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Why are classics still powerful today?
Several years ago an author sent to publishers in London, England several of Jane Austin's classics: "Pride and Prejudice", "Northanger Abby", and "Persuasion" with his name on them. He did this because he was bumfuzzeled why his own work, a thriller, had not been bought. Only one publisher called the author on his blatant plagiarism. Others sent the manuscripts back unopened because they didn't accept unsolicited manuscripts. But some had issues with the manuscript content–not plagiarism, but the actual writing.
"Pride and Prejudice" received a letter back from an acquisitions editor saying the work was way too wordy, had too many archaic sayings, and it wasn't something the publisher could purchase. [Insert shocked, bug-eyed look here.] This is the kind of editor that is supposed to know books.
I am bumfuzzeled there isn't at least one or two new authors out there that have the talent of Jane Austin or Alexander Dumas or Baroness Emmuska Orczy who wrote "The Scarlet Pimpernel". Their works were not blatantly Christian, although God was mentioned and morals played a large part in the plots. There was no foul language or graphic sexual content in their works. They wrote excellent stories. The emphasis was story, not "realism". The realism came through, of course, because of human nature. That is what makes an excellent story real, not foul words or graphic scenes (which to me, is lazy writing when trying to develop character). When will writer's learn this simple fact?
What I'm seeing is either great storyline with poor execution, or great execution (good writing) and a storyline full of potholes. Maybe one or two in the last year has been professionally edited. Sure. I've read lots of debut books that are 4-star worthy. Usually, it's the 3rd or 4th book where the author gets his stride, though. Creston Mapes is one of them. (He already knows I said this because I told him so.)
I know publishers have huge amounts of slush piles (that's a stack of unsolicited manuscripts that are almost never read). But, if Jane Austin gets tossed, we are in real trouble. That speaks volumes about how books get chosen for publishing.
Here we have a situation that is not only annoying, but frightening, too. Publishers who are very well respected in the literary circles as well as by the buying public rejected the works that have stood the test of time for 200 years, not to mention the multi-millions of dollars they have made around the world (remember "Bride and Prejudice from Bollywood"?).
Maybe the publishers problem is the screening process. Maybe their problem is… I don't know what their problem is.
What is "classic" about that?
It would seem that standards have deteriorated to fluffy-nothings or coarse discourses peppered with vulgarities of foul words and graphic scenes in the guise of "realism" or "modernism." What, I ask you, is literary about that?
I hear the refrain, "I wanted it to be as real as possible." That is the mantra of almost every writer I have come in contact with, including the Christian fiction writers on two message boards. It is fiction. What, I ask you, is real about fiction? Why do authors need fiction to be real-life?
When I was about 10, a new mall was built in Monroe, La. My mom and sister would shop the clothes stores and I would shop the book store. I used to spend my entire allowance on books at a secular bookstore. I spent my evenings and free time on weekends reading. Television never held any fascination for me, besides my imagination was much more vivid when reading than watching something on TV. The books are always better than the movies. (Remember "Bride and Prejudice" from Bollywood?) My parents never feared I would choose some book that my child eyes would be subjected to foulness of the underworld kind. It just wasn't published.
Even the movie "Gone With the Wind" paled in comparison to the book by Margaret Mitchell. My parents were subjected to many burned dinners until I finished that book.
I think movies and television have snatched the creativity from our children, which is why there are so few really creative, imaginative, and good literary works today. And which is why publishers seem satisfied with publishing fluffy nothings or coarse discourses. And which is why the buying public is not discriminating enough to demand better fare. (Of course, present company is excluded. I know you are writing a work of sheer genius or you wouldn't be part of Authors Community, right?!)
Now you've heard my rant. Why do you think classics are still best sellers today, but we are not being served reading fare that is classic worthy? Or are we?
Gina Burgess is an editor, illustrator, and author. She is COO of AuthorsCommunity.net owned by Common Sense Marketing Strategies, LLC.
40 thoughts on "Why are classics still powerful today?"
Ian Wall
Thank you Gina. Very interesting.
JannWMartin
Great, food for thought. I think there are great authors out there. We just have to work together, encourage each other, and share each other's posts and books. Sharing each others books doesn't take away from our sales it can encourage new people to find us and buy our books.
Mrs CA van Straten
Good on you, Gina! You've hit the nail on the head and, boy, did it need hitting! Bravo!
Pat, send us a list of them as well. We'll put it up on our blog, too.
PattyLou
This is true about children's literature as well. As a teacher, I found many third and fourth graders never heard of the classics and when I tutored middle school children on one to one they had not heard of any of the classics either until we started to read them together. Then their enthusiasm for reading bounded. Even the little ones had never been told the nursery rhymes and fun play on words to spark their interest. I am recommending some classic children's books on my next blog posting. I hope it helps.
Marilyn Friesen
I read an article in the Readers Digest many years ago that really impressed me and I wish I had a copy of it somewhere to easily refer back to. It was quite unforgettable though. This article claimed that popularity polls proved that movies like the Laura Ingalls Wilders series and other family -style shows truly did sell better than the corrupt stuff they try to shove down the throats of the public. I'm sure the same would apply to books, but who's going to be bold enough or have the financial backing to create a Quality Publishing Company so that modern-day classics can get a foothold? Naturally, I believe in my books and would like them to be treasured by people who love quality, memorable literature.
Hi Marilyn,
Too true. All anyone has to do is research which movies made the most money in the past 10 years and it is, hands down, the family movie. Lots of critics have said, "Oh sure, that's because parents bring their children to the movies and 4 tickets make more money that 2 tickets." Well… duh!
If the movie industry were truly in it for the money, then they would be churning out lots more family-friendly movies than R-X rated movies. But Hollywood isn't following the money. It is following an agenda… just what agenda exactly, I'm not sure.
I actually know what agenda they're following — an agenda to destroy our sense of nationhood so our enemies can take over our country and enslave us! (And it's no wonder, given that many of the studios are actually owned by enemy nations!)
Dr Sarah Tun
Yes, and may e-book Christian be a part of that surge for great lit that is wholesome and quality.
Ruth ONeil
I LOVE reading the classics. They are so much more in depth than much of today's writing – mine included! I have my students read a lot of older literature every year. One of them actually thanked me because he read a lot of things he enjoyed that he wouldn't normally have picked up.
Kudos to you, Ruth!
Dave Fessenden
I have not read "Pride and Prejudice," but I've heard the basic plot, and it doesn't impress me. (Yes, I'm dissing on a literary classic; I'll leave my address with Gina for those who wish to send me hate mail.) I am not surprised that an editor said the book was wordy. Victorian and even early 20th-century novels are notoriously wordy. (Robert Benchley once did a parody of Faulkner where he spends at least a page to describe walking across the kitchen floor and opening the refrigerator door.) And of course, "Pride and Prejudice" is full of archaic sayings — modern readers have to remember it was a contemporary novel at the time it was written, not a historical novel. We read it today and we grant allowances for the fact that it was written over 200 years ago. A 21st-century novel is a far different animal, because nobody will grant the same allowances for a novel by a contemporary author. The bottom line is, we can appreciate classics from previous centuries, and even learn some things from them, but we'd be crazy to try and write like that!
Dave…Dave… spoken like a true publihser/agent 🙂
When my daughter was in college, her anthropology professor had the students read Pride & Prejudice to understand better the customs and language of that day. Your point is well taken.
However, a 21st-century novel should not be full of bad editing and bad writing, which I find even from the Big-5. It's the GREAT writing of the classics that I lament not having, not the wordiness or the "literary" slowness to tell the story. Let a great editor loose on a wordy classic and you'd have a wonderful, worthy-of-21st-century novel.
A lot of authors today have no concept of anticipation.
A lot of authors today have no concept of real character development. They use shortcuts like foul language or kicking the dog to indicate wickedness rather than the sheer evilness in Chateu d'If, and its sadistic warden, Armand Dorleac. That is great writing.
I agree with Gina.
No hate mail to Dave, but you must read before you can comment, really. Austin is not Dickens and didn't get paid by the word. Don't take me literally Dave. It's important to discuss/chat/banter and even to disagree:)
She's hilarious as well, and that is subtle. Subtly, I think — or lack thereof — is something that Gina is referring to.
lisa thomson
Loved this article, Gina. You bring up so many interesting points. And that author sending out Jane Austen's manuscripts…too funny. What an experiment!
I don't think it's this current trend of lightweight reading that has phased out Classics. Short fiction that is turned into (lucrative) 'series' books. These get the reader addicted to simple plots and typical characters. Nothing wrong with simple however, the classics are far from it. They are complex and multi-layered. I think publishing houses (the few that are left) are focusing their attention on basic pop fiction that appeals to the masses. I believe classics do not and never have, appealed to the masses. $$$ is in mass sales. SIGH. As for vulgarity, well, I think it's always been there even in some of the Classics. The difference is that our interpretation of vulgarity has changed over the centuries. Who would disagree that Madame Bovary, or Lady Chatterley's Lover were not considered vulgar by some people during their time period?
There is quite a bit to think on here. The state of publishing in general and writing in particular. Thanks for the brain food. Plus, I love that you spent all your money in the book store. LOL. Perfect.
Excuse me, "I think it's this current trend of lightweight reading…" NOT "I don't think" 😉
Thanks, Lisa 🙂 Do you know how many books a girl could purchase with $5? Barely enough to satisfy a voracious reader for two weeks during the summer. All I had to do was keep the house clean, put lunch on the table, cook dinner, and read. I bought as many as I could find that interested me. That was when books cost $0.50 and tax was probably only about 3-4%.
Yes, pop fiction is what we're down to, but I think part of the blame goes to the Readers. We aren't demanding enough. Back when I was spending so much on my reading, if I ever ran across a poor storyline, I'd just chunk the book figuring it was my fault for not being more discrimnating. I think that happened maybe three times? I wonder what would happen if we would rise up, take the books back to the store and insist on getting most of our money back. Perhaps in the days of fast food and ATMs, that would be too inconvenient for Readers to do.
Melissa G Wilson
I have a publishing company and Gina, if you find a great book by an Indie author, send it my way and I'll seriously consider it for publication.
Will do, Melissa 🙂
Yves Fey
There are plenty of books that are classics today that were shocking in their time, even if they had no explicit sex or profanity. Tess of the d'Ubervilles comes to mind. So does Baudelaire. Do you consider To Kill A Mockingbird a classic? It's been banned for profanity. Ulysses was banned. The Great Gatsby's been banned. Hemmingway, Faulkner, Nabokov have all been banned. One of my all time favorites, All The King's Men, has been banned. While I've certainly read (probably stopped reading) tiresome fiction that substituted profanity for good dialogue, I've read a lot of wonderful literary and good commercial writing today that includes sex and/or profanity. Most of my favorite authors are 19th century or early 20th century, but I like a more elaborate style than is currently popular. I love Austen. I worship Tolkien. I also love Jean Genet. I read erotic romances – when I can find good stylists. Sex and profanity don't make writing bad – bad writing makes writing bad.
Very true, Yves. But frankly Fifty Shades of Gray won't ever make the list 🙂 Sadly, I think more people were shocked by The Purpose Driven Life than Fifty Shades of Gray.
I thought The Thornbirds was amazing. I have read some truly great debut novels (so much so that I purchased the other 3 or 4 books in the series). Usually, the writing stays great throughout. I've also read some good debut novels and found the authors got better and better in subsequent novels. I'm not dissing the great writing of the 20th and 21st centuries. I'm just lamanting there is so much trash that we have to wade through to get to the good stuff 🙂
Agreed, bad writing makes writing bad. However, 9 times out of 10 an editor or the author throw in the sex and foul language to disguise the bad writing.
Nick Zegarac
The reason classics are still 'classic' is quite simply this: true yesterday, true today, and likely truer still tomorrow. They speak to a universal of humanity, the triumph of humanity itself, or, at the very least, the human spirit. This same 'experiment' of submitting famous work for 'consideration' as a test was also tried long ago with the screenplay to Casablanca. Same results basically. Two acquisition editors thought it was too highbrow for today's audience, one considered it 'vaguely like a movie from the 1940's, while the others didn't get it at all, and didn't even recognize it. Not surprising, actually. In 1940, the average age of a skilled book editor – senior acquisitions, that is, was 55. In 1999, the average age was 25. Given what we know about today's generation, and their inability to look beyond their navel-gazing and cell phones, is it any wonder they cannot recognize 'real/reel' art when they see it? Not disparaging 'youth' – as in my twenties I was already in love with Austen, Hemingway, Tolstoy and Mary Shelly…oh yes, and Oscar Wilde. Later, I expanded that repertoire to embrace, Margaret Mitchell, Ayn Rand, Louisa May Alcott and Frank Norris. Since then, there have been others. As for film – I have always loved 'classic' Hollywood. It's a no brainer. The dialogue was more ripe, the situations filled with intriguing characters and the full flourish of wit and class. Today's readership either have no need for such qualities, or (choke!) no patience for them. To quote Truman Capote's Holly Golightly – Quel tragedy! But honestly, until we get senior editors back in the publishing houses and movies studios whose scope of knowledge is better than the latest Harry Potter or Fifty Shades of Grey (oh, please!!!!) you'll continue to have C-grade dog meat peddled as grade 'A' chuck at your bookstores and movie houses. Art is not what is written about the everyday, but what emerges as reflection from the lives we live in the here and now. It's sad. But today, I don't even think readers would know a Grace Metalious or Jacqueline Susann, despite the fact they were front running feminists, to be followed by their lessers like Kitty Kelly and Jackie Collins much later on. Today's literature and movies do not enthrall. They merely fill up our leisure with crap, smut, trash and junk. So, if you are weaned on ONLY this…how inspirational do you think its influence will be on the next generation of writers and film makers? Hmmm?
Great points, Nick. We could also mention Alistair Maclean and Louis L'Amour who managed to actually develop characters in adventure stories without the good guys wearing white hats LOL And the master of modern anticipation, Irving Wallace with The Prayer of Owen Meany.
…crap, smut, trash and junk. So, if you are weaned on ONLY this…how inspirational do you think its influence will be on the next generation of writers and film makers?
This is the greatest lament of all!
John L Moore
My wife and I were just talking about the state of literature. My first novel is considered a classic by some for the very reasons you mention: realism with a theme of redemption. Lately, I am unable to read hardly any American fiction and this was the point of the discussion with my wife. Instead, I am reading Arctic noir, books set primarily in Iceland and Sweden but also Greenland and other Scandinavian countries. First of all, they have a strong sense of place which is what I find missing in so much American fiction, largely because Americans have little sense of place. Secondly, they are very accurate police procedurals with strong characters, good plots, and in most, a sense of decency.
This is one reason why I love the Guttenberg Project. I find a lot of old classics on there free to download to my Kindle. Authors such as Wilkie Collins, Oscar Wilde, Robet Louis Stevenson… The list holds a lot of authors I'm not familiar with but intend to get to know 🙂
THIS is what Bradbury warned all of us about in Fahrenheit 451 (which, contrary to most people's perception, is not primarily about censorship — that plays a secondary role — but about the dumbing-down of society through a combination of super-fast-paced minimalist writing and political correctness!) But he was mistaken about one thing: he believed this was a natural process (and had his villain, Beatty, explain it as such), whereas at this point it's apparent that this is a deliberate malicious scheme by America-hating terrorists (who had been in charge of the entire media sector since at least the late 60s) to weaken and subvert our nation so it could be destroyed! And the ONLY way to deal with this is to THROW OUT the publishers, literary agents, "professional" reviewers and other self-appointed gatekeepers (yes, EVERY SINGLE ONE of them) and change to an entirely indie-publishing system based on unrestricted publication and ranked by customer reviews/ratings only!
I'm afraid it's more than just dumbing-down society. It's all the instant this and instant that, which has pervaded our thought processes, that has give us a sense of urgency and immediacy that cuts short life enjoyments. Songs we listen to on the radio have programmed us to think a 4-minute or 5-minute song is too long so forget about a 15-minute masterpiece. That kind of process bleeds over into other activities. Then we have the microwave that fixes our dinners and lunches in 5 minutes, and rather than sitting down to a family dinner, we eat on the run. So who has time to enjoy a 500-page classic? Sigh.
jcguest
I'm not surprised today's publishers would reject Jane Austen. I've said many times on many forums that the likes of Joseph Conrad, Victor Hugo, and Edgar Allan Poe would forever sit on a slush pile in today's publishing world. Hugo's The Man Who Laughs tried my patience, with its long descriptive passages and the front-loaded backstory of more than 100 pages, but that may have been more the result of a poor translation and living in a society that demands immediate gratification.
I once posted a Joseph Conrad excerpt as my own on a writer's forum only to have it bashed. When I mentioned they'd criticized the work of the writer many rank as the greatest writer of the 20th century, they backpedaled some.
Times change, best practices in fiction writing evolve. Today's writer must compete with text messaging and Internet shorthand, both of which have conspired to shorten attention spans. Writing courses advise against style—Elmore Leonard claimed style was the author's attempt to butt into the story. I've been told I have a very recognizable style, or voice. It was intended as a compliment. But it has kept me from achieving more notoriety in this industry.
Writer's are no longer free to tell the story only they can tell in the manner in which only they can tell it. We must hook the reader with the very first sentence or we risk losing the reader. Backstory is a no-no: "Just dump it into the story somewhere." Descriptive narrative is boring. Who cares, we're told, what color are the curtains, no matter who expertly the writer uses them to describe the mood of a character who is considering pulling the trigger on the Glock in his mouth.
Publishers are looking for that sure-fire bestseller they can sell to a Hollywood producer to turn into next summer's blockbuster movie. For a time, it was vampires and werewolves. Publishers expect books to jump off bookshelves with no investment. Bestsellers aren't so much written as they are created by a publisher who stands behind them, champions them, invests in them.
A few years ago (I believe it was 2014), I read that 60% of Americans didn't read a novel that year, and 40% of college graduates claimed they never crack another book after graduation. Those numbers were expected to grow. I can believe that. I work with a lot of Millennials who admit to not reading. People my age say they enjoy reading but just don't have the time. I must be an anomaly. I make time for what I enjoy doing, and that includes reading. I'd like to read more, but it takes away from my writing.
The classics. Do they stand the test of time? Maybe in creative writing classes and for a select few readers like me who like to connect not only with characters and stories set in bygone eras, but also with writers who died centuries ago. It's the closest I can come to time travel.
Whoever said, "Follow the money," was extremely wise. Society will always find ways to make more money and make it in a shorter time than last year.
Of course, it is sad there are so many who don't read and seem proud of that fact. They don't know what they are missing.
I have a little more faith in the reading public. I do not believe a publisher can ram a book down the throats of society if it isn't a well-written story, or doesn't have a shock element. Even some of society's most famous people's books haven't become best sellers.
Part of the reason is that we have received the sifted content of centuries. We've lost the really bad stuff — or it's around but we don't read it anymore (dive deeply into the Gutenberg Project if you want to see some of it).
And there are classics being written now, except that they're not classics yet because they haven't gone through the process. Someone noticed that it's the 70th anniversary of 1984. When it's the 150th anniversary of 1984, it will be a classic. Will it make it? I'm not sure, but it looks like it's on track.
One factor that marks a classic is that it's worth reading again and again. I tend to read in the fantasy and science fiction genre, and I can name a few authors who look like they might make it:
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell
Stephen King (he has at least one good novel among a lot of schlock)
There are others, but they're eluding me right now.
That is very true, Jan. The classics have been sifted and found worthy. I hadn't thought of that. I did read an old book printed in 1939 or 1940 and found it extremely good. Can't remember the name of it right now. The problem is I couldn't find it anywhere online when I searched. That one will go down without being sifted. So, I'm quite sure, there were many great works of fiction that just got lost down through the years, too.
Hopefully, the great works of the 20th and 21st centuries won't get lost and will float to the top as cream reading.
J. Conrad Guest
Gene Wolfe and Samuel R. Delany. Alfred Bester.
Raymond Walker
There are new "Classics" written all the time. Both in the generalist term and in redepictions of "The Classics", "Circe" was recently worthy of note. Many writers of today will have books considered classics in times to come. "Dan Simmons" sadly missed by Jan (above), Stephen King for sure, Perhaps Susanna Clarke (hope that I have spelled her name right) Peter Hoeg, Ian Banks,oh and I could go on and on. All of those mentioned are better than Jane Austen (lol- and I enjoy archasims) but people still read. Fewer than before, perhaps, but I am still here and devour a couple of books a week, Assuming I am sleeping at the time. During the insomnia (lol- also a Stephen King novel) one a night or every second night. "The Nights are long and filled with shadows" My daughter usually reads two books a week my son, fewer, one every two weeks. My neighbours boy never has a book out of his hands. jeguest as well as GinaBurgess suggest a dumbing down and I cannot imagine that to be true (though I have no scientific evidence for my assumption).
Yet, what I can say to refute the comments is that Ian Banks (mentioned earlier) took five chapters in his book "Excession" to describe four dimensional thinking in sincere mathematical terms and still had a bestseller (also nominated for a number of prizes- I think it won a few, though do not hold me to that statement). "Circe", also mentioned earlier, explores the life of the Nereid witch, that held Odysseus captive from a femenist point of view. Peter Hoeg uses long descriptive passages to describe each scene of his lauded novels, sells well and wins regular prizes as do the likes of Eowyn Ivey and Cecilia Ekback. I really do not know where the "dumbing Down" and disinterest in reading comes from. For that matter it is suggested (I have no idea wither this is true or not)that early in his career, Neil Gaiman thought, at one point that his readership were not "ready" for his novels and so produced a "Graphic novel" instead and that drew his readership closer.
Write the "right" book and you will be a success no matter what publishers think. Many authors have proved that.
That's encouraging!
Granted, Raymond, points well taken. One of my professors in college back in 19hahmmm pointed out that we are subject to our circle of influence and what we know. He gave the example of purchasing a new red car, say a Mustang. We then start to notice all the red cars and all the Mustangs on the road. We first thought we were rather unique getting a Mustang because no one we knew had one. Then we notice them all on the road and find out we aren't so unique.
I know there are some truly great modern authors in all genres. I guess the main lament I have is that out of 8 or 10 books I pick up in a month, I find only 1 or 2 are worthy of a 5-star rating… maybe. Thirty years ago, it was only 1 or 0 books out of 10 that were not good books.
Don't forget Frank Herbert!
The "Classics" also are turned into awesome films, over and over again.
I think there are a couple of reasons (of course the above discourse shares too) that I think
there aren't more great books…
The fast pace of life today means folks don't take the time to compose. We can easily type and retype. Jane Austin had to write by hand (man, her handwriting must have been awesome!) and couldn't have started over again and again. She had to think things through and "get it right".
Also, we expect less effort for more reward, don't we. Fast food, lay-away plans… it's all part of the same symptom.
Great blog post, Gina. Thanks!
Marie Bethel
I have written a Children's educational book "Back in Time" A very classic story about my childhood, and how children used to make their own toys. We are living in a time with a quick fix. The classic days of stories are gone with the wind. I am very old fashioned and enjoy reading classic stories. I believe that when writers added more sexual series , they think it is more interesting and their book sells faster . This is the type of world we in, sex sells.
Marie, my dad had a "toy" stick that he called Stick Boy. It lived in his little boy pockets and he played with it under the house. As a man he invented many things in the aviation field such as a "breather" for acrobatic bi-planes so when they flew straight up they wouldn't stall out. I believe the imaginations that reading and playing children do while young strengthens their adult imaginations. No empiracle data, just from what I see.
Great discussion. There's so much bad stuff on TV and at the movies. Reading is also hard to find that isn't junk. Going back to some of the older authors gives us some great material and food for thought.
Deirdre Tolhurst
When my daughter (now 37) was in elementary school I bought Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer to read to her because I loved them and the movies, and she had never heard of either. B. Dalton's had them for $2 each. I would change my voice with the character's and she loved it. I also bought War and Peace for $3, still have it, but haven't tackled it yet. Great article, thanks!

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Home › News › Aug 2018
Award-Winning Gulfstream G600 To Make Latin American Debut At LABACE
Staff Report From Savannah CEO
Thursday, August 9th, 2018
Gulfstream Aerospace Corp.'s next aircraft to be certified, the award-winning Gulfstream G600, will make its Latin American debut as part of the company's static display at the upcoming Latin American Business Aviation Conference & Exhibition in São Paulo.
Joining the clean-sheet, fully outfitted aircraft on static display Aug. 14-16 at Congonhas Airport will be the four-living-area flagship Gulfstream G650ER and the super mid-size Gulfstream G280.
More than 205 Gulfstream aircraft are based in Latin America; nearly 70 percent are large-cabin models such as the G650ER, Gulfstream G650 and Gulfstream G550. Mexico, Brazil and Venezuela are the three largest Gulfstream operator bases within the region, with approximately 100, 45 and 25 aircraft, respectively. The fleet in Brazil has grown nearly 10 percent since 2013.
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"Its customer benefits, including range, advanced technology, cabin flexibility and fuel efficiency, put it at the top of its class."
The G600 cabin is among the longest in its class and provides an excellent canvas for interior personalization and customization. The G600 can seat up to 19 passengers in four living areas, with berthing for nine. The galley can be located forward or aft, and a shower is an option.
The G600 on display in São Paulo features a mirrored mid-cabin bulkhead and luxurious quilted seats. The aircraft's interior won top honors in Private Jet Design at the 2018 International Yacht & Aviation Awards.
The G600 and its sister ship, the G500, which recently earned its U.S. Federal Aviation Administration type certification and production certificate, feature the award-winning, all-new Symmetry Flight Deck™, the most technologically advanced flight deck in business aviation. The flight deck features the industry's first active control sidesticks, a safety and technology breakthrough for business aircraft.
To support its growing fleet in Brazil and the region, Gulfstream operates a company-owned service center –– Gulfstream Brazil –– in Sorocaba, near São Paulo. The nearly 38,000-square-foot/3,530-square-meter facility, located at Bertram Luiz Leupolz Airport, has a staff of more than 20 employees and offers comprehensive services, including major inspections, avionics and interior installations and modifications, engine line maintenance, repairs and changes, and spare part exchanges and sales.


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← The Designer revealed by his ways
Joshua assaults the walls of Jericho… →
Science's self-imposed gaps
Is the cosmic fine-tuning argument an example of the "God of the Gaps" argument? Biologos likes the first, as opposed to Intelligent Design, and dislikes the second, so their answer would presumably be "no". I contend, however, that CFT does point to empirically obvious gaps in the understanding of the natural world which are instructive for answering the question of whether God's activity is distinguishable in nature in the affirmative.
The main reason given for finding that CFT avoids the "Gaps" accusation is that it is about the initial conditions of the Universe, rather than "miraculous intervention" within it as, it is depressingly often claimed, ID postulates. In other words, although the Big Bang itself is (the current standard model in) science, its cause is necessarily outside science, because the laws, matter, energy and time which science studies only came into being at that point. It is therefore outside the purview of science to say more about its cause.
This, of course, does not preclude future scientific evidence overturning the Big Bang Theory, though current attempts by those like Hawking and Krauss to circumvent the need for a Creator have clearly failed, and only push the question back a stage. BioLogos, at least, sees no urgent need to search for a naturalistic explanation behind the Big Bang, but accepts it as the genuine "starting point of science". The only legitimate way to deny a Creator is to show that the Universe is eternal and infinite, and that never looks likely to be demonstrable again, if indeed the very possibility of our existence in an infite time-bound Universe hasn't been disproven.
Nevertheless, BioLogos considers CFT, though not scientific, to be "a pointer to the existence of God". It does not, I believe, spell out what kind of argument this is if it is not scientific, but that perhaps isn't crucial here, because we can say it is the kind of argument that Evolutionary Creation finds acceptable within its own project.
Still, I guess most would call it, like the Multiverse or string-theories strictly considered, a philosophical argument (though EC doesn't self-identify as a philosophical project, but as a scientific and theological one). But as I've said, it is by its very nature beyond the methodological naturalism of science, and clearly is not a matter of divine revelation in theology, making it philosophical by default.
In fact, though, all inferences of design behind the Big Bang arise from the configuration of the universe that exists in empirical experience. One can see (if one accepts CFT) that the basic constants of the Universe, and values deriving from them, are absurdly suited to the existence of intelligent life, and infer that such a situation cannot derive from law (the business of science) or chaos (the Epicurean philosophy), and one can therefore postulate an Intelligent First Cause as the best explanation (and, to quote Aquinas, "This Cause we call 'God'"). Perhaps, then, CFT is best described as a scientifically-grounded inductive philosophical argument to a theological conclusion.
The first point I want to make from this is that it is, willy-nilly, a "Gaps" argument: it's just that the gaps crying out for a divine explanation, though observed empirically within the created order, have a cause outside the purview of science because it is outside the created order. The gaps to be explained are, to be precise, the strange absence of every other conceivable universe than the fine-tuned one we are in: this universe has a specification. That's why, of course, the only reasonable alternative to God is that all those other Universes must exist elsewhere invisibly. The only alternative to design, ie to intelligent information restricting the possibilities to a single, orderly, actuality, is an infinity containing every specification indiscriminately.
As far as I can see, logically this means that there truly is an observable hiatus in the scientific order, consisting of the empirically detected information inherent in CFT, for which the best explanation available is God – or this, at least, is the inductive case made by the EC organisation BioLogos. If there were no epistemological gap, there would be no possibility of a fine-tuning argument.
Let's turn now to my next, separate, argument, which is to deny the uniqueness of the Big Bang as a creative act, despite its priority in time. For Christian (indeed even philosophical theistic) doctrine is not deistic. It does not believe that God created a closed, mechanical system at a point in time, nor even that additionally God stops such a clockwork system from collapsing. Rather God's act of creation is the configuration of everything in all creation, not just an initial causation in time.
It's worth just pointing out as an aside that Deism, dependent as it was on Enlightenment mechanical philosophy, never had a solid basis for believing the Universe to be a closed system, and that the new physics empirically overturned the philosophical prejudice that made the self-sufficiency of natural causes the basis both of the scientific enterprise and deistic religion.
Creation doctrine, then, is not about the beginning of time, but holds that everything that exists, at any and every point in time, derives from God's eternal wisdom and power. Every entity and every specific event, therefore, is at all times ontologically dependent on God. That's why Thomas Aquinas was able to frame his various arguments for God in the same way whether the universe had a begining or turned out to be (according to the science of his time) eternal: all was in either case dependent on the First Cause for its particular being.
For this reason, there is no justification for restricting the inference of design to the data of cosmic fine tuning alone, as if the beginning of the universe was especially privileged vis a vis God's creation power.
A third strand in my case is to point out that, properly speaking, science only studies, and can only study, repeatable causes, that is, lawlike behaviour. Laws themselves, of course, cause nothing, being merely human descriptions of order, but we can speak of the regular powers built into nature (or God's habits, if one prefers) as the stuff of science. Likewise, "natural" is not a description of a cause. In Enlightenment times, when science was completely deterministic, "nature" could be taken as a proxy for "law", and "law" for the clockwork mechanisms of the closed universe.
That's important because, despite the demise of scientific determinism, science has tended to maintain its claim to the entire category of "natural causes", but to include within them the irregularities of chance as well as the proper study of the regularities of law, and that is scientifically illegitimate, except insofar as science is merely descriptive.
Under determinism, chance was merely the humanly unforeseen intersection of lawlike events (it was entirely epistemological), but under modern non-deterministic science, where it is not legitimately treated statistically (as in quantum mechanics), ontological chance is often treated as if it were itself an cause. But even if that were true, it would not make chance a scientific cause, because the non-repeatable is not the proper business of science, any more than the "fortuitously" fine-tuned cosmological constants can be explored scientifically. As we have seen, the constants can be explained by a philosophical recourse either to infinite chaos (multiverse theory) or to intelligently designed information (theism).
We've got to the point, then, where science has abandoned complete physical determinism (though the practical effect of that on the macro-scale is still not clear), which means that it must logically accept that not all that may be observed is lawlike. And that is only to say there are, uncontroversially, true gaps in nature that science cannot explain. We have also seen that these gaps, which are inevitable given post-determinist science, occur in the area of the unrepeatable – that is, in the area science calls "chance", which I have shown science to have no business studying other than to uncover the hidden order of as yet unknown laws – yet already knowing from first principles that laws cannot explain everything in a non-deteministic cosmos.
The gaps that interest us in cosmic fine tuning consist of specific information responsible for order, rather than chaos, which is considered a legitimate pointer to God as the author of that information. Therefore what applies to the Big Bang applies equally to anything, outside the realm of regular scientific laws, which provokes that same "properly basic" intuition of design. If specific information is not accounted for by the demonstrable regularities of nature studied by science, then it points towards the First Cause (who is outside the creation), or conceivably to some unknown intermediate cause such as superhuman intelligence, just as much as does CFT.
Two things follow from this. The first is that it is invalid to insist that observation, or inference, could say anything more about the Cause than that it was an intelligent being. Nobody suggests that the God "pointed to" by CFT can be described in detail from that information alone – conceivably, it could be a created demiurge or (the latest materialist fad) a teenager running a virtual world in his bedroom. CFT has the same profound limitations as all natural theology: it can indicate God, but not reveal him. By the same token, though, it is unreasonable to insist that the full nature of God can be specified by any design inference made by others. That is, unless one is also willing to forswear the CFT argument for oneself.
The second sequel is that we must conclude the whole basis of the "God of the Gaps" accusation to derive from an outdated and untenable philosophy of nature as a closed system. Science already knows this to be false, and I have shown that this necessarily implies that science knows there are epistemological gaps, which can be discerned empirically as whatever is attributed to "chance" (which is both non-scientific because unrepeatable, and a non-cause in metaphysical terms).
The phrase "chance of the gaps" is occasionally thrown back at scientists by critics, and this is an entirely legitimate charge if a scientist should claim that a chance event (as distinct from a statistical pattern of chance events) is a legitimate aspect of nature for science to study. Chance, like design, belongs outside science in philosophy or theology, except where it merely means "lawlike cause yet unknown" – and science can in that case only legitimately wait until it finds the regular explanation it suspects, before allowing itself to speak on the matter. If a cause is unknown, no rational scientific argument can assign it preferentially to "natural law" rather than "divine specification".
It follows that where we find a series of chance events producing order, for which no purely lawlike explanation is forthcoming (and which is therefore by definition beyond science), we are entitled to see that as a pointer towards God to exactly the same extent, and in exactly the same manner, as we might in the case of cosmic fine tuning. The universe is not a closed system, and scientists have no inside information about the limits of its openness.
But contingent order is the business of creation, whether that order rises from the Big Bang or from a series of stochastic mutations or the chance isolation of a group of hominids. Wherever nature is not explained by lawlike processes, then it's outside the methodological limits science has imposed upon itself of "repeatable material efficient causes". Contingent order is intrinsically the business, I suppose, of philosophy – though just one step removed from theology if Epicurean appeals to order from chaos fail.
One concluding thought: the CFT argument can be turned on its head. If there is a God who creates by specifying the information content in his creation (in other words, by designing it), then one would expect to find that the universe is highly contingent, with highly specified parameters like the cosmological constants. An Epicurean, naturalistic universe would contain, in contrast, all possibilities. Our universe therefore fulfils the predictions of theism, and falsifies Epicureanism, on purely empirical grounds. There are no other realistic contenders.
But likewise, that same designing God would be expected to create other levels of contingent order, indeed wherever order appears in his work. And in the same way as it is with CFT, this order will often be empirically observable. It will either show up as regularity, in which case science may study it, arbitrarily call it "natural law", and so "point to God" because the only alternative is pervading regular order arising from chaos, which is absurd.
Or else the order will show up as contingency, not referrable to scientific law and therefore properly outside the purview of science (and justly definable as a "scientific gap" if one so chooses). As in the case of CFT the inference to be drawn is either that chaos can produce order (and then CFT would be sheer dumb luck), or design by a Creator. Once cannot infer "natural causes", unless one first determines that nature has chaotic elements that lead, implausibly and in theological terms incoherently, to order.
In the case where underlying lawlike processes can be demonstrated, of course, and only in that case, science can legitimately invoke "natural causes". But then, the very existence of such order points to God rather than chaos, just as much as does cosmic fine tuning.
You see, those gaps are absolutely everywhere, and every one of them is shaped like God. What are these "natural causes" anyway?
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2 Responses to Science's self-imposed gaps
This is a brilliant piece Jon, and beautifully stated. I have heard several modern atheists say that the universe looks exactly the way it should, if there were no God. By this they mean that with the natural laws we have, we dont need God. But there are some very suspicious things about those natural laws. As Wigner famously wrote "The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in describing the world", it is in fact highly surprising that we can describe the laws of motion, the action of gravity, electromagnetic force and so on with some fairly simple mathematical equations. Is that how one might expect a universe to act? Why should it? How convenient that gravity falls off as the square of the distance, and not as a multifactorial Hamiltonian with 6 dimensions. The behavior of gas molecules have no particular reason to be so easily understood as the insanely simple fact that the pressure times the volume is equal to the number of molecules times the temperature (times a constant of course).
How do we know ours is what a God less universe would look like? It might in fact be terribly different. Actually most of the universe (possibly all of it) is very different from our planet. Which itself was also once a hellish rock of barren chaos.
I am a firm believer in evolution, but so many "lucky" accidents had to happen for me to be typing these words, that one wonders about chance as a viable force (as you elegantly explain) in a God less universe, to bring it all about. We could talk about the unreasonable effectiveness of the blue green algae that evolved to emit a toxic gas, killing all other life on the planet, but that eventually made oxygen breathing large animals possible, since only oxygen can serve as the highly efficient energy source that large creatures need to survive. The very lucky accidents of our large moon, our tectonic plates, our large neighbor Jupiter, our distance from our star, not to mention the evolution of large brains (despite their evolutionary non adaptive nature) should all be seen as quite fortuitous in an unplanned and undesigned universe.
I will also confess that like you I am becoming weary of Dawkins phrase God of the gaps, and wearier still of exhortations from Christians to avoid falling into it. We havent been basing our beliefs on the mysterious nature of thunder and lightning, or the apparent miracle of plant growth for quite a few centuries now, and it is high time for atheists and some of their allies to stop using that odious strawman phrase "Godidit" as if somehow this is different from a scientific explanation for anything.
We do not believe in a God of the gaps, but in a God of the bridges. When science learns to build a bridge spanning a former gap of our knowledge, that is where God is manifest, whether it is in the physics of particles or the synthesis of proteins.
Thanks once more for your kind words. As in so many of these issues, realising where and why ideas arose helps to free one from patterns of thought that are insufficiently grounded.
The idea of the universe as a closed system has a peculiarly local resonance (Europe and its western colonies for the last 2 or 3 centuries only) with historical roots in quite "random" things like the disputes between Catholics and Protestants and so on.
In theory we should have abandoned it in the light of 20th century physics alone, but it still underpins the way we tend to think. One hears it in the way that methodological naturalism is applied even by Christians: "In the remote possibility that you encounter an anomaly, put on the oxygen mask over your head whilst searching for a natural explanation – any natural explanation – before conceding that God might rarely disturb the settled course of nature."
I'm just reading Keener's work on miracles (as I've mentioned in passing a couple of times), whose main contribution is to show that outside the west (and even outside the cloister of western academia) virtually the whole world believes that nature is in dynamic relationship with "supernatural" powers. Survey results suggest that several hundred million people believe they have witnessed miracles, and of course almost universally people pray to God (or gods) expecting that he (they) will be providentially propitious towards their requests, ie that nature is not a closed system.
My point is that, only here and particularly amongst our intellectual elite, is there any idea that that somehow makes the world a chaotic and unreliable place. People in the East and South can still get on with regular lives – even studying science – whilst believeing the world to be porous to God's activity.
Sure God is unpredictable – but we knew the world was unpredictable when we started designing experiments to exclude all the variable aspects of reality to pin down some underlying principles. And even then, as you pointed out in your previous comment, the points are never exactly on the graph!
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should be time for LCW's turn to win his first world champion....
Actually when HKV beat Iskandar Zainuddin yesterday, I should have more confidence in him but, knowing HKV, he can be brilliant one match and so-so the next, that's why I wasn't too sure if he could live up to high expectations in the most important match of his career.
HKV is actually quite a steady performer, the reason his fortunes seem to vary so much in the professional circuit is because he has basically "stagnated" (can't learn new tricks) like Son Wan Ho-- if their bag of tricks are able to counter their opponents, form permitting, they'll win; if the opponent can counter their bag of tricks, then they'll lose.
But mentally, HKV and SWH are both stronger than the most mid-level "veteran" players because they have both had a long mid-career fight-back from injury (which probably caused their "stagnation") till their current standings.
Sorry if this sounds grating, but the youngsters HKV defeated were (at this point in time) one-trick ponies-- form permitting, HKV totally has the strategies and plays to defeat them... what I am really impressed with is his mental fortitude: he was clearly nervous and error-prone at the start of every game, but kept/adjusted his presence of mind to execute his gameplay.
MelvIndonesia said: ↑
Had Korea won in 2012, the list is complete.
this TC final is exciting but not spectacular to be honest...
all 5 games' results are as expected, Den won 3 MS, Ind won 2 MD...
no games were closely contested.... all end in 2:0, not even a game decided in not more than 2 points...
the last MS was a disappointment from a spectator's point of view... too one sided... no climax... the last 10 points like garbage time in NBA... what a pity...
KB@TB Em Regular Member
YESSSSSSSSS
Just finished watching it. YESSS. Denmark made it, oh yes. The world of badminton comes one step closer once again. Great for the competition.
They derserve to win it, they just deserve to win. And they can celebrate. Pure joy. (Not this ofc we should win, like China yesterday it is just different if the field is open instead of having the clear favourite win. And it doesnt matter whether its CHN or any other country)
What glory if you can win it this way (Their no.1 doubles not here, players struggled with injuries. Tatically well played, to not risk JOJ in the SF). Three times 3:2, what nerves they had. And players like Holst who suddenly shined to make this happen. Great to also see Boe win such a big title at the end of his career. What boost this will be for the upcoming Olympics. Viktor, Jan now know how to win the big things
Great dominance in singles today. INA was pretty nervous in the doubles, but they comeback after slow starts in both MDs and won convingincly in the end. Both nations won what was supposed to win for the Cup, but INAs youngsters couldnt rise to the occasion. If you want to "blame" someone I fear its TS who lost his way leading in game 2.
They won it fair, no excuses. Whoever would have played in MS for INA Denmarks boys have just the best mentality!
#486 KB@TB Em, May 22, 2016
pjswift said: ↑
He is new and young. Looks like he is a bright kid but wasting his youth and talent here. Life is more than just badminton unless you are a professional player.
China has many talented young players why worry? If team INA today had the guts to fielding their youngsters why not China?
opruh and nokh88 like this.
Since Lang Ping returned to coach the CHN team for the second time in 2013, CHN team has been increasing to the Top-2 today, they just won the FIVB Women's World Cup 2015 held in Japan, earned the team & the runner-up, Serbia, the first tickets to Rio OG.
Jonc108 said: ↑
All of LCW, VA, Intanon, Nehwal, Li Xuerui and even Marin's games were spectacular-- they came roaring out of the gate trying to win the first point for their team, whether their team had a good chance or not, making this Thomas & Uber Cup look like a real competition...
Whether or not the team could reach the final, SDK should be brought by looking at how he performed at Singapore Open. I believe he will be valuable to the team in case the match goes to the third single.
Team China, yes; Team Li Yongbo, no...he has become the kind of "technocrat" that you see a lot of in administrative/government position.
Talking about CHN-KOR duel, why China didn't put Lin Dan as first singles to face Son Wan Ho?! It's a big risk to field the shaky Chen Long who did two blunders in 2014, this man has no self-belief as leading role in team event.
opruh and lee00 like this.
Err, no-- because I am not the only one who can see that he outplayed his opponents in/due to "drifty" conditions in the Singapore Indoor Stadium (a relatively large complex when it comes to badminton).
Yay. thanks for your info kelana. Time to go back to love volleyball my old crush
Yup, Inthanon, Nehwel and Marin know that their team will not win but still gave their best when on court. Good sportsmanship.
CLELY said: ↑
NEWS UPDATE: Long long ago, positioning strategies resulted in easy victories and less exciting/fair competitions-- so the Thomas/Uber Cup rules have been changed to require that world ranking of 1st singles fielded must be higher than the 2nd, which must be higher than the 3rd; and 1st doubles fielded must be higher than the second.
Now the positioning strategies mainly revolved breaking up established doubles with higher rankings so that they can be fielded as 2nd doubles with lower rankings-- but this is a high-risk strategy which actually does make the competition more exciting/entertaining (& is still pretty fair).
Can Denmark field HKVas both 3rd singles and 2nd doubles? If yes, then the order of play will be MS1, MD1 MS2, Ms3 and MD2. It would be over by the 4th match.
sorry to disagree with you. I saw SDK was having a good and stable play throughout the Singapore Open. With that kind of mentality and skills, I believe he will be very valuable to be fielded as 3rd single.
Loh likes this.
He he he the Korean team came out alive from the fierce battle against the Chinese team in the QF but with heavily soaked soldiers, eventually the third party, the Indonesian team that reaped the full benefit and defeated them with relative ease.
I think that draw was unfortunate for both teams, the loser and winner, for the winner wouldn't survive the next round either.
This is a good lesson if two powerful players from the same NOC happen to face each other before the final in Rio Oly... they have to make up decision... and these outcomes of the China-Korea then Korea-Indonesia saga should be a good reminder!


There once was a little girl named Daile who had the most beautiful eyelashes in the world. They were so beautiful that was not uncommon for the jaws of young lads to drop uncontrollably when they caught sight of her. Daile was quite oblivious to all this however, and spent most of her childhood thinking that all young males (and many older ones) had trouble controlling their mouths.
As young Daile grew a little older however, she couldn't help but begin to notice the attention she was getting. The jaw paralysis of boys her age began to be followed by stammering requests for dates and various attempts to appear suave. It was most vexing for Daile, who was not interested in boys at all. It got so bothersome that she took to wearing dark glasses and avoiding gatherings where she knew there would be large numbers of young men.
One particularly gloomy evening, Daile was walking along a quiet alley in order to avoid seeing any young men. Now, we all know that walking down a quiet alley on a gloomy evening is one of the silliest things a story character can do, but poor Daile was so fed up with the constant attention that she did not realise what she was doing. She was soon brought to her senses however, by the sight of somebody walking towards her along the alley. Being rather more alert now, Daile resigned herself to the fact that this would most certainly be a villian of some sort.
He did not look much like a villian however. He did have dark hair, as any really evil villian should have, but it was rather curly and a little, well, "boofy". He was also wearing a long leather coat (leather being quite fasionable among super-heroes and villians alike), but it was of a tan colour, and not very evil looking at all. He also had a scarf, which no self respecting evil-doer would be caught dead in. What really caught Daile's attention, however, was the fact that the man was walking along the wall - literally. He was perpendicular to what any normal person would refer to as the Right Way Up.
The man seemed startled, and looked about himself with a puzzled expression on his face. "Oh, so I am," he said. "I'm terribly sorry, I shall rectify the situation immediately." And so saying, he proceded to reach into his his coat pocket and pulled out something looking very much like a brass fob watch. He frowned at it, then performed some swift, complicated movement which ended with the watch going back into his pocket. He then stepped gracefully off the wall.
"How did you do that?" exclaimed Daile.
"No, I meant walking along the wall," said Daile.
"Oh that. That's just a bad habit. All us physicists have a go at it now and then. Incidentaly, I'd appreciate it if you didn't mention it to anyone—supposed to be a great secret and all that. Probably best to think of it as a strange dream. Speaking of which…" The man seemed to become slightly less vague for a moment, and frowned at Daile slightly. Then he pulled what looked very much like a silver dog whistle out of his pocket and blew on it.
He turned around, and following his gaze, Daile saw a large, pink elephant coming down the alley. "There we go," said the man, "Can't have a good dream without a pink elephant or two. How are ya there Jimmy?" And he gave the elephant a few pats on the rump. As he was doing so, Daile noticed that he still had the whistle in his hand. What caught her attention was that a small green light had begun to flash on the end of it. The man seemed to notice too, and hurriedly put it away in his pocket.
"Off you go then Jimmy," he said a little nervously, "One can't have elephants staying too long in dreams you know - not good manners." And the elephant trotted off the way it had come.
"What was that little flashing light about?" asked Daile.
"What flashing light?" replied the man.
At this point, Daile began to get a little frustrated. "Ugh! Isn't there a single member of the male species that can answer a simple question?" she exlaimed in exasperation. It had been a long day. Daile began to rant.
"Oh, you meant the elephant whistle," said the man with every appearance of sincerity, "The little light just lets me know that the frequency shift interpolation filter circuitry has power. I made it flash because I think ordinary lights are boring.
"Haven't you noticed the ridiculous hairy things hanging off the end of my eyelids?" replied Daile, oozing cynicism.
Daile stopped here because the man didn't appear to be listening. He had pulled a notepad and pen from somewhere, and was madly scribbling away. The page seemed to be filled with very badly drawn diagrams and far too many letters from the greek alphabet. "Do go on. I am listening," he said without looking up.
Daile was exceedingly puzzled. She followed the man to a rather inconspicuous door a little way up the alley and waited outside while the man went in and could be heard tinkering about. Just as she was begining to wonder what she was doing standing outside a strange man's "workshop" in a dark alley on a gloomy evening, the man came out again carrying a pair of glasses.
Daile looked in the mirror, and was quite suprised to find that the glasses actually looked quite good on her. But they somehow made her face look subtley different, and at first she couldn't quite work out what it was.
The man raised an eyebrow at her.
Of course, from that day forward, Daile could never find the quiet alley again, no matter how carefully she retraced her steps. But she wore the glasses and rather enjoyed being able to walk down the street without attracting too many stares. She was dissapointed to find however, that sensible conversations were still a rarity—especially with young men. It seemed that in spite of her eyelashes no longer causing Issues, people were still just plain nuts.


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Sandra Coke case: ID on body found in Solano County not expected until Tuesday
Sandra Coke was reported missing from her home Aug. 4, 2013.
Fliers asking for information regarding Sandra Coke's disappearance are posted in Oakland, Calif. on Wednesday, Aug. 7, 2013. Coke was last seen by her family August 4th at about 8:30 PM at her home on the 600 block of Aileen Street. (Kristopher Skinner/Bay Area News Group)
By Harry Harris | hharris@bayareanewsgroup.com | Bay Area News Group
PUBLISHED: August 12, 2013 at 12:14 pm | UPDATED: July 20, 2016 at 4:08 am
OAKLAND — The family of Sandra Coke was anxiously waiting Monday for authorities to identify a woman's body found near a Vacaville park last week during a search for the missing federal investigator from Oakland.
"Our hearts are heavy to think she may not be coming home to us, but we have been sustained through this ordeal by the unbelievable outpouring of love, concern and prayers from all of you," Coke's family said in an online statement they posted during the weekend.
The Alameda County Coroner performed an autopsy Monday on the body, but the identity will not be released until Tuesday at the earliest, authorities said. The body was found Friday near Lagoon Valley Park during a massive search in Solano County that first began near the Solano County Fairgrounds in Vallejo.
The discovery brought the search to a halt but police have not said whether the body is that of Coke.
Coke, 50, was last seen about 8:30 p.m. Aug. 4 by her 15-year-old daughter after leaving their home in the 600 block of Aileen Street in North Oakland, reportedly to meet with someone with information about the family's missing dog.
Coke's car was subsequently located in a West Oakland parking lot and one of her cellphones was found in Richmond last week.
She was reportedly seen the day she went missing with Randy Alana, whom she dated 20 years ago. Alana, 56, is a violent sex offender with a long criminal history. He has prior convictions for rape and other crimes and is registered as a high-risk sex offender.
Alana has been in custody on a parole violation since Aug. 6 and investigators say he is a "person of interest" in Coke's disappearance, but no charges have been made against him in connection with the case.
A spokesman for the Alameda County District Attorneys office said Monday there were not updates on the case and he referred all calls to Oakland police.
As a federal investigator dealing with death penalty appeals, Coke interviews death row inmates, their friends and families, said Joe Schlesinger, chief of the death penalty appeals unit of the Office of the Federal Public Defender in the Eastern District of California.
"She is very tenacious, very good at relating to people who have had all kinds of difficulties in life," said Schlesinger, who has known Coke for more than 20 years. "We're grieving, we're in shock, we are doing everything we can to support each other and support Sandra's family. We are in a field that deals with death everyday, when it touches one of our own it's very difficult."
Coke's family members could not be reached on Monday for comment.
A $100,000 reward was offered by family members last week for information about Coke's whereabouts.
Contact Harry Harris at 510-208-6443. Contact David DeBolt at 510-262-2728.
Harry Harris
Harry Harris is a Pulitzer Prize winning breaking news reporter for the Bay Area News Group. He began his Oakland Tribune career in September 1965 as a 17-year-old copyboy. He became a reporter in 1972 and is considered one of the best crime and breaking news reporters in the country. He has covered tens of thousands of murders and other crimes in the East Bay. He has also mentored dozens of young reporters, some of whom continue to work in journalism today.
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Real Data Strategies' training programs are designed with our client's organization and culture in mind. The best analysis tools and products are only the best if their results are understood and translated to action by our users. We take pride in developing customized training and immersing our clients for their maximum strategic use. Training is always included as part of the Real Data Strategies' client relationship. From overviews on our Data Doorway web-based platform, to regular and frequent one-on-one coaching sessions utilizing our quarterly MetriX reports & relational databases, our clients are never left to figure things out on their own.
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The following is part of a letter to teenagers from a judge in the Brisbane Juvenile Court.
Always we hear the cry from teenagers. What can we do? Where can we go? My answer is: Go home. Mow the lawns — wash the windows, learn to cook, build a raft, get a job, visit the sick, study your lessons and after you have finished, read a book!
Your town does not owe you recreation facilities, your parents do not owe you fun. The world does not owe you a living. You owe the world something. You owe it your time, energy and talents so that no-one will be at war, in poverty or sick and lonely again.
In other words, grow up, stop being a cry baby, get out of your dreamworld and develop a backbone, not a wishbone. Start behaving like a responsible person.
You are important and you are needed. It is too late to sit around and wait for somebody to do something some day. Some day is now and that somebody is you!
Lol. Very poignant. I showed it it some of my friends and they just didn't get it.


An ultra-durable case that provides maximum protection for up to 5 liters of product, making it ideal for smaller sized medical equipment. With Pick N Pluck™ foam, customize it to almost any shape for 360° of equipment protection.
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The present study assessed whether psychopathology influences obese subject's ability to lose weight. The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) was used to differentiate between 46 pathological and 52 nonpathological subjects. A repeated measures analysis of variance did not support the hypothesis that the degree of weight loss is negatively associated with the amount of psychopathology measured by the MMPI. In addition, an analysis of covariance was conducted in an attempt to control for possible confounding factors at the start of treatment and also failed to support the hypothesis.
Harvey, Jeffrey J., "The predictive value of MMPI personality style in obesity therapy" (1989). Student Work. 64.


Sue Kemp has been appointed Divisional Director for Merlin Entertainment's popular family theme park - LEGOLAND Windsor – with effect from May 1st. Sue was previously General Manager of another Merlin attraction, Warwick Castle, for the last 3 years where she achieved great success including overseeing the successful launch of the new Warwick Dungeon last year.
Sue Kemp has been appointed Divisional Director for Merlin Entertainment's popular family theme park – LEGOLAND Windsor – with effect from May 1st. Sue was previously General Manager of another Merlin attraction, Warwick Castle, for the last 3 years where she achieved great success including overseeing the successful launch of the new Warwick Dungeon last year.
Sue has been with Merlin since Nove mber 2002 initially as Operations Director for Warwick, responsible for the day to day running of the Castle and its events, then moving to a similar role at Alton Towers before returning to the Castle as General Manager.


just a thirty-something gringo mumbling in this hostel.
at his back. What about every Jesus in this look-alike contest?
I ain't been laid in forty days and it's starting to show.
is still an empty bed. I drink and pretend to blend in.
are these lizards like mice to the locals?
so that makes them esta bien.
contraption with wires wrapped round the head into a socket above.
that one in Brooklyn moving through the book stacks.
and All I Could Think of Was You Singing in My Shower.
Jason Braun currently teaches English and is the Associate Editor of Sou'wester at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. He hosts "Literature for the Halibut" a weekly hour-long literary program on KDHX 88.1. He has published fiction, poetry, reported or been featured in Prime Number, ESPN.com, Big Bridge, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Evergreen Review, SOFTBLOW, The Nashville City Paper, Jane Freidman's blog, and many more.


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require 'bundler/setup' if File.exist?(ENV['BUNDLE_GEMFILE'])

if Gem::Specification.find_all_by_name('dotenv').any?
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  Dotenv.load "config/env/#{ENV['RAILS_ENV'] || :development}.env"
end

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
BBJ's Steve Hill Cultivates New Breed of Jets
By Deb Smith
Steven J. Hill was named president of Boeing Business Jets in August 2004.
Steven J. Hill says it's nearly impossible to get the "farming gene" out of your blood, especially if you've come from a long line of Michigan farmers—five generations to be exact. But he tried. The youngest of two sons born to the fourth generation of Hills in Saginaw, Mich., he spent his childhood among the rich, fertile farmland, located near the state's "thumb," as the locals like to say.
This farm had been the only means of livelihood of the generations prior to my father," explained Hill.
However, his father, William Hill, didn't farm. By the time the farm was passed to him, the economy, among other things, made it necessary for the elder Hill to seek employment outside the home.
"My dad always had some kind of a 40-hour-a-week job," Hill said.
Interestingly, the same fate would fall onto Hill and his brother and father's namesake, William Hill IV.
"I was probably 13 and my brother was 15, when my dad said, 'Son, the farm, and all of its working, are up to you and your brother," Hill recalled.
Sadly enough, he said the most money the family ever made on the farm was the money the government gave them in agreement to not grow crops in order to keep the price of certain commodities high. Therefore, Hill began to look for his future in other directions. He eventually looked up.
It was the late sixties, and the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union was in full swing. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and American Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon all agreed that mastering the art of space travel was crucial to demonstrate scientific superiority.
Although Hill knew he was interested in engineering, and had applied to several colleges, he still wasn't exactly sure which type of engineering he would study until July 20, 1969.
"I wasn't always interested in aviation, especially having grown up in rural Michigan," he said. "But what always did interest me and got me going in that direction was the space program—watching the television, and the repeated broadcasts of when we finally did make it to the moon. That event, more than anything else, told me that if I went down an engineering career, I wanted to work in aerospace."
Hill said the moment was quite serendipitous, as his parents were beginning to ask him to start making decision about what he wanted to do with his life. In August 1969, Hill left his rural abode for the University of Colorado at Boulder. He would spend the next five years completing a master's degree in aeronautical engineering.
To get to the university, the 17 year old would need to fly. That was something he'd never done before. He admits the plane ride in itself was memorable, but there were factors other than Bernoulli's principle going on that made this particular flight stick in his head.
"I had this whole rebellion thing going on," confessed Hill.
He said that even though his relationship with his parents was great, it was time to break away from home and the farm.
"I knew I wasn't going to be a farmer," he explained.
Anxious to be on his own, he said goodbye to his parents at the airport parking lot and headed into the terminal. The first thing he did once inside was buy a pack of cigarettes, signifying that he was now a "free man."
"I had very strict parents, so smoking was never permitted whatsoever," said Hill.
When a smiling ticket agent at the check-in counter asked, "Smoking or non-smoking?" he quickly responded, "Smoking." Then, he made his way to the gate. He recalls sitting in the back of the United Airlines Boeing 727 with all the smokers.
"As soon as the smoking light came on, the blue haze started to appear," he said. "It became so thick I couldn't see the front of the plane from back there."
Seated in the next to the last row, Hill lit up—and instantly began coughing.
"Other than a couple of drags with some friends under the bleachers at a football game in high school, I never had really smoked at all," he said.
As he gasped for air, red-faced, a concerned gentleman next to him leaned toward him and said, "Smoke much, son?"
The BBJ is a high-performance derivative of the Next-Generation 737-700. Designed for corporate and VIP applications, the aircraft combines the size of the 737-700 fuselage (110 feet, 4 inches)with the strengthened wings and landing gear from the 737-800
The man's question was eerily similar to something his dad might have said.
"I suffered through the rest of the flight," said Hill. "I gave that pack of cigarettes to the man before I left."
With his memorable first flight behind him, Hill began his studies with great enthusiasm. He even began taking flying lessons.
"My flying all took place in college in a Mooney," explained Hill. "It was owned by a professor in the aerospace engineering department. He had a great philosophy; he wanted his students to have the experience of flying, so if we bought the gas, we could go on any weekend with Professor Kennedy and fly with him."
Hill even accompanied his professor on a cross-country trip to St. Louis to present a paper during his junior year. However, he wasn't able to continue his flight training. He opted to prioritize his studies over flying.
"Basically, I went deeply into debt to finish my degree," said Hill. "I owed a lot to my parents and to others, and really couldn't afford to finish the lessons."
In 1973, Hill earned a bachelor's degree. Just 12 months later, he earned a master's degree in aeronautical engineering. Now it was time to find a job.
"When I graduated, I had an offer from Boeing," said Hill. "But I also had a number of other offers as well."
One of those other offers was from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. What really helped Hill make up his mind was something more than money.
"I actually spent a week back in Boston at MIT, trying to feel comfortable in a major city," he said. "The Pacific Northwest is really a beautiful area; it was more me—more like the country side of me. You have the mountains and the sea, and Boston is just a major metropolitan area. I personally didn't feel comfortable there."
Although MIT had offered Hill more money, he chose to start his career with The Boeing Company.
"I really went with my heart on this one," he said.
He began his career with Boeing in 1974 as an aeronautical engineer for the Boeing Defense Group. In that position, he worked on airborne warning and control system stability and control flight testing, U.S. Air Force flight simulator acceptance programs, and flow field analysis for advanced cruise missiles.
From 1980 to 1988, he served as a manager in Boeing's flight operations division. There, his organization provided vital technical flight operations assistance, training, and manuals in support of all of Boeing's commercial models. For the next decade, Boeing placed Hill in Europe as its director of sales for Boeing Commercial Airplanes.
In July 1996, Boeing announced a joint venture with General Electric called Boeing Business Jets.
"It started out between a former Boeing CEO, Phil Condit, and Jack Welch, CEO of GE," explained Hill.
Hill explained that since each had a company that had VIP airplanes of a smaller nature, they both did a lot of business flying.
"We saw an opportunity to do it better," Hill said. "We saw that we had a product in the 737 and that we could build a high-quality, spacious, long-range VIP airplane that would let us capture a good share of the market."
Boeing Business Jets was established as a marketing arrangement in the form of a contract venture. Boeing manages the day-to-day operations, manufactures the planes, and is responsible for sales and marketing activities, with support from GE. GE provides the airplane's engines. Both companies are involved in customer support and decisions affecting pricing and market applications.
The first Boeing Business Jet rolled out of Boeing's Renton, Wash. factory on July 26, 1998, and received FAA and JAA certification on Oct. 29, 1998. The BBJ is a high-performance derivative of the Next-Generation 737-700. Designed for corporate and VIP applications, the aircraft combines the size of the 737-700 fuselage (110 feet, 4 inches) with the strengthened wings and landing gear from the larger and heavier 737-800. The tailored combination provides owners with a business jet platform having maximum range capability (6,200 miles) while requiring less than 6,000 feet of runway.
The BBJ cruises at speeds of up to .82 Mach (541 miles per hour) and serves such routes as Los Angeles to London or Paris; New York to Buenos Aires, Argentine; and London to Johannesburg, South Africa.
The BBJ cruises at speeds of up to .82 Mach (541 miles per hour) and serves such routes as Los Angeles to London or Paris; New York to Buenos Aires, Argentine; and London to Johannesburg, South Africa. The same CFM56-7 engines used on the Next-Generation 737 power the BBJ. CFM International, a 50/50 joint company between Snecma Moteurs of France and GE, produces the engines.
In 1998, Hill returned from Europe to join Boeing Business Jets as vice president of operations. By 2002, he would be deputy vice president of Boeing Aircraft Trading. He was named president of BBJ in August 2004, replacing Lee Monson.
Hill proudly said that this year Boeing Business Jets will hit the 100-plane mark.
"We've really been quite successful selling this concept, although we don't have a huge number of large corporations using them," he said. "It's a big thing for a company like us, especially for the short amount of time we've been around."
He adds that 100 is a "good clean number."
"We try to be extremely clean in the fact that we've sold 95 firm sales," said Hill, referring to the fact that often industry numbers can mix and match commercial and private aircraft sales, especially in the VIP market. "These are BBJs that have been sold only into private aviation."
According to Hill, what has really helped the BBJ become successful is not only the private individual market, but also its ability to answer the very unique needs of heads of state.
"It makes a great mini Air Force One for smaller countries," said Hill.
As for changing the marketplace, Hill said BBJ has done more than just deliver the right product to market.
"The whole concept of Boeing Business Jets was to not just put the right airplane together, but rather to put together the right company behind it," he said.
While outsiders may think BBJ looks like a sales and marketing corporation inside of parent organization Boeing Commercial Airplanes, Hill said BBJ is actually a small VIP manufacturing and support organization for VIP clientele.
"What they care about is the fact there is a one-stop shop for them, that there's somebody who cares for them, and there's somebody to support their airplane after the sale," he said. "We have developed unique programs that aren't only competitive, but also satisfy the needs of the customers."
BBJ has its own series of dedicated field representatives that focus only on VIP clientele and airplanes, Hill said.
"We have our own spares exchange program, and our own training program as well," Hill said. "We treat the training side of the program much differently than our commercial side. It's just part of a personal care kind of approach we use at BBJ. We also have our own warranty program, and it's all handled in a one-stop shop."
What makes the BBJ unique is the fact that it arrives from Boeing to the customer in a "green" configuration (no paint or interior). Then, arrangements are made to install a long-range auxiliary fuel system at PATS Aircraft, LLC, the Delaware facility of DeCrane Aircraft Systems Integration Group.
Next, the BBJ is sent to a completion center of the customer's selection for interior completion. Currently there are five BBJ completion centers in the world, two in Europe and three in the United States.
Because the BBJ is both a business and lifestyle necessity, BBJ has now started aligning itself with many of the best-known yacht shows.
"The reason we've done this is that we're both seeking the same clientele—the private, high-net-worth individual that's looking at super yachts," said Hill. "Because of their yacht getting bigger, their airplane needs to be bigger, too."
As for the future, Hill has an optimistic outlook.
"Over the next five years, you're going to see Boeing responding to a varied customer base with the right product, and continue to see us developing new technologies that enhance the comfort and productivity of owners and operators," he said.
One of those developments is certainly the lower cabin altitude modification, which will be available soon for retrofit and standard on all BBJs in 2006. Hill said the new innovation will bring the inside cabin pressure down from about 8,000 feet MSL to about 6,500 feet MSL. That will result in a more normal and pleasant ride, particularly on longer trips.
Hill added that Boeing's new Future Air Navigation System will make its way into a more prevalent place in the market. FANS is a system that streamlines communications between airplane crews and air traffic controllers. It provides controllers with real-time airplane position reports and clearance requests for in-flight changes. The crew receives the response via nearly instantaneous text messages displayed on flight-deck computer screens.
Using Oceanic Air Traffic control satellites and VHF radio data link networks, FANS reduces conversations between flight crews and controllers, reducing congested radio frequencies. Hill assures customers that even more innovations are coming in the future, but what's important is the fact the BBJ has raised the standards for the VIP market.
The BBJ offers executives and VIPs not only the ultimate in range, space and flexibility, but also in comfort.
He said that before, the largest purpose-built VIP plane was the Gulfstream. What they've done is given people an option to step up.
"There wasn't a step up before, unless you went thought an ex-commercial airline, or bought a used jet—or even a new one from Boeing," he said. "Until BBJ, you were totally on your own to have it outfitted and have any type of support."
Steve Hill's dreams of touching the aerospace industry have come full circle. As far as that "farming gene," it's been more than 35 years since he left the 40-acre rural fields of Saginaw. His brother left, too, and in 1971, Hill's father sold the family farm and settled in Colorado. Hill tried to get farming out his system, but hasn't managed to do so yet.
"Oddly enough, farming never leaves your blood," reflected Hill.
His brother would agree. Today, he owns a farm, which Hill says is actually "more like an apple orchard." And Hill?
"About 22 years ago, I bought a 10-acre horse farm in the south part of Seattle," he said.
The best of both worlds for Hill? Of course.
For more information on Boeing Business Jets, visit [http://www.boeing.com/commercial/bbj].


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