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By Posted on October 19, 2011 October 17, 2011
A Biff Bam Pop! Exclusive Interview: JW Ward talks with The Unwritten's Mike Carey Part Two
If you missed part one of the Biff Bam Pop! exclusive interview with Mike Carey, writer of the Felix Castor novels, X-Men: Legacy and Vertigo's Lucifer, you missed quite a treat. To catch up, click here.
In part two, Mike Carey describes the evolution of his latest Vertigo series The Unwritten, his creative process and what else is coming from him in the very near future.
Oh, and spoilers on. Better safe than sorry…
Biff Bam Pop!: A Vertigo series you've been working on of late is The Unwritten. How'd you come up with that concept?
Mike Carey: I'd worked with Peter Gross on Lucifer for the better part of seven years. He came on board with issue #5 on that book and was on it for the whole of the rest of the run. It's probably the single most rewarding relationship I've had with an artist, or one of two, the other one being Mike Perkins. Both guys I keep on coming back to again and again because we just click.
A year before Lucifer wound up, we knew where we were going with it and wanted to get something else going at Vertigo. We must have pitched two or three dozen different ideas and nothing would stick, I don't know why, we just had a bad run. He went his way for a while, did the American Jesus stuff with Mark Millar. I went my way and did Crossing Midnight with Jim Fern, but we kept on talking. We met up at San Diego one year and Pornsak Pichetshote was the Vertigo editor, and we started talking about the idea that became The Unwritten. It was something completely different at that stage, but Pornsak said as we were all saying goodbye, "Don't let this conversation stop. When you get back to the U.K., let's carry on talking."
That idea eventually became The Unwritten, but it was a very torturous and strange process. It originally started out as two separate ideas that we were talking about and then they dovetailed. Mine was about the golden trumpet, the idea of a musical instrument that could change reality. There's something in Hindu mythology that does this, a trumpet that sounds when one age of the world ends and the next one begins. Peter's idea was about following one character's story both in reality and in the fiction; two different versions of their life. We kind of put them together, then added the magic ingredient, Christopher Milne, or Christopher Robin from the Winnie the Pooh books – I'd been looking at an online discussion of his autobiography. All those things together somehow became the book.
BBP: One of my favourite issues was issue 11, the "Willowbank Tales," a great done-in-one story. Is Winnie the Pooh the direct inspiration for that one?
MC: We'd always said we wanted to do a Winnie the Pooh story. We knew we couldn't because it's a Disney property and we they would have sued our asses off to kingdom come. So we had to do it in disguise. The idea of putting Pauly Bruckner, Mr. Bun, into that story came quite late. When I was finally trying to work up a story set in a kiddie fiction universe, I thought, "What's the most unlikely character you could put into that scenario?" Thus Pauly Bruckner was born.
As we talked about Gaudium earlier, about how he started out as a plot function and became a character, Mr. Bun was the same. We conceived him in relation to that one issue, but then we decided that story was worth returning to. He comes back in issue #24, and we're going to do an issue based on him probably in the next few months, and there's going to be an arc where him and Tom are going to be interacting in a different way. It was just an idea that seemed to have legs, so he's become a bigger part of the ongoing story. We were also very fortunate to have Kurt Huggins and Zelda Devon doing finishes on that issue. Peter says what we're doing on The Unwritten is like jazz comics. He does layouts for every single page, but on a lot of the issues we get other people in to do finishes. It's like his style, but seen through all these layers and permutations of other people. I think what Kurt and Zelda did over Peter's roughs in that issue was utterly phenomenal. It looks like the illustrations for an Alison Uttley or Beatrix Potter book. It's got that wonderful innocence and simplicity about it, but then there's this incongruous element thrown in there.
BBP: When it comes to the question of process, how do you approach creating a story?
MC: I guess I work top-down, which is probably the way that most people do it. I start out with whatever the seed of the story is, it might be a plot concept or character concept. For the (Felix) Castor novels, the character of Castor comes first. The idea of having an exorcist, but an exorcist who is like a Raymond Chandler private detective, who's in it for the money. He's not a man of spiritual faith, but just a guy who's got the gift and makes people pay for the gift, eking out a not particularly good living on the mean streets. With The Unwritten, it's the Christopher Robin idea of a guy who's famous on someone else's terms. With Lucifer, in some ways it was to carry on the story from The Sandman, but the cardinal idea that became the book was Lucifer playing God, creating his own cosmos and the situations that would put him in.
So you start with whatever that bare bones idea is, and you build it up into a few paragraphs of text and you would throw that at an editor and say, "What do you think?" If they like it, they'll ask you to elaborate on it. Most of my initial pitches are a side or two sides (of paper) at most. Either you'll get approval at that stage, or more likely, you'll be told to work that up to a full page with more structural and character arc information, which is the sort of stuff you'd be thinking about anyway, especially the character arcs. If I do this, who are the people and what's going to happen to them? Where are they at the beginning of the story and at the end of the story? Most stories stand or fall by the concepts and the character development. All of that stuff is in my head at a very early stage. And then after that…you know The Shawshank Redemption? You know that scene where Red, after getting out (from prison), is working in a supermarket and he asks his employer for permission to use the toilet. The manager is a bit appalled and tells him he doesn't have to ask permission, but Red's been in jail for years and always had to ask permission and can't go without. I'm like that guy. I'll do obsessively detailed plans, scene breakdowns, even if the editor hasn't asked to see them. I got into that habit with Shelly, on Lucifer, because she always insisted on seeing those breakdowns and she would actually argue with me about it. "Do you need three pages for that scene? Maybe you can put a splash in here. Maybe you should expand this." Now I need to go through that stage of budgeting pages or if it's a novel, just budgeting chapters. It helps, even if you never stick the plan, it's great to have it. It's there when you need it, and when you don't, you can ditch it.
BBP: I know Wikipedia isn't always to be believed, but your bibliography over there lists over three text pages of the work you've done. No one can accuse you of suffering from writer's block, but do you ever suffer from it?
MC: I never have. I have good days and bad days. I have unproductive days. It's not like writer's block. Certain times, you've got to manoeuvre yourself into position to start a project or get back to a project. I'm finding with novels, for example, I'll be working on a novel for a couple of weeks and then I've got to do a comic because the deadline is right now. So I stop and I write the comic strip. I can't always go straight back to the novel. I'll have to poodle around for a morning or sometimes for a whole day, just re-reading what I've already done, making endless cups of coffee, looking out the window and playing '80s games on the Sega Mega Drive, just until something clicks again and you're in the right mindset and you can get back to work. It's not like writer's block, it's a fallow period before you can get busy again. For a while, I used to feel really guilty about that, and then I realized that actually it's part of the process. Something's happening inside my head that needs the time. That's my excuse anyway <laughs>.
BBP: What can your fans expect from you in the future?
MC: I've been working on a thriller, kind of, which is pseudonymous. It's not a Mike Carey book, it's somebody else. That's just come out in the U.K., and that was done as an experiment and a complete change of mood. The other thing that I've been doing that I'm very proud of and excited by is Steel Seraglio. The Canadian publisher, ChiZine, one of the biggest reasons why I'm here this weekend, have commissioned this novel that I've co-written with my wife, Linda and our daughter, Louise. It's a fantasy novel in an Arabian Nights mould. It's set in an ancient Arabian city-state, it's written as a suite of short stories that become a novel. It's the adventures of a group of concubines that are cast out from their city and try to re-take it as an army. We've had massive fun with that book. It was an astonishing thing to do to collaborate with two other writers and produce something that we've tried to harmonize in one voice. That comes out next spring from ChiZine.
I'm going to write the sixth Castor novel next year, which has been commissioned for ages and I just haven't managed to get around to, but that's a very important thing that I'll be doing shortly. The Unwritten carries on, and for the next five months we're going bimonthly. We're having the regular issues and we're going to have a one-off issue accompany each of the regular issues. We'll get to tell five of those little free-standing stories, getting the backstory of characters like Pullman, Madame Rausch and Wilson-Taylor; people we've met in the main narrative but haven't always been able to go into a lot of detail about their past. We sold Karen (Berger, Vertigo's Editor-in-Chief) on these "0.5" issues, #31.5, #32.5 and so on. In some ways, those one-offs are the most fun thing to do.
BBP: Mike, thanks so much for coming to Toronto and for all the great work you do.
MC: Thanks! It's been a real pleasure to talk.
Categories: comics, General, interview, jw wardTags: Chizine, Lucifer, Marvel Comics Felix Castor, Mike Carey, Sandman, The Unwritten, Toronto Specfic Colloquium, Vertigo
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// source: google/monitoring/v3/alert_service.proto

package com.google.monitoring.v3;

public interface GetAlertPolicyRequestOrBuilder extends
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  /**
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   * The alerting policy to retrieve. The format is
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   *

   *
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  java.lang.String getName();
  /**
   *

   * The alerting policy to retrieve. The format is
   *     projects/[PROJECT_ID]/alertPolicies/[ALERT_POLICY_ID]
   *

   *
   * string name = 3;
   */
  com.google.protobuf.ByteString
      getNameBytes();
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


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Home › News › Anne Baker, MBE
Anne Baker, MBE
by Michael Ford — last modified 08 Jan, 2021 08:42 PM
In the New Year's Honours, Anne Baker of Harnham has been awarded the MBE for her fundraising work for charity. Now aged 106, she has been involved in raising money for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) for over 50 years.
Listen to a radio interview here.
For over 30 years she has hosted a coffee morning at her home in Harnham. This event is more like a fete, with stalls, a raffle and, of course, coffee, cakes and biscuits. She has been greatly helped in this by the Salisbury Committee of the NSPCC, and in particular her neighbour, Sheril Witt. In recent years these events have raised over £1000 a year for the charity.
But, in 2020, such gatherings were impossible because of the restrictions resulting from Covid-19 so, undeterred, she set about raising the money online. Anne recorded an appeal for funds on a JustGiving site, advised her friends and family, and the money started rolling in from as far afield as Austria, the United States and Canada. Recording thanks and sending out more appeals resulted in over £4000 being raised.
Born before the First World War, Anne remembers the excitement at the end of that war, and then being nursed after catching the Spanish Flu, a pandemic reminiscent of the one today.
Going to Oxford University, she gained her BA and a lifelong interest in History. After marrying Valentine, Anne brought up 5 children and then embarked on a literary career. She researched and wrote 4 historical books.
She adores children and now has grandchildren, great grandchildren and even her first great great grandchild.
Anne said:
"It was a great, great surprise and I'm very honoured indeed to have such a thing!"
Asked why the NSPCC meant so much to her, she replied:
"I'm very fond of children, and I think they're our future, you see - and I felt the NSPCC were really good about children."
Listen to the whole interview here.
During this lockdown, people in our Diocese have been doing amazing things and we want to celebrate them. From clergy and teachers to our young people and older congregation members - and everyone in between - we have been living out our values. So we want you to tell us about your Lockdown Heroes, inspirational people who have taken a lead, transforming lives and communities, collaborating with others, visibly living out their Christian faith. Please email 200-300 words and nice photo(s) to comms@salisbury.anglican.org.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Home News Paytm Mall hit a cashback fraud of Rs 5-10 crore
Paytm Mall hit a cashback fraud of Rs 5-10 crore
Paytm Mall has been hit with a major cashback fraud.
By Gadget Bridge Bureau
Paytm Mall has said that it has been hit with a cashback fraud in the range of Rs 5-10 crore. According to a company spokesperson, the fraud got detected with the use of a tool that Paytm developed in partnership with EY, which is a global professional services firm that was earlier known as Ernst and Young.
He also said that Paytm conducted a deeper audit after it found out that some of the smaller sellers were getting a large percentage of cashbacks offered at Paytm Mall. The audit also revealed that a number of employees had actually colluded with some junior employees of the company to earn the cashbacks.
The spokesperson told IANS that the fraud "is in the range of Rs 5-10 crore."
We should mention that Paytm Mall is a brainchild of Paytm's founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma. The platform's losses have been increasing and in the financial year 2018, Paytm Mall posted a loss of Rs 1,800 crore on revenue of Rs 774 crore.
In addition to this, Forrester Research's findings said that the market share of Paytm Mall fell from 5.6% in 2017 to 3% in 2018.
In a statement, Srinivas Mothey, Senior Vice President – Paytm Mall, said, "Our partnership with E&Y will help benchmark with global best practices as we build a technology-driven fraud prevention system to scale our operations. Our teams continue to work closely with E&Y to share our learnings and insights. We are committed to building a trusted commerce platform and will take strict action wherever needed."
We should mention that Paytm Mall has admin, finance, business operations team and various other support functions. Its business operations team works closely with partnered merchants to plan and execute cashback offers and promotions. This is exactly what leaves scope for collusion.
Paytm Mall has also said, "The EY partnership will also undertake audit and fraud prevention using both human and Artificial Intelligence (AI)."
Paytm Mall has managed to raise over $650 million from Alibaba, Softbank and SAIF Partners, but it lags behind Flipkart and Amazon in terms of market share.
paytm mall
Gadget Bridge Bureauhttps://gadgetbridge.com
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CFLeads - Community Foundations Leading Change
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Home > Going All In > Insisting on Racial Equity
Insisting on Racial Equity
Going All In
Amplifying Community Voice
Influencing Policy & Systems
Why it matters What we're finding What you can do
By 2050, people of color will become the majority in the United States. A diverse, multicultural workforce will be a boon to our economy—increasing the GDP by up to 6 percent by 2028 and by up to $8 trillion by 2050—if we can ensure widespread equity and shared prosperity for all. But currently, in nearly every measure of well-being—income, health, education, safety—the outcomes for people of color are far worse than those for White people.
There is significant evidence that these inequities are the result of systems, policies and practices that have created barriers to prosperity for people of color. Two examples include:
The GI Bill: A discriminatory implementation excluded many African Americans from WWII veterans' benefits
Redlining: Excluded African Americans and other people of color from the home mortgage market, restricting them to segregated communities with limited resources, under-financed schools and insufficient social services
These policies and practices created a more challenging path to higher education which, combined with ongoing discrimination in hiring and housing, has limited the creation of generational wealth for people of color across the country.
The impacts of these policies are clear today:
71% of White families owned homes in 2017, compared to only 46% of families of color.1
The median net worth of households in 2016 was $171,000 for White people, but only $21,000 for Latinxs and $17,000 for Black people.2
The air pollution exposure index for people of color is 15 points higher than the index for White people, and the index for Black people is 19 points higher.3
The killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in May 2020 has shone a global spotlight on the racism that exists in our systems and sparked a massive social justice movement. An estimated 15 to 26 million people participated in protests following the deaths of George Floyd and other unarmed Black people,4 and support for the Black Lives Matter movement has increased significantly.5
Insisting on racial equity matters to community foundations because our communities are increasingly diverse, and the persistent racial inequities that exist across the country call for race-conscious strategies that eliminate barriers and build a stronger society for all. Community foundations across the country are speaking out against racial injustices and are acknowledging their role and responsibility in making their communities more equitable places where all can participate and prosper.
Webinar: Insisting on Racial Equity
What we're finding
Community foundations are reorienting around racial equity, taking a leadership role, and operationalizing equity internally.
Reorienting Around Racial Equity
Our survey found that the overwhelming majority (82%) of community foundation leaders agreed that economic outcomes are increasingly inequitable. An even higher percentage (92%) believe that economic outcomes, along with social and health outcomes, vary by race. Eighty-one percent agreed that demographic changes have a significant impact in their communities, and 57% said these changes affect their work "a fair amount" or "a great deal."
Percent of survey respondents agreeing with each of the following statements
Source: Candid
Community foundations are responding by re-shaping their missions and organizational strategies around racial equity. In 2016, the San Francisco Foundation doubled down on its longstanding commitment to social justice by focusing its entire program strategy on racial equity and economic inclusion. The Brooklyn Community Foundation developed a Racial Justice Lens to ensure that the Foundation considers race as it analyzes problems, looks for solutions, and defines success in its grantmaking, governance, and advocacy.
In our survey, several community foundations affirmed that changing demographics in the communities they serve prompted them to become more involved in racial equity issues. The West Central Initiative, serving nine rural counties in Minnesota, is starting to initiate more diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts, partly in response to the growing racial and ethnic diversity of its communities. The Maine Community Foundation has made racial equity one of its strategic goals, calling people of color a growing, important and vital resource for the state.
Some community foundations, such as the Seattle Foundation, the Jackson Community Foundation in Michigan and the Waco Foundation in Texas, have been engaged in internal equity work for some time, participating in CFLeads' Equity Network to further their progress with support from their peers. Others have recently joined the CFLeads' Economic Mobility Action Network, applying a racial equity lens to address economic mobility issues in their communities.
Promising Illustrations
The Chicago Community Trust
Chicago's most significant challenges are rooted in the wealth gap between Latinx, Black and White households. The Trust has identified closing this racial wealth gap as its "moonshot" and has fully integrated this commitment into its strategic plan.
Greater Milwaukee Foundation
Milwaukee calls its commitment to advancing racial equity its "North Star." It frames its community leadership around eliminating the root causes of racial inequities with its Connected People and Thriving Communities strategies, which feature racial equity at their core and seek to catalyze community-driven change.
Do you have an example you'd like to share? Tell Us
Taking a Leadership Role
We have also seen community foundations take a leadership role in engaging donors, stakeholders and residents around racial equity. The Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo was an early leader with the production of its report, The Racial Equity Dividend: Buffalo's Greatest Opportunity, which identified an equity divide that was preventing all residents from moving forward and prospering. Through its Racial Equity Roundtable, Buffalo convenes 250 partners across the sectors focused on targeted systems change to advance an inclusive, expanded economy.
Buffalo is one of several community foundations that have been supported by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to develop Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation (TRHT) frameworks. From the Kalamazoo Community Foundation and the Community Foundation of Greater Flint in Michigan to the Black Belt Community Foundation in Selma, Alabama, these organizations are promoting new strategic partnerships, advancing dialogue, training, and narrative change, and spotlighting racial equity issues in their communities.
User-Submitted Content
Community Foundation of St. Clair County
The Foundation has partnered with the Economic Development Alliance of St. Clair County to help level the playing field for minority business owners, who do not typically have the same access to wealth and investment — whether it be from family or financial institutions — as their non-minority counterparts. To date, the Foundation has connected with more than 70 local minority and women-owned businesses and has distributed $25,000 in grants.
In Iowa, the Community Foundation of Greater Des Moines is engaging its residents through Conversations That Count, hosting discussions on equity, inclusion and overcoming racial barriers. In California, the Humboldt Area Foundation has established an Equity Alliance of the North Coast to begin a civic discussion around race and equity.
Community Foundation for Greater Dubuque
Inclusive Dubuque is a peer-learning network of partners formed in 2012 in response to community challenges related to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). In an effort to eliminate bias in the community, the network provides data and information to inform decisions and track progress, facilitates community conversations and equity education and offers a range of resources to promote DEI.
Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation
Saint Paul & Minnesota has identified narrative change and racial healing as critical components of creating racial equity. The Foundation works with news professionals to identify their own biases and change racial narratives in the media, and launched the New Narrative Project designed by and for local African-American males ages 11 to 32 with a focus on racial healing and affirmation.
Operationalizing Equity Internally
Community foundations are also beginning to address equity within their internal operations, but there is much more work to be done. Eighty-seven percent of community foundation CEOs across the country who responded to our survey identified themselves as White or Caucasian. This data corresponds with research conducted by the Council on Foundations, which reported that only 12% of foundation executives were "racial/ethinic minorities" in a 2016 study on gender and diversity.
We also found that in terms of policies and guidelines, 63% of community foundations have committed to greater diversity at the board level but lag in other areas, including senior management and vendor selection. Only a minority of respondents had written policies, goals or guidelines for any diversity outside of their board, and 30% of respondents reported not having policies in place for any of the areas listed.
Has your foundation established any specific goals, policies, or guidelines in any of the following areas?
Randy Royster of the Albuquerque Community Foundation recommends building internal equity practices into foundation bylaws, noting the importance of operationalizing these practices.
If we get most of our information from staff, and they are not diverse, who are we in touch with?
Isaiah Oliver President & CEO, Community Foundation of Greater Flint
Our survey results indicate that the vast majority (89%) of community foundations learn about community aspirations and needs from their staff's participation in civic life, making clear the importance of having a team that reflects the diversity of the community it serves. Isaiah Oliver, President & CEO of the Community Foundation of Greater Flint, believes it is critical to have diverse staff from all parts of the community, asking "if we get most of our information from staff, and they are not diverse, who are we in touch with?"
How does your foundation learn about community aspirations and needs?
The San Francisco Foundation has taken up this challenge and reports its progress publicly on its website. The Bay Area region has long been one of the most diverse in the nation, with people of color making up the majority of the population since the 1980s. The Foundation has committed to hiring an increasingly diverse staff, adopting more equitable personnel policies and benefits and contracting with diverse, mission-aligned vendors and consultants. Currently, 70% of its staff and 57% of its executives are people of color.
Several community foundations report that younger voices on staff have been pushing for a greater focus on equity internally. Jennifer Leonard, President & CEO of the Rochester Area Community Foundation, cites internal pressure for change as a precipitating cause of new policies around equity. She shared that the Foundation formed an internal, younger structural racism team while a separate extended leadership team went through 18 months of outside training. The younger group came up with recommendations for changes in recruitment, promotion, and professional development that were challenging and important, and led to significant change.
Does your foundation ask grant seekers to provide any of the following types of information about their organization when applying for grants?
With regard to grantmaking, we found that more than half (52%) of our survey respondents ask grant-seekers to provide demographic or diversity data. Sixty percent of respondents screen applicants for competitive grants for values aligning with their mission and about half of that group do the same screening for recipients of grants from donor-advised funds.
Wichita Community Foundation
The Witchita Community Foundation performed an equity audit of its funds over the past five years. Staff researched what grants were given to BIPOC led, BIPOC serving, LGBTQIA, or Disability serving populations. This information gathered is used as a baseline to compare its grantmaking and to diversify its grants over time. Click the link below to download the foundation's audit.
CFLeads is here to help your community foundation dive deeper into these three key action areas. We offer a variety of unique learning opportunities, from light-touch webinars to multi-day peer learning and intensive year-long networks, that have been shown to advance community leadership practice in community foundations of all sizes from all across the country. We are now adapting these learning opportunities and designing new programs to help you insist on equity, amplify community voice and influence policy and systems—and ultimately build more inclusive and widely prosperous communities.
We currently support community foundations looking to deepen their commitment to racial equity through our Equity Network. Visit the Equity Network page to learn more and contact us if your community foundation is interested in participating in a future cohort!
Association for Black Foundation Executives (ABFE): A membership-based philanthropic organization that advocates for responsive and transformative investments in Black communities
Borealis Racial Equity in Philanthropy Fund: Builds the enduring capacity of the field of philanthropy to advance racial equity
Bridgespan: Provides philanthropy- and equity-focused program strategy and design
Change Elemental: Partners across sectors to disrupt and transform systems of inequity and create powerful vehicles for justice
Compasspoint Nonprofit Services: Helps leaders, nonprofit organizations, and movements committed to social justice realize their full power
Interaction Institute for Social Change: Builds collaborative capacity in individuals, organizations, and networks working for social justice and racial equity
Othering and Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley: Brings together researchers, organizers, stakeholders, communicators, and policymakers to identify and eliminate the barriers to an inclusive, just, and sustainable society in order to create transformative change
People's Institute for Survival and Beyond: A national and international collective of anti-racist, multicultural community organizers and educators dedicated to building an effective movement for social transformation
PolicyLink: A national research and action institute dedicated to advancing economic and social equity
Provoc: Roots its work in an ever-deepening equity lens, collaborating with clients and partners who believe in social, economic, and racial justice
Race Forward: Brings systemic analysis and an innovative approach to complex race issues to help people take effective action toward racial equity
Racial Equity Institute: An alliance of trainers, organizers, and institutional leaders devoted to the work of creating racially equitable organizations and systems
ABFE: Imperatives for the Philanthropic Sector
Center for Effective Philanthropy: Philanthropy with a Racial Equity Lens by Anna Cruz, Kresge Foundation
Equity at the Center: How to Get Started
PolicyLink: National Equity Atlas
Prosperity Now:
Exploring Racial Economic Equity in Policy Advocacy
Communicating on Race and Racial Economic Equity
The San Francisco Foundation: Advancing Equity: Reimagining the Way a Community Foundation Delivers on its Mission
Questions to Consider Along Your Journey
If you are just getting started…
Have you taken steps to deepen the staff and board's understanding of racial equity and the history of racism in the United States?
Has your board and staff had discussions about racial equity leading to a determination as to how it fits within your foundation's values, mission and strategies?
Have you developed a common definition of racial equity for your foundation?
If you are further along the path…
Are you recruiting more board members and staff members who are committed to and have an understanding of how to advance equity?
Have you provided your staff training on antiracism, implicit bias and structural racism?
Have you begun to develop polices—from grantmaking to vendor procurement to HR—that incorporate your values and equity strategies?
Have you developed an equity lens or criteria for your grants?
Have you considered how you might go beyond your grantmaking role and engage with community stakeholders who work toward equity outcomes in your community?
If your organization is ready to break barriers…
Is your foundation focusing on how to influence the public- and private-sector systems that have led to inequitable outcomes?
Are you attempting to embed racial equity throughout the entire foundation, across all departments? For example:
Has the foundation developed a thoughtful and deliberate strategy for discussing equity with donors?
Does the foundation embed equity into the management of its endowed assets, make PRI investments with an equity lens, or strive to hire investment management firms that are led by people of color and/or are equity-focused?
Is the communications department fully engaged, supporting and helping to advance the foundation's equity goals?
Is the success of the foundation tied to delivering racial equity results through the foundation's grantmaking, actions, and investments?
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A History of the Habsburg Empire 1273-1700
Jean Berenger
C.A. Simpson
Published March 7, 1994 by Routledge
Published August 17, 2016 by Routledge
Published July 22, 2014 by Routledge
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The first part of a two-volume history of the Habsburg Empire from its medieval origins to its dismemberment in the First World War.
This important volume (which is self-contained) meets a long-felt need for a systematic survey in English of the Habsburgs and their lands in the late medieval and early modern periods. It is primarily concerned with the Habsburg territories in central and northern Europe, but the history of the Spanish Habsburgs in Spain and the Netherlands is also covered. The book, like the Habsburgs themselves, deals with an immense range of lands and peoples: clear, balanced, and authoritative, it is a remarkable feat of synthethis and exposition.
List of maps and Genealogical tables. Translator's Note. Foreword. Introduction. 1. The origins. 2. The Early history of Austria and its neighbouring lands. 3. The acquisition of Austria (1278). 4. The period of establishment (1291-1439). 5. The Hussite revolution and its consequences. 6. The strengthening of the power of the nobility.
7. Frederick III (1440-93). 8. Danubian Europe and the threat from the Turks. 9. The Renaissance north of the Alps. 10. The work of Maximilian I (1459-1519). 11. The Empire of Charles V and the Universal Monarchy. 12. The formation of the Austrian monarchy (1525-7). 13. The new state after 1527. 14. Ferdinand and the Reformation.
15. The struggle against the Ottoman Empire (1527-68). 16. Economic prosperity and social tensions in the 16thc.
17. Philip II, head of the House of Habsburg (1556-98). 18. Catholic reformation or Counter Reformation. 19. Rudolf II (1576-1611): the triumph of Prague. 20. Ferdinand II and the Thrity Years War. 21. The Peace of Prague to the Peace of Westphalia (1635-48). 22. The task of reconstruction. 23. The Counter-Reformation in the 17th Century. 24. The re-birth of the Turkish peril and the Siege of Vienna. 25. Baroque Austria. Chronology. Glossary of German terms. Guide to further reading. Bibliography. maps and genealogical tables. Index.
Medieval History 400-1500
Early Modern History 1500-1750


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From "andys" to "toasters": How has politics affected the view of non-humans in "Blade Runner" and "Battlestar Galactica"?
Jozef Lenč
Science-fiction politics. Dystopia. Non-human. Post-humanism. Corrosion of democracy. Segregation. The world of tomorrow.
This article focuses on the change in perception of humanoid androids in science fiction from Philip K. Dick's cult novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) and its later film adaptations, to the depictions of androids and people in the struggle for survival and immortality in the TV series Battlestar Galactica (2004–2009) and Caprica (2010). Science-fiction novels usually outline the author's ideas about the near or distant future of the world with which they are confronted on a daily basis. They usually warn readers of a possible apocalypse or present models of an ideal future society to replace the society of today. However, science fiction is written by real people in a specific space and time who often reflect the social tensions and issues of the time they were created. The depictions of humanoid androids, their position in society, and their desire to break free from their undignified or even slavish positions are, in many cases, a reflection of real policies and the position of today's "others" in mainstream society.
Lenč, J. 2021. From "andys" to "toasters": How has politics affected the view of non-humans in "Blade Runner" and "Battlestar Galactica"?. In World Literature Studies, vol. 13, no.1, pp. 55-67. 1337-9275. DOI: https://doi.org/10.31577/WLS.2021.13.1.5
Lenč, J. (2021). From "andys" to "toasters": How has politics affected the view of non-humans in "Blade Runner" and "Battlestar Galactica"?. World Literature Studies, 13(1), 55-67. 1337-9275. DOI: https://doi.org/10.31577/WLS.2021.13.1.5


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Description Description In this book from the critically acclaimed, multimillion-copy best-selling Little People, BIG DREAMS series, discover the life of Pablo Picasso, one of the world's greatest artists in the 20th century.
Little Pablo grew up in an artistic household and after drawing his first painting at nine years old. His dad was an art teacher and helped grow his son's talent, teaching him to use oil paints.
He moved first to Barcelona and then to France, where he achieved significant success, and went on to becoming one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. His artistic style inspired many movements in art, music and literature, which we still see today. This powerful book features stylish and quirky illustrations and extra facts at the back, including a biographical timeline with historical photos and a detailed profile of the Pablo Picasso's life.
Format Hardcover Book 32 Pages
Published Date January 25th, 2022
Teresa Bellon
Teresa Bellon was born in Albacete, Spain in 1987. She spent a few years wandering around before she did an Illustration Course in Madrid. As a result, she began working for national and international clients and her work has been exhibited all over Spain. Influenced by Portuguese and Nordic illustrators of children's books, her drawings have a touch of naivety, reduced ranges of colors, and simple compositions. Teresa doesn't stay at home waiting for inspiration, she sets out to find it. So she travels, buys illustrated books, and walks a lot around her home city, Madrid.
Play, Make, Create, A Process-Art Handbook
Author By Meri Cherry
Author By Laurence Anholt
Iris Apfel
Author By Barbara Rucci
Art Masterclass with Gustav Klimt
Author By Lucy Brownridge


text:
Kwesi Appiah scored from the spot as NorthEast United FC began their Indian Super League campaign with a 1-0 win over Mumbai City FC here on Saturday.
Press Trust of India | Vasco November 22, 2020 Last Updated at 04:55 IST
Photo: ISL twitter handle
A red card and a penalty turned a game, that Mumbai were otherwise dominating, on its head and handed NorthEast United FC a winning start at the Tilak Maidan.
Appiah (49') scored the only goal from a penalty after the Islanders were reduced to 10-men following Ahmed Jahouh's red card just before the breather.
In the early stages, it looked like NorthEast were aiming for nothing more than a goalless draw, with extreme caution visible in their game plan.
Predictably, it was Mumbai who dominated the first half. The Islanders were neat and proactive for long spells, though they were unable to find a cutting edge.
Despite having players like Jahouh, Hugo Boumous, and Rowllin Borges, all capable of creating magic on their day, Sergio Lobera's side failed to get a single shot on target in the first 45 minutes.
They did hold the lion's share of the possession that occasionally resulted in hopeful efforts. In the 12th minute, Adam le Fondre's cross from the right wing found striker Bartholomew Ogbeche. The resulting effort though was intercepted by NorthEast defender Ashutosh Mehta.
In the next few minutes, an Ogbeche header went over the bar while Jahouh took two attempts from distance. A clear-cut chance though was still eluding Lobera's men.
Then, the match took an unexpected turn as Jahouh, who was dictating things from midfield, was sent off with a straight red, a couple of minutes before half time. His offence was a studs-up challenge on NorthEast's Khassa Camara.
Gerard Nus' men capitalised on their numerical advantage soon after the restart. The Highlanders were awarded a penalty in the 49th minute when the ball struck Borges' arm after NorthEast's Dylan Fox had headed in a short corner. Appiah sent keeper Amrinder Singh in wrong direction.
With Mumbai now under pressure, NorthEast took control over the game with Khumanthem Meetei and Appiah making regular
inroads. Lobera made a tactical change replacing Ogbeche with Stephen Goddard, giving Le Fondre a central role up front.
Mumbai had a rare opportunity in the 65th minute when Sarthak got his head to a cross, but his effort sailed inches over the bar. Lobera's team kept knocking on the door in the final quarter, but an equaliser eluded them.


text:
D A V I D K R A N C H E R
about David Krancher
America, Not Always So Beautiful.
Excerpt from Tesora, a novel
Rondeau At The Train Stop By Erin Belieu
New poem by Walt Whitman
Position Needed, a poem for peace
Trump impeachment: Chief Justice John Roberts and senators sworn in as trial begins – as it happened theguardian.com/us-news/live/2… 9 hours ago
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Posts tagged 'Literature'
"Essays from the Edge" Meets "Big Sur" Without a Hangover
There's a fine review by Patricia Hampl of F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Essays from the Edge" in the American Scholar. While the excessive use of alcohol is often associated with an impulse to run away from feelings and, thus, an impulse towards cowardice, it is clear that it took great courage to expose his disease by writing these essays. While he did write fiction, it is clear from the writing that he had first-hand knowledge and that these are autobiographical events.
A generation later, Jack Kerouac came up with a novel called "Big Sur" which is a masterpiece of a chronicle of his own "crack up" with alcohol. I imagine he had read those essays of Fitzgerald's. It's amazing to me that great writing does not always require a sound mind. Perhaps writing is more than an intellectual exercise—ya think? The Crack-Up was published in 1945 and by then Fitzgerald was known as a great American writer. "Big Sur" was published in 1962 and by then Kerouac, too, was considered one.
Here's a quote from Patricia Hampl's piece:
"John Dos Passos was particularly exercised. "Christ, man," he wrote to Fitzgerald in October 1936. "How do you find time in the middle of the general conflagration to worry about all that stuff?" The "general conflagration," presumably, was the Great Depression, but also National Socialism and fascism in Germany and Italy, and the Spanish Civil War, which had ignited in July. "We're living in one of the damnedest tragic moments in history," Dos Passos steams on. "If you want to go to pieces I think it's absolutely OK but I think you ought to write a first-rate novel about it (and you probably will) instead of spilling it in little pieces for Arnold Gingrich," the editor of Esquire, who had commissioned the essays."
F. Scott Fitzgerald's Essays From the Edge:
Posted in About Fiction, About writers | Leave a Comment »
Tags: Alcohol, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jack Kerouac, Literature
Notes on Being an Artist
How My Writing Frees Itself
A talented young writer recently asked me for some support and I dashed off a letter to her and I tried to explain, just how I, myself, managed to keep working day after day, and year after year. That inspired me to come up with a list of ways I support myself. This is my list:
• The more I become myself as an artist, the less I ask other people how or what I should write.
• What other people think about my writing is not important.
• What I think about my own writing, is not that important.
• Each day I sit down and tell my mind to shut up. I sit quietly for twenty minutes and then write what my inner self guides me to. It asks me to consider very difficult things in my own life, my thinking, and in my memories. That's as it's supposed to be.
• I hope my writing is a sharing from my most honest self. If I don't have that in me, I'll never share much value as an artist.
• I don't think being an artist is easy: that I've had a difficult life so far, is to my advantage. It's made me quite human, and that's all there is to write about anyway.
• An artist's sensitivity is all he or she is. In one sense a true artist is the bravest kind of person. No one wanted to hear Jesus say "love your enemy," that was too brave. No one wanted to hear Buddha say: "Give up all your money, the only value is spiritual." Neither one published anything, but we have to read their words all the time because they got the voice right. It's an inside job, I'm afraid.
• I look in the mirror and I can tell myself one great fact: "I did not give up on myself—I love that about me."
• I don't listen to anyone who tells me what I should do with my art. I don't even listen to myself, because many of those voices I hear in my head are only echoes of negativity that have been doing their push-ups for many years.
• Be unique, be yourself, be weird, be fabulous. I don't have to try to do that, I just let myself go.
Posted in About Fiction, About My Novels, About writers | Leave a Comment »
Tags: fiction, inspiration, Literature, vision, Writing
Read the pages that Shakespeare, Beethoven, and Galileo saw.
I found this Website from Octavo, rarebookroom.org, that brings us into all the best rare book rooms of the world. You can read the same type that our earliest writings, scholars, and musicians wrote and read. You can read Books of Hours, medieval and Renaissance illuminated manuscripts; check out Galileo's notebooks; and study charts of Copernicus about how he proved the truth about the solar system. Of course Octavo hopes you'll buy some limited edition reprints of these, but if you can't afford them, you certainly can't afford not to check it out on your computer. The reality of these pages makes the type fonts on any computer screen look lame and pale by comparison, and something of the spirit of those times is transferred to the reader.
Octavo says, for instance: "Over the past several years in cooperation with the world's greatest libraries, Octavo has digitally photographed most of the existing early quarto editions of William Shakespeare's plays and poems, as well as the quarto editions of plays such as The Yorkshire Tragedy once considered part of the Shakespeare canon."
You can explore the earliest texts here.
Tags: Literature, novels, Octavo, poetry, Rare Books
The Daily Beast has a list of 10 books you shouldn't miss
They say these are: "10 Books That You Might Have Missed but Shouldn't." They are titles that might have flown under the radar for you.
There are capsule reviews of the books to help you decide which to read. Enjoy.
1. 'A History of the World in 100 Objects'
2. 'Habibi'
3. 'A Book of Secrets'
4. 'Assassins of the Turquoise Palace'
5. 'What It Is Like to Go to War'
6. 'Hemingway's Boat'
7. 'Anatomy of a Disappearance'
8. 'Into the Silence'
9. 'Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness'
10. 'Keynes Hayek'
Posted in About Fiction, About writers | 1 Comment »
Tags: books, Literary Review, Literature, novels
Swimming to the Cambodia Inside his Readers
In "Swimming to Cambodia," the monologue theater piece that became a popular movie, Spalding Gray plays Woody Allen's oft-portrayed, anxiety-stifled character better than Allen ever could. The audience's fascination may come from the conviction that Spalding Gray is not acting, but telling the truth, and he is. Although the genesis of his story may be seem spontaneous, the monologue is indeed as well-written as it is truthful.
The deeper fascination for the audience is the realization that we see through the character and the actor into the naked mind of the man called Gray with both dread and sympathy. Though we see that a person who is seriously neurotic or depressed is not us, the fascination grows because his character draws a picture so completely. In "Cambodia" Gray's acting is equal to his writing ability.
Now, in 'The Journals of Spalding Gray' a review by Ron Rosenbaum of Gray's previously unpublished personal story, we find the truth of it. Rosenbaum says: "It's distressing to read the way happiness generates sadness and terror in Gray's psyche, because his work could be the source of so much pleasure to his audiences." Not that Bob Dylan ever accomplished any success as a poet, but he once said "A poet is a naked man." I think that applies to Spalding Gray in his journals. See for yourself in this excerpt from the book which is now available for us to read: here.
Tags: inspiration, Literary Review, Literature, Spalding Gray, Theatre
New Directions for Writers and Publishers: a Debate
Thomas Glave ("Whose Song? and Other Stories," "The Torturer's Wife," and "Words to Our Now: Imagination and Dissent" from City Lights Books) is optimistic about the changes in publishing and states that they are an opportunity for writers to grow, experiment, and take advantage of new ways of expression and working with others. He is, however, fearful that Amazon's entry into publishing will not favor the art of writing and the collaboration of writers and editors, or even writers and other writers. Other publishing voices in the debate are: Dennis Johnson, publisher of Melville House; Michael Wolf, vice president of research, GigaOM: and Laurel Saville, author, "Unraveling Anne."
Check out Thomas Glave and the others here:
Tags: fiction, inspiration, Literature, novels, Publisher
Why "The Cats Table," by Michael Ondaatje Is Not an Interesting Novel
When I read about this novel, I struck by some of its similarities to my own most recent works, Tardy Son and Tesora. I read an excerpt from his latest novel to find out. But I found that it's all written from a remote adult's POV with indulgent explanations about the boy with very little emotional or psychological understanding of him. That may have been all right with The English Patient, but not with this one. Instead of the writing being alive like a teenaged boy is, it's petrified and dusty and conclusive. Life for a boy of that age might be dangerous in this situation, but it is not boring. He doesn't seek out answers ontologically. A boy looks for gold and squished bugs and is obsessively optimistic.
It seems the closer a subject is to mine, the further the writing is apart from my style. Here's a link to a NYTimes review of his new novel.
Tags: books, Literature, novels, Tardy Son, Tesora
How do you mix comedy with tragedy?
How to create dark humor:
The main character in my novel has wartime trauma and is attempting a voyage in a rubber raft. He was once a bomber pilot, so he has a certain quality of leadership skills he can use on himself. On the other hand he is trying to escape from the evil in his own mind and cannot conceive of how to do that. Perhaps this gives me the opportunity to create some wild flights of imagination to play out in his mind. They contain scenes of an idyllic childhood juxtaposed with scenes from the darker scenes he remembers from literature. He is obviously attempting to avoid his own memories, but I would like to know if these flights need to be funny out loud, or does being merely ironic work for him?
Posted in About Fiction, About My Novels | Leave a Comment »
Tags: fiction, Joe Island, Literature, novel, vision
Except from an Interview with William Giraldi
"It doesn't bother me [that my students do most of their reading on screens] all that much, actually. Harold Bloom very sensibly talks about saving those students who are saveable, teaching to that minority who have the potential to be transformed by Whitman and Blake, who already suspect that betterment is to be found in books, not in electronic illumination. We writers and teachers don't change lives, and we certainly don't make lives. We nudge them. We nudge the nudgeable. Let's not let anyone tell us that the Internet is going to murder the book, because the automobile has yet to murder the bicycle. The book, like the bicycle, is a perfect invention, and perfection dies hard. What object is more beautiful than a book?"
—Except from an Interview with William Giraldi, writer of the novel, Busy Monsters, by Steve Almond in "Poets and Writers," July, 2011.
Tags: books, Literature, novel, novels, Steve Almond, Stories, vision, William Giraldi
How much surprise do you like in a story?
How much surprise do you like in a story? I like a story to be unexpected at every turn. It doesn't need to have multiple or parallel plots or one plot with many trailing sub-plots, but I find it's the smaller surprises that help define a story and its characters. In my own life I find a competition of motives and possible actions which give spontaneity a chance to bloom. I expect any new detail to have its own story, so I pick and choose to create the characters and the themes. Among those things, I like to choose the one least probable.
Posted in About Fiction, About My Novels, About writers | 2 Comments »
Tags: fiction, inspiration, Literature, story
agent Anne Abrams art audio Blues Pizza novel books Bookworm california Cuba Dead String Dorothy Parker fiction guitar Huckleberry FInn inspiration Japan Joe Island Literary Review Literature Mark Twain novel novels photo pirates poem poems poet poetry Publisher Shakespeare short story Slavery song song lyrics songs Stories story Sweets Tardy Son Tesora vision Writers writers conference Writing Young Adult


text:
package org.zalando.stups.tokens.fs;

import java.net.URI;
import java.util.concurrent.TimeUnit;

import org.assertj.core.api.Assertions;
import org.junit.After;
import org.junit.Before;
import org.junit.Test;
import org.zalando.stups.tokens.AccessTokens;
import org.zalando.stups.tokens.Secrets;
import org.zalando.stups.tokens.Tokens;

public class FilesystemSecretRefresherTest {

    @Before
    public void setup() {
        System.getProperties().put("CREDENTIALS_DIR", "fs");
    }

    @After
    public void tearDown() {
        System.getProperties().remove("CREDENTIALS_DIR");
    }

    //@formatter:off
    @Test
    public void test() throws InterruptedException {
        AccessTokens at = Tokens.createAccessTokensWithUri(URI.create("http://we.use.filesystemsecrets.and.do.not.care.about.this"))
            .manageToken("noexistent")
                .addScope("read::all")
                .done()
            .start();
        TimeUnit.SECONDS.sleep(10);
        at.stop();
    }
    //@formatter:on

    //@formatter:off
    @Test
    public void testShouldThrowTokenMissingException() throws InterruptedException {
        try{
            Tokens.createAccessTokensWithUri(URI.create("http://we.use.filesystemsecrets.and.do.not.care.about.this"))
                  .manageToken("noexistent")
                      .addScope("read::all")
                      .done()
                  .manageToken("myfirst")
                      .addScope("read::all")
                      .done()
                  .manageToken("nonexistent-2")
                      .addScope("read::all")
                      .done()
                  .whenUsingFilesystemSecrets()
                      .validateTokensOnStartup()
                      .usingTokenContentExtractor(new DefaultFileSystemTokenContentExtractor())
                      .done()
                  .start();
            Assertions.fail("Exception expected");
        }catch(TokensMissingException e){
            Assertions.assertThat(e.getMessage()).startsWith("The following token-configurations couldn't be found : ");
            Assertions.assertThat(e.getMissingTokensCount()).isEqualTo(2);
        }
    }
    //@formatter:on

    //@formatter:off
    @Test
    public void testPolymorph() throws InterruptedException {
        AccessTokens at = Tokens.createAccessTokensWithUri(URI.create("http://we.use.filesystemsecrets.and.do.not.care.about.this"))
            .manageToken("noexistent")
                .addScope("read::all")
                .done()
            .start();
        Assertions.assertThat(at).isInstanceOfAny(AccessTokens.class, Secrets.class);

        TimeUnit.SECONDS.sleep(2);
        Assertions.assertThat(((Secrets)at).getClient("kio")).isNotNull();
        at.stop();
    }
    //@formatter:on
}


The Northwest Power and Conservation Council (NWPCC) voted Aug. 15 to approve the next step in a long-term plan to recover Pacific lamprey in the Columbia River Basin, but will leave the question of funding to the Bonneville Power Administration.
However, with funds and additional approvals, the Umatilla and Yakama tribes and the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission will--for the first time--begin releasing lamprey larvae into a handful of rivers to study whether hatchery programs can help recover this ancient jawless fish whose population has greatly diminished from historical numbers.
The fish provide an important source of food for tribes, and play a significant role in the Northwest's ecosystem, bringing back marine-derived nutrients to the freshwater environment, and offering a high-calorie source of prey for marine and freshwater predators, such as sea lions and cormorants.
The Council's support for the next five years--which includes Phase 2 and part of Phase 3 of the "Master Plan: Pacific Lamprey Artificial Propagation, Translocation, Restoration, and Research"--means that after years of laboratory research, tribes can begin to study whether young lamprey reared in a hatchery will survive in a natural setting, migrate to the ocean and return as adults.
If funding and environmental approvals come through, work to recover lamprey will include planting larvae in the Yakima, Naches, Tucannon and Walla Walla rivers, and relocating adults to the Methow, Yakima, Umatilla and Grand Ronde rivers.
Mindful of funding issues at BPA, the Council's blessing also came with a "request" that Bonneville and the tribes assess whether adequate funding is available. That caveat marks a new era in how the Council approves fish and wildlife projects, said Mark Fritsch, the Council's project implementation manager.
Fritsch noted Bonneville is still negotiating with contractors across the region on its fiscal year 2019 budget, and the Council is not part of those negotiations. He said the Council's action makes it clear that funding the Pacific lamprey master plan is a priority, but leaves funding specifics up to Bonneville and the tribes.
In a decision memo to the Council, Fritsch said the costs will likely range from about $100,000 to $350,000 annually, with costs for the Umatilla project at $670,848, and the Yakama project at $304,601.
NWPCC spokesman John Harrison said he believes the Pacific lamprey master plan is the first major fish and wildlife project the Council has approved since BPA Administrator Elliot Mainzer came to the Council in both April and June to explain the need for cost cuts across the agency, including some $30 million from its fish and wildlife program.
He said BPA's concern over F&W costs is not new, but this time, the flood of cheap renewable energy on the market and questions about Bonneville's future competitiveness will likely mean the Council will put similar conditions on future fish and wildlife project requests.
Brian McIlraith, Pacific lamprey project leader for CRITFC, said while BPA's financial outlook is a concern, the tribes are motivated to accomplish objectives in its Pacific lamprey master plan, and have already worked to keep costs down, including using existing facilities at salmon hatcheries to rear lamprey.
Council approval also came with a favorable review by the Independent Scientific Review Panel, and a condition that ISRP review the program again in 2022.
Aaron Jackson, lamprey project leader for the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, said he hopes funding issues don't break the momentum in Pacific lamprey recovery, boosted through the Columbia Basin Fish Accords, which provided $5 million a year from 2008 through 2018 to help mainstem passage. Those funds disappear after this year, unless renewed, and do not address juvenile passage, Jackson noted.
Still, there has been much improvement in Pacific lamprey populations.
In the Umatilla River, the fish were functionally extinct from the 1960s to the 2000s, and just 10 years ago only a handful of adults returned to the river each year.
Now, after decades of work, record numbers of adults are returning to the Umatilla. Jackson said this year's return is expected to hit 3,300 adults.
According to the master plan, the Umatilla tribe began its lamprey restoration efforts in 1995, and has since translocated over 4,700 adult lamprey into the Umatilla River basin, monitored the distribution of larval lamprey and out-migration of juveniles, identified and monitored adult passage barriers, and developed artificial propagation and rearing techniques.
A similar story can be told in other parts of the lower Columbia River, although numbers remain low in many parts of the basin. According to the master plan, daytime counts at Bonneville Dam declined from about 400,000 in the 1950s and 1960s to fewer than 10,000 in 2009 and 2010. But Jackson said in recent years, about 200,000 adults have been counted at Bonneville Dam.
Jackson noted that for decades, these ancient fish that have occupied Pacific Northwest rivers for 350 million years were seen as "trash" fish. In some places, like the Umatilla River, fish managers used rotenone to try to eradicate them, he said. An invasion of Atlantic lamprey into the Great Lakes left a stigma on Pacific lamprey, which are native to the Columbia River and an important part of the basin's ecology.
However, he noted, "Lamprey still has that stigma. The poor things are not winning any beauty contests. But once you work with them, you can see their beauty." He added, "There's been a lot of excitement, and a lot of mainstem improvements, but there are still a lot of things to accomplish."
The master plan's goal is to re-establish Pacific lamprey throughout its historical range, especially in the Columbia River Basin. That recovery should be widely distributed, and provide for ecological, cultural and harvestable levels. Currently, harvest is minimal and limited to traditional and cultural needs, with almost all lamprey harvest occurring at Willamette Falls in Oregon.
McIlraith said artificial propagation and adult translocation are just pieces of the lamprey's overall needs for recovery. He said the Umatilla and Yakama tribes have become world leaders in efforts to develop artificial propagation methods, and told the Council they are the "brains and the brawn" behind restoring lamprey through supplementation.
The Yakamas raised a handful of lamprey larvae from eggs to the juvenile stage, which only Japanese scientists had previously accomplished, he noted. Those efforts may help in attempts to release different age classes.
McIlraith said developing a hatchery program for lamprey is more difficult than it is for salmon. "We're talking about fish that, in the wild, are spending anywhere from three to 14 years as larval fish before they go out to the ocean. We don't know what dictates that variation," he said. Salmon spend two or three years as freshwater juveniles.
Another issue, he said, is that lamprey larvae live in sediment, so fish managers need significantly more room to expand production. In addition, because their life cycle is significantly longer, scientists studying lamprey will have to wait several years for results.


Welcome to Real Food Rocks! This fantastic day festival will be taking place on July 20th 2019 at the stunning Brathay Hall near Ambleside. We are excited to share with you a host of real food vendors, mostly local to the area, selling high quality produce.
There will also be live music during the day and a range of wellbeing workshops, low carb cooking demos and fun activities for all the family!
In addition, there is an evening event with more live music and a tasty hog roast or pizza supper. All profits from the festival will go to The Public Health Collaboration a charity dedicated to improving the quality of public health information.


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Bankers' Bonuses: The EU acts
March 6th, 2013 by Sean Jones QC
What is proposed?
The proposals are not a cap in the traditional sense because there is no fixed maximum amount that someone affected by the proposals will be entitled to earn. The proposed rules will require that the ratio of basic salary to bonus should not exceed 1:1. In other words, the value of the bonus should be no greater than the value of the banker's basic salary.
However, the ratio can be raised to 1:2 with the express permission of the shareholders. The proposals stipulate with some care the majority necessary to pass any proposal to permit the higher level of remuneration. Where permission is obtained for the more generous entitlement, 25% of the bonus must be deferred for at least 5 years.
Who has agreed these proposals?
European Parliament and Council negotiators. On 5 March 2013, George Osborne failed to persuade the EU's Economic and Financial Affairs Council to re-open negotiations. It is thought that some limited further tweaking may be possible. The political agreement will require the agreement of the Member States and the European Parliament in April 2013. The UK will not be entitled to veto the proposals. If the political agreement is ratified, the UK will have to introduce implementing legislation by 1 January 2014.
What is the significance of this announcement?
Commentators' views have covered every part of the spectrum from talk of the cataclysmic destruction of London as a financial centre through to prosaic predictions that amending pay structures may well leave the sector relatively undisturbed. From an employment lawyer's point of view the notion of direct control of UK workers' maximum remuneration by Europe is, at first glance, an unsettling one. It is worth bearing in mind, however, that there has already been some limited domestic regulation of bonuses (see the FSA Remuneration Code).
Is this an attack on the free market? Are other sectors subject to such limitations?
It depends to some extent on how free the market you are envisaging is. No-one believes that banks and their activities should be beyond the reach of regulators. The background to the package of reforms of which the bonus proposals form part is the widely perceived need (to quote the Bank for International Settlements) to "strengthen the regulation, supervision and risk management of the banking sector".
The proposals include new requirements in respect of retained capital and transparency which are intended to move banking in Europe towards compliance with the regime developed by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision and favoured by the G20, known as Basel III.
The controversial question is whether, as part of this package of regulation, there is any need for direct control of bankers' pay. The European perspective is that the global economic crisis was at least in part caused by bank employees taking on too much risk. It is thought that the emphasis on remuneration by bonus within the sector incentivized irrational risk taking. Neither proposition is uncontroversial. The causes of the crisis are unlikely to be quite so simple and the suggestion that bonuses increase risk-taking seems to be based more on intuition than study.
The UK government was the sole voice of dissent, is there any way in which the government could challenge or limit the effect of the decision?
It would be very surprising if the Government were not able to find a lawyer willing to advise them that the rules on bonuses may fall outside the competence of the European Union. A legal challenge to the validity of the rules cannot be ruled out. The length of the shrift that the European Court may give the challenge is a different question.
There has also been talk of the UK invoking the "Luxembourg Compromise". It sounds like the title of the world's dullest thriller but refers to a convention, the present scope of which is itself controversial, for there to be a veto where a proposal adversely affected a state's "very important national interest". It remains to be seen whether George Osborne would be prepared to risk playing that card. To play it and lose would likely have very considerable political consequences.
What impact will this have on remuneration structures in the banking sector?
They will adapt to meet the new regime. The likelihood is that banks will seek shareholder approval for proposals to allow them to use the 1:2 ratio and fixed salaries will increase.
What are the relevant merits/downsides of the various options:
Higher basic salary
The principal merit of this approach is that it allows the same total remuneration to be implemented as had previously been in place without any requirement for shareholder approval. It should enable employers, therefore, to forestall the possibility of significant desertions. If one accepts the premise that variable pay encourages risk taking increasing the proportion of income that is fixed should cause employees to take fewer chances.
From the bank's point of view, decoupling remuneration from results may have a number of disadvantages. When an employee's performance falls off, the impact on income is lessened. When the bank's overall performance is affected, cost cutting may require re-negotiation of terms and conditions rather than changing the often non-contractual terms of a bonus policy.
Shareholder permission to exceed basic cap
This approach does not, by itself, allow replication of previously more generous remuneration arrangements (although it can be combined with increases to basic salary). Arguably, subsequent changes to bonus arrangements may require fresh shareholder approval complicating negotiations with high-value employees in circumstances where competitors based elsewhere may have greater immediate freedom of action.
Supplementary (non-cash) benefits
Non-cash benefits may be unattractive to employees, can have complex taxation treatments and are difficult to operate with sufficient flexibility to allow total remuneration to be closely correlated with performance.
Do you believe financial institutions will leave Europe?
Whether individual bankers want to leave will depend on whether the amount of money they are paid is the determinative factor for where they work. It has to be admitted that it would not be entirely surprising if the people with that worldview were disproportionately represented amongst the group of highest paid bank employees. A degree of international mobility is already commonplace in the banking industry. If institutions fear the loss of individuals or, worse still, of teams, they may be persuaded that replicating existing business in a less restrictive jurisdiction makes good commercial sense. In the meantime, they may wish to put lawyers specialising in team poaching cases on speed dial.
Sean Jones QC


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Tags: XBT > Expendable Bathythermographs OCEAN > INDIAN OCEAN OCEAN > INDIAN OCEAN > ARABIAN SEA DOC/NOAA/NESDIS/NCEI > National Centers for Enviro
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Stefan Ruzowitzky (born 25 December 1961) is an Austrian film director and screenwriter.

Early life
Ruzowitzky was born in Vienna. He studied drama and history at the University of Vienna and started directing music videos, for example for 'N Sync, and commercials.

Movie career
In 1996, Ruzowitzky presented his first feature film, Tempo, about a group of youths living in Vienna. He was subsequently awarded with the Max Ophüls Preis. His next feature film, The Inheritors, set in the rural Mühlviertel in Upper Austria, came out in 1998, and was awarded Best Picture at the Rotterdam film festival as well as at the Flanders Film Festival. It also got a prize at the International Film Festival in Valladolid.

In 2000 he directed the successful German horror film Anatomy, starring Franka Potente, and in 2003 the equally well received sequel Anatomy 2. Between those two Ruzowitzky's first international co-production All the Queen's Men from 2001, starring Matt LeBlanc and Eddie Izzard, was received poorly by both critics and viewers.

In 2007 Ruzowitzky's The Counterfeiters premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival and was nominated for a Golden Bear award. The film is based on the memories of Adolf Burger, a Jewish Slovak typographer and Holocaust survivor involved in Operation Bernhard. The Counterfeiters, nominated on behalf of Austrian cinema, won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film at the 80th Academy Awards on 24 February 2008.

In 2013, he directed the 90-minute non-fiction drama Das radikal Böse which by means of authentic letters and interviewing psychology, military, and history experts seeks to explain the mentality of 'ordinary' members of Einsatzgruppen and Wehrmacht soldiers that carried out the Holocaust, mainly based upon Christopher Browning's 1992 book Ordinary Men which assigns the efficiency of the German killing machinery to social mechanisms of conformism and peer pressure rather than racial hatred.

He is currently working on the vampire horror film The Last Voyage of the Demeter, which is based on Bram Stoker's Dracula tale, and the psychological thriller Braincopy.

On 2 May 2014, Deadline Hollywood announced that Ruzowitzky will direct Screen Gems' action-thriller Patient Zero based on an original script by Mike Le.  The film stars Matt Smith and Natalie Dormer.

Filmography

1996 – Tempo – writer & director
1998 – The Inheritors – writer & director
2000 – Anatomy – writer & director
2001 – All the Queen's Men – director
2003 – Anatomy 2 – writer & director
2007 – The Counterfeiters – writer & director
2009 – Lilly the Witch: The Dragon and the Magic Book – writer & director
2012 – Deadfall – director
2017 – Cold Hell – director
2017 – Patient Zero – director
2019 - 8 Tage - director
2020: - Narziss und Goldmund - director
2021: – Hinterland – director

Oscar
2007 – The Counterfeiters for Best Foreign Language Film (won)

Opera
In 2010, Ruzowitzky directed his first opera production, Der Freischütz, for Vienna's Theater an der Wien. The cast included his Counterfeiters-star Karl Markovics in the non-singing role of Samiel, the production was conducted by Bertrand de Billy.

References

External links

1961 births
Austrian film directors
Austrian screenwriters
Austrian male screenwriters
English-language film directors
Living people
Film people from Vienna
Directors of Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award winners

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Exploring how the CHD Collaborative is helping clinical teams across the country achieve clear improvements in services for patients with coronary heart disease. Each article will focus on one of the Collaborative's six project areas (seen in the heart right). Here, national clinical leads and other Collaborative staff, who have a particular interest in the acute myocardial infarction pathway, report on some of the work that has been done so far.
How can ambulatory blood pressure monitoring help in the management of patients with uncontrolled or variable hypertension?


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Can seaweed farming save Indonesian fishermen?
Vivien Cumming
Freelance journalist and photographer specialising in science and the natural world
On the verge of collapse
This article is part of our in-depth coverage. Read more like this...
LOHUU, INDONESIA
Isria is sitting out on a large bamboo platform over the sea. Piles of seaweed with a multitude of colours and textures surround him. He runs his hand along a thin rope, removing a bunch of seaweed every metre and throwing it out onto the platform to dry. His boat is tied up, piled high with these seaweed-laden ropes; he has just returned from a harvest.
Isria, like many Indonesians, uses only one name. He is a seaweed farmer. He lives in Lohuu village on Kaledupa, an island that forms part of the Wakatobi Marine Park off eastern Sulawesi in Indonesia. Almost all of the working-age residents of this village of a couple hundred people are seaweed farmers.
The families in Lohuu are not alone in the region. With dwindling fish stocks, people all around these islands are finding it increasingly hard to make a living from fishing so many are turning to seaweed farming instead.
Could seaweed be the economic future of this region? Isria thinks so. Pointing behind him to his home, and then out towards the ocean, he smiles and says, "I love this work. With seaweed farming I can make enough money to feed my family."
seaweed_vc-26.jpg
Vivien Cumming/IRIN
A small seaweed farm in Pulau Manui, Indonesia
Unfortunately, it's not that simple. There are environmental impacts associated with seaweed farming that are just beginning to be understood. Worse though, as Kihagar, another seaweed farmer, points out, climate change may be affecting seaweed growth: "The weather is changing and it can sometimes give me a bad harvest."
For centuries seaweed has been a farmed product, but it wasn't until the 1930s that the use of carrageenan – a seaweed-derived thickening agent – turned commercial. Nowadays, many everyday products contain carrageenans, everything from toothpaste to ice cream to burgers.
In Indonesia, seaweed farming has been growing over the last three decades. By 2009, Indonesia had become the world's largest producer of katoni seaweed (Kappaphycus alvarezii), one of the most important commercial sources of carrageenans. By 2013, when the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization conducted extensive research into the booming industry, it was already supporting the livelihoods of more than 20,000 smallholder farmers in Indonesia alone.
Seaweed grows as fishing dies
In Lohuu and nearby villages, people started farming seaweed in 1989. La Ode Waidi, one of the oldest seaweed farmers in the village, used to journey to Borneo for tree felling work. On his travels, he noticed how much money seaweed farming made in other parts of Indonesia and started doing it himself back in Lohuu. Other villagers slowly followed suit and soon the majority of them were growing seaweed. In Lohuu, it has become the financial backbone of the community.
There are no longer enough fish to provide the livelihoods that people need. Mukan said he is still eking out a living as a fisherman, but times are tough. He described how he used to go out and bring home a basket full of fish after one hour. Now he can be out there for half a day and return with nothing.
seaweed_vc-6.jpg
Isria removes seaweed from the ropes it grows on
Professor David Smith of the University of Essex, a marine biologist who has led a reef monitoring project in the region for 15 years, has found that there are 75 percent less fish today than when they started recording in 2002.
"This is because of overfishing, but also a loss of coral cover, which is due to multiple reasons," he says.
Fish stocks aren't just plummeting here; it's a global problem. And in low-latitude developing nations like Indonesia, a crisis is brewing. In this nation of more than 17,000 islands and 260 million people, disappearing fish stocks could lead to malnutrition. As the FAO noted in a 2014 report, "the fishery sector provides a significant contribution to the food security of the country".
This is scarily apparent on remote islands such as Kaledupa. People here eat fish three times a day. Fish provide the protein and micronutrients needed to survive. But this crucial food source is disappearing as habitat degradation and overfishing take their toll on stocks.
Fishermen on Kaledupa say they are worried about the future, and that they are open to alternatives to fishing that would provide enough income to feed their families. It's no coincidence that so many are turning to seaweed farming.
Wonder crop?
It's being lauded as a wonder crop that requires no fresh water, land, pesticides or fertilisers, and it grows fast. But seaweed farming is not without its challenges.
Starting a farm is a labour-intensive process. Very small pieces of seaweed are tied every 20 centimetres to long ropes, which are anchored to sticks and attached to plastic bottles and pieces of polystyrene that act as floats. The farms float on the surface over large areas of shallow water. After 40 days the seaweed is harvested and dried in the sun.
Once dry, the farmers sell it to brokers and it eventually makes its way to the Philippines, where 87 percent of Indonesia's seaweed is processed, according to The Opwall Trust, a UK charity that supports conservation-friendly economic development projects. The high value of processed carrageenan means that this represents a significant and unnecessary loss to the Indonesian economy.
Currently, katoni is around 8,000 rupiah (USD 59 cents) per kilogram, but historically the price has been volatile. In 2008, prices suddenly shot up from 5,000 to 18,000 rupiah, before tumbling again to 10,000.
A boat brings in seaweed from a farm in Dewara on Kaledupa Island
Despite an increasing global demand for carrageenan, higher prices are not filtering down to the farmers. The Opwall Trust is piloting a plan over the next few years to build a seaweed processing plant in the region. It would cut out the middleman, meaning local farmers would be getting a better price for their seaweed.
The by-products of processing are nutrients that could be used to fertilise poor soil on the island and produce food, which could reduce reliance on fish as the main protein and source of nutrients.
The Opwall Trust also plans to offers farmers a share in the processing plant in return for relinquishing their fishing licences.
That sounds like a great idea, but in practice it's unlikely to stop anyone from fishing. The region already suffers from poor enforcement and is rife with illegal practices like using explosives to catch fish.
Biodiversity concerns
So could seaweed farming really offer a suitable alternative to fishing?
On the island of Kaledupa, it does provide a more reliable income than fishing right now, but there are serious longer-term concerns. Disease can have a big impact on harvests, and so can weather patterns, which are both becoming more erratic with climate change.
Smith, of the University of Essex, warns that if seaweed farming is left unregulated it can create environmental problems too. Shallow coastal habitats and inter-tidal areas maybe be altered or destroyed by the increasing development of seaweed farms. These coastal shallow habitats provide nursery areas that most species of fish in the tropics depend on for their survival.
Perhaps this can be overcome by creating more than just seaweed farms. In other parts of the world, seaweed has been grown alongside shellfish and other marine life.
As long as future aquaculture doesn't repeat past mistakes, it may provide a sustainable alternative to fishing, experts say. But that depends on making conservation a priority and ensuring that it allows a diversity of species to coexist.
"If seaweed farming is to be the answer, it is better to look at the most sustainable ways to manage and farm now rather than wait for expansion, unregulated farming and environmentally degrading processes," warns Smith.
Kihagar and his son make seaweed ropes in their home in Lohuu
Planning for the future does not come naturally to the people of Kaledupa. In their culture, people live one day at a time. In fact, the Indonesian language has no future tense.
But people adapt, like former fisherman Kihagar, who turned to seaweed farming as the fish ran out. He sits in his front room surrounded by mounds of rope and plastic bottles, teaching his son how to mend and build seaweed ropes.
"Hopefully we can always do this," says Kihagar.
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(TOP PHOTO: A girl sorts through seaweed under her family's house in Dewara, Kaledupa, before laying it out to dry. CREDIT: Vivien Cumming)
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