( #99000150) 550 Upper Kingston Rd.
( #84000596) Roughly bounded by Northington Rd. and 1st, 6th, Bridge, and Court Sts.
( #99000464) Primitive Ridge Rd.
( #78000482) Walnut St., East and West Court Sq.
( #87001552) 167 3rd Ave.
( #76000312) N. Prairie St.
( #98001021) 201 Kennon St.
32°04′29″N 85°32′03″W / 32.074722°N 85.534167°W / 32.074722; -85.534167 (Merritt School) Midway The Old Merritt School is a Rosenwald School that was built in 1922.
32°05′18″N 85°45′44″W / 32.088333°N 85.762222°W / 32.088333; -85.762222 (Sardis Baptist Church) Union Springs The Sardis Baptist Church was founded on June 10, 1837. The present building was erected in 1850.
( #100001875) S corner of River & White's Mill Rds.
( #80000682) Roughly bounded by Alabama and 2nd Aves. and 1st St.
( #99001177) Roughly bounded by River Rd., Spring St., Lanier St., Denson St., Combs St., and Cussetta Rd.
( #99001300) Roughly bounded by School and G.I. Sts., the Chattahoochee River, and along California St.
( #08000434) 211 B St. SW.
( #04000557) 700 Airport Rd.
32°50′57″N 86°36′35″W / 32.849167°N 86.609722°W / 32.849167; -86.609722 (Gragg Field Historic District) Clanton Constructed in 1937 as part of the New Deal's Works Progress Administration. In 1948, the airport acquired a hangar once used to house the planes of the famous " Tuskegee Airmen" of the United States Army Air Corps in World War II.
32°45′13″N 86°30′38″W / 32.753611°N 86.510556°W / 32.753611; -86.510556 (Verbena) Verbena Used by Montgomery socialites in the 1870s (including poet, Sidney Lanier, of Baltimore) as a summer safe haven from outbreaks of yellow fever. They brought with them the money required to build the elaborate homes still present today in the town of Verbena.
32°48′09″N 86°48′25″W / 32.8025°N 86.806944°W / 32.8025; -86.806944 (Walker-Klinner Farm) Maplesville Built by the Walker family in 1890, this two-story Eastlake-style home is at the center of a historic 1,600-acre (650 ha) farm that was established during the 1850s. The property is currently owned by the Klinner family.
( #100002763) 911 Willoughby St.
33°38′58″N 85°35′17″W / 33.649444°N 85.588056°W / 33.649444; -85.588056 (Cleburne County High School) Heflin The old county high school building.
( #93000762) 321 Ross St.
( #73000336) Main and College Sts.
( #80000684) 116 S. Main St.
( #74000405) Corner of Railroad and W. College Sts.
31°18′47″N 85°51′15″W / 31.313056°N 85.854167°W / 31.313056; -85.854167 (Seaboard Coastline Depot) Enterprise Originally built by Alabama Midland Railway, it currently houses Enterprise's Depot Museum.
( #16000398) 100 City School Dr.
( #75000308) Southwestern end of Front St.
( #93001542) Roughly bounded by Mill, Cooper, Rural, Court, Liberty, E. Front, Cary, and Despious Sts.
( #88003238) Roughly bounded by Coffee St., the former Seaboard Coast Line railroad tracks, and S. Three Notch St.
( #96000046) 909 Sanford Rd.
( #88003239) 28 S. Court Sq.
( #84000606) 125 Central St.
( #88003240) 101 N. Court Sq.
( #82002006) 101 S. Cotton St.
( #10001050) 23216-24310 Fifth Ave., N. Fifth St., 519-1189 S. Fifth St., 1113-1115 Fourth St., 22510-22664 Wall St.
( #09000692) 115-300 6th Ave., 302-425 College St., and 403-505 E. Three Notch St.
( #01001164) Roughly bounded by Covington Ave. and Hart, Main, Whaley, and College Sts.
( #04000926) Bounded by 1st, 6th Sts., Legrande, Glenwood, Folmar, and Hawkins Aves.
( #85000738) Roughly bounded by 4th and 1st Aves. and 2nd and 5th Sts., SE.
( #84000615) Roughly bounded by 1st and 8th Aves. and 3rd and 9th Sts.
( #92001828) 105 6th Ave., SE.
( #76000320) 309 1st Ave., NE.
( #83003444) 202 1st Ave., SE.
( #76000321) E. Andrews Ave.
( #96000594) 311 Owens St.
( #82002007) 409 E. Broad St.
( #86001160) 120 Palafox St.
( #16000834) 432 10th St.
( #95001020) 325 2nd Ave., NW.
( #100003123) Along sections of Jackson & Coffee Aves., Lawrence, Lauderdale & Madison Sts.
( #78000489) 300 Kirkland St.
31°34′02″N 85°15′03″W / 31.567222°N 85.250833°W / 31.567222; -85.250833 (Kennedy House) Abbeville This rare, dual front door, double pen Creole cottage was constructed c. 1840 and is the oldest remaining structure in Abbeville.
( #89000164) 302 Kirkland St.
31°21′13″N 85°20′33″W / 31.353611°N 85.3425°W / 31.353611; -85.3425 (Seaboard Coast Line Railroad Depot) Headland This building has been disassembled. No part of the structure survives.
( #93001519) Junction of Powell St. and Headland Ave.
( #90001315) 126 N. College St.
( #77000204) 103 N. St. Andrews St.
( #74000412) 100 W. Troy St.
( #13000406) 408 E. Newton St.
( #83002984) E. Main, Foster, St. Andrews, Crawford, and Troy Sts.; also roughly bounded by Museum Ave., Crawford, Oates, Newton & College Sts.
31°13′24″N 85°23′31″W / 31.223333°N 85.391944°W / 31.223333; -85.391944 (Main Street Commercial District) Dothan Second set of addresses represents a boundary increase approved August 13, 2018.
31°17′49″N 85°06′40″W / 31.296944°N 85.111111°W / 31.296944; -85.111111 (Purcell-Killingsworth House) Columbia This Victorian mansion, also known as "Traveler's Rest", was completed in 1890.
( #16000835) Intersection of East Powell and North Saint Andrews St., .5 mi. north of Main St.
( #91000597) Roughly bounded by Clinton, Madison, Van Buren, Jefferson, Ussery, Tennessee, Monroe and Academy Sts.
( #00000712) 844 Seminary St.
( #87001454) Junction of South Lane and Jefferson St.
( #98001026) Roughly bounded by Lawrence, Main, Court, and Market Sts.
32°03′28″N 86°32′58″W / 32.057778°N 86.549444°W / 32.057778; -86.549444 (Calhoun School Principal's House) Letohatchee Founded in 1892, the Calhoun Colored School was a private boarding and day school developed according to the " Hampton- Tuskegee Model". The principal's house on County Route 33 is the last remaining structure from the original school.
32°17′14″N 86°36′11″W / 32.287222°N 86.603056°W / 32.287222; -86.603056 (Lowndesboro Historic District) Lowndesboro The Lowndesboro Historic District covers 1,800 acres, spread over the entire town, and contains 20 contributing properties, including Meadowlawn Plantation (pictured). Architectural styles include the Gothic Revival, Greek Revival, and other Victorian styles.
32°01′29″N 86°27′06″W / 32.024722°N 86.451667°W / 32.024722; -86.451667 (James Spullock Williamson House) Sandy Ridge Greek Revival-style plantation home built in 1850. Also known as "Merry Oaks Farm".
( #94001545) Junction of Jackson Military Rd. and Thomas St.
( #09000606) Parts of N. and S. Alabama Aves., E. and W. Claiborne St., N. and S. Mount Pleasant Aves., and Pineville Rd.
31°44′09″N 87°12′35″W / 31.73581°N 87.20972°W / 31.73581; -87.20972 (Robbins Hotel) Beatrice Destroyed by fire in 2012.
( #80000734) 420 3rd Ave., NE.
( #74000434) Northeastern corner of the junction of Church St. and 1st Ave.
33°15′24″N 88°09′28″W / 33.25653°N 88.15767°W / 33.25653; -88.15767 (Stewart-Blanton House) Carrollton Building no more existing.
( #76000352) W. College St. between Pine and Cherry Sts.
( #84000721) 436 Elm St.
31°48′30″N 85°57′56″W / 31.80842°N 85.96564°W / 31.80842; -85.96564 (Troy High School) Troy The building was demolished in 2010. A public library is planned to be built on the site.
( #76000353) Southeast of Rock Mills on McCosh Mill Rd.
( #85003683) Roughly bounded by White, Main, W. Point, La Monte, Chestnut, and Louina Sts.
( #11000428) Broad St. at NE. corner of Tallapoosa St.
( #78000509) Bounded by Middle Campus Dr., Oak, Bloch and Middle Sts.; also roughly bounded by Bloch St., Farmer St., Flowerhill Dr., King St., Valley St., and Middle St.
( #01001168) 51 Chancellor Ferry Rd.
( #13000180) 555-925 Main, 710-745 Middle & 608 Valley Sts.
( #06000278) Parts of State Route 261 and Helena Rd., parts of 1st-3rd Ave., and the 200 block of 3rd St.
33°17′45″N 86°50′41″W / 33.295833°N 86.844722°W / 33.295833; -86.844722 (Helena Historic District) Helena "Old Town" Helena during a rare snowfall in January 2008. These buildings date to the late 19th century.
( #01001408) 611 E. Boundary St.
( #00000711) Portions of Broad, Main, Green, Alabama, and Jefferson Sts., and Courthouse Sq.
( #05000837) Between Rose Ave. and Scott St., and Hillabee St. and 7th St.
32°56′24″N 85°56′28″W / 32.94°N 85.941111°W / 32.94; -85.941111 (Avondale Historic District) Alexander City Avondale Mills closed in 2006 and is now known as Parkdale Mills.
( #90002109) 455 Hillabee St.
( #13000471) Lafayette, East, South, S. Tallassee & West Sts.
( #95001023) 497 Hillabee St.
32°56′51″N 85°56′53″W / 32.94762°N 85.94806°W / 32.94762; -85.94806 (Reuben Herzfeld House) Alexander City Built in 1890, the house is also known as the Mistletoe Bough Bed & Breakfast.
( #05000840) Bounded by Broad St., Tallpoosa St., Cherokee Rd., Bishop St., Franklin St., and Willow St.
( #73000375) 1400 7th Ave.
( #85000257) 1800 3rd Ave.
( #72000188) 12 miles southwest of Cordova on Pleasantfield-Evansbridge Rd.
33°38′04″N 87°21′23″W / 33.63448°N 87.35628°W / 33.63448; -87.35628 (Gilchrist House) Cordova Built in 1812, destroyed by fire in 1990s.
( #04000233) Roughly bounded by 17th St., Corona Ave., 20th St., and 8th Ave.
( #85001160) 1100 7th Ave.
( #97000655) County Road 34, 0.5 miles southeast of its junction with Old Stephens Rd.
( #09000607) 800 20th St.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to National Register of Historic Places in Alabama.
^ Red Mountain Suburbs Historic District is split between Birmingham and Mountain Brook.
^ The following sites are listed in multiple counties: Seven Mile Island Archeological District (Colbert and Lauderdale), Wilson Dam (Colbert and Lauderdale.
^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab ac ad ae af ag ah ai aj Numbers represent an ordering by significant words. Various colorings, defined here, differentiate National Historic Landmarks and historic districts from other NRHP buildings, structures, sites or objects.
^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab ac ad ae af ag ah ai The eight-digit number below each date is the number assigned to each location in the National Register Information System database, which can be viewed by clicking the number.
^ "State reward offered in covered bridge fire in Blount County". Tuscaloosa News. July 2, 1993. Retrieved 5 May 2015.
^ Staff (June 12, 2009). "Shephard family leaves mark on Covington County history". Andalusia Star News. Retrieved October 7, 2018.


text:
Articles/Guest Posts by SKJ
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Literary SKJ
Historic South Park, Colorado - Mining Mecca in the 1880s
please note all photos in this post may be viewed larger by opening in a new tab (right-click)
So we found ourselves at the Peerless Mine in my last post after we decided to turn around at the North London Mine, below, instead of driving over Mosquito Pass whose extremely narrow and rocky trail clinging to the cliff-side got the better of our nerves. The Mosquito Pass Wagon Road company extended the road past the London Mine over the pass to Leadville in 1878-1879. Gold and silver fever were at a pitch in Leadville and South Park. Mining in London Mountain began in 1874 and over 100 miles of tunnels eventually wound through the mountain. As for a brief history of the pass, which crests at about 13,200 feet, the forest service brochure says, "By the summer of 1879 more than a hundred wagons, freighters and coaches traveled the pass daily. Traffic jams on the steep switchbacks, travelers lost in blinding storms and the summit's spectacular vistas passed into the parlance of memory when the railroad lines reached Leadville by other routes in the summer of 1880. Mosquito Pass was abandoned to the ravages of wind and erosion. After WWII, local residents reopened the road, the highest drivable pass in the country, for a burro race from Fairplay to Leadville. That tradition survives as an annual event to this day." All that work to make the wagon road pass only to have it be obsolete in about a year!
These are remains of the North London Mine. Like the Dauntless and Hilltop Mines, a tramway once spanned from the London Mine down to the mill in the valley below, carrying the ore to be processed. Every time I look at a mine entrance I'm stunned to think that's the only humble indication that a massive system of tunnels, representing countless man-hours of toil, lies beyond and right beneath my feet, unseen.
Not too far from Mosquito Pass near present-day Alma, the town of Buckskin Joe, named for "an eccentric fellow" who wore buckskin clothes, thrived in the 1860s, supported by the Phillips Mine. It was the Park County seat for several years and had its own newspaper, post office, two banks, three hotels, many saloons, dance halls and gambling houses, and of course an assay office. A brass band played nightly on the street corner. Horace Tabor, one of Colorado's mining icons who eventually made his fortune in Leadville, owned a store with his first wife, Augusta, in Buckskin Joe, where Horace was also the postmaster. The original Park County courthouse from Buckskin Joe, built in 1862, now sits in the South Park City Museum (which we'll visit in a minute below).
I found this photo online, I don't know the original source of it, claiming this is the Buckskin Joe the town was named after. Whether or not it's really him (doesn't really look like buckskin clothing) it's still a good representation of what early miners looked like, hundreds of them lining the creeks and rivers panning for gold or sluice-boxing.
Several thousand people lived in Buckskin Joe in the 1860s but you would never know it now, no buildings remain on the site. But it wasn't time or weather or fire that took them. Many, including the Tabor's grocery store, were dismantled and reassembled as a tourist attraction and movie set some miles away. In 2011 the entire set of buildings was sold to a private collector who disassembled them again and moved them to his private ranch. Today the only thing that remains of the original town site is the old cemetery, which is still used today by the nearby town of Alma.
I discovered the cemetery a few years ago when I was on a solo trip in Breckenridge for my birthday. I went for a drive one afternoon and discovered the Fairplay visitor's center where I picked up a bunch of brochures that inspired me to come back in September of this year with Erik to check out a bunch of the roads featured in the brochures. As it was still winter then and I was in my Subaru passenger vehicle, I couldn't drive much of anywhere off the main highway, but I did manage to get up to the Buckskin Cemetery and have an interesting walk around.
The forest service brochure writes of the cemetery: " ... its silence the stone speaks volumes about life of the town and the people who populated it. A walk among the gravesites reveals much about struggles of the miners and settlers against weather, terrain and time. The stone grave of young Thomas Fahey records that on a blustery February day he left his cabin to go to his mine and did not return. His body was found the following June. Many of the miners were immigrants from Europe. Images of home and echoes of their languages can be seen on some stones. The stones and gravesites with their ornate rails and gates exhibit a craft and workmanship that has outlasted the modest cabins and other structures in the town." Here are some of the gravesites I photographed. I was mostly drawn to the very old and the very humble.
Having read about him in several sources in print, online and at the South Park City museum (coming up next), it seems one of the more famous characters of the area who lived in Buckskin Joe was an "itinerant preacher," Father John L. Dyer, a Methodist from Ohio. He trekked weekly with his messages of salvation from Buckskin Joe over Mosquito Pass to Leadville as well as over Hoosier Pass to Breckenridge. (!!) This is quite a lot of mileage to cover on foot, let alone over such high and brutal passes which in winter he covered on 10-foot long skis. He eventually began delivering the mail as well, trekking these routes with 30 pounds of mail on his back. That is one hardcore dude. But he exemplifies the lifestyle and character of the early miners and homesteaders who were made of far sterner stuff than most of us today.
This old building was also along the road to the cemetery.
Coming back through Fairplay from one of our outings, Erik decided to stop by an attraction that we'd both seen the signs for and wondered about every time we passed through Fairplay. We had even talked about it and wondered if it was a kid's attraction. I might not have taken the effort to find out, but fortunately Erik did, stopping into "South Park City" historical museum. We arrived at 4:00 pm, it started closing at 5:00 pm (but it takes them awhile to close all the buildings), so we actually had to hurry through what really could take a person several hours if they didn't know anything already about the Colorado mining era or wanted to read every plaque or take note of every detail. I'm not quite that person, but I definitely would have used another half hour or hour if I'd had it.
Although it's not made as a kid's attraction, children would definitely love it with 43 old buildings to walk through ... actual old buildings that have been restored, not recreations. Most of them were disassembled at their original location, moved and reassembled in South Park City, but they are all the original materials, and some are even in situ, exactly where they were when they were built. Over 60,000 items are displayed, many of which were donated by local families to the museum, making each building an authentic presentation of how it once looked. All the buildings in South Park City have been placed on the National Register of Historic Places.
This is a stamp and crushing mill, exhibiting equipment used to extract gold from ore. This was interesting to us because we find this type of equipment sitting out rusting in the open air around a lot of the abandoned mines, both in our own 'hood and exploring around Fairplay. So here we could see what it looks like in working condition as opposed to weathered, rusted condition in the open forest out of context.
Burros were essential to the building of mines, railroads and townsites in the mountains. They are amazing creatures and hauled vast amounts of heavy materials up valleys and over mountains. They also were the original source of power behind a lot of mill and mine equipment.
The original tiny houses! Houses on wheels. A covered wagon and a shepherd's wagon. I was quite astounded at how roomy they really were on the inside, it doesn't seem like it from the outside but they had nice sized beds and wood burning stoves and space to sit, cook, etc. I really liked these. If society collapses and we're reduced to living in wagons again, I think I could hack it if I had one of these. The uncovered wagon, third photo below, is a chuck wagon.
Here is the caboose of a train. I actually had no idea what one might look like inside, I guess primarily because I never realized what they were used for! I just thought of it as the tail end of the train, almost like an accessory, but in fact (you may already know) it served as the traveling home and office and lookout tower for the train crew. There were bunk beds and fold-down tables to cook and eat and do paperwork. It would be a bit cramped for several people to be living in it together, but rather more spacious and comfortable than one might expect from a caboose. The narrow gage train was built in 1914.
My two favorite buildings were the homesteader's house and the train station. I didn't take any pictures inside the house for some reason, though it was interesting and reminded us of historical houses we toured in Andorra. As the museum brochure says, it "shows the self-sufficiency of the early pioneer family." As a big fan of the "Little House on the Prairie" series of books and the TV show, it sparked the memory of childhood imagination, as I was somewhat obsessed with what it would be like to live those pioneering lives. The train station really struck a chord with me, as I imagined waiting in there on a wooden bench having spent all my money on a ticket to a place I'd never been with no idea of the hardships that might await me as I hoped to improve my fortune, a big steamer trunk sitting beside me with all my belongings to start a new life.
Unless your destination happened to be a town with a train station, you would then have to transfer to a stage coach to reach your final destination, often boarding overnight at a stage coach inn. I tried to imagine myself laying down to sleep after a long day's journey in a tiny room like this one. Downstairs was the dining table where boarders would eat and socialize. The stairs were hilariously creaky. Between the creaks and the noise that would have been going on downstairs, I wonder if ear plugs had been invented yet.
The blacksmith shop. I've always stood a little in awe of blacksmiths, how they toiled over such heat, pounding metal with such strength. I can't imagine spending all day next to the forge. A blacksmith shod horses, oxen and burros, and repaired mining equipment, wagons and sleighs.
We had a great time perusing the old drug store, J.A. Merriam Drug Store, and all the remedies and tonics and elixirs of the day -- some were funny, some were mysterious, some were downright odd. There was also a good ol' soda fountain.
The most interesting thing in the school house was a display of papers written by children who had attended that school (or one of the same time period anyway). Wowee, the penmanship of children was amazing. Their math skills pretty good, too, judging from a paper of fraction calculations.
Rachel's Place was a bustling saloon and gambling house operated in Alma. Erik had entered it first and yelled out to me still on the sidewalk, "Come in here! You're going to love this!" I didn't know if he was being sarcastic, that there was something disturbing inside, for I couldn't think what would be so lovable inside a saloon. But he was completely serious as he pointed out the kitty cat lounging on top of a poker table. Kitty was super friendly, and as we hadn't seen our kitties in almost a week, we relished the petting time. His little mittens are so cute.
So I have to recommend this museum if you're passing through Fairplay. If you have any imagination at all, you can really put yourself back in time and live a bunch of different lives in an afternoon. Considering how much time and work must go into maintaining all of the buildings and collections, I thought the admission price was extremely reasonable. If you go to their website, there's a coupon for a dollar off. We actually left more money in the "tip jar."
And now you can go to bed tonight and dream of living in a Colorado mining town in the 1800s. Maybe you win a cat for having three aces at the poker table and then buy it a soda at the fountain in the drug store.
I found these episodes of the PBS show Colorado Experience to be entertaining if you're interested in learning and seeing more from this 1800s mining era:
"Ladies of the Mines" details the lives and unique hardships for women living in these rough conditions, but in talking about that, a lot is revealed about the mines, miners and mining towns in general.
Baby Doe Tabor, second wife to Horace Tabor, is a well-known local character. This show, "The Tabors," is about Horace, who made a fortune in Leadville, and his first wife Augusta (mentioned above living in Buckskin Joe), and the fate of Baby Doe as she tenaciously held on to the Matchless Mine.
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text:
Study delay creates alarm over school heaters
By Ben Cubby
February 15, 2010 — 3.00am
The results of a statewide study of the safety of thousands of unflued gas heaters in public schools will not be made available before winter, despite strong evidence they can lead to respiratory illness.
The Asthma Foundation of NSW has joined parents' and teachers' groups to request that the state government publish all findings in the public interest as soon as possible. Hundreds of schools in NSW are fitted with the unflued heaters, which can fill classrooms with nitrogen dioxide, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide fumes if windows and doors are not left open.
Earlier tests carried out by the CSIRO at Blackheath Public School showed the heaters emitting fumes that exceeded World Health Organisation guidelines, prompting the more detailed, statewide study last year.
''We would like to stress the fact that we really don't think any further delay is acceptable,'' said the Asthma Foundation's chief executive officer, Greg Smith. ''We're very unhappy about the idea of going through another winter in NSW without these results being made public. [We have] been doing a survey of other published research and we believe there is a lot evidence that gives cause for real concern about these heaters.''
The unflued heaters have been banned in some other states and many countries, due to evidence that exposure causes or exacerbates respiratory illness.
A 2004 study by NSW Health also advises the heaters should only be used if doors and windows are left open. Its current advice says people with asthma or respiratory illnesses are ''particularly susceptible'' to exposure to nitrogen dioxide. ''Children may suffer more often from cold symptoms or asthma attacks if exposed over a prolonged period of time,'' it says.
The $2 million study undertaken by the Woolcock Institute of Medical Research last winter was criticised by industry figures because some of the air quality testing equipment did not meet Australian standards. The study also took place in one of the warmest winters on record, when heaters were used less frequently, and continued into spring.
Scientists and government officials involved in the tests told the Herald the work had been comprehensive. It involved measuring both the air quality in the vicinity of the heaters and testing the respiratory health of students. The findings are still being collated.
The Education Department maintains unflued gas heaters are safe if used properly. ''As far as we are aware there are no reported instances of ill-health as a result of their use,'' a spokeswoman for the NSW Education Minister, Verity Firth, said.
Replacing all unflued gas heaters in public schools could cost up to $400 million, enough for 20 new schools, the department says.


Coldplay returns with a five-song EP, Kaleidoscope. Throughout its course, the British band switches between alternative rock and pop.
Cali sister trio HAIM returns with their highly anticipated sophomore album, 'Something to Tell You.' Overall, it ends up being a respectable effort.


text:
Artlink unveiling its 'safe space to create'
Artlink unveiling its 'safe space to create'
Studio to open with 3-D capabilities
By Terri Richardson | The Journal Gazette
In an effort to provide a safe space for high school students and the community, Artlink is launching an Open Arts studio, which will include a virtual reality creative space, the agency announced Monday.
Matt McClure, executive director of Artlink, said the agency will relaunch its educational programming under the umbrella of Artlink Open Arts, a public art creative space and resource studio. The studio will officially open in the fall but will have limited hours in June.
One of the big components of the studio will be two virtual reality sets that will use the HTC Vive, along with Google's Tilt Brush app. The sets will allow people to create in a variety of media, such as 3-D sculpting, fashion and public art. Each virtual reality set will have goggles, two hand-held wands and two sensors that provide users a grid in which to access the virtual space. The images created will be visible to onlookers by a large high-definition monitor.
McClure said that over the past few years, Artlink has seen the cultivating of creative drive and natural artistic expression going away. That is especially true with high school students who oftentimes are being smothered by class assignments and don't have the opportunity to create freely. "There is no safe space to create," McClure said.
The idea for the Open Arts studio is to provide that safe space where people who don't have access to creative tools can come and do whatever, McClure said. "We are investing in these tools," he said.
While McClure wouldn't provide an amount for how much the studio and its equipment will cost, he did say that the money is being provided by donors. The money will help purchase equipment that will be available at the studio for those to create, as well as the VR headsets, which can cost a couple of thousand dollars for one headset, he said.
The VR space will be located in the educational wing of Artlink, 300 E. Main St., and public access will be available in half-hour increments with varied pricing for members and non-members. Initial studio time is from noon to 7 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays.
The studio will have a special emphasis on programming aimed at high school students, McClure said. He said that during set times each week, the studio will be reserved for students to use the space to create. In addition, one to two professional artists will be working on a project alongside the students, which provides them an opportunity to interact with the artists, ask questions and learn in a more relaxed environment.
McClure said that Artlink wants to be at the forefront of pushing a creative arts community and developing resources and a support system for artists to work professionally in their chosen field.
"We are the place where local and regional artists come to push a big idea," he said.
Click here to se a video of a demonstration of Artlink's new virtual reality headsets, which will be used in its new Open Arts studio.
Categories Quality of Life21st Century Talent


text:
Q: pyqt4 customize qlistwidget item Im trying to customize qlistwidgetitem but there is a overlap between the text and the button.
Here is my code.
from PyQt4.QtGui import *
from PyQt4.QtCore import *

import sys

class myListWidget(QListWidget):

    def Clicked(self, item):
        QMessageBox.information(self, "ListWidget", "You clicked: "+item.text())

def main():
    app = QApplication(sys.argv)
    listWidget = myListWidget()
    #Resize width and height
    listWidget.resize(300,120)
    l = QListWidgetItem()
    l.setText('Im an item')
    l.setFlags(l.flags() | Qt.ItemIsUserCheckable)
    l.setCheckState(Qt.Checked)
    button = QCheckBox('Hello')
    l.setSizeHint(button.minimumSizeHint())
    listWidget.addItem(l)
    listWidget.setItemWidget(l, button)

    listWidget.setWindowTitle('PyQT QListwidget Demo')
    listWidget.itemClicked.connect(listWidget.Clicked)

    listWidget.show()
    sys.exit(app.exec_())

if __name__ == '__main__':
   main()

Reqt:-

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Summer of Indie Meets With Leigh M. Lane
Our next author in the Summer of Indie lineup is Leigh M. Lane, who enjoys writing "dark speculative fiction that often contains strong social and political commentary."
We interviewed author Leigh M. Lane, author of novels Myths of Gods and World-Mart and a short collection Of Mind and Matter, to find out more about her and the inspirations for her writing.
The first book she shared with us was her dystopian novel, World-Mart.
George Irwin remembers a time before the Big Climate Change, back when the airlines were still in business and people still drove their own cars. The world has changed much over his lifetime, but he still believes in the American Dream. When an alleged terrorist act lands his wife in the hospital, however, George stumbles upon a Corporate secret that could mean the end of all civilization.
Paperback: http://www.amazon.com/World-Mart-Leigh-M-Lane/dp/0615555748/ref=tmm_pap_title_0
Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/World-Mart-ebook/dp/B005VTN1OC/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2
Author Leigh M. Lane also spoke about her inspiration for writing World-Mart:
"I began writing World-Mart when, as a manager at a large-chain corporation, I became disillusioned by the disparity I saw between the high-end corporate overseers and the low-end workers. I remember the sense of epiphany that hit me when one day at a manager's meeting, we learned the company had decided to spend ten million dollars on nationwide logo changes, while capping lower management pay at a mere ten dollars an hour. It just didn't make sense to me. Moreover, I found the bureaucracy and ever-changing policies to be mind-blowing and hypocritical, and I knew there was a dystopia to be written somewhere amidst it all."
Next, we asked about her novel Myths of Gods, a dark fantasy satire that offers a critical look at religion.
"I wrote Myths of Gods as a personal exploration of existential angst, coupled with long-standing issues of being an estranged minister's daughter. Religion can be a touchy subject to write about, but it was something I needed to do. The question of what God might think collectively about religion ate away at me for many years, so I finally broke down and wrote a book to explore that question. The result was haphazard at first, and it took several years for me to transform the book into a cohesive work that suited my original expectations."
http://www.amazon.com/Myths-Gods-Leigh-M-Lane/dp/0615491898
The last novel that Leigh M. Lane shared with us was entitled Finding Poe. She described it as very different from her previous novels, but noted that "It too came as a pang of inspiration that gnawed at me until I finally wrote the novel. I believe it is my best work to date—and definitely the scariest."
Follow the final days before Poe's death, journeying through his musings, both brilliant and mad, in search of the truth behind his unfinished work, "The Lighthouse," while unraveling the mystery behind the elusive woman desperately seeking the author for answers behind her husband's haunted death.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007M7JWTY
After finding out about her work, we asked Leigh M. Lane more about her as an author:
Q: When did you start writing?
A: I began writing when I was seven or eight. I was a voracious reader, but felt unsatisfied with simply reading—I wanted to be like my favorite authors at the time, creating stories for others to enjoy. I found myself taken by writing even more than reading, and it became my primary hobby. I started writing short stories, but by the time I was a teenager, I had graduated to screenplays and novels. When I discovered speculative fiction through authors such as Stephen King, Isaac Asimov, and Kurt Vonnegut, I knew I had found my calling.
Q: What motivated you to publish now?
A: I took a serious look at the current state of the world and the trends, and I knew the timing was finally right. When, not even a year after publishing World-Mart, Occupy Wall Street occurred, I knew I had made the right decision.
Q: Where can people get your book?
A: All of my full-length novels are available in both Kindle and paperback and are listed on my Amazon Author Page.
Q: In your book, who is your favorite character?
A: In World-Mart, my favorite character is Kurt. Even though he is a fearful and whiny seven-year-old boy, he stands for something very important (which I'm not going to spoon-feed readers). I would love feedback from those who think they've figured it out.
Q: What's your favorite indie book that you've read recently?
A: I've been doing a lot of Indy reading these days, and I have to say the overall quality I've encountered is very high. I don't think I can narrow down my favorite to just one book, but instead would like to recommend a few great Indy authors I've recently discovered: Robert S. Wilson, Bryan Hall, Armand Rosamilia, Trent Zelazny, and Jeffery Anderson.
Q: What's your favorite book of all time?
A: This is another tough one, but if I had to choose just one book, I think it would be Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s Cat's Cradle. No other book has haunted me the way that one has. There are so many other books I'd love to mention (all by the authors listed below), but I'll refrain for the sake of time and space.
Q: Who are some of your favorite authors?
A: I'll try to keep this short: Stephen King, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., George Orwell, H.G. Wells, Isaac Asimov, Olaf Stapledon, Joseph Conrad, Clive Barker, and Anne Rice.
Q: Do you have any advice for new writers?
A: I think the greatest piece of advice I can offer (hoping I don't sound too cliché here) is write, write, write. You'll think the first draft of your first novel is the greatest work of literature to grace mankind, but chances are it's crap. Do yourself a favor and refrain from shopping it (you'll thank me later). Put it aside for a year or two. If you haven't already, get an English degree. Learn, through critical analysis, what makes great books great. Learn proper grammar and punctuation. Write another book, then another one, and then go back to the piece of crap you first wrote and make it better. Write another book, then another one, and then go back to the redraft of book number one and make it great.
Q: What's next for you (in your writing)?
A: I'm between projects right now, but I am entertaining some vague ideas I hope to develop into something more concrete. The muses work in strange ways, and sometimes it takes a while to make sense of what they want of me.
Q: Name 3 things readers probably couldn't guess about you (but you'd like them to know)?
1. I'm an avid comic book fan, with a collection of several hundred works under a number of imprints.
2. I'm a singer and musician, and have not only sang for three bands (one blues, one alternative, and one rock and roll), but have also sang the "Star Spangled Banner" for the opening of a Dodgers game.
3. I write erotic horror and science fiction romance under a different name.
You can find novels by Leigh M. Lane at her Amazon Author Page:
http://www.amazon.com/Leigh-M.-Lane/e/B0055DSE6Y/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1
You can also find her online on Facebook and her website, where she also hosts a blog.
http://www.facebook.com/AuthorLeighMLane
http://www.cerebralwriter.com/
Labels: author, book, fiction, indie, Lane, political, speculative


The new campaign is aimed at pickers and packers for 2019.
In an attempt to combat the forecast labour shortage for the Bay of Plenty kiwifruit industry in 2019, a campaign is being launched for pickers and packers.
In 2018, the Bay of Plenty kiwifruit industry experienced a severe labour shortage at harvest with 1,200 vacancies unable to be filled.
The kiwifruit industry considers that another labour shortage for the Bay of Plenty is likely in 2019.
To mitigate the potential shortage, New Zealand Kiwifruit Growers Inc. (NZKGI) is employing a labour coordinator and have launched an attraction campaign to increase seasonal labour numbers.
The aim of the labour coordinator role is to attract additional workers and increase the coordination of available labour for harvest and winter pruning.
The role will also establish sustainable labour sources to support the growth of the industry in the Bay of Plenty, where over 80 per cent of kiwifruit is grown.
New Zealanders will be given priority to work, particularly people from Work and Income. The labour coordinator role is funded by the Provincial Growth Fund, the Ministry of Social Development and New Zealand Kiwifruit Growers and is expected to run through until the end of 2020.
"Ensuring a sustainable supply of labour is the kiwifruit industry's top priority," says NZKGI CEO Nikki Johnson.
In addition to the labour coordinator role, the kiwifruit industry has also recently launched an attraction campaign to attract more pickers and packers to work in the Bay of Plenty between April and June.
The campaign focuses on backpackers, retirees, students and the unemployed and has already started with articles aimed at backpackers placed throughout European media.
The campaign is supported by kiwifruit industry stakeholders under the BOP Labour Governance Group.
"New Zealand kiwifruit production will increase from 123 million trays in 2017 to 190 million trays by 2027. To meet this demand the industry will need more than 7,000 additional seasonal workers over the next 10 years," says Nikki.
The increased labour demand stems from industry expansion coupled with low unemployment as well as a lack of backpackers and international students. In addition to the labour coordinator role and attraction strategy, NZKGI is working on a range of other topics to improve the labour situation.
This includes the consistency of seasonal work, accommodation, welfare, transport and perception of pay rates.


text:
Women's Basketball / March 1, 2019
WBB Caps Regular Season at No. 10 NC State
March 3, 2019 | 2:30 p.m.
Reynolds Coliseum | Raleigh, N.C.
No. 15 Miami (24-6, 12-3 ACC) at No. 10 NC State (24-4, 11-4 ACC)
CORAL GABLES, Fla. – The University of Miami women's basketball team will conclude the 2018-19 regular season with a top-15 road showdown.
No. 15 Miami (24-6, 12-3 ACC) is set to take on No. 10 NC State Sunday at 2:30 p.m. at Reynolds Coliseum in a matchup of teams that have clinched double-byes in the ACC Tournament.
Tom Werme and Chelsea Shine will be on the call on RSN—it can be found locally on FOX Sports Sun—and it is available on ACC Network Extra, subject to blackout, HERE. Additionally, the game will be carried live on WVUM 90.5 FM HERE and live stats can be found HERE.
After dropping the first eight meetings in the series, Miami has moved to 11-10 all-time against NC State, including 10-1 in the past 11 matchups. The Hurricanes won their third contest in a row last season, a 52-48 home decision on Feb. 8, 2018.
In its last outing, Miami picked up a 69-56 victory over Georgia Tech Thursday night at the Watsco Center. Redshirt junior forward Beatrice Mompremier led all players in points (22), rebounds (16) and blocks (four), while sophomore guard Mykea Gray added 18 points on 7-of-9 shooting.
NC State owns a 24-4 (11-4 ACC) record on the season and was the nation's final undefeated team. The Wolfpack is led in scoring by graduate student guard Kiara Leslie at 16.0 points per game.
After going 26-9 (11-5 ACC) and reaching the NCAA Sweet 16 in 2017-18, NC State was picked fourth in the ACC preseason polling.
Miami can finish anywhere from first to third in the ACC with a victory over the Wolfpack and will take the fourth spot with a setback against NC State.
The Hurricanes will be back in action March 8 when they open play against a to-be-determined opponent in the ACC Tournament quarterfinals, following its aforementioned double-bye through the first two rounds.
ACC Women's Basketball Announces Schedule Changes
Women's Basketball / January 11, 2022 ACC Women's Basketball Announces Schedule Changes


text:
Power your voice searches with Java
Repairman beats Google search algorithms, battery booster explained, Chrome limiting Flash, are APIs copyrightable, and more GeekNews of the week.
Curtailing Flash to Decrease Energy Use
Adobe Flash allows web pages to display rich content—but sometimes that can put a squeeze on your laptop's battery. So we've been working with Adobe to ensure that your experience on the web can be power-efficient as well as rich and interactive—and today, we're introducing an update to Chrome that does just that.
Another article here
Extend the Life of Alkaline Batteries
Voltage boosters are nothing new, but Batteriser scales down the technology to the point where it can fit inside a stainless steel sleeve less than 0.1 mm thick. Roohparvar says the sleeves are thin enough to fit inside almost every battery compartment imaginable, and the combined package can extend battery life between 4.9x for devices like remote controls and 9.1x for various electronic toys.
Update: A number of articles are challenging the claims made in the original PC World article and by the manufacturer. Read more here
Surveillance Camera Powered by Ordinary Wi-Fi Broadcasts
Great things are expected of the Internet of things but only if engineers can solve one potential show-stopper of a question: how to power these numerous tiny machines.
Today, we get an answer thanks to the work of Vamsi Talla and pals at the University of Washington in Seattle. These guys have developed a way to broadcast power to remote devices using an existing technology that many people already have in their living rooms: ordinary Wi-Fi. They call their new approach power over Wi-Fi or PoWi-Fi.
SoundHound Hound Speech Recognition Tech
The video shows Hound responding to a wealth of questions, some of which are soft pitches and others much more complex. Some are also multi-layered, such as asking "What is the population of Japan and China and their areas in square miles and square kilometers, and also tell me how many people live in India and what is the area code for Germany, France, and Italy?" As you'll see in the video, Hound spits out accurate answers to each question without delay. We tried pinging Google Now with the same query and were directed to a list of Google search results, which showed a bunch of entries for Hound. Have a look:
Apple's Tim Cook warns the FBI not to weaken encryption
"So let me be crystal clear: Weakening encryption or taking it away harms good people who are using it for the right reason," [Tim Cook, CEO of Apple,] said.
Justice tells Supreme Court not to hear Google's API appeal
The issue before the court is when, if at all, APIs can be protected by copyright. The outcome has serious repercussions not just for Google, but the entire software industry, since APIs act as a sort of lingua franca that allow different computer programs to deliver instructions to each other.
Testing Your Self-Driving Car? Head to Virginia!
In a bid to help Google (and presumably other companies) test out their next-generation automobiles, the state of Virginia has reportedly opened up 70 miles of highway, overseen by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI), to self-driving cars.
Portions of Virginia's highways—most notably Interstates 95 and 495—are notoriously congested, which could present any self-driving vehicles with a real challenge. The state government has stipulated that any automated car will need a human driver at the wheel to take over in case of malfunction or emergency.
Egyptian repairman outranks Google in search
An Egyptian repairman has found unexpected fame as one of the most searched-for men in his country.
For a time, anyone typing Google into Google from an Egyptian computer got a page belonging to Mr Saber El-Toony as the first result despite the fact that his business doesn't include the keyword and is in no way related.
Announcing Facebook Lite
Facebook recently announced Facebook Lite, "a new version of Facebook for Android that uses less data and works well across all network conditions."
GeekSpeak_2015-06-13.mp3 22.9 MB
Ben Jaffe (cohost)
Chandler Moeller (support)
Greg Merkley (support)


text:
Evening Update Wednesday 26 August 2020
French Minister of Education, Jean-Michel Blanquer, announced this afternoon that masks will be mandatory for all adults in schools and for all students from the sixth year. The minister said that some exceptions to this rule had been considered, for example for kindergarten teachers, but it was decided to have no exceptions so that the rule is completely clear and simple. Meanwhile, the Var department has announced this afternoon that the department will provide masks free of charge to all schoolchildren who do not have a mask.
French Prime Minister Jean Castex has said that the government's economic stimulus package will be announced next Thursday, 3 September. The plan was due to be unveiled yesterday but in an interview this morning the Prime Minister said that the plan, worth 100 billion euros, was complete. He said that the 100 billion euros would include an amount of 2 billion euros to benefit the French cultural sector. Members of the entertainment industry are due to meet the Prime Minister and the Minister of Culture Roselyne Bachelot for discussions tomorrow. He also said that it will no longer be possible for prefects to opt out of the ban on gatherings of more than 5,000 people in areas where the virus is circulating strongly. He added that the 5,000 person limit may be lowered by the government, up to and including a complted ban on large gatherings.
French statistics agency INSEE has published the latest figures from its Monthly consumer confidence survey today. In August, households' confidence in the economic situation was stable - the index remains at 94, below its long-term average of 100. The figure for August was the same as July but less than the 96 recorded in June just after deconfinement.
In new figures released today, the French government employment agency has said that just over 6.1 million people are currently looking for work. Job seekers in Category A, in other words unemployed people actively looking for a job, fell by 4.1 % in July. However, the organization said that, as in the previous two months, the fall in Category A unemployed was mainly explained by people moving to a "reduced activity" category, meaning that Category B and C unemployed rose during the month.
SNCF have announced an extension to their train ticket change and refund policy. The policy was brought into effect at the start of the pandemic and allows exchanges or refunds free of charge on TGV, Inter-City and connecting TER services. If the new ticket is more expensive than the original, the ticket holder will still have to pay the difference in price. The policy was due to finish at the end of this month but will now be in operation until 1 November.
Access to the Gorges de Verdun by water from the lac de Sainte-Croix has been closed today because of high winds in the area. However, the Verdon park is still accessible by road.
The German government has annnounced a one year extension to extend a scheme that tops up pay for workers affected by the pandemic. Short-time work subsidies had been due to expire in March 2021, but have now been extended until the end of next year. The move comes after the German economy contracted by a record 9.7% in the April-to-June quarter.
A new report estimates that the UK economy may loose 22 billion pounds in spending because of the fall in tourism. The reports from the World Travel and Tourism Council says that up to 3 million jobs could be at risk in the UK as a result of reduced tourism.
UK DIY retailer Screwfix is to open 30 new stores in the UK and 10 in Ireland. It currently operates 680 UK stores and 5 in Ireland. About 400 new jobs are expected to be created.
Oil producers in the Gulf of Mexico have shut down many of their facilities as the region braces itself for a hurricane. Hurricane Laura is due to hit the coast of Texas and Louisiana late today or early tomorrow.
Football... Jamie Vardy has agreed a contract extension with Leicester City. His current deal with the club was due to expire in two years time but his contract has now been extended until 2023. Vardy was the Premiership's top goal scorer last season.
Athletics... Olympic sprinter Usain Bolt has tested positive for the coronavirus. He attended a birthday party in Jamaica last week and took a test on Saturday since which he's been in quarantine but doesn't have any symptoms. Jamaica's Prime Minister Andrew Holness said that the circumstances surrounding the gathering are being investigated.
lunchtime News Thursday January 20th 2022
Covid-19 -The French health council is expected to report that "another two weeks of effort" are required across the country before some coronavirus r... Read More


text:
Q: Anomalous probability result for computed single pair probability when dealing seven card poker hands BACKGROUND:  Today I thought I'd begin a small project building a poker
simulator.  The first task I set was to deal cards from a shuffled
deck, and check the various numerically generated probabilities
against accepted values.  The first such probability I checked was
the single pair probability--that is, generating (numerically) the
probability of being dealt a single pair, given as inputs the number
of cards dealt and the number of hands dealt, where each hand
is dealt from a separate shuffled deck.  Cards are dealt from the
top of the deck.  Below I show the beginning of that program.
I first tested numerically generated single pair probability
for five card hands.  The computed value comes to within
a tenth of a percent of the accepted single pair probability
for five card hands (but always high by about a tenth of a percent):  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poker_probability
However, when I test the numerically generated single pair probability
for seven card hands, I find that I am off by 4% to 5% from the
accepted value (e.g., typical computed value = 0.47828; accepted value as per above = 0.438).  I've run the numerical experiments up to ten
million hands dealt.  The computed single pair probability for seven
card hands is stable, and remains off by 4% to 5% from the accepted value.  It's not clear
why this is the case.
QUESTION:  Why is this the case?  I suspect that my code is not taking
something into account, but I cannot detect what.  Python code follows . . .
NOTE:  Issue 31381901 is similar to this one.  But in the below code the issue of double counting is accounted for by converting the dealt hand to a set, which will eliminate duplicate values, thus reducing the size of the set (in the case of 7 card hands) from 7 to 6.  That reduction indicates a single pair.  If three-of-a-kind is present, then the size of the set would be 5, since two of the three cards in the three-of-a-kind would be eliminated by the set conversion.
from random import shuffle

def make_deck():
    '''Make a 52 card deck of cards.  First symbol
    is the value, second symbol is the suit.  Concatenate
    both symbols together.
    Input:  None
    Output:  List
    '''
    value = ['A', '2', '3', '4', '5', '6', '7', '8', '9', 'T', 'J', 'Q', 'K']
    suit = ['C','H','S','D']
    deck = [j+i for j in value for i in suit]
    return deck

def shuffle_deck(deck, times_to_shuffle=7):
    '''Shuffle a deck of cards produced by make_deck().
    Default:  7 times.
    Input:  list, int
    Output:  list (modified in-place)
    '''
    for n in range(times_to_shuffle):
        shuffle(deck)

def test_for_single_pair(hand, cards_per_hand):
    '''Tests for presence of a single pair in
    a dealt hand by converting the hand to a set.
    The set representation of a hand with a single
    pair will have one less member than the original
    hand.
    Input: list, int
    Output:  int
    '''
    hand_values_lst = [card[0] for card in hand]
    hand_values_set = set(hand_values_lst)
    set_size = len(hand_values_set)

    if set_size == (cards_per_hand - 1):
        return 1
    else:
        return 0

def deal_series_of_hands(num_hands,cards_per_hand):
    '''Deals a series of hands of cards and tests
    for single pairs in each hand.  Creates a deck
    of 52 cards, then begins dealing loop.  Shuffles
    deck thoroughly after each hand is dealt.
    Captures a list of the dealt hands that conform
    to the spec (i.e., that contain one pair each),
    for later debugging purposes
    Input:  int, int
    Output:  int, int, list
    '''

    deck = make_deck()
    single_pair_count = 0
    hand_capture = []

    for m in range(num_hands):
        shuffle_deck(deck)
        hand = deck[0:cards_per_hand]    #first cards dealt from the deck
        pair_count = test_for_single_pair(hand, cards_per_hand)
        if pair_count == 1:
            single_pair_count += pair_count
            hand_capture.append(hand)

    return (single_pair_count, num_hands, hand_capture)

cards_per_hand = 7   #User input parameter
num_hands = 50000    #user input parameter

single_pair_count, num_hands_dealt, hand_capture = deal_series_of_hands(num_hands, cards_per_hand)
single_pair_probability = single_pair_count/ num_hands_dealt
single_pair_str = 'Single pair probability (%d card deal; poker hands): '%(cards_per_hand)
print(single_pair_str, single_pair_probability)

A: If the hand contains a single pair but also contains a higher-value unit such as a straight or a flush, your code still counts that as a pair, where the probability article does not.


There are 8 Auto insurance companies in American Fork, UT. Below is a list of the 10 most popular Auto insurance companies on Auto Insurance Directory. Are you looking for a auto insurance company specialized in a specific insurance? Refine your search by selecting a insurance.
NEED A AMERICAN FORK AUTO INSURANCE COMPANY?
Auto Insurance Directory is one of the worlds largest auto insurance company directories listing a total of 8 Auto insurance companies in American Fork, Utah.
Each American Fork auto insurance company profile covers contact details, reviews, specialization, prices, quotes, fees, auto insurance company overview and more.
Our goal is to make your search for the right car and auto insurance companies in American Fork, Utah quick and easy.


The California Code of Regulations, Title 5, Education, Section 852, states, "A parent or guardian may submit to the school a written request to excuse his or her child from any or all parts of any test provided pursuant to Education Code Section 60640. A school district and its employees may discuss the Standardized Testing and Reporting Program with parents and may inform parents of the availability of exemptions under Education Code Section 60615. However, the school district and its employees shall not solicit or encourage any written exemption request on behalf of any child or group of children."


text:
/**
 * Created by Pavel on 18.2.2015.
 */

$(function() {
    var deleteBtnSelector = $('.grid-delete-btn');

    deleteBtnSelector.on('click', function() {
        alert(this.data('confirm'));
    });
});

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Hon. Anil C. Singh was elected as a Justice of the New York State Supreme Court in November 2013. Prior to his election, he served as a judge for over a decade. He was elected to the Civil Court of the City of New York in 2002. As a Civil Court Judge, he presided over jury, non-jury and Small Claims cases, including tort matters; commercial disputes; consumer credit cases; real estate matters, including commercial landlord-tenant cases; subrogation matters; and insurance disputes.
Justice Singh was designated as an Acting Supreme Court Justice in April 2010, where he presided over Individual Assignment Part 61 until March 2015. He conducted Supreme Court jury and non-jury tort and commercial trials. His docket consisted of 1,300 cases with a varied subject matter, including personal injury litigation; defamation and business torts; insurance coverage disputes and declaratory judgment actions; constitutional claims; commercial cases; real property and foreclosure actions; guardianship and Article 78 matters; and litigation involving the State of New York and the City of New York, including the municipality and legislative branches. Additionally, Justice Singh served as a presiding justice in the Mortgage Foreclosure Settlement Part. A number of his memorandum decisions have been published in the Official Reports, the New York Law Journal and Westlaw.
In April 2015, Justice Singh was appointed to the Commercial Division of the New York State Supreme Court. His commercial docket consists of real property cases; contract disputes and claims involving business torts; shareholder derivative actions; commercial class actions; accounting and legal malpractice claims; insurance coverage declaratory judgment actions; and Article 75 arbitration proceedings. He continues to carry an inventory of commercial cases that do not meet the jurisdictional requirements of the Commercial Division.
Anil C. Singh was born in Gazipur, India in 1958 and immigrated to the United States in 1976. After earning a B.A. degree from Lawrence University in 1980, Justice Singh enrolled in Antioch School of Law in Washington, D.C., which awarded him a J.D. degree in 1986. He worked as principal court attorney to the Hon. Alice Schlesinger in both the Civil Court of the City of New York and the New York Supreme Court from 1987 through 2002.


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Friday Evening Videos: "Glory Days"
If there was ever a song that seems custom-tailored for my basic preoccupations, it would have to be "Glory Days," the fifth of seven hit singles from Bruce Springsteen's smash album Born in the USA. Like so many Springsteen tunes, I liked this one back in the day simply because I liked its sound: the aggressive guitar opener, the calliope tone of the synth, the rise and fall and rise again into a big climax and a definitive ending instead of the more usual fadeout. But as I've grown older, nearing and then surpassing the age Springsteen actually was when he recorded it — he was 34 in 1984, and I'm 48 now — the song has come to have real resonance for me. Not merely because it reminds me of the time when it was popular, but because I now relate to the lyrics. Time really does pass in the wink of a young girl's eye, and when you settle into that middle-age rut of commuting and working for The Man, it's very hard not to look back at your youth and wonder if your best days are behind you. Well, it's hard for me, anyhow. Your mileage may vary.
The great thing about "Glory Days," though, is that it's not a maudlin or depressing song. It approaches its subject with a sense of humor and an upbeat tone. It doesn't say, "Life is over and doesn't that suck?" It's more like a gentle nudge in the ribs as a friend says, "Hey, remember all that stupid shit we used to do? Good times, huh?" There's a hint of melancholy under there, but it's quickly washed away with a swig of beer and a good laugh. This song makes me feel good about knowing what Bruce is singing about.
"Glory Days" was a sizable hit in the summer of 1985, when I was 15-going-on-16. It peaked at number 5 on the Billboard Top 100, becoming the second highest-charting single from Born in the USA ("Dancing in the Dark" was the highest; it reached number 2). Oh, and one more bit of trivia for those who are interested: the video was directed by John Sayles, the writer and director of well-regarded indie films like The Return of the Secaucus 7, Matewan, Passion Fish, and Eight Men Out, about the notorious Black Sox baseball scandal of 1919. No wonder he seemed to latch onto the verse about playing baseball for the video's concept…
And now I'm going to drift out into my Friday night. This morning's rain showers have blown over, and out my office window I can see blue skies and puffy white clouds… happy weekend, everybody!
This Makes Me Smile…
Okay, this will take a bit of setup, so bear with me for a moment, please.
As part of its all-out exploitation, um, that is, expansion of the Star Wars brand, Disney has recently begun producing animated shorts set in the SW universe and released through the Disney YouTube channel. These shorts, collectively known as Star Wars Forces of Destiny, are each two to three minutes long and focus on the female characters of Star Wars (there is, however, at least one centered on Luke Skywalker). I've seen a few of them and they're… nice. They're obviously aimed at a very young audience, and they're too short for any deep storytelling — mostly they're little vignettes that fill in plot details you never knew you were curious about — but they're cute, upbeat, well drawn and animated, and — I especially like this — they include familiar voice talents from both the SW feature films (Daisy Ridley, Felicity Jones, John Boyega, Lupita Nyong'o, and even Mark Hamill) and other animated SW series (Ashley Eckstein from Clone Wars and Rebels, Vanessa Marshall and Tiya Sircar from Rebels).
As if all that weren't gratifying enough, though, I just spotted something in one of the latest ones, "Bounty Hunted," that really made me smile. See if you can catch it, too, about 14 seconds in:
Did you see it? Did you? Eh, probably not. The moment passes quickly, and you'd have to be an old super-nerd like me to even know what you're looking at.
At 0:14, there are a couple shadowy figures in the foreground who, on closer inspection, appear to be Jaxxon, the six-foot-tall green humanoid rabbit from the original Marvel Comics series of the late 1970s, and Skorr, a cyborg bounty hunter seen in the Star Wars newspaper comics of the same period, which were drawn by the legendary Al Williamson. (Skorr was meant to be "that bounty hunter [they] ran into on Ord Mantell.")
It's funny that this would cross my radar this morning, as I've been thinking a lot lately about the early days of the Star Wars phenomenon, in particular that short-lived period between the release of A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back when there really weren't any rules or conventions yet. Today, the franchise labors to breathe under decades of backstory, questions of what is or is not "canon," and, most significantly, the weight of expectations, both from the property owners and the fans themselves. But back in the day, 1977-1980, well… it seemed like anything was possible then, and the only thing anyone really cared about was that there should be more. My friend Kelly recently called that period "the gonzo years," and it's an entirely appropriate title. The stories being published by Marvel and in the very earliest tie-in novels by Brian Daley and Alan Dead Foster were colorful, freewheeling, frequently weird, sometimes awe-inspiring, and most of all, they were fun. (I think part of the reason I responded so positively to the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie is because I saw in it the same pleasingly anarchic sensibilities as the early era of Star Wars.)
It makes me happy that somebody at Disney remembers "the gonzo years" and was able to honor them even in a small way.
And it makes me even happier that Jaxxon is now officially canon…
However, on a slightly grumpier note, I thought the last line of this short, the one about telling Han that Leia is a keeper, was a real heartbreaker considering what we learn about them in The Force Awakens. Han and Leia not being together, or at least not getting back together, was one of the many reasons I didn't like that movie, and one of the many fundamental decisions underpinning the sequel trilogy that I disagree with. But that's another entry…


Although freelance in design it might well have been found somewhere near the Somerset and Devon borders. Featuring a twin track main line loop, through station, industrial area and heritage branch line there is always something to be seen moving. Although diesel traction is the mainstay of the BR line, steam trains can be seen on the heritage section.
Contact cvmrc@hotmail.co.uk to book this layout for your exhibition.
A cluster of dwellings on the edge of Extown.


Many motor vehicle accidents occur annually involving B.C. residents who are out of the province. ICBC covers qualifying residents who are anywhere in Canada or the United States, including in Alaska and Hawaii, but not outside of Canada or the U.S., including Mexico. It is important to review your accident insurance coverage prior to leaving B.C., however, as you may need additional insurance protections depending on where you are going, the reason for travelling and how long or how frequently you will be out of B.C.. If you have an accident while out of B.C., you will need to report it to ICBC's Dial-A-Claim at 1-800-910-4222 anywhere in Canada or the U.S., including Alaska and Hawaii.
To qualify for accident coverage, ICBC requires that you be a B.C. resident and that your driver's licence and insurance policy be current and in good standing. Some other conditions apply, such as limits on how long you are out of the province. To be considered a B.C. resident you must have a permanent B.C. residence, immediate family, a bank account, registered vehicles or assets and/or provincial taxes paid in B.C., even if you have never worked in B.C. and work outside the province. If you are away when your licence or insurance is up for renewal, you can renew up to six months in advance or while you are away. However, you do not have coverage from ICBC if an accident occurs after your insurance expires or is cancelled or if you are away for the entire length of the insurance policy.
Some jurisdictions may require you to register your licence or your vehicle there if you are residing or visiting, even if you are away during a period on vacation. If your vehicle is in the U.S. for the entire length of your insurance policy, you have to register, license and insure your vehicle there. If you are outside Canada and the U.S. for more than 30 continuous days, you may be able to obtain a refund of the ICBC Autoplan premium you are required to pay.
If your collision occurs while you are travelling for pleasure, then ICBC coverages will apply. If you had an accident while travelling for business, then regulatory rules where you are working may apply and the business may be responsible to provide insurance coverage. Special rules may apply if you are a regular commuter who works out of province or in the U.S. If you are mixing vacation travel with business, it is best to check with ICBC in advance to determine if additional insurance is required.
If you get into an accident with a rental vehicle, then ICBC pays accident benefits as part of Autoplan insurance to the extent that you are not covered by other insurance. Additional rental vehicle coverage applies if you bought Roadside Plus or Roadstar or additional insurance from a private auto insurer in B.C. or through the rental vehicle company. Where there are multiple policies, ICBC requires that you exhaust other insurance first before they will pay an accident claim.
ICBC accident benefits may apply if you have a collision with a personal vehicle you do not own and are not insured under (e.g., you borrow a friend's car while visiting Florida) to the extent that insurance on the vehicle is insufficient to cover the claim. For example, if the Florida liability coverage is only $15,000 per motorist, while in B.C. the minimum liability coverage is $200,000, then you may be able to claim the difference through ICBC. You may be covered by your friend's insurance, however, if permission was provided and the purpose was solely for pleasure. For travel protection insurance coverage under Roadside Plus or Roadstar (e.g., coverage to stay at a hotel while getting medical treatment), then the trip must be no longer than 30 days.
If you have an out of province accident where you were injured, consideration needs to be given to whether there are legal advantages to proceeding with a tort claim in one jurisdiction or another. Outside B.C. there may be legislated caps on general damages for minor injuries, which do not apply in B.C.; this makes it more beneficial to proceed with the claim in B.C., though a challenge may or may not be successful in dismissing the claim on the grounds that court does not have jurisdiction.
Substantial differences can exist for coverage between jurisdictions respecting the amount of third party liability insurance a motor vehicle owner or driver is required to carry. The Basic ICBC Autoplan insurance provides up to $1,000,000 of Underinsured Motorist Protection (UMP) for injury or death caused by a motorist who has insufficient insurance to pay for claims. To obtain more coverage, excess UMP can be purchased through ICBC or private insurance to raise UMP coverage to $2,000,000. Some courts in jurisdictions outside B.C. will order an insurer to pay B.C. limits even when the suit is commenced outside the province (i.e., inverse liability protection). You may benefit if you purchased extra insurance, even if the accident was not your fault.
If you are at fault, it is also beneficial if you have excess insurance coverage as claim settlements in some jurisdictions tend to be higher than others. Specifically, claim settlements tend to be higher in the U.S. as there is no limit set for non-pecuniary damages in the U.S. like there is in Canada. If you are found at fault and are sued, the higher third party liability insurance provides protection.
If there is a conflict between the B.C. laws and the laws where your accident occurs, then the legal jurisdiction that applies is that of the location of the accident. With this in mind, time sensitivity needs to be considered where a shorter limitation period exists.
Obtaining compensation for an auto accident through ICBC can be complicated if the accident occurred outside B.C. Your lawyer will have the expertise to decide how to proceed, knowing that the jurisdiction issue for the accident benefits claim and the tort claim is considered separately. At Taylor and Blair Personal Injury Lawyers in Vancouver we are ICBC accident lawyers who have experience out of province accidents. Call us for help at 604-737-6900.


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Slayage: Reflections →
Slayage
So it's been three days of Slayage, with one day left to go, and the experience has been amazing. There's something pretty singular about attending an academic conference where everyone is intimately familiar with the core texts. Normally, the conference experience, while often rewarding, tends to have a lot of papers and presentations that are quite simply mind-numbingly boring. Not because they're banal or poorly written/presented (though there are those), but because the balance of what people are writing on is pretty far out of your wheelhouse, or so extremely specialized that it simply has no relevance to you. Which is not to say such papers cannot be valuable–I have learned a great deal from papers on topics I never would have read were they not on a panel I was attending–just that in many cases, you find yourself playing catch-up, trying to grasp the substance of a topic with which you are unfamiliar.
The flip side of this unfamiliarity is the need, in writing your own conference paper, to include a certain amount of exposition: you need to be cognizant of the people in the room who know nothing about your topic.
But at a conference like Slayage, everyone knows everything. This is so incredibly liberating: while writing an early draft of my paper, I suddenly realized "Wait … I don't need to outline the main plot points of The Cabin in the Woods … everyone there will have seen it!" And in some cases, know it far better than me, in spite of the fact that I watched it at least ten times through in preparing my paper.
As an aside: the building in which many of the presentations have been scheduled has an elevator that dings when its doors close … and that ding is pretty much identical to the elevators in Cabin just before they unleash ALL THE MONSTERS. I swear to you, after multiple viewings of this film, when I heard that ding the first time I nearly wet myself.
Ahem. Anyway, the point is that it's a pretty remarkable experience to be in the company of many, many very intelligent people who are all nerding out about the same set of texts in an extremely intelligent manner. It's what I imagine conferences must be like for James Joyce or Milton scholars, only less antagonistic. The closest I've come to an argument with anyone here was politely disagreeing with someone who thought that Lovecraft was just a throwaway gesture in The Cabin in the Woods.
Speaking of … I will post again tomorrow with pictures and a fuller discussion of the conference, but for now, as promised, here is my conference paper in full. Replete with many slides, because I went to the Linda Hutcheon School of Conference Presentations, which dictates that you must distract you audience from your paper's flaws with pretty pictures.
My paper today emerges from a broader research project that looks at a handful of contemporary fantasists who employ this genre rooted in magic and the supernatural—and which in such defining texts as The Lord of the Rings and the Narnia Chronicles is overtly religious—to articulate a specifically secular and humanist world-view. I am looking at, among others, George R.R. Martin, Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett, Richard K. Morgan, and Lev Grossman … and to this lineup, Joss Whedon is an obvious addition. What I'm arguing today is that, in The Cabin in the Woods, Whedon proceeds from an identifiably Lovecraftian mythos, rewriting it to stage a confrontation between the absolute unreason of Lovecraftian gods and the instrumental rationality of technocratic conspiracy—and in that confrontation critiquing instrumentality of both hues and asserting a humanist argument that is consonant with almost all his previous and subsequent work.
Before I start, three quick caveats: first, I don't mention Drew Goddard. Whedon and Goddard collaborated on The Cabin in the Woods, but I just talk about Whedon here—so when you hear me say "Whedon" in relation to Cabin, please imagine "and Goddard" following in parentheses. Second, I'm using the terms science, technology, empiricism, reason, and rationality more or less interchangeably to mean "instrumental reason." I just didn't want to have to say "instrumental reason" repeatedly. And finally, my definition of humanism here is, by design, very loose; one of the blue-sky goals of this research is to reclaim the concept of humanism from the arid positivism of the New Atheists, and recuperate it from its savaging during the ascendancy of poststructuralism. It's early days yet, however, so my conception of the humanism I want to champion is still evolving.
There is a video on YouTube of Joss Whedon delivering a speech upon accepting the Harvard Humanist Society's Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award in Cultural Humanism. His speech is classic Whedon: a mix of disarmingly irreverent humour and passionate advocacy, culminating in his assertion that "Faith in God means believing absolutely in something with no proof whatsoever. Faith in humanity means believing absolutely in something with a huge amount of proof to the contrary. We are the true believers;" true believers who, he continues, are perfectly able to "codify our moral structure, without the sky bully looking down on us telling us what to do." What stood out for me when I first watched this speech was the apparent contradiction of Whedon's avowed atheism and that fact that the television series that made his reputation and career is not only lousy with sky bullies, but effectively predicated on the existence of a supernatural order that includes the Christian god (and, as we learn in season six, heaven). Far from being a contradiction, however, this tension is exemplary of how in Buffy the Vampire Slayer—and just about everything else he has created—Whedon consistently pits human and humanist agency against a seemingly omniscient, omnipresent collective, both of the supernatural variety (Wolfram and Hart, the First Evil), and the technocratic (the Alliance in Firefly, the Rossum Corporation in Dollhouse).
The Cabin in the Woods is thus an interesting example, insofar as it juxtaposes the malevolent mystical collective and the conspiratorial, technocratic one. At first blush the film appears to be a retread of elements from season four of Buffy—the massive underground military operation with a paddock full of supernatural monsters, which ultimately escape with dire consequences—except that where the Initiative attempts to weaponize the supernatural, the Technicians of Cabin are in abject submission to it, employing their hyper-advanced technology in the name of carrying out a primeval blood sacrifice. To frame it more abstractly, the film merges the genres of Lovecraftian horror with that of late-twentieth century conspiracy theory.
Top: The Initiative, Buffy season four. Bottom: The Technicians' bunker in The Cabin in the Woods
To address the Lovecraftian dimension first: Stephen King once famously characterized H.P. Lovecraft as twentieth-century horror's "dark and baroque prince." China Mieville, while granting the spirit of this praise, amends it slightly to account for "the canonical nature of Lovecraft's texts, the awed scholasticism with which his followers discuss his cosmology, and the endless recursion of his ideas and his aesthetics by the faithful" (xi). Rather than being horror's prince, Mieville says, Lovecraft is "horror's pope."
Considering Lovecraft's vehement and vitriolic atheism, it is dubious whether he would have appreciated that moniker; on the other hand, despite his atheism, Lovecraft's fiction articulates a mythos that is heir to the American religious visionary tradition. As Edward Ingebretsen observes, "Lovecraft writes in the traditional cadences of religious discourses" (133) that are particularly reminiscent of such fire-and-brimstone sermons as Jonathan Edwards' "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," which notoriously centers on the image of God dangling Man by the ankles over the fires of Hell. Repeatedly, Lovecraft posits a vast and ineffable cosmos populated by godlike beings beyond the ken of humanity. He opens his story "The Call of Cthulhu," arguably the defining text of his mythos, with the following cheerful observation:
A key element I'll be returning to here is the assertion of science's absolute limitation, its helplessness in the face of those black seas of infinity. All it can serve to do is reveal to us the truly horrifying nature of existence, at which point our choices are madness or the rejection of the empiricism that brought us to this traumatizing revelation. Lovecraft's fiction stages accidental encounters between individuals and these "horrifying vistas," which are not the abyss of the infinite itself, but its symbolic manifestation in such Old Gods as Dagon or Cthulhu. Human existence in Lovecraft's work is a thin scrim of ignorance in time and space, microbially insignificant next to the Old Gods.
This figuration of vast and nigh-infinite power is essentially religious in nature—or would be but for Lovecraft's nihilistic inversion, which situates humanity not as the focus, product, or creation of the divine, but rather as utterly incidental to it: fire and brimstone without the chance of personal salvation. Indeed, in his book The Roots of Horror in the Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft, Barton Levi St. Armand observes that Lovecraft articulates a bone-deep Calvinism, with its "close-reasoning logic and unyielding determinism" but without Calvinism's "metaphysical superstructure"—or in other words, the suffering and torment of the sinner's life without the ultimate meaning attached to either salvation or damnation."What we are left with in Lovecraft," he asserts, "is thus a full-fledged cosmic consciousness, without any overt religious dimension … It is, in turn, the breaking of these natural laws of time and space that produces the sublime emotions of cosmic terror that characterizes his tales" (31-32). And whatever congress his characters do have with Cthulhu or any of the other Old Gods, the result is madness unto death—or, as in the case of the story "The Shadow over Innsmouth," a monstrous transformation that itself comprises metaphorical madness. As Ingebretsen observes, Lovecraft adopts but distorts the American visionary tradition as represented by the Mathers or Jonathan Edwards,for if "Edwards implied that cosmic terror resulted from the too-attentive love of deity, Lovecraft situates terror in the indifference of [the] malignity of the cosmos" (118). China Mieville makes a similar argument, stating that Lovecraft does in fact see "the awesome as immanent in the quotidian" just as any religiously devout individual might, but for him and his characters "there is little ecstasy there: his is a bad numinous" (xiii).
It is not difficult to discern a distinctly Lovecraftian mythos in Buffy the Vampire Slayer: the idea that humanity is adrift among multiple planes of existence, most of which are populated by demonic forces that, if they think of humanity at all, think of it as a tasty snack; and an unbroken slayer lineage that goes back to Neolithic times, which was itself first created to defend humanity from the demons that pre-existed them. This mythos was expanded as the series progressed, explored more fully in later seasons and in Angel (never more pointedly perhaps than in the death of Fred at the hands of the Old God Illyria, whose contempt for humanity and her characterization of them as "the muck at [my] feet" and "the ooze that eats itself" strongly echoes Lovecraft's assertion of humanity's infinitesimal insignificance). The Cabin in the Woods alludes to Lovecraft's mythos even more overtly: humanity is at the mercy of the Ancient Ones, gods who (like Cthulhu) slumber beneath the earth, known only to the small set of secret societies that worship them.
Illyria.
Cabin is no mere Lovecraft knockoff, however: Whedon deploys the Lovecraftian frame in an almost Miltonic manner, which is to say that it functions as a key to all mythologies, with seemingly every single horror movie trope both encompassed within, and indeed the product of, this broader mythos.
"They're like something from a nightmare," says new recruit Truman as he looks on their panoptical surveillance screens at the Buckners, the zombified pain-worshipping backwoods idiots whom Dana has inadvertently summoned. "They're something nightmares are from," Wendy Lin corrects him gently. "Everything in our stable is a remnant of the old world. Courtesy of … you-know-who." Wendy's statement echoes the way in which Lovecraft's Old Gods—specifically Cthulhu in "The Call of Cthulhu"—inflect and infect the dreams of humanity. In Lovecraft's mythos, the Old Gods incite madness and ecstatic worship even in their sleep, giving rise to "Cthulhu cults" in the backwaters of the world, whose devotees are described as an "indescribable horde of human abnormality" (152).
In The Cabin in the Woods, Lovecraft shares the stage however with the familiar (and it seems, at times, inescapable) trope of conspiracy. The Technicians play the role of the top-secret agency with omniscient surveillance capabilities and the seemingly infallible ability to manipulate and control unwitting victims. Situating them as adjunct to the Ancient Ones provides the film with a dual layer of critique: first and most obviously of the horror genre itself; but in juxtaposing the trope of conspiracy with that of an ancient, malevolent supernatural power, it at once draws out and negates conspiracy's own principal symbolic force, which is the suggestion of divine or godlike powers.
To a certain extent, conspiracy as a trope has always functioned as a form of perverse theism, but that dimension became increasingly striking in the second half of the twentieth century. Don DeLillo, America's veritable godfather of conspiracy and paranoia calls it "the new faith" (28). Scott Sanders similarly declares, "God is the original conspiracy theory," and goes on to say that the conspiratorial world is one "governed by shadowy figures whose powers approach omniscience and omnipotence" (177). In Totem and Taboo, Sigmund Freud characterizes religion as essentially conspiracist in origin, comparing the figure the paranoiac to primitive societies who ascribe to their god-king persecutory powers of weather and plague; he makes an identical argument in Psychopathology of Everyday Life. And sociologist Karl Popper suggests that "the conspiracy theory of society" is simply the displacement of "a belief in gods whose whims and wills rule everything" onto the whims and wills of powerful organizations:
Hence, conspiracy narratives themselves frequently have something of the bad numinous at their center, manifesting symbolically as the suggestion of continuity between the technological present and a magical past—which functions more broadly to rewrite history as conspiracy, with the present-day conspirators heir to their ancient predecessors. Or to quote Fredric Jameson from The Geopolitical Aesthetic, the symbolic force of conspiracy narratives "draws not on the advanced or futuristic technology of the contemporary media so much as from their endowment with an archaic past" (17).
And here is where I want to go back to Lovecraft's implied characterization of the numinous and science as different in kind rather than degree. Much fantasy, especially urban fantasy, either implicitly or explicitly depicts science and magic as on a continuum: in a variation on the old adage that a sufficiently advanced technology must appear as magic, the implication is that technology has the capacity to explain and replicate magic. Season four of Buffy is essentially an extended meditation on this principle.
Angel approaches it from a slightly different perspective, with our growing knowledge of Wolfram and Hart's inner workings: the "legalization" (if you like) of the supernatural functions similarly to rationalize and domesticate the numinous. (My favourite depiction of this is the change in season five's opening credits, in which the musical punctuation changes from the image of badass Angel kicking in a door to harassed Angel snapping shut a legal brief).
It is here that The Cabin in the Woods offers a subtle but substantive shift: the film appears to establish this same continuum between the empirical and supernatural, which would be doubly consonant with the trope of conspiracy as a form of displaced theism. The shift however is that the Technicians' "archaic past" is not continuous with divine power but adjacent to it. The conspiracy evolved as subsidiary: as already mentioned, it is explicitly established as being in the service of an extant (albeit secret) theism. There is no hint of the Initiative here aside from cosmetic similarities. The Technicians do not attempt to domesticate their stable of monsters or weaponize them. The climactic slaughter that unfolds when Marty "purges" the system is superficially similar to what ultimately happens to the Initiative; but while the Initiative's demise is an obvious allegory for the dangers of hubristically pursuing weapons technology, Marty quite literally unleashes hell.
The significance of The Cabin in the Woods' shift from portraying science and magic as continuous, to this absolute disjunction between them, is not to allegorize the incommensurability between instrumental reason and the numinous, but to ironically collapse them into the same imaginative space, to show reason's thralldom to unreason not as unnatural but somehow inevitable. If the film allegorizes anything, it is that dimension of the dialectic of Enlightenment that points to how instrumental reason taken to an extreme—in effect, becoming a religion in and of itself—produces the madness of unreason. The French Revolution devolves into the Terror, exclusionary understandings of humanism facilitate race theory and slavery, the Nazis' dictatorial technocracy produces the Holocaust, blind pursuit of quantum physics gives us Hiroshima. Perhaps it seems odd, and even perhaps offensive, to discuss a parodic genre film in these terms, but I would argue that among the many, many reasons to love the work of Joss Whedon, one of the most prominent is the fundamental antipathy and suspicion that animates all he does: antipathy to and suspicion of instrumentality, of autocratic intervention, of the collective's need to impose its will on the village.
The Cabin in the Woods does not end happily, but it ends with an inescapably humanist cri de coeur: Marty and Dana being literally satanic (see, there's Joss being Miltonic again) as they declare non servium, and assert what agency they have in the face of the forces arrayed against them. The obvious argument against my claim here is that "um … they kind of killed the whole world with their petulance, there." But I would suggest that the film's overarching thesis is that it wasn't Marty and Dana that brought doom—it was the ossification of instrumental reason in the service of madness. Whedon may employ Lovecraft as a foundational basis for much of his work, but he invariably asserts this elementally humanist defiance in its face, and says to both technocracy and religion "a plague on both your houses."
DeLillo, Don. "American Blood." Rolling Stone 8 Dec. 1983: 21-28, 74.
Freud, Sigmund. Totem and Taboo: Resemblances Between the Psychic Lives of Savages and Neurotics. Trans A.A. Brill. New York: Moffat, Yard, &co. 1918.
—. Psychopathology of Everyday Life. Trans. A. A. Brill. London: Ernest Benn, 1948.
Ingebretsen, Edward. Maps of Heaven, Maps of Hell: Religious Terror as Memory from the Puritans to Stephen King. New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1996.
Jameson, Fredric. The Geopolitical Aesthetic: Cinema and Space in the World System. Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 1992.
Lovecraft, H.P. The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories. Ed. S.T. Joshi. New York: Penguin, 1999.
Mieville, China. "Introduction." At the Mountains of Madness. New York: Modern Library, 2005. xi-xxv.
Popper, Karl R. Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. New York: Routledge, 1963.
Sanders, Scott. "Pynchon's Paranoid History." Mindful Pleasures: Essays on Thomas Pynchon. Eds. George Levine and David Leverenz. Boston: Little, Brown & Co, 1976. 139-59.
St. Armand, Barton Levi. The Roots of Horror in the Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft. New York: Dragon Press, 1977.
Filed under film, what I'm watching
One response to "Slayage"
Lynette Adams
Hearing that elevator ding must have been for you what that time the phone rang just as the credits rolled on The Ring was for me.


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Happy London Pride!
It's been raining and there have been car bombs in London but I hope that doesn't affect the day.
And here's why it's still important:
The Observer, Coming out of the dark ages
"For most people the Sixties was a time of sexual awakening and experimentation. But it wasn't until 1967 that gay and bisexual men could share that freedom. On the 40th anniversary of the decriminalisation of homosexuality, we revisit the appallingly repressive atmosphere of the Fifties and Sixties that ruined lives, destroyed reputations and finally sparked a campaign for change"
The situation might have changed in the UK – this has been the summer of Civil Partnerships – but Pride marches are attacked in Moscow, Riga and gay rights are still a dream in many places around the world.