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Koda Rohan - ghosts and samurai
I found Koda Rohan's short novel The Five-Storied Pagoda accessible* because I was able to slide it into a genre, stories-about-artists, that I understood. The Pagoda, Skull & Samurai collection includes two other stories where my luck was not so good. They are even easier to fit into genres, but ones about which I know nothing.
Encounter with a Skull (1890) is a Japanese ghost story, with a strong religious theme. The renunciation of the flesh literalized, maybe. There also seems to be some relation to idealized travel narratives like Basho's Narrow Road to the Interior. Parody? Homage? No relation at all?
The Bearded Samurai (1896, I think) is even trickier. The novella covers events before and after the 16th century battle of Nagashino, an important episode in the establishment of the shogunate. Fictional and historic characters are mixed together. Long scenes involve characters debating the value of life, or the importance of duty. It's sometimes a bit like the Bhagavad-Gita, actually, and also has some resemblance to Icelandic sagas, and to European medieval chronicles, like Froissart. It's true sources, the Japanese chronicles, the Tales of Heike, and 17th century stories of Ihara Saikaku, are completely unfamiliar to me.
In other words, I'm flailing. The Five-Storied Pagoda had something of the taste of a new discovery. The Bearded Samurai, on the other hand, is a Project for Future Research. Read one book, read another, read another. At some point, some light begins to shine through. There are no secret ways to learn new things - just try and try again. I'm ignorant, but curious.
* Also, pretty great.
Posted by Amateur Reader (Tom) at 1:48 PM 0 comments
Labels: ROHAN Koda
Koda Rohan - 19th century Japanese novelist
Not many 19th century Japanese writers have made their way into English. It takes Donald Keene 300 pages of Dawn to the West, his history of modern Japanese literature, to get to Soseki, the first writer with an international reputation. So, merits aside, there's plenty of writing in the 19th century. What are the merits?
Pagoda, Skull & Samurai is a collection of two novellas and a ghost story, all from the early 1890s, by Koda Rohan. All three stories are interesting in their way, but the novella The Five-Storied Pagoda (1891-2) is especially accessible. That does not sound like such high praise, I know. It's an acknowledgment of my limitations.
A Buddhist temple is going to build a five-storied pagoda, presumably much like the one to the left that I saw at the Senso-ji temple in Tokyo. Two master carpenters (and architects, really), the successful Genta and the pathetic Jubei, both apply to build the pagoda. The saintly abbot makes the two men figure out the problem for themselves.
Rohan was known, and apparently criticized, for stories like these, with real ethical dilemmas and no villains. I find - I think most modern readers will find - the story to be pleasingly complicated. What do we want with a villain?
Jubei the carpenter may be a fool but he is also, we discover, a real artist, creative and individualistic. It's this strain of the story that makes The Five-Storied Pagoda accessible. I'm used to reading stories about artists' problems - their role in the world, the sacrifices they make, or don't, for their creativity. The Five-Storied Pagoda puts these familiar themes in a new context. New to me, anyway.
Posted by Amateur Reader (Tom) at 10:32 AM 4 comments
Back from Japan
A complicated and rewarding trip. I have a few notes on Lady Isabella Bird and Koda Rohan, and maybe about a Kubuki performance, that should move me right back into 19th century books.
A couple of successes:
I never set foot in a restaurant I'd heard of, with the exception of two stops at Starbucks, and those were both instigated by Japanese people.
I never asked for a fork, although I used it if it was there.
A failure:
A month was not enough to straigten out basic greetings and farewells. Next time.
Jiro Osaragi - a writer who loved cats
Two curiosities about Jiro Osaragi.
I mentioned yesterday that Osaragi was a sort of a French Japanese writer. His museum contains his enormous archive of French historical documents, with a particularly rich store of material about the Dreyfus affair.
It turns out that during the 1930s Osaragi wrote a historical novel set during the French Third Republic, about the Dreyfus affair. He wrote a novel about France as a way to criticize the Japanese military government while evading the censorship. After the war, Osaragi wrote two more novels set around the same time, one about the corruption scandal surrounding France's attempt to build a Panama canal, the other about the 1870 Siege of Paris and the Paris Commune. I think that's it on the left.
I would love to read one of these novels.
Second curious fact about Jiro Osaragi: the man loved cats. At one point, when he moved to a larger house, he did not sell the old one, but gave it over to his eighteen cats. So he kept two households, one for himself, one for his cats.
The Jiro Osaragi Memorial Museum is full of, aside from his books and papers, his collection of cat-related stuff. Statues of cats, for example, including the waving cat figurines one sees at Chinese restaurants.
Also, paintings of cats. And books about cats. One of these is called Cats for Pleasure and Profit. The architectural details of the building, such as window frames, sometimes incorporate cat designs, although I could not get a good picture of any of them. No living cats, though.
Any cat lover visiting Yokohama would be a fool not to plunk down their 200 yen and see this museum.
Posted by Amateur Reader (Tom) at 8:54 AM 6 comments
Labels: cats, Japan, OSARAGI Jiro
The Jiro Osaragi Memorial Museum - who?
Last weekend I visited Yokohama, where I strolled into the Jiro Osaragi Memorial Museum and discovered a few surprises, even though almost every word was Japanese.
Almost – some were French. Osaragi was a 20th century Japanese writer who was immersed in French literature. Romain Rolland was a particular favorite, and Osaragi translated Rolland into Japanese. Maybe this is part of the reason I had never heard of Osaragi. Rolland's reputation is not so healthy now, either.
On one wall of the museum one can see Osaragi's complete sets of Hugo, Baudelaire, Merimeé, Zola, Flaubert, and others. Only two books in English, both by the author.
These two novels are The Journey and The Homecoming, as far as I can tell his only novels translated into English. The latter book has the distinction of being the first Japanese novel translated into English after World War II. Both novels are actually about the American occupation, so the interest at that time is understandable. Both are in print (both in Japanese and English) in Japan, at least, and both are available for a pittance, used, at Amazon and Powells.
The topical subjects make me curious about the quality of the novels. Are they imitative of styles that are now unfashionable? Are they period pieces, of interest only to students of that time and place? Or is this another fine writer crowded out of the foreign market by the bigger names? Kawabata, Soseki, Tanizaki, and so on. Quota filled. No room for Jiro Osaragi. He also wrote a series of best-selling samurai novels, so snobbery, maybe? More simply, is he worth reading?
He does seem to have a few more of his books available in French. That leads to one of the two most interesting things I learned in the museum, but I'll save those for tomorrow.
The museum contains Osaragi's archives, as well as his books and memorabilia. In America, this would all be boxed away in some big university library. In Japan, it's in a charming, elegant museum* that has its own tea shop.
* Best I could do for a link. Don't bother with the "Official Site" button - it's for - I don't know what. Yokohama tourism?
Labels: Japan, OSARAGI Jiro
If it doesn't, it's no arrow, it's no poem.
An arrow shot by an archer
or a poem made by a poet
should cut through your heart,
jolting the head.
If it doesn't, it's no arrow,
it's no poem.
The poet is Nannecoda, the time is the late 10th or early 11th century, the language is Telugu, I think, but Sanskrit scholar David Shulman uses this poem to describe classical Sanskrit literature. The poem can be found in this review of the Clay Sanskrit Library in The New Republic.
The Clay Sanskrit Library is an ongoing series of translations of classical Sanskrit literature, with 41 volumes published since they started three years ago. The two centers of the series are the great early epics, the Ramayana (which will fill 8 volumes) and the Mahabharata which requires 32. 32! There has never been a complete Mahabharata in English, and Shulman says that "the Indian tradition tells us that the text is so powerful, and potentially so destructive, that is positively dangerous to attempt to translate it, or even to read it, from beginning to end." They've got 13 volumes done now, so wish them luck.
Shulman could hardly be more enthusiastic about having these works available in English. He admits that most past English translations of classical Sanskrit books are terrible, sometimes close to unreadable (like "Shall I set in motion moist breezes by (means of ) cool lotus-leaf-fans which removed languor?"). He has some criticisms of the CSL series, but for the most part he thinks that English readers now have a way in to a difficult but rewarding literature.
The updated versions of the playwright Kalidasa seem like must-reads to me, especially Goethe's favorite The Recognition of Shakuntala. But there is also a long list of works that are new to me, and although Shulman does not literally recommend them all, his advice is to just dig in. He even recommends reading chronolgically, using Sheldon Pollock's The Language of the Gods in the World of Men as an overview. This is my kind of review - useful.
The Clay Sanskrit Library would make a great blog project, hint hint. Who wants to blog the Mahabharata? You will have at least one reader, I promise. This will not be my project, no no no, since I have publicly declared that I will read Asian literature non-neurotically. I'll just check the library, dip in, and see what's what.
I've read the William Buck adaptation of the Mahabharata and the R. K. Narayan Ramayana, both of which reduce the huge mass of poetic material to fast-moving stories in 300 pages or so of prose. These are both wonderful books. The Mahabharata is akin to, roughly, a Homeric epic, while the Ramayana, with its beloved monkey god Hanuman, is more of a mythological story. I can hardly imagine, though, what the originals must be like. The Clay Sanskrit Library Mahabharata, for example, will be somewhere around 10,000 pages in English.
A friend who grew up in India has told me that although everyone knows the stories of the two great epics, it is typically through comic books or movies. The comic books often emphasize specific ethical lessons. The sacred Bhagavad-Gita is actually an episode of the Mahabharata, although I don't think the entire epics are thought of as sacred books. Or are they?
My real question is, how do people actually read them? I know the stories already, so should I just pick a volume at random?
I described Shulman's article as essential. If you are at all curious about classical Sanskrit literature, it really is.
I was actually planning to make a point linked to what I have been discussing all week, the use of a literaty education. But I find myself more curious about these books than in the ideas they suggest to me. Maybe that's my point.
Labels: reading, Sanskrit
Dignified, ridiculous, and endlessly amusing
"So from the study of literature we learn that life is sad, comic, heroic, vicious, dignified, ridiculous, and endlessly amusing – sometimes by turns, sometimes all at once – but never more grotesquely amusing than when a supposedly great thinker comes along to insist that he has discovered and nattily formulated the single key to its understanding."
So says Joseph Epstein in the article I mentioned yesterday. This statement is obviously wrong, in the sense that by "we" he just means "I, and people like me." Kazuko Okakura and I suspect William Deresiewicz have learned rather different lessons. But I'm in Epstein's camp. Careful with those Big Ideas – you might hurt somebody.
Epstein points to Theodore Dreiser as a great writer who was a sponge for bad ideas. Balzac is an example from my own recent reading. These were writers of high intelligence who were suckers for nonsense ("a man who fell for Stalin and Hitler both," as Epstein describes Dreiser), yet they both wrote novels as great as anyone's, and the best parts of their books are full of well-observed details about human nature, characters worth knowing, themes that are banal on the surface but rather more meaningful deep down. They are not sugar-coated philosophy or symbolical representations of Big Ideas.
To use Epstein's examples, who wants to read Proust as a study of Bergson's ideas about the nature of time, or Thomas Mann as a study of the rise of fascism? If you're so interested, why not go straight to the source? And in fact almost no one, no non-professional, gives much of this sort of thing a second thought. But Proust's ideas about how people have different identities in different circumstances, or about snobbery, or jealousy – this is the good stuff, right? To the extent that there is wisdom here, though, one doesn't simply grasp the principle, incorporate it into one's life, and move on to the next idea. Or if that is what you do, let me know how that works.
I know that I am often too reluctant to pursue meaning, that I am too quick to turn an author's ideas into The Author's Ideas, allowing me to dismiss them. This, by the way, is one of my answers to the test question about my intellectual flaws. Fear of meaning. Let's drop the subject.
The positive side of all this is that I expect the process by which literature turns facts into ideas to work slowly. That's how it works for me, at least. This is part of my sanguinity about conditions at elite schools. Patience, Professor, patience. You've pointed the youngsters in the right direction. Check back in twenty years, or thirty.* Even if they are as resistant as I am, that may be long enough for some ideas to slip through.
* Epstein informs me that Willa Cather refused to allow school editions of her novels. She thought that high school students, at least, were too young for her books. Was she wrong?
Labels: education, EPSTEIN Joseph, intellectual flaws, reading
Badly conceived, ill-taught, under-confident
Let's take one more dig at William Deresiewicz, using a couple of lines of his mentioned by nicole of My Life in Books in a comment:
"I never learned that there are smart people who don't go to elite colleges, often precisely for reasons of class. I never learned that there are smart people who don't go to college at all."
I had omitted this quote because I thought it was encrusting the gilded lily with rubies. The Jane Austen specialist "never learned" that there are smart people who never go to college. I know that formal literary study often de-emphasizes biography, but this is ridiculous. Think of how much he would have learned from a Jane Austen biography, or even an encyclopedia article.*
No college for George Eliot, Joseph Conrad, or Ernest Hemingway. That's off the top of my head. Isaac Bashevis Singer got as far as dropping out of the Tachkemani Rabbinical Seminary in Warsaw. Then there are the bad students – Theodore Dreiser, Henry James. James did give Harvard Law School a try. A lot of writers fall into this category.
Joseph Epstein, for one. He's the product of an elite education, with an English degree from the University of Chicago. But in a talk published in the latest issue of The New Criterion ("A Literary Education"), he describes himself as the sort of student that teachers don't remember. No, not the sort of student – teachers he met later in life never remembered him. He was neither the "good student" who figures out what the teacher wants and gives it to him (that was me), nor was he the passionate student, excited to plunge into the subject, the sort of student he would later, when he was an English professor, especially value (also me, I hope).
Deresiewicz says that the greatest disadvantage of elite education is that it is "profoundly unintellectual," incapable of inspiring passion for ideas or helping students "ask the big questions." Let's see what happened to Joseph Epstein:
"I would say that the most significant course I took at the University of Chicago was a badly conceived one that was, in effect, a history of the development of the novel. This course was ill-taught by an under-confident instructor not yet thirty. The reading equivalent of a marathon, in ten weeks the course went – at the rate of a novel per week – from The Princess of Cleves through Ulysses, with stops along the way for Jane Austen, Stendhal, Dostoevsky, Flaubert, Mann, and Proust. What do you suppose a boy of twenty gets out of reading Swann's Way? My best guess is somewhere between 15 to 20 percent of what Proust put into it."
This is the class that did it for Epstein, that got him moving. He realized that:
"The endless details set out in novels, the thoughts of imaginary characters, the dramatization of large themes through carefully constructed plots, the portrayals of how the world works, really works – these were among the things that literature, carefully attended to, might one day help me to learn."
I was the good student, but I had almost exactly the same experience in a freshman English seminar, "Innovative Fiction," taught by an excellent but decidedly non-innovative novelist at Big State U.** We read Madame Bovary, and nothing penetrated, although I could give the teacher what he wanted. Next was A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and something began to rattle around in an empty part of my head. The Sound and the Fury finally did the trick. Borges, Nabokov, and Calvino came next, and I read them with growing enthusiasm. The mental category where I had put fiction was now much too small. Literature, it turned out, contained the world. The more I read then, the more I read now, the bigger that world seems to get.
Joseph Epstein is a superb essayist, first-rate short story writer, elegant raconteur, and fine critic. In his case (elite), and in mine (much less so), the university did what it was supposed to, but not in a way that was specifically predictable.
I don't want to hang too much on the Deresiewicz piece, which is obviously based on an idiosyncratic reaction to his students and his employer. I am more interested in his reaction to literature and what he thinks it can do, in the classroom or outside of it. His privileged students may not be getting everything out of Emerson that he demands from them. But I don't see how he is so sure that some version of Joseph Epstein is not sitting in his class, never raising her hand, but slowly realizing that there are some surprising things going on in these books. How else is a liberal education supposed to work?
More on Epstein tomorrow. His talk is available at the website of The New Criterion, but I believe it costs $3 or some such nonsense to read. I understand that libraries often subscribe to magazines.
* I've lapsed into open mockery, but I don't see how "he doesn't really mean what he's writing" is a good defense here. Or, here's another try, he learned that there "were" smart people who didn't go to college, but not that there "are" such people.
** If I ever relax my anonymity, I should write an appreciation of this teacher, and a couple of others.
Labels: education, EPSTEIN Joseph, reading
So alien was his experience to me, so unguessable his values.
There's this essay, from The American Scholar, that's been eating at me, and entertaining me. It's by William Deresiewicz, until very recently an English professor at Yale. Deresiewicz tells us that he finds, or found , it impossible to talk to his plumber. "So alien was his experience to me, so unguessable his values, so mysterious his very language," and so on.
That a guy named Deresiewicz can't talk to a plumber still cracks me up, but even funnier is that this isn't even the point of the essay. Because it's not Deresiewicz's fault that he's snobbish and anti-social, but rather the fault of his elite education.
That's precisely what he says. Elite education "makes you incapable of talking to people who aren't like you". Yeah, pal, you. "My education taught me to believe that people who didn't go to an Ivy League or equivalent school weren't worth talking to, regardless of their class." This message was "unmistakable." So if you – is it still you? – went to an Ivy and missed this message, you must have skipped too many classes. And your parents scrimped and saved and sacrificed so much so you could go there. For shame.
Deresiewicz advocates a return to a more humanistic model of education, although he gives few hints as to what that might look like. Based on his weird, gratuitous crack at the Yale economics and computer science departments, it must involve forcing students in the sciences and social sciences to take more humanities classes. Yet he doesn't seem to think that the literature students are any better.
Come to think of it, he was once one of them, and look how that turned out. One reason – possibly the main reason – I spend so much of my time reading literature is that it introduces me to a range of people that I will never meet, and, given that most of them "lived" in the distant past, never could. Viking poets, Japanese ghosts, Victorian lady travelers. I don't just meet them, but I see the most intimate details of their lives, even their thoughts. Deresiewicz points to a quotation from Terence as a humanistic ideal: "nothing human is alien to me." Easier said than done, and probably not quite true for anyone, but this is central to why I study literature, why my "Currently Reading" list is currently entirely about Japan, why I'm tempted to drop everything for classical Sanskrit literature.*
So what happened? I was thinking that maybe Deresiewicz should spend some time with the farmers and carpenters in Adam Bede. JD at What Do I Know?, who pointed me towards this essay, recommends Rabelais, a powerful cure for many ills. But I don't think they will work here. Deresiewicz is the author of one scholarly book, titled Jane Austen and the Romantic Poets. That's right. He's a Wordsworth expert! He has read and reread "Michael" and "Resolution and Independence" and they were useless to him. His education was just that damaging. William and Dorothy had no problem talking to that leech gatherer, although come to think of it he was a voluble fellow, and now I realize that the fault may lie with the shy plumber.
In Mansfield Park, a girl from a poor family is taken in by her rich relations. Fanny is abused and ignored, and her snobby cousins sometimes have trouble knowing how to talk to her. A key sequence of the novel is when Fanny returns to her poor family after many years and finds herself horrified by the noise and disorder and bad behavior. In her most virtuous act, Fanny manages to take one of her younger sisters with her when she returns to the rich family. Deresiewicz is an expert on this novel, too.
Some of this may be unfair, but Deresiewicz specifically criticizes his Yale students for failing to recognize the useful lessons contained in literature. For example, they can't see why Emerson, in his essay on friendship, puts a high value on solitude. Youth, it turns out, is callow. I wonder if Deresiewicz is akin to Okakura here. If one reads that big shelf of books and is still self-absorbed, ambitious, and narrow, then something went wrong, he thinks.
Joseph Epstein has written (I'm paraphrasing) that the only reason to go to an Ivy League school is so you don't spend the rest of your life blaming your failures on not having gone to an Ivy. His point, or at least the part not about envy and resentment, is really very simple – that a good education is available at lots of schools – and I once thought it was clever and wise. Yet here I find a fellow who actually blames his failures, and those of many others, on having gone to an Ivy. Joe, you let me down.
Tomorrow, I'll give Epstein a chance to redeem himself.
The essay was published recently in The American Scholar. I'm not convinced that it's worth reading – the closer I looked at it, and the more I thought about it, the less logical its arguments seemed – but some smart people think otherwise, it does contain a number of points that I have ignored, and it's pretty short.**
* For good reason – come back later in the week.
** There's the possibility that this is all some sort of Swiftian provocation, by which I mean, all made up. I'm not so good at recognizing those.
Labels: education, reading, snobbery
Great art is that before which we long to die.
"The inros, the netsukes, the sword-guards, and the delightful lacquer-work articles of the period, were playthings, and as such no embodiment of national fervour, in which all true art exists. Great art is that before which we long to die. But the art of the late Tokugawa period only allowed a man to dwell in the delights of fancy."
Kakuzo Okakura, The Ideals of the East (1904), Stone Bridge Press, p. 121.
Toss in, with the lacquer boxes and inros, the woodblock prints of Hiroshige, Hokusai, and others. I left out that part of the quotaton - it was a bit too wordy.
Okakura is presenting us with a Buddhist version of the sublime, art as annihilation, art as something bigger than we are, something that could crush us. That line about "national fervour" has an unpleasant odor, but it's a logical extension of the idea: Real art, great art, is important. Important!
I should try to reword Okakura's passage into its exact opposite, then adopt it as my motto. Great art is that before which we long to live. Inros and lacquer boxes, Hokusai and Hiroshige, are playthings, and embodiments of individual creativity, in which all true art exists.
The delights of fancy are exactly what I want from art. Surely there is room for more, though. This week I will try, probably indirectly, and time permitting, to challenge myself a little. Perhaps I'm too suspicious of the sublime, too sceptical of ideas. Let's think about it.
Inros, if you don't know, are Japanese lacquer medicine cases, hung at the waist by a sort of button, the netsuke. I know them from the collection on the second floor of the Chicago Field Museum, which contains nothing but wonder and delight. Cats and frogs, children and fat little monks, the rabbit in the moon - lovely things. My favorite objects in that museum, way better than Sue the T. Rex.
Okakura was the crucial link, for decades, between Japanese and American artists and intellectuals. He crossed paths with everyone. His story, very much worth knowing, is told in Christopher Benfey's The Great Wave, where Okakura appears in many chapters.
The Ideals of the East, written in English, was an influential account of Asian and Japanese art history and aesthetics, mostly traced through the international flow of ideas about Buddhism. It is probably only worth reading for people with a particular interest in Japanese aesthetics, or in the history of the exchange of ideas between the East and West.
Labels: Japan, OKAKURA Kazuko, reading
What is poetry for, how does poetry work, why does poetry bother
This week I've looked at:
A poem written by a Japanese empress, now used as a fortune;*
A poem with serious philosophical content that also - actually, mostly - functions as a pedagogical syllabary;
A poem about painting that is itself a sort of painting;
A poem in Chinese characters that is in some sense mainly about those characters;
Poems improvised and recited by a murderous Viking at key moments in his life.
That last one is not quite the swerve that it might seem. Each of these examples is a challenge to my idea of what a poem is, how a poem is used, what is the point of the exercise. I could add more examples, some of which I have mentioned in recent weeks - Japanese poetry anthologies on long, decorated scrolls, art objects themselves. Or Arabic poems with calligraphy so abstract that the original words are nearly lost.
I see myself sitting in my armchair, leafing through an issue of Poetry, or reading through a selected poems of one famous poet or another, or trying to crack** the poems tucked away in some random corner of The New Republic or The New Yorker. Yes, this one's very nice; no, I don't really get that one. What possible relationship can there be between what I do and 1,000-year-old scrolls inscribed with the complete results of Heian-era poetry contests?
Very little, frankly. An arabesque, an untranslated piece of calligraphy, signify to me only as visual art, even if there is an added charge in the knowledge that I'm looking at - although in no way reading - a poem. George Herbert's altar poem and "Easter Wings", or Apollinaire's Calligrammes, are attempts at bringing some visual interest to poetry, but I don't recommend putting one on the wall next to your Japanese wall hanging. The contrast will not help you appreciate Apollinaire, unless you began by translating the Apollinaire into Japanese characters.***
Songs are the one area for most of us, certainly for me, where poetry moves off the page somehow. Many of the greatest German poems, by Goethe and Heine and others, are now irrevocably tied to Schubert and Schumann and Wolf, at least for listeners with some German. English literature has not been so lucky, the lieder tradition less successful. (Recommendations very welcome here).
So I mostly, almost always, read better poems than I hear. Cole Porter's best lyrics are better poems than many of William Wordsworth's poems, but they are sure not better than Wordsworth's best. Lil' Wayne sometimes, when not rapping about pointless garbage, puts together a long string of slant rhymes that are remarkable things. But heck if I'm going to sit in that armchair reading a book of Lil' Wayne lyrics.
The world is always bigger than I think it is.
* My luck was quite good today. The fortune I bought at the Tsuru-ga-oka Hachiman-gu Shrine in Kamakura tells me that my marriage will soon be settled, if I listen to advice, but that I'll have a slight illness. Overall, pretty good news.
** Like a nut, or a safe.
*** If I were a better blogger, I would find links to some examples. Poems about a cat that look like a cat, that sort of thing.
Labels: Japan, reading
Egil: the poet as sociopath
The hero, or whatever he is, of the Icelandic Egil's Saga (1230?), is a poet, of improvised pieces, mostly. Here's how the muse strikes Egil after one of his many pointless revenge killings:
Now the bitter bearer
Of the blazing war-blade
Has taken ten
Of my trusted followers:
But my salmon-spear
Settled the score
When I cast it through
The curved ribs of Ketil.
Yes, I know, it's difficult to tear oneself away from the formal beauty and stirring sentiments found in this poem. Please, wipe away your tears so I can continue.
Egil is violent even for a Viking. He commits his first murder when he is six years old, because he lost a wrestling match. Yet he is also a poet. Egil even saves his life at one point by writing a long praise-song for a King who plans to execute him:
The ravens dinned
At this red fare,
Blood on the wind,
Death in the air;
The Scotsmen's foes
Fed wolves their meat,
Death ends their woes
As eagles eat.
That's just a little taste of a poem that runs four pages. The King - obviously - gives Egil his freedom.
Ah, poetry, beautiful poetry. I may be exaggerating certain propensities of Egil's poetry through selective quotation, but just barely.
These admirable translations are from the Penguin edition, Hermann Palsson and Paul Edwards the translators.
Labels: Icelandic sagas
A poem about painting; a poem about poetry
Two Japanese poems.
The first, above, is a 17th century "poem about painting". The characters shrink dramatically after the first four (you can see a hint of that if you enlarge the photo), and then shrink again halfway down the scroll. Some sort of orthographic effect.
The second, shot from the head down, is also from the 17th century. The poem consists of exactly 1,000 Chinese characters, none repeated.
Chinese influence on Japanese art ebbed and flowed. These scrolls date from a period of flow, a torrent. Both are in the Tokyo National Museum, amidst a heap of treasures. I wish I knew how to photograph the paper used for some of the 1,000-year-old calligraphy, for example, a mix of bamboo and linen, dyed indigo, with fleck of gold leaf mixed in. Shockingly beautiful. Imagine reading a book handwritten on paper like that. Imagine the $10,000 the book would cost you.
That piece ought to be here, but I can't find it. So many other nice things to see, though, that you might not care.
Lady Isabella Bird translates a Japanese children's poem
Colour and perfume vanish away.
What can be lasting in this world?
To-day disappears in the abyss of nothingness;
It is but the passing image of a dream, and causes only a slight trouble.
from Lady Isabella Bird, Unbeaten Tracks in Japan (1880), Letter 10.
Bird notes that this poem, memorized by all of the Japanese schoolchildren, has some resemblance to Ecclesiastes, and "is a dismal ditty for young children to learn."
The curious thing is that the poem is actually mnemonic device. It contains all 50 or so Japanese syllables. Ka, ki, ku, ke, ko, and so on. That's why all the children know it, like the ABC song.
The wiki for the hiragana alphabet has the Japanese version (three quarters down). Each syllable is used only once, so it's a real trick poem. Wiki claims that the poem dates back to the 10th century, which is either preposterous or amazing. Citation, please.
A random poem by the Empress Shokun
The Meiji Emperor of Japan, who ruled 1868 to 1912, wrote, I am told, 100,000 poems, all in the 31 syllable waka form. At the Meiji shrine, built in his honor in 1920, one can buy one of his poems for 100 yen, less than a dollar. Just drop a coin in the slotted box, then take a random poem from the hole on the right.
Or one can buy a poem written by his wife, the Empress Shoken, at the charm shop. She had more to do, apparently, and only wrote 30,000 waka. Shake the can until a chopstick comes out, then show the number on the stick to the kimono-clad attendant so she can find the correct poem. It should be obvious that there are not 100,000 poems in that box, or 30,000 chopsticks in the shaker. Someone has edited the corpus down a bit.
Here's the Empress's poem that I bought:
If we but recall
That we may go astray,
We shall be most careful
In every trifling act.
Is this true? I have doubts. There are plenty of trifling acts in our lives which don't deserve that much care. Moderation in small things, right? Maybe I shouldn't take this so literally.
At a different shrine, I bought a random fortune (a bad one), also for 100 yen. The bad fortune was pretty accurate; I haven't quite fit Empress Shoken's poem into my life yet.
Here's a glimpse of the Meiji shrine, tucked away in a cool, lovely forest, surrounded on all sides by shopping, shopping, shopping. If you have the proper equipment, you may be able to see the two butterflies that danced around the whole time I was there - see, over the railing on the right.
Here they are, by the steps now:
Labels: Japan, politicians
A Tokyo ragbag
Let's see. What's in MyPictures. Hmm, hmm.
Is this guy depressed because he couldn't find the book he wanted, or is he groaning from the weight of books in his backpack? Or does he look like this all the time?
This I'd never seen before. A bookstore with so many books that it has shelves in the street. There's an awning and a curtain, nothing else.
Some of the bookshops also sell Japanese prints, original and otherwise. Notice how the Amateur Photographer artfully preserves his anonymity by not photographing his reflection.
Now this seems too be a giant loaf of bread baked by ma femme just before I left for Japan. Why do I have this photo with me? Why didn't I bring any slices with me?
I need to get out and take some more photos of Tokyo.
Labels: bookstores, bread, Japan
Tokyo's Jimbo-chi bookshops
A short stretch of the Jimbo-chi neighborhood in Tokyo is crammed with bookshops, dozens of them, one after another. They mostly look like the one to the left, except that they do not all have the cartoon samurai statue. They did have - I swear, every one of them - the outdoor browser. Almost every book in almost every shop is in Japanese, so these shops were not much use to me, aside from the pleasing thoughts about humanity a crowded book shop can engender. I also like that, very thoughtfully, they are all on one side of a busy street.
The Subun-so shop specialized in foreign language books - English, overwhelmingly, and German and French. It was not much use to me either - see right. First editions and gigantic multivolume sets. The Centennial Nathaniel Hawthorne in twenty thick volumes, that sort of thing. Hume's History of England in six volumes - that one's bottom center in the photo. Those are not going home with me.
Now here's a view of books you don't get very often.
Keenly aware of the problems of body as well as mind, a similarly packed stretch of the same street is devoted to sporting goods stores. Snowboarding equipment, mostly. And apparently if I had turned there rather than here, I would have found Tokyo's musical instrument shops. The books, violins, and snowboards are all within a half mile of each other, maybe less.
Labels: bookstores, Japan
A dedicated reader
This little fellow, who loves books so much* that he reads while hauling firewood, is standing outside of the Yaesu Book Center, eight floors of books, in downtown Tokyo.
I'll bet some sort of story is attached to this statue. I'll bet it's literally attached, on that plaque at his feet. Anyone have a guess about what the story might be?
* Unless the book is "How to Get a Job that Does Not Require Hauling Wood" - then his motivation may be something other than love of reading.
What to do with your worn out but treasured Japanese poetry anthology scroll
Chop off the good bits and hang them on the wall. This was once a piece of a long scroll dating from the 16th century, and is now a wall-hanging.
It is still hard for me to comprehend that those few characters to the left and right of the deer make an entire poem.
Click the picture for a better view. I didn't say great, I said better.
Another Japanese poetry anthology I would like to read
A 16th century Japanese poetry anthology, a 17 meter long scroll. Only about 8 meters are on display. Click to enlarge; oh yes, do.
Picture taken in a slow-moving crowd at the Tokyo National Museum.
So alien was his experience to me, so unguessable ...
What is poetry for, how does poetry work, why does...
Lady Isabella Bird translates a Japanese children'...
What to do with your worn out but treasured Japane...
Another Japanese poetry anthology I would like to ...


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Lydgate Court is located on Abbots Gate, which is situated within easy reach of the town centre and all local amenities. The development is very secure making it perfect for those people wanting to be able to leave their home for periods of time whilst perhaps travelling and enjoying their retirement. The A14 can be easily accessed which leads to Ipswich, Cambridge and London via the M11.
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Double glazed window. Radiator. TV point and a telephone point.
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text:
Major privatisations deliver $4.5 billion NSW budget surplus
By Sean Nicholls
Updated June 20, 2017 — 1.22am first published at 12.05am
Privatisations have supercharged NSW finances, with Treasurer Dominic Perrottet set to announce an expected surplus of $4.5 billion for 2016-17 when he delivers his first budget on Tuesday.
The surplus is $500 million higher than forecast in the December half yearly review, which predicted a 2016-17 surplus of $4 billion, thanks to $488.9 million in stamp duty from the partial privatisation of electricity "poles and wires" company Ausgrid.
Since then the 99-year lease of 50.4 per cent of electricity distributor Endeavour Energy and to a lesser extent the 35-year lease of the Land and Property Information service have delivered stamp duty receipts worth more than $700 million.
Mr Perrottet will announce that NSW is on track to become the first state with a net worth of a quarter of a trillion dollars.
Treasurer Dominic Perrottet on the eve of delivering his first budget. Credit:Jessica Hromas
He will also say that net debt is the best result since records began in 1996-97 and the lowest in Australia.
"This budget realises the rewards of our poles and wires reforms and invests them back into our local communities with record investments in social infrastructure," Mr Perrottet said.
This meant the government was "delivering exactly what we promised we would".
"Our strong financial and economic management means we can meet the needs of today while building for the future," he said.
NSW Treasurer Dominic Perrottet wants sweeping changes to the way the GST is shared between the states. Credit:Janie Barrett
On Monday, the government announced the budget will feature an extra $2.2 billion for 123 new and upgraded schools over the next five years to address a surge in enrolments.
It has also pledged $632 million for an upgrade to Campbelltown Hospital, $500 million for an upgrade of Tweed Hospital and $550 million to upgrade Nepean Hospital.
The budget will also contain $244 million for the Art Gallery of NSW's Sydney Modern expansion, $40 million in planning money for the F6, M9 and M12 motorways and $123 million to revitalise neighbourhoods along Parramatta Road.
The result also comes amid a surge in stamp duty receipts from property transfers in the booming Sydney property market.
With a nod to this, the budget will contain measures to improve housing affordability – an issue Premier Gladys Berejiklian pledged to make a priority upon taking the job in January.
From July 1, first home buyers of existing and new properties costing up to $650,000 will be exempt from paying stamp duty from July 1 – up from $550,000 and adding existing homes to the scheme.
Buyers of first homes worth between $650,000 and $800,000 will receive stamp duty discounts – up from between $550,000 and $650,000 and again reintroducing existing homes to the scheme.
To help fund the changes, the stamp duty surcharge for foreign investors will be doubled to 8 per cent and the land tax surcharge lifted from 0.75 per cent to 2 per cent.
Mr Perrottet will say in his speech to Parliament that the budget is "our growth contract with the people of NSW – that while we will grow bigger, we will also grow better, with the services and infrastructure we need".
But on Monday shadow treasurer Ryan Park predicted that the budget would be "a little bit like the Liberal Party itself: big on promises, very small on reality".
He described the stamp duty reforms as "too little, too late".
Sean Nicholls is the State Political Editor of The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via Twitter or email.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Draw a motor scooter for me. It needs to be modern but ...it look a bit more modern. If you can put the Royal Enfield logo on it as well would be cool Royal Enfield Dreamliner. This is for a uni project just to illustrate a concept. It will use a Royal Enfield single engine and have the distinctive "thump thump" sound their motorbikes have.


text:
Q: find the multiplicative factor for get a specific amount of sum on sin i am not a math guru so please sorry if this is a silly question. i'm not sure on how to latexize this question so i've done a spreadsheets with openoffice (and i'm interest also in the best way to write it in latex).
i want to find a multiplicative factor \beta to get a certain sin sum in n step. like this: find beta for
$$\sum_{\substack{0\le \theta\le \Pi}} \beta sin(x)$$
if theta goes from 0 to Pi in n step. say, for example if beta = 11, n = 10 so

the sum is 62.3841
now, if i have n step and i want the sum is alpha .. how to calculate beta?

A: I suggest $$\beta=\frac{\alpha}{\sum \sin x}.$$

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


With no Top 25 teams in action on Friday, it offers the chance to highlight some of the top players from some of the smaller schools in the college hoops universe.
One such player is Lehigh's CJ McCollum, a 6'3" sophomore guard who averages 22.8 points per game for the Mountain Hawks, reigning champions of the Patriot League.
On Friday, McCollum threw down 35 points in a 91-78 win at Marist, hitting 10-of-20 shots from the field including 6-of-13 three-pointers and 9-of-10 free throws. He added nine rebounds, three assists and six steals as Lehigh evened its non-conference record at 5-5. The 35 wasn't even a season high for McCollum, who had 42 points in a loss to Kent State back in November.
NOTABLE: Not exactly small schools, Iowa State and Michigan may soon be knocking on the Top 25 door. The Cyclones can count on the services of Scott Christopherson, a transfer from Marquette who redshirted the 08-09 season, averaged 7.9 points per game in 09-10 and is up to 16.8 this season. In their 75-72 win over Iowa Friday night, Christopherson scored a career-high 30 points, which included seven three-pointers. The win pushed the Cyclones to an 8-2 mark.
In Michigan, sophomore point guard Darius Morris continues to provide offense and distribution. The Wolverines improved to 7-2 with a 75-64 win over Utah in which Morris scored 19 points and dished out 10 assists.


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text:
TV & Movie reviews Trailers Popular By Name
Rambo V starts filming and is apparently a western
2018-10-03 10:15:00by Matthew Razak
This franchise is so weird
First Blood was not a movie meant to have four sequels. The original Rambo movie was more of a character study with a heavy focus on PTSD, America after the war, and a striking performance from Stallone. Then the rest of the movies happened and back in 2008 it all led to this. And now, after ten years of development hell, it looks like where it will finally lead to is... a western?
Tonight we start filming�!
A post shared by Sly Stallone (@officialslystallone) on Oct 2, 2018 at 10:01am PDT
... Comes a Horseman Wild and Free. @rambomovie #rambo5
That's the first image of Rambo V, a movie we know next to nothing about other than Rambo is going to be looking for the daughter of a friend who has been kidnapped by the Mexican cartel.
Perpetual second unit director Adrian Grunberg is directing so at least we'll know the establishing shots will be fantastic, but what I'm really hoping is that Stallone has learned from Creed that grounding his characters is far better than turning them into overblown parodies of themselves. I'd love for this to be an introspective western (with blood and gore, of course) that turns Rambo back into an actual character. Stallone has proven he's got the acting chops when he's playing characters that are basically him so my fingers are crossed we get more of a True Grit than a Last Stand.
Matthew RazakEditor-in-Chief gamer profile
Also on Destructoid: Rambo V (0) From our database:
Filed under... #Action #Flixist #sequel


text:
Wakeham is an English surname. Notable people with the surname include:

 Bill Wakeham (born 1944), British chemical engineer
 John Wakeham (born 1932), British businessman and politician
 Tony Wakeham, Canadian politician

English toponymic surnames
Surnames of English origin
English-language surnames

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
A Death In Cryptoland
About the podcast A Death In Cryptoland
When the young CEO of Canada's largest cryptocurrency exchange is reported to have died while honeymooning in India, it sets off a cataclysmic chain of events that would leave about 76,000 people out of a quarter of a billion dollars and a trail of conspiracy theories around whether Gerald Cotten is dead or alive. A Death in Cryptoland is an original podcast series about a crypto-tycoon, his secret past, his sudden demise, and an online sleuth's obsession to unravel the truth behind QuadrigaCX. Hosted by Takara Small.
The podcast A Death In Cryptoland (www.cbc.ca/podcasts) is embedded on this page from an open RSS feed. All files, descriptions, artwork and other metadata from the RSS-feed is the property of the podcast owner and not affiliated with or validated by Podplay.
Episode 6: The End Game
The revelation that Gerry's house of cards had been falling apart — just as he's reported dead in India — leaves people wondering: is this an exit scheme? Could Gerry still be alive? From buying a death certificate to Haitian zombie powder, people talk about the conspiracy theories.
Episode 5: Where's the Money Gerry?
As financial investigators struggle to find any of the missing quarter of a billion dollars, they begin to make some bizarre discoveries around how the exchange had operated — finding funny business from the very start.
Episode 4: Voleur
Despite Michael Patryn's denials that he's a fraudster named Omar Dhanani, customers' aren't buying it. They're demanding proof. A mugshot. A secret service agent, a felon-turned podcaster, and a childhood friend tell the story of Omar, the man Michael insists he's not.
Episode 3: Cracks in the Empire
Gerald Cotten and his business partner, Michael Patryn, launch QuadrigaCX on Boxing Day, 2013. There's hype in the budding Bitcoin community and the small exchange seems to have a meteoric rise. But cracks begin to appear, problems with the banks, a software bug, and delays in paying back customers. Meanwhile, online rumours of a criminal past dog Michael Patryn.
Episode 2: Hunting Ghosts
QuadrigaCX collapses and there's widespread panic. An online sleuth searches for answers through a tangle of websites, hidden identities and a trail of emails. He uncovers a pattern of deception that predates his exchange, linking Gerry to a shadowy underworld of fraudsters.
Episode 1: The Body
Upon checking into a luxury resort in India, Gerald Cotten complains to staff he's feeling ill. He and his wife are taken to a hospital and within 24 hours the young CEO is declared dead. A month passes before word gets out to customers that QuadrigaCX's CEO is gone — along with their money.
A Death In Cryptoland: Trailer
When news spread that Gerald Cotten, CEO of QuadrigaCX, died on his honeymoon in India — and had been dead for a month — it set off a series of events that shook the cryptocurrency world. A quarter of a billion dollars worth of customer funds was gone. Two years on, conspiracy theories persist, leaving many asking, is he really dead? A Death in Cryptoland launches May 25.


text:
Alfons Vila i Franquesa (Sant Martí de Maldà, 19 de novembre de 1897 - Cuernavaca, 28 d'agost de 1967),
caricaturista i dibuixant, va ser conegut com a Shum, Joan Baptista Acher, El Poeta o L'artista de les mans trencades. La seva militància anarquista li va suposar diversos empresonaments, així com l'exili al final de la Guerra Civil.

Publicà a Solidaridad Obrera, Justícia Social, La Campana de Gràcia, L'Opinió, La Humanitat, Rambla, L'Esquella de la Torratxa, Papitu, o Visca!, entre d'altres.

L'octubre de 1922 fou condemnat a mort per la seva implicació en un intent d'atemptat contra el general Martínez Anido. i per l'explosió que es va produir mentre manipulaven uns artefactes, que va causar la destrucció de l'edifici i la mort de cinc persones al carrer Toledo de Barcelona. La condemna va despertar una campanya de solidaritat demanant l'abolició de la pena capital, en la que participaren personalitats tan destacades com Màxim Gorki, Errico Malatesta, Santiago Ramon y Cajal, Valle-Inclán i sobretot l'escriptora Concha Espina, qui demanà personalment l'indult al directori militar. La campanya també va incloure una exposició monogràfica dels seus dibuixos a l'Ateneu Enciclopèdic Popular. Finalment es va aconseguir la commutació de la pena per cadena perpètua, i fou amnistiat l'any 1931, sent Victoria Kent directora general de presons de la República.

L'any 1934 fou nomenat vocal de la Junta de Museus de Barcelona. Formà part del Grup dels Sis junt amb Helios Gómez, Alfred Pascual i Benigani, Marcel·lí Porta i Fernanda, Lluís Elias i Bracons i Josep Bartolí i Guiu i va participar en el Sindicat de Dibuixants Professionals.

Combaté al front durant la Guerra Civil i s'exilià a França al final del conflicte. Posteriorment, va viure a la República Dominicana, Cuba, els Estats Units i finalment a Cuernavaca, Mèxic, on va morir.

L'estudi Shum. El dibuixant anarquista conté textos de Josep Maria Cadena, Lluís Solà i Jaume Capdevila en art Kap. A través seu es pot reconstruir. La peculiar peripècia vital del nostre home que inclou una carrera tan breu com catastròfica en l'anarquisme barceloní, seguida de la fugida d'Espanya i del seu pas per diferents països fins a recalar a Mèxic, on va morir.

Bibliografia
 DD.AA. Shum. El dibuixant anarquista, Diminuta, Barcelona, 2019. .

Referències

Caricaturistes catalans
Artistes anarquistes
Sant Martí de Riucorb
Exiliats del franquisme a França
Morts a Cuernavaca
Exiliats del franquisme catalans
Polítics de l'Urgell
Anarquistes catalans del sud
Dibuixants catalans del sud contemporanis


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It emerged when the long-dominant became factionalized around 1824. He enacted the Spoils System which did not guarantee the best leadership, and was morally corrupt. The best example of this is the vetoing of the charter of the Bank of the United States. Both mens ideas cause a state of relative economic turmoil, however each was generally looking out for the common man. In the age of Jackson, a candidate was chosen by a nominating convention and the President and Vice-President ran for their offices separately. These events are having a serious impact on our entire nation and it is crucial that we have an intelligent, experienced, and dedicated group of individuals to lead our nation.
For instance, they believed that public schools restricted individual liberty by interfering with parental responsibility and undermined freedom of religion by replacing church schools. In this essay, I argue that there have been quasi-democratic elements even within the Chinese Communist tradition. However, with the election of Andrew Jackson in 1828, a new form of democracy, differentiating in multiply ways to the Jeffersonian America, engulfed the American political and social scene. Not only it is often being misused deliberately or not by politicians, mass media and public, political scientists too cannot find agreement on what democracy actually is. While Jacksonian Democrats may have been hypocritical calling themselves the guardians of the Constitution, political democracy, individual liberty and equal economic activity, they did do many things that encouraged each of these things.
But, within that appeasement was peace. After he study law in North Carolina, Jackson moved to Nashville, Tennessee. This implies that Americans were egalitarian as they accepted and respected each other at these barbecues, despite gender or race. New York: Oxford University Press. Jacksonian Democrats considered themselves the guardians of individual liberty, but they should have really called themselves the guardians of the individual liberty for white American men.
By this he meant that for all its flaws, elections where governments are elected through votings generally result in functional and stable societies. Jackson saw no reason not to use force to achieve his goals exemplified in his handling of the Nullification Crisis of 1832, with the passing of the force act to force any law necessary Brinkley, Alan, and Davis Dyer. There are even some documents that describe modern politics in the American society to be comparable to poking holes in whichever ideal notions about Jacksonian Democracy. In the light of the following documents and your knowledge of the 1820s and 1830s. Unlike previous presidents, Andrew Jackson represented the common men. By the end of it, the electorate had increased hugely and America was probably one of the most democratic countries in the world.
Jackson supported both, the agrarian society and the common man. During this period universal white male suffrage took place and was the first step towards the revolution of the common man in politics. The journey of these Indians was very dangerous and many died along the way. The citizens left with bank notes, were in other words, left with. Court case in which Ogden was granted a steamboat monopoly by New York and federal government gave Gibbons right to operate one of his own. At this time, the members of the party basically had one overwhelmingly large task on their minds: equal protection and equal benefits to all white male citizens and also, to prevent favoritism towards a specific region or class. Ancient Greece is perhaps viewed as the epithet of the origin of democracy; a form of governance where the mastership of the people is an absolute authority.
These people, even the most assimilated Cherokee tribe, were moved from their land without a say in the matter. Jackson forced thousands of Native Americans to march from Georgia to Oklahoma on the infamous Trail of Tears with his Indian Removal Act, thus showing his hatred for the Native Americans Brands, H. Followers of a belief which stressed self-reliance, self- culture, self-discipline, and that knowledge transcends instead of coming by reason. Canada is a democratic government where Canadian citizens should be able to elect senators. Favorable economic conditions created by Jackson directly supported a switch to cash-crop agriculture and capitalist manufacturing while hurting merchant-based trading.
This decision supports the Jacksonian Democracy ideas that the rights of the community are more important than the rights of business H. While Jacksonians have much correct in their view of themselves as guardians of political democracy, equal economic opportunity and individual liberty, they were often more important in developing these concepts than protecting them. The period saw an increase in voter participation, nominating committees replaced caucuses, and electors began to be popularly elected. This was not the last time South Carolina would be ready and willing to deny enforcement of any federal law or the upholding of any constitutional right that negatively affected their state, the next issue being slaveholding-related, and only 2 years after the Nullification Crisis Doc. Make sure to know the important groups affected and the approximate time in which it took place, particularly amendments or laws associated with these expansions. Since people other than the common controlled the bank, the Democratic Jacksonians disapproved of this.
Each has its own strengths and weaknesses; yet, democracy 's effectiveness outweighs its deficiencies. Shifting roles in society, young women as well as children worked and lived at factories, during which they were overworked and underpaid. This therefore implies that the people themselves, although appeared to have wanted equality, did not wish to demonstrate it themselves. These characteristics of the Jacksonian Era brought stability and set a foundation for which its people could start reform movements. All nations at all times and in all places have been subject to different conditions, and thus all populations have been subject to different needs and desires.
During the Jacksonian Revolution, an effective foundation of democracy for the common people was formed. Yet, with a good example like the following could be a helpful resort. The Revolutionary War that soon followed, was very bloody in the rather wild and poor country where they lived, and Jackson at 13 years, joined a regiment. This movement was suppose to be a democratic movement to enforce powerful ideals but of course only for white men. This system denies able minded people the right to contribute and instead replaces them with people who have no right being in government at all. The status of women's rights in the era termed Jacksonian Democracy was not impressive. During this time, Jackson, who got elected in 1828, brought about many changes in the government.


text:
Department of Environmental & Biosystems Engineering
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Mechanization, Power and Machinery Engineering
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PhD IN ENVIRONMENTAL AND BIOSYSTEMS ENGINEERING
Degree Code: F80
Degree Name: PhD IN ENVIRONMENTAL AND BIOSYSTEMS ENGINEERING
Degree Type: PH.D
Degree Duration:
Degree Description: Click to View
Degree Courses: View
DEGREE REGULATIONS
Admission Requirements View Details
The common regulations of the Doctor of Philosophy Degrees in all Schools/Faculties of the University of Nairobi apply. However, admission into any PhD programme in the School of Engineering shall be open to holders of Master of Science degree in the respective field of specialization, either from the University of Nairobi or other Universities recognized by the Senate of the University of Nairobi. In addition, the applicants should submit a research proposal showing that they are capable of carrying out original research.
Application for Admission View Details
The candidate shall obtain an official application form from the Board of Postgraduate Studies (BPS) office situated at the Main Campus of the University (ground floor of Gandhi Wing next to the Fountain of knowledge) upon payment of a non-refundable application fee of Kshs. 3000/= for Kenyan citizens and US$ 50 or its equivalent for non-Kenyan citizens. The application fees MUST be paid in Cash at any Barclays bank branch a/c no. 030-073-1023948 and the banking slip to be taken to UNES in Gandhi Wing Room G3 for issue of receipt before collection of the application forms. The candidate shall complete the said application form, attach certified copies of degree certificates and a draft research proposal prepared in a prescribed manner and return the same to the School of Engineering. The SPSC (School Postgraduate Study Committee) in consultation with the Department in which registration is sought will process the documents and make recommendation. Upon receipt of these documents, the Director, BPS will write to the candidate informing him/her whether he/she is eligible or not. Note: A candidate who is eligible for admission can request the BPS for interim (6 months) registration pending preparation and submission of the full research proposal.
Examinations Regulations View Details
Regular Ph.D programmes in the School are by thesis only. Candidates will be required to undertake research guided by at least two supervisors competent in the subject area and field of research in which the candidate proposes to work. The main supervisor must come from the Department where the student is registered. After the research, the candidate shall be required to submit a thesis for examination. The programme shall take a minimum period of three (3) years and a maximum of six (6) years.
Examination shall comprise two parts: (i) Independent written assessment of the thesis by Internal and external examiners (ii) oral examination of the thesis by a board of examiners as prescribed by the University of Nairobi statutes.
Successful candidates shall be awarded the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the respective area of specialization. Where a candidate's thesis is assessed and found to require major revision, it shall be re-submitted once only for re-examination in a revised form within twelve months. Beyond this period, the candidate shall be discontinued.
Research Proposal Format (PhD and MSc)
The proposal should be between 15 and 30 pages in length (News Time Roman-Font 12, double spaced OR Arial Font-12, 1.5 spacing). The left and right margins should be 25 mm (1 inch) and the top and bottom margin 30 mm (1.25 inches) and 20 mm (0.75 inches) respectively.
All proposals shall consist of the following sections:
Front page, Table of Contents, Introduction (Study Background, Problem statement, Objective), Literature review, Materials and methods / Methodology, References, Work plan / Schedule of activities, Budget, Appendices.
The following shall be the format of the research proposal:
A. Front/Title Page
The front page will consist of the following:
University Logo followed by University of Nairobi and School of Engineering
Project Title: This shall be short, precise and descriptive of the study.
Candidate: Full name and admission number followed by space for signature and date.
Supervisor(s): Names of all supervisors, followed by signature and date.
Chairman of Department: Signature and date.
Chairman SPSC: Signature and date.
Dean SoE: Signature and date.
Statement: "A proposal submitted in fulfillment for the Degree of (insert name of degree)in the (insert Department where candidate is registered) in the University of Nairobi".
Date: Date of submission of proposal (month and year).
B. Table of Contents
The second page should contain a table of contents with page numbers.
C. Proposal Body
The body of the proposal should consist of the following subsections.
This section shall provide a brief overview of the proposed area of study. It should be short (maximum four (4) pages); telling the reader what the study will be about and why it is important and timely.
Problem Statement / Statement of Research Problem
This section should provide brief information identifying the gaps in knowledge or problems to be addressed in the study.
These should clearly state how the problem will be addressed. Research questions or
hypothesis should be included and tally with the objectives.
2. Literature Review
This section shall present information on the evolution and present state of theory, practice and research of the topic proposed for investigation. A candidate is expected to demonstrate review of most recent and relevant publications which must be properly cited in the references. This section may be organized with subheadings to represent different areas of emphasis.
3. Materials and Methods / Methodology
Focused on addressing the objectives of the study.
Detailed enough that the study is repeatable and reproducible.
Where standard methods are used, adequate reference should be provided
4. Work plan / Schedule of Activities
The work plan should indicate the duration of planned activities in a logical sequence.
Shall be based on all envisaged activities of the study.
Shall comprise costs relevant to the above activities, including all the materials and contingencies.
There are two widely used methods of citing references in documents such as a thesis or project report. In the first method, the reference is cited as a number in the text, thus: "These results are similar to those that have been found by other researchers [1, 2]". In this method, it is not necessary for the authors' names to appear in the text, though they frequently appear. In the references section, the cited references are then listed, in proper numerical sequence, as follows. The IEEE format also falls under this category.
1. WISMER, R. D. and H. J. LUTH. Off-road traction prediction for wheeled
vehicles. Journal of Terramechanics, 10(2):49-61. 1973.
2. KEPNER, R. A., R. BAINER and E. L. BARGER. Principles of Farm Machinery,
AVI Publishing Co., Inc. 1972.
In the second method, the authors' names and the year of publication of cited literature are used in the text, in citing the literature, thus: "These results are similar to those that were found by WISMER and LUTH (1973) and by KEPNER et al. (1972)". In the references section, the cited references are then listed, without numbering but in proper alphabetical order, as shown below:
KEPNER, R. A., R. BAINER and E. L. BARGER, (1972). Principles of Farm Machinery, AVI Publishing Co., Inc.
WISMER, R. D. and H. J. LUTH, (1973). Off-road traction prediction for wheeled vehicles. Journal of Terramechanics, 10(2):49-61.
Note:All web-based cited references should be of reputable institutions to facilitate independent verification.
7. Appendices
The appendices should be clearly labelled and placed after the reference section. The labelling system should be e.g. Appendix A (A1, A2 …), Appendix B (B1, B2), etc. They should be listed in the table of contents.
The Dean,
Schoolof Engineering
Universityof Nairobi
P.O. Box 30197-0100
Telfax: +254-020-318262 ext 28400/1
Email: deaneng@uonbi.ac.ke
Related Content: Guidelines for Admission to Postgraduate Studies
Fee Structure for Foreign Students View Details
Fees Schedule (In Us Dollars) For Foreign PhD Students
Application Fee 50
Research Money 3,000 p.a.
Book allowance 1,000 p.a.
COMPOSITE FEE
Registration Fee 360 p.a
1D Card 10 p.a
Activity fee 27 p.a
Computer fee 66 p.a
Tuition Fee 3,500 p.a.
Supervision Exam(Written) 800(per thesis)
Medical Fee 400 p.a.
Caution Money 150
TOTAL in US Dollars
Year 1 6,313
Extended:- Registration Corrections 400
Revisions of Thesis, Extended Supervision Fees 600
Examination for Revised Thesis 400
Fee Structure for Local Students View Details
Application fee (Once) 3,000/=
COMPOSITE FEE Year 1 Year 2 Year 3
Registration Fee 2,000/= p.a. 2,000/= p.a. 2,000/= p.a.
ID/Card 500/= p.a. 500/= p.a. 500/= p.a.
Tuition Fees: 108,700/= 108,700/= 108,700/=
Supervision 12,000/= 12,000/= 12,000/=
Computer Fee 5,000= p.a. 5,000/= p.a. 5,000/= p.a.
Activity Fee 2,000/= p.a 2,000/= p.a 2,000/= p.a
Medical Fee 5,000/= p.a 5,000/= p.a 5,000/= p.a
Caution Money (Once) 5,000/= - -
Total 140,200/= 135,200/= 135,200/=
Extension of Registration period: Kshs. 3,000/= p.a.
Extension of Correction period: Kshs. 1,000/= per three months.
Extension of Revision period: Kshs. 3,000/= p.a.
Extension of Supervision: Kshs. 12,000/=
Examination of Revised Thesis Kshs. 9,000/=
Rresearch money Kshs. 200,000/=
The above fees are subject to change without prior notice.
All fees due should be paid before registration can be effected.
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Recent BA Sociology graduates Katy Partington and Malgorzata Rudnicka have received top marks for their dissertations analysing contemporary issues such as 'lad culture' and whether people are pushed into early retirement.
Katy Partington's dissertation: The Importance of Friendship in the Social Construction of Masculinity within an Academic Environment enabled her to graduate with a first.
Katy's supervisor was Dr Alexandra Macht, whose research bridges the sociology of emotions, with the field of critical studies of men and masculinities, and that of family and personal relationships.
Katy chose to study the impact of notions of masculinity, as the topic for her dissertation. This was based upon her own experience of witnessing what is generally referred to as 'lad culture' amongst many of her male friends and acquaintances during her time as a student.
There are a range of examples of contemporary portrayals of young men at university, which often focus on the negative ways through which they construct their masculinity, including binge drinking and 'laddishness'. Her study aimed to address the current literature gap, by assessing the importance of friendship in influencing the varying constructions of masculinity within the UK academic context.
Katy found that as men progress through university and develop close and meaningful friendships, they become increasingly less inclined to conform to the hegemonic masculine ideal, that legitimises men's dominant position in society.
Her dissertation demonstrated the need to challenge negative and unilateral understandings of masculinity within a university environment and reiterated the importance of extensive future research in this area. Her research could allow administrators and policy advisors within higher education institutions, to provide more effective and well-directed support to young men, who sometimes find their university experience overwhelming.
Malgorzata Rudnicka tackled a very different topic: The reasons why people take up early retirement and what the best predictors are. She received 90 marks and achieved the accolade of the best Humanities and Social Sciences dissertation 2018.The topic was fuelled by policy concerns to reduce public expenditure on pensions and social welfare. Her results have provided evidence that some of the ageing population may be prematurely pushed out of the labour market. This is a vital finding for the government and policymakers that are facing the challenge of a population with an increasing old-age dependency ratio.
Malgorzata's supervisor was Dr Irmak Hazir, whose research focuses on the lived experience of class, inequality, embodiment and cultural classifications. Malgorzata is now going onto to study an MSc in Public Policy & Management, at King's College London.
You can find out more about a range of topics that explore social relationships and social institutions, through Oxford Brookes' undergraduate Sociology courses.


The sensational new novel from "one of the most talented crime writers alive" (The Washington Post) The photo on the card shows a boy who was found murdered, a year ago, on the grounds of a girls' boarding school in the leafy suburbs of Dublin. The caption saysI KNOW WHO KILLED HIM. Detective Stephen Moran has been waiting for his chance to get a foot in the door of Dublin's Murder Squad—and one morning, sixteen-year-old Holly Mackey brings him this photo. "The Secret Place," a board where the girls at St. Kilda's School can pin up their secrets anonymously, is normally a mishmash of gossip and covert cruelty, but today someone has used it to reignite the stalled investigation into the murder of handsome, popular Chris Harper. Stephen joins forces with the abrasive Detective Antoinette Conway to find out who and why. But everything they discover leads them back to Holly's close-knit group of friends and their fierce enemies, a rival clique—and to the tangled web of relationships that bound all the girls to Chris Harper. Every step in their direction turns up the pressure. Antoinette Conway is already suspicious of Stephen's links to the Mackey family. St. Kilda's will go a long way to keep murder outside their walls. Holly's father, Detective Frank Mackey, is circling, ready to pounce if any of the new evidence points toward his daughter. And the private underworld of teenage girls can be more mysterious and more dangerous than either of the detectives imagined. The Secret Place is a powerful, haunting exploration of friendship and loyalty, and a gripping addition to the Dublin Murder Squad series.
Tana French ruined my life again.
Two weeks ago I talked about Broken Harbour. I mentioned how much I love Tana French, so I'm not going to do that here. Because it should be obvious by now.
The Secret Place is completely different than anything else I had ever read before and probably will never find anything like it again. I have read plenty of young adult books, but none of them have talked about teenage girls in the way that Tana French does in this book.
This book shows teenage girls in the most realistic light I've ever seen. They were moody and sarcastic and rude and thrived on attention. They were clingy and annoying and loving and smart. They were everything that teenage girls are. They are real. I didn't have to think hard to come up with a comparison of someone that I knew as a teenager. Names just started popping up.
I could talk about how interesting the plot is. I could talk about the amazing quotes that were all through this book. I could talk about why this book kept me up until 8 in the morning. But the characters were the most important part to me.
In In The Woods, Rob Ryan and Cassie Maddox had been working together for 7 years before the time of the book. They wove together like they were one person when they were working. I loved that about them. Moran and Conway, in The Secret Place, hadn't met until this case. I loved that about them.
They were different than Rob and Cassie because they had to guess what the other person was thinking. It just worked for them. I would love more books about Conway and Moran working together. They were fun together. I loved Conway and thought her and Moran would make a perfect pair if it because a permanent thing.
I know I say this about every Tana French book, but seriously: READ THIS BOOK.
Now I just have to sit and wait impatiently for book 6 to come out. Hopefully Conway is the main character in that one.


text:
Q: Oracle how to select based on result? I am writing a select statement in Oracle to return specific results
If there is results type = 4 then only return type 4, else return everything.

Name
Type
color

a
1
blue

b
2
blue

c
3
blue

d
4
blue

Any help will be appreciated! Thank you!

A: From Oracle 12, you can use:
SELECT *
FROM   table_name
ORDER BY CASE type WHEN 4 THEN 0 ELSE 1 END
FETCH FIRST ROW WITH TIES;

In earlier versions, you can use:
SELECT *
FROM   (
  SELECT t.*,
         RANK() OVER (ORDER BY CASE type WHEN 4 THEN 0 ELSE 1 END) AS rnk
  FROM   table_name t
)
WHERE rnk = 1;

db<>fiddle here

A: Or you can use CASE in Where clause... (any version)
WITH
    tbl AS
        (
            SELECT 'a' "NAME",  1 "TYPE",   'blue' "COLOR" From Dual UNION
            SELECT 'b' "NAME",  2 "TYPE",   'blue' "COLOR" From Dual UNION
            SELECT 'c' "NAME",  3 "TYPE",   'blue' "COLOR" From Dual UNION
            SELECT 'd' "NAME",  4 "TYPE",   'blue' "COLOR" From Dual
       )
SELECT t.* FROM tbl t
WHERE t.TYPE = CASE WHEN Nvl((SELECT Count(*) From tbl WHERE tbl.TYPE = 4), 0) = 0 THEN t.TYPE ELSE 4 END
--
-- Result with TYPE = 4
-- NAME       TYPE COLOR
-- d             4 blue
--
-- Result without TYPE = 4
-- NAME       TYPE COLOR
-- a             1 blue
-- b             2 blue
-- c             3 blue


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I had been using Isomers but it is not doing anything for me now. I am 52, with wrinkles at eyes, nose to mouth lines, and showing first signs of losing elasticity in my skin on jaw and neck, normal to a little dry skin. Does anyone have any suggestions on a new skin care line? Please help me with this. Thanks!!!!
I have tried them all too. I am now back to only using M Asam for my dry mature skin. His products make my skin feel wonderful, plump, smooth, and not red at all. I find in time all the others make my skin feel great but not necissarily look great. I have a closet full of Skinn products that I am off right now. My skin just no longer responds. I think it is good to switch lines and see how your skin responds over the long-haul.
Peter Thomas Roth, Skinn Cosmetics and/or Philosophy.
I am sure that most of us have gone thru what you are going thru…..a product line that no longer workis. I went thru that with a lot of products thru the years. Esp the pricey Perricone MD. It worked for a year or two and stopped working for me as my skin changed. I like my routine simple. For the last 3 years, I have been using Skinn's basic cleansing products, Josie Maran Argan oil to add to any cruelty free moisterizer. Who knows, in a few years this regimen will probably stop working for me. Just try and find a regimen that works for your skin but try not to spend loads of $$.
p.s. Skinn's DermAppeal (facial exfoliant) helped my skin tremendously. Wrinkles on my forehead are now faint and I have had injections years ago on the frown lines around my mouth, I no longer need injections. The wrinkles are very faint and my skin looks pretty good for someone who will be turning 59 next week. No one believes I am my age.
I LOVE Skinn!!! I've used it for a year and I'm sold. Love the cleansers and Collagenisis.
Skinn is amazing. specifically Collagenisis is a wonderful moisturizing cream for the elasticity issue. Go to Evine and see some of Demetri's presentations (forget personality). I recommend some of the kits when he comes on- you can sample without commitment. I still prefer Purity as my cleanser when I apply make-up.
I agree that ingredients are king when it comes to skin care. You get "caught up" on the presentations! The top brands on my list were (in no particular order) M Asam, Perlier (Royal Jelly) and Elysee. I thought about Skinn because so many people are praising it everywhere, but I'm not sold on Skinn, don't know why. I can't put my finger on it. I am still mulling over these top contenders, and will be ordering from the top contender list soon.
Well, It hasn't shipped yet, so I can cancel and try the Elysee. They were in the top with Perlier!
I meant to add to my last post that I did purchase the big Vitamin C kit from SSC. It was such a great deal, and free shipping! I used the Vitamin C cleanser and the vitamin C peel before years ago in a "try me" size and liked them so I thought what do I have to lose? I'll try these products and see what happens. Current skin care is not working, so I'll start with this kit and go from there. With all the recommendations, I will try until I get products that work! Thanks to all who replied to this thread.
Yes I am going to try some or maybe a little of all the products recommended on this thread. I know skin care is very subjective and what works for some does not work for all. But I just love these threads because you can get very good reviews and narrow down the products that seem to work for a lot of people. Haven't narrowed it down yet, but I appreciate the honest reviews and recommendations. Love when people help each other this way. Will let you know how it goes.
I jump around with beauty lines. Lately I have been liking Elysee and think their products are quality. Actually my skin responds well to M Asam. Also, I've gotten results with SSC's Egg machine. It is not going to be dramatic like a face lift but I can see visible lifting but I've been using it since it first came out – at first every day, now 3-4 days a week. Skin care is so subjective. Good luck.
I've only tried the M. Asam Aqua Intense creme and I'm not impressed. Doesn't do much and has tons of chemicals. I LOVE Josie Maran's Argan oil!
I see ur thinking about doing Perlier from ur new post . Ru going to try any of the products recommended on this thread?
I used to be a fan of Asam, but I'm NOT liking vegetable oil in many of his products. It's a CHEAP filler, that does nothing good for skin. I'm very disappointed in him. That being said…I did like the vino gold line (green pkg), but I've moved on to other lines that provide more up to date ingredients, such as ceramides, peptides, collagen, and vitamins…without vegatble oil! I suggest, if you try Asams products, read the ingredient list. Some lines I like…are Consult Beaute, Shisedo, and even drug store brand Cerave is very nice, with 3 ceramides, and other ingredients nice for skin. Another I'm considering is from Skinn, Collagenesis age reverse night cream. I havent tried it yet, but I like the ingredients…NO WATER, and or veggie oils!! Gets great reviews.
Thanks for the input on cleansers. I like Philosophy too. The Purity Made Simple seemed to remove all makeup well when I used it a few years ago. In fact I am expecting some bottles of 3 in 1 from Philosophy any day. I've heard some people say it has changed, but I don't use enough of their products now to know. I used to use it exclusively when I was much younger, but then my skin didn't have as many problems!!


Home › Reviews › A&E Theatre Reviews › The Bottom Line Burlesque & Comedy Troupe Delivers the "Cleanest Dirty Fun You'll Ever Have!"
The Bottom Line Burlesque & Comedy Troupe Delivers the "Cleanest Dirty Fun You'll Ever Have!"
Burlesque has been around for a long time, and has been an honorable segment of theater, along with parody, satire, mockery, comedy, and variety entertainment that, in America especially, includes bawdy humor and striptease acts. The Bottom Line Burlesque & Comedy Troupe calls performances the "Cleanest dirty fun you'll ever have!" One of us laughed so hard his face hurt.
We saw A Springtime Bottom Line: Moonlight Buds & Bloomers on Saturday, March 19th, at Common Ground Theatre in Durham; and one of us even got to participate in a sensuous line dance. In the course of 34 acts (but who's counting), we saw bodies of all ages and shapes camp up striptease, juggle, chorus dance, sing, play ukulele, do skits, parade, perform one magic trick(!), set and unset props, twirl plates — and twirl batons — tell jokes and generally present two hours filled with what used to be called a "revue." The performers were funny, they had almost as much fun as the audience, and they all work under noms de théâtre.
Ruby Martini founded the troupe, and is their principal practitioner of the art of ecdysiasm. Practice has made her pretty darn good! She has the rolls, the shakes, the bumps and grinds, and some specialties best not named — and the personality that goes with them.
Twirly Temple does some marvelous baton twirling, and leads the parade on and off the stage like a true drum majorette throughout the show.
Lotte LaRue, who juggles hats, balls, and men's affections, and who's been around the world a few times, still has it; and she sure knows what "it" is!
Hottie Scottie belts out a wonderful campy version of "I Feel Pretty" in drag, and then redeems his macho standing with "Just a Gigolo," a great sad song. We had the rather blue experience of seeing what's under his kilt, and his abilities at juggling as he worked with Lotte LaRue.
Not only was the Bottom Line Burlesque & Comedy Troupe open to interaction with the audience, responding with humor and style to various comments, but they also brought some folks out of their seats to dance and get involved in other ways.
This is a boisterous and fun-filled experience. We were surprised that Hillsborough-based this burlesque-and-comedy troupe has been around for three years, doing some important good deeds supporting the UNCEED, and providing audiences with clean but dirty entertainment all in good nature, and yet this is the first time we'd heard of them. We hope to see and hear more them in the future.
A SPRINGTIME BOTTOM LINE: MOONLIGHT BUDS & BLOOMERS (Bottom Line Burlesque & Comedy Troupe at Common Ground Theatre in Durham).
UNC Center of Excellence for Eating Disorders (fundraising recipient): http://www.med.unc.edu/psych/eatingdisorders/ (official website), http://uncexchanges.org/ (blog), http://www.med.unc.edu/psych/eatingdisorders/make-a-gift-to-the-program (make-a-gift page), https://www.facebook.com/unceatingdisorders (Facebook page), and https://twitter.com/uncceed (Twitter page).
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