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Magazine Summer 2016
Read Wisconsin
Shatterproof: The Stories of Jack Ritchie
Mystery writer Jack Ritchie, 1980. Photo courtesy of Steven Reitci.
Even though he is Wisconsin's most productive writer of short stories, you might not know about Milwaukee-born author Jack Ritchie. A writer of hard-boiled crime fiction, Richie wrote nearly five hundred stories over his thirty-five-year career.
His writing features characters that rely on cunning and wit to get them out of difficult situations and a straightforward style that eschews elaborate description for narrative tension. In a nod to O. Henry, another prolific writer of short stories, Ritchie often ends his tales of murder and mayhem not with one surprise but two—and even, on occasion, three.
Born John George Reitci (February 26, 1922), Ritchie did not assume his pen name until he began his writing career in his early thirties. His father was a tailor in Milwaukee; his mother, a housewife. Following graduation from high school, he attended Milwaukee State Teachers College (now University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee) for a time.
When World War II came along. Richie enlisted and spent three and a half years in the Army, mostly in the Pacific. It was on the island of Kwajalein that a bored Ritchie, desperate for reading material, began devouring the mystery novels of Raymond Chandler, Agatha Christie, and John D. MacDonald.
While he soon became addicted to the mystery genre, Richie was not yet writing his own stories. After an honorable discharge from the Army, Ritchie tried school again under the GI Bill, but gave it over to work with his father in tailoring—a temporary arrangement, he hoped.
Inspired by his mother, who had recently joined a writer's group in Milwaukee and harbored her own dreams of literary recognition, Ritchie tried his hand at a few stories, mainly about sports. When literary agent Larry Sternig dropped by to talk to his mother, Ritchie handed him a recently composed sports story. The next day Sternig called Ritchie and encouraged him to continue writing.
Ritchie decided to write fifty stories in a year and see if any sold. His eighth attempt connected. Sternig, who became Ritchie's longtime friend and agent, sold his first story to the New York Daily News for $50. "Always the Season" was published on December 29, 1953, marking the beginning of a long and fruitful career.
His earliest stories—sports, romance, science fiction—appeared during the 1950s in such diverse publications as the Philadelphia Inquirer, Smashing Detective Stories, and Good Housekeeping. He soon found his niche and his first major publisher in Manhunt Detective Stories Monthly, which was based in New York City. The world's best-selling crime fiction magazine, Manhunt seemed a perfect match for Ritchie, eventually printing 23 of his stories—the most enduring of them, "Shatterproof."
At a time of waning popularity for the short story, Manhunt was one of the few magazines that featured only short mystery and crime stories. Ritchie had no trouble adapting his developing talent to the newly popular genres. When Alfred Hitchcock started his own Mystery Magazine in 1956, Ritchie, along with fellow Wisconsinite Robert Bloch of Psycho fame, began appearing in that magazine as well. Both often had stories in the same issue.
Soon Ritchie's stories were cropping up in Hitchcock's monthly Mystery Magazine four or five times a year, then six, then nine, and, finally in 1961, thirteen times (he had two in one issue). From 1957 to 1982 well over a hundred of Ritchie's stories, as well as eight under the pen name Steve O'Connell, appeared in the magazine, and there were few Hitchcock anthologies during those years that did not include at least one of Ritchie's (and one of Bloch's) stories.
At least three Ritchie stories were adapted for the TV series, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, which ran from 1955 to 1962. When Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine started in 1976, Ritchie wrote for that as well, appearing in its pages at least thirty times.
Ritchie's early stories were short in length, terse in style, and murderous in subject matter. He never wasted a word. From the first sentence, "He was a soft-faced man wearing rimless glasses, but he handled the automatic with unmistakable confidence" (from "Shatterproof"), to the last comment—sometimes a single word, never more than a sentence—Ritchie wrung every last drop of dark humor and pathos from sometimes as few as 1,000 words. (He once said that had he written Victor Hugo's Les Misérables, the 30,000-word section on the sewers of Paris would have come out as a paragraph or two.)
A number of his stories feature familiar Wisconsin streets, highways, and locations, particularly around Milwaukee. The Milwaukee Lakefront, Lake Shore Drive, and even the pedestrian bridge down from the East Side serve as backdrops for burglary, larceny, and murder. Capitol Drive appears frequently in Ritchie's early stories, and Third and Wisconsin, Wells, 68th Street, and the 27th Street and 35th Street viaducts figure in others. County General Hospital, variously named suburbs, an outstate community or two, and even Taycheedah prison for women are mentioned. In a sly homage to his home state, nearly all of the drinks served to or by his characters contain brandy.
A Ritchie story provides little description and relies heavily on exposition through dialogue punctuated with wry commentary from a narrator who could be a convict or a con artist, a warden or a blackmailer, a murderer or a fraud, a private eye or a detective, a victim or an innocent bystander. And at the end, the expectations of the reader are often flummoxed through a neat twist or two that surprise, but never disappoint.
In "The Customer" (Mike Shayne's Mystery Magazine, March 1983), a middle-aged man sits down at a table at the country club and begins a conversation with a man he has been told is a contract killer. Fearing entrapment, the narrator of the story, whom we learn is indeed a contract killer, proceeds with caution. Eventually he lets down his guard, and the two come to terms. When the second man pushes a small wrapped package toward the narrator and identifies himself as Lieutenant Walter Morgan of the police department, it seems the killer's worst fears have been realized. But, in another twist, we learn Morgan is earnest about having his wife murdered.
The two agree on the time and place to provide an alibi for Morgan, and the killer accepts the $5,000—less than his usual fee, but adequate—to seal the deal. Twist number three comes when the killer realizes that the Lieutenant knows too much and that he—rather than his wife—needs to disappear.
Lest the reader think these stories are glum, there is plenty of humor amidst the homicide. Some suggest that Ritchie may have picked up his streak of dark humor from friend and fellow Wisconsin mystery writer Craig Rice. Known as "the Dorothy Parker of detective fiction," Rice penned dozens of detective stories and novels that incorporated sometimes witty and sometimes screwball comedic elements.
This comedic touch is found in "The Violet Business" (Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, September 1971) when the agents for a particular killer contact him by running an ad in the paper about a lost black and white collie answering to the name Violet. The client, a man named Lynch, wants himself killed, shot through the heart: "A wise choice," the narrator responds, "and neat. Most people prefer the open coffin viewing."
Lynch has decided that the best thing he can do for his wife and two children is to die so they can collect on his large insurance policy. The killer accepts the $5,000 down payment, but his suspicions have been aroused. He goes early to the distant town, books a room, and discovers two things: Lynch is unmarried and he is running for DA. The whole thing smells of a setup.
Returning to his hotel room without carrying out his contract, the killer finds the local chief of police already there with some damning evidence in one hand and a police revolver in the other. But what charge could be made? Murder? He didn't kill Lynch. It is only then that the reader learns our hired killer has never killed anyone. Rather, he plays the murder-for-hire game, collects the money, and then warns the interested parties.
"In short, we saved lives, and made a rather nice profit doing so," the narrator informs us. The police chief, of course, does not know what we know. It seems that the arrest of this "murderer" is inevitable when the story takes another twist as the chief negotiates the murder of his own wife for $4,000 in cash, leaving the narrator to decide if he will become the murderer he has always claimed to be or go to jail.
It is this sort of forthright indirection (or hidden misdirection) that is a Ritchie trademark: the reader is led along by a somewhat neutral narrator through a perfectly logical series of events only to face a complication or two that force a re-interpretation of both plot and character.
Things are never what they seem in a Ritchie story, and the array of flim-flam artistry is incredible. Just as often as not, the con artist is the one who gets conned in Ritchie's world, forcing the characters to exercise all their cunning in an effort to extricate themselves from a situation—or even to save their lives. And running under it all is a keen satirical wit, making fun of murder, yes, but also of academics, artists, country club members, lawyers, judges, politicians, and other social elites.
Perhaps Ritchie's most famous story is "The Green Heart" (Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, March 1963), which was adapted for the cinema as A New Leaf, starring Elaine May and Walter Matthau. The short story, which can be read in twenty minutes, takes almost two hours to unravel on the big screen. It begins with this beauty of brevity: "We had been married three months and I rather thought it was time to get rid of my wife."
The 45-year-old, ne'er-do-well narrator, William Graham (Matthau in the movie), has wooed and wed an ingenuous, klutzy, and unstylishly dressed professor Henrietta Lowell (Elaine May), who just happens to be rich. While she talks with him about their annual trip to the Northwoods to find specimens for her botany research, he is running over in his mind the various methods and opportunities to do her in. In the meantime, Graham fires a number of servants who were on the take at the house, and serves poisoned scotch to a black-mailer who has taken advantage of his naïve wife's generosity. "That confirmed a suspicion of mine," coolly notes Graham. "People who drink Scotch have no sense of taste."
On their honeymoon Lowell had found what she suspects is a new plant species and names it for him: Alsophila grahamicus. Just before the subsequent Northwoods trip, Lowell receives confirmation of the classification and presents Graham with a piece of the fern encased in plastic. He is pleased, but undeterred from planning her demise even after he is forced to kill yet another interloper—with the leftover poisoned Scotch.
On their first day in the Northwoods, Graham and Lowell canoe down a river and run into heavy rapids. He is, of course, inexperienced, and their canoe capsizes. Though he makes it to shore, Lowell clings to rock in the middle of the rapids. He shouts directions to her, only to learn that she can't swim. After all his plotting, how easy this is going to be, he reflects. Graham tells her to slip into the current, and he will catch her as she comes down. She lets go, and as he turns his back to the river and her likely demise his attention is attracted by the plastic-encased Alsophila grahamicus, which has fallen from his pocket. It strikes him how total her trust in him really is. Perhaps he feels something for her as he turns about, plunges into the water, and saves her life.
Romantic? Humorous? Psychotic? "The Green Heart" is a masterpiece of ingenious, entertaining writing. On the heels of the movie's release, Ritchie published his first collection of short stories. A New Leaf and Other Stories drew on the notoriety of the film, but there were seventeen other marvelous tales, all but two culled from Hitchcock's magazine. One story, "Shatterproof" (Manhunt, October 1960), might be the best Ritchie ever wrote.
"Shatterproof" begins with a wealthy middle-aged man finding himself at the wrong end of a gun. The rich man learns that his young wife, impatient for his money (all of it), has hired a contract killer. The rich man obligingly fixes drinks for his guest and himself, then sits across from the killer. Inveigling the killer twice to look away for a moment, the narrator then stands, takes a glass from the table, and locks it within his safe.
The killer is puzzled at the action at first, then dismayed as he is forced to question whether the glass locked in the safe is the rich man's or his own—with his fingerprints on it. Exploiting the killer's doubt, the narrator uses the leverage of the incriminating glass to renegotiate his death contract. Only after the killer leaves to murder the rich man's wife do we learn that the glass in the safe actually belongs to the narrator. It was all a bluff of magnificent chutzpah.
In its dialogue, sardonic commentary, deception, and cold-bloodedness, "Shatterproof" ranks with Edgar Allen Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado." Poe's story ran to about 1,600 words; Ritchie's, about the same. It was just such expertise that prompted mystery writer and critic, Anthony Boucher, to write:
What I like most about Jack Ritchie's work is its exemplary neatness. No word is wasted, and many words serve more than one purpose. Exposition disappears; all needed facts are deftly inserted as the narrative flows forward. Ritchie can write a long short story that is virtually the equivalent of a full suspense novel; and his very short stories sparkle as lapidary art.
A later story, "Absence of Emily" (Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, January 1981), is a Ritchie tour de force. Everything points to the narrator, Albert, having done away with his short, too plump wife, Emily. A widower whose previous wife died in a boating accident, Albert appears anxious when asked by friends and family where Emily has gone. Meanwhile, Emily's rich and overbearing cousin Millicent takes it upon herself to discover her whereabouts. When she sneaks into their home and finds Emily's closet full of clothes and luggage, Millicent begins a systematic campaign to entrap her "poor cousin's" murderous husband.
Unbeknownst to Millicent (and the reader) Albert is carefully cultivating an aura of suspicion. He takes a shovel to the back of the estate and begins to exhume something under cover of darkness only to be immediately surrounded by a group of hired detectives and cousin Millicent. Millicent orders the detectives to excavate the area in search of Emily's corpse, but they find nothing. An innocent Albert threatens to sue, but says he will forego such public embarrassment for some financial consideration—and Millicent agrees to a large consideration. A week later and thirty pounds lighter, Emily emerges from a month-long stay at a health farm. She didn't want her nosy cousin to know about the trip, and had instructed Albert to get rid of her old clothes, a task he spun into a web of deceit that eventually yielded a financial windfall. With Millicent's "consideration" in hand, Albert assures Emily that she can now replace her entire wardrobe.
"Absence of Emily" is a gem of a story, reflecting the author's multifacted writing talents. The same year it appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, the story was included in The Year's Best Mystery and Suspense Stories (Dutton, 1983). At the Mystery Writers of America annual meeting Ritchie's story won the prestigious Edgar Award—a small bust of Edgar Allen Poe—for the best short suspense story of the year. It was a high point in Ritchie's career.
In the meantime his personal life was undergoing change. He and his wife, fellow writer, Rita Reitcie, divorced after twenty years of marriage. Alone now, he settled into an apartment in Fort Atkinson and continued to churn out classic Ritchie stories, most destined for the Hitchcock's and Ellery Queen's magazines.
Then in April, 1983, he suffered a heart attack and died at the age of 61. Even after his death, Ritchie's stories continued to appear in the magazines and in various collections. Mystery writer Lawrence Block was one among many who patiently waited for every Ritchie story, whether new or reprint. "His work was sprightly and surprising and always engaging," Block wrote in an article in American Heritage magazine, "and he never wrote an awkward sentence or a lifeless line of dialogue."
Four years after Ritchie's death, Southern Illinois University Press published The Adventures of Henry Turnbuckle (1987), thirty stories involving the titular character, most published in the last six years of Ritchie's life and three posthumously. Henry Turnbuckle began the series as a Milwaukee patrolman who unfortunately for his career had arrested the mayor's son for drunken driving. Despite this setback, Turnbuckle works his way up to detective sergeant on the city's police force, homicide division.
The humor in the stories comes from the elaborate theories Turnbuckle develops to explain seemingly random pieces of evidence, some as inconsequential as a cigarette butt or a toothpick. There is always some discrepancy or something outrageous in the conclusions he draws, which are generally wrong. Frustrated, Turnbuckle takes a glass of sherry, then, perhaps after another such elaboration or two, stumbles into the solution of the case.
The whole series is really an elaborate send-up of formulaic mystery stories, from the locked room puzzle to the hard-boiled private eye. "Suspicion is my business," Turnbuckle points out, whether as shamus or sergeant. Eventually Ritchie gives him a partner, Ralph, who is continually amazed and frustrated at the "detecting abilities" of his sergeant, commenting, "Henry, you can get more out of less than anybody I know."
The Turnbuckle stories were very popular, appearing primarily Hitchcock's and Ellery Queen's magazines. At the same time, as if anticipating today's obsession with the undead, Ritchie's Count Cardula stories began to appear. A vampire-turned-private eye, Cardula (his name an anagram for Dracula) works only at night. Ritchie has fun with little touches, such as Cardula needing to work to pay off the debt on his mansion along the lake, the unusual working hours from sunset to sunrise, and his odd sleeping arrangements. But Cardula is just as astute as some of Ritchie's other characters. Only a handful of the stories, however, were completed before his death.
In 1989 St. Martin's Press brought out Little Boxes of Bewilderment, a collection of thirty short mysteries by Ritchie, some of which had appeared earlier in A New Leaf. Francis M. Nevins, the same editor who assembled the Henry Tumbuckle stories, brought these together as well. In the extensive introduction to the collection. Nevins characterizes Ritchie's wonderful narratives:
More and more often he'd cook up one of his corkscrew plots, add black humor and an unmistakably personal narrative voice, get it down on paper with a bare minimum of words, and end up with a story inimitably his own.
That is praise indeed, providing a fitting epitaph for a remarkable writer and Wisconsin native, Jack Ritchie. But no amount of description, criticism, or summary is adequate for Ritchie. There is no substitute for the hands on experience of his unique style of storytelling. These stories must be read and savored by the individual reader in order to understand how Ritchie's prose is truly shatterproof.
Richard Boudreau
Richard Boudreau is professor emeritus of English at UW–La Crosse, where he taught from 1968 to 1994, and an expert on Wisconsin literature.
The Comfort of Monsters, by Willa C. Richards
The Milwaukee Anthology, edited by Justin Kern
Mitchell Park Domes
Milwaukee: City of Neighborhoods


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I just loved sharing my thoughts every day in February. I decided to challenge myself in March. If you are sick of me just scroll on. This month is all about luck. But what is luck anyway but a blessing or as some say a tender mercy of our Heavenly Father. If we fall on hard times or bad luck the Lord just has a lesson(s) for us to learn. There are blessings hidden within that trial somewhere. So I challenge you to share or list a "Lucky Blessing" each day.
#1- Lucky Blessings Come From Gratitude.
If there's no gratitude, that blessing or deed goes unnoticed. I guarantee if there's no gratitude, the giver is saddened that includes Heavenly Father. But if we are sincerely grateful, the giver is happy and will want to give us more. But that shouldn't be your only reason to give thanks. We need to sit down and truly list all of our blessings, I know you'll be pleasantly surprised and even humbled at how good you have it! If you can't sleep, listing them will surely do it, like counting sheep its never ending. (That makes me think of a song, hint: Bing Crosby.) There is too much intitlement in kids today. Teach them to give thanks often, it will enrich their lives. Appreciate all the blessings you have been given in this life. "Gratitude is an Attitude" (That was an excellent talk, look it up! By Elder Uchdorf) You need to live with gratitude in your heart, make it a way of life.


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Gilded age corruption - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
Tyra Thorstein
Gilded age corruption PowerPoint Presentation
Gilded age corruption
Gilded age corruption . By: Britni Anne Wickham, Cody Ryan Winget, Aaron Joshua Edward Sorensen, Baylee Marie Midgley. IN the beginning…. Gilded- it looks good on the top, but in reality its tainted. Having pleasing or showy appearance that conceals something of little worth. .
precinct workers
hour shifts
aaron joshua edward sorensen
britni anne wickham
baylee marie midgley
Chapter 17: Politics in the Gilded Age - . 1865-1900. section 1: political machines. pages: 518-523. political machines.
POLITICS IN THE GILDED AGE - . chapter 7, section 3. section 3: politics in the gilded age. as cities grew in the late 19
The Gilded Age and the Progressive Movement - . the big idea from the late 1800s through the early 1900s, the progressive
Gilded Age - . political and economic challenges chapter 7. essential questions. e.q. 12 - analyze a primary source
Life in the Gilded Age - . bellwork. why is the gilded age called the gilded age? what are inventors? which inventions do
National Politics in the Gilded age, 1877-1900 - . politics in the gilded age. "gilded age" – mark twain corruption
The Era of Reform and the Gilded Age - . standard and learning target. history 4.2.1: i can understand how movements
Capitalism in the Gilded Age - Adam smith (1776) origins of species (1859) social darwinism william graham sumner (1880s)
Corruption in the Gilded Age - . corruption in the gilded age. gould-fisk gold
Gilded Age Politics - . chapter 23. essential question?. in what ways did the politics of the gilded era reflect the
Gilded Age politics - . political machines. city governments in the late 1800s became controlled by well-organized
The Gilded Age - . chapter 7 section 3 pgs 3474-234234. ogt question #40. consider the following changes that occurred in
Politics in the Gilded Age - . "i know now that all that glitters is not gold... however, i still go underrating men of
Chapter 17: Politics in the Gilded Age - . section one: political machines. i. the rise of the political machines.
Politics and Corruption in the Gilded Age - . the term "gilded age". " the gilded age ," was a term coined by the
Ch. 7 The Gilded Age 1877-1900 - . a time of great prosperity and corruption. wealthy women of the era. gilded age
The Gilded Age - . a. best and worst american civilization---1870 to 1900 major events industrial expansion, inventors
Gilded Age and Progressive MS - . the compromise of 1877. in the presidential election of 1876, the republican candidate
The Gilded Age & Progressive Era Review Project - . by: darius, chase, liz, jaime, sarah. background information
Exodus from Kosovo - Thousands of kosovo citizens flee poverty, unemployment and corruption for the
Gilded age corruption By: Britni Anne Wickham, Cody Ryan Winget, Aaron Joshua Edward Sorensen, Baylee Marie Midgley
IN the beginning… • Gilded- it looks good on the top, but in reality its tainted. Having pleasing or showy appearance that conceals something of little worth.
Great railroad strike • They were cutting wages and poor conditions and strikes led to near insurrections. Eventually the strike was broken leaving 1 hundred dead. • 1.75 a day for break men working 12 hour shifts. Working under dangerous conditions: death, injuries, loss of hands feet fingers, and crushing of men between cars. • Soon the strikes escalated. Troops would shoot workers, train collisions, tore up tracks, and locomotives on fire. • A train with two locomotives carrying a double length of cars, to which railroaders had objected because it required fewer workers, and made the work more dangerous. • Working people learned that they were not united or powerful enough to defeat the combination of private capital and government power..
Immigration from Europe • 9 million immigrants had come to America between 1840 and 1880. Large business often supported the newcomers and even promoted immigration with adds. Others were not so happy, immigration. Many American born workers saw new immigrants as competition. • Some Americans feared that immigration brought the worst of other countries to America. • For the first time the US produces more steal than Great Britain. Americas Status as an industrial power is secured.
The Panic • The Panic of 1893 triggers a deep economic depression., affecting agricultural areas. Populist party expand their strength. • Creating the political machine.
Political Machine • They control the activities of the political party. Also offered services to voters and businesses in exchange for political and financial support • They gained local government in Baltimore, NY, and san Francisco. • Based on local precinct workers and captains who tried to gain voters support on a city block, or who reported to a ward boss. • Precinct captains, ward bosses, and the city boss worked together to elect their candidate, and guarantee the success of a machine. • Even though the boss wasn't elected as mayor he still controlled municipal jobs, businesses, licenses, influenced the courts and other municipal agencies. • Captains were first/second generation immigrants. • Helped give them naturalization.
To much power? • Many political bosses fell victim to corruption as their influence grew. When loyal voter was not enough to carry an election. Some political machine turned to fraud. • By using fake names part faithful's cast many votes as were needed to win. • When their candidates were into office, they would take advantage of numerous opportunities for graft. The illegal use of political influence for personal gain. They then would ask the workers to bill the city for more than the actual cost of materials and labor. The workers than "kicked back" a portion of the earnings to the machine (illegal payments). The machine granted favors in return for cash. Accepting bribes, to allow illegal activities and gambling to flourish.
The 16thAmendment • They establish a federal income tax. When republican congressman saw the end was turning into a winning touchdown he was horrified. Many other congressman liked the Amendment. The most damaging aspect of the 16th amendment was the fact that it vitiated the unalienable rights provided in this fourth amendment. There were many things wrong with this approach. Worst of all, it puts the government tax collectors in the gorilla role and intimidates citizens who are unlucky enough to be audited with the feeling that they are "victims" of an unfair system.
Towards the end • The federal reserve was established bringing central banking back to the US. • The 18th amendment was establishes prohibition, another progressive victory. • After a suffragist campaign of decades, the 19th amendment grants women the right to vote. • A steep crash in the stock market precipitates the Great Depression.
Key points • •Rapid economic growth generated vast wealth during the Gilded Age. • •New products and technologies improved middle-class quality of life. • •Industrial workers and farmers did not share in the new prosperity, working long hours in dangerous conditions for low pay. • •Gilded Age politicians were largely corrupt and ineffective. • •Most Americans during the Gilded Age wanted political and social reforms, but they disagreed strongly on what kind of reform.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Management liability and P&C wholesale insurer Socius Insurance Services Inc. has celebrated 20 years in business.
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"I'm incredibly proud of our people and what we've managed to accomplish together," said Patrick Hanley, President of Socius Insurance Services Inc., and one of the company's founders along with Paul Lefcourt, Management Liability Practice Leader. "Our consistent growth is a testament to our employees' commitment to our clients.
Lefcourt also paid tribute to the insurance brokers and underwriters that the firm works with, calling them the foundation of the business.
"We would like to thank our retail brokerage and underwriting partners—all our success is a direct result of their faith and confidence in us," he added.


The Guardian announced on Wednesday the 25th May that there would be a cross party response to tackle misogyny online. The Guardian tells us that the campaign, led by Yvette Cooper, and responding to DEMOS findings, will launch through an online forum.
Based on findings from the DUN Project however, we would suggest that contrary to the presumptions expressed in the Guardian piece and 'The Reclaim the Internet' campaign, misogyny is – unfortunately – a central and vital aspect of that web.
In keeping with DEMOS findings, our own analysis of online military forums reveals that misogyny is indeed alive and well online, but not just in relation to the content. Rather, we would contend that misogyny is built into the very infrastructure of social media and – much more importantly – is an embedded part of everyday online practices.
Although our analysis was based on military online forums, we argue that the practices that were revealed are no different to those of non-military personnel. As such, our research highlights an issue well beyond the boundaries of the military where the findings are far more universal.
To read more about this issue see our previous blog post and forthcoming article 'Beyond' Pseuydonmity: the socio-technical structure of online military forums to be published in New Media & Society later this year.


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DO children spend too long in front of their phones, laptops and TVs? Go consult a parent with one to hand. Ask me and all you'll get is a shamefaced mumble.
Yes, surely it's a worry. Hours hunched over the laptop, squinting at the smart phone and watching TV – sometimes simultaneously. Such behaviour is clearly harmful . And I really must try to stop doing it.
So it is easy to sympathise with today's headlines about parents finding it easier "to get their children to do homework, go to bed or have a bath than turn off their phones, laptops and TVs". As I discovered while peering the BBC website on at my smartphone.
A survey for the charity Action for Children finds that almost one in four parents struggle to control their children's screen use. Shocking – except that, as is the way with surveys, the negative finding has been given the greater prominence.
Looked at another way this survey reveals 77 per cent of mothers and fathers don't have a problem controlling their offspring's screen use – either that or they've given up arguing about it.
When our three were young we had battles over the family computer, limiting the game-mad boys to an hour apiece each night. This rare parental edict did lead to sulking.
The games never appealed to me. The only time our peaceable eldest son ever lost it with me was when he had a new Star Wars game and I couldn't work out how to jump across a ravine or something. Now I stay away from computer games. But not from computers.
My screen surfing replicates what our daughter used to call revising for her A-levels, sitting on the sofa with phone, laptop and nonsense on the TV. Of course I hardly ever watch nonsense on TV, although Netflix could be the undoing of any remaining shreds of high-mindedness. Too much to watch on there.
Anyway you can stumble across much of passing interest or pleasing idiocy looking at screens. Here are five things Man On Ledge discovered since last night on his smartphone:
ONE: Multi-millionaire prime minister David Cameron is worried his children won't be able to afford a home when they grow up. Clearly we should start a charitable appeal immediately. Perhaps it could be called Marbles Aid as Mr Cameron seems to have lost a few judging by his astonishingly out-of-touch remark. Or maybe we could instead go for Save the Bullingdon Bollocks.
TWO: Don't be offended by the sentence above. Prince William used a variant of that sturdy old English word while being interviewed on ITV by Ant and Dec. Did I actually watch the programme? Great heavens no. I do have some self-respect, you know.
THREE: President Barack Obama cried when laying down the law on gun control. The tracks of the presidential tears are displayed on the front of many of today's newspapers, but they first were shed on my smartphone. What does this teach us? That Americans are deeply messed up about firearms. Show an innocently slaughtered child to a member of the gun rights lobby, and they will say you have to be armed to take on the "bad guys" – not realising they are the bad guys. The idiot idealist lurking in my soul wonders why they don't just ban all guns.
FOUR: The wheel nearly fell off Nigel Farage's Volvo V70. How I chuckled at that. Then I remembered the make of our car.
FIVE: David Cameron's decision to allow government ministers to campaign for our exit from Europe is a victory for democracy. Or the complete opposite of what he said he'd do a year ago. It's a sign of a strong leader. Or a sign of a weak leader. It means we are definitely leaving Europe. Or much more likely to stay. In short, nothing learned on that score.
Is all this phone-glancing, texting and screen worrying making us rude or is it the new normal? Oh I need to check Facebook. And Twitter. Not forgetting those two email accounts. Sorry my phone's just pinged…
In those bloggy awards you can nominate me in two categories: Media and PR and Odeon Storytelling. And you can, should you wish, vote every day.
© 2016 Microsoft Terms Privacy & cookies Developers English (United Kingdom)
It is right to grant asylum to tunnel walker…


text:
Q: Find nearby places android java I have a list of latitude and longitude stored in database. Now I'm trying to develop a function on finding nearby place from my current location. Means that, i have to search all the latitude and longitude from my database and see which of the places are within my area will be shown.

A: Location.distanceBetween(lat1,lon1,  lat2,lon2, result);

A: To find the distance from one two-dimensional point to another you can use the Haversine formula, (without calling any API functions.)
// All measurements are in meters
var rad = function(x) {
  return x * Math.PI / 180;
};

var getDistance = function(coord1, coord2) {
  // This is the Earth's radius
  var earthRad = 6378137;
  var dLat = rad(coord2.lat() - coord1.lat());
  var dLong = rad(coord2.lng() - coord1.lng());
  var a = Math.sin(dLat / 2) * Math.sin(dLat / 2) +
    Math.cos(rad(coord1.lat())) * Math.cos(rad(coord2.lat())) *
    Math.sin(dLong / 2) * Math.sin(dLong / 2);
  var b = 2 * Math.atan2(Math.sqrt(a), Math.sqrt(1 - a));
  var distance = earthRad * b;

  // Returns distance from coord1 to coord2 in meters
  return distance;
};

Your question is a bit broad so this might not be the best solution. If you were constantly updating your current location you'd have to implement a Tree Sorting algorithm or some other way of optimizing performance rather than checking through your database for distances on every update.

A: You can use the Location object. The distanceBetween or distanceTo method will give you the 'as the crow flies' distance between two points. From there you can filter your results and display only the places you want to.

A: here is what i use
  public void nearBy() {
        if (map.getMyLocation() != null) {//check if my location was found
            db = new MyDatabase(MainActivity.context);
            Cursor medecin = db.lireMedecin();//read values from database
            map.clear();//clearing the map
            while (medecin.getPosition() < medecin.getCount()) { //cheking if this doctor is nearby...
                String Lat1 = medecin.getString(5);//doctor's latitude
                String Lon1 = medecin.getString(6);//doctor's longitude
                LatLng me = new LatLng(map.getMyLocation().getLatitude(), map.getMyLocation().getLongitude());//my location
                LatLng med = new LatLng(Double.parseDouble(Lat1), Double.parseDouble(Lon1));//doctor location
                if (CalDist(me, med) < 6) {//if distance is < 6km add marker to the map
                    map.addMarker(new MarkerOptions().position(med).title(medecin.getString(1) + " " + medecin.getString(2))
                            .snippet(medecin.getString(4)).icon(BitmapDescriptorFactory
                                    .fromResource(Icone(medecin.getString(7).charAt(0))))); //showing the doctor on the map
                }
                medecin.moveToNext();//next doctor
            }
        } else
            Toast.makeText(context, "Gps signal not valid", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();//can't find my position
    }

calculate distance :
 public static double CalDist(LatLng StartP, LatLng EndP) {
        int Radius = 6371;//radius of earth in Km
        double lat1 = StartP.latitude ;
        double lat2 = EndP.latitude ;
        double lon1 = StartP.longitude ;
        double lon2 = EndP.longitude ;
        double dLat = Math.toRadians(lat2 - lat1);
        double dLon = Math.toRadians(lon2 - lon1);
        double a = Math.sin(dLat / 2) * Math.sin(dLat / 2) +
                   Math.cos(Math.toRadians(lat1)) * Math.cos(Math.toRadians(lat2)) *
                   Math.sin(dLon / 2) * Math.sin(dLon / 2);
        double c = 2 * Math.asin(Math.sqrt(a));
        return Radius * c;
    }

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
void DHCPRelayTask(void);

#endif
#endif

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Here's one, a really big one
In the last post I talked about the negative role model of my behavior towards Veronica Ortega in 1985. I came up with a mistake I'd made from the get go when I decided on our first date that I loved her. I cited a huge mistake I made in idealizing her and not taking into account other possibilities of what she was after.
What she was really after ties into another huge mistake I made with her, and it's one I've made repeatedly over the years, and it continues to serve as a big mistake I could totally make in the foreseeable future. When I told myself that I loved Veronica on our first date, I assumed that she'd accepted me on a much more profound level than she ever actually did. I based this assumption on the fact that she did agree to go out with me on this one date.
I could totally make the same mistake today with any number of women in my world; a barista or waitress, someone I know on a more social level, the Invisible Woman (boy, if she ever really showed up in a not-too-fucked-up way that could totally happen); in short, anyone who had the combination of beauty and friendliness and/or seeming availability that spelled "opportunity" for me in the past where there never really was one.
I guess a real pro wouldn't assume a comfortable level of acceptance until...and even then, I've known of and been the type that assumes, to some extent, ownership of someone because of one or two rolls in the hay.
It used to be that I would try to save these brilliant thoughts for a once a week entry, but lately I've been more along the lines of, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." This one, the assumption of acceptance, has been really helpful, because lately I've interacted with some women in a way that has put me on the fence. Okay, I gave away some comics and talked to some women, but I don't really want anyone seeing me as a freak because I make erroneous assumptions about anyone's level of interest and availability.
There's this episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where the crew encounters this funky energy wave. They try to put up their shields to protect themselves, but the energy wave would only strengthen in a reflection of the strength of the shields. The solution was to let down their shields and let the diminished wave passed harmlessly over them.
When I went on my first date with a girl named Veronica in the Spring of 1985, I decided that I was in love with her on that date. It seemed like the thing to do. I wrote two Richy Vegas comics about her, titled "The Villainess Veronica Ortega." I concluded that she just wanted to collect admirers that she didn't have to take seriously as a way of coping with a breakup with a longterm boyfriend. There was this other obsessive guy that she complained to me about, but in spite of her protests about him to me, he seemed to feel encouraged enough to make it all about her all the way into the next Fall.
I think about how I decided that I was in love with Veronica so soon into my acquaintance with her and how best to relate to the women in my world. It is a very strong negative role model to work against. I've mentioned that I tried to get with workers at these businesses a few years back and came up totally empty. The only thing I can think about is, don't do whatever I did that made me decide that I was in love with Veronica so soon.
I guess the main thing that make me decide this so soon was to idealize Veronica. I carried this idealized image of her around with me and didn't take into account what she may have really been about. I think about the women in my world, and think about how I can be a little more critical, in a realistic way, about them.
I remember that the really pretty college age women back then ALWAYS seemed to have boyfriends, or were not single for long between boyfriends. I think about a fair number of the viable women who would allow themselves to be treated shabbily by their boyfriends just for the security. Security often meant that they wouldn't have to field date inquires from young men that they considered unworthy. Their righteous boyfriends, who often times were guys they considered to be assholes, were worthy, so that's a pretty valid criticism. I'm not saying that any of the attractive young women in my world have this kind of thing going on, but it's food for thought as far as I'm concerned.
The tide has gone out today on the Invisible Woman. By that I mean I'm not so inclined today to think any of that stuff has any basis in reality. The tide may come back in on her, or it may not. I think that just by toning it down with the women in my world, it may reduce the intensity of what ever remains of my fixation on her. Much in the same way as how the crew of the Enterprise dropped the shields to reduce the intensity of the energy wave.
Making love too important
I remember hanging out with this guy some years back this one time, and he was going on to those within earshot that he thought that he'd met someone. I remember hearing stories about how needy this guy came across to the women friends we both knew, and I couldn't help but think, "Dude, you probably didn't actually meet someone."
So I'm not making a claim like that at this time. I just have the opportunity to talk to someone who is not an employee of a business I patronize, like a coffee shop, whose JOB it is to kind of talk to the regular costumers, at least a little. Nope, she's not in that category, but that's still a long way from saying I've met someone.
Anyway, this Schrodinger's Cat dilemma came up where, okay, the Invisible Woman; if I get with this person in my world, the Invisible Woman would show herself and be really pissed off, but if I don't get with this person in my world, the Invisible Woman would just remain a figment of my imagination and not show at all.
This is what passes for woman drama in my world, but no one out there really has to read this if they don't want to, so I'll continue. Yeah, this hung me up for a few hours, this Schrodinger's Cat dilemma, but I came up with this: I was listening to this Temptations Greatest Hits CD on my computer last night, right, so they are going on about love, love, love, this, that, and the other, right. And, I started thinking, "Man, Dr Burns is right, they sure do make love out to be this big, important thing in these pop songs. Don't they?"
I mean, if love weren't this big important thing to me, too important still, in my opinion, there'd be no dilemma. Am I right? The reality of whatever situation I really am in will shake out in some form or other, but I could just calm down about the whole thing and not take the lyrics in this one Temptations cover of "The Impossible Dream" to heart: "To love, pure and chaste from afar." I mean, fuck that. Right?
And don't anyone think that such a crazy-dumb dilemma can hang me up makes me some kind of dumbass either. I used to have this therapist who, when I'd just mention someone in my world whom I had an attraction to, he would immediately evaluate her suitability to be in a relationship with me. Mind you, not to just ask for a date, not to just go on one date, not to bump uglies with her just one time, not to date for a month or so and call it off, but whether this person that he'd never met would be a suitable partner for a longterm committed relationship. Ay yi yi! These people get paid a fortune to come up with this shit.
And if I just do the math on how many girls and women I've been on one or more dates with vs. how many I've actually closed the deal with in my adolescent and adult life, the ratio has got to be at least 7 or 8 to 1. Mind you, I've not been with that many women in my life, and I've not been on just an incredible number of dates, so to just automatically think about that moment where we're both naked with anyone in my world is a bit premature at this point. No?
Me I'm Git Git Gone
I dedicate this song to the Invisible Woman. I have my reasons...
The commas indicate an emphatic strike on the bass string
I'll try to give instructions on how to sing the bridge. This blog page doesn't accept the text box formatting of the Word program.
Me I'm Git Git Gone
Verse: D,G,A Bm
Chorus: A,D,E7
Bridge:C7,Em,G,D
B↓↑B↓↑
You can have your cake
And eat it too cake
Morning after morning
You can, wake and bake
You can take a manicure
You can take a pedicure
Anytime you can take a man
Oh, that's for sure.
While you sit there on your throne
Like Zatoichi leaving town
I'm, all alone
I'm, all alone.
You can call in sick
And just be too too quick
Your beauty and your fame
Can buy you Harry Tom or Dick
No one can leave ya'
You're the, Queen of Sheba
I don't know you you don't know me
Call me, over-a-cheeb-a
You're the classiest filly
In the, royal night sky (up)
I don't know why I'm lassoed (sustain)
I don't bother askin' why (down)
No matter oh why poor poor me (sustain)
Soon enough I will be free (up)
 G
You stay in your world
While I sizzle at a (down)
Hundr-e-ed degreeees. (up to D)
The pain in my neck
Hurts like all the heck
There's a piece of my brain
At your, call and beck
You can take a yoga class
Meet some real estate ass
I hope that when they hit you up
You, give 'em a pass.
Till then I'm git git gone
Like Zatoichi leavin' town
Let Zatoichi leave that town
I'm, here at home
I say I'm here aaaat home. (one downstroke on home)
Richy Vegas
Where the F--k Is My Copy of Seven Samurai?
Will this torture never end? I can't find my copy of Seven Samurai. What the fuck is this shit? A couple of weeks ago I couldn't find my DVD remote for the life of me. A few days later, there it sat in a usual place. I figured that my housecleaner had found it and put it there.
But my Seven Samurai DVD? That's fucking hardball. That is fucking low. Only a lowlife like the Invisible Woman can be the reason behind my missing Seven Samurai DVD.
What if I actually saw this person in real life? Like during SXSW, or in a city where these people hang, like New York of LA. If I saw her in a restaurant I was eating at or at a museum or something, I'd probably be shit scared to death. She's really pretty, which is bad enough, but also she's a big fucking deal to boot. My pecker would probably shrivel with like it was in an ice water bath to a quarter it's nachul size, and my balls would go up into the my stomach, and it would be as if my bloated, 262 pound, 52 years old ass stood naked before a goddess of the realm. She could judge me to be some unworthy piece of shit, act as if she has no clue as to who I am-whether or not she actually did know who I was- and I'm supposed to take that kind of chance if I ever saw her in public. Fuck me, like hell I would!
Oh god, and shit of mine keeps coming up missing. The Badfinger CD never turned up. I just wanted to see an actor's name on the Seven Samurai box. It was the guy who played Kambei Shimada, the leader of the Samurai. He's in a Zatoichi movie I'm watching now as well. But no, I now live in a world where I can't count on my Seven Samurai DVD being where I last remembered it, or any other logical place, either. Her parents must be proud. Their big deal Pop star daughter is spending her days fucking with a middle-aged mentally ill guy's head.
I hope she likes the movie. I really do. I noticed that my Once Upon a Time In the West DVD is in the same stack of DVDs as where my Seven Samurai DVD was supposed to be, so maybe she's already seen that one. It's a good one, right Baby?
Started The Legend of Richy Vegas
I'm filling out note cards for Richy Vegas Comics:"The Legend of Richy Vegas." So far I've filled out two sets that outline eighty pages each of material. I plan on filling out two more sets, and then laying out the text of the four issues in sketchbooks. I was going to try to do a more formal outline, but I decided against reinventing the wheel- this is how I usually lay out the pages.
I'm taking issue # 13 to the printer today, so I'll get the ball rolling on that soon enough. That will complete the ideas for comics that I had way back in 2008. As I said to someone the other day, it's one thing to write ideas out on notecards, it's quite another thing to actually complete the projects. The first two ideas were single issue comics. The next idea took two issues. "The Consequences of Bringing Light." took six issues. By far I spent the most time on the first of the ten books, "Anita, You're the Reason I'm Not In Prison." That took about two and a half years. Issue # !2 took the shortest amount of time; a little over five months. Six moths or less was typical for the last five issues.
I'm giving myself two to three months to get "The Legend of Richy Vegas" off the ground. I have two manuscripts to draw from. The first manuscript I started during my second hospitalization in December 1992. It goes into detail about the hallucinations, "recovered memories," that I experienced after my romantic love deal really unraveled. The second manuscript details the events, almost blow by blow, of what led up to that breakdown.
"The Consequences of Bringing Light" didn't get the thorough documentation over the years that I can draw from with "The Legend..." It has only been through the process of doing "The Consequences..." that I feel okay about bringing up what all happened,
Ooh, Ooh, Yoo Stepped On My Widdle Mentally Ill Toes!
Two posts ago I brought up my effort to sit through Love Actually. I brought up a female relative, who shall remain nameless, and how she got all bent out of shape about how there were several relationships between older, powerful men and younger, subordinate women. Look at the post, Love Actually vs. A Distant Mirror, for my take on that.
Now, let's get to my neck of the woods, the burdensome mentally ill brother in Love Actually who fucks up his sister's deal with a guy. It was a bit of a gut punch, I will admit, with that first scene of him in his permanent acute care residency in that facility. At least he's getting good UK health care. At the end of the movie almost everyone has a happily ever after at the airport, except this poor woman with this pain-in-the-ass crazy brother, we don't see her at the airport at all.
Wellll, it's true family members make sacrifices for their disabled siblings or kids or parents all the time. I auditioned for a job that featured a mother who basically gave up her own life to care for her son who was afflicted with cerebral palsy. The dad took a powder when he saw what he was in for, and it was just her and whatever caregivers, which were quite few, and whatever means to pay for them that paid for them. That shit happens. That's life.
I can compare the portrayal of this potentially violent brother to the hilarious portrayal of Van Gogh in a home improvement store ad that appeared like a year ago for some time. First we see Leonardo Da Vince bring the funny somehow, I forget how. Then I think it's Rembrandt's turn, with maybe a self portrait. Then they show Van Gogh with wide eyes and a goofy smile on his face crazily talking to a bird in the window. That was another gut punch of an irreverent portrayal of an artist and all he went through. An artist that I have no small personal affinity for.
But, you know what. Fuck all that identity politics and being sensitive to people like me all the time. I've said it before in this space, and I'll say it again: the problem I have with stigma is not insensitive portrayals of the mentally ill in any form of art. The biggest problem with stigma for me personally comes from family members, friends, psychiatrists, social workers, therapists- anyone I actually depend on for support letting me down somehow. Those kinds of people can potentially do far worse damage than any insensitive portrayal of people like me in movies, TV shows, comic books, etc.
I stand on the side of free artistic expression over people artistically tiptoeing around whatever they are supposed to tiptoe around on my behalf. Sure, someone can take things too far, but I'll be the personal judge of when that happens, I don't want people saying that they represent me making those decisions on my behalf with the threat of boycotts or online outrage or what have you.
A far as a total piece-of-shit portrayal of the mentally ill in a movie, I have never seen a film that topped King of Hearts. It was made in Belgium in the '60s, and it takes the fucking cake, hands down. When I was a kid I would see it show at the arthouse revival cinema in town with glowing blurbs about how the crazy people are not as mad as the war around them, that they ultimately reject etc etc. It got three and a half stars in the Maltin movie guide, so maybe it's just me....
Apparently the mentally ill people in this movie in this war-torn French Belgian town all learned how to pantomime circus performers or musicians or ballerinas, and the sympathetic portrayal of these gentle souls consisted of them gleefully miming their act in front of whatever audience gathered before them. Fuuuck me! I saw this movie at the absolute lowest point in my life, and I tell you, it's a good thing there were no guns in the house of the friend whose house I saw it at, because I might not be writing this today if there were any.
As far as romantic comedies with some drama thrown in, Love Actually is not too bad, though I'm no expert on the genre. I think they have at least tossed out the tired "they hate each other until they realize that they're madly in love with each other" bullshit in these kinds of movies that can really fuck with someone like me, if I was so inclined to take that kind of shit to heart.
If I had some girly-girl girlfriend who went in for that kind of stuff, this one would be okay for me to watch again. If someone is willing to sit with me through Once Upon a Time In the West or Seven Samurai as I watch them for the umpteenth millionth time, I could watch something like Love Actually and get into it. Hell, I could binge watch Big Bang Theory or Two Broke Girls if someone were cute enough. Though I sure as hell wouldn't make her pause these shows when I went to the crapper or made myself a sandwich.
I Think We're Done
My last post was about A-list celebrity as American Royalty, and how that affected me, Richard Alexander, with a celeb fixation I've nicknamed the Invisible Woman. This deal has been on since the first of this year, so anyone who wants to get up to speed, just start reading posts from there until now.
My last post talked about the attractive young or youngish women in my world being like a lesser nobility, and the Invisible Woman being more like this one King of England in the Middle Ages, who sent his guard to cut down a mob of peasants who were deluded into thinking that their king loved them as much as they loved him, and that they would find redress for their grievances against their local nobles through his good graces.
I might have mistakenly given the impression that I bore ill will towards any of the attractive young or youngish women in my world by making this analogy. That's not true. I've found that since I've stopped trying to make these kinds of women into my girlfriend, I don't have much to complain about. I get kind of upset when one of these types tries a little too hard, or way way too hard, to go adversarial on me and paint me as some kind of bad guy in their world, just because they know things about my mental illness combined with my obsessive nature.
I'm talking primarily about women who work at businesses such as food service or other retail businesses and who have to interact with broad cross-sections of the general public, including myself. I'm getting out more and I am not so much in a position where these types are the ONLY attractive women I'm around. I've just extended the deal with myself that I don't have to pressure myself to ask anyone out or even try much to talk to any attractive women who work at these types of places. Now I go out, and I don't pressure myself to meet women in those places that I go to play open mikes or see bands either. I've noticed that I get out a lot more than I used to, and It may be precisely because I don't pressure myself to do any of that.
I may come off as rude or standoffish to at least some of these workers in these business, but when one tries to go in the opposite direction from where there was no fruit to be had, it has to manifest itself in some way. Right?
So the lesser nobility vs. the King of England. Well, I actually see and interact with the lesser nobility, while the King of England might as well be a holographic projection for all the reality that she represents in my world. Soooo, might it be a more viable priority to just try to get along with the lesser nobility and blow off the King?
I think that a lot of celebrity stalkers have this kind of thing going on inside of them, where they may have faced a lot of rejection and heartbreak with the people in their world for a long time, and look to our American royalty to take them away to bigger and better things. I remember reading a story where John Cusack had a woman stalk him. She told reporters that she had been raped, but that the local authorities had done nothing about it, so John Cusack was supposed to be the kind of guy who could make things better for her if only she could get in touch with him I've just been backing up and backing up and backing up these past several years in an effort to see some kind of big picture, and I inadvertently bumped into this phenomenon in my inner world.
Yeah, I think me and this celeb that I've nicknamed the Invisible Woman are done. And sweetheart, if by some snowball's chance in Hell you're actually out there reading this, I've only experienced you as a kind of phantom presence, while these "lesser nobility" women are real 3d people who have as much of a right to exist in my world, both inside and outside, as I do in theirs.
Love Actually vs. A Distant Mirror
I've tried to watch the popular romantic comedy Love Actually, but I find myself only able to watch it in little bitty bits. A female relative, who shall remain nameless, didn't like it because it wasn't politically correct enough for her. People like this always have some idea about how every work of art could have been done to appease the PC stick up their asses, so I wanted to see the movie myself to see if I could agree with her.
The problem she had with it involved the dynamics of economically advantaged, older men falling in love with younger maids and secretaries and interns and whatnot. She painted the movie with the generalization that ALL the couplings were of this nature, at least that's the impression she gave me, and that, in and of itself, is not true. For example, I switched it off when two coworkers of equal social status and age were about to get in on, only to have the American female's burdensome mentally ill brother keep calling because he can't stand to be by himself for any extended length of time, and I guess that he's such a basket case that she can't just explain that the potential love of her life awaits the consummation of their mutual desire for each other, but that's my own PC ax to grind, so I won't go on about that,
No, let's get to her PC ax to grind: the class thing. Each story revolves around barriers to true love presented to the myriad protagonists, class only being one of them. Nothing gives a Brit a chubby like crossing class lines for true love, so of course that one is going to get some mileage in an ensemble piece such as this one,
But Rich, you ask, what does this have to do with you and your alleged love interest, the Invisible Woman (the uninitiated are going to have to go back to my posts starting from January 1st until now to get up to speed)? I will tell you. Historian Barbara Tuchman wrote a book titled A Distant Mirror about Europe in the tumultuous 14th Century. In one passage, she tells the story of a serf rebellion in England. The serfs rebelled against their oppressive feudal overlords, formed a mob numbering in the thousands, and set out to take their grievances to the King of England. They'd been brainwashed all of their lives about how much the King really, really loved them, so they thought that the problem lie with their immediate oppressors, their lords, their lords overseers and henchmen, etc.
So a mob goes on the march to one of the King's castles in hopes of bending his ear and having the King solve all of their problems. Naturally the King, who loves them so much after all, gets word of this mob descending on his castle, sends out his personal heavily armed guards, and the trusting, filthy rabble get cut to ribbons.
Well, in the good old USA, celebrities are a form of royalty for us. Sooo, for me, the twenty-two years old waitresses and baristas are the oppressive, lesser nobility with their collective foot on my neck, right, and the Invisible Woman is my version of the King of England. Am I right?
Now, Austin's own South by Southwest music festival is coming up, and these A-list celebrity types are known to show up for this. So, if I see the Invisible Woman down on Red River during this time and exclaim, "My love! At last we can be together!" and start running towards her, I bet that her security detail would tackle me, wrestle me to the ground, and kick the living shit out of me. Am I right?
That's the thing; there will always be things coming up in this town, or if I venture into this woman's town for any reason, there will be things going on that I will think will be an occasion to maybe meet up with this person, at least for awhile.
Now, to all you young or youngish ladies out there who may or may not actually read this, my oppressive feudal overlords in other words, I couldn't have come up with this insight if I hadn't been willing to disengage from the eternal pursuit these last several years and just do my best to take a fucking chill pill. Am I right? Damn right I am!
Like the song says about the models on my swimsuit calendar, "Well your stand-ins in my world/ don't serve you well at all/ and I bet I'm better off/ when you're a picture on my wall." What song you ask? Why "Picture On My Wall," by none other than Richy Vegas. How nice of you to ask.
I hope it's not as bad as all that
I remember when I fixated on Cathy C in the spring of 1984. Cathy was very beautiful. She was in one of my art classes. She had a serious boyfriend. Whatever fixations I had on girls in high school, this fixation with Cathy was that much more intense, and marked the beginning of a major problem with mental illness.
I just couldn't reconcile my attraction to Cathy with the reality of her situation. It took quite a few failed deals for me to be able to give up on the idea of getting something going with someone with a serious boyfriend.
My fixation on individual women did indeed evolve into a problem with women who represented themselves as something they were not; typically, they represented themselves as available and interested when they were either not interested or not interested and not available.
The fixation on women from my psychotic hallucinations was far less caustic and damaging as it could be when one of these later fixations really got a hold of me. One time they went head to head: Snolly, who may have thought that God was on her side when she tried it vs. Monica, the girl at the top of this page. No contest. I gave Snolly about and inch-and-a-half's worth of consideration, and given that my handling of her deal gave her pause and put her in a place that she didn't anticipate, it really was my prerogative.
Nowadays, I may or may not be in the midst of a celebrity fixation. I really don't know if it will be tougher than what I've had to deal with, oh, these last thirty or so years, but it could be bad, I don't know. I've talked about the weird dynamic of fixating on a person I've never even met, but whose presence seems to be in my life regardless. I've talked about the terms in which I think it would end; with some high profile coupling on her part, but maybe not right away. Maybe she's being more discrete this time, and she got in GOIN' AWN right now.
I've learned to just not attempt to engage with women under the age of say, thirty-five, and that at least gives me ammo to fling accusations that whatever static comes forth comes from their end of it, if nothing else. So, naturally, genius that I am, I've got to find another type of woman to tie me up in knots.
Maybe after this one passes, I'll move on to Ariana Grande or Jennifer Lawrence, who are not my current celeb fixation, but may as well be if I my reptile brain ever really lets go of this one.
Maybe it's not as bad as all that. I remember my fixation with Cathy C being so damn debilitating, tortuous really, compared to where I am now, I think. Maybe a month from now it will pass, maybe not. If anyone sees me in my world who reads this, and senses that my mind is somewhere else, well, I guess you'll know what it's all about. If you're an attractive woman thirty-five or under, I really don't want to speak to you unless I'm spoken to first, whether I'm otherwise preoccupied or not.


I recently bought the Natural Beauty Bible in an attempt to replace the toxic products in my regime with more natural options. The book details reviews from 2000 users and this was top, so i gave it a try. I was worried it would break me out, purely because it was a new product on my face but I needn't have worried. It is a gel-like cream, lightweight, oil-free, and sinks in like a dream. The smell is utterly divine - grapefruits, orange, tangerine etc, I love it so much I sit sniffing my hands for a while! The cream is fortified with Panax Ginseng and Coffee Bean which Origins suggest "jumpstarts hydration levels". I'm not sure about that but it certainly moisturises with no greasy feeling whatsoever and my skin looks visibly different after a month of using it. Even in photographs, I can see the difference. I thought it might be because my make-up sits better on top of this product ( I was using Neutrogena oil-free previously) but I have notice a great improvement in my naked face. I am not not ashamed to allow my boyfriend to see my freshly showered and make-up free face because it just looks better, glowing, healthy and clear. For the first couple of weeks I did notice two or three VERY small short-lived blemishes appeared on my cheeks, close to my nose but they have since disappeared. My skin is currently better than it ever has been and I'm 34!


text:
Oil Painting 9" x 6"
Label on back reads "Folly Lane" Potters Bar from M.C.A. Dec.25 1909
Image from the Peter Miller Collection
The oil painting above is dated 1909, and is believed to be the only known image of a pair of cottages that once stood on the south side of Hawkshead Lane to the east of the railway line next to where Hawkshead Bridge is today.
Both Hawkshead Road and Hawkshead Lane have previously been known as Hawkshead Lane, Reeves Lane, Folly Lane, Jennings Lane, and Boltons Lane.
OS one-inch to the mile map Middlesex Sheet VII published 1 August 1822
The cottages feature on the first detailed Ordnance Survey (OS) map of 1822, and can be seen just above the word Reeves. The map above was created before the Great Northern Railway (GNR) line was built.
Map from Images of North Mymms - J.Potter
The 1830 GNR plan of the proposed route for the railway, above, depicts the building as two dwellings.
Interestingly, the undated pre-1850 GNR land acquisition map, below, illustrates the intent to construct the Hawkshead Bridge at right angles to the railway, rather than the skew bridge as it is today.
Map from the Peter Miller Collection
North Mimms (sic) 1844 tithe map
The award book that accompanies the North Mimms 1844 tithe map, above, lists the cottages as Plot 150, Cottage and Garden, owned by John Godfrey and occupied by James Coventon (sic) and another.
The 1841 census is more precise, and lists James Covington as a 30-year-old agricultural labourer living with his 25-year-old wife Eliza and their three daughters aged eight, five and two years old.
1868 OS six-inch to the mile
Image courtesy of the National Library of Scotland
Construction of the railway line and bridge began in 1848 and was completed in 1850. The map above illustrates the railway line and Hawkshead Bridge in close proximity to the cottages. A signal box was also located here but had been removed by 1896.
1896 OS 25-inch to the mile
The 1881 census lists 26-year-old signalman George Bonner as living there with his 23-year-old wife Harriet and their one-month-old baby.
The 1891 census lists agricultural worker Major Dell and his wife Elizabeth with their three young children living in one part, and agricultural worker William Mansell and his wife Merry with their six young children living in the other part.
The cottages had been demolished by 1950.
Article by Peter Miller 2019
Comments and information welcome
If you have anything to add to this feature, or just want to add your comments, please use the comment box below.
Author / Contributors / Sources / Topics: Images of North Mymms, Peter Miller, Peter Miller Collection
Location: Hawkshead Lane, Brookmans Park, EN6 1NL, UK


Defusing "Financial Weapons of Mass Destruction"
In 2002 Warren Buffett wrote that in his view, credit derivatives were financial weapons of mass destruction ("FWMDs"). He made the comment while explaining to shareholders why he was unwinding a Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary dealing in them, and few outside of the value investor community paid much heed.
Eight years later we could be singing a different tune in both the media and Congress. After all, we've had a financial crisis, $23.7 trillion of potential government financial backstops and a "Great Recession" that were all exacerbated and partially caused by a FWMD explosion. With some notable exceptions however we haven't changed enough, and these contracts remain poorly understood even as the markets have evolved beyond the levels for which Mr. Buffett first expressed concern.
At the time of his statement, Buffett's reasoning was simply that credit derivatives were "time bombs" where parties would enter highly leveraged contracts with risks they often didn't understand or couldn't evaluate. This was effectively describing the problem AIG would later face (and he wanted Berkshire to avoid). In explaining how impossible to value some contracts were, Buffet gave the example that, if desired, he could easily purchase a speculative position on "the number of twins to be born in Nebraska in 2020." Those words should have raised red flags on how improper derivative contracts could easily simulate a massive underground gambling house.
This would not be the worst of it.
When Buffett wrote his letter, a subset of the market known as credit default swaps ("CDS") was still young. In 2000, the entire notional value of this market was just $900 billion, mostly reflecting bona fide "good faith" buyer hedging. For an individual, bona fide hedging is like buying insurance on your home; in return for a monthly premium (the contract's "spread"), you receive downside protection that pays in the event of catastrophic loss.
But in the early 2000s the CDS market started to change, and new investors whose primary purpose was to take speculative positions emerged in greater force. The reasons why are not hard to understand as potential payouts are enormous; buying $1 million of CDS protection can return as much as $200 million if the underlying company collapses. This 200X return is in contrast to the maximum 2X (ie, 100% profit) return an investor would receive using a generic equity short under the same scenario, because CDS by themselves are more inherently leveraged (ie, they simulate higher levels of debt).
By 2007 the CDS market had mushroomed to a notional value in excess of $45 trillion. At those levels, at least $20 trillion was primarily speculative -- we know this because the combined underlying markets they were based on (bonds and certain structured products) had a total value of less than $25 trillion. This would be like buying a home insurance plan worth $450,000 on the same day you acquired the house for $250,000.
That minimum of $20 trillion in contracts was therefore "naked," or at least mostly so. In finance, being naked generally means transacting in an asset without any ownership or correlated upside in that asset.
Put another way, buying a 5-year naked CDS is like buying life insurance on a stranger. The main point is that you would receive zero benefit if the stranger does well in life; in fact, you would stand to lose money (the premium) if they survived to the end of the contract. However, if they didn't do well, you would earn a fortune. This is both immoral and illegal for an individual but allowed to investors under current law.
If that were the end of it -- simple speculative insurance -- it would be problematic enough. In theory, we might even derive some benefits in the form of increased liquidity and better pricing for all insurance contracts.
However, this would only work in a world without avarice. In fact, the pure logic of buying life insurance on a stranger actually has a moral advantage to buying a naked CDS -- at least with individuals, the act itself of buying life insurance doesn't harm the stranger. It only creates financial incentive to do so.
CDS are more intrinsically leveraged (remember, 200X vs 2X).
CDS relate to a different part of the capital structure, debt instead of equity.
In the case of a theoretical naked short manipulation, a speculator would sell large quantities of a company's equity in order to drive the price down, but do so with shares they either don't own or that don't exist ("phantom" shares). This creates a highly concentrated burst of selling activity in excess of what would be possible using only "real" shares, shares that could either be borrowed or owned outright.
For companies that don't access the capital markets regularly, CDS pressure can be frustrating but not debilitating. However, for leveraged financial companies -- who often rely on short-term, daily funding sources -- the results of a spiraling and unknown increase in their CDS would directly affect the core business and be much more dangerous. At minimum this would hurt their cost of capital, reducing profit margins in a healthy bank or causing a weak bank to lose money more quickly. In extreme scenarios, this would even create a confidence-liquidity trap and the modern-day equivalent of a bank run. The only difference here is that we would have institutions rather than consumers lining up for their money, and they would technically not be taking money out but refusing to put money in.
I've heard it speculated that this is exactly what happened in the cases of both Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers. The evidence -- circumstantial at best -- is that one can see a series of sharp increases in CDS spreads for both companies prior to public awareness of any issue. Sadly, forensically determining what happened is next to impossible because the players leave few traces and are exempt from oversight since the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000. Whether or not CDS pressure was exerted however, what remains likely is that had a similarly weak peer institution (say, Merrill Lynch) experienced the CDS run-up instead of Lehman, their situations and timing of collapse could easily have reversed.
More recently, I have read rumors that a dispute between a TARP-receiving investment bank and the fiscal authorities of Greece escalated into the use of CDS pressure by the bank and two hedge funds to increase the government's cost of debt. This is probably not true, however it is probably also plausible; George Soros famously "broke" the Bank of England using less aggressive instruments and with far less market power than the big banks have today.
Credit default swaps are not complicated; they are simply corporate insurance. They should be treated like insurance by the authorities, especially after their misuse became a focal point in the US financial crisis.
Naked CDS are the corporate equivalent of buying life insurance on a stranger. They should be treated no differently than the theoretical potential for naked equity shorting abuse.
I hope that readers and staff of the Huffington Post may join me in calling for regulators to propose a ban on abusive naked CDS that is at minimum similar to the one already in place that bans abusive naked shorts. In addition, I hope that together we can push more elected officials into doing the work needed to genuinely understand these issues beyond basic sound bytes. If they do, I am confident that more attention will be paid to smart proposals for dual-regime oversight such as the one put forward by CFTC Chairman Gary Gensler. In it, he establishes the basis for overseeing not just the markets (through exchanges, clearing houses, etc) but also the dealers themselves. Without a dual-regime approach, it is just a matter of time before smart, unregulated traders find new ways around the system because it is their financial incentive to do so.
-- The author is an independent corporate advisor at Belstone Capital and editor of the blog Polifinance.com, where this article has been co-published.


This late 19th Century antique Kuba rug showcases the craftsmanship of tribes from the Caucasus region. Warp-wrap technique has an angled stitch, looped back over the warp.
Stylized elements create a dynamic pattern of crisp lines, intricate borders and phenomenal detail in the animal and floral motifs.
This rug's highly complex construction reflects a substantial commitment of the weaver's time and attention to transform wool yarns into a finished work.


When people are planning their architectural designs for buildings, the concept of using glass structures surely appeals to them. In the plan of things, this kind of component is nowadays being added to a great extent, because glass structures add unique value to the total structure. In such scenarios, it would be best to give glass balustrades London the option to be put up in the balconies and outdoors. A balustrade is like a boundary wall, where the glass structure can be either put up without support or railing can be added to give support to the glass, the former being known as frameless balustrade. To get the best quality of such balustrades, buildings should be provided with genuine and strong glass items, especially by the established frameless glass balustrade suppliers in the market.
In the event of a decision to add glass balustrade London in the houses, people should check out the best options. They have to get the products from proper sources, where the items are genuine and strong. Printed varieties are also available, while there are railings and frameless varieties in the market. People can go for the ones, which are most suitable for the given space, getting the products from trusted sources.
When the balustrades are to be fitted in the house or buildings, the proper items should be selected. From the frameless glass balustrade suppliers, the items are required to be purchased, because people will then get the assurance of lasting and durable products. These structures have the charm to add great appeal to the decor. When purchased correctly, it would be great for people for enjoying the charm of these balustrades.
This entry was posted in Business, Glass, home improvement, News, Product, Shopping : Crafts : Glass and tagged frameless glass balustrade suppliers, glass balustrades London. Bookmark the permalink.


text:
A spiritualist medium holds a seance for a writer suffering from writers block but accidentally summons the spirit of his deceased
Solar rating: 3/5
Blithe Spirit (2020)
Two competing TV hosts are sent to a festive small town over Christmas. While pretending to get along for the sake of appearances,
A Bright & Merry Christmas (2020)
A young woman returns to her small hometown intent on killing her abusive father only to discover someone murdered him the day bef
Kate Pierce is reluctantly spending Christmas with her mom's new boyfriend and his son Jack. But when the North Pole and Christm
The Christmas Chronicles 2 (2020)
The story of America's first astronauts, known as the Mercury 7, told through archival news & radio reports, newly transferre
The Real Right Stuff (2020)
Girl SolarMovies > Just Added
Gone with the Wind: American classic in which a manipulative woman and a roguish man carry on a turbulent love affair in the Ameri
Gone with the Wind (1939)
Dragonfly: A grieving doctor is being contacted by his late wife through his patients near death experiences.
Dragonfly (2002)
Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer: Third grader Judy Moody sets out to have the most thrilling summer of her life.
Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer (2011)
Funny Games: Two seemingly well-educated young men, who call each other Paul and Peter among other names, approach a family on vac
Funny Games (1997)
Fanaa: Choices--to choose between right or wrong is simple, but what defines ones life is the decision between...
Fanaa (2006)
Sleep Tight: You wake day after day to the comfort and security of your home. But how safe is it really?
Sleep Tight (2011)
Breathless: A debut from Yang Ik Joon who wrote, directed, produced and played the lead role...A bitter and abusive debt collector
Breathless (2009)
My Sassy Girl (Yeopgijeogin geunyeo): Based on a series of true stories posted by Ho-sik Kim on the Internet describing his relati
My Sassy Girl (Yeopgijeogin geunyeo) (2001)
Timecrimes : A man accidentally gets into a time machine and travels back in time nearly an hour. Finding himself will be the firs
Timecrimes (2007)
La grande illusion: During 1st WW, two French officers are captured. Captain De Boeldieu is an aristocrat while Lieutenant Marecha
La grande illusion (1937)
After Life: After people die, they spend a week with counselors, also dead, who help them pick one memory, the only memory they ca
Bandslam: A new kid in town assembles a fledgling rock band -- together, they achieve their dreams and compete against the best in
Bandslam (2009)
Andrey Rublyov: Andreiv Rublev charts the life of the great icon painter through a turbulent period of 15th Century Russian histor
Andrey Rublyov (1970)
Airborne: Mitchell Goosen is sixteen/seventeen year old kid from California who loves to surf and roller blade...
Airborne (1993)
Dead Snow (D�d sn�): A ski vacation turns horrific for a group of teenagers, as they find themselves confronted by an unimaginable
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Lat sau san taam: A tough-as-nails cop teams up with an undercover agent to shut down a sinister mobster and his crew.
Lat sau san taam (1992)
The girl who kicked the hornets nest - (Luftslottet som spr�ngdes): No description
The girl who kicked the hornets nest - (Luftslottet som spr�ngdes) (2009)
Tomboy: Laure is moving into a new neighborhood with her little sister Jeanne. Because she is in need of new friends and does not
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Shutter: A young photographer and his girlfriend discover mysterious shadows in their photographs after a tragic accident. They so
Shutter (2004)
Le samouraï: Hitman Jef Costello is a perfectionist who always carefully plans his murders and who never gets caught. One nig
Le samouraï (1967)
Nouvelle-France: Prejudice, perfidy, love, and bravery in Qu�bec. In 1779, a priest on his deathbed receives a young woman. Flash
Nouvelle-France (2004)
Fame: A chronicle of the lives of several teenagers who attend a New York high school for students gifted in the performing arts.
Fame (1980)
Mar adentro: The real-life story of Spaniard Ramon Sampedro, who fought a 30 year campaign in favor of euthanasia and his own righ
Mar adentro (2004)
Winter Solstice: In this suburban drama, a widower (played by Anthony LaPaglia) confronts his older sons (played by Aaron Stanford
Winter Solstice (2004)
Ladybugs: To climb the corporate ladder to success, a guy agrees to coach the companys all girl soccer team with the help of his s


text:
How the Story of 'Carson Wentz and the Dutch Destroyer' Saved Max
By now, all fans of Carson Wentz know the touching story of his connection with Lukas Kusters, AKA, 'the Dutch Destroyer'. When Jerry Shott, father of Max Shott, saw that story, the impact it would have on their family became immeasurable.
On Monday, October 23, 2017, ESPN aired the story of the Dutch Destroyer prior to the Philadelphia Eagles' Monday Night Football game against the Washington Redskins. Longtime Eagles fan, Jerry Shott saw the piece and was immediately struck by it. At the time, Jerry's 4-year old son, Max, had been battling an illness with similar symptoms of what was described in the case of Lukas Kusters, before his diagnosis.
The Shotts acted immediately to seek help for Max. It was on October 30th that Maximus Shott was diagnosed with leukemia.
Max spent most of the next month in the hospital getting treatment that included: five emergency blood transfusions, a platelet transfusion the day he was brought in, two bone marrow tests, 12 spinal taps, and intense chemotherapy treatment.
Wentz would soon learn of Max's situation and sent him a signed ball, as he did for Lukas. Max's ball read: "Max, Best wishes. Keep the faith and God bless!" -- Carson Wentz, AO1
The early detection of Max's illness has helped. Just 30 days after his diagnosis, Max was in remission. The bone marrow that had been lost in his case was significantly less than most. Jerry said of Max's situation:
The doctor said if we wouldn't have gone when we did, because his hemoglobin count was so low, he probably wouldn't have made it...He would have went to sleep and never woke up again...If I hadn't seen that story, he probably wouldn't be here right now, and that's the truth.
Max will still receive chemotherapy through January 2021. While he's not completely out of the woods, the odds for a full recovery seem to at least be in his favor. He's recently been cleared to go back to school and is happy to do so.
The Eagles, having learned of Max's story early on, arranged for him and his family to be invited to a training camp practice this past August, along with Lukas Kusters' family, as each family was to be surprised with the other's presence.
After meeting Max's family, Rebecca Burmeff, mother of Lukas Kusters, said, "It just made me feel wonderful to know that Lukas isn't here with us anymore but he is still making an impact, and he's making a big one." Rebecca currently runs the 'Live Like Lukas Foundation', dedicated to helping families battling childhood cancer.
After the training camp practice, Wentz spent some time playing with Max on the field.
Wentz spoke about the experience of meeting Max:
It was cool. Seeing Max on the field was the best part, especially hearing how they said how sick he was and how he was struggling. I'm looking at this kid just running around, it's 100 degrees out and he's having the time of his life, doesn't want to go in, doesn't want to stop playing catch or kicking the ball, just to know how quick of a turnaround he made and how it really impacted him because they saw the story...And I know for Rebecca, it was emotional but inspiring at the same time, for the whole Kusters family, but it was just cool to kind of see God's hand in the middle of all of it, because I truly believe he's working through it. No matter how tough it is, God is doing something through it, and it's cool to see it firsthand like that.
Wentz will now wear a black bracelet that says "Team Maximus" and features a Batman symbol. It'll be worn on the same wrist as his "Dutch Destroyer" bracelet.
Filed Under: Eagles
Categories: Featured, Local News, Newsletter, Sports


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