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The X-Files - The Movie DVD
The X Files - The Movie DVD
Thirty-seven thousand years ago, a deadly secret was buried in a cave in Texas. Now the secret has been unleashed. And its discovery may mean the end of all humanity. When a terrorist bomb destroys a building in dallas, Texas, FBI Agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) are drawn into a dangerous conspiracy surpassing anything they've ever encountered. With the dubious assistance of a paranoid doctor (Prior Academy Award winner Martin Landau), Mulder and Scully risk their careers and their lives to hunt down a deadly virus which may be extraterestrial in origin - and could destroy all life on earth. Their pursuit of truth pits them against the mysterious Syndicate, powerful men who will stop at nothing to keep their secret safe, leading the agents from a cave in Texas, to the halls of the FBI, and finally to a secret installation in Antarctica which holds the greatest secret of all.
Interactive menus, Scene Access, Multiple Language Subtitles, Original Theatrical Trailer, Audio Commentary From Chris Carter And Rob Bowman, Making Of X-Files: Fight The Future
Aspect Ratio 2.40:1
Aspect Ratio 1.77:1 (16:9)
BBFC 15
Case Type Amaray Single
Cast Christopher Fennell,Cody Newton,David Duchovny,Dean Haglund,Armin Mueller-Stahl,Blake Stokes,Blythe Danner,Jeffrey DeMunn,Lucas Black,Martin Landau,Mitch Pileggi,John Neville,Terry O'Quinn,William B Davis,Gillian Anderson
Director Rob Bowman
IFCO 15
Subtitles Czech
Subtitles Hebrew
Subtitles Hungarian
Subtitles Icelandic
Subtitles Polish
Subtitles Portuguese


I went along to the Arnold Arboretum on Wednesday evening to hear Amy Stewart (www.amystewart.com) talk about her most recent book, The Drunken Botanist. Stewart is well known in the garden bloggingsphere. She cofounded the successful blog GardenRant (www.gardenrant.com) back in 2001, well before many of us even knew what a blog was. She also has a successful print writing career. She has published six books and has been on the New York Times best sellers list three times. I have been reading and enjoying GardenRant for years, so I was interested to see and hear her up close and personal.
Stewart is an entertaining speaker. She has a lot of experience and her presentation benefits from that. It's witty, engaging and offers up just the right amount of information to keep the audience attentive, without either boring the audience or giving away too much so no one buys the book .
Nevertheless, I felt lectured. The subject of The Drunken Botanist is how alcohol comes from plants. Listening to Stewart explain this was akin to being at a dinner party where the verbose host has just discovered for herself knowledge the rest of the world has known for millennia. Trapped at the dinner table with other informed guests our host would go on about how "junipers are an important ingredient in gin, I have it on good authority from Dr X at Cornell" and "dark rum gets its color from molasses according to Dr Y who has done extensive research in Barbados ". It is enough to make one reach for the fermented grape juice again and again.
The best fun fact of the evening came ad lib from the audience. Ned Friedman, director of the Arnold Arboretum (www.arboretum.harvard.edu), offered up the tidbit that hops, from which beer is made, is in the same family, Cannabaceae, as marijuana. Just goes to show there is a lot of fun to be had in the natural world, if you know how to mix it.
After the talk the organizers had the good idea to ask several local distillers and brewers to offer samples of their wares, all made from – you guessed! – plants. There was watermelon beer from Blue Hills Brewery, and lots of spirits from Bully Boy Distillers and Grandten Distilling. All quite enjoyable, and potent. Don't be fooled by the name, the Angelica liqueur is 60 Proof. No fading flower there.
I did not buy the book. I'm spending the money on distilled plants.
The tidbit about hops and Cannabaceae was quite fun to know!
Ummm…very interesting what some people know and don't know.
Haha! I love the fact you went for the booze instead of the book! Well, after all isn't that what the book is promoting?! 😉 !!
I am glad you see the humor in the situation! Thanks very much for your comment.


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Tunstall – przysiółek w Anglii, w Staffordshire. W latach 1870–1872 osada liczyła 72 mieszkańców. Tunstall jest wspomniana w Domesday Book (1086) jako Tunestal.

Przypisy

Wsie w hrabstwie Staffordshire

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


A key aspect of the Iraq investment opportunity is arbitraging the delta between real and perceived risk. The perceptions of the widely covered parliamentary elections fit within this arbitrage opportunity in that they miss the mark by a wide margin.
The May elections did not result in an overall winner with an outright majority (165 seats among the parliament's 329 seats) enabling the formation of a government. Instead, they produced winners and losers who will eventually form a coalition government. At the lead is Sairoon, a coalition of Shia cleric Muqtada Al Sadr, Communists and Liberals, with 54 seats; followed by Fateh, a coalition of the political arms of the Popular Mobilisation Units (PMU's), with 47 seats; finally, Nasr, the Prime Minister's (PM) coalition, with 42 seats.
The rest are made up of: five different coalitions each with 18-25 seats; four coalitions each with 4-6 seats; and finally, a gaggle each with 1-3 seats. The next step would be the formation of an alliance of coalitions that would, on the first day of the new parliament by end of June, have the largest number of seats to enable it to have a PM with a chance of forming a government. The whole process should take a few weeks but, in the past, it took a few months.
The winning coalitions, irrespective of their lead player, are all cross-sectarian unlike the prior ethno-sectarian monolithic blocs that dominated over the past 14 years – a division that was the root cause of Iraq's political and social instability since 2003. Moreover, for the first time since 2003 there was a strong mass opposition to these ethno-sectarian monolithic blocs that manifested in an active non-participation movement. This led to an election participation turnout of 44.5%, which in turn had huge effects on the seats won and lost by the different coalitions.
Drilling further into the leading blocks shows neither they nor their leading players conform to simplistic assumptions. For example, Muqtada Al Sadr is often described as a firebrand cleric who is anti-secular, anti-Western and pro-Iran as a result of his leading role in Iraq's dark history since 2003. Yet, at least outwardly, he went through a transformation to a firebrand cleric who is anti-Iran and anti-its proxies in Iraq, whose alliance with Communists and Seculars kept the 2015 pro-reform demonstrations alive and relevant.
Moreover, he was a leading player in rebuilding Iraq's relationship with Saudi Arabia and the UAE – both received him in their capitals in 2017 to further this rebuilding. The second leading coalition, Fateh, a grouping of the political arms of the supposedly pro-Iranian PMU's, although not all are, is led by Iranian-allied Bader Organization. Yet Bader has been a part of every Iraqi government since 2005, responsible for the Ministry of the Interior, and as such a major part of the next phase of Western support for Iraq in rebuilding its security apparatus in the long-term fight against ISIS.
The most visible fruit of which has been the decline of violence since the end of the Mosul campaign and in the first violence free elections (see chart below). Finally, the Naser coalition which is led by the PM and while much admired for leading the fight against ISIS, he suffers from perceptions of failure to address the demands of the demonstrators since 2015. Although an unfair criticism given the overriding priority to deal with the ISIS invasion, it was behind much of the reason for his collation's third place showing. Nonetheless, his chances of returning as a PM capable of leading a workable government are high.
The new oil price dynamics have a huge positive implication on Iraq's ability to provide funds for this massive investment spending estimated at USD 88bn over the next five years. Current estimates for the country's budgets for 2017-2022 are based on Iraqi oil price assumptions of USD 45.3/bbl in 2017 and increasing to USD 47.1/bbl by 2022. These estimates would result in a cumulative deficit of USD 17.6bn, thereby increasing the debt load, necessitating borrowing to fund the deficit and restrict the ability to fund reconstruction. This implies the need for outside aid and investment to fund reconstruction.
However, different assumptions based on the new oil price dynamics would provide a vastly different picture. For instance, using realized prices of Iraqi oil of USD 49.2/bbl for 2017, and assuming Iraqi oil prices of USD 60/bbl for 2018, then declining to USD 51/bbl in 2022, would produce a cumulative surplus of USD 47.4bn instead of the earlier assumed cumulative deficit of USD 17.6bn. In other words, this equals a turnaround of USD 65bn in potential available funds.
While, an assumption of an oil price of USD 64/bbl for 2018, then declining to USD 55/bbl by 2022 would produce a cumulative surplus of USD 78.2bn, or a turnaround of USD 95bn in in potential available funds.
In the immediate term, given the impossibility of forecasting future oil prices out to 2022, if Iraq's oil price was to hold the YTD average for the remainder of 2018, it would convert the IMF 2018 projected deficit of USD 9.5bn into a surplus of USD 10.9bn. This means a turnaround of USD 20bn in potential available funds. Coupled with a slight positive variance to 2019 projections, this would provide Iraq with enough fiscal flexibility to start directly funding the immediate needs for reconstruction. This changed fiscal position would further allow it to comfortably access debt markets at reasonable rates to build upon this reconstruction. The potential addition of regional investments led by Saudi Arabia, as discussed here in the past, could lead to a self-reinforcing investment cycle.
Through 22nd May the market was down -3.9% for the month, bringing the year to date gains to +5.8%. The daily market action has been almost identical to that of the prior month with the same low turnover, the same buying in the selected leading stocks and the same selling in the banks based on the same fears.
The response of the currency to the elections for the most part matches that of the market with the market price of the Iraqi Dinar (IQD) weakening versus the USD in the days around the elections but returning to the same levels at the start of the month. The upshot, is that the premium of the market price of the IQD over the official exchange rate increased from 1.2% at the end of April, reaching 2% just before the elections and is now back to 1.2%.
The issue that continues to dominate the market is the timing of the return of liquidity as a result of the expansionary effects of higher oil prices and the end of conflict. As discussed here in the past, the observed time lag between Y-Y changes in oil revenues and Y-Y changes in M2 has been about 7-9 months which suggests that M2 growth should see improvement over the next few months as the chart below implies: it shifts the Y-Y percentage change in M2 back by 9 months versus the Y-Y percentage change in oil revenues. However, it is complicated by the additional time taken up by pre and after elections, and the additional time needed for the formation of the new government. All of which will delay this recovery but would likely result in a large back-end loaded return of liquidity.
I cant see how Sadr being Prime MInister will help the fluidity of currency. History of secular governance has shown that jobs for the boys and ethnic favourites take priority over the nation. The status quo is enjoyed. However Abadi has helped to change the ethnic secular and given Iraq the most stable governance post Sadam. It was good to read that 44% of voters were keen to vote. I hope Bader can continue Abadi's legacy. Unless Sadr maintains a reformed perspective on a more western non secular government, I dont think he will bring the reform needed. At best what does he know about managing the finances of the nation??
What would he care about an international currency? The nation has been able to rebuild their defense under a closed economy??? How? it is very puzzling to me. Is the corruption curbed so that the interest of the nation is foremost. The people decide but, it looks like a return to religious governance under another Shia head poobar. to me.
Maybe Sadr will appear to have reform but really he is a wolf in sheep's clothing and reform will not continue because of that religious fervor. Relying on SairoonI to master Iraq's governance into a Maliki Mk 2. If there is a strong alliance forming with the UAE, then I think relations with Iran will decline. Abadi was loosely addressing the presents of those Iranian cells which kept some form and functionality alive during the days of Maliki but a back flip is waiting in the wings & the U.S /UAE and Iraq relationship will strengthen. Sadr needs to embrace and take advantage of the parliamentary reform that has been now established and not be so bull antish as though it were an obstruction.


CW Image Campaign 2014 Director's Cut.
One thing I can say about this fandom that I love is the creativity. The CW released its holiday sizzle reel earlier in the month of December but they recently added a bonus. Giving us The CW Image Campaign video where we see some of the holiday sizzle reel but with more imagery of our favorite stars. So I'm ready fang fans to see what awesome gifs, videos and fan art you come up with.


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Law professor Tey Tsun Hang 'guilty' on all six counts of corruption in sex-for-grades case
May 28, 2013, 1:14 pm SGT
http://str.sg/ZcGH
Bryna Singh And Walter Sim
Law professor Tey Tsun Hang was found guilty on all six counts of corruption in the sex-for-grades case.
Chief District Judge Tan Siong Thye, who delivered his verdict on Tuesday, said: "I find the accused guilty and he is to be convicted on all the six charges."
He was satisfied with prosecution's position that Tey had corrupt intent, knew what he was doing was wrong, but persisted in "'taking advantage of" his former student Darrine Ko.
The chief district judge also noted that Tey had made no attempt to reimburse Ms Ko for the items she had bought him, and had "tricked her into having sex with him".
He said Tey was "not a truthful witness", as he had lied on numerous occasions.
He also did not believe Tey's defence that he was in a "loving, romantic relationship" with Ms Ko and pointed out that Tey did not say he loved Ms Ko in any of his six lengthy statements to anti-graft officers, and did not refer to Ms Ko by name either, when asked about the sexual episodes.
"'The accused was not affectionate in his written communication (with Ms Ko). He was terse in his emails, to the point of being curt,'" he added.
Lawyers for Tey are now in the midst of making his mitigation plea.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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When I wrote an article for Greater Good Magazine (and then Alternet) about the science of gratitude, I had no idea it'd have so much resonance. Around Thanksgiving I was asked to come on the NPR show Humankind to talk about my gratitude experiment.
Newer PostAlternet: Will Saying Thanks Make Us Happier?


Lithium-ion batteries are most commonly employed as power sources for portable electronic devices. Limited capacity, high cost, and safety problems associated with the commercially used graphite anode materials are hampering the use of lithium-ion batteries in larger-scale applications such as the electric vehicle. Nanocomposite alloys have shown promise as new anode materials because of their better safety due to higher operating potential, increased energy density, low cost, and straightforward synthesis as compared to graphite. The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate and understand the electrochemical properties of several types of nanocomposite alloys and to assess their viability as replacement anode materials for lithium-ion batteries. Tin and antimony are two elements that are active toward lithium. Accordingly, this dissertation is focused on tin-based and antimony-based nanocomposite alloy materials. Tin and antimony each have larger theoretical capacities than commercially available anodes, but the capacity fades dramatically in the first few cycles when metallic tin or antimony is used as the anode in a lithium-ion battery. This capacity fade is largely due to the agglomeration of particles in the anode material and the formation of a barrier layer between the surface of the anode and the electrolyte. In order to suppress agglomeration, the active anode material can be constrained by an inactive matrix of material that makes up the nanocomposite. By controlling the surface of the particles in the nanocomposite via methods such as the addition of additives to the electrolyte, the detrimental effects of the solid-electrolyte interphase layer (SEI) can be minimized, and the capacity of the material can be maintained. Moreover, the nanocomposite alloys described in this dissertation can be used above the voltage where lithium plating occurs, thereby enhancing the safety of lithium-ion batteries. The alloy anodes in this study are synthesized by high-energy mechanical milling and furnace heating. The materials are characterized by X-ray diffraction, scanning and transmission electron microscopies, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. Electrochemical performances are assessed at various temperatures, potential ranges, and charge rates. The lithiation/delithiation reaction mechanisms for these nanocomposite materials are explored with ex-situ X-ray diffraction. Specifically, three different nanocomposite alloy anode materials have been developed: Mo3Sb7-C, Cu2Sb-Al2O3-C, and Cu6Sn5-TiC-C. Mo3Sb7-C has high gravimetric capacity and involves a reaction mechanism whereby crystalline Mo3Sb7 disappears and is reformed during each cycle. Cu2Sb-Al2O3-C with small particles (2 - 10 nm) of Cu2Sb dispersed in the Al2O3-C matrix is made by a single-step ball milling process. It exhibits long cycle life (+ 500 cycles), and the reversibility of the reaction of Cu2Sb-Al2O3-C with lithium is improved when longer milling times are used for synthesis. The reaction mechanism for Cu2Sb-Al2O3-C appears to be dependent upon the size of the crystalline Cu2Sb particles. The coulombic efficiency of Cu2Sb-Al2O3-C is improved through the addition of 2 % vinylethylene carbonate to the electrolyte. With a high tap density of 2.2 g/cm3, Cu6Sn5-TiC-C exhibits high volumetric capacity. The reversibility of the reaction of Cu6Sn5-TiC-C with lithium is improved when the material is cycled above 0.2 V vs. Li/Li+.


Joining a flight school can be dream come true for many. But in order to meet the pro-pilot standard, you need to toil through the whole learning spectrum. Let's find out the tips, which can make this journey less demanding for you, and also give you valuable insight into the history of aviation.
Getting mentorship is one approach to get the hang of flying faster. Sometimes, the normal aviation environment puts so many distractions that finding a mentor would make it easier for you to pull off one-to-one learning interaction.
Don't beat yourself up with for bad landings. Also don't pound yourself in order to touch the ground. In the long run, the place will touch the base, so you don't have to try too hard. Master the way where you can fly the plane straight – without human involvement.
Preparing your lessons in advance would give you clarity of concepts. Continuously request your instructor to let you know about the next day's maneuver ahead of time. Study before the training night thoroughly. You can even form study groups for more interactive learning.
Join aviation groups in social media. Attend seminar or conference on this subject- conducted by your school or any outside entity. Put more effort to know other instructors and students.
Tuning to CTAF (Common Traffic Advisory Frequencies) will make you aware- what mistakes other pilots are committing on air. The radio communication mode would run a live commentary lesson to alert you about the common blunders.
Read books on Aviation or watch movies like Top Gun. Dig deeper into internet and fish out archived career trajectories of great pilots. A Q&A platform like Quora would make it simpler for you to make direct inquiries on pilot training from the pros.
Take a picture of cockpit from your Smartphone and get it printed. Along this line, you'd be able to figure out its layout faster in the practical day. Utilize flow chart of the plane and keep checklist by your side while flying.
Try not to pass up the post-briefing sessions, as they give you the impetus to discuss the areas where you excelled and where you faltered. Also, take plenty of rest before come to a training session.
During the pre-flight mode, always keep your cabin neat. Do you feel nausea while on the sky? Keep the sic sac within reach. The ipad, pen, EB6 or kneeboard should be accessible. All these would make it for a positive learning experience.
Start watching YouTube videos where you would see different aspects of pilot training. Take part in online quizzes, mock written tests and MOOC. If you can afford, then purchasing a video training course about on aviation would come handy.
Nobody learns flying a plane within a week. So keep your expectations realistic. However, that doesn't imply that your objective would be to meeting only the minimum cut-off mark. You must always outperform in order to become a pilot par excellence.


As long as you're not choosing to rock a lace veil or finger-to-toe covering floor-length gown, wearing a black dress to a wedding is one of the least offensive things you can do to the bride. We're showing you how to pull off the color and make it as festive as the event you're attending. Click through for a little bit of inspiration. Isn't it time you stopped being so afraid of the dark?


Last night saw the new SK Gaming in one of their first competitive outings. They were up against Season 1 World Champions Fnatic so it promised to be a very hard match in the first round of the ESL Major Series play-offs.
After the strong performances of Manuel 'Lamia' Mildenberger at Dreamhack, it was non-surprising to see Ashe banned, something that teams consistently failed to do at the Season 1 finals.
Another targeted ban was that of banning Alistar which was no doubt aimed at Maciej 'Shushei' Ratuszniak, however Gragas was left open which Fnatic promptly picked for Shushei.
The game lasted 37 minutes and the scores finished at 22-15 in favour of SK. The new SK line-up put in a very strong team performance with all players having good scores across the board with an even mix of kills and assists.
Peter 'Mellisan' Meisrimel bore the brunt of the SK attack which resulted in him finishing with a disappointing 0-6-5 on Taric.
The first result went to SK but as Fnatic showed us in the Dreamhack qualifiers, this can mean very little.
Bans: Warwick, Ashe, Nunu, Alistar, Amumu, Rumble.
Similar bans for the second match but the line-ups are somewhat different. Surprisingly, Shushei didn't opt to go for Gragas despite him being open. There was obviously something from the last game which Fnatic didn't feel comfortable with.
The second game was slightly shorter at just 33 minutes and the scores were more one-sided at 20-6.
SK had the advantage from the start and carried it through to the end, a very dominant performance from new AD Carry signing, Adrian 'Candy Panda' Wübbelmann who went 11-2-6 on Vayne.
The whole team put in strong performances however with some nice scores from all.
Two very strong performances from the new SK team means that they progress to the next round of the ESL Major Series where they hope to defend their title as reigning champions but it does however mean Fnatic have been eliminated.


QUESTION ON What to Do with Unpaid Taxes?
What advice would you give for someone that hasn't keep up with their personal taxes and sales and usage taxes. Can you tell me what to do to get this straighten out. I only gross 10,000 a year in a really good year, but I'm not keeping my books like I should.
As they say, there are only two sure things in life: death and taxes.
You mentioned that you don't really make so much sales in a year. Not knowing your entire financial picture, it may even be possible that you may even be exempted in pay your personal taxes.
However, in this country, tax evasion is a crime and failure to file your income taxes is subject to penalties. So, before the problem becomes greater than it is right now, I suggest that you take time to review your financial and tax records. Hire a book keeper or accountant to help you; or if you can't afford one, find a friend who can help you figure out what you owe in your taxes. During tax time, some public libraries offer tax preparation advice and/or services. Ask what they can do to help you solve the problem.
You can also visit the IRS website at http://www.irs.gov/ or call the nearest IRS office at your location to ask for advice. You can ask tax questions by calling the IRS toll-free customer service line at 1-800-829-1040 for individual tax issues or 1-800-829-4933 for business-related tax issues.
If you are in business, sooner or later your unpaid taxes may catch up with you and then your penalties may have gone sky-high. Go and tell them your predicament. Don't be afraid. They only want you to pay your taxes (if any) and if there is none, then you can go forward and start taking care of your books.
You are the only one who can straighten it out. Be careful of services and individuals who will tell you that they can solve your problem and then charge you a steep fee. You might lose your money and still owe the taxes.


Leadership surveys @ TedBall.com over the past year reveal that both governance and managerial leaders seem to feel a sense of "pending chaos" about Ontario's health system transformation. The first question people ask is: do the bosses really know what they are doing?
What we need most from our governance and managerial leaders in these uncertain times is resilience, confidence and optimism. I hope you find that most of my blogs try to model that — while telling most of the "whole truth".
In Positive Organizational Scholarship, Sutcliffe and Vogus define resilience as "the ability to flourish and thrive amid adverse conditions when rigidity might be expected." What we know from their research is that organizations with positive work relationships are more resilient – recovering more quickly from external threats and internal implosions. However, while positive relationships are a key to success, the research tells us that to succeed in a transformation, there must be alignment at the top.
The Balanced Scorecard Collaborative who have studied best practices since the early 1990's say that the most common reason for strategy execution failure is a "lack of commitment/ alignment at the top" – that is, among the executive leadership of the organization; or, in the case of a Health Link, it would be the CEOs and senior staff of the partners. In the healthcare sector, this also requires the leadership to shift from reactive "crisis management", to proactive strategy development, and to strategy implementation/strategy execution.
How can a CEO create such a fundamental shift in the thinking and behavior of their top management? How can middle managers "add-value" to those who actually delivery the services? Professional leadership coaches and change management scholars would emphatically say that it must start with a commitment by the CEO to model "change" and "learning" themselves.
Experience tells us that when a Board is encouraging their CEO to find innovative solutions, success rates skyrocket. When CEOs and managers tap into the collective intelligence of their organizations, there is a surge of innovative solutions to long-standing problems.
Brain research over the past few years has produced critically important information for people whose function is to provide leadership. We now know that the moment our brain registers ambiguity or confusion, it alters the chemicals in the part of our brain called the anterior cingulated cortex and makes us crave certainty.
In my experience, leaders who create the perception that success is attainable — within the chaos — because the organization is smart and capable — always succeed. Also showing long-range plans (like an 18-36 month Transformation Journey Map, or a strategy execution process like the Strategy Management System's 8-box model) tends to calm people because they then sense that there is actually a real commitment to the transformation process. In the past, many people have experienced hopeful boasts by their CEO, by the LHIN, or by the Minister — but then nothing much happened.
As in the balanced scorecard strategy development process, or in the patient experience design storyboarding process, or in the Health Link development process, organizational knowledge creation is a continuous and dynamic interaction between tacit and explicit knowledge.
We talk about the "Learning Organization" approach being top-down & bottom-up. However, in the full real-world roll-out, the process is very much a middle-up-down-sideways process.
The strategic decision to become a Learning Organization, or for a Health Link Partnership Group to become an Intentional Learning Community, means that CEOs need to learn how they can lead and manage such an evolved and inter-connected organization. This can be a very different style of management than the current norm in the healthcare sector. CEOs who want to have a more leveraged impact need to learn more about how they can be developmental coaches and learning facilitators. They need to determine how they will personally model leaning, growth and change during the transformation journey.
Old ideas about "bosses" won't work in our context. Today we need CEOs to be teachers, facilitators and role models. When everyone understands that the leaders are deeply committed to the struggle to become a "learning organization" that learns from its "best mistakes", people always become less anxious, more open to exploring change… more open to learning.
That often means "learning-how-to-learn". It requires an understanding of adult learning methodologies/ learning styles, and developing their own capacity to be developmental facilitators and coaches to others. So here, once again, is the need for a balanced perspective between a journey that is designed to support the development of all these essential "soft" skills – while putting in place the rigorous systems, structures and processes that will enable the organization to achieve these bottom-line results.
CEO's and senior teams that are pathologically focused on the bottom-line results — but fail to address the "soft-side" to mobilize the humans — will fail, every time. However, some will continue to thrive on the basis of results-oriented language that is supported, at best, with incremental gains. All of the literature in this area indicates the critical importance of "the leader" in these major transformation efforts.
While external coaches and facilitators and internal senior managers and facilitators can very often "add value" to such a process, it is essential that the transformation process be led by the CEO. Others can help, but unless the CEO leads it, the gains will only be incremental, the pace will be very slow, and the changes are not likely to be sustainable.
The challenge for senior managers is how they will change their relationships with their direct reports. How do you stop being a "boss", and start being a coach, guide, mentor and learning facilitator?
"Oooh! The soft, mushy, human stuff and the 'vision thing' again," the cynics will say. But while many of our best performing healthcare organizations do have some fancy IT support, their transformation is succeeding because the people in the system think differently and act differently – in contrast to just "doing things differently", but "thinking the same way." What is most common among the top performing healthcare organizations is that they are transforming towards the learning organization model of staff empowerment and continuous improvement.
Organizations that produce superior results with Balanced Scorecards, best practice Accountability Agreements, and collective intelligence tools like Kaizen and Storyboarding, are those where the middle managers have transformed themselves from command and control in organizational silos, to a new emphasis on developmental facilitation for integrated, cross-functional high-performance teams. Gosh, even our Minister has transformed herself into a learning facilitator — instead of just being ministerial, and "announcing" her thoughts she comes to Longwood's Breakfast with the Chiefs Program and facilitates.
This new skill for developmental facilitation is different from basic facilitation. However, experience tells us that middle managers will not transform until and unless their bosses have authentically transformed as well – and are themselves modeling the thinking and behavior that middle managers are expected to exhibit for front-line workers. The evidence tells us that the senior management team members behavior is the single most important factor that will drive change.
This is a major challenge for CEOs: how to develop the capacity of their senior and middle managers to be highly strategic and capable of leading and managing others through a transformative learning experience. While IDEAS from Utah may provide a few more tools, CEOs can't contract out their role as teacher/knowledge facilitator to Queen's Park. From the CEO's perspective, since their own personal success is completely dependent upon the success of each of their direct reports, they clearly have a major stake in seeing that each of their senior managers will be successful at achieving the outcomes for which they are accountable.
After all, when the CEO's direct reports are successful at achieving their outcomes, the CEO is, by definition, successful. And, when the CEO is successful at achieving a balance of outcomes – everybody wins. Does that sound like a place you would like to work?
FORWARD THIS BLOG TO COLLEAGUES WHO BELIEVE THAT THERE IS LEVERAGE IN THE SOFT, MUSHY, HUMAN STUFF — AND IN THE DAMN "VISION THING".


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Home » Kiah Roache-Turner on Wyrmwood [Exclusive Interview]
Kiah Roache-Turner on Wyrmwood [Exclusive Interview]
Zak Greene February 13, 2015 Comments Closed 387 views 0 likes
Australian post-apocalyptic zombie action film Wyrmwood (review) is really gaining some traction now that it's finally available in select theaters and on VOD. And it doesn't look to be slowing down anytime soon. It's a high octane Mad Max style flick with a visual flair and an "everything but the kitchen sink" attitude that continually throws new and interesting ideas and twists at its audience. I recently got the chance to sit down with director/co-writer Kiah Roache-Turner and chat about his influences, comic books, deleted scenes, and even some thoughts on the sequel.
Wicked Horror: So the premiere is today.
Kiah Roache-Turner: Yeah, it's out today! It's releasing on 73 screens in our country, which for an independent film… it's phenomenal. The reaction in this country has been great and it's weird because we premiered in America and people loved it. We went to Spain and they loved it there and we went to Sweden and they loved it in a much more polite way, but I was really nervous about how Australia was going to react to this film because it's a film made by Australians for Australians and…they love it! We had our premier and I was like "Ahhhh" I breathed this big sigh of relief. I'm like "Oh God, four years of nervousness and they actually like it." So thank God for that, because if Australians don't like something that Australians do they cut you down, because we got the tall poppy syndrome over here so I could have been in trouble.
WH: Now the big comparison that I keep hearing is that it's "Mad Max meets Dawn of the Dead." Were these both conscious influences?
Kiah: There's a whole bunch of films that mean a lot to me obviously because I'm a massive film geek, but me and my brothers grew up particularly loving Mad Max and loving Dawn of the Dead. Those two films we watch regularly and because Mad Max is a home brew… well you guys call it The Road Warrior, right?
WH: The second one's The Road Warrior.
Kiah: So the first one's Mad Max in America!
WH: Yeah, the first one's Mad Max here in America and the second one's The Road Warrior.
Kiah: Oh fantastic! Oh ok, well Mad Max then, yeah! Because Mad Max is home grown I actually used to go to parties as a kid with my brother and meet stuntmen from the film and I remember when we were kids this big guy in a beard called Richard came up and he had a hundred stitches and he said, "See these stitches? I got these from Mad Max." And so we grew up with this mythology, you know and it wasn't just a mythology. People we knew were in the film, so for some reason we've always felt that that kind of filmmaking was very accessible to us. Originally we wanted to make a zombie movie because they're easy and they're cheap. All you need is a bunch of friends and a big bucket of blood and you can make a zombie film, but we really wanted to do another post-apocalyptic Mad Max style film because we've been waiting all our lives for somebody to do another film like this and nobody did. So we just thought, "Oh let's do it ourselves." That was the approach, yeah.
WH: It's weird too, because those two styles fit together so well and it seems like it'd be such an obvious combination that I'm shocked nobody's done it before, at least not to this extent.
Kiah: It's so funny that you should say that, because I've had so many emails through the years with people just going, "Why didn't anybody think of this before?" It's weird! It's one of those things like pancakes and maple syrup that just goes perfectly! It's always a zombie apocalypse…as if you wouldn't go get a hockey mask and some leather armor and a shotgun. That's what you'd look like, you'd look like Mad Max, of course! And you'd put spikes on your car and you'd drive around really fast and be really aggressive. That's Mad Max, you know? So it makes a lot of sense and I think that's the reason why it's doing very well, because we just lucked out. We accidentally made the right film at the right time.
WH: And speaking of the right time you're coming out right in that window between the Mad Max: Fury Road trailer and the actual release. Do you think that's helped?
Kiah: Well can I just say that when I saw that Mad Max: Fury Road trailer I was just like going through the wall. I've been waiting for this film for so long. Thank God we came out before they came out because once that film comes out we're over. Like this is redefining the whole Mad Max genre, of course. It just… it looks so good. I mean, one of the things I'm really hoping is that once Fury Road comes out people will go see that and go, "that's what you can do with a hundred and sixty million dollars," and then look at Wyrmwood and go, "that's what you can do with absolutely nothing." So I hope the films will complement each other in that respect.
WH: Oh absolutely, and also with the whole zombie thing it's definitely a few steps away. Now…the armor. That's the most iconic thing with Wyrmwood right now as far as all the advertising. I want to talk about that. Who designed it, where did it come from?
Kiah: Ebay.
WH: Ebay?
Kiah: Ebay. [laughs] Now look, I mean…I drew the pictures and I said, "We're gonna need this and this and this," and my brother just went out and sourced it on Ebay. I said, "Look, we need leather armor," and he said, "Okay, well that's just motorbike leather." We need padding and he goes, "Okay, a friend of mine plays (what you guys call football and we call) American football," and so he just lent us some old pads. We're gonna have to have a hockey mask, because you just have to have a hockey mask. Once you put all those elements together and throw a bunch of mud and blood at it… you have yourselves a poster. I know it's funny because the first things we did were the costume tests. We got the lead guy over to the house, we did a costume test, we shot one picture…and that is the picture that's on all the posters. It's so iconic, you know? As soon as I saw him standing in the back yard in the 40 degree heat (celsius, which is 104 degrees fahrenheit) wearing that stuff I was like, "We, my friends…have ourselves a film," because it's totally iconic, yeah!
WH: It's definitely eye catching, and it's definitely in that Mad Max style, but it doesn't look like anything specifically from that movie.
Kiah: Yeah. It looks a little bit like that Master Blaster guy I guess, and it looks a little bit like the guy in the American football armor with the feathers and the kind of fit looking boy on the back of his bike, but it's a combination of elements. It's kind of like Mad Max meets Halloween, but because we're mixing genres you kinda get away with it. It's funny though, because people think it's a video game. People are seeing the poster and going, "Oh, when does that video game come out?" because it looks like a real kind of video game aesthetic and I think um…yeah I love the armor. I really do.
WH: That is actually kind of a theme in zombie video games right now. Maybe not so much the makeshift armor, but definitely makeshift weapons. Do you play any of those or were any of those an influence?
Kiah: Me and Tristan, my brother, just loved video games growing up. Not so much any more because I'm more interested in filmmaking now. I can't really sit still for periods of time without at least watching a film, but we certainly grew up playing video games. The biggest influence honestly was comic books. We were huge comic book nerds growing up and I used to have a standing order at Comic Kingdom. I'd go down and I'd pick up my comics order in my little brown paper package and I was so excited. I read X-Men and Hulk and all that stuff and I think because I loved comics so much as a kid I've got a bit of a costume fetish. You know? I just love costumes and helmets and masks and I love that stuff. It's gonna be really hard for me to keep that stuff out of films because that's the image that I love, the comic book hero.
WH: Absolutely. It definitely makes things feel a bit larger than life.
Kiah: Yeah! That's comic books. It's larger than life entertainment. It's fantastic.
WH: Outside of Dawn of the Dead were there any other specific zombie films that were big influences on you?
Kiah: Yes… I mean, obviously 28 Days Later was something we were thinking about. Shaun of the Dead was something we avoided. We were like, "We cannot make a zombie comedy," because you can't get funnier than Shaun of the Dead, so that's something that we purposely went away from. Really the films that influenced us more than anything in terms of style and the way we made the film was Peter Jackson's Bad Taste, his earliest film, and more than anything…The Evil Dead. They're more demons than zombies, but they're crazy and the demons jump around and move in weird ways and Sam Raimi's camerawork is just mental. It's like somebody just poured methamphetamine into the camera and just treaded around the room. I still don't know how he got some of those shots. That was really a huge influence there.
WH: Yeah, Sam Raimi was really good at taking a small budget and making it look bigger. You said earlier that the zombie genre was a good choice because it's easy and cheap to make on a small budget, but a lot of the stuff in Wyrmwood looks bigger. It doesn't feel low budget. Was any of that intimidating? Some of the stunts and big props?
Kiah: We really did start making a very very low budget kind of Evil Dead thing, but what happened was every time we filmed we wanted to lift our game. Because there was so much time between every scene and we shot chronologically, so every time we shot we got more and more time to plan and we got more people on board and people are coming out of the woodwork going, "Well I know a stunt guy," and, "Oh I know the guy that did the stunts in Mad Max," and "I know a guy who could do a head burn." It just sort of builds and builds. At the end of the three and a half years it got to the point where we were doing these huge action set pieces. I think there was a point about two years in where I arrived on set and I'm used to six people on set…the DOP, the sound guy, a couple of mates, and some zombies, and I arrive on set and theres like fifty five people there! It's like… I don't know anybody here. Where did they come from? I don't know how we got to this point, and it just builds and builds. It's just one of those things where my brother and I are a little bit obsessive compulsive and everything had to be better than the last. I guess… I don't know. To hear somebody say that it looks sort of expensive is fantastic, thank you for saying so!
WH: Oh, no problem! So you were just pooling all the resources you had and it built?
Kiah: Yeah! There's a great book by Robert Rodriguez called Rebel Without a Crew. In that, in the opening thing he says, "Look, if you're going to make a movie with no money you look around to what you've got and you use that." What we had was a bunch of friends and the ability to buy a four wheel drive and put spikes on it and these great outdoor Blue Mountains locations in the bush. Let's just use that! We just used what we had and out came Wyrmwood.
WH: With the movie there's two stories going on. There's all the Mad Max stuff, but there's also the scientist and the girl. Where'd the idea for that come from with her being able to control zombies?
Kiah: Well my brother came up with the methane-breathing zombies and then you can run the trucks off of them. I loved that idea, I thought it was so cool, and when he came up with that I was like, "Well I've gotta come up with an idea now," and I came up with the zombie telekinesis thing. Honestly I can't remember where it came from. I'm sure I copied it from somewhere, but I don't remember where that came up. It's just like…you've gotta have cool new stuff. There was a scene early on in the film where she develops these powers and she makes them dance. She gets a group of zombies and she makes them do this weird zombie dance. I think that's the first thing that popped into my head. That's a crazy idea, if I put that in a film people will be talking about that for ten years. I mean, we eventually had to cut the scene because it was too ridiculous. I don't know, you have the weird ideas and you know that you have to give the audience something different. That just jumped into my head. I guess with the doctor we knew that we didn't have a lot of money and there's a big tradition in low budget filmmaking to put somebody in one location and then have them escape. You know the one location thing like with Reservoir Dogs or you've got a great film like Cube where they've gotta think their way out of a situation. I just love the idea where she's absolutely stuck. She's tied to a wall in a room full of zombies and she's gotta think her way out. I just liked that, I just thought it was a cool kind of low budget idea. So we just did it, it made sense.
WH: This movie definitely has a few things that I don't think I've ever seen before. The controlling zombies bit and then the zombies breathing methane.
Kiah: Well if I can be completely honest, I'm sure we stole those ideas. There's nothing new under the sun and I could probably point you in the direction. You know, the zombies being fast at night and slow during the day is totally stolen from Richard Matheson's I Am Legend. The zombie methane gas was a concept that I think Tristan stole from a documentary called Food Inc where he saw the cows breathe methane. I probably stole the zombie telekinetic thing. I probably stole it from X-Men, I don't know. You know, all the plot points and stuff were taken from George A Romero and taken from George Miller, but I think you just gotta have the right sources. You sort of mix it all up in a bucket and people call it originality, which is fantastic, but really these ideas are kinda floating around and you just pick the ones that suit your story.
WH: As long as they're not all from the same place.
Kiah: Because then you get sued.
WH: Yeah, exactly. [laughs]
Kiah: We want to steal just enough to not get sued. [laughs]
WH: Alright, my last question has to be… are there any plans for a sequel? And if not, what are you up to next?
Kiah: For sure. You've been set up for a sequel, and people are just like, "When is the sequel?" and I'm just like, "Just give me a holiday!" We've been making this for four years and so if I have to do another close up on a zombie I might have to kill myself, but the sequel is huge. We've got these great images of a soldier with a zombie whose legs and arms are cut off and he's wearing it as a backpack, using it as a flamethrower. You know what I mean? We've got this imagery of this huge truck-train in the desert with hundreds of armless legless zombies strapped to the side of them powering these big vehicles, just hovering along the road. We've got Brooke telekinetically controlling hordes of zombies to fight the evil soldiers in the middle of the desert. It's really cool, but we probably won't get there for a couple of years because the next film's gonna be a ghost film. It's gonna be like an R-rated Ghostbusters. I'm halfway through the framework right now and I just can't wait to start shooting that one. That's very weird.
WH: Nice! It's been really great talking to you and I'm very excited for both of those.
Kiah: Thank you, sir! And thank you for saying such nice things about our little film!
Wyrmwood is available Feb 13th, 2015 in select theaters and on VOD.
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Tags: Action Horror, Australian Horror, b movie, Comic Books, director, George Miller, George Romero, interview, kiah roache-turner, Low Budget Filmmaking, mad max, post apocal, Wyrmwood, Zombie, zombie movie
Written by Zak Greene
Zak Greene is an artist, rapper, and horror movie fanatic. Previously having worked on a wide array of video reviews for his own site Reel Creepy and contributing a segment to Fun With Horror, he has a particular love for the low budget and obscure. When Zak isn't watching slasher flicks he's working on one of his own creative outlets.
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Q: Find primitive element of splitting field extension of $x^4 - 5$ over $\mathbb{Q}$ A splitting field extension of $x^4 - 5$ over $\mathbb{Q}$ is $K = \mathbb{Q}(\sqrt[4]{5}, i)$, and $[K:\mathbb{Q}] = 8$.
Let $\alpha = \sqrt[4]{5}$ and $\gamma = \alpha + i$. I'm trying to show $\gamma$ is a primitive element, and it is getting complicated. On a computer, I get
$$\begin{aligned}
{\gamma}^2 &= {\alpha}^2 + 2\alpha i - 1 \\
{\gamma}^3 &= {\alpha}^3 + 3{\alpha}^2i - 3\alpha - i \\
{\gamma}^4 &= 4{\alpha}^3i - 6{\alpha}^2 - 4{\alpha}i + 6 \\
{\gamma}^5 &= -10{\alpha}^3 - 10{\alpha}^2i + 10\alpha + 26i \\
{\gamma}^6 &= -20{\alpha}^3i + 20{\alpha}^2 + 36{\alpha}i - 76 \\
{\gamma}^7 &= 40{\alpha}^3 + 56{\alpha}^2i - 112\alpha - 176i
\end{aligned}$$
Next, I look at the coefficients of $\gamma, {\gamma}^3, {\gamma}^5$, and ${\gamma}^7$ to form a $4 \times 4$ matrix.  On a computer again, I then check that the matrix is invertible, and so there are linear combinations to solve for $\alpha$ and $i$.  Thus $\mathbb{Q}(\sqrt[4]{5}, i) \subseteq \mathbb{Q}(\sqrt[4]{5} + i)$.
Is there an easier solution?
By the way, this problem is in Chapter 7 of the book on Galois theory by Garling, and Galois groups are not yet covered. A more elementary solution is expected.

A: I would do it this way, without any linear algebra, because this is a rather simple situation:
Consider $\alpha$ as an irrationality over the Gaussian numbers, $\Bbb Q(i)$. You know that $X^4-5$ is still irreducible as a $\Bbb Z[i]$-polynomial, because $(5)$, though not a prime, is product of two distinct primes, $5=(2+i)(2-i)$, and Eisenstein applies. That is, $f(X)=\text{Irr}\bigl(\alpha,\Bbb Q(i)[X]\bigr)=X^4-5$ and by translation, $\text{Irr}\bigl(\alpha+i,\Bbb Q(i)[X]\bigr)=f(X-i)=X^4-4iX^3-6X^2+4iX-4=g(X)$. Now your desired polynomial is just $g(X)\overline g(X)$, where the bar is complex conjugation of each coefficient.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Teach Laugh Plan: What are Molasses Classes?.
It's the start of the new school year for most of us. We are all excited to set up our classroom and put up all our "cutesy" stuff. We get to meet our students... oh my goodness they brought me gifts on the first day of school, they're so sweet and we are so psyched to make it a great year! Then before we know it, the "honeymoon" is over! In his new book, Ron Clark (NY Times Bestselling Author of the Essential 55) offers 101 extraordinary solutions for parents and teachers. Make your year a FABULOUS one with Ron Clark's help. I just started reading his book and I am hooked!
The essential 55 was a part of my bachelorettes curriculum. I wish I could implement that in my classroom! I'm aiming to have it implemented by my fifth year teaching. I'm still on my second =(.
First day of School Activity....Take a Guess!
Another Freebie - Get to 30!
Do you have your classroom procedures in place?
I got it! I got it! And you can too!


Wall Painting Ideas for Small Apartments Bedrooms - Light, airy, as well as contemporary, the house style includes streamlined furnishings, tactical storage and vibrant, intense accent colors - it's an appearance assured to make the most of small bedrooms. The fresh and useful technique to embellishing looks enjoyable in any kind of room however is particularly matched to little bedrooms like those in modern apartments. A cost-efficient appearance relies much more on a lively imagination and a positive method than on a generous budget plan.
The look attracts from lots of varied sources, which belongs to its beauty. As an example, you can integrate office-style, state-of-the-art lighting with Scandinavian-style pale timber furniture and ethnic woven rugs. The aim is to develop a dynamic, comfortable space that is practical, well arranged, and simple to leaving organized, yet experiencing a younger feeling of fun.
Fresh, pale, solid-toned walls are the starting factor for the apartment room. Along with producing a peaceful ambience, they supply an inconspicuous backdrop for vivid accessories. Affordable, straightforward furniture available from home-decorating shops suits the style's streamlined appearance. Several items been available in flat-pack, self-assembly type - useful when negotiating house escalators and narrow staircases. Where possible, choose dual-purpose bedroom furnishings, such as a dressing or night table, which doubles as a desk, and also maybe a sleeper sofa - you could after that take pleasure in the area throughout the day as well as at night.
Wall surfaces as well as ceiling: The smaller sized the room, the more crucial it is to make use of a light-reflective color. White wall surfaces are a great starting point and leave your selection of accent shades broad open. Continuing the wall shade over the ceiling, particularly in an attic bedroom, creates a sense of smooth-flowing space.
Though refined paint impacts such as color washing or sponging agree with, stay clear of highly contrasting results as well as fiercely formed wallpapers - these could make a currently tiny space appear claustrophobic. Larger bedrooms could take bold, solid however still light-reflective shades, such as abundant yellow.
Windows: Home window treatments continue the pale background motif or present bright color. Usage streamlined, solid-colored or striped blinds by themselves or integrated with straightforward drapes or drape, in pale or intense tones and also simple or formed, to soften the look.
Combine shades experiencing net or muslin curtains for daytime personal privacy as well as to conceal an unattractive view. Venetian blinds, with their lancinating, ruler-straight lines, contribute to the look; their adjustable slats offer privacy as well as color experiencing a minimal loss of light. Plantation-style louvered shutters are just as appropriate and might duplicate the style of louvered equipped closets. To block out any web traffic noises, make or buy massive, interlined curtains.
Floors: For a streamlined, minimalist effect, opt for removed as well as brightened pine floorboards or wood strip floor covering. Bring in vibrant carpets, experiencing vibrant geometric or otherwise large-scale patterns, for aesthetic passion as well as comfort, especially near the bed. For safety, placed rugs on refined timber floorings experiencing non-slip underlays.
If your budget could take it, choose wall-to-wall carpeting for a softer, a lot more comfortable surface underfoot. Choose a solid-toned, neutral-colored one, which, like a solid-toned wall surface, produces a sense of room - particularly in a tiny room. Carpets could be white or a more functional neutral such as beige or grey, possibly with one or more scatter carpets as focal points. Pale, ordinary natural-fiber floor covering is a less expensive option, as well as looks particularly attractive combined experiencing unpainted wicker furnishings.
Wall Painting Ideas for Small Apartments Bedrooms - Lighting: Select lights to suit the area's structured, useful feel. Discreet, wall-mounted torchers give excellent overall illumination, and are supplemented with simple, stylish, or chunky bedside lamps or mobile office-style lamps that you can relocate concerning the room as essential.


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Style, News, Editor's Pick
BAZ LUHRMANN creates a springtime fantasy for ERDEM X H&M campaign
Visionary filmmaker Baz Luhrmann creates an alluring fairytale filled with passion, drama and vivacity in his recent cinematography short film for ERDEM X H&M. Staged in a mysterious country house Reddham Gardens, the victorian set-up was decorated with an assortment of herbaceous plants; with only natural sunlight slating through the windows, the entire space narrates a blissful modern love story where it is "always spring".
It's harsh out there in the world, but in here, the things that really matter keep growing in an eternal spring," says Baz Luhrmann.
The house is like its own private world that is always filled with flowers, influenced by ERDEM's celebrated floral prints. When young friends come to stay, a magnetic love triangle begins, in the film starring upcoming actors Tom Rhys Harries, Hero Fiennes Tiffin and Ruby Dagnall.
They are joined by acclaimed actress Harriet Walter, as well as super models Saskia de Brauw, Imaan Hammam, Grace Hartzel, Fernando Cabral, Neels Visser and Tony Ward. Throughout, Baz used pieces from the ERDEM x H&M collection to define the characters and propel the narrative, channeling freedom and spontaneity while the new track by Years & Years captures the mood of positivity, friendship and love.
Check out the campaign below:
The ERDEM x H&M collection will be available in selected H&M stores, as well as on hm.com, from November 2.
Interview: "Asia's Got Talent" hosts Justin Bratton & Alan Wong
Men's Folio jets off with The Travel Issue this November


I mean, I'm happy to join in…but I ran 8.4 miles on Saturday and am doing my third half-marathon in October, so I'm not sure if you really want the likes of me hanging around. I'm pretty useful for injury advice though, I've seen a lot of it. Also, I really want to get faster but I'm not sure how to do that.
But yes, 6.2 miles is downright respectable. I actually think that 10ks are the perfect distance – respectable, worth the money, but don't hurt you and the training is much less likely to lead to injury.
My problem when I started running and tried a C25k-type program was that any amount of walking was too much, and I didn't want to run again. I had much better luck when I went out and ran a mile, then I went out and ran a mile and a half, and then I went out and ran two miles. After I ran two miles without stopping, I felt pretty badass and started to run more. After I did my first 5-mile run, I was like "boo-yah! I can do ANYTHING!!!" which was mostly true, as long as I wasn't stupid and didn't try to increase my mileage too much.
Maybe all the bloggers can get together and do a race! How about the Hot Chocolate 15k? 9.3 miles is also a totally badass/respectable distance (and they have a 5k as well).
It's really interesting to me that walking completely turns you off to running. I'm the exact opposite. But hey, we find what works best for each of us, right?
Ah, the Hot Chocolate races! I was just looking at them! (Sweet jackets as part of the race bags? Yes please!) I'm not sure if I can foot the $65 right now, but if I find the cash, I'd be down!
"many dance styles build muscle along the sides of your calves. Running builds it along the back. According to my doctor, the two do not mix." Iiiiiinteresting. Though I haven't danced in years, it was my main form of physical exercise throughout my formative years and I'm pretty sure most of my muscle in my legs is because of it. And running was awful for me. Even though I started slow and built up slow, I kept getting pain in my knees and calves. Wonder if that might have something to do with.
Good luck… though I think I've given up on running myself.
That was EXACTLY my experience (I danced for 22 years … I'll have to tell that story this week). I understand that muscle break down is part of starting a new exercise, but it was EXCRUCIATING. I've never had muscle break down hurt like that before. Which is why I went to the doctor in the first place.
Interestingly, this time, there's little to no pain at all. So, it took about a month, but I think we're just on to the building portion now. Thank God.
Good luck Sarah! I've had "run a 5k" on my goals list forever, so hopefully all this talk of running will motivate me to get moving. Thanks!


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The Otakusphere
Fall 2017 Anime Impressions
October 17, 2017 Karen	4 Comments
Since I've been watching more anime than usual lately, I figured I may as well take advantage of it and talk about the new shows like a proper Aniblogger. Here are my takes on some of this season's offerings; keep in mind I only watch shows that are available on legal streaming services. This is less of an anti-piracy stance, and more of a "I am too goddamned old to be dealing with malware on my computer from dling torrents," stance, but let's all pretend it's because of my unimpeachable moral compass.
Urahara– This show puts me in a bind; I really like what I think it's trying to do, but it's just not working. The washed-out color palette, the intentionally wonky hand-drawn backgrounds, the surrealist feel, the enemies that turn into candy when defeated? I love all of that. But somehow the designs and the art style just don't seem to work together, and the story has all the urgency of watching paint dry. It's just so nonsensical that it's impossible to care about anything that's happening; it also doesn't help that the magical girl designs are the absolute worst part of the show.
Right now it feels like a half-baked version of Flip Flappers, a show that often felt surreal but managed to maintain a sense that what the characters were doing actually mattered on some level. I'm probably going to stick with it, just because I like some of the things the show is experimenting with, but I wouldn't blame anyone for bailing out; it's pretty much an incomprehensible, silly mess right now.
Anime-Gataris– There was something off about the art in the first episode that made me wonder if this was the studio's first anime, but it turns out Wao World, the studio responsible for Gataris' animation production, is prolific. The production company, DMM Pictures, is new, but I'm not sure how much that actually matters. The director, Kenshirou Mori, has relatively few credits, but one of them is the first episode of Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood. So, not exactly a newbie.
Normally I stay away from this kind of inside-baseball approach to anime, because I don't know much about what goes on in production, but something about this show really made me want to try to figure out what the hell was going on. It looked like the show was made by people who had watched anime and taken a lot of notes, but had never actually made it before; there was something just slightly off-kilter about the colors, the shading, the backgrounds, etc. Even the piece of stock animation that Arisu uses to summon her butler looks like it was made in 1998. By the second episode, things had smoothed out a bit, but I'm still wondering if the weird look the show started with was a real phenomenon, or if I'm just hallucinating.
In terms of the story, there isn't much to discuss. It's a show about people talking about anime, so it runs on in-jokes and nods to otaku culture. The main thing it has going for it is that it's making nods to very recent shows, so it's more topical than these in-jokey shows tend to be. I'm going to keep watching it, but it doesn't have a lot to offer unless you've been actively following anime for the last year or so.
The Ancient Magus Bride– I have to admit, I was distracted during this show because I couldn't help wondering what Anime Feminist was going to think of it. A young girl sells herself into slavery, to a huge monster dude who calls her pet names and treats her like a dog? Including forcibly bathing her? How could the show itself possibly compete with the entertainment value of feminists having a complete meltdown over it?
Turns out, the person who reviewed it for AniFem has read the manga, so was able to reassure feminists that the sundry "red flags" in this episode are not truly indicative of the story's overall quality. You would think this experience would lead AniFem to question their policy of "Screen all first episodes for problematic content and judge them accordingly," but apparently not. Remember, I may defend AniFem's right to exist, but that doesn't mean I have to think that anything they publish is any good.
Oh right, I just wasted time talking about another anime blog and not the show itself. So far, it's high quality overall, but it's a bit of a cypher to me…I need to see more before forming an opinion, which is rare for me because having opinions tends to be one of my strengths, really. I think I was just too distracted by wondering about how this show was going to be perceived to pay enough attention to the substance of it, and that's on me, not The Ancient Magus Bride.
Blend S– One of the Immutable Laws of Karen is that I will watch any anime that takes place in a coffee shop; keep in mind that I have watched not just one, but both seasons of Is the Order a Rabbit?, making me quite possibly the only straight woman on Earth who has done so. Maybe it's my love for coffee in general, maybe it's pure nostalgia for Polar Bear Cafe, but this is The Law; I must watch all of Blend S, because it takes place in a coffee shop. It doesn't matter if it's terrible.
Fortunately, it's not terrible. The premise sounds like it's going to be toying with some S&M vibes (since the main character is roleplaying a sadist as part of her gig at the cafe), but right now it's very reminiscent of the lighthearted workplace comedy of Working! and its sequels. The whole S&M hook is really just a tease so far, since the humor is about as adult, as err….well, Working! The only slimy thing about it is how Maika's boss continually hits on her, which is only really objectionable if you're on the "anime must never depict anything that would not be acceptable IN REAL LIFE" train. I don't know why anyone gets on that train, it's a boring-ass train.
Recovery of an MMO Junkie– Another anime about people who spend much of their lives inside an MMO, although this one has an unusually adult take on it. Instead of teenagers and college students, the characters on this show are definitely old enough to drink, so they can drink screwdrivers in front of the computer while they wonder why they're wasting their lives grinding for levels. (No one has actually done this one the show yet BTW, but it seems like something they would do.)
It's gender-swapped, with the female character playing a male avatar in the MMO and vice versa, and it looks like it's mainly going to focus on the romance between the lead characters. Normally, I would expect betrayal when they find out about each others' true identities, followed by inevitable reconciliation, but this show is sophisticated enough about MMO culture that I trust it to go somewhere more interesting with the relationship. It would be really cool if after the reveal, both players just went "Oh, well that's not surprising," and just continued playing as normal.
A Sister's All You Need– This show turned people off with an introductory scene that tried to portray little sister fetishism as disgustingly as possible, and succeeded, with stomach-turning results. Some concluded that the show was simply gross, but I think I get what they were doing by taking the little-sister trend to it's logical (if unsettling) conclusion. And the show features interesting relationships between insecure writers, who are all insecure for different reasons, and that's right in my wheelhouse.
This show actually reminds me of The Pet Girl of Sakurasou, which also received some early backlash for having a "gross" premise, which turned out to be entirely overblown. Now, it may turn out to be just another forgettable show trying to earn some points with shock value, but it could also be the little sister show that actually examines why people develop this obsession, which would be interesting. I would call it "a deconstruction of Oreimo and it's ilk," except A)I don't actually know what 'deconstruction' means and B)that sounds so pretentious I would have to slap myself. Let's just say that this show has the potential to do something different with its premise, and hope that it does.
Konohana Kitan– This feels incredibly bland to me. I think it's trying to be that kind of episodic occult show where the supernatural-creature-of-the-week is the focus, and the main characters are more there for consistency than anything else. (See: Mushi-Shi, The Morose Mononokean.) However, too much attention is given to the little fox girls in the foreground for the show to have that kind of oblique feeling, which would be okay if the fox girls weren't such boring characters.
It's cute as hell, and if you like anime girls with fox ears and/or tails, this could be your Show of the Decade, but I'm not sure if it has much to offer besides moe/fetish appeal; it doesn't have the sophisticated appeal of an occult anthology show, nor does it have strong enough characters to work as a slice of life show.
Love Is Like A Cocktail– As a big fan of I Can't Understand What My Husband is Saying, I was anticipating this one; anime about stable, married couples are rare and intriguing. However, it's hard to get excited about something that's three minutes long. I get that these kinds of shows are designed as shorts, and they're not meant to sustain full 22-minute episodes, but I still think three minutes is a little lean; I would prefer half-length episodes, like Muromi-san and Encouragement of Climb.
It's cute, and having each episode themed around a drink works nicely, but it makes me wish there was more to it.
March Comes in Like A Lion, Season 2– So, hahahahah funny story, I thought I had completed the first season of this show, only to realize that I somehow stopped watching it towards the end and had no memory of doing so. That may sound like it bodes ill for Lion, because if it were a good show, surely I would remember whether I had finished the season or not? However, I think of this show as being kind of like the Marcel Proust of anime: it's very artfully done and nuanced and everything, but sometimes you just can't take it anymore and need to put it down for about five months.
Anyway, now that I've had a nice break, I look forward to catching up on Lion and finding out what's new with Rei and his deranged sociopath of a stepsister.
Food Wars! The Third Plate– By now, you probably know whether you enjoy the Food Wars! brand of attractive and talented people having elaborately illustrated foodgasms over curry, or not. I found the formula was getting a little stale for me by the end of The Second Plate, but it's still amusing enough to keep up with, for now. I find myself beginning to genuinely dislike Soma though: like, why you gotta challenge EVERY chef on the show to a duel? Can't you just be secure in the knowledge that you cook good food,? Did you watch too much Top Chef as a toddler and it totally distorted your view of eating meals?
That's all for now; I may pick up a few more fall shows, in which case I'll write an Impressions: Part Deux post. However, it's entirely possible that that will never happen, in which case I would like you to forget that we ever had this conversation.
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4 thoughts on "Fall 2017 Anime Impressions"
cthellis says:
Blame Soma's pappy. HOW many duels had they fought by the beginning of Ep1? 489?
He has no choice!
You know what, you're right. It's been a while and I had forgotten that everything that happens on Food Wars! is entirely Soma's dad's fault. Poor Soma can't even conceive of life without cooking battles, and I was wrong to judge him.
Lifesongsoa says:
In MMOs Blue-haired male avatars are typically women. Pink-haired female avatars are typically men. The vast majority of purple-haired avatars belong to women. I have no science to back up any of that, but time and time again I've seen it played out to the point that it's become a natural expectation that is almost always correct. I could theory craft up a rant about why it might be that way, but I'd offend half the internet for trying to find the right words for it so I'll hold back. For whatever reason that's always how things seem to play out in MMOs.
In Recovery of an MMO Junkie our heroine is a purple-haired woman with a blue-haired male avatar and the pink-haired avatar belonging to her new friend is a man. Either the author of the original story is an observant person who knows MMO communities or they walked blindly into playing up the strange magical bonds that generally keep people away from breaking those color "rules". Assuming it was intentional, at least the blue and pink color choices, I think it's a safe bet these two characters won't panic too badly when they learn the truth. If anything I half expect the joke to be that everyone else in the guild already knows.
rjr2992 says:
I got to catch the preview for the Ancient Magus' Bride at my local theater about a month or two ago and was really looking forward to it. Have to wait for three weeks to catch up to where they left off but definitely my most anticipated for me.
Other than that its kind of a weak season for me, unless someone really sells me on something.
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