text:
Extensive Crosstalk Between O-GlcNAcylation and Phosphorylation Regulates Cytokinesis
By Zihao Wang, Namrata D. Udeshi, Chad Slawson, Philip D. Compton, Kaoru Sakabe, Win D. Cheung, Jeffrey Shabanowitz, Donald F. Hunt, Gerald W. Hart
Science Signaling 12 Jan 2010 : ra2 Full AccessRestricted Access
Protein O-GlcNAcylation regulates cell division.
Editor's Summary
Quantitative Phosphoproteomics Reveals Widespread Full Phosphorylation Site Occupancy During Mitosis
By Jesper V. Olsen, Michiel Vermeulen, Anna Santamaria, Chanchal Kumar, Martin L. Miller, Lars J. Jensen, Florian Gnad, Jürgen Cox, Thomas S. Jensen, Erich A. Nigg, Søren Brunak, Matthias Mann
Protein phosphorylation during the cell cycle may be an all-or-none process in many instances.
Cyclic Nucleotides Converge on Brown Adipose Tissue Differentiation
By Paul S. Amieux, G. Stanley McKnight
Science Signaling 12 Jan 2010 : pe2 Full AccessRestricted Access
cGMP-mediated signaling pathways are required for the differentiation and function of brown adipocytes.
Basal Release of ATP: An Autocrine-Paracrine Mechanism for Cell Regulation
By Ross Corriden, Paul A. Insel
Science Signaling 12 Jan 2010 : re1 Full AccessRestricted Access
Responses to ATP play an important role in regulating the signaling and function of a diverse array of cells and tissues.
BMPing Up Metabolism
Science Signaling 12 Jan 2010 : ec7 Full AccessRestricted Access
BMP signaling plays a role in energy homeostasis.
High Fat Content
By John F. Foley
The increased abundance of the lipase MAGL and of signaling lipids in aggressive tumor cells contributes to their malignancy.
BCR Survival Signals
By Wei Wong
Chronic active B cell receptor signaling promotes cell survival in some types of diffuse large B cell lymphomas.
Histone Eviction During Hypoxia
Science Signaling 12 Jan 2010 : ec10 Full AccessRestricted Access
Histones are removed and then replaced at the promoter of the gene encoding endothelial nitric oxide synthase in response to hypoxia.
Recruiting the Components for Cell Division
By Guy Riddihough
Phosphorylation of the chromatin protein histone H2A plays a critical role in chromosome segregation during cell division.
Cocaine Addiction and Histone Methylation
By Peter R. Stern
Cocaine suppression of histone methylation in the nucleus accumbens mediates the drug's ability to enhance reward.
Synaptic Activity of ATM and ATR
The kinases ATM and ATR associate with synaptic vesicle proteins and influence synaptic plasticity.
A Nod to Autophagy
Bacterial invasion elicits autophagy through Nod1 and Nod2 independently of RIP2 and the NF-κB signaling pathway.
Niche Metamorphosis
By Pamela M. Hines
Intestinal stem cell progenitors use Notch signaling to specify a niche cell that remains undifferentiated until metamorphosis.
Ratting Out a Diabetes Gene
By Paula A. Kiberstis
Sequence variations in an adrenergic receptor gene cause reduced insulin secretion and contribute to type 2 diabetes.
Wingless Enforces Strict Segregation
By L. Bryan Ray
Signaling by the secreted morphogen wingless controls deposition of a myosin II–containing barrier that prevents cell mixing at segmental boundaries of the fly embryo.
More From Science Signaling
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Mission and Scope
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Free Sample Articles
Online Cover Posttranslational modifications involved in regulation of the cell cycle are the topic of two Research Articles in this week's issue. In the Research Article by Olsen et al., the authors use mass spectrometry to characterize the phosphoproteome during all phases of the cell cycle. In the Research Article by Wang et al., the authors use mass spectrometry to characterize the proteins modified by O-GlcNAcylation during the last stages of mitosis. The cover image shows the global landscape of the phosphoproteome during cell cycle phases. A subset of the quantified phosphoproteome time course was rendered as blue-green traces using Processing (http://processing.org/) and was subsequently mapped to a globe geometry. The phases of the cell cycle map to the four points of the compass, with North as M phase, East as G2, South as S, and West as G1. [Credit: Martin L. Miller, Chanchal Kumar, and Jesper V. Olsen, Max-Planck-Institute for Biochemistry (J.V.O., C.K.), University of Copenhagen (J.V.O., M.L.M.), Lilly Singapore Centre for Drug Discovery (C.K.), Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (M.L.M.)]

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Q: Bash - access oc node properties The problem is pretty simple, but I am struggling to understand where to even look for a solution. I want to iterate over a list of pods I retrieve from openshift and then output some of its properties.
In other words, what I want to do is this:
for node in $(oc get nodes);
do
  echo  ${node.name}
  echo  ${node.role}
done

Unfortunately that leads to the error "line 67: ${node.name}: bad substitution".
Just iterating over the nodes with echo node works fine, but it just lists all the properties with one line per property value.
the output of just oc get nodes is:
NAME                                    STATUS   ROLES    AGE   VERSION
avaloq-abcde-master-0-xyz               Ready    master   38d   v1.xx
avaloq-abcde-master-1-dfs               Ready    master   38d   v1.xx
avaloq-abcde-master-2-gsd               Ready    master   38d   v1.xx

the output of
for node in $(oc get nodes -o name);
do
  echo  ${node}
done

is
node/avaloq-abcde-master-0-xyz
node/avaloq-abcde-master-1-dfs
node/avaloq-abcde-master-2-gsd

If I try to add another property via -o (the output format?), it throws the following error:
error: unable to match a printer suitable for the output format "roles", allowed formats are: custom-columns,custom-columns-file,go-template,go-template-file,json,jsonpath,jsonpath-as-json,jsonpath-file,name,template,templatefile,wide,yaml

What I expect is the following output
node/avaloq-abcde-master-0-xyz
master
node/avaloq-abcde-master-1-dfs
master
node/avaloq-abcde-master-2-gsd
master

I assume that is where my understanding is lacking. Is the "array of objects/ table" returned via "oc get nodes" not an array of objects but rather just a text list separated by tabs and return characters?

A: You can use something like this if you only need specific columns from oc get node command
oc get nodes | awk '{print $1, $3}'

which will print output like
avaloq-abcde-master-0-xyz master
avaloq-abcde-master-1-dfs master
avaloq-abcde-master-2-gsd master

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Zaman Toleafoa
zaman.toleafoa@fticonsulting.com
Journalism, Auckland University
M.A., Contemporary History, Birkbeck College, University of London
Zaman Toleafoa is a Senior Managing Director at FTI Consulting, and is based in New York. Mr Toleafoa is in the Strategic Communications segment, and is a senior leader of its Financial Services sector practice.
Mr Toleafoa has over 20 years' experience providing senior counsel to financial services firms in the world's financial capitals of London and New York in areas such as reputation management, issues management, media relations and crisis communications. His current and former clients span the financial services spectrum from private equity, investment banking, wealth management and asset management.
Mr Toleafoa also has significant experience managing complex, cross border client relationships and engagements considering his international network and relationships spanning the US, UK, Europe and Australasia.
Prior to FTI Consulting, Mr Toleafoa worked in inhouse communications roles at insurance conglomerate AXA Group in London, and at Bank of New Zealand in his native Auckland, New Zealand. He was also the London attaché for the Samoan Olympic team at the 2012 London Olympics.


A Zelda Classic adventure that I started to design and which was not completed. If zeda classic was released 10 years sooner, I would have been to paradise and would have had a huge fun designing and playing quest. But now the lack of time prevent me from doing so.
The archive contains a scan of the paper notes and the incomplete quest file that requires Zquest (supplied with Zelda Classic) to be able to open it.


text:
Q: Firebase Auth with GoogleAuthProvider I've been following this tutorial to implement firebase googleAuth in my react admin project.
I'm able to login to my app, and logout. That all works, but i'm having trouble with how I can see the tokenID that google is sending to verify my login. I need this information to verify with an eventual backend. Here is what my Login form looks like currently.
import React from "react";
import { Login, LoginForm } from "react-admin";
import StyledFirebaseAuth from 'react-firebaseui/StyledFirebaseAuth';
import firebase from 'firebase';

// Configure FirebaseUI.
const uiConfig = {
  // Popup signin flow rather than redirect flow.
  signInFlow: 'popup',
  // Redirect to /signedIn after sign in is successful. Alternatively you can provide a callbacks.signInSuccess function.
  signInSuccessUrl: '#/',
  // We will display Google as the auth provider.
  signInOptions: [
    firebase.auth.GoogleAuthProvider.PROVIDER_ID
  ]
};

const SignInScreen = () => <StyledFirebaseAuth uiConfig={uiConfig} firebaseAuth={firebase.auth()}/>;

const CustomLoginForm = props => (
  <div>
    <LoginForm {...props} />
    <SignInScreen />
  </div>
);

const CustomLoginPage = props => (
  <Login {...props}>
    <CustomLoginForm {...props}/>
  </Login>
);

export default CustomLoginPage;

Any idea how I can draw out this information, like id, name, email etc, from this flow?
Thanks in advance

A: Welp, spent 4 hours yesterday to no avail. Post this and 15 mins later find my own answer. If you add this call back to the uiConfig, you can log out the credential information and from there, do what you want with it.
  callbacks: {
    signInSuccessWithAuthResult: function(authResult, redirectUrl) {
       console.log(authResult)
    },
  },


text:
Why art is essential to democracy
Art invites viewers into perspectives and ways of life different from their own — and with that, helps foster a sense of empathy required for democracy. Learn about the creative avenues art takes in giving power to the people.
Checking list
Oskar Eustis Why theater is essential to democracy
Truth comes from the collision of different ideas, and theater plays an essential role in showing us that truth, says legendary artistic director Oskar Eustis. In this powerful talk, Eustis outlines his plan to reach (and listen to) people in places across the US where the theater, like many other institutions, has turned its back — like the deindustrialized Rust Belt. "Our job is to try to hold up a vision to America that shows not only who all of us are individually, but that welds us back into the commonality that we need to be," Eustis says. "That's what the theater is supposed to do."
Rayma Suprani Dictators hate political cartoons — so I keep drawing them
"A political cartoon is a barometer of freedom," says Rayma Suprani, who was exiled from her native Venezuela for publishing work critical of the government. "That's why dictators hate cartoonists." In a talk illustrated with highlights from a career spent railing against totalitarianism, Suprani explores how cartoons hold a mirror to society and reveal hidden truths — and discusses why she keeps drawing even when it comes at a high personal cost. (In Spanish with consecutive English translation)
Dread Scott How art can shape America's conversation about freedom
In this quick talk, visual artist Dread Scott tells the story of one of his most transgressive art installations, which drew national attention for its controversial use of the American flag and led to a landmark First Amendment case in the US Supreme Court.
Ariana Curtis Museums should honor the everyday, not just the extraordinary
Who deserves to be in a museum? For too long, the answer has been "the extraordinary" — those aspirational historymakers who inspire us with their successes. But those stories are limiting, says museum curator Ariana Curtis. In a visionary talk, she imagines how museums can more accurately represent history by honoring the lives of people both extraordinary and everyday, prominent and hidden — and amplify diverse perspectives that should have always been included.
Anthony D. Romero This is what democracy looks like
In a quest to make sense of the political environment in the United States in 2017, lawyer and ACLU executive director Anthony D. Romero turned to a surprising place — a 14th-century fresco by Italian Renaissance master Ambrogio Lorenzetti. What could a 700-year-old painting possibly teach us about life today? Turns out, a lot. Romero explains all in a talk that's as striking as the painting itself.
Walter Hood How urban spaces can preserve history and build community
Can public spaces both reclaim the past and embrace the future? Landscape architect Walter Hood has explored this question over the course of an iconic career, with projects ranging from Lafayette Square Park in Oakland to the upcoming International African American Museum in Charleston, South Carolina. In this inspiring talk packed with images of his work, Hood shares the five simple concepts that guide his approach to creating spaces that illuminate shared memories and force us to look at one another in a different way.
Amy Padnani How we're honoring people overlooked by history
Since its founding in 1851, the "New York Times" has published thousands of obituaries — for heads of state, famous celebrities, even the inventor of the sock puppet. But only a small percentage of them chronicle the lives of women and people of color. In this insightful talk, "Times" editor Amy Padnani shares the story behind "Overlooked," the project she's leading to recognize people from history whose deaths were ignored — and refocus society's lens on who is considered important.
Trevor Copp and Jeff Fox Ballroom dance that breaks gender roles
Tango, waltz, foxtrot ... these classic ballroom dances quietly perpetuate an outdated idea: that the man always leads and the woman always follows. That's an idea worth changing, say Trevor Copp and Jeff Fox, as they demonstrate their "Liquid Lead" dance technique along with fellow dancer Alida Esmail. Watch as Copp and Fox captivate and command the stage while boldly deconstructing and transforming the art of ballroom dance.
Patrick Chappatte A free world needs satire
We need humor like we need the air we breathe, says editorial cartoonist Patrick Chappatte. In a talk illustrated with highlights from a career spent skewering everything from dictators and ideologues to selfies and social media mobs, Chappatte makes a resounding, often hilarious case for the necessity of satire. "Political cartoons were born with democracy, and they are challenged when freedom is," he says.
Thelma Golden How art gives shape to cultural change
Thelma Golden, curator at the Studio Museum in Harlem, talks through three recent shows that explore how art examines and redefines culture. The "post-black" artists she works with are using their art to provoke a new dialogue about race and culture — and about the meaning of art itself.
TED Talks are free thanks to our
partners & advertisers


Our prices allow unlimited training at any suitable Forza Karate Club. Our Senior Instructors are Fully Insured and DBS (CRB) enhanced checked.
It's great fun for all and great to meet new friends. Why not come down with a friend or the whole family and see what Karate has to offer?
Do you hold a Black Belt in Karate? Interested in teaching part time or full time? If you are passionate and have the desire to succeed we want to talk to you. Contact Sensei Anthoni Everitt on 07401 080 078.
Copyright © 2019 Forza Karate Club | Chelsea. Theme: ColorNews by ThemeGrill. Powered by WordPress.


Centre College's Center for Career & Professional Development (CCPD) has assembled a group of over 300 successful alumni to form the Career Mentor Network, a community designed to provide career information and advice to current Centre students from professionals who are already established in their fields.
Parents have now joined the effort, too, promising an even stronger network.
Joy Asher, director of the CCPD, hopes all Centre students take advantage of this valuable resource to help guide their futures.
Students are paired with mentors by searching an online system using using variables important to their future plans, such as major, career field, job title and geographic location.
Although parent participation in the Career Mentor Network is in its infancy, the group already includes nearly 20 successful parent professionals representing fields such as education, government, healthcare, architecture, engineering, the clergy and many others.
Students are encouraged to call the CCPD at 859.238.5283 to register.


text:
Twin Cities Daily Planet (https://www.tcdailyplanet.net/interview-new-primitives-righteously-spiced/)
Interview: New Primitives, righteously spiced
By Dwight Hobbes (TC Daily Planet) | November 27, 2007
Stanley Kipper performs with New Primitives. Photo courtesy Stanley Kipper.
There is justice in the world: starting November 29, New Primitives are the Thursday night house-draw at Nye's Bar & Polonaise Room in Minneapolis. This band wrote the book on powerhouse Afro-Cuban rock. When New Primitives throw down, it's time to git on up and shake some hips.
Founder Stanley Kipper (vocals, timbales, drums), Javier Trejo (vocals, guitar) and Chico Perez (congas, backing vocals) front the band, fueling a polyrhythmic avalanche. Holding down the rhythm section, Joel "Family Man" Arpin is on traps with Tommy Peterson and Matthew Stevens alternating on bass. Founding member Brian "Snowman" Powers occasionally sits in on sax; lately he's been tied up wrapping production of New Primitives' second album American Nomad and finishing Oleta Adams's new disc. That's the nucleus: there's no telling who may sit in at any given gig. Stanley Kipper talked with Dwight Hobbes about what's been going on with the band.
DWIGHT HOBBES: Maybe some folks who took New Primitives for granted when you were at the Cabooze will show up more frequently this time. What you think?
STANLEY KIPPER: I think people will come around to check us. We have new songs that we are fixin' to drop. We got something for [our fans]: Music like food, righteously spiced and slow-cooked all day. We are bringin' it. I have heard a lot of folks like to see us at Nye's because it's intimate and everyone is right up next to the music.
DH: Did you tell me the New Prims used to be a regular attraction at Nye's?
SK: Yes. We were there in the underground for couple of years before the move to the Cabooze.
DH: You guys were going to play the Whiskey A Go-Go in Los Angeles. How'd it come off?
SK: We didn't go. At the last minute some things popped up, health issues in the band. Don Forte had to cancel everything at the last minute. We are scheduled to go back in March or April of 2008. We will be playing the Whiskey on that trip in addition to a few other shows around LA. The Joint in West L.A., Malibu Inn. Some others.
DH: I caught you at Acadia Café backing up Barbara Meyer with former One World bass-monster Bill Hulett. In fact, the three of you were in One World. How was it gigging together again?
SK: It was a great time. It is nice to reconnect with the Honey Bee. Plus me, him and Barbara have some history together, [which is] very important when it comes to tryin' to hang with us.
DH: You produced Barbara's solo album. How did it turn out?
SK: Nice, real nice! Barbara and I worked on the songs for a while before we went in to the studio. Rich Mattson from Ol' Yeller and Barbara already had one song cut when I came in to work with Barbara on the rest of the songs. We played them like the White Stripes when they were around: just rockin'. That's the way we cut them. Rich played bass on some of the stuff in the
studio at the same time Barbara and I were cutting rhythm tracks. He was also the guitar player and engineer.
DH: New Prims have been threatening to release a new album since about this time last year. What's up?
SK: We have fifteen songs that are going to be on the CD. We've been getting closer to being finished. I know what you're thinking…[it's] for real this time, though. This CD has some of the best work we have done together so far: Family Man, Chico, Jav, TP [Tommy Peterson], Mateo [Matt Stevens] layin' it down with Snowman Powers at the flight deck. Eric Anderson, on keys, just got back. He's been out with Atmosphere.
DH: Well, congrats on hooking up at Nye's. And, I guess, on progress with the new album.
SK: Thanks. I'm sure.
Dwight Hobbes


Discussion in 'Honda Industry News' started by webby, Feb 26, 2016.
American Honda notified NHTSA of a stop sale and safety recall for approximately 34,000 2016 Civic vehicles due to potentially missing or missing piston pin snap rings that may cause engine stall or failure. Any new or used units in dealer stock must be inspected, and if necessary, repaired per service bulletin 16-017, Safety Recall: Piston Pin Snap Ring once the parts, tools, and complete repair information are available. Refer to your eResponsibility report or VIN inquiry to determine which units in your inventory are affected by this safety recall.
Note: Affected vehicles should not be sold until the repair has been completed. Should an unrepaired vehicle result in any claim because of the required recall repair, the dealership will be solely responsible to the claimant, and will be required to defend and indemnify American Honda for any resulting claims.
All affected units will require use of a borescope to inspect the four cylinders to confirm correct piston pin snap ring placement. Vehicles exhibiting any concerns with piston pin snap ring placement may require replacement of damaged pistons, piston pins or rings, or other related engine components.
Replacement parts are not available at this time. American Honda is working to procure a sufficient number of borescopes and replacement parts to satisfy this recall. As such, the version of bulletin 16-017 posted on the Service Information System does not currently contain any tool, parts, warranty, inspection, or repair information. Once tools and parts are made available, American Honda will revise service bulletin 16-017 to include all details related to this recall. American Honda will notify dealers of the bulletin revision and tool distribution details via iN message.
Customers affected by this safety recall may visit your dealership prior to tool, parts and/or repair procedure availability. Please be sure to inform these customers of the safety recall, being sure to let them know that tools and parts are not currently available, and that they will be notified once supply stabilizes. American Honda expects to conduct customer notification in mid-March 2016. By this time, all necessary tools, parts and details are expected to be available.
As always, please be sure to check VIN status inquiry to determine if this or any open safety recall applies to a particular vehicle.


The 30-Days Foundation is proud to announce the fourth volume of The Bayfront Blues Collectors Club CD featuring multiple Bayfront Blues Fest artists donating their tracks to help our efforts.
The first three have raised nearly $60,000!! Thank you to all of the great artists who support our mission.
Founder Mick Sterling is also proud to announce a double CD retrospective of thirty years of songs and songwriting with AND HAVING SAID THAT. The proceeds from this 30 song effort will benefit The 30-Days Foundation as well!


Mecer Z140C Silver. Windows 10 Processor Built in camera, 2Gb Ram, Storage SD, Skype 7Gb Online Storage only 6months old excellent condition.
Serial MSA100 Amphenol 259992-001 MSA 19200 8-N-1Collection is possible from on of two places, either St Winifreds Kingsburgh or La Lucia, Durban North. Please let me know which you prefer so I can have your item at the correct place. If I do not answer my phone please whatsapp, email or sms me, as I may be caught up in work.
Cable still in great condition. Collection is possible from on of two places, either St Winifreds Kingsburgh or La Lucia, Durban North. Please let me know which you prefer so I can have your item at the correct place. If I do not answer my phone please whatsapp, email or sms me, as I may be caught up in work.
Cable is a DB25 female plug that splits into two DB9 plugs, one male and other female.


OpenAI, the AI research company cofounded by Elon Musk, has made an AI tool which can generate fake text.
The Guardian's Alex Hern played with the system, generating a fake article on Brexit and a new paragraph for George Orwell's "1984."
The company isn't open-sourcing the system because it fears it could be misused, for example to infinitely generating negative or positive reviews.
AI research nonprofit OpenAI has created a system that can generate fake text from a single line - and it's not open-sourcing the code for fear of misuse.
OpenAI was cofounded by tech mogul Elon Musk, and its sponsors include Silicon Valley heavy-hitters such as Peter Thiel and Amazon Web Services.
Last year it gained the praise of Bill Gates after it built a team of five neural networks capable of beating human players in the computer game "Dota 2."
Now the company has created a system, named GPT2, capable of imitating and generating text based on only a sentence.
The Guardian's Alex Hern got to play with the system, and tried typing in a single Guardian headline about Brexit. From that headline alone, GPT2 was able to generate quotes from UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn as well as a fictional spokesman for Prime Minister Theresa May.
"The PM has made it absolutely clear her intention is to leave the EU as quickly as is possible and that will be under her negotiating mandate as confirmed in the Queen's speech last week," the fictional spokesman said.
"I was in my car on my way to a new job in Seattle. I put the gas in, put the key in, and then I let it run. I just imagined what the day would be like. A hundred years from now. In 2045, I was a teacher in some school in a poor part of rural China. I started with Chinese history and history of science."
OpenAI's research director Dario Amodei told Hern that the models used to make GPT2 were enormous, and it was trained by reading through roughly 10 million articles, which were selected by crawling through Reddit. If an article had more than three upvotes, it was selected.
While GPT2 is potentially groundbreaking, OpenAI is not ready to share it with the world just yet. Its head of policy told the Guardian that GPT2 needs to be tinkered with for a while to find out whether it could be used for mischief.
"If you can't anticipate all the abilities of a model, you have to prod it to see what it can do. There are many more people than us who are better at thinking what it can do maliciously," he said.
As an example, OpenAI showed how the system could be used to generate limitless bad or good reviews. The internet is already awash with spam, and product reviews are often gamed - whether by people promoting their own products or rivals seeking to sabotage them.
OpenAI told the Guardian that the goal was to show people technology what could become commonplace in a year or two.


text:
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Harvard Book Store Presents (Past Events) • Special Events Archive
Colm Tóibín
at 6:00 PM (Doors at 5:30)
Colm Tóibín reads from House of Names: A Novel
Online pre-sales (ticket + book) on sale April 11. $5 Tickets on sale April 25 at 9am. Unable to attend? Order the book(s) or pre-order a signed copy from Harvard Book Store. No Brattle Passes.
This event includes a book signing.
Harvard Book Store welcomes award-winning author COLM TÓIBÍN—author of The Master, Brooklyn, and Nora Webster—for a reading from his latest novel, House of Names.
About House of Names
From the thrilling imagination of bestselling, award-winning Colm Tóibín comes a retelling of the story of Clytemnestra—spectacularly audacious, violent, vengeful, lustful, and instantly compelling—and her children.
"I have been acquainted with the smell of death." So begins Clytemnestra's tale of her own life in ancient Mycenae, the legendary Greek city from which her husband King Agamemnon left when he set sail with his army for Troy. Clytemnestra rules Mycenae now, along with her new lover Aegisthus, and together they plot the bloody murder of Agamemnon on the day of his return after nine years at war.
Judged, despised, cursed by gods she has long since lost faith in, Clytemnestra reveals the tragic saga that led to these bloody actions: how her husband deceived her eldest daughter Iphigeneia with a promise of marriage to Achilles, only to sacrifice her because that is what he was told would make the winds blow in his favor and take him to Troy; how she seduced and collaborated with the prisoner Aegisthus, who shared her bed in the dark and could kill; how Agamemnon came back with a lover himself; and how Clytemnestra finally achieved her vengeance for his stunning betrayal—his quest for victory, greater than his love for his child.
In House of Names, Colm Tóibín brings a modern sensibility and language to an ancient classic, and gives this extraordinary character new life, so that we not only believe Clytemnestra's thirst for revenge, but applaud it. He brilliantly inhabits the mind of one of Greek myth's most powerful villains to reveal the love, lust, and pain she feels. Told in fours parts, this is a fiercely dramatic portrait of a murderess, who will herself be murdered by her own son, Orestes. It is Orestes' story, too: his capture by the forces of his mother's lover Aegisthus, his escape and his exile. And it is the story of the vengeful Electra, who watches over her mother and Aegisthus with cold anger and slow calculation, until, on the return of her brother, she has the fates of both of them in her hands.
"Brilliant . . . Tóibín's accomplishment here is to render myth plausible while at the same time preserving its high drama . . . The selfish side of human nature is . . . made tangible and graphic in Tóibín's lush prose." —Booklist, starred review
"Clytemnsestra, narrating in the first person, is a captivating and terrifying figure, heartbroken and ruthless in her lust for power . . . Tóibín captures the way that corruption breeds resentment and how resentment almost unstoppably breeds violence. The original myths established these characters as the gods' playthings, but Tóibín reframes this version in a 'time when the gods are fading' the besster to lay the blame for our human failures plainly on ourselves." —Kirkus
Colm Tóibín is the author of seven novels, including The Master, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Brooklyn, winner of the Costa Book Award; The Testament of Mary, and Nora Webster, as well as two story collections. Three times shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Tóibín lives in Dublin and New York.
Photo credit: Brigitte Lacombe
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text:
Indian police shoot dead suspects in rape-murder
Source AFP | Friday, 06 December 2019, 08:24
Activists protest against the rape and murder of a 27-year-old woman in India. Police later shod dead the four detained suspects as they re-enacted the crime.
INTERNATIONAL NEWS - Indian police on Friday shot dead four detained gang-rape and murder suspects as they were re-enacting their alleged crime, prompting outrage but also wild celebrations.
The men, who had been in custody for a week, were shot early Friday morning as they tried to escape during the re-enactment in the southern city of Hyderabad, police said.
"They were killed in crossfire. They tried to snatch weapons from the guards but were shot dead," deputy police commissioner Prakash Reddy told AFP.
The four were accused of raping, murdering and burning the body of the woman, a 27-year-old veterinary doctor, who had parked her scooter on a busy highway in November.
The men deflated her scooter tyre and lured her to a truck yard with the promise of fixing the machine, according to police.
They allegedly then raped and murdered the woman before setting the body on fire under an isolated bridge.
The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, had called her sister informing her that she was scared of the men who had offered to help her before her phone went off.
The case sparked widespread demonstrations and calls for swift and tough justice, with social media swamped with demands for them to be put to death.
Shortly after their arrest hundreds of protesters also tried to storm the Hyderabad police station where the four accused were held.
At one demonstration in Delhi, some women wielded swords while in parliament one lawmaker called for the men to be "lynched" and another for rapists to be castrated.
Several hundred people flocked to the scene of the men's deaths on Friday, setting off firecrackers to celebrate and showering police with flower petals.
The victim's sister also welcomed the killings.
"I am happy the four accused have been killed in an encounter. This incident will set an example. I thank the police and media for their support," the sister told local television station.
There were other reports of people celebrating the shootings from several parts of the country.
However rights activists accused the government of using "arbitrary violence" to avoid accountability.
Police in India are often accused of using extra-judicial killings to bypass the legal process, often as a cover-up in botched investigations or ot pacify public anger.
"This is absolutely unacceptable," lawyer and activist Vrinda Grover told AFP.
"There must be accountability of the police. Instead of investigation and prosecution the state is committing murders to distract public and avoid accountability," she said.
More than 33,000 rapes were reported in India in 2017, according to the latest government figures, but vast numbers go unreported, experts say.
At the same time, a huge backlog of cases in the highly inefficient Indian criminal justice means that many victims wait years for their attackers to be convicted.
Posted on: 08:24 Fri, 06 December 2019


My spin on the utility (or safari) trend might be unique, but only in a social media world where new outfits seem to be obtained at lightning-fast speed. The rest of the world calls this normal: wearing trendy items with things you've already had in your closet for years. (5-12 years, in this case!) Unlike some would have you believe, this trend ever really goes out of style. And in general, I'm all for wearing what you like no matter what the trends say - and this is a type of outfit I can definitely get behind!
Which olive and khaki look do you like better?
Approx. dates: Top is 12 years ago. Shoes are last year. Bag is recent. Shorts and scarf are new.
Approx. dates: Pants are 5 years ago. Shoes are 2 years ago. Bag is recent. Top is new.
There's just something about this gorgeous blue dress! And $40? Take my money. I added a vintage brooch and white accessories to create an even stronger sense that I just stepped out of the 1960s (like my inspiration, Jackie O). Now the only thing missing - I think - is Spanx. The fabric on this dress is a bit less structured/thick than I would prefer it to be. I don't have much experience with Spanx but I will give it a try with this dress and report back. If you have any tips, please share!
Approx. dates: Brooch is 8 years ago. Purse and earrings are 3 years ago. Shoes are recent. Dress is new.
By far my most-loved and repeated dress last summer was this stripe linen dress. So when I spotted today's similar jumpsuit - I couldn't resist! I will style it with simple sandals and a straw or wooden bag as pictured, and I also added this new lace-up denim jacket. I bought it the minute I saw the inspiration photo - and then put together a similar concept with items in my closet!
Approx. dates: Shoes, purse, earrings are last year. Jumpsuit and jacket are new.
This outfit renders the typical routine of "returns home, immediately changes into pajamas" completely unnecessary. Because it already feels like you are wearing pajamas! It's really that soft, comfortable, and forgiving. I'm not sure when trendy things became comfy things, but I gotta tell you - I am here for it. I found this pair of stretchy pants in the post-Christmas sales (waited until it got warmer to photograph them), but lots of similar options for ya below. In today's world, comfy pants rule (yoga pants I'm looking at you) and there are so many cute ways of wearing them!
Approx. dates: Bodysuit, purse, shoes and earrings are last year. Pants are new.


Born: 1889, King William's Town, South Africa.
Died: 21 May 1973, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa.
Richard William ('Dickie') Varder, son of John Widdicombe Varder and his wife Ruth Cooper, completed his schooling at a young age, passing the matriculation examination of the University of the Cape of Good Hope in 1905. He continued his studies at Rhodes University College, Grahamstown. In 1908, at the age of 19, he was awarded the degree Bachelor of Arts (BA) with honours in physics by the University of the Cape of Good Hope. The next year he was appointed as lecturer in physics and applied mathematics at Rhodes University College under Professor Alexander Ogg*, being the first lecturer to be appointed from the ranks of the college's former students. In 1911 he obtained the MA degree in physics. A year or so later he went to England and from 1913 to 1915 did research in atomic physics under the direction of Sir Ernest Rutherford at the University of Manchester. This work did not lead to an additional degree, but was reported in two scientific papers published in the Philosophical Magazine: 'The transformations of actinium C' (with E. Marsden, 1914) and 'The absorption of homogeneous beta rays' (1915).
Upon his return to South Africa Varder was appointed in 1917 as professor of physics at Rhodes University College (from 1951 Rhodes University), succeeding Professor Ogg. He remained in this position until his retirement in 1952, having had a long and distinguished career as an inspirational teacher and tireless university administrator (Austin, 2001, p. 17). However, he produced few publications.
Varder became a member of the South African Association for the Advancement of Science in 1918 and served as president of Section A (which included physics) in 1932. His presidential address was entitled 'Particles and waves' (South African Journal of Science, 1932, Vol. 29).
In December 1919 Varder married Marie-Louise Lesur, with whom he had a son.
Calendar of the Rhodes University College, Grahamstown, 1910, 1911, 1924, 1930, 1936.
Currey, R.F. Rhodes University 1904-1970. Grahamstown: 1970.
Google Scholar. http://scholar.google.co.za Publications by R.W. Varder.
National Automated Archival Information Retrieval System (NAAIRS). http://www.national.archives.gov.za/naairs.htm Documents relating to Richard William Varder / R.W. Varder.
Rootsweb. http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com Search for Richard William Varder.
South African Journal of Science, 1918, Vol. 15, List of members; 1932, Vol. 29, paper by Varder.


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Jerry Sandusky's Lawyer Is Trying To Keep Him From Talking At His Sentencing
Centre County Correctional Facility
Even though Jerry Sandusky regrets not testifying at his child sex abuse trial, his lawyer has cautioned him statements he makes at his upcoming sentencing could come back to haunt him.
In an interview with The Associated Press, published Wednesday, Sandusky's lawyer Joe Amendola said the former Penn State assistant football coach will likely be sentenced in October.
Sandusky was convicted in June of 45 counts of child sex abuse.
During the trial, Amendola hinted Sandusky would take the stand — something he regrets never doing.
"He does now," Amendola told the AP of his client's regret at not testifying. "What do they say about Monday morning? 20-20?"
Despite that, Amendola said he is trying to discourage Sandusky from making a statement at his sentencing hearing, since anything Sandusky says could be used against him if the former coach is granted a new trial.
Amendola has said he needs a little more time to prepare for Sandusky's sentencing hearing.
"The reality is Jerry is going to get a sentence, which, if it's not reversed on appeal, is going to be tantamount to a life sentence," Amendola told the AP.
The defense team hasn't decided whether to fight a recommendation Sandusky be labeled a sexually violent predator under Pennsylvania's Megan Law, Amendola told the AP.
DON'T MISS: Ex-Cop Calls Marijuana 'The Filthiest Drug On The Street' But Would Still Legalize It >
More: Crime Sex Offender Child Abuse Penn State


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Home Policy When Insurers Save, Patients and Doctors Pay
When Insurers Save, Patients and Doctors Pay
As insurers ratchet up utilization management, doctors' paperwork burden increases and patients must jump through endless administrative hoops to access care.
Theresa Rohr-Kirchgraber, MD, FACP, FAMWA
Health insurance companies excel at devising new ways to reduce their losses, but it is doctors and patients who pay the price for their utilization management strategies. Doctors now spend more time filling out forms than caring for patients. Patients jump through endless administrative hoops to access care. Both have run out of patience and are demanding a return to a healthcare system where doctors, in partnership with their patients, drive patient care decisions.
In the last four years alone, physician burnout has increased by 25%, according to Medscape's Lifestyle Report 2017. The main cause reported was "too many bureaucratic tasks." Doctors now spend more time entering data and reading guidelines than examining patients and treating illness. The American College of Physicians (ACP) estimates that doctors have to spend two hours completing additional administrative work for every hour spent interacting with a patient.
It should come as no surprise to anyone that the amount time U.S. physicians spend on paperwork has increased proportionately with the growth and complexity of managed care. The U.S. healthcare system is a sprawling web of payers, including multiple employer-provided plans, dozens of independent insurance providers (each of which may offer a handful of different plans), a federal Medicare bureaucracy, and 50 independently-administered state Medicaid programs.
The average doctor answers to over a dozen third-party payers at any given time. Each payer has its procedures for verifying patient eligibility, collecting copays, filing claims, billing denied claim lines, referring to specialists, measuring care quality, and appealing denied claims, each of which can change with little notice.
The cost of all this reporting has ballooned as well. Administrative costs as a percent of total U.S. healthcare spending doubled between 1980 and 2010. Paperwork for third-party payers now constitutes about 18% of the country's total healthcare expenses, an estimated $471 billion in extra healthcare costs each year. Per doctor, total billing and other insurance-related costs amount to as much as $85,000 each a year, according to the American College of Physicians.
These practices are not only time-consuming, but are also costly and dangerous
For all the added costs, patients are facing rising premiums and steeper deductibles. Americans with employer-provided healthcare saw their premiums rise by 255% since 2006, according to a 2015 Kaiser study. Despite paying these extra costs, Americans are increasingly being denied access to prescribed treatments, which is jeopardizing the health of patients treating chronic diseases—like diabetes, high cholesterol, or cancer—in particular.
A recent survey by the Doctor-Patient Rights Project (DPRP) found that insurance providers denied treatment coverage to nearly one-in-four patients being treated for a chronic or persistent illness or condition—as many as 53 million insured Americans. Most patients had to wait over a month just to hear the bad news (28% waited 3 months or longer).
For over a third of those patients, the out-of-pocket costs proved too high and they had to skip treatment altogether. More than 40% say they were already "in poor health," and 29% said their condition worsened.
Among the patients denied coverage for a prescription medication, 24% reported that their insurer deemed their treatment "medically unnecessary," 12% said their insurance provider denied coverage because their insurer requires them to try a series of cheaper drugs first (a policy known as "step therapy" or "fail first"), and 5% say their insurance provider covered an alternative medication used to treat similar symptoms instead (a policy known as "therapeutic substitution").
More than half of American adults report that they, or someone they know, had to battle their insurance company to overcome these "utilization management" strategies and get their insurer to cover the cost of a prescribed treatment. Many lost and either had to pay costs out-of-pocket or forego treatment entirely.
Related Content: A Tale of Cost & Care: Blood on the Sidewalk
The downside of pharmacy management
When insurance companies are not erecting barriers to patient access to healthcare, they are denying coverage outright. In particular, insurers have rapidly expanded their formulary exclusion lists, annual catalogs of all the treatments the insurance company will not cover, except in dire, rare circumstances.
The number of treatments the nation's second largest pharmacy benefit management (PBM) company (CVS/Caremark) excludes more than quadrupled, from 38 exclusions in 2012 to over 168 in 2017. Express Scripts (the largest) has yet to release its formulary exclusion list for 2018 but has revealed that it will include 159 treatments, more than any other PBM.
Formulary exclusion lists ostensibly save insurance companies money by allowing them to refuse to pay for the most expensive drugs if there are cheaper alternatives. The substitute drugs, however, may have an entirely different chemical structure from the medication the doctor originally prescribed, which can reduce the effectiveness of treatment and adversely impact patient health.
Drugs that treat similar illnesses or symptoms are generally grouped into the same therapeutic class. But exact substitutions are rare. Doctors decide which drug to prescribe based on medical science and sound clinical practice, taking into consideration a patient's particular physiology and medication history. The cost to the insurer is (and should be) a secondary factor, if it is a factor at all.
For insurers, cost is often the primary concern. Too often, however, the cheaper treatment the insurance company will cover is not as effective as the treatment the doctor prefers. In some cases, the insurer's choice can introduce complications from unknown drug interactions or adverse patient reactions.
Unfortunately, insurance providers are increasingly exercising their powers as payers to make themselves the final word in treatment decisions. While no insurer can bar a patient from receiving prescribed care, they can withhold payment, which amounts to blocking access to treatment for many patients.
Patients may be reaching their breaking point
Patients may be reaching their breaking point. More than two-thirds of the patients DPRP surveyed said their perception of their insurer either had not changed (27%) or had gotten less favorable (38%) over the past 5 years. A clear majority (52%) felt insurance providers were playing a less constructive role in healthcare than they had previously. Even more (64%) felt that insurance companies were failing their customers—a number that grows to 85% among patients who had been denied treatment coverage for a chronic condition.
The highest number of respondents to DPRP's survey (91%) rejected insurance companies having the final say in treatment decisions. Almost as many (88%) said they wanted their doctors to be empowered to fulfill treatment decisions, without interference from insurance providers.
Health insurance is costing America's doctors and patients more time and more money. In return, they are getting more paperwork burdens and less access to the care they believe they are paying for through their premiums. Insurance companies, in the meantime, do not appear to be suffering any similar losses. In fact, despite increased regulatory compliance costs under Obamacare, U.S. health insurers made record profits last year, according to an Axios analysis.
The situation is unsustainable. Insurance companies would be wise to start rolling-back their barriers to healthcare access for patients and removing some of the excessive administrative burdens on doctors. If they refuse, they could soon see losses of their own, in the form of fewer customers, greater regulation, or both.
cost, quality & value
https://doctorpatientrightsproject.org/
Theresa Rohr-Kirchgraber, MD is the Past President (2015-2016) of the American Medical Women's Association (AMWA) and a Founding Member of the Doctor-Patient Rights Project (DPRP).
Dentists: An Untapped Resource for Equitable COVID-19 Vaccine Distribution
What Will Healthcare Look Like in a Post-COVID-19 World? (Part 1)
Physician Compensation 2020: How Much Money Do U.S. Doctors Make Per Year?
Conservative vs. Liberal Views of Social Change: Who's Right?
Fake Health News: How to Recognize It So You Can Stay Safe
WILLIAM BRADEN August 30, 2017 At 7:02 pm
For expensive meds (I mean $1000 a month and upward), the prior authorization system could be considered good stewardship. But now we have PA required for meds of average cost. Part of this is cost concerns by insurers trying to save every last nickel. Part of it is Medicare/CMS, who have decided that PA is the best way to reduce use of potentially inappropriate drugs for elderly patients. (For instance, amitriptyline may cause memory loss, confusion, sedation, etc.) Good intentions but in practice, most part D insurers approve all my requests, so it's a waste of everyone's time. The exception is those truly stupid insurers who reject anything not specifically "indicated" for the patient's diagnosis — like schizoaffective disorder, for which only one drug, paliperidone, is actually FDA approved. (Rant aborted.)
Patricia Salber MD, MBA (@docweighsin) August 31, 2017 At 6:09 am
Thanks for providing this info about what it's like to deal with PA…another example of potentially good intentions gone wrong.
Sherman Jew August 23, 2017 At 4:04 pm
I sense there are real operational as well as philosophical tensions in the current healthcare-business model; the business end aims to lower cost and increase revenue, while the healthcare end wants autonomy and better care without constraints.


In our Tuesday "Concert of Prayer" services, you can expect to experience the presence of the Holy Spirit,as the congregation in one mind and accord enters a heavenly experience through spiritual worship.
The evidence that the Holy Spirit has responded, is through the manifestation of divine healing, deliverance from oppression, breakthroughs, comfort, and answered prayers. We like to say, "this is where you meet God face to face".
Our preaching and teaching is not just for the purpose of transferring information, but also for impartation of the "truth that sets us free".
In this service we seek to learn to live the following scripture.


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Rightpoint Steps onto National Stage with Acquisition of Agency Oasis
Expansion into six new U.S. markets creates national powerhouse digital agency around customer experience
Chicago – Rightpoint, a leading technology and design services company headquartered in Chicago, announced today that it has acquired Boston-based Agency Oasis. The acquisition expands Rightpoint's existing presence from Chicago, Detroit and Denver to six new markets including Boston, Los Angeles, Atlanta, New York, San Francisco and Dallas, and establishes it as a leading national digital agency focused on creating customer experiences that build brands and grow businesses.
"We have always been grounded in creating transformative digital experiences that help our clients differentiate in an increasingly competitive environment," says Ross Freedman, Co-CEO of Rightpoint. "The union of Rightpoint and Agency Oasis bolsters our ability to deliver creative and technology solutions for our clients at scale and attract the best talent in the industry."
The addition of Agency Oasis, a full service digital agency focused on customer experience, expands Rightpoint's capabilities within the healthcare and financial services sectors and adds new clients to Rightpoint's portfolio of marquee brands including Mass Mutual, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, IMS Health, Cincinnati Children's Hospital, Delaware North, and Bell Helicopter. Mirroring Rightpoint's position as a Platinum Sitecore Partner, Agency Oasis also strengthens Rightpoint's systems integration work with strategic technology partners including Microsoft, Episerver, Insite Commerce, and Salesforce.
"The Agency Oasis team is delighted to be combining forces with Rightpoint," said Jeff McMahon, CEO of Agency Oasis. "The ability to combine the service offerings of two national leaders within the digital marketing ecosystem was an exciting proposition for us. The Rightpoint team has created an amazing organization filled with exceptional talent. We are thrilled to be part of the leading independent digital agency in North America."
After a brief integration planning period, Agency Oasis will rebrand and operate under the Rightpoint banner. As part of the integration, the three founders of Agency Oasis, Jeff McMahon, Nick Laidlaw, and Robert Naughton, will join Rightpoint's Leadership Team and Mr. McMahon will be joining the Rightpoint Board of Directors. Rightpoint co-founders, Ross Freedman and Brad Schneider, will remain in their positions as Co-CEOs and continue to manage the strategic direction and growth of the company with support from the Leadership Team. The addition of Agency Oasis' Executives and staff will increase Rightpoint's headcount by more than one-third, to more than 300 employees.
Fueled by a $55 million equity investment from New York-based Stella Point Capital last spring, the acquisition of Agency Oasis aligns with Rightpoint's accelerated growth strategy, which includes expanding its national presence, growing capabilities in key areas including digital marketing, e-commerce and CRM, and augmenting professional services with product-based solutions.
For more information, visit www.rightpoint.com.
About Rightpoint
Rightpoint is a technology and design services company serving Fortune 1,000 companies. The company creates experiences that amplify brands and business through creative and technology services including web, mobile, social, IoT, e-commerce and cloud. With a client base that includes some of the most iconic brands in the world, Rightpoint was named to Forbes' 2014 list of America's Most Promising Companies and Crain's 50 Fastest Growing Companies in Chicago in 2015. For more information, visit rightpoint.com and follow @Rightpoint.
About Agency Oasis
Founded in 2001, Agency Oasis a leading independent digital agency in North America, providing sophisticated digital strategy, digital design, and marketing technology platforms. Specializing in the Sitecore Experience Management platform, Agency Oasis solves its clients' complex business problems through innovative and creative online experiences. Based in Boston, Agency Oasis maintains offices in Los Angeles, Atlanta, New York, San Francisco and Dallas. Agency Oasis works with an impressive roster of global brands to support enterprise-level websites and complex digital marketing campaigns that require international reach.
Velir Partners with Stella Point Capital to Accelerate Growth Strategy and Expand CX Capabilities
International Money Express, Inc. Announces Pricing of Secondary Public Offering
Genpact to Acquire Industry-Leading Digital Consultancy, Rightpoint
444 Madison Ave 25th Floor • New York, NY 10022


You're the first author I've interviewed who's had a Broadway singer perform at the book launch for their debut novel. I watched the promotional video of the one and only Idina Menzel performing the theme song from the first book of your Peasprout Chen series, Peasprout Chen: Future Legend of Skate and Sword, with you. That's so cool! What's the backstory? How did that happen?
We're represented by the same agency, ICM. She got a hold of the advance reader copy of the first Peasprout Chen book and flipped over it. She asked ICM if they could arrange for her to meet me. After I finished screaming into my pillow, I said, "Oh, well, let me see if I can find a slot in my calendar to squeeze in lunch with Idina Freeggin' Menzel." Then I screamed into my pillow some more. We met and really hit it off. She has become a dear friend. So I asked her to sing the theme song for the book at the launch. She said yes. Then I died of shock, and thus am conducting this interview with you from the Beyond.
(2) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman invites you to gobble goat cheese fritters with Scott H. Andrews while listening to Episode 87 of his Eating the Fantastic podcast.
Scott H. Andrews, founder and editor and publisher of the online magazine Beneath Ceaseless Skies, celebrated the 10th anniversary of that magazine by hosting a party at the recent World Fantasy Convention in Baltimore, Maryland — which made it seem like the right time for us to discuss that first decade. So we raised a pint at Red's Table in Reston, Virginia.
Well, he raised a pint — of bourbon-barrel aged Gold Cup Russian Imperial Stout from Old Bust Head Brewery in Fauquier County, Virginia — while I downed my usual bottle of Pellagrino. And as we sipped, we chatted about that work on Beneath Ceaseless Skies, which has so far earned him six World Fantasy Award nominations and six Hugo Award nominations — and won him a British Fantasy Award. He's a writer as well, with his own fiction appearing in Weird Tales, Space and Time, On Spec, and other magazines.
We discussed the treatment he received as a writer which taught him what he wanted to do (and didn't want to do) as an editor, how his time as member of a band helped him come up with the name for his magazine, why science fiction's public perception as a literary genre is decades ahead of fantasy, what it takes for a submission to rise to the level of receiving a rewrite request, the time he made an editor cry (and why he was able to do it), how he felt being a student at the Odyssey Writing Workshop and then returning as a teacher, the phrase he tends to overuse in his personalized rejection letters (and the reason why it appears so often), the way magazine editing makes him like Arnold Schwarzenegger in Conan the Barbarian, why writers shouldn't worry about the ratio of submitted stories to purchased ones, the reason he'll probably never edit novels, what anyone considering starting a magazine of their own needs to know, and much more.
(3) GET ILLUMINATED. "Sacred Texts: Codices Far, Far Away" – Two University of Pennsylvania scholars are doing a series of videos about the ancient Jedi texts until Star Wars Episode 9 is released on December 20.
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, Luke Skywalker gathered a small library of ancient Jedi texts and placed them in an uneti tree on Ahch-To.
On October 8, 2018, Dr. Brandon Hawk and curator Dot Porter met to talk about these ancient books, and to compare them with manuscripts from the collection of the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts at the University of Pennsylvania.
(4) NEW HORIZONS PHOTOS ARRIVING SLOWLY. "Nasa's New Horizons: Best image yet of 'space snowman' Ultima Thule" – BBC had the story.
The New Horizons probe has sent back its best picture yet of the small, icy object Ultima Thule, which it flew past on New Year's Day.
The image was acquired when the Nasa spacecraft was just 6,700km from its target, which scientists think is two bodies lightly fused together – giving the look of a snowman.
Surface details are now much clearer.
New Horizons' data is coming back very slowly, over the next 20 months.
This is partly to do with the great distance involved (the separation is 6.5 billion km) but is also limited by the small power output of the probe's transmitter and the size (and availability) of the receive antennas here on Earth. It all makes for glacial bit rates.
The new image was obtained with New Horizons' wide-angle Multicolor Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC) and gives a resolution of 135m per pixel. There is another version of this scene taken at even higher resolution by the probe's Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), but this has not yet been downlinked from the probe.
(5) RSR PRO ARTIST RESOURCE. Rocket Stack Rank's Greg Hullender says, "Based on the discussion on File770, we did the experiment of expanding our Pro Artist list using the ISFDB info. This actually expands it hugely. We ended up not trying to merge the lists for this year, but we posted the ISFDB data separately just so people could have it as a resource. It's awfully nice data, if a bit overwhelming, and it'd be great to find a good way to use it. We're hoping people will look at it and offer some ideas for how to make it a bit more manageable." — "Pro Artists from ISFDB Novels 2018".
Based on some conversations on File 770 about better ways to find candidates for the Best Professional Artist Hugo Award, we decided to try using the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDB) as a source. The result is spectacular, but maybe a bit overwhelming, so we decided not to try to integrate it with our regular Pro Artists page this year. Instead, we're treating this as an experiment and inviting feedback on how we might best use this wealth of data in the future to help people who're trying to find professional artists to nominate.
Robin Zebrowski, a professor of cognitive science, pointed out that the themes of Frankenstein — of creation, difference, empathy, monstrosity, and control–are the memes of artificial intelligence. Zebrowski pointed out that early robot stories are about Frankenstein. 'They're about building something no one can control once it's unleashed,' she said. She noted that the first work of literature ever written about robots–a 1923 Czech play called R.U.R.–is a story about a robot uprising.
January 25, 1915 — First transcontinental telephone call was made, between New York and San Francisco; Alexander Graham Bell and Dr. Thomas A. Watson exchanged greetings.
Born January 25, 1958 – Peter Watts, 61.Author of the most excellent Firefall series which I read and enjoyed immensely. I've not read the Rifters trilogy so would welcome opinions on it. And his Sunflower linked short stories sound intriguing.
Born January 25, 1963 – Catherine Butler, 56. Butler published a number of works of which the most important is Four British fantasists : place and culture in the children's fantasies of Penelope Lively, Alan Garner, Diana Wynne Jones, and Susan Cooper. Another important work is Reading History in Children's Books, with Hallie O'Donovan. Her website is here.
Born January 25, 1973 – Geoff Johns, 46. Where to begin? Though he's done some work outside of DC, he is intrinsically linked to that company having working for them for twenty years. My favorite work by him in on Batman: Gotham Knights, Justice League of America #1–7 (2013) and 52 which I grant which was over ambitious but really fun.
Born January 25, 1985 – Michael Trevino, 34. Performer, Tyler Lockwood on The Vampire Diaries and now Kyle Valenti on the new Roswell, New Mexico series whose premises I'll leave you to guess. His first genre appearance was in the Charm episode of "Malice in Wonderland" as Alastair. He also shows up on The Originals, The Vampire Diaries spin-off.
Born January 25, 1985 – Claudia Kim, 34. Only four film films but all genre: she played Dr. Helen Cho Avengers: Age of Ultron followed by voicing The Collective In Equals which Wiki manages to call a 'dystopian utopia' film to which I say 'Eh?!?', and then Arra Champignon in the 2017 version of The Dark Tower and finally as Nagini, Voldemort's snake which I presume is a voice role (though I've not seen the film so I could be wrong) in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald.
Hulk's last words? Bizarro has them.
(11) RE-DEEP. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] A press release from Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias in Spain addresses the latest "deep image" from the Hubble Space Telescope. The original Hubble Deep Field was assembled in 1995, only to be exceeded by the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field in 2004 and the Hubble eXtreme Deep Field in 2012. Each imaged galaxies further away and thus further back in time. Now there's a new version of the Ultra-Deep Field that recovers "additional light" not included in earlier versions and showing thus additional information about the included galaxies.
A scientific paper on the image and analysis is on ArXiv at https://arxiv.org/pdf/1810.00002.pdf (technically a preprint, but it has been accepted for publication by Astronomy & Astrophysics). The data itself is at http://www.iac.es/proyecto/abyss.
(11) NOW BOARDING. James Davis Nicoll knows how we love the number 5 here — "5 SFF Stories About Surviving the Dangers of Boarding School" at Tor.com.
Are there any SFF novels featuring boarding schools? Why yes! I am glad you asked—there are more than I can list in a single article. Here are just a few….
(12) BETTER TECH, MARK 0. Scientists have now deduced that "Neanderthals 'could kill at a distance'".
Neanderthals may once have been considered to be our inferior, brutish cousins, but a new study is the latest to suggest they were smarter than we thought – especially when it came to hunting.
The research found that the now extinct species were creating weaponry advanced enough to kill at a distance.
Scientists believe they crafted spears that could strike from up to 20m away.
Lead researcher Dr Annemieke Milks, from UCL Institute of Archaeology, said: "The original idea was that Neanderthals would have been very limited using hand-delivered spears, where they could only come up at close contact and thrust them into prey.
Extension of the above — "Why we still underestimate the Neanderthals".
(13) LOST ART? This certainly seems symbolic of the government shutdown: "Shutdown Leaves Uninflated Space Sculpture Circling in Orbit" in the New York Times.
…"Orbital Reflector," a sculpture by Trevor Paglen that was recently launched into orbit.
The sculpture is not lost in space as much as stuck in a holding pattern before activation, pending clearance by the Federal Communications Commission. According to the artist, it might not survive the wait while F.C.C. workers are on furlough.
A 100-foot-long mylar balloon coated with titanium oxide, "Orbital Reflector" was designed to be visible to the naked eye at twilight or dawn while in orbit for a couple of months. It would then incinerate upon entering the Earth's thicker atmosphere.
But although it was sent to space, the balloon was never inflated as planned.
Odyssey Writing Workshops is offering three live, intensive online classes this winter. Odyssey's nonprofit mission is to help writers of fantasy, science fiction, and horror, however, writers of all genres are welcome to apply. Courses will cover issues relevant to writers of adult, young adult, and middle grade fiction. Full information can be found at their website or by emailing jcavelos@odysseyworkshop.org.


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COMSOL News 2014 Is Now Available
Alexandra Foley July 8, 2014
We're excited to announce that COMSOL News 2014 is now available, which features stories about the cutting-edge research of engineers and scientists working in a variety of application areas around the globe. This year's edition of the magazine provides insight into how multiphysics simulation can empower product development and help companies to stay ahead of — and create — new market trends. How is this achieved? Check out the magazine to learn more about innovative simulation techniques.
Multiphysics Simulation Throughout the Design Process
When flipping through COMSOL News 2014, one thing that you'll notice is that multiphysics simulation plays a key role in all aspects of the design process for many firms, from the conceptual phase of product development, until a product is delivered to the market (and even after as new discoveries lead to continuous design improvements). Not only is the use of multiphysics simulation explored throughout many stages of the design process, but also explained by simulation experts is the way that each of these steps are interrelated. In the magazine, you'll learn how multiphysics simulation, when used throughout the design process, can provide a realistic model that comprises all relevant physics effects, allowing engineers to bring the right product to market on time and within budget.
Innovative Release Mechanisms for Drug-Eluting Stents
For example, multiphysics simulation is employed by engineers at Boston Scientific, who are revolutionizing medical device design by gaining the knowledge required to control the underlying release mechanism of drug-eluting stents. Their goal is to treat the plaque build-up in arteries by using drug-release rates customized to a patient's individual needs.
Turn to page 10 of COMSOL News 2014 to read the article by Boston Scientific called "Simulating the Release Mechanism in Drug-Eluting Stents".
Testing Low-Enriched Fuel Types for Nuclear Reactors
Moreover, researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) are currently in the conceptual phase of design, where they are testing new low-enriched fuel configurations for the High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR), one of the last nuclear reactors in the U.S. using highly-enriched uranium fuel. By utilizing multiphysics simulation and exploring different fuel configurations and fuel plate deflections, ORNL researchers are helping to develop a new HFIR core that will continue to produce the same flux of neutrons while utilizing low-enriched uranium fuel. By testing different conceptual designs, ORNL researchers can ensure that their final design will perform as expected.
Lightning Strike Protection
For engineers at Boeing, multiphysics simulation helped investigate and verify the thermal expansion of composite materials used in metal foil for lightning strike protection on the Boeing 787 Dreamliner (which you can see featured in the cover of COMSOL News 2014). For this innovative jet airliner, comprised of more than 50 percent carbon fiber reinforced plastic, Boeing researchers evaluated the performance of such protective material over time.
Read the Magazine Now
Mentioned here are just a few highlights of the innovative work achieved by engineers and researchers that depend on the power and accuracy of multiphysics simulation. From building physics to tire pressure sensors and lab-on-a-chip devices and robotics, there are many exciting projects featured from many different application areas.
Get the full stories by checking out the magazine online.
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SA Health Minister Takes On The President – Bhekisisa
The Article and its contents belong Bhekisisa and the Mail and Gaurdian
Article Written by: MIA MALAN
How to defy Zuma – and survive to tell the tale
Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi knows the political consequences of firing him weigh heavier than the repercussions of keeping him on in his position; that's why he reportedly seconded a vote of no confidence against President Jacob Zuma this weekend, says political analyst Steven Friedman.
On Saturday a vote of no confidence is said to have been tabled by ANC NEC member Joel Netshitenzhe at the ANC's national executive committee (NEC) meeting in Irene near Tshwane. Motsoaledi and his deputy Joe Phaahla apparently backed Netshitenzhe.
This would be the second time that Motsoaledi has supported such a motion. Zuma also faced a motion of no confidence in November, tabled by then tourism minister Derek Hanekom. Zuma dismissed Hanekom in a cabinet reshuffle in April , also removing Pravin Gordhan as finance minister.
"Everything in the ANC at the moment has to be understood in terms of the balance of power between the two rival factions – those who support Zuma and those who don't," says Friedman. "Clearly Motsoaledi's reading, and that of his faction, is that there's not going to be a second cabinet reshuffle anytime soon, and therefore if he wasn't removed from the cabinet for taking this position the first time, there is no reason why he shouldn't support such a motion a second time."
Friedman says Motsoaledi's strong SACP connections, as well as his "institutional base" in the ANC, makes it difficult for Zuma to act against him. Motsoaledi's uncle Elias Motsoaledi was one of the eight men, including former President Nelson Mandela, sentenced to life imprisonment in the Rivonia trial in 1964.
Friedman explains: "If you fire Motsoaledi you're actually declaring war on a faction, or an affiliate of the ANC, whereas Hanekom doesn't have that kind of institutional base.
"So clearly Zuma took a decision that it was not in his interest to fire an SACP minister who quite clearly had substantial support. His reading of ANC politics was that he would be taking on too much, he would be inviting too much resistance; if he was getting rid of people like Motsoaledi as well."
Health activists have been expressing "enormous respect" for Motsoaledi's "bravery and courage" in his ongoing opposition to Zuma. Executive director of the social justice group SECTION27 Mark Heywood says his organisation, as well as the HIV advocacy movement, the Treatment Action Campaign, believes the health minister acted "honourably" by seconding the motion.
Motsoaledi: What the NHI will mean for you – and your tax credits
Our Laura Lopez Gonzalez asks health minister Aaron Motsoaledi five questions about the National Health Insurance (NHI) and your medical aid.
The ANC had a press conference on Monday afternoon at its head offices to announce the outcome of the NEC meeting. Zuma survived with 18 NEC members supporting the motion and 54 being against it.
But Friedman says he's not surprised: "The only time the ANC has asked a president to step down, which was [former president Thabo] Mbeki [in 2008], there was a huge majority [in the NEC] supporting it. We're not there yet.
"All the motion may do, if it has any effect at all, is to give both sides a greater sense of who is on their side and who is on the other side. This they will use to continue to do the main thing they're doing at the moment, which is to contest who will be running the ANC next year."
This article was updated on June 3 to include the outcome of the ANC's NEC meeting. The article was originally published before the meeting happened.


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By now, anyone interested in fashion or design knows that Pantone's colour of 2014 is Radiant Orchid. It's an unimportant little fact has lead to some fun fashion choices. That's all, right?
Well, not for me. For me, it sparked a rumination on the long term emotional effects of sexual abuse, and the ways that it forever changes a woman's relationship with her body.
To put it plainly, it made me think about how being sex trafficked and sexually abused throughout my childhood and teens made me feel about my vagina. Not very many people write and talk about how rape makes women and girls feel about their vaginas. We should.
How did I get from the fun little fact that radiant orchid is the colour of the year, to rape and vaginas? Read on. It will make sense. I promise.
Here, in part, is Pantone's fanfare announcement of their chosen colour for 2014: "Radiant Orchid blooms with confidence and magical warmth that intrigues the eye and sparks the imagination. It is an ... embracing purple -- one that draws you in with its beguiling charm. A captivating harmony of fuchsia, purple and pink undertones, Radiant Orchid emanates great joy, love and health."
Are they talking about a colour? Or a flower? Or...
Happy, welcoming, "embracing purple" vaginas have "magical warmth" and "draw you in with [their] beguiling charm." When treated well, they "emanate great joy [and] love." Don't they?
And, seriously, have you ever really looked at an orchid, or an iris, or at a lot of other flowers for that matter? Have you?
Georgia O'Keefe certainly did when she famously painted them ...
... repeatedly and lovingly.
We can twitter and blush and say, "Oh, don't ruin flowers by looking at them that way! They can be pretty anyway." Or, we can say, "Damned straight they look like vaginas. Aren't they beautiful? Aren't I beautiful?"
There's nothing wrong with glorifying the beauty of women's "flowers." Why shouldn't we? We've got phallic symbols everywhere in our world. Why not a few vulvic ones?
The Art Nouveau period, with its flowing lines inspired by nature, was particularly keen on its vulvic flower images.
I can't really believe that the makers of the silver bowl and vases above did not know exactly what these irises looked like. This doesn't detract from their beauty. It enhances it.
This imagery repeats itself over and over again throughout the Art Nouveau period, especially in jewelry, but such imagery is not exclusive to that period. This ring, which looks to me like a particularly happy "flower," is more recent.
These happy flowers are from a recent line by Cartier.
Artists and designers are not idiots. They know what they're portraying.
Commercial artists, like Mucha, above, have long utilized the appeal of the female body to sell everything from tobacco to cars. We know this to be true. The unspoken promise was always: buy our product and you'll get ... laid.
While they couldn't actually portray completely naked women, welcoming vaginas on full display, they could subliminally (though not all that subliminally) suggest nudity and female genitalia.
This is all kind of cute and fun and tee-hee in retrospect.
But it's not as cute and amusing when we see that it's still going on today.
Calvin Klein's current model for this perfume is eighteen. She's been modeling for four years.
It's a very fraught issue. Yes, it's good and even important to see vaginas as beautiful. But it's not good to commodify them. It's even worse to commodify the vaginas of the very young.
So far, I've been talking about the metaphorical commodification of the vagina: vulvic images of flowers and the subliminal promise of sex used to sell products.
Yet we all know that real women and girls are sold. We all know that real people will pay to enter and violate real vaginas.
Me, at about nine or ten.
Which brings me to my own story. Starting when I was about ten, Smother started pimping me. (Actually, this is just the age I was when I started noticing money being exchanged, but she'd been passing me around to her friends since I was three or younger.) Over and over again, she let men (and sometimes women) rape me and she took money for it.
It is a measure of how badly abused I was that, when the above photo was taken, I thought I looked sexy with my new hair cut and elastic-topped dress covered in little pink roses. Not cute. Not pretty. Sexy.
I can tell you that vaginas are beautiful like flowers but I cannot see my own like that. At best, I see it as tainted, defiled, and sick.
At worst, I see it as dead.
William Blake's own illustration for The Sick Rose
When I was eighteen, I reread William Blake's poem The Sick Rose:
O Rose though are sick
The invisible worm
That flies in the night
In the howling storm
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy
And his dark secret love
Does they life destroy.
To me, the meaning of the poem was unquestionable. I was Rose, my "bed of crimson joy" was my vagina, the worm was a rapist's penis, and my life was destroyed.
I didn't even question it. My life had been destroyed. It was a simple irrefutable fact.
Normal women and girls who had not been raped were clean, healthy, and beautiful, but I was not. They deserved and expected to have lovely things happen to them. I did not.
Far from my body being my own and my vagina being like a beautiful flower, my vagina was a garbage can for depraved men's slimy, seedy emissions.
I was used, filthy, impure, forever defiled and disgusting.
The fact that I had not chosen to be a garbage can changed nothing. I was one and would forever be one.
Far from being a beautiful, delicate flower, my vagina was a receptacle for all that is disgusting and vile.
I was dirty. I would always be dirty. No-one could ever see me as clean.
No-one could ever love me. Nor should they.
Me, around ten or eleven, feeling all grown up in what I thought was a sophisticated outfit.
In fact, my body actually was physically altered by all those violent rapes. My back was permanently injured and I am now disabled by chronic pain. My vagina was sliced with a razor, permanently separating my inner labia from my clitoris. It was repeatedly pried apart by men hasty to violate it; its top and bottom split. It mostly healed, but never completely.
In the photo above, you see me already suffering from back pain, in the midst of months of itching, scabbing, and pain as my outer vulva repeatedly healed and re-split, healed and re-split. I still have a scar, and my perineum still frequently tears and bleeds; it's like having a constant paper cut down there.
Equally bad, though, was the emotional feeling of being filled up with men's seed. This feeling never went away.
I was disgusted in sex education classes when I saw those microscopic sperm, blindly, violently, and insistently wriggling and squirming, not just for entry into the vagina, but for entry into the egg as well. The sperm did not care if the sex was consensual or the vagina that of a girl or a woman. It just pushed and insisted and twisted and invaded.
That's what happened to me.
Seeing it in class made me feel nauseated and outraged. What a hideous trick of nature that I was made this way and men were made that way. Why would God make me like a delicate flower, so easy to violate, so easy to hurt, so vulnerable, and make men like battering rams, so strong and impervious to my pain? Why could I not keep them out?
I never felt that the sperm in me went away. I still don't feel that way. I feel that, to this day, my body is completely full of filth and decay. I feel like it runs poisonous through my veins.
Sometimes I even feel that, if I open my mouth, black slime and ooze will escape from it, showing the world what I really am.
Far from my vagina being a lovely flower, I feel that it is full of the stagnant rot of others' depravity.
I didn't choose it, but that doesn't change the fact that I was and am defiled -- forever.
The primacy and value placed on female virginity doesn't help my feelings of defilement at all. In Western culture, white represents virginity and the words "virginity" and "purity" are used interchangeably when people speak of the meaning behind the white wedding dress.
There are many cultures in which people still insist that a raped woman or girl is shamed, dirty, and impure. They are shunned and unmarriageable. I am horrified that anyone could say this when, clearly, the shame, dirt, and impurity belongs to the rapists, not their victims.
Yet, when I think about myself and my own body, this shaming of the victim seems totally logical to me. How could any lover think I'm clean when clearly I'm not?
And, you know, I am by no means the only person who was thus violated as a child.
I remember a teenage prostitute telling me about a trick she'd turned. "He asked me to put my hair in pigtails and wear a schoolgirl skirt and call him daddy," she told me. "Whatever," she said, shrugging. "I figure this way maybe he'll stay away from his own daughter. And at least I'm getting paid for it now."
Like me, she had been sexually abused as as child, and she felt that she was already ruined, already filthy and unworthy of respect. She believed that, at least now, she had some power because she could demand money to be violated. This man's little girl, though, was still clean, or so she hoped, and the teenager hoped to help protect the little girl's purity by fulfilling this man's schoolgirl fantasy. After all, her logic went, he can't defile me because I'm already defiled.
Plenty of men feel this way too. It never occurs to them that what they're doing is rape, but it is, legally and morally. They wouldn't dream of raping their own daughters but they happily go to extremely underage prostitutes -- sex slaves -- thinking, "Well, she's already dirty, so I'm not doing anything wrong."
There may be female prostitutes who were not sexually abused as children, but I've never met one.
How I wish, if my vagina had to be like a flower, it could have been a dangerous one like the Venus flytrap, carnivorous, able to fight back, animated.
Later in life, I heard of the Vagina Dentata, the vagina with teeth, and wished I could have one. I would have been safe. I would have had power.
Even if there were some way I could come to see that I was not made dirty by what had happened to me, I had another problem that made it virtually impossible for me to cherish my vagina.
My primary sexual abuser -- the one who sexually abused me nearly every single morning for years -- was a close female relative. She made me perform "oral sex" on her often. That's why I now call her Smother.
She called it love.
Her vagina was, to me, a thing of terror.
It was horrible, hot, oozing, steaming, suffocating.
And I had the same anatomy.
How could anything good come of my own adult female sexuality when sexual desire was obviously something that led adults to hideous acts of selfish cruelty and degradation? Impossible.
Eventually, in my 30s, after years of trying to be okay with my own sexuality, celibacy seemed the only option. It was the only way I could see to escape my feelings of disgust and self-loathing.
I was single for twelve years.
Celibacy was also the only way for me to avoid even acknowledging the deeper feelings beneath the disgust. It was the only way to avoid my fear of intimacy and vulnerability, and the feeling that I was fundamentally tainted and therefore unlovable.
Okay, I thought to myself, I have a great education, a successful career, wonderful friends, good health, a vibrant intellectual life. So I don't have love. I guess that's the one great tragedy of my childhood that I can't repair. (Remember, this is when I was still able-bodied, before my back gave out.)
I accepted it. I'd be single forever. I was an introvert. I was okay. It was okay.
But somewhere along the line, after I became disabled, I stopped accepting it. I did deserve love. I even deserved a vibrant, healthy, loving sex life.
But it was going to take a lot of work and require a lot of vulnerability. I was going to have to learn to love my body. I was going to have to learn to be vulnerable. I was going to have to learn what love really is, not what Smother had told me it was.
I began doing the healing work on my own, without much hope, but with the will for change.
Then, two years ago, I met Beau, a kind, gentle man for whom sex is inseparable from gentle and genuine love. I was terrified. Sometimes I still am.
Before we became lovers, I told him everything about my childhood. He cried. He was horrified. But he never ever thought of me as unclean.
Beau has helped me to be glad I have my very own flower, because, when I'm with him, it can be a source of great pleasure, playfulness, sweetness, and beauty.
But, even with this kind, attentive lover, my feelings of shame and disgust often return. How can he possibly love me when I'm so dirty? How can I enjoy the very acts that so defiled me when I was a child? What's wrong with me? How can I degrade myself like that? How can I see my body's sexual satisfaction as good when Smother's was so selfish and evil?
I'm working on it. I try to explain to myself that rape and making love are two very different things, like the difference between being force fed poison, and eating a sumptuous feast. I try to explain to myself that pedophilia is sick and evil, but adult sexual desire is healthy and good.
I try to explain to myself that my vagina is no more vile and disgusting because someone once used her own vagina to suffocate me, than Beau's penis is cruel and selfish because pedophiles once used their penises as battering rams on me. Just as a penis can deliver great horror or great pleasure, so too can a vagina.
Beau and I have banished words like "dirty" and "naughty" from our sexual vocabulary. It helps -- a bit.
Beau says my flower is beautiful, clean, pure, and, above all, special. Beau says being invited to enter and welcomed in is an honour never to be taken for granted. He says he doesn't think of himself as entering me as much as he thinks of me as embracing him.
The language we use for sex is really important.
I'm coming to feel that I am blooming, in many ways for the first time in my life. I still don't feel like an open, happy iris, totally comfortable in my desires.
Maybe my flower and my ability to love are like delicate alpine flowers.
They grow in adversity where flowers have no business growing, let alone flourishing, but grow and flourish they do.
At ten, I believed it was already too late for me. At forty-two, I realized that I was wrong.
It's never too late.
(If you too were sexually abused as a child, you might want to read my post, Healing from Sexual Abuse: 26 Things that Work for Me.)
Labels: Body Image, Surviving Child Abuse
The Geometry of Fashion: Art Deco in Black and White
I got this skirt for about ten dollars on sale at JQ Clothing a few days ago. It's one of those asymmetrical ones, shorter in the front, longer in the back, not a style I've thought would suit my short frame. But it's slimming, and fun, and very comfortable, so I thought I'd give it a try.
Even for me, the mixing of patterns in this outfit was a bit daring: black and white stripes, with grey and black swirls on a white background. But what the hell? What do the kids say these days? YOLO? Okay, why not?
Skirt: ?; Shirt and blazer: Reitmans; Boots: Ecco
My poses and locations for photos were inspired by the geometry of the prints in this outfit. Though the cut of each piece and the overall ensemble don't really resemble fashions of the 1920s and 30s, the prints on the fabrics do.
Fashion and glamour photos of the Art Deco period are often about geometry on geometry so I kept posing in front of (or amidst, or behind) interesting lines and angles.
Still, I wasn't totally aware of just how inspired I was by Art Deco photography ...
... until I got the photos I'd taken home and looked and looked at them on the big screen.
It was a time when harsh angles were everywhere in fashion, and backdrops seemed almost as much a part of an outfit as the clothes themselves did.
Large ring: vintage; Top stackable ring and faux eternity band: boutique; Lower stackable band: Etsy
I tried to pick jewelry to match my look and to photograph it too with its own appropriate background.
There was a lot more motion in my outfit and a lot more curve in my body than was common in '20s and '30s fashion ...
Top left ring: Birks; Bottom left diamond ring: heirloom from 1936; Thin silver ring: boutique
... and only my grandmother's engagement ring was actually period specific, but it was all somehow very evocative of a period, and became more so with the ways I asked Beau to photograph me.
I think that it was a time of a kind of perfect confluence of fashion, art, design, and black and white photography, each complimenting and enhancing the other.
And that photography got pretty artsy at times.
Interior design, architecture, clothing ... it all became of a beautiful, stark, angular piece.
So I thought I'd get a little artsy with it too. Here, the lines of the chair reminded me of Art Deco, and I thought they contrast interestingly with my skirt. Regardless of whether it worked, it was a fun experiment.
As I was setting up shots, I kept thinking of the angular lines of Louise Brooks' iconic black bob against her sculpted white face ...
Definitely Busby Berkeley. Which film? Let me know.
... and 1930s musicals, especially those choreographed by Busby Berkeley. Women's bodies became a kind of geometry unto themselves. There is something slightly vulgar about it, and offensive, but it's also amazing.
If you've never seen any of Berkeley's choreography, do look it up. It's ingenuity and symmetry will make your jaw drop.
Eleanor Powell and Robert Taylor (I think), in Broadway Melody of 1938
Vertical lines -- clean and crisp, black and white -- are absolutely everywhere in 1930s musicals.
Ruby Keeler in 42nd Street
The new, urban landscape, with its stepped sky scrapers, was a major inspiration for the aesthetic of the day. This is part of why I'll never understand why people so frequently confuse Art Deco with Art Nouveau. Art Nouveau was known for its flowing, organic lines inspired by nature, whereas Art Deco was known for its harsh, angular lines inspired by new technology and architecture.
Many would have seen it as relatively gritty, a Modernist aesthetic of the machine age.
Brooch: Robert Larin
In this sense, it has far more in common with the later Brutalist movement than with dreamy Art Nouveau.
I got this signed, Robert Larin brooch for about eight dollars. I looked up the artist online and found that his pieces are selling for between one hundred and three hundred dollars. If anyone knows any more about the designer, I'd love to hear from you. It's weirdly, appealingly ugly. Should I sell it?
The harsh angle and vertical line were in, baby, in in in!
In, I tell you, in!
It was simply too divine!
My own figure, with its ample curves, is much more of an Art Nouveau figure than an Art Deco figure.
And if you think different body types don't go in and out of style just like skirt lengths and lipstick shades, well, you're living under a rock.
I can't really make my own body one more column amongst the others in an Art Deco photo, but I can still have great fun playing with the lines.
And with the dramatic facial expressions and poses.
Like Theda Bara doing her best "exotic" expression as Cleopatra.
Or Louise Brooks' dance partner's expression in Lulu. Oh the intrigue!
Oh, the heady drama of the early, silent movie queen!
Or of Bette Davis' eyes.
Dare I flatter myself and say that, as I get older, I'm getting Bette Davis eyes?
See what I mean? I think Bette and I both had bags under eyes since birth. I choose to use them for drama, and not see them as unattractive.
I think she and I have the same forehead too. May I now formally and for the record make a plug for actresses and women in general choosing to keep their foreheads natural so that they actually, you know, move when they express emotions? No botox, please! All hail the mobile face!
Of course, in the second photo of Bette, her eyebrows are dramatically thicker and darker. This is a clear indication that it was taken in the 40s. That harsh eyebrow came around in the 40s and stuck around through most of the 50s.
And, since we're on the subject of the 40s and 50s, let me mention yet another inspiration for my photos that day: the use of venetian blinds and their shadows in film noir.
Isn't it just the coolest?
It's also a great excuse for me to finally post this wonderful shot of an overwintering hummingbird seen through venetian blinds. It had been a very harsh, stormy night, and I was glad to see she'd come through it okay. She just hung out resting on my balcony for a while. I didn't want to disturb her, so I photographed her through my own venetian blinds rather than opening them for a clear shot.
I've also been waiting for an excuse to post this great shot of a cat having the best of both worlds: in and out, of the world, and, simultaneously, not of it.
And this brings us to, you guessed it, vertical lines. They too were absolutely everywhere in Art Deco design.
The juxtaposition of vertical and horizontal lines together was a particular favourite.
With stairs. Everywhere, dramatic, harshly lit stairs in beautiful, stark black and white.
Like these? Okay, not like these, but KITTY!
Seriously though, these musical sets were phenomenal.
And massive.
Just like the set for this photo, right? Okay, not really.
I told Beau to "sit macho." He looked at me with utter bewilderment. "I don't know how to do that," he quipped. This was what he came up with.
We got a good laugh out of it anyway.
This fluffy, grey and white dog also obligingly posed for her own Art Deco photo here, though I suppose she too is a little too roundy and fluffy for the Art Deco look.
She's not bothered by it and neither am I.
In the end, artsy or not, we should never take ourselves too seriously in our fashion shoots.
Where's the fun in that?
(I'd like to give a little shout out to 20th Century Decorative Arts, whose Facebook page has helped me learn more about Art Deco and helped to inspire this post. I got some of my photos from their page. I'm also linking up with Visible Mondays over at Not Dead Yet.)
Labels: Art and Cultural History, Fashion History, Kitties are in this Post
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