I must start this blog post, unfortunately, with a bit of bad news. The last post burned up nearly 50% of the internet usage with my satellite modem, and so until I can get back to an internet café, I'm afraid there won't be many pictures posted to accompany the story (with one notable exception- see below). I guess I'm still learning what I can and can't do via satellite internet, which is much slower and super expensive compared to the amenities available in the US.
I'm not quite sure where to begin since the last post because so much has happened, but let me start with one more very interesting snake that popped up before we left the last site south of Buta (Bombole). Since we can't have the benefit of a photo, I'll spill the beans a little by saying it is a Polemon, but it had a body quite different from the species I've seen in the past. Most snakes in the genus have average bodies for a snake, but this one was distinguished by having the shape of a thick piece of spaghetti. It was 50 cm long (SVL), 2.2 cm tail length, 15 scale rows at midbody, 288 ventrals and 20 subcaudals. Like most other species in the genus, it has a distinct coloration around the neck, and this one was bright yellow. Perhaps the students can start working on this for the cybertaxonomy project, and I will post pictures when I can. UPDATE: Picture is now here.
The road north to Buta was good, as it had been for hundreds of kilometers to and from Kisangani. When we reached the city, we saw many Belgian buildings and houses that were still standing, and it was impressive to see that it must have once been a major commercial center, mainly for cotton. We stopped long enough to fill up our tank with fuel, grab some lunch, and by mid-afternoon we were on the road heading east toward our distant destination of Niangara. I wanted to sample the forests on the way, and then we hoped to see the forest/savanna transition zone at Niangara, which would harbor an interesting diversity of species from both habitats.
We soon noticed that the road heading east hadn't been renovated like the one heading south from the city, and we stopped briefly to collect a few frogs that were hopping around in a small pool of water that had collected in a hole in the road. We also spotted a man who was carrying the decapitated remains of an enormous Jameson's mamba, but in the typical African fashion, he had thrown the head away and would need a lot of time to go find it. We didn't have time for that, so we moved on. Within an hour we reached a colonial-era bridge that still had the solid steel foundation, including two thick pieces down the middle (luckily at the same width as the truck's tires), but the wooden structure on top of the frame was crumbling. Just as our driver Faustin was about to pull onto the bridge to try his luck at getting across, he got stuck in a hole just in front of the structure. Several people who happened to be passing by on bicycles and motorcycles sensed an opportunity to make a quick buck, and they dropped everything to help push us out of the hole. Faustin was then able to navigate the tires over the treacherous remains of the bridge without any problem, and we continued on. However, he stopped every time a small piece of bamboo was in our path, or to scrutinize tiny pools of water that were very easy to drive through, and we lost a lot of time from his overly cautious and inexperienced approach.
It was now late afternoon, and after weaving through several additional holes and eroded places in the road, we got stuck in one particularly muddy morass only a kilometer away from the village where we hoped to spend the night. More local people showed up to help push us out, but an argument broke out between Faustin and the people who were trying to help us. They tried to tell him that it was easier to drive the truck into the large holes with water instead of trying to drive around them into the mud as he was attempting. Again and again our driver ignored them, and repeatedly, he got stuck. After the 2nd or 3rd disaster, a thunderstorm rolled in and doused everyone with heavy sheets of rain. I looked over at Danny to see if he was freaking out, but despite the noise from the shouting, thunder, and engine revving, he simply said, "wow this is crazy!" We were completely soaked by the time we were able to set up our tents to go to sleep, which we had to do without the benefit of a meal. Whenever one enters an unknown village in this country, it takes time to get to know the people, figure out where to fetch some water, get firewood to start a fire, and after several hours, finally cook up some food. We simply didn't have the time, so we had to go hungry until the following morning.
The next morning we were all set to continue the journey east, but the car wouldn't start. Terrific. Faustin spent a couple hours taking apart the battery, checking wire connections, and generally making a racket as he experimented in an attempt to fix the problem. When I noticed that Aristote and Wandege had wandered off somewhere, I decided to go look for them. After walking about half a kilometer with no sign of them, I asked one of the villagers if she had seen my friends. She pointed to a large hut, and thinking I would catch them red-handed goofing around, I walked in to find the place was empty except for a handsome blue-faced monkey that was chained to the support beams. I guess something got lost in translation, but I took a photo of the animal (no mammal books handy so not sure of the species yet) to illustrate how beautiful it is.
Pet monkeys are common throughout Congo for an unfortunate reason. The adults are hunted for meat (so-called bushmeat, a very big conservation concern in Central Africa), and when a mother is killed, the baby is often taken as a pet. As we would see in the coming days, this species of monkey is commonly hunted in the area, as evidenced by the large number of poached individuals seen on the back of bicycles traveling between villages. They are hunted with crude homemade rifles, and on one occasion, I spotted something that looked like a colobus monkey as well.
When I returned to the site of the vehicle breakdown, the locals gave us the name of a mechanic at Buta, and Danny and I worked on some specimens we had picked up along the way while we waited. One of these was an interesting blind snake that someone had found crawling on the ground that morning (probably brought to the surface by the heavy rains the previous night), and it had a unique pink coloration that I had never seen before. Because only a couple species of blind snake are known from the Congo Basin and all of them are relatively rare, I was quite excited by this find. About two hours later after sending for him, the mechanic showed up and immediately got the truck started. Apparently Faustin didn't have it in the right gear. At that moment I realized we were in trouble, because the roads were no longer in good condition, and our driver obviously didn't know what he was doing. The mechanic passed along the bad news that the roads would get much worse for about 50 kilometers, but he would be willing to help us drive through the obstacles in exchange for a handsome salary. After that, he assured us, the roads would be good. We negotiated a reasonable price for his services and two assistants, and immediately took off heading east. The assistants were remarkable because they clung to the back of the truck, hopping off at problematic places in the road to cut back dangling bamboo or move obstacles in our way. One of them wore a black martial arts outfit, and he looked like a samurai as he wielded a large machete to clear a path for us.
At first our spirits soared because our new driver really knew how to navigate the problematic places in the road, and there were many of them. Enormous holes filled with water, places where half the road had eroded away with only a narrow and treacherous strip to allow passage, long cracks where decades of rain runoff had created streams in the middle of the road, fallen trees, and large stretches of mud as deep as the tires. We had entered an area dominated by bamboo stands that were 15 meters tall, and many places had accumulated huge pools of water, because the vegetation was so thick it didn't allow the sunlight to penetrate the ground and "burn" the water away. As it sits for weeks on end, especially during the rainy season in the summer, it creates enormous quagmires of mud that resemble large bowls of chocolate mousse (can you tell I'm missing desserts?). He managed to pass all of these problems with ease, until we reached a place in the road where there was a very big problem. To illustrate how bad it was, and how bad the roads were in general, I am going to include one picture for now. The mechanic/driver can be seen with his head in his hands in despair to the left of the vehicle.
As usual, a bunch of local people dropped what they were doing to help us (with the promise of some cash of course), but the trap was strong. Usually in situations like this, I get out of the way because it is dangerous work trying to free a big truck from a muddy pit, and I can't understand all the arguments in Lingala about what strategy to pursue anyway. I tried to convey this idea to Danny, but he insisted on helping and got splattered with mud in the process. I sat down on the side of the road, watched the transition of insect fauna from black butterflies with malachite blue stripes in the afternoon to fireflies in the evening, and held my breath every time the driver revved the engine in his multiple attempts to drive out of the hole. I got bored and depressed after several hours, so I went into the forest and found a stream, where Danny helped me catch a few treefrogs. In the end, it took nine terrible hours to free the truck from the huge pit in which we found ourselves, and in his enthusiasm to move on, our driver immediately drove the truck off the road, and the vehicle teetered dangerously over the edge as everyone scrambled to keep it from tipping over. That little mistake took another hour to fix, and we finally got to bed (again without any food) at 3 AM.
We had driven for a couple hours, starving at this point, when he stopped at a small village to get something to eat. Goats and chickens were everywhere, and perhaps, I thought, they would be on the menu. Overjoyed that there was a little hut serving as a restaurant, Danny and I jumped out of the truck and were the first in line to look at the food. My mouth started watering when a woman appeared with a large steaming pot full of meat in a red sauce. She showed it to me and it was my favorite—goat meat. I ordered two large pieces with some cassava, and dipped the latter into the sauce. It was delicious and a little spicy, but at last our terrible hunger would be satiated. And then Chif showed up just as I was about to try the meat, and said, "you're going to eat THAT?" "Yes, it's goat meat, my favorite!" "That is bad meat," he said matter-of-factly. Then it dawned on me that the meat portions were unusually large for goat. I could feel the nausea starting when I asked what the meat was. Monkey. Danny started laughing as he asked if I had tried some. Oh no big mistake! I dropped my bowl and walked out of the restaurant. Visions of monkey pox (imagine chicken pox on steroids) and other zoonotic diseases swirled in my head as I tried not to throw up. Despite my protests, our driver and his assistants had a full breakfast, and guess who had to pay for it?
We were able to buy a few bananas along the road as we continued east, and eventually we reached a village where our driver said the good road was starting. Relieved that the worst was over, we got a full meal and a good night's sleep. The next day we drove into a small village as we continued on our journey east, and Faustin stopped to buy some motor oil. With all the engine revving to get us out of the muddy holes, the truck had taken a beating and needed a little TLC. We were chatting with some of the locals when the assistant in the kung fu outfit showed up out of nowhere, and in a ridiculous display of anger and poorly choreographed martial arts moves, he scattered the crowd away from the truck and faced us with an angry look. He didn't have his machete, but he certainly looked menacing. Apparently Faustin had made some kind of deal with him, and he didn't pay up. A big argument broke out over the equivalent of $5 (at least a week's income for the average Congolese person), so to keep the peace, I paid Faustin's debt, but told him it would be withheld from his salary.
Thinking the drama was over, we continued on our way, but soon discovered that the road was not getting any better, and Faustin hadn't learned a thing from the more experienced driver who had taken us to this point. We tried to reason with him and have someone else try to drive (ANYONE would be better), but he adamantly refused. It was his truck, he said, and he wouldn't let anyone else drive it. Again and again he got stuck in muddy holes, which took hours of digging, yelling, and stress to rectify. In some places the road was impassable and we had to drive through the middle of neighboring villages to get around the problem. When we reached bridges that were destroyed, we had to move discarded logs into place to drive over them. And then the flat tires started. A few days ago we got two flats in a row, and with no more spares, we had to take our baggage to the nearest village and figure out a way to fix the flats in the middle of nowhere. I made the mistake of sending Aristote on a motorcycle to Dingila, the nearest major town down the road, to find someone who could help. He didn't show up for nearly 24 hours (I suspect beer had a key role in his tardiness).
We relished the one-day break from the road problems, and managed to find several more interesting snakes, including some blind snakes, a 1.7 meter-long forest cobra that somebody had killed with a machete, and many different kinds of frogs. As a little bonus, I'm throwing in a photo of a crazy spider I photographed in the forest (I couldn't resist collecting it too).
The scenery was also beautiful. The way the tall stands of bamboo form nearly continuous arches over the road seems like something from a dream, and the diversity of butterflies, birds, trees, and other life is impressive. At night, the haunting calls of the hyrax can be heard almost everywhere, giving the forest a prehistoric feel. If you haven't heard the call of this rabbit-like mammal before, you can hear it on the video from the 2011 expedition on the fieldwork tab of my main website. Below is a photo of the bamboo arches over the road.
The headaches and terrible loss of time and morale (except for Danny who always seems to be in good spirits) from the roads continued for several days as we passed through Titule, where we saw an impressive colonial-era church. When we reached Dingila, we saw quaint Belgian houses near an old cotton factory, which must have been a major operation with hundreds of workers in the colonial era. And this brings me to an explanation for the terrible state of the roads. Towards the beginning of the colonial venture to benefit from cotton farming in 1921, 900 kilometers of roads for extracting cotton (known specifically as routes cotonnières) were in place. But towards the height of the colonial era in the 1950's, over 200 million franks were used to maintain thousands of kilometers of roads, build new ones, and maintain bridges and other crucial infrastructure (Likaka, 2009). A lot of the labor used to build and maintain the roads was by forceful conscription of the Congolese people, many of whom resented the roads and didn't benefit from them. And now that colonialism has been in the past for over half a century, time wreaked havoc with the roads and they are nearly impassible, except for very large lorries (that create many problematic ruts) and motorcycles.
Realizing Niangara was unattainable with the devastated roads and rapidly diminishing time, I decided to take a small detour at Bambili a few days ago. Suspecting the Uele River is a major biogeographic barrier, I had hoped to sample the northern side of it at Niangara, but this would be our only chance under the circumstances. We had to cross the river by pirogue at great time and expense, but the collecting was fantastic, and for three wonderful days we forgot about the road problems. Once again the locals assured us that the road to Isiro wasn't too bad. When we returned to the road to head east, we encountered a stretch of disasters that were the worst we had encountered yet. Because of our growing experience with the obstacles, we were able to get around four very deep muddy pits in only 12 hours, and one of the people who dug us out even found a very rare Hemisus frog (mentioned earlier in the blog from Murchison). I will try to post a photo when I have better internet access because it is quite impressive. UPDATE: photo appears below.
Last night as we drove into the village at Bangale after the umpteenth million time stuck in the mud with another flat tire (we keep patching the holes as best we could), we started smelling a smoky odor from the engine. Faustin had finally burned up the clutch. I collected some small Arthroleptis in the bamboo near my tent before taking out my BGAN (dual satellite phone and modem) to call a mechanic in Dingila to ask for the part we needed. He confirmed he was sending two mechanics this morning, and they finally showed up at 4 PM. Fingers crossed they have the right parts and can fix our battered truck, because Danny and I have only 10 days or so left to reach Goma, where we hope to find transport back to Kampala and the flight home on the 15th of July. Everybody says the road will improve the closer we get to Isiro, but that city is still at least 200 kilometers away. In the end if we run out of time, we can always hire some motorcycles to get us out of here faster, but that will cost a lot of money and I hope to avoid that option.
What's the good news? The collecting has been very very good. At the Uele River crossing, Chifundera found a blind snake thicker than a garden hose, and at 72 cm long, it is larger than any known species from the region. I can't wait to do the research at UTEP to figure out what it is. We also found at least two species of frogs that haven't been recorded for over a century. Given the isolation here, one can understand why. Other good news? With the exception of painful ear aches for Wandege and Paluku (medication we bought locally hasn't worked so they will have to wait for Isiro), everyone is in good health. That is no small matter in Congo!
Finally, let me mention that the solar charger I am using to power the computer and BGAN hasn't performed as well as I had hoped, because it takes all day in the partly cloudy skies (typical during the rainy season) to charge about 50% of the battery. At that level, I can get enough power for the computer for about two hours, but I need several hours to write these posts, arrange the photos, etc. Please excuse any lag between now and the next post. I hope to be less isolated and more mobile at that time. Below is the citation for the information I provided about roads and cotton in the colonial era.
Likaka, O. 2009. Naming Colonialism: History and Collective Memory in the Congo, 1870-1960. The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, Wisconsin, USA.
Thanks for the great posts! We've been following your activities with great interest, and this last post…wow…what an ordeal! But you are weathering all of the obstacles with patience and aplomb, it seems, and I'm glad very one is still in good health! Good luck on that last 200 km…hopefully you're there by now!
I'm very sorry about this unfortunate period. Yes, Danny is the best trooper to have during a hiking trip! Take advantage of that, Dr.
Cross fingers you won't get ebola. I've actually got a treat for you guys when you get back!


Downloads Drivers Downloads for Xbox One - Xbox One Downloads, Repairs & Drive Replacements, Emulators, Homebrew, JTAG, RGH and more.
The new PC drivers will enable the Xbox One controller to be used with any game that featured gamepad support for the Xbox 360 controller. Simply download the drivers, connect your Xbox One controller to your computer through a micro USB cable and you'll be gaming in no time.


It's been illegal to use your mobile phone at the wheel for over a decade, but on 1st March 2017, the laws got much tougher. Now that these changes have been in effect for a few months, we take a look at what they are and how they affect you.
What Are the Mobile Phone Driving Laws in the UK?
The laws on using a mobile phone at the wheel are pretty straightforward: the answer is in fact that you should not use your phone at the wheel of a car. Sounds quite obvious, right? Well, according to a recent survey commissioned by Co-op Insurance, 16% of drivers admitted to using their phone at the wheel in the past month alone – whether that was to make a call, reply to a text, change their music or, perhaps most worryingly of all, update their social media.
What Do These Changes in the Law Mean?
The latest government crackdown saw the law become much stricter on those caught using their phone whilst driving a car or riding a motorcycle, whether the vehicle is moving or not.
It's been illegal to read and/or reply to a text, check emails or social media, or take calls at the wheel since 2003, but these rules became stricter in spring 2017 due to the increase in road accidents and fatalities as a result of drivers being distracted by their phones while at the wheel.
This applies to drivers of cars, motorbikes, buses and other motorised vehicles.
Whilst you're still allowed to use hands-free devices, it's crucial that the device is fully set up before you drive, so you can take calls without handling it.
However, limitations to this mean that the police can still stop you if they believe your driving has been affected or you've been distracted by your call.
It's easy to get distracted by a conversation, particularly on your phone, so try to limit calls to strictly necessary or emergency ones.
The law is clear: you must not use any handheld mobile, even as a satnav.
If you set your phone up to give directions before starting your journey and it's attached to the windscreen or dashboard and in clear view while you're driving, it is okay to use your mobile phone as a satnav whilst driving. This would mean that your journey is loaded onto the phone before you start your engine or begin your journey. If your car is in motion, only a passenger can amend the journey on your phone, or you'll have to safely pull over.
When Is It Okay to Use Your Mobile Phone in a Car?
You must be safely parked to be able to use your mobile phone in your vehicle. This does not include being stopped at traffic lights, or waiting in a traffic jam.
Essentially, if your engine is running, the law applies and you should not touch your mobile phone.
However, in an emergency, it is okay to dial 999 if it's not safe to stop.
What Are the Penalties for Using Your Phone Whilst Driving?
As part of the crackdown, drivers may find themselves with six penalty points and a £200 fine if they are using a handheld phone.
The government has also warned that you could be taken to court, where you can be banned from driving or riding, and you could even get a £1,000 fine. That's if you've been driving for longer than two years; if you've only passed your test in the last 24 months, you will lose your licence.
In addition, a mobile phone conviction will most likely result in the increase in the cost of your insurance premium.
Can I Lose My Licence If I've Been Caught Using My Mobile Phone at the Wheel?
Yes, you could lose your licence if you're caught using your phone at the wheel – especially if you've held a licence for less than two years.
More experienced drivers can lose their licence if they receive 12 points in a three-year period, which can mean being caught using your phone just twice. In certain circumstances, at the police's discretion, you as the driver could be taken to court, face a fine of up to £2,000 and eventually be disqualified. If you cause someone's death by dangerous or careless driving, you could face up to life imprisonment.
If you've been caught using your mobile phone whilst driving, and have a CU80 conviction on your licence, you may find that you struggle to find affordable insurance cover. At Complete Cover Group, we help drivers with CU80 convictions find affordable insurance, so if you're looking for great value cover click for an online quote or speak to our friendly team on 0800 997 8232.
Check out our blog or follow us on Twitter and Facebook for everything you need to know about motors and the world of insurance.


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Guest Lecture: Branding Coca-Cola, The Strategy of Sustainable Development
来源:必威官网亚洲体育 阅读:5792 发布于:2018-11-15 09:12
On Friday, November 9th, the School of Media and Communication hosted a guest lecture "Branding Coca-Cola: The Strategy of Sustainable Development" by Ms. Chunhong Yu – General Manager for Public Policy, Sustainability and Social Impact of Coca-Cola Greater China.
At the beginning of her speech, Ms. Yu mentioned that Coca-Cola has celebrated its 132nd anniversary on May 8th of this year, as well as, the 40th anniversary of Coca-Cola's return to the Chinese Mainland.
Ms. Yu stated that Coca-Cola is the largest non-alcoholic ready-to-drink beverage company in the world. On an average day, around 1.9 billion Coca-Cola beverages are being enjoyed by people all over the world. Coca-Cola works with 27 million retailers delivering its products to consumers everywhere. In China, Coca-Cola has about 70 different brands and still counting, while all over the world, it has over 500 brands in categories like: sparkling drinks, water, and ready-to-drink tea & coffee. Around the world, Coca-Cola has more delivery trucks than DHL, USPS, and FedEx, combined altogether!
"We have formed what our chairman called 'Golden Triangle Partnership' where we work with business communities, NGOs and with the government, to collectively try to solve the problems that we face. Sustainability priorities for us are three W's as in: Water, Women and Waste." – Ms. Yu mentioned, speaking of Coca-Cola's sustainability priorities.
(Written by: Norhan Omar; Edited by Lutong Zhang)
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Hunting Network LLC owns over 2,000 hunting domain names and currently operates the largest network of hunting websites in the world. These sites include our main e-commerce portal Bowhunting.com along with over 50 microsites containing the finest free hunting articles, knowledge, and information. Below you will find a collection of our ever-expanding microsites that make up just a small part of our Hunting Network.


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Last chance to get PC Gamer Weekender 2018 early bird tickets
By Joe Donnelly 2017-11-30T11:23:21.333Z
We're back! Returning to the Olympia in London on February 17-18, 2018.
Update: the deadline has been extended to midnight Saturday December 2! Grab your discounted tickets while you can.
Original story: After two years of pre-release games, panels, talks and a general celebration of all things PC gaming, the PC Gamer Weekender is back in 2018 for its third annual show.
Expect all of the above and more this time round, including the OMEN by HP Bootcamp—a showcase that offers insight into the world of esports and what it takes to succeed within this increasingly demanding field.
To echo our editor-in-chief Samuel, the Weekender is an event that we ourselves would love to see as PC players—and we'd love even more to have you along. Now's your last chance to grab early bird tickets for as little as £9.99. Early bird prices are available until midnight tomorrow, December 1.
We'll have more details on some of our very special guests soon. In the meantime, here's a general overview on what to expect in 2018:
GET INTO GAMES
If you are looking to pursue a career in the gaming industry, get yourself to the PC Gamer Weekender Get Into Games feature, new for the 2018 show. For anyone studying at higher or further education level, or if you're simply looking for a career change, there will be experts on hand to give you the information and advice you need to take the next step in your journey to working in games. Publishers and recruiters will give talks on things like being a games designer or programmer, the importance of game jams and what you need to do to stand out.
Get all nostalgic at the PC Gamer Weekender in our arcade area, where you will be able to play classic games Sonic 2, Metal Slug X, Street Fighter II: Champion Edition, Pac-Man, Dr Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine, 1943, Puzzle Bobble, Streets of Rage, Missile Command and Sonic 3.
ESPORTS BOOTCAMP
Check out the esports Academy at the PC Gamer Weekender and learn from pros first hand. Understand the games you love in a whole new way and gain the skills and confidence to delve deeper into the world of esports. Topics covered will include things like brain coaching, leadership development and biofeedback training.
Everything you loved from the PC Gamer Weekender 2017 will be back—including modding your PC in Workshops, Tournaments which will be bigger and better, and, of course, loads of pre-release games to try out!
PC Gamer Weekender


I am falling for fall and it feels oh-so good! Breaking out sweaters and pants for the first time since early spring is ALWAYS refreshing, and this year, I'm kicking my fall fashion up a notch with bold hues, interesting silhouettes, and so-now extras.
Where do I even start? I love everything about this fall look — from the rich yellow coupled with bright red, to the retro vibes my makeup and jewelry give off. The pop of leopard and statement purse are icing on the cake.
Don't be shy about embracing color this season. I'm currently loving yellow and red together, and something else I've been experimenting with is style and fit. I'm usually a skinny-pant person, but I decided to step out of my comfort zone and try these wide-leg pants on for size. Turns out, I'm not just a skinny-pant girl anymore! I love how this pair looks flattering and feels elevated.
Fall is the most exciting time for fashion, so take full advantage while you can! Try out new fits, experiment with color, and finally give yourself that bold cat eye. After all, before we know it, you'll have to cover up underneath a bulky coat! ...Dun dun DUN.
A superb and elegant outfit with almost Belgium's national colors ;) The red mules are fantastic!
Oh my gosh, how cute is that bag?! I love this look!


DAYTON, OHIO, July 13, 2009 – Plus Technologies announced today the availability of OM Plus for SUSE 10. OM Plus, version 3.3.2, has been tested and certified for SUSE 10 environments. This means that enterprises with 'mission important or critical' printing can now achieve enhanced print functionality not available on the SUSE 10 platform.
Many of the enhanced features provided by OM Plus include page level confirmed print, print failure notification, automated printer failover, page level restart, load balancing, real time context based routing, user print accounting, and many other capabilities.


text:
Read The Immortals Online
Authors: Amit Chaudhuri
Tags: #Fiction, #General
BOOK: The Immortals
HAUDHURI
was born in Calcutta in 1962 and brought up in Bombay. He is a graduate of University College, London, and was at Balliol College and later, as Creative Arts Fellow, at Wolfson College, Oxford. He has published four previous novels, and a collection of short stories, and his work has appeared in various publications, including the
, the
. Winner of the Betty Trask Award, the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book, the Encore Award for Best Second Novel and the
Times Book Prize for Fiction, he lives in Calcutta with his wife and daughter, but spends some of the year in the UK, where he is Professor of Contemporary Literature at the University of East Anglia. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and an acclaimed musician and singer.
Also by Amit Chaudhuri
A Strange and Sublime Address
Afternoon Raag
The Picador Book of Modern Indian Literature
(editor)
D. H. Lawrence and 'Difference':
The Poetry of the Present
St. Cyril Road and Other Poems
Clearing a Space:
Reflections on India, Literature, and Culture
Memory's Gold: Writings on Calcutta
First published 2009 by Picador
This electronic edition published 2010 by Picador
an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
Basingstoke and Oxford
Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com
ISBN 978-0-330-50512-3 in Adobe Reader format
ISBN 978-0-330-50512-3 in Adobe Digital Editions format
ISBN 978-0-330-50514-7 in Mobipocket format
Copyright © Amit Chaudhuri 2009
The right of Amit Chaudhuri to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
www.picador.com
to read more about all our books and to buy them. You will also find features, author interviews and news of any author events, and you can sign up for e-newsletters so that you're always first to hear about our new releases
For Rinka
'The mortals become immortals; the immortals become mortals.'
Heraclitus
My days are pallid with the hard pummelling of work,
my nights are incandescent with waking dreams.
Arise from the clash of metals, O beautiful one, white fire-flame,
may the mass of matter become wind, the moon become woman,
may the flowers of the earth become the stars of the sky.
Arise, O sacred lotus, rise from the spirit's stalk,
free the eternal in the unfading forgiveness of the moment,
make the momentary eternal.
May the body become mind, the mind become spirit, the spirit unite with death,
may death become body, spirit, mind.
Buddhadeva Bose
(trans. from Bengali by Ketaki Kushari Dyson)
HE NOTES OF
Bhimpalasi emerged from a corner of the room. Panditji was singing again, impatient, as if he were taking his mind off something else. But he grew quite immersed: the piece was exquisite and difficult. He'd composed it himself seven years ago.
From not far away came the sound of traffic; the roundabout, bewildering in its congestion. Bullocks and cars ground around it. The bulls looked mired in their element; the buses and dusty long-distance taxis were waiting to move. The car horns created an anxious music, discordant but not indifferent.
The Panditji wasn't there: he'd died two years ago, after his third cardiac seizure. They had rushed him to Jaslok Hospital; on the way, in the car, he'd had his second heart attack. He had died in Jaslok, to the utter disbelief of his relatives: they hadn't thought that he'd been admitted to a hospital to die. Now, his presence, or his absence, persisted in the small seven-hundred-square-feet house. The singing had come from the tape recorder, from the tape the grandson had played accidentally, thinking it was a cassette of film songs.
'Yeh to dadaji ke gaane hai,' remarked the boy, recognising his grandfather's singing; was he surprised or disappointed? Next to him hung a portrait of his dadaji, enlarged from a photograph taken when he was fifty-seven. The face was an austere one, bespectacled, the oiled hair combed back. It was the face of – by common consensus in the family – a great man. The large forehead had been smeared with a tilak, as if someone had confused the portrait with a real person.
Already, the Panditji was becoming a sort of myth. It wasn't as if a large number of people knew him; but those who did divulged their knowledge with satisfaction. How well he sang Malkauns, for instance; how even Bade Ghulam Ali hesitated to sing Malkauns at a conference in Calcutta after Panditji had the previous day. How Panditji was a man of stark simplicity, despite his weakness for the occasional peg of whisky in the evening.
But it was certain that Panditji was proud, a man of prickly sensitivity. He had been a man silently aware of the protocol between student and teacher, organiser and performer, musician and musician. If slighted or rebuffed, he sealed off that part of the world that rebuffed him.
This severity had probably cost him. There was a story of how Lata Mangeshkar wanted a guru to train her in the finer points of classical music, and of how she had thought of him, Ram Lal, having heard his abilities as a teacher praised highly. 'You must call her, Panditji,' said a well-wisher. 'She is waiting for your call.' Panditji did not call. 'She should call me,' he said. 'If she wants to learn from me, she will call me.' The call did not come. In the meantime, Amir Khan telephoned her and said that he was at her disposal. Word spread quickly; Lata turned to the distinguished ustad; and Amir Khan became known as the man who had taught Lata Mangeshkar the subtler intricacies of classical music.
And yet, for all that, his reputation as a teacher had remained intact when he died; like something small and perfect, it had neither been subtracted from nor added to. People outside the family remembered him less and less; if asked 'Where did you learn that beautiful bandish?' they might say in a tone of remembrance, 'Oh I had learnt that from Pandit Ram Lal,' for people used to drift in and out of Panditji's life, and some became students for brief spells of time.
Shyamji's life was to be different. This was a simple determination, but it was not a conscious plan.
, Panditji's life was the ideal life; when Shyamji mentioned it, it was as if he were speaking of a saint, and not of his father. That was all very well; but it was a life that could not be repeated.
Tonight was a night of upaas and jagran, an absurdity enforced ritually by the women. Shyamji succumbed meekly to being a witness. The abstention from food by the women, the singing of bhajans till dawn: these were necessary observances. Done repeatedly, they were meant to lead to betterment. Instead, they led to acidity, and a grogginess and lack of focus that lasted two days. But they were undertaken in light-hearted camaraderie.
The children and the men were fed. Then night came; and they began to sing the bhajans. The children had fallen asleep without any prompting, as usual, in the midst of the chatter, their eyes closed in the bright light of the tube-light. The low, droning singing began; not tuneless, because this was a family of musicians, but strangely soothing. Half-asleep, Shyamji watched his wife and his sister and, with them, an older daughter, Neha: they were about to lull him to sleep. Nisha, his youngest daughter, had desperately wanted to stay awake, and join the chorus; but she had fallen asleep at a quarter to eleven. His mother sat in a corner, in a plain white sari, with an absent look, yet entirely alert. Shyamji had a dream into which was woven the sound of the chorus; in which his father was also present, both as a living person and as a portrait, hanging in a reddish light. This dream, about the vicissitudes of Shyamji's life, continued for a long time, taking one shape, then another. When he woke briefly, it was dawn; the women had vanished: they must have gone to bed, probably after having taken a glass of milk to break the fast. The room was silent, except for the noises coming in from outside.
Late one evening the door must have been left ajar – early evenings the doors were anyway wide open, to let in a continual trickle of visitors; people coming in and going out – but late one evening when the door was ajar, the rat must have got in. No one had noticed. But it was Neha who saw it later that night, as she was stepping out of the bathroom. It had jumped out, and scooted behind the pots in the kitchen once again. Expectedly, Neha almost fainted. It was really a bandicoot; cats were scared of them. They ran down the gutters and, at night, scurried down the narrow passage that connected the houses of the colony. They had the aggressiveness and urgency of touts.
The children danced, half in fear and in excitement at an undefined peril. Shyamji's wife, never known to be particularly violent, had managed to chase it out with a jhadu; it darted through the kitchen window. Shyamji, not moving from the divan, was a picture of patience, and kept saying, as he did during most crises, 'Arrey bhai, pareshan mat hona, don't get agitated.'
N THE WAY TO
the city in the mornings, he'd stop at Peddar Road sometimes, at his wife's brother's place; going up a steep incline and entering a compound that was not visible from the main road. Here, they lived in a single-storey house not far from a posh girls' school.
'Hari om,' he said as he entered. It was an old joke, this invocation to God, a part of Shyamji's 'fun' mode: it meant he was hot, and that he was here, needing attention. 'Water, jijaji?' asked the woman sitting near the doorstep; she had covered part of her face with her sari the moment he had stepped in. Shyamji nodded; then added affectionately: 'Cold.' He lowered himself onto the mat and sighed.
Envy by Kathryn Harrison
The Wonders of the Invisible World by David Gates
Kick (The Jenkins Cycle Book 1) by John L. Monk
Poking a Dead Frog: Conversations with Today's Top Comedy Writers by Mike Sacks
Banana Split by Josi S. Kilpack
The Girls He Adored by Jonathan Nasaw
Hard as You Can by Laura Kaye
Tempting Target: Heart of a SEAL by Carmen Faye
Life at the Dakota by Birmingham, Stephen;
La vidente by Lars Kepler


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Leave a Comment	/ At Home / By Linda, Webmistress
In 2045, apparently the world sucks so bad that everyone just wants to live in a world of virtual reality. More specifically, they want to live in The Oasis, a VR universe accessible by just putting on your mask. You can be anyone you want to be. You can earn points, lives, and "coins" to amass even more stuff and power. You can be popular, athletic, cool, make friends, and fall in love. But now everyone has a new goal in The Oasis: Before the uber-rich creator of The Oasis died, he left "easter eggs" in the program. In full Willy Wonka-ish fashion, creator James Halliday (Mark Rylance) left clues how to "win" the game, inheriting the control and massive fortune of The Oasis. Everyone, of course, wants to win it all.
Our hero Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan) is a teen in the "stacks" of Columbus, Ohio (visually cool vertical slums), which also happens to be the home of the technology giant that created The Oasis. Wade, known as Parzival in The Oasis, is determined to win, as are his group of online friends like love interest Art3mis (Olivia Cooke) and BFF Aech (Lena Waithe). But tech mogul Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn) also wants to win, and has employed an army of employees to try to make it all the way to the end so that he can (financially, at least) rule the world. Ready Player One, in true Spielbergian fashion, becomes a race between scrappy young people and greedy, corrupted adults. Who do you think will come out ahead?
Ready Player One is visually kind of like Avatar plus Tron plus Blade Runner, mixed in a blender, then topped with sugary froth and neon. It is truly eye-popping–a big-screen video game universe. Most of the movie is indeed in this VR world, which is a bit irritating at first (especially the ubiquitous big-eyed CG versions of the main characters). But just as it started to hurt my brain, (because seriously, how much of this can one take?) I started to relax and get into it. If Spielberg knows one thing, it is how to make an entertaining adventure. There is just enough depth to the characters to make you care, and just enough cleverness in the script and plot to keep you involved. Bonus points go to the voice acting of Simon Pegg (as the Curator of a virtual library) and T.J. Miller (as the bad guy's hilarious henchman).
I found it strangely refreshing to see a virtually (no pun intended) death-free family adventure film. Remember, the characters are all playing a video game, so when they "die" in The Oasis, whether its from a planet-obliterating explosion, a fight, or a giant ape, you just recharge, or pay some coins, or use a "life", and you are back in the game. Leave it to Spielberg to bring back the friendliness of family-friendly action films.
Older viewers will get a kick out of identifying as many bits of the truly excessive 80s references, just as kids will crow about how they "discovered" cool music like New Order from watching this pop-culture-soaked film (just in the way my generation "discovered" 50s and 60s pop with the Stand By Me and Big Chill soundtracks). And you know what? It's all good. If this movie was a pile of poo, I'd be more offended to see my childhood put into a video-game-blender, but it is actually a pretty fun trip.
The Blu-ray edition of Ready Player One includes six behind-the-scenes featurettes including interviews with Steven Spielberg and Ernest Cline. Bonus features include, "The 80s: You're the Inspiration", "Game Changer: Cracking the Code", "Effects for a Brave New World", "Level Up: Sound for the Future", "High Score: Endgame", and "Ernie and Tye's Excellent Adventure".
{amazonWS:itemid=B07BDSKQ5T;associatesid=moviepiecom-20;}


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Newly Discovered "Teenage" Antibody Could Mean Knocking Out HIV for Good
By Max Plenke
An HIV vaccine could finally be on its way, thanks to the discovery of an immature antibody.
The research, published Tuesday in the journal Immunity, was a collaboration between five teams in three countries. It involved discovering an odd antibody in a Chinese patient whose immune system could fight against the virus.
The antibody looked a lot like the well-known VRC01 antibody, known to "broadly neutralize" HIV by mimicking an immune-system interaction in your body. It wasn't fully developed, so the researchers called it a "teenage" antibody — only instead of having a pimply mustache and a sulky attitude, it offered a look into how the immune system builds its shields.
"There was something a little bit weird about this antibody," Jiang Zhu, a biologist from the Scripps Research Institute and co-senior author on the study, said in a statement.
Read more: Thanks to CRISPR Gene Editing, Scientists Could Knock HIV Out of Our Vocabulary
What makes HIV so hard to fight: The human immunodeficiency virus is such a challenging disease to battle because not only does it mutate, making it hard to pin down and treat, but it has a wickedly sophisticated defense system. HIV makes a protein called Vif, which can disable a protein in your body that, in other cases, breaks a virus down in order to better attack it — a divide and conquer technique. When Vif stops that break-'em-up protein from pulling out parts of the HIV's genetic code — like defensive, weaponized gene editing — HIV can keep growing.
Because of that, traditional methods of building vaccines won't work. You have to "reverse-engineer" a cure using what's known about HIV and past antibodies that have fought against HIV, according to Zhu. Those antibodies are extremely rare.
But finding this "teenage" antibody meant seeing your body's immune system still in progress and not in its final, matured form, offering a rare look at how the body builds its defenses. It was as if the patient had started the team's reverse-engineering research already.
Antibodies attacking HIV Getty Images
The research team — a mix of scientists from the Scripps Research Institute, the University of Maryland, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Peking University and Nankai University — has been studying the donor's samples for over five years (since the antibody was a "toddler," according to Zhu). Like proud parents, the team watched the antibody develop from its origins to its adolescence to see how antibodies develop — and used that information to make a vaccine to evoke those antibodies.
The best part is that, contrary to previous studies that inferred decade-long development times for powerful VRC01 antibody traits, Zhu's donor showed results in one or two years — the kind of speed you need to fight HIV.
"As long as you have some of those VRC01 signatures, a teenage-stage antibody can become a killer for HIV," Zhu said. "This could be important for developing a universal HIV vaccine."
There's still work to be done before this discovery can lead to huge changes in how doctors handle HIV; an underdeveloped antibody doesn't sit flush with the mature ones, making it hard to neutralize the virus.
But by knowing how antibodies form their defenses, scientists are much closer to finding that universal vaccine, and that's huge news for the future of HIV/AIDS treatment. Score one for teenagers everywhere.
Correction: April 5, 2016


The Aquaculture Advisory Council (AAC) is a balanced stakeholder representative organisation created for consultation on elements of Union policies which could affect aquaculture under Articles 34 and 44 of Regulation (EU) No 1380/2013.
The AAC may provide its advice to the European Commission, the European Parliament, the Committee of the Regions, the European Economic and Social Committee, one or several European Union Member States and any other relevant stakeholder, on any new legislative, regulatory or legal measure at European or national level, that is relevant to its objectives and the tasks defined by regulation.
The AAC is composed of representatives from the industry and other stakeholders, with a 60% -40% allocation of the seats in the general assembly and the executive committee (Ex-Comm).
The Assembly and Ex-Comm are guided by the advice generated by three working groups. The Working Group 1 focuses on Finfish, the Working Group 2 on Shellfish and the Working Group 3 on Horizontal issues.


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The 2022 season was Hammarby Fotboll's 107th in existence, their 53rd season in Allsvenskan and their 8th consecutive season in the league. They competed in Allsvenskan and Svenska Cupen, as defending champions. League play started in April. Martí Cifuentes made his first season as head coach.

Summary
On 13 December 2021, shortly after the final league fixture the previous campaign, head coach Miloš Milojević was sacked by Hammarby IF, after he had sought a move to Norwegian side Rosenborg BK and visited Trondheim without Hammarby's permission, in a deal that ultimately fell through. The club's board called his behavior "unacceptable" and stated that they had "lost all their trust" in Milojević.

On 7 January 2022, Hammarby sold midfielder Aziz Ouattara Mohammed to Belgian First Division A club Genk. The terms were undisclosed, but the club confirmed they had received the second biggest transfer fee in its history, reportedly set at around 30 million SEK. On 31 January 2022, Hammarby sold winger Akinkunmi Amoo for reportedly 46 million SEK to F.C. Copenhagen, at the time a record transfer fee for the club.

In early January 2022, Martí Cifuentes was appointed as new head coach, signed from Danish club AaB on a three-year contract. In late May, Hammarby reached the final of the 2021–22 Svenska Cupen, but lost 4–5 on penalties to Malmö FF after the game ended in a 0–0 draw.

During the summer transfer window, Hammarby sold Williot Swedberg to Celta de Vigo for a reported fee of 56 million SEK bonuses and a sell-on clause, making it a new record breaking transfer for Hammarby. At the same time, Hammarby paid a new record breaking fee in July, signing Veton Berisha from Viking FK for a reported sum of around 20 million NOK.

In Allsvenskan, Hammarby finished 3rd in the table, thus qualifying for the 2023–24 UEFA Europa Conference League. Midfielder Nahir Besara played all 30 fixtures, scoring 11 goals and providing 11 assists, the most in the whole league. At the end of the season, he was nominated for Allsvenskan Midfielder of the Year, an award that eventually went to Mikkel Rygaard, but was voted Hammarby Player of the Year by the supporters of the club.

Players

Squad information

Transfers

In

Out

Player statistics

Appearances and goals

|-
! colspan=12 style=background:#DCDCDC; text-align:center| Goalkeepers

|-
! colspan=12 style=background:#DCDCDC; text-align:center| Defenders

|-
! colspan=12 style=background:#DCDCDC; text-align:center| Midfielders

|-
! colspan=12 style=background:#DCDCDC; text-align:center| Forwards

|-
! colspan="18" style="background:#dcdcdc; text-align:center"| Players transferred/loaned out during the season

|-

Club

Coaching staff

Technical staff

Other information

Pre-season and friendlies

Friendlies

Competitions

Allsvenskan

League table

Results summary

Results by round

Matches
Kickoff times are in (UTC+01) unless stated otherwise.

Svenska Cupen

2021–22
The tournament continued from the 2021 season.

Kickoff times are in UTC+1.

Group 3

Knockout stage

2022–23
The tournament continues into the 2023 season.

Qualification stage

Footnotes

References

Hammarby Fotboll seasons
Hammarby Fotboll

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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Art by Stealth: a Look Back at the Brent Biennial
Hettie JudahPartnership with Brent 202015 January 2021artreview.com
From soft drinks as art, to murals of pop stars, the London Borough of Culture had to rethink 'the big show' in the face of the pandemic
Kensal Rise does not exist, John Rogers informed a Zoom audience of local residents. Which would be awkward if literally true: Rogers had just made a work, one of ten library-based art shows in the Brent Biennial, for Kensal Rise. Crisscrossing through a triangle of streets bordering the library, you encounter signs installed by Rogers inviting you to scan a QR code and listen to snippets of interviews with locals. Should you be inclined to track down all of the codes, the work becomes a promenade through a Kensal Rise of the mind.
Old local maps show how place names and neighbourhoods in Brent (as elsewhere) emerged and shifted. Rogers suggested that Kensal Rise was more idea than place: a piece of linguistic packaging that serves the purposes of estate agents and those who buy into their patter. Kensal Rise is an image, but not the kind you could meaningfully contain on a map. (As if proof were needed, a local boutique owner profiled in British Vogue recently explained that "Kensal Rise isn't strict suiting or catwalk gowns, it's a great flattering tee, cool leggings and skate shoes.")
A neighbourhood, like national territory, is a construct, its borders prone to shift. Ditto a city borough. There is a River Brent, which rises in Barnet and meets the Thames at Brentford. On 1 April 1965 the River Brent's name was taken for a new borough bolted together out of Willesden and Wembley. What would this April Fools' Day construct, Brent, become? Strict suiting and catwalk gowns? Cool leggings and skate shoes? Something else?
Half a century later, Brent's residents speak 149 different languages, and 65 percent are from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds. The borough is home to Neasden Temple and the Jewish Free School. Just behind my house, there's an Islamic primary school founded by Cat Stevens. Living standards in the borough range from the fragrantly nourished Otollenghishire of Queen's Park, to overcrowded multigenerational households in Harlesden and Neasden. SARS-CoV-2 had a horrifying impact: by the time the Biennial opened in mid September, it was the worst affected area in the UK.
Ruth Beale at Kilburn Library, Queens Park, Brent. Photo: © Roy Mehta
Ruth Beale originally wanted to hold a sleepover curated with a local school at Kilburn Library. Instead she started thinking about the 491 Brent residents who already died during the pandemic: "What does the community need? How can the library respond to that?" She selected 500 books, and made bookplates that could be dedicated, as a circulating memorial: once the Biennial finishes in January, the books will go back into the wider library system.
Brent doesn't have an easily marketable identity. Nor does it have a substantial institution dedicated to the visual art. When it was announced as 2020 Borough of Culture last November, organisers tactically re-branded the celebration 'Borough of Cultures' and publicised a programme of music, dance and theatre, headlined by Don Letts and Zadie Smith. There was no mention of a Brent Biennial: the visual arts only came to the fore early in 2020, as it became clear that mass public celebration, gigs and plays could not.
"The Biennial wouldn't have happened if the pandemic hadn't happened," says Lois Stonock the artistic director of Brent 2020. When the pandemic hit, her team "had to rethink and reformulate." Suddenly the modest visual art program had more prominence.
"The exciting thing about Brent is that the culture isn't institutionalised," says Stonock: a positive way of saying that a Biennial structured around a substantial exhibition would have been a challenge with no museum, no art centre, no gallery to host it. Besides, a showy biennial full of imported art stars went against the community-focused Brent 2020 ethos. The question for Stonock then became, "How do you do a biennial without one author?" How to create a biennial that suggested plural perspectives: community- and artist-led, as well as curatorial?
Rather like the borough itself, the Biennial was largely bolted together from elements already in place, including the library projects. Smaller local enterprises were supported by the rolling Culture Fund. Partners were found for three works in the public realm: George Michael fan-art by Dawn Mellor with Studio Voltaire; two murals by Pio Abad with Create; and Paul Purgas's sound installation with Camden Art Centre. Five new community-based commissions – by Barby Asante, Adam Farah, Yasmin Nicolas, Dhelia Snoussi and Abbas Zahedi – were made with re-deployed Art Fund money.
Dawn Mellor's mural of George Michael. Photo: Benedict Johnson
The result is a Biennial that is in many ways not particularly visible. For projects like Snoussi's South Kilburn 'zine, the discretion is deliberate, indicating commitment to a specific audience. In other instances, lack of visibility is circumstantial: even before lockdown, the libraries were open on reduced hours. Hoped-for public engagement has been impossible, even on a basic level (Beale notes that the chairs have been removed from Kilburn library.)
"The things that were always going to be difficult were made so much more so by the pandemic," admits David Blandy, who worked with Capital City Academy and Roundwood Youth Centre to build futuristic societies and scenarios for his role-player game The World After. Once the pandemic hit, communication relating to the project was essentially cut off because those collaborating with Blandy were minors. Blandy worked with illustrator Wumi Olaosebikan to use the ideas they had already developed as the basis for an installation at Harlesden Library intended "as the setting for the groups and others to engage with the games and imaginary spaces," says Blandy. That engagement, too, remains impossible.
David Blandy, World After: Visions of the Deep Past, 2020. Photo: Thierry Bal. Courtesy Brent Borough of Cultures
Structural problems encountered by the artists reflect wider issues in Brent. The first 500 books selected by Beale for her memorial got lost in a library transport system subcontracted to a private operator. Beale thinks few books have yet been dedicated: there's no easy way for her message to reach residents that aren't part of an established community network. Blandy was painfully aware that Roundwood, the last youth centre in Brent, was underfunded and under threat.
All of the community-based projects used existing structures – schools, libraries, community centres – that had not received adequate (or any) additional funding to accommodate them. "The anxiety is that it's seen as a way of sprinkling some art dust on to save a situation," says Blandy, of public practice in general. "As an artist going in, you can see the structural issues already there: you can feel like a sticking plaster at times."
For his paintings off the Kilburn High Road, Pio Abad gathered ornaments from local households: "the minor, strange forms that occupy people's lives." Unable to meet community groups, the components for Abad's vanitas arrangements were solicited through conversations online. "I was open to accepting any objects," he says "It was interesting seeing how widely travelled a lot of them were, but also to find out which community groups were very active – try as I might, I couldn't get any Filipino objects."
Pio Abad, Remember this House, 2020. Photo: Andy Keate
Painting outdoors for a month however allowed Abad at least to engage local Filipino residents in conversation, among them a café owner who once worked in a restaurant he frequented in Manila. Abad's audience included a small boy who watched him for hours each day from his window. "Being part of the street for a month invites very different interaction to a work in a library," he says. "I didn't think I'd be a muralist, but the civic role is something I really value… I realised that the public has a healthier relationship with street art in a way: it's immediate, and it's the most democratic form because it doesn't require you to go into a space."
(It's interesting how firm those boundaries between 'art' and 'street art' remain: Webheath Estate on the other side of Kilburn High Road was a hub site for the London Mural Festival, which happened concurrently but had zero crossover with the Brent Biennial.)
Anecdotal evidence suggests awareness of the Brent Biennial has been low. While Brent 2020 branding is on train stations and billboards, the Biennial's is limited to a few small signs, free maps and a logo spray-painted onto the pavement, long since faded. Does that matter? Does the term 'biennial' even indicate anything of interest to those beyond an artworld hardcore? The organising team describe it as a biennial by stealth. The term 'biennial' implies repetition, which makes it a tool at least towards on-going funding structures and studio spaces in the borough.
Abbas Zahedi, Soul Refresher (Mountain Rose Soda), 2020. Photo: James Beeson. Courtesy the artist and Square Root Soda Works
"How do you create a work that is distributed in a way that invites someone to engage with art?" asks Abbas Zahedi, whose Soul Refresher perhaps best exemplifies the concept of biennial-by-stealth. Soul Refresher is a pink soda formulated by Zahedi with Square Root Soda Works, inspired by the Indian sherbet syrup Rooh Afza. The alcohol-free drink is a symbol of inclusive gatherings, and recollects the music, spoken word and literary events once organised by Zahedi at Rumi's Cave on Willesden Lane. It also nods to Brent's diverse food cultures. Most of the bottles of Soul Refresher made for the biennial were distributed through the Sufra food bank, with which Zahedi also has history.
In its label design and rose-petal flavouring Soul Refresher plays with a specific set of references, and honours some of Brent's neo-diaspora cultures. It is readable on multiple levels: an artist's project for those who look for it, a pink drink for those who don't. Rather than placing additional pressure on stressed structures, it is generous: local stores and cafés that carry the drink set their own price, and keep money from sales as recompense for providing a distribution network. The Sufra food bank distributed six-packs, allowing families a moment of celebration in a difficult year.
Kensal Rise, Dollis Hill, or Fryent may not exist in any meaningful way, but for a while, at least, this year, you could meet there to share a soda.
Taylor Le MellePartnership with Brent 2020
Art By Stealth: a Conversation with Pio Abad, Barby Asante and Abbas Zahedi
ArtReviewPartnership with Brent 2020
Video: Artists Ruth Beale and Brian Griffiths Discuss 'What Do Libraries Do?'
Video: ArtReview and David Blandy Travel 8,000 Years Into the Future
'Who Is Telling the Story and on Whose Authority?' Brian Griffiths on his Art Lending-Library


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Sixties generation
Criterion Collection September Releases
La Cage aux Folles BLU-RAY DEBUT and DVD (1978) Renato (Ugo Tognazzi) and Albin (Michel Serrault) -- a middle-aged gay couple who are the manager and star performer at a glitzy drag club in St. Tropez -- agree to hide their sexual identities, along with their flamboyant personalities and home decor, when the ultraconservative parents of Renato's son's fiancee come for a visit. This elegant comic scenario kicks off a wild and warmhearted farce about the importance of nonconformity and the beauty of being true to oneself. A modest French comedy that became a breakout art-house smash in America, Edouard Molinaro's "La Cage aux Folles" inspired a major Broadway musical and the blockbuster remake "The Birdcage." But with its hilarious performances and ahead-of-its-time social message, there's nothing like the audacious, dazzling original movie. New 2K digital film restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition. Extras: New interview with director Edouard Molinaro; archival footage featuring actor Michel Serrault and Jean Poiret, writer and star of the original stage production of "La Cage aux Folles"; new interview with Laurence Senelick, author of "The Changing Room: Sex, Drag and Theatre"; French and U.S. trailers; a booklet featuring an essay by critic David Ehrenstein. (The Criterion Collection).
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold BLU-RAY DEBUT (1965) The acclaimed, best-selling novel by John le Carre, about a Cold War spy on one final dangerous mission in East Germany, is transmuted by director Martin Ritt into a film every bit as precise and ruthless as the book. Richard Burton is superb as Alec Leamas, whose relationship with a beautiful librarian, played by Claire Bloom, puts his assignment in jeopardy. "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold" is a hard-edged and tragic thriller, suffused with the political and social consciousness that defined Ritt's career. High-definition digital film restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack. Extras: Exclusive, wide-ranging interview with author John le Carre; selected-scene commentary featuring director of photography Oswald Morris; "The Secret Centre: John le Carre," a 2000 BBC documentary on the author's life and work; interview with actor Richard Burton from a 1967 episode of the BBC series "Acting in the '60s," conducted by critic Kenneth Tynan; audio conversation from 1985 between director Martin Ritt and film historian Patrick McGilligan; gallery of set designs; trailer; booklet featuring an essay by critic Michael Sragow. (The Criterion Collection).
Autumn Sonata BLU-RAY DEBUT and DVD (1978) "Autumn Sonata" was the only collaboration between cinema's two great Bergmans -- Ingmar, the iconic director of "The Seventh Seal," and Ingrid, the monumental star of "Casablanca." The grand dame, playing an icy concert pianist, is matched beat for beat in ferocity by the filmmaker's recurring lead Liv Ullmann as her eldest daughter. Over the course of a long, painful night that the two spend together after an extended separation, they finally confront the bitter discord of their relationship. This cathartic pas de deux, evocatively shot in burnished harvest colors by the great Sven Nykvist, ranks among Ingmar Bergman's major dramatic works. New 2K digital film restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition. Extras: Introduction by Ingmar Bergman from 2003; audio commentary featuring Bergman expert Peter Cowie; "The Making of Autumn Sonata," a three-and-a-half-hour program examining every aspect of the production; new interview with Liv Ullmann; a 1981 conversation between Ingrid Bergman and critic John Russell Taylor at the National Film Theatre in London; trailer; a booklet featuring an essay by critic Farran Smith Nehme. (The Criterion Collection).
Slacker BLU-RAY DEBUT (1991) "Slacker," directed by Richard Linklater, presents a day in the life of a loose-knit Austin, Texas, subculture populated by eccentric and overeducated young people. Shooting on 16mm for a mere $3,000, writer-producer-director Linklater and his crew of friends threw out any idea of a traditional plot, choosing instead to create a tapestry of over 100 characters, each as compelling as the last. Slacker is a prescient look at an emerging generation of aggressive nonparticipants, and one of the key films of the American independent film movement of the 1990s. High-definition restored digital film transfer, supervised by director Richard Linklater and director of photography Lee Daniel, featuring 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack. Extras: Three audio commentaries, featuring Linklater and members of the cast and crew; "It's Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books" (1988), Linklater's first full-length feature, with commentary by the director; "Woodshock," a 1985 16mm short by Linklater and Daniel; casting tapes featuring select "auditions" from the more-than-100-member cast; footage from the Slacker 10th-anniversary reunion; early film treatment; home movies; 10-minute trailer for a 2005 documentary about the landmark Austin cafe Les Amis; deleted scenes and alternate takes; original theatrical trailer; a booklet featuring essays by author and filmmaker John Pierson and Michael Barker, as well as reviews, production notes, and an introduction to "It's Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books" by director Monte Hellman. (The Criterion Collection).
3 Films By Roberto Rossellini Starring Ingrid Bergman BLU-RAT DEBUT and DVD. In the late 1940s, the incandescent Hollywood star Ingrid Bergman found herself so moved by the revolutionary neorealist films of Roberto Rossellini that she sent the director a letter, introducing herself and offering her talents. The resulting collaboration produced a series of films that are works of both sociopolitical concern and metaphysical melodrama, each starring Bergman as a woman experiencing physical dislocation and psychic torment in postwar Italy. It also famously led to a scandalous affair and eventual marriage between filmmaker and star, and the focus on their personal lives in the press unfortunately overshadowed the extraordinary films they made together. "Stromboli" (1950), "Europe '51" (1952) and "Journey to Italy" (1954) are intensely personal portraits that reveal the director at his most emotional and the glamorous actor at her most anguished, and that capture them and the world around them in transition. New digital film restorations of the English- and Italian-language versions of "Stromboli" and "Europe '51" and the English-language version of "Journey to Italy", with uncompressed monaural soundtracks on the Blu-ray editions. Formats: Five-disc DVD, four-disc Blu-ray. Extras: Archival television introductions by director Roberto Rossellini to all three films; audio commentary for "Journey to Italy" featuring scholar Laura Mulvey; "Rossellini Through His Own Eyes," a 1992 documentary on the filmmaker's approach to cinema, featuring archival interviews with Rossellini and Bergman; new visual essays about Rossellini by scholars Tag Gallagher and James Quandt; "Rossellini Under the Volcano," a 1998 documentary that returns to the island of Stromboli 50 years after the making of Stromboli; new interview with critic Adriano Apra about each of the films; new interview with Fiorella Mariani, Rossellini's niece, featuring home movies shot by Bergman; new interview with film historian Elena Degrada about the different versions of "Europe '51"; new interviews with Isabella Rossellini and Ingrid Rossellini, daughters of Rossellini and Bergman; "Ingrid Bergman Remembered," a 1996 documentary on the actor's life, narrated by her daughter Pia Lindstrom; "My Dad Is 100 Years Old," a 2005 short film, directed by Guy Maddin and starring Isabella Rossellini; "The Chicken," a 1952 short film by Rossellini, starring Bergman; "A Short Visit With the Rossellini Family," a six-minute film shot on Capri while the family was there during the production of "Journey to Italy"; a booklet featuring essays by critics Richard Brody, Fred Camper, Dina Iordanova, and Paul Thomas; letters exchanged by Rossellini and Bergman; "Why I Directed Stromboli," a 1950 article by Rossellini; a 1954 interview with Rossellini conducted by Eric Rohmer and Francois Truffaut for "Cahiers du cinema"; and excerpts from a 1965 interview with Rossellini conducted by Apa and Maurizio Ponzi for "Filmcritica." (The Criterion Collection).


text:
	#include <sys/utsname.h>
#elif _WIN32
	#include <windows.h>
	#include <intrin.h>
#elif _OSX
//some OSX header
#endif

#include <fstream>
#include <string>

#ifdef __linux__
	#include <GL/gl.h>
#elif _WIN32
	#include <GL/glew.h>
#endif

namespace swift
{
	// returns friendly name of OS
	std::string getOSName()
	{
		#ifdef __linux__
			utsname linuxInfo;

			if(uname(&linuxInfo) == -1)
				return "";

			return static_cast<std::string>(linuxInfo.sysname);
		#elif _WIN32
			return "Windows";
		#elif _OSX
			return "OSX";
		#endif
	}

	// returns version of the OS
	std::string getOSVersion()
	{
		#ifdef __linux__
			utsname linuxInfo;

			if(uname(&linuxInfo) == -1)
				return "";

			return static_cast<std::string>(linuxInfo.release);
		#elif _WIN32
			OSVERSIONINFO osvi;
			ZeroMemory(&osvi, sizeof(OSVERSIONINFO));
			osvi.dwOSVersionInfoSize = sizeof(OSVERSIONINFO);
			GetVersionEx(&osvi);

			return std::to_string(osvi.dwMajorVersion) + '.' + std::to_string(osvi.dwMinorVersion) + '.' + std::to_string(osvi.dwBuildNumber);
		#elif _OSX
		// get OSX info
		#endif
	}

	// returns architecture of the OS
	std::string getOSArch()
	{
		#ifdef __linux__
			utsname linuxInfo;

			if(uname(&linuxInfo) == -1)
				return "";

			return static_cast<std::string>(linuxInfo.machine);
		#elif _WIN32
			SYSTEM_INFO siSysInfo;
			GetSystemInfo(&siSysInfo);

			return std::to_string(siSysInfo.dwProcessorType);
		#elif _OSX
		// get OSX info
		#endif
	}

	// returns total RAM in kB
	std::string getTotalMem()
	{
		#ifdef __linux__
			std::ifstream fin;
			fin.open("/proc/meminfo");
			std::string totalMemStr = "";

			// while can't find "MemTotal" in the string
			while(totalMemStr.find("MemTotal") == std::string::npos)
				std::getline(fin, totalMemStr);

			fin.close();

			return totalMemStr.substr(totalMemStr.find_first_of("012345689"), totalMemStr.find_last_of(' '));
		#elif _WIN32
			MEMORYSTATUSEX statex;
			statex.dwLength = sizeof(statex);
			GlobalMemoryStatusEx(&statex);

			return std::to_string(statex.ullTotalPhys / 1024);	// convert to KB from B
		#elif _OSX
		// get OSX info
		#endif
	}

	// returns friendly name of CPU
	std::string getCPUModel()
	{
		#ifdef __linux__
			std::ifstream fin;
			fin.open("/proc/cpuinfo");
			std::string cpuModel = "";

			// while can't find "MemTotal" in the string
			while(cpuModel.find("model name") == std::string::npos)
				std::getline(fin, cpuModel);

			fin.close();

			return cpuModel.substr(cpuModel.find_first_of(':') + 2);
		#elif _WIN32
			int cpuInfo[4];
			__cpuid(cpuInfo, 4);

			return std::to_string((cpuInfo[0] >> 4) & 0xf);
		#elif _OSX
		// get OSX info
		#endif
	}

	// returns designer of Video Card
	std::string getVideoVendor()
	{
		return reinterpret_cast<const char*>(glGetString(GL_VENDOR));
	}

	// returns name of Video Card
	std::string getVideoCard()
	{
		return reinterpret_cast<const char*>(glGetString(GL_RENDERER));
	}

	// returns version of the driver used by video card
	std::string getVideoDriver()
	{
		return reinterpret_cast<const char*>(glGetString(GL_VERSION));
	}
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


More detail on this person: Earl Warren Fletcher, 78, a retired military officer who was highly-decorated for service in three wars, passed away Thursday, Aug. 15, 2002, in Arlington.
Funeral: 1:30 p.m. Wednesday at Moore Funeral Home Chapel, 1219 N. Davis in Arlington. Burial: Arlington National Cemetery, Washington, D.C.
Memorials: may be made to Cancer Care Services, 605 W. Magnolia, Fort Worth, Texas 761004.
Earl was born and raised in Moultrie, Ga. He rose to distinguish himself by serving his country in both war and peace. He graduated from North Georgia Military College and George Washington Graduate School. Earl provided optimism and strength to his friends and family for whom he cared deeply. His unique approach to life, his sense of humor, his determination and his fabulous smile will be greatly missed.
During his long military career Earl served post-World War II in Europe as aide-de-camp to Gen. C. Magruder and Gen. Maxwell Taylor.
He served in Korea in 1950. He served in Vietnam from 1967 to 1969, where he survived three helicopter crashes and was one of the most decorated military officers in combat. He was awarded over 60 combat medals, including: Silver Star, two Legion of Merits, three Bronze Stars, Distinguished Flying Cross, 27 Air Medals and numerous foreign awards; and a double award which included a National Order and Gallantry Cross Medals. He was also awarded over seven Gallantry Crosses for gallantry in action.
Earl was an Army War College graduate. He served at Fort Rucker from 1970 to 1973, as Assistant Commandant Deputy Commanding General, Army Aviation School.
He was posted to Fort Hood, from 1973 to 1975 as Chief of Staff Army Test Command until his retirement date, May 31, 1975, as an Army colonel.
After his military career ended, Earl served from 1978 to 1979 in Iran, Division Director of Flight Training Division of Bell Helicopter International. He was responsible for Army aviation training that involved 2,100 pilots, ultimately responsible for the safe evacuation of over 5,000 Americans due to the fall of the Shah of Iran.
Earl loved spending time with his beloved wife Wendy and their constant companion Nutmeg aka "Scooter."
He enjoyed a passion for the stock market, was an avid tennis player for almost 40 years and loved the game of golf - at one time achieving a handicap of "1". He continued to educate himself throughout his retirement, obtaining a real estate agent license as well as a broker license.
Our heartfelt thanks to the staff of Station 32 Arlington Memorial Hospital, the Infusion Center personnel, Arlington Cancer Center. Our deepest appreciation to Dr. Karel Dicke and Sylvia Hanks, NP, for their steadfast care and support.
Survivors: Devoted wife, Wendy; sons, Mark, Michael and wife, Anastasia, David and Scotty; daughter, Nancy Fletcher Madren and husband, Clyde; grandchildren, Annie Madren, Melanie Thornhill, William Fletcher, Collin Fletcher and Jessica Fletcher; son-in-law, Frank D. Thornhill; sister, Wyley Maye Gibbs and brother, Jack Fletcher and wife, Sally.
Published in the Star-Telegram on 8/18/2002.


Will there be a dawning of a new humanity, with roses on the horizon?
The Earth has been in a giant Ice Age for two million years, with a few interruptions. Society has likewise been in an Ice Age socially and sexually, for just as long, so it seems.
While we lack the resources to hold back the geological Ice Age cycles, we have no such excuse for not ending the deep freeze that is gripping our social scene with ever deeper sexual division and isolation, even marriage isolation. In fact, we need a profound, warm, new renaissance of universal love at the grassroots level, in order to be able to survive physically in the resuming Ice Age world at the global level.
In this science-action novel, the protagonists' struggles, interwoven with tears and joy, are staged to build a higher platform that lies beyond the world of trained emotions. With this, the future determines the present, provided that we care to answer its challenge.
You are invited to share the protagonist's roses and celebrate with them in the light of their personal sunrise at the break of a new day?


text:
10 Facts about Robert Winston
Home > Science > 10 Facts about Robert Winston
Find out the information about the British professor on Facts about Robert Winston. He was born 15th July 1940. He is known as a scientist and medical doctor. In Politics, Winston is in Labour Party. You can also see his presence as a TV presenter. His full name is Robert Maurice Lipson Winston. When he was a child, he grew up as an Orthodox Jew. His father was Ruth Winston-Fox. His mother was Laurence Winston. The birthplace of Winston was located in London. He had to lose his father at the age of nine. His father passed away because of medical negligence. Some people believe that Winston wanted to become a medical doctor because of this. Actually, it was not true. His eventual career option did not have anything to do with his father's death. His mother had served as the Mayor for the former Borough of Southgate. Here are other interesting facts about Robert Winston:
Facts about Robert Winston 1: early education
Before he was enrolled at Colet Court and St Paul's School, he studied Salcombe Preparatory School until he was 7 years old. In 1964, he earned a degree in medicine and surgery from The London Hospital Medical College. He became an expert in human fertility during his graduation.
Facts about Robert Winston 2: a theatre director
It was surprising that Winston became a theater director for a brief of time in his life. In 1969, he participated at Edinburgh Festival where he earned National Directors Award.
Robert Winston Facts
Facts about Robert Winston 3: academic medicine
Winston decided to make a comeback in medicine by developing different kinds of methods for reproductive surgery. The most notable one is sterilization reversal.
Check Also: 10 Facts about Robert Hooke
Facts about Robert Winston 4: the first fallopian tubal transplant
In 1979, the first fallopian tubal transplant was performed. Do you know that Winston did it?
Facts about Robert Winston 5: family life
His wife is The Lady Winston or Lira Helen Feigenbaum. The couple married in 1973. The couple have three kids. They are Joel, Tanya and Ben.
Robert Winston
Facts about Robert Winston 6: organization
Winston follows a number of organizations and clubs. He is a member of the MCC, Garrick Club and Athenaeum Club. He serves as Fellow of Royal Society of Arts.
Read Also: 10 Facts about Robert Ballard
Facts about Robert Winston 7: the Reach out Laboratory in Imperial College
The Reach out Laboratory in Imperial College was established by Winston. The primary objective is to promote science.
Facts about Robert Winston 8: as a presenter
Winston is also noted as a presenter. There are many BBC TV series presented by Winston such as The Secret Life of Twins and Your Life in Their Hands.
Facts about Robert Winston
Facts about Robert Winston 9: The Story of God
The Story of God is also presented by Winston. It talks more about the religious beliefs and their development.
Check Also: 10 facts about Robert Brown
Facts about Robert Winston 10: politicians
People also recognize him as a politician. Do you know that he talks much about art, medicine, sciences and education in the House of Lords?
Are you impressed after reading facts about Robert Winston?
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text:
February 3, 2009 [LINK / comment]
Revolutionary anniversaries
As the American capitalist system struggles to keep its head above water, and left-wing socialism gains ground elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere, the leaders in Cuba and Venezuela had much to celebrate as they marked the 50th and tenth anniversaries of their respective revolutions. How things have changed over the past ten years!
Venezuela under Hugo
In Venezuela, which was a bastion of stable, middle-class democracy until the 1990s, the tenth anniversary of Hugo Chavez's first inauguration -- in February 1999 -- was declared a national holiday. (That was almost exactly seven years after Chavez's first coup attempt, in February 1992.) President-for-life Chavez boasted of all the changes that his government have brought about, some of which are no doubt valid. Poor people do have rights and much improved access to health and educational services, as well as better housing. The question is whether the socialist economic system Chavez has created can be sustained over the long term. The ambition of Hugo Chavez knows no limits, and he often invokes the hero of the wars of independence, Simon Bolivar, implicitly striving to unite Spanish South America under his leadership -- hence the official renaming of the country as the "Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela." The celebration was attended by the presidents of Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Honduras, but not Ecuador or Cuba; see below. See BBC.
All is not well in Venezuela these days, however. The falling world price of crude petroleum has put severe strain on the national budget, which is why they temporarily suspended the CITGO heating oil subsidy program last month. Crime and violence in Venezuela are signs of growing social discontent. A referendum on whether Chavez will be allowed to run for another term as president will be held on February 15.
Cuba under Fidel (& Raul)
It was on New Year's Day 1959 that Fidel Castro and his ragged band of rebels marched into Havana, as the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista abruptly collapsed. Castro had an ambiguous political background, and it took several months before the widespread suspicions that he intended to pursue a communist agenda were confirmed. By the end of 1959, Castro made it clear that his revolution was following the Marxist-Leninist model pioneered in the Soviet Union.
Castro's regime had many ups and downs over the decades, and after the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989) and the collapse of the Soviet Union (1992), Cuba seemed destined to crumble under the weight of a dead ideology. Two things saved communism in Cuba: money from European tourists and subsidies from oil-rich Venezuela, thanks to Hugo Chavez. Without those two factors, it is difficult to imagine that the revolutionary government could have survived for very long in the 21st Century.
There is another, perhaps equally important factor that explains the longevity of Cuban-style communism, however: the mystical force of personality exuded by Fidel Castro himself. The image of a rebel leader standing up against the wicked imperialists resonates deeply throughout Latin America, and Fidel embodied that heroic ideal extremely well. His jaunty attitude, chomping at his cigar, were reminiscent of Franklin D. Roosevelt grinning with a cigarette holder. That, plus his frequent moralistic speeches condemning capitalist extravagance and his apparent simple lifestyle endeared him to many if not most Cuban people. Since Fidel became ill in late July 2006, his brother Raul has taken over as de facto leader, and the transition became official nearly one year ago. Given that the personality aspect is so important to maintaining political order in Cuba, there may be a tumultuous upheaval after Fidel and Raul Castro pass away. That day may not be far off.
The official organ of the Cuban Communist Party, Granma, has a special Web section devoted to commemorating the half century of the Cuban Revolution, coinciding with Fidel Castro's 80th birthday. It includes interviews with dozens of Cuban military commanders, homages from friendly foreign leaders such as Hugo Chavez, and many "fun facts."
Raul Castro in Russia
President Raul Castro, Fidel's younger brother, has paid a visit to Russia, which is why he could not attend the celebrations in Venezuela. He met with President Dmitry Medvedev, who recently visited Cuba, as well as Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, the de facto ruler of Russia. See BBC and Granma. Relations between Cuba and Russia have improved greatly since the Boris Yeltsin was president; the Russian Navy visited Havana in December, bringing back memories of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Russia may be tempted to test President Obama's mettle by making some abrupt strategic move in Latin America, much as Sen. Joe Biden warned about during the fall campaign.
Posted (or last updated or commented upon): 03 Feb 2009, 11: 11 PM