AIM: To evaluate the outcomes of short (15 minutes) oral hygiene vs. hand hygiene education for preschool children 4 weeks after these interventions. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Sixty-one preschool children (age range 4-6 years) attending four kindergarten classes participated in a 15-minute health education programme on the importance of body cleanliness for general health. In addition, specific instructions on oral hygiene were provided for two randomly selected classes (30 children), while the remaining two classes (31 children) were given instruction of hand and nail cleaning. The oral hygiene status was assessed usingthe plaque control record (PCR). The cleanliness of the hands and fingernails was determined using a hand hygiene index (HHI) and a nail hygiene index (NHI). All three parameters were assessed before the intervention as well as 4 weeks thereafter. RESULTS: Four weeks after education, the PCR had improved for all children from 79.95% to 72.35% (p < 0.001). The NHI had improved from 74.91% to 61.71% (p < 0.001). In addition, the mean PCR of the children given oral hygiene instruction decreased from 83.67% to 72.40%, while the mean PCR of the children given hand and nail cleaning instruction decreased from 76.23% to 72.29% (interaction effect 'time x type of instruction': p = 0.044). Girls' PCR improved significantly more than boys' PCR (Girls, 80.98 vs. 69.71; boys, 78.33 vs. 75.31; p = 0.021). CONCLUSIONS: The results of the study show that even a short, school-based educational intervention at an early age may affect children's oral health promotion significantly. Teachers should, therefore, be encouraged to educate children from an early age about oral hygiene promotion.


text:
Print June 6, 2016 3 comments
The Baker Street Männerbund:
Some Thoughts on Holmes, Watson, Bond, & Bonding
"These," he pointed around, "are my other guns. The parallel is exact!" — Sherlock Holmes, "The Empty House."[1]
Having devoted considerable time and attention to the genres of weird fiction and science fiction,[2] it is perhaps long overdue that I should spend some time considering the remaining one of the Three Disreputable Genres,[3] detective fiction.
The transition is made easier by the fact that the inventor of the detective tale, by most accounts, is that master of the weird tale, Edgar A. Poe, who in turn Lovecraft considered his own master.[4]
I suspect that, as with weird fiction and science fiction, the persistent popularity of this looked down upon genre — one might even say, obsession — lies in its ability to present Traditional metaphysical themes no longer countenanced by mainstream fiction, or culture in general. Let's see!
In dealing with detective fiction, one must, of course, deal with the epoch-making figure of Sherlock Holmes.
The first thing writers on Sherlock Holmes feel the need to tackle is the question of the overwhelming cultural impact of these tales of a late Victorian/early Edwardian private (or "consulting") detective. The only rival, though still subject to far less fan obsession, is that other British chap, James Bond, secret agent, of whom more anon.
As usual, Colin Wilson has an interesting and useful theory about this.[5] He attributes the overwhelming and continued fascination with Holmes to Doyle having, quite inadvertently, solved an important problem in spiritual evolution.
Holmes was more than a fictional character: he was a response to a deep-rooted psychological need of the late Victorians, a need for reassurance, for belief in the efficacy of reason and for man's power to over come the chaos produced by this new disease of alienation.[6]
The rise of literacy among the populace led to an obsession with the realistic novel (itself an innovation of Cervantes, Richardson, Defoe and others).
You would have to imagine that Sir Walter Raleigh brought back marijuana from the New World, and all Europe became pot smokers. This taste for escaping into worlds of fantasy swept across Europe, and literature gained an important that it had never possessed in any previous age.[7]
A point often missed, especially by literary critics of the Realist camp,[8] is that this involves more than the accumulation of precise detail, important though that is.[9] Among realists, Dumas would always be more popular than Balzac, and even within with Dickens, Pickwick Paters would be more popular than "better" novels like Hard Times.[10] "They are too 'real,' and they lack the element of the wish-fulfillment fantasy."
The point is, to get the two together, in the right proportion: the wish-fulfillment fantasy, with enough realistic detail to assure us that this, unlike a fairy-tale, is real.[11]
But then, around the turn of the 19th century, a problem developed; people began to live too much, perhaps entirely, in their imaginations. Enter the literary figure of the aesthete — Axel, Dorian Gray, and most notably Des Esseintes, the protagonist of Huysman's À rebours (Against the Grain) — all living apart from, and hostile to, the outside world, constructing their own, superior counter-world at home.[12] Unfortunately, as Wilson points out, the world always wins; Des Esseintes ultimately sickens and must return to the hated Paris for treatment.[13]
Holmes was at first a similar figure, holed up in his rooms at 221b Baker Street, taking cocaine and coffee, gesturing "languidly." As Wilson notes, Doyle was commissioned to write the second Holmes novel, The Sign of the Four, by the same publisher, at the same dinner party, that produced The Picture of Dorian Gray, just two years after À rebours.
But unlike either character, Holmes evolves a solution to the problem: crime; or rather, the solution of crimes, the pursuit of justice: "He has not turned his back on the world; on the contrary, he regards himself as a last court of appeal."
Quite unconsciously, certainly unaware of what he was doing, Conan Doyle had solved the problem that had tormented and frustrated the novelist since Richardson. He had created a romantic hero, a man whose life is entirely the life of the mind ("I cannot live without brainwork), yet succeeded in steering him out of the cul-de-sac of despair and defeat tat destroyed so many of the best minds of the fin-de-siecle period.
This has a sound basis in Tradition. From Plato (The Myth of the Cave) to Emericus Durden,[14] the path of the Realized Man involves not only rising to the heights but also a return to live among us. [15] As Krishna explains his role as avatar:
"Whenever there is a decline of righteousness,
and the rise of unrighteousness,
then I re-incarnate myself
to teach dharma."[16]
Indeed, soon an even more fascinating development occurred. Fired by his interests in detection, Holmes acquires more and more knowledge and skill, until, no longer a languid aesthete who claimed to not know, or have an interest in, whether the Earth revolved around the Sun or vice versa, to a polymath, a universal genius — a superman, or, as Wilson add, "a true magician." He becomes that figure we have frequently cited, the Chakravartin, the Unmoved Mover turning things from the Center of the World; as Wilson quotes Watson on Holmes:
"He loved to lie in the very center of five millions of people, with his filaments stretching out and running through them, responsive to every little rumor or suspicion of unsolved crime."[17]
Wilson thinks Doyle's writer's instinct was right to try to kill off Holmes, because he was unable to find a way to develop the character further.[18] He sounds a bit like a Liberal Goodthinker when he suggests that "a man like Holmes" should have naturally become interested in the causes of crimes, not just solving them, which did not interest Doyle.
What interested Doyle was spiritualism, séances, and such like, and "it's hard to imagine Holmes at a séance." True, but I find it hard to imagine Holmes campaigning for slum clearance, hot school lunches, or midnight basketball, either.
The real problem is that Doyle's interests were not in real Tradition but in the modern, deviant areas of "spiritualism" or what Guénon disparaged as "Spiritism,"[19] an interest Wilson shares [20] and to which we will be returning.
Wilson gives us a compelling portrait of Holmes and the reasons for the Holmes phenomenon. Still, it might be useful to see what the "professional" literary critics have to say about it.
There are, of course, gazillions of editions of the Holmes novels and tales, ranging from expensive "limited edition" volumes to pricy, vastly annotated slipcovered editions[21] to free Kindle versions from Amazon sellers. The Oxford volume I employ, whose second edition recently appeared, collects most of the famous tales as well as the short, early novel The Sign of the Four, all gently annotated, and with a useful introduction by Barry McCrea.[22] Prof. McCrea reminds me of what my mentor, Plotinus scholar Dr. John N. Deck, once said about Walter Kaufmann and his attempts to popularize Nietzsche and Hegel: he's seldom wrong but never profound. As such, he provides a useful framework which we can, as Dr. Deck would also say, aprofondise with our own expansions of his comments.
McCrea and Wilson agree, and it is good that they agree, that "There is simply no other fictional character who comes close to having the cultural influence of Holmes," and that he is "clearly a product of his times." However, since Doyle fails to give Holmes any PC speeches about racism, sexism, etc., Prof. McCrea has to exercise a bit of academic legerdemain to get his quota of goodthinking in:
The mechanism of the stories is to focus our attention entirely on the mystery while imperceptibly exposing us to social, economic, psychological and historical realities.
Ah yes, love that "imperceptibly"; it's there, but you can't see it until the critic comes along. Double points!
McCrea's still got something on the ball, though; in his own PC way, he does manage to notice many of the points we and Wilson have been hammering away on. Holmes' stories manage to insinuate the plight of women under patriarchy, the toiling of the oppressed workers, the ruthless exploitation of the colored masses, etc., because Holmes exercises the superhuman powers of the Charkravartin:
Holmes sees almost everything and he understands everything he sees, often immediately.
Holmes' work . . . reveal[s] the connections that remain otherwise hidden, or unspeakable.
Holmes is an appealing figure in an overcrowded world and a bewildering global economic system because reveals unseen or disavowed connections.
Holmes reveals new, unexpected connections and conjunctions generated from the new circumstances of metropolitan living.
McCrea, of course, does not attribute this to any mystical, superhuman achievements. Rather, he brings it back to another of our themes; Holmes' method of deduction depends on the same patient, exhaustive, perhaps neurotic and suffocating, accumulation of details that we have identified as the literary method of weird fiction. In "The Red-Headed League,"
Holmes sees something invisible to the police, to the characters who are victims of the scam, and, of course to the eternally astonished Watson: — namely, that "the line of fine shops and stately business premises . . . really abutted on the other side upon the faded and stagnant square." The fact that the two neighborhoods are physically next to each other is invisible to Watson because socially and imaginatively they are so far apart.[23]
Like Poe, Lovecraft, and other writers of weird fiction (as well as such Traditionalists as Guénon and Evola),
Strangeness is hidden somewhere within ordinary life. For the mystery to be solved or the criminal identified, commonplace doings and commonplace people, not usually worthy of enquiry, must be scrutinized.[24]
Holmes is able to see or make these connections due to his social isolation.
He is not of the world he investigates. The only ones who see the world the way Holmes does are the criminals and family outsiders.
McCrea also agrees with Wilson in seeing Holmes as a fin de siècle figure, a withdrawn dandy, but fails to notice any development of the sort Wilson descries. Instead, he takes the idea in a different and equally intriguing direction: "Holmes is a bohemian bachelor who abhors family life."
Yet Holmes himself is a confirmed bachelor who lives, on and off, with a male companion. Watson, just as he intermediates between Holmes and the reader, is never fully part of either realm, the bohemian bachelor life he shares with Holmes or the heterosexual family world which he ostensibly joins when he marries. . . . Watson shuttles anxiously back and forth between them, supposedly living at home with Mary, but moving back to Baker Street whenever there is a crime to solve. . . . From the point of view of the reader, he is married to Holmes.
What seems to engrave itself more than anything else on our reading memories is the domestic life of 221b Baker Street. Holmes and Watson sitting in their rooms, reading he newspapers, discussing Mrs. Hudson's cooking, or waiting for the door bell to ring and a stranger to arrive with a new mystery to solve.
Refreshingly, McCrea dismisses any concern over the question "Is Holmes gay?" one way or another. Instead, he picks a different thread to unravel:
What we can say for sure is that Holmes stands emblematically outside of the economy of marriage and reproduction.
Holmes is most often called in to help where the family is failing or under threat.
Here we see Holmes and Watson taking on the role we've called attention to before: the Männerbund, the "band apart," outside of but not hostile to the family unit; indeed, by its very isolation, able to come to its defense in desperate times.[25]
This cultural role parallels the (paradoxical, to some) biological role of homosexuality in enabling large groups of mammals to survive, by allowing some members to be always available to defense, food gathering, etc.[26]
221b Baker Street is inhabited by a "couple" whose partnership cannot bear biological fruit, a household which will not leave a genetic legacy. By the same token, Holmes's professional eye is resolutely turned away from thoughts of the future. . . .
Where we find clarity and solace is not in the comfort of family life, the marriage and fertility that offers comfort in so many other kinds of narrative, but in the unconventional homestead of 221v Baker Street, a queer source of order from which the strangeness of the world, and how it came to be as it is, is visible with a unique kind of clarity.[27]
This raises another, subtle point (though I doubt McCrean notices). The homosexual is often the homophobic Right's favorite straw man for "those with no concern for future generations."[28] And yet isn't the Right — the non-libertarian, at least — concerned above all with the past, and the preservation thereof? In a word, archeofuturism?
The gaze of the stories is fixed firmly on the past, on how things turned out as they did, not on what they will or might become. The mysteries, even when solved, leave us with a sense that underneath ordinary daily life there might always lie something old and dark and violent that will return in an unpredictable form.
McCrea also make an important point about the use of Watson:
There is something in the stories' form as opposed to content, that has nothing to do with historical context but which draws us in wholly and inexplicably. . . . Watson is our way into the stories. . . . because his blindness and puzzlement in the face of these facts mirror our own experience of reading the story. The sense that Watson incarnates of missing the big picture, of not "getting" how everything rally fits together, is part of our experience of life itself.
It is one of the sources of fellowship between ourselves and Watson that we never master Holmes' skill, and it is part of the stories' compulsive hold on our attention that we keep feeling we might.
This is an essential component to the wish-fulfilment aspect that Wilson emphasized. Kingsley Amis made the same point in his invaluable study of the Bond phenomenon: Bond,[29] like all wish-fulfilment figures, must be enough like us to plausibly suggest that "I could do that if given half the chance." He's a good shot, not the best; he needs to train, to read up on card tricks, etc. He's Batman, not Superman.[30]
In tune with the times, Bond, unlike Holmes, is presented as a relentless womanizer, and even (in the books) make occasional homophobic observations, usually in the context of bemoaning feminism[31] and other aspects of modernity.[32] Amis, however, is at pains to point out, in that carefully cataloging way of his, that Bond seldom beds more than one or two ladies per book, a rather modest count, well within the "I could do that" mode of successful wish fulfilment.[33]
More importantly, Don Juanism is easily seen as a cover for latent homosexuality; Bond's marriage is quickly erased by Blofeld,[34] who then replaces Tracy as the object of Bond's obsessions. Once Blofeld too is dispatched, the energy of the series — perhaps also due to Fleming's physical decline — drops off dramatically, and it really just peters out.
Amis is correct to suggest that both M and the various super-villains function as surrogate fathers for Bond, who is intimidated by their worldly sophistication and punished for his transgressions and inadequacies; M and the villains both do so with snide comments and other displays of superiority, the villains ultimately inflicting corporately punishment as well.
All this is echoed in the recent (supposed) Internet surge to have Gillian Anderson take over the role of Bond. Although popular with a certain generation of post-humanist nerds,[35] a number of problems seem obvious.
First, the whole "Jane Bond" idea has already been exploited by the porn industry.[36] More importantly, a female Bond completely ruins the ratio of detailed realism vs. wish fulfillment; as alt-Rightist frequently point out, real world women just can't do that stuff, and it's even dangerous — to them — to pretend otherwise.[37]
As Tim Stanley notes:
Here's what I'm not saying: that women can't play men's parts. They can, they have and it can be illuminating. The problem is that the switch is almost always highly self-conscious — it's done to make an artistic point.
When a woman plays Hamlet, the audience is in on the conceit and feminising the role adds new depths to it. When Cate Blanchett played Bob Dylan in Todd Haynes' I'm Not There it was to make the point that Dylan's constant search for meaning, and his ready identity with outlaws, meant that he could just as easily be played a woman as by Marcus Carl Franklin, a black adolescent, or Richard Gere, an ageing Billy the Kid.
By contrast, the desire to see a woman play Bond is purely so that a woman can play Bond — and with the absurd proviso that we'd all have to act like we hadn't noticed. The idea is both dumb and dishonest.
Sure, make a film about an ass-kicking female spy who beds everyone she meets and drives a Lotus underwater. But don't call her Bond.[38]
The Bond world as a whole, then, is a Männerbund,[39] or rather, a sort of world-wide public school in which Bond is trained for membership. The dynamic is all two-way, Bond/M or Bond/Villain, with the villain trying to win Bond over to "the dark side" like Emperor Palpatine.[40] The famous "Bond Girl" can at most take the place of Watson, with generally unsatisfactory results.[41]
I suspect that the lack of a Watson figure accounts for the relatively lower level of personal obsession with Bond, whatever his world-wide fame;[42] for all his solitude and singularity, Holmes needs a Watson, not a Bond Girl, for the reader's interest to crystalize around.[43]
1. "I wonder that my very simple stratagem could deceive so old a SHIKARI," said Holmes. "It must be very familiar to you. Have you not tethered a young kid under a tree, lain above it with your rifle, and waited for the bait to bring up your tiger? This empty house is my tree, and you are my tiger. You have possibly had other guns in reserve in case there should be several tigers, or in the unlikely supposition of your own aim failing you. These," he pointed around, "are my other guns. The parallel is exact."
2. See the essays mostly collected in The Eldritch Evola…& Others (San Francisco: Counter-Currents, 2014) and my latest collection Green Nazis in Space! (San Francisco: Counter-Currents, 2015).
3. The ascension of first, Chandler and Hammett, and then Lovecraft and Philip K. Dick, to the Library of America indicates a bit of a sea change, though accompanied by the usual grumbling from contemporary Edmund Wilsons who value bourgeois status quo rather than Tradition.
4. The Eldritch Evola contains "Mike Hammer, Occult Dick: Kiss Me Deadly as a Lovecraftian Tale," which considers the parallels between the overly-inquisitive protagonists of detective fiction and Lovecraft's weird fiction.
5. The Books in My Life (Hampton Roads, 1998); see Chapter 5, "Sherlock Holmes, the Flawed Superman."
6.Symptomatic of which illness is the other new character type, the anti-Holmes, the master criminal such as Prof. Moriarty, or fiend, such as Jack the Ripper.
7. I don't really agree with Wilson that this was some kind of evolutionary leap, "the most decisive steps in the evolution of man since the invention of the wheel"; but certainly, after centuries of Christian cretinizing, it was a distinct improvement.
8. As well as ideologues like Tom Wolfe; see his polemical articles on the New Journalists as The New Realists reprinted as the introduction to The New Journalism (Johnson, E. W.; Wolfe, Tom; New York: Harper & Row, 1973). "Believe me, there is no new journalism. It is a gimmick to say there is … Story telling is older than the alphabet and that is what it is all about." – Jimmy Breslin, quoted in Philip M. Howard. Jr., "The New Journalism: A Nonfiction Concept of Writing," unpublished master's thesis, University of Utah, August, 1971; quoted on Wikipedia, op. cit.
9. I discuss the maniacal accumulation of detail as a key method in writers as different as Lovecraft, Henry James and Baron Evola in "The Eldritch Evola" and elsewhere in The Eldritch Evola, op. cit.
10. Even crusty F. R. Leavis had to include Hard Times in his survey of The Great Tradition (1948).
11. In pursuing the Tooth Fairy, FBI "manhunter" Will Graham knows that he can't be caught unless Graham can figure out what his fantasy is: he kills "to fuel his fantasy." By the end, "The psychological paths of Graham and Dollarhyde finally converge. Graham tells Crawford how he understands the Tooth Fairy. 'He dreams about being wanted and desired. So he changes people into beings who will want and desire him . . . Killing and arranging the people to imitate it . . . You put it together, you get, if our boy imitates being wanted and desired enough times, he believes he will become one who is wanted and desired and accepted. It will all come true.'" There is an uneasy confluence in the modern mode of fiction, one of fantasy/reality, child/adult: "Are you sympathizing with this guy, Will?" Crawford asks offscreen. Mann keeps the camera on Graham's face. "Absolutely," he answers. "My heart bleeds for him as a child. . . . As an adult, someone should blow the sick fuck out of his socks. Do you think that's a contradiction, Jack? Does this kind of understanding make you uncomfortable?" See the remarkable analysis of Taxi Driver and Manhunter, "God's Lonely Men: Cinema Psychopaths" at The Niles Files, here. Here's a sample: "More interestingly, they both have the same cinematographer, Dante Spinotti. But whereas Red Dragon briskly moves along with its plot and suspense thriller tropes in terms of how it uses lighting, music, editing, and sound, every element in Manhunter is able to be savored again and again: the compositions, the colors of window blinds behind a character, Mel Bourne's amazing production design, the moody synthesizer music, the highly experimental editing and sound. All this could at first be perceived as a flaw of over-stylization; indeed, whereas The Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal, and Red Dragon come off as gothic horror, Manhunter feels like a cousin to the New German Cinema of the 1970s. But this criticism is off-set by two things: Mann is totally invested in his characters and his meticulous research reveals itself in the slightest nuances of his performers; (even the fantastic Fiennes feels trivial and shallow when compared to Noonan's Dollarhyde; and Ed Norton's Graham seems to have no struggle whatsoever); and secondly, the aestheticism of the film is integral to the substance, being that Francis Dollarhyde, one of cinema's great creepy gazers, looks and then elevates or perverts everything that he sees. Like Mark Lewis, he is a filmic cyborg and what we see in Manhunter is filtered through a lens of complete aestheticism." For more on the intense re-view-ability of Manhunter, see my "Essential Films … & Others," here.
12. Here again, Poe was first; his detective, Dupin, already lives shut away from the Paris noise, preferring to live by night. Other than the aesthetic veneer, on might compare such creatures to today's basement-dwelling video-gamers.
13. Wilson later devotes a chapter to "Huysmans: The Ultimate Decadent."
14. See my review of his Aiming Higher Than Mere Civilization: How Skeptical Nihilism Will Remind Humanity of Its Long Forgotten Purpose (Emericus Durden Philosophy Series Book 1), here.
15. In The Hermetic Tradition, Evola discusses how the Realized Man rebuilds for himself a new, glorified body (the Body of Light in various traditions); see Chapter 32, "The Red Work: Return to Earth." In his autobiography, The Path of Cinnabar, Evola explains his interest in Guenon and Tradition as arising from the idea that the Absolute Ego that he had arrived at in his studies in philosophical Idealism needed to be "grounded" in history, and this he identified with the historical founders of the various Traditions, such as Manu, Solon, or the Yellow Emperor.
16. Bhagavad Gita, 4.7. I discuss this avataric role in "The Babysitting Bachelor as Aryan Avatar: Clifton Webb in Sitting Pretty, Part 2," here, as well as its relevance to the Männerbund theme in "'God, I'm with a heathen': The Rebirth of the Männerbund in Brian De Palma's The Untouchables," here and reprinted in The Homo and the Negro (San Francisco: Counter-Currents, 2012).
17. "The Adventure of the Cardboard Box," in the last collection, His Last Bow.
18. As I have frequently emphasized, unlike "moral" fiction, in genre fiction the death of a character — especially a Big Bad who, as Trevor Lynch notes, is usually the only spokesman allowed for Traditional, or non-PC, views — results only superficially from "just retribution" (the cover story) but simply because there is nothing else to be done with him. "When you get the message you hang up the phone," as Alan Watts liked to say. Tura Satana's character in Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill is herself killed at the end not because the wimpy girlfriend triumphs but because the film has to end at some point.
19. See The Spiritist Fallacy (Ghent, NY: Sophia Perennis, 2003) and Theosophy: History of a Pseudo-Religion (Ghent, NY: Sophia Perennis, 2001).
20. A somewhat hostile critic calls Wilson "somewhat innocent and over-trusting, like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Both Conan Doyle and Wilson gave credence to the Cottingley fairies, for example." For his part, Wilson said that "Like Joe Cooper, I am willing to believe the girls were telling the truth. Both had had many psychic experiences, which Joe records (and which anyone who wants to explore further can find summarised in my son Damon's article on fairies in our joint book Unsolved Mysteries Past and Present). Joe's book The Case of the Cottingley Fairies received little publicity and is still not widely known. This has given me the opportunity to speak of my own attitude to these things, and to explain why, like Joyce [Collin Smith], I accept the reality of these 'elementals', as did the poet W. B. Yeats and his friend Lady Gregory, and as did the writer and researcher Evans Wentz in his classic book on the subject, The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries."
21. Before publishing the more modest New Annotated Lovecraft we reviewed here, Leslie S. Klinger prepared The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, described by Wikipedia as "a series of three annotated books edited by Leslie S. Klinger, collecting all of Arthur Conan Doyle's short stories and novels about Sherlock Holmes. The books were originally published by W. W. Norton in oversized slipcased hardcover editions. The first two volumes containing the short stories were published on November 17, 2004, with the third volume containing the novels following a year later on November 17, 2005. Each volume was subsequently published separately on November 5, 2007 without a slipcase. This publication of the Sherlock Holmes canon has been called "definitive."
22. Sherlock Holmes: Selected Stories (Oxford Worlds Classics) 2nd ed., 2014.
23. Of course, this also reminds us of Jim Garrison's method of "guilt by geography," where, for example, a "connection" is established between Lee Oswald and Guy Bannister by noting they had offices in the same building; see Patricia Lambert's False Witness: The Real Story of Jim Garrison's Investigation and Oliver Stone's Film JFK (Evans & Co., 2000).
24. Whether McCrea intends it or not, that word always recalls to my mind F. R. Leavis' journal, Scrutiny.
25. The Ur-text is "'God, I'm with a heathen': The Rebirth of the Männerbund in Brian De Palma's The Untouchables," in The Homo and the Negro. As the future M, Judi Dench, intones at the beginning of The Chronicles of Riddick: "In normal times, evil would be fought with good. But in times like these, well, it should be fought by another kind of evil."
26. See James Neill, The Origins and Role of Same-Sex Relations in Human Societies and my review-essay thereon, available as an Amazon Kindle here. Needless to say, this is all subverted by the "gay" identity manufactured by the Left, in which marriage and family are "redefined" so as to merge the happy homosexual in the mix: he's just like us! As Ann Sterzinger puts it, "can you imagine William Burroughs writing about the Wild Boys with an adopted baby strapped to his chest and a yuppie husband yapping in his ear about Glee?"
27. Is it not the Jew, with his "family values," that gifted us with capitalism and its obsessive concern with the new and the future? A concern shared by the Marxist, with his "New Soviet Man" and the total destruction of the old order. The ethnic outsider tears down and "develops" — like Caddyshack's Al Czervik — while the homosexual reclaims and gentrifies the old.
28. Keynes is often "explained" this way: "Well, he said 'in the long run we are all dead' because he was queer, you know?"
29. Amis, Kingsley, The James Bond Dossier (London: Jonathan Cape, 1965), which I've called the very model of genre criticism
30. Unlike Batman, of course, he's not a vigilante (except, notably, when pursuing Blofeld), but, as Amis emphasizes, a loyal, old-fashioned King and Empire Brit, a mere "civil servant" and certainly not a grubby little spy. This makes him even more like Green Lantern, as opposed to both Bats and Supe, as I noted in the title essay of Green Nazis. Trevor Lynch has noted the same essential opposition when reviewing the new Batman vs. Superman movie: "In any matchup between Batman and Superman, I side with Batman. I've never liked the character of Superman, because he is not a man at all. He's basically a god. He's not a human being who has raised himself to the pinnacles of human excellence. He's an alien who is simply endowed with superior abilities. There is nothing heroic about Superman, because he is almost invulnerable. He faces no risks. There's nothing he must struggle to overcome.
Batman, however, is a true Nietzschean superman, a man who has made himself more than a man, a man who faces injury, death, and imprisonment night after night in order to fight evil. I don't want to live in a godless universe, but frankly I would prefer that we make ourselves into gods rather than find them readymade."
31. In Goldfinger, Tilly Masterson is "one of those girls whose hormones had got mixed up. He knew the type well and thought they and their male counterparts were a direct consequence of giving votes to women and ''sex equality.'' As a result of fifty years of emancipation, feminine qualities were dying out or being transferred to males. Pansies of both sexes were everywhere, not yet completely homosexual, but confused, not knowing what they were. . . . He was sorry for them, but he had no time for them." (162-63) Sounds like something right out of today's man-o-sphere. Right-wing types who might cheer Bond/Fleming's homophobia should note that Fleming associates sexual deviance with "furriners" including the US. For the film version, Tilly was ret-conned as straight, and Pussy Galore became a fantasy lipstick Lesbian who would succumb to Bond's charms. In the book, however, Pussy's backstory is: ''I come from the South. You know the definition of a virgin down there? Well, it's a girl who can run faster than her brother. In my case, I couldn't run as fast as my uncle. I was twelve. That's not so good James. You ought to be able to guess that'' (191). As Tricia Jenkins points out, "Here, Fleming specifically implies that Pussy's lesbianism emerges from the familial and cultural dysfunction of the American South, and given the Bond formula, this deviancy can only reflect the degeneracy of the United States." See her invaluable essay "James Bond's 'Pussy' and Anglo-American Cold War Sexuality," here. While American "conservatives" laud down-home Southern family values and sneer about the British queers, Fleming sees "degeneracy" right there in the Flannery O'Connor heartland, not from "cultural Marxism" but from the primitive conditions of the family-obsessed conservatives of the colonial world; real men are the bachelor products of public schools, like Bond.
32. Bond is really rather a rather crusty old reactionary — part of his "Queen and country" mentality that explains his perverse championing of the British, who haven't mattered since the days of Bulldog Drummond. The American Bond phenom' really ran on the coat-tails (a two button, soft shouldered suit, of course) of the Camelot mystique, when JFK, supposed champion of "youth," averred to having a Fleming novel at his bedside. One wonders who was fooling whom; after all, how much time did JFK really spend in the White House bedroom per se? "My bedroom! Where my wife sleeps! Where my children play with their toys!" — Michael Corleone, The Godfather Part II.
33. By contrast, Bond spoofs like the Flint or Matt Helm series have their heroes surrounded by veritable harems, the typical exaggeration of satire. I suspect any adult woman would be immune to, and able to easy handle, or break free from, Helm's boozy "charm." Austin Powers' comically frustrated satyriasis is fully in line with Fleming's creation. On Matt Helm see Jef Costello's "'The Flash in the Pan': Fascism & Fascist Insignia in the Spy Spoofs of the 1960s," here; and his forthcoming collection The Importance of James Bond (Counter-Currents, 2016).
34. Bond kills Blofeld in the book You Only Live Twice with his own hands, an intensely up-close, personal, one might almost say sadistically homosexual way; typically, movie Bond, having become Roger Moore, picks up the wheelchair bound Blofeld with a helicopter and dumps him into a factory smokestack (sexual inversion?) as he pleads "I'll buy you a delicatessen — in stainless steel!" Perhaps that curious line is meant as a taunt about Bond's Judaic, middle class mindset?
35. "Dear Agent Scully; Did not appreciate your lawyer's tone . . ." Mystery Science Theater, Episode 1010, The Final Sacrifice.
36. Jane Bond Meets Thunderballs (Jack Remy, 1986), and various sequels.
37. Unless, of course, we go full video-game, or virtual reality. And indeed, this isn't the first time Anderson has been to this rodeo. Season 7 of The X-Files brought us "First Person Shooter" by none other than William Gibson himself, where Scully ultimately needs to enter the virtual world of a video game to save Mulder from a rogue female warrior. Interestingly, critics regard this episode as "legendarily bad," while it "became one of Gillian Anderson's favorite episodes, despite 'its reliance on big guns and raging testosterone.' Anderson explained that she enjoyed the opportunity 'to show Scully wearing heavy metal and firing oversized weapons.'" Wikipedia, here. This doesn't bode well for an Anderson Bond.
38. Jef Costello made similar points about the ultimate unsuitability of a female M in his review of Skyfall.
39. Skyfall is the Bond manor, I suppose.
40. As the film series was "modernized" M of course became a mother figure (The Avengers had already given us the wheelchair confined Mother), and Bond ultimately the Judaic Daniel Craig. Book Bond is almost embarrassingly enthused about Sir Hugo Drax at the start of Moonraker; Dr. No hosts Bond to dinner because he thinks he's smart enough to appreciate his status, but dismisses him as "only a stupid policeman." Goldfinger absurdly carries Bond to Kentucky (New York in the book) to witness Operation Grand Slam. As always, the question is: why don't you just kill him? Because, of course, Bond is the potential apprentice; "there are always two."
41. In the Goldfinger book, Bond is not captured but instead is shanghaied, along with Tilly Masterton, as Goldfinger's "secretary," which emphasizes their equivalence as protégés of the master. Male secretaries were still common in Britain, a point leading to some comic interaction on Mad Men between the ladies of Sterling Cooper and Lane Pryce's male secretary when PPL takes over. In Dr. No, the book makes much of Honeychile's muscles and "boyish behind," leading Cyril Connelly to ask "What on Earth was he thinking?" The Spy Who Loved Me is the only book narrated by the Bond Girl, with results universally regarded as dire (she even gets his title wrong; as noted above, he's a secret agent, not a "spy").
42. Felix Leiter hardly counts; although he might be thought of as an attempt to give Bond an American partner for the bigger US market, he is, in accord with is CIA background, a cipher; his numerous beatings and dismemberments suggest not so much a stand-in for Bond as a sadistic figure of fun, a Judy to Bond's Punch; the movies have fun having him played by a different actor each time, in line with his nonentity.
43. As always, your mileage may differ: "I've learned a whole lot about life from James Bond, and I will continue to defend Bond and continue seeing these films from now till my dying breath . . . unless they make Bond black." Jef Costello, "The Importance of James Bond," here.
Neurotic Bond
Ecce Homo:
The Apotheosis of Neville Goddard
A Call to All You Daydream Believers
The Writers' Bloc with James O'Meara on Better Call Saul
Better Call Saul:
Christian Romanism as the First Psy-Op, Part 2
Colin Wilsondetective fictionIan FlemingJames BondJames J. O'Mearathe Männerbundweird fiction
« Temný rytíř povstal
A brillant take on the character of Sherlock Holmes. Of course, I'd expect no less.
rhondda says:
Marvelous as ususal James. James J. O'Meara that is. In the footnotes, or the end notes, whatever, there is a lot to ponder and I am grateful for that. ( although I now call them side notes, as I open another window)
The_Brahmin says:

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
PPDA establishes govt contracts management system to bolster information access
PPDA Executive Director Mr Benson Turamye addressing reporters in Kampala (PHOTO /Courtesy)
KAMPALA —The Public Procurement Disposal of Assets (PPDA) has finalized the establishment of the Contract Management System to allow citizens fully access information concerning government contracts and infrastructure development.
The development was revealed by PPDA Executive Director Mr. Benson Turamye during an antigraft Civil Society Organizations and government agencies breakfast meeting held at Fairway Hotel in Kampala.
He said the system will go live in January 2022 and urged the members of the public to hold their leaders accountable especially at the local government level.
"The money used for Government projects is tax payer's money, so citizens need to benefit from their money by demanding for accountability," he said, adding that "This is where we want again to involve the citizens, the civil society organisations in terms of contract monitoring and where do we start, we start by availing contract documents because you cannot start monitoring the contract without knowing what is within this contract.
"We want the citizens to raise up because these contracts and services they are the ultimate beneficiaries, this attitude of saying these are Government projects should cease and stop today", he added.
In July this year, PPDA also rolled out the Electronic Government Procurement System, also known as the eGP, a web-based tool used to carry out public procurement and disposal.
The system uses information and communication technology (ICT) to conduct the end-to-end government procurement and disposal process online.
It involves all stages right from procurement planning, bidding, evaluation, award, contract management, invoicing, and payment for supplies, works and services.
The system aims at reducing physical interface between the bidders and government officials thus closing out one of the avenues of malpractices in public procurement.
Turamye said the transparency and openness associated with the e-GP will lead to increased promotion of domestic businesses and chances for hitherto marginalized groups like women and SMEs to participate in government business.
Tags: Action AidBenson TuramyetopUganda


text:
Nyctocalos es un género con siete especies de árboles pertenecientes a la familia Bignoniaceae.

Taxonomía
El género fue descrito por Teijsm. & Binn.  y publicado en Journal de Botanique Néerlandaise 1: 366. 1861 La especie tipo es: Nyctocalos brunfelsiiflorum Teijsm. & Binn.

Especies

Referencias

Oroxyleae

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Western style room(12㎡) with traditional Kyoto style Latticework.
In the room, usually 2guests sleep with one double sized bed.
※ The price has no seasonal changes.
To persons staying in Kyoto city, the accommodation tax will be introduced on 1st/Oct, 2018.
After 1st/Oct, we will charge the accommodation tax separately from the accommodation fee.
※ All rooms has no private bath room.
※ Machiya is mainly made from wood, mud and paper.
Because of that your voice and noise can bother other guests easily.
We appreciate your quiet behavior.
Copyright© 2014 Bed & Breakfast Tsukiya All Rights Reserved.


text:
A sample controller that demonstrates how to write a controller that targets the
cluster registry. This controller will post messages to a Slack channel when a
cluster is added to or removed from the registry.

## Quickstart

1.  Set up a cluster registry. Refer to the [user guide](/docs/userguide.md)
    for more info.
1.  Run `go build ./examples/slackcontroller` to build the controller.
1.  Create a [Slack incoming webhook](https://api.slack.com/incoming-webhooks)
    and get its URL to pass via the `-slack-url` flag on `slackcontroller`.
1.  Deploy the controller into a cluster, making sure you pass the incoming
    webhook URL to its `-slack-url` flag.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Relax in-tuck Pants Brown
Knitwear Brown
Still By Hand is a Tokyo based label and has been in the business for over 15 years. They care about details, fabrics and provide the finest men's wardrobe essentials. Designer Yusuke Yanaghi started the brand In the year of 2000 after returning home from his study in the U.K. and working for a Japanese company for a few years. He initially started producing small collections in this year and then in 2009, when the company Style Department was established with the brand, full collections were presented.
Still by Hand is in its 10th year of production. Its attentively-put-together clothes have been well received and are currently carried by around 60 select shops, such as Steven Alan JAPAN (UNITED ARROWS), inside its own country.
Since it decided to go international in the year of 2015 and introduced its newly-sized collection aimed at the international market, it has had 6 successful seasons in Paris and NYC and, as a result, started working with over 50 exquisite stores in Europe, the U.S. and Asia.
Still by Hand brand basic rules are to make its products with Japanese fabrics, in Japan, with an open-minded approach to the colours used. The nature of the country, which is vertically fairly long and has distinguished four seasons, always has a significant influence on what it creates.


text:
Spectrum Art Gallery and Artisan Store | Fine Art, Sculpture, Photography and Unique Gifts | Pottery, Art Glass, Jewelry and Fiber Art
61 Main Street, Centerbrook CT | Art Classes and Workshops for All Levels.
Abstracting Nature
A New Spectrum Gallery Exhibit Opens May 14
Discover new and original artwork that explores how artists envision the majesty of nature in all its variety, color, and abundance. At Spectrum Art Gallery and Artisans Store's newest exhibit, Abstracting Nature, experience both impressionistic and abstract work in this seven-week show which kicks off Friday, May 14 and is celebrated with an Open House Weekend, Saturday, May 15 (12:30-6pm) and Sunday, May 16 (12:30-5pm). The exhibit, located at 61 Main Street, Centerbrook, CT will include wine and safely bagged snacks throughout the weekend.
Many favorite artists and fine artisans are returning to the Gallery as well as new ones presenting for the first time, including Daniel Breslin, a painter and multimedia artist who has exhibited, both virtually and in person, in galleries across the country. And Naomi Nevo Ben Ari, Israeli-born and Connecticut-based, an award-winning artist and arts educator who has shown extensively throughout the US.
Artist Sarah Baskin joins Spectrum for the first time with impressionistic watercolor landscapes and still life. She is attracted to the transparency of the medium and how the white of the paper shines through the paint. Susan Zirlen is a mixed-media textile artist who combines a passion for collecting and curating vintage fabric with her love of nature. By creating textile collage pieces using the slow stitch process and including both natural and manmade embellishments – buttons, ribbons, and more – her work establishes a connection between these two worlds.
Tammy Blais, a Connecticut-based photographer and painter, is returning to Spectrum. She works in oil, presenting themes with a whimsical view often inspired by the elements she finds along the coast. She paints in soft, tranquil color tones on stretch canvas of various sizes, smooth board, and linen paper. Also returning to Spectrum is painter Kim Coughlin Tellez who experiments with abstraction, exploring expressionism and bold use of color. At Spectrum, she presents a large abstract work of nature.
New to Spectrum is award-winning artist Michael Fanelli who joins Abstracting Nature with several digital photographs. He is an independent graphic designer, photographer, illustrator, and sculptor. With a background in film photography, he employs the language of traditional photography, even when pursuing experimental imagery.
A variety of original photography and limited-edition prints are available including those by Christian Nielsen, a photographer whose inspiration comes from his travels around the country and the world. His work focuses on the uniqueness of natural landscapes and urban spaces. Abstract impressionist photographer Elizabeth Lauren West joins the exhibit with several digital archival works. She creates images using long and multiple exposures with various focal lengths to exude softness, movement, and painterly qualities. Her multilayered compositions play with light, color, and contrast using chiaroscuro effects. Allison Maltese, also new to Spectrum, has been taking photographs of the natural world for over 40 years and has exhibited extensively throughout the Shoreline. Growing up in Killingworth, she draws inspiration from the woods and gardens on her family's rural property.
Many fine artisans at Spectrum Gallery are offering works in wood, glass, paper, fabric, jewelry design, and more. As the Artisan's Store continues to expand its relationships with fine crafters, new items to browse and purchase are available. There are new artisans and returning favorites like Terry Van Heusen who adds to her collection of ceramic wall vases featuring her love of cats. And new to the Gallery Store is fine artisan Marie Angersola who specializes in wood burning and painting gourds, adorning them with colorful and whimsical images of animal life and nature.
The Gallery recently expanded and relaunched its online shopping site, Spectrum Anytime, at spectrumanytime.com. It is the place to browse and shop online with shipping available throughout the US – a perfect choice to discover new artists while adding to one's collections, as well as a convenient site for artwork and gift card purchasing.
Spectrum Gallery, located at 61 Main St., Centerbrook, CT is open Wednesday through Saturday (12-6pm) and Sunday (12-5pm). It adheres to all safety measures and asks that visitors wear masks and use hand sanitizer upon entering. For more information call (860) 767-0742 and visit spectrumartgallery.org. To follow on social media visit facebook.com/spectrumartgallery, instagram.com/spectrum_art_gallery, and twitter.com/spectrum_ct


Trail Riding in Alberta: enjoy the ride!
Any horse, any rider, any tack. While the saying might not be strictly true, competitive trail riding (CTR) is a sport that riders from any other discipline can enjoy. Competitive Trail Rides have been taking place in Alberta since the early 1970's. A group of dedicated horsemen founded the society, Trail Riding Alberta Conference (TRAC) and set up the rules. The rules resemble the conditions faced by early pioneers, whose horses travelled vast distances at the quickest pace possible and required enough stamina for the same effort tomorrow.
Rides are held in scenic areas that will provide the greatest challenge and enjoyment for horse and rider. There are three divisions: novice, intermediate and open. Riders are divided into three categories within each division: junior, lightweight and heavyweight. The objective is not to be the first across the finish line, but to finish with your horse in as close to the condition as when starting the ride within a specified time period.
Whether you prefer to spend your time taking in the scenery of the trail or are partial to the competitive spirit of the sport, consider participating in Competitive Trail Riding. What a great opportunity to meet new friends that have a passion in which we all share – our horses.


text:
'Affidavit: Texas constable admits ordering bugging'
Out of the East Texas town of Tenaha, another remarkable story from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram about an asset-forfeiture scandal, this time centered around an elected constable. The story opens:
A small-town Texas constable told the FBI he secretly bugged other officials' offices after they were accused of illegally forcing motorists to forfeit their cash, according to a search warrant affidavit.
The affidavit, based on interviews conducted by FBI agents and Texas Rangers, quotes Shelby County Constable Fred Walker as saying he authorized the installation of hidden surveillance cameras and digital recorders even though he didn't have legal authority. It also includes a statement from a witness who claims Walker helped organize a scheme to sell drugs seized from suspects.
It's just another chapter in a longtime drama in Tenaha, a town of 1,160 near the Louisiana border, where nearly $800,000 in cash seized from motorists stopped for traffic violations along U.S. Highway 59 has led to lawsuits and a federal criminal investigation of the county's former district attorney and other officials.
Walker, 53, was Tenaha's city marshal at the time the alleged bugging occurred. He was elected constable in 2010. ...
According to the affidavit, McClure told authorities that Walker had him install surveillance cameras disguised as smoke detectors and hidden voice-activated digital recording equipment in the offices of Tenaha Mayor George Bowers and deputy city marshal Barry Washington. Walker said he wanted to "cover" himself over the traffic stops, most of which were conducted by Washington, McClure said in the affidavit.
Walker acknowledged in an interview the same day that he had authorized the installation of the devices in Washington's office and at City Hall, the affidavit states.
What a pit! This story just keeps getting worse and worse.
Labels: asset forfeiture, Constables, Surveillance Society, Tenaha
Anyone know how many unsolved murders there have been in Tenaha since this organized crime syndicate has been in business there?
For that matter, how many where the reports were "lost"! I can't wait for some of this to get into court where the whole story can be told, but from a distance it seems like there weren't many non-corrupt state actors there - certainly not that were speaking up.
It's interesting that the disgraced DA, Lynda K Russell, who was the mastermind behind the corruption of highway robbery in Tenaha has resigned and announced plans to relocate to Round Rock. She says it's to 'spend time with her mother'. Some are wondering if she has plans to join John Bradley in some of his shennagins.
Tenaha reminds me of San Jacinto County, and Sheriff James "Humpy" Parker. They still don't know the death count from his time in office: http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl/1995_1282335/after-24-years-she-still-hopes-brother-is-alive-te.html


text:
Biografia
È nato a Mönchengladbach da padre albanese e madre polacca.

Carriera
Di ruolo terzino sinistro. È cresciuto nelle giovanili del Borussia fino a divenire titolare della formazione Under-23. Nella stagione 2008/09 viene fatto esordire in Bundesliga dal tecnico Hans Meyer, che l'8 novembre 2008 lo convoca per la prima volta e lo schiera subito titolare. Dopo una stagione al Greuther Furth, nell'estate del 2012 si trasferisce nei Paesi Bassi all'Heracles Almelo.

Collegamenti esterni


Sinn Féin in Dublin has hit back at the Taoiseach after he took aim at local councils over the housing crisis in a speech to the Fine Gael party conference last night.
Last night Leo Varadkar told Fine Gael members at the party's annual conference, that parties on the left and Sinn Féin were voting against new housing projects.
He also hit out at the values of Sinn Féin, saying he would never enter a coalition with them.
"They don't respect our Courts, they don't respect our Gardaí, they don't respect any of the four parliaments they are elected to, including the ones they turn up for, they don't respect our democracy," he said.
Councillor Mícheál Mac Donncha, the Sinn Féin deputy group leader on Dublin City Council, says the Taoiseach was trying to mislead the public with his statements.
"The Taoiseach was talking nonsense and quite deliberately so, I'm sure he knows what he is saying is not true," Cllr Mac Donncha claimed.
"There is a queue of proposals for housing - social and affordable - projects in Dublin City Council and the other Council areas and that's on the desk of the Minister Eoghan Murphy."
Cllr Mac Donncha added that the proposals were "either waiting for approval in principal or waiting for funding.
"The problem we have is government policy which sets its face against the type of direct state involvement in housing that we had for decades under successive governments - including Fine Gael governments.
"But now because this government is committed to the interests of big landlords, property speculators and vulture funds we see the housing crisis that we have suffered by thousands upon thousands of people," he added.


Austin Preparatory School, located in Reading, Massachusetts about 15 miles north of Boston, is seeking qualified candidates for the position of Director of Communications. Founded in 1961, Austin Prep is an independent co-ed Catholic school in the Augustinian tradition for students in grades 6-12. There are 750 students enrolled in the school. The Director of Communications reports to the Assistant Headmaster of External Affairs and is responsible for the development and implementation of communications initiatives at Austin Prep, specifically internal communications, social media, publications, and media relations. S/he works across various departments, most notably development, admissions, academics, and athletics, and serves in many capacities to advance the mission and initiatives of the school. The position serves the entire AP community and as such, requires an effective collaborator, strategic thinker, proficient writer, and creative storyteller.
Bachelor's degree; 5+ years of experience in communications and marketing, preferably in independent schools.
Excellent skill in desktop publishing design and management of design production.
Demonstrated experience with photography, videography, website content management and design, and social media marketing.
Flexible and willing to work evenings and/or weekends as required.
Interested candidates should submit the following electronic documents as a single PDF to earesumes@austinprep.org 1) a letter of interest expressing the applicant's qualifications for this position; 2) a resume; and 3) a list of five professional references that includes e-mail, phone number, and a description of the professional relationship (references will not be contacted without the applicant's permission).
Review of applications will begin immediately and qualified candidates will be contacted as materials are received. For full consideration, application materials must be received no later than Tuesday, April 12, 2019.
Austin Preparatory School is a Catholic co-educational independent school for students in grades 6 - 12.


text:
#include "oc_api.h"
#include "port/oc_clock.h"

#include <pthread.h>
#include <signal.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <unistd.h>

static pthread_t event_thread;
static pthread_mutex_t app_sync_lock;
static pthread_mutex_t mutex;
static pthread_cond_t cv;
static struct timespec ts;
static int quit = 0;

typedef enum { UNKNOWN = 0, LOCKED, UNLOCKED } lock_state;

typedef struct oc_smartlock_t
{
  struct oc_smartlock_t *next;
  oc_endpoint_t *endpoint;
  char uri[64];
  lock_state state;
} oc_smartlock_t;

OC_LIST(smartlocks);
OC_MEMB(smartlocks_m, oc_smartlock_t, 100);

static void
free_smart_lock(oc_smartlock_t *lock)
{
  oc_free_server_endpoints(lock->endpoint);
  oc_memb_free(&smartlocks_m, lock);
}

static void
free_all_known_locks(void)
{
  oc_smartlock_t *l = (oc_smartlock_t *)oc_list_pop(smartlocks);
  while (l != NULL) {
    free_smart_lock(l);
    l = (oc_smartlock_t *)oc_list_pop(smartlocks);
  }
}

static int
app_init(void)
{
  int ret = oc_init_platform("Intel Corporation", NULL, NULL);
  ret |= oc_add_device("/oic/d", "oic.wk.d", "SmartLock", "ocf.1.0.0",
                       "ocf.res.1.3.0", NULL, NULL);
  return ret;
}

#define SCANF(...)                                                             \
  do {                                                                         \
    if (scanf(__VA_ARGS__) != 1) {                                             \
      PRINT("ERROR Invalid input\n");                                          \
    }                                                                          \
  } while (0)

static void
display_menu(void)
{
  PRINT("\n\n################################################\nSmart Lock "
        "Controller"
        "\n################################################\n");
  PRINT("[0] Display this menu\n");
  PRINT("-----------------------------------------------\n");
  PRINT("[1] Discover smart locks\n");
  PRINT("-----------------------------------------------\n");
  PRINT("[2] GET lock state\n");
  PRINT("[3] POST lock state\n");
  PRINT("[4] Start OBSERVE lock state\n");
  PRINT("[5] Stop OBSERVE lock state\n");
  PRINT("-----------------------------------------------\n");
  PRINT("[6] Exit\n");
  PRINT("################################################\n");
  PRINT("\nSelect option: \n");
}

static oc_event_callback_retval_t
show_discovered_locks(void *data)
{
  (void)data;
  PRINT("\nDiscovered locks with rt oic.r.lock.status:\n");
  oc_smartlock_t **locks = (oc_smartlock_t **)data;
  oc_smartlock_t *l = (oc_smartlock_t *)oc_list_head(smartlocks);
  int i = 0;
  PRINT("\n\n");
  while (l != NULL) {
    if (locks != NULL) {
      locks[i] = l;
    }
    PRINT("[%d]: %s", i, l->uri);
    oc_endpoint_t *ep = l->endpoint;
    while (ep != NULL) {
      PRINT("\n\t\t");
      PRINTipaddr(*ep);
      ep = ep->next;
    }
    PRINT("\n\n");
    i++;
    l = l->next;
  }
  return OC_EVENT_DONE;
}

static void
signal_event_loop(void)
{
  pthread_mutex_lock(&mutex);
  pthread_cond_signal(&cv);
  pthread_mutex_unlock(&mutex);
}

static void
handle_signal(int signal)
{
  (void)signal;
  signal_event_loop();
  quit = 1;
}

static void *
ocf_event_thread(void *data)
{
  (void)data;
  oc_clock_time_t next_event;
  while (quit != 1) {
    pthread_mutex_lock(&app_sync_lock);
    next_event = oc_main_poll();
    pthread_mutex_unlock(&app_sync_lock);

    pthread_mutex_lock(&mutex);
    if (next_event == 0) {
      pthread_cond_wait(&cv, &mutex);
    } else {
      ts.tv_sec = (next_event / OC_CLOCK_SECOND);
      ts.tv_nsec = (next_event % OC_CLOCK_SECOND) * 1.e09 / OC_CLOCK_SECOND;
      pthread_cond_timedwait(&cv, &mutex, &ts);
    }
    pthread_mutex_unlock(&mutex);
  }
  oc_main_shutdown();
  return NULL;
}

static void
POST_handler(oc_client_response_t *data)
{
  PRINT("POST_lock_state:\n");
  if (data->code == OC_STATUS_CHANGED) {
    PRINT("POST response OK\n");
  } else {
    PRINT("POST response code %d\n", data->code);
  }

  oc_smartlock_t *lock = (oc_smartlock_t *)data->user_data;
  oc_rep_t *rep = data->payload;
  while (rep != NULL) {
    switch (rep->type) {
    case OC_REP_STRING:
      if (oc_string_len(rep->name) == 9 &&
          memcmp(oc_string(rep->name), "lockState", 9) == 0) {
        PRINT("\n\n%s : %s\n\n", oc_string(rep->name),
              oc_string(rep->value.string));
        if (oc_string_len(rep->value.string) == 6 &&
            memcmp(oc_string(rep->value.string), "Locked", 6) == 0) {
          lock->state = LOCKED;
        } else {
          lock->state = UNLOCKED;
        }
      }
    default:
      break;
    }
    rep = rep->next;
  }

  display_menu();
}

static void
GET_handler(oc_client_response_t *data)
{
  PRINT("GET_lock_state:\n");
  oc_smartlock_t *lock = (oc_smartlock_t *)data->user_data;
  oc_rep_t *rep = data->payload;
  while (rep != NULL) {
    switch (rep->type) {
    case OC_REP_STRING:
      if (oc_string_len(rep->name) == 9 &&
          memcmp(oc_string(rep->name), "lockState", 9) == 0) {
        PRINT("\n\n%s : %s\n\n", oc_string(rep->name),
              oc_string(rep->value.string));
        if (oc_string_len(rep->value.string) == 6 &&
            memcmp(oc_string(rep->value.string), "Locked", 6) == 0) {
          lock->state = LOCKED;
        } else {
          lock->state = UNLOCKED;
        }
      }
    default:
      break;
    }
    rep = rep->next;
  }

  display_menu();
}

static void
get_lock_state(bool observe)
{
  pthread_mutex_lock(&app_sync_lock);
  if (oc_list_length(smartlocks) > 0) {
    oc_smartlock_t *locks[100];
    show_discovered_locks(locks);
    PRINT("\n\nSelect lock: ");
    int c;
    SCANF("%d", &c);
    if (c < 0 || c > oc_list_length(smartlocks)) {
      PRINT("\nERROR: Invalid selection.. Try again..\n");
    } else {
      if (observe) {
        oc_do_observe(locks[c]->uri, locks[c]->endpoint, NULL, GET_handler,
                      HIGH_QOS, locks[c]);
      } else {
        oc_do_get(locks[c]->uri, locks[c]->endpoint, NULL, GET_handler,
                  HIGH_QOS, locks[c]);
      }
    }
  } else {
    PRINT("\nERROR: No known locks... Please try discovery...\n");
  }
  pthread_mutex_unlock(&app_sync_lock);
  signal_event_loop();
}

static void
stop_observe_lock_state(void)
{
  pthread_mutex_lock(&app_sync_lock);
  if (oc_list_length(smartlocks) > 0) {
    oc_smartlock_t *locks[100];
    show_discovered_locks(locks);
    PRINT("\n\nSelect lock: ");
    int c;
    SCANF("%d", &c);
    if (c < 0 || c > oc_list_length(smartlocks)) {
      PRINT("\nERROR: Invalid selection.. Try again..\n");
    } else {
      oc_stop_observe(locks[c]->uri, locks[c]->endpoint);
    }
  } else {
    PRINT("\nERROR: No known locks... Please try discovery...\n");
  }
  pthread_mutex_unlock(&app_sync_lock);
  signal_event_loop();
}

static void
post_lock_state(void)
{
  pthread_mutex_lock(&app_sync_lock);
  if (oc_list_length(smartlocks) > 0) {
    oc_smartlock_t *locks[100];
    show_discovered_locks(locks);
    PRINT("\n\nSelect lock: ");
    int c;
    SCANF("%d", &c);
    if (c < 0 || c > oc_list_length(smartlocks)) {
      PRINT("\nERROR: Invalid selection.. Try again..\n");
    } else {
      int s;
      PRINT("Lock states:\n[0]: Locked\n[1]: Unlocked\n\nSelect lock state: ");
      SCANF("%d", &s);
      if (s < 0 || s > 1) {
        PRINT("\nERROR: Invalid selection.. Try again..\n");
      } else {
        if (oc_init_post(locks[c]->uri, locks[c]->endpoint, NULL, &POST_handler,
                         HIGH_QOS, locks[c])) {
          oc_rep_start_root_object();
          if (s == 0) {
            oc_rep_set_text_string(root, lockState, "Locked");
          } else {
            oc_rep_set_text_string(root, lockState, "Unlocked");
          }
          oc_rep_end_root_object();
          if (!oc_do_post()) {
            PRINT("\nERROR: Could not issue POST request\n");
          }
        } else {
          PRINT("\nERROR: Could not initialize POST request\n");
        }
      }
    }
  } else {
    PRINT("\nERROR: No known locks... Please try discovery...\n");
  }
  pthread_mutex_unlock(&app_sync_lock);
  signal_event_loop();
}

static oc_discovery_flags_t
discovery(const char *di, const char *uri, oc_string_array_t types,
          oc_interface_mask_t iface_mask, oc_endpoint_t *endpoint,
          oc_resource_properties_t bm, void *user_data)
{
  (void)di;
  (void)iface_mask;
  (void)user_data;
  (void)uri;
  (void)types;
  (void)bm;

  oc_smartlock_t *l = (oc_smartlock_t *)oc_memb_alloc(&smartlocks_m);
  if (l) {
    l->endpoint = endpoint;
    int uri_len = (strlen(uri) >= 64) ? 63 : strlen(uri);
    memcpy(l->uri, uri, uri_len);
    l->uri[uri_len] = '\0';
    oc_list_add(smartlocks, l);

    PRINT("\nDiscovering...\n");

    display_menu();

    return OC_CONTINUE_DISCOVERY;
  }
  oc_free_server_endpoints(endpoint);
  return OC_STOP_DISCOVERY;
}

static oc_discovery_flags_t
null_discovery(const char *di, const char *uri, oc_string_array_t types,
               oc_interface_mask_t iface_mask, oc_endpoint_t *endpoint,
               oc_resource_properties_t bm, void *user_data)
{
  (void)di;
  (void)iface_mask;
  (void)user_data;
  (void)uri;
  (void)types;
  (void)endpoint;
  (void)bm;
  oc_free_server_endpoints(endpoint);

  return OC_STOP_DISCOVERY;
}

static void
issue_requests(void)
{
  oc_do_ip_discovery(NULL, &null_discovery, NULL);
}

static void
discover_smart_locks(void)
{
  pthread_mutex_lock(&app_sync_lock);
  free_all_known_locks();
  oc_do_ip_discovery("oic.r.lock.status", &discovery, NULL);
  oc_set_delayed_callback(NULL, show_discovered_locks, 5);
  pthread_mutex_unlock(&app_sync_lock);
  signal_event_loop();
}

int
main(void)
{
  struct sigaction sa;
  sigfillset(&sa.sa_mask);
  sa.sa_flags = 0;
  sa.sa_handler = handle_signal;
  sigaction(SIGINT, &sa, NULL);

  int init;

  static const oc_handler_t handler = {.init = app_init,
                                       .signal_event_loop = signal_event_loop,
                                       .requests_entry = issue_requests };

#ifdef OC_SECURITY
  oc_storage_config("./smart_lock_creds");
#endif /* OC_SECURITY */

  oc_set_con_res_announced(false);
  init = oc_main_init(&handler);
  if (init < 0)
    return init;

  if (pthread_create(&event_thread, NULL, &ocf_event_thread, NULL) != 0) {
    return -1;
  }

  int c;
  while (quit != 1) {
    display_menu();
    SCANF("%d", &c);
    switch (c) {
    case 0:
      continue;
      break;
    case 1:
      discover_smart_locks();
      break;
    case 2:
      get_lock_state(false);
      break;
    case 3:
      post_lock_state();
      break;
    case 4:
      get_lock_state(true);
      break;
    case 5:
      stop_observe_lock_state();
      break;
    case 6:
      handle_signal(0);
      break;
    default:
      break;
    }
  }

  pthread_join(event_thread, NULL);
  return 0;
}


In year 1994 the Malaysian community based in Beijing set up an informal association with the intention of facilitating opportunities for networking among Malaysians and friends from local communities. This association was unofficially named MAYCHAM Beijing. This team of enthusiastic volunteers worked towards bringing legitimacy and legal status for its organization. Its long held wish became a reality. MAYCHAM Beijing became MAYCHAM China.
In September 2004, MAYCHAM China, The Malaysian Chamber of Commerce and Industry in China, was officially approved by the Chinese authority (the "Foreign Chamber Management Provisional Regulation of the People's Republic of China) in Beijing.
Two years later MAYCHAM Shanghai Chapter was formed to support MAYCHAM China's activities in Shanghai and the provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui.
The pioneers of MAYCHAM in Beijing and Shanghai work closely with each other. Together with the Malaysian Embassy the pioneers promote and strengthen its role and relevance as a Chamber in China fast changing business landscape.
Maycham Shanghai Chapter is a pro-active Chamber of Commerce which advocates, facilitates and fosters friendship, good faith, integrity, equitable principles, charity and environmental consciousness in preserving our environment and its ecosystems founded on corporate responsibility in serving its members and their local communities.
We create a conducive environment by providing a platform where our members, associates, friends and business representatives can meet and exchange views and ideas which enhance opportunities and visibility for their economic development and quality of life. Our organisation is open to all nationalities where diversity generates new opportunities and scope for our members. MayCham Shanghai Chapter is committed to its mission's ideal by listening, applying and communicating its values through sensitivity and community involvement.
MayCham Shanghai Chapter is a strong promoter of green and eco-friendly products as part of its working mandate with the commercial world in China. In underscoring this theme, Maycham Shanghai annual golf game was officially coined "One World One Earth One Life" about 3 years ago with the objective of encouraging its members, friends and associates to have Environmental Care close to their heart.
Interested in joining us, please click here to download the Membership Application Form.
Do not stand there and be hungry. Come join our feast and get fed up!


text:
Planning Commission consists of five members, one of which is a Member of Council. The term of the citizen members is four years. Planning Commission conducts studies and surveys and prepares plans, reports and maps relative to the overall planning of the growth, development and redevelopment of the City and makes recommendations to City Council, the Board of Zoning Appeals, and the administrative officers of the City. This Commission is responsible for the continuous review of the effectiveness and appropriateness of the Planning and Zoning Code, review of site plans and conditional use permits, and review of subdivisions. Planning Commission meets on the 3rd Tuesday of every month at 6:00 pm.
For additional information contact Kameryn Jones at 513-539-7374 extension 1020.
The Board of Zoning Appeals consists of five members with a term of five years. The Board of Zoning Appeals hears appeals from decisions issued by the Zoning Enforcement Officer relating to the enforcement of the Planning and Zoning Code and the International Property Maintenance Code. In addition, the Board of Zoning Appeals renders decisions on variance requests. The Board of Zoning Appeals meets on an as needed basis.
Park and Recreation Board
The Park and Recreation Board consists of five members with a term of five years. This Board studies the recreational needs of the City and develops plans for the operation, maintenance, and use of recreational facilities within the City. The Park and Recreation Board meets on the second Wednesday of each month at 5:30 p.m.
For additional information contact Donna Turman at 513-727-8953.
The Personnel Board consists of five members with a term of five years. This Board is responsible for the determination of merit and fitness for the basis for appointment and promotion of employees in the classified service of the City. The Personnel Board meets on an as needed basis.
For additional information contact Kacey Waggaman at 513-539-7374 extension 1025.
Local Board of Tax Review
The Local Board of Tax Review shall consist of three members. The three members of the Local Board of Tax Review may be domiciled in the municipality, but the appointing authority may consider membership from individuals who are not domiciled within the municipality. Two members shall be appointed by the legislative authority of the municipality, and may not be employees, elected officials, or contractors with the municipality at any time during their term or in the five years immediately preceding the date of appointment. One member shall be appointed by the top administrative official of the municipality. This member may be an employee of the municipality, but may not be the Director of Finance or equivalent officer, or the Tax Administrator or other similar official or an employee directly involved in municipal tax matters, or any direct subordinate thereof.
For additional information contact Karen Ervin at 513-539-7374 extension 1005.
The Audit Committee consists of five members for a term of three years. The primary functions of the Audit Committee are to review financial information, review the system of internal controls, and provide independent recommendations to City Council. The Committee shall have one representative sit on the City Finance Committee in a non-voting, advisory capacity. The Audit Committee meets at least once quarterly at a time and place selected by a vote of its members.
For additional information contact Deborah Armitage at 513-539-7374 extension 1005.
Mayor's Court
City of Monroe, Ohio
Monroe, OH 45050-0330
Building & Zoning Forms
I'm getting ready to start a home project. Where can I find out what permits are required?
I'm new to the area. Where can I find information about setting up utilities?
Does the City accept online payments?
When are the trash pick up days?


text:
Category: Farm Sanctuary
Out of the Darkness Comes a LightRemembering that horrific…
April 14, 2017 Animals of Farm Sanctuary Animal Rights & Environment, Farm Sanctuary
One of the many pens of animals at the farm in Franklinville NY. Far right is Matilda and Zepha- one of the mothers we took in, is close as always.
Nectar, Kaley and Adel in their new barn with 24 hour a day access to outside. You cannot beat this.
Twin brothers Jack and Bob Barker will never know fear and were born into peace and love- the way they should all live.
Vera Jo dive bombs
A very happy family. left to right: Zepha and her daughter Laurie and twin Cindy frolicking in the grass with Izzy, Bob Barker and Bob's mom Daniella
The babies born to the mothers who suffered loss after loss of their lambs, can finally have these babies live with them forever.
Goat boys who had never been outside in their life, spent the first months terrified to leave their barn. Thankfully you can see they got over this.
Ducks, who were surviving on eating trash and the bodies of the dead, now are enjoying the Farm Sanctuary life.
Out of the Darkness Comes a Light
Remembering that horrific
farm operation in Cattaraugus County, NY, is not difficult
but it is still hard. It is hard because it is painful to think that the beautiful beings we now know so well came from this hell on earth.
It is hard because these loving, caring, and kind individuals were living in darkness — some never seeing the light, feeling the sun, or touching the earth for years on end.
Matilda, whose original rescuers took her babies away, was suffering from horrible mastitis, emaciation and exhaustion. Now. at Farm Sanctuary, she is happy and thriving.
All of the animals living in the barns were living in darkness with no opportunities to venture into the sun or fresh air.
It is hard because these fragile, gentle creatures went without care
− some without shelter in the dead of winter.
The geese were left outside without shelter in the dead of winter, but mud season was actually worse. Due to improper housing, and living in areas with multiple deceased animals, the girls arrived with a rare and very difficult to treat parasite.
It is hard because mothers, who we know love their children, had to see them taken away to be sold for food, and then were forced to reproduce and create more children to love and lose.
From a birthing pen, where baby after baby is taken, Izzy and Daniella had their next babies at our sanctuary in Watkins Glen, NY. These babies, as you can see, are as big as mom and still with their family.
So we remember. We cry for those who never had a chance to get out
− for the hundreds who died on that farm. We feel pain for the babies sold for lamb as their mothers were forced to let them go.
When we arrived to pick up the sheep and goats, many were being removed or had been removed by local farmers. We could only take some of the remaining animals. Gabby, above back left, was one who made it to Farm Sanctuary.
We remember those who were left to survive in barns so filthy that humans were not allowed to enter without respirators; where our eyes and throats burned from the ammonia in the air.
Beeley Pippin, before and after. Arriving dirty, emaciated, and in poor feather condition, this girl has made a huge change for the better.
But we also celebrate. We celebrate because those who are at sanctuary are feeling the earth, soaking up the sun, protected by shelter, able to live with their loved ones, and seen as someone, not something. We celebrate because we know them as the individual beings that they are
not as products of the meat, egg, and dairy industries.
Gabby, seen in the photo above where she was penned since being born, now enjoying freedom and love.
And we celebrate because their stories will be told over and over again, so that future generations will know that these animals' lives were worth living.
Running for Your Life: Another Bull Attempts Escape
March 11, 2017 Animals of Farm Sanctuary Animal Rights & Environment, Farm Sanctuary
Queenie over 16 years ago and her great escape – painting by Sue Coe
Maxine thankfully was also roped after only light sedation and again she was run into a yard and had the ability to calm down. She was also much smaller.
Darted and roped- this was done right! Photo by Robert Stridiron
Frank Roped to a tree- already darted twice- and in the end darted 3 times. Photo by Robert Stridiron
Photo by Ellis Kaplan of the recent escapee being chased – already darted too many times.
Last week, yet another bull escaped from a New York City live market — the third in less than 13 months. And people are outraged.
From left to right: Queenie (rescued August 2000), Maxine (rescued September 2007), Freddie of Skylands Animal Sanctuary and Rescue (rescued January 2016), and Frank (rescued April 2016).
And this bull had a place lined up to go — a chance not only to survive, but to actually live out his life with other cattle and a new family. Upon learning of this bull in need, Mike Stura of New Jersey-based Skylands Animal Sanctuary and Rescue immediately set out for the city, but sadly, this sweet boy — one of millions killed every year for food — was already gone.
Freddie enjoying life as a free man at Skylands — loving his people and his hay.
For the sake of statistics, more than 18,000 cattle are slaughtered in the U.S. each day. So why is this bull so special? Because he got loose — he was free, and people were rooting for him. People saw him. There are likely others in the same facility — but we saw him, and watched him try. But he still died, and now, for many people shocked and upset by the loss, there seems to be the need to blame someone — in many cases, the police — but is that really fair?
The most handsome face of the now sweetest boy, Frank. Although he attempted to hurt people during his escape, he has been a perfect gentleman since his arrival at Farm Sanctuary.
I, too, watched the live video online and did the same thing: I screamed at the computer — "Stop chasing him!" "They hit him too many times with the darts!" "You're going to kill him!"
And they did. But even a bull as young as this one was could easily have
killed someone else — because he was running for his life. The police are not hired to protect and serve cattle — many will eat a burger after work. They are hired to protect people.
Queenie is one of our smallest cows and was an adult when she arrived — although she was the size of a calf. Here, she demonstrates that even an 800-pound girl like herself can cause damage — serious damage.
So are the police officers who tranquilized him alone to blame? Should all 32,000 potential police officers in New York City be trained to properly tranquilize bulls? Again — they are hired to protect people.
One of my favorite things about those who have escaped slaughter is that they are drawn to each other. Here, Queenie and Cinci Freedom spend time together enjoying sanctuary life.
Cattle are prey animals, and they have a fight-or-flight response. Bulls and cows brought to the live markets are originally from farms, where they
spend their time with their bovine family and herd outside grazing. A very
few of them are shipped into New York live markets; most are sold at auctions and slaughtered elsewhere.
This bull was likely not the only bull,
cow, sheep, goat, chicken, duck, etc., who died that day in a Queens slaughterhouse. And he was scared. Even when we have to sedate our friendliest, calmest steers at sanctuary, we walk away after the sedative drugs are given — we don't chase them or even hang out around them, so that they will feel safe and go to sleep.
Maxine disguising herself as a powdered doughnut.
So let's look at other cases in which animals lost their lives in recent years. Many animal lovers placed the blame on those whose decisions, in the end, led to the animals losing their lives. But are they really to blame?
1. Many blamed the zookeepers and the mother of the child who fell into the exhibit in the 2016 case that ended tragically with the death of the magnificent gorilla Harambe at the Cincinnati Zoo. But was the blame only theirs? Again, I don't think so.
2. I vividly remember the 2011 case of Ohio resident Terry Thompson, who threw open the cages of his private exotic animal collection before committing suicide. Police, having no method to tranquilize these animals, ended up killing 48 of them. There was an outcry against the officers, who were accused of being trigger-happy — but was that really the cause of this tragedy?
3. In 2010, a very pregnant Holstein cow in a birthing tent, where visitors to the California State Fair can witness the miracle of birth, escaped. Because she was unable to be knocked down with tranquilizers, she was shot and killed.
4. Just last year, another fairground-escapee bovine ran over a police officer and a teenager, and was shot and killed.
5. And then there are these cases of escaped cattle killed who were not even given a chance, and were instead shot:
The Queen — our first live-market escapee, Queenie, is still with us more than 16 years after her dash for freedom.
Multiple times each year, cattle are shot down to avoid injury to people in areas where they escape. And just a few weeks ago, a steer escaped, but was recaptured. This happens, too, and the ending is far worse for the animal: being returned to the slaughterhouse.
Cinci Freedom was always aware when humans were near, and like so many escapees, did not ever fully become comfortable with humans.
So when thinking about this most recent case, as in the endless other cases, perhaps stepping back and looking at the big picture is the only way to fairly assess why these beings died.
Frank's first week in the herd.
The bottom line is this: Gorillas should not be captive in zoos — they
should live in their jungle homes with their families. They are in zoos because people pay money to
come and see them.
Big girl Maxine with her people. The one in the right rear is Queenie.
Private citizens should not be allowed to obtain exotic cats and dangerous wild animals. A small Ohio town (or any town) is not equipped to rescue that many loose and potentially deadly animals in one night.
Frank and his new family — and new best friends. From front to back: Frank, Nik, Dennis, and Chandini.
And animals should not be put on display — especially a vulnerable, pregnant mother ready to give birth. Of course she ran — she was afraid.
The beautiful Maxine! Although she has never become close to people, she loves her cattle family.
And the bottom line in this sad case: This bull should not have been in the
city. We mourn the loss of this and all beings whose lives are cut short, who go unnoticed and who never get the chance to really live. R.I.P., sweet boy.
Walk Around the Farm With Susie: Pigs Go to Bed
March 2, 2017 Animals of Farm Sanctuary Animal Rights & Environment, Farm Sanctuary
Hello!!!!!! Bedding is fun! Andy loves his bed!
Joan and pals bedded down!
Honey snuggled in the straw.
Ben David piglet bedded down next to Honey, his adoptive mom.
Eric's first bed.
One thing we see time and again when we rescue pigs — especially those who've come from factory farms or been forced to live in pens consisting only of mud or in concrete-floored barns — is that bedding is what they seem to enjoy and want the most.
Noah and Portia hate to be disturbed when napping!
Now, I love to sleep, and nothing feels better than sleeping in soft, comfortable bedding. Sleep needs to feel safe, secure, warm, and snuggly — and no one appreciates this more than a pig.
The family that nests together stays together.
So today's walk around the farm is all about pigs and going to bed! We will watch as our rescue-barn resident pigs make their beds and get ready to sleep. With the snow falling down right now and temperatures dropping into the teens, nothing says comfort like a warm, soft bed!
So sit back and watch some of our pigs get comfy — and I hope you all have an equally comfortable and happy sleep!
Eric started out snuggling on a stuffed pig, and now he does the same with his real friend Bob and in snuggly straw!
Bob and Eric now — Bob is the live version of the Gund pig above!
Bedtime for Bovines!
February 25, 2017 Animals of Farm Sanctuary Animal Rights & Environment, Farm Sanctuary
National Shelter Director Susie Coston takes us along for the ride as she bids her bovine friends good night at our New York Shelter!
One of our cow residents, Belinda, is currently wearing a coat at night to give her a little extra warmth. When she decides that she might prefer not to wear it, her friends come over to check on her and make sure everything's all right! This is just one of many reminders we have the opportunity to see here at Farm Sanctuary that these incredible animals have rich emotional lives and form strong bonds of friendship and family, just like we do. Learn more about these intelligent and deeply social beings at The Someone Project.
Claire and Erika: Family, Best Friends, and Partners in Crime (and Life)
January 18, 2017 Animals of Farm Sanctuary Animal Rights & Environment, Farm Sanctuary
Mama Claire guides Erika through her first days of life!
Baby Erika gets adjusted to her legs.
"Aunt Felicity" checks in on baby Erika.
Facilities Coordinator Danielle Petrovich meets Claire the day before she started her internship.
Erika shares some love with fellow "kid" pal, Nicole!
Actress Beth Behrs recently visited the farm, and was charmed by these two lovely ladies!
Claire only has eyes for her new pal, Beth Behrs.
A day in the life of Claire and Erika — making it through each day together!
If there's one thing guaranteed to visitors of Farm Sanctuary's Southern
California Shelter, it is a likely glimpse of Claire and Erika goats snuggled
together. This mother-daughter pair is, indeed, inseparable. Erika is one of
the lucky few to have been born on the sanctuary, and therefore has only known
Her mother, Claire, was rescued as part of a large-scale
cruelty case seizure by Los Angeles County animal control services from a
Southern California illegal backyard butcher in 2013. Claire was seized along with 13 sheep and a
calf. Most of the sheep were elderly, emaciated, terrified, and suffering from
a variety of ailments. All appeared to have been bred repeatedly. We suspect
the butcher used these aging sheep to breed lambs for his customers and
probably killed the babies within earshot, if not eyesight, of their mothers.
Twelve of the sheep, as well as the calf, were transported to
our Northern California Shelter to receive more intensive care and
rehabilitation. Claire goat, however, remained at the Southern California
Shelter along with a very special Barbados Black Belly sheep named Felicity, with whom
she shared a tight bond.
Coming from a backyard butcher, it was no surprise that quite
a few of the sheep were pregnant — and, as it turned out, Claire was pregnant,
too. Unlike most of the other pregnant sheep, however, this goat was a young
mother and this may have been her introduction to motherhood — at least, we hope
Usually when an animal is expecting to give birth, we isolate her from other animals to minimize any possible harm to the baby. But Felicity sheep was equal parts terrified
of us and bonded to Claire that they refused to be apart. Rather than cause either Felicity or Claire
undue stress from separation, we retained the status quo and monitored the
situation closely.
The day that Claire gave birth to her beautiful baby was
exciting indeed at the sanctuary. The
loving bond was instantaneous and strong.
Claire radiated love, and from that moment she
vowed to stay by her baby's side. Erika, in turn — like any baby — dutifully followed her mother everywhere she went. Felicity quickly became infatuated with tiny Erika, too, and welcomed the honor of becoming Aunt Felicity. The three became one and were so bonded that
the staff referred to them collectively as "Flerika".
Acton Shelter Manager Alicia Pell gets to know our then-newest resident, Erika!
Though wary of our interference with her baby, Claire
reluctantly accepted that we had Erika's best interest at heart when we
performed regular health checks. Luckily
for everyone, Erika was the perfect picture of health and monitoring and
maintenance was all that was needed from us.
As mothers worldwide can attest, Claire did all of the hard work in
rearing Erika; we were just along for the ride.
Before they were ready to join our main sheep and goat herd, "Flerika" lived in an enclosure adjacent to our cattle pasture. "Big brother" Paolo and the rest of the herd would check in on their new neighbors to make sure they were comfortable before the big "mooove"
When Erika grew big enough, she, her mom, and her
aunt — Flerika — were all introduced to the main goat and sheep herd. The trio was an instant hit among their
mates. And, unsurprisingly, they
remained a close knit trio, not straying far from one another at any
point. Whether in the barn, roaming the hillside, or at the feed trough, Flerika
remained connected.
"Flerika" posing on the hillside together!
Mother and daughter particularly piqued the interest of our
debonair llama Yoda, who is particularly adept at and fond of babysitting — which we learned when he met Erika. Erika was the first kid he met, and he
was instantly smitten. Claire accepted
the lanky giant's interest with grace, never questioning Yoda's intentions with
her beautiful daughter. Instead, Claire
recognized Yoda as an ally in protecting and guiding Erika. When Erika was young, she and her mom followed
Yoda everywhere, roaming much farther onto the hillside than they would alone,
now that they had their fierce protector in tow. Felicity followed warily behind at a
respectable, safe distance. Erika would
look up to Yoda before venturing on, appearing to seek guidance as to whether
they should continue. Those interactions
earned Yoda the nickname "Uncle Yoda," and, with that, Erika's family grew.
At base, her primary relationship remained with her mother,
and so it still remains. Mother-daughter
bonds are special to begin, but there's something exceptionally notable about
Claire and Erika's closeness. Perhaps it's because Claire was so young when she
gave birth and the two of them are quite close in age. It seems like they could be sisters, and they
are without a doubt best friends.
The love of Claire and Erika is never more apparent than when
they're resting and sleeping. Every day
they nap near one another and usually with one of them resting her head on
the other. Whether occurring in the
barn, on the patio, or on the hillside, this spectacle never fails to melt our
hearts and the hearts of all of those lucky enough to bear witness to this love.
Claire and Erika's signature move. These girls are never far apart, and their love is truly a sight to behold.
Claire and Erika's relationship is a great comfort to them both. They are always there for one another, in good times and in bad. When we had to evacuate our Southern California Shelter due to the Sand Fire last summer, Claire and Erika stayed side by side, helping each other get through the stress of the move and an unfamiliar setting until we were cleared to head back home.
These girls always have each other's backs!
To this day, nearly four years after her birth, Erika is not
often found without her mother in close proximity. When they wander too far apart, Erika's
bleats can be heard all over the sanctuary.
The doting and caring mother that she is, Claire responds to her daughter's
cries and the two are swiftly reunited.
During routine health care checks, both Claire and Erika wait
patiently on the other side of the gate while the other has their hooves
trimmed and receives a full body check by the caregivers. They no longer act too
concerned — at this point they know the routine and that it's nothing to be scared
of. But they do remain vigilant and watchful — patiently waiting, just in case — and
are always happy and relieved when they're reunited.
Nowadays, Claire and Erika lead the pack roaming the
hillside. Sometimes Yoda and Felicity
are in tow, and sometimes not. Claire is
the clear matriarch of the goat herd.
Paul Harvey, Vince, and Calvin often tromp around the hillside with
Claire and Erika. Erika and Paul Harvey
particularly enjoy palling around together and enjoy testing each other's
In addition to goats, sheep, and one llama, Claire and Erika
also count many humanimals among their friends.
They're often the first to greet staff members and visitors at the gate — usually
because they're looking for treats. When
treats are not forthcoming, though, they gladly settle into being adored and
doted upon.
Claire and Erika ask for some love from their good friend Kim Kaspari. And we're always happy to oblige!
When all else fails, visit the humanimals in the office for some treats!
Claire spends some time with her new friend, Beth Behrs, who plays Caroline on CBS's "2 Broke Girls."
The girls are also quite fond of their "kid" pals! Here, Claire enjoys a back rub from her friend Michelle, while Erika looks on from behind.
All and all, Claire and Erika are great goat ambassadors,
demonstrating to every visitor at the sanctuary the strong and unbreakable bond
between a mother and her child. We're so happy that these lucky girls will
always have each other to turn to and to rest their heads upon.
Please share Claire and Erika's story. Together, we can raise awareness that goats like them are each someone, not something. With your support, we can continue to promote compassionate vegan living through rescue, education, and advocacy efforts. A compassionate world begins with you!
Dear National Pork Producers Council:
Let me first apologize for not writing sooner, because this letter is long overdue. You see, we have rescued and[…]
Mr. Sanchez: His Protective Nature Almost Cost Him His Life #AnimalRescue
I would love to say that Mr. Sanchez's story is a fluke, but sadly, it is more like the norm.[…]
Animal Advocate and Farm Sanctuary Board Member Megan Watkins on Finding Her Compassionate Path #AnimalRescue
A more compassionate world begins with each of us – and with all of us. No matter where we are on[…]
A Week at Farm Sanctuary: Welcome, December! #AnimalRescue
It's the final month of the year, but thanks to you, it's only the beginning for our rescued residents! This[…]
On a rainy Tuesday a few weeks back, we began our journey to help two amazing turkeys, Tofu and Tina,[…]


text:
@interface ViewController ()
@property (weak, nonatomic) IBOutlet STypingAnimation *typingView;
@end

@implementation ViewController

- (void)viewDidLoad {
  [super viewDidLoad];

  [self.typingView setTextArray:@[@"Hello World!",@"It's working!"]];

  // (Optional) Properties to modify
  self.typingView.typingSpeed = 0.5;
  self.typingView.cursorBlinkSpeed = 1;
  self.typingView.startTypingDelay = 1;
  self.typingView.delayToStartDeleting = 1;
  self.typingView.deletingSpeed = 0.1;
  self.typingView.loop = YES;
}

@end


We believe every person has her or his own comfort zone and that a single type of transport can neither cater to the needs of every customer.
Hence, we continuously expand the range of transport vehicles we offer. In addition to Black Cars, more discerning clients can choose to upgrade to a chauffeur at their beck and call at the press of a button without an exorbitant price tag.
Fare is your access to amazing cars with sophisticated drivers for a price that is more affordable. It's a flexible, innovative service that offers easy booking of first class on-demand services with upscale transportation at a competitive price, whether it's just one vehicle for a night on the town or a fleet of luxury vehicles for a corporate function.
We work closely with service providers to give them access to a greater diversity of travelers while maintaining strict compliance with our stringent ground rules for safe, reliable, clean and professional service.