. All together they are my community, the creators of the very idea of books, poetry, and extended narratives, and of the amazing human conversation that has taken place across millennia, through weal and woe, over the heads of interest and utility."
In the context of the essay, "interest and utility" cover the day-to-day practicalities, commerce, self interest, and such small-group interests of politics and business as usual that have contributed to "[t]he cultural disaster called 'dumbing down,' which swept through every significant American institution and grossly impoverished civic and religious life, [and which] was and is the result of the obsessive devaluing of the lives that happen to pass on this swath of continent." If, for example, education is seen only as the creation of workers, we have devalued education and also ourselves. It makes me sad. I feel, in my gut, the woe.
But then I read, I laugh, and I am inspired again. (I'd like to show you an image of Homer Simpson here, saying, "D'oh!" but I don't own the copyright.)
Posted by Kathleen at 9:46 AM 11 comments:
Labels: Blue Monday, Poetry Someday
Weal and Woe
Imaginary (and actual if you go there and click) soundtrack provided by: The Weal and Woe!
Little did I know (sudden reference to Stranger Than Fiction, which this sort of is) that my random meandering in this blog would lead me back to an old boyfriend.
Yes (sudden reference to Young Frankenstein), he's my boyfriend! (Was.)
OK, hold your horses. Back up, start over, go slowly, in linear fashion, calmly. OK, so, yesterday, quoting Marilynne Robinson, I wrote the phrase "weal and woe." I made sure "weal" meant what I thought it meant in that context, not a red welt but the public good, as in the commonwealth. A care for all, generosity through awareness, and prosperity or good stuff, as opposed to "woe."
So far, so good.
Today, I pursued it a little further, discovering Weal and Woe in Garveloch, political fiction by Harriet Martineau, from her Illustrations of Political Economy, which you can read via the Online Library of Liberty. (I gather it is more successful as an "illustration of political economy" than as fiction, which reminds me of my synoptic major in Poetry and Politicial Philosophy at Kenyon College, and thesis projects for it involving Shakespeare, Shaw, and Emily Dickinson. But I meander.)
That Harriet Martineau was quite a woman!
Anyhoo, The Weal and Woe is also the name of a band that just produced The One to Blame, an album full of "[g]orgeously harmony-driven oldschool honkytonk and 1950s style proto-rockabilly sounds," to quote their website quoting the New York Music Daily blog's praise of it. Go there and see and listen! Many congrats to the The Weal and Woe!
I went to high school with Mark Deffenbaugh, the guy on the left, and the rest is personal history!
Call it Self or Call it Soul
I am reading When I Was a Child I Read Books, by Marilynne Robinson, partly because I love her writing, partly because when I was a child I read books, too, and partly to counter the blue effects of The Book of Disquiet, by Fernando Pessoa.
In Pessoa, the disquiet goes on and on. In Robinson, it is given a name, a context in literature, and a buoying calm: "lacrimae rerum, the tears in things." She is citing Virgil, the Aeneid, and reminding us that the ancients saw, knew, and intuited so much. Why do we ever reduce or dismiss them?
So I am still reading Pessoa, experiencing his tenderness alongside his sadness in Lisbon, but now I am feeling uplifted, comforted, and calmed by Robinson, who remains remarkably afloat on a sea of tears, even in the face of our potential destruction from the unintended consequences of our actions. Which the ancients took on, repeatedly, in literature. New threats: bacteria, nuclear fission; old source: human nature, hubris.
Meanwhile, there's a new poetry feature up today at Escape Into Life, which references good old Walt Whitman, author of Leaves of Grass, singer of "Song of Myself." Laura Madeline Wiseman has continued to imagine him in poetry and in love. Beautiful photos there and here by Sebastien Tabuteaud.
I read a lot of science, and my husband is educating himself on quantum physics. This morning, I read to him from Robinson's books of essays:
"Having read recently that there are more neurons in the human brain than there are stars in the Milky Way, and having read any number of times that the human brain is the most complex object known to exist in the universe, and that the mind is not identical with the brain but is more mysterious still, it seems to me this astonishing nexus of the self, so uniquely elegant and capable, merits a name that would indicate a difference in kind from the ontological run of things, and for my purposes "soul" would do nicely."
I have a feeling Walt Whitman would have liked Marilynne Robinson, so "elegant and capable" a soul. She continues, later in the paragraph: "At this point of dynamic convergence, call it self or call it soul, questions of right and wrong are weighed, love is felt, guilt and loss are suffered. And, over time, formation occurs, for weal or woe, governed in large part by that unaccountable capacity for self-awareness."
That's self-awareness, not self-consciousness (in a negative sense), nor self-absorption. Self-awareness takes its place among other humans, being generously aware of them, too.
Pessoa felt his alienation. Whitman felt his connection, though one of a kind. Hmm.
Darkness and a Duck
Well, the "spring forward" aspect of Daylight Saving Time has made it dark again around here in the early morning, during the get-to-school-work-and/or-exercise-class routine. It's depressing, as the optimism of spring was just arriving via the light!
But this morning, in the dark, a duck was crossing the road. I didn't hit her, and she stopped. Headlights. Noise. It's nice to see her back. A pair of mallards wanders the neighborhood each spring. Sometimes they swim in the tiny pond that appears at the back corner of two lots here after a strong rain. As happened yesterday.
Mixed with snow. No doubt the ducks didn't like that any more than I did.
But the sun is shining today! Blue sky. No snow in the forecast. No snow on the steps of the McLean County Museum of History. Come on over at 7:30 for ¡Fiesta, Forever! ¡A Celebration in Poetry!
Poets in the community are reading poems composed in response to objects and information in the current exhibit on Mexican popular arts.
The museum exhibit is set up like a tourist visit if you could travel through time, getting your passport stamped in every region, seeing colorful stuff and learning a lot about history, pottery, handicrafts, stone, the Mayans, and Catholic saints as you go! Free, fun, colorful, cultural.
Thanks to the museum for the graphic, Country Financial for helping to sponsor the exhibit, and Richard Bartz for the ducks.
My daughter is registering to vote on International Women's Day! What a thrill!
All this week we've been celebrating March as Women's History Month and today as the arrival of International Women's Day over at Escape Into Life. Today there's a sort of Whitman's sampler of lines from poems by 13 women who live all over the world writing poetry. Several live in the USA but have a heritage from elsewhere, and several live elsewhere but came from the USA; it's an amazing array of women writing in English who live in Australia, Mexico, New Mexico, Germany, Norway, Austria, etc.
The fragments of poems make up a sort of collage, and there is collage art by Ashley Blanton, who is cutting and pasting and inking on pages from old books. You can find more of her work at her website, Paper Doll Parts. I love the sweet ironies in all this. And the taste of iron in blood.
Labels: Poetry Someday, Thor's Day
Born to Lose
I sold my car today. My sweet little 1998 Nissan Sentra. And I've been listening to The Blue Room, the newest CD from Madeleine Peyroux. Hits the spot! I love her gorgeous slow, easy voice and choice of songs. On this one, I'm drawn to "Born to Lose" and "You Don't Know Me," and last night I wept to her rendition of "Gentle On My Mind." Not because of the car. Just because the song is sweet and sad and lovely.
I'm still reading The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa. Also waiting on a patient stack: Where Good Swimmers Drown, by Susan Elbe, winner of the Concrete Wolf chapbook contest, and Survivors' Picnic, by Debra Bruce, both poetry books, both a little blue-sounding (and making it a Blue Monday on a Thor's Day in the blog). For instance, here's a very short poem by Debra Bruce:
Her Ex Sits Next To Her
It's far too soon for her to make a joke of it,
scuttle him away with a swish of wit,
This is a love seat, isn't it?
but too late to reach across the child-size space
between them, or look directly at his face.
Good stuff, that. I'll be able to read and review Survivors' Picnic for Escape Into Life, because Debra Bruce is one of our EIL poets, so more on that later!
In the meantime, everything is gentle on my mind.
Labels: Blue Monday, Thor's Day
Peafowl & Poetry
Celebrating Women's History Month in the USA and International Women's Day, coming up on Friday, March 8, with this Women in History poetry feature over at Escape Into Life. It's got poems by an international crew of women: Nicolette Wong writing about Chinese fiction writer Eileen Chang, Michaela A. Gabriel of Austria, writing about Austrian physicist Lise Meitner (later a Swedish citizen), Jeannine Hall Gailey writing about Austrian-American movie star and mathematician Hedy Lamarr, and Ren Powell, currently of Norway, writing about Cuban revolutionary Haydee Santamaria. With photos of sculpture by Petah Coyne.
The various photos of interesting peafowl here, um, all male, since they are the fancy ones, are thanks to posters sharing images at Wikipedia. The amazing white peacock is from the uploader Abdominator. This peacock feather, which reminds me of decorative feathers in my childhood home, is thanks to Schnobby. (Here's looking at you, bird.)
Here's another wonderful peacock on display, thanks to Jebulon. These birds are so amazing, but also so annoying, I hear--from Flannery O'Connor and Joan Didion, to mention a couple women writers! Didion's husband threw things at the screaming birds, I just read in The Year of Magical Thinking.
Ah, yes, it's a Random Coinciday in the blog, a Poetry Someday, and the Hump of the Week. And now, like a green peafowl, aka Siamese Dragon, thanks to Frankyboy5, I shall walk daintily, majestically away...
Magical Thinking
I've just read The Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion. It's about grieving and coping and going a little crazy (just part of the grieving) the year after her husband died. Fascinating and beautifully written book. In it is a passage about geology that relates to "the grand indifference of the stars" in Fernando Pessoa's Book of Disquiet, which I am still reading, mentioned in a past blog entry.
Here's Didion:
"As a child I thought a great deal about meaninglessness, which seemed at the time the most prominent negative feature on the horizon. After a few years of failing to find meaning in the more commonly recommended venues I learned that I could find it in geology, so I did. This in turn enabled me to find meaning in the Episcopal litany, most acutely in the words as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end, which I interpreted as a literal description of the constant changing of the earth, the unending erosion of the shores and mountains, the inexorable shifting of the geological structures that could throw up mountains and islands and could just as reliably take them away. I found earthquakes, even when I was in them, deeply satisfying, abruptly revealed evidence of the scheme in action. That the scheme could destroy the works of man might be a personal regret but remained, in the larger picture I had come to recognize, a matter of abiding indifference. No eye was on the sparrow. No one was watching me. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end."
This gets at my sense of things, how science and whatever the soul is co-exist. What is, is, as the Buddhists say. And as I say, frequently, in conversation.
Sometimes with myself. What a comfort to read, in this Paris Review interview, that Joan Didion is, essentially, talking to herself, too! "Are you conscious of the reader as you write?" asks the interviewer, Linda Kuehl. "Do you write listening to the reader listening to you?"
"Obviously I listen to the reader," Didion answers, in her usual smart, blunt way, "but the only reader I hear is me. I am always writing to myself."
Thanks to Joan Didion for her acute insights and to Facebook for "talking to Myself...."
It's not quite spring yet, but it's coming! And I'm glad it's not silent. Birds were singing this winter morning! But I've been thinking of Rachel Carson on this Blue Monday, as we begin to celebrate Women's History month over at Escape Into Life, first with If Bees Are Few--another look at the prairie, this time with the help of Emily Dickinson, Rachel Carson, and Sandra Steingraber.
It's another look at Shawn Decker's Prairie, too.
The other art you'll see there, and here, is by Chuck E. Bloom. Chosen for its eerie beauty and haunting titles: What We Forget, Appreciated From a Distance, and How Many Times Will It Take? Go take a look.
Posted by Kathleen at 4:45 PM 1 comment:
Hazelnuts in Winter
I'm tired of winter. But it's very pretty. Here is the Winter Quarterly issue of Blue Fifth Review, its Blue Five Notebook series: 5 writers on a topic, this time, the city. My poem in it, "Emilio's Tapas, Sol y Nieve", actually takes place in the summer in the city, but there is a reason (hazelnuts) to imagine the winter.
Reading is a good way to keep warm, all bundled up on couch or chair.
And here is Prick of the Spindle, where I have a new Poetry Cheerleader review up, of Illinois, My Apologies, a chapbook by Justin Hamm. Cheerleading is another great way to keep warm.
Many thanks to Wikipedia for its public domain image of the common hazel and to Tony the Tiger for three hazelnuts (aka filberts), skin-on, skin-off, and halved. Yes, Tony the Tiger. Filberts are also good covered in chocolate, yet another way to stay warm in winter. Do I seem a little obsessed with chocolate lately?


It wasn't a fantastic weekend for Mexico national team players, but there were some bright spots and a pair of meetings between multiple Mexican players.
The best news of the weekend may have been Javier "Chicharito" Hernandez's return to the West Ham United starting lineup. It was the second start of the season for Mexico's all-time leading scorer and the first since August. Chicharito has been sidelined by illness and recovery from that issue, but played an hour in the Hammers' 1-1 draw with Leicester City - a game overshadowed by the tragic helicopter accident that took place in the aftermath.
Multiple Mexican players saw their compatriots wearing the opposing jersey this weekend. In Portugal, Jesus "Tecatito" Corona started for Porto against Antonio "Pollo" Briseno's Feirense side. Hector Herrera replaced Corona in the 64th minute of the 2-0 win for Porto, with HH among several regulars playing smaller roles after a midweek Champions League win over Lokomotiv Moscow.
In the Netherlands, Hirving Lozano got the start for PSV with his teammate Erick Gutierrez coming off the bench in a labored 2-1 win over Groningen. Uriel Antuna started last week for Groningen but came off the bench in stoppage time for a cameo this week.
Raul Jimenez started for Wolves but exited a 1-0 loss to Brighton after playing around an hour.
In Spain, it was a rough week for El Tri players. Nestor Araujo didn't get into Celta de Vigo's 4-0 victory over Eibar. Hector Moreno again sat on the bench for Real Sociedad as the Basque club lost 2-0 to Atletico Madrid. Miguel Layun was an unused substitute in Sunday's Villarreal loss to Alaves after taking part in a 5-0 Europa League victory against Rapid Wien. Andres Guardado continues to miss time with an injury and wasn't in the 18 for Real Betis' 2-0 loss to Getafe.
Diego Reyes had played in the Europa League during the week for 2-2 draw against Anderlecht and then was on the bench as the Yellow Canaries fell 3-1 to Ankaragucu. The home defeat spelled the end of Phillip Cocu's tenure and Reyes will now have a different manager to play under going forward.
In Belgium, Guillermo Ochoa played in goal for Standard despite a quick turnaround from a Europa League victory over Krasnodar. Fatigue didn't seem to be a factor, with Ochoa and Co. able to secure a 1-1 draw with Genk and stay in the playoff places of the league.


How did you hear you'd booked your first Broadway show? I was lying on a rock in Central Park after my final callback at Lincoln Center, and my agent called me.
What is your favorite event in the Broadway community? The Tonys.
What's something about Broadway that fascinates you? How intimately connected the community really is.
What, other than theatre, has inspired you recently? My daughter.
If I could have coffee with any living person, it would be... David Lynch.
If I could trade places with anybody for a day, I would choose... my wife, Jessica Rush.
To be successful in this business, it takes... being self-aware, talented, and low maintenance.
Tell us a secret. It's all about family.


Youtube isn't the first site that comes to mind when authors go looking for reviews but maybe it should be. When I published my book in 2012, there weren't that many people on Youtube who reviewed books and those that did, didn't review indie books. In fact, some of them didn't even know what an indie book was. Ouch! Fast forward to 2015 and Youtubers are a force to be reckoned with, they endorse everything from cosmetics, clothes, and yes, even books. Several Youtubers have even become millionaires and in response Forbes created a list of the wealthiest Youtubers. Several of these channels have a subscriber base of millions which means they often reach more viewers than some popular television shows! In fact, corporate America is taking notice and getting their products and services in front of this untapped market. Sure ads are okay, but to get an influencer to endorse your business is gold and gives your product credibility.
Youtube claims over 1 billion users reaching more young people (18-49 year olds) than cable television. Also, the hours spent on the site has gone up 60% in the past 2 years. Youtube is so powerful that many book marketers have recommended authors create their own channels or the very least, create a book trailer for promotional purposes.
An author who took the plunge and created his own channel was bestselling author John Green, who along with his brother Hank, created Vlog Brothers, a channel where they discuss all things nerdy. Since its launch in 2007, Vlog Brothers has amassed 2.6 million subscribers. Not bad for an author, and his brother, huh?
For those who doubt that Youtube could provide any opportunity for the indie book movement, doubt no more. The Booktuber phenomenon has gotten so strong that it's gone global for instance, while I was researching for this post, I stumbled across several Booktube channels in Spanish. Amazingly, I got to watch John Green being interviewed in Spanglish. (Spanish & English) I loved it!
Before I go on, I need to give the disclaimer and remind you that many of these vloggers are busy, and have normal lives so they can't review ever single book that is pitched to them. Also keep in mind, you are competing with other authors so if they say no, don't take it personally.
I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't state the obvious, but be sure to read the guidelines in a Booktuber's "about" tab before pitching. Trust me there's nothing worse than getting an unsolicited email from someone who never bothered to learn your name or the genre you review.
Helpful Tip: Many of the top Booktubers are inundated with requests so try to target a Booktuber with a smaller audience.
I believe the Booktuber phenomenon will evolve giving indie authors a greater chance at exposure. Who knows, maybe you will be the one who builds the Youtube channel solely for indie books? As far as I can tell there isn't anyone doing that right now and that's a shame but that's another post for another day.
Next post5 Things Indies Can Get for Cheap or Free!


Baramulla: The Government Middle School Manzgam Uri in Boniyar tehsil has three rooms for eight classes comprising of around 100 students.
The students of the school said that while they have good teaching staff the paucity of space forces teachers to take classes in the open. Plus students of two three to classes study in the same room. "The school management are helpless, what can they do, when there are only three class rooms and all school equipments are also in these classrooms. The teachers are teaching class 8th students in office room because of shortage of accommodation" Asif Ahmad, a student said.
Abdul Ahmad, a local resident said that they have been asking the Education department to build more rooms for the school.
"We forwarded several aplications to department that we have lot of land around the school, and department can construct few more classes easily here, but they are paying heed to our repeated complaints".
Chief Education Officer Baramulla Abdul Ahad Ganie told Kashmir Reader that that he would look into the matter. "I will visit the school personally and will solve the problem" Ganie said.


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Mercedes-Benz sales witnesses the most successful month ever
In the 1st quarter of this year, the GLC SUV became their best-selling car. The unit sales were also 33.4 percent higher compared to the last year's record
The past March, as well as this quarter, became the best-selling period of Mercedes-Benz ever with a myriad of unit sales records set worldwide.
It is reported that 237,307 Mercedes-Benz cars have been sold in March alone. This number welcomes a new sales record which surpasses the record from the previous year month by 3.9 percent officially, becoming the strongest March sales ever of the brand.
The past March, as well as this quarter, became the best-selling period of Mercedes-Benz ever
Also, the last quarter was the strongest quarter in Mercedes-Benz sales' history as they reach 594,304 car buyers (+6.0 percent).
Here is the list of countries in which the premium car chart shows best Mercedes-Benz sales in March: Brazil, Canada, Australia, South Korea, Japan, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, Russia, Italy, France, Germany, and Great Britain.
It is reported that 237,307 cars have been sold solely by Mercedes-Benz in March
The most remarkable sales margins come from Europe when it reached a total of 109,252 units last month and 238,131 in the 1st quarter. (+2.1 percent).
In the 1st quarter, Portugal, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium, Spain, and Frace also made their new unit sales records.
>>> Also read: Top 5 best Mercedes-Bens convertibles of all time
Hectic car-buying in Asia
Unit sales in the Asia Pacific also rose significantly making a new record selling 88,976 MBs in March (+13.1 percent)
Aside from China, Malaysia, India, and South Korea also witnessed a hectic quarter of car buyers in these countries with new records. Thai customers bought more cars than the prior year quarter as well.
READ ALSO New 2020 Toyota Corolla (Pictures)
Unit sales in the Asia Pacific also rose significantly making a new record selling 88,976 MBs in March
Witnessing the potential in the Asia Pacific, the star brand has joined hands with Thonburi Automotive Assembly Plant and Daimler to invest a huge 45.3b naira to satisfy the soaring demands in the region.
In the 1st quarter of this year, the GLC SUV became their best-selling car. The unit sales were also 33.4 percent higher compared to the last year's record.
Aside from China, Malaysia, India, and South Korea also witnessed a hectic quarter of car buyers
The Cabriolet and the Maybach S-Class were the two models gained big sales success in the past quarter.
| Tags: Mercedes-Benz sales witnesses the most successful month ever
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Above: Severine flying the Redstone Rig.
On Saturday afternoon at IFarm last weekend, aerial photos were taken from multirotor and fixed wing aircraft, and from a kite. When the powered flights were finished, I made my first ever flight with a Redstone Rig. Even though I have been encouraging others to print them and buy them from me, I had not yet gotten around to trying a Redstone Rig. Under a Fled kite and a yellow Picavet, with a Canon S95 shooting every five seconds, the rig worked just as expected.
A Canon S95 on the Redstone Rig under a Picavet suspension.
I pointed the camera in the general direction of the Tuckaway Farm complex, and below is a stitched panorama from six photos.
View over Tuckaway Farm from under a Fled kite.
When the rig came down, we got some practice making aeries (aerial selfies).
That's Jeff, Ned, Don, Christine, Abe, Louis, Severine, and Graham.
There is more to come from the other flights that day, but the stitching job from the Bixler flight is slow. Maybe I will report on the quadcopter flight with Mobius ActionCam Infragram next.


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(Redirected from Mon oncle)
Mon Oncle ("My Uncle") is a 1958 film by Jacques Tati. It was Tati's first colour film — not counting the colour-debacle of Jour de fête — and that same year won him the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, a Special Prize at Cannes, as well as the prestigious New York Film Critics Award, making it the most-awarded of Tati's films.
The film centers on the character of Monsieur Hulot (who had already appeared in Tati's previous comedy, Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot) and his comedic, quixotic and childlike struggle with postwar France's mindless obsession with modernism and American-style consumerism. As with most Tati films, Mon Oncle is largely a visual comedy, with voices and dialogue merged into the background noise of daily life.
M. Hulot is the dreamy, impractical, and adored uncle of young Gérard (nine years old), who lives with his materialistic parents in an ultra-modern geometric house and garden (Villa Arpel) in a new suburb of Paris, situated just beyond the crumbling stone buildings of the old neighborhoods of the city. Gérard's parents, M. and Mme. Arpel, are firmly entrenched in a machine-like existence of work, fixed gender roles, and the acquisition of status through possessions and conspicuous display. (A running gag involves a fish-shaped fountain at the center of the Arpels' garden that Mme. Arpel turns on only for important visitors).
Each element of Villa Arpel is representational rather than functional, an environment completely hostile to the comfort of its occupants. In choosing modern architecture to punctuate his satire, Tati once stated, "Les lignes géométriques ne rendent pas les gens aimables" ("modern architecture does not produce amiable inhabitants"). From pas japonais positioned like mine fields, to impossible-to-sit-on furniture, to a kitchen with the decibel level of a jet engine, every facet of Villa Arpel emphasizes the supremacy of superficial aesthetics and electrical gadgets over the reality of daily living.
Despite the facial beauty of its modern design (the set was so admired by one film fan that a real-life version of the house was constructed near Paris), the Arpels' home is entirely impersonal, as are the Arpels themselves. In fact, M. and Mme. Arpel have completely subordinated their individuality to maintain their social position and their shiny new possessions. Tati emphasizes his themes surrounding the Arpel lifestyle (as well as M. Arpel's automatonic workplace, Plastac) with monochromatic shades and cloudy days; vivid colors and bright light coincide only with the arrival of visitors, particularly Uncle Hulot.
In contrast, Uncle Hulot, the quintessential poète des terrains vagues, lives in a small old corner of the city. He is unemployed, and gets around town either on foot or on a rather tired VéloSoleX. Though he is obviously without possessions, he does not seem to notice; color, light, and frivolity inhabit Hulot's world. Young Gérard, utterly bored by the sterility and monotony of his life with his parents, fastens himself to Uncle Hulot at every opportunity. Uncle Hulot, little more than a child himself at times, is completely at home with Gérard, but also completely ineffectual at controlling his horseplay with his school friends, who take delight in tormenting adults with practical jokes. Exasperated at their uncle's perceived immaturity, the Arpels soon scheme to saddle him with the twin yokes of family and business responsibilities.
Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Mon Oncle" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on original research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.
Retrieved from "http://www.artandpopularculture.com/Mon_Oncle"
This page was last modified 20:04, 5 November 2018.


This master bath remodel was part of a whole house renovation we did in Ahwatukee. We updated everything with new wood or tile flooring, removed popcorn texture from the ceilings, repainted the entire home and added new quarts counter-tops to the kitchen.
The bathroom had major accessibility issues due to its narrow doorways, and cramped shower.


There are three elements of a compelling vision. In my last blog post, I discussed the first element – having a significant purpose. The second element of a compelling vision is a clear picture of the future.
There is tremendous power in holding a picture in your mind of what you intend to create.
I first became aware of the power of holding a picture of what you want to create after the 1976 Olympics. The Russians walked away with almost all of the gold medals, and people were wondering how they did it. We discovered that they were using a technique called "mental rehearsal" where they imagined practicing the race. I was very curious about this and got interested in visualization.
Around the same time, I was teaching children with learning disabilities. These were 10 year-old kids who had experienced years of failure in learning to read and were quite frustrated. One day it occurred to me that they probably couldn't even imagine themselves reading. Despite all the techniques I was using, if they couldn't imagine themselves reading, no wonder it was so hard.
So I started a little experiment where I had them close their eyes for 10 minutes each day while I took them through a guided imagery. I started the year with having them imagine that they were walking into the library, just enjoying looking at picture books and feeling comfortable in the library. Over the year, I gradually added in reading words. By the end of year, I had them imagine they were reading long books with no pictures and enjoying it.
Their attitude really changed. You could see that they felt so much more comfortable, and teaching became more fun. I believe they actually learned more that year.
Vision is a very clear picture that you can see in your mind. It's more than just positive thinking.
As techniques in mental imagery became more sophisticated, sports psychologists discovered that although mental rehearsal was helpful, the real power was in having the athletes imagine they were standing on the podium receiving the gold medal.
It's not possible to map out the entire journey. Hold your picture of the destination, the end-result you desire. The process for getting there will become more clear as you proceed.
Vision is a clearly articulated, results-oriented picture of a future you intend to create. It is a dream with direction.
Jesse, thanks for this wonderful story of the children learning. I absolutely believe in visualization as an effective technique and have experienced its success personally. However, despite that knowledge, I forget the power of it and don't use it nearly as much as I could or should. I so appreciate this reminder. Thank you for re-energizing me in this effort.
Hi Robin, Thanks for your comments. Glad my post reminded you. There is tremendous power in visualizing a picture of the result you intend to create, whether it is for a vision or even just a goal.
Once, after a presentation, an attractive woman came up to me and told me that she had lost over 50 lbs in the past year. Of course she had dieted, but she was able to maintain her diet because she purchased a pair of blue jeans in the size she wanted to be and hung them in her bedroom. Every night she imagined what she would look like wearing those jeans. Her story made me realize how much easier it is to focus on the picture of what you want to create, rather than on the food she was being deprived of.
A caveat: we can get into trouble if we visualize too many of the details because we can lose the sight of the forest in the midst of the trees. One might hold a picture of the kind of relationship they want to have, but it's a mistake to visualize being in a relationship with a particular person because you might be wrong about what's possible with that person.
Hi Jesse, In the world of solution focus we use a small scale version of visioning. It's called the miracle question and it's very powerful. It was formulated by Steve de Shazer.
"Suppose…. that you leave here today and go home and finish your day…and go to bed…..
And while you're asleep…..a miracle happens…. and the problems that brought you here have vanished or things are how you want them to be or you have achieved what you want to achieve….But you're asleep, so you don't know the miracle has happened…..
This disassociative technique is designed to get the person or team to describe what would be happening instead of the problems they face. It works well because of the last line – it gets them started.
Excellent activity! Much thanks for sharing it here Alan.
What makes this work so well is the question you ask: "what are the signs that show a miracle has occurred?" Asking "what would you see?" forces them to focus on the end result. Not only does it steer them away from the problems, it also steers them away from designing solutions before they are clear about what they really desire to achieve.
I like your activity because it is a quick way to shift their thinking. A longer activity that I find quite effective in helping to create a shared vision is using a guided imagery like what I did with the children. I do a variation that involves a time machine, where the dial doesn't have dates but instead says "ideal future." I have them imagine getting out of the time machine and walking around.
What are people doing? What activities are they engaged in? What are they saying to each other? How are they interacting with each other? How do they feel about themselves? about others? Where are you? What are you doing? Who are you with? How do you feel about yourself? What is the physical environment like? What is the climate like? What is management doing? There's a meeting, what are people talking about? How are they relating to each other? What is the tone?
(If they say they are on a Caribbean island, I encourage them to return from their vacation and see what's happening back home or at work).
The power in both of our activities comes in the discussion afterward where people see the significance of their dreams and the similarity with others on their team.
The Indian Mythology has several stories narrating this micro-visioning".
Invariably, someone – normally a 'common' human being wishes to aspire for something big (either attaining the state of TOTAL KNOWLEDGE or getting to gain physical access to the DIVINE POWER). However, fulfilment of such a 'dream' becomes a reality only when a great amount of 'focused', 'selfless' penance is practiced. And then suddenly, that 'dream' becomes a 'reality'. The person attains what was aspired.
The important issue is, What Next?
To continue the above story, the person then carries on with the 'regular' life, enjoying 'direct' or 'indirect' benefits of the realization of the dream.
Those who enjoy and share with others live saintly or divine life and those who do so for only selfish gains or do so for altering what is considered to be the 'natural order' are treated as DEMONs in these stories.
In short, the conceptualization of 'dream', efforts to realize it and then deploying the fruits for the benefits of the society is indeed a subject that can make a person from 'also-ran' to the 'champion' material.
Thanks for sharing these stories. Very interesting to see cross-cultural applications and the universality of the underlying message.
A very touching post on the use of visioning with children. While I personally use visioning when-ever I remember, I never thought that it could be used with children to get them used to something, as a conscious practice. It is something to practise in my own life. Thanks.
So glad my post expanded your thinking about visioning. Thanks for letting me know, Jason.


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Israel's Shufersal to Implement Trigo Vision's Cashierless Tech Across all its Stores
by Chris Albrecht
November 13, 2018 November 13, 2018 Filed under:
Trigo Vision announced today that its cashierless checkout technology, which delivers Amazon Go-like experiences at retail, will be installed in every location of Shufersal, Israel's largest supermarket chain.
Technically, the two companies have signed an agreement to adopt Trigo Vision's technology, but the two still need to go through a pilot in one store first over the next year, and then roll out to the rest of the chain's 272 locations.
Trigo Vision says that one of benefits of its technology over Amazon Go is that Trigo Vision can be retrofitted into any retail store of any size. Amazon Go stores are built from the ground up to house Amazon's high-tech cameras and sensors and are typically smaller, hovering around the 2,000 square foot mark. Trigo Vision's system uses basic off-the-shelf connected cameras, computer vision and machine learning to be able to identify products people put in their cart in a way, the company says, that can accommodate any lighting condition or store set up.
Being able to accurately identify more than 2,500 SKUs in a store has been a challenge, Trigo Vision CEO, Michael Gabay and COO, Jenya Beilin told me in a phone interview. Part of the issue with using computer vision for product identification is that the algorithms must be able to understand subtle shifts in branding, like for a special promotion or a seasonal flavor. But Trigo Vision claims that its technology has automated this process, and now it will go into broader real world use courtesy of the Shufersal partnership.
The competition to bring cashierless checkout tech to the grocery masses is fierce. Amazon is rolling out its Go stores at a fast pace across the country. Sam's Club just debuted its first cashierless retail store. And Microsoft has long-been rumored to be working on cashierless tech with Walmart: the two giants recently expanded on an existing cloud partnership, which includes working on the internet of things and IT modernization. It makes sense that including a cahsierless retail component could be a part of that relationship, especially when so much data around how people shop and what they purchase can be mined from such a store.
Based in Tel Aviv, Trigo Vision raised a $7 million seed round earlier this year. The company says it's expanding quickly and will have 20 – 25 people on their team by the end of the year. In addition to Shufersal, Trigo Vision has one other pilot happening right now with an undisclosed European grocer.
cashierless checkout
cashierless technology
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You are at:Home»KBS»A-Tishoo, A-Tishoo… We All Got Played! UK COVID Cronyism Revealed!
By kevbakershow	 April 24, 2021 No Comments
Masks vs anti-masks. Lockdown vs anti-lockdown. Vaccine vs anti-vaccine. People talking about how there is no virus, its never been isolated & everything is all just some cabal stunt they call a 'plandemic'.
Just some of the confusion that has been as epidemic as COVID itself, but why? Neil Sanders joins me to expose the truth behind the UK governments seemingly inept handling of the COVID pandemic.
Did the UK Go for Herd Immunity?
By Neil Sanders (visit website… CLICK HERE)
On the 3rd February 2020 Boris Johnson made a speech to the Tory party donors in which he said:
"Global growth is itself anemic and the decline in global poverty is beginning to slow," he said. "And in that context, we are starting to hear some bizarre autocratic rhetoric, when barriers are going up, and when there is a risk that new diseases such as Coronavirus will trigger a panic and a desire for market segregation that go beyond what is medically rational to the point of doing real and unnecessary economic damage, then at that moment humanity needs some government somewhere that is willing at least to make the case powerfully for freedom of exchange."
He went on to suggest that the UK would be the country "ready to take off its Clark Kent spectacles and leap into the phone booth and emerge with its cloak flowing as the supercharged champion".
Also in February it was revealed that government advisor Dominic Cummings had stated "herd immunity, protect the economy, and if that means some pensioners die, too bad." As reported in the Financial Times:
"The acceptance that the disease would inevitably spread widely across British society — but could be managed — meant that Britain did not immediately announce tough social-distancing measures and had a limited testing regime. "Dominic supported the policy 100 per cent," said one Downing Street official"
By this time the UK government had moved 20000 covid patients into care homes to recover. Covid began to spread like wildfire in care homes.
By the 27th of February Cummings and his mate Ben Warner (of VoteLeave) were advising the SAGE scientists on the strategy of achieving herd immunity:
"SAGE updated its assumptions for a reasonable worst-case scenario. It said: "80% of the UK population may become infected, with an overall 1% fatality rate in those infected." It also added that: "Only a proportion of those infected will experience symptoms".
On the 3rd March 2020 Boris Johnson announced that he had been to a hospital with Covid patients and had been shaking hands with everyone.
On 5 March 2020 briefed by No.10 – Robert Peston of the Spectator – owned by Tory donors the Barclay brothers- revealed the govt strategy was to "allow the virus to pass through the entire population".
Also on March 5th Boris Johnson appeared on This Morning to tell Phillip Schofield that: "One of the theories is, that perhaps you could take it on the chin, take it all in one go…"
On 5th March, the SAGE minutes confirm that the Government decided to adopt this approach. The meeting during which this was cemented was attended by Cummings, Warner and David Halpern, head of the Cabinet Office's Behavioural Insights Team (known as the 'nudge unit').
On March 11th David Halpern of the Nudge Unit appeared on BBC radio saying that the plan was to cocoon the vulnerable and allow the rest of the population to achieve herd immunity.
11 March – the day the WHO declared COVID19 a pandemic- Jenny Harries Deputy Chief Medical Officer for England said public outdoor events are safe & that "we don't want to disrupt people lives".
That week, Liverpool played Real Madrid & 250,000 people went to the Cheltenham Festival. Matt Hancock mysteriously received a payment of £370000 from the organisers if the Cheltenham Festival. Dido Harding, who oversaw the spending of £37 billion on a useless track and trace system, is married to a board member of the Jockey Club – the owners of the Cheltenham Festival.
Also on March 11th Patrick Whitty announced that the government were not going to test anyone unless they were already in hospital.
On March 13th Patrick Vallance (also of the Nudge Unit) appeared on TV to defend the Governments Herd Immunity strategy
Also on 13th March in the INews newspaper, Patrick Vallance again proposed that Herd Immunity was the best strategy.
Government Advisor Nick Phin also appeared on Channel 4 to discuss Herd Immunity saying: "Well, herd immunity is the situation where you get so many people in the population to develop an immunity to a disease that there is no opportunity for the disease to actually become established and spread to lots of people," said Nick Phin, deputy director of the National Infection Service.
"Normally we do that with a vaccine," he said. "You can do that naturally, of course, if a disease that's not been introduced before affects a large number of people, and that's really how herd immunity in the U.K. would develop."
Also on 13th March Boris Johnson spoke to the Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte that the UK's strategy was to achieve herd Immunity. This was confirmed by the Italian health minister Pierpaolo Sileri.
With lockdown looming Boris Johnson refused to order the pubs to close. Fearing imminent closure thousand flocked to their favourite watering holes.
Lockdown started on 23rd March. Notes from the minutes of SAGE meetings show that the herd immunity strategy was still in place until mid April.
"A series of meeting minutes from this period show that SAGE belatedly conceded that there was "no evidence pointing to high levels of population immunity in this stage in the pandemic"; that it was unclear how long immunity lasted; and that therefore the idea of opening up the economy via mass distributing of immunity passports for people recovered from the Coronavirus was premature."
On 24th March the financial Times science editor Clive Cookson, suggested that the country "had already acquired substantial herd immunity through the unrecognised spread of COVID-19 over more than two months". If true, this would vindicate the Government's "unofficial herd immunity strategy – allowing controlled spread of infection," he stated. This became known as the Oxford paper – but strangely it didn't come from Oxford University and it escaped the usual peer review process.
This concept had been formulated and presented by a group called Surgrue Communications – the PR arm of the UK's Nudge Unit and works with the MOD DSTL lab.
The article in the FT stated: "Although some experts have shed doubt on the strength and length of the human immune response to the virus, Prof Gupta said the emerging evidence made her confident that humanity would build up herd immunity against COVID-19." Sunetra Gupta would become a prominent voice in covid denial – claiming we achieved herd immunity in March 2020.
On April 15th the first anti Lockdown protest is held in Michigan USA – it transpires that this was arranged by Koch industries, the Devos family and the Heritage Foundation. Simultaneously there is a campaign called filmthehospitals that is started by Council for National Policy member Jason Jones. All of these people are connected in some manner to the Conservative party as donors.
At the end of April the oil industry shuddered as oil went into negative pricing – this meant that the oil industry – for a time –was paying people to take their oil. Due to the slowing of international and domestic travel the industries profits were hit heavily.
SAGE notes from May 1st show that the government had spent the entire period of the lockdown arguing that the measures should be reversed.
In Early May Simon Dolan – multi millionaire tax exile who lives in Monaco and just so happens to be hard Brexit – got hard Brexit lawyer – connected with the VoteLeave campaign – Dominic Hoar to fight the legality of the lockdown. Dolan had previously been trying to win a contract to supply the government with masks. His contract was turned down and he suddenly became a hard core anti masker and critic of the lockdown and down-player of Covid. Reports are that he is often seen in Monaco wearing a mask. Anyway – this multi millionaire crowd funded his spurious case against the lockdown. Obviously this case was thrown out – but not before Francis Hoar had pocketed nearly £70000 of people's money. Dolan produces films for Ickonic.
On 22nd May it was reported that Dominic Cummings had breached the lockdown and had driven to Durham. The result of this was a total undermining of the policy and we saw huge amounts of people flock to parks and beaches for May Bank Holiday. It later turns out that Cummings shopped himself to the police and newspapers – almost as if he wanted to undermine the lockdown.
In August and September 2020 several anti lockdown protests were put on in Trafalgar Square – these were arranged with the help of John Mappin of Turning Point UK – Koch industries, The English Democrats – racist hard Brexit group that contains Vernon Coleman – and the Church of Scientology – heavy supporters of Trump and the right wing nexus. Pro Brexiteers such as Andrew Tice and Simon Dolan also got involved.
As an interesting aside – you need to get permission from the government to protest in Trafalgar Square. This was arranged by a chap called John Carlton – a Scientologist who works with at least two other Scientologists on a 5G ran home automation project. He is also friends with John Mappin the head of Turning Point UK and a prominent Qanon promoter – who also runs Camelot TV – a media outlet that denies covid exists.
In September, against the advice of the SAGE Scientists, university students were sent back to campus. Cases soared and these students were isolated in their halls of residence. Only remote lessons were possible but at least the university's got their rent. Strangely schools like Eton resisted the return of students.
In September the government released a letter published by a group of scientists including Sunetra Gupta, Carl Heneghen, Karol Sikora, Michael Yeadon and others. They had been pushing for herd immunity since March – Gupta, Yeadon and Sikora repeating several times the lie that this had already been achieved and argued that lockdowns were more detrimental than the virus. On the surface this seemed critical of the government – arguing that lockdowns were draconian. However it soon became clear that this line of thought came directly from the UK Treasury – specifically a think tank called Economic Insight. These scientists were working alongside the treasury focusing on costs not health. Furthermore it was revealed that Gupta, Heneghen, Yeadon et al were also being promoted by the UK Behavioural Insight Group – The Nudge Unit. Specifically the PR firm Surgrue Communications (the PR arm of the Nudge Unit) promoted these herd immunity anti lockdown tropes.
When shown to epidemiologists -The Economic Insight paper on COVID-19 deaths was described as "pseudoscience" as the "model or the premise doesn't even stand up to basic scientific scrutiny".
Also in September Gupta, Sikora, Heneghen and the Swedish Anders Tegnell spoke at Downing Street to promote herd immunity. After this meeting against the advice of SAGE the autumn circuit break lockdown was rejected.
Around this time – for no apparent reason – Anders Tegnall warned the UK that herd immunity wouldn't work – not that he had been doing that in Sweden obviously – perish the thought.
Following this Boris Johnson repeatedly refused to impose measures on London.
In October 2020 the Koch Industries financed AEIR promoted the Great Barrington Declaration – a conference and paper that promoted the idea of herd immunity. The Great Barrington Declaration, after the town in which it was created, was drafted by Gupta with two other top US scientists, Professor Martin Kulldorff of Harvard University and Stanford Fellow Jay Bhattacharya.
Patrick Fagan who worked for Cambridge Analytica is for some reason part of the Great Barrington Declaration.
Alongside Gupta you have Dr Carl Heneghen also playing it down – he is financed by this couple called the Willets who are friends with that Chris Burnham of the Trump transition team and Mary Jacobi who worked directly with the Reagan and Bush administrations – so Pro Trump Heneghen ends his posts: "… the article has not been peer-reviewed; it should not replace individual clinical judgement and the sources cited should be checked… The views are not a substitute for professional medical advice".
His stuff is published by the Spectator – Barclay brothers and then there is Dr Karol Sikora who is up to his tits in the IEA (Koch Industries/Brexit) and surprise surprise wants to privatise the NHS – says it is communism – works for Astra Zeneca – lied about being connected to Imperial College for some reason. He was the Lockerbie bombers Dr – who lied about his cancer; he once gave a 14 year old boy a mercy killing lethal injection.
But he does have an illustrious record of lobbying on behalf of the Conservative Party. For instance, he founded the Doctors for Reform group – a free-market pressure group which was accused in 2004 of being "supported by the Conservative Party", according to the British Medical Journal.
In 2009, he was paid to appear in US adverts for the Republican Party created by a lobby group, Conservatives for Patient Rights, which attacked the NHS
During this time PCRClaims came about – another group with Michael Yeadon as their figurehead. The point of this group is to criticise the PCR test – mostly with the idea that they give 90% false positives – they don't they actually give 30% false negatives. This is easily disproved – if they gave 90% false positives – then we would see uniform levels of infection everywhere. Indeed if they gave 90% false positives we would never have any area where there was zero covid – but we do hence Yeadon is a liar. He was also exposed as being a horrible old racist as loads of old tweets surfaced with him being a sad nasty old bigot. Patrick Fagan of Cambridge Analytica fame is also involved in PCR Claims.
PCRclaims.co.uk, too, has links to the Conservative Party and the Government.
One of its 'experts' on economics is Jeffrey Peel, previously an area vice-chair of the Conservative Party, a business spokesperson for Vote Leave, Northern Ireland chairman of Brexit campaign group Business for Britain, and an advisor to the Department for International Trade from 2017 to 2020
The Great Barrington Declaration was also overseen by an advisory board called PANDA. On the board of PANDA were – Patrick Fagan, Martin Kulldorf and Donald Trump's former Covid advisor Scott Atlas. PANDA is heavily opposed to vaccines and backed the discredited work of anti vax doctor Denis Rancourt.
In December 2020 – having been kicked off twitter – Michael Yeadon started a Facebook "news" channel denying covid and the pcr tests called Unlocked United Kingdom. Yeadon was helped in this endeavour by Patrick Fagan. Unlocked's chairman and co-director of ULUK Limited is former Conservative Party donor-turned-Brexit Party MEP Ben Habib – who had previously backed Yeadon's social media career.
At Christmas against the advice of the SAGE group Boris Johnson suggested Christmas bubbles allowing different groups to meet and mix. Following this thousand died.
During the entire debacle we have seen a series of media outlets pouring scorn on the severity of the virus, picking at figures, suggesting that tests don't work and that hospitals aren't stretched. These include Talk Radio (Murdoch), The Times (Murdoch) Telegraph and Spectator (Barclay Brothers), The Mail (Northcliffe), The Lockdown Sceptics (Toby Young), Sky News Australia (Murdoch) Fox News (Murdoch). By massive coincidence these are all owned by people who donate to the Conservative party and want you to go to work and earn them money. The anti lockdown protests in the UK were put on by the Church of Scientology – backers of Trump and Turning Point UK – Koch Industries.
You see in April 2020 for the first time oil went into negative – meaning that due to a lack of demand you had to pay to get rid of it – as opposed to the normal profit on each barrel. The same people who just so happen to finance the Republicans in the USA and the Conservatives in the UK also have ties to the petrochemical industry.
That's why they resisted lockdown for four weeks. That's why they undermined it and finished it in May. That's why they sent the students back. That's why they introduced tiers, and then changed the rules. That's why they pretended to oppose the government policy. It's all about money.
That's why we never closed the borders or provided adequate facilities at airports.
And to explain why the government is actually behind a series of media nodes and personalities that seem to be undermining the figures, tests, severity etc – well it's quite simple. If you doubt that the figure of 130000 dead is inaccurate – then the government didn't do quite as bad as you thought. This is why the nudge unit has tricked people into providing the government with an alibi – when you should be holding them to task for their failures.
boris johnson covid covid19 lockdown mask matt hancock
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text:
Trade unions propose to hike minimum wage to €492
Employers call for a formula with pre-set indicators for calculating an annual increase of the minimum wage.
Labour, illustrative stock photo (Source: Sme)
Trade unions would like to see the minimum monthly wage increased by €57 to €492 in 2018. This would mean an increase of 13.1 percent from the current €435. Positive macroeconomic developments, as well as the economic condition of both the public and private sectors, speak in favour of minimum wage growth of this magnitude, argue trade unions.
"Even politicians are not hiding that economic indicators in Slovakia are good," said Jozef Kollár, president of the Confederation of Trade Unions (KOZ) as cited by the TASR newswire.
KOZ announced their recommendation on April 13, adding that after levies and taxes are deducted, the increase would be only €36.
"Even with the minimum wage increased like this, we will still belong to the tail end of EU countries in terms of the minimum wage level," said Kollár as cited by the TASR newswire.
While the Labour, Social Affairs and Family Ministry supports the hike, it says that the rise must be agreed with social partners. Employers warn that such a high increase would make it difficult for low-earners to find jobs and they have called for a scheme to calculate the hike in the minimum wage.
The third Robert Fico government has declared that the minimum wage will grow to €500 by 2019. The minimum wage has been increased for the past couple of years in Slovakia. In 2015 it amounted to €380, while it was €405 in 2016.
Around 210,000 people currently receive the minimum wage or a sum similar to it in Slovakia, i.e. they earn about €450 per month, according to KOZ.
The Labour, Social Affairs and the Family Ministry is pushing for as high and appropriate a rise in the minimum wage as possible each year.
"First of all, however, a rise in the minimum wage must be agreed on by the social partners, and the law-prescribed deadline for doing so is July 15," explained Veronika Husárová, spokesperson of the Labour Ministry. Social partners include trade unions, the government and employers. In case they fail to agree on the rise, as has happened during the last few years, it is the government that decides by the end of July.
In response to KOZ's initiative, the Federation of Employers' Associations (AZZZ) suggested a different tack. Given that the annual talks between the social partners fail to produce an agreement on the minimum wage, said AZZZ, a formula should be put in place whereby the minimum wage increase would be based on pre-set indicators. This would make it possible for employers to predict the costs related to this several years in advance, said AZZZ spokesperson Miriam Špániková.
17. Apr 2017 at 21:33 | Compiled by Spectator staff
Theme: Career and HR
Job offers hit six-year low
Employers are searching for more people than during the first pandemic wave
Coronavirus speeds up changes to labour market. More IT positions are sought
Labour market seems to be recovering. New job offers exceeded 4,000
Most people in Slovakia fail to receive more than €1,000 net


Little kids sometimes say the cutest things or blurt out their opinions at the most inconvenient times. Have you enjoyed such an experience?
Did your little one ever say, comment on, blurt out his/her opinion("uncut version")when you were least expecting it?
These utterances are treasures that adults often think of and laugh!
What was it he/she said?
Someone should make a TV show about this. Bill Cosby would be a good host.
I forgot that little ones are very literal-minded.
@Ivan Dammit. I was going to say that.
My 5 year old cousin and I were on a walk the other week. We went past the skatepark and he announced very loudly that I would make "cute chil'ren with that boy in the blue shirt." Then proceeded to run into the park to talk to the guy about skating.
I had to facepalm and go after him.
AHHHHHHH KIDS SAY THE DARNDEST THINGS DONT THEY?
Yes, it is funny and cute. But terribly awkward if it is related to you.
Bill Cosby HAD a show like this before: Kids Say the Darndest Things.
Did all that ~points up~ really just happen?
When our boys were 2 and 4 my wife and I took them with us to a White House Press Corps Dinner. At the time George W. was the man in power and he was making his pass around the table before the meal was served. He stopped briefly where we were seated, commented on what strapping young men we had, and asked my 4 year old what he wanted to be when he grew up.
Needless to say we were never invited back.
every burst out laughing. embarrassing, but funny.
I'm told that one hot, hot summer, when I was small, I accompanied my grandma to the grocery store. My grandma didn't do well when it got above 80°F (27°C) and when we got to the register, the cashier told my grandma that she looked a little weary. "She's in heat!" I announced.
My son is 19 months old, so his vocabulary is limited to "Daddy"(interchangably "Mommy" and "Daddy") "kee-key"(kitty-cat), "Car-car", and about 25 others.
Three year old grandson calls broccoli 'trees', but when I offered him a tree last week, he said that's not a tree, that's shrubbery.
I was just at IHOP with my friend's almost 2-year old.
This elderly man came up and started making faces at her.
She laughed at first then hit him in the face and screamed "BIIIIIIIIIIIITCHHHHHH" as loud as she could.
I'm pretty sure my face was very very red.
According to my mum, I once told a bald man that he forgot to put his hair on!!! I was about 3 years at the time.
I just thought of another great story. My dad has dentures, or actually what are called "partials"...basically all his back teeth are gone and he has this thing where it's metal attached to false teeth. You can't tell by looking at him, so he likes to freak kids out by taking his teeth out and chomping them at the kid.
Well, one day he was showing a little girl…he slapped himself in the back of the head with one hand and caught his teeth with his other hand as they flew out of his mouth. That was all well and good, except the next time the girl saw her grandma, she walks up to grandma, whacks her in the back of the head expecting her teeth to come out. Only two problems….1) grandma didn't have false teeth, and 2) grandma had never met my dad and had no idea why her grandaughter would have done such a thing.
How fast could you arm yourself?
What's the funniest thing you ever did as a kid?
If a kid was President of the U.S. what would happen?
Is there a trait you have that relatives make fun of you for?
When did children's cartoons become so funny?
Embarrassing/funny things you (as a child) or your children have said unknowingly?


Edit: MAC VERSION READY! :D Sorry for the large size; for some reason the build on Mac is way higher than Linux and Windows.
Game Have been fix! You should be able to run it now without problems by running the .exe on the root folder!
My game for this theme is a clone of basic cat and the mouse game. Everything was done by me. You can find out about the story by activating certain beacons when collapsing on them.
Everything was done in Unreal Engine 4. I wanted to make the game to look like raycast game from the Doom era. Hope you like it!
Then go ahead and run the game by running the .exe on the root folder.
I'm getting an error message "Failed to open descriptor file '../../../TheEmpty-Win32-Shipping/TheEmpty-Win32-Shipping.uproject'. Using Windows 8.1 here and installed the UE4 runtime when prompted.
I can't open this either, good luck though! I've run other UE4 games, hopefully yours gets going.
I got the same error. I installed the UE4 prereq files first.
Windows 10 - same descriptor error. Also run as admin.
Same issue here. Sorry. Screenshots look cool!
Installed the pre-requisits and am having the same problem as disperse and camthestar, "Failed to open descriptor file '../../../TheEmpty-Win32-Shipping/TheEmpty-Win32-Shipping.uproject'.
Same error, Windows 10.. I'll try to come back later!
Hey guys! Have you tried this folder?
Same error as everyone else seems to be getting. Tried running it from the Binaries/Win32 folder... looking through the files it extracted I can't even see the file it's looking for in there? Unless it's supposed to park of the pak or something?
Check if your anti-virus for some reason took it as a false positive.
I hope you get it working. It looks cool.
If you rename TheEmpty\TheEmpty\Binaries\Win32\TheEmpty-Win32-Shipping.exe to TheEmpty.exe it runs.
Have have been fixed! You can run it by using the exe on the root folder!
Fantastic graphics and use of the theme, the mood was set well and it felt quite reproachable in a good way.
The girl got stuck a couple of times on trees, but generally it was fun and enjoyable!
Worked for me now. The graphics and visual effect was really cool. By the end I felt pretty bad about stabbing them ghost ladies. Truly we are the monsters.
Very well put together, although I have to admit that I do not think I "get" it.
Although I don't fully understand the story, the running around in the dark and the things that were said certainly made me feel uneasy, which was fantastic for the mood of the game.
Very interesting experience over all.
Ty guys! The story is non linear for those not getting it :D and it can be interpreted in several ways.
what error are you getting Newan?
Cool. Love the graphics. Awesome entry.
-The music gets repetitive and grating, I feel ambient noise probably would have been a better choice.
Interesting game, I found it hard to connect with the story. Incredible shaders, I loved the visual effects and aesthetics. I would love to see this game in more depth, nice work!
A thought-provoking concept and I really enjoyed the graphics. It's kind of light on gameplay but very interesting.
I loved the voxel style and the narrative was pretty interesting (albeit it was a bit confusing at times). The way the story ends fits the theme very well.
Neat graphical style! I didn't really understand the story, or what causes the main menu to reappear, though.
A simple game. I didn't realize there was a "real" target until a long time in, since I wanted to investigate the house. Good work, and thanks for sharing it!
It was creepy, but I didn't really get the point of it. It was too easy too kill the women while she was it the yard.
The music is nice and the voxel based graphics are lovely.
Probably my favourite graphics so far in LD! The garden's a bit too big, but otherwise, it looks so awesome I can't complain.
okay, got the fixed version to run! Really love that chunky voxel style, and had a good time exploring the house. The plot was ... lacking, though, and hunting down my victim wasn't very fun. Still, would love to see these assets used in a more full game!
This is almost the opening from Scream. It just needed the pop corn. Also a little bit dark... Um!!!!!!
I particularly like the radiation or insomnia esque graphic bit effect.
First game ive seen that literally makes you the bogeyman from those films.
Thanks guys! I'll try to turn this into a full game ala manhunt probably, the only problem would be funding if I do so.
The graphic style is nice, but I'm not sure I understand the story, although I think I found all the "beacons" before killing the real girl.
Great atmosphere! The music is a bit repetitive but it works. Graphics and shaders are great!
I already love the visuals, and I really want to play it - but I can't, error is - returned c1, don't know what it means, anyway, I'll will check for updates, cuz visuals are really awesome!
@collaboration: Can you tell me pls, which platform are you running?


text:
Which sentence is written in first person point of view?
First-Person Point of View The biggest clue that a sentence is written in the first person is the use of first-person pronouns. In the first sentence of this paragraph, the pronouns appear in bold text. We, us, our,and ourselves are all first-person pronouns. Specifically, they are plural first-person pronouns.
Which is often an effect of the second person point of view?
In fiction, a second person narration is often used to transform the reader into a character, as a means of drawing them closer to the story. When writing from this POV, authors will most commonly use the pronoun, 'you' — as opposed to 'I' in the first person and 'he,' 'she,' 'they,' and 'it' in the third person.
How do you address a reader?
Use You as Often as Possible. No matter how large your target audience is, each one of them wants to feel like your address them directly.
Start a Conversation. Speaking of conversations, you need to sound human.
Share Your Story.
Use Emotions and all Five Senses.
Write in the Language Your Readers Speak.
How do you start a third person narrative?
How to start a novel in third person: 7 tips
1: Choose between third person limited, objective and omniscient.
2: Begin with character action and description that raises questions.
3: Avoid introductory character descriptions that read as lists.
4: Remember not to use dialogue attribution in third person unless necessary.
5: Balance introducing character and setting.
What is a direct address example?
Direct address involves the use of a person's name or title to address a remark or a question directly to that person. This use of Alison's name to speak directly to her is an example of direct address.
Can I use the word I in a research paper?
Can I Use First-Person Pronouns in a Research Paper? Yes! For example, the first person is more likely used in the abstract, introduction, discussion, and conclusion sections of an academic paper while the third person and passive constructions are found in the methods and results sections.
How do you write a second person narrative?
You must have a reason for writing in the second person — and it must involve the reader's experience.
Avoid too much repetition where possible.
Set it in the present tense.
Consider using it sparingly.
Choose a form that makes sense.
Test the waters with a short story.
How do you address an audience in an essay?
10 Effective Tips To Reach Your Audience Through Writing
Know your audience. In order to write content that will resonate with someone, you must have an idea of who is going to read it.
Construct a persona.
Create a connection.
Be helpful.
Be informative.
Be personable.
Be vivid.
Know your stuff.
What is it called when the narrator addresses the reader?
Narrative instances In the book, the story is told by the narrator. When the narrator addresses a reader ("Dear reader …"), in fiction this "reader" is not the real world reader of the book, but the audience: an instance of the text. (Only in non-fiction does the author actually address the reader directly.
Can you write in the second person?
Writing in the second person requires use of the pronouns you, your, and yours. It is different from the first person, which uses pronouns including I and me, and different from the third person, which uses pronouns such as he and she. …
Which sentence is an example of first person narration?
Explanation: The sentence that is an example of the first-person narrative is I never knew that I could be so happy. The first-person narrative is a point of view in which the narrator uses the pronouns I or We.
What is the third person narrative?
THIRD-PERSON NARRATION: Any story told in the grammatical third person, i.e. without using "I" or "we": "he did that, they did something else." In other words, the voice of the telling appears to be akin to that of the author him- or herself.
What does addressing the reader directly mean?
The writer speaking directly to (or at) the reader through words such as "you", constitutes a direct address. Second-person writing is unusual in the English language, and therefore its use is surprising enough to grab the reader's attention.
Why did the Antifederalists oppose the new constitution?
How can I improve my grammar and vocabulary?


Looking for a running partner, fellow explorer and all-round charmer? Bob's your man! Bobby is an active young chap who loves nothing more than a romp in the countryside. Bobby enjoys running around with his canine friends, going on long walks with his fosterer and even running with his fosterer's human friends! Bobby is easy to please, he just loves to stretch his legs and enjoy life. He's having a really fun time staying with his fosterer and a dozen other dogs, but he'd love his own home.
Bobby is a very handsome young adult of medium size (17kg) with an adorable pirate eye patch, unique dappled skin pigmentation and a curly white tail. Bobby had been living in an adoptive home but unfortunately found it very difficult to adjust to life as an only dog without the off-lead exercise he needs to thrive. So it was decided he needed to be rehomed with at least one other dog.
Bobby has back with his original fosterer in Surrey for several months now and doing so very well. He gets on brilliantly with the (12+) other dogs in his foster home, often with more dogs coming and going. He has shown no problems with any other dogs - even around food and is good with the people he meets out and about. Bobby has even been going out on regular jogs with some friends of his fosterer's who wanted a running companion! Despite being new people, Bobby gives them all his trust and is so excited to go out with them...he boings right into their car from his fosterer's house!
Bobby is really enjoying time off-lead (his recall is brilliant so he's a pleasure to walk). (View video below.) He was nervous in his adoptive home but has never shown this in his foster home. It will be onwards and upwards for Bobby now that it is known he needs canine companionship and exercise to burn off his energy. Bobby's fosterer loves him and wishes he could stay forever, but she needs his space in order to save other rescue dogs.
Bobby is an active young boy who is looking for an outdoorsy, dog-experienced family who will allow him to run off lead every day and get the physical and mental stimulation he requires. He is brilliant off-lead and loves to explore but never goes far and has great recall. (View video below). Bobby is such a loving and sweet boy and will thrive in the right home.
Poor Bobby (originally named Ariel) was originally found as a lone pup in the middle of the street, with nobody to care for him and no home to call his own. He grew up in a rescue shelter where he was well cared for but did not have the human or canine family guidance that every puppy deserves. He is now wishing for a home of his own with someone who can take him under their wings forever.
If you are interesting in adopting Bobby or one of the other dogs, please fill out an Application Form.
As travel costs for Bobby have been covered already, we are able to offer a discounted adoption fee to his future family.


We're trying to take advantage of the last few weeks of daylight savings time and mild temperatures by using the grill whenever possible for dinner. While Brandon is a year-round griller, it's just more enjoyable to be out there in daylight and not shivering!
We're always looking for ways to mix it up on the grill so we're not always preparing the same grilled chicken, fish, steak, veggies, etc. Luckily, we have some great resources for inspiration and while flipping through The Cook's Illustrated Guide to Grilling and Barbecue, I came across this recipe for Tandoori-Style Chicken Breasts. I really enjoy ethnic foods and I was especially excited for the opportunity to use the turmeric and coriander that are usually pushed to the back of the spice cabinet.
This chicken features a thick coating of a very flavorful spice rub. The tandoori effect is achieved by getting the grill really hot and starting the chicken on high heat before moving it to a cooler side of the grill. The yogurt sauce is the perfect finish and a nice contrast to the chicken. I served the chicken with Indian-Style Potatoes from Epicurious and roasted broccoli.
Whisk together all ingredients and season to taste with salt and cayenne. Place in fridge until ready to serve.
Prepare grill. If using gas, preheat by turning all burners to high and closing lid.
Mix together ginger, coriander, cumin, turmeric, cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoon of salt and 1/4 teaspoon of cayenne together in a small bowl. Rub chicken breasts with olive oil and then generously coat with spice mixture.
If using gas grill, leave one burner on high and turn others to medium low. Place chicken on hot part of the grill until well-browned, 2-3 minutes with the lid down. Move to the cooler side of the grill and continue to cook for another 10 mninutes. Turn and cook for 5 more minutes or until done. Internal temperature should read 160 degrees.
Note that we cooked this on the Big Green Egg and used a similar technique to the above by moving chicken to a cooler part of the grill after the first few minutes and cooking with lid down.
Let chicken rest for 5 minutes and then slice. Serve with yogurt sauce.
This looks relish! And, isn't it funny how most people hate or love cilantro? I'm on the hate side, it ruins a meal!!
I've been meaning to pick up some of those Indian spices and this recipe just may have convinced me! Yum!


We decided to spend another day in Hanoi before taking a cruise along Halong Bay. We started the day weaving in and out of Hanoi's motorbikes to make it to Hoa Lo Prison.
Hoa Lo Prison was built by French colonialists during 1900s and was used by the French to torture and interrogate political prisoners rallying for independence. The prison even had the guillotine on show that was used to execute prisoners. After Vietnam's Independence from the French in 1954, the Hoa Lo Prison was actually then used by the Vietnamese to incarcerate American POWs who'd been shot down during bombing raids.
The Hoa Lo Prison today tells a very different story of the treatment of the American POWs at the hands of the Northern Vietnamese. The prison denies any knowledge of any torture or interrogations of American POWs. The museum paints a very different picture with photos showing American POWs enjoying their stay at the prison. The photos had captions like'Americans making Christmas Dinner', 'American pilots listen to Ho Chi Minh's speech', 'American pilots enjoy playing games in the yard' and so forth. All the pictures suggest the prison was more like a hotel and the museum even goes on to how say American POWs called it the 'Hanoi Hilton'.
I found the prison a little disappointing with all its Hanoi Hilton propaganda and its inability to show both sides of the story.
After the Hoa Lo Prison we walked to the Temple of Literature which is also Hanoi's university. The Temple of Literature is dedicated to Confucius, who put a lot of emphasis on the importance of studying and scholarship. Like the lake yesterday, the Temple of Literature and the surrounding grounds were full of students in graduation gowns and traditional Vietnamese dress taking pre-graduation photos. I still can't get my read around pre-graduation/weddings photos but hey!
We then decided to visit Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum. I'd read in the guide book that despite Ho Chi Minh's desire to be cremated, the Vietnamese buried him in the mausoleum. You can apparently spend 10 seconds in front of his preserved body in his glass casket. We heard the guards at the mausoleum were very strict: no bare flesh, no smiling, laughing or talking, you must be silent and walk in two lines, and hands can't be in your pockets, nor can they be crossed. We thought it sounded like an interesting thing to go and see, but unfortunately I'd read the entrance times wrong and the mausoleum was closed!
Next stop : Halong Bay!


text:
Defence minister meets top Army brass; reviews situation along Pakistan, China borders
Abha Boyal June 16, 2019
Defence minister Rajnath Singh on Friday held a meeting with top brass of the Army. According to reports, the Defence Minister reviewed the overall security challenges facing the country including situation along borders with Pakistan and China.
According to a defence ministry statement, Rajnath Singh was quoted saying that, "It is a matter of great pride that Indian Army is ready for full spectrum of challenges and it will be ensured that their capabilities keep getting continuously enhanced."
"Jointmanship of the Indian armed forces will be a key area and due endeavours towards the same will be ensured," he added.
The ministry said Singh complimented the Indian Army for ensuring the "highest level" of professionalism and showing continuous readiness against external and internal challenges.
The meeting noticed the presence of Army Chief General Bipin Rawat, Vice Chief of the Army Staff Lieutenant General Devraj Anbu and all the General Officer Commanding-in-Chiefs (GOC-in-C).
The Defence Minister also visited the headquarters of Defence Research and Development Organisation. The defence minister has released a publication titled 'Roadmap of DRDO', which encapsulated its target for the next ten years.
Singh was given a detailed presentation by DRDO Chairman Dr G Satheesh Reddy and other senior scientists on various projects.
"The presentation covered recent achievements, details of major ongoing projects and the roadmap of DRDO," the defence ministry said.
"The defence minister appreciated the commitment and dedication of DRDO scientists and directed that they should focus their energies on flagship programmes of national importance," said the ministry.
Abha Boyal
Abha has taste of years in journalism and writing. She is known to elaborate her findings in a vibrant way. With writing as her incredible skill, Abha also enjoys exploring new places. She stays focused on whatever she does and this makes her an all rounder.
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Azonic proudly presents the video "amBADASSador" produced by Petr Andreev, Vincent Allard and Pavel Vabishchevich.
Petr Andreev: "It's always fun to travel the world and ride bikes. Ride perfect dirt lines, dry jumps, and beautiful trails, to have the possibility to train in the foam pit every day. This is what everyone's dreaming of during the winter – escaping the cold and the rain. Last September I decided move to BCN to ride during the winter, train in the foam pit and ride big jump lines every day. I've spent all winter training and pushing myself and my riding.
Luckily, one day I met with Vincent Allard who came over to BCN to hangout with Walter CatKid and some other guys. Vincent was one of founders of "The Rise" crew with Michel, Matt MacDuff and Jay Jay. Now he's a professional race car and action sports filmmaker. I gave him the idea to make an unusual dirt video and he was super keen! I hadn't filmed with MTBs for a long time and it was awesome working with Vincent. His wild ideas even got a little bit too crazy sometimes (like the fireworks!).