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Home License Agreements Technology Licenses Royalty Report: Drugs, Antibody, Surgical – Collection: 279903
Royalty Report: Drugs, Antibody, Surgical – Collection: 279903
Royalty Report: Drugs, Antibody, Surgical - Collection: 279903 quantity
Licensor hereby grants to the Swiss Licensee a co-exclusive license (together with Licensor), under the Licensor Technology, to develop Licensed Products in the Collaborative Fields with respect to the U.S. Territory and the European Union, in accordance with the Asthma Development Plan and Transplant Development Plan, and to import and use Licensed Products for such purposes. The foregoing licenses include the right to perform Development outside the U.S. Territory and European Union in accordance with the Asthma Development Plan and Transplant Development Plan with respect to any Licensed Product, solely in order to obtain Regulatory Approval of such Licensed Product in the Collaborative Fields in the U.S. Territory or the European Union.
Licensor hereby grants to Licensee a co-exclusive (together with Licensor), non-transferable right to Promote and Detail Licensed Products in the Asthma Field in the U.S. Territory, in accordance with applicable law and the Asthma Commercialization Plan.
Licensed Product shall mean any pharmaceutical product having as an active ingredient Daclizumab, but excluding Nutley Dac. Daclizumab means that certain humanized murine monoclonal antibody directed against the p55 component of IL-2R and given the generic name "Daclizumab" by the United States Adopted Names Council. Daclizumab does not include fragments of such antibody or any antibodies having a different amino acid sequence from such antibody. IL-2R means the IL-2 receptor.
Licensor Technology means Licensor Know-How and Licensor Patents.
Know-How" means all inventions, discoveries, trade secrets, information, experience, data, formulas, procedures and results related to antibodies that bind to IL-2R, and improvements thereon, including any information regarding the physical, chemical, biological, toxicological, pharmacological, clinical, and veterinary data, dosage regimens, control assays and specifications of Licensed Products.
Licensor Patents means all patent applications owned or Controlled by Licensor or its Affiliates alone or with a Third Party ("Sole Licensor Patents") and all Joint Licensee-Licensor Patents claiming Licensed Products or their manufacture or use in the Collaborative Fields, which are filed prior to or during the term of this Agreement in the U.S. or any foreign jurisdiction, including any addition, continuation, continuation-in-part or division thereof or any substitute application therefor; any patent issued with respect to such patent application, any reissue, extension or patent term extension of any such patent, and any confirmation patent or registration patent or patent of addition based on any such patent; and any other U.S. or foreign patent or inventor's certificate covering Licensed Products in the Collaborative Fields.
Transplant Indications means all indications that involve the suppression of rejection of transplanted organs, bone marrow or other tissue, including, without limitation, solid organ transplantation (including tolerance induction and xenotransplantation), bone marrow transplantation, graft versus host disease and cell transplantation. In any event, if a given indication satisfies the criteria for both an Autoimmune Indication and a Transplant Indication, such indication shall be deemed a Transplant Indication and not an Autoimmune Indication, provided that an Autoimmune Indication shall not be deemed a Transplant Indication merely because it may cause the need for a transplant (e.g., Type I diabetes, even if it causes the need for an organ transplant).
Collaborative Field (i.e., used in the singular) shall refer either to the Asthma Field (unless and until the Asthma Field is excluded from the definition of Collaborative Field or the Transplant Field (unless and until the Transplant Field is excluded from· the definition of Collaborative Field.
Asthma Field means the treatment and/or prevention of asthma or other respiratory diseases.
Transplant Field means the Transplant Indications.
The Swiss Licensor hereby grants to Licensee, under the Licensor Technology, Licensor Inventions, and all patents claiming Licensor Inventions, (i) a co-exclusive license (together with Licensor) to develop in accordance with the Asthma Development Plan and Transplant Development Plan and use Licensed Products in the Collaborative Fields with respect to U.S. Territory and the European Union, (ii) a co-exclusive license (together with Licensor) to import Licensed Products in the Collaborative Fields into the European Union for such Development purposes, (iii) an exclusive license to import, offer for sale and sell Licensed Products in the Collaborative Fields in the U.S. Territory, and (iv) an exclusive license to make Licensed Products in the Collaborative Fields in the Territory.
Licensor Inventions means all inventions that (a) relate to or are useful with antibodies that bind the IL-2 receptor (IL-2R) and (b) are made during the term of this Agreement by employees of Licensor or persons contractually required to assign or license patent rights covering such inventions to Licensor, in the course of performing Licensor's obligations, or exercising Licensor's rights, under this Agreement.
Licensor Patents means all patent applications owned or Controlled by Licensor or its Affiliates ("Sole Licensor Patents") alone or with a Third Party, and all Joint Licensor-Licensee Patents claiming Licensed Products or their manufacture or use in the Collaborative Fields, which are filed prior to or during the term of this Agreement in the U.S. or any foreign jurisdiction, including any addition, continuation, continuation-in-part or division thereof or any substitute application therefor; any patent issued with respect to such patent application, any reissue, extension or patent term extension of any such patent, and any confirmation patent or registration patent or patent of addition based on any such patent; and any other U.S. or foreign patent or inventor's certificate covering Licensed Products in the Collaborative Fields.
A Collaborative Field (i.e., used in the singular) shall refer either to the Asthma Field (unless and until the Asthma Field is excluded from the definition of Collaborative Field) or the Transplant Field (unless and until the Transplant Field is excluded from· the definition of Collaborative Field. Collaborative Fields shall be deemed to exclude the field (i.e., Asthma Field or Transplant Field) with respect to which the rights are so terminated.
Licensor grants to Swiss Licensee and to Licensee's Affiliates, during the Commercialization Term, the exclusive (even as to Licensor) right and license under the Licensor Know-How and Licensor Patents to (i) market, promote, and detail Nutley Dac in the Licensee Territory solely for use in Transplant Induction, and (ii) to sell and offer for sale Nutley Dac in the Licensee Territory under the Trademarks. In addition, Licensor grants to Licensee and to Licensee's Affiliates, the nonexclusive right under the Licensor Know-How and Licensor Patents to make, have made, use and import Nutley Dac, but only to the extent reasonably necessary for Licensee to carry out its rights and obligations under this Second Amended and Restated Worldwide Agreement. Licensee may sublicense the rights and licenses granted to Licensee, subject to Licensor's written consent, which consent Licensor may not unreasonably withhold. It shall be deemed reasonable for Licensor to withhold consent with respect to sublicense by Licensee of any of the rights or licenses to any other entity that is developing (in at least one Phase II clinical trial with directional human efficacy data), or marketing or selling in a Major Country any product for the treatment of any Autoimmune Indication. Notwithstanding the preceding sentence, Licensee and its Affiliates may use Third Party distributors in accordance with their customary practices. All sublicenses granted by Licensee or its Affiliates of the licenses set forth in this agreement shall automatically terminate at the end of the Commercialization Term.
Nutley Dac shall mean the FDA-approved form of Daclizumab manufactured at Licensee's Nutley, New Jersey facility as of the Amendment Effective Date.
Daclizumab shall be deemed to be a Licensed Product, a humanized antibody now known by the generic name daclizumab, which binds to the interleukin-2 receptor ("IL-2R"). Daclizumab means any product that contains humanized anti-Tac (as defined under Field).
Licensed Product means any product, other than an Excluded Product, in the Field, including any Combination Product, the making, importation, use, offer for sale, or sale of which utilizes Licensee Know-How, Licensee Patents, or Joint Inventions or would, in the absence of this Second Amended and Restated Worldwide Agreement, infringe a Valid Claim of a Licensee Patent.
Combination Product means any product containing both an ingredient that causes it to be considered a Licensed Product and one or more other therapeutically active ingredients.
Other Licensed Products means all Licensed Products other than Daclizumab.
Licensor Patents means all patent applications owned or Controlled by Licensor alone or with a Third Party ("Sole Licensor Patents") and all patent applications resulting from Joint Inventions ("Joint Licensee-Licensor Patents") Covering Daclizumab, which are filed prior to or during the term of the 1989 Agreements, the 1999 Agreements or this Second Amended and Restated Worldwide Agreement in the United States or any foreign jurisdiction, including any addition, continuation, continuation-in-part or division thereof or any substitute application therefor; any patent issued with respect to such patent application, any reissue, extension or patent term extension of any such patent, and any confirmation patent or registration patent or patent of addition based on any such patent; and any other United States or foreign patent or inventor's certificate covering products in the Field.
Licensor Patent Rights:
Patent No. 5,585,089, "Humanized Immunoglobulins," issued December 17, 1996.
Patent No. 5,693,761, "Polynucleotides Encoding Improved Humanized Immunoglobulins," issued December 2, 1997.
Patent No. 5,693,762, "Humanized Immunoglobulins," issued December 2, 1997.
Patent No. 6,180,370 "Humanized Immunoglobulins and Method of Making the Same", issued January 30, 2001.
Trademarks means the trademark "Zenapax®," and all trademark registrations and applications therefor, and all goodwill associated therewith, and all other trademarks owned by Licensee (except for any Licensee housemarks or trade names) and used in connection with the sale or promotion of Nutley Dac in the Licensee Territory.
Licensor Know-How means, except as otherwise set forth, all inventions, discoveries, trade secrets, information, experience, data, formulas, procedures and results in the Field, and improvements thereon, including any information regarding the physical, chemical, biological, toxicological, pharmacological, clinical, and veterinary data, dosage regimens, control assays and specifications of Daclizumab.
Licensee Patents means both the Licensee Owned Patents and the Licensee Controlled Patents.
Licensee Owned Patents means all patent applications owned by Licensee or its Affiliates ("Sole Licensee Patents") alone or with a Third Party, and all patent applications resulting from Joint Inventions ("Joint Licensee-Licensor Patents") covering inventions in the Field that are filed prior to or during the term of this Second Amended and Restated Worldwide Agreement in the United States or any foreign jurisdiction, including any addition, continuation, continuation-in-part or division thereof or any substitute application therefor; any patent issued with respect to such patent application, any reissue, extension or patent term extension of any such patent, and any confirmation patent or registration patent or patent of addition based on any such patent; and any other United States or foreign patent or inventor's certificate covering inventions in the Field. Licensee Owned Patents as of the Effective Date are, specifically, those listed.
Serial No. 60/416,302 – Use of IL-2 Receptor Antibodies
Joint Inventions means any inventions in the Field, whether patented or not, that are jointly made during the period beginning on January 31, 1989 and continuing until the end of the Commercialization Term by at least one (1) Licensor employee or person contractually required to assign or license patent rights covering such inventions to Licensor and at least one (1) Licensee-Nutley or Licensee employee or person contractually required to assign or license patent rights covering such inventions to Licensee-Nutley or Licensee.
Field means any humanized or chimeric antibody that binds to IL-2R, where "humanized" means a genetically engineered combination of a substantially human framework region and constant region, and complementarity determining regions from non-human antibodies, and where "chimeric" means a genetically engineered combination of human constant region and non-human variable region. "Antibodies in the Field" means humanized and chimeric antibodies that bind to IL-2R. It is believed that these Antibodies in the Field may be useful for therapeutic, diagnostic, imaging and similar purposes. It is understood that the Field includes, but is not limited to, that certain humanized murine monoclonal antibody prepared against the p55 component of IL-2R ("humanized anti-Tac"). Furthermore, the Field includes, but is not limited to, all improvements relating to humanized anti-Tac, including without limitation modifications in structure introduced by genetic engineering, or by chemical or enzymatic cleavage. Also included within the Field shall be alternate hosts for producing humanized anti-Tac, methods for purification, formulations incorporating humanized anti-Tac, and uses and methods of use for humanized anti-Tac in human medicine.
Daclizumab is a therapeutic humanized monoclonal antibody which was used for the treatment of adults with relapsing forms of multiple sclerosis.
Licensor grants to the Swiss Licensee a sole and exclusive, even as to Licensor, worldwide right and license under the Licensor Patents and Licensor Know-How to make, have made, use, offer for sale, sell and import Licensed Products in the Field.
Licensor grants a nonexclusive, nontransferable. limited right to use the Licensor trademark.
Licensor owns or controls patents and know-how related to a series of proprietary compounds which act as purine nucleoside phosphorylase inhibitors (PNP Inhibitors), including the compound known as –X-4208.
Compound means the PNP Inhibitor known as –X-4208.
Licensed Product means any and all pharmaceutical products containing Compound.
The Field means the prevention or treatment of Autoimmune Indications and Transplantation Indications.
Autoimmune Indications means all indications that involve pathogenic consequences, including tissue injury, produced by autoantibodies or autoreactive T lymphocytes interacting with self epitopes, i.e., autoantigens.
Transplantation Indications means all indications that involve the suppression of rejection of transplanted organs, bone marrow or other tissue, including, without limitation, solid organ transplantation (including tolerance induction and xenotransplantation), bone marrow transplantation, graft versus host disease and cell transplantation.
BCX-4208 is for the prevention of acute rejection in transplantation and for the treatment of autoimmune diseases.
The Parties will focus their initial efforts on the development of Licensed Products to treat psoriasis. In addition, the Parties shall develop Licensed Products for Organ Transplant Indications.
Licensor grants a worldwide license under the Licensor Patents and Licensor Know-How in the Field to develop, make, have made, use, sell, offer for sale, have sold and import Licensed Products. Such license shall be co-exclusive with Licensor in the Co-Promotion Territory and exclusive even as to Licensor in the Licensee Territory.
Licensed Product or Licensed Products means a formulation for use in the Field containing Anti-CD11a or any molecule derived from Anti-CD11a that is substituted as the subject of this collaboration.
Anti-CD11a means that certain monoclonal antibody, and other constructs with minor modifications thereto resulting from changes to the manufacturing process occurring after the transfer thereof from Licensor to Licensee which is now known as Efalizumab, and which recognizes the CD11a cell adhesion molecule on leucocytes, the full length sequences of the light and heavy chains.
The Field means the use of Licensed Product for the treatment or prevention of any human condition, disorder or disease. The Parties will focus their initial efforts on the development of Licensed Products to treat psoriasis.
'Initial Indications' means the use of Licensed Product for the treatment of psoriasis and the Organ Transplant Indication. For purposes of this Agreement, psoriasis is a single indication regardless of whether the psoriasis is mild, moderate or severe. Separate Initial Indications will not result based on the severity of the psoriasis or organ transplant rejection, the onset period of organ transplant rejection, or the demographics of the patient class.
Psoriasis is a long-lasting autoimmune disease characterized by patches of abnormal skin.
Anti-CD11a is an investigational, recombinant, humanized monoclonal antibody designed to prevent the activation of T-cells and their migration to sites of inflammation. The first Phase III randomized trial will involve approximately 30 sites throughout the United States and Canada for patients with moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis. A second Phase III study is planned to begin in the first quarter 2000.
Royalty Report: Drugs, Antibody, Drug Discovery – Collection: 344545
Royalty Report: Drugs, Cancer, Disease – Collection: 273286
Royalty Report: Medical, Device, Ophthalmological – Collection: 27930


Heterogeneous photocatalytic removal of Rhodamine-B (RhB) dye by metallic Au nanopatrticles deposited TiO2 photocatalyst was studied. For this study, a chemical reduction method by hydrazine hydrate for gold deposition was employed in order to synthesize Au/TiO2 nanocomposite system. For the characterization of the synthesized nanomaterials, X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), UV-vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS), the Fourier transformation infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and photoluminescence spectroscopy (PLS) techniques were performed. The obtained results show that the deposition of gold onto TiO2 surface could effectively inhibit the recombination of the photoinduced electron and holes, improving the absorption capability for the visible light source and leading to the increased surface OH group density. The degradation experiment reveals that the efficiency of color removal from RhB aqueous solution containing Au/TiO2 powders for the photocatalytic bleaching of RhB dye is more efficient than that of bare TiO2 sample upon UV-vis light activation. In addition, degradation kinetics of RhB dye in aqueous suspensions can be well simulated by the Langmuir-Hinshelwood model and obeys the pseudo-first order law, with a decolorization rate of 0.0252 min-1 to the photocatalytic removal of RhB dye.
Jain, R., Mathur, M., Sikarwar, S. & Mittal, A. (2007). Removal of the hazardous dye Rhodamine B from photocatalytic and adsorption treatments. J. Environ. Manag. 85, 956-964. 10.1016/j.jenvman.2006.11.002.


The revolution that is occurring in video content proliferation and distribution is changing the way brands and publishers think about how they reach and engage audiences.
At Now We Collide we take a strategic approach to the role video content plays within the overall content ecosystem which helps to inform our creative teams and the production and distribution of video content.
Part of this approach uses data and analysis of video content trends and creative across multiple video platforms. We use multiple data sources to find and understand content trends, creators and publishers. One key source of insights comes from Now We Collide's partnership with Tubular Labs, the world's only cross-platform, all device, video data source. With in depth understanding of the software and data we are able to assess analytics across over 30 video platforms including YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Vine and Vimeo.
So - as part of a regular blog post series we'll be giving a sneak peak of just some of what we have access to by providing the top 5 video creators by audience views in Australia across the key video platforms.


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Artist Reclaims Instagram Cliché For Viral Political Message
Heather Leighton Contributor
Michael James Schneider stands in front of his balloon art.
Michael James Schneider. Copyright 2019. All rights reserved.
Michael James Schneider didn't intend for his political message about President Donald Trump to go viral, but he's happy he was able to connect people despite the current controversial national rhetoric.
On Sunday, President Trump sent out a series of tweets calling out four congresswomen of color saying they "originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world" and they should "go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came." All four of the women are U.S. citizens and three of the four were born in America.
Throughout the week the president's words were challenged, criticized and clarified. The Portland-based artist was among those to share his opinions after being inspired by cartoonist Adam Ellis.
On Monday, Schneider, who works as an operations manager for Louis Vuitton, shared a photo of himself with the message "Donald Trump is a ra_ist" written in balloon letters. He is seen holding a letter C and P in each of his hands to fill in the blank.
By Friday, his post attracted more thank 48,700 likes. On average, Schneider's posts get about 2,000 likes.
"The balloons may come off as whimsical, but the message is very serious," he told me. On Instagram, the traditional use of the balloons are typically used in celebratory situations like engagements or gender reveals. He's also used the balloons, which he recycles to be environmentally-conscious, to address female reproductive, transgender rights and Instagram art.
Left: Niscelle Ward stands in front of a quote by Margaret Sanger to benefit The Yellowhammer Fund. ... [+] Right: Michael James Schneider in front of one of his art installations.
For each of his posts, Schneider tries to point his followers back to a nonprofit or organization to donate to their cause, because "anyone with privilege and a platform should be very vocal but also challenge people to not just share a photo, but to actually do something actionable." For the viral Trump photo, Schneider pointed his followers to the ACLU in Oregon.
"The reaction has been good and any artist would want that and I just want to make people feel a little less lost. Obviously, there are people upset," he told me. "I didn't know it was going to be this big, but I don't want to be deterred from sharing that message."
For his future art, Schneider doesn't know what will inspire him in the future, but he is "eager to see what comes next."
Heather Leighton

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


While in college, it can be challenging to find the best ways to balance all priorities while maintaining a hectic schedule. Though keeping a consistent balance might be challenging, this actually makes college one of the best times to develop some of the healthiest habits that can shape your standard of living for years to come. The following habits are some of the healthiest lifestyle patterns a lock down before graduation.
The fact that budgeting effectively in college can be so difficult to do in tandem with your studies means that it is one of the best opportunities to learn how to budget effectively. Though you may not be able to buy absolutely everything that you want, this will be an effective time to make a list of all of your needs and wants in terms of priority. Exercising the discipline to prioritize what is absolutely necessary will help to ensure that you have what you need to survive and comfortably reach the income level for buying your wants in the future.
Exercise will not only help you keep your physical health under control, but it can also be a powerful emotional regulator as well. Exercising can help fight back the stress hormones that lead to issues that are far more severe than simply gaining weight. Your immune system will benefit from exercising, which can assist you in staying productive in your job hunt and study sessions without getting compromised by unexpected sickness.
No matter how tempting it may be to go for a week on only two hours of sleep for an upcoming exam, it is far more beneficial to have a sleep schedule that can be effectively maintained while keeping your sanity. Sleep deprivation can hamper your productivity, cognitive ability, and physical stamina without you even being aware of just how impaired you are until it's too late. As soon as you can control your sleep, all other aspects of life will be that much more manageable as well.
Networking is more than just something that you can do to get internships. In all walks of life, the connections that you have will be invaluable for reaching different areas of opportunity. Not only is networking valuable for advancing your professional prospects, but regular socialization is an aspect of healthy living that is nearly on the same level as sleep and exercise. Make a certain quota for establishing new contacts on a weekly basis, and it will get easier as you do it more consistently. You never know what opportunities might be on the horizon due to friends in the right places.
Much like networking is healthy even if it isn't done for professional advancement, regularly challenging your brain and exposing it to new information in books is very healthy even if it isn't for a class. Make a habit of always absorbing new information for the sake of intellectual enrichment and immersion in different literary dimensions; this will be invaluable for fostering the kind of creativity that can help you excel in your profession, even if the books aren't related to your job.
Not only will these habits help make college all the more manageable, but they will also go a long way in helping anyone who adopts them feel much more energetic and fulfilled in their daily life. No matter what your career might be, these habits will be essential for ensuring that you are able to operate at your fullest potential, with all of the physical, mental and social resources that you need to succeed.


Giddy up! This golden lariat looped Seed and Bugle Beaded Fringe has an intricate design that will add an elegant touch to your projects. The beautiful trim features a lavish design made from seed, bugle and faceted beads. The beaded trim is attached to a satin ribbon tape for easy attachment to most fabrics and materials. Use this trim to decorate drapery, throw blankets and bedding. Dry clean or hand-wash only. Available in one style.


I wonder right now, where is your mind at?
And I could only hope that you have that gaze.
I could only hope I'm watching the sun set with you.
That you've claimed my heart from the start, yes, you do.
To have it disappear again and set my prayers straight.
Ever since I've seen it, it has been my favorite view.
It's enchanting beauty specially cause you're with me.


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Image surveillance company lands $50 million contract with US Coast Guard; Shares rise
Published Wed, Feb 15 20175:16 PM EST Updated Thu, Feb 16 20179:56 AM EST
Lauren Thomas@laurenthomas
U.S. Coast Guard rescue swimmers at work.
Source: USCG
Shares of FLIR Systems rose Wednesday after the company announced a $50 million contract to provide electronics systems to the U.S. Coast Guard.
The Wilsonville, Oregon-based company will configure systems on more than 2,000 U.S. Coast Guard vessels, according to a Wednesday press release from FLIR. The U.S. Coast Guard did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CNBC.
Shares gained 8 percent on the day, bouncing back from a 6 percent decline on Tuesday after FLIR reported earnings that missed analysts' expectations.
The image surveillance company announced adjusted fourth-quarter earnings of 48 cents per share, missing Thomson Reuters estimates of 54 cents.
Looking at the full year ahead, though, FLIR released new guidance of earnings that should fall within a range of $1.81 to $1.91, topping Reuters estimates of $1.79. FLIR has also approved a quarterly cash dividend of 15 cents per share, which is 25 percent more than its previous dividend of 12 cents.
FLIR 1-year performance
Source: FactSet
On Tuesday the Oregon company also said that chief executive Andrew Teich plans to retire when the company finds a successor. Teich has been with FLIR since 1999, and he became CEO in 2013.
With Wednesday's gain, FLIR shares are up 2 percent for 2017, versus the S&P 500's more than 4.5 percent gain.
FLIR Systems Inc


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Paul Burman — bloggety-blog
I'd rather you read my books than read my blog, but do both and I'll pour a drink or two, raise my glass to you...
.........BLOG..........................WEBSITE..........................REVIEWS.......
Searching for the Story
One September several years back, my job took me to Thessaloniki, northern Greece, for a couple of weeks. As I flew out of Australia, Sydney launched its Olympic Games Opening Ceremony, and the irony of seeing several events taking place in my home country through the medium of Greek TV wasn't lost on me. I'd lounge in my hotel room at the end of the day, watching the 100 metres or the discus throwing, and find it bizarre that Mount Olympus was only a spit and a lick away. As was Alexander the Great, Aristotle and Socrates, and there were more Byzantine churches, Roman baths, temples and tombs around than you could poke a javelin at. It's a stunning country to visit, not least because its rich history and culture is apparent at almost every turn. So many stories.
However, this isn't a travelogue, and while there were many experiences (from both contemporary and ancient Greece) to enjoy on that trip, and which I've often savoured since, it was a fragment of domestic grief only briefly witnessed that created the most profound effect on me. Comedy and tragedy happens all around us - unreachable and unalterable, despite being uncannily close at times - and sometimes all we can do is join the Chorus as unwitting and helpless observers, hoping that the worst of the stories are never our own.
On my last morning in Thessaloniki, before flying to Athens, I was up and packed by 5am and standing at the open window of my room. It was still dark outside - still and dark - and warm with the promise of another hot day. My room was located on the fourth floor, at the rear of the hotel, looking across to the back of a couple of high-rise apartment blocks. They didn't seem too big a stretch away and it would have probably added to the ambiance of the place if someone had slung a washing line between, but I've always enjoyed the backyard and rooftop views of cities, seeking out the back streets and lanes in preference to postcard hotspots, and so it suited me fine.
It was good to breathe in the end of night, the start of day, and to catch a few moments of stillness before heading down to the lobby and catching the airport bus. And I was thinking this and mentally checking to make sure I hadn't forgot something - that I'd kept my passport and tickets handy, and that sort of thing - when, from an apartment almost opposite, a woman began crying.
It began as a sobbing. Deep sobs, one after the other. Until one sob became an intense wail: a drawn-out cry that reminded me of someone drowning. She was sobbing and crying as if the best of her life was over, and I couldn't tell whether it was from grief or pain or loss or betrayal or... There suddenly seemed so many reasons a woman might cry at 5 o'clock in the morning.
I peered out to try and identify which apartment and which room she might be in. Was she hurt? Had she witnessed the death of her child. Or a husband? What sort of loss was it? Was she sitting next to a telephone or a bloody mess? Was there a scribbled note in her hand? Was she in danger? Did she need help? I couldn't tell, but the solitary sound of this woman crying was amplified across the courtyard of tall buildings, along with its poignancy, and it found its way into me. It was one of the most plaintive, lonely sounds I'd ever heard.
It seemed that at any moment someone would have to join her, to soothe and comfort her, or to continue bullying and berating her; that the click or slam of a door would be equally clear on a morning like this, along with the ripple of soothing words or the throwing of pans, the smashing of crockery. But none of that happened. Just as she began her lament, so she ended it. As I stood and listened and wondered what - if anything - could be done, a current swept her from one end of grief to another, and her wailing once again became a series of sobs punctuated by silence. Except the silence now seemed louder than before. And I had to catch a bus to the airport.
So evocative was this scene for me that I've tried writing it numerous times across the years, although most often when I'm somewhere far from home. Usually as a poem, but occasionally as a short story. Except the words I really want and the view I really want to present have always eluded me. All I've created are scraps of paper with scribbled jottings and crossings-out to join the heap of other scraps of paper covered in scribbled jottings and crossings-out. (I have trees worth of these and sometimes, when we're short of winter firewood, I'll burn a box or two of them and we'll warm ourselves on the flames of old words.)
I could leave it well alone, of course, and allow the scene to simply hang in the gallery of my memories. Except I'm reluctant to. And so, I do what many writers do and begin to analyse why what I've tried won't work, while searching for a way of telling it in a way that might work instead. I look at the possibilities from different perspectives and learn that I can't see my way forward, perhaps, because my focus has been misdirected.
Maybe, instead of attempting to present a view of the woman's predicament and an interpretation of her situation, or even just capturing an evocative moment in life, the power of the scene might lie in the many questions that are raised but left begging. Or, in a Carveresque manner, it might lie in describing two characters who, for very different reasons, find themselves on the brink of change. There are so many possibilities. Maybe it needs to be one of those stories whereby, instead of making sense of the world - or a slice of the world - we end up with even more questions than answers along with a weightier awareness of our smallness in the universe. Maybe I should turn to Euripedes, Homer, Sophocles, and ask how the Greek poets would have shaped the telling of this story. Perhaps I should question what universal truth might be revealed here. Maybe, perhaps, possibly... There are so many ways of telling a story, if only we, as writers, can find one that works.
Searching for the Story first appeared in The View from Here in February, 2009.
Posted by Paul Burman at 15:50 No comments:
'On the Waterfront' and 'Fitzcarraldo'
It's been one busy week, what with trying to complete an article for a magazine, the demands of turning up to a salaried job (ho hum), and my painterly partner bailing on her fair share of domestic duties as she does a bit of globe-trotting. However, it's had its highlights.
One recent aspect of the Day Job I've appreciated is that it's given me a heap of opportunities to get to know Elia Kazan's 1954 film On the Waterfront. This is a new discovery for me, but I must admit I've enjoyed exploring it. Marlon Brandon and Eva Marie Saint are wonderful, and the improvised scene, where Edie drops her glove and Terry tries it on, is magic. The politics behind the movie, with Kazan justifying his request that he be called again in front of H.U.A.C., so that he might name names during the McCarthy witch-hunt, is fascinating too. While the ending seems unsatisfactory, with the longshoremen trudging blindly into the maw of capitalism, and the dynamic Edie reduced to a simpering doll, there's enough strength in the film for it to work.
Also, came across two websites that are worth shouting about and checking out. Talie Helene is a musician, writer and editor from Melbourne, Australia, and you can find out what's she been up to here. Alan Baxter - another Australian, but this time from New South Wales - is the author of dark fantasy novels RealmShift and MageSign, and of late he's been blogging about How to Write Fight Scenes.
The other highlight of the week was watching Fitzcarraldo, directed by Werner Herzog. I've always liked the sound of this word - 'Fitzcarraldo' - whenever I've heard talk of Herzog's work, but am amazed I never got round to watching the film until now. More fool me. What a film! It's made one hell of an impression, and I can already sense that some aspects of it are going to influence the way I write, the way I think about writing. And as for Klaus Kinski - brilliant. Look, I don't want to be objective and critical here. While some of the potent images are still percolating through my head - Fitzgerald's passionate feverishness when he gatecrashes the opera, the way he clings to the church bell-tower and screams at the town, his interactions with the rubber barons and the indians, the winching of the 320-ton steamboat up one side of the mountain and down the other - I'm more than happy just to gush about it instead.

The tra

The trailer doesn't go anywhere near doing justice to this movie, but don't take my word for it: watch the movie.
The Ride of the Googlebots
It used to be that my blog stats would show I'd been visited by one or two Googlebots a day, and I've always found comfort in this. It's reassuring, I think, to know that these little spiders had found their way to my blog, had a bit of a browse and then scurried back to Mountain View, California, or wherever their nest is, to record the memory of that visit, in preparation for sharing it with the world. Their visit is an affirmation of sorts. It reminds me that I exist - or that my blog exists, at least.
However, of late, the things seem to be swarming, and I wonder if it's to do with the mild weather... or whether, like fembots, they're part of a plan to take over the world. Fairly regularly, I find there's been 16 or 17 of the blighters across the day, trawling through the archives, leaving little bits of web hanging off the drawers.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. The more affirmation the better. And I don't have an aversion to spiders of any sort. It's just that I wonder why.
Anyway, given that it's happening, I thought I 'd leave a trail of flies for them to follow: 01000100111000110011... all the way to a couple of websites I like to visit. I've been getting to know a few more Australian writers recently, amongst whom is Cam Rogers, author of The Music of Razors, and Michael Pryor, author of The Chronicles of Krangor, The Laws of Magic, and many other novels and short stories. Cam is overhauling his site at the moment, but that makes visiting the current site all the more worthwhile - catch it before it changes. Catch them both.
Little Red Riding Hood has always been one of my favourite tales. That it's one of those frequently reinterpreted stories we carry with us from childhood into adulthood adds to its richness, as far as I'm concerned. Even though each variation may draw on common elements, I'm always delighted to hear how different storytellers respond to it – what they bring to it, what they choose to leave out. From the sexy and the sinister to the sermonising and the comical. From the Brothers Grimm to Roald Dahl.
My favourite retelling of all is, without a doubt, Angela Carter's The Company of Wolves. This is a stunningly evocative story from an anthology (The Bloody Chamber) that I've found almost addictive at times, and which includes variations of Bluebeard, Puss-in-Boots, The Erl-King, and Beauty and the Beast, amongst others.
I don't mind admitting that it was my great admiration of her writing that inspired me to include my own 'folk tales' as interludes in The Grease Monkey's Tale, and to retell Little Red Riding Hood one more time (although my version was also shaped by witnessing the horrendous abuse of a young child by her drunk grandmother once).
With this in mind, I looked forward to watching Catherine Hardwicke's Red Riding Hood recently, but was disappointed. While I particularly liked the palette of colours Hardwicke employed – all that red and white, blood and snow – it felt as if the screenplay had attempted to cobble together as many stories connected with wolves as possible, and ended up doing justice to none of them. (Conversely, Angela Carter references the story of Little Red in The Company of Wolves to a number of other lycanthropic stories too, but achieves a tremendous unity for doing this.) I quite liked the medieval setting (reminiscent of the one episode of Game of Thrones I've managed to watch), but thought the CGI wolf was laughably bad – so bad I couldn't stop laughing. All very corny and disappointing. To shake it off, I revisited The Bloody Chamber and Carter's wonderful description of the seduction of a wolf.
Posted by Paul Burman at 21:53 2 comments:
From Thomas Mann to Tim Winton - a marriage of music and words
Having come across some great discussions about e-books recently (Louise Cusack's Enhanced Features for e-Books, help or hindrance? and Jason Nahrung's Putting the eeeeee! into e-books are essential reading), I have resuscitated an article I wrote for The View From Here just over a year ago. Its relevance might not be immediately apparent, but it meanders there eventually.
I'm not sure whether I'd have ever read Thomas Mann's Death in Venice if it hadn't been for a trip to the cinema in 1973, but Visconti's film adaptation had just been released and I needed an excuse to hang out with a girlfriend. I doubt whether I gave the film my full attention (for obvious reasons), but I recall brooding, impressionistic images and a soundtrack that drew heavily on Mahler. Not long after, and perhaps in honour of the girl and our evening together, I shelled out 35p for a paperback copy of the book.
I vastly preferred reading Death in Venice to watching it (the little I'd seen) and, although the girl soon disappeared from view, this slim novella has remained on my bookshelf ever since. However, Visconti had a more profound influence than I realised at the time, because as soon as I opened the book I couldn't help but hear those haunting phrases from Mahler's Third and Fifth symphonies underscoring every sentence, and they too have stayed with me.
Adolescent relationships may be fleeting, but the love affair between film, music and literature is an enduring (and polyamorous) one, it seems. This is especially evident in films that aren't so much moving pictures as moving paintings, and where music is cast in a leading role rather than as an optional extra loafing about in the background. Maybe Walt Disney kindled the flame to this romance with the magical (if not trippy) Fantasia in 1940. Here we have Mickey Mouse's animated orchestration of Goethe's The Sorcerer's Apprentice dancing to Dukas' symphonic poem of the same name. It's a marriage with added significance when we remember it was Goethe himself who said: "Music begins where words end."
The intimacy of the relationship became obvious in Elvira Madigan (1967). Drawing on Johan Lindström Saxon's nineteenth century ballad, which chronicled the murder-suicide of a married cavalry officer and his young tightrope-dancing mistress, film director Bo Widerberg created an inseparable bond when he matched this story with Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21. It's proved such a long-standing affair – no murder-suicide to mirror the original – that the Elvira Madigan tag is still promoted on new recordings forty-three years later.
Nor have Australian films been shy in this respect. After all, Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) went all the way with Joan Lindsay's novel. No brief flirtation here. Consequently, it's become a challenge to pick up this book, let alone read it in the shadow of Hanging Rock, without drifting into soft focus and expecting the earth to move to the tedious ripple of panpipes.
The upshot of this was that, as an Arts student in the 70s, it was difficult not to believe that a half-decent understanding of literature must be accompanied by a sound grounding in music. How else could these directors have recognised the essential Mahler behind Mann, the Mozart in Madigan? If I couldn't discover something similar in Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, Chekhov's Three Sisters or Sartre's Nausea, I sensed they'd remain incomplete texts, half-read and half-understood at best.
This belief led me to Tchaikovsky, Chopin and Satie, amongst others, until I recognised the risks of overdosing on classical music: sombre days and even more sombre nights. Literature needed to lighten up and start dancing with a younger partner.
So it was a relief to encounter bands like The Cream releasing Tales of Brave Ulysses and Camel dedicating an entire album to Paul Gallico's The Snow Goose, and even to hear Kate Bush warbling her way through Wuthering Heights. Being a committed student, there wasn't much I wouldn't kick back and listen to. The more diversions the better. I thought of it as research and much preferred it as a study technique to browsing a library for notes on Chaucer, Conrad or Coleridge. Except when it came to Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Titch's Legend of Xanadu. How could anyone take a band with a name like that seriously?
What I would've liked, though, was to actually hear the music that underscored the words for myself. Instinctively, as I believed Visconti had. But it didn't happen. There may have been an occasion once, when I thought a few bars from a pianoforte leaked out of Mansfield Park, but that could equally have been because I was cramming my reading of Jane Austen at 3:00 am while twitched up on caffeine.
There was little for it but to make the most of literature that allowed for such tune deafness. Saul Bellow's Henderson the Rain King became a favourite the moment Eugene Henderson sang a couple of lines from Handel's Messiah: "I am despised and rejected, a man of sorrow and acquainted with grief".
In marriage, partners redefine one another and – for better or for worse – while Henderson's story has resounded to the Messiah ever since for me, so too has it been impossible to hear the oratorio without having flashbacks of a middle-aged American multi-millionaire blundering through the African jungle in search of salvation.
Something similar happens with Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange. This novel embraces Beethoven's Ninth Symphony so passionately (even as it flirts with Mozart and Bach on the side) that I no longer hear it without picturing Alex and his droogs bashing and raping, thieving and destroying. It's a deliberately disturbing relationship that reverberates all the more for Alex's belief that music is "gorgeousness and gorgeousity made flesh."
Of course, not all literature is evocative of music; some texts are destined to go quietly through life – unaccompanied. But reading is particularly enjoyable when it engages at this level. It's the reason I got excited when, with the advent of CDs, Laura Esquivel released The Law of Love with its own soundtrack slipped beneath the front cover – a track for each chapter – because it heralded a fresh dynamism in the relationship. However, although Tim Winton's aptly-named Dirt Music was released with an optional double album of bluegrass and classical tracks (an invitation to re-read the novel every time it's played), relatively few authors have travelled any distance on this bandwagon.
But the writing's on the wall... or, if not the wall, it's certainly appearing on digital readers. Putting aside my preference for the feel and smell of paper rather than screens and warm batteries, I've been considering buying a Kindle or Sony Reader lately. The software isn't quite there yet, but I don't think it'll be long before e-readers are gauging what music should accompany which e-book, matching the compatibility of rhythm and mood in each, while allowing, perhaps, for the user's reading pace.
Maybe then it'll only be a matter of time before every piece of literature is accompanied by its own soundtrack, and Mahler's symphonies will literally resound through Death in Venice. Unless it's done badly and resembles those awful Christmas cards that play the same tinny tune over and over again the moment they're opened... or if the moment Picnic at Hanging Rock is opened we're forced to listen to those bloody panpipes yet again. In which case, I imagine the relationship between literature and music might end in a murder-suicide after all – the messiest of divorces – and we'll be clammering for old-fashioned, silent books once more.
Down at the Factory of the Imagination - August report
Okay, I'm a bit late reporting August's figures, but maybe I'm still working on the Julian Calendar... or cooking the books. Anyway, August wasn't too bad word-wise and there's 61,000 of the little critters perched more or less in place. The 60,000 mark feels like a critical psychological barrier, so overtaking it is accompanied by a sigh of relief, because now I feel as if I'm accelerating towards the end - that is, if 20,000 words will get me there.
I'm not sure what this next month will be like, in terms of capturing words, and suspect I'm getting to the point where I have to print the entire thing out if I'm to successfully find my way towards that ending. Like The Snowing and Greening, this is a non-lineal beast, so when the characters deviate from where I thought they were taking me, which they're doing a lot at the moment, I have to go back and change a number of details relevant to how they got there in the first place.
Okay, forget that hotch-potch of metaphors I've just stumbled through - the factory, the hunting, the road journey - maybe I should settle for time-travelling instead, because that's what non-lineal writing feels like at times. If only I could meet a friendly Tralfamadorian. Then I could let myself know yesterday how the rest of this month is about to go.
Two books I didn't enjoy
Many years ago, in a bid to overcome my obsessive need to finish reading every book I started, however abysmal they were, I created a 40 page and 80 page rule. If I found myself disliking a book by page 40, and could find no redeeming features, or if I found a book wasn't compulsive reading by page 80, then I allowed myself to dump it.
But I've be breaking this rule recently.
Of the last two books I read, one shouldn't have made it past page 40, while the page 80 rule should've applied to the other. The first one I stuck with, skimming across fifty pages or so before dipping into the story again, all the way through to the end, while the second didn't get the final flick until page 136.
I won't bother naming names here - there's nothing to be gained from that, except to prove yet again that what engages one reader won't necessarily engage another - but I do find this business of reading such books useful to a certain extent, inasmuch as it reminds me what makes a story work and what kills it.
Briefly, with the first novel, I thought it had an interesting storyline and the author had created a compelling narrative voice. However, the main characters, who I was expected to be sympathetic towards, if not empathetic with, were tedious bores. I didn't give a toss whether they lived or died, whether their lives were wracked with guilt or whether they ever found true love. If I was on a bus having to listen to them, I'd have got off at the first stop and waited for the next one. I'd rather stand in a blizzard than put up with their prattling.
The second novel was touted as a 'classy ghost story', although it seemed to be working a tad too hard at conveying literary classiness at the expense of pace and... well, substance. One slow meandering after another that seemed to be getting nowhere. Left me cold.
Why stick with them? Well, what's usually a tower of books at the side of my bed, waiting to be read, is at an all-time low. Having been let down by Amazon with a couple of titles, I've also been waiting several weeks for Fishpond to deliver the debut novel of my friend, Mike French, but The Ascent of Isaac Steward is proving elusive. I'll have to write to them on Monday if it hasn't appeared in the post by then. Because of this, I've been making do with reading a few books that have been lying around, but now it's time to start building that tower again.
What's Hot & What's Not
Being a slow learner in most things grammatical (put it down to sloppy trends in institutionalised education when I were a nipper), I've surprised myself of late to find I actually enjoy refining my skills in this area. That's partly why Strunk and White's excellent The Elements of Style made such an impact on me not so long ago (see post). However, I've just come across this fine post ....... from .... Patrick O'Duffy (hater of the sloppy ellipsis) ........ called .... Who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma?
Also, came across the website of Australian novelist and short story writer Kirstyn McDermott, whose thriller Madigan Mine was released by Picador last year. Check it out here.
What's Not:
Tony Abbott, Bleater of the Opposition, claiming he's Australia's official critic-in-chief. Too easy! But then, when politicians say nothing loud enough and often enough they really seem to believe they must be saying something. Our current cast of parliamentarians are, I suspect, puppets who've escaped from the 1980's British satirical comedy Spitting Image, preparing to act out a Ronald Reagan sketch or two - particularly The President's Brain is Missing. Can't find that episode, but this'll do instead.
WELCOME TO THE BLOG OF
NOVELIST & SHORT STORY
WRITER .... PAUL BURMAN
This is where I scribble about a whole
heap of random stuff that crowds its
way into my head.
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Titles also available as e-books.
For bio, publications, contact details
and the like, please visit my website
(see link above).
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From Thomas Mann to Tim Winton - a marriage of mus...
Down at the Factory of the Imagination - August re...


text:
By Marc Faber
Bill Bonner Posted
A Damnation in Disguise
This expert's principal concern – regarding the U.S. financial and real estate markets – is precisely that the economy is as strong as everyone predicts. How can that possibly be?
If the Fed continues to print money at the rate they have done in the last couple of weeks, there is a chance – given that the global economy is, while unbalanced, nevertheless in a strong synchronized growth mode – that inflationary pressures could accelerate far more than is currently expected.
In this instance, inflationary symptoms would show up in sharply rising wholesale and consumer prices and not necessarily in rising asset prices, such as real estate. In other words, inflation would migrate from the asset markets to consumer prices and lead to far higher interest rates and, possibly, to a rout in the bond market, as has already happened in Japan, where JGB bond yields have risen by more than 300% since June 2003, knocking off bond prices!
Now, in the case of Japan, the more-than-tripling in bond yields coincided with a strong recovery in the stock market (up from less than 8,000 in April to around 11,500 recently); therefore, one could argue that, in the United States, further weakness in bonds, or even a collapsing bond market, may not derail a bull market in equities.
But there are numerous important differences between Japan and the United States. For one, I suppose that a rise in Japanese bond yields from less than 0.5% to 1.9% has hardly had an impact on the Japanese property market, since properties have rental yields of 6% or more.
Rising Global Inflation: Japan Was Depressed
In the United States, however, where rental yields are frequently below mortgage rates, I suppose that a rise in mortgage rates from 6% to 18% would have a devastating impact. (Such a rise in bond yields is, for now, inconceivable.) Also, when Japanese stocks and interest rates bottomed out a year ago, expectations in Japan about future economic growth were extremely depressed, bearish sentiment was at an extreme, and Japanese institutional investors and individuals were very underweighted in equities compared to bonds. Otherwise, how could one explain that, at the time, the Japanese stock market had a dividend yield of more than 1.5%, while bonds were yielding less than 0.5%?
May I remind our readers that in the 1940s, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had, at times, a dividend yield of 7%, while government bond yields fell to below 2%, indicating that growth expectations were then as low as they were last year in Japan. And in the same way that the 1940s represented the best short opportunity in one's lifetime for U.S. bonds, I suppose that investors will never again see Japanese bond yields of less than 0.5%, and that from here on, interrupted by trading rallies, Japanese bonds will continue to decline for the next 10 years or so.
Over the last 12 months, as the bearish sentiment about the Japanese economy and its stocks began to dissipate, a massive shift from bonds into equities got under way. Admittedly, foreign investors largely drove this shift. In short, because Japan suffered from a severe asset deflation and a poor economic environment throughout the 1990s and until just recently, when its bond market bubble was deflated over the last 12 months, it did not cause any serious pain in the asset markets as the economy improved and deflationary forces dissipated. (Still, if interest rates rise much further in the immediate future, some pain may be felt – particularly in the banking sector, which still holds huge bond positions.)
In any event, I hope that the reader will understand the current fundamentally different conditions between Japan (which also enjoys a high savings rate and a huge current account surplus) and the United States, where asset prices didn't deflate over the past 15 years, as was the case in Japan, but were instead inflated as a result of expansionary monetary policies.
Moreover, U.S. stocks have a far lower dividend yield than long-term bonds (high growth expectations) and households and financial institutions hold a far higher percentage of their financial assets in equities than in Japan.
Rising Global Inflation: Fueling Asset Inflation
To put it in very simplistic terms, whereas rising global inflation and interest rates are likely to be beneficial for the Japanese economy, whose problem was asset deflation, this is unlikely to be the case for the United States, where excessive debt growth fueled asset inflation and led to a highly leveraged consumer. In fact, my principal concern regarding the U.S. financial and real estate markets would be precisely that the economy is as strong as everyone is predicting.
In this scenario, I wouldn't be surprised to see a repetition not of 1994, as is popularly supposed, but of 1973/1974, when corporate earnings expanded but stocks fell out of bed because of rising inflation and interest rates. (Watergate certainly didn't help, but today's geopolitical tensions are, in my opinion, far more serious.)
In this respect, it is important to understand the following.
Rising Global Inflation: Salaries Not Inflating
The Fed can largely control to what extent it wants to expand the money supply (print money), but it doesn't control its consequences – that is, where the money flows to and which sectors of the economy inflate. (Admittedly, Mr. Greenspan has been able to inflate just about everything around the world.) Still, one sector that has not been inflating much, given the global competition for labor, is wages and salaries of the U.S. labor force.
Therefore, if expansionary monetary policies lead to a rise in the cost of living (not the CPI, published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which understates for political reasons the true rate of inflation), then real wages will continue to decline since cost-of-living increases are more likely to run at 5-7% per annum while wages are rising at most by 2-3% per annum. If this were to occur, the consequence would be that affordability will become a problem and households will have to reduce the rate at which they are spending, unless they choose to increase their borrowing.
But here comes the problem. In this scenario of declining real earnings but accelerating inflation (read stagflation), it is likely that the market – not the Fed – would force interest rates up considerably and that, therefore, the asset markets (notably real estate) may – if not decline – at least cease to appreciate at the rate at which they have done so over the last few years. As a result, the rate at which the consumer takes on additional debt will slow down or even decline (should consumers, for a change, decide to boost their saving rate).
The Federal Reserve Board is caught in a very difficult position. Continuous excessive money printing may not lead to a stronger economy but to declining real incomes and rising interest rates as inflation picks up. Conversely, resolute tightening moves could easily upset already overleveraged consumers and lead to a severe adjustment in the real estate market, whose appreciation has fuelled consumption since 2000. In fact, it would seem to me that, regardless of future monetary policies, the economy will disappoint, as the market mechanism has begun to take away the Fed's job by tightening monetary conditions.
I might add that the Fed should never have had the authority to distort the free market for interest rates through monetary policies. Hopefully, the market mechanism is now powerful enough to render the Fed's monetary manipulations irrelevant.
Marc Faber,
"I don't recognize the place," was our first comment. We once lived in Albuquerque, nearly 40 years ago. New Mexico was a strange place – one of the poorest states in the nation. People lived in ramshackle hovels and drove old pickup trucks.
But now there are houses everywhere…and new cars clogging up the streets. One street stretches for miles, lined with nothing but auto dealers.
How did people get so rich? We don't know. Wages have scarcely risen, yet everyone seems to have a lot more money to spend…
More travel notes, after the news from Eric:
Eric Fry, from a city at risk…
– The hardy Dow Jones Industrial Average shrugged off terrorism threats and record-high oil prices to notch its fifth-straight winning session – the blue chip index's longest winning streak since mid-December. Under the amber glow of an "orange alert," the Dow advanced 39 points, to 10,179, while the Nasdaq gained 5 points, to 1,892.
– Ironically, terrorism-focused stocks logged some of the day's largest gains. Mace Security International (MACE), which makes pepper and tear-gas sprays, gained 6.3%, while DHB Industries (DHB), a maker of bulletproof vests and other body armor for our troops in Iraq, jumped 9.1%.
– Over the weekend, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge raised the terror alert level to "orange," citing "unusually specific" evidence of possible attacks against certain key financial buildings, including the New York Stock Exchange. But the bulls would not be so easily cowed into selling stocks.
– Al Qaeda be damned! The if-you-sell-stocks-the- terrorists-win contingent was out in force yesterday, buying stocks in the name of war. Immediately after the opening bell, share prices charged into negative territory. But the patriotic lumpeninvestoriat repelled the sell-off and pushed the major averages back into the black. What's more, the lumps maintained their buying even as crude oil prices set new all-time highs. September crude futures added 2 cents at $43.82 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, after advancing within a whisker of $44 a barrel.
– Curiously, yesterday's anxieties produced precious little buying in the precious metals pits. Gold gained a mere 40 cents, to $394.10, while most gold stocks had very little to show for their 6½ hours of trading. Nevertheless, one savvy investment pro believes gold stocks are now in "bounce mode."
Jay Shartsis, professional options trader at RF Lafferty here in New York says, "Four gold stocks had 'selling climaxes' or bullish weekly reversals last week [They made new 52-week lows, but closed higher on the week]. They are ASA Limited (ASA:NYSE), Gold Fields (GFI:NYSE), Hecla Mining (HL:NYSE) and Richmont Mines (RIC:Amex)."
– This week's Commitments of Traders report lends credence to Shartsis' call for a bounce. The report shows that commercial traders (known as the "smart money") have been rapidly reducing their bearish bets against gold. "The just-released report," says Shartsis, "shows a big shift…as the commercials decreased their shorts by a very big 40,892 contracts, while paring their long position by only 1,486 contracts. This is a pretty good move in the right direction for gold bulls."
– In other words, the smart money is becoming more favorably disposed toward the yellow metal, which should be a good thing. – Turning our attention back to the realm of paper assets, what should we make of our confused little stock market? For weeks it had been falling for no apparent reason. And now that it finally has a good reason – or two or three – it doesn't. It inches higher.
– Throughout the spring months, the stock market seemed like a wax museum – lifelike, but fixed in place. As July arrived, however, the wax museum became a House of Horrors…the wax figures came to life and terrorized investors. Between June 30 and July 26, the Nasdaq tumbled more than 10%.
– But the horrors have ceased for the moment at least, as the Nasdaq has bounced back about 3%. And the lumps are now hoping that the House of Horrors becomes a kind of financial Louvre – a serene location filled with countless items of beauty and objets d'art…a place where the sights and delights are well worth the price of admission.
Bill Bonner, back in Albuquerque…
*** "There's so much to see in New Mexico," Elizabeth commented.
There are two factions in our family. Elizabeth and Henry study things carefully and try to learn all they can. When they travel, they read guidebooks, history books and travel books – with the aim of learning every detail they can.
Elizabeth was studying an "insight Guide" to New Mexico on the plane. By the time we landed, she knew the history of the place – even its geological past – and was ready to visit museums and historical sites all over the state.
The rest of the family takes a more spontaneous approach to tourism. We get in the car and drive; we may not always end up where we intend to go, we say to ourselves, but we always end up where we ought to be.
"This is one of the most geologically active regions in the world," Elizabeth continued. "It has active volcanoes. Of course, the last eruption was 3,000 years ago."
In a matter of minutes, Elizabeth was lecturing the family on the Permian Sea…on the KT boundary…and volcanic rocks. "All igneous rocks are formed by volcanoes," she explained. "But some cool inside the earth – such as granite – and others cool after they get to the surface, such as…I think they're called tuffs."
We stopped in at the Natural History Museum in Albuquerque. You walk through a display that begins with the Big Bang and carries along until Homo sapiens appear. Particularly impressive, and somewhat alarming, was the presentation on the great extinction. About 65 million years ago, most advanced forms of life on Earth were exterminated. No one knows exactly why. But the leading theory is that a giant burning rock, 6 miles across, smashed into the Gulf of Mexico. It set off floods, firestorms, and all manner of catastrophe. The big dinosaurs went down like duckpins. The pictures in the museum show them lying on their backs with their feet sticking up.
But the little mammals survived, flourished, and inherited the Earth. The meek little things had been hiding in holes to avoid the dominant, meat-eating beasts. They were saved by their own modesty, protected by their ignoble holes.
Man is now the world's Tyrannosaurus rex…the alpha species…the cock of the earth's walk. What meteor has our name on it, we wondered.
*** "What happened to the camels?" The question was posed to one of the student guides at the Natural History Museum. Elizabeth had noticed that camels disappeared from North America about the same time as humans arrived. She assumed they had been hunted to extinction.
"I think they just crossed the Bering Strait…at that time it was a land bridge into Asia," was the answer she got.
There are many different reasons the camels might have disappeared. The student seemed to have picked the least plausible of all: that the camels all decided to move to Siberia! What makes college graduates so dumb, we wondered again.
Looking at the course catalogs of modern universities, we think we have a clue. Lesbianism is a big subject in today's universities. Lesbians in 18th Century English Poetry is a typical course offering. Or maybe A Lesbian Interpretation of the Class Struggle and Lesbos and the Classical Tradition…we have not yet seen Lesbianism and Nuclear Physics, but it is surely coming.
Forty years ago, colleges offered few courses on lesbianism. Still, many of them must have depressed students' intelligence. We recall a class in which the professor tried to argue that political science was as much a science as chemistry. The idea is absurd, but you got credit if you were credulous enough to believe it. Another professor used his English literature class to convince students – especially the coeds – that they should practice free love. "Why should you treat one part of the body different from other parts?" he would ask. And there was a professor of philosophy who didn't believe in learning at all. He would come to class and tell us all to be quiet and meditate. "Don't think," said he, "just be." This might have been good advice…but not the sort you'd want to pay for.
*** We had intended to drive across the country. We wanted to show the children the whole place…including the vast cornfields in the center of the country, the part between the coasts…the part commonly called "'flyover country." But we dallied too long on the East Coast and decided to fly over it. Yesterday, we took a plane in Charlottesville and few to Albuquerque.
*** We had been driving around in a Mercury minivan. But it was too small for our family of six. Here in Albuquerque, we switched to a Ford Expedition, a heartier vehicle with surprisingly little space for luggage.
*** "The pension crisis of the world's richest nations is like prostate cancer – evolving so slowly that it's likely to be ignored until it approaches an excruciatingly painful climax," writes old friend, Martin Spring. "Victims ignore early signs of the problem, frightened by the prospect of the unpleasantness of the treatments required. Yet the longer they delay, the more painful and dangerous the condition will become.
"Future pensions are going to be much less attractive than the current generation of retirees enjoy and the next generations expect. Funding them is going to become a major burden on taxpayers, businesses, employees and investors. And along the way there are going to be some painful accidents."
The black hole in U.K. public-sector schemes alone has been estimated at the equivalent of more than $850 billion, and the cost of additional contributions to close the gap at $57 billion a year. Generating that sort of money would require massive tax rises and savage cuts in public services. The politicians prefer to ignore the problem (although they've made sure that their own pension scheme is both lavish and secure).
The evolving pensions crisis is not limited to Britain:
In the United States, corporate pension funds have seriously underprovided for their liabilities – airline funds alone are $280 billion in deficit. To try to make up the shortfalls, employers are having to contribute more – the "legacy costs" of past retirement promises (pensions and medical care insurance) have become a major burden for industries such as steel, airlines and automobiles. For example, they account for $1,900 of the costs of every car sold by General Motors.
The federal bailout fund is already in the red, yet there's worse to come as companies seek to dump their pension obligations on the fund. Retirees suffer, too. When the fund took over U.S. Airways' liabilities recently, its pensioners faced cuts of up to 50 per cent in benefits. [Ed. Note: The pensions crisis is but one spoke in the wheel of this rapidly approaching Federal disaster. We urge you to learn more:
Government-sponsored Catastrophe
In Europe, where retirees depend on state pensions rather than company funds, experts warn that benefits may have to be cut by up to a third to keep the system solvent.
In Japan, pension fund assets of the 100 largest companies cover less than half the amount of their promises to retirees. In the year to March 2003, pensions-related write-offs were equivalent to a massive 72% of their pre- tax corporate profits."
3 Signs Black Friday Was a Bust
By Craig Wilson Posted November 30, 2016
Economic confidence in America is at an all time high yet Black Friday sales were a total let down. Here are 3 signs Black Friday has met a slow death. Craig Wilson reports…
About Marc Faber:
Dr. Marc Faber is the editor of The Gloom, Boom and Doom Report. Dr. Faber has been headquartered in Hong Kong for nearly 20 years, during which time he has specialized in Asian markets and advised major clients seeking down-and-out bargains with deep hidden value–unknown to the average investing public–bargains with immense upside potential. A book on Dr Faber, "Riding the Millennial Storm", by Nury Vittachi, was published in 1998. A regular speaker at various investment seminars, Dr Faber is well known for his "contrarian" investment approach.
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By James Rickards
It's not a case of being stocked out of all goods all the time. Your store is like a box of Cracker Jack – you never know what's inside.
Sound Money Isn't Enough
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Why The Daily Reckoning is for sound money…
Highest Goods Inflation Since 1975
Word came issuing from the United States Department of Labor this morning. December's CPI did in fact register 7% year over year. This 7% acceleration represents the greatest yearly consumer price inflation since 1982… 39 years distant.
It's now 2022 and we're still dealing with COVID-19 – the number 19 being short for 2019. Lockdowns didn't stop it, masks didn't stop it, vaccines didn't stop it.
Freedom Is the Answer
By Jeffrey Tucker
The government response to the pandemic, along with media censorship of dissenting voices, has caused many Americans to lose faith in the institutions they may have once respected. Today, Jeffrey Tucker argues that trust must be rebuilt on a foundation of freedom.
Another Giant Jobs "Miss"
"Every High Civilization Decays by Forgetting Obvious Things"
"Every high civilization" — wrote Chesterton — "decays by forgetting obvious things." We begin to suspect American civilization is down with a hard amnesia.
Hell to Pay — for Decades
Despite lockdowns, masking, vaccination and the rest of it, Americans are sicker than ever, claims Jeffrey Tucker in today's reckoning. But he also argues that we're nearing the end of the entire charade, as Americans are saying enough is enough.
2022: The Year of Breakdown
As a financial newsletter, we are duty-bound to give our annual market forecast — such as it is. So today we fetch our crystal ball from storage… blow away the dust… and gaze for images of the year ahead.
It's not a case of being stocked out of all goods all the time. Your store is like a box of Cracker…


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Three of Wilkes football's finest perform on national stage
Courtesy of Howard Deemer
William Deemer and Marcellus Hayes show their Wilkes pride after the game
Taylor Ryan, Sports Co-Editor
As football season begins to wind down, many senior athletes begin to feel a little nostalgic about their time ending.
Three Wilkes football seniors were able to suit up for one last game in various senior classic games. Including William Deemer, Tanner Stengel and Marcellus Hayes. These players were invited to play in various All-American Senior Classics in order to showcase their four years of hard work and exceptional talent. Stengel played in the eighth annual Tazón De Estrellas senior all-star game held in Mexico. While Deemer and Hayes traveled to Myrtle Beach to represent Wilkes University in the DIII Senior Classic.
The DIII Senior Classic is put on by the Collegiate Development Football League. The North vs. South all-star format was developed for Division III football players to showcase their skills in front of professional teams and scouts.
According to playcdfl.com George and Pete St. Lawrence, the founders of the Division III Senior Classic, saw a large increase in the recruiting opportunities in smaller division III athletics, "it was then decided to broaden the scope of their services by looking to provide more opportunity for small college players to gain exposure to the pro-scouts."
This year was the 6th year that the game has been played and has seen a large amount of success, as well as a large spectrum of talent. The players must be selected in order to play in this showcase game.
"It has attracted the best football players Division III has to offer, for the past three years, boasting rosters that are consistently 82% All-Americans", according to playcdfl.com
While other Wilkes players have been selected to play in these games, or similar ones, Deemer and Hayes were able to have a unique experience, not only getting to play the sport they love one more time, but also play one more game with a teammate by their side.
Deemer stated, "It was awesome to share this experience with another teammate Most people are there alone but for us we get to feed off of each other as if we were playing in PA. It made the experience that much more enjoyable."
Being able to go from representing your university, fellow teammates, and coaches on a local base and taking it to the national level is something remarkable and unique. In many Division III instances, you perform on a smaller stage. This game allows senior athletes to showcase all of the hard work, time and leadership they have dedicated in their last four years, on an even bigger stage.
When asked what his favorite part of the overall experience was, Deemer said promptly, "my favorite part was being able to represent Wilkes on a national scale instead of just NEPA."
Taylor Ryan is a senior communication studies major with concentrations in strategic communications/public relations and broadcast production. She also...
MIH: Tyler Dill's hat-trick leads Colonels over the Monarchs
FB: Monarchs third-quarter momentum caused Wilkes to fall and lose the Mayor's Cup 34-7
WSOC: Emily Bidelspach's impact on Wilkes women's soccer
WIH: Colonels secure first win since February 2020
FB: Colonels fall to No. 10 Delaware Valley in a shut-out
MBB: Returning starters look to lead this team deep in MAC
WBB: Defense, agility are keys for success in the new season
MLB World Series Championship contest is neck-and-neck
Men's and women's ice hockey: New season, new perspective
FB: Defenses' second half shut-out leads Wilkes to victory


So, for many cosmetic procedure habitués. a dermatologist at Laser & Skin Surgery Center in NYC, since that's when many patients are more likely to have downtime, out of sight from friends, colleag.
A neck lift is actually a set of procedures used to enhance the appearance of your neck. Learn more here from WebMD. Skip to main content. of Neck Lift Surgery. cosmetic or plastic surgery.
Certified by the American Board of Cosmetic Surgery, Dr. Taylor is a leader in his field: a teacher, author, and researcher. With over 30 years of experience, Dr. Taylor specializes only in surgeries of the face, head, and neck, giving him a depth of understanding and experience rare in the world of cosmetic surgery today.
A neck lift can shave years off your appearance, giving you a more toned and sculpted look. Neck lift surgery, also called platysmaplasty, addresses wrinkles and sagging skin caused by aging or weight loss. Your surgeon can remove excess skin or fat, tighten underlying muscles, and improve the contour of your jawline.
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A neck lift cosmetic surgery enhances the appearance of the neck by removing loose skin and tightening the underlying muscles. The surgeon may present neck lift before and after pictures to the patient during the pre-op consultation.
Some people may require more surgery (or related procedures) to get the results they want. "Not all neck lifts are the same," Washington, D.C.-area facial plastic surgeon dr. philip Schoenfeld explain.
A former oil worker with a "hideous" growth on his neck has told how a staggering six-year wait for surgery has cost him his girlfriend and his job. Don Wright first consulted his GP in 2013 and was r.


From the outside looking in, we probably believe that we know all the ins and outs as to why Carmelo and La La Anthony's marriage hit the skids back in 2017. There were reports of infidelity on his part, as well as the possibility that he fathered a child outside of their marriage (which he's never confirmed or denied). But according to La La, things were rough even before then as she struggled not to be solely seen as his wife.
While speaking alongside Gabrielle Union at a National Basketball Wives Association Summit last month, the 39-year-old wife, mother of one, actress, author, designer and a whole host of other things, opened up about how being known as a "basketball wife" caused her to rebel somewhat in her marriage.
The two have since reconciled, doing so last year, and to be able to do so, La La said that she had to have a change of mindset when it came to that "basketball wife" label (among other work that needed to be done).
"I'm so proud to uplift my husband and not feel as though I'm sacrificing myself by doing so," she said.
She would later clear up her statement by saying she is fine with the label, as she has many, but it doesn't fully define who she is, of course.


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ALL CHRISTIANS ARE ON A JOURNEY, a journey in faith and into faith. The Spiritual Exercise of St Ignatius Loyola describe the stages people go through along the way of this journey.
Experienced spiritual director, retreat giver and writer, Fr Patrick O'Sullivan, describes these stages in an appealing. enlightening and light-hearted way. He shows how we approach the fostering of our relationship with God, looks at the shadows that cloud that relationship - sin - and how we move out of the shadows into light. At the heart of the approach is the truly human figure of Jesus, and the way we live out his Paschal Mystery in our lives. A final reflection on renowned fellow-Jesuit Pedro Arrupe is a tribute to one who has now completed the journey and whose life can show us the way.
Fr O'Sullivan's particular interest in the psychology of the person makes his reflections immediate and easily accessible to those who see spiritual growth as part of the general growth to maturity.
This is a book of practical, down-to-earth spirituality. readers will find in it nourishment and encouragement as they make their pilgrimage towards the Kingdom.
Sure Beats Selling Cardigans
PATRICK O'SULLIVAN SJ is a former Provincial of the Society of Jesus in Australia. He was called to Rome by Fr Pedro Arrupe to take charge of the Jesuit Secretariate for the Christian Life Communities. Back in Australia, he continued his work with the CLCs and was also Director of Campion Retreat Centre, Melbourne, and Editor of Madonna magazine.


Team David's Salon is the first 4-man mixed relay team from the Philippines attempting to complete Race Across America (RAAM).
Starting in Oceanside, under one of the longest piers in California, RAAM spans 3000 miles, climbs 175,000 feet, crosses 12 states and finishes in Annapolis. Join us as we embark on this cycling journey for the benefit of the Haiyan typhoon victims supported by FP-UA Foundation.
Leave a comment 10 days left!


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Calgary Police Service member charged in off-duty incident
A member of the Calgary Police Service has been charged in relation to an incident stemming from a domestic dispute.
On Monday, May 28, 2018, it is alleged that an off-duty Constable was involved in a domestic dispute at a residence in Airdrie. Following that incident, it is alleged that the officer stole a CPS firearm from a secure locker in a District Office.
Police were called by a friend who was concerned for his welfare. The officer was located and arrested by members of the Calgary Police Service.
Following a thorough investigation, the officer was charged earlier today with ten offences including break and enter, theft under (in relation to the firearm), possession of a prohibited or restricted firearm, unsafe storage of a firearm and breech of recognizance.
The officer, an 11-year-member, was also charged by the RCMP in relation to the domestic incident in Airdrie that preceded the alleged theft of the firearm. Details of these charges were released to the media on Friday, Aug. 3, 2018.
At the time of the alleged offences, the member was off on an unrelated leave. He remains on this leave of absence from the Service.
As the charges are connected to a domestic incident, the name of the accused is not being released so as to protect the privacy of the victim. This is the same right that is afforded any victim of domestic conflict.
As is the case anytime charges are laid against a member of the public, the officer is afforded the right to a fair trial and is being offered the appropriate supports from the Service throughout the court process.
Media Relations Info
Calgary Police Media Relations
cps@calgarypolice.ca


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CSA postpone Division 2 four-day matches due to COVID-19
Johannesburg, Dec 2 (IANS) Cricket South Africa (CSA) on Thursday postponed all three Division 2 four-day matches scheduled to take place between December 2-5 after some players were tested positive for COVID-19.
The domestic cricket is not being held under the strict measures and with cases going up countrywide, several of those due to take part in this week's matches have tested positive.
This is the first disruption to the domestic cricket season in South Africa since the discovery of the Omicron variant of coronavirus last week. Earlier, the second and third ODIs between South Africa and Netherlands were called off after several countries, including many in the European Union, imposed travel restrictions on southern Africa.
"The competition is not being held in a Bio-Secure Environment (BSE) and in the last couple of days, some positive COVID-19 test results have emerged following team pre-arrival testing sessions," the CSA said in a statement.
"Activating the precautionary and preventive measures stipulated in the organisation's COVID-19 protocols to ensure the health, safety and well-being of all involved is a top priority for CSA. CSA is monitoring the situation closely and a decision regarding the remainder of the fixtures this year will be made in due course as it develops," it added.
The development comes just two weeks before the start of South Africa's three-Test, three-ODI and four-T20I with India.
Notably, the India A team is currently in a bio-bubble in Bloemfontein, where they are playing the second of three unofficial Tests and there is no indication of them leaving earlier than planned. However, it's understood there are concerns about the senior side's arrival because South African scientists predict that cases will continue to go up in the country in the next month.
Speaking on the eve of India's second Test against New Zealand, Virat Kohli, Test and ODI skipper said that a conversation has been initiated within the team and expected a clarity on the situation soon.
"We're not playing in normal times anyway. So there's a lot of planning involved. There's a lot of preparation involved in terms of understanding exactly what's going to go on. There are players who are not part of the group right now who will be entering quarantine to join the team, in the bubble, to fly in a charter. Those kinds of things, you want to seek clarity as soon as possible," said Kohli at the pre-match press conference on Thursday.
"We have spoken to all the senior members of the squad. Obviously Rahul bhai has initiated a conversation within the group, which is very important to know. At the end of the day we understand – our focus from the Test match will not shift regardless – but you want to have clarity and want to be in a situation where you know exactly what's going on. We've been talking to the board and we are pretty confident that within a day or two, or pretty soon we'll have absolute clarity as to what is going on," he added.
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