text:
The Sinking of Skywalker
This post contains ALL THE SPOILERS
DO NOT READ UNLESS YOU'VE SEEN THE FILM
So. I've seen it. I preface the below with the following disclaimer: it is just a film. It is entertainment and there are far more serious issues in the world, and in my country, right now.
However…it is also a presentation of how our culture sees itself. There's reams of academic literature exploring how presentation of popular culture shows a mirror on the concerns and occupations of the people participating. And, in case the reaction to The Last Jedi hadn't made you aware, Star Wars has become a battle ground between a certain class of those who think the world should serve them, reflect their preconceptions and prejudices and exclude those not like them and those who think, basically, the opposite.
I'm in the latter camp – I'm looking for representation. I'm looking for challenge, for change and for more than nostalgia for a type of society that has NEVER existed except in the myths told by the powerful to justify their actions.
Ok. If you've made it this far I'm ready to actually start. I'm going to list a few things I like about the film and then I'm going to really let go.
First. I like Adam Driver and Daisy Ridley. They are both fantastic in all three films. The commit to the material and both of them manage to deliver nuanced and emotional content. I could especially watch Driver all day long.
I also think John Boyega is great.
I think Chewie's response to Leia's death is the only really genuine emotional point in the film. Nothing else comes close.
And as ever, Hamill comes to the screen with an ironic but authentic presence. I feel like we truly missed a great actor of his generation. It helps that he appears to be a genuinely cracking human being as well.
The problems, for me, start with the opening crawl. The film simply announces the Emperor is back. No explanation. No sense of why or how anyone could have not foreseen this. No sense of being able to trace his signal back. Instead we have a preamble focussing on Kylo Ren rather than the heroes (and that's a foreshadowing if ever there was one) who basically montages his way to secret hideout and then discovers all the secrets. I mean…really? And those secrets completely change everything he previously thought…well those convictions were easy to dismiss.
Then we have a completely pointless 'spy' narrative. It appears only to serve to establish there's no time to save the galaxy from this unspecified threat (which by the way the spy can't know about yet, since Ren himself also doesn't know the details at this point). But hey, who needs continuity???
And here we see hyperspace travel, which has been clearly held up as taking hours, days or weeks across the entire canon now being completely discarded. (let's not even talk about tie fighters which can hyperspace despite NEVER having been able to do this before).
By this point and I've already got questions…who saved Palpatine and took him half way across the galaxy to a safe space where snowflakes couldn't get at him? Who fed him, watered him and doused him with anti-cancer drugs after they found him in a nuclear fusion reactor…?
How did his face not get BURNT OFF by the heat of an exploding nuclear reaction??? How did he create Snoke? We never find out. How did he become EVERY VOICE YOU'VE EVER HEARD?
I mean. Well I got nothing here. Because just then a thousand star destroyers rise up out of the mud…just like that. Who's crewing them? Who's feeding that crew? Who's doing all of this???
It turns out Hux is the spy…the basic ruler of the first order. The chap who masterminded StarKiller base. Selling HIMSELF out. Why? Because like a five year old who's had his candy taken away 'I want the other kid to lose'. How this guy ever charmed his way to ruling a galaxy spanning super advanced nation of neo-nazis is anyone's guess at this point. But it's ok, because he has an ornate wooden walking stick in his quarters for the very day he gets shot in the leg…thank goodness. He obviously was a great Cub Scout.
So the resistance still has an unspecified number of ships (as does Ren, even after their disastrous losses in TLJ). So they just fly about wherever and whenever. The resistance generals leave the resistance behind instead of leading them and head off from one frolick to another without any clue what they're doing excepting chasing down one macguffin after another. And it doesn't matter when they get destroyed because it turns out there's always another one. Oh, and I love that the Sith Wayfinder can be crushed by a human hand but can survive an inferno which melts a Tie Fighter…which was just so handily parked exactly where a random and ranging melee brawl happens to finish…
Ren gets his gang of Incels together and with a chimpanzee they spend an unnecessarily long time reforging his helmet. Indeed the chimpanzee probably has a more meaningful role than Rose, Finn's love interest from TLJ and the moral heart of that film. But of course, certain white men hated her so she got sidelined and her emotional connection to the film severed. These Knights of Ren aren't Sith, they aren't jedi gone bad and don't have anything to recommend them except old fashioned medieval melee weapons…which you can tell isn't going to end well for them. And hey, it doesn't, but who cares because by the end of the film they've done precisely NOTHING. Even Rey has to fight people with lasers…these guys have sharps…which are nasty except when pitted against LASERS! A pathetic waste.
So Rey's been trained. Except she hasn't passed some test we're not really sure about because it's not made clear. She's almost all powerful and can teleport items across the entire galaxy. And she has powers other jedi considered rare (or were previously completely unseen). Now, I don't object to this except they're not consistent and only appear to get her out of being stuck. Like force memories (from Fallen Order). No prior use but all of a sudden she's all about them.
And apparently her parents were important. Now this is where I really lose my shit. One of the things I loved about the Last Jedi was its message we are all capable of changing the world. That there is no divine right of kings, no special people who are special because of their blood, or their wealth or their parents. Instead we're brought right back to, oh yes, the concept of there's a specially powerful aristocracy and the rest of us should just shut up and listen and do what they say. And the entire argument between Sith and Jedi becomes an argument between two sides of the same group -those who are divinely chosen. It's profoundly anti-democratic and deeply depressing that this is the message we're choosing to privilege. It also suggest the nastiness of caste systems and is an argument that's been used to justify slavery, racism, sexism and on and on across human history. You'd think we'd be able to jettison it – especially when TLJ did exactly that.
By the way…who's flying the star destroyers? (I know, I've already asked but really, have you got an answer?)
Then there's the fleet that arrives out of nowhere. It looks spectacular but…we're told explicitly the hyperspace lanes are blocked…we're also told no one came before. This is an important point. Except one ship disappears off and brings the entirety of the galaxy's civilian population to fight the fascists (which is great btw!). How did they unblock the spacelanes? How did they convince people who, previously, had stayed the hell away? There's no more hope now than earlier…so what changed their mind? Why weren't the heroes doing this bit? Scouts could have been sent to…you know…SCOUT. The heroes and leaders could have been…oh, I don't know…leading?
I feel sorry for Oscar Isaac. Poe is charming and dashing but clearly emotionally stunted because he learned this great lesson in TLJ and the immediately forgets it all over again and gets most of his mates killed doing exactly what he learned not to do the movie before.
By the way…when you need to insert into the script lines like 'but that's impossible' not once but like three times? You've jumped the freaking shark, come back and given it a hotdog for being a good boy and then jumped it again and you're so embarrassed by this you even confess it to the audience.
C3PO – I mean you sacrificed everything for this plot only to be brought back from the 'dead' just like that. Chewie…we thought you too were sacrificed to show Rey's power and the conflict in her…only for you too to be still alive.
And Harrison Ford…I mean…were you a force ghost? An ordinary ghost? A memory? A hallucination? I mean…what? Was Ren actually mentally ill and the film simply crassly uses that to change Ren's thinking?
Ren…you wanted to kill the old…and then you didn't. For no reason except you discovered Rey was a Palpatine…which makes no sense. Much like the rest of the film, but hey. I like your character. I like your neo nazist portrayal, I like how it meant you could have been a proper bad guy. I hate how they made you back into a child doing someone else's bidding. Oh, you have a plan? No you don't because the PLOT says otherwise. What you have is a suddenly sexual crush on Rey who sees you like the boy next door and if only you become that boy next door you can be the good guy. After killing millions there'll be no consequences for you and you'll get the girl. Good old white boys will be boys after all.
And Poor Finn. You loved Rose. Or at least she loved you. But there's no room for her anymore and even if you also love Poe, we can't let that happen between two main characters can we??? Oh no, keep the gay stuff for two minor unnamed characters who get to kiss at the end. Argh! So Finn has no story. No arc. No meaning. Except hey, what's this? Other POC who were stormtroopers too..probably slaves? yes, let's not use that word but let's heavily imply it. Then let's only have relationships between people of the same colour – because white men complained about mixing of races on twitter. And let's make this a slave rebellion on horses! Woo! Oh…wait. No. let's not do that.
And, you know, after telling the audience for 8 films and an entire canon that it takes huge effort and a moon-sized base to create a planet destroying laser…let's just tack one onto every spaceship the bad guys own…no need to supply chains, no need for ANY resources because we have the emperor in our back pocket and he can shoot lightening into space and only hit his enemies! In fact, who needs spaceships at all…apparently he doesn't (he even says this) which dies beg the question…why have them at all you numbnutz?
And oh dear me…she did have important parents? And she's not angry at them? And Palpatine didn't have control over them? The emperor who says, at every fricking opportunity, this is just as I planned? Pretty poor planning/management skills there old Palps. You might need to watch a couple of TED talks mate, get a grip on family planning and strategic thinking.
It also entirely undermines Rey's emotional journey – she's no longer struggling with moral choices – she's simply obeying her blood…more divine right moral absolution. It wasn't me and even if it was, God said I could do it and who are you to question me?
I actually like the swapping of lightsabers. I liked the confrontation between Rey and Palpatine. I liked Chewie. I liked a whole bunch of moments in this mess. And it looked beautiful (although TFA and TLJ had more standout compositions) and the soundscape was great.
The film offers no reasons for many of the characters' choices. No reason for Ren to change his mind, no reason for Lando to actually help, no reason for why Luke comes along and says 'hey, all the stuff I learned in the last movie, when Yoda finished my training…it was all ponk. I was just wrong. Ignore me!' No reason for Finn and Rose to not be together, no reason for why Poe was a spice smuggler or why he left, no reason offered for why Luke was looking for the Sith homeworld, no reason for why the rest of the galaxy decided now was the time to pitch up and help (when the enemy fleet is a hundred times bigger than the last time), no reason for Dominic Monaghan, no reason for why R2-D2 is almost entirely absent from the film.
BB8 is irrelevant and his hairdryer friend operates purely as a plot delivery mechanism.
I'd love to say this is lazy writing and some of it surely is. But I think it's worse than that. I think it's design by twitter and reddit. I think it's design by reference to what the alt-right want in their films. Less non-whites, less mixed relationships, more white guys being the saviour, more white guys full stop. More mavericks, less cooperation and less community making the difference. I mean, it's hard not to read into the people turning up to destroy the fleet as being anything other than a militia…so we have a defence of the 2nd amendment right there (another preoccupation of the alt-right checked off).
I apologise this is garbled. so a summary to finish.
This film destroys all the good work of TLJ in taking Star Wars in new directions
Even if you hate TLJ, it also completely ignores the universe set up over the last 40 years
It has no character development worth a damn since there are no sacrifices by any major characters. Even Ren is redeemed and gets off without having to face the consequences of his actions.
Who's flying the frickin star destroyers???
It makes the universe others have spent so long making feel real feel like a toybox with a kid simply saying 'and then this happens and then this happens'. A crushing of the narrative rules.
Characters are safe from harm because of plot armour. They're also safe from thinking because of plot requirements.
Worst of all, the above combines to make a chronically dull film which, although it's clear it doesn't like fascism, accommodates it in Kylo Ren and has no answers to the questions posed by evil. To be honest, it's not even clear why Rey dies after her confrontation with Palpatine except it's narratively expedient.
In the end it's just a film. But my kids watch it and see the kind of world they think might be possible politically through stuff like this. To me its messages are retrograde and need to be rejected and to make it worse? It's boring and meaningless with no consequences. It might be nostalgic crack for a certain demographic but the rest of us are left looking at it and shaking our heads as we move off to find content which actually interests and represents us
Why can't we get there from here?
I was fortunate enough to speak at the LSFRC's Productive Future's conference yesterday at UCL's School of Art. I managed to see a couple of other sessions too and they were universally well presented and provoked plenty of discussion afterwards in each case. I particularly liked Dan Hassler-Forest's paper on the economics of the mega-franchise.
Below are my, edited, notes on the paper/speech I gave. Long story short – I have been concerned for a while now that much science fiction is lagging on the issues that really face us today – one of which is our relationship to energy. In the notes below I posit a couple of reasons why I think we struggle to develop that relationship as writers and I add one additional argument based in our relationship to neo-liberal capitalism which arose out of a question I was asked at the end of the talk.
Thank you for having me. I'm coming at this as an economist, scientist and author. These three elements of my background will inform the construction of my argument and I'll present my own thoughts based through these lenses. Before we get going though, a little bit about what we're going to cover.
what we're going to cover
Definitions – energy
Physical considerations – that is, the what, the who and the where of our relationship to energy
Theory – what would a physicist say about energy? How does that divert from socially constructed meanings ascribed to energy
Science Fiction and how what we write reveals about us
The future – what kinds of subjects would I love to see us thinking about more carefully
Conclusion – what can we hope for through literature
Time for questions
But first a little about me – physicist, economist, banker, author blah, blah, blah.
Overview of Energy – a question of definitions
Energy is a word used in all sorts of contexts – from hard science where energy is a fundamental building block of everything to new age philosophy through to synonyms for our gas and electricity supplies.
In science fiction we have energy weapons (just about any space opera), light sabres, psychic energy (c.f babylon 5, Star Trek, Transcendence etc. etc.). The list goes on. For me, the concept of energy is multi-variate in nature with definitions as poorly defined as they are widely spread.
For the purposes of this presentation I'm interested in three uses of the word
Energy as a physical resource – such as solar, oil and fission
Energy as in physics – a raw measure of joules, electron volts etc.
Energy as in useful sources of power for cars, ships, people and spacecraft – agnostic about the physical resources. i.e. how we use and consider energy as a motive force.
Physical Considerations – where, how, who – The Politics and Economics
The energy we use is not invisible or intangible. It takes up space, needs to be moved and managed and, in most cases, comes from a primary resource such as wood, water and oil.
The implications of this are perhaps well understood by companies and politicians but not by the average lay person – modern supply chains are complex, multi-national and hidden by design even from the individuals working within them. Getting oil from the gulf of Mexico to a car in China is a chain that crosses dozens of countries, navigates months of time and passes through companies employed hundreds of thousands of people. See here for instance for a fantastic infographic on the subject. Rutherford's maxim that complicated ideas should be explainable to a barmaid does not stand.
This is partly a capitalist imperative – to reduce the agency of consumers who are forced into dependency because they cannot source their own supplies and cannot tinker. All innovation must be created by an economically motived agent, not a community agent because this is how you maximise profit for your shareholders.
Most ordinary people do not think about how their electricity is generated. They couldn't tell you what green electricity really is – if you asked them how does green electricity get to your house they'd not be able to tell you it was a stupid question.
Furthermore the scale of the energy market – whose financial instruments, derivatives, futures and contracts with multiple benchmarks, currencies and timescales is too overwhelming for even experts to really understand. You only have to look at Goldman's predictions of oil going to $200 a barrel in May 2008 about thirty days before it collapsed to less than $37 in Feb 2009 demonstrates the point well.[1]
So where does that leave us? There are a couple of strong narratives both in factual reporting and in fiction.
The first of these is that we don't need to think about energy. We live, in advanced late stage capitalist economies, post scarcity. Energy is infinite (or at least abundant in the fact that it is ALWAYS there when we turn on the lights). The infrastructure we've built guarantees it fades into the background as a certainty we don't need to consider – unlike for most of history where we've had to concern ourselves each day with whether we'll have enough calories to make it through.
The second is well demonstrated in M L Ross' book summarising the Curse of Resource Wealth first posited by Auty et al.[2]. Resource rich countries do not benefit from their resources. Or at least, the majority of the people in those countries. Consider Nigeria[3] where political violence between the state, local politicians, the companies and locals appear to be the only booming business despite the vast reserves of oil.
As always the truth is more complicated. Britain, Norway and the US, to name just three, have or have had deep resource benefits and did end up as 'failed states'. In my mind it's really more a sense of post colonial classification as post colonial powers look on at the eviscerated cultures they've then abandoned and scratch their heads to an answer. Any answer will do that doesn't implicate their decade or centuries long pillaging as being largely responsible for environments in which these kinds of outcomes find fertile soil[4]. Better yet a narrative that blames those left behind for their own woes.
Contemporary thrillers understand that energy is politically volatile – there are many movies and novels about oil for instance (the very best of them being Oil! which was remade as the Oscar winning There Will Be Blood) but they often draw a straight line between governments and corporations as bad and people on the ground as good. They do not explore how those governments are often simply reflecting the actual exigencies of what their populations are demanding in terms of services and standards of living.
This comes back to the first idea – that we don't need to think about energy and its intersection with the wider population.
Popular explorations of geopolitics and how societies survive have also entirely overlooked these links – Tim Marshal's Prisoners of Geography and Jared Diamond's Collapse or his Gun, Germs and Steel have strong central theses about why politics turn into guns being fired and they are not driven by the need for energy. Jared's theories about scarcity and even his ideas about the impact of the horse skirt the edges of this but don't take the heart of it seriously – that a need for energy security – be it fuel to cook, fuel to heat our homes and mine our bitcoin drives much of the conflict we've witnessed over the last 50 years.
The problem is, energy security is effectively at the heart of US projections of power. It also informs Russia's tilt to supplying energy to China after Western sanctions hit, activity in the Yemen. I met a number of oil industry executives in 2003-2005 and they were exceptionally clear we went to war in Iraq because of energy security concerns over and above anything else. I remember one conversation on this matter with a CEO stood on their construction floor where they were building new drill bits which were ordered before the resolution was passed at the UN authorising the invasion.
Energy has huge social, economic and political meaning.
Theoretical Considerations – Domain, Range and Extensibility
Having explored the physical I want to step back a bit and think more abstractly before bringing these two threads back together and addressing speculative fiction's coverage of energy more directly.
Energy is, in its purest sense – not dependent on people. The largest delivery mechanism of energy to the planet earth is the Sun, the second is our molten iron core. Neither of these need our input or can even be influenced by us.
How does that come into culture and is it helpful where it does?
Most discussions about energy are filtered into common language designed to make them graspable. It's that mechanism that more often than not leaves us unable to really grasp the neutrality of the science of energy. By which I mean we're at its mercy not that it doesn't matter.
For instance, Electron mass is ½ MeV. And the mass of that very famous particle because of which most people have heard of CERN, the Higgs Particle is 125 GeV. Does this mean anything to anyone except physicists? If you tried to write a sci fi thriller about this where would you even begin?
How many calories have you eaten today? Most of us can't parse that statement realistically without help from apps and information on the back of food containers. Why not? Because it's hard, not because we're dumb (although that's often the underlying message of press coverage).
So forget asking what we mean by the horse power of your car? Or how much energy is there in the universe.
When thinking about how we can parse this into Sci Fiction, and perhaps into normal everyday language we should borrow an idea from mathematics about Domain, Range and Extensibility.
Energy is everywhere. This is its Domain
However, energy cannot be extracted from all things. Even if all work requires energy – this is its Range
Another way of saying this is as follows: not all types of energy are equally available to us (i.e. high energy photon which had 10Kcals of energy, enough to heat a cup of tea but no real way of harnessing it. Or when we burn petrol we don't recoognise that the heat and noise oof the conversion are forms of lost energy which we've failed to capture).
We know energy is tough to harness and that laws of entropy mean there are ever diminishing returns for us. Carnot's engine is learnt by undergrads but is not well known elsewhere. Yet it impacts what we can reasonably expect humanity to achieve. What energy can we expect to be able to harness? How can we do it and how do we cope with the possibility we will always be on the losing side of the equation?
These are questions not well addressed by a Science Fiction grounded in post scarcity economics. We tend to see worlds which have everything they need regardless of their energy system or we have apocalypse where there's nothing (although they still somehow have enough to eat with some notable exceptions such as McCarthy's superb The Road)
There is a religious impulse in this thinking – a strong desire to see one of the basics of a society which works as one where we have abundant energy so we can then focus on the surface elements rather than the infrastructure. You can see in many sci-fi texts (cf. Alita: Battle Angel) that the poor live among the infrastructure and the rich do not see it. In real life we are the rich in the West and we do not see the infrastructure of our energy consumption and so do not question either our position nor its impact on others except by waving our hands in their direction as if it's their fault.
Further still, we are too often left with magical thinking in our forecasts about human energy consumption. Consider climate change, bitcoin and AI. I'm avoiding references here because I, too, am a writer and it's just not done to highlight other people's creative choices.
Mini-conclusion – energy is vitally important. Most people can articulate that but they can't articulate why. They also have no grasp of what we mean by energy – be it theoretically or physically considered. People have no better idea what a barrel of oil can power, where it comes from or how many are produced a day than they do about HE photons or the impact of a gamma ray burst and its implications for a goldilocks zone within most galaxies.
Science Fiction – common flaws, notable successes
So now I want to discuss how all this scene setting influences the landscape of what we discuss in science fiction. We can all name the most common tropes:
Faster than light and other forms of space travel – Star Trek, Star Wars and any number of other texts such as Interstellar and Children of Time.
The flaws to this are beyond the lack of science supporting it.
The flaws are about the energy requirements and about how they could drive wars and conflict, cooperation and entirely new branches of science. c.f the energy requirements of the current writer's favourite, the Alcubierre drive.
Cryptocurrencies – a new breed of thrillers and discussions from people like
Neal Stephenson, myself, Kim Stanley Robinson, Doctorow and Friedman
Bitcoin mining is energetically expensive and remains a poorly scaling store of value with no real economic application at this point despite its obvious libertarian political rationale – see the FT Alphaville blog for reams of articles on this point. Izabella Kaminska in particular.
Fusion – free energy. The Abyss! Space Opera.
It's ok to completely ignore this stuff and just write soap. Personally, I'm not advocating we only see hard SF.
But sci fi can do so much more. It can present to us the challenge of energy and scarcity. Think about the Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi which is the stand out example of addressing these issues.
The AI – from 2001 to Diamond Age to Ancillary Justice
Construction and maintenance of Cityscapes – Lavie Tidhar in Central Station, Rendevous with Rama and SevenEves and Red Mars.
Production of Metamaterials – relatively poor examples of how new materials can change everything. Again, we end up looking at people like Stephenson but too often they're macguffins rather than realistic looks at how new tech changes everything. By Light Alone by Adam Roberts is interesting.
The support of transhumanism – any Kurzweilian approach to humanity. Zero K by Delilo is a really strong mainstream example which crosses boundaries.
The thing is they rarely talk through the key technological and economic problems of these technologies because, most of the time the technology is magic – not necessarily even internally consistent.
After all, AGI is terribly expensive to run.
Who provides the power to maintain a brain in a computer?
Why mine for materials in space when the energy required to get there would out weight the benefits from what could be brought back to earth by orders of magnitude?
As we're all aware, in the real world, pursuit of energy security drives politics. Science Fiction is all too often the preserve of a homogeneous (and by this we mean white) cultural artefact and so entirely misses the political and racial streams of energy security.
The Future – plausible, implausible, impossible
My thesis then is this: energy is hyperreal. It is too large and too broadly defined an idea to be grasped well, even by subject matter experts. Hence we see speculative fictions struggling with how we get from where we are today to other futures – we struggle with developing the idea of Asimov's Future History when it comes to energy. Part of this is by the cultural/political design of neoliberal capitalism, part of it is simply the scale of the political energy economy is too large for people to grasp.
Our abiding energy myth in western democracy is about abundance. It's so ubiquitous we don't even have memes about it being added to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.
We have no new myths about energy scarcity yet. No stories we tell of how we arrived as a post scarcity environment for some and not for others, how we fought wars to create this world and how those wars are going to be fought and fought again as long as there isn't truly abundant energy for all.
Here's a trio of ideas I'd love to see in the literature – stories presenting possible futures to us where these kinds of technology are present but are also central to the worlds we're creating.
There's already a burgeoning field of Energy Economics[5], [6], [7] with its own journals and conferences. This is an exciting real world development and its subjects of study are ready made for political science fiction. I really hope that given we're developing a language and pattern of thought which actually addresses these issues today we will start to see stories picking up on this and bringing these ideas into the mainstream
Zero carbon footprints – the challenge of lifestyles which could accommodate this and the importance of deflationary economics – the conflict in the heart of capitalism against deflation. My own employer is working toward being carbon neutral – if large companies can do this then there is language and conflict to explore.
Deflationary economic systems – Nouriel Roubini interview on FT Alphachat
What can we do through literature?
As we see new language discussing how we get from here to there I truly hope speculative fiction develops stories about the journey and not just the aftermath.
Explore the challenges of developing new technologies which are fantastically energy hungry
What are the challenges for authors though? Economics of course – stories have to sell. But also audience tastes. Info dumping, political appetite and making a point all turn readers off.
But speculative fiction can change the dimensions of the Overton window to allow us to see discussions about the hidden infrastructure as normal, about peeling it back being what we do.
https://www.frontier-economics.com/uk/en/sectors/energy/
https://www.nber.org/programs/eee/eee.html
http://www.biee.org/
https://www.google.com/search?safe=active&rlz=1C1GCEA_enGB753GB753&biw=1264&bih=1322&q=energy+economics+articles&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwic3qzF2LnkAhWDVBUIHYX1COc4ChDVAigAegQIChAB
https://www.nature.com/subjects/energy-economics
https://www.journals.elsevier.com/energy-economics
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/21/business/21oil.html
[2] https://press.princeton.edu/titles/9686.html
[3] https://www.giga-hamburg.de/en/system/files/publications/wp120_maehler.pdf
[4] Political Research Quarterly, volume: 67 issue: 4, page(s): 769-782
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_economics
[6] https://www.iaee.org/
[7] https://www.oxfordenergy.org/publication-category/energy-economics/?v=7516fd43adaa
Post Cyberpunk Larp
Got your attention? I hope so.
I challenged a friend of mine a few months ago on whether they'd be interested in and whether they could think of a way of turning the world in which A Family War exists into a LARP.
The problem with any sci fi LARP is really getting into the details of scifi – you know, those computers, AI, futuristic weaponry, hacking and the like.
My mate Andy has come up with a neat solution for the physical aspects and I think I've worked out how to do the electronic side so that players could experience both.
There are pinterest boards, ideas for plot and I'm going to start thinking about approaching the site and asking a small, select bunch of people if they'd be part of the team that could put this together…
However, the other important thing to note is that it'll be kind of a post-cyberpunk theme. Beyond the cybernetics and implants that made cyberpunk such a thing. Gibson has been writing it for ages (ie, he moved on from cyberpunk a long time ago) and I realised in talking to Andy that The Oligarchy is also post cyberpunk.
Funny how these things emerge…
More news as it's ready but for now this is very much at ideas stage. One thing though…if you were interested it would be great to know.
The game'll be limited numbers and limited run – and it'll be openly pvp (although pve will be the main focus), cos what's drama without conflict?
And it's out
Final checks passed! Launch buttons pressed. A People's War is out.
Hope you enjoy and as always – regardless, if you do read a copy, please could you do me a massive favour and pop a review up for me?
Stuart Keen showing a cool demeanour under immense pressure
Not to forget the competition – as per A Family War, the person who posts up the best photo of them with the novel will get the final instalment for free. The winners of the original competition are Bex Cardnell Hesketh and Stuart Keen, both of whom have now received their free copies of A People's War.
Thanks and merry Christmas
Helena Woolf
Book 2 of the Oligarchy is nearly ready to go. We're aiming for the third week of November – more on that when we have a firm date. In the meantime, I realised that I'd never really talked that much about Helena, the main character throughout the trilogy.
Helena's an Oligarch. By that I mean she's solidly within the 1%. Don't hate her just yet (no…wait until you read about her and what she does before you make the decision). She's blessed with access to technologies that the 99% are denied. For instance, she's functionally immortal, although the reality is no one really knows just how long her generation will live. She's benefitted from genetic therapies that mean she won't get any of the more common diseases associated with ageing or those we might ordinarily say are heritable.
Add to that the fact that she's had the best education, the best opportunities and you'd be forgiven for thinking she had everything going for her. A woman who might typify #firstworldproblems. Except Helena is also completely human, just like and I. Well, almost.
In the first book she discovers something terrifying about the world humanity has built for itself, about how it could follow its own logic and destroy the very thing that gives it substance. In A People's War she's following through on what she discovered in the first book, not least of which is that her missing father might just be the very man around who everything now revolves.
I'm showing two pictures for Helena above because she has changed her appearance more than once in the story so far. She has, via internal AIs, control over her pigment, hair colour and a limited ability to change her basic features given enough time. For me it's a sign that in a world where you can change your appearance at will you're not going to be worried about looking a certain way (except to be fashionable). While that doesn't exclude racism, nor implicit bias, it does mean that people like Helena aren't wedded to a certain way of appearing. You might comment that both the women whose images I've shown are beautiful (depending on your POV). I'd say, yes. Given the option, most people would probably choose to adhere to symmetry and current norms for beauty. It's an issue I don't tackle all that much I'll admit, but I am very aware of what kind of messages are constructed in choices like this and wanted to highlight that this is deliberate and, hopefully, satirical.
Helena is complex (and I hope that comes across on the page) just like the rest of us.
A People's War
This is the blurb, well draft 1 anyway. It's always had to give enough of what makes a story cool without giving too much away, either about the first book or about what happens in the story itself. Suffice it to say that there's no spoilers below. 🙂
"Helena's father went missing a century ago. He took his team of researchers and their findings with him so that none could benefit from his work. For Helena this is a problem since someone's finished up what he started and is looking to benefit from creating a war between the largest corporations in the solar system. A war in which there'll be no winners.
Throw into this mix a third side, one intent in freeing itself of the Oligarchy and Helena is propelled into finding her mother, who may just have a clue to where he went. Except Edith is slumming it in a war zone far from the City, refusing to cooperate with anyone on anything while she satisfies her own agenda.
Helena is going to have to risk everything to persuade Edith to help. Even if she does there's no guarantee that any of them will make it out of the war alive because this is a people's war, a war of rebellion against the 1% and Helena is very much in their sights."
A People's War – Cover Reveal
It's here. At least the cover is almost here. Lawrence Mann has done another bang up job.
This is the cover for the second book in the Oligarchy trilogy. It's due sometime towards the end of November, but we'll make sure there's lots of advance warning. I am looking for a small handful of people who want advance copies in exchange for honest reviews, so please let me know if you're interested.
The process for creating this cover was simpler than the first one – after developing a sense of the visual representation of the world, Lawrence was quickly able to capture what it was I was hoping for in this cover. It's not a spoiler but it does represent a key scene from the book.
The story here moves on from that in the first, starting just a few days after the events of A Family War. It moves in a very different direction though as Helena heads off somewhere new for…(no spoilers, Stew!) Reasons ™.
I'll have a proper blurb in the next week which I'll post here too. In the meantime, enjoy the cover.
The price of free
I decided last week in discussions with Matt at AR, that we should put the kindle version of my debut novel up for free at Amazon for 72 hours. That 72 hours runs out tonight. This post is about what's happened and my feelings about it.
The first consideration was this: lots of people, including a not inconsiderable number of friends, have stumped up proper money for either a physical or ebook copy of A Family War. A decent number of those have then gone on to post very kind and honest reviews about the story they experienced.
I have been really concerned that they'll feel a little bit cheated that the book has gone for free for a short period. I worry that it might put them off buying anything more of mine in the future because they'll think 'I can get it free later on anyway'.
I also worry because they've bought the fricking thing, have been supportive and have given me great feedback.
However, at the same time, I'm a fledgling author who's is trying to establish an audience not just for this novel but for its sequel and all the other ideas that are trapped in my skull screaming to get out. I want this book to get to as many people as possible and create that market that an unknown author like me simply doesn't have through the machinations of a massive marketing department.
So we come to the event itself – the book has been free since Saturday morning. In that time at least 2,000 downloads have occurred – definitely more as I'm still waiting for today's numbers to come in. I have NO IDEA how people have found it, I have NO IDEA how it's got to where it is in the charts – #1 in US Sci Fi, #1 in US Sapce Opera, #111 on the whole kindle store while in the UK it's been #4 or 6 in the same categories.
I truly don't understand how people found it at that point or how it's propelled itself up the charts among other authors who've written lots of novels and have well oiled marketing programs. I'll be trying to figure that out in the coming days with Matt as getting this kind of attention was exactly the kind of outcome I was dreaming of (even though not expecting in any way). It's something to learn from, to understand and then to figure out how to make it work for me when book 2 comes out.
At the same time, I'm waiting to see if any more reviews pop along, if people continue to buy it when it returns to the heady heights of two bucks a copy and if this does actually help build an audience over time.
I'm an author – loving writing. However, I'm also an author who wants to get his work out there, selling for real money preferably, but also who has just enough self belief to think my work is, on a good day, worth reading. So I wrestle with the idea of creating something and then having to think about how to present it in the best way over time (and by time I mean weeks and months) in order that my secondary wish of getting it in the hands of as many people as possible bears fruit.
The free offer has paid dividends in terms of getting my work out there to literally thousands of people. I have been really tempted to make it permanently free, to ride this wave of people downloading the story to see how far it will take me – the heart gibbers madly, saying thousands could become tens of thousands or even more. Yet I'm listening to those around me who have advised ending the promotion as planned and seeing what happens…Part of me thinks it's about momentum and that it should stay free, but in the end the argument that it's actually worth something wins out. We'll see if readers agree.
Free is tough. I love the people who spent their own money to buy a copy, (I don't see book 2 ever being free). I truly hope they'll stick with me as I continue to write and hopefully get published. However, I also really hope that as more people find my work, as some of them even like it, that they will, in future, also think it's worth paying out their money too!
It's not that I don't appreciate anyone who takes the time to try my writing out – trust me I'm humbled that among all the choice out there, you've taken the time to pick my stuff up. But I'm trying to figure out how to make this all work and how to ensure that Matt as Alternative Realities thinks it's worth publishing the next one I send to him.


We have an extensive catalogue of fiction and non-fiction titles available for loan. With 100s of titles to choose from - across a range of genres and including classics to the latest reads - there's something to appeal to all tastes! New titles are added to our collection throughout the year.
We have multiple copies of each title (book sets), so more than one group can read the same title at the same time. We currently have more than 50,000 books on our shelves.
To browse through our catalogue, or search for a particular author or book, click on the menu button "On-line Catalogue" on the righthand side of your screen. If you would prefer to view an interactive version of our printed catalogue, please open the e-Catalogue version.


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Home/Scholarship By Countries/Australia Scholarships/Brown Group Scholarships at QUT in Australia 2021
Australia ScholarshipsOceania ScholarshipsPhDPostgraduateResearch
The Queensland University of Technology in Australia welcomes applications for Brown Group Scholarships (Brown Group Biomedical Engineering and Materials Scholarships) in the 2021/22 Academic year.
Queensland University of Technology (QUT) is a key Australian university with a truly international outlook. Home to almost 50,000 candidates, they are offering real-world infrastructure, learning and teaching, and graduate opportunities to the next generation of change-makers. They are an aspiring and collaborative institution that looks to equip their scholars and graduates with the skills they'll require in an increasingly disordered and challenged world.
The Brown Group merges advanced investigational and computational procedures to provide new understandings into the structure-function relationships in biomedical materials. While concentrating on musculoskeletal tissues and associated biomaterials, the group keeps an active interest in other high-performance biological materials like spider silk and ivory. The Brown Group is also immersed in a number of translational undertakings, like the improvement of novel optics-based diagnostic devices, scalable nanostructured surfaces and 3D constructs for regenerative medicine, new devices and techniques for surgery, and mechanized analysis/interpretation procedures for medical imaging.
You will be able to develop detailed insight, understanding and expertise in your selected field of research. Technical growth will be in addition to broad professional development towards an academic or research and development profession. You will gain from access to flexible and tailored experimental amenities, high level scientific know-how, access to a variety of local and global collaborators, and first-class facilities like QUT's Medical Engineering Research Facility (MERF).
Projects with crucial PhD positions available are:
spider-silk: structure mechanics and synthesis
comprehending and exploiting the remarkable properties of collagen
surgery with rockets.
Other projects are, but are not restricted to:
magnetically guided micro-rocket sutures
deep learning in practicable medical image datasets, and conversion to clinical practice
manipulating and exploiting collagen piezoelectricity for energy harvesting and biomedical materials
development of an optical procedure for the measurement of bioelectric fields
evolutionary convergence for translational biomimicry
tiered mechanics of biological materials
development of a robotic endoscopy device through electrorheological fluids
development and utilization of native spider cells and processing methods for silk production and categorization
experimentally guided fibre network modelling to investigate disease mechanisms
development and execution of highly multiplexed, antibody-labelled electron microscope imaging procedure
development of an innovative 3D metal micro-printer
directed self-assembly of matrices in hydrogels
development of state-of-the-art approaches to diagnosis and management of musculoskeletal conditions
advancing the physical comprehension of pain and disease.
Worth of Brown Group Scholarships
$27,082 each year, tax free for up to 3 years.
You will be able to develop detailed knowledge, comprehension and expertise in your selected field of research.
Technical development will be combined with broad professional development towards an academic or research and development profession.
You will gain from access to flexible and tailored experimental facilities, high level scientific know-how, access to a variety of local and foreign collaborators, and first-class facilities comprising QUT's Medical Engineering Research Facility (MERF).
Eligibility for Brown Group Scholarships
You have to put in for and be given admission to their Doctor of Philosophy (PhD). Your research proposal has to be pioneering and high impact.
They'll take applications from applicants from any academic background, given that you meet the eligibility conditions for the PhD.
How to Apply for Brown Group Scholarships
Get in touch with Professor Cameron Brown to express your interest in the Brown Group Scholarships.
You may then submit an application through a formal evaluation process, based on interviews, written work and references.
For additional details about the application procedure for Brown Group Scholarships, get in touch with the Science and Engineering Faculty Research Scholarships Office.
To discuss the research project further, get in touch with Professor Cameron Brown.
Application Deadline: The Brown Group Scholarships for Biomedical Engineering will remain open until filled.
Not interested in this particular scholarship? See other Australia scholarships here
Oxford-Swire Graduate Scholarship in UK 2021
PhD Scholarship in the Emotional Face at QUT in Australia 2021
Brookes Cultural Heritage Scholarship in Australia 2021

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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We can't put an end to immigration detention without powerful storytelling.
The media's role in covering immigration detention is crucial to creating public awareness, holding governments and private prison companies accountable and bringing about systemic change. Journalists also play a critical role in shaping how we perceive and connect with people who've been directly affected by this inhumane system.
We are eager to work with reporters who wish to cover the many facets of immigration detention and put a face to the issue.
For general media inquiries, please contact Liz Martinez at lmartinez@freedomforimmigrants.org.
From how to access an immigrant prison or jail to how to file a Public Records Act request, we've compiled this list of FAQs and resources to assist you in navigating this topic and system.
Portraying immigrants
In a piece for the Huffington Post titled "Do We Have To Abolish the Victim Narrative to Abolish Immigration Detention?," the co-founders of Freedom for Immigrants explain why we, including journalists, need to shift our depictions of immigrants who are in detention or who have been detained.
""If all we see are images of people in immigration detention who suffer, how can we imagine a country where immigrants thrive outside of detention?" "
— Christina Fialho & Christina Mansfield, Co-Founders & Co-Executive Directors of Freedom For Immigrants
We believe journalists have the power to change how we think about people, especially those who are deliberately marginalized and hidden from public view. It is important to reframe the issue of immigration detention in a way that doesn't reinforce this oppressive system and uplifts, rather than undermines, those who've been affected by it.
Words matter. Sylvester Owino and Carlos Hidalgo, who were both in detention and are now immigrant rights rights activists, started a campaign to call these facilities "immigrant prisons and jails."
Here's a glossary of terms we compiled to help demystify the nuances of terms in the immigration space.
We also stress the importance of developing more opportunities for solutions journalism.
Immigration detention in the media
In 2017 we released our first Immigration Detention in the Media report, which found that reporting on the issue has increased but immigrant voices were largely silenced.
Of the top 8 newspapers in the United States, there were only 845 articles that focused primarily on immigration detention between 2009 and 2016.
We hope more journalists begin to examine this largely unseen corner of society.
Check out the report.
Click here to check out our latest press releases.
Photos of Freedom For Immigrants
Here are a few photos you can use when covering Freedom for Immigrants.


Welcome, Devoted Yogi! You're the kind of badass who practices 2-3 times a week and are dedicated and devoted to prioritizing your self-care and wellness. Your friends, family, co-workers, and fellow Albuquerque drivers thank you for being this calm, amazing, person!


text:
El camaleón de la India (Chamaeleo zeylanicus) es una especie de lagarto de la familia de los camaleones (Chamaeleonidae). Se distribuye por Sri Lanka, India y Pakistán donde habita en matorrales y bosques semiáridos.

Descripción

Al igual que otros camaleones, esta especie tiene una lengua larga, pies bífidos, una cola prensil, la capacidad de mover los ojos independientemente y la de cambiar de color de piel. Se mueven lentamente con un movimiento de bamboleo o balanceo y son generalmente arbóreos. Por lo general su coloración ese de tonos verdes o marrones con bandas. No suelen adaptar su coloración a los tonos de su ambiente y puede que ni siquiera sean capaz de percibir las diferencias de color. Pueden cambiar de color rápidamente y el propósito principal del cambio de color es para comunicarse con otros camaleones y para controlar su temperatura, cambiando a colores oscuros para absorber calor.

Referencias

zeylanicus
Animales descritos en 1768

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Disney Donna Kay: I Have An Announcement!!
Hi everyone!! I am very happy to announce that I am opening an Etsy store! It is Magical Creations & Celebrations and I would love for you to stop by and let me know what you think. I am starting slow with just a few items in the shop, but will sell more things as I get a little more comfortable with the entrepreneurial life.
The first items in the shop will be vinyl decals - including the Mickey inspired circle monograms on my Facebook Page, as well as the Damask Mickey and Bohemian Mickey I posted there earlier in the year. Later I will be venturing into party supplies as well as home decor items.
Again, here's the link to the store Magical Creations & Celebrations.
I appreciate all of your support. Wish me luck!!
Yay Donna! I'll have to check it out!
Thanks Amy! Please let me know if there is anything you would like to see there.
I'd wish you luck Donna, but I know you don't need it. I LOVE everything you do!!
Thanks my friend!! You are always so sweet and supportive and I appreciate it more than you know!! Hugs!
Thanks Melissa! I am working on some new stuff but wanted to start out slowly.
Thanks Kelly!! You are so sweet!!


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St. Josaphat Parish
School Site
Give Central
Bulletin Bulletin
Welcome to St. Josaphat!+
Letters from Fr. Francis
About Jesus & Becoming Catholic
JosaFASTS - Our Weekly Email
Online Resources+
June 2020 Survey Results
2019-20 Stewardship Report
Masses & Prayer
Our Masses
Mass Reservations
Mass Readings and Scripture Reflections
Homilies at St. Josaphat
Praying the Mass at Home
Bringing Home the Word
Info for Lectors, Greeters, Cleaners
Need Prayers?
Our Daily Prayer Email: Take 5 For Faith
Events & Sacraments
Faith Sharing Groups
Book of Acts Bible Study with Fr. Francis
Recipes for Bake Alongs
Reconciliation/Confession
Holy Eucharist (One of the Sacraments of Initiation)
Marriage+
Funerals/Memorial Masses (Not Sacraments)
How Can I Become Catholic? (RCIA)
Event Status
Annual Blessing of the Pets
Mass of Remembrance
Advent Wreath Making
Nativity Nights
Christmas Tree Lot
Oplatki Wafers
Don's Helping Hands
Teaching the Faith
Help Our Restaurant Owners
Masks for St. Agatha - Our Sharing Parish
Spotlight on Social Justice
Wentworth School Collaboration
Join our Mass Greeting or Cleaning Teams
Kolbe House Jail Ministry
Religious Ed (PK4-8th Grade)+
Request Prayers or a Mass?+
Get Sacramental Records?
Have Fr. Francis Bless My Home?
Get a Parishioner in Good Standing Letter?
Request a Hospital Visit/Communion Call?
Purchase Religious Goods?
Host Hospitality?
Get my Birthday Message Up in Lights?
Common Parish Club/Event Questions
Submit Communications / Mass Announcement Requests?
Get the Parish Tax Exemption Form?
Indicate interest in the Parish Office Associate position?
Outreach+
Services at Symphony Residences
Parish Councils+
Service Opportunities for Confirmation and High School
Liturgical Ministers+
Music Ministry+
Divorce & Annulment+
Holy Orders and Consecrated Life
How can I "finish" my sacraments?
For Adults+
For Kids and Teens+
Parish Awards+
Read Our Weekly Communications+
Fr. Francis on Discipleship Through Gifts
Give Stuff
Rebuilding Our Home Capital Campaign
Latest Financial Statement
In Your Will
Unity Gala - Our Annual Fundraiser
St. JosaFEST - Our Annual Party in the Parking Lot
Rectory Basement Renovation
SPRED - Special Religious Education
Read JosaFASTs
Want to know what is going on in our parish? JosaFAST, our weekly news e-mail, does just that. Below are all the previous JosaFAST stories. If you wish to receive our weekly news letter, sign up here.
01/07/21 - Happy New Year!
12/24/20 - Merry Christmas!
12/17/20 - Help prepare our 2020 Christmas Tree for 2021 (please!)
12/10/20 - See parishioners' treasured Nativities, and bless your own
12/03/20 - The Real Story behind Old St. Nick
11/26/20 - Happy Thanksgiving
11/19/20 - Preparing for Advent
11/12/20 - Happy Feast Day, St. Josaphat!
10/29/20 - November is our Month of Remembrance
10/22/20 - Faith Sharing Groups
10/15/20 - Parish Service Awards
10/08/20 - Our Pets Are So Blessed!
10/01/20 - Aid for Women
09/24/20 - Blessing of the Pets
09/17/20 - Congratulations Deacon Nate!
09/10/20 - Join us as we dedicate our Helping Hands Ministry to Don Tenbrunsel on Sunday!
09/03/20 - What will the rest of 2020 look like at St. Josaphat?
06/11/20 - Class of 2016, Where Are They Now?
06/04/20 - Virtual Prayer Groups
05/28/20 - eLearning
05/21/20 - Love Endures During Covid-19 (Part 2)
05/07/20 - Care Bags
04/30/20 - Nuestros Pequenos Hermanos
04/23/20 - Let's Help Little Sisters
04/16/20 - Restaurants
04/02/20 - Status: Shelter in Faith
03/26/20 - Meet Keenan Fix
03/06/20 - Unity Gala
02/20/20 - Lent
02/06/20 - Organ Repairs
01/30/20 - Catholic Schools Week
01/23/20 - Prayer Guidebook
01/16/20 - 1st Reconciliation
01/09/2020 - Fostering Faith in your Family with Father Francis (F5)
01/02/2020 - Kolbe House
12/26/2019 - Celebrate St. Stephen Today!
12/19/2019 - The Unity Award
12/12/2019 - Nativity Nights
12/05/2019 - 12 Days of Christmas
11/28/2019 - Happy Thanksgiving!
11/21/2019 - Giving Tree
11/14/2019 - Jail Cards
11/08/2019 - Service Awards
11/01/2019 - Take the ME25 Gallup Survey Today
10/24/2019 - Pray - Serve - Give
10/17/2019 - Open House Chicago
10/10/2019 - 5 Steps to SLDJ (Serve Like Jesus Did)!
09/26/2019 - Preparing Ourselves for Mass
09/19/2019 - Living the Mass
09/12/2019 - ARRR
09/09/2019 - JosaFEST
08/29/2019 - Year of Prayer, the Mass
08/22/2019 - Fr. Francis' Retreat
08/15/2019 - The Assumption
08/08/2019 - Try Prayer Journaling Today!
08/01/2019 - Preaching to the Choir
07/11/2019 - Freestyle Prayer
07/04/2019 - God Bless America
06/28/2019 - 30-Day Silent Retreat
06/20/2019 - Vacation Bible School Recap
06/06/2019 - Year of Prayer Feedback
05/30/2019 - Graduation
05/23/2019 - Golf Outing Recap
05/16/2019 - Deacon Arthur
05/09/2019 - First Holy Communion
04/25/2019 - Marian Consecration
04/18/2019 - Holy Thursday
04/11/2019 - Holy Saturday & the Easter Vigil
04/04/2019 - Good Friday
03/21/2019 - St. Ann's Mission
03/14/2019 - Stations of the Cross
03/07/2019 - Fr. Grassi's Mission
02/21/2019 - The Gospel of Luke
02/14/2019 - Unity Gala
02/07/2019 - Praying With Scripture
01/31/2019 - One Parish, One Book: Gospel of Luke
01/24/2019 - Catholic Schools Week
01/17/2019 - Taizé Prayer
01/10/2019 - Quick Reference Guide to Meditation
01/03/2019 - Join us for Taizé!
12/27/2018 - First Christmas in Bethlehem
12/20/2018 - Prepare the Way for Jesus
12/13/2018 - What to do During Adoration
12/06/2018 - Eucharistic Adoration
11/29/2018 - Our Advent Wreath Making Party is SUNDAY!
11/22/2018 - Prayer for Thanksgiving
11/15/2018 - St. Albert the Great
11/08/2018 - Feast of St. Josaphat
11/01/2018 - All Saints Day
10/25/2018 - All Soul's Day
10/18/2018 - Five Finger Prayer
10/11/2018 - A Year of Prayer
10/04/2018 - Blessing of the Pets
09/27/2018 - Cradles to Crayons
09/13/2018 - Fall Sports Blessing
09/06/2018 - George Weigel on the Abuse Scandal in the Catholic Church
08/30/2018 - Septemberfest Top 10
08/23/2018 - R.C.I.A.
08/16/2018 - Back To School
08/09/2018 - Assumption
08/02/2018 - Septemberfest - SAVE THE DATES!
07/26/2018 - Theology On Tap
07/19/2018 - College Send Off
07/12/2018 - Farewell to Tim
07/05/2018 - Fr. Francis' Summer Reading
06/28/2018 - Happy Fourth of July!
06/21/2018 - Happy Retirement, Fran!
06/14/2018 - Vacation Bible School
06/07/2018 - Volunteer Appreciation Mass and Reception
05/24/2018 - RMC Team Submits Our Recommendation
05/17/2018 - Make a home altar to honor Mary during her month of May
05/10/2018 - Arthur is Finishing His Internship With Us and Wants Feedback!
04/26/2018 - Altar Servers!
04/19/2018 - Confirmandi
04/12/2018 - Fr. Greg Boyle - Book Discussion and Invitation to Hear Him Speak
04/05/2018 - JosaFAST: we need your input at the RMC TownHall on Monday at 7pm
03/29/2018 - JosaFAST: Triduum
03/22/2018 - JosaFAST: RCIA Candidate Katlyn Kicia
03/15/2018 - From Archdiocese: Initial Scenario for our RMC Grouping
03/08/2018 - Meet our RCIA Candidate Ben Zelmer!
03/01/2018 - Renew My Church Overview
02/22/2018 - Meet our RCIA Candidate Sonia Avendano!
02/15/2018 - Things to do in Lent at St. Josaphat
01/04/2018 - The Tradition of Blessing your Home on Epiphany
12/14/2017 - Do You Oplatki?
12/07/2017 - Whose Immaculate Conception???
11/16/2017 - Mass Intentions... What are they?
11/09/2017 - St. Josaphat- The Patron Saint of Unity
11/02/2017 - Fr Francis: Thank You! 13+13+90 = Lots of Feedback for Me to Help You!
10/26/2017 - Fr. Francis: How can I help you grow in Christ
10/19/2017 - Fr. Francis: I'll Give It To You Straight
10/12/2017 - Fr. Francis: We're jus getting started
09/28/2017 - Shanah Tovar!
09/21/2017 - St. Josaphat has a new Seminarian
09/14/2017 - Installation Mass and Septemberfest Pics
09/07/2017 - Our Catholic Response to Hurricane Harvey
08/24/2017 - Top 10 Things you need to know about Septemberfest!
08/17/2017 - In Honor of the Assumption, Post-It Notes of the Blessed Mother
08/10/2017 - We Welcome Tim Berryhill as our New Parish Support Specialist
08/03/2017 - Catholicism in the Era of Cell Phones
07/27/2017 - Parishioners Hosted 50 Sheffield Garden Walkers at the Church Last Weekend!
07/20/2017 - Come Wish Our College Students Well at the 1st Annual College Sendoff Mass at 5pm on 7/29
07/13/2017 - Need to Find a Church on Vacation?
07/06/2017 - Happy 4th of July and Welcoming Fr. Francis
06/22/2017 - Saying Goodbye to Fr. Simon and Fr. Bart
06/15/2017 - Our Parish Children have been having "Adventures on Promise Island" this week!
06/08/2017 - Come wish Fr. Rich well after the 10 am Mass or before the Noon in the Community Park this Sunday!
06/01/2017 - Oh the Places They'll Go: Class of 2017!
05/25/2017 - Meet our new Principal!
05/18/2017 - There is a time for everything, including transitions!
05/11/2017 - See What the First Communion Students Have To Say!
05/04/2017 - Have you heard Pope Francis' TED talk?
04/27/2017 - Confirmation is Tonight!! Hear what our confirmandi have to say!
04/20/2017 - Easter can last for 50 Days!
04/13/2017 - Want to do some good this Holy Thursday? Remember those who have the least!
04/06/2017 - The Palm Sundays and Good Fridays of our Lives
03/30/2017 - JosaFAST: Nancy asks, Is this my Best Lent Ever?
03/23/2017 - JosaFAST: Catechumen Finds Connection Among His Life, Church and God
03/16/2017 - I have become fascinated with the Catholic faith and rituals through the RCIA process!
03/09/2017 - Sponsoring my fiance through the RCIA process - a great way to prepare for the Sacrament of Marriage!
03/02/2017 - Lent 2017 - Live as Children of the Light!
02/23/2017 - Can Catholicism and Feminism Mesh? They Sure Can!
02/16/2017 - Want to Get a Head Start on the Parish Retreat? Take Some Time to Read the Passages Beforehand!
02/09/2017 - What our 2nd Graders had to say about receiving the Sacrament of Reconciliation
02/02/2017 - What Our Kids Have to Say About Catholic Schools Week
01/26/2017 - Ready, Set, BID! The Sweet Home Chicago Online Auction is going live tonight!
01/19/2017 - Can the Rosary Really Change You?
01/12/2017 - 5 Easy Ways to Achieve a Better Life in 2017
01/05/2017 - So Why Wasn't I Baptized in the River Like Jesus?
12/29/2016 - The Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God
12/22/2016 - The Christ Child as a Warrior?
12/15/2016 - Parish Christmas Concert Tonight at 7 pm in the Church!
12/08/2016 - A Reflection on the Immaculate Conception
12/01/2016 - Attention Envelope Users! New Envelopes in 2017!
11/25/2016 - Happy Thanksgiving! Come give thanks at Mass tomorrow at 10 am!
11/18/2016 - End of the Year of Mercy With the Saints!
11/11/2016 - St. Josaphat, Our Patron, is the Patron Saint of Unity
11/04/2016 - Meet Matt Green, Our New Parish Support Specialist
10/27/2016 - It is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Domestic Violence is not always physical.
10/20/2016 - Do you know someone who needs prayers? Of course you do!
10/13/2016 - The Latest from around Chicago, the "Arch" and St. Josaphat!
10/6/2016 - Change is in the Air at the Parish Office
09/29/2016 - So you're thinking about getting (more) involved...
09/22/2016 - Did you see the video of the pope visiting the hospital neonatal ward?
09/15/2016 - Fun Pictures from SeptemberFest!
09/08/2016 - St. Teresa of Kolkata: Joy is strength.
09/01/2016 - SeptemberFest is September 10 & 11!
08/25/2016 - Welcome Back St. Josaphat Students!
08/18/2016 - Look Who Did NOTHING this Summer!
08/11/2016 - Mary's Visits to Us Since her Assumption (Celebrated on August 15)
08/04/2016 - SAVE the DATE for SEPTEMBER FEST!
07/28/2016 - A Year of JQS
07/21/2016 - Did the rainstorms get in your way today?
07/14/2016 - Our First Native American Saint
07/07/2016 - Catching up with SJS Grads - Classes of 2008 and 2012
06/30/2016 - A Prayer for the United States on the 240th Anniversary of our Independence
05/27/2016 - LET'S HONOR OUR VETERANS THIS MEMORIAL DAY
05/19/2016 - Can't wait for your next vacation? Try something exotic right here in our neighborhood!
05/12/2016 - We think we've made some good progress. You be the judge!
05/05/2016 - May is the Month of Mary
04/28/2016 - Put a smile on your face! Read what our First Communicants have to say about their big day!
04/21/2016 - What our Confirmandi have to say will renew (or confirm!) your faith in youth!
04/14/2016 - THE JOY OF LOVE - What's it all about?
04/07/2016 - Have a point of view on the Archdiocese? Be heard!
03/31/2016 - Welcome to our family Tyler, Sue, Jon, Wes and Creighton!
03/24/2016 - Stories from the Almoners
03/17/2016 - Our 7th & 8th Graders' Thoughts on the Works of Mercy
03/10/2016 - FEED THE HUNGRY Saturday and GIVE YOURSELF 2 HOURS OFF ON Sunday
03/03/2016 - "Clothing the Naked" and "Advising the Doubtful" isn't that hard after all!
02/25/2016 - To Shelter The Homeless
02/18/2016 - A Bit of Dignity Goes a Long Way
020/4/2016 - Catholic Schools Week
01/28/2016 - Sweet Home Chicago: Saturday Night!
01/21/2016 - St. Josaphat Awards $10,000 to Hope Harmony & Healing
01/07/2016 - The Year in Review and What's Next?
12/24/2015 - Imagining the Night of Christ's Birth
12/17/2015 - Has this Advent been a good one so far? It doesn't matter, it's not over yet!
12/10/2015 - Reflection on the Holy Year of Mercy
12/03/2015 - Breakfast With Santa!
11/26/2015 - Is giving thanks just for November?
11/19/2015 - Meet the Rebuilding Our Home Chairs!
11/12/2015 - Happy Feast Day to Us!
11/05/2015 - 86 Days to Go!
10/28/2015 - We have relics at St. Josaphat?
10/22/2015 - Dia de los Muertos and All Souls' Day
10/15/2015 - What does RCIA have to do with me? I'm already Catholic!
10/08/2015 - A personal invitation. . .
10/01/2015 - All are Welcome to the Blessing of the Pets this Sunday at 1:15 in the Community Park
09/24/2015 - Catching up with the Pope
09/17/2015 - On the Changes to the Marriage Annulment Process
09/10/2015 - Invested with the Pallium
09/03/2015 - 10 Things You Didn't Know about SeptemberFest (This is funny!)
08/27/2015 - JosaFAST: Religious Education for Adults and Children!
08/20/2015 - Why does St. Josaphat have a Parish School?
08/13/2015 - Join us for SPRED!
08/06/2015 - Message from Fr. Rich
07/30/2015 - Exciting Events on the Horizon
07/23/2015 - Meet Flat Francis!
07/16/2015 - Mundelein: You know the City, you know the Seminary, but do you know the Man?
070/9/2015 - Who is Fr. Wojciech and how do you pronounce his name?
07/02/2015 - Today's Scripture Reflection by Jonathon Marek
06/25/2015 - Farewell from Fr. Jose, Deacon Dave and Erin Shields!
06/11/2015 - Still trying to figure out what to do this summer?
06/04/2015 - Meeting with Bishop Kane
05/28/2015 - Class of 2015 - Oh, the Places They'll Go!
05/21/2015 - So what's it like to become a Deacon, Pat (and Judy!) Casey?
05/14/2015 - Parish Transformation Action Plans - Kickoff This Weekend!
05/07/2015 - Out of the Mouths of Babes - Words from our First Communicants
04/30/2015 - What do you know about our Sharing Parish?
04/23/2015 - Thank you and Congratulations to Mary Drill-Hermanek on 10 Years of Service as St. Josaphat School Athletic Director
04/16/2015 - Parish Transformation Project: Working on our Mission Narrative
04/09/2015 - Please Give Lesley Gunderson a Warm Welcome to the Catholic Faith next time you see her!
04/02/2015 - What is the Sacred Triduum?
03/26/2015 - Hosanna! Blessed is the king of Israel!
03/12/2015 - Wisdom for all of us from our Confirmands
03/05/2015 - And the survey says. . .
02/19/2015 - Will you Grow Closer to Jesus during these 40 Days of Lent?
02/12/2015 - Parish Transformation - Add Your Voice! & Ash Wednesday
02/05/2015 - Sweet Home Chicago, Sweet Indeed!
01/29/2015 - It's not your father's Catholic Schools Week!
01/22/2015 - And the winner is. . .
01/15/2015 - Who Is Fr. Simon?
01/08/2015 - St. Josa. . . F.. A.. S.. T
Masses: Saturday 5:00 pm, Sunday 8:00 am, 10:00 am, 12:00 pm, Weekdays 8:00 am (except Thursday) phone (773)327-8955 2311 N. Southport Ave., Chicago, IL 60614 grace@stjosaphatparish.org
Check Calendar for Masses on Holy Days of Obligation


text:
Life in Stills | The Photohouse Movie
Life In Stills
Written and Directed by: Tamar Tal
Producer: Barak Heymann
About the Movie
At the age of 96, Miriam Weissenstein never imagined that she would be facing a new chapter in her life. But when The Photo House – her late husband Rudi's life's work – was destined for demolition, even this opinionated and uncompromising woman knew she needed help.
Under the cloud of a family tragedy, a special relationship is forged between Miriam and her grandson, Ben, as they join forces to save the shop and its nearly one million negatives that document Israel's defining moments.
Despite the generation gap and many conflicts, Ben and Miriam embark on a heart-wrenching journey, comprising many humorous and touching moments – a journey that requires a lot of love, courage, and compassion.
Carmel Mountains
Poster- Life in stills - english
Postcard: Rothschild Boulevard, Tel Aviv, 1936
Poster- TLV
The movie has won several awards including the Best Israeli Film in the Docaviv festival in 2011
and the TALENT DOVE OF THE MEDIA FOUNDATION OF THE SPARKASSE LEIPZIG FOR
AN EXTRAORDINARY DOCUMENTARY FILM TALENT
"The winner was a story movingly and sensitively told, which managed to combine a strong sense of comedy with powerful insight. It managed to combine the strengths of its characters with a strong story, and noticeably entranced its audience."
"This is an intimate film that celebrates the individual in all his richness and complexity. Director Tamar manages to share the most beautiful moments of bonding between grandmother Miriam and her grandson Ben Weissenstein with the audience. The film also shows that a positive approach to life, understanding, forgivness, empathy and a sense of humor are things that keep us alive and let us overcome even the most tragic moments."
Written and Directed by: Tamar Tal', Producer: Barak Heymann, Co-Producer: Tamar Tal ,Cinematographers: Daniel Kedem, Tamar Tal Editor: Tal Shefi, Additional Editing: Eyal Tsarfati ,Original Music: Alberto shwartz , Production manager: Tali Shamir-Werzberger


I'm using XlsIO to read an excel file.
When I run the program on Win7, it works perfect. But I got the following error when I run on an windows 8 machine.
The reported issue has been fixed in our 12.2 and later versions. But your working version is mentioned as 11.4. To avail this functionality along with other enhancements, we strongly recommend you to upgrade to the latest version.
The improper conversion of IntPtr to Int32 inside the library causes the overflow exception in your application.
Thank you. So i can't really find something in used excel document and change it to avoid this exception, can i?
Disabling the UseNativeStorage property resolves this issue. This property indicates whether we should use native storage (standard windows COM object) or .NET implementation to open Excel 97-2003 files.
Following code example illustrates this.
// New instance of XlsIO is created[Equivalent to launching MS Excel with no workbooks open].
// Instantiate the spreadsheet creation engine.
// Instantiate the Excel application object.
The reported issue has been fixed in our latest versions.It is also recommended to upgrade to our latest version 16.4.0.52 which has more bug fixes, enhancements and features. Latest version can be downloaded from following link.


Q One of my patients has recently downloaded a set of American guidelines for her complaint from the internet. Unfortunately it gives a different suggested management from our local guidelines. How do you recommend tackling this problem?
If, as one would expect, the local guidelines were evidence based, you may advise your patient in this case that the local guidelines are a more secure basis for practice than the ones she has downloaded.
Differences between healthcare systems, in which different payors and/or different total amount of resource available may influence 'real life' recommendations.
Any of these would be readily understandable to your patient, even if he or she did not like the result.
You could, of course, treat your patient according to the American guidelines (assuming that the recommendations did not fall foul of regulations or other factors in the UK context), but you should only do this if you feel satisfied yourself that the recommendations are sound and appropriate to the particular case. The patient may misinterpret guidelines, and they may not apply to his or her problem.
Finally, if you and the patient cannot agree what to do, you should always be prepared to give your patient the option of a second opinion.
Q A recently published research paper seems likely to change accepted practice and therefore national guidelines. Should we try to adopt the changes now or wait until a new set of guidelines is published?
A There is a tension between trying to make sure that guidelines are as up to date as possible in a world in which new information becomes available more and more rapidly, and making sure that the evidence on which the guidelines are based is carefully considered by acknowledged experts who develop evidence-based recommendations.
If you have good critical appraisal skills and can be sure that the new research paper is itself sound and the change proposed represents a significant benefit to the patient (or avoids significant harm to the patient), then you should probably change your practice accordingly.
You should not assume, however, that because a paper is published in a peer-reviewed journal that all is as it seems, and in addition it may not be easy to derive recommendations from 'raw' evidence.
If in any doubt, wait for the new guidelines. Whether or not you act before the new guidelines are published, you can do your bit to speed up the process of guideline development by bringing the new paper to the attention of the appropriate group or professional body and urging them to review the old guidelines as soon as possible.
Q The Standing Medical Advisory Committee advises the use of the Sheffield table for selecting patients with hypercholesterolaemia for primary prevention. We would like to use the New Zealand modified tables as recently published in the BMJ for this purpose. Will using different guidelines from the recommended ones cause us problems?
A You should think very carefully before developing guidelines that differ in any important respect from those recommended by a recognised national body. This may cause several problems: you may find that there are some highly technical reasons for choosing one basis for a set of guidelines rather than another, which are not immediately apparent.
New guidelines may not fit well with existing local arrangements (protocols for screening and referral, contractual arrangements in the local path lab etc.) based on older guidelines. However, this is all relative. If, in your judgment, the New Zealand modified tables are better than the Sheffield table, then you should base your practice on those.
You should be ready to explain your decisions to anyone with a legitimate interest and it is always a good idea to make sure that you take local colleagues along with you: key people here would be partners, physicians to whom you refer patients, and your local director of public health.
Before making up your mind you may find it useful to contact SMAC directly and get their views.
Q One of our local consultants is not managing patients in accordance with agreed primary/secondary care guidelines. Whose responsibility is it to tackle this? Who will be responsible in the event of a patient complaint?
A Before taking this any further, you must establish the reasons for the consultant's management. It may be, for example, that the consultant thinks – rightly or wrongly – that the patients concerned do not fall within the scope of the guidelines. Or, the information sent to you by the consultant may have left you with the false impression that the guidelines are not being followed. The easiest way to do this is to contact your secondary care colleague directly, preferably in person or by phone, and ask for information in a neutral way. Apart from clearing up any misunderstanding, you may find that even if the consultant is not following the locally agreed guidelines, he or she is quite willing to do so and the problem is solved.
What happens if the consultant concerned will not follow the guidelines. One simple remedy is not to refer your patients to that consultant, but this always seems an unfair way to deal with a colleague who is not making a contribution, because it puts an additional strain on others.
Once formal clinical governance arrangements are in place, the responsibility for dealing with the situation you outline will be clearer – in theory, at least.
Meanwhile, you could speak to the trust's medical director, or the appropriate clinical director, and share your concerns. Depending on the circumstances and the local situation, you may find that the local director of public health or a public health consultant may be able to clarify the issues and perhaps take the matter up on your behalf.
Who carries the can in the event of a complaint by the patient depends very much on the details of the situation. In general, you are not responsible for the consultant's decisions and actions. However, if you continue to refer to this consultant knowing that his or her practice is bad, the patient might reasonably argue that you bear some responsibility.
If the consultant is simply not following the guidelines and the patient does not come to any harm, a complaint is unlikely to be made – and, if made, is unlikely to succeed.
Q We are interested in designing guidelines. Who should we contact for advice?
Guidelines – summarising clinical guidelines for primary care. Berkhamsted: Medendium, 1998.
Agency for Health Care Policy and Research. Using clinical practice guidelines to evaluate quality of care. U S Department of Health and Human Services, 1995.
Agency for Health Care Policy and Research. Using practice guidelines to evaluate quality of care, volume 2: methods. Agency for Health Care Policy and Research, 1995.
British Medical Association. Clinical Audit Committee. Guidance notes for clinical guidelines. London: BMA, 1996.
Cluzeau F, Littlejohns P, Grimshaw J, Feder G. Appraisal instrument for clinical guidelines (version 1). London & University of Aberdeen: Queen Mary and Westfield College, 1998.
Group Health Association of America. Introduction to clinical practice guidelines in health maintenance organizations. Washington, DC: Group Health Association of America, 1995.
Hurwitz, B. Clinical guidelines and the law: negligence, discretion and judgement. Oxon: Radcliffe Medical Press Ltd, 1998.
Maclean D. Clinical guidelines: a report by a working group set up by the Clinical Resource and Audit Group. Edinburgh: Scottish Office, 1993.
Mann T. Clinical guidelines: using clinical guidelines to improve patient care within the NHS. Leeds: NHS Executive, 1996.
Marek KD. Manual to develop guidelines. Washington, DC: American Nurses' Association, 1995.
McCormick KA, Moore SR, Siegel R. Clinical practice guideline development. Rockville, Md: US Department of Health and Human Services, 1993.
Mozena JP, Emerick CE, Black SC. Clinical guideline development : an algorithm approach. Gaithersburg, Md: Aspen, 1996.
Royal College of Nursing, Dynamic Quality Improvement Programme. Directory of national clinical guidelines 1997. Royal College of Nursing, 1997.
Royal College of General Practitioners. Clinical Guidelines Working Group. The development and implementation of clinical guidelines. Report of the Clinical Guidelines Working Group. Exeter: RCGP, 1995.
University of Leeds. Effective healthcare – implementing clinical practice guidelines. University of Leeds, 1994.
Information for Health. Leeds: NHS Executive, 1998.
McLellan F. "Like hunger, like thirst": patients, journals, and the internet. Lancet 1998; 352 Suppl 2: 3.


text:
AllSaints Takes New York Fashion Week
By Sarah Karmali 21 August 2013
ALLSAINTS will make its New York Fashion Week debut in September. The retailer will hold a presentation on Sunday 8 and Monday 9, during which it will showcase its spring/summer 2014 collection.
The presentation will "disrupt the format of the traditional fashion show and integrate product, digital and music" in an "interesting and immersive" way, explains the show invite. Press and buyers will also be able to arrange one-on-one appointments with AllSaints chief creative director Wil Beedle.
The move marks a year of expansion plans for the label, which also launched a film production division, AllSaints Film, earlier this year. The company will commission young innovative filmmakers as well as produce its own in-house content - exploring everything from "music, style and street documentaries to cutting-edge moving installations" - the likes of which will undoubtedly be effectively utilised for the forthcoming NYFW presentation.
New York Fashion WeekAllsaintsNews
Backstage With British Vogue At The Fashion Awards 2019
By Vogue 3 December 2019
Vogue Retail: Fashion
By Vogue 3 January 2020
Emma Watson Covers The December Issue Of British Vogue
By Edward Enninful 4 November 2019


For an SEO professional, life was more straightforward inside the link-construction age.
In the need for position results that were better individuals developed tons of ways to create links, either mechanically or manually.
The general interest shift is quite clear, as you can observe in the image above.
With guide and Penguin fees, Google began annihilating these unethical techniques one by one. The transition is more of a mindset transition in the idea of building link profiles to investing effort and time into growing them.
In all of the excitement during another trend and most of the hoopla, folks tend to be more lost than ever before as to how are they going in the old ways to the new.
I can not recount without seeing some graspable and decent significance for it, how many times I Have read over quantity.
It is clear the attitude of making significant and useful content helps the city as well as you. But how can you find yourself to earn links?
Everybody anticipates results that are useful . This really is one reason why Google works difficult so that you can rank to enhance their algorithms.
That means your website could be in trouble for those who have some second thoughts about revealing any one of your links to Cutts.
Link and link construction bringing in actually are not two theories that are distinct – they're two sides of the same coin. Link building is not higher to the development ladder than link earning, as you really have to prove to be more resourceful and provide helpful advice to the searcher.
One crucial difference between both of these theories is the fact that a link building service is dependant on your clear purpose of locating sites that will put a link to your own website, invalidated worth or by relevance.
Putting thoughts on paper and figuring out your content strategy ought to be your first step. You should remember that actual worth is relative to other sites or influencers that may need to talk about your content also to your market.
We have written a great deal about quality link building and bringing in links as well as the way in which they distinguish from one another and you need to select link earning as ways to improve your link portfolio. Now it is time to show you a few techniques which you need to begin to utilize so that you can earn those links that are organic.
Here is the most conceptually easy, though difficult to execute, efficient link- technique that is earning. It's possible for you to dodge it or dismiss it.
The development of content that is impressive is completely vital to links that are bringing in. You need to imagine this awesome content to supply subscribers with utility but in addition to be shareable.
When you construct something searchers are finding useful on your own website, be certain they'll happily allow you to spread the word out and link back. Awesome and participating content can end up being rather efficient if done correctly, as it is going to spread like fire on social networking platforms, websites, and websites, without a too much of a manual hassle.
Another great link-earning thought is always to create involvement inside the city through giveaways and competitions. Host competitions in your website after which boost it online. Networking with web site owners and influencers and inquire to pass on the data for their subscribers.
It is not true, although you could say requesting other web site owners to post info on their site in your behalf would appear to be an abnormal link construction technique. It is an encounter from which everybody gets to bring in something. Particularly you, because you are likely to really have a large amount of coverage, that may create many links that are organic.
The most persuasive reason for folks to start out talking about you as well as share links that point to your own website would be freebies. And by resources I mean a program that's not very difficult to create or some kind of content and users may find quite useful.
You should actually understand your market 's demands, in the event you would like to reach your goals with this particular technique.
For now, Google ranks websites with link profiles that are unethical. I think it's just an issue of time until the SERPs are swept clean of the websites that use backlink building services that is unethical and cleaner -building techniques can not rate well. There are several creative ways you'll be able to make link construction benefit you without putting your website at risk of being penalized.
Webmasters should often focus less on manual link construction and much more on providing community help and amazing content!
Overall you will have a lot a lot more to make should you invest a great deal more of your time and effort to dishing out advice and bringing in links that folks really wish to link to. You will also raise your brand awareness besides getting links and you are planning to consolidate a standing that is solid in your market. You will get new visitors, ranking, as well as a societal existence!
I simply completed viewing "The Demise of Link Creating a movie published by SEOmoz boss Rand Fishkin entitled and also Link Earning"'s Revival. The name alone is sufficient to create any SEO individual perform a double-take. He covers how link creating methods that are "old" may not be effective, even better, Bing may really be penalizing you via a formula filter-like Penguin.
Bing is continually changing their formula to be able to combat honor excellent/related information and webspam. Panda is included Penguin, by several of those upgrades, Google+ authorship and customization that have mostly influenced SERPs. Through rewarding another method their formula is changing is. By this, I am talking about, individuals who really take some time to produce information that is great that share and others wish to connect to. They don't need you obtaining links through purchasing them, making them, pressing them, shedding them etc. Certain, the latter is handy and simple to complete, however it doesn't truly gain the folks who come across this content.
Are you able to envision if each time we searched in Bing, a lot of junk stuffed, unimportant information for anything sprang up? Their carrying it out therefore everybody who's looking the net might have a much better user-experience as it might be to be used SEO people who Google retains altering their formula as irritating. At the day's end purpose would be to supply customers with related, quality results. We're within the information-seeking era, and that is known by Google.
With that said, a flipside is usually to every cash. The drawback of the formula that is refurbished is the fact that it's making businesses to construct large sites that are really content, as well as for some, might be abnormal or synthetic due to their company purpose. Consider for instance e-commerce proprietors which are selling branded products — picking out excellent information that is distinctive can not be an easy.
Scared that is I'm link making will be considered a hard-sell to clients of the term expense that is long. Many customers need easy and fast outcomes and don't wish to notice about enhanced style and content-creation. The stark reality is, from the common, obtaining a backlink in era / website that is related is a much less disadvantageous than 100 quality backlinks that are low — if additional time to complete is taken by this.
Under, you are able to view Rand's movie discussing this notion of Link Making in greater detail.
I've defined his demonstration using the important takeaways of making and gone and included a number of my very own tips.
Links occurring backwards and forwards in an exceedingly organic, low- method that is tricky. No one's dropping text.
Reveal links socially across your systems to amplify your concept therefore people and you might find them-and ideally link back.
Produce the type of information you know somebody really wants to connect to really wants to share, might add, might come up with or website about or contain within their study or their push or in something.
Demand to become contained in Yelps listing of the very best eateries in Ma or listings like the 500 fastest-growing businesses.
Fussy means individuals who worry about what's being published on don't and the website simply post something. One link from the website that is excellent could not be worthlessness article directory sites 1,000.
Take part in towns like these which are energetic and genuine and also have actual account and actual involvement, in this method that people of these systems, of these towns and you may discover you after which connect naturally.
Likely to Open Website Traveler or Topsy and taking a look at, "What may be the content that's gotten the absolute most links from my rivals or from people that are aggressive in my own area?" Searching at Topsy and viewing what's the absolute most socially distributed information, what's obtaining warm out of this website, this website, this study, the forex market chief, whomever it's, after which carrying it out better.
Creating a social-network that's really comprised of influencers, of people who are able to connect to you, the linkerati, the people who own sites and who've a in Facebook, Google+, Fb that may affect others, that'll get people watching you. In the event that you develop up this, you'll accomplish than what this could do for you personally today. Filter your audience by rating and an effective way to find important people inside your business is by using the Hootsuite dash.
Addressing there is that a subject trending online is a superb method to piggy back off what's currently topofmind and certainly will entice interpersonal spreading and backlinks. Furthermore, addressing may attract backlinks. A number of your market and you may differ, but that good. You're gold so long as the subject could be fairly guarded on both attributes. Search through sites such as for instance Reddit and Bing for that most widely used posts and a method to perform this really is to check boards.
On earth of Search Engine Optimization, many people might have lately identified others in internet marketing and a clever connection between ourselves. This relationship is now somewhat more obvious every moment we get forewarning of some other Google algorithm update.
What is intriguing is the incredible appearance of anxiety of these this period of doubt I see spread across every one of the faces of those whose lifestyles center around SEO. While I am sure I am perhaps not the only person wanting to stay unaffected by the widespread tension leading to such proceeding, such as the information Yahoo has been attempting to share is getting more visible with every change, I Have finally started to feel.
The time has come to possess SEO.com begin helping actual hyperlinks are earned by you! This is specialized in by us!
A few of the newer upgrades, like Penguin 2.0, have have gone people feeling uncovered and surprised at the conclusion of just how wrong things had reviewed the previous fifteen years. The desperate efforts to rank on the research motor of Google there is apparently no-end to the pain and gradually cause a slippery-slope. Hype about those upgrades is a lot more interesting to me of how they are able to be damaging more than helping appears to be dropped, and issues and ill-satisfied.
My advice is always to just take that as bible. Nothing actually comes as readily as we'd been attempting to create it, hence why the misgivings in regards to the upgrade when up on ourselves, we brought this in fact? Online entrepreneurs dropped right into a routine that labored to get for a while but that moment has passed. The time has come to get a fresh program to consider main, an improved method; one which is much more moral, leads to better outcomes and enables the unlimited world of "on-line" to be utilised as it had been supposed to to stay supplying useful info.
It is necessary to understand although that it is maybe not that these systems are awful. There's nevertheless worth in a few construction procedures, for instance, including valuable remarks on a post with goals of creating a connection or alarming a website of links that are broken. But gone is the day of building links through pointless, poor articles, link-farming, and bombarding. We've eliminated right back to our beginnings when the times of fair relationship-based "link bringing in," was common pattern and viewed as the natural means to conduct online business. Jeremy Thorne's current post, "Earning Hyperlinks COMPARED TO Creating Links" sets out a simple makeup of the newfound procedure combined with the reasoning behind why it might be quite so powerful.
I generally prefer to keep apart from issues of self-analysis and potential unfavorable threat but simply with regard to the ethics of the scenario I Will introduce the idea: if we'd not lost sight of the true goal here, where might many of us be?
It is moment we ask a fresh group of queries – beginning with how exactly we get right back on course. Rand Fishkin, in a recently available post to The Moz Site, "The Passing of Link Building as well as the Reincarnation of Link Earning," offers an idea that there's nevertheless a connection involving the current attempts of link construction as well as the right methods of bringing in links. This concept brings a little relaxation to those that believed that all was dropped with that update that is current. He constructs a vision of recognition along with an easier transition in to position that is truthful and draws a parallel between yesteryear and future.
The entire concept a great number of others and Rand happen to be attempting to share is not complex; the times to build hyperlinks are eliminated. Moreover, it is automatic in character and there's absolutely no room for robots in this-world anymore (unless you happen to be running webpages for Yahoo, for the reason that case…by all signifies).
Making hyperlinks is an associated procedure. It's actively playing actual dialogue, making articles that is significant, developing connections, and building a a presence in the correct circles.
1. How can hyperlink bringing in be capitalized on by smaller businesses?
2. What's hyperlink bringing in?
3. Should businesses nonetheless link construct?


During the course, you participate in range drills to reinforce classroom instruction. Instructors focus on field-expedient maintenance methods to assist you in the field and on the range. These intense drills teach you how to troubleshoot and fix a machine gun on the spot when necessary to keep it functioning.