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HomeNewsSouth CarolinaCharleston DeaneryCaleb Borick advances to nationals in piano competition
Caleb Borick advances to nationals in piano competition
January 31, 2017 Caroline Charleston Deanery, News, Parish Life, South Carolina
CHARLESTON — Caleb Borick, 14, will travel to Baltimore, Md., in March to compete in the 2017 MTNA National Competition.
Caleb, the son of Carl and Susan Borick, earned this opportunity after winning the Southern Division of the MTNA Piano Competition Junior Performance. A homeschooled freshman, Caleb has been studying piano for nine years and is currently a student of Joseph Rackers, Ph.D., associate professor of piano at the University of South Carolina.
Last year, Caleb appeared on NPR's "From the Top" (Episode No. 320), and in July 2016 he attended Music Fest Perugia in Perugia, Italy, where he performed Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto with the Alicante Symphony Orchestra. He played the opening concert at the Green Lake Festival of Music in Wisconsin in June, performing both solo and chamber works. Locally, over the course of his music career he has played Piccolo Spoleto events, the Heart Ball, TEDx Charleston and many other venues.
When not playing piano, Caleb is a karate enthusiast, and in September he earned his black belt after studying less than two years. He now teaches younger karate students on a daily basis. He also serves the community by regularly playing concerts at local nursing homes.
The MTNA National Piano Competition will take place March 18, during the MTNA National Conference. The winner will receive a cash prize and perform in a concert during the conference.
The three-tiered MTNA competitions begin at the state level. Winners advance to division competition, then proceed to national finals. Caleb won the state event in Spartanburg on Nov. 5 and southern division in Columbia on Jan. 15.
Awards are 'a great reminder of the call to serve'
Putting down roots
College advice part three: Studying and keeping an open mind
September 4, 2014 Victoria Wain South Carolina, Video
This three part video series has advice for the incoming freshman class on how to adapt to college life. Seniors and recent graduates from different schools across South Carolina share some of their experiences.
College advice part two: Faith, friendships and support systems
August 27, 2014 Victoria Wain South Carolina, Video
College advice part one: Emotions, new friends and exploring campus


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Приаднепровското възвишение (; ) е обширно възвишение в югозападната част на Източноевропейската равнина, разположено в централната част на Украйна.

Приднепровското възвишение се простира между средното течение на река Днепър на североизток и река Южен Буг на югозапад, на протежение около 500 km от северозапад на югоизток и ширина до 160 km. На северозапад се свързва с Подолското възвишение, а на югоизток склоновете му постепенно потъват в Причерноморската низина.

Надморската му височина варира от 200 – 240 m на северозапад до 150 – 180 m на югоизток. Максимална височина 323 m (), разположена в северозападната му част, на 0,5 km северно от село Паривка, Виницка област. В основата на възвишението заляга обширния Украински кристалинен щит, скалите на който са препокрити с глини, пясъци, льосови и льосовидни наслаги. Релефът му се характеризира с редуване на заоблени и заравнени междуречия с дълбоки (до 60 – 80 m), често каньоновидни речни долини.

От възвишението нодят началото си множество десни притоци на Днепър – Тетерев, Ирпен, Рос, Ингулец и леви притоци на Южен Буг – Соб, Синюха, Ингул и др.

Приднепровското възвишение е важен селскостопански район на Украйна. Голяма част от площта му е заета от обработваеми земи, като се отглеждат предимно зърнени култури (пшеница, царевица и др.), развито е овощарството и интензивното животновъдство. В югоизточната му част се експлоатират големи находища на железни (Криворожки железноруден басейн) и манганови руди, живачни пясъци и уран.

Източници

Възвишения в Украйна

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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Tuya's Marriage: Wang Quan
TUYA'S MARRIAGE is the indelible portrait of a strong woman determined to save her family, herself and her husband from separation, starvation and possibly worse circumstances.
Set in the remote inner Mongolian grassland, TUYA (Nan Yu,)is the iron-willed wife of Bater, a herdsman who has been paralyzed. Tuya takes up the sole responsibility to make a living for her family, but her hard labor endangers her health. The solution to their harsh reality is for Tuya to get divorced and remarried to a man willing to take on the responsibility of her children, her husband and tending their herdland the sole source of their livelihood.
Tuya is shown to be a strong-minded, stubborn, but gentle woman whose principles and her love for her family including her husband guide her decisions in life.
The Mongolian setting, the life style so different from our own, adds an element to the quirky plot that keeps the viewer enthralled as this determined mother/wife and woman bring the elements of modern day feminist's desire into reality.
Wrenching and beautiful: educational and empowering:. I recommend this film whole heartedly
Tuya's Marriage Open April 4, 2008
LindaZ
WBAI Women's Collective
Posted by Critical Women, Prairie Miller at 11:48 AM No comments:
The Favor: Written and directed by Eva Aridjis,
The Favor(2006) is an intimate family drama about a working class, middle age man
Lawrence Hull(Tony award winner Frank Wood, The Royal Tenenbaums) whose intimate knowledge of closeness seems limited to the companionship he enjoys with his little dog Lucy until he elects to make his girlfriend of years ago orphaned sixteen year old troubled adolescent son, Johnny(Ryan Donowho OC, Broken Flowers, A Home at the End of the World) his foster child.
This is a powerfully acted and emotionally accurate film with attention to details often omitted in films where success is counted in making money and being the best student, the shining light real parents seldom enjoy during the trying adolescent years. The unforeseen lessons, the moments of learning to know and accept one another are brought to the fore with skillful depiction. Much of the power of the film is in the understatement of the obvious, the simplicity of scene. It is a film where the less said the more is implied with great success and it ends not with doom or gloom or dramatic events. It ends simply with a statment of hope:
Where love prevails so do we.
I recommend this film as a must see moment to be enjoyed by parents and their children, alone or as a family
Linda Z
The Favor will open for an exclusive engagement on May 2, 2008 at Quad Cinema, located at 34 West 13th Street in New York City.
The film premiered at the CineVegas Film Festival in June 2006
Wings Of Defeat: Military Machismo As Assisted Suicide
By Prairie Miller
It's nearly a given that Americans learn most about 'history' at the movies, not in the classrooms. And where more often than not, there's always one side to every story. So it's no surprise that people in this country believe that the WW II Japanese kamikaze pilots who deliberately flew their planes into US naval warships, were simply crazed, screaming fanatics trying to impress their emperor. Risa Morimoto's very personal yet historically complex documentary, Wings Of Defeat, sheds a very different light on those young men, some of whom are still alive to tell their quite sad and compelling story.
Morimoto has crafted Wings Of Defeat not only as a cinematic inquiry, but as someone who has an intimate, tragic connection to those times. Though born and raised in New York City, Morimoto discovered only recently that she's the niece of a kamikaze pilot who died twenty years ago in Japan. For the secrecy and embarrassment that exists in connection with those thousands of kamikazes, hundreds of whom survived because they were still in training when the war ended, is not unlike the silence that shrouds the Vietnam War era here in the US.
And so Morimoto made the painful journey to Japan to discover through her film, the mystery surrounding her late uncle's life along with the other pilots. Her inquiry is penetrating and also balanced, as she allows surviving elderly kamikazes, family members of those who were killed, and sailors who were aboard those targeted US ships, a shared spotlight in her film. And it is her initial hope that as an outsider, she can ease the sting of recollection.
While the US veterans are puzzled that the kamikaze pilots would readily give up their lives - several even confessing that they didn't have the heart to shoot them down - while the Americans were fighting for their own survival, the former kamikazes themselves and these families have far greater difficulty expressing their opinions or feelings. In fact, some are speaking about the subject for the first time ever in their lives, to the camera rather than to their own spouses or children. A profound survivors' guilt also hovers in the air, along with chronic despair and buried pain, wherever Morimoto makes her rounds.
And it's not just about the collective shame of being vanquished in a war. What comes to light through Wings Of Defeat, is a military brutality that forced most of these young men to sacrifice their lives. Many were in fact as young as fifteen and sixteen years old, dragged out of their schools, plied full of sake wine, and given a one way ticket so to speak - that is, not enough plane fuel for a return ride - and sent on their way. In effect, those boys not old enough to legally drink or drive, were ironically forced to do both out of obedience to patriotic duty.
Some were beaten and starved into submission, while others were pressured into believing that they were saving their countrymen, who would otherwise be massacred by the poised US invaders. One survivor recalls how a fellow pilot went on his mission only after learning that his young wife had flung herself and their two children into a river, so he wouldn't have to endure the suffering of knowing that he was leaving them behind. Another shows Morimoto his 'funeral portrait' taken just before he was supposed to fly on his own mission. He remembers that everyone was 'dying on the inside' but kept smiling. His parents and sons had never before heard him speak a word of what he describes as a grim time.
What is also striking on a more political level, is the similarity of language contained in the war rhetoric, that continues to be echoed today as rationalization for foreign aggression. The Japanese government so effectively persuaded the country to rally behind the war effort, because they insisted they were pushing Western imperialism out of Asia and 'liberating' Asian countries from US tyranny and predatory designs. And the kamikaze assaults, which were not implemented until late in the war, rather than a novel military tactic, were simply last acts of desperation, as Japan itself metaphorically nosedived into its own demise. That is, when fuel and supplies had nearly run out, and human beings as bombs became a military weapon of last resort.
The numerous melancholy threads of Wings Of Defeat come together in the end with an unanticipated inspirational optimism. Morimoto is saddened about her uncle, but relieved to discover that he was set up to be martyred by his country, not for them. And while the family sweeps and washes his grave during a visit to the cemetery, one elderly former kamikaze feels a renewed determination to fight for permanent peace on an otherwise doomed planet, while expressing a desire to meet those American sailors in the film who had spared his comrades.
Wings Of Defeat is an exemplary scrutiny of the emotional and psychological manifestations of patriotism. And a candid and bold challenge to the whole notion of preconceptions and stereotypes.
Wings Of Defeat will be screened at the Japan Society in New York City on March 18th, and at Georgetown University in Washington DC on March 19th. More information is online at: wingsofdefeat.com.
Edgewood Pictures
Prairie Miller
The Death of Mr. Lazarescu
2005/DVD 2006
Director: Cristi Puiu
Cast: Luminita Gheorghiu, Ion Fiscuteanu, Daru Ana
Review by Nancy Keefe Rhodes
Both films are about unwanted teen pregnancy, but there's no mistaking the new and widely respected Romanian film, 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days – which has just briefly played at Manlius Cinema – with Juno. That mere blink of an eye in which Ellen Page's chatty teen-ager considers and dismisses the possibility of abortion? Cristian Mungiu's film is all about that "option" as it played out in 1987, in the depths of Nicolae Ceauşescu's dysfunctional regime, two years before the dictator's own bloody demise. Mungiu's film is harrowing and in one late section, when the student roommate, a soberingly indomitable young woman, is traversing some dark alleys and stairwells to dispose of her friend's fetus, you find yourself filled with dread, for her safety and really for the well-being of us all.
Inscrutably passed over for Oscar nomination – much to the consternation and surprise of numerous reviewers – Mungiu's film is part of the surge of new Romanian cinema that came to our attention several years ago with Cristi Puiu's The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005). Mungiu uses the same cinematographer, Oleg Mutu, so both films have a similar look and feel – there's the strange sensation of events on the brink of chaos that a camera has locked onto, as if only the shoot itself holds things together. And again, there's a female performance and character of understated yet profound humanity. Luminita Gheorghiu's portrayal of Mioara Avram, the nurse-paramedic who accompanies Dante Lazarescu (Ion Fiscuteanu) on his final night's journey through four different city hospital emergency rooms, is itself reason enough to rent this movie.
Red-haired and a little blowsy, in her mid-50s, smoking whenever she can and bothered all night by her own gall-bladder pain (nasty, by the way, especially when your job entails hauling heavy bodies around through a night shift in a cold, lurching ambulance), Mioara arrives at Lazarescu's dismal high-rise at ten o'clock on a late October Saturday night. He has a terrific headache, his stomach hurts, he smells of alcohol and he vomits several times.
Lazarescu has three cats whom the neighbor's wife hates and you know will not be safe in his absence. He has a busy sister in another city who wants his pension check and a married daughter in Toronto, and lost his wife eight years ago. His gentle neighbor, Sandu (Daru Ana), is so huge he must stoop, emphasizing how tiny Lazarescu's flat is. Focused, patient, fairly astute medically, Mioara decides Lazarescu must indeed go with her, but first she's tempted – like every over-worked medical person he encounters – to dismiss his pains as drunkenness.
A huge accident in which a bus carrying children crashes complicates their journey. That carnage overwhelms all the hospitals ahead of them. At St. Spiridon, one doctor calls Lazarescu "you pig" for requesting more courteous treatment. At University Hospital, a morose figure in a flowing black cape meets the ambulance in the parking lot with, "Please go away." At Filaret Hospital, doctors determine Lazarescu needs surgery after wasting long moments chastising Mioara for challenging their authority by suggesting it. At Bagdasar Hospital, near the end of the night shift, he's finally prepped for surgery.
Along the way, Lazarescu deteriorates, wets himself, begins to speak deliriously, lapses into coma just before dawn. He's stripped, washed, his torso draped with a clean sheet. An aide pats his newly shaved skull, calls him "Handsome." Instead of leaving him at any number of acceptable junctures, Mioara sticks by him, even defends him, touches him from time to time with a reflex that finally becomes tender. They exchange the kind of personal details, largely at Lazarescu's persistent prompting – Mioara says early on, "This one likes to chat" – that make it hard to see another as an object and send out for croissants, as one doctor does, before his gurney's out the door.
With great economy, Puiu provides the weary emergency room staffs through whose hands Lazarescu passes with enough traits that they light up for their few moments as individuals. The first physician who lectures and derides Lazarescu wears a haughty pompadour. One young doctor's constant cracking of his chewing gum somehow summarizes his youth and energy. One woman physician secures a needed test for Lazarescu by tapping into her supervisor's amorous intentions, while at the next stop the model-glamorous blond doctor – she of the croissants – is locked in a power-fueled stalemate with her male superior that poisons every interaction in their vicinity like fall-out. The aides who finally wash Lazarescu's body, unlike many of the previous younger women, are older, heavier, their thick hands and waists evoking some rural village where the women wash the dead for burial.
All these deft minor strokes evoke another, more classical journey through the underworld also famously peopled by vivid cameos. Puiu brackets his film early and late with this defining reference, identifying his main character's full name as "Dante Remus Lazarescu" and the orderly called at the closing to "take him across" as Virgil. Puiu says he also called on the series ER for ambiance and background of a different sort – it's a favorite of his, serialized on Romanian TV.
After a boatload of international prizes and US DVD release in 2006, this film has not done terribly well here, perhaps because of misguided marketing as an "acclaimed black comedy." The DVD contains the US trailer with its hyper-edited snatches of dialogue and shots that create a wholly misleading slapstick impression. But Puiu says Romanian audiences did laugh at initial festival screenings, which he allows "surprised" him. If the film at Manlius is no Juno, this one isn't The Bucket List either. Based on a real incident in which an ambulance visited six Bucharest hospitals in one night – Puiu says the repetition provided a structure that let him explore variations – this launches six films that will portray kinds of love. Puiu starts that series with "love of humanity." Comedy, yes - but of the divine sort.
This review appeared in the 3/13/08 issue of the Syracuse City Eagle weekly, where "Make it Snappy" is a regular column reviewing DVDs of recent movies that did not open theatrically in CNY & older films of enduring worth.
Disgusted About Sexism In Film Criticism: WFCC Women Interviewed
Congratulations to the WFCC women who were interviewed in the Friday Union-Tribune article about the disgusting sexism in the male-dominated movie criticism field, after U-T columnist David Coddon approached the Women Film Critics Circle. And thank you to all who responded. Here's the article and link:
FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH | DAVID L. CODDON
Sexist remark shines a light on shortage of female film critics
The negative review of "The Other Boleyn Girl" that appeared in the Feb. 29 Currents Weekend began this way: "What is the point of a bodice-ripper starring an actress who – how can we put this politely? – doesn't have much to offer in the decolletage department?"
That same day, a female colleague on the U-T features editing team who'd seen "The Other Boleyn Girl" and liked it told me she could tell from that very first sentence that the review had been written by a man. She was right.
It was written not by a Union-Tribune staff member, but by a critic whose review was plucked from the Associated Press wire. I did the plucking. I'm sorry I did. It was a stupid, sexist way to open a critique of "The Other Boleyn Girl."
Then I started wondering why there are so few female film critics, especially on major newspaper staffs (including this one). Searching for insight, I discovered the Women Film Critics Circle, which dubs itself the "First National Association of Women Critics." I contacted several of its members and tapped their brains.
"There are a lot of male editors and men in management positions," said Felicia Feaster, one of two critics (the other is a man) at the alternative weekly Creative Loafing in Atlanta. "I don't think it's seen as essential to have a female voice on that particular beat.
"It's ironic to me because one of the most famous film critics ever was Pauline Kael (of The New Yorker), who was so influential. What's her legacy? There's no one who has that kind of role now."
Feaster said there are more female voices in the alternative press, but even there, film is a male-dominated beat. "It's unfortunate because women sometimes bring a completely different point of view to films."
Fellow WFCC member Mary Garcia in New York City writes reviews for the trade pub Film Journal International and for The Progressive. Garcia suggested that "The male voice of authority is still with us. When I was in film school, one of the reasons women weren't trusted behind the camera was because we couldn't carry one. So the men used to say, 'You can try, but why don't you do continuity?' We grew up with that."
Still, Garcia cautions that having "more women's voices doesn't necessarily guarantee less bias."
In fact, Nancy Keefe Rhodes in Syracuse, N.Y., who covers film and visual arts for MovieCrossRhodes.blogspot.com, said that some WFCC members "are on the radio, some are online, some are in weekly papers. I don't think there are quite as few of us (female critics) as you might think."
Do men and women look at a film differently?
"Inevitably, I do look at many films as a woman," Rhodes said. "Certainly, men have a male perspective, too. I want to be able to review films that everybody makes for all kinds of audiences."
As online journalism overtakes print, more people – men and women – will be reviewing more and more films. Sadly, though, the line between legitimate criticism and mindless blogging is sure to blur. Film "reviews" may become the first cell phone call or text message one friend makes to another as he or she walks out of the screening. While it can, the printed word must give moviegoers credibility – and it takes the printed words of both genders to do that.
[http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/features/20080314-99
99-1c14closeupm.html]
Women Film Critics Circle: wfcc.wordpress.com
Critical Women On Film: Journal of the Women Film Critics Circle - criticalwoman.blogspot.com
Eliot Spitzer's 'Bank Job'
By Logan Nakyanzi Pollard
It's fun looking at fuck-ups because they take our eyes off ourselves. I can't prove this, but I suspect that in some way we're all hypocrites, we're all frauds. Some of us are even criminals.
I was thinking about this last night as my husband and I were on the way home from watching the film The Bank Job, a take on a "true life" story about a bank heist in the 1970's. The Bank Job takes place in grim, dark London in 1971 -- enter wacko black radicals and white Brits treating other white Brits badly -- depressing but sexy stuff. The subplot of the film involved a series of photos taken of various prominent people having sex with people they shouldn't being having sex with. How sad. How uptight! We laughed on the way home. It's an unfortunate thing... having people see your most intimate desires, when you'd rather keep them private: like that public official in the film, surreptitiously photographed being whipped while wearing pink ladies panties.
And there seemed an odd congruity yesterday -- hearing Eliot Spitzer's big reveal: that he likes high-priced prostitutes. (I like the "high price" part, it adds a certain cache -- what exactly do you get for $5000/hour?) It's not so much of a big reveal though is it? I mean, infidelity is a common thing. And worse still, most of the time the other partner is none the wiser: "70 percent of married women and 54 percent of married men did not know of their spouses' extramarital activity," claims Men's Stuff publication. I've always thought Eliot Spitzer was a handsome man, I don't mind telling you that now. Part of me has often thought a man that handsome would have to get into some trouble. I even felt a smug kind of satisfaction in seeing I was right about him. Around me at work -- I hadn't see this much excitement in the newsroom since Monica Lewinsky. So sexy! So fun! All of us released for a moment from the tension of covering the fight between Obama and Clinton. Love a sex scandal. Look at him, his face. His wife. This is juicy stuff: Good man gone bad.
And then, I suddenly felt chilled -- chastened actually: Spitzer was supposed to be the man to clean-up Albany. Now all the crooks can say to him: you have been brought down. I wondered, why are we gleeful? Are our lives really so boring that we are happy to see a man brought down by -- of all things -- himself? His own weakness? This is a sad thing, I think.
Further along in this direction, I wonder, are we waiting for our leaders to fail? Maybe we want them to fail so we can have an excuse to not believe in anyone anymore. If nobody can be perfect, then nothing will have to change. If nobody can be perfect, then you will not have to do anything. We can all sit around and judge each other. I wonder, maybe, we should stop. Maybe we should not set up people for this. Maybe we should let each other fuck up sometimes.
[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/logan-nakyanzi-pollard/
eliot-spitzers-bank-job_b_90979.html]
Logan Nakyanzi Pollard is an executive producer at Air America Radio and Go Left TV, and writes for The Huffington Post. Logan is also a member of the Women Film Critics Circle.
Irina Palm Review: Sleaze, Social Satire, Feminism and Found Love
With media junkies hooked right now on disgraced New York Luv Guv Eliot Spitzer's comedown - no puns intended and there are many more to come in this review, so pay attention - and little focus from the service provider's perspective, so to speak, the movie Irina Palm may go a long way to change all that. Scarcely scandal-free, former Mick Jagger favorite honey, singing sensation in her own right, and occasional suicidal homeless heroin addict Marianne Faithfull turns the hooker with a heart of gold notion on its head along with well, giving is better than receiving issues, which are all in for a radical makeover in this film.
Marianne is Maggie in Irina Palm, a frumpy, aging suburban London widow and lifelong housewife who endured a loveless marriage through the decades after finding herself pregnant at seventeen. And now she's suddenly saddled with the burden of her young grandson afflicted with a potentially terminal disease, and having to help find the money to pay for a possible life-saving operation in another country.
It also happens to be Christmastime, and in a painfully cruel series of ironic twists on all that fake good will season rhetoric, Maggie is summarily turned down for crisis cash at the bank by a loan officer in a ridiculous Santa Claus hat and surrounded by glittering trees, and later dismissed outright at the unemployment office, as just another marginalized, economically desperate old woman with no work history.
Having led an existence quite sheltered from the real world, Maggie spots a help wanted notice for a hostess job in the window of a sleazy downtown Soho strip club, and applies, taking the job title literally. Miki (Miki Manojlovic), the cranky Eastern European club owner, at first ridicules the serious-minded senior applicant, then notices that she may have a special gift that transcends age or sex appeal - a pair of exceptionally soft hands.
So Miki sets Maggie up for a probationary trial run administering anonymous hand jobs, to put it bluntly, to unseen clients through a well-positioned hole in the wall of a scuzzy back room. Maggie is shocked and revolted to say the least, but with the prospect of her grandson's life coming to an end, she methodically goes about her well-paying chore in her household cleaning smock, until routine eventually replaces revulsion.
Taking to heart more than a little the maxim that beauty's only skin deep, while turning a whole menu of storytelling conventions on their head, the film does just that as Maggie's unique talent - of which she's completely unaware mind you - becomes the stuff of local legend. And long lines of lusty customers to partake of this grandma's great right hook, are soon forming, as they increasingly ignore all those nude young dancers cavorting around the club. Maggie is such a hit, that Miki rewards her - in his own way - by renaming her Irina Palm on her door sign advertising her wares. And when she gets mad enough to bawl him out for issues around worker exploitation, Miki not only begins to notice her as a person and connect to her human side, but may also be becoming captivated by her as a woman.
Director Sam Garbarski has crafted an extraordinarily unique and touching film, combining sleaze, social satire, feminism, and romantic grace to create a tenderhearted tale of found love, female empowerment, and redemption from the collective dehumanization inherent in commercially driven society. And he actually pulls it off, give the guy a hand. On second thought...
Posted by Critical Women, Prairie Miller at 7:46 PM 1 comment:
Further comments on Funny Games 2007
DON'T DO VIOLENCE TO VIOLENCE:
In defense of Funny Games U.S.
By Linda Z
In my earlier review, see below, I confessed to being so enamored by this film that it rendered me tongue tied. But Prairie Miller and our readers have sufficiently loosened my tongue that I am more capable of giving those vital details to enable readers to go to the see the film and understand, emotionally and intellectually the work of a true genius.
History has taught us that the genius is rarely understood at the time of his greatest works. In this regard Michael Haneke is no exception. However, Michael Haneke addresses this problem. By remaking the film he has taken up the burden of his intellectual superiority.
In his opinion this film is more true today in the United State than when he originally made it and that is the reason he has remade it.
What he wants is for more people to see and understand what he is saying.
What is he saying?
Although there is only a seven second difference between his original film and the remake, the substantive difference is important. These actors are "more professional" Michael Haneke said in the press session I attended.
If this is just another one of many gratuitously violent films, why should this slight difference in the actors make such a profound difference to the Director?
The answer lies in what he is trying to convey. The actors are not people but caricatures of real people. They are like robots, plastic renditions of human beings. They have no past, no real emotions. Even the family in the car ride to their summer house are plastic and the music which is not really what it seems to be, is plastic, annoying, because it has no melody, nothing to emotionally grab hold of. It is a wake up call. It throws all other thoughts out of one's mind to put us in the moment. But don't we live from moment to moment with anxiety hovering over all of our lives
Funny Games is not about violence, the blood and gore type It is about the game, life as a violent, dehumanizing, grossly disturbing game.
This is not Hollywood. We understand that this is not a Hollywood film by deliberate effort when the Dircetor breaks all the rules in film making and gives us a rerun of a tense moment of potential escape. In Hollywood the good guys win. I found myself relaxing with the original film take, the good guys win version and when the scene is rerun, and it becomes obvious that the Director is playing with us just like the media always does, and the truth here prevails: the good guys will not win, I found myself emotionally distraught, confused and then educated. This is a film that says we are so used to seeing the good guys win but the truth is the bad ones are wining every day. And they win while we watch television and cheer about a sports event with all that superfluity of emotion. That eliciting of exuberant emotion is a game visited upon us by Hollywood and the media.
Look at the news. Designed to entertain. War reduced to a numbers game peppered with the implicit understanding that we, the perpetrators of violence worldwide with the dissemination of weapons of destruction and overt acts of aggression, are the good guys and we are winning.
This is not a Marxist film. It is not about one class struggle against another.
Every character is of the same class, made from the same cloth, with the same higher education and the same overt display of money, in clothes, life style. Thus it is impossible to say who is good, who is bad. These characters are "beyond good and evil" as are those school children with guns drawn shooting at those with whom they spend the everyday moments of their lives. There is even a Biblical reference in the names, Paul and Peter, for the serial killers.
This film says we are all alone even with our new found cell phones and other means of communication that don't work when we need them most.
When we close the gate to our inner selves, our summer estate, we are making ourselves more vulnerable to attack.
It is a mistake, an important error in judgment, not to see this film. We must open our eyes to what life really is, accept, and embrace the violence of our world. A prerequisite to meaningful change is the understanding emotionally and intellectually of what is.
Funny Games gives me/us hope.
SEE IT. Then tell me how wrong, how right I am
Funny Games: A Different View
With the cult of cruelty wallpapering the mass media more than ever before, and everything from murders, wars and celebrity breakdowns as lowbrow spectator sport entertainment, it was only a matter of time before the cinema of sadism would seek a new, virtually untapped market among the egghead arthouse crowd. And now that German born writer/director Michael Haneke and his warped imagination have ventured into that virgin territory with Funny Games US, the remake, the stampede is on. Or so it would seem.
Film critics, whom one would imagine would know better, have apparently lost their minds over this movie at the moment. Or at least hastily set aside any sense of professionalism and even moral decency, as they've shown up at preview press screenings for Funny Games in droves, with lines snaking around the block, to partake with great gusto and hearty cheerful enthusiasm, in the ambulance-chasing style morbid pleasures of observing a family, however fictional, being tortured nonstop on the screen for two hours.
Haneke decided to remake his original Funny Games, which came out in 1997, for reasons which are unclear, considering that this production remains nearly intact. Except for a new cast of characters, relocation of the setting from Germany to Southampton, Long Island, and a notably passive male head of household victim and contrasting take charge, more aggressive housewife. The director has mentioned in interviews that he had really intended his first film to be made about America, because of the greater inclination of US movies to revel in violence as entertainment.
As Funny Games begins, the affluent Farber Family, George (Tim Roth) and Ann (Naomi Watts) are headed by car to their remote palatial vacation home with their young son, Georgie (Devon Gearhart). While father and son tidy up the family fishing boat at their private dock, Mom makes preparations for a dinner that night with visiting neighbors.
Ann's kitchen duties are suddenly interrupted by the appearance at the door of an odd preppie young man dressed in a golfing outfit and white sports gloves, and with impeccable formal etiquette. Peter (Brady Corbet) asks to borrow four eggs at the request of a neighbor he claims to be visiting, then proceeds to drop and break the eggs, and ask for four more. Soon Peter is joined out of nowhere by his identically attired and likewise strangely verbally polite pal, Paul (Michael Pitt).
When the peculiar pair becomes increasingly demanding and refuses to leave, a confrontation with the couple ordering them to do so leads to an ugly hostage situation, and escalating degradation, violence and psychological torture for this unfortunate family. And the two patrician young men never lose their soft-spoken cool, while casually applying the most despicable forms of suffering and humiliation to these random, doomed victims.
The emphasis is clearly on torture for sport, given the athletic attire of these elite thugs, and their favored wielding of golf clubs as potential deadly weapons. And their stated intentions that the rules of the 'funny games' in progress consist of whether or not the family members can prevail and avoid death at their hands, by managing to survive until morning.
There's also the implied intended collusion of the audience, devised by a mischievous filmmaker not without his own culpability in this extended atrocity, in a kind of depraved spectator sport. And sorry to say, the assembled film critic viewers at the screening I attended, appeared to themselves be taken agreeable hostage with pleasure and even laughter, for the ride. Will the real monster stand up, please.
This sort of having-your-cake-and-eating-it-too indulgence in torture porn, however arty, while pretentiously and simultaneously implying a vague critique of the proceedings, is nearly as repulsive and pointless as anything observed on the screen. Is Haneke suggesting deadly home invasion with its initial, deceptively gracious diplomatic overtures, as symbolic of imperialism? If so, there's not much merit to that premise, as the perpetrators and victims alike are all upper class. Perhaps the most striking irony at work here, is that the wealthy have devised all sorts of technical measures and gadgetry like elaborate electronic gated communities to protect their interests, but in doing so may also be trapping themselves within, in a crisis. Well, so what.
The idea itself for Funny Games, though, is not necessarily far fetched. The most notorious patrician killing spree on record, that of Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold Jr. who kidnapped and murdered a child in the early 1920s simply for thrills, subsequently inspired two movies, Compulsion (1959) and Swoon (1992). But Funny Games sheds no new light in this arena on either the complexity of pathological human relations, or psychological depravity.
Hopefully Funny Games is not indicative of a new trend where the arthouse crowd gets their own stylistically upgraded B slasher fare too. That ominous cruelty-is-cool, polite homicide-is-hip mentality is nothing more than a new low in the movie world.
Warner Independent Pictures
Rate R
Posted by Critical Women, Prairie Miller at 7:33 AM 3 comments:
Barrio Cuba
Director: Humberto Solás
Cast: Luisa María Jimenez, Mario Limonta, Jorge Perugorria, Adela Legra, Rafael Lahera
It's remarkable how you remember some films, how you find they are crisp and clear in your mind much later and just as good now as when you first watched them, surprised and unsuspecting. Cuban director Humberto Solás' Barrio Cuba, just out on DVD here, screened almost exactly a year ago – March 3, 2007 – at the DC Independent Film Festival in Washington, thanks to the persistence of DCIFF's founder and director, Carol Bidault. She had seen Barrio Cuba abroad at another festival and endured lengthy negotiations to make the DC appearance happen. Barrio Cuba had its international theatrical premier later – in mid-July – in Spain. Perhaps needless to say, it has never opened theatrically here.
Two staff attached to the Washington Cuba Section Office came with the film that Saturday night, keeping to themselves in a strategic corner of the mezzanine balcony overlooking the main lobby on the University of the District of Columbia campus in northwest DC – this year's DCIFF opens this weekend at George Mason University – even during the lively, pretty much continuous reception between and during screenings. The second in a trilogy of films about life in Havana's slums, Barrio Cuba was extremely well-received by that festival crowd.
Many seemed to know Solás' most recent previous film, Honey for Oshun, about a young man who searches for his lost mother after he discovers he was taken out of Cuba illegally as a child by his father. Honey for Oshun released in 2001, the year after the notorious Elián González affair in which a boy brought to Miami by his mother was returned to his Cuban father after court battles by Miami relatives and middle of the night seizures by federal agents. I had seen Honey, which shares four principal cast members with the newer film, at a May Memorial Church fund-raiser several years ago here in Syracuse, and watching Solás at work in Barrio brought memories rushing back. Whatever else has been going on under Fidel, the 67-year-old Solás – who started his film career in 1961 with shorts and docs, appreciates and explores women as few male directors do, and survived Cuba's aggressively anti-gay state policies that began in the 1970s – can sure still make movies.
In the past year since DCIFF, three have become available in the US, notably through First Run Features' 5-disc Cuban Masterworks set, which has come out one disc at a time: A Successful Man (1987), about two brothers' divergent political paths and their family newspaper from the 1930s through Castro's revolution; Amada (1982), about a cross-class Havana romance in 1914; and Cecilia (1981), about racial tensions circa 1830. Solás' 1968 sensation about three women who embody three critical time periods, Lucía, exists on DVD but sadly not in US format.
The plotline of Barrio Cuba also revolves around three women and their trials, partings, longing for children, family, connection and reconciliation. The nurse Magalis (Luisa María Jimenez) rides her bicycle to the hospital – already exhausted by her father's bickering with her younger brother Willy over his decision to come out as a gay man and by husband Alfonso's wandering – past the shop where much older Ignacio (Mario Limonta) watches her daily, besotted. Chino (Jorge Perugorria) picks up Vivian (Isabel Santos) from her all-night shift at the pharmacy. Prodigiously passionate, their marriage breaks under the strain of her miscarriage and his own family's grief as a younger brother leaves Cuba, taking the young grandsons with him. Amparo (Adela Legra) welcomes the pregnant wife Maria (Ana Dominguez) of her son Santo (Rafael Lahera) into her tiny barrio home, only to have Maria die in childbirth. We measure the film's time frame – years longer than we might think without this yardstick – by the growth of the boy Miguelito, whom Santo leaves with Amparo when he takes to the road, unable to bear Maria's death.
We meet all of these characters, save Miguelito, in the film's opening moments, as Havana sets out en masse, gamely, even energetically for its worn, tattered day. One of the shocks of this film, which steals over you gradually, is the depth of material privation in everyday Cuban life after decades of embargoes and sanctions. Yet this city is gorgeously filmed and these emotional lives rich, full-bodied, nuanced, utterly convincing. Every major character weeps at some turning point. Esteban Puebla provides a musical score of startling lush emotional power. Such filmmaking has a confidence and sweep that leaves much of American mall cinema seeming rotely hesitant by comparison, even in Solás' refusal to create artificial connections among his subplots. Instead, he simply pans across the sky to the next location, picking up that story where he left off, relying on the momentum of emotional resonance to keep its balance and coherence. Remember that first time you rode without training wheels?
This review appeared in the 3/6/2008 issue of the Syracuse City Eagle weekly, where "Make it Snappy" is a regular column reviewing DVDs of recent movies that did not open theatrically in CNY & older films of enduring worth.
Funny Games 2007
A remake of the Michael Haneke 1997 film of the same name
Naomi Watts, Tim Roth, Michael Pitt, Brady Corrbet, Devon Gearhart
A wealthy family (mother, father and son) goes on vacation to their palatial summer home and is met by two serial killers.
Usually when I see a film I can walk out of the theater and say something about it. But with this film I was so blown away by the sheer brilliance that I became tongue tied.
Where to begin? With the opening music. The sound isn't soft, melodious, gently pulling you into the experience as you read the credits. No. The music that ushers in the film is loud, too loud, jarring and that is just what the Director Michael Haneke wants.
To make his audience uncomfortable, to make us think about what we are seeing rather than just sitting in the theater taking in the moments without a critical eye.
From the opening he then introduces the viewer to the principle actors, well, some of them, the family. They know classical music and this sound is soft, beautiful. It indicates that Michael Haneke does know pleasant music in contract to what he initially exposed us to.
Michael Haneke never forgets his audience.
Some might object to this, the interruption to talk to you as you sit through one tense grueling violent or potentially violent scene after another. But he is saying, this is our world, as the television racecar meet accompanies the violent act of gratuitous murder. But isn't that exactly what we do. We watch the football game while we continue to finance the murder of women and children in iraq, In Afghanistan?
And if you didn't understand the television as background music, Michael Haneke gives us a not uncommon experience with the cell phone to show that all these new age devices seem to promise communication and protection and help but when we need them most, they don't work. Unfortunately, that too resonates with our all too frequent life experience.
The rerun of a scene also a unusual addition to the film's evolution, reminds us that new age technology can make anything happen and often takes what is real and not real and mixes it all up.
But the most intense moment of horror for me was when Naomi Watts, an actress whom Michael Haneke specifically wanted for the part of the mother, and attractive wife, is thrown like a piece of unwanted banana peel into the lake as the boat sails on.
Oh the discomfort, the profound image of eggs to symbolize life and pending death, the entire concept of games being nothing that comes close to fun or funny.
There are no winners in this film. There is only a statement, a statement that I think needs to be said, to be seen, to be understood. Our world is a violent, disconnected, isolated place and the very educated that everyone in the film seemed to be including the serial killers, does not diminished isolation from "the essence" of life, the substance that makes it all worth while.
You can be part of the wealthy set with their lavish summer houses that, kept gated, protected, insured, and still
not escape the ravishes of this world. There is no worthwhile preyer in the film and no God to protect us from ourselves.
This is a brilliant, intelligent and unfortunately accurate film that was not only made twice but should be seen many many times.
Thank you Michael Haneke for reminding me that I am not alone in this ever escalating nightmere.
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Based in Fairfield County, Fitzgerald's Fine Catering is one of Connecticut's premier wedding and special event catering companies with over 35 years of experience, catering award-winning special events including weddings, corporate and non-profit functions, and private parties. A descendant of a family-owned catering business that began operations in 1948, Nicholas Shope continues the legacy with the goal to provide his clients with everything they need to make their special day a huge success, to deliver innovative cuisine, and to achieve excellence in all aspects of event catering.
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Kwara State Governor, Alhaji Abdufatah Ahmed has approved free bus ride for school children in uniform, pregnant women and the physically challenged people under the Maigida Soludero Mass Transit.
The Chief Executive Officer of the State Micro Small and Medium Enterprise (MSME) Bureau, Mr. Segun Soewu, made this known while featuring on a radio programme on Tuesday.
Soewu explained that the pregnant women and physically challenged will be entitled to the free bus ride throughout the day, while the school children can only enjoy the free service in the afternoon.
He said that Governor Ahmed gave the directive as part of efforts to bring succour to families and the less the privileged.
The MSME Bureau boss added that the mass transit scheme has been offering subsidized intra and inter-city transport service to students and other members of the public since it was launched in June 2017.


text:
How To Apply Slow Motion Effect To Videos In The YouTube Editor
Hours and hours of videos are uploaded to YouTube every day and they all differ in quality. For amateur movie makers who don't have access to expensive professional video editing software, and the skills to use it, there's a whole host of simple and easier to use apps that can be used instead, not least of which is YouTube's own video editor. The editor is easy to use for beginners and it has every basic feature you would need to edit a video as well as some effects, the latest addition to which has been the 'Slow-motion' effect. If you often edit videos, you might be aware how rare it is to find this effect as a feature in an app or service. Here's how you can use it to edit a newly video you've uploaded to YouTube, or to an existing one.
The slow motion effect is available in both the YouTube video editor, and the quick editing tools that you can access from the video player itself. Once you've uploaded the video you just made, and added it to the editor, click the effects button that appears when you hold your mouse over the video's thumbnail and under the 'Stabilize Video' option, you will see the 'Slow Motion' option. Enable it and then select how slow you want the video to be. This applies the effect to the entire video that you've selected. To slow down only parts of the video, clip it from the original video using the slicing tool and add the slow-motion effect to that clip only. You can then arrange the different clips you have (those with and without the slow-motion effect) in the editor to create your final video.
Alternatively, you can open an old video that you've uploaded and click the edit button under the player and click the magic wand button to access the effects panel. At the top right, you will see a button with a turtle on it and select a speed to slow it down to.
The first method, i.e. using the editor has the upper hand here; you can slice a particular portion of a video and apply the effect to it only. When editing it from the video's page, you have no choice other than to apply it to the whole video.
The preview feature doesn't seem to work for this particular effect i.e. you can see how the original video plays compared to the one you've slowed down. Videos are slowed down by a fixed percentage of their original playback speed and not by frames per second (or millisecond). Users can only select one of the preset speeds for slowing the video down and in case you were wondering, there is no option as yet to speed videos up.
Read How To Apply Slow Motion Effect To Videos In The YouTube Editor by Fatima Wahab on AddictiveTips - Tech tips to make you smarter
from AddictiveTips http://www.addictivetips.com/web/how-to-apply-slow-motion-effect-to-videos-in-the-youtube-editor/
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text:
// Boost.Geometry (aka GGL, Generic Geometry Library)
// QuickBook Example

// Copyright (c) 2011-2012 Barend Gehrels, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

// Use, modification and distribution is subject to the Boost Software License,
// Version 1.0. (See accompanying file LICENSE_1_0.txt or copy at
// http://www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt)

//[boost_fusion
//` Shows how to combine Boost.Fusion with Boost.Geometry

#include <iostream>

#include <boost/fusion/include/adapt_struct_named.hpp>

#include <boost/geometry.hpp>
#include <boost/geometry/geometries/adapted/boost_fusion.hpp>

struct sample_point
{
    double x, y, z;
};

BOOST_FUSION_ADAPT_STRUCT(sample_point, (double, x) (double, y) (double, z))
BOOST_GEOMETRY_REGISTER_BOOST_FUSION_CS(cs::cartesian)

int main()
{
    sample_point a, b, c;

    // Set coordinates the Boost.Geometry way (one of the ways)
    boost::geometry::assign_values(a, 3, 2, 1);

    // Set coordinates the Boost.Fusion way
    boost::fusion::at_c<0>(b) = 6;
    boost::fusion::at_c<1>(b) = 5;
    boost::fusion::at_c<2>(b) = 4;

    // Set coordinates the native way
    c.x = 9;
    c.y = 8;
    c.z = 7;

    std::cout << "Distance a-b: " << boost::geometry::distance(a, b) << std::endl;
    std::cout << "Distance a-c: " << boost::geometry::distance(a, c) << std::endl;

    return 0;
}

//]

//[boost_fusion_output
/*`
Output:
[pre
Distance a-b: 5.19615
Distance a-c: 10.3923
]
*/
//]

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Dying rhino leads calf to safety in final act of motherly love as game reserve poachers go on four-day killing spree in South Africa
Dying mother rhino leads her calf to farm lodge and safety after being attacked by poachers on killing spree in South AfricaPoachers kill eight rhino in four day killing spree in North West provinceIt left maggot-covered carcasses dotted across Finfoot Game ReserveFive men charged in connection with the massacre and due in courtBut game reserve staff say 'It's not "if", it's "when"' poachers return
00:05 GMT, 27 November 2012
A dying rhino summoned the strength to save her calf as poachers went on a killing spree on a game reserve in South Africa, keepers said today.
The slaughter lasted between three and four days and left maggot-covered carcasses dotted across the landscape at the Finfoot Game Reserve near Sun City in North West province.
Gamekeepers said after being shot at, the pride of the reserve named Longhorn realised she would die. But in a final act of bravery she led her 18-month-old calf to the reserve farm's lodge, where she would be safe.
Slaughter: Miles Lappeman, with the carcass of Longhorn, a 24-year-old Rhino Cow, at the Finfoot Lake Reserve
Longhorn, who was 24-years-old, was then butchered for her 3ft-long horn. Rhino horn is highly sought after and is sold for around $60000 per kilo (about R532000/kg).
Another calf found by gamekeepers did not escape the slaughter – it was found lying next to its mother, butchered for its tiny horn that measured just an inch, Times Live reported.
Miles Lappeman heard from his son, Mark, that rhino poachers had hit the farm, the first question he asked was: 'What about Longhorn'
Longhorn was the first animal Mr Lappeman bought from the Natal Parks Board, and the reason he spent 25 years caring for his breeding herd of White Rhino on his farm.
He let out a huge sigh of relief when he learned that Longhorn was not among the seven rhino found killed.
But last Monday, Longhorn's body was discovered 300m from the farm's lodge. She had suffered a mortal wound to her stomach.
Rhino's on the Finfoot Lake Reserve on November 24 in North West, South Africa
Five men have been arrested in connection with the massacre and are due to appear at Brits Magistrates' Court next week
Since the slaying, seven men have been working around the clock to protect the remainder of the herd
Her calf has been taken to a place of safety.
Since the slaying, a group of seven men has been working around the clock to protect the remainder of the herd, with the help of Mark Prangley, an anti-poaching operator.
Mr Lappeman says it is inevitable that the poachers will return.
'Its not "if", it's "when",' he told Times Live.
Pride of the reserve: Miles and Mark Lappeman with the carcass of Longhorn
The carcasses of a rhino and her calf lay on the reserve surrounded by dried blood
Killing spree: A rhino calf butchered for her horn at the Finfoot Lake Reserve
'We are fighting a bush war against trained professionals, with people who are not trained for it,' he says.
Mr Lappeman's son Mark grew up with the animals .
'To see animals dead on the farm is like walking into your home and seeing a relative lying dead. It's soul-destroying.'
Pelham Jones, chairman of the SA Rhino Owners' Association, said: 'We are losing this war and people who think there is a quick fix are living in denial.'
Mr Prangley, however, proposes a practical solution: 'Kill the poachers.'
Five men have been arrested in connection with the massacre and are due to appear at Brits Magistrates' Court next week charged with illegal possession of a firearm and poaching.
Posted byadminlebanon November 27, 2012 Posted inNewsTags: board, carcass, final, horn, monday, north, reserve, white
GPs paid to register an illegal immigrant: Fury over 64-a-patient incentive deal for doctors
New guidance says GPs cannot withhold appointment on the grounds that patient does not have identificationMPs Frank Field and Nicholas Soames said the situation is 'absolutely unacceptable'
llegal immigrants must be given free treatment by GPs, under a hugely controversial edict handed down by NHS managers.
The doctors will be paid 64 a year for each migrant they put on their books – the same amount they receive for all new patients.
The guidance, which was slipped out in July, states that an overseas visitor can register with a doctor provided they are in the area for more than 24 hours.
A GP's appointment cannot be withheld on the grounds that the patient does not have personal identification or proof of residence.
Guidance: GPs have been told they must give illegal immigrants free treatment (file picture)
The instruction also says that past or present payment of taxes or National Insurance is not to be taken into account.
Last night, Whitehall sources said Jeremy Hunt was 'concerned' by the edict, which was issued before he became Health Secretary in September.
Officials said a review of the rules is under way to see if they need to be tightened. Two senior MPs have also written to the Prime Minister demanding the instruction – designed to protect the human rights of foreign visitors – be withdrawn immediately.
In a joint statement, Labour's Frank Field and Conservative Nicholas Soames said the order goes much further than rules operated in other EU countries.
Some, including France and Germany, insist visitors have health insurance worth around 20,000 before they are granted a visa.
The MPs said: 'The public will be astonished to learn that access to GPs in the NHS has been opened to anyone in the world who comes to Britain. We believe that this is absolutely unacceptable at a time when the NHS is already struggling financially.'
The impact of the instruction, passed without debate in the Commons, was revealed in a report by think-tank Migration Watch. Earlier this year the Daily Mail reported how foreign students and tourists must be given free treatment by GPs under human rights law.
But the analysis by Migration Watch reveals this must also apply to illegal immigrants. Refugees and asylum seekers already have the right to free NHS care so are unaffected by the change.
Joint statement: Conservative MP Nicholas Soames, left, and Labour MP Frank Field, right, said the situation was 'absolutely unacceptable' (file picture)
The group's chairman, Sir Andrew Green, said it threatened to turn the NHS into the 'World Health Service'. Its provisions allow illegal migrants and foreign visitors full and free access to primary care services, which can be the first step to costly secondary treatment in hospital.
Sir Andrew said: 'At a time of intense pressure on the NHS this is an incredible decision. It is an open invitation to the whole world to come and take free advantage of a health service paid for by the taxes of the people of this country. Taxpayers will regard this as an insult and will want it reversed at once.'
GPs are paid 64 a year for any patient they register. Once registered, migrants will be entitled to the same care as all other patients and can receive free blood tests, jabs and – in certain cases – free prescription drugs.
In some respects, the new rules will give overseas patients more rights than those living in the UK , who can be turned away from surgeries if they live a few yards outside the catchment area.
In a statement, Mr Hunt said: 'This is a National Health Service, not a global health service, and we must stamp out this abuse of the system. Where people are using registration to get free treatment through the backdoor, we will take action.'
n MINISTERS should break EU laws and test all foreign doctors on their English to ensure patient safety, Tory MPs Andrea Leadsom and Charlotte Leslie have insisted.
Brussels currently bans the Government from carrying out such checks on European doctors.
Posted byadminlebanon November 27, 2012 Posted inNewsTags: conservative, health, immigrants, incentive, jeremy, labour, national, nicholas, rights, secretary
Manhunt underway for notorious sex offender Dean Goodwin, 32, suspected of raping woman in Poole area of Dorset
Serial sex offender on the run: Police issue alert after woman was raped in her own home by attacker who kicked in the door
Public urge public not to approach him
Suspect was previously jailed for sex assaults on a 63-year-old woman and a 13-year-old girl
A serial sex offender was on the run last night after raping a young woman in her own home.
Police have warned the public not to approach Dean Goodwin, 32, who has served time for vicious sexual assaults on a 63-year-old woman and a girl of 13.
Police described the latest attack, on a woman in her 20s, as shocking.
Serial sex offender Dean Goodwin, 32, from Poole is on the run again as police investigate the rape of a woman in her 20s
'It was an exceptionally nasty attack and one that gives us great cause for concern,' said Detective Inspector Marcus Hester of Dorset police.
'We very quickly identified who we believe the offender is and that is Dean Goodwin.
'He was known to the victim and he was not a stranger to her.
'I would urge members of the public not to approach him but to dial 999. We need to have him in custody as soon as possible for the safety and the benefit of the public.'
GOODWIN'S VIOLENT PAST
Goodwin had 31 previous convictions by his late teens when he was sentenced to 15 months at the Portland Young Offenders' Institute
He was released early and just over a month later attacked a 63-year-old woman in broad daylight in Poole
Five days after that Goodwin subjected a 13-year-old schoolgirl to equally vicious sex assault in Poole
He was arrested at his grandmother's home in Ringwood a week later where officers found him hiding in a wardrobe
Goodwin was arrested in 2009 when he briefly went on the run after failing to announce himself at a bail hostel in the West Country
He was arrested after police found him on the Isle of Wight and sent back to jail for two more years for breaching his bail conditions
Up to 40 officers are conducting door-to-door enquiries in the hunt for Goodwin. High-visibility police patrols are in place in and around the Poole and Bournemouth area and the force helicopter has been called into action.
The rape victim had the front door of her home in Poole kicked down in the middle of the night last Friday. Neighbours said that two weeks earlier armed police had visited the property following another disturbance.
Goodwin had been living in a hostel in Poole since his release from prison 12 months ago.
In 2009 – toward the end of his sentence – he absconded while out on licence and was caught and jailed for a further two years.
The incident saw him branded a high risk offender and local women were warned not to go out alone.
Mr Hester added that 'anyone found to be helping, harbouring or in any way aiding Dean Goodwin will be arrested'.
He said the rape victim was being looked after by her family supported by specially trained officers.
Goodwin racked up 31 convictions in his teenage years which led to him being given 15 months at the Portland Young Offenders Institute.
He was released early from that sentence and within a month had attacked the 63-year-old woman in broad daylight in Poole.
Just five days later he subjected the 13-year-old schoolgirl to an equally vicious and terrifying sex assault. He was arrested a week later at his grandmother's home, where officers found him hiding in a wardrobe.
He was jailed at Bournemouth Crown Court for the two offences in 2000. Judge Samuel Wiggs said only an extended period in custody could ensure the public were protected from him.
Nine years later he went on the run after failing to report to a bail hostel in the West Country. Police found him on the Isle of Wight and the extra two-year sentence was imposed for the breach of the terms of his licence.
The victim was raped in her flat in the Parkstone area of Poole, Dorset
Mr Hester confirmed reports that Goodwin had been spotted on CCTV footage during an 'incident' on Sunday evening but would not say where in Dorset this was.
'He may well offend again just to survive,' he added.
'We don't believe he has any money on him and he needs to eat and may well be stealing to achieve that aim.'
Detective Superintendent Mark Cooper, of Dorset police, said: 'Dean Goodwin is believed to be responsible for a very violent offence and members of the public should be very cautious if they see him or suspect they see him.'
Goodwin, who is from Poole, is described as white, 5ft 10in and stocky and muscular with very short hair.
Posted byadminlebanon November 27, 2012 Posted inNewsTags: assault, attack, daylight, detective, dorset, hester, months, offenders, old, police, poole, result, sex
Pong is FORTY: Classic that launched the multi-billion dollar video games industry celebrates anniversary this week
It's a long way from Call of Duty! How the multi-billion pound video games industry began 40 years ago with table tennis in black and white Classic video game was the first release by Atari in 1972They were later sued after another company claimed it stole their idea
Now here's an anniversary to make you feel old. Pong is 40 this week.
The classic video game, one of the first to reach mainstream popularity, was officially released on November 29, 1972 – 40 years ago this Thursday.
The two-dimensional table tennis simulator, the first release by Atari, is credited with being one of the progenitors of the video games industry, which is now worth a phenomenal $65billion a year.
Simple, but addictive: Pong, the first release by Atari, is credited with being one of the progenitors of the video games industry, which is now worth a phenomenal $65billion a year
The simple two-dimensional simulation of ping pong, consists merely of two paddles which moved up and down to pass a moving spot between each player.
Yet its addictive gameplay captured the imagination of thousands of players around the world, building Atari's status as an early video games giant.
The game was designed by Allan Alcorn, an expert in electrical engineering and computer science, who was handed the project as a training exercise by Atari co-founders Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney.
It was not the first commercial coin-operated video game – that accolade belongs to Computer Space, which Dabney and Bushnell helped to develop for Nutting Associates.
But it was the first to really take off with the paying public, spawning a host of imitators and, indeed, a lawsuit from the makers of the first home computer games console who claimed it was a rip-off of their product.
Despite that, it formed the basis of Atari's first home video games console and, following a settlement, the company went on to become, for a time, the world leader.
The high tech of the old days: Liverpool FC and England footballer Steve Heighway and a woman playing the computer tennis game Pong on the Videomaster games console
Atari's Home Pong console, released through Sears in 1975: A far cry from today's all singing, all dancing motion sensitive video games entertainment systems
Pong is a two-dimensional sports game that simulates table tennis.
The player controls an in-game paddle by moving it vertically across the left side of the screen, and can compete against either a computer controlled opponent or another player controlling a second paddle on the opposing side.
Players use the paddles to hit a ball back and forth, with the aim being for one to earn more points than opponents by forcing fail to to return the ball to the other.
Pong was the first game developed by Atari after its incorporation in June 1972 by Bushnell and Dabney, who were fresh from producing Computer Space.
The pair asked Alcorn, an expert in electrical engineering and computer science who had no computer games experience, to develop the game as an exercise to familiarise him with game production.
Bushnell told Alcorn that he had a contract with General Electric for a product, and asked him to create a simple game with one moving spot, two paddles, and digits for score keeping.
The way we played: A little boy plays a video game of noughts and crosses in a picture dated to 1975
Youngsters play on a Sega Mega Drive: The video games industry has come on in leaps and bounds since its early beginnings
ATARI CO-FOUNDER'S DOUBTS ABOUT THE LATEST NINTENDO
Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell has said he doesn't get Nintendo's latest tablet-controlled console the Wii U and told of his doubts about its long term success.
'I am baffled by it,' he says in an interview with the New York Times. 'I don't think it's going to be a big success.'
He told the paper that Nintendo's latest machine could mark the end of an era in which consoles are the dominant force in gaming.
'These things will continue to sputter along, but I really don't think they'll be of major import ever again,' he said, adding that consoles are being made obsolete by mobile games.
Nintendo has admitted it is losing money on every Wii U sold, but claims that the sale of just one game per machine would put them back in the black.
Alcorn built the first prototype from a $75 Hitachi black and white television set bought from a local shop and placed in a 4ft wooden cabinet, with wires soldered into boards to create the necessary circuitry.
Feeling the basic game was too boring, Alcorn added features to give the game more appeal, according to Wikipedia. He divided the paddle into eight segments to change the ball's angle of return.
For example, the centre segments return the ball a 90 angle in relation to the paddle, while the outer segments return the ball at smaller angles.
He also made the ball accelerate the more it was returned back and forth between paddles; missing the ball reset the speed.
Despite its simplicity, the game impressed Bushnell and Dabney so much that they felt it could be profitable and they installed a prototype in a local bar for market testing, where it was a success.
Despite interests from gaming companies including Midway, which would later go on to fame with the Mortal Kombat series, Atari decided to build the product themselves and by 1973 were shipping Pong cabinets worldwide.
Experts consider Pong the game that launched the video game industry, with the release of its home version in 1974 the successful beginning of home video game consoles.
Posted byadminlebanon November 27, 2012 Posted inNewsTags: accolade, addictive, classic, dimensional, gameplay, games, operated, paddles, result, simulation, table, tennis, video
The moment that Anders Breivik planted his bomb: Never before seen CCTV footage shows mass murderer parking van that killed eight in Oslo
Breivik wearing security guard's uniform walks away from bomb inside vanCCTV footage captures significant damage caused by the device last yearAfter bomb exploded, Breivik got into second van which he drove to Utoya
This is the chilling moment mass murderer Anders Breivik walks away from his van in Oslo before a bomb inside it explodes killing eight people and injuring dozens.
Never before seen CCTV footage also captures the devastation the device caused in July 2011, which was planted by the 33-year-old Norwegian.
Breivik, wearing a security guard's uniform, is seen parking his white van at the entrance of a Government building that housed the Prime Minister's offices. The PM was not there at the time.
After the bomb exploded, Breivik got into a second van which he used to drive to the nearby island of Utoya
where he gunned down 69 people – mostly teenagers.
Chilling footage of Anders Breivik parking the van with a bomb inside at the Prime Minister's offices in Oslo
Breivik, centre back, leaves the van with the bomb after parking it in the Government headquarters. Minutes later the bomb went off and caused large scale death and destruction
Haunting: A far away still of the moment Breivik briskly walks away from the vehicle in the capital Oslo
Chilling footage shows Breivik walking further away from the van packed with explosives
Anders Breivik earlier this year. He is serving the Norwegian maximum sentence of 21 years and is expected to spend most of that time at high security facility Ila prison near the capital Oslo
Although photographs of Breivik parking
the van had previously been released and footage was shown during his
trial earlier this year, this is the first time the video has been
released publicly.
After parking the first van at the
Government offices, Breivik is seen getting out of the vehicle in the
capital Oslo and briskly walking away.
The security camera video contains pictures of the significant damage caused by the
device, which weighed nearly a ton.
Breivik
then gets into a second vehicle, a grey Fiat van, which he used to
drive to the nearby island of Utoya where he shot 69 people at a Labour
Party youth camp.
security guard at a government building said of the Oslo footage,
reported by Sky News: 'My colleague got a call from the reception at the
high-rise building (PM's office). At the same time I saw the white van
on the monitor in front of me.
'It is normally only the Prime
Minister and the bodyguards who park there. But every day we get cars
parking there without permission so we need to chase them away.'
The guard added: 'I
see he has the usual reflex markings on the trousers and it looks like
he has a circular logo on his arm, so I believe it is a uniform from a
security company. I see that he calmly leaves the car and walks away.'
The guard said he zoomed in on the
registration number and was about to send a text to the motor tax office
to find out which security company it belonged to when the explosion
happened.
Breivik is serving the Norwegian maximum
sentence of 21 years and is expected to spend most of that time at high
security facility Ila prison near the capital Oslo.
This photo shows the moment the bomb in the parked van went off outside the Goverment headquarters in Oslo
The trees shake during the bomb explosion as the outside of the building shatters
Shattered glass at the Government building as the footage captures the devastation caused by the bomb
slaughtered 77 adults and teenagers in total when he bombed the
government buildings in Oslo and carried out a mass shooting last year.
The footage is part of a documentary that Norway's public broadcaster NRK will air on Tuesday evening and will include comments by the security guard on duty that day.
The programme also features comments by the security guard on duty that day.
Video of killer Breivik parking van with bomb
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Posted byadminlebanon November 27, 2012 Posted inNewsTags: death, destruction, dozens, facility, guard, headquarters, maximum, minister, security, sentence, teenagers
Smoking harms your brain as well as your body: It leads to sharp decline in mental ability, warns study
Smoking harms your brain as well as your body: It leads to sharp decline in mental ability, warns study Test on nearly 9,000 people over 50 have shown lifestyles could damage the mind as well as the bodySmoking, high blood pressure, high cholesterol levels and a high BMI all worsen the risk
Tests on 8,800 people over 50 have showed cigarettes can damage memory
Smoking is known to be highly damaging to physical health, being a major factor in cancer and heart disease.
Now, however, its alarming effects on the mental well-being of millions of smokers have been outlined by British scientists.
Lighting up regularly has been associated with a sharp decline in the performance of the brain, according to their study.
They found that middle-aged smokers performed less well on tests compared with those without the tobacco habit.
The project examined memory, planning
and overall mental ability after four and eight years. The tests
included asking people to learn new words or name as many animals as
they could in a minute.
Researchers concluded that smoking 'consistently' reduced all three performance measures after four years.
They also found that high blood pressure and being overweight took their toll of brainpower – but not as much as smoking.
The team warned that people need to be aware of the impact on their health of lifestyle choices, like smoking.
Risk factor data was examined for more
than 8,800 people aged 50 and over taking part in the English
Longitudinal Study of Ageing.
The researchers at King's College
London were investigating links between the likelihood of a heart attack
or stroke and the state of the brain.
Smoking, high blood pressure, high cholesterol levels and a high BMI all worsen the risk of dementia
High blood pressure and high risk of
stroke were also associated with lower scores for memory and overall
mental ability after eight years.
Being overweight was linked to poor
memory, according to the findings published in the journal Age and
Ageing. Lead scientist Dr Alex Dregan said 'Cognitive decline becomes
more common with ageing and, for an increasing number of people,
interferes with daily functioning and well-being.
'We have identified a number of risk
factors which could be associated with accelerated cognitive decline,
all of which could be modifiable. This offers valuable knowledge for
prevention and treatment interventions.'
The researchers said their results indicate that high blood pressure has a gradual effect on the brain over a long period.
This could explain why short-term
trials of blood pressure drugs being used to treat mental decline failed
to show a clear benefit.
Recent laboratory research suggested a
compound in tobacco called NNK provokes white blood cells in the
central nervous system to attack healthy cells, leading to severe
neurological damage. There are almost 10 million smokers in the UK. The
habit is still by far the biggest single cause of preventable illness
and premature death.
It is a major contributory factor in causing heart disease and 39,000 lung cancer cases each year.
Dr Simon Ridley, of Alzheimer's
Research UK, said: 'Research has repeatedly linked smoking and high
blood pressure to a greater risk of cognitive decline and dementia. This
study adds weight to that.
'Cognitive decline as we age can
develop into dementia, and unravelling the factors linked to this
decline could be crucial for finding ways to prevent the condition.'
Jessica Smith, of the Alzheimer's
Society, said: 'We all know smoking, a high blood pressure, high
cholesterol and a high Body Mass Index is bad for our heart.
'This adds to the huge amount of evidence that also suggests they can be bad for our head too.'
One in three of the over-65s will develop dementia, she added.
Posted byadminlebanon November 27, 2012 Posted inNewsTags: british, choices, cholesterol, college, dementia, heart, lifestyle, measures, physical, result, risk, smokers, study, tobacco
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text:
Winning images from the 2019 Nat Geo Travel Photo Contest
A striking image of a tiny fishing village in Greenland has won the Grand Prize in this year's National Geographic Travel Photo Contest.
Grand prize, and 1st prize Cities category - "Greenlandic Winter" by Chu Weimin. Photograph by Chu Weimin/2019 National Geographic Travel Photo Contest.
Captured by Chinese photographer Weimin Chu, the photographer spent nearly a week in the snow-covered town.
"Upernavik is a fishing village on a tiny island in west Greenland," Chu writes. "Historically, Greenlandic buildings were painted different colors to indicate different functions, from red storefronts to blue fishermen's homes—a useful distinction when the landscape is blanketed in snow. This photo was taken during my three-month, personal photo project to present life in Greenland."
Chu took home the $7,500USD grand prize and a feature on the Nat geo instagram account for his efforts.
3rd prize Nature category -- "Dusky" by Scott Portelli. Photograph by Scott Portelli/2019 National Geographic Travel Photo Contest
Closer to home, Australian photographer Scott Portelli came third in the Nature category with his image of a dusky dolphin captured in Kaikoura, New Zealand.
"Dusky dolphins often travel together in great numbers in the deep canyons of the Kaikoura, New Zealand in search of food," he writes. "They glide through the ocean effortlessly, coming up only to breathe. Dusky dolphins are fast and will often keep pace with a speeding boat. I waited on the bow of the boat as the Dusky dolphin almost broke [through the surface]. Their elegance and streamlined bodies are built for speed and maneuverability—accentuated by the smooth, clear water of the New Zealand coastline.
There were nine winners in total, three in each category, as well as two honorable mentions. You can see all the images below.
1st place Nature category -- "Tender Eyes" by Tamara Blazquez Haik. A gorgeous griffon vulture is seen soaring the skies in Monfragüe National Park in Spain. How can anyone say vultures bring bad omens when looking at such tenderness in this griffon vulture's eyes? Vultures are important members of the environment, as they take care of recycling dead matter. Vultures are noble and majestic animals—kings of the skies. When looking at them flying, we should feel humbled and admire them. Photograph by Tamara Blazquez Haik/2019 National Geographic Travel Photo Contest.
1st prize People category -- "Showtime" by Huaifeng Li. Actors prepare for an evening opera performance in Licheng County, China. I spent the whole day with these actors from makeup to [stage]. I'm a freelance photographer, and the series "Cave Life" is a long-term project of mine. In China's Loess Plateau, local residents dig holes in the loess layer [to create cave living spaces, known as yaodongs] and use the heat preservation properties to survive cold winters. This series mainly records the life, entertainment, belief, labor, and other [daily] scenes of the people living in the caves. Photograph by Huaifeng Li/2019 National Geographic Travel Photo Contest.
2nd place Cities category - "In the age of aviation" by Jassen Todorov. There are four runways at San Francisco's International Airport (SFO). This is a rare look at the approach end of runways 28 left and right. I had dreams of documenting the motion at SFO and [arranged] permission to fly directly overhead. What a windy day it was. Winds at SFO were 35-45 miles per hour, which meant a bumpy flight, and it was much harder to control the plane while photographing. The flight was challenging, but it was also so thrilling that I couldn't sleep for several days afterward. Photograph by Jassen Todorov/2019 National Geographic Travel Photo Contest.
2nd prize People category -- "Daily Routine" by Yoshiki Fujiwara. "This photo was taken at a public park at Choi Hung House in Hong Kong," explains the photographer. "When I visited during the afternoon, it was very crowded with many young people taking pictures and playing basketball. But when I visited at sunrise, it was quiet and a different place." Photograph by Yoshiki Fujiwara/2019 National Geographic Travel Photo Contest
3rd place Cities category - "Streets of Dhaka" by Sandipani Chattopadhyay. People pray on the street in Dhaka, Bangladesh during Ijtema. Bishwa Ijtema is one of the major Islamic religious gatherings which is [observed] annually in Dhaka and millions of Muslims visit [during this time]. Dedicated prayer grounds are not [large] enough to handle this huge number of people, so large numbers of people come to [Tongi], the main street of Dhaka. All the ground transportation and [pedestrian crossings] are suspended during that time. Photograph by Sandipani Chattopadhyay/2019 National Geographic Travel Photo Contest.
3rd prize People category -- "Horses", by José Antonio Zamora. Every year on the feast of Saint Anthony the ceremony of the purification of animals, called Las Luminarias, is celebrated in Spain. In the province of Avila, horses and horsemen jump over bonfires in the ritual that has been maintained since the 18th century. The animals [are not hurt], and it is a ritual that is repeated every year. To make the photo, I moved from Seville to San Bartolomé de Pinares because I am very interested in photographing ancestral rites. Photograph by José Antonio Zamora/2019 National Geographic Travel Photo Contest.
Nature honorable mention -- "King of the Alps" by Jonas Schäfer. A herd of ibexes in Switzerland's Bernese Oberland cross a ridge above Lake Brienz. Their powerful and impressive horns show who the king of the Alps are. Ibexes are ideally adapted to live at dizzying heights. The continuing ridge path and the rising fog show the natural habitat of these animals. After a few hours of observing the animals, I spotted the ibex herd on one side of the ridge. Several ibexes stopped at the transition [to view the world around them]. Photograph by Jonas Schäfer/2019 National Geographic Travel Photo Contest.
People honorable mention -- "Mood" by Navin Vatsa. I captured this layered moment during sunrise along the banks of the Yamuna River in Delhi, India. This boy was thinking silently, and visitors were enjoying the loud musical chirping of thousands of seagulls. The early morning golden light from the east mixed with the western blue light, creating a [ethereal atmosphere]. I am a regular visitor [here] and have photographed this place for the past three years. Now, many national and international photographers have begun visiting [too]. Photograph by Navin Vatsa/2019 National Geographic Travel Photo Contest.
2nd prize Nature category -- "Dreamcatcher" by Danny Sepkowski. What happens before a wave breaks? That question has been my assignment this past year. On this particular day, I decided to shoot the sunset on the east side of Oahu, Hawaii. About 100 photographers were out in the morning, but I had the evening to myself. The textures from the trade winds [created] subtle colors from the west and blended well using my 100mm lens. I had to look into my viewfinder while this wave was breaking. Not an easy task when a wave is about to crush you. Photograph by Danny Sepkowski/2019 National Geographic Travel Photo Contest.
You can see more winning images, including People's Choice winners, on the National Geographic website at natgeo.com/travelphotocontest.


I write the Travel Tech column each month in our sister magazine, Conde Nast Traveller. Here is the column from the December 2011 issue. You can subscribe to the magazine here.
This column's mission to end hotels' scandalously high Wi-Fi charges continues. A few weeks ago, I took the crusade to the World Youth and Student Travel Conference in Barcelona, where after giving a keynote speech I implored the industry to boycott hotels that charge for basic internet access (make us pay for high-end access by all means, I explained, but gouging us for simple email-checking is like charging extra for running a bath).
You can never predict how an audience will respond to such provocation, but in this case the applause suggested the campaign is gaining ground. Whew.
I came away with something else I'd like to share with you: the results of a contest launched by the conference to identify the industry's best travel apps for smartphones and tablets. Organisers estimate that there are 17,000 travel apps on the market -- which presents quite a challenge in terms of knowing which are actually worthwhile. You'll have downloaded Conde Nast Traveller's own supremely useful city guides, of course. Beyond these, the contest's top five, as chosen by thousands of votes, offers a pretty useful list of others you might want to explore.
A translation app with features such as a phonetic pronunciation guide, a "Slang Slider" to include more or fewer colloquialisms, and flash cards to help you memorise phrases. Inevitably it incorprorates a points system that turns language-learning into a game. It's available in Spanish, French, Italian, German, Portuguese, Dari and, er, Pirate.
If you have a pressing travel question -- Where to go birdwatching in Ireland? Can you cycle on the Golden Gate Bridge? --the World Nomads community of more than 11,000 travellers from 129 countries will share its knowledge in search of an answer. Useful for researching a destination before you go; also offers a "Nearby" feature to help you discover interesting things once you're there.
If you're looking to cut your carbon footprint as you travel while optimising your experience, this app is designed to help. It offers "eco-friendly activities and experiences" in more than 80 cities so you can support more sustainable local businesses without missing the main sights.
A portable Spanish phrasebook that works offline (helpful when avoiding unwelcome roaming charges). Download the app before you go, and you have access to categories of vocabulary, with a basic 500 words and phrases to help buy that movie ticket or order those tapas.
A trip-planner that lets you create a personalised itinerary before you go, and a journal of your photos, messages and check-ins to enjoy once you're back. Usefully, it works offline so you can avoid those nasty roaming charges.
Hmm, maybe our next campaign should be aimed at bringing down those appalling data-roaming charges. Anyone want to come on board?