text:
AN-MY LÊ with Sara Christoph
SARAH LEWIS with Phong Bui
DEMYSTIFYING GERHARD RICHTER'S GESTURAL ABSTRACTION Painting in the Gap between Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art
By Herbert R. Hartel, Jr.
TAL R with Phong Bui
YAEL BARTANA with Sara Roffino
KRISTIN JONES with Ann McCoy
By Ann McCoy
DREAMLAND Coney Island and the 20th Century Avant-Garde
By Kurt Hollander
MARGRIT LEWCZUK Me, We
By Tyler Akers
ALIZA NISENBAUM
By Erin Yerby
STUART SHILS because i have no interest in these questions...
By Hearne Pardee
WANG JIANWEI Time Temple
By Tatiana Istomina
STURTEVANT Double Trouble
By Christopher Green
All Pores Open
By Molly Elizalde
JOE FYFE make me one with everything
By David Rhodes
Speaking of People: Ebony, Jet and Contemporary Art
By Charles Schultz
Djordje Ozbolt More paintings about poets and food
By William J. Simmons
SADIE BENNING Fuzzy Math
By Terry R. Myers
RUDY BURCKHARDT Subterranean Monuments: A Centenary Celebration
Thanks to Apple, Amazon, and the Mall
By Maya Harakawa
Rough Cut
By Kate Liebman
TAL R Altstadt Girl
By Margaret Graham
SAUL MELMAN Central Governor
By Shana Beth Mason
JON SCHUELER 1975 – 1981, The New York Years
By Mary Ann Caws
RYAN MCNAMARA Gently Used No Entrance, No Exit
Nostalgia for Jane Freilicher (1924 – 2014)
By Anne Waldman
A Tribute to Jake Berthot 1939 – 2014
Castles Burning
By Michael Straus
Toward Polyphonic Criticism
Guest Critic: Jarrett Earnest
ABOUT POLYPHONY: All in One
THE ENAMORED MAGE Magic, Alchemy, and Esoteric Thought in Works by Robert Duncan and Jess*
LISA YUSKAVAGE on Nina Simone and Giovanni Bellini
By Aliza Shvarts
"PUTTING YOURSELF IN A PLACE WHERE GRACE CAN FLOW TO YOU" Nancy Goldring on Robert Lax
Dolly Parton's Songs
THE LAND WHERE YOU WANTED TO BE Paul Bowles, Mohammed Mrabet, and 17-year-old Me
By Thyrza Nichols Goodeve
Fearing The Feral Carousels No More
The Long Way Around
By Jill Dehnert
Recovering Churchill
By Allen Guy Wilcox
A New Look at New Delhi
By Diksha Basu
By Casey Murphy
The Morality of Landscape
By Christopher X. Shade
The Elemental Similarities That Unite Us
By Weston Cutter
FICTION AS MAGIC, LANGUAGE AS SPELL PETER MARKUS with Lily Hoang
THE ELEMENT OF ESCAPE: ATTICUS LISH with Dan Ostlund
Brooklyn Rail Highly Selective Music Events
THE REAL FOLK BLUES FERAL FOSTER with Stephanie Joy Del Rosso
A CONCERT, WITH FOOTNOTES GABRIEL KAHANE, The Ambassador
By Jeff Tompkins
Reflections on Seeing and Saying
By Leslie Allison
ELEMENTS OF ERASURE Molly Lieber and Eleanor Smith's Rude World
By Cassie Peterson
THE BODY IN PIECES Zoe | Juniper Examines Myths of Memory and Identity
By Madison Mainwaring
AMERICAN REALNESS: Move You/Move Me New Works by Miguel Gutierrez, Jack Ferver, Keith Hennessy, and Luciana Achugar
By Jaime Shearn Coan
SIX MONTHS LATER Reflecting on Ferguson
By Ryan Kelly
THEME AND VARIATIONS The Royal Road, Phoenix, and The Dragon is the Frame
By Max Goldberg
DIRTY PRETTY THINGS David Cronenberg's Maps to the Stars
By Glenn Heath JR.
SERIOUS GAMES: Film and video at play in Experimenta at the 2014 BFI London Film Festival
By Herb Shellenberger
SURVEILLANCE AESTHETICS On Laura Poitras's 9/11 Trilogy
By Ava Kofman
PLENTY OF CAUSES FOR CONCERN BAM's Migrating Forms
By Ben Mendelsohn
ON REFLECTION When Evening Falls on Bucharest or Metabolism
By David Gregory Lawson
MAMA SAID KNOCK YOU OUT Bareknuckle at Gleason's Gym
By Hannah Bos
Laundromat-Theater: Where Every Fold Matters
By Ginny Mohler
Tanya Barfield: On the Space-Time Continuum
By Kathryn Walat
by Hassouna Mosbahi, translated from the Arabic by William Maynard Hutchins
from Delusions of Being Observed
By Lewis Warsh
Conversation In The Palace Of Ch'ien-Lung
by Alfred Döblin, translated from the German by Chris Godwin
from Miransù
by Monica Sarsini, translated from the Italian by Maryann De Julio
The "Game" of Cat and Mouse
By Tom Motley
By Sophie Robinson
By Rod Smith
from Lovers in the Marquetalla Republic
By Tim VanDyke
Three from mary wants to be a superwoman
By erica lewis
By Noelle Kocot
LEARN TO READ ART: A Surviving History of Printed Matter MAX SCHUMANN with Maya Harakawa
Nick Cave: Epitome
By Holly Gavin
April Gornik Drawings
By Paul Mattick
Is it Possible to Win the War After Losing All the Battles?
By Pavlos Roufos
Letter from Paris
By Charles Reeve
Anger and Shame
by Catherine Robert, Isabelle Richer, Valérie Louys, and Damien Boussard
We Should Say No to This Hypocritical Rally
By Patric Jean
AYOTZINAPA Reasons of State—and Economy
Why Now? Why in Guerrero?
By Magdalena Galindo Ledezma
Ayotzinapa: The Rural Normal School and the Criminal Government Offensive
By Jorge Cázares
The Criminal Economy
By Sandy E. Ramirez Gutiérrez
FEB 2015 Issue
Coney Island and the 20th Century Avant-Garde
In the late 1980s I wrote my last short story, "Skinny Takes a Walk," which I self-published at that time in my magazine The Portable Lower East Side. In the story I take the subway out to the last stop in Brooklyn, walk over to a residential building a few blocks away, ride an elevator up to the 12th floor and stand in front of a door behind which my father is living. In the end, though, I don't ring the bell, but rather turn around and take the elevator back down and walk around the Coney Island amusement park, boardwalk, and beach. Instead of actually avoiding my father, all I think about that fictional day are the stories he used to tell me about hanging out here as a kid. My trip to Coney Island in the short story is aimless, devoid of any great adventure and without any real connection to the place, and the story ends on a depressed note, wondering how I can do anything of value in a world in which everything of any consequence has already been done, a world in which my father had done so much more than I ever will.
All images courtesy of Kurt Hollander.
As I mention in the story, Ida, my grandmother, lived in one of the dozens of identical International Ladies' Garment Workers Union co-op buildings in Coney Island. As a young kid, the gangs of elderly Jews sitting on benches outside the buildings sunbathing and gossiping as they awaited approaching death used to scare me, as did the plastic seat covers on the toy-like furniture and the smell of camphor in my grandmother's cramped apartment. Ida was a tiny old white-haired woman by the time I knew her, an immigrant from Odessa who had come over as a child during the pogroms and worked in Manhattan sweatshops throughout the Depression. At the beginning of the 20th century, more than one-third of New York City residents were immigrants, most from Europe and Russia, and although the majority of Russian and Eastern European Jews settled in the Lower East Side, many moved out to Brooklyn neighborhoods such as Williamsburg (where my father was born) and to Coney Island, where his mother moved after he ran away from home at the age of 16.
My grandmother died in the 1970s, and my father, an artist living in funky studios on the Lower East Side, moved into her Coney Island apartment, where he was living when I wrote this short story. On the not-so-frequent occasions that I visited him there, my father would get stoned and bombard me with messianic diatribes and artistic rants. To bring him down to earth a bit I would try to get him to tell me more stories about his life growing up in Brooklyn. The story that most disturbed and fascinated me was how he used to go on the Cyclone rollercoaster with the pinhead girls from the Freak Show and as the car careened around the curves and the pinheads were screaming in fear my father would reach over and squeeze their titties. The fact that my father as a young man (along with his friend and future filmmaker Mel Brooks) had worked as a barker for the Freak Show to get people to "Come on in and see the show," meant that he had taken part in a significant piece of New York City history, while the pinhead breast-squeezing was a detail better than anything I could invent in fiction. This is probably the reason I gave up semi-autobiographical fiction and began writing semi-autobiographical nonfiction, instead.
If "Skinny Takes a Walk" has anything of value beyond what I lifted directly from my father's life, it's the references to Coney Island's unique history. As I research this history more seriously today, I realize how my own experience of using Coney to bolster my own (meager and minor) literary production was common practice, and that in fact Coney Island provided not only essential material but also, more importantly, a fantastic, fictionalized aesthetic to many of the leading artists, writers, performers, and thinkers responsible for producing the 20th century avant-garde.
Although neither they nor any other indigenous group actually lived there, the Canarsie Indians would comb the Coney Island beach, which they called the "land without shadows," for seashells to barter for other goods. When he sailed the Half Moon through uncharted territory in 1609 for the Dutch East India Company and first caught sight of this small beach island off the Atlantic coast of Brooklyn, the English Capitan Henry Hudson was one the first Europeans to behold what would eventually become the United States of America. Much like the famous purchase of Manhattan (which Hudson discovered the following day), the Dutch bought Coney Island from the local Indians for a few guns, gunpowder, and beads, among the sweetest real estate scams ever conducted.
In 1839, the pirates Gibbs and Wansley, after having jacked the treasure from the Vineyard as it sailed to Philadelphia, buried the chests of Mexican gold and silver coins within the uninhabited dunes in Coney Island. Caught soon afterwards, they were given the opportunity to return the treasure they had stolen and have their lives spared, but as the shifting sands had rearranged the monotonous landscape, the pirates wound up swinging from a rope. Almost 10 years later, during an exceptionally low tide, one local resident stumbled upon a thousand coins and a mini-gold rush overtook Coney Island. Since that time, Coney Island has been a constant destination of treasure seekers, gold diggers, and fortune hunters from all over the world, including those who traded in ideas and images.
The earliest seaside hotels in Coney, built in the 1840s, enticed NYC's wealthy and cultural class to make the long trip in carriages for fresh air and tranquility. Few visitors of that time, however, actually went into the water, as most feared drowning or having the sea leech them of their essential salts, and it took decades and the assurance of doctors to convince visitors that it was not risky to bathe in the ocean. Herman Melville, Washington Irving, and Edgar Allan Poe all wandered around Coney Island, and Walt Whitman was a fan of Coney's "long bare unfrequented shore […] where I loved after bathing to race up and down the hard sand, and declaim Homer or Shakespeare to the surf and seagulls by the hours."
The Coney Island Elephant, one of many hotels designed to attend the needs of the increasing crowds of visitors, was built in 1885 out of wood and tin in the shape of a giant pachyderm, 122 feet high and seven floors tall. A cigar store operated out of one leg, several body parts were used as hotel rooms (and at times as a brothel), and the head was an observatory that offered vistas of the Atlantic Ocean through the eyes. The Elephant Hotel was merely the first of a long line of fantastic constructions in Coney as three huge amusement parks soon rose up in Coney Island, each one more spectacular and surreal. Steeplechase Park, Luna Park, and Dreamland boasted hundreds of extreme rides, lavish performances, and improbable structures, the latest and greatest in vernacular visionary aesthetics. Like the magic tricks performed within the parks, the architecture relied more on sleight of material and façades than actual foundations and constructions.
The Elephant Hotel was built one year before the Statue of Liberty, but even after the Iron Lady began officially greeting immigrants in the New York City harbor, the first glimpse of America that the "tired, huddled masses" saw as their ships arrived in the New World were the quixotic constructions and bright lights of Coney Island. Coney Island's dream world was the perfect greeting card advertisement for America, a country that has always sold itself to the world not so much as a land of freedom but rather as a fantasy world where the most extravagant dreams come true.
Like Hollywood today, Coney has always fueled people's fascination with death and disaster. Spectacular fireworks provided the special effects for the recreation of famous battles, such as the defeat of the Spanish fleet at Manila or that of the Russians at Vladivostok. Other natural disasters, such as the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, a tenement fire, and The Last Days of Pompeii (a show recreating the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, complete with a cast of 400 extras), were reenacted several times a day.
Courtesy of Kurt Hollander.
Miniature cities were erected in Coney to simulate exotic cultures. The Streets of Cairo, which opened in 1897, boasted Egyptian architecture and Kasbah-like alleyways. Besides offering camel rides, the attraction featured the wonders of the Turkish dancer named Little Egypt, the first and most famous hootchy-kootchy, muscle and belly dancer in all of America. Thousands of natives from far-off lands were brought to live permanently in Coney, including a tribe of more than 200 Spanish-speaking Filipinos who spent their workday blowing poison darts through reeds and making crafts; 18 Algerians who did tricks on horseback; a tribe of over 100 Somali warriors with self-inflicted scars on their bodies; 19 near-naked Wild Men from Borneo; and a real Hindu village transplanted intact to Coney.
Beauty and ugliness, physical prowess, and physical deformity were all equally exploited in Coney. Lilliputia, a half-scale city built to resemble 15th-century Nuremberg, housed 300 midgets from all over America who enjoyed their own Parliament, a Midget City Fire Department, and their own beach. Midgets were publicly married and divorced daily (unintentionally leading to dozens of children born out of wedlock). The Dreamland Circus Sideshow, the first major freak show in America created in 1911, included albinos, a man billed as a tattooed "art gallery," a human salamander, a legless man, the tallest and the fattest lady in the world, and the very popular Zip, also know as "What is It," a black-skinned pinhead with a small tuft of hair on his head. Several other freak shows sprung up in Coney Island to compete with the original, often employing simulated freaks (such as the famous Mexican Siamese twins who after a fight during one of their shows each walked their separate ways).
Many of the scientific wonders associated with Coney were actually imported or copied from the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago and later World's Fairs. While these World's Fairs displayed the latest technological advances to educate people and to advance science, Coney Island used technology to titillate people's morbid curiosity. The Infant Incubator, basically a small hospital that housed a dozen or so iron-and-glass incubators heated by hot-water pipes connected to a central boiler, was designed to care for hundreds of babies that had been born prematurely. The fact that the emaciated babies could die at any moment made this one of the most popular exhibits in Coney.
Even more so than any single theme park or act, the greatest new technology on display in Coney Island, however, was electricity.
Only recently discovered, electricity powered the futuristic rides and at night lit up the amusement parks' million electric light bulbs. Thomas Alva Edison, America's most prolific inventor, not only patented the first electric light bulb he also patented a system to distribute electricity in 1880 and supplied much of New York City (including Coney) with direct current (DC).
Edison's monopoly, however, was threatened by the higher voltages and cheaper distribution costs of alternating current (AC), invented by the Serbian Nikola Tesla and promoted by George Westinghouse. To take out the competition, Edison devoted much of his time and money convincing people that AC was dangerous by creating the electric chair just to illustrate the lethal potential of his competitor's electricity. Edison offered public displays of the dangerous AC current in which he electrocuted (or as he referred to it, "Westinghoused") all sizes and species of animals up to and including horses and cows. His greatest publicity stunt came in 1903 when Topsy, an elephant at Coney's Luna Park Zoo, squashed three handlers (including one who had fed her a lit cigarette) and had to be put down. Copper wires attached to her feet were connected to an electrical plant and a 6,600-volt AC charge slammed through her body, frying Topsy instantly.
Besides killing animals in public, Edison was also responsible for another form of entertainment first introduced to the masses in Coney Island. Edison was granted a patent for the motion picture camera Kinetograph and for the Kinetoscope, a peephole viewer, both first publicly exhibited in 1891, and in 1896 the Vitascope, also manufactured by the Edison factory, was used to project motion pictures in public screenings in nickel theaters and outdoors at night. By 1906 as many as 30 moving picture venues were operating in Coney Island, with hundreds of tents and movie boxes showing films, as well.
Not only were the earliest films being viewed there, but Coney also served as the ideal location for producing films. In 1896, Edison started to film the rides, acts, and theme parks at Coney Island, and continued to do so over the next 10 years. Between 1895 and 1905, over 50 films were shot at Coney Island, including films of Harry Houdini performing such acts as the Substitution Trunk or Metamorphosis Illusion.
Films by the French production company Éclair brought Coney's unique dreamlike theme parks and architecture to Europe and influenced a whole generation of artists and thinkers, including the avant-garde filmmaker George Méliès, known as a "cinemagician." A Trip To The Moon, one of Luna Park's most popular rides (850,000 tickets sold during the first summer), was installed in 1902, the same year that A Trip to the Moon, directed by Méliès and credited as the first science-fiction film, was shot, and the film's theatrical sets and futuristic effects are surprisingly similar to the ride of the same name in Coney Island. Méliès was unable to release his film in the United States but Edison managed to get his hands on the film and made pirate copies that he distributed in movie venues in Coney Island and throughout the country, netting him a huge profit.
Coney Island dreamland architecture and theatrical extravaganzas might have been a major inspiration for the dream-drenched artwork and films of the European Surrealist movement, but their influence was even more direct in the creative horizon of many other avant-garde U. S. and European filmmakers. Little Fugitive, directed and shot by photographer Morris Engel in 1953, portrayed a day in the life of a kid lost in Coney Island, filmed in and around the amusement parks, boardwalk, and beach with camera in hand. The film won the Silver Lion prize in the Venice Film Festival and was a major influence on François Truffaut and his film 400 Blows, as well as a major influence on French New Wave Cinema.
Coney also provided the film world with future stars of the big screen. The Marx Brothers first performed together in Coney Island in 1908, while one of Buster Keaton's first appearances was in Fatty Arbuckles' 1917 movie entitled Coney Island. Although not shot in Coney Island, Freaks, directed in 1932 by Todd Browning (who had just made the box office success Dracula with Bela Lugosi the year before) was cast with many of the freaks from Coney Island's Sideshow, including the bearded lady, midgets, and pinhead girls. (The idea of treating freaks as real human beings created such a scandal that Browning's career never recovered.)
Even more than the featured performers, in Coney the crowds were the protagonists and the biggest attraction. Marilyn Monroe's famous pose, with her white dress fluttering up in the air over a subway grating, might very well have come from Coney's crowd-pleasing air vent that lifted women's dresses as they stepped off of certain rides. One ride, the Barrel of Love, forced strangers, both men and women, into intimate physical contact, or had them come tumbling out head over heels into the jeering crowd, creating a semi-erotic reality show for the crowd's enjoyment.
Walt Disney loathed Coney Island for he saw it as too crude and vulgar and too full of low-rent immigrants. Although the urban, erotic, exotic Coney was the opposite of the all-American fairytales Disney created, one of Disney's finest films, Dumbo, about a female elephant who turns on her trainers when provoked, was based on the story of Coney's Topsy. Even though Disney films dominated the animated film market in the U. S., Disney's amusement parks could never match the success Coney Island enjoyed for decades (only five million people went to Disneyland the year it opened in 1955, compared to the 46 million people who visited Coney in 1943).
Although Disney attempted to avoid Coney Island's cultural anarchism and cheap thrills, his work was very much inspired by the comic strip Little Nemo in Slumberland. Little Nemo, the dream-child of Winsor McCay first published in the New York Herald at the beginning of the 20th century, was arguably the most surreal children's comic ever, and by far the most avant-garde in its design and layout. Living in nearby Sheepshead Bay, McCay lifted many of the most fantastic architectural landscapes within his comic strip directly from Coney's theme parks, and the typography and titles were inspired by its sideshow posters and signs, while the very name Slumberland in the comic's title was surely inspired by Dreamland. McCay's versions of Coney Island's Human Roulette Wheel, the Laughing Mirror Gallery and the Loop the Loop, as well as the air vents in the floor routine, were amongst the most striking images within Little Nemo. Like many other artists, the settings of Little Nemo's worldwide adventures that McCay didn't get from firsthand travel experience were mostly likely borrowed from Coney Island's theme
park "cities."
Due to all the film and cultural production that was inspired by its theme parks, Coney Island's fantastic allure reached far and wide, stimulating the European subconscious. Intellectuals and artists from all over the world were irresistibly drawn to the buzzing lights of Coney. Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung stood and watched Coney Island pass by as their ocean liner, the George Washington, was tugged into the New York harbor in 1909. On deck that day Jung gushed about how they were bringing enlightenment to the New World, to which Freud dryly replied that they were bringing with them the plague (the dreamland called psychoanalysis). Freud, an analyst of dreamlands of the mind, also remarked: "The only thing about America that interests me is Coney Island."
The Russian writer Maxim Gorky came to Coney Island in 1907 and, wowed by the electric lights and fantastic constructions, wrote about the "fantastic city all of fire […] Fabulous and beyond conceiving, ineffably beautiful, is this fiery scintillation." Another visit in the daytime changed his views. In his essay "Boredom," Gorky went on to note: "The city, magic and fantastic from afar, now appears an absurd jumble of straight lines of wood, a cheap, hastily constructed toy house for the amusement of children. […] Everything is stripped naked by the dispassionate glare. The glare is everywhere, and nowhere a shadow," (unknowingly referring to Coney's original, indigenous name). Along the same lines, E. E. Cummings remarked how in the "theater we are merely deceived, at Coney we
deceive ourselves."
In 1926, the Mexican José Juan Tablada, a longtime New York City resident and the man credited for bringing Mexican poetry into the modern era, wrote about the Coney Island Freak Show: "... long before Coney Island rose out of the ocean like a common, commercial Venus, Montezuma had jesters, dwarves and hunchbacks, caged beasts and botanic gardens."
José Martí, another longtime New York City resident, realized Coney Island's importance to American culture, calling it "that immense valve of pleasure opened to an immense nation." Yet this champion of popular culture and democratic values wrote disparagingly about the crowds at Coney, condescendingly noting that "such people eat quantity; we, quality." Martí wasn't referring so much to the hot dog, invented and sold by the millions in Coney Island, but about the whole Coney experience, which he believed epitomized the cheapness and excesses of the American imagination.
Federico García Lorca felt the same as Martí, describing Coney Island as, "monstrous," as well as "stupendous although excessive." Yet it is just the monstrous American technological and cultural excesses best epitomized by Coney Island that gave rise to the surreal, grotesque flights of fancy in Lorca's own poetry. In his "Landscape of a Vomiting Multitude (Dusk at Coney Island)," his greatest poem from the collection Poet in New York (1929), an afternoon trip to the amusement parks inspires delirious images that perfectly mirror the spectacles in Coney and helped usher in European avant-garde poetry.
With jammed-packed crowds of summer beachgoers and fun-seekers letting it all hang out and playing up to the camera, Coney Island has long provided the raw material for some of the 20th century's greatest photographers. Weegee's best known photo was taken of the Coney Island beach on the 4th of July in 1938, while Coney provided Diane Arbus and many other photographers with some of their most iconic images of freaks, decadence, and failed dreams.
The mere inclusion of Coney Island within their work has given many artists and writers a huge boost in both critical and commercial success. In his 1935 story "In Dreams Begin Responsibilities," Delmore Schwartz uses the Coney Island boardwalk and amusement parks as the backdrop for a filmic recreation of the day his father proposed marriage to his mother. Written when he was only 21 years old and hailed by the poets Wallace Stevens and T. S. Eliot for ushering in a new narrative form, the story achieves its vanguard status in large part by introducing Coney Island's working-class culture and history into a highbrow literary medium (my own short story, inspired in part by Delmore's work, created no such literary excitement).
Lou Reed, a student of Delmore and his greatest fan, struck gold as well with his 1975 album Coney Island Baby, in which the title track, despite its name, is actually about his football team in a Long Island school and only mentions his "Coney Island baby" in passing at the end of the title song. In 1958, the San Franciscan Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti published a collection of poems entitled "Coney Island of the Mind." Even though it was barely referred to within the book, Coney Island's presence in the title and a photo of one of its theme parks at night made it the best-selling American book of poetry ever and showed just how much influence Coney exerted on the American highbrow imagination.
By the mid-1960s, the three main amusement parks that had inspired so many filmmakers, poets, artists, and thinkers from all around the world had burned to the ground (a victim of their own electric fantasies), marking the end of Coney's golden age. Despite the fact that some rides and games survived, and despite the fact that the boardwalk and beach still attracted millions of visitors in the summer, Coney Island ceased being America's favorite dreamland destination. Like other inner-city neighborhoods with large minority populations in New York City during the economic downturn in the late '60s and '70s, social services were slashed, the white middle- and upper-classes fled to the suburbs, and Coney Island was overrun by gangs and crime. Low-income housing projects, with mainly black and Puerto Rican families stuffed into tiny apartments, replaced much of the area the amusement parks had occupied. At this time, right when I first starting going out there with my family and then later on my own, most tourists kept away from Coney except during the summer weekends or holidays, and the elderly, Jewish residents, such as my grandmother, tended to huddle nervously within
their apartments.
The dreamlike fantasy of Coney that had so inspired poets and intellectuals for decades was replaced by a tough, crime-ridden world. Yet, even during these hard times Coney managed to find its way into and inspire some of the greatest works of urban realism, including Sol Yurick's 1965 novel Warriors (adapted to the screen by director Walter Hill in 1979), a tale of New York City gangs that travel from the Bronx all the way to their home turf in Coney Island. Hubert Selby's 1978 novel Requiem for a Dream (decades later directed for the screen by Darren Aronofsky), the story of the amphetamine addiction of an elderly Jewish woman living in the Jewish housing projects and the crimes her son commits to feed his heroin habit, all take place within the bleak backdrop of Coney Island.
Yet just when it seemed that the Coney Island dream world had smashed against the daily grind, a new wave of Russian-Jewish immigration began to repopulate the area in and around Coney Island in the '80s and '90s. Jews were among the few people allowed to emigrate from Russia before the Berlin Wall came down, and Odessa in the Ukraine supplied the largest portion of early immigrants to Brighton Beach (which soon became known as Little Odessa), settling along a beach community that remarkably resembled the city they had just left. (The sea-front city of Odessa had itself been an artistic motor, home to a group of avant-garde Jewish writers that were eventually executed for being "rootless cosmopolitans" during the 1949 Stalin-orchestrated Night of the Murdered Poets).
Although much of the immigration was organized and populated by the Russian mafia, it helped "whiten" the neighborhood, lower crime, and increase real estate value, thus eventually making the area attractive for larger, corporate developers. In 2005, a developer purchased Coney Island's last remaining amusement park and razed it to install three expensive, Disneyworld rides. This same developer has been lobbying to receive permission to build a shiny glass and metal, Las Vegas-style hotel complex so tall it would dwarf the Wonder Wheel. While approval for this hotel complex is currently pending, several decades-old boardwalk restaurants have been torn down and replaced by venues where middle- and upper-class families can consume behind thick windows that buffer the noise and sight of the "huddled masses" outside.
In his book Delirious New York, superstar architect Rem Koolhaas dedicated a chapter to Coney Island in which he describes it as the "fetus" of what was to become Manhattan's skyscraper center. Yet it is precisely this corporate skyscraper culture, the same one which recently decimated the ethnic and cultural hotbed that was once Times Square, that now threatens to drag Coney Island into the global tourism market. As it inevitably tilts toward mid-American and European package tourism, as glass towers and insurance-friendly rides displace the old theatrical façades and haunted houses, and as corporate interests consolidate their stake in the area and national chains such as Hooters are set to arrive, the artistic and intellectual attraction of Coney Island has finally ended.
Due to its bawdy excesses, cheap theatrics, and technological innovation, its prefab fantasy and futuristic fictions, Coney Island remained at the forefront of modern life and culture for nearly a century, and more than any other single place on this planet figured prominently in and inspired the work and imagination of some of the greatest American and European avant-garde thinkers and creators. This privileged cultural position has been lost, and Coney Island will never again provide material for our era's greatest fictional fantasies.
Twenty-five years after writing my short story "Skinny Takes a Walk," I step off of the elevated subway in Coney Island and walk through the 4th of July heat and crowds on my way to visit my father. More than two decades ago, I abandoned New York City, which I felt had betrayed its long history of political and cultural opposition, to live in Mexico City, where corporate culture is only now devouring the city and its working-class culture, but I'm back here now on assignment to write about and photograph Coney Island for a Mexican cultural magazine that paid my plane ticket and expenses. I spend the day smoking pot and taking photographs of all the people sitting on the boardwalk benches, and in the afternoon I walk over to visit my dad.
After having lived and painted for a couple of decades in upstate New York in a 20-room house with half a barn in front of a river and train tracks, my father is currently spending what's left of his life in a retirement home 20 blocks from Coney Island. Within this modern "home," elderly Jews, Russians, and Brooklynites shuttle around the hallways in wheelchairs in no hurry to go anywhere. Although I wish my father would once again recount to me his early adventures, filling in some of the blanks of his early life and what it was like hanging out in Coney Island over 70 years ago, he will never add a single word to his past stories, as he suffered a massive stroke over 10 years ago and is now semi-paralyzed and unable to speak.
I unsteadily wheel my father out through the huge revolving door of the retirement home and then speed up, exaggerating the curves and maneuvering him over to the oceanfront walkway as if we were making a run for it. Instead, I slam the brakes on and then sit down on a bench next to him, watching the seagulls fly overhead, the dirty waves bumping against the concrete wall, and take a few photos of him in front of the Atlantic Ocean. The Wonder Wheel, the Cyclone, and the abandoned Parachute Jump, locally known as the Brooklyn Eiffel Tower, colossal structures that have witnessed the rise and fall of "America's Playground," appear as dim lines in the background of the photos.
The sun beats down hard on my shaved head and when I can't take the heat any longer I stand up and slowly wheel my father back inside the air-conditioned building. An image of the elderly people here ramming their wheelchairs into each other like the Coney Island bumper cars I used to ride as a kid flashes through my mind but quickly fizzles out as we arrive at my father's room. The reality of aging and dying is just too overpowering to let imagination take wing within these grey-green walls. I park him in front of the television and kiss him goodbye on his forehead in a clumsy, ashamed, and sad way, not knowing when or even if I will see him or Coney Island ever again.
Kurt Hollander
KURT HOLLANDER is originally from New York City where he was the editor/publisher of the Portable Lower East Side. He has been living in Mexico City for 25 years, where he is a photographer (kurthollander.com), writer (dfdeath.blogspot.com), and author of Several Ways to Die in Mexico City (2012), an autobiography.


text:
Just what does the Democratic Party want from the federal government?
David Robertson October 2, 2015 Democrats 25 Comments
Now that the Democratic Party has distanced itself from its legacy of racism and has won in regards to same-sex marriage and Obamacare, it is a good time to ask a particular question: Just what does the Democratic Party want the federal government to do that the U.S. Constitution permits the federal government to do?
Does the Democratic Party even acknowledge the Ninth and Tenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution? The latter haven't been repealed. So, will the Democratic Party pledge to conform to them? After all, the 2012 Republican Platform says, "We salute Republican Members of the House of Representatives for enshrining in the Rules of the House the requirement that every bill must cite the provision of the Constitution which permits its introduction." That GOP Platform even cites the Ninth and Tenth Amendments.
Regarding the issue of keeping the federal government within its constitutional limits, the 2012 Democratic Platform says . . . the 2012 Democratic Platform says . . . the 2012 Democratic Platform says nothing about it.
The Democratic Party should be telling the American public what works within the limits of the U.S. Constitution. So far, the Democratic Party hasn't been doing a good job of doing so.
For example, prior to its enactment, Obamacare was sold to the general public as being something other than a tax. So, someone asked Nancy Pelosi what in the U.S. Constitution permitted Obamacare. Pelosi mocked the question instead of answering it. The only reason that Obamacare survived a later legal challenge is because the SCOTUS ruled that Obamacare is indeed a tax, giving the Democratic Party the constitutional cover that Pelosi was unable to give.
Is that really the way that Democrats want to operate? If it is, then they are represented by the proper animal: a jackass.
"The very idea of this makes America 2015 ™ cringe..."
Joel Stein: Liberals don't love America the way conservatives do
Chris Matthews: 'Outlaw Semi-Automatic Weapons'
A refugee from Planet Melmac masquerading as a human. In fair condition. A fixer-upper. Warranty still good. Not necessarily sane. Publisher and editor of the Melmacian Times @ http://melmacian.tumblr.com/

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Jeff Green: 30 @ Rhino Room, Adelaide 15/2/2018
on Feb 16, 2018 February 16, 2018
Jeff Green started off his show saying that he had not been at the Adelaide Fringe for 3 years and that this was his 10th year living in Australia. He had recently become an Australian Citizen and this lead to a very funny interaction with an audience member who would interject most of the time he was on stage. This never seemed to faze Jeff who has been in the stand-up trade for 30 years (hence the name of the show) During a very funny story the same interjector completely ruined the punchline of the joke but with Jeff's quick wit he was able to make a joke out of the interjection.
Jeff told some very funny anecdotes about Facebook and his family life and living in Melbourne. These days Jeff told us that he also gives out tips to aspiring comics in comedy workshops. 2 of the things he teaches is to make sure you connect with the audience as well as making sure you are funny between the jokes. I find that Jeff succeeded in both these things tonight
Towards the end of the show, he mentioned that it was the first night and that he thought the show was a bit scattered. This was true but in my opinion, this did not detract from the laughs.
Fringe Review by Richard De Pizzol
Catch Jeff Green at Rhino Room during the Fringe. Tickets and show details here https://adelaidefringe.com.au/fringetix/jeff-green-30-af2018
Previous: RNB Vine Days @ Leconfield Wines, McLaren Vale 11/2/2018
Next: Vance Joy Announces Australian Dates


This feature article has been contributed by Spencer J Harris.
We are all guilty of having files on our computers with a filename similar to img_3579 or DCS_8642. As a result, when you look at the names of your own files your initial reaction is "what is this a picture of?" You may have to use specialized software to open and view the file, but once you do, then you only have a general idea of the subject matter. However, depending on how long ago the file was created you may not remember the details associated with the file, such as who is in the photo or where was it was taken.
The common issue is that these unknown or forgotten details about your assets do not just plague personal computers and files, but are also common in the workplace. How many times have you received an email attachment where the filename is screenshot 2017.07.23 13:45:06, and you were in such a hurry, you merely saved the attachment to get on in your tasks. Then, days or weeks later you needed to go back and find that saved attachment, but because the filename has no real value to you, you end up wasting time trying to track it down, and in some scenarios, are never able to locate it.
Think of your asset as a coin: it has monetary value, and when its use is maximized, you can make it go a long way. That coin has two sides to it – a head and a tail. They co-exist and are related to each other. You cannot have one without other. The two sides to every asset are the filename and its metadata, and are what create the value for your asset. Without them, you will not be able to find or use your asset, and therefore it's no longer an asset, but rather a bunch of ones and zeros taking up space on your server or hard drive.
The first thing to understand is that there is a difference between a filename and metadata. In some cases, you can argue that a filename is technically metadata, however, fundamentally they are different. They play different, but complementing roles in the DAM universe and treating them the way they should be will significantly improve your success in finding such assets.
The filename you give your assets should have a purpose. That purpose is to provide you or anyone who sees that asset with a high-level idea of the content contained therein. For example, a picture of a couple kissing in front of the Eiffel Tower should not be named, img_3478.jpg as that tells you nothing about the content contained in that asset.
If you go looking for that asset, whether you are manually navigating a folder structure or through some search utility, chances are you will not find it; at least not without time wasted. On the off-chance it does show up in your results, you will not know it unless you take the time to preview or open the asset and visually confirm it is what you are looking for.
There are a few critical components to a DAM good filename. The filename should provide enough high-level information that you do not need any unique program to view or tell you essential details. You should be able to look at a filename and have a general idea of what content is contained within the asset. Be careful not to use too much internal coding or terms, as it can be difficult for new employees or contracted staff to decipher the filename.
DATE – include a date that is associated with the asset, whether that be a creation date, a due date, or an in-market date. Dates help provide a contextual time for the asset. It is highly recommended to follow the YYMMDD format, especially when the folder holding your files has files from multiple years.
DESCRIPTION – include high-level details, without making your filename excessively long, but with enough detail to know what the subject matter is within the asset. The description may include features such as location, product name, model name, Layout, Concept, and so on.
DIFFERENTIAL DETAILS – sometimes you may have multiple versions or variations of the same asset (version is different from variation). These details are most common in photos or design layouts. As such, you need a way for the filename for each version or variation to be distinguishable, so adding details such as v2, r3, or color space can be the difference in quickly finding the exact asset. You can even put image dimensions at the end of the filename such as 1200px or 16×20 if that is the crucial difference.
You should NEVER use your filename to hold all your descriptive tags or keywords. That information belongs in the metadata. I have seen stock images that have their filenames loaded with dozens of descriptors, causing the filename to exceed well beyond 255 characters.
As mentioned earlier, you cannot have one without the other. We cannot have a suitable filename and little or no metadata and expect our assets to be easily found. A proper filename is only one side of the DAM coin.
Metadata is most commonly going to tell you details about your asset. These details can include the make and model of the camera used to create the photograph, the creative software used to create or edit the file, the date when an asset was created or last modified, a description of the asset, the usage rights associated with the asset, and a myriad of other details.
All of the details contained within the metadata can be set up as search filters within your DAM solution in order to find your assets quickly. When you have a very large number of assets in your library it can become challenging to quickly find what you are looking for. Many times, filenames are not the critical detail needed to find the appropriate assets, as you may be searching for a group of assets with common filenames but different metadata.
When you think about what metadata you should enrich your assets with it is essential to identify the information different users of your DAM will want to use when it comes to searching for assets. Not every department or user will want to search using the same information. Creative teams will want to search and filter by different criteria to product managers. Some users will want to use the DAM merely to take stock of what assets exist, or to evaluate the quality or accuracy of current assets.
If your team currently does not have use of a DAM, you do not need one to get started creating and applying meaningful filenames and metadata. Most of the time you can do this in the properties section of the software you use to create your assets. The key is not to wait to get started.
You may not necessarily see significant improvements in your asset findability right away. However, after implementing these changes for a few weeks, those weeks will turn into months, and those months will eventually turn into years, and before you know it, you have a large bank of DAM coins.


text:
The Spanish 'H': Always Silent
Languages › Spanish
by Gerald Erichsen
Gerald Erichsen, Spanish language expert, has created Spanish lessons for ThoughtCo since 1998.
The letter h may be the easiest of all the Spanish letters to pronounce: With the only exceptions being a very few words of obvious foreign origin and the two-letter combinations explained next, the h is always silent.
In Combinations and Alone
The letter combinations ch, which used to be considered a separate letter of the alphabet, and the sh in flash and a few other imported words are pronounced basically the same as in English; however, the usual silence of h doesn't mean its pronunciation doesn't sometimes trip up beginning Spanish students. Those who speak English as a first language often want to pronounce the letter when it is in a cognate, that is, a Spanish word that is more or less the same as English. For example, the h should not be pronounced in words such as vehículo (vehicle), Habana (Havana), Honduras and prohibir (prohibit), as tempting as it may be.
If the h is silent, why does it exist? For reasons of etymology (word history) only. Just as the "k" in the English "know" and the "b" in "lamb" used to be audible, the Spanish h used to be pronounced ages ago. Almost all Spanish consonants have become softer over the years; the h became so soft as to become inaudible.
The Spanish h also was used to separate two vowels that weren't pronounced as one, that is as a diphthong. For example, the word for "owl" used to be spelled as buho to indicate that it was pronounced as two syllables rather than rhyming with the first syllable of cuota or "quota." Nowadays, though, an accent is used over a stressed vowel to indicate the lack of a diphthong, so the word is written as búho. In this case, then, the accent isn't used to indicate stress as it usually does, but as a guide to the proper pronunciation of the vowels.
Also, these days it is standard for the h between vowels to be ignored in pronunciation; that is, the vowels sometimes run together despite the h between them, depending on how they are stressed. For example, prohibir is pronounced more or less the same as proibir would be. Note, though, that when the stress is on the second syllable in forms of this word, it is accented and pronounced clearly. Thus conjugated forms of the verb include prohíbes, prohíbe, and prohíben.
Also, this is why búho (owl) is spelled with an accent mark. The accent assures that this word is pronounced as búo rather than buo. Similarly, alcohol is pronounced as alcol, not as alco-ol with a brief pause (known as a glottal stop) between the o and o.
The words where the h is pronounced? Apparently, the only such word that is recognized by the Royal Spanish Academy as fully Spanish is hámster, a cognate of the English word for "hamster," although it came to Spanish by way of German. It is pronounced much as it is in German or English as if it were spelled jámster.
Other imported words, listed by the Academy as foreign or not listed at all, in which native speakers often pronounce the h include hockey (not to be confused with jockey), hobby (plural usually hobbys), Hong Kong (and some other place names), hacker and hit (baseball term or a major success).
Also, jalar and halar (to pull) are often used synonymously, and in some regions, it is common to pronounce jalar even while writing halar.
Why Does It Matter if a Spanish Vowel Is Strong or Weak?
How to Pronounce "Guacamole" in Spanish
3 Ways in Which Stress Can Be Placed on Spanish Words
How Do Spanish and English Alphabets Differ?
29 Lessons on Spanish Pronunciation
5 Reasons for Using Accent Marks in Spanish
4 Ways To Improve Your Spanish Spelling
Y, E, O, or U? When to Change Conjunction Vowels in Spanish
What You Should Know About Pronouncing the G and J in Spanish
Learn How To Pronounce Spanish Vowels
What Are Those Marks Above Some Spanish Letters?
7 Common Spanish Pronunciation Mistakes You Can Avoid
13 Spanish Consonants You Should Learn To Pronounce
More than Dos Equis: 4 Ways to Pronounce 'X' in Spanish
How To Make Spanish Nouns and Adjectives Plural
How Do You Pronounce the K and Q in Spanish?


This shoot was such a fun way to see all of the dynamics in a family welcoming their second baby home. When I got there, big brother was napping, and we starting things off slow and quiet. We cuddled, admired this little lady's tiny fingers and her itty bitty nose, and soaked in babyhood. Then, big brother woke up. We added his adorable smile, his awesome energy, and a seriously amazing dance party to the mix. This little girl is going to have an awful lot of fun with her big brother. After our dance party and some daddy/son wrestling, we wrapped things up much the way we began, with little toes, and a baby all snuggled in at home.


Need to locate a California DMV near you? You can easily find DMV offices in California by using our DMV office locator. Click on a CA DMV near you on the map or the list provided below to find out all you need to know about that particular California DMV.
Are you hunting for property records for the home located at 255 E Alexander Ave, Merced, CA 95340? If so, we can help you easily find crucial details for the property as well as other Merced property records, California public records, and other vital real estate details that can help you simplify the moving process.
Atwater: When the closure of Castle Air Force Base was announced in 1994, a group of dedicated enthusiasts in the Atwater-Merced area formed a non-profit organization called the Castle Air Museum Foundation, Inc.
According to the 2015 Genworth Financial cost of care survey, the average hourly home care rate in California is $22.50. The monthly base rate for California home care is typically higher when compared to neighboring states.
Youth from the Excelsior District and surrounding areas protested a controversial mixed-use housing proposal Saturday that they said would accelerate gentrification and fuel displacement in the largel.
search titles only has image posted today bundle duplicates include nearby areas bend, OR (bnd); eugene, OR (eug); fresno / madera (fre); gold country (gld); hanford.
On this state page you will find resources, senior housing, and senior lifestyle opportunities. Such items address Seniors' needs from Active Communities to Assisted Living along with Insurance, Medical and Financial Planning information.
Browse photos and price history of this 3 bed, 2 bath, 1,478 Sq. Ft. recently sold home at 770 Redwing Dr, Merced, CA 95340 that sold.


Caldwell Sling Stand is a great alternative to rummaging through piles of chain, wire rope or nylon to find the right lifting sling for the job. Keep all your slings stored with the lifting eye at shoulder height to reduce any unnecessary lifting of slings. Simply line up the crane hook to the storage hook and push the lifting eye onto the crane.


This year, Mystifly – awarded as the "World's Leading Airline Consolidator" by World Travel Awards will be focusing on new sectors with richer content in the travel and hospitality space at these events.
Travel Agents, OTAs', TMCs' and Corporates across the globe have appreciated and are profiting by substantially reducing their costs with Mystifly's flagship product MyFareBox – a B2B airfare booking platform. Also with the OnePoint API solution, they are now able to access and service new markets with Mystifly's global airfare content from 70+ countries covering 900+ airlines. With both these combined products, Mystifly today powers over 2500+ travel organisations across the world with the most competitive global airfare content.
Expanding the horizon, the recently launched Mystifly API OnePoint for hotels will make its presence felt at BTS-London and ITB-Berlin. This solution for Hotels will help them open additional streams of revenue by creating uniqueness in its offering for their customers, and create private travel deals combining airfare and their own products as a bundled offering. With the ability to combine air, Hotel's can now take advantage of deep airlines discounts to offer guests a package price that will help maintain a healthy margin by combining the strength of source and destination products. This will help Hotels to create private travel deals that can then translate into more loyal guests.
In addition to this, one of the key highlight at these events would be the pre-trip approval and self-booking tool for the Corporate travel management- 247 TravelDesk. With 247 TravelDesk, corporates can now control and manage their employee travel booking while enforcing policy adherence and streamline the approval process.


text:
Airbnb Experiences Being Expanded To 200 Cities
By Adnan Farooqui, on 01/28/2018 10:24 PST
The Airbnb Experiences program offers its users the opportunities to connect with locals at the destination to have, as the name suggests, new experiences. It lets Airbnb offer more than just short-term rentals and also enables those who may not have an extra room to rent out to make some money on the side by simply hosting people at their cooking class or walking tour. Airbnb has now confirmed that it's expanding its Experiences program to 200 cities across the United States.
Airbnb says that since launching Experiences, it has seen global weekly guest bookings go up over 2,000 percent and the number of active experiences has surged 500 percent. Airbnb is now offering more than 4,000 experiences globally across 50 cities.
The company also revealed that the average earnings for someone who hosts experiences nine times per month is $6,200 annually in the U.S. Those who are able to host more frequently like 15 times or so per month are making upwards of $24,000 annually. More than 1,000 experiences and counting are currently being offered in the United States and Airbnb wants to increase that number significantly.
The company says that it's going to invest $5 million in the United States this year for its Experiences program in order to develop, support, and promote entrepreneurs. This effort will help expand Airbnb Experiences to 200 cities across the country.
Filed in General. Read more about Airbnb. Source: airbnbcitizen
Airbnb To Acquire HotelTonight
Americans Spent More On Airbnb Compared To Hilton In 2018
Hidden Camera Found In An Airbnb After Guest Scans Wi-Fi Network
Airbnb Wants To Create Video Content To Make People Travel More
Airbnb Adventures Will Add Some Thrill To Your Next Vacation
Airbnb Luxe Lets You Travel In The Lap Of Luxury
You Can Now Download The CIA's Declassified Files On UFOs
Boss Gifts Staff Hi-Tech Cushion, Uses It To Spy On Them Instead
Activists Turn The Table On Police By Using Facial Recognition To Identify Them
Human-Made Materials Now Outweighs The Earth's Biomass
Disney+'s The Mandalorian Is 2020's Most Pirated TV Show
Even Facebook's Employees Don't Believe The Company's Attack On Apple Is...
This AI Playing A Non-Stop Bass Solo Is All Kinds Of Impressive


text:
Q: Return recursive method Why in this recursive method:
public static int contaCaratteri1(String qq, char bb, int ripp, int poss) {
    if (poss > qq.length() - 1) {
        return ripp;
    } else {
        if (bb == qq.charAt(poss)) {
            return contaCaratteri1(qq, bb, ripp + 1, poss + 1);
        } else {
            return contaCaratteri1(qq, bb, ripp, poss + 1);
        }
    }
}

I can return even though return contaCaratteri1(qq,bb,ripp+1,poss+1); are not int but, in this one:
public static void palindroma(String k, int i, int j) {
    if (i > j && j < i) {
        System.out.print("La stringa e' palindroma");
        return;
    } else {
        if (k.charAt(i) == k.charAt(j)) {
            return palindroma(k, i + 1, j - 1);
        } else {
            System.out.print("La stringa NON e' palindroma");
            return;
        }
    }
}

I can't because it is not void

A: The palindroma function should return boolean by design to be called recursively thus it cannot have void return type.
Also, else part of if statements may be removed when return statements are used to simplify the code:
public static boolean palindroma(String k, int i, int j) {
    if (null == k) {  // check for null
        return false;
    }
    if (i > j && j < i) {
        System.out.print("La stringa e' palindroma");
        return true;
    }
    if (k.charAt(i) == k.charAt(j)) {
        return palindroma(k, i + 1, j - 1);
    }
    System.out.print("La stringa NON e' palindroma");
    return false;
}

A: Normally when we create a function we try to get a value in return with ( return 0) to see if the function is terminating correctly.
some functions are predefined in the compiler
or programming language .( ex: return, void, int , char)
suppose we write a simple program in 'C' programming language with declaration. such as
void main() {
}
// here no value cannot be expected as return. because you have declared the function as NULL.
//as we know,  this does not mean that the program will not run or terminate correctly, but we cannot write a return value at the end of the function ( because function already declared as NULL/ VOID)
suppose we write a program
with no value expected in return at the end of completion of a function.
it normally returns as void
So Void is predefined as NULL inside compiler and also void function does not take any arguments .
kindly refer to wikipedia article:-
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Void_type

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Read the terms and conditions of this agreement carefully prior to submitting your information online or ordering the DVD.
Bill Sims Company collects information about you when you request information from us online. This information is used to help us understand your needs and improve our offerings.
We may contact you about our services and how we can help you improve your workplace.
We will never share this information with a third-party.
Bill Sims is willing to make our DVD available to you for a limited time for your consideration only on the condition that you accept all the terms of this agreement. This is a legal and enforceable contract between you and bill Sims. By ordering the DVD you agree to the terms and conditions of this agreement. If you do not agree to these terms and conditions do not order the DVD.
This Agreement is between The Bill Sims Company, Inc. ("Bill Sims") a South Carolina corporation and You ("Prospective Client" or "You") and is effective as of the date you order the DVD as defined below. This represents the entire agreement between You and Bill Sims.
The DVD and the Confidential and Proprietary Information and Intellectual Property contained therein (Properties) are the exclusive property of Bill Sims and belong solely to Bill Sims. Such Confidential and Proprietary Information includes, but is not limited to methods for designing employee incentive and recognition programs, methods for employee training programs and methods for obtaining favorable tax considerations. Intellectual Property includes, but is not limited to trade secrets shared, the Bill Sims trademark and service mark properties and copyrighted materials contained within the DVD.
Bill Sims retains all the rights to the DVD and to the Properties.
In consideration for Bill Sims allowing You to access the DVD, You agree to keep secret and to treat with confidentiality the Properties, and not to disclose the Properties to others for any purpose whatsoever other than those in Your organization, on a need to know basis, for consideration, evaluation and potential acquisition of Bill Sims' services.
Bill Sims hereby gives You limited access to the DVD to review the DVD and the Properties contained therein. Such limited access does not encompass any right to make copies of the DVD, share the DVD or the Properties contained therein with other companies or persons or use the DVD or Properties in the creation of similar systems for You or for others. You also agree not to reverse engineer, copy, or plagiarize the methods and concepts revealed either thru in house programs or a third party. You may not make copies of the DVD nor may You share it with others not privy to this Disclosure Agreement. This is NOT a license Agreement.
This Agreement shall be interpreted in accordance with the laws of the state of South Carolina. You agree that violation of any of the restrictions or use going beyond those expressly set forth above will cause immediate and irreparable harm to Bill Sims for which damages will not be an adequate remedy. Accordingly, You agree that if you violate the terms set forth above, Bill Sims shall be entitled to apply for preliminary and permanent injunctive relief as well as reasonable attorney's fees and an equitable accounting of any earnings, profits, and other benefits arising from such violation. Nothing herein shall be construed as a prohibition on Bill Sims from pursuing any other legal or equitable remedies, including damages.
This Agreement is binding upon and shall benefit the parties hereto, and Bill Sims successors and assigns. This Agreement may not be amended.
Bill Sims Company is the owner of all intellectual property rights, including all copyright, patents, and trademarks associated with the site and its contents.
You may not reproduce or distribute the contents of this site without the expressed written permission of the Bill Sims Company.


text:
Q: How do I edit Infopath webparts in SharePoint 2010? I have full control on a SharePoint 2010 site with an Infopath Web part on it.
I want to edit its content but the relevant ribbons would not show up from the top.
Please help.
Screenshot below:

Thanks

A: Navigate to the list associated with the web-part.
Under the List tab, click "Customize Form."
Inside Infopath, Find the "Page Design" tab.
Under it, one can select the different views to customize upon.


text:
The resources here are used in visual force pages.  The zip file must be uploaded into salesforce

http://wiki.developerforce.com/page/Delivering_Static_Resources_with_Visualforce

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
InfoQ Homepage Gerrit Content on InfoQ
Google Donates Trademarks to New Foundation
On Wednesday, Google created a new Open Usage Commons Foundation for the purpose of hosting trademarks relating to open source projects under its control; Istio, Angular and Gerrit trademarks were moved over. Not everyone approves of this move, and the benefits are questionable. InfoQ looks behind the story to find out what it means for developers everywhere.
Alex Blewitt
on Jul 10, 2020 2
Go Language Now Accepts Patches via GitHub Pull Requests
Google has started mirroring GitHub PRs for Go into Gerrit, Go's upstream Git server, thus making it easier for developers to contribute to Go development.
Sergio De Simone
Use the Force, Luca - Jenkins Developer Wipes out a Month of Commits on GitHub
Yesterday, a developer on the Jenkins project accidentally triggered a force push on the GitHub repositories that store the Git repositories for the Jenkins codebase, wiping out several months of commits. InfoQ looks at what happened and what needs to prevent this re-occuring in the future.
on Nov 12, 2013 2
Why Gerrit chose Buck
Six months ago, the Gerrit project started moving towards a Buck-based build system from the existing Maven build. With the 2.8 stream, Buck has become the default build. At EclipseCon, Shawn Pearce explained why the switch makes sense, and a little bit more about the build system itself. Read on to find out more about Buck and its advantages over Maven.
on Oct 31, 2013 2
Gerrit at the Eclipse Foundation
The Eclipse Foundation has made Gerrit available for projects using the Git version control system at https://git.eclipse.org/r/. This allows patches to be sent directly in the form of commits which can be applied to a Git repository, although the Eclipse IP Process needs to be updated to make it widely useful. Read on to find out what this means for Eclipse projects.


text:
Q: Tmap: Cannot create school district map for national level I want to plot school districts on a national map in R using the library Tmap. I used a shapefile from the official website, the National Center for Education Statistics, for school district boundaries. Please note that I used the 2019 file instead of the latest one, and you can download this file from Single Composite File in the link mentioned earlier. I first tried with one state, Utah, and everything went well without any problems. My code to plot this map and the reference for the national map (from Bloomberg Citylab) is following;
library (sf)
library (tmap)
map <- st_read(".../schooldistrict_sy1819_tl19.shp")
ut <- map[map$STATEFP == 49, ]
tm_shape(ut) + tm_borders()

However, I encountered an error when I tried to make the national map. I used this code and got the following error.
tm_shape(map) + tm_borders()
Error: Shape contains invalid polygons. Please fix it or set tmap_options(check.and.fix = TRUE) and rerun the plot

Of course, I did some research. One website suggested that the following error occurred because of invalid geometries. I checked and tried to make these valid, but I got the same mistake as the first time I did. I attempted to solve this problem with the following code.
sum(!st_is_valid(map$geometry))
[1] 858
st_make_valid(map$geometry)
Geometry set for 13315 features
Geometry type: MULTIPOLYGON
Dimension:     XY
Bounding box:  xmin: -179.1686 ymin: -14.5487 xmax: 179.7487 ymax: 71.38961
Geodetic CRS:  NAD83
First 5 geometries:
MULTIPOLYGON (((-80.11417 26.07902, -80.11423 2...
MULTIPOLYGON (((-82.19919 26.77353, -82.19748 2...
MULTIPOLYGON (((-81.45356 25.80323, -81.45388 2...
MULTIPOLYGON (((-80.39962 25.25725, -80.40002 2...
MULTIPOLYGON (((-81.56409 27.34066, -81.56423 2...

tm_shape(map) + tm_borders()
Error: Shape contains invalid polygons. Please fix it or set tmap_options(check.and.fix = TRUE) and rerun the plot

Since I was blank about the geometry in R, I totally have no idea how to make it works. If anyone has done this before, could you please share any advice/ suggestions regarding this? Any idea to solve this problem would be appreciated. Thank you so much for reading my question!

A: Thanks to @mrhellmann, who figured out the minor mistake I made, you need to assign the map data to a new variable after using st_make_valid. I used the following code to plot the district-level data into the nationwide map.
library (SF)
library (tmap)
map <- st_read(".../schooldistrict_sy1819_tl19.shp")
map2 <- st_make_valid(map$geometry)
tm_shape(map2) + tm_borders()


A two-day course on effective group management techniques for longer outdoor trips.
A pre-requisite to the course is at least one OCC Field Leader course. This nationally recognized course will provide participants with Outdoor Council of Canada (OCC) training and certification in Field Leader – Overnight and qualifies participants to lead longer trips in low-risk terrain classes relevant to their activity. The program is suitable for hiking club leaders, trail group volunteers, recreation department staff, teachers, 4H leaders, Scout and Guide leaders, parents or individuals interested in leading hikes. The course will be delivered by an OCC certified instructor. It is offered through Hike Nova Scotia in partnership with the NS Chapter of the OCC and supported by the Nova Scotia Department of Communities, Culture and Heritage.
To be hiking leaders, participants should have some hiking experience and be able to participate in a low risk natural environment hike on a designated trail while carrying what they will need for the day outside. The module will review and deepen the event cycle and offers effective group management techniques for longer outdoor trips. Participants are required to read a manual, and participate in an online planning meeting beforehand. Participants who successfully meet the course outcomes will earn Outdoor Council of Canada Field Leader – Overnight certification along with the necessary skills to be a confident overnight hiking leader. All of the instruction will be outdoors, including an overnight hiking trip. Participants must attend the full two-day course in order to receive certification. For further information regarding Field Leader - Overnight Certification, please go to the Outdoor Council of Canada.
The cost is $155 (with an additional 15% off for paid Hike NS members). A reduced fee of $125 is available for Duke of Edinburgh leaders. Registration includes a course manual and a one-year membership with the Outdoor Council of Canada. All participants must sign a waiver. Further course information will be provided upon registration. Participants are responsible for their own meals and transportation.
Hike NS requires three full days' notice in order to reimburse anyone who wishes to cancel their registration. For this course, notice of cancellation by email or phone must be received by 5 pm on September 17. Sometimes Hike NS must cancel a course due to instructor illness, low enrollment or other unforeseen circumstance. If Hike NS has to cancel the course, you will be contacted at least a day in advance and will be fully reimbursed.
Please help promote these courses by cutting and pasting these write-ups for emails, online and social media (Word file - coming soon). Or download and print this flyer (coming soon). Thank you.


The September edition of the free local newspaper The Brixton Bugle is out today (Friday).
The paper – produced and published monthly by the team here at Brixton Blog – is available at dozens of points around Brixton, including The Ritzy Cinema, The Rec, Lambeth Town Hall and all the main supermarkets.
If you have any questions or comments, or would like to get involved, contact us on the tab above.
Hi I was wondering where else the meeting at Brixton town hall on the 11th September has been advertised as I only found out about it from someone else and people I have spoken to had no idea about it.


Very little is left of Oxfordshire`s woodland, and what remains is mainly fragmented and surrounded by intensively farmed land. Woodland plants and animals are struggling to survive in these small isolated woods.
Restore helped fund the doubling of the size of Piddington Wood a remnant of the ancient hunting forest of Bernwood by buying another 21 acres of adjoining woodland and fields. This has helped buffer and protect the ancient wood from the effects of neighbouring intensive agriculture. The whole site is now being managed primarily for the benefit of butterflies, especially the brown hairstreak which is now very rare.
Maintaining forest edge habitats for the butterflies is attracting further species and there is growing interest in the bats that are being attracted to the site, with Local volunteers now erecting and monitoring bat boxes.


GENERAL SANTOS CITY (MindaNews / 12 March) — The Senate blue ribbon committee will resume here on Friday, March 16, its investigation into the alleged P8.7-billion road right-of-way (RROW) "scam" in the area.
Dominador Lagare III, supervising legislative officer of the office of Senator Emmanuel Pacquiao, said Monday four senators have already confirmed to attend the scheduled Senate hearing at the city council's session hall.
He said these are senators Vicente Sotto III, Juan Edgardo Angara, Gregorio Honasan and Pacquiao.
Senate blue ribbon committee chair Senator Richard Gordon, has yet to confirm his attendance as of Monday, he said.
The office of Senator Pacquiao, who initiated the conduct of the Senate inquiry on the RROW controversy last year, has been coordinating the preparations for the senate inquiry.
The initial hearing, which was held at the Senate, was facilitated by the committee on public works chaired by Pacquiao.
"If Senator Gordon will not be available, Senator Pacquiao will preside over the hearing," Lagare said in an interview over radio station Brigada News FM.
Lagare, a former city councilor here, said they have finalized the preparations for the Senate hearing, which will be aired live on national television and Internet streaming.
He said among the invited resource persons are officials of the city assessor's office and the registry of deeds as well as regional and national officials of the Department of Public Works and Highways and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources.
The "scam's" whistle blower Roberto Catapang Jr., who hails from the city, has confirmed to attend the hearing, he said.
Lagare said Pacquiao pushed for the conduct of the Senate hearing here since the controversy happened in the city and involved individuals as well as offices based in the area.
He said it will allow the Senate blue ribbon committee to gather the needed documents and verify the areas covered by the supposed fake RROW claims, which included road expansion projects in portions of the national highway in Barangays Batomelong to Lagao, Calumpang, Tambler and Labangal.
These include the validation of the cadastral map on the RROW claims previously presented by the DENR, he said.
"During the previous hearing, some resource persons failed to present the necessary documents since they were reportedly left in their offices here in Mindanao. So that will be addressed by the hearing here," he said.
Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II disclosed last year the alleged scam involving some P8.7 billion in RROW settlements in the city and neighboring areas based on supposed fictitious and fabricated documents.
He had directed the National Bureau of Investigation to investigate the scam, which was based on revelations made by Catapang.


text:
Cameo + OAK presents… Romance (Live Debut!) with DJ Sets from JD Samson & Nomi Ruiz
Cameo93 N 6th St, Brooklyn, NY 11211
JD SamsonNomi Ruiz
housedeep house
93 N6TH ST. BK
FRI, FEB 13th
ADV TIX ☞ http://ticketf.ly/1xZXoTw
Cameo + OAK presents…
Romance (Live Debut!)
with DJ Sets from…
/ JD Samson
// & Nomi Ruiz
https://www.facebook.com/pages/ROMANCE/837935352940699
ROMANCE is the alluring new project by producer Yung Diamond and vocalist TC Milan. The two found themselves alone together in New York City in Spring 2014 when they first started writing these love songs. It instantly became clear that this was more than a fleeting affair, that the musical moments they were creating deserved real devotion and time. ROMANCE is about the search for true love and happiness in this vast, sometimes cruel world. Their forthcoming EP, The Romance EP, will be released in Spring 2015.
https://www.facebook.com/DJJDSAMSON
An international icon of the LGBT community, JD's career as a singer, producer and DJ has landed her at the intersection of music, art, activism, and fashion. Most known as the lead singer of Brooklyn-based band/art/performance collective MEN, JD is also one third of the Feminist Dance Punk Performance Project, "Le Tigre". Since their inception, MEN has toured extensively around the world, from LA and New York to Moscow and Shanghai to Paris and Sydney, performing with the likes of Gossip, Peaches, and CSS. With MEN's latest release, Labor, and a handful of other audio projects in the works, JD shows no sign of stopping her evolution as a creative force of nature.
http://www.nomionline.com/
Singer/songrwriter/vocalist Nomi Ruiz is a Dance, Electro-pop, R&B and Hip hop singer from New York City who was among the cast of vocalists that contributed to Hercules and Love Affair's debut album. Ruiz is now fronting electro-pop sensation Jessica 6
21+, Doors MIDNIGHT
FULL CALENDAR LISTINGS
http://www.cameony.net/
https://twitter.com/cameogallery


text:
Der Ausdruck Wedel kennzeichnet die Verlängerung der Wirbelsäule zu einem Schwanz bei Schalenwild außer Schwarzwild, welches  einen Pürzel hat.
In der Jägersprache gibt es für weitere Tiere unterschiedliche Bezeichnungen für diesen Körperteil, z. B. die Blume beim Feldhasen und anderen hasenartigen, die Lunte bei Fuchs und  Marder.

Literatur
 Ilse Haseder, Gerhard Stinglwagner: Knaurs Großes Jagdlexikon, Augsburg 2000, ISBN 3-8289-1579-5

Jägersprache

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
Russia Signs Contract With Eutelsat to Launch Satellites Through 2023
Russia Signs Contract With Eutelsat to Launch Satellites Through 2023 © Sputnik/ Oleg Urusov
11:08 29.10.2015(updated 11:16 29.10.2015) Get short URL
http://sputniknews.com/business/20151029/1029267824/Russia-Eutelsat-Satellite-Launches.html
Russia's space agency Roscosmos said in a statement that a subsidiary of Russia's Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center signed a contract with Eutelsat, the French-based satellite provider, to put the companies satellites into orbit during the period of 2016-2023.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) – A subsidiary of Russia's Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center signed a contract with Eutelsat, the French-based satellite provider, to put the companies satellites into orbit during the period of 2016-2023, Russia's space agency Roscosmos said in a statement Thursday.
"In the period of 2016-2023, several Proton-M carrier rocket launches with Eutelsat satellites from the Baikonur space center will be carried out," the statement reads.
From the Russian side, the contract was signed by Khrunichev's subsidiary the International Launch Services (ILS) company.
The first launch under the contract will put a Eutelsat 9B satellite, designed to provide digital television and data services in Scandinavia and the Baltic countries, into orbit.
According to the Khrunichev Center, over the past 15 years Russian Protons launched 11 Eutelsat satellites.
Kiev attempts to jam Russian satellites
A very real danger from falling Russian Satellite
OSCE slams Kiev's repressive shutting down of Russian TV Channels
Russia will begin Moon colonization in 2030 – draft space program
USA hopes to cooperate with Russia on ISS; Russia is unwilling
Deputy PM Rogozin Says Russia Must Continue International Space Cooperation
Category: General information	Tags: 2023, Eutelsat, Launch Satellites, roscosmos, russia, russian tv, satellite tv, satellites, Signs Contract


text:
Ві́ктор Григо́рович Яла́нський (* 24 листопада 1919, Катеринослав — ?) — український радянський графік. Член спілки художників СРСР. Батько Заслуженого художника України Андрія Яланського.

1955 року закінчив Київський державний художній інститут, клас Василя Касіяна і Антона Середи.

Основні твори Яланського: плакати, монументально-декоративні тематичні пано в готелі «Дніпропетровськ» у Дніпрі, там само на фасаді середньої школи, в дитячій санаторії в Скадовську, в Палаці шахтарів у Первомайському (1971) та ін. Книжкова графіка.

Примітки

Література

 . Словникова частина. — Т. 10.

Українські графіки


Following the decision to upgrade the existing hydroelectric scheme on Ardtornish Estate (Scotland); preliminary ground investigation confirmed that the ground conditions were not sufficient for the planned hydro scheme and a decision was made to undertake a more detailed investigation, which included rock drilling and geochemical testing of the samples.
Two 10m deep vertical rotary cored boreholes and one 10m inclined rotary cored borehole were drilled and samples were sent to a geotechnical laboratory for testing. The test results confirmed that the ground in the immediate vicinity of the proposed dam site needed to be improved in order to allow safe construction and operation of the proposed dam. It was determined that a number of holes would be drilled which would be filled with grout consisting of a mixture of cement and bentonite. A total hole length of over 400m was drilled. Over three tons of cement and bentonite were used to inject into the grout holes and after completion, each hole was tested for permeability.
The test results were accepted as satisfactory, and three years after the dam was completed, the regular dam inspection confirmed that the structure is sound and working as designed.


text:
Amnesty International UK
Login Search Menu
All popular browsers allow zooming in and out by pressing the Ctrl (Cmd in OS X) and + or - keys. Or alternatively hold down the Ctrl key and scroll up or down with the mouse.
Increased Default
High contrast Default
USA: discriminatory facial recognition technology should be banned - new call
A Black Lives Matter protest in Vienna last week © Christopher Glanzl / Amnesty International Austria
Call comes as Black Lives Matter protests sweep across the world
One facial recognition technology company claims to work with 600 US law-enforcement agencies
'Surveillance only exacerbates the potential for abuses' - Michael Kleinman
With global Black Lives Matter protests continuing to sweep across the world in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis last month, Amnesty International is calling for a ban on the use of facial recognition technology by police for mass surveillance purposes because of its use in racially discriminatory policing and in racial profiling.
Research shows that facial recognition technology systems process some faces more accurately than others, depending on key characteristics including skin colour, ethnicity and gender, creating inequities in both surveillance and policing. Despite this, racial recognition technology has seen a huge uptake in recent years - particularly in the realm of law enforcement. One US facial recognition technology company alone - Clearview AI - claims to work with more than 600 law-enforcement agencies in the USA.
Amnesty is calling for a complete ban on the use, development, production and sale of facial recognition technology for mass surveillance purposes by the police and other government agencies in the United States, and also calling for a ban on exports of the technology systems to other countries.
For a full explanation of the issues, see the accompanying Amnesty briefing.
Michael Kleinman, Director of Amnesty International USA's Silicon Valley Initiative, said:
"Black people throughout our communities already experience disproportionate abuses of privacy and basic rights, and surveillance only exacerbates the potential for abuses.
"We are seeing these violations play out daily as police departments across the United States use facial recognition technology to identify protesters.
"Just the mere threat of surveillance creates a chilling effect on people who would otherwise exercise their right to protest. Instead of violating human rights daily out on the streets, law-enforcement officers should be supporting people's right to protest these killings and join communities in necessary dialogue.
"The ability to be part of an anonymous crowd is what allows many people to participate in peaceful protests and to feel safe. Instead of using these technologies to heighten people's fears, law enforcement should fulfil their obligations to respect and facilitate the right of people to peacefully protest."
Amnesty is mobilising its millions of members and activists worldwide to demand that the US government respects, protects and fulfils the human rights of all black people.
View latest press releases
Receive urgent actions to Your phone
Text PROTEST + your full name to 70505
Work for Amnesty
Urgent Actions
© Amnesty International UK 2019. Amnesty International UK Section Charitable Trust. A company limited by guarantee registered in England and Wales (03139939) and a charity registered in England and Wales (1051681) and Scotland (SC039534). Amnesty International United Kingdom Section. A company limited by guarantee registered in England and Wales (01735872). Registered office 17-25 New Inn Yard London EC2A 3EA.
© Amnesty International UK 2017