text:
EXCLUSIVE: Tim Matheson Has No Problem Playing the President-but It May Depend on Which One
By Stacy Lambe 1:50 PM PST, December 2, 2016
Kate sZatmari
Tim Matheson is no stranger to politics -- onscreen and off.
On The West Wing, the
longtime actor -- perhaps still fondly remembered for playing Otter in Animal House -- played Vice President
John Hoynes, earning two Emmy nominations for the role. Most recently, he
portrayed President Ronald Reagan in National Geographic Channel's adaptation
of Killing Reagan. The part earned
him well-deserved award buzz, including a Critics' Choice Television Award
nomination for Best Actor in a Movie/Miniseries.
"I was not politically aligned with Ronald Reagan -- nor am
I today -- but you can't act politics," Matheson tells ET by phone, just a week
after the election. The 68-year-old actor has made no secret of his support of
Hillary Clinton or dismay over the election of Donald Trump. While he's steadfast
in his own politics, which vastly differ from the likes of Reagan or even
Trump, Matheson set those feelings aside to portray the president in the days
before and in the aftermath of his assassination attempt by John Hinckley Jr.
"You could just get carried away or in the wrong direction
if you let those things influence your performance," Matheson says, revealing
that he instead focused on finding Reagan's voice. Meticulous about research,
the actor studied speeches, phonetically spelling out Reagan's words in order
to capture his cadence and style. He also read Reagan's diaries and
autobiography. "I wanted to play the man, not the myth or the persona of who he
was to so many people."
EXCLUSIVE: Tim Matheson Channels Ronald Reagan on the Set of 'Killing Reagan'
And while Matheson had preconceptions about who Reagan was,
he found value in diving deep into the psyche of the president. "The biggest
lesson -- which was something Reagan believed in -- is just because I don't
like your politics doesn't mean I can't like you," he says. "And I find that in
today's political world, that's something that's been lost."
Offscreen, when it comes to Trump, Matheson believes Reagan
wouldn't be able to make sense of the incoming president. "He was a man who
felt he had something to give, giving his life to being of service. It wasn't
about him," the actor says. "I think that sense of selflessness and that sense
of higher purpose and the greatness of American and service to America is
something that's not present in this man who has been elected."
Two days after the election, still reeling from the outcome,
Matheson retweeted an open letter that West
Wing creator Aaron Sorkin had written to his daughter about the results.
"Thank you, Aaron Sorkin," he wrote. When asked about what that letter, which
expressed feelings of anxiety and guilt, meant to him, Matheson says it
captured "a sense of loss and a loss of innocence."
"We're all coming to terms with it, my family and my
children," Matheson continues, adding that he's shifting his focus to the
day-to-day moments and personal connections. "I found that I got a bit
obsessive about the politics and now that's over."
MORE: Cynthia Nixon Sets Aside Politics to Play Nancy Reagan
Although he's since tweeted stories about the election
results, Matheson says he's trying take a step back from what he calls Twitter's
"echo chamber" of news and like-minded followers. "I've disengaged," Matheson
says, revealing he felt let down by the outlets he trusted most.
In fact, Killing
Reagan is a welcome respite from the current political madness, offering
perspective on the situation. "What's exciting about these stories is what
comes out of this," Matheson says of the film and other true-crime series. "It
speaks to events like this election, semicataclysmic events like an assassination.
What can we make of that? What helps us go on and find greater purpose? That's
what I'm left with after the election and that's what I'm left with of what
Reagan did."
With that said, could Matheson ever see himself portraying
the 45th president? "You have to divorce yourself from the politics and find
the character underneath," he says, pointing to Alec Baldwin's "brilliant"
portrayal of Trump on Saturday
Night Live. "We all, as actors, look for the greatest challenge. So, yes, I
think that would be an interesting challenge. It would be a good wig, too!"


text:
package common.util;

import java.io.*;
import java.text.MessageFormat;
import java.util.ResourceBundle;
import java.util.Locale;

/**
 * Utilities for File manipulation.
 * More information about this class is available from ostermiller.org.
 *
 * @author Stephen Ostermiller http://ostermiller.org/contact.pl?regarding=Java+Utilities
 * @since ostermillerutils 1.00.00
 */
public class FileHelper {

	/**
	 * Locale specific strings displayed to the user.
	 *
	 * @since ostermillerutils 1.00.00
	 */
	protected static ResourceBundle labels = ResourceBundle.getBundle("com.Ostermiller.util.FileHelper",  Locale.getDefault());

	/**
	 * Move a file from one location to another.  An attempt is made to rename
	 * the file and if that fails, the file is copied and the old file deleted.
	 *
	 * If the destination file already exists, an exception will be thrown.
	 *
	 * @param from file which should be moved.
	 * @param to desired destination of the file.
	 * @throws IOException if an error occurs.
	 *
	 * @since ostermillerutils 1.00.00
	 */
	public static void move(File from, File to) throws IOException {
		move(from, to, false);
	}

	/**
	 * Move a file from one location to another.  An attempt is made to rename
	 * the file and if that fails, the file is copied and the old file deleted.
	 *
	 * @param from file which should be moved.
	 * @param to desired destination of the file.
	 * @param overwrite If false, an exception will be thrown rather than overwrite a file.
	 * @throws IOException if an error occurs.
	 *
	 * @since ostermillerutils 1.00.00
	 */
	public static void move(File from, File to, boolean overwrite) throws IOException {
		if (to.exists()){
			if (overwrite){
				if (!to.delete()){
					throw new IOException(
						MessageFormat.format(
							labels.getString("deleteerror"),
							(Object[])new String[] {
								to.toString()
							}
						)
					);
				}
			} else {
				throw new IOException(
					MessageFormat.format(
						labels.getString("alreadyexistserror"),
						(Object[])new String[] {
							to.toString()
						}
					)
				);
			}
		}

		if (from.renameTo(to)) return;

		InputStream in = null;
		OutputStream out = null;
		try {
			in = new FileInputStream(from);
			out = new FileOutputStream(to);
			copy(in, out);
			in.close();
			in = null;
			out.flush();
			out.close();
			out = null;
			if (!from.delete()){
				throw new IOException(
					MessageFormat.format(
						labels.getString("deleteoriginalerror"),
						(Object[])new String[] {
							from.toString(),
							to.toString()
						}
					)
				);
			}
		} finally {
			if (in != null){
				in.close();
				in = null;
			}
			if (out != null){
				out.flush();
				out.close();
				out = null;
			}
		}
	}

	/**
	 * Buffer size when reading from input stream.
	 *
	 * @since ostermillerutils 1.00.00
	 */
	private final static int BUFFER_SIZE = 1024;

	/**
	 * Copy the data from the input stream to the output stream.
	 *
	 * @param in data source
	 * @param out data destination
	 * @throws IOException in an input or output error occurs
	 *
	 * @since ostermillerutils 1.00.00
	 */
	private static void copy(InputStream in, OutputStream out) throws IOException {
		byte[] buffer = new byte[BUFFER_SIZE];
		int read;
		while((read = in.read(buffer)) != -1){
			out.write(buffer, 0, read);
		}
	}
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
package com.tyutyutyu.api.moly4j.editor;

import lombok.Getter;
import lombok.NoArgsConstructor;
import lombok.ToString;

@Getter
@NoArgsConstructor
@ToString
public class Editor {

	private int id;

	private String name;

}


text:
September 9, 2015 Cover 1 Comment BBCBBC1 Live LoungecoverDemi LovatoHozierLive Lounge
Demi Lovato Slays a Cover of Hozier's 'Take Me To Church'
Demi Lovato stopped by the BBC Radio 1′s Live Lounge today where she performed the best cover of Hozier's "Take Me To Church" I have ever heard. Check it out below!
September 9, 2015 September 9, 2015 country, lists Leave a comment CountryGeorge JonesGram ParsonsHank WilliamsKacey MusgravesPorter WagonerTammy Wynette
Rolling Stone's 100 Greatest Country Songs of All Time — 40-31
Click here to see 100-91, 90-81, 80-71, 70-61, 60-51, 50-41
40. Gram Parsons, '$1000 Wedding' (1974)
Devotees have been puzzling over the meaning of this enigmatic masterpiece for 40 years, but it has yet to yield up a definitive interpretation. Parsons' protagonist is a none-too-bright bridegroom at a low-rent (possibly shotgun) wedding, where he is stood up for reasons unknown. Maybe the bride died, maybe she ran off with someone else – it's never specified. So he and his groomsmen go on a drunken bender so epic, "It's lucky they survived." Wedding seems to morphs into funeral, leading to the saddest closing line in all of country music: "It's been a bad, bad day." For all that the words leave unspoken, there's no mistaking Parsons' tone of stoic, bemused resignation. Duet partner Emmylou Harris blesses the proceedings with the perfect note of angelic sadness.
39. Kacey Musgraves, 'Follow Your Arrow' (2013)
"Even if [people] don't agree with the girls-kissing-girls thing or even the drug reference," Musgraves said about her breakthrough song, "I would hope that they would agree that no matter what, we all should be able to love who we want to love and live how we want to live." The heart of her drama lies in waiting for the establishment to catch up. Censored at the Country Music Association Awards and lionized by the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, 25-year-old Kacey Musgraves has become one of the loudest symbols of young country musicians embracing progressive values. But like most of her debut Same Trailer, Different Park, "Follow Your Arrow" isn't an attack on conservatism so much as an attack on any system that keeps us from being who we are, gay or straight, sober or stoned.
38. Patsy Montana, 'I Want to Be a Cowboy's Sweetheart' (1935)
The first million-seller by a female country artist, this yodeling paean to the Wild West mythos made an icon of Arkansas-born singer-songwriter-actress-fiddler (and Jimmie Rodgers fan) Ruby Blevins, a.k.a. Patsy Montana. After stints in Los Angeles and New York working in radio, TV and film, Montana joined the Kentucky string band the Prairie Ramblers and adapted the early Western standard "Texas Plains" as "Montana Plains" and then as "I Want to Be a Cowboy's Sweetheart," establishing her gun-totin' cowgirl image (she later sang of being a "man-hatin' lassie" on "The She-Buckaroo"). "Cowboy's Sweetheart" has been covered consistently from Patti Page to the Dixie Chicks, even showing up on The Voice as the audition song for Gracia Harrison.
37. George Jones and Tammy Wynette, 'Golden Ring' (1976)
Here's why this is country's finest duet of all time: Country's Greatest Singer and Most Feckless Drunk vs. Country's Greatest Actor and Crankiest Pill-popper. Prediction: Heartbreak wins again, in the most bluntly theatrical way possible. The couple's screwy marriage on the outs, they sound like they're about to wrap their hands around each other's throats. Inspired by a made-for-TV movie about a handgun's history – going from cop to murderer to little kid – genius co-writer Bobby Braddock subs a wedding ring for the gun. But the narrative is no less gritty, working you over like a Cassavettes flick, moving from the mundane (the intro's inexplicably frisky guitar) to the devastating (in the song's crowning scene, Wynette voices the man's palpable hurt, while Jones intones grimly, "She says one thing's for certain, I don't love you anymore"). The ring ends up back in the Chicago pawn shop from whence it came. Our protagonists, meanwhile, remain a dizzy gospel-invoking mess.
36. Hank Williams, 'Lost Highway' (1949)
The song that possibly best articulates the doomed country mythos that Hank Williams' life and death epitomize wasn't written by Hank himself. The blind country singer-songwriter Leon Payne wrote and recorded "Lost Highway" just a year before. Payne wasn't just waxing spiritually metaphorical: He was indeed lost along the highway, struggling unsuccessfully to hitchhike from California to Texas to visit his ailing mother, forced instead to seek food and shelter in a Salvation Army.
35. The Everly Brothers, 'Bye Bye Love' (1957)
Recorded with an all-star band that included Elvis' piano player, the Opry's house drummer and guitarist Chet Atkins, "Bye Bye Love" catapulted the Everly Brothers into the stratosphere, becoming a Top Five hit on the country, pop and R&B charts in 1957. Apart from the song's introductory guitar riff, which Don Everly lifted from an earlier tune called "Give Me a Future," the brothers didn't write "Bye Bye Love." They did give the song its identity, though, beefing up a relatively standard chord progression with equal doses of Tennessee twang and their iconic harmonies.
34. The Carter Family, 'Wildwood Flower' (1928)
Originally an 1860 parlor song titled "I'll Twine 'Mid the Ringlets" (a raven-tressed maiden's plucky response to being unceremoniously abandoned), "Wildwood Flower" was revived by Virginia "song catcher" A. P. Carter. He arranged it for his family trio including singer-autoharpist wife Sara and her lead-guitarist cousin Maybelle, who turned 19 the day the group recorded the song outside Philadelphia. Its opening lyrics were mondegreened, pursuant to the mishaps of oral tradition. "I'll twine mid the ringlets of my raven black hair" became "Oh, I'll twine with my mane, golden weeping black hair," and would continue to alter as numerous others recorded it – including Joan Baez, Emmylou Harris and Reese Witherspoon. No version, however, is quite so outlandish as country comedian Dan Bowman's hallucinogenic 1964 variation, "Wildwood Weed."
33. Porter Wagoner, 'A Satisfied Mind' (1955)
"One day my father-in-law asked me who I thought the richest man in the world was, and I mentioned some names," says co-writer Red Hayes. "He said, 'You're wrong, it is the man with a satisfied mind.'" Porter Wagoner's demo of this pious lament, first recorded at a Missouri radio station in 1954, would end up becoming the version that would hit Number One on the country charts the following year. In the ensuing decades, the most famous song by the man once known as Mr. Grand Ole Opry would go on to become an unlikely standard amongst a slew of rootsy country-rock revivalists: the Byrds, Bob Dylan, Gram Parsons, David Allan Coe, Lucinda Williams and Jeff Buckley have all taken their turn at the song.
32. Mississippi Sheiks, 'Sitting on Top of the World' (1930)
Not so much straight "country" as the blues seasoned with rural fiddle, "World" percolated through the western swing circuit as covered by Bob Wills and Milton Brown; became Fifties blues in the hands of Howlin' Wolf; and then Sixties rock via the Grateful Dead and Cream – a history that, if nothing else, cements the song as a kind of Rorschach test that ultimately filtered back to Chet Atkins, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and Willie Nelson. More recently, the Mississippi Sheiks became a cause for Jack White, who is reissuing their entire catalog through his Document label – presumably lured by that "real-thing" feel in their gritty but obscure sound.
31. Hank Williams, 'Your Cheatin' Heart' (1953)
Did Hank Williams write perhaps his greatest "heart" song to spite his first wife, while joyriding in a convertible and eating ice cream with his second wife? Wife No. 2 says so, but she probably would. At any rate, Williams was in full flail at the time, caught in a matrix of loves: Audrey (ex-wife-manager, mother of his son); Bobbie (pregnant girlfriend contractually promised child support); Billie Jean (19-year-old new wife). It's not hard to imagine that the owner of the cheatin' heart was the guilt-wracked singer himself. While Don Helms' mournful pedal steel pierces the air, Williams sorrowfully laments a cheater's fate. Completed in a single take during his last recording session, it was released posthumously and went straight to Number One.
September 9, 2015 September 9, 2015 Late Night Shows Leave a comment Alabama ShakesAloe BlaccBrittany HowardBuddy GuyLate ShowMavis StapleStephen Colbert
Stephen Colbert Ends His First 'Late Show' with a Super jam Musical Number
Bandleaders Jon Batiste and his band, Stay Human, led an all-star jam for a joyful cover of Sly and the Family Stone's "Everyday People." The lineup included Brittany Howard of the Alabama Shakes, Buddy Guy, Mavis Staples, Beirut, Kyle Resnick, Ben Folds, Aloe Blacc, Derek Trucks and Colbert himself.
Click here to watch the awesome performance
September 8, 2015 country, lists 1 Comment CountryLoretta LynnRoy AcuffTownes Van ZandtWillie Nelson
Click here to see 100-91, 90-81, 80-71, 70-61, 60-51
50. Steve Earle, 'Guitar Town' (1986)
Fueled by drugs, booze and a nasty divorce from his third wife, Steve Earle delivered this road anthem with a croon and a bark, snarling his way through lines about speed traps and truck stops with the authority of a rock & roll rebel who, at 31 years old, had already seen (and snorted) it all. Years of hard living eventually took their toll on Earle, who released three follow-ups to Guitar Town before spending the first half of the '90s in a heroin-addled haze. By the time he cleaned up his act in 1995, the alt-country movement was in full swing and Earle joined a new generation of musicians – many of whom had strummed along to a Guitar Town cassette – in the effort to tear down the boundaries between country and rock.
49. The Louvin Brothers, 'The Christian Life' (1959)
A highlight of the Louvins' second gospel album, 1959's Satan Is Real, "The Christian Life" adds a homespun fire-and-brimstone attitude to the sort of Depression-era country harmonizing picked up from earlier sibling acts like the Delmore Brothers: "My buddies shun me since I turned to Jesus / But I still love them, they burden my heart," Charlie and Ira sing in close harmony over a waltz rhythm. Almost a decade later, the Byrds went on to cover "The Christian Life" on their 1968 country-rock masterpiece Sweetheart of the Rodeo, with Roger McGuinn's voice dubbed over Gram Parsons' original lead vocal.
48. Willie Nelson, 'Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain' (1975)
Fred Rose wrote it in the Forties, and everyone from Roy Acuff to Hank Williams took a shot at it, but the true purpose of "Blues Eyes Crying in the Rain" was to finally launch a long-striving, industry-beleaguered, 42-year-old Willie Nelson into orbit as the stark, startling centerpiece of his 1975 smash Red Headed Stranger. Michael Streissguth's 2013 study Outlaw: Waylon, Willie, Kris, and the Renegades of Nashville has a great scene where skittish label suits, fearful that the album "sounds like it was recorded in Willie's kitchen," frantically arrange a press listening session at Nashville hot spot the Exit/In, and then marvels as "Blue Eyes" triggers a standing ovation. "Nobody was more shocked than we were," then-CBS Records President Rick Blackburn once conceded. "It didn't have… the bells and whistles. It wasn't the way you went about making a record in Nashville in those days." Result: His first country Number One.
47. Bobbie Gentry, 'Ode to Billie Joe' (1967)
Innuendo has always played a role in folk and country music. But few songs piqued the pop crossover crowd's curiosity more than Mississippi-born, Los Angeles-schooled Bobbie Gentry's 1967 debut, in which an adolescent narrator and her family sit around the dinner table passing biscuits and gossiping about Billie Joe McAllister's descent from the Tallahatchie Bridge. McAllister threw something else off it a day earlier and Gentry never reveals what it was. "The song is sort of a study in unconscious cruelty," she once said of the family's nonchalant attitude to the suicide. Released as the B-side to "Mississippi Delta," "Ode" is a sultry country blues that drifts downstream on Gentry's ominous acoustic guitar. Arranger Jimmie Haskell added dramatic strings, and three minutes were edited from her seven-minute original. Saxophonist Lou Donaldson's funky 1967 instrumental version was sampled on dozens of hip-hop songs.
46. Roy Acuff, 'Wabash Cannonball' (1936)
Complete with choo-choo sound effects and the harmonica solo of some long-imagined cowboy, Acuff's version of "Wabash Cannonball" was an early instance of country culture rising to meet the needs of city entertainment – the band even changed their name to the Smoky Mountain Boys once they made the Grand Ole Opry, presumably to retain that rural flavor. No surprise that he soon got into publishing and later ran for office – his moves always did seem a little strategic. But these are milestones, too; moments of friction in the development of a style as it took shape within the listening public at large.
45. Lefty Frizzell, 'Long Black Veil' (1959)
This 1959 saga of sacrifice is arguably the most persuasive primer on the pitfalls of infidelity. The hero of Frizell's saga was wrongly executed for murder; he declined to give an alibi because was spending time "in the arms" of his best friend's wife, a lethal indiscretion he takes to the grave. Since covered by Joan Baez, the Band, Johnny Cash, Bruce Springsteen and plenty of others, "The Long Black Veil" has become a country-folk standard, a grim, haunting evocation of forbidden love and all its consequences.
44. George Jones, 'The Grand Tour' (1974)
In "The Grand Tour," the Possum sings the part of a deserted husband and father leading a stranger through a memory-filled house that is no longer a home. The genius lies in the way Jones's voice evokes that ghostly feeling amid the lush excess of producer Billy Sherrill's strings, guitars and chorus. Written by Norro Wilson, Carmol Taylor and George Richey, "The Grand Tour" is the lead and title track of Jones's masterful 1974 album. Although Jones was an admitted heavy drinker when he recorded it, "The Grand Tour" contains no clue to its protagonist's crime. Instead, there's only Jones's impossibly detailed, syllable-by-heartbreaking-syllable performance of a shell of a man condemned to life in a haunted abode that is full of stuff but devoid of love.
43. Buck Owens and the Buckaroos, 'Act Naturally' (1963)
According to Owens' autobiography, Buck 'Em!, songwriter Johnny Russell stumbled into "Act Naturally" when a last minute Los Angeles recording session forced him to break a date with his Fresno girlfriend. When she asked what he would be doing, Russell gave her the line that would eventually open the song: "They're gonna put me in the movies, and they're gonna make a big star out of me." Two years and several rejections later, Owens heard Russell's demo and decided to record "Act Naturally" as part of the first sessions that brought his full road band, the Buckaroos, into the studio. Here, the group sounded tight and alive, the promise of that first line making the second – "We'll make a film about a man that's sad and lonely, and all I gotta do is act naturally" – all the more cutting. A Beatles cover helped a younger generation discover his music but Owens recalls a flight during which his neighbor explained to him how she loved the Beatles but hated country music. "As hard as I tried," he said, "I couldn't convince her that 'Act Naturally' was a country song."
42. Loretta Lynn, 'Coal Miner's Daughter' (1970)
This autobiographical reminiscence was a gear-shift for Lynn, who'd made her name by feistily fending off hordes of honky-tonk homewreckers out to bed her man. The song originally rambled for six minutes and eight verses before producer Owen Bradley got out his red pen, excising a scene of Lynn's mother hanging movie magazines on their cabin wall as well as other homey details. It's country music's definitive started-from-the-bottom anthem, climaxing with one of popular music's most stirring key changes. Though Lynn is proud of her family's hardworking decency, she never pretends that her life would've been better if she'd never left Butcher Holler and poverty behind.
41. Townes Van Zandt, 'Pancho and Lefty' (1972)
Leave it to the poet laureate of Texas country to not only tell a story of betrayal, but to make the turncoat a sympathetic character. "Pancho and Lefty" is The Great Gatsby of country songs, conveying more about friendship, duplicity and guilt than most novels. In the song, the bandit Pancho Villa has been dispatched by the hangman's rope, but at least his suffering is over. His sidekick Lefty, who set him up, has to die a thousand deaths, trying to live with what he's done while hiding out in cheap hotels up north. Or as Van Zandt puts it, "The dust that Pancho bit down south/Ended up in Lefty's mouth." Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard's cover ended up topping the country charts in 1983.
September 8, 2015 Movie, Movie Soundtrack Leave a comment James bondsam smithSpectre
Sam Smith Records James Bond 'Spectre' Theme
In a statement released this morning, Sam Smith stated, "This is one of the highlights of my career. I am honored to finally announce that I will be singing the next Bond theme song. I am so excited to be a part of this iconic British legacy and join an incredible line up of some of my biggest musical inspirations. I hope you all enjoy the song as much as I enjoyed making it."
Smith co-wrote the song with his fellow Grammy winner Jimmy Napes. He will be the first British male solo artist to perform a Bond theme song since 1965 whenTom Jones performed the theme from Thunderball.
In the press release from Sony, producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli said: "Sam and Jimmy have written the most inspirational song for Spectre and with Sam's extraordinary vocal performance, 'Writing's On The Wall' will surely be considered one of the greatest Bond songs of all time."
Capitol Records will release "Writing's On The Wall" on Sept. 25. Spectre, the 24th film in the James Bond franchise, will be released Oct. 26 in the U.K. and Nov. 6 in the U.S.
September 6, 2015 country, lists 2 Comments Brad PaisleyCarrie UnderwoodCountryEric ChurchJohnny Cash
Click here to see 100-91, 90-81, 80-71, 70-61
60. Tennessee Ernie Ford, 'Sixteen Tons' (1955)
With its theatrical vocal, finger-snapping rhythm and a haunting clarinet hook seemingly borrowed from a Brecht/Weill musical, Tennessee Ernie Ford's excoriation of the evils of debt bondage was an unlikely country-pop smash. Although folksinger George Davis claimed to have written an original "Nine-to-Ten Tons" in the Thirties, Merle Travis countered that he wrote the more productive "Sixteen Tons" about his father's life in the coalmines of Muhlenberg County, Kentucky. The opening lines, meanwhile, came from a letter Travis's soldier brother wrote during World War II, and the Sisyphean refrain – "I owe my soul to the company store" – from his father's experience being paid in store tokens rather than cash. A blend of machismo and melancholy, "Sixteen Tons" has been covered by Elvis Presley, the Weavers, Stevie Wonder, Tom Morello and countless others.
59. Marty Robbins, 'El Paso' (1959)
Arizona native Marty Robbins' unusually long (4 minutes, 40 seconds) story-song is a barreling Greek tragedy adapted from the Mexican waltz-time ranchera country style. In what might be country's most cinematic hit, a narrator enamored of "wicked" Feleena shoots down a "dashing and daring" young cowboy who's hitting on her. Past tense becomes present as the narrator returns to El Paso, is shot himself by a vengeful posse and dies in Feleena's arms. Grady Martin's nylon-stringed guitar provides eloquent, flamenco-influenced instrumental commentary. A longtime staple of the Grateful Dead's cover repertoire, "El Paso" caught another cultural wave decades later when Feleena was transformed into "Felina," the anagrammatically allusive title of Breaking Bad's 2013 finale.
58. Jeannie C. Riley, 'Harper Valley P.T.A.' (1968)
"That song was my novel," songwriter Tom T. Hall once said of the epic "Harper Valley P.T.A." In this sassy 1968 takedown of small-town hypocrisy, a mini-skirted widow "socks it to" the titular busybodies – in its way, it was as innocence-ending as Bobbie Gentry's "Ode to Billie Joe" the previous year. Indeed, when singer Margie Singleton asked Hall to write her a similar song, the aspiring novelist took note of the Harpeth Valley Elementary School in Bellevue, Tennessee and found artistic inspiration in Sinclair Lewis's religion-mocking novel Elmer Gantry. Jeannie C. Riley's recording, however, made her the first woman to top both Billboard's Hot 100 and country-singles charts. Barbara Eden starred in both the 1978 comedy based on the song and in a 1981-82 TV show spun off the flick.
57. Eric Church, 'Springsteen' (2011)
It's not really about Bruce Springsteen, first of all. Though stadium-filling bad boy Eric Church's iPhone-lighter-app-waving triumph details "a love affair that takes place in an amphitheater between two people," the Boss was not the performer in question. Church politely but firmly declines to reveal the actual inspiration, which means the best country song of the 2010s thus far might have more accurately been titled "Nugent" or "Anka" or "Fogelberg." Cowritten by Church with Jeff Hyde and Ryan Tyndell, it's a dreamy, nostalgic weeper (tough as our man talks, he's a softie at heart) and drove 2011's Chief to dizzying heights. It even earned Church a handwritten thank-you note from Springsteen himself – scrawled on the back of a Fenway Park set list.
56. Carrie Underwood, 'Before He Cheats' (2006)
This crossover smash emerged from circumstances as prefabricated as country music gets – written and produced by men whose credits include Lady Antebellum and Rascal Flatts, sung by an American Idol winner and sporting a literal-interpretation video. And yet the popcraft of "Before He Cheats," as rendered by Carrie Underwood in the key of frosty rage, is nearly perfect. Even a certified alt-country critical darling like Canadian singer-songwriter Kathleen Edwards is not immune to its seductive charms. "The rhythm of it, the metric of the lyrics, the chord changes, the play on words and unconventional patterns, the way she says 'Shania karaoke' – it's genius," Edwards said in 2009. "Fuck, I wish I'd written that!"
55. The Flatlanders, 'Dallas' (1990)
Perpetually unsung, the Flatlanders were a Lubbock trio who sounded like – well, there was Jimmie Dale Gilmore's flat, twangy voice; the warble of a singing saw; the lyrics that made sutras of psychedelic complexity sound like they were something Grandma crocheted into a throw pillow. Small-town, but more importantly, sensitive enough to address even the most routine insults of life in the 20th century, the big city didn't repulse them, but it did give them the willies. And yet in song, they are somehow always the eye of a storm: unchanging, know-nothing, happy to breathe deeply and just watch the show unfold. Would you be surprised to learn that they sank like a stone?
54. Brad Paisley, 'Alcohol' (2005)
He rarely touches the stuff himself, but Brad Paisley's way with a booze anthem is unparalleled, and such range, too: "Whiskey Lullaby," a grim, suicide-haunted duet he cut with Alison Krauss in 2004, is basically Leaving Las Vegas in miniature, whereas this bawdy, self-penned waltz unleashed just a year later comes on like Animal House. A boastful first-person rundown of hooch's seductive powers – "I can make anybody pretty," it begins – that claims credit for everyone from Hemingway to the thoroughly soused best man at your wedding. It's a longtime live-show staple that inspires superfans to bring their own lampshades (seriously). "The song somehow seems to make the entire audience feel something in common," Paisley has marveled. "We're all out there together. We've all done it. We're all one big collective idiot. And there's nothing better than feeling that way."
53. Charley Pride, 'Kiss an Angel Good Mornin" (1971)
Charley Pride's 1971 recording of Ben Peters' "Kiss an Angel Good Mornin'" remains the definitive version of this a slightly naughty love song attempted by Conway Twitty, George Jones and Alan Jackson. The piano-driven arrangement here is classic early-Seventies countrypolitan, propelling the singer's only crossover Top 40 pop hit. Pride's métier has always been an easygoing effortlessness, which perfectly suits this ode to the pleasures and virtues of "Drunk in Love"-style domesticity.
52. Flatt and Scruggs, 'Foggy Mountain Breakdown' (1949)
If sparks flying off metal could sound sophisticated, they'd sound like Earl Scruggs' three-finger, five-string, five-alarm-fire banjo picking on this instrumental classic, which enshrined the banjo as a lead instrument in bluegrass. A stoic virtuoso from the western North Carolina boonies, Scruggs peppered the air with rippling eighth-note ragtime rolls on "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" (a song derived from an earlier track, "Bluegrass Breakdown," that he wrote for Bill Monroe), trading solo breaks with fiddler Benny Sims. Despite its innovative panache, the song only hit the country (and pop) charts after appearing as accompaniment to the car-chase scenes in Arthur Penn's scintillating, taboo-flaunting 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde.
51. Johnny Cash, 'Folsom Prison Blues' (1955)
California's second oldest state prison was a brutal place before the state implemented much-need penal reforms in 1944. Johnny Cash learned of that dark period at a screening of the 1951 film Inside the Walls of Folsom Prison, while serving with the U.S. Air Force, stationed in Germany. Cash initially recorded the song for Sun Records in 1956, but the version he performed 12 years later for Folsom's inmates became the iconic hit. It's said that the raucous cheers following, "I shot a man in Reno/Just to watch him die" were actually added in post-production, but who really wants to believe that?
September 5, 2015 September 5, 2015 new music Leave a comment Janet Jackson
Janet Jackson Releases Title Track of New Album 'Unbreakable'
Janet Jackson's forthcoming album Unbreakable is coming out October 2. Recently, Ms. Jackson has shared the title track, "Unbreakable. "
September 5, 2015 September 4, 2015 country, lists 3 Comments CountryLee Ann WomackLoretta LynnPatsy ClineRosanne CashTammy Wynette
Click here to see 100-91, 90-81, 80-71
70. Lee Ann Womack, 'I Hope You Dance' (2000)
In the two decades Lee Ann Womack has been making music, she's never made a splash like the one she made with this 2000 song. It charted at Number One on both the country and adult contemporary charts, won "Song of the Year" at the CMAs, ACMs, ASCAP awards and took home a Grammy for "Best Country Song." Plus, between the years of 2000 and 2007, you couldn't throw a rock at a high school graduation without hitting it. But according to the song's co-writer Tia Sillers, it was actually less about how the children are our future and more about her rough divorce. Still inspirational, just more depressing.
69. Tammy Wynette, 'D-I-V-O-R-C-E' (1968)
Country music's most parodied anthem (see Homer and Jethro paean to a doomed sow, "B-A-C-O-N & E-G-G-S") began, unpromisingly, as "I-L-O-V-E-Y-O-U, Do I have to Spell It Out for You?" Songwriter Bobby Braddock found a juicier subject and song-plugger Carly Putman suggested a sadder melody. Producer Billy Sherrill brought the finished product to Tammy Wynette, whose achingly sincere limning of a mother spelling out the "hurtin' words" in front of her four-year-old made the song her third Number One and the title track of her first gold album. "I hated myself for not writing that song," the five-time divorcée later said. "It fit my life completely."
68. John Prine, 'Angel from Montgomery' (1971)
When John Prine wrote "Angel" he'd been working as a mailman in the suburbs of Chicago, sketching out ideas as he made the rounds, playing open mics on weekends. At the time, country was cross-pollinating with the distinctly un-country sounds of pop and soft-rock, but Prine presented himself as something more stripped down: A regular guy with a plain voice playing simple music, no shoulder pads necessary. But it was his ear for detail – the flies buzzing around the sink, the rodeo poster that sends a woman on a daydream that she knows will never get fulfilled – that made his songs quietly complicated. Country music rendered with the sharpened eye of an author.
67. Loretta Lynn, 'The Pill' (1975)
Recorded in 1972 but released in 1975, Lynn's ode to reproductive rights turned out to be a difficult pill for many country stations to swallow – one of nine Lynn songs banned during her career. Written by Lorene Allen, Don McHan and T. D. Bayless, "The Pill" uses a chicken-coop metaphor ("I'm tearin' down your brooder house") to warn a straying cock that his hen may start exchanging her maternity-wear "garbage" for clothes that "won't take up so much yardage." Lynn, who birthed four babies by age 20, employs her throaty chuckle-growls to even the scales over funky chicken-scratch guitars. "They didn't have none of them pills when I was younger," Lynn wrote in Coal Miner's Daughter, "or I would have been swallowing 'em like popcorn."
66. Rosanne Cash, 'Seven Year Ache' (1981)
When Cash recorded "Seven Year Ache" at age 25, it was with the soulful, seen-it-all purr of someone who'd endured the game for decades. And she had: Growing up with dad Johnny's drug addiction, touring absences, divorce from her mom Vivian and second marriage to June Carter which forced her dual Tennessee/California identity; not to mention cultivating her own career, sustaining her first marriage to hotshot singer-songwriter Rodney Crowell and having their first child. Yet the mood on this career-defining Number One country hit – which chronicled a man's wanderlust and apparently traced to a spat with Crowell (who produced the song!) – was an almost breezy reasonableness, as if the singer almost pitied the poor schnook. The melodic tick-tock was "Mellow Mafia" with a twangy moan, and Rosanne's tart aphorisms were some of the genre's most poetic.
65. Merle Haggard, 'Okie from Muskogee' (1969)
Not to be confused with Jimmy Patton's 1959 rockabilly track "Okie's in the Pokie," this megahit kicked Merle Haggard into the top tier of country performers. A Bakersfield-born son of Okie farmers, Haggard co-wrote this condemnation of pot smokers, sandal-wearers and draft-card burners on his tour bus with Strangers drummer Roy Edward Burris. Both parody ("pitching woo"? "Manly footwear"?) and counter-counterculture anthem – Hag once said its 24 lines contain "about 18 different messages" – "Okie" remains an undeniable a manifesto of ethnic pride.Haggard followed his relatively mellow Los Angeles studio original with a more truculent live version, then doubled down in January of the following year with his borderline-jingoist "The Fightin' Side of Me." Yet as he told a journalist decades later, "I didn't intend for 'Okie' to be taken as strongly from my lips as it was."
64. Patsy Cline, 'I Fall to Pieces' (1961)
Recorded as a single in 1961 and included on Patsy Cline Showcase that same year, this track has became a country ballad standard – but it almost wasn't. Producer Owen Bradley initially envisioned the track recorded by baritone Roy Drusky. According to Ellis Nassour's biography Honky Tonk Angel: The Intimate Story of Patsy Cline, Cline was standing in the hallway when she overheard Drusky turn it down because it wasn't manly enough. It ended up being his loss: Bradley agreed to let Cline take it over and she allegedly sang it so tenderly during sessions that it caused every man in the studio to cry. It became one of the first of several pop/country crossovers for Cline and charted for over six months.
63. George Jones, 'The Race Is On' (1964)
A Top Five country hit in 1965, George Jones knew the ironic, upbeat number would be a hit the minute he heard it: "'The Race Is On' was pitched to me," he later told Billboard, "and I only heard the first verse, [sings] 'I feel tears welling up cold and deep inside like my heart's sprung a big leak,' and I said, 'I'll take it.'" Eight years later, the song took on new meaning when it became the first to be broadcast by New York's WHN, the crossover-friendly radio station that would set audience records and define the sound of pop country in the late-Seventies.
62. Emmett Miller, 'Lovesick Blues' (1928)
Obviously, the blackface aspect of Emmett Miller's act will forever shadow his legacy, but covers by everyone from Little Richard to Etta James to Ryan Adams to LeAnn Rimes are keeping "Lovesick" alive. Hank Williams didn't learn everything he knew from Miller, but the sweet-singing 1920s minstrel performer did play a significant role inspiring country music's founding father. A couple decades before "Lovesick Blues" became Williams' first number one hit in 1949, Miller and his melancholy yodel were in love with a beautiful gal too. Miller's version comes with a spoken intro in which he explains that he's got "every known indication of being in that condition" before dappling the show tune, from the 1922 Tin Pan Alley musical Oh, Ernest, with some octave vaulting. For another take on Miller, hear David Lee Roth covering "Big Bad Bill (Is Sweet William Now)" on Van Halen's Diver Down.
61. Ray Price, 'Crazy Arms' (1956)
After periods emulating both smooth Eddy Arnold and honky-tonkin' Hank Williams (whose Drifting Cowboys band he led after Hank's death), Ray Price (a.k.a. "the Cherokee Cowboy") returned to his Texas roots with this 1956 megahit that spent 20 weeks at the top of Billboard's country chart. Co-writer Ralph Mooney penned the tune after his wife left him due to his drinking, and its lyrics suggest deep emotional delirium and paranoia. The music, however, reflected Price's new shuffle style, with single-string fiddle, pedal steel guitar, and doubled acoustic and electric basses. Six months after Price's release, Jerry Lee Lewis's first Sun Records side was a more blatantly delirious rock cover that turned many heads.
September 4, 2015 September 4, 2015 video Leave a comment beyonceHappy BirthdayJay Z
Happy Birthday 34th Queen Bey — See Her Best Videos (so far)
Drunk in Love (Explicit) ft. JAY Z
Check On It ft. Bun B, Slim Thug
Video Phone ft. Lady Gaga
September 4, 2015 September 3, 2015 country, lists 4 Comments AlabamaCountryDolly PartonGarth BrooksLucinda WilliamsMartina McBride
Click here to see 100-91, 90-81
80. John Anderson, 'Wild and Blue' (1982)
Inspired by a girl who "could party and rock harder than anyone I'd known," John Scott Sherrill wrote this song while separating from his wife. The first country chart-topper for both singer John Anderson and Sherrill, "Wild and Blue" is a hauntingly beautiful account of a cheating woman, told from the POV of her cuckolded man. Anderson's syrupy drawl and mournful wail is intensified by sister Donna's Hill Country harmonizing. Lloyd Green's pedal steel and twin fiddles paint a long, bleak evening of waiting for honey to come home, but in the end the singer's resigned forgiveness is hardly cause for celebration. Big-voiced Sally Timms gave Anderson's 1982 hit a straight, strong reading when British country-punks the Mekons covered it on 1991's Curse of the Mekons.
79. Garth Brooks, 'The Dance' (1989)
The second Number One single off Garth Brooks' debut LP, "The Dance" is a better-to-have-loved-and-lost slow jam that co-writer Tony Arata had been playing to open mic nights since he had moved to Nashville a few years earlier. "The only folks listening, however, were other songwriters," remembers Arata. When Brooks first heard him play "The Dance," he swore he would record the song if he ever got signed.
78. Roger Miller, 'King of the Road' (1964)
Inspired by a sign in Chicago that read "Trailers for Sale or Rent," Roger Miller's finger-snapping, bass-walking 1965 hit sold 2.5 million copies and became the Texas-born songwriter's signature tune. Miller's deliciously detailed masterpiece describes a happy-go-lucky vagrant's existential tradeoff: "Two hours of pushin' a broom / Buys an eight-by-12 four-bit room." A perfectly modulated chorus sketches the hobo's sunny familiarity with train engineers' families before sneakily adding his similar acquaintance with "every door that ain't locked when no one's around." Later in '65, singer Jody Miller (no relation) answered with "Queen of the House," a similarly ironic ode to domestic royalty. Roger released his own sequel of sorts in 1970 when he opened Nashville's King of the Road Motor Inn.
77. Martina McBride, 'Independence Day' (1994)
Songwriter Gretchen Peters wrote "Independence Day" from the point of view of an eight-year-old girl who watched her mother get abused by her alcoholic father, until her mother burns down their house. Its popularity – intrinsically tied to its subject matter – helped McBride become a spokesperson for domestic abuse awareness and raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for charity. But conservative host Sean Hannity wasn't in on the track's deeper meaning, using it as the theme song for his 2001 political radio show. "I know he [was] completely disregarding what the song's about," said Peters, "but… as long as they pay me, that gives me the wherewithal to support causes I believe in, and it all works out."
76. Jamey Johnson, 'In Color' (2008)
Addiction, divorce, despair: Jamey Johnson spilled his demons on 2008's, That Lonesome Song, an album that positioned the Alabamian as an able heir to the outlaw country throne. "I was trying to reach that dude at the bar going through what I was going through," he told Rolling Stone. But where he truly shines is on "In Color," a bittersweet ballad about man trying to convince his grandson that his photos – and his life – were more vibrant than just black and white, displaying a delicate sense for narrative and an emotive voice that's both calloused and vulnerable. Written with James Otto and Lee Thomas Miller, the song was originally cut by Trace Adkins, for whom Johnson had earlier penned the American-as-apple-bottom anthem "Honky Tonk Badonkadonk." "Trace was gracious," Miller later explained. "He told me, 'The guy wrote the song. What am I gonna do?'"
75. Charlie Rich, 'Behind Closed Doors' (1973)
Charlie Rich had been struggling to find a niche between his rocking, jazz-picker roots and the Music Row mainstream for two decades. Then "Behind Closed Doors" gave the so-called Silver Fox the biggest hit of his career. "The jocks had been complaining that [Rich] was too bluesy for country," producer Billy Sherill explained toBillboard in September of 1974. "Others said he was too country for anything else. We just needed the right song." To create that right song, Sherill and Co. started with a riff that writer Kevin O'Dell had been humming for years, and then balanced traditional country flourishes with the dramatic orchestral instrumentation of an 11-piece string section. Rich won two Grammys and his only CMA Entertainer of the Year award.
74. Lucinda Williams, 'Passionate Kisses' (1988)
After recording a pair of acoustic blues albums for Folkways, Lucinda Williams found her rightful audience with her eponymous 1988 Rough Trade debut. It contained this hoarse-voiced pop-rock anthem about not only wanting but deserving a comfortable bed, bath, and emotional beyond. Williams was broke and turning 40 when Mary Chapin Carpenter softened the song's edges, added a stirring guitar arrangement and took "Passionate Kisses" close to the top of the Billboard country chart in 1993, winning Grammys for both herself and its author.
73. Dolly Parton, 'Coat of Many Colors' (1971)
Parton's most homespun hit (and her frequently avowed favorite) effortlessly transplants the biblical story of Joseph to the postwar Tennessee of Dolly's girlhood, celebrating the unselfconscious pride in a patchwork garment her mama fashioned out of rags. Parton wrote the song on Porter Wagoner's tour bus – and on Porter Wagoner's dry cleaning receipt, the only paper handy when inspiration struck. Wagoner later framed that receipt. The coat itself (or, as Coat Truthers insist, a latter-day recreation) hangs in the Chasing Rainbows Museum at Parton's theme park, Dollywood.
72. D.L. Menard, 'The Back Door (La Porte en Arrière)' (1962)
Born into a Cajun farming family in Erath, Louisiana, in 1932, Doris Leon Menard based this regional hit on "Honky Tonk Blues" by Hank Williams, to whom he always bore a musical resemblance. Written during his shift at a service station, and recorded with Elias Badeaux and the Louisiana Aces, Menard's catchy two-step satirizes a Cajun stereotype, the hard-drinking spendthrift whose late-night escapades lead to an early-morning return through the back door (and ultimately prison). "La Porte d'en Arrière" sold out its initial 300-copy run within days, then sold half a million more while becoming Cajun music's most frequently covered song not titled "Jole Blon." Although Menard soon "came to where I couldn't bear to even hear the name of that song, I got so tired of it," he still manages to perform "La Porte" to this day.
71. Alabama, 'Mountain Music' (1982)
Years before his band become the most successful country group of the 1980s, Randy Owen spent his childhood days on Lookout Mountain, where his family ran a small cotton farm. 1982's "Mountain Music" paid tribute to those southern roots, setting Owen's adolescent hobbies – river-swimming, tree-climbing, raft-building – to a soundtrack of classic-rock guitar riffs, country harmonies and fiddle-fueled breakdowns. "We did 'Mountain Music' in two cuts," he told CMT. "Back when we had a chance to rehearse and arrange stuff, we just went in and did the song like we'd rehearsed it." Released during a time when country stars rarely played on their own records, "Mountain Music" was the work of a true band, and was proof that no one has to rely on the Nashville hit machine.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Главная » Все товары » Видеопрограммы » Постановки балета » Matthew Bourne's: Nutcracker!
Matthew Bourne's stunning production of Nutcracker! has broken all box office records during its season at Sadler's Wells and subsequent national tour. This delicious production is full of his trademark style of wit, pathos and theatrical magic. Nutcracker! follows Clara's journey from a bleak Christmas Eve at Dr. Dross' Orphanage, through a shimmering ice-skating wonderland to the spectacular candy folk of Sweetieland. Tchaikovsky's much-loved score and Olivier award winning designer Anthony Ward's stunning sets and costumes combine with sizzling choreography. Promising a fresh serving of the traditional Christmas fare, Matthew Bourne's Nutcracker! is a delightful feast for all the family. Matthew Bourne has achieved worldwide artistic and popular success with his imaginative new versions of classical ballets such as Swan Lake, Cinderella & The Car Man.
Поискать данный товар на onlinetrade: Matthew Bourne's: Nutcracker!


If you've come from the sweet Jennie Harper's blog, you're in the right place! If not, make sure to start over at StampTV to not miss out on all the lovely inspiration!
The Gina K Design Team has come up with some fabulous cards featuring many techniques found on StampTV. If you haven't checked StampTV out, you totally need to! Not only is there fabulous inspiration but Gina, the DT and many others but it also has hundreds of video tutorials on a multitude of stamping techniques! I know I've learned so much from them.
I used Gina K Design's "Lovely Labels 3" stamp set to create that beautiful label. Nina Brackett designed this set (she has a Labels1 and 2, also!). That gorgeous paper is new from DCWV "The Tradewinds"--oh, I just love their new lines!
Isn't that just gorgeous? I used three different ink pads to create this look, Tea Dye and Frayed Burlap Distress Ink, and Memento Rich Cocoa to add a bit of darker color to it. I just love it! I was hoping more would show up on my card but I'm ok with it; the part that does show is so cool!
Thanks so much for stopping by! Gina has so many wonderful tutorials, I just know you are going to learn a lot just by visiting the other DT blogs! Next up is the talented Giovana Smith!
Your weathered wood is gorgeous, Janice! Fabulous card!
Fantastic Janice!! I have to try this technqiue :) Thanks for the inspiration.
This is so awesome Janice! The wood, and colors, that dp, all just work together perfect!
Wonderful technique, Janice -- I really like the warmth of the wood paired with the unexpected pretty floral paper!
That is a great look and it reminds me so much of the weathered wood on old barns. It has a beauty that is very unique. Thanks for showing a beautiful creation using that technique.
Very nice card! Love the colors and paper you chose!
Beautiful, Janice! The softness of the flowers paired with the wood look is a great contradiction of textures.
This is a beautiful card and your weathered wood looks like real wood.
Love your card and the weathered wood technique!
Love the look of the wood! Great card too,lol!!!
This is a really cool looking technique!
Love the weathered wood behind the label. Beautiful!
LOVE how you combined the weathered wood with the vintage flowers to create a gorgeous feminine card, Janice. TFS your talents.
Sooo pretty! Sometimes something that we can just get a wee peek of has more impact that something all over the front of a design. I love the contrast of your pretty blue floral with the wood and the lacey panel on top.
Your wood technique looks so real. Love the DP too.
Janice your weathered wood looks just like weather wood. Super!
Wow neat card I love bule pattren paper on your base card. and all diffrent shpes.
great job on that technique looks just like real wood, beautiful card!
Wonderful technique. Love the way your card turned out.
fabulous card and the wood look is incredible. Note to self - I must remember to use this technique.
Thanks for the inspiration Janice.
Beautiful card and you have such a fun way of sharing!
Fantastic job with this technique, Janice! Your card is gorgeous.
It turned out FABULOUS, Janice!!! Very very pretty!!!
Great weathered wood! Pretty card!
Wowza!!!! Just stunning...I have got to try this technique!!
Love how your weathered wood came out Janice, so pretty, thanks for showing it before you covered it up! Your card is so pretty and you are right, LOVE that PP, just gorgeous~~whole card is gorgeous.
Another great technique and a beautiful card.
Love this card Janice, and the choice of dp is so very pretty!
Amazing weathered wood! I just love your card. I'm in love with the DP you used!
I had watched Gina's tutorial on this technique before and forgot all about it. (Believe me it is not the first thing I've forgot.) Thank you for re-introducing this technique. Your card is beautiful. Thank you for sharing.
All of you are so talented it's mind boggling. I love every card you design. Thnx for sharing.
your cards are beautiful.. so is your chair.. lol..
Garden Silhouettes and Timeless Textures!


text:
"""
Created on Tue Nov 29 19:41:37 2016
MIT License

Copyright (c) 2016 Zeke Barge

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
SOFTWARE.
"""

from zeex.core.compat import QtGui
from zeex.core.views.main import ZeexMainWindow
from zeex.core.ctrls.main import MainController

class ZeexApp(QtGui.QApplication):
    def __init__(self, sys_argv):
        super(ZeexApp, self).__init__(sys_argv)
        self.main_view = ZeexMainWindow(MainController())
        self.main_view.show()

    @property
    def control(self) -> MainController:
        return self.main_view.control


text:
TikTok, Satellite Images, Flight Trackers Reveal Russia's Attack On Ukraine
December 26, 2022 0 Comments Science
The explosion of OSINT means that governments can be called out if they release information that can quickly be shown to be false. In the most striking example, the Biden administration in early February announced that its intelligence indicated that Moscow was planning a fake attack that would be blamed on Ukraine, providing a pretext for war.
On Feb. 22, separatists in the Donbas region claimed that three people had been killed in an IED explosion that had destroyed a car and a van. One of the main separatist militia groups posted images of the aftermath on its Telegram channel. News reports quickly followed in the Russian government newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta and RT, blaming the attack on Ukraine.
The claims fell apart, however, when the investigative journalism group Bellingcat, which specializes in OSINT, showed the images to an explosives specialist who said the damage shown was not consistent with a blast from an IED. What's more, charred human remains seemed to be cadavers planted at the scene, with one image showing a cut to the skull, apparently made by a bone saw. "It's a typical cut made to remove the skullcap as performed during an autopsy," one forensic pathologist told GRID News.
Now, with the war underway, social media is being swamped by images and videos showing the movement of Russian armor, verbal confrontations between Ukrainian citizens and Russian soldiers, and the impact of missile strikes on residential areas, government buildings, and other infrastructure. "Individual people with cellphones are becoming like sensors," Hanham said.
"Nowadays, if you do anything significant and you move through population centers with military equipment, everyone has cellphones, and everyone has access to the internet and social media," Rob Lee, a graduate student researching Russian defense policy at King's College London's War Studies Department, told BuzzFeed News in early February.
At that time, comments posted on TikTok from Russia were already revealing future troop movements. "They're saying, 'My boyfriend or husband is going to be gone six to nine months.' They said they were going to Belarus for exercises," Lee said.
Over the past few days, Ukrainian news broadcasters have urged their viewers to post information on the movement of Russian troops while avoiding images of Ukrainian troop movements or refugees trying to escape the fighting.
The goal, according to Jane Lytvynenko, a Ukrainian-born research fellow in the Technology and Social Change Project at Harvard's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy, and formerly a BuzzFeed News reporter, is to create an "uneven OSINT environment" that will help the defense of Ukraine.
But for some OSINT specialists, analyzing information released selectively to tip the scales of a conflict raises some difficult questions. It's especially fraught when the intelligence involves videos taken from people from their apartments, which could be easily geolocated and potentially targeted for reprisals. "Now we are moving into an era of 'Should I do this, could I do more harm than good?'" Hanham said.
Companies providing satellite imagery could also change the dynamics of a war by selectively releasing information that gives a propaganda or military advantage to one side. BuzzFeed News asked Planet, Maxar Technologies, and Capella Space, which each have contracts with the US defense sector as well as operating in the civilian one, to comment on how they consider what information to release, given the possibility that this might cause combatants to be targeted for missile strikes and bombings. Maxar did not immediately respond. Planet referred BuzzFeed News to a statement expressing concern for Ukraine.
"We provide transparency, which is what the world needs at a time like
this," Capella said by email. "Our public catalog is available to customers and other approved
entities to see what data is available."
What is clear is that OSINT is now part of the fabric of war. "This data is out there. It's on the internet," De La Fuente said. "It's not going to go away."
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text:
Q: GeoServer renders blue and red backgrounds occasionally It looks like this:

As you can see some tiles are rendered correctly.
Our data source is an mbtiles file, styled with a mapbox style (we had to install mbtiles and mbstyles extensions).

A: I removed the mbtiles layers from the layer group and only let the style remain there. The map renders correctly now.
The issue was probably that the layers were being rendered multiple times, once with the style and once without, sometimes the styled layer covered the unstyled, and sometimes the other way around (depending on which one rendered faster).

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


While others are wondering whether there is a way on how to grow taller, a teen from Brazil is standing there – effortless. Meet Elisany Silva. She is literally being looked up to by everyone because of her amazing height measures and she makes everyone around her look small. The 14-year old teenager stands a skyrocketing six feet and nine inches (6'9" or 206 cm) which makes her the tallest Brazilian girl. This girl definitely might get into the Guinness Book of World Records.
The world's tallest teenage girl in Brazil was born on September 27, 1995. Though she ranks among the world's tallest teen, there are still some downsides about her situation as she find it difficult to get clothes and shoes that would fit her. Moreover, her being tall makes her unable to play normally with the other teens. She even finds it a tedious task to move around their house because of her height.
Elisany Silva's rapid increase in height causes her loved ones to be alarmed especially her mother. The mother was worried that her daughter was suffering from an abnormality, but they can't afford to seek medical attention. According to the doctor, the biggest teen in the world might be suffering from gigantism which can even lead to death especially if she keeps growing because her body will be stressed and her organs particularly the thyroid and ovaries will fail eventually.
The world's tallest Brazillian teenage girl hopes that she could make use of her height to help her family. And true enough, reports have it that Elisany Silva is set to brag how tall she stands via modeling at a bridal fashion show in Belem, Brazil.


Your small business simply isn't large enough to warrant a fully-fledged human resources department. Unfortunately, human resources is hardly a one-person job; it takes a team of professionals to shoulder all the responsibilities demanded of HR — or else an experienced professional who is well-equipped with the right supplementary resources.
If your business can't afford or contain a qualified team of HR professionals, there are other options. Read on to learn about a few more-affordable HR alternatives that provide the services your business needs to succeed.
Software development is booming, and competition amongst developers often pushes many to offer their products for free. As a result, it isn't difficult to find free HR software solutions that your business can use to facilitate HR tasks — and you are no doubt attracted to this option due to its seeming lack of cost.
Unfortunately, free software typically isn't totally free. You still need to have workers dedicated to using the software correctly; even if the tools automate certain processes, you or your employees will need to control and monitor the tool to ensure no major mistakes are being made. Worse, many seemingly free software solutions offer only basic tools, and to unlock the capabilities you need you will need to pay — so-called freemium tools that cost more than you expect.
While free software can fill in the HR gaps for especially small businesses with meager needs, they typically don't provide sufficient services for larger businesses in the long term.
Paid HR software tends to be a bit more robust than free or even freemium options. This means they tend to offer more features to ensure that your business receives the exact tools it needs to provide appropriate HR services to employees.
On the downside, paid software solutions also tend to require constant attention from experienced HR professionals, which means using paid software doesn't inherently excuse you from hiring an HR team. If you are committed to keeping at least one HR professional on staff, you need to equip them with the right software tools, but if you are trying to eliminate in-house HR entirely, this might not be the best solution for you.
Hiring a freelancer might be an excellent short-term option to meet staffing shortages in HR and elsewhere, but you shouldn't lean heavily on freelance HR providers for a few reasons. First, HR professionals need to have intimate knowledge of a business and its employees and access to sensitive information including contact information and payment accounts. Typically, you don't want to provide this valuable data to a freelancer, who will only temporarily have affiliations with your business. Secondly, you simply cannot use a freelancer for an extended period of time without becoming non-compliant with state and federal law. Thus, you should only consider relying on an HR freelancer or consultant if you have a plan for reducing their use relatively quickly.
In more advanced agreements, PEOs will also provide recruitment and termination support, employee training and development, survey and feedback management, strategic planning and more. Costs for PEO services vary because services are highly tailored to your specific HR needs. Additionally, most PEOs will scale services with your business to ensure your growth does not result in a lapse in HR coverage.
HRO stands for human resource outsourcer, which is a completely separate business entity that provides you HR services. HROs go by many names, including plain-old HR services providers, but they should not be confused with PEOs because they do not co-employ your workers; they function more like HR vendors. However, like PEOs, HROs will customize your plan to ensure you receive the exact functions your business needs. In fact, HROs are even a bit more flexible than PEOs, allowing you to cherry-pick which functions you will keep in house.
The primary difference between HROs and PEOs is the type of relationship you have with your HR provider. Do you want a service-oriented third party to provide only the HR functions you do not want to handle, or do you want an HR partner that can grow alongside your business to ensure consistent service for your employees?
After using an HR alternative, you might never try to establish an in-house HR department. The modern solutions for HR are so well-developed that many businesses continue using a combination of software and third parties even once they grow large. You should consider your HR options before making a business strategy for the future.


A second Marine recruit who became ill last year after exposure to E. coli at Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego, has filed a federal lawsuit against a food service provider claiming its negligent food handling cost him a job in the Marine Corps and led to long-term health issues.
The lawsuit against Maryland-based Sodexo Inc. claims Michael Baker Jr., 21, suffered kidney failure and required dialysis as a result of the illness and then was discharged (for unspecified reasons) in March from the Marine Corps. Baker fell ill after eating food provided by Sodexo.
According to the lawsuit, filed Aug. 8 in U.S. District Court in San Diego, Baker suffered permanent kidney damage. He is seeking a "fair and reasonable amount" for his health care and for dismissal from his enlistment contract.
Baker, of Coeur D'Alene, Idaho, is the second recruit at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot to sue Sodexo after becoming ill following exposure to the E. coli bacteria.
On July 30,Vincent Grano,19, of Lake In the Hills, Ill. filed a lawsuit claiming his epilepsy and ongoing seizures — which the lawsuit links to contracting E. Coli — led to his discharge from the Marine Corps on June 29, 2018. Epilepsy is a disqualifying condition for military service.
As with Grano, Baker's lawsuit accuses Sodexo of not complying with regulatory provisions related to the manufacture, distribution and sale of food. It also states Sodexo violated state, federal and local safety regulations in manufacturing and distributing the food and was negligent in its food preparation and not living up to its corporate guidelines, which include making sure its food does not contain E. coli.
The lawsuit states Baker was among more than 300 Marine recruits affected in an E. coli outbreak at the San Diego recruit depot that may also have affected recruits at Camp Pendleton. The recruits were treated at local hospitals in late October and early November.
Both Baker and Grano are represented by Frederic L. Gordon of the Gordon & Holmes law firm in San Diego.
Following the outbreak, preventative medicine units at Naval Medical Center San Diego and Naval Hospital Camp Pendleton inspected all mess halls for cleanliness, food storage, and handling procedures. Food samples were sent for testing to the U.S. Army Public Health Command at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas.
Later, investigators from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention inspected the recruits' barracks, bathrooms and cafeterias, where meals were served to 2,000 to 3,000 recruits at one time. Investigators identified two strains of the E. coli bacteria, which they determined came from undercooked ground beef served in their cafeterias, the lawsuit states, citing the CDC report.
More than 200 of the recruits were affected by the more serious Shiga toxin-producing E. coli from food products prepared by Sodexo Inc, the lawsuit states. Fifteen recruits — including Baker and Grano — developed a life-threatening complication called hemolytic uremic syndrome. Six of the fifteen recruits became critically ill. All have survived.
Baker arrived as a new recruit at MCRD on Oct. 16, 2017 and became sick Oct. 25. He initially reported painful stomach cramps, nausea and vomiting, according to the lawsuit. When his condition worsened he was ordered by his drill instructor to go to the medical clinic at MCRD. From there, he was taken to the Balboa Medical Center by ambulance and was diagnosed with hemolytic uremic syndrome.


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British Cycling announces first 50 Hall of Fame inductees
by Simon MacMichael December 17 2009
Judging panel sifts through 300 nominations and favours past over present
British Cycling has announced the 50 cycling heroes who will be the first inductees to its Hall of Fame, set up to celebrate the governing body's 50th anniversary.
The list was whittled down from 300 names submitted by members of the public by a selection panel chaired by British Cycling President Brian Cookson and also comprising Executive Director Peter King, World and Olympic Champion Victoria Pendleton, Guardian Cycling Correspondent William Fotheringham, BBC commentator Hugh Porter and Cycling Weekly Editor Robert Garbutt.
Nominations included not just stars of the road and track, but also coaches, team managers, sport administrators and volunteers, as well as public figures who have helped raise cycling's profile.
The panel unanimously chose to recognise names who have figured over the last five decades of the nation's cycling heritage, so there's no room for the likes of Sir Chris Hoy, Bradley Wiggins or Dave Brailsford, although they will doubtless get their chance as the Hall of Fame expands in the coming years.
Victoria Pendleton said: "We made a conscious decision not to select elite riders who are still competing at an international level or coaches and managers at the top of their game. We also agreed we should recognise administrators and volunteers who have been active in the sport over many years and have made a significant contribution to it during that time. There have also been several posthumous awards."
British Cycling's President, Brian Cookson, added: "The response we've had from the public for the Hall of Fame has been phenomenal and choosing just 50 individuals out of over a hundred proved very challenging. With such a fantastic number of nominations this year we have decided to make the Hall of Fame an annual event to enable us to recognise more recent and current cycling successes."
The official induction of the 50 "cycling heroes into the British Cycling Hall of Fame will officially take place at British Cycling's 50th anniversary Gala Dinner at Manchester Central on 20 February 2010.
The full list of the first 50 inductees into the British Cycling Hall of Fame, in alphabetical order, is:
Pat Adams - no mean cyclist in his day, but best known as the man behind Mountain Mayhem and Sleepless in the Saddle
Caroline Alexander - Queen of British cross country mountain biking in the mid-90s and a serious challenger for the world title on numerous occassions
Brian Annable - President of City of Edinburgh Racing club and more than two decades as secretary of East of Scotland Cycling Association
David Baker - pioneer mountain bike racer
Sid Barras - sprint legend still ripping it up on the rollers
Stuart Benstead - doyenne of road race promotors
Chris Boardman MBE - needs no introduction
Bill Bradley - dominated the British road scene in the late 50s and early 60s
Beryl Burton OBE (pictured) - possibly the greatest British cyclist ever, male or female
Keith Butler - 60s road racer who raced as a pro in Belgium
Arthur Campbell MBE - fiery Scottish cycle campaigner who had the Meadowbank velodrome built
Brian Cossavella - highly respected international race organiser and promotor who died last year
Doug Dailey MBE - British Cycling's logistics manager, himself a former Olympian and National Road Race Champion
Tony Doyle MBE - twice World Pursuit Champion and six-day racer
Ian Emmerson OBE - ex-British Cycling president and cycling author still involved in event organisation
Malcolm Elliott - top 80s road man still doing it today - Vuelta points jersey winner
Benny Foster OBE - organised 1970 Road World Championships when they came to Leicester
Tim Gould - switched to from road and cross to mountain biking in 1985 and took the sport in the UK to a new level
Eileen Gray CBE - former President of British Cycling who helped women's cycling achieve recognition as an Olympic sport
Dave Hemsley - former World Cycle Speedway Champion
Barry Hoban - 60s and 70s road legend, eight victories gave him the stage wins record for Brits at Le Tour until a certain Manxman took it this year
Dale Holmes - BMX World Champion in 2001
Mandy Jones - Won the Women's World Road Race title in 1982
Peter Keen OBE - the coach who transformed British Cycling
Peter King CBE - the man who brought in the coach that transformed British Cycling and who pulled the organisation back from the brink
Stan Kite - organiser of London-Holyhead and London-Bradford races, and administrator of Professional Cycling Organisation and
Phil Liggett MBE - the voice of cycling for the world
Craig Maclean - track sprint ace
Paul Manning MBE - multiple track World Champion who retired after helping Team GB to gold in team sprint at Beijing
John & Doreen Mallinson - Couple have been involved in sport in North West for half a century
Yvonne McGregor MBE - when Team GB didn't win medals, she did
Gerry McDaid - UCI Commissaire from Scotland
Jason McRoy - downhill mountain biking pioneer, inspired a generation before his tragic early death
Chas Messenger - former rider and BLRC official who organised the Milk Race from 1958 to 1965
George Millar - like Gerry McDais, another Scot to make his mark on the administrative side of the sport at international level
Robert Millar - still the only Brit to win a jersey at the Tour de France, would have won the Vuelta in 1986 if the locals hadn't banded together
Graeme Obree - Superman
Hugh Porter MBE - top pursuiter, and a top commentator too
Jason Queally MBE - gold in Sydney in the kilo sprint
John Rawnsley - organiser of the Three Peaks cyclocross race, and has competed every edition since it started in 1961
Brian Robinson - trailblazing pro from the 50s and 60s who was the first Briton to complete the Tour de France, and the first to win a stage
Alan Rushton - race organiser who brought Tour de France to Britain and Ireland in the 1990s
Tom Simpson - remembered by many for the manner of his death, but he was also one of the best British road riders ever and still our only male road pro World Champ
Eddie Soens - legendary Merseyside coach, "the Bill Shankly of cycling"
Colin Sturgess - 1989 World Pursuit Champion
Dot Tilbury MBE - long-time volunteer at Isle of Man's National Sports Centre which has helped give likes of Mark Cavendish and Peter Kennaugh their start in the sport
Graham Webb (pictured) - 1967 World Amateur Road Race Champion
Les West - one of Britain's top road racers of the 60s and 70s, won the Milk Race twice
Sean Yates - two time wearer of the yellow jersey, all-round road legend and now DS at Team Sky
Tony Yorke OBE - Mastermind of British Paralympic Cycling team's 16 gold medal haul at Beijing
British Cycling Hall of Fame
British Cycling
50 Years of British Cycling
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text:
is a Japanese hairstyle worn by  (apprentice geisha). It was also worn in the latter Edo period (1603–1867) and in the Meiji period (1868–1912) by young married women.  wear it before and during the  ceremony, which marks their graduation out of apprenticeship.

References

Hairstyles
Geisha
Japanese words and phrases

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Azerbaijan's SOCAR to install chargers for electric cars at petrol stations
Oil&Gas 30 December 2020 09:25 (UTC+04:00)
BAKU, Azerbaijan, Dec. 30
By Fidan Babayeva - Trend:
The State Oil Company of Azerbaijan SOCAR plans to install a charger for electric vehicles at its all petrol stations in the first half of 2021, Trend reports citing SOCAR.
The project will be implemented within the framework of cooperation between SOCAR Petroleum CJSC and CZAR Company.
SOCAR-Petroleum has 37 filling stations. It also owns the only compressed natural gas (CNG) terminal in Azerbaijan, SOCAR is a leader in the introduction of environmentally friendly CNG fuel.
Follow the author on Twitter: @Fidan_Babaeva
SOCAR
Georgia sees decrease in electricity consumption
Iran's South Pars Gas Company beats new record on export


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Assign technicians to carry out quality feedback, establish oil file, implement regular tracing and monitoring for quality change and predict cycle of oil replacement.


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‧Sports
Home / Sports
Fri, Apr 06, 2007 - Page 22 News List
Sri Lanka seals last-gasp victory
FIGHT BACK Ravi Bopara and Paul Nixon took England to the brink of a sensational win after the openers failed again and they had been down and out at 133 for six
AFP , ST JOHN'S, ANTIGUA
England cricketer Ravi Bopara looks at his flying bails as he is clean bowled off the last delivery of their innings during the ICC World Cup 2007 Super Eight stage match between England and Sri Lanka at the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium, St. John's, on Wednesday.
Dilhara Fernando took a wicket with the last ball of the match to seal a dramatic two-run win for Sri Lanka against England in their World Cup Super Eights clash at the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium on Wednesday.
England, set 236 to win, finished on 233 for eight when Fernando (three for 41) bowled Ravi Bopara, whose career-best 52 off 53 balls so nearly set up an improbable win in only his fifth one-day international.
But Sri Lanka, who'd lost a one-wicket nailbiter to South Africa, held on with the 1996 champions moving a step closer to the semi-finals.
England must now try to revive their ailing bid for a last four spot against world champions Australia here on Sunday.
Bopara and Paul Nixon took England to the brink of a sensational win, after they'd been down and out at at 133 for six in the 34th over, with a stand of 87.
England needed 77 to win off the last 10 overs with four wickets standing, and Bopara and Nixon were still in when 49 were required off five.
But after wicket-keeper Nixon reversed swept Muttiah Muralitharan for a six and a four, the target was 19 off two overs.
However, when Nixon holed out off Lasith Malinga to Sri Lanka captain Mahela Jayawardene for 42 off 44 balls, England were 220 for seven -- still requiring 16 off seven balls for victory.
But Bopara square cut Malinga's final ball for four and England needed 12 off the last over.
His cheeky sweep for four off Fernando then made it seven off four balls.
By the time Bopara faced the last ball three were still needed only for the Essex all-rounder to be clean bowled.
Sajid Mahmood, who'd earlier taken a career-best four for 50, was two not out.
England were on course for victory at 101 for two.
But the unfortunate run out of Ian Bell (47) started a slump that saw four wickets lost for 32 runs in 49 balls.
Together with Kevin Pietersen (58), Bell put on 90 for the third wicket.
Well though England bowled, there was always the suspicion that Sri Lanka, had enough runs to play with.
It certainly seemed that way as England lost both openers cheaply to be 11 for two.
Before this match England skipper Michael Vaughan said it was time he scored a hundred, having failed to reach three figures in a limited overs international.
Instead the England captain, in his 82nd match at this level, fell for nought when, shaping to glance Chaminda Vaas, he was caught by wicket-keeper Kumar Sangakkara.
Pietersen, rated the world's best one-day batsman, counter-attacked by lofting Vaas for a straight six.
Bell, the only survivor from the England side that suffered an eight-wicket defeat at Headingley in July that saw Sri Lanka wrap up a 5-0 one-day series victory, followed up by cutting the left-arm quick for four.
Bell, almost run out for 39, went that way soon afterwards in cruel fashion after a 20-over stand.
Pietersen drove left-arm spinner Sanath Jayasuriya down the pitch and the bowler deflected the ball onto the stumps as Bell turned to ground his bat.
Third umpire Rudi Koertzen took several minutes over the decision before giving Bell, who'd faced 71 balls with four fours, out.
Pietersen then completed a 74-ball fifty with one six and three fours.
But two balls after sweeping Muttiah Muralitharan for four he chipped a return catch to the star off-spinner
England were now 126 for four in the 31st over and the game was in the balance.


It was always going to be tricky to improve on such a successful machine, but BMW have managed it, thanks to its tasty new motor. Now there's more of everything: lolloping lowdown power, a chunkier midrange and the kind of savage top end kick that leaves you asking whether this really is a humble boxer twin.
The motor's extra sparkle and the firmer electronically suspended ride gives a sportier overall feel, but still manages to be ultra refined, comfortable, roomy, convenient and characterful. It's this enviable mix of peppiness-meets-luxury that's going to make the mighty RT harder to beat than ever.
Changes may only be restricted to its engine and a few details, but that's fine by us because BMW's new tourer does what RTs do best: just about everything, especially if you've spec'd it to the moon, which you're advised to do.
Easy controls, perfect fuelling and fingertip-light steering make it a joy to ride through town. Cruise control, an electric screen, superb wind protection and a lack of engine vibes let you waft, untroubled for hundreds of miles and you won't ever get cold thanks to five stage heated grips and seat, which you could cook your dinner on.
And when you want to blast along your favourite stretches the RT will do that in style, wet or dry, thanks to its fantastic brakes, grippy Metzeler Z8 Roadtec tyres, stable chassis and grunt from the best boxer engine ever made.
It's wide enough to make you think twice about breath-in filtering, so spacious you'll forever have a happy pillion and full of fuel weighs a hefty 279kg, but the R1250RT somehow has the steering, agility and short wheelbase-feel of a sportsbike. It's always been this way, which is why the RT is exemplary on the mountain roads of Europe as it is trudging along the motorways to get there.
Optional electronic suspension with constantly adjusting damping and rear 'self-levelling' preload, is sharper and more accurate than ever in its Dynamic riding mode. It still delivers a smooth ride, especially in Rain and Road modes (although not as well damped), but the ride quality isn't the last word in shag pile plushness, like a multi-cylinder tourer, American cruiser or BM's own K1600.
A 'hill start' system comes as standard, which is far handier than you'd imagine, especially on a big bike riding through stop/start towns and cities. Holding the brake on sloped junctions is hardly taxing, but with hill start doing it for you (clamping the rear brake until you pull away) it's just one small extra thing that makes the RT nicer to live with.
It works by pulling firmly on the front brake lever, or if you've ticked the options box it's gyro controlled and does it automatically on a five degree or steeper slope. Optional up/down quickshifter (also available on the previous RT) works well with the engine under high load, but with gear ratios widely spaced it's stiffer at low speed and kinder on the box if you use the clutch.
Remember the old days when BMW flat twin engines were quirky, but bulletproof lumps, designed for pushing along policemen, beards, pipes and slippers? Things couldn't be more different now with the RT's evolving into graceful sophistication.
Sure, the Boxer lump still isn't as refined as a conventionally laid-out three, four or six-cylinder motor and there's a fair bit of vibration on a closed throttle above 4000rpm, but it growls and bellows like a race bike one minute and whispers along the next, depending on your mood.
A wide, beefy spread of power lets you pull cleanly from as little as 2000rpm in top (35-40mph), cruise on the motorway at 3500rpm and give sportsbikes the hurry-up when you keep the revs on the boil.
Like the 2019 R1250GS, GS Adventure and R the R1250RT gets an 84cc capacity hike and variable valve timing 'Shift Cam' system. There's 14ftlb more torque, 250rpm lower down in the revs and power is up from 123bhp to 134bhp. Each cylinder's inlet cam features partial and high lift cam lobes and slides across the top of the engine (in just five milliseconds and undetectable from the rider) delivering mild or hairy cam timing, depending on your throttle input.
Inlet valves are staggered when they're open, creating swirl in the combustion chamber for a better burn. BMW claims improved fuel economy - we managed 47mpg (191 miles before the reserve light) and a theoretical range of 258 miles from the 25-litre tank.
Although the previous model had a recall when it was first launched and BMW servicing can be pricey, there are no major reports of problems with the RT. Only time will tell how durable the ShiftCam system proves to be.
You get a lot of fun touring bike for your money, even in standard trim, but tick the options boxes and you'll get so much more from your RT, you'll never want to stop riding it. It'll add a few grand to the price, but will make your Beemer easier to sell on.
Heated grips, a multi function colour display, Rain/Road riding modes, electric screen, Hill Start Control, ABS pro are all standard on the R1250RT base model.
The SE has electronic suspension, heated seat, cruise control heated seat and additional 12v power socket. The top spec LE adds an up/down shifter, chrome exhaust, central locking, tyre pressure display and alarm.
2010: Update: HP2 Sport-derived new twin cam engine, fairing and clocks.
2014: RT gets partially water-cooled motor, smoother throttle, fairing and ergonomic tweaks. Traction control, two riding mods, electric screen and ABS are standard.
There are none to date.
No owners have yet reviewed the BMW R1250RT (2019-on).


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INTRIGO -- A Trilogy of Undercooked Crime Dramas
Adapted from the collection of novellas by Swedish author Håkan Nesser, filmmaker Daniel Alfredson's Intrigo trilogy offers viewers three independent but thematically-connected tales of murder, mayhem, and mystery. Yet despite competent direction and strong casting, the scripts are too uneven for the films to be particularly memorable.
Alfredson and co. took three of the five stories out of Nesser's collection to adapt to the big screen, each exploring a different genre of crime fiction. Because of this, not only do each of the movies diverge in terms of plot and character, but they also have distinct tones. The link that connects them is a non-diegetic narrator who introduces the theme of each film in a Twilight Zone-esque manner via voiceover, but this is simply too weak of a structure.
The first entry, Death of an Author, which already received a U.S. release this January, is undeniably the most intriguing of the three, if only because it is the most ambitious. The complex intertwined narrative about a writer recounting his story of translating a famous author's final work is a bit too convoluted for its own good, but has enough twists and turns to keep the viewer entertained at the least.
That said, it is the cast in Death of an Author that impresses the most. Sir Ben Kingsley gives a supporting performance that, while minimal in nature, is quite entertaining to watch. Benno Fürmann also gives a compelling turn in his role, having all the charming qualities that define the mysterious leading man.
However, the other two entries in the film lose this aspect of mystery, and as a result, aren't quite as compelling. Yes, Dear Agnes and Samaria are much easier to follow, but with that comes a predictability that isn't particularly rewarding. They are relatively anticlimactic follow-ups to a strong beginning.
The second part, Dear Agnes, explores the lengths a person will go to in desperation, and it's comparatively dull to what Death of an Author has to offer. In what is essentially an erotic thriller with none of the steaminess, there is still a bit of twistiness to this story, but the result is largely underwhelming and anticlimactic.
Samaria, the final of the three movies, finds a nice middle ground between logical and entertaining, but it still drags quite a bit. Following a documentarian and her former professor as they try to uncover the truth behind a disappearance that may have resulted in a wrongful conviction, this is the most grounded and realistic of the three films.
The first hour of Samaria is very compelling, drawing viewers in with the promise of an exciting thriller with a big reveal. But when that reveal finally comes, viewers will almost certainly be underwhelmed, wishing that there had been even ten more minutes to tie up the loose ends in a more satisfying way.
Alfredson is certainly one hell of a director, taking these underdeveloped scripts and turning them into something genuinely watchable, but one can't help but feel like something got lost in the process of adaptation. Turning a dense short story into something a bit more screen-friendly has always been a challenge for filmmakers, and perhaps a trilogy of feature-length movies wasn't the way to do it.
As of right now, adaptations of Nesser's two remaining Intrigo stories are stuck in development, and perhaps that's for the best. Although they're passable entertainment for the most part, Alfredson's films are grasping on straws even in that department. Sometimes it's better to leave the source material alone.
Intrigo: Death of an Author is now available on VOD. Intrigo: Dear Agnes and Intrigo: Samaria hit VOD on May 5.
Marsha Ahrenkiel
Just noting that my husband and I found them "memorable." Smart, interesting characters, compelling locations, and a moral ambiguity that makes for a more satisfying story. We typically spend twenty minutes choosing a movie that we then bail on in five. I wish there were a dozen more of these.


You are very welcome to bring your parent/carer to help you explore a variety of toys, enjoy some messy craft activity, join in singing simple action songs and make new friends. Tea or coffee is available for adults.
We meet in Botley Church room from 9.45 am until 11.45 am every Tuesday morning, during school term time. Stay for the whole session or drop in when you can during the morning.


The first overall pick in last year's draft, Garrett finished his rookie year with 31 combined tackles and seven sacks despite losing five games to injuries. The 6-4, 272-pound Garrett has an intoxicating combination of speed and power. The Browns' defensive personnel has been improving, and as the team continues to get better on that side of the ball, Garrett's numbers should get even better. If he can stay healthy over a 16-game regular season, look out.