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The worst the Christian community can do in America
Ayaan Hirsi Ali gave the keynote at the AA Convention, and James Croft livetweeted it. There was some…dubious stuff in it.
Such as a Dear Muslima for teh gayz.
James Croft @JFLCroft 5 hours ago
"If you are gay the worst the Christian community can do in America is not serve you cake." @Ayaan #AAcon15 Privilege check needed!
Oy. That's so not the worst the Christian community can do in America.
There this story in Outsports, for instance. A high school basketball game in rural Kentucky. One of the winning players called Dalton Maldonado a faggot. Maldonado had a meltdown in the locker room.
After collecting their clothes and bags the team headed to the bus, where some of the opposing team had assembled. They were yelling at the "faggot," ordering him to stay out of the bus and face them. When Maldonado boarded, the opposing team proceeded to pound the nearest window of the bus with their fists as they yelled more gay slurs. When a couple opposing players tried to board the bus to get to him, Maldonado's teammates and coaches forced them back. Once the Betsy Lane team was inside, the bus pulled away.
The opposing team wasn't done. Several of the players got in their cars and pursued the bus. Whether they actually wanted to assault Maldonado or not, they certainly wanted to scare the hell out of him.
I suppose it's possible that they were all atheists or some atheists and some Jews and Muslims – but in rural Kentucky, it's not likely.
And then she went after feminists. Of course she did; it's the hot new thing in the atheist "community."
"I'm disappointed with some of my feminist friends: they only want to go after white sexist men. What about the rest of us?" @Ayaan #AAcon15
Sometimes people have to deal with the problems that are right in front of them before they can move on to ones that are farther away. Solidarity is better than Dear Muslima.
Ophelia Benson
Notes and Comment Blog
iknklast says
I heard her talk. She also felt that if you come out of the closet, it might cause tension with your friends, your family, and your community, but that is all. Jerry DeWitt lost everything. Many people lose everything. Some people have been driven from their homes. I am not out to my family (though I am generally out; they just don't pay any attention to me online, so they don't notice) because I have never felt safe. My family is a mini-version of Fred Phelps (which is ironic, since my father makes counter-protests of Phelps – but only once he started picketing military funerals. My dad has no use for the LGBTQ community, and didn't say anything when Phelps was picketing gay funerals).
It is safe in some places in the US; not so safe in others. And living in a fundamentalist home? Well, children die from parents failing to take them to the doctor. People die from exorcisms. People have been shot for being atheist. She needs to get out more.
"I'm disappointed with some of my feminist friends: they only want to go after white sexist men. What about the rest of us?"
Wait, is she saying "what about sexist men in minority communities, you're leaving women of colour without support", or is she saying "what about sexist women of colour (like me)"?
Marcus Ranum says
I remember when Christopher Hitchens introduced her as his soul-mate (platonic, natch…) and I thought maybe it meant there was something wrong with her, too. I guess she was more like Hitch than I realized.
chigau (違う) says
I was always impressed with her guts and stamina and ingenuity.
Maybe it was really ruthless narcissism.
themann1086 says
This makes me so indescribably angry. Fukitol…
chrislawson says
chigau: Hirsi Ali does have guts, stamina, and ingenuity, but she also has a moral blind spot a mile wide. I'd be willing to cut her anti-Islamic views some slack for having lived under Islam and experienced some terrible things, just as I find it hard to blame WW2 veterans who feel uncomfortable around Japanese people. But like WW2 vets who allow their experiences to fill them with hatred, Hirsi Ali has gone well past the point of reasonable criticism of Islam and into outright bigotry.
Blanche Quizno says
I think the worst thing (one of them) would be to be ambushed by a bunch of Christian rednecks, beaten to a pulp, then tied up and left to die on a fence in, oh, Wyoming or some northern state in the dead of winter when the temperature is 20 degrees below zero or summat. #IRememberMatthewShepard
ZugTheMegasaurus says
Yeah, the reason I'm too afraid to say the truthful statement "I'm a lesbian" to a dude at the bar who won't leave me alone is because I'm afraid he won't make me a cake. And it so has nothing to do with sexism either. I sure am glad we have her to clear this up.
Ayaan Ali Hirsi, a New Atheist who advocates violence against all Muslims, and now she hints she may convert to Judaism. Why escape one nutty religion to join another? It's not about smearing atheists. It's about exposing the bigotry of rabid New Atheists (anti-theists).
=8)-DX says
Can we just say "LGBT* teen suicide and homeless rates?" Oh I forgot it's only a conspiracy of silence if it's about Muslims..
aziraphale says
"Sometimes people have to deal with the problems that are right in front of them before they can move on to ones that are farther away."
Damn, that's so good.
Helene says
@Aziraphale
Sorry to disagree. Some problems are more pressing and and the menace far greater (FGM, "honor" killings, etc). I don't doubt Ophelia's committment but when this sort of statement is made by others I sometimes suspect that it's just the soft — well, maybe not so soft — bigotry of low expectations.
Like Hirsi Ali, I'm a brown ex-Muslim. There is nothing that infuriates me more than white "progressives" (I use the scare quotes advisedly; theirs is not the left I joined when I reached political maturity) giving a pass to islamofascists (yes, Hitchens' term is apt) on the basis of some hierarchy of victimhood.
johnthedrunkard says
The reflexive pro-Islamist avalanche among pseudo-progressive Westerners seems to have taken a toll on Ali. And, she has been associated with the American Enterprise Inst. for quite a while now.
Hj Hornbeck says
Yeah, why don't feminists cover street harassment in India and Kenya, or sexual assault and domestic violence in Brazil, or international economic policy? Why do they keep fixating on all problems faced by over three billion women worldwide, when they should instead be focused on certain issues of a hundred million or so in a few select countries?
Hirsi Ali isn't a feminist, she's a paid shill working for a lobbying group opposed to feminism. If we won't invite climate change deniers to speak, we shouldn't be inviting her either.
Ophelia Benson says
Helene – but since that's not what's going on here, and you seem to know that, why bother to say it here?
I oppose people who say "don't criticize Islam" and I oppose people who say "don't criticize any sexism that's not Islamist sexism." Both. I oppose both of those.
Helene@12: what HJ and Ophelia said. None of us are against criticising Islam as a religion, a set of cultural practices, or a political movement. If you've followed this blog for more than a few weeks, you should know this. If you want to follow a reasonable voice of Islamic apostasy, I'd recommend the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain instead of Hirsi Ali.
And Maryam Namazie, who founded it. And Taslima Nasreen, and Heina Dadabhoy, and Kaveh Mousavi, and Kiran Opal, and I could go on and on.
Saad says
Helene, #12
I'm also a brown ex-Muslim. A pass isn't being given to islamofascists when we criticize this "Dear Muslima" attitude that Ali is promoting. She is right about a lot of things about Islam and I don't dismiss everything she says about it.
But whenever I hear things like "the worst you have to deal with is cake, there are gay people being hanged", I immediately have to wonder about the motive behind saying such a thing. And I'm sorry, but the motive is to make an oppressed class feel guilty for wanting equality. And that I will always oppose.
Ophelia,
What I am objecting to is a certain "progressive" attitude (to be very clear: not yours) to Hirsi Ali which objects to her fight against islamofascism. On the basis that being Muslim makes someone a natural ally in some vague "anti-imperialist" campaign. So, tough luck for people like me.
Well… Islam, with all its attendant horrors, is a problem "right in front" of me. It is also as a feminist that I fight Islam. But when I try to enlist the help of progressives in my fight, many of them (the "progressives" with scare quotes) balk. Being against Christian fundamentalism is fashionable in their circles.Opposing Islam not so much, if at all. So we who have grown up in that world are either left to our own devices or actively defamed as being reactionaries.
So, sorry if I sound strident (or "shrill" !) but as a brown (no, I am not pulling rank, just precluding any admonitions to check my "privilege"), feminist, atheist ex-Muslim, I can't think of a more urgent campaign than combating Islamic racism, misogyny and terrorism.
… Or what recently happened at Trinity College Dublin.
http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2015/03/in-dublin-beheading-expositor-speaks-freely-potential-victim-censored.html
Helene – but, again, why here? This seems like an odd place to make that point when we all know it already. Like, that last link, to that nonsense about Maryam's talk in Dublin – did you not see that I did multiple posts about that at the time? You're pounding away on an open door.
I agree that combating Islamist racism, misogyny and terrorism is urgent. What I disagree with is Dawkins telling American women it's more urgent than any local concerns they may have so they should stop talking about their local concerns. I disagree with AHA when she echoes that line, as she apparently did at AA yesterday.
Helene @20:
OK, I'll bite: what has Hirsi Ali done to combat Islamofascism? As far as I can tell, she's written a few books in English, and given expensive lectures to Christians and atheists who'd be lucky if they even had a Muslim friend. Even if every one of the people she talked to came out convince of the dangers of radical Islam, they'd be powerless to stop it. When you contrast her efforts to that of Leo Igwe, who is currently combatting superstition on the ground in West Africa, she comes across less as someone fighting the good fight, and more as an opportunist preaching to the choir's fears.
I am not a regular lurker here (although I do check in from time to time on Butterflies). What caught my attention was the "right in front" business as quoted in a comment above. I don't know how many times I have heard it used as an excuse for avoiding action on Islamic issues. E.g., "I sympathize with the predicament of Muslim women but…" Somehow that "predicament" is never urgent enough, never "in front" enough. Despite Muslims numbering (by some estimates) 1.5 billion, and Islam having conquered and enslaved huge swaths of Asia and Africa, Muslims are always victims, never the victimizers. Seemingly they have no agency. So they have become allies of the "anti-imperialist left". And, at best, Muslim women and other victims of Islam must simply take a number! Not to mention that when someone invokes association with Christopher Hitchens as a smear I know perfectly well which side I am on.
Helene — the problem with the Dear Muslima argument:
1. "Dear Muslima" implies that one should only combat the world's worst examples of a problem and never the less dramatic examples of the same problem immediately around us.
2. "Dear Muslima" minimises the importance of mild and moderate aspects of a problem by asserting that they're not worth tackling.
3. "Dear Muslima" minimises the importance of geography by assuming one's efforts are better spent on addressing a problem on the other side of the world in a culture one is not a part of. (Note: I have nothing against people trying to address a problem in distant lands and unfamiliar cultures, I'm only against the attitude that this is the only acceptable way to do it.)
4. "Dear Muslima" assumes that progress on a problem in better-off countries has no effect on progress on the same problem in countries where the problem is more entrenched, when we know full well that as more and more countries adopt a culture change, the resistant countries become more and more isolated and feel more pressure to change (e.g.: the Arab Spring, the spread of gay marriage equality, the rise of democracy in Europe in C18-20).
5. "Dear Muslima", at its worst, underplays the severity of problems in better-off countries; as Ophelia and Zug have already pointed out, being denied a wedding cake is NOT the worst thing that can happen to gay people in the US.
6. "Dear Muslima", on the observational evidence, is exactly what Saad says: a rhetorical tool for dismissing concerns about the treatment of oppressed groups in better-off nations in order to maintain the status quo; it is a deeply conservative message that essentially says "no effort should be made to address local inequities until they have been eradicated in all distant parts of the world", i.e. never.
Let's imagine these "Dear Muslima" prescriptions being used in international health.
1. "We cannot treat your malaria here in Brazil because the disease is far more prevalent in Africa."
2. "We're not going to treat your testicular cancer because it has a much better 5-year survival rate than pancreatic cancer."
3. "We're not going to put any money into researching AIDS vaccines because the people who really need the vaccine are in Africa, not here."
4. "We're going to stop vaccinating against polio because we feel like ignoring the benefits of vaccinating neighbouring countries to reduce transmission everywhere."
5. "We shouldn't treat heart disease because the worst that can happen is unpleasant chest pains."
6. "Of course we'd like to improve the health of First Nations people in the US, but our hands are tied until Australia and New Zealand close their health gaps; it saddens me to say it, but our First Nations people are just going to have to accept the situation with the admirable resilience they have honed over centuries of mass murder and land displacement. Our thoughts are with them, but not funding or political change."
robertbaden says
One problem about looking at only the behavior of white men is it ignores the effects the sexism or racism of white women or men of color has on women of color and their children.
It wasn't white men who made my mom, my sister and I wait until every white person in the store had been served, even those who came in afterwards, before they would help us. It was the white saleswomen.
[…] chrislawson on The worst the Christian community can do in America […]
How dare we says:
[…] some of us disagree with Ayaan Hirsi Ali on the Dear Muslima or Fallacy of Relative Deprivation or Not serve you cake or Who does the dishes question. How dare we disagree with Ayaan HA on anything, don't we […]


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Author Archives: Kelly Hammond
Final Project Proposal
Posted on October 29, 2018 by Kelly Hammond
For my final project, I was originally interested in investigating new ways that publishers are "doing things with novels," in particular, how they are trying to attract consumers of social media to narratives themselves as well as to the act of social reading. The New York Public Library, for example, launched in August a new series of InstaNovels—classics that have been repackaged for an Instagram audience. Their first offering, a two-part Alice in Wonderland series, was fun and light with some innovative creative design and a little interactivity, albeit somewhat forced. On October 3rd, NYPL launched another InstaNovel, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wall-Paper," an 1892 short story that I hadn't read. (I am truly embarrassed to say I hadn't read it, given its status as a feminist classic and my enjoyment of Gilman's novella Herland). So, I opened up Instagram and read it.
Gilman's story is impressive—tight, short, unnerving. In it, a woman suffering from mental unease is brought by her husband to what seems a tranquil, private country retreat to recover. Far from curative, the place, particularly the bedroom with its visually disturbing wall covering, exacerbates the illness (or at least symbolizes the subjugation and social captivity that drives her closer to madness). Further, and particularly relevant to our DH720 studies, material text plays something of a character itself in the book: the narration is a first-person account relayed through journal entries (which the narrator calls "dead paper") that the protagonist has been asked not to write to spare her mental health, and the wall-paper's patterns at moments in the story become imposing, shifting lines behind which a spectral woman seems trapped.
It is a tale clearly born out of the era that brought America Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville. But it is also shockingly relevant in the era of #metoo and the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, with thoughts such as, "If a physician of high standing, and one's own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency—what is one to do?"
The InstaNovel of the story is highly disappointing, with a low-effort attempt at rendering the titular menace as section dividers and with virtually no interactivity. Yet, the story practically proposes its own interactivity: why not have the paper begin to creep over the words, requiring the reader to mimic the protagonist's actions of trying to scratch and peer behind it, to liberate what is trapped there? Further, why not have the digital paper alter itself in some way, as the wall-paper does throughout the story?
Doing a little digging, I learned that the publication history of Gilman's piece has been wallpapered over itself, with agenda-laden scholarship and significant misprinting and misattribution of the text over time. One particularly intriguing article comes from Julie Dock et al, in 1996, entitled "'But One Expects That': Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 'The Yellow Wallpaper' and the Shifting Light of Scholarship"—an article Dock followed up with a published book on the matter two years later. The original publication of Gilman's story in the January issue of the New England Magazine is available online, so deviations from it are easy to spot. Other intriguing resources available during some of that publication history include a defense of the story by Gilman both in the Forerunner in 1913 in response to over a decade of negative reception by the medical establishment (whose methods are portrayed in the story as harmful) and in her 1935 autobiography.
This digging convinced me that "The Yellow Wall-Paper" is uniquely ripe for a digitized environment that could offer layers of both scholarship and simulation. For my final project, I'd like to research the story's early reception and publication history and create an annotated and interactive version of the text. One that explores that history in a way parallel to the protagonist's experience—perhaps where lines move within a fixed, barred space. For that, I'll also need to do a little reading into simulations that mimic the psychological atmosphere of literary spaces, such as a recent VR game on Kafka's "Metamorphosis" (also made into an InstaNovel, by the way).
For my platform, I'm hoping to continue working with Manifold. I envision a brief introduction to the story's initial reception and publication history, an annotated, resource-rich version of the story that focuses on its publication history, and either links to home-grown interactivity or embedded content for visitors to experience in a provocative way the misprintings and publication errors. Given the constraints of time and my novice status with the text, I know that the product will be a little rough. However, I've already played around with some simple tools—just html, css, and javascript—to create a rudimentary scratch-off interface to force users to uncover words, and that's a start. If the interactive tools fail me (or I them), I'll create a companion to the annotated version in Steller that at least provides the shifting visuals described in the text.
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Manifold Critical Responses to "Benito Cereno"
It's hard to throw a polished hatchet around without hitting someone familiar with Marshall McLuhan's line that the medium is the message. And our group began this project thinking that Medium would be our medium. We loved it for its unstuffy, modern feel that invited conversation—real social reading. But, our lens for the project was critical responses over time, a focus perhaps better suited to a more intentionally academic platform. After a brief experiment with MIT's Annotation Studio (which had some useful hypothes.is-esque features such as tagging), we found Manifold—a gem of a close-reading environment largely fashioned by CUNY's Digital Initiatives group. We loved it for its elegant design, ease of annotation, and, perhaps more vital to our intent, the ability to connect multimedia resources both directly in the text as well as outside of it.
Looking to uncover a broad swath of critical opinions, we each chose interest-driven angles such as Travis's legal slant and Patrick's psychological one. Culling responses from 1856 to 2014, our annotations formed something of a social dialogue over time, revealing as much about the critics as the story itself. The responses sometimes differed radically with one another challenging the seemingly authoritative nature criticism and suggesting, perhaps, that, just like reader marginalia reveals much about its writer, so too critical responses reveal much about the critic's times—not a ground-breaking thought, but one brought to the fore through our process.
Both our individual choices of what critical strands to follow and the critical responses themselves hearkened to Schact's thoughts about power of collaborative annotation that can "build community, empower students to speak, and underscore the inherently collective nature of creativity and interpretation." Our findings also supported Barthes' ideas in that the Text generated by Benito Cereno across these 160 years truly has a unique relationship with the sign: the relationship between Melville's signifiers and the seemingly signified changed significantly through the decades. The sheer variety of critical responses suggests that this Text has unlimited symbolic, stretching even beyond the knowledge base of Melville who both did not directly understand the Muslim identity of the slaves about which he wrote and could not have had a 20th-century understanding of mental illness or queer theory.
My particular focus, driven by our in-class discussions, was to investigate black and white responses for different audiences over time: an 1856 review in a women's magazine under a female editor, a white man writing for the New York Times in 1927, an African-American critic writing in the Journal of Negro History in 1956, and Greg Grandin and Toni Morrison writing in the Nation in 2014.
Two of those responses were particularly profound, both on their own and juxtaposed. The first was from Herbert L. Matthews, the white, male reviewer writing in May of 1927 for the Times who was giddy about the publication of a new, stand-alone edition of Benito Cereno, complete with powerful illustrations. Matthews pitches the story solely as a thrilling, maritime mystery, not once mentioning anything about race despite the illustration that accompanied the article: an exaggerated image of a knife-wielding, mid-revolt slave, with others menacingly in the background. While slavery, at that point, had been legally abolished for over 40 years, the Times had since been covering the legacy of enslavement: horrific accounts of lynchings and the push for anti-lynching legislation. In fact, it had covered such topics over 20 times in 1927 in the months before Matthews' review. His blindness to the racial dimensions of the plot, let alone the undercurrent and context of the tale, is fairly astounding. As a critic, Matthews is, in many ways, Delano—a perhaps well-intended liberal missing the reality of racial struggle around him.
In sharp contrast, Sidney Kaplan, an African-American male writing thirty years later for the Journal of Negro History, not only addresses the racial implications of the story, but takes head-on Melville's culpability in perpetuating a dehumanized view of the black world. Kaplan points to Melville's decision to elevate to near martyrdom the real-life, and by legal reports, morally bankrupt Cereno, kowtowing more to a public fear of slave insurrections than to whatever abolitionist tendencies he might have displayed in Moby Dick. Though literally a century separated their writing, Kaplan and Melville both were writing a decade before decisive events in American racial history, and both experienced the fomenting struggles. In such a parallel time, and while still praising Melville's writerly craft, Kaplan indicts Melville as a near contemporary. For a tale that in many senses ends with the words "the negro," BC's reception by the Journal of Negro History, is both aware of Melville's text and context, as well as its own, and that awareness makes the conviction all the more poignant.
The wide range of critical responses begs the question, who is the implied reader of Melville's text? A commercially desirable one? One who, like the Times reviewer, is hungry for a good mystery regardless of moral implication (which, by its original serialization in 1855's holiday season, certainly seems plausible) ? One who is looking for a political commitment, just years before the Civil War, to either abolition or enslavement? One looking for a lesson on human nature, like those in the tales of ancient storytellers? More than what's truly going on in the San Dominick, that may be the real mystery of Benito Cereno.
To see our project, make an account at https://cuny.manifoldapp.org
Vannevar Bush: The Blind Seer of the Digital Humanities
Soothsaying is a risky business. Often, visions of the future expose the limits of the prognosticator rather than the possibilities of invention. Remember Octave Uzanne's 1894 The End of Books? He muses, "Who might tell us, in effect, what will be the state of Bibliophilia in the year 2000? Will the art of typographic impression still exist at that date, and will the phonograph…not definitively replace printed paper and illustration with some advantage?"1 Even giving science a century of growth, Uzanne still imagines the phonograph as a key player.
Johanna Drucker speaks to why so many futurists miss the mark: they base their vision on the current forms of technology rather than on performative functions. Of electronic texts, she laments, "The icon of the 'book' that throws its shadow over the production of new electronic instruments is a grotesquely distorted and reductive idea of the codex as a material object."2 She urges a refocusing on the "program" of the material book—what books allow readers to do—explaining that "if we shift our approach we can begin to abstract that functional activity from the familiar iconic presentation."3
Sixty years before Drucker and a year before the realization of ENIAC (the first computer), Vannevar Bush then is dazzlingly prescient. He shrewdly bases his predictions squarely on the program of scientific thinking rather than its forms. He considers the history of what scholars do—taking field notes, recording data, analyzing, consulting previous works, writing, and publishing—and considers how new scientific tools such as photocells and thermionic tubes might transform, rather than replicate, those processes. In doing so, he predicts the future of technology with powerful accuracy.
The list of devices he imagines with precision is astonishing, from computer components such as monitors, RAM, and CPUs, to branded products such as iPhones and GoPros (walnut-sized, head-mounted cameras). He anticipates a coding language with dichotomous branches and Boolean logic to facilitate the compression of published texts and a means to search them. More broadly, he also imagines the credit card, point-of-sales software, and even Siri and Alexa who he says will "certainly beat the usual file clerk." Understatement indeed.
His visionary piece de resistance, however, is the memex—a hyperlinked, albeit local, internet. The memex enhances the program of intellectual discovery: the human brain's capacity for associative indexing "whereby any item may be caused at will to select immediately and automatically another." Calling to mind Seth Lerer's historical reference to the Sammelband, Bush depicts such indexing "as though the physical items had been gathered together from widely separated sources and bound together to form a new book." But, outstripping the material confines of the Sammelband, the mimex "is more than this, for any item can be joined into numerous trails."
In addition to the worth these associations have for the creator of them, "the inheritance from the master becomes, not only his additions to the world's record, but for his disciples the entire scaffolding by which they were erected." Bush believes that the associative indexing itself, in addition to the discovery it yields, is valuable. (And as I copied and pasted that quotation from Bush's archived Atlantic article into my own notes, having just searched my Word doc for the Sammelband reference, I was struck by how Bush, 75 years ago, was describing my experience in 2018.)
He extrapolates the uses of the mimex to a range of occupations, from the legal to the medical, as well as to unimagined ones. He believes there will be "a new profession of trail blazers, those who find delight in the task of establishing useful trails through the enormous mass of the common record"—the passion of us Digital Humanists who, just this week, have been establishing such useful trails to and from Benito Cereno.
And, like many prophets of ancient literature, Bush is also, in a sense, surprisingly blind. Despite his enormous capacity for predicting the future of technology, he glaringly misses the future of society.
Appearing only twice in his detailed vision, women exist merely as technological courtesans. He describes a stenotype in the 1940s as if the operator were a prostitute on opium: "A girl strokes its keys languidly and looks about the room and sometimes at the speaker with a disquieting gaze." Imagining computers in the future, he writes, "Such machines will have enormous appetites. One of them will take instructions and data from a whole roomful of girls…" While he wasn't far off his near future, as ENIAC was originally programmed by a team of women, his anthropomorphic description here is more reminiscent of Sardanapalus in his bedroom than a machine in a lab. The omission of women is striking given female scientists such as Edith Clarke at GE, where Bush had worked a decade earlier, who published celebrated papers about Bush's invention of the differential analyzer well in advance of his writing this article.
Bush's view is also surprisingly limited in scope. He envisions assistive technologies such as speech-to-text, text-to-speech, and audio, but, unlike his predecessor Edison, he doesn't imagine what those affordances can do for the disabled. He eagerly awaits freedom for the mathematician so lofty that he cannot compute numbers himself, but he doesn't extend the liberating capacity to those more visibly impaired or to academics weeded out early in their educations precisely because they couldn't do elementary math.
He's also missed the humanities, relegating photography to data gathering and never once mentioning, even in his litanies of professions, the realm of literature, despite his admonition that "specialization becomes increasingly necessary for progress, and the effort to bridge between disciplines is correspondingly superficial." While he sees the capacity for the technology to connect material, he has missed its perhaps more important ability to connect people to each other.
While unbound in his scientific imagination, he remains a prisoner of his social one: his world of the future is that of continued isolated and individual achievement by members of an elite that is distinctively male and abled and presumably white and well off. And yet, he has impressively envisioned the very tools that now invite much of the world to contribute, collectively and from myriad walks of life, to the "general body of the common record."
1Rubery, "Canned Literature," 238-239.
2Drucker, "Virtual Codex from Page Space to E-Space," 220.
3Ibid.
Digital Annotations: Tugging on the Thread of Text
Posted on October 4, 2018 by Kelly Hammond
Written in 1971, Roland Barthes' "Work to Text" is an argument presented in the era of the material book. Computers, up to that point, were merely giant number crunchers, albeit highly useful for calculating trajectories of rockets or missiles. In that print-centric context, the hard distinction between the titular terms is easy to see as he explains his first proposition: "the Text is not to be thought of as an object that can be computed." He clarifies further still: "The difference is this: the work is a fragment of substance, occupying a part of the space of books (in a library for example), the Text is a methodological field." Simple. The work is the product of the author, and the Text is what we make of it, academically, culturally, and personally—how it resonates with other readers, other texts, and in other times.
Barthes goes on to propose five more characteristics of the Text. It has no bounds (neither physical nor hierarchical nor taxonomical). It has a unique relation to the sign, mutating beyond the original signified as it moves in space and time. It is plural, nay infinite, in its forms and meaning. It is an object of play. And it gives us self-replicating pleasure that lasts far beyond the act of consuming the work. Barthes' Text seems a radiant cosmic force, or perhaps a democratic one: of all, by all, and for all, expert and novice alike.
However, it's hard to tell how pure his vision of the work is. Barthes seems to delineate it quite clearly as whatever the author originally offered as the finished work. He goes so far as to say, "It is not that the Author may not 'come back' in the Text, in his text, but he then does so as a 'guest'." Are choices made by editors, publishers, and book sellers the end of the work or the start of the Text? If an author provides explanatory notes—an introduction, footnotes, an afterword, or edits in another edition—has she changed the work or contributed to the Text?
His distinctions get hazier still when it comes to annotation. Certainly, scribbled marginalia fit the bill for Text—unlimited, interpretive, filtered through unique lenses, playful in their interactivity, and, for most of us, quite pleasurable. Similarly, in the digital world Barthes could not have imagined, exercises like ours on hypothes.is seem to be Text as well—an organic conversation of us all comparing our experience with the oued of his theory.
But annotation as scholarly commentary seems to buck some of these criteria, especially when codified the way Matthias Bauer and Angelika Zirker propose to do. Barthes lauds the expansive nature of the Text: "The Text, on the contrary, practises [sic] the infinite deferment of the signified, is dilatory." Bauer and Zirker seek to constrict it, to narrow it with the aim of making it useful, seeing a "risk of the loss of information through the overabundance of information."
Bauer and Zirker propose a brilliantly practical scheme: to identify categories or fields of scholarly annotation and to leverage the infinite space and hyperlinked nature of the digital realm to offer it at three different levels. Barthes may find that their linguistic, formal, intratexual, and interpretive fields are part of the work's Text, springing, as they all do from the work itself and part of the response to it. But he might consider the contextual and intertextual fields too close to what he calls the "myth of filiation." In fact, he may reject them altogether, noting that "the citations which go to make up a text are anonymous, untraceable, and yet already read: they are quotations without inverted commas."
Bauer and Zirker might argue back, claiming that their codification is intended to be heuristic—part of the seemingly open and democratic nature of the Text, allowing more to contribute to its plurality. They might also argue that scholarly annotation is one way to stimulate the vitality of the Text, to keep it alive, as they explain, ""[These levels] manage the amount of information presented, encourage plausible interpretation, and show the dynamic aspect of annotation. This aspect is seen in the digital format in particular: a digital annotated edition may become an ongoing working platform."
With the elapsing of 44 years of technological development on their side, Bauer and Zirker are certainly able to counter Barthes' first proposition, at least in part. By categorizing and leveling scholarly annotation on a digital platform, that segment of the Text can be computed. They offer, "The quantitative levels are not exclusively reader-oriented; they are also text-oriented, showing us, at the same time, a text that virtually speaks for itself (with just a little help from us) and that is situated in a network of many linguistic, cultural, and historical interactions." In fact, computing the Text is growing easier and easier, from quantifiable, geo-mapped "likes" and hashtagged Twitter feeds.* But, while he may take issue with the idea that a text requires help to speak for itself, paradoxically Barthes may find that such computing, is actually part of the Text itself. In other words, while we weave the tapestry of the text, we can stand back to analyze or admire the patterns therein, which may guide where and how we place our next weft.
*I've recently been stunned by page-by-page analytics available to lay users on digital publishing platforms like issuu. Below is its reporting on how many readers headed to page 7 in a collection of poetry my students wrote over the summer.
I Prefer To: A Convert Speaks of Narration
Posted on September 26, 2018 by Kelly Hammond
After last week's work, I had begun to agree with Rubery that audiobooks had the power to turn us all into listeners. Turns out Rubery might be right about the their second capacity as well: to turn more of us into narrators. While listening brought the text from the page to me, creating an audiobook brought me back to the page, deep into the page.
As our group prepped for project, the mere act of imagining the audio brought out elements of Melville's text that I'd missed such as frequent alliteration and hilarious slapstick. Our attention was largely on Bartleby himself—how we might represent him as both passive and powerful. Our idea of layering additional narrators to his spoken lines as the story went on seemed both promising and wonderfully menacing, especially when he is ultimately silenced in the Tombs.
But, treating the text as a script and re-recording passages forced me to explore more profound possibilities. I found myself (I hope) doing what both Liu and Rubery had described as co-authoring—interpreting to offer something new.
For example, the story seems, by virtue of its title and eponymous, enigmatic character, really about Bartleby. And given our class discussion of parallels between Bartleby's occupation and Melville's life, that reading makes sense. As the oldest and weariest of our group, I'd volunteered for the first two and last eight pages–the times when the narrator himself is his oldest or weariest. In those pages, I found equally significant the disintegration of the narrator—of big business—in the face of Bartleby's unmoving movement. Melville's punctuation and fragmented sentences suggested an almost dissociative disorder besetting the narrator on page 27—a Poe-esque one—as he argues darkly with his own conscience and desire. Trying to voice that split, that unraveling, I felt the fever brought on by the what the narrator subconsciously sees as the contagious disease of Bartleby's passive defiance—one fatal to an industry reliant on unthinking workers—which explains the absolute and dark necessity, in the narrator's mind, to cure himself of the scrivener.
The dissociation became so intense (and I used GarageBand effects to capture the internal voices) that I entertained for a moment whether Bartleby was even real. I thought perhaps he may be a projection of the narrator's psyche—a freedom he longed for in himself that he externalized and then murdered through neglect to protect the comfortable life of ease to which he had grown accustomed. (Farfetched, yes, but fun to kick around.)
https://allred720fa18.commons.gc.cuny.edu/wp-content/blogs.dir/4125/files/2018/09/Bartleby-Way-Exaggerated-27-28-92318-5.59-PM.mp3
That reading brought the truly baffling last two lines into greater clarity: they seem to be the reconciling of the dissociative mind. "Ah Bartleby!" the narrator cries just after blaming the Dead Letter Office for what seemed the scrivener's predestined course for death—a course that, if truly predestined, removes the narrator from all culpability. "Ah humanity!" he adds, ruing the state of the very world that he feeds and that feeds him financially and necessarily sends all unproductive fluff to the flames.
While I value a recording that strives to be faithful to the text, this experience made me long for time to play around, like a jazz musician with a riff, to see what else "Bartleby" might yield—to try exaggerating the humor, to imagine Bartleby's inner monologue, to see the story from Nippers' or Turkey's eyes. Ah the due date! Ah full time jobs!
Listening to W.E.B. Du Bois
For this assignment, I chose a LibriVox recording of W.E.B. Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk. Having already heard some commercial audiobooks, I wanted to try an amateur production. I chose Souls not only because I know it well, but because it presents two big challenges to narration: the chapters are a mix of genres, from critical essay to fiction, and each begins with an epigraph followed by musical notation of part of a Sorrow Song, the music of enslavement.
The quality of the production is excellent. The narrator, known simply as toriasuncle, has what Rubery calls "verbal muscularity" (67)—a resonant, warm voice that could easily belong to an African-American man like Du Bois. (I listened to a recording of Du Bois himself, and toriasuncle's voice is nearly identical in register and in his slightly slushy s sounds.) The recordings from chapter to chapter were impressively consistent aside from an occasional variation in volume and one chapter where the reader was so close to the microphone that it picked up the breath of aspirated consonants.
Toriasuncle is the sole narrator, and with impressively well-chosen pauses, he takes to heart the LibriVox manual's hope of "controlling the pace in order to engage the listener." He makes effective choices to modulate his voice for different characters, whether historical or fictional, and his treatment of female voices is particularly noteworthy, as he softens his voice rather than changing his pitch—a technique Rubery notes, explaining, "male narrators often have more success speaking female parts in a whisper rather than a falsetto" (67). This softening reinforced the diminutive role of women in Du Bois's collection of thoughts on black life at the dawning of the 20th century. Because I knew the printed text well, I did a lot of what Rubery called "prooflistening" (68) and found that only one character—white John in chapter 13—didn't speak as I had imagined.
Impressively, just as toriasuncle shifts his voice to reflect the speaker, so too he changes instruments (in what seems to be a digital program like GarageBand) as he plays the bars of the sorrow songs, seeking to reflect their "characters" and to match the tone of the chapter. For example, a lone, plaintive guitar picks out the notes opening chapter two, which speaks to failed Reconstruction. Chapter three is a scathing critique of Du Bois's philosophical arch-enemy, Booker T. Washington; Toriasuncle plays its opening bars with clipped, plucked strings despite the legato marks—an abrupt departure from the more fluid bars of the first two chapters. This license he takes with the musical notation is the only evidence of him "editing in the guise of auditing" (67). Otherwise, toriasuncle stays true to every line of printed text.
Overall, listening to this edition Souls was ear-opening.* The most striking contrast from the print edition was hearing the music that opens each chapter. It highlighted what had become for me a forgotten last chapter—"Of the Sorrow Songs"—where Du Bois traces the contribution and evolution of music from Africa to popular minstrelsy. Similarly, in reading the text on paper, I had skipped the German Du Bois peppers throughout. Hearing the language underscored Du Bois's scholarship and worldliness powerfully juxtaposed with the white perception of black academic potential at the time—a perception Du Bois addresses directly in the text. It also helped me make connections to his reference in chapter 13 to Wagner's Lohengrin and to an alliterative line in chapter 14, "to Queen and Kaiser," as well as to hear how white audiences might have received Du Bois himself as an intellect in 1903. By contrast, I was jarred by white characters' use of the n-word—a markedly uneducated and base term and one that seems more contained on the page than when spoken in the ear. Toriasuncle rightfully imbues it with all the superiority and hate with which it was spoken then and now.
One true revelation of the listen was the continuity it gave the text, broken up only by the boilerplate librivox language at the start of each chapter. Since Souls binds together chapters of many genres, the narrative voice for each sounds different to me in print. Toriasuncle kept the autobiographical tone of the forethought and first chapter throughout, even in the chapter that is fiction, "Of the Coming of John." That consistency knit together the variety of threads through which Du Bois looks at the African-American experience and made it feel, as it of course was, intensely personal to him.
The audio experience had far more perks than I imagined, and I'm already planning to listen to more, starting with the only other toriasuncle recording, a collection of poetry. Yes, I had to take notes on paper or my phone, and yes, arriving and departing subways made me miss what may have been important sentences, but the ability to read while moving through the city on my commute or, as I did twice, taking a long walk in McCarren Park, did make the text feel immediate and alive.
*If Rubery can make bad puns, so can I.
Hayles' Missed Opportunity
Posted on September 5, 2018 by Kelly Hammond
In "Hyper and Deep Attention: The Generational Divide in Cognitive Modes," N. Katherine Hayles urges professors to anticipate a shift in the way rising, media-steeped students think and to evolve accordingly. She presents her argument in unambiguous, binary structures, with two types of attention, two generational sides, and ultimately, two inevitable solutions: "change the students to fit the educational environment or change the environment to fit the students" (195). Perhaps out of rhetorical necessity—she is, after all, writing in 2007 to the largely deep-attention readers of the MLA's Profession magazine—she oversimplifies both the "divide" and the research that evinces it, obscuring some of her keenest observations and their pedagogical import.
She defines deep attention with a direct connection to the discipline of her peers and an example likely to be beloved by many: "Deep attention, the cognitive style traditionally associated with the humanities, is characterized by concentrating on a single object for long periods (say, a novel by Dickens), ignoring outside stimuli while so engaged, preferring a single information stream, and having a high tolerance for long focus times" (187). By contrast, she defines hyper attention more clinically, as "characterized by switching focus rapidly among different tasks, preferring multiple information streams, seeking a high level of stimulation, and having a low tolerance for boredom" (187). Her audience, both by generation and occupational predilection, might place greater value (even ascribe superiority to) deep attention. But she argues that there is merit and weakness in both. Deep attention, she notes, while essential for solving complex problems, lacks awareness and the ability to adapt quickly to change—skills her audience may need to recognize this generational shift and accommodate it. Inversely, hyper attention is great for navigating quickly evolving environments but struggles to sustain energies when the task demands it—energies a student might need to read an article like this one.
Again perhaps to placate her audience, she presents the modes as seemingly mutually exclusive, and springing from history and evolution. Where deep attention is the product of luxury, of a society (or a sliver of society) that needn't battle constant threats to survive, hyper attention was (and perhaps may be becoming again) a survival strategy when humans responded to persistent and unpredictable threats. In conjuring an image to clearly depict the modes, she segregates them almost pejoratively but certainly stereotypically: "picture a college sophomore, deep in Pride and Prejudice, with her legs draped over an easy chair, oblivious to her ten-year-old brother sitting in front of a console, jamming on a joystick while he plays Grand Theft Auto" (187-88). Of course, life requires both: from the hyper attention needed to drive in traffic to the deep attention that solves moral dilemmas. And the college sophomore is as likely to be glued to her phone later that night as the ten-year-old is to enjoy a bedtime book.
Further, the root of the generational shift lies in kids' unfettered, unchaperoned access to a wide variety of media that gives rise to a hunger for multi-channel stimulation which, at its extreme, presents as AD/HD—a term likely to instill fear in deep-attention readers.
But within her pared-down and somewhat alarmist model are exciting revelations that present real opportunity. Analyzing a study of the effects video games have on executive function in kids, she concludes, "The results suggest…that media simulation, if structured appropriately, may contribute to a synergistic combination of hyper and deep attention—a suggestion that has implications for pedagogy" (193). This seems huge. To wed the two types of valuable and desired attention is not only a goal for the rising generation, but educators themselves and serves as a true call to investigate ways to scaffold the use of media in the classroom.
She also references a study of older gamers who "found the opportunities offered by the games for achievement, freedom, and in some instances connections to other players even more satisfying than the fun of playing. Stimulation works best, in other words, when it is associated with feelings of autonomy, competence, and relatedness—a conclusion with significant implications for pedagogy" (195). The study reveals that these games require "active critical learning" (195) to progress, motivating players to learn new things incrementally. Designing curriculum with these natural incentives seems less modern age than just plain effective.
Hayles' Facebook example is wonderfully prescriptive, as students use an accessible, relevant example (societal forces at work that shape online personas) to tease out truths they can immediately apply to a more deep-attention piece, The Education of Henry Adams. Greater still, students can reinforce this insight every time they encounter a digital profile or read another novel. Harnessing that "active critical learning" also engages learners in their own assessment, giving them a stake in their education. While creating audio books, Allred's "students also noted issues of readerly competence and affect: one student noted, 'I came across a few words I had never seen in my life nor had I known how to pronounce them out loud'" (Allred, 121), something she may have dismissed in reading simply to write a paper.
Both approaches help students harness hyper attention in service of deep attention. Both harness digital relevance to bring students to more remote, but perhaps equally universal or resonant texts. The 2007 readers of Profession who missed this insight may be among the very faculty that Brian Croxall described as the "absent presence" (Kirschenbaum).
Rubery online lecture on audio books next week (9/17)
Julia's Genius Project
Jenna + Lauren's final project
Final Thoughts on Ivanhoe & Gaming Readings
Classroom collaboration etiquette
Ideas for the last week of class | LitHub@Hunter on final "presentation" guidelines
Jeff Allred on Genius Annotation Project Proposal
Jeff Allred on Final Project Proposal: Story Map The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner
Jeff Allred on Digital Mapping of Oral Histories
Jeff Allred on "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark."

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
LUYA Administration Interface
==========

[![LUYA](https://img.shields.io/badge/Powered%20by-LUYA-brightgreen.svg)](https://luya.io)
[![Build Status](https://travis-ci.org/luyadev/luya-module-admin.svg?branch=master)](https://travis-ci.org/luyadev/luya-module-admin)
[![Coverage Status](https://coveralls.io/repos/github/luyadev/luya-module-admin/badge.svg?branch=master)](https://coveralls.io/github/luyadev/luya-module-admin?branch=master)
[![Total Downloads](https://poser.pugx.org/luyadev/luya-module-admin/downloads)](https://packagist.org/packages/luyadev/luya-module-admin)

Administration Interface based on [Angular JS](https://angularjs.org/), [Materialize CSS](http://materializecss.com/) and [Yii 2](http://www.yiiframework.com/) (which is wrapped in the LUYA CORE).

![LUYA Admin Interface](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/luyadev/luya-module-admin/master/luya_admin.png)

## Features:

+ CRUD (based on RESTful and Angular)
+ Scaffolding CRUDs
+ Syncing Project between Environments
+ Storage System for Files and Images, also known as File Manager.
+ Permission System with Users and Groups.
+ Searching trough all Modules and Models.

## Installation

Install the module trough composer:

```sh
composer require luyadev/luya-module-admin:1.0.0-RC3
```

Add the module to your configuration file within the modules section:

```php
'modules' => [
    // ...
    'admin' => [
        'class' => 'luya\admin\Module',
    ]
]
```

The module is now registered and installed. In order to comple the installation run the migrate, import and setup command:

Database Migration:

```sh
./vendor/bin/luya migrate
```

Import:

```sh
./vendor/bin/luya import
```

Setup (Setting up the User and Group)

```sh
./vendor/bin/luya admin/setup
```

You can now login to your Administration Interface by adding the admin module in the Url: `http://example.com/admin`

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Hockey, Professional
U Sports Hockey: Atlantic Canada is no longer being overlooked by the hockey world
Professional Hockey is finally flourishing in Canada's Maritime provinces, as the Newfoundland Growlers have given a sporting identity to not only their home province but all four maritime provinces.
Brought to the province by the Toronto Maple Leaf hockey club, the Growlers have captured the hearts of Newfoundlanders.
Having pro hockey in their backyard has given the people of Newfoundland something to be proud of, which has been a rare find, especially when it comes to sporting experiences. Giving Newfoundland a place in pro hockey, as well as the focus of the Maple Leafs organization has brought pride to the east coast.
A couple's Growlers jerseys at the CAA Centre in Brampton (Benjamin Steiner)
In the spring of 2019, the Growlers began to draw attention from across the hockey world, as the maritime club strode towards the ECHL's championship. They won that championship but did so in completely different fashion than previous winners.
Since they began to operate the club, the Maple Leafs management has used the Growlers with a clear purpose, as an entry to pro hockey for young players. This theme has not been used in the past, but it's worked well for Newfoundland. The average age of their championship-winning team was a hair over 24; because the youth worked so well, they have opted to go even younger, with 2020's roster having no players born prior to 1992, good for an average age of 23.75.
While the age of the team is one thing, there are many other aspects that the Growlers organization can be proud of. There's one thing which is important but is largely out of focus for non-locals, and that's the fact that the team has three players from Newfoundland.
One of those three is Marcus Power, who brings a hockey identity to even more of the Maritimes. Power played university hockey with the Prince Edward Island Panthers, who are one of the highest attended teams in all of U Sports. His addition to the roster added an element of nostalgia for island hockey fans that they rarely can find in professional hockey.
There are few who have been able to forge a sporting career completely in the Maritimes, but for Power, the existence of teams has lined up perfectly with his hockey career. When he began at the University of PEI, the Growlers didn't exist; but by the time he graduated, he was being recruited by the newest ECHL franchise.
"It's great that it has worked out like this, I only wish we could have an NHL team out there now, but that's not gonna happen," said Power following the Growlers 7-6 shootout loss to the Brampton Beast.
In that same game, the impact of U Sports was massive, as four former university athletes were in on the scoring.
Power is one of the latest examples of the growth of U Sports. At the time of writing, he leads the Growlers with 20 goals and is second on the team with 36 points. Not long ago were U Sports players completely absent in pro hockey, but now they make up some of the best the ECHL has to offer.
The Growlers game in Brampton was a massive statement for U Sports, although it went unnoticed by nearly everybody. Four former university players contributed to the scoring, including goals from Power and Petgrave, two players from the Atlantic University Sports (AUS) conference.
"Ya we know each other, we both do well at this level because of the AUS," said Petgrave, who went on to say that while he knows Power well, their rivalry is based on UNB vs PEI, rather than their ECHL teams.
Petgrave has gotten a cup of tea at the higher level of hockey, having recently spent a few games with the AHL's Utia Comets, but Power finds himself in a different position. At 26 years old, the former PEI Panther may never make the NHL, although one cannot count him out just yet. Calgary Flames forward Derek Ryan was the latest player to make it out of a Canadian school to the NHL, and he made his debut at 29.
Power vs Brampton (Benjamin Steiner)
"We have to see where things go, I'm doing well this year so maybe I can catch somebody's eye," said Power of possibly moving up in the hockey pyramid, but he doesn't want to get in front of himself. "I am loving it with the Growlers here and we are successful, so I'm just focusing on now," he finished with.
The Growlers have changed hockey in Canada; they're winning with youth and showcase local talent, something that is often not the case in an ever-growing international sport. But besides everything that happens on the ice, the unifying factor and passion the team has provided to Newfoundlanders is something that is becoming an important element of maritime identity.
Ben Steiner January 27, 2020 January 27, 2020 forty
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Ensuring the success of any online presence only means one thing, making sure that marketing the web site is effective enough to drive traffic. For this purpose effective search engine optimization strategies are needed to ensure that you create traffic and have the capability to increase it over time. Despite many different kinds of marketing strategies, SEO strategies geared towards keywords are still some of the most successful tactics you can use for your success. Here are some tips you can do to ensure that your web site remains visible in search engines.
You've often heard it said that content is king – and up to now that is still true. Content drives traffic to your site and it is also content that provides you with the means to improve your search engine rankings. It is also content that will allow you to build links that will, in turn, also improve your rankings. Your content is the vehicle for you to provide your targeted keywords naturally and legally.
One of the most common mistakes made when managing a site is providing enough internal links. Linking each page in your web site to other internal pages that naturally fit in terms of relevance is also important and a great tactic for improving search rankings. It also provides a better navigational benefit for visitors to your web site.
We cannot overemphasize the value of social media and social networking in providing a good vehicle on which to mount your SEO marketing strategies. We all know how effective viral content is in disseminating itself and providing a good content and keyword vehicle. This is one of the things you should aim for because it propagates naturally and spreads fast within social networks.


The NBA asks 'whether the dunk of Gabe Norwood with the detest of NBA star Luis Scola was the best so far. The game between Philippines' Gilas vs Argentina is one of the heart-warming game on the third day of FIBA world cup 2014.
One of the best moments of the fight was the dunk of Gabe Norwood over Scola, people on the side court were all shouting and cheering after the "best dunk" so far from Gilas.
Just after the game it became trending on social medias with the delight of all basketball fans and off-course the Filipino fans.
Although Gilas was not able to win, they were able to show how to play the game with #puso.
Here are some info about Luis Alberto Scola Balvoa known as "Luis Scola"
Here are the previous games of Philippines' national basketball team Gilas Pilipinas.


text:
International Journal of Technology Assessment in Health Care
URL: /core/journals/international-journal-of-technology-assessment-in-health-care
Virtual Special Issues
Special Collection - Policy Forums
Special collection - Methods
Latest volume
< Back to all volumes
Volume 29 - Issue 1 - January 2013
VOLUME 28: STATISTICS AND THANKS
Marjukka Mäkelä, Terhi Ilonen
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 February 2013, pp. 1-2
COST-UTILITY ANALYSIS OF NT-PROBNP-GUIDED MULTIDISCIPLINARY CARE IN CHRONIC HEART FAILURE
Deddo Moertl, Sabine Steiner, Doug Coyle, Rudolf Berger
Objectives: A recent randomized, controlled trial in chronic heart failure patients showed that NT-proBNP-guided, intensive patient management (BMC) on top of multidisciplinary care reduced all-cause mortality and heart failure hospitalizations compared with multidisciplinary care (MC) or usual care (UC). We now performed a cost-utility analysis of these interventions from a payer's perspective.
Methods: Costs related to hospitalizations, ambulatory physician and nurse visits, and NT-proBNP testing for the three management strategies were acquired for both Austria (€) and Canada ($) and combined with the survival and quality of life data from the clinical trial for cost-effectiveness analysis. Data on long-term survival, costs, and quality-adjusted life-years (QALY) were extrapolated for a 20-year time horizon using a Markov model, which simulated the progression of disease through beta-blocker use, hospitalizations, and mortality.
Results: BMC was the most cost-effective strategy as it was dominant (cost-saving with improved health outcome) over both MC and UC based on both Austrian and Canadian costs. Incremental cost-effectiveness ratios for MC relative to UC were €3,746 and $5,554 per QALY gained for Austrian and Canadian costs, respectively. The probabilities for BMC being the most cost-effective strategy were 92 percent at a threshold value of Austrian €40,000 and 93 percent at a threshold value of Canadian $50,000.
Conclusions: NT-proBNP-guided, intensive HF patient management in addition to multidisciplinary care not only reduces death and hospitalization but also proves to be cost-effective.
TRANSCATHETER AORTIC VALVE IMPLANTATION FOR SEVERE AORTIC STENOSIS: THE COST-EFFECTIVENESS CASE FOR INOPERABLE PATIENTS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM
Aileen Murphy, Elisabeth Fenwick, William D. Toff, Matthew P. Neilson, Colin Berry, Neal Uren, Keith G. Oldroyd, Andrew H. Briggs
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 January 2013, pp. 12-19
Aortic stenosis (AS) is caused by age-related calcific degeneration of the aortic valve (1). Initially, cases are asymptomatic but, from the point that symptoms first develop, there is rapid progression and if left untreated survival estimates are low (2–3 years) (1). Therefore, managing AS effectively and efficiently is a priority for health systems with increasing healthcare costs and longer life expectancy.
MEDICAL TECHNOLOGY AT HOME: SAFETY-RELATED ITEMS IN TECHNICAL DOCUMENTATION
Ellen S.M. Hilbers, Claudette G.J.C.A de Vries, Robert E. Geertsma
Objectives: This study aimed to investigate the technical documentation of manufacturers on issues of safe use of their device in a home setting.
Methods: Three categories of equipment were selected: infusion pumps, ventilators, and dialysis systems. Risk analyses, instructions for use, labels, and post market surveillance procedures were requested from manufacturers. Additionally, they were asked to fill out a questionnaire on collection of field experience, on incidents, and training activities.
Results: Specific risks of device operation by lay users in a home setting were incompletely addressed in the risk analyses. A substantial number of user manuals were designed for professionals, rather than for patients or lay carers. Risk analyses and user information often showed incomplete coherence. Post market surveillance was mainly based on passive collection of field experiences.
Conclusions: Manufacturers of infusion pumps, ventilators, and dialysis systems pay insufficient attention to the specific risks of use by lay persons in home settings. It is expected that this conclusion is also applicable for other medical equipment for treatment at home. Manufacturers of medical equipment for home use should pay more attention to use errors, lay use and home-specific risks in design, risk analysis, and user information. Field experiences should be collected more actively. Coherence between risk analysis and user information should be improved. Notified bodies should address these aspects in their assessment. User manuals issued by institutions supervising a specific home therapy should be drawn up in consultation with the manufacturer.
COST-UTILITY OF WAITING TIME IN TOTAL JOINT REPLACEMENTS: A RANDOMIZED CLINICAL TRIAL
Ulla Tuominen, Harri Sintonen, Pasi Aronen, Johanna Hirvonen, Seppo Seitsalo, Matti Lehto, Kalevi Hietaniemi, Maria Blom
In many Western countries, long waiting times for elective surgery are a concern. Major joint replacement is an example of a type of surgery with a high volume of demand and relatively long waiting periods for patients. As populations get older, the prevalence of slowly progressive diseases, such as osteoarthritis (OA) in hip and knee joints, is increasing. Over three-quarters of a million total hip and knee replacement surgeries are done in the United States annually (1). Furthermore, according to March et al. (1997), the costs of OA have been estimated to account for up to 1–2.5 percent of the Gross National Product (GNP) in several developed countries (2). In Finland, a total of 11,104 total joint replacements (TJRs) were performed in 2004 (hip 6,600 and knee 5,905), with the median waiting time of 181 days for the surgery (hip 153 and knee 209 days). Until 2007, the number of TJRs was 17,334 (hip 7,698 and knee 9,636), with a median waiting time of 120 and 142 days, respectively (3;4). The mean waiting time for elective surgical procedures is approximately 3 months in several countries and the maximum waiting times can stretch into years.
SHOULD CHRONIC HEPATITIS B BE TREATED AS EARLY AS POSSIBLE?
Frank Hulstaert, Christoph Schwierz, Frederik Nevens, Nancy Thiry, Mohamed Gamil, Isabelle Colle, Stefaan Van de Sande, Yves Horsmans
Objectives: We studied the cost-effectiveness of tenofovir and entecavir in e antigen positive (CHBe+) and negative (CHBe-) chronic hepatitis B.
Methods: Using a multicenter survey including 544 patients we measured patient quality of life and attributable costs by clinical disease stage. Natural disease progression was studied in 278 patients in a single center. A Markov model was constructed to follow hypothetical cohorts of treated and untreated 40-year-old CHBe+ and CHBe- patients and 50-year-old patients with compensated cirrhosis.
Results: We did not find an improvement in quality of life when viral load was reduced under treatment. Transition rates to liver cirrhosis were found to be age-dependent. Assuming equal effectiveness, tenofovir dominates the entecavir strategy because of its lower price in Belgium. The incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) of tenofovir after 20 years is more favorable for treating Caucasian cirrhotic patients (mean ICER €29,000/quality-adjusted life-year [QALY]) compared with treating non-cirrhotic patients (mean ICER €110,000 and 131,000/QALY for CHB e+ and e-, respectively). Within the non-cirrhotic patients the ICER decreases with increasing cohort starting age from 30 to 50 years.
Conclusions: Results of long-term models for tenofovir or entecavir treatment of CHB need to be interpreted with caution as long-term trials with hard end points are lacking. Especially the effect on HCC remains highly uncertain. Based on cost-effectiveness considerations such antiviral treatment should be targeted at patients with cirrhosis or at risk of rapid progression to this disease stage.
AUTOMATED SCREENING AUDIOMETRY IN THE DIGITAL AGE: EXPLORING UHEAR™ AND ITS USE IN A RESOURCE-STRICKEN DEVELOPING COUNTRY
Katijah Khoza-Shangase, Lisa Kassner
Background: The current study aimed to determine the accuracy of UHear™, a downloadable audiometer on to an iPod Touch©, when compared with conventional audiometry.
Methods: Participants were enrolled primary school scholars. A total number of eighty-six participants (172 ears) were included. Of these eighty-six participants, forty-four were female and forty-two were male; with the age ranging from 8 years to 10 years (mean age, 9.0 years). Each participant underwent two audiological screening evaluations; one by means of conventional audiometry and the other by means of UHear™. Otoscopy and tympanometry was performed on each participant to determine status of their outer and middle ear before each participant undergoing pure tone air conduction screening by means of conventional audiometer and UHear™. The lowest audible hearing thresholds from each participant were obtained at conventional frequencies.
Results: Using the Paired t-test, it was determined that there was a significant statistical difference between hearing screening thresholds obtained from conventional audiometry and UHear™. The screening thresholds obtained from UHear™ were significantly elevated (worse) in comparison to conventional audiometry. The difference in thresholds may be attributed to differences in transducers used, ambient noise levels and lack of calibration of UHear™.
Conclusion: The UHear™ is not as accurate as conventional audiometry in determining hearing thresholds during screening of school-aged children. Caution needs to be exercised when using such measures and research evidence needs to be established before they can be endorsed and used with the general public.
BENEFITS OF CONTINUOUS SUBCUTANEOUS INSULIN INFUSION ON QUALITY OF LIFE
Andrea Lukács, Emőke Kiss-Tóth, Beatrix Varga, Andrea Soós, Peter Takác, László Barkai
Purpose: The aim of this study was to compare the general health-related quality of life (HRQoL), the metabolic control (HbA1c), the anthropometric measurement, and the cardiorespiratory fitness (expressed by VO2max) in youths with type 1 diabetes treated with continuous subcutaneous insulin infusion (CSII) to those receiving multiple daily injections (MDI). We looked for factors influencing the HRQoL and metabolic control.
Methods: A total of 239 patients treated with CSII (51 girls and 53 boys) or MDI (64 girls and 71 boys) between ages 8 and 18 years were assessed with the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory, Generic Core Scales, and Diabetes Module. VO2max was evaluated using the 20-meter shuttle run test.
Results: CSII group had significantly better HRQoL according to both child self-report and parent proxy-report. Youths with CSII reported better physical, emotional, and school-related functioning, and had less diabetes-related fear and symptoms than the MDI group. There were no significant differences in body mass index z-scores, insulin doses, HbA1c, and VO2max between the groups. HRQoL was predicted by the CSII therapy (β = −0.220; p = .000) and the VO2max (β = 0.386; p = .000), other clinical and anthropometric parameters had no effect; the HbA1c was predicted only by VO2max (β = −0.353; p = .000).
Conclusions: Diabetic youths treated with CSII therapy have better HRQoL than those treated with MDI. There are no differences between the investigated groups in anthropometric data, glycated hemoglobin, and physical fitness. Moreover, good physical fitness has an important role in achieving better metabolic control and HRQoL, which underlines the importance of regular aerobic exercise in the treatment and care of type 1 diabetes in childhood.
ECONOMIC EVALUATIONS AND DIAGNOSTIC TESTING: AN ILLUSTRATIVE CASE STUDY APPROACH
Sabina Sanghera, Rosanna Orlando, Tracy Roberts
Objective: The aim of this study was to present a clear process of synthesizing test accuracy data when conducting economic evaluations of diagnostic tests for health technology assessment (HTA) assessors and health economists.
Methods: We appraised the methods advocated for using diagnostic test accuracy data in economic evaluations. We used a case study of fetal anemia in which data from a screening test are used in combination with a confirmatory test.
Results: We developed a step-by-step guide and consider two scenarios: when data on test accuracy from several studies are based on (i) the same test threshold for positivity and (ii) different test thresholds.
Conclusions: We conclude that each approach has its strengths and limitations. We show that the optimal operating point of the test should be identified to determine the true cost-effectiveness of the test. We advocate that these issues require a multidisciplinary team of health economists, decision modelers and statisticians.
APPROACHES TO CHRONIC DISEASE MANAGEMENT EVALUATION IN USE IN EUROPE: A REVIEW OF CURRENT METHODS AND PERFORMANCE MEASURES
Annalijn Conklin, Ellen Nolte, Hubertus Vrijhoef
Objectives: An overview was produced of approaches currently used to evaluate chronic disease management in selected European countries. The study aims to describe the methods and metrics used in Europe as a first to help advance the methodological basis for their assessment.
Methods: A common template for collection of evaluation methods and performance measures was sent to key informants in twelve European countries; responses were summarized in tables based on template evaluation categories. Extracted data were descriptively analyzed.
Results: Approaches to the evaluation of chronic disease management vary widely in objectives, designs, metrics, observation period, and data collection methods. Half of the reported studies used noncontrolled designs. The majority measure clinical process measures, patient behavior and satisfaction, cost and utilization; several also used a range of structural indicators. Effects are usually observed over 1 or 3 years on patient populations with a single, commonly prevalent, chronic disease.
Conclusions: There is wide variation within and between European countries on approaches to evaluating chronic disease management in their objectives, designs, indicators, target audiences, and actors involved. This study is the first extensive, international overview of the area reported in the literature.
SUPPORTING DECISION MAKING IN CROSS-BORDER REGIONS: A HEALTH TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT TOOL FOR HOSPITALS
Saskia Knies, Gloria Lombardi, Matt Commers, Hans-Peter Dauben, Silvia Evers, Kai Michelsen, Wija Oortwijn, Chibuzo Opara, Helmut Brand
Objectives: The aim of this study was to develop an health technology assessment (HTA) decision tool to support the decision-making process on health technologies for hospital decision makers in cross-border regions.
Methods: Several methods were used to collect information necessary to develop the cross-border mini-HTA decision tool. The literature was inventoried on HTA in border regions and local settings and the use of HTA by local decision makers. Semi-structured interviews with hospital decision makers in cross-border regions were also performed. Based on group discussion of the resulting information, it was decided to use the Danish mini-HTA guideline as a starting point for development of the decision tool. After finishing the first version of the decision tool it was tested in two pilot studies
Results: Some questions in the Danish mini-HTA guideline were not relevant. Other questions needed rephrasing and questions about cross-border situations were added. The pilots showed several missing topics, including legal questions and reimbursement issues. The final decision tool consists of three sections: a general section, a section for hospitals not cooperating cross-border and a section for hospitals that are cooperating with hospitals across a national or regional border.
Conclusions: Based on our literature search, this may be the first cross-border mini-HTA decision tool. The decision tool will be of help for healthcare professionals and decision makers in border settings who would like to use HTA evidence to support their decision-making process.
INVOLVEMENT OF CONSUMERS IN HEALTH TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT ACTIVITIES BY INAHTA AGENCIES
David Hailey, Sophie Werkö, Rugayah Bakri, Alun Cameron, Britta Göhlen, Susan Myles, Jasmine Pwu, Jomkwan Yothasamut
Objectives: To obtain further information from members of the International Network of Agencies for Health Technology Assessment (INAHTA) on the involvement of consumers in their programs.
Methods: A questionnaire for a survey was developed and sent to member agencies in November 2010. Survey responses were compared with those from an earlier survey conducted in 2005.
Results: Of the thirty-three agencies that provided responses, 67 percent involve consumers in some aspects of their health technology assessment (HTA) programs, compared with 57 percent in 2005. As in the earlier survey, most agencies reporting involvement have contact with consumer or patient organizations and a large minority also involve individual consumers. Summaries of HTA reports that are intended to be easily understood by consumers are prepared by 84 percent of the agencies, and 42 percent involve consumers in dissemination of HTA material. In both areas, there was some increase from the levels previously reported.
Conclusions: The survey results suggest that there is a trend to increased involvement of consumers by the INAHTA agencies in their programs but that the level of involvement remains relatively limited. The manner of consumer participation varies between agencies.
ASSESSING THE IMPACT OF HEALTH TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT ON THE AUSTRIAN HEALTHCARE SYSTEM
Ines Schumacher, Ingrid Zechmeister
Objectives: In Austria, research in health technology assessment (HTA) has been conducted since the 1990s. The aim of this study is to analyze whether the HTA research program of the Institute of Technology Assessment (ITA) and the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for HTA (LBI-HTA) have had an impact on the Austrian healthcare system.
Methods: We applied qualitative and quantitative empirical research methods, such as interviewing, download analysis, questionnaire, retrospective routine data analysis, and media analysis. Data were analyzed according to a conceptual framework, considering seven impact categories (awareness, acceptance, process, decision, practice, final outcomes, enlightenment) and different target groups.
Results: A rising number of downloads and single HTA reports with high media interest were identified. Interviews showed that HTA reports have increasingly been used for investment and reimbursement decisions, as well as for the preparation of negotiations. Economic impact was indicated by decreased expenditures due to HTA recommendations. Overall, knowledge about evidence-based medicine increased and, in places, an "HTA culture" can be recognized. Yet, several decision-making processes occur at all levels without the use of HTA.
Conclusions: The analysis demonstrated an impact within all predefined categories; however, it depends on the system level and its target groups. HTA reports are primarily used by hospital management, (social) insurances, and the Austrian Ministry of Health. Nevertheless, there is still potential to increase the impact of HTA. Therefore, the inclusion of HTA in decision-making processes in Austria needs to move from a voluntary basis to a mandatory one.
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FINANCIAL IMPACT AND COVERAGE OF DRUGS IN AUSTRALIA
Josephine Mauskopf, Costel Chirila, Catherine Masaquel, Kristina S. Boye, Lee Bowman, Julie Birt, David Grainger
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 December 2012, pp. 92-100
Objectives: The aim of this study was to estimate the relationship between the financial impact of a new drug and the recommendation for reimbursement by the Australian Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee (PBAC).
Methods: Data in the PBAC summary database were abstracted for decisions made between July 2005 and November 2009. Financial impact—the upper bound of the values presented in the PBAC summary database—was categorized as ≤A$0, >A$0 up to A$10 million, A$10 million up to A$30 million, and >A$30 million per year. Descriptive, logistic, survival, and recursive partitioning decision analyses were used to estimate the relationship between the financial impact of a new drug indication and the recommendation for reimbursement. Multivariable analyses controlled for other clinical and economic variables, including cost per quality-adjusted life-year gained.
Results: Financial impact was a significant predictor of the recommendation for reimbursement. In the logistic analysis, the odds ratios of reimbursement for drug submissions with financial impacts ≥A$10 million to ≥A$30 million or >A$0 to <A$10 million compared with ≤A$0 were 0.12 (95 percent confidence interval [CI]: 0.03–0.51) and 0.16 (95 percent CI: 0.04–0.60), respectively. In the recursive partition decision analysis, the first split of the data was for submissions with a positive financial impact compared with those with a zero or negative financial impact.
Conclusions: In Australia, financial impact on the drug budget is an important determinant of whether a new drug is recommended for reimbursement when cost-effectiveness estimates and other clinical and economic variables are controlled.
A REVIEW OF HEALTH TECHNOLOGY APPRAISALS: CASE STUDIES IN ONCOLOGY
Koonal Kirit Shah, Jorge Mestre-Ferrandiz, Adrian Towse, Emily Nash Smyth
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 December 2012, pp. 101-109
Pharmaceutical manufacturers, regulators, patients, providers, and payers all have a shared interest in improving health outcomes for patients with cancer. Each plays an important role in helping to achieve this common goal. Pharmaceutical manufacturers seek to develop new medicines that are supported by robust and clinically meaningful evidence of their safety, efficacy, and effectiveness. Regulators authorize these medicines based on evaluations of their safety and efficacy. Patients and providers together make treatment decisions and desire access to the most effective treatment options. Payers appraise new medicines with the goal of ensuring access to those medicines that constitute efficient uses of healthcare expenditure. Profits generated from the sale of the medicines provide a return to the manufacturer, which helps to drive continued research and development in an effort to improve patient health outcomes and societal well-being. Many payers have initiated health technology assessment (HTA) activities to inform decision making in light of the rising costs of health care. Given the financial constraints imposed as a result of the global economic crisis, HTAs are likely to become increasingly important as payers seek value for money solutions to major health problems. Successful collaboration and aligning incentives across stakeholders is critical to ensuring that patients are able to access the most effective medicines.
AN ETHICAL EVALUATION OF TELEMEDICINE APPLICATIONS MUST CONSIDER FOUR MAJOR ASPECTS – A COMMENT ON KIDHOLM ET AL.
TRANSCATHETER AORTIC VALVE IMPLANTATION FOR SEVERE AORTIC STENOSIS: THE COST-EFFECTIVENESS CASE FOR INOPERABLE PATIENTS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM – CORRIGENDUM
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 February 2013, p. 112
APPROACHES TO CHRONIC DISEASE MANAGEMENT EVALUATION IN USE IN EUROPE: A REVIEW OF CURRENT METHODS AND PERFORMANCE MEASURES – CORRIGENDUM
Front Cover (OFC, IFC) and matter
THC volume 29 issue 1 Cover and Front matter
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 February 2013, pp. f1-f6
Back Cover (IBC, OBC) and matter
THC volume 29 issue 1 Cover and Back matter
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 February 2013, pp. b1-b5


6 Approved Flex Building Lots approx. 1 to 3 acres each with public water and sewer. Natural gas available. Located in the HUB Zone Empowerment Contracting Program. Wide range of available usages. Great location for Flex space, warehouse,light manufacturing or retail. Located near Route 68, Route 545, and Maguire Air force Base. Buy individual lots from $145,000 to $190,000 or purchase the whole project for $995,000. If you are thinking of starting a business this is a must see property!!!


Scree's skin prickled with warning. Something was watching her . . .
of my sequel, currently titled Black Lightning. Scree is an undersea shape-shifter exploring beneath the arctic ice in The Dragon Dreamer series by J.S. Burke.
Scree felt no shift in the currents but her skin prickled with warning. Something was watching her. She changed color while her skin cratered and dimpled with sharp edges like broken eggs. In the blink of an eye she disappeared, perfectly matching the volcanic rocks. What was it? Her arms could only taste the overwhelming sea-smells of rotten egg, weathered rock, and old melted ice. She focused her mind on the thousands of tiny eyes in her skin; it was like looking through a wall of glass bubbles at a puzzle image. He was lurking in the shadows behind her.
You know something is good when you read the opening sentence and instantly remember it then read it anyway. Great passage, Jenny!


Jonnie and Howard Surland, owners and trainers of Highland Stables, are plese to announce the new home of Highland Stables at Five Star Equestrian Center, 23203 Dutch Hall Road, Bennington, Neb., at the northwest edge of Omaha, Neb. Their new location includes a 100' x 200' inside arena, automatic waterers, climate controlled stalls and arena all under one roof. The new facilities also include a large outside arena, working rings, and a viewing balcony of the inside arena.
Trainer Jonnie Surland has a long history of producing world champion American Saddlebreds, Hackney Ponies, and equitation riders, as well as her premium academy riding program.
For more information, please contact Jonnie Surland at 402-679-6588 or js5314@aol.com.


Mr. Branson was born on the 18th of July, 1950, in Surrey – a county in England. He suffered from dyslexia and it was very hard for him to be an ordinary student. So he dropped out of school (as many famous entrepreneurs did) when he was only 16 and started his first project – a magazine called 'Student'.
The revenue from the first circulation was around $8 000 form advertisements. The money covered the costs, so he distributed all of the 50000 copies for free. The project was an overnight success and made the initial boost of his career as an entrepreneur. In 1969 Branson decided to get involved in the business with records. This was how he started his mail-order company for selling records – 'Virgin'. He opened a record shop in London which wasn't a huge success but provided him with the so needed capital to expand. A few years later, in 1972, Richard opened his own recording studio called 'Virgin Records'. Many famous artists, musicians, and bands hired the studio for their records. Mike Oldfield, Se Pistols, Culture Club, Rolling Stones and many others recorded their first albums there. He produced many unpopular, controversial or not wanted by the other studios artists. Very soon the Virgin Records studio became one of the tops amongst its rivals.
But his journey was not only glory and success. In 1992, his company Virgin Group fell in a bad financial situation and was struggling for its survival. In 1992 Virgin Group was sold to 'EMI Group Ltd.' for around $1 billion. This was like a defeat for Branson and he shared that he cried when the deal was over. But after a few years, he started again. Quitters never win and winners never quit. He founded 'V2 Records' because he wanted to enter the music business again. In 1993 he got into the railroad business by the company 'Virgin Trains'. This year he also started 'Virgin Radio'. During the next several years Branson founded more than 200 other successful companies under the name 'Virgin'. They operate in many different countries around the world. You can see a full list and information about them here: http://www.virgin.com/company. He even founded a company offering trips in space – 'Virgin Galactic'.
– 1998 – he attempted a trip around the world on a balloon.
– 1991 – flying by a balloon at the speed of 394 km/h he crossed the Pacific starting form Japan and ending to Arctic Canada. This was a new world record.


It took years but I have dozens of them! East of' the rocky mountains we only have the ruby troughted type. Still great. It's a rush as they are here like bees, and you can have them too. Just get basic feeder in make plain sugar water as strong a mix as you can. That will steal them from your neighbors! These are NOT dumb birds - heck - they can fly backwards!!!!!
Just funny - it's been a bit cold here at night and I just saw one all fluffed up trying to stay warm. Sometimes I like this world of critters better than the car world, Go figure?
Hey Tom I know what you mean about these little birds, they are great to watch as they dart in out around you.
Down at my trailer that is on the north shore of Lake Erie just off of Long Point Bay, we have hundreds of them. Everyone at the park has one or two feeders and the birds have gotten use to the people to the point I've had one join me at the table while I was sitting on the deck. The little guy just sort of sat there checking me out as much as I was he.
The only problem with everyone feeding them is that people don't take their feeders down in September and the birds don't realize that it's time to migrate south. If they don't leave in time there is a good chance that they may get hit with some of Canada's cold weather.


Study your existing kitchen: How wide is the doorway into your kitchen? It's a common mistake many homeowners make: Buying the extra-large fridge only to find they can't get it in the doorway.To avoid mistakes like this, create a drawing of your kitchen with measurements for doorways, walkways, counters, etc. And don't forget height, too.
And a final tip to help keep your frustration level down while the construction is going on: plan for a Remodel Tip Contractors will often set up a temporary kitchen or loan you a two-burner countertop as part of their remodeling services. Read More In What to Do About Dinner When Your Kitchen Is Being Remodeled temporary kitchen. along with the plans for your new kitchen. You'll be happier (and less frustrated) if you've got a way to have dinner while construction is ongoing.