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THREE TODAY!!!
Yes, today's the day that the Lucid Frenzy blog celebrates its third birthday! (This may well be the first time this blog has ever brought in something on time...) Expect more of the usual sort of thing to come. But for today here's some links...
Somebody has reviewed 'Lucid Frenzy'!
Well, sort of... I have sometimes produced paper zine versions of old items, which I've given away to people I've bumped into at at the London Zine Symposium. During this haphazard prcoess, 365 Zines A Year was handed one and wrote about it...
...updated only yesterday with more pictures of London, graffiti and the Sussex Downs.
My Share My Playlists page
...http://sharemyplaylists.com/members/lucid-frenzy/playlists>... found here. With playlists devoted to folk, punk, post punk, hardcore, psychedelic, kosmische and the human voice (among others)
K-Punk on 'Inception'
Only recently, I reviewed the film 'Inception' through the prism of Mark Fisher (aka K-Punk's) recent treatise 'Capitalist Realism.' Click here for what the man himself had to say about the film...
K-Punk Playlist: The Metaphysics of Crackle
I'm actually listening to this playlist right now! My only possible complaint would be that it's so well mixed I don't tend to listen to it as a series of individual tracks, but a whole, so I've still no idea who any of the acts are...
Andrew Rilstone on Joseph Campbell
Regular readers (should any exist) will have seen me link to Andrew's stuff before. This reaction to Joseph Campbell is sprawling and multiform rather than concise and incisive, but I'd like to think that's a description rather than a criticism. And he does have his incisive moments...
"Campbell thinks that symbols mean what they mean, and there's an end to it. All stories have a meaning, and it's our job to learn the language or crack the code or remove the mask so the One Truth is revealed.
I think that this is a silly, reductive, limiting way of reading stories."
(Believe it or not, and I didn't, but it is in part a reaction to something I wrote.)
It starts here, though there are several parts.
Normal service should not be assumed...
Posted by Gavin Burrows at 13:29 No comments:
Labels: Admin Announcements, Anniversaries, Film, Folk Music, Music, Mythology, Photos, Post Punk, Psychedelic/ Acid Rock, Punk
THE REAL SHARE DRIVE?
Here's something I wrote for Andrew Hickey's magazine 'PEP' on the subjects of downloading, copyright and intellectual property - from the inevitable anti-capitalist perspective.
(NB That PDF download does take a while!)
Danger! Plot Spoilers below...
Psyche Or Spy?
Some have seen this new film by Christopher Nolan as a de facto sequel to his earlier 'Memento'. I'd been cynically suspecting something more akin to the 'Matrix' template - spewing out cool-sounding concepts slightly faster than you could keep up with. Something fun in itself, but aimed at 0-Level stoners.
For once, such cynical suspicions were largely unfounded. 'Inception' has its gaps and lapses, but is far more coherent than 'The Matrix.' It's chief feature is an elegantly 'nested' structure of dreams-within-dreams, as if its reality was built up of Russian Dolls. Instead of either film above, it would make for a better comparison with Cronenberg's 'eXistenZ.'
However, as with Nolan's earlier 'Batman Begins', I was left with the feeling that Hollywood films have now caught up with comics – but the comics of ten years ago. There was a period in comics where more sophisticated stuff could happen incidentally, provided two superheroes hit each other at the end and the good one won. But this period is by-and-large over, and artists now delight in trivialising such scenes. Take Daniel Merlin Goodbrey's 'Play', currently on display as part of the Hypercomics Exhibition. As the artist says here, he uses the attacking demons merely as a device to delay exchanges between the two chief characters. They could as easily be waiters in a restaurant.
But here, while there's no denying the smart plot structure, in terms of events it is less Russian Doll than a jam sandwich. The 'jam' of crazy concepts and wacky dream worlds must always alternate with the 'bread-and-butter' of standard action movie fare – car chases and gun battles.
There's a telling moment during one such gun-battle where a character levels a gun, only to be upbraided by a comrade – "you mustn't be afraid to dream a bit bigger" – who produces... ahem... a bigger gun. Given they're in a dream world they could build a titanium wall around themselves, or make those enemy agents vanish in a puff of illogic. But of course we are in the action-movie section, where all actions are arbitrarily confined to gun-battle rules. There's a frisson of excitement as we enter each new dream level, which is somewhat dissipated when the same gun-battles are simply transplanted into it. (The patented excuse is that you can't bend reality too much, to risk tipping off your target. Yet this dream is being held by one of their team, so walking incognito isn't necessary.)
Moreover, a lot of the dream images are themselves redolent of the clichés of spy movies. One recurrent motif is the image of the safe, representing the private self or 'Rosebud' secret. This suggests layers of jam spread rather thin, with the butter poking through.
In this way 'Incognitio' is like a smarter 'The Matrix', raising the question of whether it is merely for A-level stoners.
Except, like the dreams, there's another level to it...
Dreams Inside Dreams, Films Upon Films:
One clear metaphor for dreams in the film is drug addiction. People jack themselves into dreams, their bodies then collapsing into stupified piles, 'Trainspotting' style. We encounter one group of old ethnic men, for little reason other than to remind us of opium dens. There's the standard warnings about going in too deep and not coming out. This is a recurring comparison in films, which often utilise dreams and drug-induced states as almost interchangeable plot-advancers. Drugs are almost always hallucinogenic in the visual world of film, despite the fact that few common recreational drugs are actually of this class. (LSD is widely supposed to be a hallucinogenic, perhaps largely from the way it is presented on film.)
Yet, as was clear from 'Memento', Nolan also has a predilection for making formalist films – films about film. When we start to watch a film, we are thrust into unknown situations with nothing to guide us but immediate visual clues. Of course this was the exact situation imposed upon the protagonist of 'Memento', whose memory loss leaves him bereft of anything approaching background or context. (So easily sketched in with a few words in a novel.) The cafe scene here is redolent of this, where the character Ariadne is asked how she got to that cafe. Realising she has no idea, she concludes she must be in a dream. Yet of course this is also the way film works.
Many are those who claim to be utilising genre conventions only to subvert them, and equally often are the times where I don't bother listening. But, though I don't doubt at all those 'bread-and-butter' scenes are primarily there to fill the cheap seats, this time there may be a little more to this.
Take, for example, the scene where Cobb is fleeing pursuers. At one point he has to squeeze through an ever-thinning alley to evade them. This seems too redolent of all the architecture-bending we've already seen to be a co-incidence. Is this a clue he's actually in a dream there and then, without knowing it? But, what of all the other chase cliches we've just sat through – him jumping from first floor windows unharmed, a car screeching by to rescue him at just the right moment? Are they any more likely for being more common?
Dreams in films follow a set of conventions entirely unrelated to our actual dreams. They're almost like sex scenes in films of old, before they could actually suggest any sex so instead made up some stand-in codes. Real dreams are almost always more about atmospheres than narratives. And I for one more often dream about quite ordinary situations, which are suffused with such a sense of numinousness that they feel more significant than the vastest of explosions.
Yet comics writer Grant Morrison has said he's had dreams in which the McDonalds logo appears. Similarly, we have seen such scenes so often that, by force of repetition, they must surely have permeated our subconscious by now. More widely, the common suspension of logic encourages us to combine the two. We know, at some theoretical level, that real car chases and gun battles don't happen the way they do on film. But they're so ubiquitous that we don't think to question them. By foregrounding the dreams, by questioning what is dream logic and what is merely movie logic, 'Inception' does take some faltering steps to question the very gun-battles it titillates us with.
A core concept of the film is the Totem. Each team member has a totem, an object only they know intimately, which they use to tell dream state from life. (It might be interesting to compare them to the photos in 'Blade Runner'.) Our protagonist Cobb (played by Leonardo de Caprio) uses a spinning top. In dream states it merely continues spinning and never falls. As the film ends, finally reunited with his children, he again spins the top but the film cuts out before we see whether it falls.
(This is all based on something of a fudge. The point isn't supposed to be that the top can never stop spinning in the gravity-defying world of dream. It's that Cobb knows from experience exactly how it spins and falls, better than any dream architect could rig. It's useless at telling us anything. But this hole is papered over by a kind of fuzzy association, between the perpetual spinning and the apparent timelessness of dream.)
Naturally people focus on the top. With inevitable literalism, they ask whether Cobb is in fact dreaming this feelgood ending. But its surely just as significant that Cobb doesn't focus on it, but instead walks away to his children. It's reminiscent of Clint Eastwood throwing away his gun at the end of 'Dirty Harry.'
It's almost a non-question whether this is Cobb's dream because this is so much Cobb's film - he's the only thing approaching a character in it. It's significant that the two figures who most influence him have clearly allegorical names. Mal, his wife, is Latin for 'sick' and Ariadne is named after the Greek princess who guided Theseus through the maze and showed him how to slay the Minotaur. Mal was driven to her death by obsessing over whether reality was actually real. But by this point Cobb has defeated her, his shadow self, and simply doesn't care. He will live the life he finds, real or not.
However, the top is still there for us. Two core concepts of the film are the act of inception itself and the "kick". Inception is the mission of Cobb and his team, they must implant an idea so deep in the mind of their target (Fisher, played by Cillian Murphy) that he will believe he thought of it himself. The "kick" is the jarring motion that jerks you back into wakefulness, simulated by the team when it's time to escape the dream.
'Inception' the film is of course both act of inception and kick, and this is the point where we are given our kick. It's almost like the infamous ending to Jodorowski's 'Holy Mountain', which tells us explicitly we have been in a film but must now carry it's purpose into the wider world. The final 'message' is quite a Buddhist one. Our lives are taking place in a realm of illusion, created only to teach us life-lessons which will allow us to leave it. We need to wake up now.
Except, like the dream, there's another level to it. (Like the film this review has a tripartite structure, gettit?) As so often, if we want to know what's really interesting about this film we're going to have to look past the whole business of authorial intent...
Flexible Landscapes:
It's tempting to wonder if the fate of any metaphor is to become actualised. 'Blockbuster' is a case in point. It originally applied to stage-plays, and simply meant 'hit'. But it was first usurped by movies, then (in accordance with post-September 11th and environmental fears) it found it's literal expression. Virtually every Hollywood budget came to be spent on demolishing at least a good section of downtown New York, or somewhere similarly iconic.
But, as you'll know if you've so much as seen the trailer, 'Inception' mutates this into a new variant – the blockbender. One scene from the film (iconic but of little plot importance) shows the streets of Paris buckle, bend and flip back over themselves, like rolled-up lino.
...except of course that's only new to film. Variants of such sights have been commonplace in adverts for years. Perhaps the classic example was one of the first, the T-Mobile advert which matched malleable geography to the slogan "the world just got more flexible" (variant below). (Itself, inevitably enough, a literalisation and recuperation of once-radical notions, such as Unitary Urbanism.)
This, of course, inverts the usual trajectory. We're used to new visual motifs springing up the other way, from film into adverts. (Think of that post 'Matrix' phase where there seemed a law where every advert had to have 'bullet time' in it.) This reversal would seem grist to the mill of Mark Fisher who, in his study 'Capitalist Realism', suggests contemporary Hollywood blockbusters are reflecting Post Fordist economics.
As Fisher puts it: "the assembly line becomes a 'flux of information'... Work and life become inseparable. Capital follows you when you dream... Time ceases to be linear, becomes chaotic, broken down into punctiform divisions... To function effectively as a component of just-in-time production you must develop a capacity to respond to unforeseen events, you must learn to live in conditions of total instability."
Not so long ago, all that was needed to hold down a job was to have vaguely relevant skills and show up on time. Now it is necessary to display indefinable 'soft skills', and the place you pick them from is your private life. It's increasingly common to go to work interviews and discover your prospective employer has already looked you up on-line, and made character judgements about you on this basis. What could be a more classic metaphor for that throwing-open for inspection than the invasion of dreams? Dreams were once the most private thing, not just walled inside your head but double-cocooned within your subconscious.
Significantly, however, our heroes here are not defenders of personal privacy but very agents of this seemingly inevitable invasion. Equally significantly, they are jobsworths not evangelists. Their mission, to plant an idea inside your head so deep you think you must have thought of it, is not the game-plan of quack gurus -who seek to emphasise the centrality of their role at all costs. Instead it's the aim of the marketing man, to subliminally channel your whim not towards a soft drink but that soft drink.
And as jobsworths, this crew are not presented as black hearted rogues so much as themselves victims of this paradigm, perhaps as much as the man they seek to rob. They're a shiftless bunch, migrating from job to job across a non-place world, made up of interchangeable cityscapes, train carriages, plane cabins and chain hotels. From Cobb's 'secret' its unclear whether they even know each other particularly well, or are just pretending to stay disconnected out of assumed professionalism.
The dreams they enter into are no magic-door escape route from the outside world. There are no crystal castles conjured from dust, as Dr. Manhattan creates in 'Watchmen." The dream worlds are simply distortions of the waking one, the same corporate lobbies and chain hotel corridors. In fact, as the dream world is their workplace, it is where this world is most manifest. It reflects the way in which the post-Fordist workplace endlessly shifts tasks and goals upon you, or demands new sets of 'soft skills' be conjured up.
Even dying doesn't give them an "out", they simply wake up ready for the next mission. The place they fear most is not Hell but Limbo, a kind of post-modern netherworld which contains only the crumbling residue of the past. Cobb literally cannot go home to his family. (An extrapolation and microcosm of the contract worker, chasing job after job as they appear. 'Inception' would make a good comparison to de Caprio's previous 'Shutter Island' here.)
Their mission, to ensure Fisher does not take over his father's business, is also significant. During Fordism, sons simply duplicated what their fathers did or took up some essentially similar variant. (Ford was himself succeeded by his grandson.) The idea that you don't do this, that life is a series of continual fractures and branchings, is the essence of Post Fordism.
This is never more proven than in the twin payoff scenes. In Fisher's he 'remembers' a number code to reach a staged reconciliation with his dying Father. Yet this number code has only retconned significance, he was forced to recite it earlier and then a dream safe was built to that combination. Playing this deception upon him is not made into a quandary or an act of moral complexity: indeed, it is filmed as an almost exactly similar triumph to Cobb's more central payoff. Instead the whole question is dismissed as if irrelevant. He is given an epiphany, what more could someone possibly want? Similarly, we are not told that Cobb is back in reality, merely that he is "happier now". As always in Hollywood, or any other marketplace, feelgood trumps all.
However, none of the above should be taken to suggest this is a bad film – in fact, quite the reverse. The role of a work of art is not to come up with the correct answer, but articulate most clearly what it is trying to say. The images 'Inception' conjures up of the Post Fordist world are potent and effective. The bending and buckling streets of Paris do not literally represent our world, but portray the way it feels to live in it. 'Dark Knight' perhaps did a similar thing, but it was much more capital-P political, presenting us with tagged 'ethical dilemmas' and the like. 'Inception' is much more structural, looking less at the debates which occupy the surface of our world than at what underpins them.
Labels: Film, Politics, Science Fiction
"LET'S DO A MAGAZINE": PETE ASHTON ON BRITISH SMALL PRESS COMICS HISTORY
"They were kind of obsessive and kind of compulsive and had a fair amount of mental disorders."
It seemed slightly weird at first that Pete Ashton, big cheese in the Nineties small press comics scene, should choose to focus his Birmingham Zine Festival talk on the Escape/ Fast Fiction crowd of the Eighties. But, true to form, Pete turns in a good talk, and he's surely right to suggest that pretty much everything since has moved in their slipstream. (It would certainly be true of my efforts.)
The emergence of the British Small Press Comics scene in the early 1980s from Pete Ashton on Vimeo.
Posted by Gavin Burrows at 21:49 2 comments:
Labels: Comics
RUDE BRITANNIA: BRITISH COMIC ART (2)
For Part One click here
Sticking It To The Man – A How-to Guide
But enough of history, which is perhaps just one big how-to guide anyway. Having established that satire has to have a target, let's look at what weapons it has to throw.
Satire has a weird and often abusive relationship with realism. Satire must always mirror in some way what is, but must equally function as a distorting mirror. This is pretty much a definition of the caricature. George Grosz (excluded from this show by nationality) spoke of "interior reality", in which art is liberated to show things the way they really should look. The cartoonist Kaz (excluded from here for a very similar reason) commented "basically, I'm dissatisfied with the way the world looks... why don't corporations look more evil? Instead of water fountains in front of their building, why not flames?" ('Comics Journal', 186)
Another medium equally inextricably caught up with satire is collage, which by definition shoves clashing worlds together. Thomas Patch's painting'A Gathering of the Dilettanti in a Sculpture Hall' (1760/1) could be seen as a proto-collage, straining to invent the form. It shows the boorish British, the original lager louts on tour, let loose in a continental sculpture hall. They are caricatured against the more classically depicted background. (You could see this as the return of the cartoons, in the word's original sense of 'under-drawing', and with it the reduction of high art to its baser source.) Yet portraying them through the same medium as the stately backgrounds diminishes this juxtaposition, fits them too neatly into their surroundings. In more recent years this would be done as a photomontage, cartoon figures imposed upon a photographic background.
Of course it is not that paint is tied to realism. (Or else Francis Bacon would have had a rather short career.) It's true that the drawn line better captured the life, the plasticity of the image. But there's something else. Its plasticity also conveys the all-important sense of fluidity, of flux. We need to be aware of the mutation. The caricature, whether of Pitt or Blair, relies on our remembering their actual look and comparing it to the artist's distortion. It's like comparing a jazz reworking back to the original standard.
More widely, satirical art is illustrational in the verb sense of the word – it is there to show something. The artist's skill and imagination is pressed into service of a central idea; what Cruikshank called "the mapping out of certain vices for an especial purpose". A sense of speed and dynamism, even a slightly unfinished quality, keep the audience's eye on the through-line and not the flourishes. (Ironically, Cruikshank's own afore-mentioned 'Worship of Bacchus', the source of this phrase, epitomises when this is not followed.)
But is caricature actually any more than exaggeration with an agenda? Could Hogarth have been right to warn against it? In the giant 'Viz' strip Gillray and Rowlandson compete in ever-more-outrageous ways to depict the Prince Regent, a kind of arms race of excess which collapses in on itself until it is replaced by conceptual art. (They're both upped when a dog turd is taken for an image of him.) (Analysing the dog turd in a 'Viz' strip... I should be getting paid for this!)
In addition there's the constant concern that satire will not prick but inflame the power of its targets. As Will Self comments "no matter how venal, corrupt and disgusting you make them look, they still call up wanting to buy the thing so they can hang it in their toilet." For that reason Ralph Steadman has vowed only to portray the legs, not the likeness, of politicians – effectively abandoning caricature.
One sidestep from this is to represent figures with an emblem, what David Low called "a tab of identity." Just as the Bat sign stands for Batman, Harry Furness' series 'Getting Gladstone's Collar Up' turns Gladstone's starchy collar into a shorthand image of the politician. Steve Bell reduced John Major to his underpants to the degree where he mock-lamented the end of Major's tenure by showing just the underpants ('Burning Pants' ,1997).
Photomontage is by definition pulled closer to its targets, and to escape their orbit needs to enhance its own unreality. Pete Kennard and Cat Phillip's well-known 'Photo Op' (2005) draws power from using a real image of Tony Blair. Yet the 'fakery' is also foregrounded and unmissable, we know this is no actual photo-op but a collage - an editorialism written with scissors and glue.
Conversely, Alison Jackson takes lookalikes in unlikely but naturalised settings, and her work becomes a misconceived failure. It's not the moralist point that the artist is trying to palm off a fake as real, it's the sense that the all-important presence of the artist – the manipulating figure trying to make a point – becomes diminished. We are just left with the celebrity.
Disorder in the Gallery
Given this interest in form and emphasis upon continuity of tradition, you could see why they decided upon a thematic not chronological arrangement of the works. But they never quite had the courage of this conviction and the result reveals an evident tension between the two. The first room, given the label 'British Comic Art' as though the rest of the show is about haberdashery or something, is essentially chronological – about historical roots. But a smattering of more modern works are added, just in case we don't get the point. This is followed by 'Social Satire and the Grotesque' and 'Politics' but (as these labels might suggest) these are pretty much interchangeable.
The two other rooms, 'The Bawdy' and 'The Absurd', were by contrast too standalone. I had pretty much expected this from the bawdy, but had held high hopes for the absurd! My heart beats for the points where the absurd gets married to the political, perhaps as a means of resolving the afore-mentioned paradox of satire - the one stops the other becoming too schematic or moralistic, the other roots the one and stops it trailing off into whimsy.
Take Shaun Dolye and Mally Malass's large-scale sculptural piece 'Death to the Fascist Fruit Boys' (2010). A bag of chips (in the traditional blue-and-white cone), dispatches a gang of 'healthy' fruit. It's a brilliant and well-executed work, spilling into a thousand subsidiary gags. But, despite the nods to 'healthy eating' campaigns it is purely absurdist and not political. It works for the very reason 'Worship of Bacchus' doesn't, the large 3D rendering of what is essentially a slight gag cartoon is so out-of-proportion that it creates a bizarre and arresting juxtaposition. It's like if someone made a plastic dog turd the size of a pyramid. Had it just been a gag cartoon, it would have been amusing but forgettable.
Worse, for a show with such self-proclaimed wildness there did feel something safe and predictable in the choice of works. Hogarth and Gillray may be fantastic talents, but many will have seen them adorn Tate walls before. Perhaps we should take their presence as a given, and exult in the more modern artists getting into the galleries. But there's a rub to that...
Not In Rude Health After All
By chance I took in this show en route to the Caption comics convention. Despite (or perhaps because of) being the arts' poor relation, comics are often ahead of the curve of trends. Comics publishing was once constrained into a very small number of genres, each ruled by strong censorship. But with the effective collapse of the UK comic industry, comics went into post-Fordist micro-production. Caption, essentially a meet-up for self-publishers, is now the UK's longest-running convention. Perhaps not un-coincidentally, self-expression and autobiography are now in.
A hit of the show was Darryl Cunningham's 'Psychiatric Tales', an account of his experiences as a psychiatric nurse. There is no denying that in itself that in itself this book is great! But it seems to epitomise the direction comics have gone in. Even the few political cartoonists, such as Edd Baldry or Isy Morgenmuffel tend to write autobio comics of their experiences in political activism – there's little satire going on. Something like Sean Duffield's 'Crap Factory', which lambasts David Cameron, Alan Sugar and Barack Obama (below), is a rarity. I can't help but feel that when we boldly marched in one new area we lost the land we once had. Personal expression has been gained but the social has been lost, the embracing of popular culture, and with it the revelling in the rudery of satire. 'Common' once meant both base and widely shared. Now it's not even an active word.
Tom Lehrer claimed "satire died" in 1973 when Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize. But, decades later, is he finally proven right? Is that how this exhibition can be here, in such salubrious surroundings? After all, what's the point in knocking down politicians in an era where nobody looks up to them anyway? In a world ruled by celebrity, aren't we better off ignoring them? And yet I for one miss the stroke of the vitriolic nib...
...in short, this show was something I'd hoped to love and feared to disdain. But, while there was much to commend, ultimately 'Rude Britannia' did not break past the level of polite applause.
Exhibtion website
A tour of the exhibition by curator Martin Myrone, recorded by Alex Fitch for Panel Borders...
Labels: Art, Comedy, Comics, Exhibitions, Sculpture
Tate Modern, until 5th September... yep, yet another exhibition I get round to reviewing just as it closes!
"Satire and mockery work best when there is an underlying basic respect, even affection, for the target."
- The Daily Express
"Our leaders always should be questioned. They are very arrogant people that set themselves up."
- Gerald Scarfe, Tate Short
"I do admire a man with a vitriolic nib"
- Woman cosying up to Gillray in 'Viz' cartoon
In Rude Health:
I approached this exhibition with a familiar combination of hope and trepidation, for many of us fear we have become used to this sort of thing. Comics tend to be the poor relation who's habitually hoping to be well-connected, that Seventeenth Century prints will turn out to be some long-lost Uncle who has secretly left them an inheritance. But, to take a Dickensian analogy, any fortune always tends to have come not from Miss Haversham but Magwitch the convict.
Thankfully, this exhibition avoids all of that. For one thing, it isn't particularly interested in the form of comics as distinguished from cartoons or graphic art in general - as the progamme styles it, "the comic in British art." But more importantly, its aim is more to draw 17th Century prints down to the level of comics than vice versa. Comics have no 'heritage', but they do come from a lineage of bolshey and disrespectful louts.
This show did have the good fortune to be set against the grand and august Tate Britain, not the jazzy and insistently contemporary Tate Modern. Just seeing the gaudy signs outside the hallowed Victoriana was an invigorating juxtaposition, like the lunatics had taken over the asylum. However, this was built upon with repeated attempts to play creatively with the gallery setting. Every room was given its own curator, granting each its own look and feel. In a typically nice touch, Scarfe provided a Gillray-styled Pitt with his legs forming an arch between two rooms.
...but of course I would say that! For so many of these things we'd already done in Brighton with the 'Sofa' comic art shows of the Nineties, albeit in our characteristic haphazard, dole-cheque-stretching fashion; cartoons re-rendered into relief, picture labels as their own cartoon strip which you could follow, places set aside for you to read and draw, even a giant-size stand-up comic. (Though, in the parlance of 'Viz', theirs was bigger than ours!) There was even a call for fanzine producers to send in their wares! Alas, though, we didn't think of the Cashpun machine where punters were invited to donate jokes.
Naturally, I'd like to imagine the big boys borrowed it all from us. But it's more likely a case of great minds thinking alike. To frame this type of content the accepted way would be deathly.
No Two Britains:
An accompanying BBC4 documentary of the same name, broadcast in June, went further than this counterposing the common against the refined. It posited two Britains perpetually at war with one another, the upright and spendthrift versus the bawdy and licensuous – the very reverse of John Major's infamous "a nation at ease with itself." This would seem a popular idea, kept alive by sources as apparently separate as 'Class War' and 'Loaded' magazine. But it really rests on the notion that some forms of art are inherently high or low culture, a rather rigid demarcation for something supposedly celebrating the unruly!
Like most ahistorical theories, its kryptonite is history. To the exhibition's credit, it serves up enough glowing green stuff to dispel the documentary's binary notions. Hogarth, for example, was very much a moralist and social improver. You just need to look at one of his most famous engravings (helpfully on show here), 'Gin Lane'. This is the classic indightment of binge drinking, familiar from so many shock TV documentaries and tabloid headlines. Yet Hogarth is very much the father of our scurrilous tradition.
This paradox has a further twist, for (as the exhibition demonstrates) Hogarth then took a paternity test against his offspring. In 1742 he drew 'Characters and Caricatures' (above), a doubling up of pre-and-post-caricature head shots, as a demonstration of the very wrongness of caricature, "a foreign aristocratic indulgence." Yet of course many took the warning as a how-to guide. Later in the same room we come across Gillray's 'Doublures of Characters' (1798). which uses exactly the same device to sing caricature's praises! History is made in this messy way, of influence despite intent, of progression through twist and turn.
Moreover, an unchanging artistic tradition relies on the notion of an unchanging politics. But before the vote was widespread politicians were inevitably drawn from the aristocratic class, giving them still some of the shine of divine right. Of course Pitt was not born to the Prime Minister, but he was from part of a small elect group who by birthright were be looked up to. Consequently, Princes and Prime Ministers became equally pilloried. In such a time, just to drawn Pitt as a fleshy being rendered him as a man like you or me, and undermined this.
Greed for money or power were therefore translated into baser functions, gluttony or sexual avarice. Curator Martin Myrone describes this as "the body being overtaken by its own desires, transformed into something monstrous."
Of course change has been mostly cosmetic. Today we toil under an ex-Bullingdon Prime Minster whose cabinet is stuffed with toffs. But nowadays they seek to downplay and disguise their origins. (Hence the gag of Cameron as "call-me-Dave.") To reduce them to bodily functions is pointless when they are so keen to come across as men of the people. The old methods of attack no longer bite. (Notably, there's been a more recent development in deforming and debasing corporate brands rather than celebrity figures.)
Finally, and going back to 'Gin Lane' it could be argued that satire has an inherent paradox between the lambasting and the improving. Satire is qualitatively different to mere parody. To be a parody, it's enough for something to be a poor imitation of something else. (Rob Liefeld was a parody of Kirby, the UK Subs of the Sex Pistols and so on.) Satire has at least an incipient critique, a beef against its target. Even the foulest-smelling rotten fruit must be well-aimed to be effective. Yet this risks tipping over into sanctimoniousness, against which jeering boorishness can be a valuable asset.
In fact a room here is given over to showing what happens when the boorishness is taken away - Cruikshank's vast late work 'The Worship of Bacchus' (1862). This pious warning against "the evils arising from intoxication" is as grandiose as anything Bosch ever came up with. Room curator Steve Bell describes the work's aim as "to rescue mankind from its own base urges and this to preserve the established order." Though compelling, the work is something of a grand folly. Its already pious message is magnified by the sheer scale of it, so gargantuan as to repels involvement. It's like reading of a great massacre, in which so many millions died that your brain numbs to the numbers. 'Gin Lane' is more effective for focusing on a few representative figures.
Onward to Part Two!
"LET'S DO A MAGAZINE": PETE ASHTON ON BRITISH SMAL...


On Saturday Noah and I went to the U2 concert at TCF Bank Stadium on the University of Minnesota campus. We have season tickets to the Gopher football games so we're down there pretty often in the fall, but I've never seen it so packed. There were people everywhere! People that didn't get in to the concert were camped out on nearby lawns to catch the show.
Interpol was the opening act. Fantastic...but it seemed like a lot of people had never heard of them before. Boo Minneapolis!
As usual, there was a long wait between Interpol and U2's big entrance. Gave us plenty of time to study their space ship/stage.
They entered on our side of the stadium, but with only my phone for pictures, the best shot I got of their entrance was of the video footage playing on their 360° screen. I liked how they shot it in black and white. Very Rattle and Hum.
So we bought these tickets about 2 years ago... Minneapolis was supposed to be the last stop on their concert tour last year, but then Bono hurt his back and required emergency spinal surgery! We didn't mind waiting, but you'd think that given the extra time I would have bought their newest CD, No Line on the Horizon, and familiarized myself with a few of the songs. I'm a terrible U2 fan! My husband downloaded the album from Amazon the morning of the show.
Luckily they played a lot of their older songs and the few that they played from the new album, I knew from hearing them on the radio. Phew! The last U2 concert I went to (10 years ago), they played a ton from their new album and I was lost even though I had it!


Truth of Self › Forums › Truth of Self Talk › How to build a happier self! – Some useful methods to manage psycho-physiological states.
This topic contains 1 reply, has 2 voices, and was last updated by Barra 2 years, 5 months ago.
I really liked this post! thanks for sharing.
3 to 1 rule is an excellent idea!


never saw the light of day at all – that's why, I guess.
I hear she is being set up with someone in Japan.
Being set up with someone? Is that what she said?
No, I don't want to hear that….
Who on earth would return home with her dream only half done!!
Hey, hey, Rod!! Where are you heading!!?
I realized that I don't know where her hometown is….
the only clue I have is this picture…..
and it's you. You're on cable TV, aren't you?
Yes, yes, that's it! See, right?
I am a regular viewer of the channel.
I remember "diet recipe without mayo", wasn't it?
The yesterday's was "diet using mayo".
I wonder what they want us to do exactly. Ahaha.
(例)They headed home an hour ago.


Full employment is particularly important for low- and moderate-income families because it not only means more jobs but also leads employers to offer higher wages to attract and retain the workers they need. Yet full employment has been more the exception than the norm in recent decades. Policy Futures aims to establish full employment as a primary policy goal and to design and promote policies to reach it.


Designed by Pat Thode of Heartstrings this is a limited edition semi-kit for the holidays. A skating Santa is pushing his sleigh with a primitive tree, snowman and cat riding. A checkered border of Christmas themed items alternating with plaids surround the top and sides. Originally released in 2004 these are just being added to the catalog. Kit contains counted cross stitch chart, specialty thread and embellishments. You add fabric and floss. Design size is 211W x 127H or 15″ x 9″ on 28 count or 13 1/4″ x 8″ on 32 count. Just the thing for holiday decor!


"The influences of the Spirit of God are even now in process of withdrawal, as He prepares for that departure from earth which will leave it open for Nephilim, seven fold worse than those who formerly dwelt in it, to enter, and for a short season to work their will upon the human race; Then will all the Nephilim, who are yet at liberty, be among men, and will quickly make them feel the meaning of that awful utterance, 'Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the Devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.'" G.H. Pember As far back as the beginning of time and within every major culture of the ancient world, the astonishingly consistent story is told of gods who descended from heaven and materialized in bodies of flesh.


Solutionreach, the leader in patient relationship management technology, recently announced the launch of an Android version of PatientReach Mobile, their patient-facing mobile application, previously only available on iOS. The features within the app enable a more direct, effective stream of communication between provider and patient.
The PatientReach Mobile messaging feature allows patients and providers to communicate via HIPAA secure SMS-like messages, giving them the ability to share images or files and elect to receive push notifications. Through the app, patients can also manage their schedules, confirm and set reminders for upcoming visits, quickly pay their bill, or request new appointments with their provider.
In addition to the release of the new Android app, Solutionreach now incorporates state-of-the-art iOS Touch ID technology into their platform for higher security coverage.
Solutionreach is dedicated to eliminating the communication gap between healthcare providers and their patients by striving to significantly impact the industry with a high-tech, innovative, and interactive platform. By offering multiple avenues for effective patient engagement, they aim to assist healthcare providers in improving their practice's productivity and profitability. For more information, visit www.solutionreach.com.


Sx: coughing and wheezing with watery, copious sputum, a stifling sensation in the chest and diaphragm, SOB marked by relatively labored inhalation and smooth exhalation. there may also be pain and weakness of the lower back and legs, edema of the extremities, and/or fatigue. T: white coat that is either slippery or greasy. P: n/a.


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Diane upstairs in the bedroom, 1976 - Framed Print
Diane Patalano was a patient and willing subject—not at all self-conscious. She liked having her picture taken and was open to direction—relaxed, comfortable, and somewhat detached. She brought me up to the top story bedroom with walls of windows to the north and east looking out over the ocean. The morning was overcast. It was a perfect natural light studio with an atmosphere that told a story.
"A lot of locals don't like haole people and back then the locals really didn't like the hippies. In those days, I was, like, totally scared of locals. They used to come through Camp drunk and fighting and stuff. But when I think back at the way I dressed, I just go, 'God', you know. Hairy underarms, hairy legs. It was just — it was just our generation. After I moved out and they burned down the Camp—I was about 21— I started going out with local guys for like 15 years and got really into the culture, but when I was living at Taylor Camp I didn't know any local people, just surfer dudes and hippies from Camp."
— Diane Patalano
Back to Taylor Camp Framed Prints

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


« Useful information on healthcare–where is it?
Sometime during the Bush administration, a 1970s-ish malaise settled on the country, and it hasn't lifted yet. There's the volatile price of oil…that cop drama about an officer who goes back in time to 1973…everyone in a bad mood about something (I was teething)…and oh yeah, the government is apparently spying on journalists!
TICE: Well, I don't know what our former president knew or didn't know. I'm sort of down in the weeds. But the National Security Agency had access to all Americans' communications, faxes, phone calls, and their computer communications. And that doesn't — it didn't matter whether you were in Kansas, you know, in the middle of the country, and you never made a communication — foreign communications at all. They monitored all communications.
WRIGHT: And then they began asking if the person on our end of the call, my end, was named Caroline. And that's my daughter's name. And they asked, you know, is her name Caroline Brown? And I said, no, she's, you know, a student at Brown. But I said, her name's not on any of our phones. How do you know this information? Are you listening to my calls? And they just shut their briefcases and left.
TICE: what was done was a sort of an ability to look at the meta data, the signaling data for communications, and ferret that information to determine what communications would ultimately be collected. Basically, filtering out sort of like sweeping everything with that meta data, and then cutting down ultimately what you are going to look at and what is going to be collected, and in the long run have an analyst look at, you know, needles in a haystack for what might be of interest.
It would be interesting to know whether this sort of data sweep gets better results than labor-intensive 24-hour East German surveillance operation depicted in The Lives of Others. Judging from "Caroline Brown", I'd say maybe not – yet.
This entry was posted on Monday, February 16th, 2009 at 6:38 am	and is filed under Protecting Privacy in Meaningful Ways, Public Policy, The Future of Advertising and Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.


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Survivor 41 Contestant Evvie Jagoda Discusses The Importance Of Queer Representation On The Show
By Lauren Vanderveen published 29 December 21
Survivor 41 added more inclusivity and diversity to its list of changes for a new era.
Survivor 41 was a season defined by a lot of firsts. First season to be only 26 days instead of the traditional 39. The first woman of color to be crowned Sole Survivor since Season 29 (Natalie Anderson in San Juan del Sur). It was also the first time LGBTQ and people of color made up the majority of the cast. Now that it's all been said and done, contestant Evvie Jagoda, who identifies as queer and non-binary (they/she), reflected on the importance of queer representation on the show this year.
Evvie Jagoda actually made one of the biggest impressions in the early days of Survivor 41 with their decision to confide all the secrets of their tribe with outsider Deshawn Radden. One could argue, too, their solid social game was a literal lifesaver when that decision came back to bite them. Unfortunately, Jagoda didn't make it to the end – but they did make it to the jury. And the Harvard PhD student in Human Evolutionary Biology recently spoke to their alma mater's newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, about how they wanted to make their mark in Survivor's history in a significant way. They stated,
LGBTQ contestants on Survivor go all the way back to the very first season with Richard Hatch, the first winner, who was a gay man. And I was very conscious of being in that history. Especially, the representation of non-men queer players is just a lot less. I mean, there's not that many queer players in general, and especially non-men. I think about people going back to, like, Survivor: Vanuatu, where you have Ami Cusack and Scout [Cloud Lee] and more recently, Elaine Stott and Lyrsa [Torres] on recent seasons, so there's some great queer non-men players that I just really wanted to emulate and hopefully — especially compared to the players who played long ago — be like an updated version to some degree. I feel like a lot of people around my age or younger, like in Gen Z, present closer to how I present, or there's a lot of people that do use the word queer, are a lot more gender-fluid, and things like that. And that's kind of who I am. So it's cool to be able to present that version of a queer player and LGBTQ player on this season, especially with it being the most diverse season of Survivor ever. It was really, really special to be a part of that.
CBS indeed followed through on their diversity initiative for their television lineup this year. But Jeff Probst helped set the more inclusive tone of the Survivor 41 season by asking the cast upfront if his standard greeting, "Come on in, guys!" wasn't appropriate anymore. Ricard Foye – who would open up about his and his transgender husband's background later on – spoke up and Probst declared that it would be changed permanently. Evvie Jagoda would eventually share her own story and address LGBTQ viewers directly, saying, "Any queer kids out there: Be yourself. You're amazing. Love yourself."
Some Survivor audience members and alums have vocalized criticisms of the perceived "woke" changes. Nevertheless, Evvie Jagoda learned first-hand the power of representing their identity. They revealed that they heard from many LGBTQ fans after the season stating that their message "meant a lot to them." The Survivor 41 contestant continued,
Being loud and proud and joyful about my queerness is just 100% integral to who I am. I literally have a tattoo that says 'gay' with a rainbow flag on it. Because that is what queerness is to me. Like, it's not just okay, it's not something I tolerate. It's something amazing about me, that I love about myself and that brings me so much joy. Part of the reason I wanted to do the show was to be able to put that message out there and be someone that people do get along with and wanna play Survivor with, and be my full queer self, wearing rainbow boxers and a bow tie. So that was never in question about whether I was gonna do that…
Seasons 41 and 42 were filmed back-to-back earlier this year. So the upcoming season will likewise be shortened and equally as diverse, with some of the controversial new advantages returning as well. To find out who exactly will carry the baton from the likes of Evvie Jagoda, Ricard Foye, Genie Chen, et al, tune into CBS for Survivor 42 on March 9 at 8 p.m. EST!
Lauren Vanderveen
Freelance writer. Favs: film history, reality TV, astronomy, French fries.


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Osoby:
 Ludwik Wertenstein – polski fizyk
 Wanda Wertenstein – polska krytyczka filmowa

Zobacz też:
 Werthenstein

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


ience Park. Our loop is 3 km, and 6 km, if you cross over and run the Eriksberg waterfront.
For a longer route, cross over to Eriksberg on the bike path and enjoy another 1.5 km along the Eriksberg waterfront. Or, explore the streets of this ever-changing neighborhood.


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Queen Street Streetcar Service Petition (501-Neville Park)
Renee Knight
#Roads & Transport
PETITION TO the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC):
WHEREAS the TTC posts a schedule on the 501 Queen Streetcar line, listing service delivery at the frequency of every 6 minutes. The TTC routinely does not perform service as scheduled to Beach Residents, thereby making the service on the Queen Street 501 Streetcar an inefficient method of transportation for Beach Residents, including the elderly and handicapped, staff of local businesses and for those wishing to use the services of these businesses, or to or visit the Beach, to travel westbound out of the Beach, or eastbound into the Beach, and forcing people to take cabs or drive, when they've already paid a fare and/or invested in a monthly Metropass.
Transit service delivery is only as good as its weakest link, people will take the transit only when it is reliable & efficient. In particular, east of Kingston Road is underserviced by the 501.
At minimum 50% of Neville Park streetcars are short-turned before getting to the Beach, without any traffic irregularities occurring on the route, leaving service delivery, at less than every 12 minutes (at the very best), while the line according to TTC Customer Service is supposed to be achieving "frequent service of under 10 minutes". On a regular basis there are no streetcars for 12-45 minutes at a stretch, and then two to four streetcars coming out of the loop back to back due to "schedule management" forcing breaks to be taken by drivers at the loop, and then making up the time elsewhere on the route.
Route Management must also consider that Beach Residents require the 501 streetcar for travel within the Beach for appointments, and shopping. Making up time on the downtown route, and denying service to the Beach via excessive short-turning is completely unfair to residents of the Beach, especially those who have limited mobility.
TTC's services are based on equal access for all citizens, to get around the city, in and out of the core, and around their neighborhoods safely and efficiently, according to a posted schedule: the Beach area seems to be under-serviced, and neglected, against the backdrop of keeping the service on schedule in the downtown core; despite paying the same fares, and fees for services as the downtown core.
This level of service is entirely unacceptable to the residents, business people and visitors to the Beach. Limited parking in the Beach, makes the service delivery in the Beach for residents and visitors to the area, that much more important. Regardless of whether or not one takes transit, poor quality service along this portion of the route, leads to more cars on the road, greater congestion, more smog, and inefficiency along the rest of the route and connecting surface routes.
All TTC passengers, especially Metropass holders require and deserve equitable access to the most effective transportation to and from work, appointments, and social engagements, and all citizens should be able to benefit from the Transit System since it is primarily financed by fares.
TTC is built with our tax dollars, and in part operated with tax dollars, on terms that are equitable and fair, with no barriers to access, and with a goal of reducing traffic in the downtown core and improving our environment in keeping with Toronto's Clean Air Policy.
WE, the undersigned, petition the Toronto Transit Commission as follows:
1. To reject any and all route supervisor's excuses of downtown traffic congestion being the cause of consistently neglecting the service from the Connaught Yard to the Neville Park Loop, and to get to the heart of the real problems on this route, ie: City traffic support.
2. To reject any proposal or policy that may result in Beach residents, employees of local businesses and institutions as well as visitors to the Beach getting less service than posted, and less service than the downtown core of the same route is provided.
3. To reject any proposed service cuts along the 501 Route east of Connaught, and to bring service from Kingston Road to the Neville Park Loop to a level where the service delivery is up to par with the requirements of the citizens and posted schedules.
4. To immediately correct the problems with their management on this line which causes it to operate with great gaps in service. IE: trip times scheduled to reflect busy times of day.
5. To immediately improve service performance and cease stranding passengers in the Beach, by excessive short-turning, and causing them to take up to 4 vehicles, and up to four times the "actual" trip time, to get into the downtown core or back into the Beach unless there is a bona fide, "documented" emergency that causes a bona fide delay.
6. To provide alternative services such as buses, or a car out of the yard, to pick up passengers in the Beach, when streetcars scheduled to go to Neville Park are re-routed/short-turned and service to the Beach is cut off, and passengers stranded.
Sign Petition Signatures Map Comments Link
The Queen Street Streetcar Service Petition (501-Neville Park) petition to Toronto Transit Commission was written by Renee Knight and is in the category Roads & Transport at GoPetition.
toronto public transit TTC Queen Street Streetcar Service Improvement Petition 501 Neville Park


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Lessons for the SA investment industry
Asset managers should expect the same impacts from RDR as experienced in the UK.
Patrick Cairns / 9 October 2019 00:05
OVERVIEW OF Sanlam Ltd. - JSE:SLM
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With Great Britain now seven or eight years post-RDR, it provides a crystal-ball type picture of what South Africa can expect. Image: Shutterstock
When South Africa's Retail Distribution Review (RDR) was announced in 2014 much was made of how it would profoundly change the financial services industry. To meet its aims of professionalising financial advice, helping customers make informed decisions, and promoting fair competition, it would require some major shifts in how products are accessed and paid for.
Five years later, the implementation of RDR has been slower than might have initially been expected. This has led to a degree of complacency in the industry – that perhaps RDR isn't going to be so meaningful after all.
Read: The big question for financial advisors: 'Are you worth it?
It is, however, important to appreciate the lessons from countries that have already gone through the RDR process – in particular the UK, since South Africa's model is largely based on what has been done there.
A view of the future
"What we are anticipating in RDR is almost a carbon copy of what has happened in the UK," says Leigh Köhler, head of business solutions at Glacier Invest. "In our world it's almost like a crystal ball."
If it is indeed the case that the local market will follow the UK's path, then the future for South African financial advisory and asset management firms looks distinctly different.
"The UK is now seven or eight years post-RDR, and the market pre-RDR looked quite similar to how South Africa looks now," says Phil Middleton, head of UK intermediary business at global asset manager Schroders.
"And you've probably never seen a period of such change as you are seeing now in the UK distribution market."
One of the most significant developments in the UK has been the adoption of centralised investment propositions (CIPs) by financial advisors. This is a standardised approach to their investment offering, usually based on a client's risk profile. It means that clients with similar needs will be given similar, if not exactly the same, portfolios.
Many advisors are also choosing to outsource the actual management of these investments. The portfolios they offer to clients are therefore likely to be model portfolios offered by investment platforms or discretionary fund managers (DFMs).
"Currently 88% of all advised assets in the UK are sitting in a centralised proposition," Köhler notes. "Of that 49% is invested by DFMs."
The power has shifted
The rapid rise of DFMs has been one of the defining characteristics of the UK market in the past few years. According to Köhler, there are now 110 DFM businesses in the UK. Just three of them, however, account for more than 60% of the market.
Something similar is already taking place in South Africa, where many local advisors have already realised the benefits of outsourcing their investment proposition. There are more than 40 local DFM firms, and the top four have a market share above 70%.
What this led to in the UK, and will almost certainly do in South Africa, is that the entire investment industry has become a lot more narrow.
"Pre-RDR advisors had their own investment processes selecting funds," says Middleton. "Now it is much more centralised, with a smaller number of buyers in the marketplace."
Instead of thousands of advisors picking funds, it is the discretionary managers who are doing so. And when a few large ones dominate the market to the extent they do, it means that a much smaller number of funds is being selected for client portfolios, which has serious implications for asset managers.
Read: SA is behind the curve on unit trust fees
First of all, they are competing in a market where the buying power now rests with far more sophisticated buyers. DFMs are far more demanding in their research and due diligence than the average advisor or retail investor, which means that underperforming asset managers and those without a clear value proposition are being found wanting.
Fee pressure has also become severe, particularly with the added competition from passive products.
Performance fees in the UK have almost disappeared entirely.
"For active managers, it is a challenging environment," Middleton notes.
"There is downward pressure on margins, and longevity is falling because if you go through a period of weak performance you might have a big decision maker decide to sell your product and you can see significant outflows," he adds.
Before RDR, investments stayed within a fund for an average of five to six years. That has now fallen to three to four years.
Prepare for impact
A notable consequence of this pressure on asset managers is that the industry is going through a period of major consolidation. Barriers to entry have also risen.
"In the UK you have fee pressure, but also rising costs due to the burden of compliance and regulatory oversight," says Middleton. "So you are being squeezed both ways. In this environment it's pretty hard to set up a boutique from scratch."
Tellingly, any firm looking to manage funds has also needed to meet far more onerous capital requirements and qualification standards.
This has made it far less attractive for advisors to manage funds themselves.
In South Africa, there has been an explosion of these kinds of advisor-managed funds of funds over the past decade. Their value proposition has, however, always been questionable. Post-RDR, they may vanish even more quickly than they arrived.
"Most of the advisor funds in the UK don't operate anymore," Middleton says. "Businesses that were doing that have either become significantly professionalised and are managing portfolios on platforms, or they have outsourced to DFMs or fund management companies.
"The catalyst was needing more qualifications, more capital, and how much they cost to run. Also, clients were getting so many other options so much cheaper."
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Patrick Cairns
Patrick Cairns is one of South Africa's most respected commentators on the investment industry. He also covers economics issues and business news.
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BrianB 3 months ago
So basically advisors are getting DFMs to pick funds and portfolios in order to manage asset manager risk…
Im just saying its an added layer of fees where you could follow what the US market has done and just use Passive strategies and avoid asset manager risk entirely.
Better returns with lower costs without having to over complicate things.
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GAD 3 months ago
It's not as simple as that! In SA the custodian platforms (LISP's) make the decision on what funds/instruments to load and what fee classes to load, so they determine what's available for the advisor and client thereby influencing the overall cost to client. DFM's can help reduce client costs by clever portfolio construction methodology whilst ensuring the clients investment objective is managed efficiently over time as the global economic landscape evolves. Indexation like all investment instruments has its place but cannot "stand alone" as an only solution. Using indexation is an active decision and comes in many variations with different outcome objectives. Finding the right DFM can be extremely beneficial to the advisor and ultimately the client! Separating the advice process and the investment management process leads to TCF and a better client outcome.
CV63 3 months ago
In other words, if the investor finds the 'right' adviser, who finds the 'right' DFM, who finds the portfolio mix just 'right' for the client, and picks the 'right' fund managers, the investor will do alright. But who in their right mind would pay for so many 'ifs'?
I came across this recent example (for an RA): the investor is paying an investment management fee of 1.12%; a platform fee of 0.58% to Allan Gray; a financial advice fee of 1.15% to his adviser and now also a discretionary investment manager fee of 0.40% to Portfoliometrix.
Effectively, the total advice fee with the DFM has increased to 1,55%. Total cost 3,25% pa.
Sadly, this person is paying an additional 2,5% in fees pa, without getting any superior value (guaranteed higher return) over a risk-appropriate multi-asset index fund.
(If you look in the industry rubbish bin, that's where you'll find the FAIS Act, TCF regulations and all the retirement reform discussion papers intended to protect clients from this type of abuse…)
PLB 3 months ago
We are a Jersey based, LSE listed and independent DFM, FAIS licenced in and doing business with South Africans via independent and regulated advisor firms, and managing over $16bn of client assets across our Group. We deliver an actively managed offshore portfolio of funds at a total annual fee of 0.50%, with the underlying fund costs around a further 0.60%. The advisor typically charges 0.50% for relationship management and the necessary suitability assessment. Therefore "all in" a South African investor can enjoy the international diversification and investment return benefits at a TER (total cost) of 1.60% or so – and no other fees such as custody, trading, account opening, penalties etc. – and a fully liquid portfolio at all times… Speak to the right advisor!
daniemare 3 months ago
Why can't the annual fee and advisor fee not be fixed. Exactly how does the size of my funds affect these to services?
CR63 I think you missed the point about the right DFM having the capability to reduce overall fees for the client to what they currently paying ….
Should read CV63….
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Arsenal are weighing up a January move for Porto striker Andre Silva, according to Portuguese newspaper O Jogo.
Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger reportedly sent their scouts to watch the 20-year-old forward in action in the Champions League match against Leicester City.
The Portuguese striker, who signed a new five-year deal with Porto earlier this summer is reportedly being monitored by the French boss, who seems to be a great admirer of the player since watching him at the under-20 World Cup.
At the age of just 20-years, the attacker has an impressive youth record for his nation, scoring four goals in three U-21 games and eight goals in 10 games under-20 matches.
Silva includes a whooping €60million release clause – which equals to £52.8 million.
He has scored five goals and provided two assists in seven Primeira Liga games this season.


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text:
Q: Django-Debug-Toolbar is not showing I am building BlogApp and I am trying to run Django-Debug-Toolbar BUT it is not showing. I have seen many answers BUT nothing worked for me.
I have installed it correctly according to the Documentation
I have added in installed apps , middlewares and urls and also collecstatic. BUT still not showing when i go to Browser.
settings.py
if DEBUG:
    MIDDLEWARE += [
        'debug_toolbar.middleware.DebugToolbarMiddleware',
    ]
    INSTALLED_APPS += [
        'debug_toolbar',
    ]
    INTERNAL_IPS = ['127.0.0.1', ]

    # this is the main reason for not showing up the toolbar
    import mimetypes
    mimetypes.add_type("application/javascript", ".js", True)

    DEBUG_TOOLBAR_CONFIG = {
        'INTERCEPT_REDIRECTS': False,
    }

urls.py
if settings.DEBUG:
    import debug_toolbar
    urlpatterns += [
        path('__debug__/', include(debug_toolbar.urls)),
    ]

Any help would be Appreciated.
Thank You in Advance

A: This code I placed at the bottom of settings and solved my problems:
settings.py
import mimetypes
mimetypes.add_type("application/javascript", ".js", True)

DEBUG_TOOLBAR_PATCH_SETTINGS = False

def show_toolbar(request):
    return True

DEBUG_TOOLBAR_CONFIG = {
'INTERCEPT_REDIRECTS': False,
"SHOW_TOOLBAR_CALLBACK": show_toolbar,
'INSERT_BEFORE': '</head>',
'INTERCEPT_REDIRECTS': False,
'RENDER_PANELS': True,
}

Another problem I have got it was no debug_tolbar/css files in my_project/static/ file. Collectstatic did not solve my problem.
Solution: I have copied from: python3.8/site-packages/debug_toolbar/static/debug_toolbar/css/   to   my_project/static/debug_toolbar/css/

A: I had the same issue with application django debug toolbar
In settings.py, everything is correctly, but the application did not showing in the browser.
If you look by the inspect mode, you could see a javascript error because he sees it as text and not as js code.
Solution:
In the registry Editor ("Ctrl+r" "regedit") find HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT.js
then dubble click on the "Content Type" the "Value data" should be "text/javascript"
Then restart server "python manage.py runserver", remove cookies of your browser and that's all.
At the worst restart your machine.

A: Try to add in your settings.py:
import socket
hostname, _, ips = socket.gethostbyname_ex(socket.gethostname())
INTERNAL_IPS = [ip[:-1] + "1" for ip in ips]

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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text:
FantasiaBarrino
Chaka Khan's 'American Idol' Skin-Tight Catsuit: Hit or Miss — Photo, Poll
Soul singer Chaka Khan's slimmer figure was on full display during Wednesday night's (May 23) "American Idol," where Philipp Philipps was crowned the Season 11 winner. The 59-year-old, who recently shed 60 pounds, wore a brown, body-hugging catsuit as she commanded the stage, which can be seen in The BoomBox gallery below...
Georgette Cline
Fantasia's 'American Idol' Shocking Catsuit: Hit or Miss — Photo, Poll
Fantasia returned to her "American Idol" roots Wednesday night (May 23), showing up on the music competition reality show to perform a duet with contestant Joshua Ledet. While her appearance on the show was a welcomed surprise, it was Fantasia's outfit choices for the evening that shocked viewers...
Fantasia to Earn Film Profits for Mahalia Jackson Role
R&B singer and actor Fantasia Barrino has been cast to star as Gospel great Mahalia Jackson in an upcoming biopic and stand to make a pretty penny if it is successful. The title of the film is 'Mahalia' and is based on Jules Schwerin's 1993 book 'Got To Tell It: Mahalia Jackson, Queen of Gospel' reports the New York Post. So...
Alvin Blanco
Fantasia to Star as Gospel Queen Mahalia Jackson in Biopic
Former 'American Idol' champ Fantasia Barrino is set to star in a biopic about late New Orleans gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, and in preparation for her role, she's going to have to pack on 30 to 45 lbs. Adapted from the book, 'Got to Tell It: Mahalia Jackson, Queen of Gospel,' the feature film will tell the story of one of the most influential gospel singers in the world...
Fantasia & Her Ex Off the Hook, Judge Rules in Their Favor
A North Carolina judge has reportedly put an end to the speculation surrounding Fantasia Barrino's high-profile relationship with her ex-boyfriend, Antwaun Cook. According to reports from RadarOnline, it was ruled that Antwaun Cook was legally separated from his former wife Paula Cook on Sept...
Nadeska Alexis
Fantasia Pours Her Heartbreak Into 'Back to Me'
Almost four years have elapsed since Fantasia put out her second, self-titled album in December 2006, but there has been no shortage of drama in her life. In the midst of a public marital scandal and recent suicide attempt, the 26-year-old singer returns with 'Back to Me' -- a chronicle of all the heartbreak that went down behind the scenes...
Fantasia Admits Her Overdose Was Intentional
Former 'American Idol' star, Fantasia Barrino, was treated and released from a North Carolina hospital two weeks ago after ingesting a potentially lethal amount of aspirin and sleeping aid. In a new episode of VH1's 'Behind the Music,' which premieres on Tuesday night (Aug...
Fantasia Receives Honorary High School Diploma
Fantasia Barrino, whose struggle with illiteracy was documented in her 2005 memoir 'Life Is Not a Fairy Tale,' has another accolade to add to her collection. The former 'American Idol' contestant was given an honorary high school diploma last week from her former high school in North Carolina...
Fantasia Receives Racist Hate Mail
American Idol alum, Fantasia Barrino, has increased her security measures after receiving some threatening hate mail this weekend. The Color Purple star was reportedly sifting through her fan-mail following a Friday night (Feb. 19) performance at Los Angeles' Pantages Theater, when she came across a bit of unwanted text...


Hooray! Congratulations to our sixth grade students who have graduated and will be moving on to junior high in the fall. A big thank you to our amazing sixth grade faculty, Mr. Boswell, Mrs. Jayme and Miss Shumway who have done a wonderful job with their students this year. Good luck next year students!


I find these neat displays at Cabela's during our last visit. Photos were taken by my Samsung Galaxy phone.
A celing light made from antlers.
Cool! Have a fabulous week.
Sorry about that Joanne, re uploaded it, hope it can be viewed now.
I love Cabella's. Great finds for the letter A.
Airplanes and Antlers are pefect for this new round. I've never been to Cabella's, would like to visit some time.
Poor animals ! Would never hang that in my house !
I've seen a ceiling light like that one before. Quite unique and interesting.


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We also provide curriculium development and students recruitment to diverse educational institutions.


text:
CES 2021: The digital health revolution and what pharma should know
Departments, February 2021, Interactive & digital Marketing, Issue Archives, Med Ad News
By Alex Kareotes, director of media and innovation at Intouch Solutions
It's no surprise that this year's fully virtual CES shined a bright and hopeful spotlight on the future of digital health. Over three days, the mega-tech conference packed over 39-plus sessions on digital health, led by industry leaders across healthcare and tech companies, providers, consultants, and payers.
Undoubtedly, there is optimism across the industry that we are in the midst of a digital health revolution, accelerated by COVID-19, and the landscape will transform over the next several years. Take today's current patient experience: it's beyond fragmented – requiring the need to access information across doctor portals, insurance/pharmacy portals, HSA/FSA logins, consumer apps … the list goes on. The current system is focused on 'sick care' and chronic diseases, instead of extended health and wellbeing. "What we've learned in the past year is how much of the healthcare system is focused on late-stage disease. When it comes to prevention, there are crickets in the structure," said Deneen Vojta, executive VP of United Healthcare. Deneen shared the promise of digital health: finally having the data to realize facilitated self-service, improved outcomes, and a decrease in overall costs to the healthcare system.
"COVID-19 is not only accelerating telemedicine, it's enabling a new, more direct care model." – Aloha Mcbride, Global Health Leader, Ernst & Young
So what does this future look like, and how can pharma stay innovative within this ever-evolving landscape? Here are a few top takeaways from this year's digital health track at CES.
Care will take place virtually anywhere
Instead of being confined to a medical center, care will conveniently take place at home. We've already seen this transformation at the onset of the pandemic, but new technologies will serve as a catalyst for increased telemedicine usage, enabling vitals collection, labs, and even diagnostics in a virtual environment. According to an EY survey, more than 80 percent of physicians believe that patient care will involve a mix of face-to-face consultation and teleconferencing in the United States over the next decade. This acceleration in telemedicine has also paved the way for companies that are creating innovative, end-to-end healthcare experiences for consumers, including Hers, Roman, and Done.
Pharma takeaway
It's important that brands consistently evaluate their customer journeys in the context of a telehealth environment. In some categories where appropriate, pharma can offer patients a telemedicine experience, enabling a bridge on their Brand.com directly to Rx.
The patient experience is rooted firmly in the center and is empowered by data
New technologies and remote monitoring tools will enable continuous omni-present systems, powered by AI, which will lead to patients having actionable insights they can use to improve health outcomes and share with their HCPs. Wearables are not just about tracking fitness, but also about monitoring health and chronic diseases. But where does all of this data live? Companies like Well are working to streamline all healthcare-related data into a single, customized solution so consumers can take control of their healthcare experience.
"Right now, when you think of medical wearables, you might think of an Apple Watch or a Fitbit. We think there is a larger market for medical wearables that are essentially invisible – it's sole function is biometric monitoring that can feed these digital therapeutics." – Dr. Steven LeBoeuf, President and Co-founder, Valencell, Inc.
Just as the industry is heading toward more streamlined, personalized experiences for patients, pharma should deliver the same. Additionally, it's critical to stay on top of how medical wearables are evolving to consider potential partnerships or even development of tools directly from the brand that can create better data-driven experiences for your patient population.
Medicines of the future: A combination of molecular therapy and digital therapeutics
EndeavorRx is the first and only FDA-cleared treatment delivered through a video game experience, for ADHD patients ages 8 through 12.
Instead of providers leaning on decades-old data from clinical trials of the past, they'll expect to evaluate patient data in real time, powered by AI-generated insights to offer more personalized therapies to each individual. The digital therapeutics space will continue to skyrocket, with therapies like EndeavorRx gaining FDA acceptance. When it comes to trust and adoption of these technologies from providers, Jesse Ehrenfeld, trustee board chair for the American Medical Association, noted the top questions physicians ask, including: "Will it work?", "Will I get paid for it?", and, "Am I liable, or will I get sued?" Physicians are becoming more open to integrating digital therapeutics and tools into their clinical practices, but certainly these potential barriers to adoption will need to be overcome.
In many categories, pharma companies will face entrant competition from digital therapeutics. Pharma has the unique opportunity to think about how it can offer digital companion tools to their therapies that will offer real-world analysis of data, funneling insights to both physicians and patients that may improve outcomes.
Trust as a disruptor: A new innovation opportunity
Consumer trust and privacy concerns will continue to be a primary challenge for nearly every industry to tackle in 2021 and beyond. In fact, as shared on a panel on the topic, 55 percent of consumers don't trust tech companies with their healthcare data. This will push companies to build trust and transparency by design, a key strategy while building out customer experience and engagement from the start. Krishna Cheriath, head of digital, data, and analytics at Zoetis Inc. and former chief data officer at BMS, shared an example on informed consent: "All of us are guilty of clicking 'I agree' before reading the terms and conditions – because it's so difficult to go through reams of legalese to do it. What if we were able to break it down in a digestible way so users know what they are consenting to. Really make that experience of transparency friction-free."
"Digital trust is eroding fast in our society. Fake news, data breaches, fear of misuse of data, general fear of big tech are pervasive in society. And I think these trends are true in varying degrees in digital health as well. But I don't think of this as a challenge. I think of this as an opportunity for innovators to establish trust as a priority in the digital health space." – Krishna Cheriath, VP, Head of Digital, Data and Analytics at Zoetis Inc.
There are a few primary challenges for pharma: 1) Trust impacts brand digital strategies as the "cookie" will continue to crumble. And, 2) it impacts your reputation and how your customers perceive your brand/company. Consider earning and building trust with your customers by taking a more transparent approach to privacy.
Market access will play a pivotal role in digital health adoption into mainstream
For promising digital health technologies to be embraced by providers and patients alike, payors will have to be on board and provide reimbursement. These technologies will be required to prove their value in improving overall health outcomes and decreasing system costs. Deneen Vojta, executive VP of United Healthcare, made it clear that their position was to continue to support telehealth. She acknowledged that, "We cannot just layer technology over the existing system," and that, "The current system needs radical change." However, there is some skepticism from providers, including Lee Schwamm, MD, VP of digital health virtual care at Mass General Brigham. While he shared that the use of technology provides the opportunity to modernize and digitize every aspect of practice to be able to accomplish personalized medicine, Dr. Schwamm also emphasized that if nothing is done at the federal/state level for reimbursement in the long term, providers will revert back to the old care model.
We are increasingly moving to a system of value-based care, and it will be critical for pharma to continue to take a market-access-first approach in developing go-to market strategies. Pharma has the unique opportunity to embrace digital innovations that will support proving their brands value in this environment.
February 16, 2021 /by Andrew Humphreys
https://www.pharmalive.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/EndeavorRx.jpg 675 1212 Andrew Humphreys https://www.pharmalive.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Pharmalive_4c-300x37.png Andrew Humphreys2021-02-16 02:08:112021-02-17 02:12:02CES 2021: The digital health revolution and what pharma should know
BiondVax announces appointment of Amir Reichman as new CEO Baking humanity into your data in 2021