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Marjorie Louise Pickett, age 99, passed away Tuesday, January 11, 2022 at her home. She was born in Harrison County on September 12, 1922 to the late Orville William and Mary Lou Angel Dowd. Besides her parents she is preceded in death by her husband, Floyd Bannister Pickett; two sons, George Pickett, Gordon Pickett; and ten brothers and sisters.
She is survived by one son, David Wayne Pickett; one daughter, Mary (Gary) Taylor; one sister, Lena Walden; five grandchildren, BJ Sizemore, Ryan Pickett, Laura Pickett, Allen Picket, Lisa Pickett; and several great-grandchildren.
A funeral service will be held on Monday, January 17th at 2:00 PM, with visitation beginning at 12:00 PM. Burial will be at Robinson Family Cemetery on Stringtown Webber Rd. In lieu of flowers memorial contributions may be made to Bluegrass Care Navigators, 1317 US Hwy 27 N, Cynthiana, KY 41031.
View and sign the guest book www.warefuneralhome.com
Brenda Carol Fryman, age 71, passed away Monday, January 10, 2022, at Grand Haven Nursing Home in Cynthiana. She was born in Harrison County, on July 13, 1950, to the late John Marshall and Lillian Garnetta Mattox Fryman. Besides her parents she is preceded in death by one sister, Penny Fryman.
She is survived by one sister, Connie Sue Franklin; and five nieces and nephews, Susan Bryan, Joseph Murphy, Rebecca Murphy, Bryan Franklin, James Franklin.
A funeral service will be held on Saturday, January 15th, at 11:00 AM, at Ware Funeral Home. Visitation will be held Friday, January 14th, from 5:00 PM until 8:00 PM. Burial will be in Pythian Grove Cemetery. In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to Lair United Methodist Church, c/o Kathy Young, 2366 Oddville Sunrise Rd., Cynthiana, KY 41031.
Wanda Nichols Stone, age 74, passed away Friday, January 7, 2022 at Baptist Health in Lexington. She was born in Harrison County, on March 25, 1947, to the late Jonathan Nichols and Heelen Fryman Nichols.
She is survived by her husband of 51 years, Walter Stone; one son, Chris (Robin) Stone; one daughter, Kim Stone-Yonts; one sister, Pam Snapp; four grandchildren, Luke Stone, Alli Stone, Reagan Yonts, and Kendall Hacker.
Wanda was a veteran teacher for the Harrison County school system, teaching and caring for children for more than 30 years.
A funeral service will be held on Friday, January 14th, at 11:00 AM at Ware Funeral Home, with visitation beginning at 5:00 PM, on Thursday, January 13th. In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, 304 Whittington Rd., Suite 102, Louisville, KY 40222.
Peggy Sue Shields, age 60, passed away Thursday, January 6, 2022, at her home. She was born in Versailles, Kentucky, on August 25, 1961, to the late Raymond Shields and Polly Ann Garnett Fryman. Also preceded in death by two brothers, Bill Ireland, John Toomey; and a special friend, William Giles.
She is survived by her sister, Dorothy Toomey; a daughter, Starla Shields; grandchildren, Lacresia Hollingshed, Javonte Shields, Anastasia Shields, Alexis Shields, and Malachi Foxx; great granddaughter Leilani Hollingshed; companion, Paula Clay; and special friends, Shirley Wheeler, and Julie Harrington.
A funeral service will be held on Saturday, January 15th, at 12:00 PM at Cynthiana Baptist Church, with visitation beginning at 11:00 AM. View and sign the guest book www.warefuneralhome.com
Melvin M. French, age 72, passed away Sunday, January 2, 2022 in Huntersville, NC. He was born in Robertson County on January 16, 1949 to the late William Keith and Junita Myers French. Besides his parents he is preceded in death by a son, Donald Keith French, four brothers, Donald Keith French, Jerry Wayne French, Ray Eugene French, William Darrell French; and one sister, Emma Pratt.
He is survived by his wife, Kathy E. French; one son, Timothy Todd French; four stepchildren, Dawn (Dee) Minton, Roy (Audra) Jennings, James Jennings, Auri (Scott) Huisman; three sisters, Geneva French, Patty (Rick) Dixon, Dian (Billy) Beckett; two grandchildren, Dustin (Lyndsey) French, Kasey (Jeremy) Hamm; and four great-grandchildren, Coleman Paul French, Emma Grace Hamm, Sadie Elizabeth Hamm, Josie Kate Hamm.
A funeral service will be held on Sunday, January 16th at 3:00 PM at Ware Funeral Home, with visitation beginning at 2:00 PM. Pastor Sammy Harris will officiate the services. Burial will be in Kentontown Cemetery. In lieu of flowers memorial contributions may be made to a hospice location, or to a charity of your choice.
Richard Allan Lanthorn, age 57, passed away Saturday, January 1, 2022 at his home. He was born in Maysville, KY on December 17, 1964 to Edgar Allen and Barbara Kerr Shaw Lanthorn.
Besides his parents he is survived by his husband, James Michael Sallee; and two sons, Mason Lanthorn, Carter Lanthorn.
Services will be held at the convenience of the family. In lieu of flowers memorial contributions may be made to Cynthiana Christian Church Scholarship Fund, PO Box 236 Cynthiana, KY 41031.
Elizabeth Nichole Stanfield, 28, passed away Monday, January 3, 2022.
Born November 16, 1993 in Harrison County, she was a licensed CNA, a talented pianist and member of Wagoner's Chapel United Methodist Church.
Surviving are her mother, Lori Watkins (Jeffrey Alan) Seivers; her father, Robert (Antonia) Stanfield; 2 sons, Elliot Wayne & Cooper Alan Burkhart; her grandmothers, Bettye Watkins and Nina Stanfield; and 7 siblings.
She was preceded in death by her grandfathers, Jerry Wayne Watkins and Clyde Stanfield, and a sister, Olivia Stanfield.
A private celebration of Elizabeth's life will be held at Wagoner's Chapel United Methodist Church.
Memorial contributions to the Drake-Whaley-McCarty Funeral Home to assist with funeral costs are greatly appreciated by the family.
Opal Frances Noel Griffin, 77, wife of the late Paul Griffin, passed away Thursday, January 6, 2022 at Grand Haven Nursing Home.
Born August 10, 1944 in Scott County to the late Clarence & Gracie B. White Noel, she was a devoted homemaker who enjoyed needle-crafting and was of the Christian faith.
Surviving are 4 children: Connie (Ronald T., Jr.) Kiskaden, of Cynthiana, Elizabeth Mathison, of Hudson, Wisconsin, Wade (Wanda) Field, of Jordan, Minnesota, and William Clyde Field, of St. Bonifacius, Minnesota; 14 grandchildren and several great-grandchildren.
Also preceding her in death were 6 brothers & sisters: Maggie Logsdon, Ola Wright, Odella West, Melissa Noel, Bill Noel and John Noel.
Following cremation no services will be held.
©2019 by WCYN Broadcasting. Proudly created with Wix.com


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Two CEOs tell us where alternative lending is headed
Business Insider Intelligence
This story was delivered to BI Intelligence "Fintech Briefing" subscribers. To learn more and subscribe, please click here.
The alternative lending industry is hitting turbulence as it attempts to overcome its biggest challenge — securing capital for loans from investors as other assets become more competitive from a risk-return perspective.
We reached out to top brass from two alternative lenders to get more insight into how they're grappling with this problem and where the industry is headed.
Rob Frohwein, CEO at Kabbage. Kabbage is a US-based small business and consumer lender. The company doesn't offer a P2P lending marketplace like Lending Club; it originates and holds loans on its books rather than serving as an intermediary between borrowers and investors.
Marketplace vs. balance sheet: Frohwein tells us that investors in marketplace lenders focus on the risk of investments as much as potential returns, but returns are subject to the actual default rate of the loans they invest in. In contrast, the return is fixed for note-holders in the balance sheet lending model. For this reason, balance sheet lenders have a more stable source of capital because investors know the return they're going to get. "Marketplace appears to continue to struggle especially in the consumer market where margins are thin and alternatives are plenty," says Frohwein.
The outlook for alt lending: Frohwein says that alt lenders can be successful in both good and challenging economies, but that it's critical firms do not assume past market behavior is indicative of the future. Alt lenders need to have multiple liquidity options in place, even if that means making a trade-off on their balance sheets to achieve such flexibility. "I can tell you the need for a diversified strategy is painfully obvious," Frohwein explains. "And I don't think we've seen everything yet. If a credit cycle does occur, those that don't have reasonable margins in their business and adequate sources of capital will have serious challenges."
Ron Suber, president at Prosper Marketplace. US-based Prosper offers a P2P marketplace for consumers and closely competes with Lending Club. Suber says that Prosper has no plans to pursue an on balance sheet model.
Marketplace vs. balance sheet: Suber says that "there is no magic answer," there are three models in the industry — on balance sheet only, marketplace only, and hybrid — and it's not clear that one is better than the others. But Suber is confident in Prosper's marketplace model. "We've found investors that have committed to us in the marketplace model and banks who love the ability to work with us in a nonbalance sheet format to get the yield and the risk that they require."
Industry outlook: Suber is more optimistic than Frohwein and suspects that the recent slew of bad news is behind the industry. "The insatiable quest for yield around the world is getting even stronger. So more and more pensions, endowments, foundations, and smart money is starting to find the platforms that are institutional, that have enterprise risk solutions, that support securitization." But while Suber expects profitability to increase for the top platforms, he also expects that the industry will thin out.
Alternative lending is particularly important for small businesses, which represent 99% of US companies, 54% of total sales, and 55% of all jobs, according to the US Small Business Administration.
These businesses need capital in order to grow, but small businesses are underfunded — only half of small businesses with $100,000 to $1 million of annual revenue received at least some of the financing they applied for from large banks in late 2015. This is partially because banks have retreated from this segment because issuing loans to small businesses using the traditional underwriting model is expensive. This leaves a massive amount of unfulfilled loans that we estimate reached $96.5 billion in Q4 2015.
Alternative lending companies have stepped in to capitalize on the opportunity available in helping meet more small business' lending needs. Alternative small business lending platforms use machine learning and digital tools to extend credit to a wide array of small businesses quickly and efficiently, particularly to those that have been rejected by banks. Alternative small business lending companies provide digital platforms that connect small business borrowers to capital using nontraditional means.
We estimate that alternative small business lenders originated $5 billion and had a 4.3% share of the small business lending market in the US in 2015. But alternative small business lending platforms will originate $52 billion and gain a 20.7% share of the total market by 2020, driven by the continued growth of new players, increased borrower awareness and interest, and most importantly, major partnerships with big banks.
Evan Bakker, research analyst for BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has compiled a detailed report on small business alternative lending that analyzes the market opportunity for alternative lenders, forecasts the market share and volume growth of alternative lending platforms, profiles key players, and addresses the main industry risks.
Here are some key takeaways from the report:
Alternative lending platforms are in a position to capitalize on this underfunding and also take share from banks. These companies use machine learning and digital tools to extend credit to a wide array of small businesses quickly and efficiently. We estimate that alternative lending companies' share of the small business lending market in the US will reach 20.7% by 2020.
Alternative lenders are now partnering with banks and this will propel growth going forward. New lenders are finding opportunities to offer white-label services to major banks. We expect banking partnerships, like the one between JPMorgan and OnDeck, to add 7.7 percentage points to the alternative lending industry's market share by 2020.
A flurry of new lenders have entered the market, but it's still early innings. A handful of small business lenders, from Funding Circle to Credibly, have entered the market and this is creating challenges as customer acquisition costs rise and alternative lending companies struggle to differentiate themselves.
In full, the report:
Forecasts the market share and volume growth of the small business alternative lending sector, and breaks down the main growth drivers.
Explains why small businesses are underfunded, and quantifies the market opportunity for alternative lenders.
Defines the different types of platforms that alternative lenders employ, including their revenue models.
Lists the advantages and disadvantages that alternative lenders have compared to traditional players.
Overviews the key players in the industry and identifies their growth factors as well as the pain points limiting their growth.
Pinpoints the key risks that could undermine the success of alternative platforms
To get your copy of this invaluable guide, choose one of these options:
Subscribe to an ALL-ACCESS Membership with BI Intelligence and gain immediate access to this report AND over 100 other expertly researched deep-dive reports, subscriptions to all of our daily newsletters, and much more. >> START A MEMBERSHIP
Purchase the report and download it immediately from our research store. >> BUY THE REPORT
The choice is yours. But however you decide to acquire this report, you've given yourself a powerful advantage in your understanding of small business alternative lending.
More: BI Intelligence BI Intelligence Content Marketing Fintech Alternative Lending

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


AUGUSTA, Ga. -- Four-time Masters champion Tiger Woods stalked early. Jon Rahm fussed and fumed his way to a share of the lead. Adam Scott, the 2013 champion, made a late rush to the top.
They were all passed on what might be the last sunny afternoon at the week at the Augusta National Golf Club on Thursday by an all-star cast of competitors spread out among the final three threesomes who rained one spectacular shot after another into the greens and poured as many clutch putts into the holes.
When the last slivers of sunlight faded, Brooks Koepka, who has won two of the last three major championships and three of the last six, made a strong surge to adding a Masters title.
Koepka birdied four holes in a row from Nos. 12 to 15 and with a bogey-free 66 tied Bryson DeChambeau for first place at 6-under par.
Koepka has made his last 17 cuts in major championships and last year won the U.S. Open for the second year in a row, later adding the PGA.
DeChambeau, the analytical four-time PGA Tour winner with such a strong sense of golf history that he devoured every book he could find on Augusta National founder Bobby Jones, nearly holed out at Nos. 16 and 18 and chipped in for birdie at No. 17.
His approach shot from 200 yards out at No. 18 then rolled onto the green and kissed off the flagstick, coming to rest on the edge of the cup.
He said what everyone was thinking.
"I guess I should have taken the flag out," he said.
Three-time Masters champion Phil Mickelson birdied three of his last four holes, including an 8-footer at No. 18, and is alone in third with a 67. Dustin Johnson drained a 30-foot putt at No. 11 on his way to a 68, tying Ian Poulter for fourth.
Scott and Rahm wound up dipping from a tie for first to a tie for sixth at 3-under 69 with Kevin Kisner, Kiradechi Aphibarnrat and first-time Masters player Justin Harding of South Africa.
Woods shot 70 in the first round of the Masters for the sixth time in his career. On three of those occasions, he won.
Woods, trying to win a fifth green jacket 14 years after his fourth, was 1-under through 12 holes and then energized the patrons on the second nine with birdies at Nos. 13 and 14 to get a share of the lead.
His curling 25-foot birdie putt at the 14th sent a shock wave through the course with the realization that Woods had a piece of the lead at the Masters.
But he didn't sustain the momentum, making a tepid par at No. 15 after hitting his second shot over the green and failing to get his third shot onto the putting surface.
He said the ball was on a root and had to guard against pitching the ball into the water with a bladed shot.
"Probably the hardest shot I had all day," Woods said.
He bogeyed the 17th after hitting his tee shot into the trees on the right — and missing a 9-foot par attempt — but made a good par at No. 18 from the fairway bunker.
Woods continued to have putting issues and missed a 5-footer for par at No. 5 and a putt of similar length for birdie at No. 8.
Several pre-tournament favorites had difficult days and will have an even more difficult time making up ground if weather forecasts calling for rain the next three days hold true.
Rory McIlroy may have to wait another year before completing the career grand slam as he posted a 73. He missed half the 14 fairways and needed 32 putts on a day in which he bogeyed the first two and the last two holes of the second nine, with three birdies in between.
World No. 1-ranked Justin Rose, who lost to Sergio Garcia in a playoff in the 2017 Masters, bogeyed the last three holes on the first nine for a 40, then missed a birdie opportunity at No. 16 before finishing with a 75. He hit only five fairways.
Defending champion Patrick Reed hit only eight fairways and eight greens and shot 73.
And while no one was projecting 2015 champion Jordan Spieth among the pre-tournament favorites, he continued to struggle with a 40 going out on his way to a 75 that matched his highest score at Augusta.
Spieth has not finished higher than a tie for 35th in a stroke-play event on the PGA Tour this season.


And so on for 30 minutes…after 30 minutes you hit that runners high you hear so much about! No, no that never happened… I'm pretty sure that whole idea is a lie made up by the producers of sport drinks with the words EXTREME…and INSANITY in them.
No, what DID happen though was me making it through…alive. And I think that's a pretty good start, all things considered.


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420356 Praamzius é um objeto transnetuniano que está localizado no cinturão de Kuiper, uma região do Sistema Solar. Ele é classificado como um cubewano. O mesmo possui uma magnitude absoluta de 5,6 e tem um diâmetro com cerca de 334 km. O astrônomo Mike Brown liste este corpo celeste em sua página na internet como um candidato a possível planeta anão.

Descoberta
420356 Praamzius foi descoberto no dia 23 de janeiro de 2012 pelos astrônomos K. Cernis, e R. P. Boyle.

Nome
Este objeto inicialmente usou a designação provisória de  até receber o nome de Praamzius, o deus lituano do céu, paz e amizade. Essa designação permanente foi atribuída em 22 de fevereiro de 2016.

Órbita
A órbita de 420356 Praamzius tem uma excentricidade de 0,002 e possui um semieixo maior de 42,962 UA. O seu periélio leva o mesmo a uma distância de 40,111 UA em relação ao Sol e seu afélio a 45,601 UA.

Ver também
 Objeto transnetuniano
 Lista de objetos transnetunianos

Ligações externas

Cubewanos
Objetos do cinturão de Kuiper
Candidatos a planeta anão
Objetos transnetunianos
Objetos astronômicos descobertos em 2012

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Blackberry market share at all time low 0.6%, is it finally dead?
Blackberry used to dominate the smartphone market. With their low priced devices with keyboards, the then called RIM was together with Nokia the leader in smartphone sales and market share until 2008. In 2007 Steve Jobs revealed the first touch-screen smartphone called the iPhone and this is where it all went downhill for Blackberry.
Q1 2014 market share reports claim that the once big Blackberry currently has just 0.6% market share and has shipped just 1.9 million units during the first quarter of 2014. The last 2 years Blackberry has fired thousands of employees in an effort to reduce expenses but it is yet to determine if Blackberry is able to generate enough revenue from handsets to keep it self alive over the next year or so. When the first touch screen devices appeared, Blackberry kept focusing on devices with keyboards something that has ultimately let them to their death.
Can the new Blackberry Passport save the company?
The latest BlackBerry Z10 and the BlackBerry Q10 haven't been able to save Blackberry from losing market share, this has forced the company to look at things differently and combine the best of both smartphones to create one heck of a device called the BlackBerry Passport.
The oddly shaped device features some impressive specs with a 1,440 × 1,440 pixels square 4.5 inch display, QWERTY keyboard Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor, clocking in at 2.5GHz, along with 3GB of RAM and a 8 Megapixel camera. The device is expected to launch some time in September. Many analyst are saying the Passport could save blackberry due to its great screen size, keyboard and high specs, what do you think? Is blackberry dead? Let us know!


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Q: Solving Second-Order partial derivatives Find the values of $a$ and $b$ in $ξ = x +ay$, $η = x +by$ such that they transform the partial differential
equation :
$$ \frac{\partial^2u}{\partial x^2} + 4\left(\frac{\partial^2u}{\partial x\partial y}\right) + 3\left(\frac{\partial^2u}{\partial y^2}\right) =0$$
into
$$\frac{\partial^2u}{\partial ξ\partial η} = 0$$
I'm aware how to solve simpler derivatives like $\frac{\partial u}{\partial y} $ and $\frac{\partial u}{\partial x}$ but I dont understand how to do the $\left(\frac{\partial^2u}{\partial y^2}\right)$ and $\left(\frac{\partial^2u}{\partial x^2}\right)$ derivatives.
I'd appreciate if someone could show me the process.

A: We can expand partial derivatives w.r.t. $x,y$ in terms of $\xi,\eta$ using the chain rule.
$$\frac {\partial u}{\partial x}=\frac{\partial u}{d\partial xi}\frac{\partial \xi}{\partial x}+\frac{\partial u}{\partial \eta}\frac{\partial \eta}{\partial x}=\frac{\partial u}{\partial \xi}+\frac{\partial u}{\partial \eta}$$
$$\frac {\partial u}{\partial y}=\frac{\partial u}{\partial \xi}\frac{\partial \xi}{\partial y}+\frac{\partial u}{\partial \eta}\frac{\partial \eta}{\partial y}=a\frac{\partial u}{\partial \xi}+b\frac{\partial u}{\partial \eta}$$
We can also expand second partials the same way. Since we've made no assumptions about $u$, we can substitute any function we want (including our expansion of $\frac{\partial u}{\partial x}$) in its place. We can assume the mixed partials are equal in this case.
$$\frac {\partial ^2u}{\partial x^2}=\frac \partial {\partial x}\left(\frac{\partial u}{\partial x}\right)$$
$$=\frac \partial {\partial x}\left(\frac{\partial u}{\partial \xi}+\frac{\partial u}{\partial \eta}\right)$$
$$=\frac \partial {\partial \xi}\left(\frac{d\partial }{\partial \xi}+\frac{\partial u}{\partial \eta}\right)+\frac \partial {\partial \eta}\left(\frac{\partial u}{\partial \xi}+\frac{\partial u}{\partial \eta}\right)$$
$$=\frac{\partial ^2u}{\partial \xi^2}+2\frac{\partial ^2u}{\partial \xi \partial \eta}+\frac{\partial ^2u}{\partial \eta^2}$$
Performing the same computations for the other second partials gives:
$$\frac {\partial ^2u}{\partial y^2}=a^2\frac{\partial ^2u}{\partial \xi^2}+2ab\frac{\partial ^2u}{\partial \xi \partial \eta}+b^2\frac{\partial ^2u}{\partial \eta^2}$$
$$\frac {\partial ^2u}{\partial x\partial y}=a\frac{\partial ^2u}{\partial \xi^2}+(a+b)\frac{\partial ^2u}{\partial \xi \partial \eta}+b\frac{\partial ^2u}{\partial \eta^2}$$
Plugging these into the DE gives:
$$(1+4a+3a^2)\frac{\partial ^2u}{\partial \xi^2}+(2+4a+4b+6ab)\frac{\partial ^2u}{\partial \xi \partial \eta}+(1+4b+b^2)\frac{\partial ^2u}{\partial \eta^2}=0$$
Here we want the 1st and 3rd coefficients to be $0$, which gives us $a=-1,-3$ and $b=-1,-3$. However, notice that the $\frac{\partial ^2u}{\partial \xi \partial \eta}$ coefficient will be zero if we choose the same value for $a$ and $b$. This means we should choose $a=-1,\ b=-3$.
($a=-3,\ b=-1$ is also possible, which will simply reverse our choices of $\xi$ and $\eta$. Since the equation is symmetric, nothing would really change.)
Evaluating for these values gives:
$$4\frac{\partial ^2u}{\partial \xi d\eta}=0$$
which of course, is equivalent to the equation we want:
$$\frac{\partial ^2u}{\partial \xi d\eta}=0$$

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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Vacoas-Phoenix ist mit 106.253 Einwohnern (Stand 2016) die zweitgrößte Stadt auf der Insel Mauritius und liegt auf einer Hochebene im Zentrum der Insel im Bezirk Plaines Wilhems. Die Stadt liegt zwischen Curepipe und Quatre Bornes, etwa 16 km südlich von Port Louis. Entstanden ist die Stadt 1963 durch die Zusammenlegung der Orte Vacoas und Phoenix.

Geschichte
Das britische Marineamt hatte in Vacoas ihr Hauptquartier. Für den ersten Inlandsflug am 2. Juni 1922 wurde ein britischer Doppeldecker aus dem Ersten Weltkrieg auf dem Seeweg nach Mauritius verschifft und in Vacoas wieder zusammengesetzt. Dieser Flug stellt den Beginn der Geschichte der Luftfahrt in Mauritius dar.

Einwohnerentwicklung
Die folgende Übersicht zeigt die Einwohnerzahlen nach dem jeweiligen Gebietsstand seit der Volkszählung 1983.

Städtepartnerschaften
Partnerstädte von Vacoas-Phoenix sind:

  Pune
  Antsirabe
  Sainte-Suzanne

Klimatabelle

Wirtschaft
Phoenix Beverages, die größte Brauerei in Mauritius, hat ihren Sitz in Vacoas-Phoenix.

Persönlichkeiten
 Anerood Jugnauth (1930–2021), Politiker
 Pravind Jugnauth (* 1961), Politiker
 Kailash Purryag (* 1947), Politiker

Weblinks

 Gemeindeverwaltung von Vacoas-Phoenix

Einzelnachweise

Ort in Mauritius
Ort in Afrika
Distrikt Plaines Wilhems


Jennifer Lopez faced backlash on social media for her lead participation in a tribute recognizing a historic African-American record label.
The Grammy Awards air February 10 — just five days before Congress faces another partial government shutdown deadline.
The 'X-Files,' like the Emmys Grammys, NFL and CNN, is the latest Hollywood product to collapse in the ratings due to anti-Trump hatred.
Recording Academy president and CEO Neil Portnow says he regrets saying women need to "step up" to win Grammy awards, after the Sunday's ceremony saw male artists take home an overwhelming majority of the major awards.
Two out of every three Donald Trump voters turn off awards show when actors, singers and other entertainers start preaching politics, according to new data published by the Hollywood Reporter.
The Grammys featured a performer namedrop "President Agent Orange" and a presenter urging the audience to google a transgender teen. The made-for-television event lost one percent of its ratings over last year and four percent over 2015.
Rapper Busta Rhymes referred to President Donald Trump as "President Agent Orange" and accused him of "perpetuating evil" throughout the United States during his performance alongside Tribe Called Quest Sunday night at the 59th annual Grammy Awards.


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Insta-Branding and the Commercial Quickie!
Presented by Blaine and Honey Parker
LBS Branding Experts and founders of Slow Burn Marketing
In the oversaturated information age, the business with the best brand sticks out and wins big. But what happens when you have a client with an ill-defined brand–or worse, no brand? And they have to be on the air ASAP. We've all been there.
Here's one way to figure out the brand and write the first commercial in about half an hour–laying the foundation for all the advertising to follow. Honey and Blaine Parker are going to show you the work they each did for a real business in about half an hour. Two different brands. Two different approaches to the commercial. And two different ways to take the advertising for an ongoing campaign. It's simple to do–and can make your job easier and more profitable.
Blaine has been on broadcast stations from coast to coast. He has appeared in national campaigns for brands like Bud Light, State Farm Auto Insurance, Air Touch Cellular, Coldwell Banker, TJ Maxx, Furniture Row, Little Caesar's Pizza, GoToMeeting, and Cheez-Its. As a regular voiceover performer for NBC TV, he has been heard on NBC-owned & operated stations across the country and recently ended a two-year run as the voice of Papa John's Pizza in the UK.
Beginning life as a New York advertising art director, Honey quickly switched over to copywriting. (Better hours.) The peak of her career on Madison Avenue was as Senior V.P. at the iconic Grey Advertising. Beckoned by a career as an LA freelancer, Honey answered, servicing both powerhouse agencies and creative boutiques. Her agency roster includes Saatchi & Saatchi, Rubin Postaer, Deutsch, Ogilvy, McCann, J. Walter, Team One, David & Goliath, and Donat/Wald.
Your entire sales team is encouraged to join this challenging session. See you there!


When the short film "Of God and Dogs" took the Short Film Grand Jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival in January, no one should have been surprised. A powerful piece that explores murder, guilt and an unusual quest for redemption, it was the kind of film that that seemed destined for critical acclaim. But the filmmakers weren't some budding auteurs fresh out of film school. "Of God and Dogs" was produced by the Abounaddara Collective, a group of Syrian social activists and documentary makers based in Damascus who decided to combat the standard media narratives about the conflict in the country with intimate portraits of anonymous citizens—both inside Syria and in exile. The short films, ranging in length from 26 seconds to 12 minutes, address themes as varied as a woman's reasons for taking off the veil to the confession of a young Free Syrian Army soldier who killed a man he knew to be innocent—the subject of "Of Gods and Dogs." New videos are posted every Friday on Vimeo.
Abounaddara is the Arabic nickname for a man with glasses, a reference that reflects the peculiar take on the world when it is seen through the eyes of filmmakers more interested, according to the collective's manifesto, in "stories of everyday life [rather] than in grand narratives." Though the content isn't overtly political, members of the collective prefer to remain anonymous, a stance that has its roots in the pre-war days when the artistic freedom of Abounaddara's filmmakers was at risk of being curtailed by government censorship. Founded four years ago, most of the collective's pieces are posted online only. The subjects are unnamed, as is the location of filming. Most take place in Syria, or among Syrian refugees in neighboring countries.
The Smiters for Damascus from abounaddara on Vimeo.
Another piece, ostensibly about a traditional fabric painter in an old Syrian souk, captures a spirited exchange in which a potential client asks for a widows' discount. The fabric painter tartly responds that he is a widower too, at which point the widow's daughter weighs in with the offer of her mother in marriage, as a way to score a cheaper price. Like all the other pieces by the collective, there is no narration. The subjects reveal their characters through their own voices, and invite the viewer to join in their laughter as the mix of commerce and marriage proposals takes an uproarious turn.
The Stamp Man's Last Stand from abounaddara on Vimeo.
While some of the documentaries are clearly well produced affairs complete with music and deft editing, most are uncut and unrehearsed. They are delivered straight to camera, visible evidence of the preoccupations of a people determined not to be defined by war, but to live in spite of it. "War or no war, we're still hip, right?" a beautician and teacher asks her class as she demonstrates how to craft an elegant wedding updo in a darkened bunker.


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Q: Atomic writes with Ghostscript output devices I'm using Ghostscript to convert PDF pages to PNG using the following on the command line:
gs -dDOINTERPOLATE -sDEVICE=pnggray -r200x200 -o 'page%%d.png' filename.pdf

My intent is to take in large PDFs and do other work with the PNGs as they are built, cleaning them up after I'm done. However, it seems that the output PNGs aren't generated atomically -- that is, they become available before they're complete. Is there a way to get Ghostscript to generate these files atomically, or some way I can access them as the command runs without encountering incomplete files?

A: No, there isn't. Ghostscript opens the file for writing immediately that the page begins. It write the data either in one large lump when the page is complete, or in a series of horizontal stripes (at high page sizes or resolutions).
Since it might be writing the page in a series of bands, it has to open the file up front.
You could write an application around Ghostscript using the API, that will produce a callback on page completion which you could then use to trigger your other processing.


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What to do about Toronto's neglected green spaces
JOHN LORINC
Helena Grdadolnik has launched an ambitious international design competition for the Green Line project.Moe Doiron/The Globe and Mail
In the constellation of Toronto's public spaces, the string of forlorn parkettes extending along the midtown rail corridor have long had a decidedly back-of-beyond feel – a few desultory playgrounds, community gardens and dusty parking lots situated in the shadow of a major hydro corridor.
Residents know that the strip, which abuts a partially gentrified west-end neighbourhood, is so far off the radar that contractors use it to dump construction debris. "It just appears at night where our kids are going to play the next morning," mused Evan Castel, co-chair of the Davenport Neighbourhood Association, as he strolled one morning through a park located close to several auto body shops and a bike store famous for its espresso machine. "Neglect breeds neglect."
Most residents' groups would respond to such incidents with neighbourhood watch programs or a push for new playground equipment.
But Mr. Castel and urban designer Helena Grdadolnik have set their sights higher, launching an ambitious international design competition meant to generate visions of an extended linear park that swoops south from Earlscourt Park and runs east to the Bridgman Transformer Station, located where Davenport Avenue ducks under the railway tracks.
The goal – a contiguous cycling and pedestrian corridor – is an especially challenging assignment because the route is frequently interrupted by difficult-to-cross arterials, retaining walls, and the TTC's sprawling Hillcrest yard. It also abuts a busy rail corridor used both by freight trains and urban adventurers.
Their project, dubbed "The Green Line," is a deliberate attempt to replicate the success of other post-industrial linear parks such as the West Toronto Railpath, an award-winning space that runs along the Georgetown South corridor, and New York's High Line, a once crumbling elevated rail spur that was converted into an electrifying park that weaves through Manhattan's red-hot west-side warehouse district. Both projects trace back to local ideas competitions.
The Green Line traverses a dense, diverse urban landscape of row houses, aging warehouses, hidden artists' studios, condos, theatres and a community college. The area is also in the throes of a substantial transition. South of the tracks, the city is trying to figure out how to respond to development pressure on Dupont.
Ms. Grdadolnik, a Workshop Architecture associate director who once managed an international design contest for the alleyways in Vancouver's Gastown, hopes that this "ideas competition" will attract entries from all over the world. "Some will be unbuildable and some will be really realistic," she predicted.
"Give us an Amsterdam perspective, give us a Cairo perspective," added Mr. Castel. "You don't have to be here to help with this vision."
(Submissions are due by early February, with the winners announced in May. The plans of all the finalists will be posted publicly in one of the parkettes along the route and published in the spring issue of Spacing Magazine.)
The genesis of the competition plan was a small city landscaping project, completed earlier this year, to remove a fence and shrubs from the corner of a parkette near Shaw Street that had become a well-concealed hang-out for drug dealers. "Suddenly people realized there was a tree here, and benches," said Mr. Castel.
As residents worked on this little upgrade, they realized the city had no overarching plan for connecting these spaces, even though many cyclists and pedestrians now use them as an alternative east-west route. While the city has been financing similar small projects elsewhere along the Green Line, there's no sense of coherence, nor any attempt to build a continuous route, said Mr. Castel.
While such exercises often get bogged down in plodding public consultation processes, Ms. Grdadolnik sees the Green Line contest as a way to spark the public's imagination and persuade the city to develop a master plan to guide future open-space investments. "If you have a plan," she said, "at least you can be strategic."
John Lorinc is a senior editor at Spacing Magazine.
Follow us on Twitter: @globetorontoOpens in a new window
Parks and revolution: Toronto residents take back their green spaces
Parks and wrecks: Why Toronto's playing fields are in such rough shape
As condos rise, pressure on urban parks grow
Toronto's Underpass Park aims to turn neglected space into community hub


I know I promised this post on making fabric tangrams on Saturday but I ran into a little problem! I had it all set to go and was just uploading the photos when Blogger informed me that I'd run out of photo space!!! It seems that my plan of lazily uploading giant pictures without re-sizing them had finally caught up on me. Newbie bloggers take note - re-size!!
Now back to the task at hand. On Friday I gave you my Friday Freebie - a tangram booklet and template. I'm a huge fan of tangrams but I started thinking how I could make them even more fun. The answer - make them out of fabric instead of card! :) I originally saw this pin of a "tangram-esque fabric puzzle" on pinterest from Beauty All Around. It's amazing, she made 42 little coloured fabric squares! There's no way I'd have the patience for that but I figured I could give a normal 7 piece tangram set a go.
Click here to download the templates I used. I made mine yellow on one side and red on the other but you could do them all in different colours or just use one. I cut out the bigger template and traced around each piece twice, once on red fabric and once on yellow. I used the smaller template to cut out the wadding to stuff them.
Then pin the pieces right sides together and sew around the sides. Make sure to leave a gap so you can turn and stuff them. The trickiest part for me was sewing the corners on the triangular ones.
Then turn the pieces the right way out and stuff them with your little pieces of wadding. Use a ladder stitch to neatly sew up the gaps and then you're all done!
And of course do download my little booklet. It has 12 shadow puzzles in it with the solutions at the end. And it's free! I made a little bag to keep the pieces in and the booklet fits in perfectly too if you print multiple pages on one piece of paper.
- This really should be a thing I have not learnt, I still left too tiny a gap and had zero fun turning and stuffing some of my tangrams. Will I ever learn?
- But I did learn lots about re-sizing pictures and avoiding paying Google any money. ha ha Love you really Google.
- And I learnt that fabric tangrams are so much more fun to play with than card ones. I made these as a gift but might have to keep them and make another set!
Friday Freebie #3 and a Huge Sale!!
But before we get to that I've got some exciting news! I'm participating in my first TPT sale and it's a big one!! This Monday and Tuesday (26th and 27th) there will be 28% off everything in my store!! So have a look at some of the new things I've added, go put them on your wishlist and then head back over next Monday or Tuesday and grab a bargain!
Gingerbread man Positional Language Pack. This pack come in two versions so make sure you get the one that's right for you! This one is great for young children and ESL/EAL learners who need to practice positional language. It contains flashcards, worksheets and activities to learn and practice using words like "under", "beside", "behind" etc. Children will love working out where the gingerbread man is hiding!
This pack also come in a version as Gaeilge. It can be hard to find cute resources for teaching Irish online and the ones that do exist are either very expensive or aren't very attractive. But don't worry, I'm working on solving this problem! One pack at a time. :) So if you're planning on covering positional language like "ar an", "os comhair" etc. in the next few weeks then this Christmas themed pack is perfect for you!
And finally, this week's FREEBIE!! :) Fun with Tangrams - Click here to download! This pack contains tangram piece templates, ideas for use and a booklet with 12 puzzles and solutions. And it's free!!
You can see in the picture that I used the template to create a fabric set of pieces. They are so much more fun to play with than paper or card ones. I made them as a gift but I'm already thinking I'll just have to make a second set and keep these for myself! Check back tomorrow and I'll show you how I made them.
Want more freebies? Check out Friday Freebie #1 and Friday Freebie #2!
- People love a good freebie. :) And hopefully they love a good sale too!
Liebster Award and a Giveaway!
I've been nominated not once but twice for the Liebster Award! :) Thanks T'onna @ Navy Wifey Peters and Shannon @ Sewing Barefoot. The Liebster Award is given by bloggers to up and coming bloggers who have less than 200 followers. It is to show new bloggers that they are appreciated and to help spread the word about new blogs.
- You must post 11 random things about yourself.
- Answer the questions that the nominator set for you.
- Create 11 questions for the people you nominate.
- Choose 11 blogs you love (with less than 200 followers) and link them in your post.
- No tag back (but please leave me a comment on this post with the URL to your Liebster post so I can learn more about you)!
1. I've been purposefully being vague and not giving away too much about myself here but I guess it might be time to divulge a little more! :) So number 1 - my name is Karen.
2. I live in Ireland. Which is lovely most of the time but way too cold and wet at others!
3. I originally started this blog to keep myself amused as I recovered from an illness. It definitely served that purpose and I'm pretty sure it's here to stay!
5. I keep telling myself I'm going to learn how to crochet but somehow manage to find a million other things that need to be done first.
8. I used to live in Bangkok, Thailand and might hopefully be moving back there soon!
9. I am a terrible singer. Like hands over your ears, panes of glass breaking, I'd rather scrape my nails down a blackboard terrible. ha ha. Thankfully little kids don't mind too much and nobody else has to hear me sing!
10. I still haven't learnt how to drive. Another thing sitting pretty on my to do list.
11. I spent a month volunteering in an orphanage in Thailand and googled to see if any of the adoptive parents had blogs so I could follow along and see how the kids were doing. Thus began my adventures in blogging!
What's your favorite book? I love to read. But I tend to be a bit feast or famine about it! Haven't been reading too much lately as all my free time is going into this blog and my TPT store. But my all time favourite book is "We Need to Talk about Kevin" by Lionel Shriver. Or any of her books really.
Do you have any children? If so, how many and what are their names & ages? Nope no kids!
What's your favorite season and why? I love Christmas but hate the cold and dark so I'm gonna go with summer. I'm all about the sunshine and beach time!
Are you a dog or cat person? Cat. Definitely cat. :) I like dogs, and will probably own one someday but they are a lot of work and too jumpy and dirty for my liking! Cats on the other hand are always clean and are independent enough to be able to cope on their own when I go away for the weekend. And you may have to work a bit more for their affection but that just makes you appreciate it more!
Where do you buy most of your clothes? I'm a huge fan of H&M, Penneys, Forever 21 and Zara. Basically the only shops I can afford to buy stuff in at the moment!
2. I'm giving you a thousand euro - what are you going to do with it?
3. Do you like to travel? What's your dream holiday destination?
4. What achievement are you most proud of? Permission to brag!
5. If time wasn't an issue what new activity would you take up?
6. What's your favourite Christmas tradition?
8.What's your favourite pin on Pinterest?
9. A few easy ones to end with - chocolate or crisps/chips?
11. Real books or ebooks?
Don't forget to comment on here and leave me a link when you've answered!! :) It is a little time consuming but it's nice to get to know a bit more about the people behind the blogs!
My CVC Word Jigsaw Center is included in pack number 4 so be sure to enter that one!! :) And if you're already following me then you don't even need to do anything new, just head on over and enter.
Or click here to buy one for only $3! :) It contains the letters of the alphabet on jigsaw pieces and a bunch of work mats to practice making CVC words on.
I promise to do my very own giveaway when I reach 100 followers so if you're not following already be sure to join up! :) And don't worry, there will be more recipes and crafts coming in the next few days too!
- The power of social networking and collaboration.
Not my best photography but I was on route to deliver them before I realised I hadn't taken any pictures and din't have my good camera with me.
- Tiny little things like wing mirrors are impossible to turn the right way out!! If you're thinking of making some of these make sure to make your wing mirrors and wheels way bigger than you think necessary! I lost most of mine to the seam allowance and then had a nightmare turning them.
Friday Freebie time again! :) Here's a link to last week's post in case you missed it, but basically the idea is that once a week I'll give you a little update on the new things I've added to my TPT store and give you a little freebie. Publicity for me, free stuff for you!
Now as you may I noticed I spell it "colour" but don't worry, I made two packs! The US version uses the spellings "color" and "gray" and the Irish/UK version uses "colour" and "grey". And if there's any other spelling variants that I missed out on please let me know!!
The pack has two purposes. First it contains 12 large jigsaw pieces in different colours with the colour word written on them. These can be used to make a wall display to reinforce spelling, reading and colour identification. And secondly it contains smaller pieces and a set of worksheets. These can be used to explore colour mixing. Slot the pieces together like a jigsaw to show what happens when you mix the colours.
I also made a Jigsaw Piece Numbers pack. This one works great as a maths centre. It contains a set of green jigsaw pieces with the numbers 0 -20 and multiples of 10 up to 100 on them and a set of yellow pieces with maths symbols on them. They can be used for free play and exploration, allowing kids to create their own number sentences.
Or they can be used in a more structured way with the worksheets I've included. There's 6 worksheets for working on number bonds and simple arithmetic and a set of 7 worksheets for working on greater than/less than.
And finally - this week's freebie. It's a pack of 13 free .png borders for you to use to dress up your worksheets and other teaching documents. Feel free to use them for whatever you like, just include a link to my blog or TPT store if it's for commercial use. I've actually had this up in my store for a few days but added more borders (including some Christmassy/wintery ones!) to it last night especially for you guys.
I'm working on a great freebie for next week. It's kinda related to jigsaw puzzles but begins with a T... cryptic eh? ha ha If you guess what it is I'll send you a copy first!
Oh and I only have 10 followers on TPT and much as I love and appreciate those 10 I'd love some more!! Pretty please follow along if you download my freebies. :) Or start your very own TPT store and join in the fun!
- Hmm lots of things this week actually. I found the forums on the TPT website and learnt lots about marketing and pricing my products. And I joined my first collaborative pinterest boards! I'm pretty excited about these. There's so many great teaching ideas out there and collaborative boards just make it easier to share it!
I'm super proud to say that my free borders were featured on Teaching Blog Addict's Freebie Friday!!! :) If you're looking for some more freebies check out Friday Freebie #1 and Friday Freebie #3.
So it's all go on the Christmas present production front here. Next up - homemade glitter name crayons! :) I first saw and pinned this idea almost a year ago - re-use old crayons to make cute little heart shaped crayons! I'll probably still do this for my class for Valentine's Day but hearts aren't very Christmas-y and it's been too long since I last melted something so decided to make these cute glitter name crayons instead!
First peel the paper off your crayons, break them into little pieces and sort them by into colour groups. It's up to you how many different colours you want in each crayon but be careful not to let them mix together too much when they're melted unless you want a whole bunch of brown crayons!
A craft knife will make the annoying job of peeling so much easier! :) Failing that, pop them in a basin of warm water for 10 minutes.
Next grab some alphabet ice cube trays. I searched for weeks for these but ended up buying them on amazon. These are the ones I bought . They're freezer and oven safe so perfect for this!
Pour a little glitter into the bottom of the ice cube tray and roll your little crayon bits in more glitter. Then slot them into the letter spaces.
Put them on a tray and pop them into the oven. It's a good idea to cover your tray in tinfoil in case you get any spillages, I can't imagine cleaning crayon out of the oven is much fun!
I had them in on a low heat (about 140° C) for about 5 - 10 minutes. But just keep an eye on them and keep checking them. Make sure they're fully melted and then take them out of the oven to cool. Be careful moving the tray, the more you shake them the more the colours will mix.
Then pop them out of their trays and into their little bags!
- As ever when crayons are concerned it's worth paying the little extra for good quality ones! At a push I'd mix in a few old cheap ones with the Crayola ones .
- Peeling the paper off is definitely the most time consuming part of making these. So either soak them in warm water first or use a craft knife to slice the paper wrapper open.
- Use a toothpick to swirl the melted crayons if you want the colours to marble a little or mix completely. I didn't touch most of mine (bar the light blue one) as I wanted the colours to stay a little distinct.
Thought I'd share these little felt nativity hand puppets that I made for Christmas last year. This was in my pre-sewing machine days so I just hand sewed the puppet and used craft glue to attach the fabric. I wish I'd sewn the pieces on now as it would look much nicer but they're holding up pretty well!
The angel and the shepherds and their sheep. The sheep were the most fun to make!
*Update - I've had a few requests for patterns for these puppets. Unfortunately I don't have them anymore as I made these last year (a.k.a. pre- blog!) and threw them away. But I based them on ones I found over at TipJunkie and I just found some cute ones over at This and That for more inspiration too. You just need a hand puppet base that's big enough for your/your kids' hands and then you can use the same template for the faces and clothes and just change the fabric. I just made my pattern pieces on scraps of paper.
**Another Update - Although the puppets are not for sale I have made them into images and created a nativity word wall and flashcard set from them which is available here in my TPT store.
- Ha ha well since this time last year? Sewing machine's aren't so scary after all.


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Andy Pearson Finds Love
Twenty years ago, as CEO of PepsiCo, Andy Pearson was named one of the 10 toughest bosses in America. Now at Tricon, Pearson has found a new way to lead — one based on personal humility and employee recognition.
By David Dorsey long Read
High above Tennessee, the leaders of Tricon Global Restaurants Inc., the largest restaurant chain in the world, are having a casual but strategic conference in one of their corporate jets. Andy Pearson may be sitting in front — but you'd never know he is one of the two men who run this company. Like all of the others, he wears a golf shirt that bears the logos of their three restaurants: KFC, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell. He comments lightheartedly on the ideas that the others are advancing about partnering with another food chain — multibranding in their restaurants for variety. Maybe they'll put a Baskin-Robbins inside Taco Bell. At 30,000 feet, all ideas are good: Pearson isn't about to bring anyone down to earth from up here.
And that in itself is a huge change in Pearson's leadership style. This is the new Andy Pearson, a man who, now in his mid-70s, has transformed himself into a new kind of boss. The old Andy Pearson ran PepsiCo Inc. for nearly 15 years, driving revenues from $1 billion to $8 billion. Back then, he was known for his skills at bringing people down to earth, from any altitude. His chief weapons at the time were fear, surprise, and a fanatical devotion to the numbers. In 1980, Fortune named him one of the 10 toughest bosses in the United States. Pearson was singled out for the relentless demands that he put on his people. As one employee put it, Pearson's talents were often "brutally abrasive."
He was an effective CEO: His style worked. Pearson raised the bar for even the most outstanding performers. Nothing was ever quite good enough for him — even in situations where results were better than projected. One PepsiCo manager, for example, agreed to increase the volume of his unit's business by 12% that year. Instead, he racked up a 15% gain — and came to his performance review expecting at least a smile from his boss. Instead, Pearson pointed out that the market had grown even faster than this manager's operation and suggested that his performance had better improve.
Twenty years later, Pearson is still proud of having been included in the Fortune article. And he's still unapologetically tough. Over the years, he earned a reputation for his relentless, Socratic, two-word interrogation in meetings: "So what?" Every year, without hesitation, he fired the least productive 10% to 20% of his workforce — and he still thinks it's a good idea to let go of a certain layer of the company's lowest performers. But now he's learned to demand high standards in a different way. "There's a human yearning for a certain amount of toughness," Pearson says. "But it can't be unmitigated toughness."
These days, Pearson is focused on a different, more positive emotional agenda: "You say to yourself, If I could only unleash the power of everybody in the organization, instead of just a few people, what could we accomplish? We'd be a much better company."
You can see this new attitude in the way that he speaks and listens, even up here, at this altitude, in a cushioned swivel chair. Pearson presides over this brainstorming session, tossing pithy cautionary asides into the air. He points his words with barbs of humor to make them stick. Tricon's chairman and CEO, David Novak, is the official leader of this group, this meeting, and this company. Yet Pearson's wisdom holds everyone in thrall. At the age of 76, he's been doing this sort of thing twice as long as anyone else on the jet. Everyone listens, over the drone of the turbines, when Pearson speaks. Even Novak listens, often leading the company by following Pearson's line of thought. Pearson just offers up what he knows and lets it sink in.
Someone suggests opening an all-night restaurant. Pearson doesn't think it would work, but he doesn't say so, at least not directly. He finds some nugget of intelligence in the idea and offers what he sees as "the challenge." "For Kinko's, being open all night is a big thing," he says. "But you would have to preempt the category. You can't share it." The suggestion is, if people want to tackle the challenge, he won't stop them. But they've been warned.
Pearson guides — but he doesn't control. He used to make a living running companies. Now he governs. The shift is more radical than it may sound.
Performance From the Heart
As founding chairman and former CEO of Tricon (Novak took over the post in January), Pearson feels that he has arrived at a personal inflection point that has universal significance — although he can't pin down any particular moment when the change occurred. He has learned some of his new leadership skills by watching Novak inspire the company with warmth, energy, and charisma. Yet the roots of his change go deeper.
Pearson has had several different careers. He spent 14 years as president and chief operating officer at PepsiCo, learning the business of soft drinks, snack foods, and restaurants. Before joining PepsiCo, he was a senior director at McKinsey & Co., the global consulting firm, where he rose from associate to senior director and was in charge of the firm's marketing practice.
After PepsiCo, he taught at Harvard Business School, where he wrote many articles for the Harvard Business Review, such as "Muscle-Build the Organization" and "Tough-Minded Ways to Get Innovative" — aggressively Pearson-esque articles that summarized the elements of his macho leadership style. He joined the leveraged-buyout firm Clayton Dubilier & Rice in 1993, then joined Tricon at Novak's insistence. "I told him it would be really meaningful if he would join me at Tricon," Novak recalls. "He could call himself anything, do anything."
At Tricon, Novak has established a culture that elevates the common worker in a way that brings out the emotional drive and commitment that is at the heart of good work. As a result, Pearson has seen employees weep with gratitude in reaction to nothing more than a few simple words of praise. Where before he might have dismissed that kind of display as sentimentality, he now recognizes emotion for what it is: the secret to a company's competitive edge.
It's a new way of thinking, as much as a new way of feeling. When Pearson came to Tricon, he absorbed what he saw in Novak's style — and realized it was more than a style. It was a method. Almost overnight, Pearson saw how the human heart drives a company's success — one person at a time — and how this kind of success can't be imposed from the top but must be kindled through attention, awareness, recognition, and reward.
The logic was clear: If the need for recognition and approval is a fundamental human drive, then the willingness to give it is not a sign of weakness. It's a lesson that has changed Pearson's own definition of leadership. "Great leaders find a balance between getting results and how they get them," he says. "A lot of people make the mistake of thinking that getting results is all there is to the job. They go after results without building a team or without building an organization that has the capacity to change. Your real job is to get results and to do it in a way that makes your organization a great place to work — a place where people enjoy coming to work, instead of just taking orders and hitting this month's numbers."
The Smartest Guy in the Room
Not that there's anything wrong with hitting — or exceeding — your numbers. Under the leadership of Pearson and Novak, Tricon has increased its store-level margins from 11% to 15%, boosted operating profit by 32%, and cut its debt in half, to $2.5 billion. Tricon's leaders credit those numbers directly to their new culture of employee recognition. All of this has made Tricon a $22 billion retail operation with more than 30,000 restaurants and 725,000 employees worldwide. (It opens a new restaurant somewhere around the world every 10 hours.) Spun off of PepsiCo in 1997, Tricon's brands have worked their way into the fiber of people's lives. In China, there is a life-size statue of Colonel Sanders outside almost every KFC, and families there actually have to reserve their Thanksgiving bucket of chicken. (KFC imported the American holiday as a marketing ploy.)
When Novak invited Pearson to join the team, Pearson agreed, with one stipulation: "You are going to run this company. You will answer to me, but everyone else will answer to you."
"We'll do this together," Novak replied. "We can learn from each other."
When Pearson showed up at Tricon's corporate offices in Louisville, Kentucky (also the headquarters of KFC), the staff had a little surprise waiting for him. When he drove up, he saw hundreds of employees cheering. There was even a band playing to celebrate his arrival.
"All the time I was at Pepsi, nothing remotely like this had ever happened," Pearson says. "It was overwhelming. I knew something was going on that was fundamentally very powerful. If we could learn how to harness that spirit with something systematic, then we would have something unique."
Pearson's mission was manifest: to refine the new soul of this old machine into something rigorous, systematic, and shrewd — without destroying the generosity and warmth at the heart of it. The awe that he felt eventually became a profound respect for Novak's achievement. For Pearson, Novak has become something of a guru over "soft-side" issues, just as Pearson remains Novak's mentor on the "hard side."
This change of heart for Pearson — this stance of humility as a management style — became immediately apparent to everyone around him. Those who already knew him saw the transformation right away. Pearson had always been known as the quickest study around; he could learn a lesson in a matter of seconds. But he used his mental quickness as a weapon to see through the faulty logic of the people who reported to him, enabling him to prove how smart he was — particularly compared with them.
"I proved that I was smart by finding fault with other people's ideas," Pearson says. "I remember bringing one of our market-research women to tears because I told her that the information she was gathering wasn't producing anything. I could just see the breath come out of her. I realized that in today's world, you can't treat people that way. First, people have so many more options than they used to. They can leave — and you can't find more talent just by turning over the next log. Second, that kind of treatment demoralizes people. I don't think that woman was ever the same. If you're not careful, you might discard a very good person. There are a lot of ways to ask tough questions without killing somebody." The result of Pearson's new awareness: "I think I've gone from making my way by trying to be the smartest guy in the room to just asking questions and insisting that the answers be reasonable and logical."
Aylwin Lewis, Tricon's chief operating officer, started working with Pearson three years ago, before the new Andy had completely emerged. He's the first to point out that, even after his change of heart, Pearson has lost none of his business acumen — nor his ability to be blunt. But the old Andy was often known to be, well, a little too blunt.
"I used to read his stuff in the Harvard Business Review," Lewis says. "But Tricon was the first time I had personal contact with him. He was brutal. He'd just beat the crap out of us. I remember one time he told us, 'A room full of monkeys could do better than this!' That was only three years ago."
Pearson had a powerful influence in Lewis's own career development. Lewis had become disgruntled with the way that Tricon was working. He felt overlooked. And although he believed that he was totally committed to the company, others saw only his discontent.
"He was constantly threatening to leave," Pearson says. "One day we were driving from one store to another, and I told him, 'The problem I've got with you is that if something happened to you and you died, I don't think I could get two people in top management to carry your casket. We all want you to succeed. But you're making it impossible.' He asked me why. I told him, 'You don't come to meetings, and you're constantly bitching.' That was a year and a half ago. Now he is the most productive guy we have in top management."
In retrospect, it may sound like a throwaway line. But in fact, the key sentence that Pearson said to Lewis was, "We all want you to succeed." When he said it, Pearson felt it — and Lewis knew it. Pearson may have been blunt, but he was reaching out to Lewis to help him, rather than to browbeat him.
Later, when they were by themselves, Lewis approached Pearson with a few words: "Andy, you changed my life."
Letters That Bring Tears
Pearson's new leadership style is more than a way of relating to people. It involves the nuts and bolts of what he does from day to day, the processes that define the company's operations. Where before, Pearson would have dealt with only a small team of direct reports, he now seeks contact with people at all levels. It's his responsibility to motivate people across the company. He now believes that it's less important to issue orders than it is to seek answers and ideas from below. His job is to listen to the people who work for him and to serve them. He believes in firing those who don't perform. But more important, he's committed to making a strenuous effort to find a proper place for the talented ones who, for whatever reason, aren't living up to their potential.
"My old mantra was to influence the direction and behavior of a relatively small circle of direct reports," Pearson says. Now he and Novak move their values and ideas across the organization through programs such as CHAMPS, which rewards employees for recognizing the best practices of fellow workers, and through regular visits to the restaurants, during which they study those practices and reward people for good work.
"We need to make an enormous effort so that people feel that their individual contribution is vital to our success, starting with the store manager," Pearson says. Doing that requires a relentless sacrifice of shoe leather. "I was out in stores twice in the past two weeks," Pearson says. "I had a chicken burrito and a chicken taco the last time I was out. They didn't have any taste! Couldn't we put something in there? Salsa or something? You need a product that sends people into orbit. Retail is detail. Little ideas and details parlayed over the course of the year make a huge difference. Set the example. That's leadership."
Pearson has become a mentor to a group of leaders inside Tricon. "I spend a day with them, like a playing lesson with a golf pro," he says. "They talk to me about how they're doing. It's friendly. I get one or two letters a week from people saying, 'I can't believe that the founding chairman of the company would come and spend an hour just to talk with me.' I get letters that would just bring tears to your eyes."
How do you spell "yum"?
In Dallas, at the headquarters of Pizza Hut and Tricon International (a division of Tricon that handles the company's overseas business), 1,000 people have assembled in the long, high-ceilinged atrium for Tricon Founders' Day 2000. For Pearson and Novak, this is what the business is all about: a celebration of numbers hit and cultural commitments kept. Today, the leadership duo will honor four outstanding general managers in front of thousands of people who will watch both here and in other cities via satellite.
Overhead, a banner reads, "The Customer Is Why." Novak is already into his speech: "Our same-store sales will go up, not down. You never go down when you're satisfying customers. We're a company of customer maniacs."
People shake noisemakers built from two paper plates pasted around popcorn kernels. Up front sit the general managers, the four with the company's highest CHAMPS scores. Novak launches into a cheer: "Gimme a Y! Gimme a U! Gimme an M! What's that spell?"
"What's that spell?"
The audience screams and does a wave, like spectators at a football game. "This is the loudest Founders' Day welcome in history," Novak says. He shouts out the glowing numbers: Earnings per share are in the double digits and growing, and debt has been reduced by more than half. "You can count on one hand the number of companies that generate that kind of cash," Pearson adds.
It's quite a show. As the two of them play off of each other, it becomes clear how warmly the corporation has embraced Pearson, who has assumed an almost iconic persona: the Big Bad Guy. He's the gatekeeper, the guy who throws ice water on the coach before the game. But with Novak by his side, with the endorsement of the feel-good CEO, Pearson becomes loveable. His employees trust him. The new Andy can make fun of his own toughness — and be tough at the same time. He is tough love.
"Our same-store sales were down a percentage point," Novak says. "We need to bring that up."
It's the only bad number, but it's a big one, a key measure. You can keep increasing overall revenue by opening new stores around the world, but if you aren't increasing productivity and sales per store, at some point you run out of places to expand.
"We've got to get maniacal," Novak tells the crowd. "I'm talking about satisfying our customers every day. In 30,000 stores, we have to make that happen every day. It's all about motivating through recognition and celebration. We will be the biggest restaurant developer in the world."
It's time to call up the four winning managers. Awaiting them is the YUM award: a huge set of false teeth that walks when wound up. The managers are humble and moved as they accept their award. They are being singled out for recognition in front of the entire company. It means a lot.
Novak does what all great leaders do: He pays homage to these four managers as leaders. "They have created a work environment where they can come to work and be excited about what they do," he says. "The work environment that these leaders have created is the best I've ever seen."
As the event winds down, Novak asks Pearson to reflect on his career so far at Tricon. And it's Pearson who gets the loudest cheer of the day when he tells the crowd, "My experience at Tricon represents the capstone of my career."
In person, without the cheering crowd around him, Pearson is even more appreciative of the change that he's gone through. In his Connecticut office, on the table near his couch, is KFC rubber chicken number 227 — the one that Novak gave him in 1997 when he joined the company. On the side of the chicken, Novak had written a note: "Congratulations on being the first chairman and CEO of what is sure to be the best restaurant company in the world. You are clearly our Big Chicken around the world."
What's the lesson for other CEOs? "Ultimately," Pearson says, "it's all about having more genuine concern for the other person. There's a big difference between being tough and being tough-minded. There's an important aspect that has to do with humility. But I've been modestly disappointed at how hard it is to get leaders to act that way. I think it's going to take a generation of pounding away on this theme. We've got a half-dozen or so real leaders in our company, but we don't have 20 or 30. You know what it takes? Role models."
David Dorsey is a frequent Fast Company contributor who lives in Rochester, New York. Contact Andy Pearson by email (andy.pearson@tricon-yum.com).
A version of this article appeared in the August 2001 issue of Fast Company magazine.


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The fantastic NBA finale sportsbook player witnessed this past Monday brought images of the historic Super Bowl we witnessed this past season. Seeing LeBron James facing such overwhelming odds instantly brought bettors back to that 28-3 deficit that Tom Brady and the New England Patriots were facing in last season's Super Bowl.
Even though the NBA delivered a brilliant finish, it also brought with it some melancholic news: the end of the NBA betting season. However, when one door closes another opens. We're still a ways off from NFL sports odds and lines filling our mind, with the preseason being a couple of months away. However, with the NBA and NHL seasons coming to a close, now is the perfect time to look at the changes that have been happening around the league. Specifically, which teams have been making the best offseason moves?
Without a doubt, the single, irreproachable, greatest signing we've seen this offseason – and perhaps even NFL history, was the move that freed the Houston Texans from very large debt.
The Texans had been flirting with Super Bowl contention for a couple of years, and the success-hungry franchise decided to snag up Brock Osweiler, at whatever cost. Osweiler hadn't really proven himself and when that opportunity did rear its head, Osweiler let his true colors be shown.
The Texans ended up making the playoffs, but sports betting sites agree it wasn't because of anything Osweiler did. Rather, a strong defense and a tremendous running game led the way to the postseason. In fact, Osweiler got benched towards the end of the season and only got to see snaps in the playoffs because his replacement got injured.
The lack of results left Houston holding a rather large bill. However, the Texans displayed some finesse by steering themselves out of the precarious situation. Houston accomplished this by trading him to the Browns. Cleveland received a second-round pick for compensation, and the Texans relieved themselves of a heavy financial burden.
At the time, it was speculated that Tony Romo would be Houston's replacement. But when Romo announced that he was interested in other ventures, and the Texans drafted Deshaun Watson, the situation became abundantly clear.
The NFL sports lines and odds know very well that Cleveland has a seemingly endless problem at the quarterback position. Year after year, draft after draft, free agent signing after signing, the Browns never seem to find their starter.
This year, the franchise finally decided to break their luck with 1st round quarterbacks by ignoring them completely. Instead of going after Deshaun Watson or Mitch Trubisky, the Browns calmly and intelligently called upon Myles Garrett.
Garrett is unquestionably the greatest defender available in this year's draft, and the Browns' willingness to choose a different path reflects the club's decision for a serious change. After all the woes Cleveland has suffered in the sports world; Indians blowing a 3-1 lead and the Cavs loss in the NBA Finals, the city could really use a pick-me-up.
Fresh of a Super Bowl win with the Patriots, Martellus Bennett has a very good chance of winning back-to-back rings. The Packers were one game away from competing for the Vince Lombardi trophy, and there's no doubt that Bennett's offensive prowess will make a significant impact for Green Bay.
Aaron Rodgers is widely considered to be one of the best quarterbacks in the league. However, even Rodgers needs a little help. Specifically, Green Bay's quarterback's numbers are much better when there is a big tight end on the field to help him out. Enter Martellus Bennett, one of the best receiving tight ends in the league. Look for NFL betting sites to favor the Pack heavily this season.


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4.9 quart Onyx Stainless Steel canister. Manufactured in Korea out of 18/10 Onyx Stainless Steel. 4.9 qt. Diameter: 18 cm / 7 1/16" Height: 18 cm / 7 1/16" Capacity: 4.6 L / 19.375 cups.
I love that these are totally stainless steel; however, I wish they would come up with some eco-friendly seal for them (i.e. silicone), as the lids do not fit snugly.


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Tag: metafiction
Reading, Short And Deep #063 – The Hashish Man by Lord Dunsany
Wednesday, April 19, 2017 Jesse Willis	Leave a comment
Reading, Short And Deep #063
Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss The Hashish Man by Lord Dunsany
Here's a link to a PDF of the story.
The Hashish Man was first published in A Dreamer's Tales, 1910.
Podcast feed https://sffaudio.herokuapp.com/rsd/rss
Reading, Short and Deep Podcast #063 - The Hashish Man by Lord Dunsany [ 0:30:20 | 29 MB ] Hide Player | Play in Popup | Download
The SFFaudio Podcast #303 – READALONG: The Narrative Of Arthur Gordon Pym Of Nantucket by Edgar Allan Poe
Monday, February 9, 2015 Jesse Willis	3 Comments
The SFFaudio Podcast #303 – Jesse and Paul Weimer talk about The Narrative Of Arthur Gordon Pym Of Nantucket by Edgar Allan Poe
Talked about on today's show:
1838, Poe's only completed novel, Paul's Poe years, The Tell-Tale Heart, a macabre sort of phase, Deus Irae by Philip K. Dick and Roger Zelazny, fix-ups, Premature Burial, Ms. Found In A Bottle, The Oblong Box, The Gold Bug, secret codes, Poe is old and public domain and not particularly racist, The Pit And The Pendulum, the Poe theme, the death of a beautiful woman is conspicuous by her absence, the meta-commentary, Tristram Shandy, The Cask Of Amontillado, a dog named Tyger (burning bright?), William Blake, Jules Verne, An Antarctic Mystery, Ms. Found In A Copper Cylinder, Antarctica, "Ms. Found In A…", "it was begun to have been serialized", fake stories as true stories, Captain Cook's Antarctic expeditions, "a labyrinth of lumber", how to load a ship, Moby Dick by Herman Melville, Washington Irving, SF as a generally American phenomenon, a slow creep of fantastic elements, full-blown surrealism, the drinking, on the Grampus, dressing like a ghost, another phantom in white, "Mr. Pym is not available", a genuine narrative, missing islands, a metaphor for alcoholism, sailing in a storm, half-sunk/drunk, echoes, the plague ship, the Penguin, echoes, all these lies, a note from the Wikipedia entry, fictional analogues for real events, autobiographical drinking, The Lighthouse by Edgar Allan Poe (a fragment), "I expected to inherit some money", money problems, "he's pouring his troubles into this manuscript", this is Poe's version of Dude, Where's My Car?, an unreliable narrator, an excellent story, Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner, albatrosses, thematic similarities, they eat many birds, "an unmentionable thought", subsequent cannibalism, the same ghost ship as in Rime?, Antarctic spirits, H.P. Lovecraft, the subtitle:
Comprising the Details of Mutiny and Atrocious Butchery on Board the American Brig Grampus, on Her Way to the South Seas, in the Month of June, 1827. With an Account of the Recapture of the Vessel by the Survivers; Their Shipwreck and Subsequent Horrible Sufferings from Famine; Their Deliverance by Means of the British Schooner Jane Guy; the Brief Cruise of this Latter Vessel in the Atlantic Ocean; Her Capture, and the Massacre of Her Crew Among a Group of Islands in the Eighty-Fourth Parallel of Southern Latitude; Together with the Incredible Adventures and Discoveries Still Farther South to Which That Distressing Calamity Gave Rise.
who wrote the subtitle?, they didn't have the concept of spoilers, the opposite of a spoiler, The Savage Land (Marvel Universe), Edgar Rice Burroughs' The Land That Time Forgot, a hollow earth theory, this is a Science Fiction book in a strange sense, what's with the multi-layered coloured water?, the strange creatures, the creature's corpse in the white waters, is Australia a place?, At The Mountains Of Madness, why Poe is not in outer space, basically these Antarctic people are aliens, this is very Stanley G. Weinbaum (A Martian Odyssey), Michael Moorcock's Seas Of Fate, H. Rider Haggard, duplicitous natives in the black land, what will be in the white lands?, a heavily read book (in the 19th century), The House Of The Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne, when Lovecraft describes it…, haunted by the architecture of homes, Lovecraft's description of Pym:
"In the Narrative of A. Gordon Pym the voyagers reach first a strange south polar land of murderous savages where nothing is white and where vast rocky ravines have the form of titanic Egyptian letters spelling terrible primal arcana of earth; and thereafter a still more mysterious realm where everything is white, and where shrouded giants and snowy-plumed birds guard a cryptic cataract of mist which empties from immeasurable celestial heights into a torrid milky sea."
pouring into the hollow Earth?, Journey To The Center Of The Earth, At The Earth's Core, Kublah Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, leaving the ending open to the reader, how will he get back to Nantucket?, the names A. Gordon Pym and E. Allan Poe, framing devices, The Turn Of The Screw, a framing device gives the reader an extra distance, The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad, Robert Silverberg's The Secret Sharer, the southern polar bear, "Tekeli-li, tekeli-li." the face of an open book, downy feathers, what does it mean?, whiteness, philological scrutiny, "white-phobic", the audiobook narration, copyright, a total Poe thing to do, Poe loved cryptography, Poe would be writing in Elvish, a font nerd, hanging out with Charles Stross and Alan Moore, can you imagine Poe at a Worldcon?, a drunkard's story, shoplifting at The Innsmouth Bookshop, Fungi From Yuggoth XV: Antarktos:
Deep in my dream the great bird whispered queerly
Of the black cone amid the polar waste;
Pushing above the ice-sheet lone and drearly,
By storm-crazed aeons battered and defaced.
Hither no living earth-shapes take their courses,
And only pale auroras and faint suns
Glow on that pitted rock, whose primal sources
Are guessed at dimly by the Elder Ones.
If men should glimpse it, they would merely wonder
What tricky mound of Nature's build they spied;
But the bird told of vaster parts, that under
The mile-deep ice-shroud crouch and brood and bide.
God help the dreamer whose mad visions shew
Those dead eyes set in crystal gulfs below!
the black cone, the primal sources, Lovecraft quoting himself, that shrouded white figure, "Tekeli-li don't kill the albatross", Lemuria, Thule, the novel as a journey, how do you return from the surreal?, what happened to Tyger?, they ate him!, Dirk Peters (so manly he has two penises), Tyger's collar, someone was going to drown the dog, poor Tyger, a horrendously awful horrifying experience, when Paul Theroux visited Jorge Luis Borges he read him The Narrative Of Arthur Gordon Pym Of Nantucket, Borges thought Pym was Poe's greatest work, the interest in the meta, strange runes, Lovecraft was a teetotaler, deep into madness (not drunken madness), genetic disease or confronting reality, The Call of Cthulhu, dreams, a fever dream?, forgetting, a change in tenses, the missing two or three final chapters, Xeno's paradox, a Mercator map, and Greenland, is that all racism?, "a nautical negro", Toni Morrison, the black cook, don't go into a tiny box-canyon with natives of any colour, scrupulously honest, earlier bushwhacked voyagers, going piratical?, going whaling?, the mutiny, Mr. Starbuck, why is Pym stowing away in the first place?, the captain that ran them down was drunk, boating skills, Treasure Island, Augustus' father, the inexplicable weevils, "taking liberally from the spirits", this narrative is full of holes, a free sea voyage, Pym is a teenager, everybody has a boat on Nantucket, an adventure of a lifetime, Pym is "not available", Jeremiah N. Reynolds, Poe's last word was "Reynolds", a possibly apocryphal story, Mocha Dick, the long conversation of conversation of Science Fiction, Moby Dick is in dialogue with Pym and Mocha Dick, bibliographic archaeology, The Island Of Doctor Moreau by H.G. Wells, in a dinghy, considering cannibalism, drawing straws, "and dropped like stones", did their bones dropped likes stones?, the narrator becomes more and more unreliable, dis-masted, a teetotaler who drinks only coffee.
The SFFaudio Podcast #303 - READALONG: The Narrative Of Arthur Gordon Pym Of Nantucket by Edgar Allan Poe [ 1:21:08 | 37.29 MB ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
The SFFaudio Podcast #298 – AUDIOBOOK: Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
Monday, January 5, 2015 Jesse Willis	Leave a comment
The SFFaudio Podcast #298 – Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen, read by Elizabeth Klett.
This UNABRIDGED AUDIOBOOK (6 hours 55 minutes) comes to us courtesy of LibriVox.org. Jane Austen was first published in 1817.
The next SFFaudio Podcast will feature our discussion of it!
The SFFaudio Podcast #298 - AUDIOBOOK: Northanger Abbbey by Jane Austen [ 6:55:44 | 190.46 MB ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
Review of Indexing by Seanan McGuire
Friday, May 9, 2014 Seth Wilson	3 Comments
By Seanan McGuire; Read by Mary Robinette Kowal
Themes: / metafiction / urban fantasy / fairy tales
I'm usually opposed to quoting the synopsis in my reviews–it's just fluffing my word count! But I'm not even going to try to explain the premise of Indexing myself, so this time I'll let the synopsis do all the heavy lifting.
"Never underestimate the power of a good story."
Good advice…especially when a story can kill you.For most people, the story of their lives is just that: the accumulation of time, encounters, and actions into a cohesive whole. But for an unfortunate few, that day-to-day existence is affected—perhaps infected is a better word—by memetic incursion: where fairy tale narratives become reality, often with disastrous results.
That's where the ATI Management Bureau steps in, an organization tasked with protecting the world from fairy tales, even while most of their agents are struggling to keep their own fantastic archetypes from taking over their lives. When you're dealing with storybook narratives in the real world, it doesn't matter if you're Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, or the Wicked Queen: no one gets a happily ever after.
Indexing is New York Times bestselling author Seanan McGuire's new urban fantasy where everything you thought you knew about fairy tales gets turned on its head.
As the author of both the October Day series and, under the pseudonym Mira Grant, the Newsflesh trilogy, Seanan McGuire is no stranger to writing urban fantasy. But, as you may have deduced from the blurb, Indexing is not your run-of-the-mill hot vampire-on-werewolf ménage-a-trois urban fantasy. Instead, it's populated with fairy tales. Here be Pied Pipers, Frog Princes, and Mother Gooses (Geese?) in spades. In the moribund desertscape of urban fantasy, Indexing is a cool refreshing garden grown wild with novelties. McGuire's writing is dynamic enough to play fair with both the here-and-now realities of an urban setting and the timeless terrible beauty of fairy tales. Like quicksilver, the tone can glide from spunky 21st-century dialogue riddled with F-bombs to an ethereal transcendence full of snow and moonlight.
The presence of stories come to life in the world of Indexing places it squarely in the realm of metafiction. In fact, the book takes its title from the very real Aarne-Thompson Index, a comprehensive listing of folktale types compiled in the early twentieth century. In the land of metafiction, Indexing has some pretty affluent neighbors, such as Italo Calvino's If On A Winter's Night A Traveler and Jorge Luis Borges's The Library of Babel. Unfortunately in this regard the book fails to measure up, like that rundown house you drive by on your street and mutter about how you wish the neighbors would cut their grass. The premise itself is intriguing in exactly the way that speculative fiction is supposed to be, but the underlying worldview is overly pessimistic. In this story, Narrative itself is a character, or at least a vital force, trying to impose itself onto our order of reality. According to the world of Indexing, this is almost always a very bad thing, something that needs to be stopped. The novel's closing chapters bring to light some extenuating circumstances that lend this structure a modicum of feasibility, but the reader still comes away with the sense that our world is better off without fairy tales made manifest stalking our streets.
As I write this, it occurs to me that this bothers me so much because it's at odds with why I read speculative fiction in the first place. I firmly believe that these stories really do make our world better, in a very tangible way. I'm not saying we should unleash every fictional character on the streets of New York–there would probably be utter chaos. But there would be hope too. There would be Aragorn, for example, and Optimus Prime, and–you get the idea. The influx of story into our own world, "mimetic incursions" as they're called in Indexing, needn't always be the harbingers of misery and ruin. In fact, I think I took personal offense at the book's denigration of stories. And then, of course, there's the added irony that we're actually reading, or listening to, a story. Just what sorts of mimetic incursions will Indexing spawn, I wonder. Ahh, the joys of peeling the layers of metafiction, kind of like an onion, but pointier and more slippery.
To be clear, my criticism of the novel's metafiction is purely ideological. Leaving those aside, McGuire tells a damn good story. The pacing ratchets up the suspense like a mystery novel, and the writing, as I said, is sturdy as a house made of bricks. (See what I did there? Three Litle Pigs reference? Okay, never mind, on with the review.) And even if the book's metafiction elements are problematic, its exploration of storytelling does succeed on a psychological levee. Narrative psychology and therapy have become buzz words in the last twenty years, and on both individual and cultural levels we do think of our lives, both individually and collectively, as stories. In that sense, the main characters of Indexing become archetypes for ways in which people deal with their stories, their past, their trauma, whichever psychobabble catch phrase you like. Some fight it, others embrace it, while still others have more of a story than they think they do. Like most good speculative fiction, Indexing succeeds because of its powerful characterization.
Mary Robinette Kowal, a weaver of fantastic tales in her own right, shines as Indexing's narrator. Her performance of Henrietta Marchen, a recovering Snow White through whose eyes we see most of the book's events, is at once confident and vulnerable in perfect measure. And I don't think I've ever heard a female narrator quite reach the baritone depths that Kowal does when she voices the burly Andy Robinson. The only blemish in the performance is her portrayal of Sloan Winters, whose incurably foul mouth is already grating enough without eery sentence curling up at the end like a skunk's tale. Perhaps Kowal is simply trying to instill in us, the listeners, the same distaste that Sloan's teammates feel towards this Wicked Sister. But that's the only cloud in the sky. The glamour of Kowal's voice captures the capricious fairy-tale heart of Indexing.
In spite of my significant ideological qualms with the book, I thoroughly enjoyed McGuire's foray into the world of fairy tales. There's no indication that a sequel is in the works, which is a shame. I'd gladly spend more time with this world's colorful characters and fairy tales, morose and morbid though they may be. And I would dearly love to learn that Narrative isn't so bad after all.
Posted by Seth Wilson
Someday by Isaac Asimov
Tuesday, April 22, 2014 Jesse Willis	Leave a comment
Last night I discovered that Someday, a wonderful short story by Isaac Asimov, is PUBLIC DOMAIN.
I've posted the |PDF| from the original mag to our PDF PAGE (there're hundreds more there by the way).
Someday set in a future in which everyone is illiterate (Asimov has another story, The Fun They Had, that has a similar premise). It talks about audio vs. video, robotics, artificial intelligence, creativity, empathy, and it has a terrific twist ending.
I think you'll treasure it as much as I have over the years.
And here's an audiobook version:
The SFFaudio Podcast #258 – READALONG: The Star Rover by Jack London
Monday, March 31, 2014 Jesse Willis	3 Comments
The SFFaudio Podcast #258 – Jesse, Seth, and Maissa discuss The Star Rover (aka The Jacket) by Jack London.
titled The Jacket in the UK; astral projection; what about alien past lives; the primordial ooze; the book is a laundry list of Jack London's interests; structure resembles television flashbacks; knuckle-rap Morse Code; The Count of Monte Cristo; Seth recounts his own past-life story; Jesse and Maissa debate plausibility of reincarnation; Plato and the Land of the Forms; "little death" means something else in French; Ragnar Lodbrok based on Norse Mythology; anachronism; Korean history and turtle ships; Jesse attempts to use the Napoleon Complex to debunk reincarnation; everyman (and everywoman); does reincarnation extend beyond humanity?; "there's only one soul"; Lucretius, star dust, and the recovery of scrolls from Herculaneum; "souls are totally bogus"; past lives as a metaphor for reading widely; prevalence of the number 40; hallucination; Jack London on surfing; multilingual reference as an indicator of fame; prison reform; interrogation, torture, and Guantanamo Bay; loosely adapted in 2005 film The Jacket; the 1923 silent film adaptation is sadly lost; comparing and contrasting with The Iron Heel; T.C. Boyle's The Relive Box in The New Yorker; Until the End of the World, a film about reliving dreams; on cultivating sleep; frame narrative; sexism; historical basis for character names; H.P. Lovecraft, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and the creative power of dreams; confabulation; Total Recall; "faith in the lordship of my mind"; the odd importance of tobacco; The Island of Doctor Moreau by H.G. Wells.
The SFFaudio Podcast #258 - READALONG: The Star Rover by Jack London [ 1:07:10 | 30.9 MB ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download


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Q: Обновление datagridview Есть схема привязки данных: DataGridView привязана к BindingSource, BindingSource привязан к таблице из DataSet. Также на форме есть Combobox, SelectedValue которого привязан к BindingSource (к конкретной ячейке).
Вопрос в следующем: при изменении значения Combobox отображение в DataGridView меняется, только тогда, когда DataGridView получает фокус. Как это сделать без щелчка на DataGridView?
A: Это мне не помогло. Сделал через comboBox.Databindings[0].WriteValue(); (это для примера. Может кому понадобится.
A: Попробуйте после изменения Combobox делать DataGridView.Refresh() или BindingSource.ResetBindings(). Но, скорее всего, причина в том, что данные, подключенные к BindingSource, не реализуют INotifyPropertyChanged.
Для более полного ответа нужна информация об отображаемых данных.