text:
Salix viminalis é uma espécie de planta com flor pertencente à família Salicaceae.

A autoridade científica da espécie é L., tendo sido publicada em Species Plantarum 2: 1021. 1753.

Portugal

Trata-se de uma espécie presente no território português, nomeadamente em Portugal Continental.

Em termos de naturalidade é introduzida na região atrás indicada.

Protecção

Não se encontra protegida por legislação portuguesa ou da Comunidade Europeia.

Referências
 Salix viminalis - Checklist da Flora de Portugal (Continental, Açores e Madeira) - Sociedade Lusitana de Fitossociologia
 Checklist da Flora do Arquipélago da Madeira (Madeira, Porto Santo, Desertas e Selvagens) - Grupo de Botânica da Madeira
 Salix viminalis - Portal da Biodiversidade dos Açores
 Tropicos.org. Missouri Botanical Garden. 26 de dezembro de 2013 <http://www.tropicos.org/Name/28300206>
 Salix viminalis - The Plant List (2010). Version 1. Published on the Internet; http://www.theplantlist.org/ (consultado em 26 de dezembro de 2013).
 Salix viminalis - International Plant Names Index
 Castroviejo, S. (coord. gen.). 1986-2012. Flora iberica 1-8, 10-15, 17-18, 21. Real Jardín Botánico, CSIC, Madrid.

Ligações externas

 Salix viminalis - Flora Digital de Portugal. jb.utad.pt/flora.
 Salix viminalis - Flora-on
 Salix viminalis - The Euro+Med PlantBase
 Salix viminalis - Flora Vascular
 Salix viminalis - Biodiversity Heritage Library - Bibliografia
 Salix viminalis - JSTOR Global Plants
 Salix viminalis - Flora Europaea
 Salix viminalis - NCBI Taxonomy Database
 Salix viminalis - Global Biodiversity Information Facility
 Salix viminalis - Encyclopedia of Life

Flora de Portugal
viminalis
Plantas descritas por Lineu
Flora de Portugal Continental
Flora introduzida em Portugal Continental
Flora introduzida em Portugal


text:
Season ends for women's soccer
WILDER, Ky. – Jessica Dotson's unassisted goal at the 64:01 mark Saturday afternoon gave the University of Nebraska at Omaha women's soccer team a 1-0 victory over NKU in the NCAA Division II national quarterfinals at the Town ' Country Sports Complex.
Amy Price recorded the shutout as unbeaten UNO earned its first-ever trip to the NCAA Division II Final Four and handed No.1 NKU its only loss of the season. The Norse entered Saturday seeking its fourth consecutive trip to the Final Four, but the UNO defense limited NKU to just two shots in the second half.
NKU had several opportunities in the first half, but were unable to find the net. Kristen Noakes blasted a shot from 15 yards out that hit the crossbar and bounced away early in the opening half, and two other chances – one by Katie Hanck and one by Bessie Black – also were off target.
Dotson snapped the scoreless tie by dribbling through a pair of NKU defenders and blasting a kick from 18 yards out past Norse goalie Sam Westerling into the net.
NKU had one final chance to tie the match with 20 minutes remaining when Price left the UNO goal unguarded, and NKU's Stephanie Sandfoss chipped a 25-yard shot over the goalie's head toward the open net.
The shot, however, hit the right post and bounced out of bounds, and NKU was unable to threaten again.
Sports Information

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Gabbeh rugs come from southern central Iran. Woven by nomadic travellers that inhabit a large area that include the Zagros mountain range. Most often attributed to the Qashgai people. More likely is that the rugs are woven by any of the tribal groups from the surrounding area. Luri, Khamseh or Afshah. For Gabbeh rugs are coarsely woven with a thick chunky pile They have fat warp and weft threads and that makes them quick to weave. The simplistic freeform designs are much simpler to weave than the traditional Persian rug designs. They are usually woven on horizontal looms that can be quickly staked out on the ground and just as easily taken up when it is time to move camp. For similar styles in a finer quality search for Luribaff rugs.


text:
Q: What are nested functions? What are they for? I've never used nested functions, but have seen references to them in several languages (as well as nested classes, which I assume are related).

*

*What is a nested function?

*Why?!?

*What can you do with a nested function that you cannot do any other way?

*What can you do with a nested function this is difficult or inelegant without nested functions?

I assume nested functions are simply an artifact of treating everything as an object, and if objects can contain other objects then it follows.
Do nested functions have scope (in general, I suppose languages differ on this) just as variables inside a function have scope?
Please add the language you are referencing if you're not certain that your answer is language agnostic.
-Adam

A: One popular use of nested functions is closures. In a lexically scoped language with first-class functions it's possible to use functions to store data. A simple example in Scheme is a counter:
(define (make-counter)
  (let ((count 0))                ; used to store the count
    (define (counter)             ; this is the counter we're creating
      (set! count (+ count 1))    ; increment the count
      count)                      ; return the new count
    counter))                     ; return the new counter function

(define mycounter (make-counter)) ; create a counter called mycounter

(mycounter)                       ; returns 1

(mycounter)                       ; returns 2

In this example, we nest the function counter inside the function make-counter, and by returning this internal function we are able to access the data available to counter when it was defined. This information is private to this instance of mycounter - if we were to create another counter, it would use a different spot to store the internal count. Continuing from the previous example:
(define mycounter2 (make-counter))

(mycounter2)                      ; returns 1

(mycounter)                       ; returns 3

A: It's useful for recursion when there is only 1 method that will ever call it
string[] GetFiles(string path)
{
  void NestedGetFiles(string path, List<string> result)
  {
    result.AddRange( files in the current path);
    foreach(string subPath in FoldersInTheCurrentPath)
      NestedGetFiles(subPath, result);
  }

   List<string> result = new List<string>();
   NestedGetFiles(path, result);
   return result.ToArray();
}

The above code is completely made up but is based on C# to give the idea of what I mean.  The only method that can call NestedGetFiles is the GetFiles method.

A: Nested functions allow you to encapsulate code that is only relevant to the inner workings of one function within that function, while still allowing you to separate that code out for readability or generalization.  In some implementations, they also allow access to outer scope.  In D:
int doStuff() {
    int result;
    void cleanUpReturn() {
        myResource1.release();
        myResource2.release();
        return result * 2 + 1;
    }

    auto myResource1 = getSomeResource();
    auto myResource2 = getSomeOtherResource();
    if(someCondition) {
        return cleanUpReturn();
    } else {
        doSomeOtherStuff();
        return cleanUpReturn();
    }
}

Of course, in this case this could also be handled with RAII, but it's just a simple example.

A: A nested function is simply a function defined within the body of another function.  Why?  About the only reason I could think of off the top of my head is a helper or utility function.
This is a contrived example but bear with me.  Let's say you had a function that had to act on the results two queries and fill an object with values from one of the queries.  You could do something like the following.
function process(qryResult q1, qryResult q2) {

   object o;
   if (q1.someprop == "useme") {
       o.prop1 = q1.prop1;
       o.prop2 = q1.prop2;
       o.prop3 = q1.prop3;
   } else if (q2.someprop == "useme") {
       o.prop1 = q2.prop1;
       o.prop2 = q2.prop2;
       o.prop3 = q2.prop3;
   }

   return o;

}

If you had 20 properties, you're duplicating the code to set the object over and over leading to a huge function.  You could add a simple nested function to do the copy of the properties from the query to the object.  Like this:
function process(qryResult q1, qryResult q2) {

   object o;
   if (q1.someprop == "useme") {
       fillObject(o,q1);
   } else if (q2.someprop == "useme") {
       fillObject(o,q2);
   }

   return o;

   function fillObject(object o, qryResult q) {
       o.prop1 = q.prop1;
       o.prop2 = q.prop2;
       o.prop3 = q.prop3;
   }

}

It keeps things a little cleaner.  Does it have to be a nested function?  No, but you may want to do it this way if the process function is the only one that would have to do this copy.

A: (C#) :
I use that to simplify the Object Browser view, and to structure my classes better.
As class Wheel nested in Truck class.
Don't forget this detail :
"Nested types can access private and protected members of the containing type, including any inherited private or protected members."

A: A nested function is just a function inside another function.
Yes, it is a result of everything being an object.  Since you can have variables only visible in the function's scope and variables can point to functions you can have a function that is referenced by a local variable.
I don't think there is anything that you can do with a nested function that you absolutely couldn't do without. A lot of the times it makes sense, though.  Namely, whenever a function is a "sub-function" of some other function.
A common use-case for me is when a function performs a lot of complicated logic but what the function computes/returns is easy to abstract for all the cases dictated by the logic.

A: They can also be useful if you need to pass a function to another function as an argument.  They can also be useful for making factory functions for factory functions (in Python):
>>> def GetIntMaker(x):
...   def GetInt():
...     return x
...   return GetInt
...
>>> GetInt = GetIntMaker(1)
>>> GetInt()
1

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


It's hard to sum up the budget session in a single word, or even a few words, but let it be known: the grassroots threw down. Even with "old Albany" rearing its ugly head (shady lobbyists, backroom politics, etc.), we continued to make our voices heard and demand the big changes our communities have been waiting for.
As a result of the work of Citizen Action and its partners, we passed the most significant criminal justice reforms our state has seen in nearly half a century. And we forced our legislators to create a commission to implement small donor public financing.
There's still a lot more work to do this session (next up: housing). But it's important to recognize the huge role that grassroots activism has been playing so far this session.
The Fair Elections coalition held an emergency rally in front of the Governor's Manhattan office to demand that public financing be included in the budget. With many of our Democratic legislators working to keep it out (fearing a threat to their reelection bids), it was grassroots pressure that forced their hand and led them to create a commission to oversee its implementation.
Our Binghamton and Capital District chapters participated in #ReleaseTheReport rallies calling for Robert Mueller's report be made public. Without transparency, there can be no justice.
On April 4th, 1968, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. King had traveled to Tennessee to support striking sanitation workers, who were being paid significantly lower wages than their white counterparts. The day before he gave his famous "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech.


text:
It's beginning to look a lot like... 1998
By ScGO's, December 5, 2017 in Orioles Talk
ScGO's
The start of our fall from grace, 14 straight years.
In 98, we still had our bats, but just like 2017, our starters crapped the bed after Erickson and Mussina. Then our key assets walked (Moose, Raffy, Alomar) as we watched Brady, Cal, and BJ age for a few seasons before anyone realized the farm had gone barren. By then, anything resembling a capable GM had been run out of town, and the O's were at the mercy of Syd, and you all know the rest.
I believe Dan is a capable baseball man, but I wonder if he is hand cuffed at times by directives from above. Our winning ways got away from us quickly after 98 and I see similarities in the current team. Many key pieces will be leaving in the upcoming years. We failed to retain the correct assets or invest in the correct ones. I just don't understand Angelos' business model; I don't believe Dan does at times either. But to me, he takes his job seriously, evident by how active he is in the market. I believe he is doing the best he can with what he has been given and some his moves have been brilliant.
However, I believe he walks after the season. The way he talks to the media reminds me of someone who is disgruntled but plays it safe to cover his butt and get by and appease the boss. It took him a long time to get back into baseball, and he had to settle for the Orioles and their owner's directives. He has done well and now he is hoping he can find another Toronto-like offer.
Hopefully, whoever we get next is the start of a string of former players and who-are-these-guys types.
23 minutes ago, ScGO's said:
Is not the start. Sorry.
It's starting to look a lot like Philly.
Oh wait that started when they brought Davis back.
At least they won a WS.
theobird
What it is looking like to me is more of the same old thing. Sitting on the fence, not really going after the kind of players that could make you competitive. Now don't get me wrong, I want a full rebuild as I think that is the only way to get a Champion in Baltimore. But these guys have stated that they are all in on 2018, but I don't really believe that. What they want to do is fence sit, hope everything breaks right and this team can finish a few games over .500 and keep bringing folks through the turnstiles up into september. And that is the worst track to take imo. I would be all in on a complete rebuild, which I think is the smart track to take. I would be OK if they went all in and made every attempt to actually be competitive in 2018, although I really don't think that is likely regardless of how much they spend. But I am pretty sure we are looking at fence sitting.
MILWAUKEE — The collapse of the Baltimore Orioles is reduced to basics by Frank Robinson.
"The talent is not there," said the man who has been all things with the Orioles: player, coach, front-office executive and now manager. "It's that simple.
"It used to be that the Orioles turned out talent on top of talent, then went out and traded for that one particular player.
"When you have to do what they've done in the last few years, when you have to fill four or five positions every year, you're not going to be successful. You're not going to have the same stability and execution."
http://articles.latimes.com/1988-04-22/sports/sp-2099_1_orioles-farm-system
The 1988 Baltimore Orioles season was a season in American baseball. It involved the Orioles finishing 7th in the American League East with a record of 54 wins and 107 losses. The season is remembered for the 0-21 start that lasted from April 4 to 28 to start the Orioles season.[1] Manager Cal Ripken, Sr. was fired after an 0-6 start and replaced by Hall of Famer Frank Robinson. The Orioles won their first game of the year against the Chicago White Sox at Comiskey Park on April 29.[2] The most runs allowed during the season was 15 in a game on June 19 while the most runs scored was 12 in a game on May 31.[1] Orioles owner Edward Bennett Williams died in August of that year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988_Baltimore_Orioles_season
107 losses.
2 minutes ago, weams said:
Gillick left and took the wins with him.
It's beginning to look a lot like December 5th of every offseason around the Orioles Hangout since.... well, since 1998.
8 minutes ago, wildcard said:
2 hours ago, ScGO's said:
Dan was fortunate to get this job and would be the first to tell you that. All baseball GMs work for demanding billionaires who are likely to give "directives". It comes with the job. He has done some good things but he also walked into a good situation due to the work of his predecessor who was hired by this owner and the manager who was also hired by this owner. There will be no shortage of candidates very willing to take one of the few jobs in the US entitled MLB GM. And if this team's system is not as good as it was when Andy Macphail left and falls off rather than goes up, then that is on Dan and his resume. Constantly giving Dan a complete pass and blaming only the owner for any bad results gets tiresome.
MDtransplant757
Plus Member since 3/2017
48 minutes ago, wildcard said:
Gillick and Davey Johnson were martyrs against the Angelos regime until buck and dan came to power.
While I see some similarities with 1998, there's no reason we need to have 14 straight losing seasons again, even assuming we hold onto our expiring contracts. The farm system is in better shape than in '98. The front office really did a poor job of rebuilding in the early/mid 2000's, and so it took three times as long as it should have.
54 minutes ago, tntoriole said:
And if this team's system is not as good as it was when Andy Macphail left and falls off rather than goes up, then that is on Dan and his resume.
Hold on just a second.
In November of 2011 Dan took over a last place O's team the was 69-93.
Guthrie 9-17, 4.33 ERA (Dan traded him over the winter)
Britton 11-11, 4.61 ERA ( Who never made it as a starter)
Arrieta 10-8, 5,05 ERA ( We all know that story)
Simon 2-5, 8.77 as a starter
Tillman 3-5, 5.52 ( He had just failed for the 3rd time as a starter)
Bergesen 2-7, 578 as a starter
Matusz 1-9, 10-69 as a starter
Hunter 3-3, 5.00 as a starter
1B Davis 708 OPS (Lee went FA).
2B Andino 570 OPS
ss Hardy 801OPS
3B Reynolds 806 OPS (Machado was in A Ball)
C Wieters 778 PS
RF Markakis 758 OPS
CF Jones 785 OPS
LF Reimold 781 OPS
DH Guerrero 733 went FA
I don't know if you can say the Dan will have a worst team in 2018 then the one he took over in 2011.
I think things look a lot better now than they did in '98. Though if all our prospects crap out, and Gausman and Bundy get injured or decline . . .
One sobering similarity though. The Orioles' recent successful seasons have been due, in part, to the weakness of the NYYs or RS or both. Part of the problem in the period that began in 1998 was the great strength of those teams (especially the NYYs) year in and year out: they finished 1-2 in each of the ten years from '98 through 2007 (except 2006, when the BJs edged Boston by a game). Both those teams look pretty strong right now, and their young ML players, prospects, and huge operating revenues make it look like they'll be formidable for a while. Realignment, anyone?
Seems to me that Tillman, Britton, Hardy, Jones, Wieters, the drafted Machado, the drafted Schoop were pretty important parts of the winning seasons beginning in 2012. And Dan inherited all those guys. Dan will likely walk away after 2018, so it is the state of the team from 2019 on that he will be compared to what he inherited. Whoever takes over in 2019 will walk into a worse situation at the major league level and on the farm system than the one Dan inherited, imho.
Dan doesn't get enough credit for putting together a decent rotation out of thin air in 2012 as well as putting together an excellent bullpen. But he did inherit a nice young core and was fortunate to be around as those players were maturing. And Manny turbocharged the whole team.


text:
National Football League (NFL)
Football - Soccer
Who caught brett's favre first pass his first td with green bay?
Sterling Sharpe
Q: Who caught brett's favre first pass his first td with green bay?
Who did Brett favre throw is first pass to as a green bay packer?
Himself. On his 1st play as a Green Bay Packer, Favre threw a pass that was deflected & was caught by himself for a loss of 7 yards.
Who did Brett Favre complete his first nfl pass to for the green bay backers?
Brett Favres' 1st pass for the Green Bay Packers was deflected by a defensive player & Favre himself caught it for a 7 yard loss.
What team did Brett Favre play for in 1992?
The 1992 season was Brett Favre's first year as quarterback of the Green Bay Packers. He was traded to Green Bay by the Atlanta Falcons.
Who caught Brett Favre's last pass as a packer?
Well, this can be answered two ways considering Favre's "last pass" as a Green Bay Packer was an interception in overtime of the 2008 NFC Championship game... With that said, the Packer (or teammate) that caught Favre's last pass was... Donald Lee. However, Favre's very "last pass" as a Packer was intercepted by Corey Webster from the Giants.
Who wore the first 4 jersey for the Green Bay Packers?
recently, Brett favre.
Why did Brett Favre go to green bay?
Packers GM Ron Wolf traded a first round draft pick for Favre during the 1992 offseason.
When was Brett Favre in the Green Bay Packers?
brett favre was on the packers from 1992-2007.
What color eyes does Brett favre have?
What is Brett Favre's eye color?
What color are Brett Favre's eyes?
Did Brett Favre say 319 or green 19?
What is Brittany Favre best known for?
Brittany Favre is best known for being the daughter of American NFL football quarterback Brett Favre. Brett Favre was the quarterback for the Green Bay Packers.
When did Brett Favre leave the Green Bay Packers?
Brett Favre left the Packers at the end of the 2007 season.
Which team did Brett favor play for first?
Brett Favre Played for the Green Bay Packers first. Then the New York Jets, then the Minnesota Vikings.
What was Brett Favre's nickname with the Green Bay Packers?
Tailgater
Who was the quarterback for the Green Bay Packers in 1996?
Bret Favre
What was Brett Favre's Green Bay Packers number?
When did Brett Favre leave Green Bay Packers?
Who was the Green Bay Packers quarterback in 1997?
Who wore number 4 for the Green Bay Packers?
favre
Who was the quarterback for Green Bay Packers in 1995?
Is Brett Favre currently married?
Yes, he was married to Deanna Favre (nee Tynes) on July 14, 1996 in Green Bay. They had their first daughter in 1989 (19yrs) and had their second daughter in 1999 (9yrs).
When did packers get Brett Favre?
Brett Favre was traded by the Atlanta Falcons to Green Bay following the 1991 NFL season
Why did Brett Favre retire?
Eventually all NFL players retire, most of them well before the age of 38, which was Favre's "first" retirement, from the Green Bay Packers in 2008. He retired for the second time in 2009, from the New York Jets, before signing with the Minnesota Vikings. Although Favre reportedly wanted more time at home with his family, the catalyst for his first retirement may have been mutual disappointment : the Packers with his play and Favre with Green Bay management.


text:
Travel Photographer/FS Spouse Seeks to Help Rebuild a Small Corner of Nepal
August 28, 2015 By domani spero in Americans Abroad, Foreign Service, Photo of the Day, Spouses, USAID Tags: awesome, Derek Brown, EFMs, humans of the foreign service, Nepal, Nepal Earthquake 2015, Rebuild Nepal Together	1 Comment
The impact of the 25 April and 12 May earthquakes resulted in over two million people in Nepal losing their houses due to damage. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, during September and October this year, population movements are expected to increase, particularly with the mass outflux from the Kathmandu Valley to districts before the Dashain festival beginning in late October. On a smaller scale, with the end of the monsoon, the majority of those residing in spontaneous settlement and those relocated due to landslide risks will likely return to their original residence. Ensuring comprehensive returns will also depend on the availability of support for shelter reconstruction.
Derek Brown, a Foreign Service spouse and a friend of the blog is helping with shelter reconstruction in a small corner of Nepal. Derek is an American travel photographer, currently based in Kathmandu. He was previously in Pakistan and India with his USAID FSO spouse and has been generous in sharing some of his photos with this blog (see Derek Brown's Photographs From India — Old Delhi, Ahmedabad, Udaipur, and Kutch; NYT's India Ink Features Awesome Photographer and USAID/EFM).
In the aftermath of the earthquake, Derek wanted to document Nepalis helping Nepalis, and reached out to his friend Pawan Shakya whom he'd first met in 2013. Pawan who runs a small family publishing business from Durbar Square, the historic center of Kathmand has already embarked on self-funded relief projects aimed at some of the neediest villages following the earthquake. Derek realized that he could help in the planning, funding and execution of Pawan's projects. He brought in Tyler Driscoll, a graphic designer he knew from San Francisco and together they put up a GoFundMe fundraising to help rebuild a small corner of Nepal.
© 2015 Derek Brown http://www.rebuildnepaltogether.com/photo-blog/
The relief effort is intended to improve the lives of over 500 earthquake-stricken Nepali villagers in 2 villages. They picked the village of Chhap, 3.5 hours northeast of Kathmandu. Of 250 houses in the area, only 1 remained inhabitable after the earthquakes. The other location Ranipauwa Village is roughly 1.5 hours drive northwest of Kathmandu, and was almost totally destroyed by the earthquake, with essentially none of the houses inhabitable or even repairable.
The villages were selected based on need, the ability of villagers to help each other, and their ability to help themselves. Very importantly, one young man from each village works for Pawan's family business. Having a person from inside each community not only provides valuable insight into issues and opportunities, but it also facilitates ongoing communication and monitoring that can help avoid all sorts of missteps.
They plan not only to build bamboo relief houses, they also plan to fund chicken farms, replace livestock and provide improved seeds for future plantings in the two villages.
Tyler, Derek and Pawan © 2015 Derek Brown http://www.rebuildnepaltogether.com/photo-blog/
Derek says that neither Pawan nor him will be taking any compensation at any point–Pawan is doing the calendar printing at cost and there will be no charge for Derek's images. The GFM campaign provides other rewards that do carry cost like mugs, t-shirts, large prints, so do let them know if you do not want them. They have raised about $11K so far in the last two months of their GFM campaign. If you are able to help, check out their GFM campaign: http://www.gofundme.com/nepaltogether.
You may also follow Derek's photo blog documenting their rebuilding efforts here: http://www.rebuildnepaltogether.com/photo-blog/
Below is a photo of a mother and child washing hair in a creek in Nepal, one of our favorites from Derek's collection. What a lovely smile! Check out the rest of his photos on Facebook and Tumblr. धन्यवाद
© 2015 Derek Brown
Leaks in the Department of State in 1963, and a Scolding on Leaks in 2015
August 28, 2015 By domani spero in Govt Documents, Secretary of State, State Department, US Presidents Tags: Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, David Langbart, George W. Ball, John F. Kennedy, leaks, oppressive practices, Public Affairs, Robert Manning, Text Message	2 Comments
Foreign Policy's John Hudson recently did a report on Secretary John Kerry admonishing State Department employees about making unauthorized disclosures to the press.
In a tense Monday meeting about leaks, which was promptly, well, leaked to Foreign Policy, Kerry told staff to keep a lid on internal deliberations or find a new place to work.
"In slightly more polite words, Kerry said if you want to leak, you can get the f— out," a State Department official said.
Asked about the meeting, State Department spokesman John Kirby said at no time did Kerry "discourage anybody at the State Department not to talk to the media."
Read more (registration may be required):
#Kerry scolds staff on #leaks–which is leaked–to FP's @.john_hudson https://t.co/5Rcukbe3Vu
— Jeff Stein (@SpyTalker) August 13, 2015
The National Archives, David Langbart did a blogpost on Leaks in the Department of State, 1963 on March 17, 2015. That post includes an 8-page memo to President Kennedy on how Under Secretary of State George W. Ball (then the Department's #2 official) plan to deal with the issue.
On April 28, Mr. Langbart posted additional documentation on what led to that memorandum in his post, Leaks in the Department of State, 1963: Antecedents.
By early September 1962, President Kennedy and Under Secretary Ball were discussing how to handle relations with the press. To brief the Under Secretary and provide him with food for thought, Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs Robert Manning to sent Ball a long memorandum.
Among the points he made were (the following are all direct quotations from Manning's memo to Ball, 1962):
[O]ccasionally top officials of the government display a certain lack of reality about (a) the degree to which we can expect the day-to-day coverage of foreign policy to reflect only the assessments and characteristics that we believe are the correct ones, and (b) the degree to which we react to individual stories or pieces of speculation we do not like.
[I]n almost all instances where given stories or reports seem to raise serious problems for us, experience shows that a few hours or a few days later there was, in fact, no real cause for demonstrable concern. We too often allow ourselves to react when in fact the problem would disappear — or prove to have been non-existent — if we were to just relax and move on to other matters.
[W]e have to give more thought to what can be done to protect the main objective, namely the pursuit of the national interest, from harm or mischief that can be done by ill-considered reporting or ill-considered talk and gossip by government officials.
I would be deeply concerned — for the government, for the Administration and for the President himself — if this concern were to provoke us into oppressive practices or other inhibitions that would not solve the problem yet might very well hamper the ability of officials to get the information they need and use it for legitimate conduct of their duties.
I might give a few opinions on what produces the kind of talk and gossip and bits and pieces of fact and fancy that make up a large part of the dialogue between officials and the press in Washington.
There is no doubt . . . that the official State Department position is that within the limits of national security and national interests there is supposed to be direct dialogue between officiers [sic] dealing with policy and members of the press. . . . and it is in the interests of the competent men dealing with policies to take a direct responsibility for making those policies clear to responsible correspondents.
People who talk to the press are supposed to be motivated by the simple purpose of the Department policy, namely to explain policies to the American people and to make a public use of the power of the press and of public discussion to help carry its policies forward.
Often, however, those who talk are propelled by other impulses:
— There are a few who get a simple personal enjoyment out of talking with newsmen, out of cultivating them, their acquaintance, their approval, and . . . out of the personal publicity and identity that can be attained by press, and . . . public attention.
— There are the simply garrulous types who in fact enjoy being in the know and are apt occasionally to try to demonstrate this point. . . .
— There are those who use the channel of the press to leak partial information on policies they oppose, in the hope that such publicity will defeat or amend those policies; or who, conversely, will talk prematurely in order to push a policy into the open and therefore closer to acceptance. . . .
— There are those who in all sincerity believe they have all the facts at their command and that they have a mandate to make them clear and forthright within the confines of security practices and other restrictions. This type represents the best and in my estimate should be protected should there be any attempt to bring the other types under control.
— There is the person whose primary function is to talk to the press on behalf of the government in the role of information officer or public affairs adviser or spokesman or whatever you want to call him. Since this is the breed that includes . . . myself . . . , I have a particular interest in promoting their worth and enhancing their value. . . . I do feel strongly however that more has to be done about bringing this group or a representative of this group into the very middle of the most delicate situations. . . . Once a correspondent knows he is talking with a person "who was there" and once he has come to trust that person, he is willing to stake his own reputation on the information he gets. . . . .
I do not believe that there are any simple mechanical ways in which the problem of leaks and unknowing conversations can be completely cured. I would be strongly opposed to any steps designed sharply to inhibit responsible officers from contacts with the press . . . [as they] would have unfortunate repercussions in the actual performance of officials in the Department.
It may be possible . . . to produce a sharper awareness of the problem and to get some useful result if you were to follow your idea of talking personally to officials . . . of the Department about the nature of this problem and the concern that is felt by you, the Secretary and the President.
[I]t would also be of immense help if some similar educational process could be applied to that area of the White House staff that maintains its own intimate and, frequently, very thorough intercourse with the press.
Read the original post here via Text Message.


text:
Mr. David Lee Christmas
October 11, 1961 - March 30, 2019
Funeral services for Mr. David Lee Christmas, 57, who entered into rest on Saturday, March 30, 2019, will be held at 2 o'clock on Wednesday, April 3, 2019, in The Chapel of Hancock-Elmore-Hill Funeral Home. The Rev. Paul Atkinson and The Rev. Brandon Barkley will officiate with burial to follow in Bethany Baptist Church Cemetery. The family will receive friends from 5:00 until 7:00 pm on Tuesday, April 2, 2019, at the funeral home, and other times in the afternoons at 770 Lakewood Drive, Sumter, SC. Hancock-Elmore-Hill Funeral Home is caring for the family. Memorials may be made in his honor to the Prisma Health Toumey Hospital Cancer Center and Oncology Unit, 130 N. Washington Street, Sumter, SC 29150. Mr. Christmas was born on October 11, 1961, in Bishopville, SC. He was a son of the late Duncan Lee Christmas and Bessie Mae Bramlett Christmas. He was the owner of Kool Breeze Heating & Air and was also employed with Palmetto Paving Corp. He enjoyed visiting Ashwood Nazarene Church and Memorial Chapel. He loved his wife, his children, and his grandchildren. He loved cookouts, singing karaoke, fishing, gospel music, the mountains, working in his yard, gardening, and his tractor. He enjoyed cutting the fool and making others laugh. He loved to help others and would give you the shirt off of his back. He was known for doing the "Kool Breeze" dance, his cooking, and being a mommas boy. He loved sitting on his swing by the pond and looking at the birds. He was a man of many talents. He never met a stranger, and he enjoyed being the life of the party. His favorite color was purple and he loved fast cars and motorcycles. He is survived by his loving wife, Sheila Dianne Christmas of Ashwood, SC; son, Randy Leverne Baker of Bishopville, SC; daughters, Ashley (Josh) Baker of Mayesville, SC, Kellee (Jim) Compton of Bishopville, SC; stepchildren, Rebecca (Clint) Davis of Sumter, SC, Edward (Kelsey) Andrews of Sumter, SC, Patrick Andrews of Sumter, SC; brothers, Buddy (Linda) Christmas of Sumter, SC, Thomas (Myrtle) Christmas of Sumter, SC; sisters, Runette Ward of Cassatt, SC, Faye (Pete) Shadoan of Sumter, SC; grandchildren, Sellers Baker, Ansley Grace Baker, Bristol Baker, Lil Clint Davis, Dallas Davis, Hailey Davis, Wyatt Andrews, Patrick "P.J." Andrews; special friends, Mike Smith, John Kelly, Virgil Hatton, Kevin Gilmer; his loving dog, Pixie Mae Lee Christmas. He was preceded in death by his brother, Wilburn (Mildred) Christmas of Bishopville, SC; sister, Elizabeth (Jim) Newton of Griffin, GA; paternal grandparents, Tommy (Kate) Christmas; maternal grandparents, Willie (Beulah) Bramlett. Serving as pallbearers will be Virgil Hatton, Kevin "Gizmo" Gilmer, Mike Smith, Scott Brown, Clint Davis, Ken Christmas, Robby Christmas, and Brian Christmas.
Funeral services for Mr. David Lee Christmas, 57, who entered into rest on Saturday, March 30, 2019, will be held at 2 o'clock on Wednesday, April 3, 2019, in The Chapel of Hancock-Elmore-Hill Funeral Home. The Rev. Paul Atkinson and The Rev.... View Obituary & Service Information
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text:
Q: Cannot connect Logitech 810 keboard on 13.10 I have a Logitech 810 bluetooth key board that I was able to pair when I was running Ubuntu 12.04LTS.  After the upgrade to 13.10 it no longer works and the old recipes to get the keyboard connected no longer seem to work.  Has anybody succeeded in getting this keyboard to work in 13.10?

A: The clearest step-by-step procedure is posted here. So for, in the past 24 hours, I have not had any problems with the keyboard connection.
The below instruction is from the source.

*

*Start a terminal (terminal 1)

*Install the tools needed for this walk-through
sudo apt-get install bluez-hcidump bluez-utils blueman

*Enable Bluetooth on your Ubuntu machine (you might have a hardware button, don't forget about that)

*Start the bluetooth manager (blueman) from your start menu, dash, or whatever other way of starting programs your desktop has

*Start another terminal (terminal 2) – yep you'll need two for this exercise

*Get the K810 into pairing mode by pressing the button on the back of the keyboard and then one of the device buttons on the front
  (F1-F3). You should see the bluetooth light flashing now.

*In terminal 1 run
hcitool scan

if the K810 is found this should give you something like
Scanning ...
xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx   Logitech K810

*Copy the address of your K810 (that's the xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx)

*In terminal 2 run
sudo hcidump -at | grep pass

*In terminal 1 run
sudo bluez-simple-agent hci0 xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx

*In terminal 2 you should now see the passkey which is a number

*Type that code on your K810 followed by enter

*The bluetooth manager should now show the K810.

*In blueman select the K810 and mark it as "trusted"

*Now click on Setup and follow the dialog box.

*Tada, you're done, you can now close all terminals as well as blueman.

A: Try BlueZ because Linux is not supported by logitech:
http://logitech-en-amr.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/35054


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Universal Friendship Association Of Southern Nevada
Universal Friendship Association Of Southern NevadaUniversal Friendship Association Of Southern NevadaUniversal Friendship Association Of Southern Nevada
We are a federally recognized 501 © (3) Tax exempt organization.
The Employer ID 51-0578662
Help Sri Lanka during its catastrophic Covid-19 surge
Since the detection of the first COVID case in January 2020, Sri Lanka has successfully managed two waves of the pandemic, but is struggling to contain a third wave that began in April 2021. Universal Friendship Association has decided to fundraise monies to buy Oxygen Concentrators and donate to hospitals in Sri Lanka. Please donate generously & all proceedings will go directly to this noble cause. You can donate using the above donate link or write a check in favor of 'Universal Friendship Association Of Southern Nevada' & mail it to 8751 Sapphire Coast Ave, Las Vegas, NV 89148. Thank You!!
Donated Oxygen Concentrators to Dr. Neville Fernando, Kurunegala & Jaffna Teaching Hospitals
Thank You For Your Generous Donations!!
ඔබට ස්තුතියි --- நன்றி
DR. LAMBERT & TINA ABEYETUNGE
GUY & SHIRANEE PERERA
ELIAS PARAKRAMA & NIMALIE SENEVIRATNE
DR. VYTHI LINGAM & FAMILY
DR. YOGARAJAH BALARAJAN & SUMI BALARAJAN
DR. MAHENDREA & PRIYA DE FONSEKA
CHIRS & MARY DE FONSEKA
RANGA & THUSHANI MALAVIARACHI
GAMINII & ASANTHI SAMARAWICKREMA
SANATH & PUSPA MEEGODA
MUGUNTH & ABI VAITHYLINGAM
CHAMINDA & GANGA ATHAUDA
NISHANTHA & MANEL KIRIELLA
RAMA & UMA SINNATHAMBY
TULASIDAS & TANUJA SUNKARA
We are a non-political & non-profit organization. Our prime objective is to promote fellowship and understanding among all people in our community. We work for community development and service here and aboard. Our goal is to help charities, and agencies that have the special meaning in our lives, disadvantaged children, disabled adults,
We are a non-political & non-profit organization. Our prime objective is to promote fellowship and understanding among all people in our community. We work for community development and service here and aboard. Our goal is to help charities, and agencies that have the special meaning in our lives, disadvantaged children, disabled adults, at-risk teens, medical research, support and aid to orphans and the poor in Southern Nevada.
We have continued in our community programs and projects during the past twelve years. We will continue to engage in similar work in the future to benefit the community.Please join & help us!
Please assist Universal Friendship Association of Southern Nevada, and our goal of providing hope, and assistance to the needy in our community. Thank you for being a partner in our quest to make the universe a better place for all.
UFA Christmas Program 2018 Duet Song by Guy & Manel
Remembarance 2018
Matilda Senaratne
Ivor Bulathsinghala
A pioneer among Sri Lankan's in the community in Las Vegas, and President of the Sri Lanka America Association of Southern Nevada until the day she died on Friday March 30, 2018. She will be long remembered for all of her dedication and work for our community.
Longtime member of the Sri Lankan Las Vegas community since 1980. Regular UFA volunteer for our various UFA events. He will be long remembered for all of his dedication and work for our community.
Dr. Sue
Longtime member of the Sri Lankan Las Vegas community since 1980, Regular UFA donor and volunteer for our various UFA events. She will be long remembered for all of his dedication and work for our community.
Your generous gift will help us fund our mission to help those in need. Together, we can make a difference.
Copyright © 2021 Universal Friendship Association Of Southern Nevada - All Rights Reserved.


The president of the development company describes the Music Factory in Irving as "one big parcel" that will include a movie theater, 20 restaurants and office space. A stone's throw away is the Irving Convention Center and the not-yet-built Irving Convention Center Hotel.
The Irving Music Factory has taken years to come to fruition. It's finally under construction.
Editor's note: This story has been updated as more restaurants were announced.
The Irving Music Factory, now under construction near U.S. Highway 114 and Las Colinas Boulevard, will have a lot more than music. The 18-acre walkable development will be home to an Alamo Drafthouse, a 100,000-square-foot office park and more than 20 restaurants.
The first two restaurants announced were Gloria's, the Latin eatery with a dozen locations in D-FW, and a new-to-the-area sushi restaurant called Kabuki. Also expected to open there is Thirsty Lion Gastropub, a sports bar/pub hybrid, and a beer bar and restaurant called the Yard House. One other Yard House is currently open in North Texas, in Addison.
More restaurants will be announced in the coming weeks, says Noah Lazes, president of ARK Group, which is developing the Music Factory.
Some of those coming-soon restaurants will be national players -- restaurants many of us are already familiar with, Lazes hints. But he is also courting local restaurateurs.
"We could fill this place three times over with regional, national operators. We've reserved special places for these local guys," he says. It'll add "flair" to the project, he thinks.
An "upscale, very well known steakhouse" will also open there, he says.
North Texas has long been a strong restaurant region. Lazes' team, which has developed projects in Charlotte, N.C., and Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, among others, is acutely aware of D-FW's dining potential. Lazes describes the Music Factory as "in the dead center of the 7 million [people] in the Metroplex" -- which means he hopes the complex will draw from all over the region.
Construction just began, though passersby will not see the development "go vertical" for a few months, Lazes says.
The anchor to the development is a 4,000-seat, 8,000-person concert venue that will be operated by Live Nation. Our Hunter Hauk describes it as a venue that "will change with the seasons." The Pavilion at The Music Factory will be walking distance from the Irving Convention Center and the not-yet-built Irving Convention Center Hotel. It seems likely that convention center visitors will also utilize the more than 20 restaurants.
The Music Factory is expected to open in April 2016. Lazes hopes every restaurant will be open by July 2016.
Need a summary of what this complex is? Click here.


In America, squirrels and raccoons are pretty common wild animals. But in other parts of the world, monkeys can be found all over town. The raccoon might steal your trash, the BBC reports that some monkeys have learned to steal things from tourists, and hold the valuables in exchange for food. Crafty little devils.


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Science Fiction and Dystopia-Part Two
Science fiction, being a fantasy, is by definition escapist. Fans would probably prefer that real life not intrude upon their fantasies. They would rather escape. Nonetheless, reality intrudes, especially in the form of politics. Why is that?
There are two kinds of people in the world, those for whom everything is political and those for whom only political things are political. People in the second group can get along pretty well without giving much thought to politics. People in the first group on the other hand have to insert politics into everything. Their sense of outrage requires them to act, and by acting, impose their will upon everyone around them. They are the kind of people C.S. Lewis called moral busybodies, what we might as well call progressives. They simply cannot rest. They simply cannot leave things alone. The things they can't leave alone include science fiction.
As a fantasy about the future, science fiction has a built-in flaw, i.e., its tendency to become politicized. Left alone, science fiction is escapist fun, or, at the other extreme, big, ambitious, and thought-provoking. But science fiction won't be left alone for as long as there are moral busybodies at work, for they have carved out an exclusive claim to the future. The future once belonged to everyone equally, including writers and readers of science fiction. Now the future belongs only to progressives. If you don't agree with them, you are on the wrong side of history and will be banished from participation in the future. If that requires only your silence, good. If your silence comes only with your being eliminated, well, these things are sometimes necessary. It's as though the future has become simply an extension of history, and because history is known, the future can be known as well. And because history has become a science, explicable by materialist methods, the history of the future is predictable and controllable. It is a simple unwinding. (1)
The idea of history as a science seems to have come from Marx, whose philosophies have been relabeled as scientific socialism, dialectical materialism, and historical materialism. The idea that the future, as an extension of history, can be predicted by scientific means may have entered science fiction by way of Isaac Asimov, who was, incidentally, a materialist. The economist Paul Krugman, a progressive if there ever was one, was inspired by Asimov and his concept of psychohistory from the Foundation series. Here's a quote from "The Deflationist: How Paul Krugman Found Politics" by Larissa Macfarquhar from The New Yorker, March 1, 2010:
Krugman explained that he'd become an economist because of science fiction. When he was a boy, he'd read Isaac Asimov's "Foundation" trilogy and become obsessed with the central character, Hari Seldon. Seldon was a "psychohistorian"--a scientist with such a precise understanding of the mechanics of society that he could predict the course of events thousands of years into the future and save mankind from centuries of barbarism. He couldn't predict individual behavior--that was too hard--but it didn't matter, because history was determined not by individuals but by laws and hidden forces. [Emphasis added.]
Note the dismissal of the individual, the materialist and collectivist "understanding of the mechanics of society," and the belief in "laws and hidden forces." I'll call on C.S. Lewis once again:
I have great hopes [writes the demon Screwtape] that we shall learn in due time how to emotionalise and mythologise their science to such an extent that what is, in effect, a belief in us (though not under that name) will creep in while the human mind remains closed to belief in the Enemy [God]. . . . If once we can produce our perfect work--the Materialist Magician, the man, not using, but veritably worshipping, what he vaguely calls "Forces" while denying the existence of "spirits"--then the end of the war will be in sight. (Ch. VII)
Note the use of the word forces in both quotes. Same word, same meaning.
Like Isaac Asimov, C.S. Lewis wrote science fiction. Unlike Asimov and Marx, he was a man of faith. Unlike Paul Krugman, he was a conservative. Here is his take on the future, all from The Screwtape Letters (1942) and all in words of advice given by the demon Screwtape to his nephew Wormwood, who is trying to win over his human "patient":
Don't waste time trying to make him think materialism is true! Make him think it is strong or stark or courageous--that it is the philosophy of the future. That's the sort of thing he cares about. (Ch. I)
[W]e want a man hagridden by the Future--haunted by visions of an imminent heaven or hell upon earth--ready to break the Enemy's [God's] commands in the present if by doing so we make him think he can attain one or avert the other. . . . (Ch. XV)
We want a whole race perpetually in pursuit of the rainbow's end, never honest, nor kind, nor happy now . . . . (Ch. XV)
Of a proposed course of action He [the Enemy, God] wants men, so far as I can see, to ask very simple questions: Is it righteous? Is it prudent? Is it possible? Now, if we can keep men asking: "Is it in accordance with the general movement of our time? Is it progressive or reactionary? Is this the way History is going?" (2) they will neglect the relevant questions. (Ch. XXV)
We have trained them [men] to think of the future as a promised land which favored heroes attain--not as something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is. (Ch. XXV)
Here, then, is the Progressive, a materialist, "a man hagridden by the Future," one who believes that history is an unalterable force that merely extends into the future, one who believes that the future is attainable only by "favored heroes." His program is twofold. First, to prevent what he believes to be hell on earth by preventing people from being free and therefore some from being unhappy. (The disorder of freedom is a hated condition to the Progressive.) Second, to bring about his vision of heaven on earth, a utopia of perfect order and perfect happiness. Utopia, another word for Dystopia, requires perfect order because without perfect order, people will remain free and imperfect, thus human. In the mind of the Progressive, the future belongs only to him and shall be by his command Utopia. Because science fiction is about the future, it, too, must be utopian, belongs only to the Progressive, and must be made under his command.
(1) Our current president--Paul Krugman, too--likes to use that phrase, "on the wrong side of history," as if he and his coreligionists know the difference between right and wrong, as if they and they alone are capable of seeing how history unfolds. Here is another of the president's claims to the future: In 2012 he issued a fatwa by pronouncing, "The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam." That one paid off earlier this year with the slaughter of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists. Now, from Charlie Hebdo, there is silence.
(2) In other words, "Is it on the right side of history?"
Labels: C.S. Lewis, Is Science Fiction Dying?, Utopias & Dystopias
Science Fiction and Dystopia-Part One
So if science fiction is a kind of fantasy about the future; and if stories of utopia/dystopia, being about the future, belong in the realm of science fiction; and if every utopia/dystopia is about a perfectly ordered society of dehumanized people and is thus totalitarian in nature; finally, if the future belongs exclusively to people who call themselves progressives, in other words, to people who seek to create a perfectly ordered society, i.e., a dystopian society ruled over by a totalitarian leader, then science fiction may very well have within it a tendency towards totalitarianism or dystopia. And if science fiction is the extension of science into the realm of literature, then science itself may also have totalitarian or dystopian tendencies. Here is a bit of evidence:
You might think that this person, with his/her futuristic coiffure; pointy eyebrows; lifeless, android stare; high, stiff collar; and blue-sheen outfit is a character from a science fiction movie. In actuality, she is Christiana Figueres, a real-life global warming guru on the staff of the United Nations. To introduce one of her talks, she invoked Ixchel, goddess of reason. (Reason--the same master served by the numbers in We by Yevgeny Zamyatin.) Here is what she has planned for us:
This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model for the first time in human history.
Translation: We--as in Zamyatin's We--will be required to conform to her utopian vision of the world, all so we can be saved from a gas that is: a) naturally occurring, b) generated by nearly all living things--including Christiana Figueres, if she is not in fact a robot--and c) essential for life on Earth. Here is her less evil twin:
Doctor Zachary Smith, played by Jonathan Harris on Lost in Space. (Thanks to a commenter on the Internet for pointing out the resemblance.)
Here is one of her co-religionists:
Doctor Rajendra K. Pachauri, until earlier this year chair of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). His resignation from that august body came about after accusations that he had sexually harassed a twenty-nine-year-old co-worker. (Doctor Pachauri is seventy-four. Imagine for yourself the meaning of his hand gesture in the image above.) Doctor Pachauri claims to be a scientist, but a statement in his letter of resignation is illuminating:
I will continue to [work on climate change] assiduously throughout my life in what ever capacity I work. For me the protection of planet Earth, the survival of all species and sustainability of our ecosystems is more than my mission, it is my religion. (1)
I would use the word cult rather than religion, but you get the picture.
In 2007, IPCC shared a Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore, the high priest of Doctor Pauchari's religion, for their work. Mr. Gore was also of course vice-president under another alleged sex offender, Bill Clinton. Following are two images. One is of President Clinton's wife. The other is of Doctor Evil from the Austin Powers movies. See if you can tell which is which:
Like Christiana Figueres, Hillary Clinton (the one on top) has plans for us:
Laws have to be backed up with resources and political will, and deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed.
We will bend to her will whether we like it or not.
(1) Click here for the source of the quote, "IPCC Chair Rajendra Pachauri Resigns" by Damian Carrington on the website of The Guardian, Feb. 24, 2015.
Labels: Is Science Fiction Dying?, Utopias & Dystopias
Threescore and Ten-Part Three
Stories of utopia began in the Renaissance as a kind of fantasy of the present. As late as the nineteenth or early twentieth century, a utopia of the here and now was still plausible. No more. Stories of utopia have now become a fantasy of the future, in other words, a sub-genre of science fiction. For example, Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a sort of King Solomon's Mines (1885) for women and set in the present, was published in 1915, before America's entry into the Great War. We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, a dystopian novel of the future, was published just six years later, even as the Bolsheviks tightened their grip on Russia, even as Europe was in decline. Note how quickly visions of a perfect society became visions of a perfectly awful one, and how quickly utopia became dystopia. Now we can hardly imagine a perfect society of the future, at least in the literature of science fiction. That hasn't stopped some people in the real world from attempting to bring it about.
The religion of flying saucers has often been utopian in its vision, a belief that our space brothers are here to save us from ourselves and to help us create a perfect world. Scientology, too, is utopian in its way, reaching as it does towards individual perfection. Both came out of the science fiction of the 1940s, when the future looked so bright. The utopian vision of the future, exemplified in 1950s images of rocketships and flying saucers, has faded. Scientology of course has given us a glimpse of the totalitarian aspect of science fiction. Thankfully, that offspring of L. Ron Hubbard's diseased mind may be fading as well. (1) Marxism--so-called "scientific socialism"--Nazism, eugenics, technocracy, and global warming are other examples of beliefs that have passed from "science" (more accurately pseudoscience) into the real world. Each is essentially tyrannical, authoritarian, or totalitarian in nature.
So, stories of utopia and its supposed opposite, dystopia, now belong to the science fiction author. (2) The word utopia means, literally, nowhere. The word itself admits its own impossibility. We know that human perfection is impossible, yet there are those among us who still believe in the perfectibility of human society and will do anything to bring it about. That belief goes back at least to Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) and has been the source of more than a little grief and suffering. Thinking people know that utopia is an impossibility, that in order to bring about a perfect society, people must be stripped of their imperfections, hence of their humanity. Witness the operation in We, by which the protagonist, D-503, is cured of his "illness," that is, his possession of a human soul. In the end, every utopia--being a society of perfect, hence soulless, people--must be dystopian. So utopia is impossible, but dystopia may not be. In fact it may be a very real possibility.
(1) More on the totalitarian aspect of science fiction later in this series.
(2) Including Margaret Atwood, who doesn't like science fiction and doesn't count herself among the authors of that lowly genre.
Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman was first published in 1915. That makes this year the centennial of Gilman's feminist utopia. I mentioned Margaret Atwood above. In 1985, she published a dystopia for feminists, The Handmaid's Tale, thus another neat and even anniversary year. Ms. Atwood is a bundle of contradictions. In one recent interview, she seems to have gone off the deep end:
Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid's Tale is having a big moment on social media and elsewhere because of the various states in the United States who've enacted some quite strange legislation having to do with pregnant women.
Charlie Rose: Like what?
Margaret Atwood: Like if you are pregnant and you are even suspected of possibly not wanting your baby you can be arrested and chained up to your hospital bed until you have the baby. Tennessee has just enacted legislation like that. Texas has got it. A number of them have it. . . . (from Charlie Rose, Nov. 11, 2014)
More recently, she completed a novel that will not be published for another hundred years, not long before the bicentennial of Herland.
Captions and text copyright 2015 Terence E. Hanley
Threescore and Ten-Part Two
At age seventy, postwar science fiction has reached what we euphemistically call senior citizenship. Some of its peers--some parts of postwar culture--have died or are in decline. Why shouldn't science fiction share that fate? Take the example of flying saucers. After the war, from 1947 into the 1960s, flying saucers were a potent myth and a worldwide craze. Everyone knew what flying saucers were, a sizable number of people believed that they came from outer space, and many had actually seen them. That all went into decline in the 1960s and '70s--with the issuing of the Condon report in 1968, after the last big flap in 1973, with the passing of the first generation of aficionados. Science fiction helped to sustain the myth, but in the end flying saucers came crashing down the way the Martian ships in The War of the Worlds (1953) crashed. Now we know that flying saucers came from science fiction and not from other worlds. They served their purpose in their time, but that time has passed and people have moved on.
Born in 1947, the myth of flying saucers is now nearing its allotted age of three score and ten. We shouldn't be surprised at its decline or death. But what of the other real-life belief system that came out of 1940s science fiction? Dianetics is now sixty-five years old, Scientology a little younger. (1) Those misbegotten twins, born a few years apart, have lasted longer than a belief in flying saucers, but of late they have been displaying signs of decline as well. Every week and even several times a week since the showing of Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief (on March 29, 2015), there have been stories about Scientology under fire or under threat. L. Ron Hubbard would not have tolerated such a thing, but then times have changed. The genie is out of the bottle and won't be put back in again. Like Yogi Berra, I don't like to make predictions, especially about the future, but I can foresee a time when Scientology will go the way of the flying saucers (or for that matter the Soviet Union). That can be attributable to lots of things, but what if Scientology, like flying saucers and other parts of postwar culture, is simply running its course, eventually to meet its natural end?
As a belief system, the religion of flying saucers is not hierarchical or authoritarian. You can pretty much do what you want and believe what you want about those fantastic spinning disks from outer space. Scientology is different. In fact, Scientology is a totalitarian organization, headed by an absolute and arbitrary ruler and held together by applications of force and the firm faith of the True Believer. As we have learned from history, an absolute ruler cannot afford to loosen his grip, for that spells the end of him and his regime. But a totalitarian system also depends upon ignorance and fear. Once the people are no longer ignorant--once they know something of the outside world, can communicate with it, and can escape from the system that holds them prisoner--the system cracks. Once they are no longer afraid, the system falls apart. Since Going Clear, Scientologists can see that others are criticizing, resisting, dissenting, escaping, returning to normal lives (if such a thing is possible for them). They can see that Scientology doesn't seem to have enough fingers to plug all the leaks. How much longer will it be before they go over the wall, the way East Germans went over the wall in 1989? How much longer before they wake up from history?
(1) Science fiction may be a belief system as well. I'll have more to say on that topic later in this series.
Astounding Science-Fiction, September 1945, the first issue (by date) of the postwar. The cover story is "World of Ā" (or "World of Null-Ā") by A.E. van Vogt. Note the atmosphere of decay that has descended upon the monumental architecture of the future. Note also the presence of an aircraft, what you might call an unidentified flying object were it not for the 1930s technocratic-gyrocopter look of the thing. An instructive quote from science fiction critic David Hartwell:
No one has taken van Vogt seriously as a writer for a long time. Yet he has been read and still is. What no one seems to have noticed is that van Vogt, more than any other single SF writer, is the conduit through which the energy of Gernsbackian, primitive wonder stories have [sic] been transmitted through the Campbellian age, when earlier styles of SF were otherwise rejected, and on into SF of the present [1984]. [Quoted on Wikipedia.]
Very shortly I'll come back to that key concept--Gernsbackian. Suffice it to say, this cover, by William Timmins, joins the Gernsbackian to the Campbellian, and the decay of the past with the bright future represented by science fiction.
A.E. van Vogt (1912-2000) was a Canadian author of science fiction. He also contributed to a late incarnation of Weird Tales. Further quotes from Wikipedia:
Van Vogt was always interested in the idea of all-encompassing systems of knowledge . . . .
[I]n his fiction, van Vogt was consistently sympathetic to absolute monarchy as a form of government.
Take those two things, throw in some childhood trauma and a kind of great-man or strongman theory of history, and you have a writer ripe for the plucking. Thus, in 1950, van Vogt, an associate of L. Ron Hubbard, began subscribing to Dianetics.
Original text and captions copyright 2015 Terence E. Hanley
Labels: Is Science Fiction Dying?, John W. Campbell Jr., The Religions of Science Fiction, Utopias & Dystopias
A Spacecraft Around Yuggoth
This week, on July 14, 2015, the spacecraft New Horizons, after a near decade-long journey, flew by Pluto, thus giving us our first close-up view of that distant world. Once upon a time, schoolchildren learned the mnemonic "My Very Educated Mother Just Sent Us Nine Pies," knowing that "Pies" stood for the ninth planet Pluto. In 2006, the same year in which New Horizons was launched, Pluto was demoted to the status of dwarf planet. You can imagine how the men and women who worked on New Horizons felt, knowing that their spacecraft was no longer on its way to a planet. Clyde Tombaugh (1906-1997), the discoverer of Pluto, would be fully justified in coming back from the grave except that part of him--about an ounce of his ashes--is on board the ship, now winging its way to the Kuiper Belt.
Pluto was found and named by young people, and young people have held the little planet close to their hearts. Clyde Tombaugh was twenty-four years old and working at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, (1) when he first detected the new planet on a number of photographic plates. The date was February 18, 1930. Nearly a month passed before an announcement was made to the larger world. Venetia Burney, an eleven-year-old schoolgirl from Oxford, England, provided the name, which became official on May 1, 1930. (2)
At about the same time that Tombaugh was poring over photographic plates in search of the elusive Planet X, a writer was at work on a new story in faraway Providence, Rhode Island. The writer was Howard Phillips Lovecraft, then in his fortieth year and enjoying some success as an author of pulp fiction. His story progressed through the year 1930 and was finally finished in September. A year later, in the same month that Lovecraft turned forty-one, the magazine Weird Tales published "The Whisperer in Darkness." Lovecraft's story is now considered one of his best. In 2011, about halfway through the flight of New Horizons from Earth to Pluto, "The Whisperer in Darkness" was released as a feature-length movie. It included a new character, a girl named Hannah Masterson, who must have been about Venetia Burney's age.
"The Whisperer in Darkness" is about a struggle between men and Mi-Go, a race of crustaceous fungi from another world. The narrator explains:
The blasphemies which appeared on earth, it was hinted, came from the dark planet Yuggoth, at the rim of the solar system; but this was itself merely the populous outpost of a frightful interstellar race whose ultimate source must lie far outside even the Einsteinian space-time continuum or greatest known cosmos.
His correspondent tells more:
"There are mighty cities on Yuggoth--great tiers of terraced towers built of black stone like the specimen I tried to send you. That came from Yuggoth. The sun shines there no brighter than a star, but the beings need no light. They have other subtler senses, and put no windows in their great houses and temples. Light even hurts and hampers and confuses them, for it does not exist at all in the black cosmos outside time and space where they came from originally. To visit Yuggoth would drive any weak man mad--yet I am going there. The black rivers of pitch that flow under those mysterious cyclopean bridges--things built by some elder race extinct and forgotten before the beings came to Yuggoth from the ultimate voids--ought to be enough to make any man a Dante or Poe if he can keep sane long enough to tell what he has seen."
"[T]he dark planet Yuggoth, at the rim of the solar system" would seem to refer to the newly discovered Pluto. Lovecraft is supposed to have suggested as much. Yet the concept of Yuggoth predates the discovery of the planet, for Lovecraft penned a series of sonnets, entitled "The Fungi from Yuggoth," between December 27, 1929, and January 4, 1930. It would not be the last time that an artist anticipated Pluto.
Robert E. Howard, born just thirteen days before Clyde Tombaugh, (3) also wrote about a planet on the edge of space. In his story "The Tower of the Elephant," published in Weird Tales in March 1933, the eponymous elephant relates his story to Conan of Cimmeria:
"I am very old, oh man of the waste countries; long and long ago I came to this planet with others of my world, from the green planet Yag, which circles for ever in the outer fringe of this universe. We swept through space on mighty wings that drove us through the cosmos quicker than light, because we had warred with the kings of Yag and were defeated and outcast. But we could never return, for on earth our wings withered from our shoulders. Here we abode apart from earthly life. We fought the strange and terrible forms of life which then walked the earth, so that we became feared, and were not molested in the dim jungles of the east, where we had our abode."
An etymologist might identify Yuggoth and Yag as having come from the same root. So were they the same planet? Were the Mi-Go "the kings of Yag"? And did Howard anticipate the discovery of the solar wind? (4)
Finally, in 1979, space artist Don Dixon painted a portrait of the then-planet Pluto. The images from New Horizons, reaching our Earth this week, confirm the artist's vision. I have read some comments by Internet numbskulls saying they don't see a resemblance. I find the resemblance extraordinary. I also find it extraordinary that we can at last see the surface of Pluto--of dark, distant Yuggoth--so clearly.
(1) Established by Percival Lowell (1855-1916), the man who put Martians on Mars. His initials are the fist two letters of the name Pluto, a planet whose existence he postulated and which he called Planet X.
(2) Venetia Burney died one day short of that anniversary in 2009.
(3) It's interesting that Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto in his birth month and that "The Whisperer in Darkness" was published in Lovecraft's birth month.
(4) The Mi-Go also fly through space on wings. Theirs are weak in comparison to those of the elephants of Yag. Maybe that's why the elephants reached Earth first.
Labels: H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard
Threescore and Ten-Part One
Although I have written in the past few days about Earl Norem and whip-poor-wills in weird fiction, my main focus right now is on dystopia and a dying science fiction. I will keep visiting those topics on my way back to Weird Tales and fantasy fiction.
So far, the entries in this series are:
"The Iron Heel and 1984," Parts 1 through 7--June 15-27, 2015
"A Corporate Dystopia for Today"--June 30, 2015
"More Dystopian Television"--July 8, 2015
Today's entry is a continuation.
Weird Tales was the first American magazine devoted exclusively to fantasy. It began in 1923 when the Great War was still fresh in the minds of pulp readers. The shock, horror, and violence of the war had carried like an echo into the then-present. If fantasy and weird fiction look to the past and thus assume that we are living in a time of decadence, then Weird Tales suited the mood of the 1920s in some ways. But not in the main. The twenties may have been a time of decadence, especially in Europe, but for the main stream of American culture, it was a roaring time. We were busy, vigorous, with our eyes on the future and the past behind us. Something new and different was on the horizon. For readers of pulp magazines, that something new was science fiction.
The second American fantasy magazine of significance was Amazing Stories, first published in 1926. Amazing Tales was a science fiction magazine, the first of its kind here or anywhere. It came so early that the genre had not yet been properly named. The publisher of Amazing Tales, Hugo Gernsback, called it instead scientific fiction or scientifiction. Science fiction of course looks to the future. It is suited to a society that is vigorous, hopeful, and progressive in its outlook. (The word progressive has come to mean something far different in recent years than it did in the distant past.) When Amazing Stories came along, the Great War was still a recent memory, but the country had its eyes to the front. And even though the stock market collapsed and a great depression began just three years later, science fiction magazines proliferated into the 1930s and '40s. By the postwar period, science fiction was king, and though Weird Tales soldiered on, it finally reached its end in 1954.
To hear some people tell it, science fiction started dying sometime in the 1950s. Isaac Asimov claimed an end to its golden age in 1950. (Once a golden age ends--no matter what comes after it--by definition a period of decay sets in.) In her anthologies of the 1950s, Judith Merril argued in favor of the phrase speculative fiction instead of science fiction to describe the genre. In doing so, she may not have suggested that science fiction was dying, but when the terminology changes, especially when there are suggestions that a genre should become more literary, mature, or sophisticated, something--some kind of purity or innocence or just plain fun--is lost. Finally, in 1960, science fiction fan Earl Kemp published a fanzine called Who Killed Science Fiction?, a compilation and analysis of answers to questions he had sent out to the luminaries in his field.
Seventy-one authors replied to Mr. Kemp's questionnaire. Of those, fifty-five replied that, no, science fiction was not dead, although some felt that death was near. Eleven said that science fiction was already dead or dying. The reasons they gave included "dull, boring, and inferior material being published," changes in markets, problems with distribution, rising costs, a decline in the quality of the readership, and competition from comic books, paperback books, and television. In other words, the problems with science fiction, according to the seventy-one authors, could be attributed to publishers, editors, distributors, writers, readers, and fans. In other words, there was something wrong not with the genre of science fiction but with the people involved in it.
So, science fiction (like western civilization) has supposedly been dying or decaying for a long, long time. The question seems to me: How long is this going to take? If science fiction has been decaying since 1950 or dying since 1960, why isn't it gone by now? One possible answer is that the sorry state of science fiction in 1960 was, as I have said, due to problems exterior to science fiction--publishing, marketing, distribution, etc. If science fiction is dying now--or has been dying since 1980, for example--there could be a different problem, a problem with the genre itself. Maybe science fiction has some basic problem with its philosophy. Maybe it has reached its logical limits, as real life has caught up with or even surpassed it, or as the infinite futures promised by science fiction have been whittled down to a few not very promising futures (with dystopia and apocalypse on that very short list). Or maybe it's just that science fiction is at its natural end and nothing can be done to save it, for if postwar science fiction began in 1945, it has now reached an age of threescore and ten, all of a man's allotted years on this earth.
Labels: Is Science Fiction Dying?, The Religions of Science Fiction, Utopias & Dystopias
Whip-poor-wills in Weird Fiction
I have been doing more research on Lee Brown Coye and have come upon something that might make a simple side note to the study of weird fiction. On the other hand, whip-poor-wills in weird fiction might have some significance. If they do, it might be one of the ways that Robert W. Chambers has had such an influence on the authors who came after him.
The whip-poor-will is a non-passerine bird, about the size of a robin or bluejay but with a slim body, long pointed wings, a long, fan-like tail, and a broad mouth used for catching insects on the wing. Whip-poor-wills are crepuscular, a nice word to add to your store. It means active at dawn and dusk. In the evenings of spring and summer, as light fades into a smoky haze, you might have heard the ceaseless repetition of the whip-poor-will's mad cry from the darkening woods. If so, you are unlikely to have forgotten it, for it is a haunting sound, the sound of a kind of wildness that is disappearing from the world.
Along with the chuck-will's-widow, the poor-will, and the nighthawk, whip-poor-wills are of the family Caprimulgidae. In everyday speech, the members of this family were once called goatsuckers for the belief that they suck milk from goats. That belief carries over into the Spanish word chupacabra, which is also now used for a cryptozoological monster. Another and less colorful word is nightjar, which refers to the nocturnal habit of the bird and its chirring or jarring call. Modern ornithologists--being scientists--seem to be a little squeamish about the word goatsucker, I suppose because of the folkloric (hence non-scientific) connotation. They prefer the more neutral nightjar.
Although they are in trouble today, whip-poor-wills would have been common in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. We think of them as birds of the wilderness, but you're more likely to hear them close to human habitation, in old-field woods or in woods that have been heavily cut over. In the day or in the evening, when there is still enough light, you might see them gliding soundlessly among saplings and poletimber, like a kite or like a toy on the end of a string. Their calling, their silence in flight, and their pattern of flight only add to the whip-poor-wills' ghostly qualities.
According to Clifton Johnson in his book What They Say in New England (1896), "If a whippoorwill sings near the house, it is a sign of death. Some say this is simply a sign of trouble." That superstition passed into weird fiction by way of "The Dunwich Horror" by H.P. Lovecraft, published in Weird Tales in April 1929. From "The Dunwich Horror":
It is vowed that the birds are psychopomps lying in wait for the souls of the dying, and that they time their eerie cries in unison with the sufferer's struggling breath. If they can catch the fleeing soul when it leaves the body, they instantly flutter away chittering in daemoniac laughter; but if they fail, they subside gradually into a disappointed silence.
Whip-poor-wills figure prominently in the story, so much so that they made a reappearance in a story by one of Lovecraft's circle, August Derleth. The story is called "The Whippoorwills in the Hills," and it was published in Weird Tales in September 1948. Lee Brown Coye was the illustrator.
According to Wikipedia, "Lovecraft based this idea [that whippoorwills capture the souls of the just departed] on information of local legends given to him by Edith Miniter of North Wilbraham, Massachusetts when he visited her in 1928." I have assumed that August Derleth drew on "The Dunwich Horror" for his story of whip-poor-wills, but a discussion on the Internet proposes that Derleth's true inspiration was the work of Robert W. Chambers.
Robert W. Chambers is a tough case for fans and students of weird fiction. Although he made his name as the author of The King in Yellow in 1895, Chambers wrote scads of conventional and ultimately forgotten popular fiction. In doing an Internet search for "Robert W. Chambers" and "whip-poor-wills" (or "whippoorwills"), I came up with numerous results, but searching through those results, uncovering the original works, determining whether they are weird fiction or not, and trying to puzzle out the significance (or insignificance) of whip-poor-wills in Chambers' stories would take time and resources that I confess I don't have right now. I guess the question is: Did whip-poor-wills arrive in weird fiction by way of Robert W. Chambers? Or did Derleth get his inspiration from Lovecraft, who in turn got it from Edith Miniter and the folklore of old New England? And what of Edith Miniter (1867-1934)? Did she read Chambers, or did she go back to the folklore itself for her tale of the soul-swallowing whip-poor-will?
Note: Where else are there whip-poor-wills in weird fiction or genre fiction? In "The Whip-poor-will" by James Thurber, published in The New Yorker, August 9, 1941, and reprinted in Alarms and Diversions (Harper and Brothers, no date). From that story: "Down where she came from, she said, if you heard a whip-poor-will singing near the house, it meant there was going to be a death." ("She" is Margaret, wife of the protagonist's butler. The protagonist, a man named Kinstrey, is being driven crazy by the cry of a whip-poor-will outside his window. There are indeed deaths in store for the Kinstrey household.)
In 1948, Weird Tales published "The Whippoorwills in the Hills" by August Derleth and illustrated by Lee Brown Coye. Coye was a very productive artist who did thorough research on everything he drew, but he often worked under tight deadlines. That might explain his use of imagery from the work of John James Audubon, including pictures of:
The Whip-poor-will, and
The Chuck-will's widow. Audubon (1785-1851) was an artist inclined towards natural history, what would then have been called natural philosophy, but he was also a Romantic with a capital "R." If he had written fiction, he might have found himself sandwiched between Washington Irving (1783-1859) and James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851). American Romanticism was partly Gothic and gave rise of course to weird fiction and stories of supernatural horror.
Labels: August Derleth, H.P. Lovecraft, Lee Brown Coye, Robert W. Chambers
Earl Norem (1923-2015)
Earl Norem, cover artist on The Savage Sword of Conan for many years, died last month, on June 19, 2015. Born in Brooklyn on April 17, 1923, Mr. Norem was a U.S. Army veteran of World War II. In a career that spanned more than half a century, he created hundreds of cover illustrations and interior illustrations for men's magazines, comic books, and children's books. He also created designs for trading cards and program books. If you read The Savage Sword of Conan during the 1970s, you learned to recognize his style and his name. Few of his contemporaries could match his bravura handling of Robert E. Howard's warrior of Cimmeria. Rest in peace, Earl Norem.
Labels: Robert E. Howard, Series Characters
More Dystopian Television
Within the past couple of weeks, I have seen two dystopian television shows, one new and one more than half a century old.
My nephew and I like to watch Teen Titans Go! on The Cartoon Network. It's a very smart and funny show with good writing and attractive and colorful animation. The episode of June 29, 2015, is called "Beast Man." In it, Beast Boy changes into a middle-aged man, and for awhile the Titans have fun with his new identity. Then the identity takes over, and the adult Beast Boy trudges off to a soul-sapping job at a place called The Man, Incorporated, run by (who else but?) The Man. Beast Boy's new place of work is a kind of corporate dystopia, but it looks like Jonathan Pryce's government office building in the movie Brazil (1985). The Man himself is actually an onscreen, disembodied face, as in the classic Apple Macintosh commercial of 1984. (He also evokes memories of two American cultists, Morris Applewhite and Stephen Covey, as well as the villain in the 2002 film Undercover Brother.) Luckily for Beast Boy, the other Teen Titans follow him to work and rescue him from the clutches of The Man.
A few days later, we watched a Twilight Zone marathon on Syfy. By accident or design, Syfy showed the episode "The Obsolete Man" on Independence Day. "The Obsolete Man," originally broadcast on June 2, 1961, is an out-and-out dystopia, set in the future and probably modeled after 1984. Rod Serling wrote the script, an unsubtle but effective work showing just what is possible when people give themselves over to an all-powerful State. In his introduction, Serling speaks:
This is not a new world, it is simply a extension of what began in the old one. It has patterned itself after every dictator who has ever planted the ripping imprint of a boot on the pages of history since the beginning of time. It has its refinements, technological advances, and a more sophisticated approach to the destruction of human freedom. But like every one of the superstates that preceded it, it has one iron rule: logic is an enemy and truth is a menace. . . .
The story of "The Obsolete Man" is built around a trick by which an individual--a man played by Burgess Meredith--defeats his tormentor, a representative of the State played by Fritz Weaver. Weaver is defeated when--locked in a room in which a bomb is about to explode--he exclaims in desperation, "In the name of God, let me out!" Returning to the trial room, he himself is declared an obsolete man and is condemned to death. Last year, I wrote about the zombie as a monster of the twenty-first century. In the last scene of "The Obsolete Man," Fritz Weaver's character is torn apart by the zombie-like servants of the totalitarian State.
Teen Titans Go! is a cartoon. The idea of a corporate dystopia may very well be on the level of a cartoon. That's not to say that a tale of corporate dystopia can't be interesting and entertaining. In the end, though, it's probably just another kind of fantasy. The overarching State on the other hand represents a very real and potent threat to the rights and freedom of the individual. Rod Serling introduced "The Obsolete Man" as "not a future that will be but one that might be." That was fifty-four years ago. How close are we now to that future that might have been? Can we say that the State has begun forging its iron rule? Will the State one day declare the truth to be a menace? Or has that declaration already been made?
A scene from "The Obsolete Man," the last episode of the second season of The Twilight Zone. "It was vaguely reminiscent of some of the German films of the twenties," said director Elliot Silverstein, "and there was a certain amount of expressionism in the style of the performances and the sets." (Quoted in The Twilight Zone Companion by Marc Scott Zicree [1992], p. 209.) In his book From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film (1947; Princeton University Press, 1971), Siegfried Kracauer talked about the choice in Weimar Germany between tyranny and chaos. Silverstein's linking of German expressionism to the choice of tyranny in "The Obsolete Man"--conscious or not--was no mere coincidence.
Labels: Rod Serling & The Twilight Zone, Utopias & Dystopias


text:
Longtime CPA, zoo booster Roxane Gabrielson passes at 66
Roxane L. Gabrielson, 66, a longtime Certified Public Accountant in Salisbury and Salisbury Zoo supporter, died Friday, Dec. 31, 2021, at her home.
Born in Philadelphia, she was the daughter of …
Roxane L. Gabrielson.
Posted Thursday, January 6, 2022 12:48 pm
Born in Philadelphia, she was the daughter of the late Roland and Leone "Lee" Kurtz.
A graduate of Souderton Area High School, she received an associate's degree in Fine Arts from Montgomery County Community College in Pennsylvania, a bachelor's degree in Accounting and a master's degree in Business Administration from Wilmington College.
She joined PKS & Associates in 2012, after working at other Salisbury-area firms and having her own business. She was a member of the Maryland Association of Certified Public Accountants and American Institute of CPAs.
She was formerly a resident of Whitehaven, where she served on the Whitehaven Heritage Association.
She was a longtime member of the Delmarva Zoological Society, where she was the former Board Chair.
She had a love for gardening and was well known for raising Great Danes.
She is survived by her husband, Stefan Gabrielson of Salisbury; her brother and sister-in-law, Jeffrey and Linda Kurtz of Greenwood; and two nieces, Jessica Snow of Oswego, N.Y., and Nichole Kurtz of Baltimore.
A memorial gathering will be held at a later date. Arrangements are in the care of Holloway Funeral Home in Salisbury.
Like the music he taught, Wicomico's Melvin Harris touched lives
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"Explain to your family that you very much appreciate their interest in learning about your dietary needs, but that you just want to enjoy the meal with your family and not focus on your celiac disease. Ask them to take a rain check so that you can explain all of the dos and don'ts at a different time. If there are people in the room that you don't see very often, ask if you could delay the conversation until after the meal is done. Maybe that way you can even avoid clean-up…an added bonus!"
"If 'the talk' with your family is overdue, and they really need an education, then make it a teachable moment. If monopolizing the conversation will ruin the party atmosphere and the chat can wait, then answer the question honestly but briefly, and redirect the conversation. If you want to educate them, take look at what dishes are on the table and give some examples of those foods in the 'yes,' 'no,' and 'maybe' categories. Mention what changes or substitutions could easily make a dish gluten-free, and what are some ways to make sure the dish is prepared gluten-free in the kitchen. It might not seem so overwhelming to family members if they have some guidance so when the next holiday rolls around, your family will be better prepared and willing to try some new adaptations of family favorites."
"If the focus is negative, stress how healthy you feel living gluten-free. Lighten the mood by saying your family is lucky—more food for them!"


In a deal worth approximately $4.65 billion in cash, Symantec will acquire the web security firm Blue Coat Inc. The Boards of Directors at both companies have approved the acquisition and the deal is expected to go through in Q3, 2016.
Blue Coat currently has the largest share in the web security market and has GAAP revenue for the fiscal year ending on April 30, 2016 of $598 million and non-GAAP revenue of $755 million. The company has developed an extensive portfolio of technologies and has developed a Cloud Generation Security platform that is being used by more than 15,000 customers. The company continues to develop new products and expand its customer base and has achieved year-on-year growth of 17%.
Under the deal, Blue Coat Chief Executive Officer Greg Clark will become the CEO of Symantec and will join the Symantec Board.
The acquisition will help Symantec maintain is position as a leader in the field of cybersecurity, with its customers protected from a much wider range of cyberthreats. Symantec will be able to offer best-in-class protection, detection, and remediation of email, web, endpoint, network, and server threats.
Symantec's leading threat telemetry will be combined with the network and cloud-security solutions of Blue Coat to provide differentiated security solutions for hundreds of millions of endpoints and servers, as well as allowing Symantec to offer security solutions for cloud users, cloud data, and cloud apps.
The acquisition will certainly benefit Symantec shareholders. The combined revenue of both companies in the past fiscal year would have been $4.4 billion. By the end of FY 2018, Symantec will have made run rate cost savings of $400 million from its cost efficiency program, and a further $150 million as a result of this acquisition.
Investment in Symantec by Silver Lake has also been doubled to 1 billion and Bain Capital has agreed to invest a further $750 million in the company.