Gym owners who wish to cater to bodybuilders should understand which equipment is most beneficial for them. This includes the most basic equipment to accommodate your machinery without causing injuries, such as weight belts and straps. It also encompasses the vital equipment that provides them with the ability to work toward lean or bulky muscular makeup. If you wish to review used or refurbished choices, you should examine gym equipment from Equip Your Gym.
As you make your selections, you should consider equipment that boasts a basic construction. A more simplistic option presents your clients with the ability to perform natural movements. This promotes bodybuilding efforts without the possibility of injuries due to awkward positioning.
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Dumbbells are an obvious choice. Next, you should consider incline and decline benches. These options help work the chest and abdomen to build bulky, well-defined muscle groups. Customers who want to work on their pecs specifically should use cable crossovers. You should acquire this equipment to offer a better variety.
Pull down machines help bodybuilders to create strong backs. They help define these muscles and generate bulk. With these options, your clients can adjust them for their preferred weight class and build up to more forceful settings. To complete these goals, they will need to have access to the chin and dip combo machine, which strengthens their arms.
Gym owners acquire more financial benefits by selecting used and refurbished options. With these choices, you will gain the ability to provide the machinery needed to build a rapport with local bodybuilders and remain within the restraints of your budget. This allows you to buy what you need without committing to a contract or purchasing equipment you just can't afford on your own. If you wish to acquire these options now, contact your preferred retailer today.


But here's the not-so-good news. While these overall numbers are inspiring, once we dig a little deeper it becomes clear that many women receiving post-secondary education are not investing in degrees that will lead to society's highest-paying jobs. Women throughout the educational system either choose or are steered toward traditionally female careers. Even though the fastest growing careers are in traditionally female-dominated fields such as health care, the highest paying careers remain in male-dominated fields, including engineering, technology and other science-related industries and services—all fields in which women still lag very far behind men in educational degrees.
As more women take on breadwinning roles, the educational system must prepare women for jobs that can support a family rather than the jobs our grandmothers were allowed to hold. This means our postsecondary educational institutions—community colleges, four-year colleges and universities and their many graduate school programs alike—will need to take further proactive steps to ensure women pursue and complete degrees that allow them to bring home the same-size paychecks and benefits from the same array of professions as men. For this to happen, these educational institutions must seek parity between the genders in all majors and concentrations from first-year postsecondary education to post-doctoral research. But this is not enough. They also need to provide family-friendly support and child care as well flexible class scheduling so that women (and men) can attain successive levels of education in order to boost their earnings in today's economy while juggling shared responsibilities in life.
Here's why. Despite reaching college in greater numbers, women still cluster largely in traditional female majors when they choose their course of study. They receive 86 percent of the bachelor's degrees in the health professions, which includes nursing, 79 percent in education, and 78 percent in psychology.3 These professions, often called the "helping professions" or "women's professions," have always attracted women and were once the only professions open to them. Men, in the era when they were typically the sole breadwinners of their families, were less attracted to these professions in large part because they offered lower wages and less career advancement, as they do today.
Women with the same degrees still lag behind men's pay and almost never catch up. Education raises women's pay, but the gender gap remains at all educational levels.
What's more, women with the same degrees still lag behind men's pay and almost never catch up. Education raises women's pay, but the gender gap remains at all educational levels. In 2008, the ratio of women's to men's median hourly wages was about 77 cents on the dollar for those with college degrees as well as those with only high school degrees. Women who make significant investments in college educations earn more than they would otherwise, but they don't earn as much as men, often because they remain in lower-paying female-dominated occupations. While the gap has narrowed in recent decades, we still have a long way to go to get to earnings parity (see Figures 1 and 2).
It is not new news that women do not receive equal pay for equal work, but what is depressing is that education, the much-touted engine for economic opportunity, fails to provide gender equality. Even with the increased numbers of women in higher education and in the workforce, the wage and power gaps remain large and stagnant at all educational levels. Women who are breadwinners simply cannot bring home a family income equal to a man with the same educational background (see Figures 1 and 2).
One reason that women may be encouraged or even choose not to enter male-dominated educational fields and occupations is that once female graduates enter the workforce, they find inflexible workplace policies that can exacerbate gender inequalities (policies that are often inflexible across the board, but may be exacerbated in male-dominated fields). Knowing this, students choose jobs they perceive to be more family friendly.
Most workplaces still maintain the structure established in the late 19th century, when husbands worked full time to support their families and never needed to consider taking time off to care for their a family member because most had a wife at home to attend to such matters. In this environment, workers are penalized for working less than full time, or for taking a break from their jobs to care for their family. In short, simply opening the door to higher education does not necessarily allow women to achieve true equality in the workforce.
This chapter will first describe the current state of the U.S. educational system for women and girls, with special emphasis on how education often thwarts rather than advances the economic opportunities of women, beginning with community colleges, then four-year educational institutions, then graduate and post-graduate programs (see box "The forgotten third" that examines gender stereotypes in career training programs for young women and men without college degrees). We will then explore the achievements nonetheless made by women despite these obstacles. We will then conclude with several suggestions for how American post-secondary education can be reformed to ensure that women are able to function as equal partners in the future workplace.
Originally, these educational institutions were structured to provide high school seniors an affordable first two years of college before they transferred into a baccalaureate program. Today, however, many community colleges have expanded their mission in order to accommodate the economy's increased demand for graduates with specific career skills in disciplines such as information technology and home health care.
Community colleges offer nearly everyone a chance—95 percent of community colleges offer an open admissions policy and the annual tuition and fees are less than half that at private four-year institutions and one-tenth those at private four-year colleges and universities. For many older students they offer a second or third chance. Nearly half of all students at community colleges are over 25. Because of their accessibility and low cost, community colleges enroll a diverse group of students, including larger percentages of nontraditional, low-income, and minority students than four-year colleges.
Despite the openness and flexibility of community colleges, traditionally gendered career choices remain the norm. Women predominate in traditional female majors such as education (80.2 percent) and health sciences (83.4 percent all students), which includes nursing, while men predominate in computer and information sciences (73.1 percent) and manufacturing construction, repair and transportation (92.3 percent).23 These choices certainly influence potential earning power, but there are also fundamental concerns about how much earning power an associate's degree from a community college will bring.
Indeed, community colleges often aren't doing enough to get women on the path toward the highest-paying careers. Increasingly, many of the popular career choices pursued by community college students are requiring a four-year bachelor's degree or specialized training. This is true for both men and women as more careers, including computer technology and science, education, and health, rely on higher-educated workers.
Community colleges often aren't doing enough to get women on the path toward the highest-paying careers.
But barriers to advancement beyond community college remain.28 Thirty-nine percent of students come from minority backgrounds, compared to only 24 percent at the four-year college level. The difference is particularly strong for Hispanic students: They represent only 7 percent of four-year college students, but 16 percent of community college students.29 Poor women, especially poor minority women, face particular challenges (see box "Excluding poor women").
One of the most significant social phenomena of the last third of the 20th century and the beginning years of the new millennium is the steady rise of women in undergraduate, and more spectacularly, in graduate and professional education. Many factors, including gender equity laws, birth control, and recognition that women are now important players in the economy all contributed to this trend.
These so called re-entry women, many of them single mothers and some of whom are welfare recipients, realize that a college degree is necessary to support their families. Some colleges and universities provide special services and support for re-entry students. But this important trend has not received the attention and support it deserves (see Figure 3).
Still, women have advanced in both numbers and in proportion over the whole college degree-holding population in every racial and ethnic group over the past thirty years. This is good news, but more for some groups than others. The distribution of college degrees can be explained in large part by the size of the group in the general population. Many of these groups, Hispanics and Asians in particular, have swelled on the new immigration wave. But are the new immigrants receiving their fair share of the degrees? No. Smaller percentages of Hispanic women and men earn degrees according to their population. This corresponds with the group's disproportionate share of high school dropouts—there are fewer Hispanics prepared to enter the college pipeline.
Yet these are the areas of technological innovation where a large percentage of high-paying jobs are predicted to increase in the future. Even in math and statistics, where women once represented close to half of the undergraduates, the past two decades have shown a decline in female participation.49 There is no easy explanation for this trend, but it rings an alarm bell, which calls for investigation.
Despite these gains, women remain far less likely than men to pursue the highest graduate degrees and ultimately careers in cutting edge scientific research—careers that bring status power and higher salaries. This lack of women scholars at the top of the science and technologies pyramid boasts enormous implications for future generations of women.
The presence of a successful role model to inspire a career in any field is critical. In law and medicine there are a substantial number of women professionals working in the field, and a steady diet of popular media featuring women characters litigating in the courtroom or curing patients of deadly diseases. But there are many fewer role models for women in engineering or the computer sciences.
Overall, women make up less than 30 percent of full professors at four-year educational institutions.52 In engineering and the physical sciences the numbers are far smaller; in 2005, the American Institute of Physics found that only 10 percent of faculty members in physics were women.53 There are many physics departments in this country where women faculty number in single digits or are not present at all.
There are some innovative success stories of programs to attract and retain women in the sciences. In 2009, the fourth annual Conference for the Undergraduate Women in Physics sponsored by NASA, the Department of Energy, and three participating research universities attracted more than 350 young female students from across the country. They came to network and to hear the dazzling research talks of distinguished female physicists from places such as NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of California Berkeley.54 Many of these students were from small colleges where there were no women on the faculty. Preliminary results from the early years indicate that the conferences were influential in encouraging young women physicists to continue in graduate school.
Men and women scientists who wish to pursue a scientific research career are usually expected to spend from one to five years as a postdoctoral fellow to enhance their research skills and number of publications following the receipt of the Ph.D. before they take a professorial position. The women who have taken this step are usually already in their thirties and are serious about their research careers. This also is the optimal age for childbearing in the United States and many will have children during their post doctoral years.
This story is not just true for women scientists. It appears to be true across the board for highly educated women who prepare for careers that were previously dominated by men. Law and medicine are the most populous and, one might argue, the most esteemed of the male-dominated professions. Women now attend law school and medical school in fairly equal numbers to men. They train for and enter these male enclaves of power and privilege in large numbers, but, like women scientists, most are not reaching leadership positions and lag behind men in salary.
While women overall have dramatically increased their access to education, there are still some groups of women that lag far behind. Too few Hispanics, for example, are entering our four-year colleges. Hispanics represent only 7 percent of four-year college students compared to 16 percent of community college students.
At all levels of postsecondary education, women are still highly concentrated in the low-paying "helping" professions of health and education and not encouraged to enter the high-paying fields of the future, including mathematics, engineering, and computer science.
When women do receive degrees in fields that could lead to high-paying professions such as academia, law, or business, they face inflexible workplaces that do not allow them to combine work with family responsibilities, and thus too many of our highly educated women dropoff the career track for which they trained. When they do stay, they often earn less than their male counterparts because they are in less "prestigious" positions—they are primary care physicians instead of surgeons, biologists instead of physicists, and government attorneys instead of corporate law partners.
But Title IX isn't the only answer. Women with family responsibilities need to be supported at all levels of education and once they enter the workforce. To support women scientists, federal agencies providing research grants, for example, could offer financial incentives to universities and colleges to include family accommodations, among them child care to attend conferences and paid family leave to encourage young graduate students in particular to continue their scientific careers. Similarly, more should be done to replicate the good work of community colleges and four-year colleges providing family-friendly support and child care as well as flexible class scheduling so that women (and their partners) can attain successive levels of education to boost their earnings in today's economy.
But the real answer may lay in the next chapter authored by Brad Harrington and Jamie Ladge on how businesses have and should respond to women's entry into the workplace. Without businesses to support women's rise to the top and support the everyday struggle of combining work and care, receiving a good education will never be enough.
National Center for Education Statistics, "Digest of Education Statistics 2007" (2007), Table 177.
Catherine Freeman, "Trends in Educational Equity of Girls and Women: 2004" (Washington: National Center for Education Statistics, 2004).
Michael Planty and others, "The Condition of Education 2008" (Washington: National Center for Education Statistics, 2008), Table 27-1.
Center for American Progress analysis of Center for Economic and Policy Research Extracts of the Current Population Survey Outgoing Rotation Group files (2008).
20 U.S.C. § 1681, et seq.
The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, "Valerie Jarrett and Education Secretary Arne Duncan Hold White House Roundtable on Title IX" (June 23, 2009), available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Valerie-Jarrett-and-Education-Secretary-Arne-Duncan-Hold-White-House-Roundtable-on-Title-IX/. See also Association for Women and Science and Society of Women Engineers, "Campaign Responses to Questions from the Association of Women in Science and the Society of Women Engineers" (October 13, 2008), available at http://www.researchresearch.com/media/pdf/Obama-McCain3080.pdf.
Laura Horn and Thomas Weko, "On Track to Complete? A Taxonomy of Beginning Community College Students and Their Outcomes 3 Years After Enrolling: 2003–04 Through 2006," (Washington: National Center for Education Statistics, 2009).
Mary Lufkin, Mary Wiberg and others, "Gender Equity in Career and Technical Education." In Susan Klein, ed., Handbook for Achieving Gender Equity Through Education, Second Edition (Mahway, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2007).
National Center for Education Statistics, "Special Analysis 2008: Community Colleges" (Washington: 2008) p. 40.
Lutz Berkner, Shirley He, and Emily Forrest Cataldi, "Descriptive Summary of 1995–96 Beginning Postsecondary Students: Six Years Later" (Washington: National Center for Education Statistics, 2002).
Linda M. Erickson, "Historical Dictionary of Women's Education in the United States" (New York: Greenwood Press, 1998), p. 342.
Miriam K. Chamberlain, "Women in Academe" (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1991), p. 366.
Marie Tessier, "Welfare + Education Leads to Jobs, Higher Pay," Women's eNews, September 17, 2009, available at http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/592.
Mary Gatta and Kevin McCabe, "The Poor Need Training that Works for Them," The Star-Ledger, January 24, 2006, available at http://www.itwd.rutgers.edu/news/poor_need_training.htm.
Nolita Clark, Shannon Stanfield, and Vivyan Adair, "Remarkable Journeys: Poor, Single Mothers Accessing Higher Education," On Campus With Women 33 (3–4) (Spring/Summer 2004), available at http://www.aacu.org/ocww/volume33_3/fromwhereisit.cfm?section=1.
Vivyan Adair, "The ACCESS Project at Hamilton College 2003 Year End Report" (Clinton, NY: Hamilton College, 2003).
National Center for Education Statistics, "Career/Technical Education Statistics" (2003–2004), Table P51.
U.S. Department of Labor, Women's Bureau, "Facts on Working Women: Women in High-Tech Jobs," (2002), available athttp://www.dol.gov/wb/factsheets/hitech02.htm.
Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Career Guide to Industries, Health Care, 2008–09 Edition" (2008), available at http://www.bls.gov/oco/cg/cgs035.htm.
Anthony P. Carnevale and Donna M. Desrochers, "Help Wanted…Credentials Required: Community Colleges in the Knowledge Economy" (Annapolis, MD: Community College Press, 2001), p. 57.
Louis Soares and Christopher Mazzeo, "College Ready Students, Student Ready Colleges" (Washington: Center for American Progress, 2008).
National Center for Education Statistics, "Special Analysis 2008: Community Colleges" (2008).
Christianne Corbett, Catherine Hill, and Andresse St. Rose, "Where the Girls Are: The Facts about Gender Equity in Education" (Washington: American Association of University Women Educational Foundation, 2008), p. 62.
William T. Grant Foundation Commission on Work, Family and Citizenship, "The Forgotten Half: Non-College-Bound Youth in America" (1988); William T. Grant Foundation Commission on Work, Family and Citizenship, "The Forgotten Half: Pathway to Success for America's Youth and Young Families" (1988).
Samuel Halperin, "The Forgotten Half Revisited: American Youth and Families, 1988–2008" (Washington: American Youth Policy Forum, 1998).
Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Highlights of Women's Earnings in 2007" (Department of Labor, 2008) p. 5, chart 3.
Bureau of the Census, "Income, Earnings and Poverty Data from the 2007 American Communities Survey" (Department of Commerce, 2008), p. 15, table 7.
David Neumark and Donna Rothstein, "Do School-to-Work Programs Help the 'Forgotten Half'?" Working Paper 11636 (National Bureau of Economic Research, 2005).
Davis Jenkins, "Career Pathways: Aligning Public Resources to Support Individual and Regional Economic Advancement in the Knowledge Economy" (New York: Workforce Strategy Center, 2006), available at http://www.workforcestrategy.org/publications/WSC_pathways8.17.06.pdf.
James W. Ainsworth and Vincent J. Roscigno, "Stratification, School-Work Linkages and Vocational Education," Social Forces, 84 (1) (2005): 257–284.
James Kemple and Cynthia J. Willner, "Career Academies: Long-Term Impacts on Labor Market Outcomes, Educational Attainment, and Transitions to Adulthood" (New York: MDCR, 2008).
National Women's Law Center, "Title IX and Equal Opportunity in Vocational and Technical Education: A Promise Still Owed to the Nation's Young Women" (2002).
Corbett, Hill and St. Rose, "Where the Girls Are," p.62.
Michael Planty and others, "The Condition of Education 2008," (Washington: National Center for Education Statistics, 2008), Table 27-1.
Martha West, John Curtis, "AAUP Faculty Gender Equity Indicators 2006," (Washington: American Association of University Professors, 2006), p. 10.
American Institute of Physics, "New Report on Women in Physics and Astronomy" (2005), available athttp://www.aip.org/fyi/2005/035.html.
American Institute of Physics, "New Report on Women in Physics and Astronomy" (2005), available at http://www.aip.org/statistics/trends/reports/women05.pdf.
National Center for Education Statistics, "Table A-11-2: Graduate and Professional Education," available at http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/2009/section1/table-gre-2.asp (last accessed September 2009).
The National Academies, "Gender Differences at Critical Transitions in the Careers of Science, Engineering, and Mathematics Faculty" (2009), p. 24.
Mary Ann Mason and Marc Goulden, "Do Babies Matter: The Effect of Family Formation on the Lifelong Careers of Academic Men and Women," Academe 88 (6) (November–December 2002).
Marc Goulden, Karie Frasch, and Mary Ann Mason, "Staying Competitive: Patching America's Leaky Pipeline in the Sciences" (University of California Berkeley Center on Health, Economic, and Family Security, forthcoming), p. 5.
Mary Ann Mason, Marc Goulden, and Karie Frasch, "Why Graduate Students Reject the Fast-Track," Academe 95 (1) (January–February 2009), available athttp://ucfamilyedge.berkeley.edu/Why%20Graduate%20Students%20Reject%20the%20Fast%20Track.pdf/.
Results from Mary Ann Mason, Marc Goulden, and Karie Frasch, "UC Postdoctoral Career Life Survey" (2008), available athttp://ucfamilyedge.berkeley.edu/grad%20life%20survey.html.
Goulden, Frasch and Mason, "Staying Competitive," p. 7.
Goulden, Frasch and Mason, "Staying Competitive," p. 25.
Mary Ann Mason, "Do Babies Matter in Science?" (2008), p. 20, available at http://sdbonline.org/Re-BootCamp09/Mason_ReBootSDB09.pdf.
Mason, "Do Babies Matter in Science?" p. 23, figure 11.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Highlights of Women's Earnings in 2007" (October 2008), table 2, available athttp://www.bls.gov/cps/cpswom2007.pdf.
Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, 20 U.S.C. §§ 1681-88 (2006).
"Title IX Legal Manual," available at http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/cor/coord/ixlegal.php (last accessed March 20, 2009).
Women's Sports Foundation. "2008 Statistics- Gender Equity in High School and College Athletics: Most Recent Participation & Budget Statistics," available at http://www.womenssportsfoundation.org/Content/Articles/Issues/General/123/2008-Statistics–Gender%20Equity-in-High-School-and-College-Athletics-Most-Recent-Participation–Budge.aspx (last accessed August 2009).
United States Government Accountability Office, "Gender Issues: Women's Participation in the Sciences has Increased, but Agencies Need to do More to Ensure Compliance with Title IX" (July 2004).
Mary Ann Mason is a contributor to The Shriver Report.


Apparently, several hundred miles across the state is "close enough." In a couple of cases, I found a township and city with the same name. Different counties, but not only the same municipality name, the town and city had the same street names where the landmark was located. I suspect the computerized placement got confused and placed the landmark in the city instead of the township.
I've seen that a lot with the National Register entries. It's like they just say "Eh, close enough," and poke the map where it's convenient.


The press and media often cover and benefit from stories about my work as an artist, painter.
Here are a few examples of the high quality, high echelon and outright entertaining fun coverage: enjoy !
Ladepeche (art) 19.08.14 "Frickers, des vagues et des coteaux".
WIFR ~ The magazine's avidly read Odin's Eye leader delivers salty views that make government ministers and civil servants wince, while also providing food for thought in the top echelons of naval forces. Since its foundation in 1998 WARSHIPS International Fleet Review has evolved into the world's leading and only high street naval news monthly magazine of its kind. The primary aim of WARSHIPS IFR is to provide a forum for the navies of the world.
"Artist captures winner, instantly", "his on the spot painting".
"near the library Observe Gordon Frickers the renowned marine artist at work".
"Gordon captures the Nexus", "commissioned to record the cableship Nexus on canvas for BT Marine".
"Breathing new life into Chester's old port", "a near perfect example of a mid Victorian port".
"vision of the future" "commissioned by the STA to paint the ship".
Two new prints have been released by marine artist Gordon Frickers to mark two very significant points in the Trafalgar story.
'Trafalgar Dawn' interprets history to depict the view from HMS Victory at five minutes past six on October 21, 1805, when officers where awoken by the cheering of the crew on deck.
'I have urgent dispatches' … leaps to the aftermath and the tiny HMS Pickle conveying the news of the victory at Trafalgar and Nelson's death.
Royal Geographic Society 11 September 2012 – (on the Geography Directions Web site), IBG Journals and Geography Compass, Wiley-Blackwell's review journal covering the entire discipline.
Dr. F. Ferbrache who specialises in current imigration/emigration wrote an assesment of the painting Emigration, Plymouth Cattewater.
Warships International Fleet Review, April 2013, part of an article on 'New war fighting prowess in HMS Somerset's DNA.
Arte Navale, February 2014, a quality Italian magazine, part of a 4 page article on Richard Branson's Atlantic Challenge.
Le Cashier Loisirs, 24 April 2014 – 3 page article on the new wine museum at Broze near gaillac, Invincible Vigneron.
La Depeche, same day similar article.
Bow Wave Issue 696, 11 June 2015 article about the last engine less square riggers.
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text:
IT ALL STARTED IN OHIO...
That's where an old radio friend is running the sales department at a radio station in Columbus.
He sent me a video and asked for my opinion.
The video is of a successful radio guru on a stage, presenting the results from a survey he conducted.
His thesis is that it's time for radio to make commercials shorter.
And his proof is in the form of the answers from a survey he conducted: radio listeners think radio commercials are too long.
IT'S IMPOSSIBLE TO DENY THE EVIDENCE
He's an accomplished and authoritative guy with a successful practice.
And right there in his survey, the paid respondents are asked: when does an advertising message turn them off?
The number-one response was when it was too long.
Seeming to go hand-in hand with this is the proof from the behemoth of all things online, Google.
YouTube is now refusing to sell 30-second spots that are not skipable
That's right. If you want to buy a 30-second spot on YouTube, the viewer has to be able to skip through it, or it just isn't gonna fly.
SO, SINCE YOUTUBE IS DOING IT, SHORTER MUST BE OBVIOUSLY BE BETTER
They are, after all, part of Google's empire, which is set on world domination through digits.
Moreover, since radio listeners were paid money for their opinion in this survey and asked specifically what turns them off, it must all be correct.
Here's where I invite you to call me crazy.
In doing so, you won't be the first.
But isn't asking radio listeners what's wrong with radio commercials like asking a 6-year-old what's wrong with his mother's parenting skills?
Or asking the child's opinion on broccoli?
WHY NOT POLL THE LUNATICS REGARDING WHAT THEY DON'T LIKE ABOUT THE ASYLUM'S MANAGEMENT?
I'm not saying that the respondents in this survey are children, lunatics or even garden-variety 21st-century nitwits.
They are quite possibly average, highly sophisticated, digital-age information consumers.
The problem is, despite being consumers, they aren't sophisticated, digital-age information producers.
Your average consumer of media has no damn idea how to craft a smart story.
And THAT is the core problem: story.
AT ITS CORE, MEDIA IS ABOUT DELIVERING STORIES
Whether it's YouTube, Facebook, NPR, The Morning Zoo--it all boils down to story.
And when it comes to delivering a decent story, the vast majority of radio commercials are total crap.
Sorry to have to drop that éclair into the punchbowl.
But it's just a fact of life.
Most radio commercials suck and almost nobody in charge cares enough to do anything about it.
RADIO COMMERCIALS DON'T NEED TO BE SHORTER
They need to be better.
And all you have to do is look at the results of the survey in question.
The very smart fellow who conducted the survey took the answers from the "What turns you off" question and created a word cloud. The most frequently repeated words show up as the biggest.
You can see the evidence right there: the biggest word is "Long."
But the other big words are "Loud," "Annoying," and "Boring."
So, couldn't that mean the messages are too long because they are "Loud," "Annoying," and "Boring"?
One of my favorite words in the cloud is somewhat smaller, but it says so much.
THAT WORD IS, "NOTHING"
There's a Seinfeld moment for you.
The long-ago NBC sitcom once went down a long and winding, self-referential, shaggy-dog road where Jerry and George tried pitching a sitcom to NBC.
Their big hook was that it would be a show about nothing.
Judging from the word cloud of the survey here, radio listeners don't care for commercials that are about nothing.
But that aside, here's my personal challenge in the guru's evaluation of the survey.
IT SAYS THE SYMPTOM IS THE PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED
And that doesn't work.
It's first necessary to understand WHY listeners are saying commercials are too long.
And it's probably because those commercials are loud, annoying and boring.
And is the real answer that we have to make those loud, annoying, boring commercials shorter?
Or is the real answer that we need to better the craft?
"OH, NO, WE CAN'T POSSIBLY MAKE THE CRAFT BETTER!"
I guarantee you, there are radio bean counters all over the nation who would blanch at this prospect.
Because it costs money, and they don't get it.
Radio at large is a chintzy, tightfisted and parsimonious little medium with an ignorance problem.
Not always, but often, radio decision makers do not understand the craft of their medium.
They will not hire the people with the talent required to make their commercials listenable.
So you end up with loud, annoying and/or boring messages about nothing anyone wants to hear.
WORST-CASE OUTCOME: THE LISTENER LEAVES
Let's go back to the YouTube model: not selling any 30-second advertisements that aren't skipable.
That's actually a brave step, and should scare the creator of mediocre advertising.
One of the things I find so satisfying about YouTube is the handful of advertisers who have figured out how to make me pay attention.
There's an expression in Hollywood screenwriting: enter in the middle of the scene.
And the best YouTube advertisements are doing that.
THEY COME FLYING AT ME IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SCENE
Conflict!
They present a sudden and surprising dramatic moment that makes me think, "Whoa! What the--"
And I watch.
Yes, if it's really long and I feel like I've gotten the meat and don't need what they're selling, I may skip out.
But any advertiser who surprises me and makes me want to know more gets my undivided attention for the full spot, and I am glad to give it.
It's like getting a little gift from someone who respects their craft.
YES, YOU COULD MAKE COMMERCIALS SHORTER
But what good does that really do?
In the end, it's a crass, cynical and cheesy response to a real and disappointing problem.
"We can't afford to hire the talent to make these better, so let's just make them shorter."
It's the kind of moronic response delivered by an overeducated nitwit who thinks his goal as a broadcaster is to "increase shareholder value."
That is the single worst three-word phrase ever uttered in the history of radio. "Increase shareholder value."
The goal should be to deliver a high-quality product that people want to listen to.
THAT'S where shareholder value comes from: delivering a good product.
AND AS IT HAPPENS, THIS ALL DOVETAILS NICELY WITH ANOTHER SCREED NOT MY OWN
Just as your relentless scribe here was struggling with whether to screed or not to screed about this, an old friend reared his sensible head.
Broadcaster and broadcasting professor, Dick Taylor, posted his own screed about "Relevancy."
His premise is that, "A radio listener is always hearing, but listens only when something is relevant."
He proposes that radio programming departments should be allowed to approve any advertising that goes on their air.
He tells a story about a gig he once had at a beautiful music station.
The company had "strict guidelines about what content could be added to their music presentation and that included commercials."
THAT'S WHY THE LOCAL, LOUD, SCREAMING CAR DEALER WASN'T ON THEIR AIR
He was the city's biggest car dealer, but they didn't want his commercials as they aired elsewhere.
Dick says they "Finally convinced the owner not to 'wear a t-shirt to our black tie' radio station's over-the-air presentation.
They were able to create messages that fit in with the station's format . They avoided being loud and annoying to the listener who was there for something very different.
At best, they turned the advertiser into a friend who supported the listener's music habit.
That's called affinity. It's a powerful thing to give a listener.
DICK ALSO MENTIONS A STATION IN FLORIDA THAT IS UNLIKE ANY OTHER ANYWHERE
The reason is because the station is owned by a guy who insists on programming what he likes.
So the music mix is unique. Nobody else has it.
I went to their website. You can hear The Eagles, Ramsey Lewis, The BBC Symphony Orchestra, Rod Stewart, Pete Fountain, Chet Atkins--the playlist is the picture of eclectic.
Dick says, "The commercial breaks are just as carefully watched over as the music. The ads are about things that listeners attracted by the music will also enjoy. Be it theater, dining, travel, clothing etc.; it's all relevant."
RELEVANT. IMAGINE THAT.
To revisit a phrase oft repeated by he of Chickenman fame, the great Dick Orkin, "People do not pay attention to advertisements. They pay attention to what interests them. And sometimes, it's an advertisement."
To that end, this Florida radio station has another hook attached to interest and relevance.
Every weekday, they announce a winner of their "Business of the Day" and "Listener of the Day" contests.
Yes, they make their station interesting by making it about the people listening to it.
The station remains surprising.
And they try to not suck.
INSTEAD OF MAKING THINGS SHORTER, HOW ABOUT JUST NOT SUCKING?
It's not a lofty goal.
It's not even that hard to attain.
It doesn't take a whole lot of training.
How effective is it going to be, trying to get ahead by truncating the suckage?
How about making the stories better?
"BUT THEY'RE NOT STORIES, THEY'RE ADVERTISING!"
Yes, and advertising is, at its core, telling a story about solving a problem.
And advertising at its best appeals to a simple human emotion, and makes a listener want to know more.
Is it that hard or that expensive?
It's much harder and much more expensive to be ignorant.
And sadly that's where so much advertising continues to live.
Even if we must make it all shorter, let's also make it better.
ARE WE A DAY LATE AND A DOLLAR SHORT?
Depends on how you look at it. The faithful subscriber to the screed knows: we almost never talk about the Super Bowl commercials the week after the Super Bowl.
We wait a week or two, then examine the fallout.
Who ran a commercial that was especially useful for the small-business marketer looking for a scalable idea?
What commercial was such smart advertising that a marketer can say, "I could do that."
And here, two weeks out, we have winner.
No, it's not 84 Lumber and their sprawling, calculatedly heart-tugging, pro-immigrant message.
It's not Peter Fonda half a century after the anti-establishment, anti-materialist idealism of Easy Rider driving away from a bunch of bikers in a $100,000 car.
It's not Audi's debatable "Daughter" commercial or Budweiser's Horatio-Algeresque, immigrant saga "Born the Hard Way."
THE WINNER IS E-COMMERCE AND CLOUD-COMPUTING EMPIRE, AMAZON
Were they the funniest commercials in the big game? No.
Were they the most entertaining or the most poignant? Hardly.
What they were was salient--and they used one of the single smartest tactics in the advertiser's toolbox.
Amazon gave an engaging demonstration of the product as a problem solver, and did so with frequency.
Yep. Sounds really un-sexy.
But again: we're not talking million-dollar stunt commercials, of which the Super Bowl offers plenty.
WE ARE TALKING ABOUT A TEMPLATE FOR THE COMMON MAN
We're talking sensible creative executions and strategy that make sense no matter what's in your wallet.
A big problem with the Super Bowl commercial paradigm as an example of good advertising is it's an aberration.
It's a stunt.
Rarely is does a big-game advertiser think, "This message will make people race into our stores."
Instead, the typical advertiser who spent $5 million on a single 30-second spot that cost a million bucks to produce is looking for what the Big Guys call, "Brand Lift."
UH-OH--SOUNDS LIKE JARGON
No matter. It is what it is and, for our purposes, is arguably as silly as a $5-million spot buy.
Brand Lift refers to improving how an audience perceives a brand.
For instance, 84 Lumber's story about a Mexican woman and her little girl trying to reach the United States and being blocked by a giant wall is not designed to make anyone think, "Look at that wall! Wow, they have good building materials!"
It's designed to make the viewer feel something else entirely. It is political, polarizing, and might even piss people off. So it goes.
It's still going to make a lot of people feel good about 84 Lumber.
It is not driving traffic for a specific product or service. It is not a sales message. It is an institutional message calculated to make you feel a certain way about the advertiser's behavior.
SO, WHAT ABOUT AMAZON?
An especially good question if you know that, several years ago, Amazon pulled much its marketing budget out of advertising.
They took the money they were spending on production and media and put it into free shipping.
It also paid off huge! Huge!
But obviously, they're still advertising.
And for the big game, they were advertising a specific product: Amazon Echo.
"ALEXA, WHAT IS AMAZON ECHO?"
As I was writing this, I thought, "Let's ask her that question."
She replies, "Amazon Echo is a device designed around your voice that can provide information, music, news, weather and more."
Not as much as much fun as asking her, "Alexa, what do you look like?"
Her reply is, "I look like lots of ones and zeroes."
So anyway, if you don't know the product, Amazon Echo is what they call a "smart speaker." It's a cylinder about 9 inches tall. And via the internet, Echo connects to Amazon's voice-controlled intelligent personal assistant, Alexa. She's a little like Siri. Only, she sounds prettier.
AND ALEXA WAS STARRING IN THIS YEAR'S SUPER BOWL NOT JUST ONCE, BUT THREE TIMES
Generally speaking, one spot is not usually enough to have an impact on a prospect vis a vis getting a sale.
A salient, surprising and evocative message delivered frequently is how an advertiser penetrates the prospect's psyche.
Which is probably why, instead of seeing a single 30-second spot for Amazon Echo, you saw three 10-second spots.
One was called, "Buster."
It's a single take of a shot of a coffee table.
The table is filled with a vast spread of game-day food. In the middle of it all is a Boston terrier, standing in the guacamole and chowing down. Off camera, a guy with a Boston accent yells, "Buster!" He sighs. "Alexa, ask Pizza Hut to place an order." Alexa says: "OK. What would you like to order?" Cut to product shot. Graphic: "Amazon Echo."
NOT GENIUS--BUT AMUSING AND MAKES A RELEVANT POINT
Alexa can solve your sudden dog-in-the-dip problem.
Another commercial was called, "My Girl."
It's another single take. Shot of a guy sitting on the sofa with his young daughter. They're watching a football game.
The girl looks frustrated and says, "They're relying on the blitz too much."
The guy looks at his daughter, then looks off screen. "Alexa, play 'My Girl." Alexa says, "OK." We hear the strains of "My Girl" by the Temptations. Daughter gives the barest hint of a smile. Dad nudges her with his elbow. Cut to product shot. Graphic: "Amazon Echo."
OK, THAT MIGHT TUG AT THE HEARTSTRINGS OF THE FATHER OF A DAUGHTER
The third commercial might be repellent.
It's called "Finger Lick."
Sound of the game on TV. A close-up shot of a mouth licking orange dust off greasy fingers.
Cut to shot of the guy committing this egregious act sitting next to a woman on the sofa. He finishes licking and digs his hand back into a bowl of chips.
The Woman looks askance and says, "Alexa, re-order Doritos from Prime Air." Alexa says, "OK."
Cut to shot of product sitting in a window. Alexa says: "Look for delivery soon." A drone with the Amazon logo flies into the shot. Subtitle: "Prime Air not available in some states (or any, really). Yet."
IS THAT BUZZ YOU HEAR THE SOUND OF A DRONE?
More likely, it's the sound of people eagerly anticipating Amazon Prime Air delivery.
Gross-out photography and mastication audio is usually a bad idea.
It's hard to ever excuse it.
That said, viewers paid attention.
There was a whole lot of online buzz about this commercial even though drone delivery seems a long way off.
And all three of these commercials are simple storytelling with a theme of problem solving.
They are frequent and consistent in their delivery of the message.
And this model neither began nor ended with the Super Bowl.
AMAZON HAD ALREADY CREATED MORE THAN 100 SIMILAR MESSAGES
Most of them have appeared as online videos.
Example...
Overhead, subjective camera shot of a guy loading up a plate with dozens of chicken wings. "Alexa, how many calories in a chicken wing?" Alexa: "A chicken wing contains 88 calories." Guy hesitates, and puts back one chicken wing. "Anyone know where the potato salad is?" Product shot of Echo. Graphic: "Amazon Echo."
Inexpensive to produce, clear and mildly amusing.
Another...
Close-up on frustrated man: "Alexa, ask Uber for a ride. For Todd." Cut to wide shot of a group sitting on a sofa in blue jerseys. Behind them, Todd is in a red jersey, jumping and pumping his fist. "YES!" Everyone else looks annoyed. Alexa: "There is an UberX two minutes away." A guy throws a jacket at Todd, who leaves. Product shot. Graphic: "Amazon Echo."
LONG BEFORE GAME DAY, AMAZON HAD ALREADY PENETRATED THE ZEITGEIST
These messages have been out there and making themselves known.
They've even been part of the advertising landscape during NFL broadcasts. Their first "Alexa Moment" aired in a game last November.
The commercial is called, "The Break Up."
It's about a sappy father using Alexa to comfort his teenage daughter over a break up with a boyfriend.
Then (SPOILER ALERT), he uses Alexa to turn his home's sprinkler system on the offending boyfriend.
THESE ARE SIMPLE MESSAGES DELIVERED CONSISTENTLY
There's a good chance they will not win any major advertising awards.
That's not what they're for.
They're for creating interest in a product that people are now buying in record numbers.
They are simple, relevant stories told with relentless consistency.
If you can take away anything from any Super Bowl advertising campaign, this is the one: stories, simplicity, relevance and consistency are your friends.
EXPENSIVE STUNT ADVERTISING IS NOT
For the small-business marketer, it makes little sense.
The sprint race of blowing a huge amount of money on a one-time ad message almost never pays off.
A marathon does.
Running the marathon with simple, relevant stories told with relentless consistency in an affordable medium usually pays off for the marketer with the patience and perseverance to commit.
To see the Amazon "Alexa Moments" campaign, including the Super Bowl commercials, click here. Or copy and paste http://tinyurl.com/zv592yl
WHAT DID YOU DO WITH YOUR $5 MILLION--IF ANYTHING?
Last week, we talked about The Super Bowl Advertising Hall Of Shame.
The Super Bowl commercial in question was a $2 million spot in 2000's Super Bowl XXXIV, the infamous "Dot Com Superbowl."
The message we held up for a good-natured beating was advertising a long-since-forgotten business called Lifeminders.com.
The erstwhile e-mail reminder business had two weeks to produce a commercial before the big game.
What I'm about to say, I mean in the nicest possible way: The result was a disappointing, titles-on-the-screen message that lacked clarity and purpose.
THE TAKE AWAY FOR THE SMALL-BUSINESS OWNER WAS THIS...
Successful advertising, even under the duress of a time crunch, requires being resonant for your core customer--a quality that has nothing to do with the delivery platform, whether it's Google ads or Super Bowl ads.
Successful advertising requires clarity.
Successful advertising requires respect for the prospect.
Successful advertising requires knowing how to light up that prospect.
These qualities can all be implemented more easily by understanding and establishing a brand, and using that brand to inform the subsequent messages.
IRONICALLY, THIS YEAR'S SUPER BOWL IS EQUALLY ILLUSTRATIVE
There is even more shame to go around--epic shame with a $5-million price tag.
A 2017 advertiser says they fired their ad agency, leaving themselves with not two weeks to create a Super Bowl commercial--but two days.
And oh, what a commercial it was.
We're talking 30 seconds of WTF.
We open on an extreme close-up of a long, brown, russet potato. It's sitting on a white background.
Across the potato, written in all caps with a sharp-pointed black marker, is the word, "ADVERTISEMENT."
AND THAT IS ALL YOU SEE
For 30 full seconds, you get a static shot of the potato.
The camera never moves.
There is no audio beyond the dead air of the room in which the potato was shot.
Potato...
WHAT WAS THIS AND WHAT WAS THE POINT?
This non-message was the brainchild of the folks from the fill-in-the-blanks party game, Cards Against Humanity. (Tagline: A party game for horrible people.)
And yes, this commercial message failed miserably--by Cards Against Humanity's own admission.
They've written a story about it, published at the social journalism site medium.com.
The story is entitled: "Why Our Super Bowl Ad Failed."
In it, Cards Against Humanity is very candid about their miscalculations.
The first thing they admit is, "We wasted time with establishment thinking" by going to ad agency, Wieden + Kennedy:
They wasted over six months of our
precious time pitching concepts like
people laughing while playing the game,
and amusing card combinations coming
to life on screen. Eventually, we realized
that they were burdened by conventional
thinking and fired them.
THEIR OTHER EXPLANATIONS ARE EQUALLY BRAZEN ADMISSIONS
Admissions like, "Overconfidence in the model."
"Bad luck."
"Failure to trust our customers."
"We were asking the wrong questions."
"Our ad failed to connect with young people."
"We didn't add music."
Really, it's hard to imagine such an epic series of enormous miscalculations coming together in a single $5-million spot buy.
You could even call it a perfect storm of hubris, arrogance and stupidity fueled by filthy lucre.
AND THE MOST EPIC OF OUTCOMES HAS RESULTED
Cards Against Humanity admits: "While we succeeded creatively, the advertisement showed a disappointing return on investment ($0), and we are now going out of business."
What is the takeaway for the small-business marketer here?
Be as wildly creative and out-of-the-box as you can be while remaining on-brand.
Spend as little money as possible.
And harness the power of the press.
This is fake news taken to a genius level.
If you've never followed the marketing efforts undertaken by Cards Against Humanity, they are masterful in what has evolved into a kind of 21st century marketing as performance art.
They never bought a $5-million Super Bowl spot. They are not going out of business. And this lunacy has created an epic stir in social media.
IT'S A SATIRE OF SUPER-BOWL ADVERTISING AND SELF-CONGRATULATORY AD-BIZ DOUBLESPEAK
It has also been widely covered in the press--and at least one news outlet thought it was for real. (Website newsy.com has added an editor's note to the story, saying, "Well, we fell for it.")
By spending virtually nothing to publicize this non-commercial, they created a fake news story that has millions of people paying attention to Cards Against Humanity.
They've done it before by doing things like promoting Black Friday sales by raising prices.
They've replaced their product with boxes of bull poop--and thousands have purchased it.
Last December, they spent over $100,000 digging a hole in the middle of nowhere.
During the presidential race, they set up an anti-Trump Super PAC called the Nuisance Committee. They bought a billboard with a comic-book image of the candidate screaming at a computer monitor. The headline read, "Donald Trump mains Hanzo and complains about team comp in chat."
Which means absolutely nothing if you weren't their core customer of a college-age gamer who plays the anime computer game Overwatch.
Know what this is?
EARNED MEDIA DOLLARS RIDING WILD
If you don't know the expression, earned media is essentially free advertising. Earned-media dollars is what that coverage is worth expressed in monetary terms.
It's what your business gets when you do something so attention-worthy, the press feels compelled to cover it.
Cards Against Humanity has probably earned countless millions of dollars in earned media, or as it's sometimes called, free media.
But this kind of thing is not limited to people who have national reach.
Slow Burn Marketing has a client who makes a Bloody Mary mix. She is the queen of earned media. She works constantly to get her product in local press, most recently with a prominent mention in the Sacramento Bee.
Back in the pre-digital era when I worked for a homemade ice-cream business in Miami's South Beach, I would routinely get them covered on local radio and in the local newspapers--including a full-page Miami Herald story about a burgeoning ice-cream war in South Beach. (The ostensibly warring parties were good friends--but the press didn't know and they loved the story.)
Slow Burn also works with the first-ever winery in Park City, Utah. That might sound like the punch line to a joke. And that's probably one reason why their story keeps catching the eye of journalists in the local area. And the wine is excellent.
WHEN YOU UNDERSTAND YOUR BRAND, YOU CAN THEN UNDERSTAND HOW TO BE A FASCINATING STORY
The news media need news.
They need stories people will pay attention to.
And especially in an age where everyone is overworked and underpaid, stories that seem made-to-order are especially profitable.
The small-business owner who understands the business's brand can then understand how to promote that brand in ways that get headlines.
And there may be no better scalable example from this year's Super Bowl than the fake Super Bowl message from Cards Against Humanity (a party game for horrible people).
They make it work.
They make it fun.
They make it profitable.
And their strategy can easily be scaled down for even the small-business owner working on the local level.
To see Cards Against Humanity's Super Bowl failure story, click here. Or copy and paste http://tinyurl.com/zmey3ch
WHAT DID YOU DO WITH YOUR 2-MILLION BUCKS?
Yes, it's that time of year. We're all busy vacuuming up crushed, salty corn products while lauding the winners and savaging the losers among the Super Bowl commercials.
But here in the rant, the critique for last weekend begins next week. We always like to take a week for the dust to settle and get back some reports on how it all shook out.
In the meantime, we're going to look back at the arrogance and the apathy.
Yes, it's the Super Bowl Advertising Hall Of Shame.
And perhaps the saddest advertising maneuver of all comes not from Groupon and Timothy Hutton diminishing the plight of Tibet for great restaurant deals, nor from GoDaddy and its endless parade of medically manipulated stripper cleavage, but from a business you have never heard of, and probably never would have heard of, were it not for this little screed.
REMEMBER SUPER BOWL XXXIV?
It was played on January 30, 2000. It's also referred to as the Dot Com Super Bowl. The dot-com bubble was blowing up big. Many of the commercials aired during the big game included companies whose names you simply cannot remember today.
One of those companies ran this commercial:
OPEN ON A YELLOW SCREEN.
PLAYING UNDER IS A BAD RENDITION OF CHOPSTICKS ON A LOUSY PIANO
TITLES THAT ARE WRITTEN IN A BLACK, SMEARED COURIER FONT, AS IF FROM AN ANTIQUE TYPEWRITER, BEGIN APPEARING OVER THE YELLOW.
"This is the worst commercial on the Super Bowl.
"But it might be the best thing you see tonight.
"Introducing Lifeminders.com.
"We send highly personalized emails on topics you ask for. Free.
"No junk.
"How can we do this for over 7.5 million members?
"We're information experts. (geeks).
"But we don't know diddly about making ads.
"www.lifeminders.com"
"OF COURSE! LIFEWONDERS! HOW COULD WE FORGET THEM?!"
No, not Lifewonders. Lifeminders.
"Lifemenders! How could we forget them?!"
Not Lifemenders. Lifeminders.
"Lifewinders! How could we forget them?!"
Never mind. Don't know diddly about making ads, indeed.
What is Lifeminders?
Funny you should ask. I played the commercial for the Fabulous Honey Parker. Her first question was: "What do they do?"
THAT SHOULD NOT BE THE FIRST QUESTION SOMEONE ASKS AFTER SEEING YOUR BUSINESS TO CONSUMER MESSAGE
Especially not after you spent over $2 million to place that message one time on national television.
To find out what Lifeminders was about, I did some research.
After reading several press releases, I still had no idea.
Finally, in a release issued about three months before the big game, I learned that they offered email reminders.
You'd fill out a profile with your interests.
They would send sponsored emails to help you manage your life.
IN OTHER WORDS, IT WAS OPT-IN EMAIL INTRUSION
Can you imagine managing your life with email today?
You need a full-time assistant just to manage your email.
My in-box is flooded with spam about dating hot, lonely Russian women, or commanding me to browse psoriasis creams, or how it's time to learn how to talk to my cat. (Which would be a fool's errand. He doesn't listen.)
Anyway, how did Lifeminders decide they needed to be in the Super Bowl?
Hard to know. Maybe it had something to do with lots of venture capital. People will tell you that VC and egos go hand-in-hand.
But not long after the Super Bowl, with a stock price of $90 a share, a 12-month sales figure of $14 million, a 12-month income of almost $33 million, assets totaling almost $71 million, and liabilities of just over $10 million, how bad could things be?
"BUT WHAT DO THEY DO?"
Well, yes, there's that question.
But here's what they decided they didn't want to do: they decided they didn't want to be in the Super Bowl.
They'd bought the spot and later wanted out.
But then, they couldn't unload their $2 million investment.
So, with two weeks to the big game, they turned to their advertising agency, the illustrious Fallon Worldwide (then known as Fallon McElligot), and said, "Hey, we need to produce a Super Bowl commercial."
You can probably hear the riotous laughter echoing in the halls of Fallon's Minneapolis HQ. But they were probably very polite when they turned back to their client (whose account was worth an estimated $50 million or more to the agency) and said, "Ah, afraid we can't do that."
SEND IN THE FREELANCERS!
A big-agency freelance team known to the VP of marketing was called in, and the self-proclaimed "Worst commercial on the Super Bowl" was produced.
Further research reveals that about a year and a half later, Lifeminders.com was sold to Cross Media Marketing Corp for more than 68 million bucks.
And about two years after that, Cross Media Marketing Corp filed for bankruptcy.
Yes, you can hear the sad sound of dot coms circling the drain.
But back to the Super Bowl commercial. Big-money meets big arrogance for a big flop?
Again, hard to know.
Because Lifeminders did try to pull out. When they couldn't, they tried a Hail Mary.
And they eventually sold their business for a staggering amount of money.
Still, when you're spending two-million bucks on one advertisement, isn't a little clarity a good idea?
WHERE IS THE THINKING BEHIND THE MESSAGE?
Who was it for?
What was it trying to tell them?
I still have no idea.
And I'm guessing the freelance team (which had a big-agency pedigree) also wasn't sure. If they'd spent their careers working on creating big-brand advertising, and had never worked in direct response, it's entirely possible they never considered who they were trying to reach and what the specific message might be.
Or maybe they didn't even have the time to think that hard.
Or maybe the client wouldn't let them.
Whatever. It's all conjecture and nothing more. Monday-morning quarterbacking on this is impossible.
It's just tragic that, with a $2-million buy at hand, the best that could be done was a message that makes a savvy professional ask, "What do they do?"
AND IN A PROPHETIC NOTE FROM THE SAME SUPER BOWL...
We get another commercial.
The infamous chimpanzee dancing on a spackle bucket.
Two rhythm-challenged dimwits are sitting in a garage on lawn chairs. The chimp runs up, tunes the radio to a cha-cha, jumps on an upside down bucket, and starts dancing--while wearing an E*Trade T-shirt. After 20 seconds of this comes the message in two graphics:
"Well, we just wasted two million bucks."
"What are you doing with your money?"
ANNCR: It's time for E*Trade, the number-one place to invest online.
It's almost advertising art imitating commercial life.
SO, WHAT'S THE TAKEAWAY FOR THE SMALL-BUSINESS MARKETER?
Beware arrogance in advertising creative decisions. That big idea of yours might really be bad enough to fail.
If you've got pros around you who have a track record, listen to them. If you don't have any pros, find some.
Don't be fooled by bright lights and shiny keys. Being in the Super Bowl--or anywhere else--is not a goal for your advertising. The goal is for your advertising to generate results.
We literally know local advertisers who've said, "But they gave us a spot in the Super Bowl!" And if you ask what good that spot did them, they can't tell you.
We also know a guy who runs a venture capital investment company that specializes in funding tech start-ups. He says that routinely, companies who come to them are spending huge amounts of money on Google ads.
The ads aren't producing any results.
BUT THAT DOESN'T STOP THEM FROM WRITING $30,000 CHECKS EACH MONTH
Dude, you're spending someone else's money without having a plan of attack, without a strategy or tactics, and with no idea of how to craft a salient, resonant message that generates response. What are you doing?
We've worked with tech companies, and the ones who Get It are a joy to work with.
The ones who don't get it don't work with us because we aren't hip enough and we certainly aren't smart enough. How could we possibly be smart enough? They know tech!
Look at the company that inadvertently started the Super Bowl of Advertising.
Go back to Super Bowl XVIII in 1984.
Yes, that's when Apple Computer unleashed its brand upon the world with a commercial called, 1984.
THEY DIDN'T TELL YOU IT WAS GOING TO BE THE WORST AD IN THE SUPER BOWL
They also didn't tell you it was going to be the best.
They just lit people on fire.
And to inspire that kind of conflagration requires knowing about something more than zeroes and ones.
It requires knowing that you're not necessarily smarter than everyone else.
It requires knowing that being resonant has nothing to do with the delivery platform, whether it's Google ads or Super Bowl ads.
It requires respect.
It requires understanding the emotionally resonant core of your customer.
It requires finding that core, and then knowing how to light it up.
And having a little clarity.
"Don't know diddly about making ads," indeed.
Don't be like Diddly. Be like Bo. Bo knows Diddly.
(How's that for a shameless mashup of a advertising reference you're probably too young to remember with a shameless rock & roll reference you're definitely too young to remember?)

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Јутака Икеучи (; 25. август 1961) јапански је фудбалер.

Каријера
Током каријере је играо за Toyoda Automatic Loom Works и Фуџита.

Репрезентација
За репрезентацију Јапана дебитовао је 1983. године. За тај тим је одиграо 8 утакмица.

Статистика

Референце

Спољашње везе

Рођени 1961.
Јапански фудбалери
Одбрамбени играчи у фудбалу

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
Q: Numpy combining 2 arrays I have 2 arrays I'd like to combine:
x1 = np.zeros((10,37632))
x2 = np.zeros((10,4))

... into x3.shape = (10, 37632, 4)
Want:
Given x1 and x2, make x3 ... The shape of x3 should be (10, 37632, 4).  The original data in x1 and x2 should be intact.
Tried:
I've tried reshape, append, expand_dims,block,hstack, etc. but I'm new to numpy and python.  For instance,

x3=np.append(x1,x2, axis=1)

... gives me a shape of (10, 37636).  This is not what I need.
Btw - I used "np.zeros" above, but in my app, I have 10 images (37632 = 112 x 112 x 3) and 4 model scores for each image.  That's "x1" and "x2". I need to keep the data intact.  "x3" will be passed into Keras.
Thanks for your help or pointers!

A: I think you mis-understand what a 3-d array means!
examples -
when we say a shape of (2,2), we mean {putting random numbers.}
[1,2
 3,4]

when we say a shape of (2,2,2), we mean {putting random numbers.}
[[1,2],[3,4]
 [5,6],[7,8]]

That is that there's literally another dimension to the input!
Think of a (2,2) shape as a normal 2-d matrix in a paper. adding a third dimension, think of the numbers in each cell coming out of the paper!
So to go from (10,37632) to (10,37632,4) , each of the cell in your (10,37632) matrix which currently has only a single number, has to be a list of 4 numbers!
Hope it helps!

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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Suffering a serious personal injury can cause permanent disability, long-term chronic pain, disfigurement and even death. If you or a loved one suffered a serious personal injury, you should find a lawyer to help make sure you receive all the compensation you are entitled to.
The law firm of Morse Bratt Andrews & Terry LLP has roots in this region stretching back to 1949. Offering an extraordinary depth of knowledge and experience, our law firm in Vancouver, WA, has helped many of our fellow citizens recover the compensation they needed to move forward after a traumatic tragedy. To schedule a free consultation, call 360 213-2040 or contact us online today.
If you don't see your claim on that list, that doesn't mean we don't handle it. Our lawyers have an extraordinary amount of legal experience in personal injury law.
Our job is to ensure that your settlement fully compensates you for every aspect of your loss. If you miss time from work, you need to be compensated for lost wages. If you lose the ability to do your job, you need to be compensated for lost future wages through Social Security benefits. If you require long-term medical treatment, you need to make sure your settlement will cover it.
If necessary, we will work with medical, vocational, economic, psychological and financial experts to calculate the true value of your claim.
Every day, people get injured in car accidents. The injuries they suffer may vary in severity, but in every case, individual citizens find their need for compensation pitted against an insurance company's desire to pay as little as possible. If you or a loved one suffered injuries in a car accident, we can help.
The law firm of Morse Bratt Andrews & Terry LLP, has roots in this area stretching back to 1949. Our lawyers bring a wealth of legal knowledge and experience to the service of each client. If you or a loved one suffered a personal injury in a car accident, call us today at 360 213-2040 or contact our offices online.
Insurance companies serve a vital role in our society - seeing to it that when people suffer tragedies, they can get the care they need without being left destitute. But they are also businesses. Their top priority is the value of their stock. The less they pay in each settlement, the more their stock price goes up.
Whether a car accident causes whiplash, a spinal cord injury or wrongful death, the insurance company will constantly look for ways to justify lowering the total amount of compensation. Without a lawyer, the injured individual or grieving family can be left helpless against this exploitation.
Contact ourdisability lawyer in Vancouver, WA, to receive support for your bodily harm case. We work with individuals throughout Clark, Skamania, Wahkiakum, Cowlitz, and Lewis Counties.


Logitrain >> IT Jobs and Career >> Why do IT Training at Logitrain?
Why do IT Training at Logitrain?
Previously, Information Technology has rapidly developed, instantly making strongholds in every possible business niche. The current era is of automation, making business operations highly efficient and cost-effective it training. Information Technology branches out into various niches, such as hardware, security, networking, management, software and application. To ensure the eligibility of an individual to professionally operate, manage and troubleshoot the job, IT vendors like Microsoft, Cisco, ITIL, CompTIA and ISTQB provide certifications and IT courses.
Having IT certification help students and IT professionals to stay ahead of cutting-edge technologies with higher market value.
Logitrain is one of the leading IT training institutes in Australia with training centres in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane and Canberra. Logitrain help students and IT professionals to make their career recession proof and excel in their related fields by getting certified. Logitrain strongly believes that IT beginners and professionals should be ensured with reliable jobs by enabling them with indispensable IT skills.
Logitrain is an accredited institute having partnerships with Microsoft as Silver Learning partner, by PeopleCert as ITIL Training organization, CompTIA authorized partner, certified Prometric Test Center, Pearson Test Center and Certiport Test Center. To provide an adequate learning environment, Logitrain has perfect, clean and professional classrooms and labs with latest IT pieces of equipment. All of the Logitrain's courses and certifications are classroom-based, taught by accredited and experienced instructors. Apart from Logitrain's high quality and low-cost training, there are a bunch of other reasons as well to do training here. Logitrain always thrives to be the best provider of IT Training, while facilitating students whenever possible. There are many special offers and value-added services for valued students.
Apart from high quality and solid IT Training, Logitrain provides various value-added services, gifts, free giveaways and group discounts. Just remember that offers are valid for a limited time period and keeps updating from time to time, so you better stay tuned!
Logitrain prides itself for being totally student-focused, as students come first here. We are dedicated and ensure that you achieve your IT certification goals. We firmly believe that if you study hard and follow our guidelines, you will pass the exams and get the certification.
The Logitrain career services are one stop shop for all your future endeavours. We help you in finding the right employer and job for you. Through our different services, we increase your chances of getting hired. Our writers for resume writing have creativity, knowledge and technical expertise to create a high-impact resume and make it fall over the top 5 per cent of cream. Logitrain has years of experience in IT Training and Consultation, and know the art of making portfolio attractive. Logitrain has successfully helped hundreds of candidates in getting their dream jobs.
Conclusively, there are many good reasons to do training at Logitrain. You better make your mind and prepare yourself to make career recession proof and excel!


This article is about a user-generated foundry mission or its content.
This article does not reflect any official game content or Star Trek canon.
Toran is a Vulcan working for Starfleet Intelligence, on a deep cover assignment gathering information on the Orion Syndicate. His real name is "Volar", however, he has assumed the identity of a Romulan mercenary named "Toran" as a cover.
Toran is the handler for Selomi, offering her support and relaying communications to and from Starfleet Intelligence.
It is implied that Toran has a deep affection for Selomi, in his actions and attitudes toward her. Upon questioning though, he will claim ignorance of the fact.
Being a Vulcan, Toran is naturally immune to the mind-altering effect of Orion pheromones.
Last modified: 17 October 2011 at 11:20.


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New Oklahoma Car Seat Law
What you need to do.
Kiley Roberson,
It's one of the most terrifying moments. The sound of crunching metal, the smell of brake dust and the feeling of panic mixed with confusion. If you have ever experienced a vehicle accident, even a minor one, your mind was probably flooded with thoughts. Am I okay? Are they okay? What happened? In the midst of chaos, hopefully none of your concerns were for the safety of a child passenger.
Sadly, this isn't the case for many of our Oklahoma neighbors. According to the Safe Kids Coalition, more than 6,000 Oklahoma children were involved in crashes in our state last year. Of those, 607 were seriously injured and 22 were killed.
Heartbreaking stories that, in some cases, may have had a different outcome had the child been in a car seat or booster seat. That's why Representative Scott Inman (D-Del City) authored a new Oklahoma law to keep children safe when they're on the go.
"While we are required to buckle up, we aren't required to buckle them up in a way that would save their lives," Inman said.
Inman's bill was signed into law this summer and takes effect on November 1, 2015. The new law requires children to be in a rear-facing car seat until they are 2-years old. Children younger than 4 years are required to be in a forward-facing car seat, and those younger than 8-years old and less than 4'9" tall are required to be in a full car seat or booster seat.
While the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends rear-facing car seats until age 2, it's never been the law in Oklahoma…until now.
"Rear facing for as long as possible is your child's best bet in an accident," explained Jenny Rollins with Tulsa's Safe Kids Coalition. "The neck and spinal cord are still developing in young children. Rear-facing seats cradle the child through a crash and distribute the force across their back, often saving them from serious spinal injury."
The fact is, toddlers are not just small adults; their bodies are still developing and those developmental changes make them more vulnerable. A toddler's vertebrae are connected via cartilage rather than ossified bone. Those pieces of cartilage have the ability to stretch up to two inches. Yet only 1/4″ stretch is enough to rupture the spinal column, resulting in paralysis or death.
It's a scary reality, but as parents it's our responsibility to do everything we can to keep our kids safe. Even if that means forcing your 7-year-old into a booster or turning your toddler back around. The good news is that if you have a convertible car seat, it's an easy switch from front to back. If you've already purchased a forward-facing seat, you'll just need to revert back to your previous rear-facing seat until your child has aged out.
If you need help installing your car seat or just want to have it checked out, you can contact Tulsa's Safe Kids Coalition at 918.494.8256 or on their website for a list of scheduled car-seat checks.
Tulsa's Safe Kids Coalition says when it comes to car-seat safety, the numbers speak for themselves:
Booster seats have been shown to reduce the risk of serious injury by 45 percent compared to seat belts alone for children ages 4 to 8 years.
Children should ride in a back seat until they are at least 13 years of age.
Children 2 to 5 years of age using safety belts prematurely are four times more likely to suffer a serious head injury in a crash than those restrained in child safety seats or booster seats.
Child safety seats can reduce fatal injury by up to 71 percent for infants and 54 percent for toddlers (ages 1 to 4.)
73 percent of child restraints are installed or used improperly. Infant seats have the highest percent of critical misuse.
When installed and used correctly, child safety seats and safety belts can prevent injuries and save lives. As parents, a lot of the decisions we make are unpopular. We just have to make the decision that safety comes first. Car seats aren't about comfort, preference or popularity; they're about saving lives. And what could be more important?
Categories: Features
Know the Signs of Depression in Your Children
sponsored by 988 Mental Health Lifeline
Mya Safary: Cascia Junior's Life Lessons from Volleyball


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Australia's Centre Bet to Get Casino Games from Cryptologic
CryptoLogic Limited, a global designer of branded online betting games and casino hosting software, announces that Centrebet, a leading international online betting and gaming company, has become the latest licensee for the company's suite of compelling online casino games.
Under the terms of a multi-year agreement, Centrebet will launch at least ten of CryptoLogic's most popular branded and non branded slot games, on its website, http://centrebet.com/. Games are expected to go live in the third and fourth quarters of 2009.
These games have a proven track record of generating significant recurring monthly licensing revenues due to their rich content and compelling user experience. CryptoLogic will derive revenues based on wagers placed by Centrebet's customers. The games are being deployed through Orbis Technology, a global platform solutions provider to the betting industry.
The agreement is in line with CryptoLogic's "build-once-license-often" business strategy to return to profitability and growth. It takes the total number of CryptoLogic licensees to 24.
Justin Thouin, CryptoLogic's Vice President, said: "This deal with Centrebet maintains the strong momentum to establish CryptoLogic as the gaming partner of choice for the world's internet gaming operators and in particular strengthens our leadership in slot games."
Centrebet commenced operations in 1992 and in 1996 was the first licensed bookmaker in the southern hemisphere to offer online sports betting. It has since grown to become a leading international online betting and gaming company and currently offer up to 4,000 international sports and horse racing markets per week, plus a growing list of state-of-the-art online poker and casino products.
Luke Brill, Head of Marketing at Centrebet, commented: "We are delighted to have signed this agreement with CryptoLogic who are known to be one of the best and the most innovative providers of gaming content in the world. We are confident this collaboration will heighten our customers gaming experience and will help expand our casino offering."


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Overture to Oberon Orchestral Horn Excerpts A collection of horn excerpts presented as they appear in the original parts and performed in context by various orchestras. martin roth top stocks 2018 pdf 9/02/2010 · It would be a great favor if someone could upload some scores by Dmitri Shostakovich. Specifically Festive Overture.
Festive Overture is a bright, bravura work for band that requires a great deal of control from all sections. Its interjections and long lines seek mature responses across the ensemble. Its interjections and long lines seek mature responses across the ensemble. indian festival calendar 2018 pdf Stream Shostakovich, D.: Symphony No. 10 / Festive Overture (Helsinki Philharmonic, Depreist) by Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra and tens of millions of other songs on all your devices with Amazon Music Unlimited. Exclusive discount for Prime members.
Donald Hunsberger's transcription of this piece is very skillful. He transpose original key A Major to A-flat Major. I transpose it to B-flat Major. It is very hard (and terrible!) for brass player but easier for wood winds. Don't conduct in slow tempo!
The list below includes all pages in the category "Overtures". This includes independent works designated by their composers as an 'Overture' (or abertura ) in a title or subtitle. The overture was usually written as a prelude to an opera.
Festive Overture, Op. 96 sheet music - Concert Band sheet music by Dmitri Shostakovich: Hal Leonard. Shop the World's Largest Sheet Music Selection today at Sheet Music Plus.


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DJ Kaiser
Associate Professor Teaching English as a Second Language Coordinator, School of Education Language, Literacy and Leadership Development St. Louis Main Campus, Missouri djkaiser@webster.edu Office: (314) 246-7153
Applied Linguistics Language Pedagogy Language Planning and Policy Teaching English as a Second Language Teaching English Pronunciation
DJ Kaiser joined the Webster University faculty in 2011 having taught previously at Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Barcelona, Parkland Community College, and the University of Illinois. He holds bachelor's degrees in Linguistics and Spanish. He graduated with distinction an...
DJ Kaiser joined the Webster University faculty in 2011 having taught previously at Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Barcelona, Parkland Community College, and the University of Illinois. He holds bachelor's degrees in Linguistics and Spanish. He graduated with distinction and received the Mary A. Hussey Award for Excellence in ESL Teaching from the University of Illinois upon completion of his first master's in Teaching English as a Second Language. Kaiser also has a master's in Drama and a doctorate in Comparative Literature and Drama from Washington University in St. Louis and completed the graduate certificate in Translation Studies.
He is a specialist in teaching English pronunciation with a vast background in phonetics, phonology, and applied linguistics. His research and teaching interests also include translation studies, adaptation studies, language planning & policy, general linguistics, World Englishes, pragmatics, second language acquisition, language pedagogy, and teacher training. In addition to teaching for Webster University, he has worked on a three-year Math and Science Partnership (MSP) grant (2011-2013) with the St. Louis Public Schools, Pearson Education, the Center for Applied Linguistics, the Magic House, and the International Institute and worked on a five-year U.S. Department of Education National Professional Development (NDP) grant (2012-2017) with Webster's TESL Program on the Kansas City campus working with the Kansas City Public Schools.
He has presented at numerous conferences and various institutions throughout the USA and in China, Thailand, Vietnam, Uzbekistan, Mexico, Spain, Greece, the Netherlands, Canada, the United Arab Emirates, Ecuador, Uruguay, Argentina, and Brazil. In 2015 Dr. Kaiser was awarded a research grant to study the innovative English language instruction project Ceibal en Inglés in Uruguay. In 2016 Dr. Kaiser was awarded two more research grants to focus on projects of Videoconference Assisted Language Learning (VALL): a U.S. Fulbright Scholar grant in Uruguay to research Ceibal en Inglés in primary and secondary schools throughout Uruguay (March-June 2016) and a Faculty Research Grant to research Rio de Janeiro's EnglishWorks (June-July 2016).
He is currently the incoming chair for the Standards Professional Council for TESOL International, a site visitor and site visitor lead for accreditation visits with the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP), and the Project Director for a $2.7 million U.S. Department of Education National Professional Development (NPD) grant (2017-2022).
LinkedIn Faculty Page Personal Site
St. Louis Public Radio, Feb. 26, 2018


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Killer Smile
John Maccormack September 28, 2000 4:00AM
DEL RIO, Texas--In the moments before the trial began, the small blond girl sat close by her grandmother on a hard oak courtroom bench, chatting nonchalantly about Creed and getting a troublesome artificial nail filled.
"Why should anyone be nervous? Lots of people want to know my story," she said, using a felt-tipped marker to color a page.
Except for the formal legal setting and the jagged pink scar running diagonally across her throat, Krystal Surles, 11, could have been any cute sixth-grader on a family outing. Dressed in a pink striped blouse, navy skirt, white canvas mules, and a delicate anklet, she could have been waiting for a Sunday school class instead of the public reprise of a personal nightmare.
But the coloring stopped and the courtroom hushed when a very pale, short-haired man with a blue tattoo beneath his left ear entered, flanked by two armed deputies. Dressed in a blue suit and white shirt, the man sat quietly next to his lawyer and then glanced at the spectators, perhaps seeking one in particular.
"He looked at me. He keeps looking at me," said Krystal, nestling deeper under a protective arm.
"It's all right," said her grandmother.
The pudgy man with the jailhouse complexion was Tommy Lynn Sells, the killer drifter, who, after a lifetime of shiftless anonymity, had hit it big. Television cameras now followed his every move. In the space of a few months, Sells had gone from being one of those pathetic shabby guys who slouch by the roadside holding a sign reading "Work for Food" to a nationally known killer.
Sells was tried last month for the December 31 murder of Kaylene Harris, a 13-year-old Val Verde County girl who was killed in her bedroom while her mother and two siblings slept nearby. He was also charged with the attempted murder of Krystal, a girl from Kansas who was staying with the Harris family at their doublewide trailer west of town. Sells and Surles were again eye-to-eye, and the girl did not flinch. Sells had made a name for himself in the months after the Harris slaying by claiming to have killed 20 or more people. Police believe he has murdered at least 10 people and are also convinced he is a savvy, merciless killer, rarely leaving behind as much as a fingerprint, much less an eyewitness. But this time, one got away and lived to tell on him. "I thought I killed her too," Sells later told police.
He nearly had, using a wickedly ugly 12-inch boning knife to slice through Krystal's windpipe, rendering her speechless. The knife had cut into the sheath of her carotid artery. A bit deeper, and Krystal would have quickly bled to death like her friend Kaylene. But this time Sells bungled the job on a 10-year-old girl weighing less than 80 pounds. Feigning death, Krystal had lain motionless on the top bunk until the bearded, long-haired man turned off the bedroom lights and left. After hearing a car start and drive off, she found her way through the darkness, over the bloody, lifeless body of her friend, and out into the rural night.
A quarter mile down the unlit road, she knocked on the door of the first house she found. Inside, Herb Betz, a military retiree, lay awake, having set the alarm early to observe the televised arrival of the new year. When he looked through the peephole, he saw a little girl on his front porch. When he opened the door, he saw she was covered with blood and was pointing to her throat. "Her little eyes were saying to me, 'Help me,'" he recalls. It was a few minutes after 5 a.m. that Betz called 911. "I told them I had a little girl with a slashed throat, and that other people were hurt."
The girl asked for pen and paper and wrote out several messages. "The Harrises are hurt," was one. "Tell them to hurry," was another. And finally she wrote: "Will I live?" By this point, Krystal was lying on the floor and going into shock. "I kissed her on the forehead and told her several times she'd be all right. I didn't believe it. I thought she'd die on my kitchen floor," Betz says.
A day later from a San Antonio hospital bed, still speechless, Krystal drew a composite of the wild-haired intruder. The sketch reminded a family friend of Tommy Sells. After Krystal picked him from a photo lineup, police obtained a murder warrant for his arrest. On a Sunday morning, just over 48 hours after the attack, Sells was arrested at the mobile home he shared with his wife and her four children. "If we had come a day later, he would have been gone," says Lt. Larry Pope of the Val Verde County Sheriff's Office. "He told us he was leaving town. He'd sold a car and was just waiting around for the banks to open to get the money." Once arrested, Sells quickly confessed to the Harris murder, but he didn't stop there. He spent the next several months in the Val Verde County Jail talking to police about all the people he had killed.
John Maccormack
Grand Jury Doesn't Indict Grapevine Cop for Fatal Shooting of Unarmed Man
By Stephen Young
The Money Pit: Dollars Go AWOL at the South Dallas/Fair Park Trust Fund
By Jim Schutze
Dallas Volunteers Fight Ebola at Its Source by Trying to Rebuild West Africa


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You are here: Home1 / Mustsharenews2 / NDP 2021 Will Be Held At The Float @ Marina Bay, Only Vaccinated People...
NDP 2021 Will Be Held At The Float @ Marina Bay, Only Vaccinated People Can Attend
NDP 2021 Will Be Centralised At Physical Venue With Testing & Vaccination Required
The National Day Parade (NDP) is traditionally held at the floating platform, otherwise known as The Float @ Marina Bay.
But due to Covid-19, this wasn't the case in 2020.
Now, however, with vaccinated individuals exceeding 50% in Singapore, the NDP can go ahead physically in 2021, with an audience to boot.
There will be pre-event testing still, and all participants have received their jabs.
NDP 2021 will be held at floating platform
Defence Minister Ng Eng Hen said on Monday (28 Jun) that the NDP will be held physically as a centralised event.
However, there'll be fewer participants and spectators, with the exact number to be confirmed later.
Spectators above the age of 12 must be fully vaccinated, and they will undergo pre-event testing too.
All performers are already vaccinated, and must undergo antigen rapid testing (ART) before each rehearsal.
Just 1 preview show will be had, although there'll also be heartland activities.
National Day a time to shift to new normal
Dr Ng had shared with reporters that National Day appears an appropriate occasion to move to a new normal.
The hope is that at least 2/3 of the population will have gotten their 2nd dose of the vaccine.
The safety measures should ensure a physical NDP is good to go.
That said, things like fireworks are still best enjoyed from home, Dr Ng cautioned.
Crowding will also be managed with safe distancing ambassadors and administrators.
At the same time, Singaporeans should take their own measures to protect themselves, especially if unvaccinated, he noted.
Successful NDP can lead to more in-person events
Vaccination is clearly a key factor in the drive towards a new normal.
To enjoy more in-person events in the coming months and years will almost definitely require getting the jab.
At the same time, you'll be protecting those who can't receive the jab themselves.
Featured image adapted from Flickr.
The post NDP 2021 Will Be Held At The Float @ Marina Bay, Only Vaccinated People Can Attend appeared first on Must Share News – Independent News For Singaporeans.
https://thecrowdreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/ndp-parade-QZbLLJ.jpeg 683 1024 https://thecrowdreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/TCRLogo.png 2021-06-30 20:15:332021-06-30 20:15:33NDP 2021 Will Be Held At The Float @ Marina Bay, Only Vaccinated People Can Attend
CPIB will not take further action on corruption allegations about MUIS officer... Oyo's Indian rival banks nearly $16m in round led by French hospitality m...


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Right to Life New Zealand is a Christchurch-based anti-abortion group. It broke away from the New Zealand Society for Protection of the Unborn Child (now Voice for Life) in 2000 following disagreements between the Christchurch branch spokesperson Ken Orr and the national leadership over lobbying tactics. Besides opposing abortion, Right to Life NZ opposes euthanasia, sex education, and specific policies around LGBT issues.

History

Origins
Right to Life originated as the Christchurch branch of the New Zealand Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child (SPUC), now known as Voice for Life. In 2000, the Christchurch branch of SPUC was expelled from the national organisation due to disagreements between the branch's spokesperson Ken Orr and the national organisation over lobbying tactics. While Ken Orr wanted to push for anti-abortion legislation, the national leadership wanted to wait for a strongly anti-abortion government. In September 2000, the Christchurch branch of SPUC formerly revamped itself as Right to Life New Zealand.

Nikki's Case, 2002
In 2002, Right to Life won a court case known as "Nikki's Case" in which a fetus was made a ward of the court after the mother decided to allow the birth to be filmed for a pornographic movie. According to journalist Allison McCulloch, this court challenge was part of Right to Life's campaign to enshrine the right to life from conception in New Zealand law.

Legal proceedings against the Abortion Supervisory Committee, 2008–2011
Between 2005 and 2012, Right to Life New Zealand's leader Ken Orr pursued a court case against the Abortion Supervisory Committee, New Zealand's abortion regulator since 2005, arguing that the Committee had failed in its statutory responsibility to monitor the legality of individual certifying consultant responsibilities under the Contraception, Sterilisation and Abortion Act 1977, protect fetuses, and stop elective abortions. In 2008, Right to Life's case was upheld in part by Miller J, however he refused to issue a declaration that the Committee had failed in its duty.

On appeal, the Court of Appeal found against Right to Life on 1 June 2011. It dismissed their case against the Committee and upheld Wall v Livingston, an earlier Court of Appeal case that found that there was no statutory definition of embryo or foetus under New Zealand law in the context of abortion. The Court of Appeal also ruled that there was no foetal right to life.

Right to Life New Zealand Inc sought leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of New Zealand. In a decision on 26 August 2011 the Supreme Court granted Right to Life New Zealand Inc leave to appeal in relation to certain issues (including regarding the powers of the Abortion Supervisory Committee), but declined leave to appeal regarding the issues of the rights of the unborn child and independent counselling for women.

The appeal was heard in the Supreme Court on 13 March 2012. The Supreme Court delivered its judgment on 9 August 2012, declining Right to Life's appeal by a 3-2 majority decision and upholding the Wall v. Livingston decision. The Court ruled that the Abortion Supervisory Committee could not investigate the decision-making of certifying consultants in individual cases but also made it clear that the ASC could ask consultants how they were making their decisions in general. Orr claimed the latter ruling as a victory in holding consultants accountable for abortions that they authorised. Right to Life Inc applied to recall that part of the judgment which dealt with costs, but the recall application was declined by the Supreme Court on 25 October 2012.

Recent campaigns
Since 2017, Right to Life New Zealand has also opposed efforts to legalise euthanasia and assisted suicide. As of 2019, the group is lobbying against ACT Party leader David Seymour's proposed End of Life Choice Bill, which passed its second reading in late June 2019. In addition, Right to Life also opposes contraception, In vitro fertilisation, and prenatal testing.

Decriminalisation of Abortion: March 2020

In August 2019, Right to Life NZ urged supporters to make submissions opposing the Labour-led coalition government's proposed Abortion Legislation Act 2020, which intends to remove abortion from the Crimes Act 1961 and ease access to termination services. However, it failed to achieve that objective after the third and final reading of the Abortion Legislation Act on 23 March, 2020, after which it became law. Nor was Right to Life New Zealand any more successful in its concurrent campaign against the End of Life Choice Act 2019, which sought to ratify the decriminalisation of voluntary euthanasia. The End of Life Choice Act passed after a binding referendum was held alongside the New Zealand general election 2020 by a margin of 65.9% (support) compared to 34.1% (opposed).

See also
Abortion in New Zealand
Christian politics in New Zealand
Euthanasia in New Zealand

References

Further reading

External links
Right to Life New Zealand's official website

Anti-abortion organisations in New Zealand
1999 establishments in New Zealand


The first disciples, seduced by Jesus "Left everything and followed him". Nothing can be compared to the fascination of the Master. By the power of his sovereign word, the lack of fish becomes an abundance of fish, their embarrassment becomes a mission: "I will make you into fishers of men".