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Human Sacrifice Pt. 2: The Stories
by Jax on Nov 1, 2011 • 1:54 am 2 Comments
Happy Dia de los Muertos!
Before I get started, I do want to clarify that DdlM has NOTHING to do with human sacrifice. It's a day to celebrate your ancestors and other people who have passed on.There is nothing violent about it. And once again I will state for any new to the realm that MODERN PAGANS DON'T PERFORM HUMAN SACRIFICE. We all clear on that? Good. On to the ghoulish entertainment for Halloween!
Two weeks ago I created a more inclusive definition for human sacrifice, so if you haven't read that please take a moment to do so (and the comments! There was some really cool discussion on the meaning of the word sacrifice; thanks to all who have commented!) I also provided a couple examples of a more "practical" human sacrifice. These deaths have nothing to do with religion – like hanging convicted criminals or soldiers dying in battle – but were made into human sacrifices by dedicating the deaths to a god. I'm going to leave those out for today and focus on tales of people who died solely because of a violently misguided religious belief.*
Those with queasy stomachs may want to look away now. For those more intrepid, I've designed a system of skulls to rate the ick factor from 1-3. Read the high skull count at your own risk!
The Classics – Death by (Ancient) Pagan Sacrifice
Still-Beating Hearts ☠☠â˜
Picture this: Cheers roar as the honored one is led over a carpet of flowers, up the steps of the temple, and onto the stage above. Music swells as the crowd pierces their own flesh with needles, absolving their sins as the blood flows. On the stage, the honored one blesses them before lying down on the carving of a jaguar. His stomach is slashed with a flint knife. A priest reaches in past the ribs and removes his still beating heart. The body is tossed down the stairs to a warrior waiting below who has earned the right to cannibalize the flesh. First, though, the warrior removes the head to display it on a rack with the dozens of others who have been so honored today.
Welcome to world of the Aztecs.
According to Aztec mythology, the gods sacrificed themselves so that mankind could survive, and so they called human sacrifice "debt-payment." And boy did they settle their accounts. Their style of warfare was designed not to kill their opponents, but to capture them for sacrificing. They set children on fire (and sometimes pulled them out of the fire before they died so they could cut their hearts out), drowned women, flayed corpses (and wore the skin around to promote fertility.. uh, yeah, you read that right…), and had a big festival with gladiator fights in which one guy was chained to a rock with a weapon made of feathers fighting four armed warriors.
Apparently, horrific as this sounds to us, the Aztecs viewed being sacrificed as an honor. When the Spanish conquistadors tried to free future victims, they were shocked to find that many of the men got angry and went right back to the temple to get sacrificed. The Aztecs believed the eternal fate of a sacrificial victim was:
 …the sun called them inward so they can live with him there in the sky to rejoice and sing in his presence… they never know sadness nor melancholy nor disgust, for they live in the house of the sun where there are riches and delights.
РBernardino de Sahag̼n, Historia General de las Cosas de la Nueva Espa̱a Bk 6, ch. 21 [translation is my own]
Sounds nice, but I think I'll keep my heart all the same.
The Well of the Witch Water â˜
On my first trip to the Yucatan I was told by a native Mayan that Chichen Itza, the name of the great Mayan city, translates to "The Mouth of the Well of the Witch Water." The city was built within easy walking distance of a gorgeous cenote, a natural sinkhole, that is 200 feet wide and nearly a 90 foot drop from the cliff to the murky water below. When the Mayans needed rain, the village went to the cenote and prayed to Chaac, the god of thunder and rain. Men and children came bedecked with heavy jewelery as gifts to the god. At some point in the ceremony, the jewels – and the people wearing them – were tossed over the cliffs to fall ten stories into the water below. The jewelry weighed sacrificial victims down, ensuring they would sink to the bottom and drown.
The Original Thugs â˜
Kali Ma protects us! We are her children! We pledge our devotion to her with an offering of flesh… and blood!
-Indiana Jones after drinking the Kool-Aid in Temple of Doom
The English word thug comes from "Thuggee," an Indian cult of serial killers that would infiltrate caravans and rob and garrote the party in the name of the goddess Kali. It was a pretty sophisticated operation. A party of Thugs would join the caravan one at a time (sometimes with children they were apprenticing). Then when they'd earned the trust of the other travelers (and got to a location where they could hide the bodies), the cultists would pair up and use their turbans or belts to strangle people. They did this for the material wealth, but they also believed that if regular sacrifices weren't made to Kali, she would come down and destroy humanity in her wrath. The British eradicated the Thuggee during their occupation.
A completely inaccurate version of a Thuggee cult was used as the villains in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
Convert or Die (Horribly)
Auto-da-fé ☠☠â˜
The most infamous type of human sacrifice performed by the Christian church was Auto-da-fé – literally "Act of Faith." This is a catchall phrase for the public torture and execution of heretics done at the behest of the Inquisition; the most famous, of course, is burning at the stake. According to The Talmud, the original "burn the witch" of the Bible was done by pouring melted lead down a person's throat. Icky, but pretty instant death. By the medieval era, however, this was not enough of a penance.
Since a mass burning allowed people to die by carbon monoxide poison, the Inquisition would set people on fire individually. (Hence the familiar image of one person per stake as opposed to a much simpler mass immolation.) Done "right" it can take a couple of hours to die as the fire slowly consumes the victim's feet, calves, hands, arms, hips, etc. Some stories tell of victims surviving up until their skull caught fire.
Apostasy in Modern Islam â˜
According to recent Pew Forum polls (it's about 2/3rd down the page. Here's a direct link to the chart), a surprising number of Muslims in the Middle East still favor the death penalty for the "crime" of apostasy. "Apostate," for those unfamiliar, is a pejorative term for somebody who left a faith. Though the Qu'ran has no verse specifying death for apostates (although, like any holy text you can find passages to interpret that way), it is still allowed by law in several theocratic Muslim countries. A couple years ago in Egypt there was a big case involving Maher Ahmad El-Mo'otahssem Bellah El-Gohary, a convert from Islam to Christianity, for whom the death penalty was sought by prosecuting lawyers. (They were prosecuting him for converting.) According to El-Gohary:
 Our rights in Egypt, as Christians or converts, are less than the rights of animals. We are deprived of social and civil rights, deprived of our inheritance and left to the fundamentalists to be killed. Nobody bothers to investigate or care about us.
He claims to be regularly attacked on the street and that he and his daughter receive regular death threats via text messaging and phone calls. Apparently in Egypt your ID card (like our driver's licenses) has your religion written on it, and after 36 years of being a Christian, El-Gohary asked to have his license changed from Muslim to Christian so that when his daughter came of age, she could be Christian without being considered an apostate. While (fortunately) El-Gohary's story is not a human sacrifice, it shows that the "convert-or-die" version of human sacrifice is (unfortunately) not as dead as we'd like to think.
Olaf Tryggvason (King Olaf I of Norway) and Raud the Strong ☠â˜
In the 10th Century, Olaf made his fame by converting Norway to Christianity… and became infamous for inventing new and tortuous ways to kill people who refused. The story of Raud the Strong is, in my opinion, the creepiest. Raud was a landowner and possibly a priest who followed the Old Ways long after King Olaf had declared it illegal. He was also known for his longship, the prow of which was decorated with an exquisite carving of a serpent. And apparently it was bigger than Olaf's longship. (You know what they say about men and the size of their, ahem, longships). Olaf paid a visit to Raud in the middle of the night, kidnapped him out of his bed, and told him that if he got baptized, they'd be good buddies and Olaf would let him keep his ship. Raud refused with some choice words. Olaf, inspired by the ship's carving, stuck a horn between Raud's teeth and chased a snake down it with a hot poker. The snake was forced into Raud's stomach where it ate its way out Raud's side and he died.
Legendary (but Unproven) Sacrifices
The Wicker Man ☠â˜
This legend was started by Julius Caesar in his De Bello Gallico (The Gallic War). He claimed (though he never saw it done) that druid priests would build a giant man of, well, wicker, put criminals inside of it (or innocent people if they didn't have enough criminals to fill it) and set the whole thing on fire, burning alive everyone trapped within. No other sources attest this practice, but it is certainly ingrained in popular imagination. There's even a cult classic horror film from 1973 about a modern cult that gives it a go (and yes, there was a remake with Nic Cage, but from everything I've heard it's spectacularly awful). **
Dedication of the Aztec Temple ☠â˜
I know I already talked about the Aztecs, but they are the gold standard in human sacrifice and deserve another mention. At the reconsecration of their main temple at Tenochtitlan in 1487, the Aztecs claimed they sacrificed 80,400 people over an extended weekend (four days). That's 20,100 people a day, or 14 people every minute with no breaks (not even for sleep). That's a faster kill rate than Auschwitz at its worst, and the Aztecs didn't have gas chambers. Apparently four tables were set up at the top of the pyramid. People were executed (via heart removal) and immediately jettisoned down the side of the temple and replaced by the next victim. Though most historians think the Aztecs were exaggerating (the Aztecs kept meticulous records and didn't tend to lie about these things, but that number doesn't seem possible), there is no doubt that a mass sacrifice, likely of thousands, did occur at the dedication.
Blood Eagle☠☠☠☠(Yes, on a scale of 1-3, this is a 4)
Of course I saved a viking legend for last. The Blood Eagle is the ultimate revenge kill in viking mythology, and it possibly dedicates the kill to Odin. (Or it just hurts a lot. Whether or not this ever actually happened is up for debate, as is whether it was a type of sacrifice or just really freaking violent.) In a Blood Eagle the victim is forced onto their stomach. Their ribs are broken along the spine and snapped outward to make "wings". The lungs are then pulled through the cavity. The victim will pass out from blood loss and then die of asphyxiation as the diaphragm can no longer pump oxygen into the lungs. (I'm still trying to figure out how to work this into a book without passing out at the keyboard as I try to describe it in sensory detail.) Ah, Vikings. I love you. Even when you scare me.
And there you go! Human sacrifice around the world. Gory enough for you? And I didn't even mention self-immolation, Sati, Bachanals, or a host of other death-by-faith stories! Ah well. I'll have something to talk about next year.
I hope everyone had a marvelous Halloween!
* Disclaimer: I am not an expert on the subject of human sacrifice. I have tried hard to present accurate information here, and if there are any mistakes I apologize (and would love a referenced correction!). However, my purpose here is more edutainment than scholarship (hence the lack of source links), so take the stories with a grain of salt!
** This movie is, for reasons I cannot fathom, wildly popular in the Pagan community. I hate it. It paints us in a horrible light. But up until the end it is interesting, and they clearly did a lot of research on Celtic Pagan culture. At least until the part where Reconstructionist Pagans are depicted as sociopathically crazy. *eye roll* Seriously, my Pagan peeps, why do Pagans like this movie??
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Mankind's capacity for barbaric acts… it never ceases to astound me.
Likewise its capacity for profound, selfless heroism.
What complicated beings we are.
Bloody Amazing!


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28 Up (1984)
July 31, 2013 admin Comments 1 comment
"Give me the child until he is seven and I will give you the man."
A group of diverse British children are interviewed at the ages of 7, 14, 21, and 28.
Michael Apted Films
I'll be cheating a bit in my review of this "unique, fascinating documentary" by Michael Apted, which "began as a television short called 7 Up," in which a "crew interviewed 14 seven-year-old school-children about what they wanted in their futures in regard to education, occupation, money, and marriage", and then interviewed them again every seven years, with snippets from each set of interviews strategically interwoven. Peary's review in GFTFF is of 28 Up (1984), but most film fanatics today will likely also have seen the follow-up entries — 35 Up (1991), 42 Up (1998), 49 Up (2005), and 56 Up (2012) — and I find it impossible not to reference the entire series in my own response. With that said, Peary makes a few key points in his review that remain relevant for all of the films in the series: he writes, for instance, that "the viewer is placed in an awkward position in that s/he becomes a judge as to whether these 28-year-olds [or 35, 42, 49, 56-year-olds] have succeeded, as most contend they have, in reaching their potential happiness; and the unfortunate tendency… is to feel superior to most of these people who have lives we don't envy".
Peary further asserts that in 28 Up, "the 'successes' we see are those subjects who have somehow achieved some freedom" — such as Nick, "the science researcher who… fled with his wife to Wisconsin" and Paul, "the bricklayer who is raising a family in Australia"; but he pities both Neil, the "near-genius who has dropped out altogether and lives on welfare" and "a cabbie [Tony] who is satisfied with [the] 'freedom' he gets from his job and his close family life, but whose poor education deprived him of what a person of his natural intelligence and warmth deserves". He argues that the "picture leaves you sad", but notes that "surely a documentary on any seven [sic] subjects taken over 20 [sic] years would have the same result because, let's face it, kids look happier, cuter, and more enthusiastic than adults". Interestingly, seeing the participants at later ages (specifically 56, as in the most recent entry) allows one to feel a little less melancholy about the inevitability of both heredity and class, as nearly every participant seems to have achieved some measure of happiness and contentment — whether through (re)marriage, grandchildren, and/or career. Few, for instance, would feel sorry at this point for Tony, who has actually achieved an enviable measure of financial success (he owns a second home in Spain); and while Neil has continued to struggle with his mental challenges, he's been able to pursue his dream of a career in politics.
Apted's series has been rightfully praised over the years as an invaluable longitudinal document of humanity itself — regardless of its specificity in following Britons from a certain generation (and mostly white males, an initial "casting" choice Apted apparently regrets). While there's nothing particularly innovative about the way in which Apted films his subjects, or the questions he asks them, his devotion in tracking down the participants like clockwork every seven years (or occasionally in between, as when he filmed a participant's wedding) is an impressive feat in itself. (Apted is reportedly so devoted to this project that he's said he hopes someone else will take up the mantle in the event of his own death; he'd like to follow the participants to the ends of their lives.) One also feels appreciation for the dedication of the participants, all but one of whom have chosen to reappear in most (or all) of the episodes; long before the advent of "reality T.V.", they have graciously allowed at least portions of their lives to be on public display. Most film fanatics will eagerly await the next installment, and hope that all the "children" — Andrew, Bruce, Jackie, John, Lynn, Neil, Nick, Paul, Peter, Sue, Suzy, Symon, and Tony — will still be alive and well at the age of 63 and beyond.
Note: Devoted followers will enjoy watching the entire "Up Series" (as the DVD set is referred to); others may simply want to watch 56 Up and work backwards as desired.
Update (1/9/21): Rest in Peace, Michael Apted. Thank you for your contributions to cinema and our understanding of humanity.
An enduringly fascinating long-term social document
Yes, as part of a deservedly classic documentary series.
Genuine Classic
ReelViews Review
Stagecoach (1939)
Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The (1962)
One thought on "28 Up (1984)"
A once-must, for its unique value as both a documentary and a sociological study.
Off-hand, because of the scope of this series, I can't recall whether or not I've seen this particular section or not… but I believe I have. At any rate, it was either this or '35 Up'. Essentially, the territory was familiar to me on this rewatch.
I don't particularly think that "most film fanatics today will likely also have seen the follow-up entries". In fact, I don't think this is the kind of film that the average film fanatic would be drawn to – unless, possibly, there was a leaning toward documentaries. Of course, I do think the average film fanatic *should* be aware of the series and at least see part of it (especially this part, since it seems the most crucial). But I think those who would see it would be a smaller percentage of ffs.
If, in fact, the "picture leaves you sad", I believe that's, in part, a flaw of the filmmaker. As admirable as the project is, Apted (for whatever reason) makes a point of comparing the lives of his participants (who are mostly of a working-class background) to those (not filmed) who have had more of a 'silver spoon'. A few of those interviewed in '28 Up' wonder why he does this and question him about it. One actually says, "You keep asking me if I'm worried about (not having more advantages)." – while another lets us know that she never thinks about comparing her lot in life to those who are better off… until Apted asks her about it when a new part of the series is being filmed.
It's rather a curious thing: why didn't Apted focus on their own reasonably-well-off levels (it's not as if they're poverty-stricken) and ask them about their feelings re: navigating within their actual strata… instead of indirectly feeling sorry for them for not having more than they have?
I don't sense that Apted "pities" Tony but it's more likely that he did pity Neil. However, Neil is the subject who seems to get the most time of anyone here. As a result, viewers may get a better understanding of him than the other subjects. (I probably personally related to Neil more, in the sense that it resonated with me when he speaks about his parents not giving him any guidance about any particular 'policy' as a map for life. It's certainly unfortunate that such a lack left Neil not feeling the need for discipline – however, the interviews with him also touch on certain psychological issues that wouldn't necessarily (though they could) arise strictly from parental indifference.
Overall, the true value of this documentary is that it affords viewers the chance to look at their own lives and reflect on their own progress, in order to take stock. After all, how many of us simply choose to forget that we were once children? How many of us wonder whether or not who we are now is essentially connected to who we always have been?

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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When Gabrielle Douglas teetered, then wobbled, then fell off the balance beam at the USA gymnastics national championships in St. Louis this month, it would have been natural for any 16-year-old to fight back tears or make other big mistakes as she continued the competition.
Without the full one-point deduction for the fall, Douglas would have beaten defending world champion Jordyn Wieber and won her first national all-around title.
As it is, she and Wieber will come into the U.S. Olympic trials June 28-July 1 in San Jose as Olympic all-around gold medal favorites just as Shawn Johnson and Nastia Liukin did four years ago. Liukin ended up winning the Olympic all-around gold and Johnson took the silver.
Wieber won the national title, scoring 121.900 to Douglas' 121.700, but it is Douglas who is the unlikely gymnastics star.
If she makes the U.S. Olympic women's gymnastics team, she will be the first African American since Dominique Dawes in 2000 and is aiming to be only the second African American woman to win an individual medal. Dawes won a floor exercise bronze in 1996.
U.S. women's national team coordinator Martha Karolyi has given Douglas the nickname "Flying Squirrel," for her height-defying release moves on the uneven bars. Her coach, Liang Chow, says it is "astounding" how much Douglas has improved the last few months.
Douglas, noted for her bright smile and fast talking, has made difficult career choices already.
Almost two years ago, when she was barely 14 years old, Douglas left her home in Virginia Beach, Va., her mom, Natalie Hawkins, and her four older brothers and sisters and moved to West Des Moines, Iowa, to train with renowned coach Chow. The Chinese native had molded Johnson into a world champion and Olympic gold medalist. Douglas was to live with a host family headed by Travis and Missy Parton.
Hawkins said the moment when Douglas moved west was the hardest of her life.
"I almost went into a depression," said Hawkins. "Letting her go wasn't easy."
Hawkins, who said she is at the end of divorce proceedings with Douglas' father, Timothy Douglas, said Travis Parton was "an awesome father figure" for Gabrielle and the whole family made her daughter one of their own.
The stubborn Douglas said she acquired lots of colds in Iowa at first — "I just refused to wear a jacket because I wouldn't admit it gets cold in Iowa in the winter" — but also acquired confidence in her gymnastics.
Johnson, who retired from the sport a few weeks ago after deciding a knee injury would not hold up to intense Olympic training, called Douglas "a ball of raw talent," when she first met her two years ago.
"She was all over the place mentally and physically but she was also a machine," Johnson said.
Douglas calls herself, during the course of three conversations, "crazy," "hyper," and "focused," and all three descriptions seem apt.
When Douglas fell off the balance beam, it was a mistake that seemed born of speed and missing concentration, something Douglas said afterward.
"I don't know where my head was," she said, "just getting ahead of myself, all the fans, all the noise. I had expectations, you know?"
But the little girl who resolutely packed up and left home collected herself and corralled the rest of her skills.
Missy Parton said she could never do what Hawkins let Douglas do.
"That's something I completely admire in Natalie," Missy Parton said. "But Natalie and I had a lot of phone conversations before Gabby came. We just connected, you know? We had a lot of the same beliefs, we agreed about raising our kids and that we'd call Natalie if anything was ever going on."
The Partons, who have a daughter taking gymnastics at Chow's gym, said a few months before Douglas came to live with them, they had told Chow if he ever needed a temporary home for a faraway gymnast, theirs would be open.
"And now," Missy Parton said, "I can't imagine life without her. It would be impossible. I would have been unable to write a script like this, but this is how our life goes now and we love her."
Hawkins, who is on leave from her job in the recovery department of HSBC, an international banking company, said that before Douglas began receiving national team financial aid, "I'd always pull an extra shift at work.
"We'd get bonuses and that would go into savings. I was always at the savings rack, spending frugally."
Parton said her family was able to easily take Douglas into their four-bedroom, two-bathroom home. "She doesn't eat much," Parton joked. Travis runs his own home maintenance company and the family also runs a fitness gym, Parton said.
After finishing second to Wieber, Douglas ran to Hawkins first, then Missy Parton immediately after. Big hugs all around.
"I named her Gabrielle Christina Victoria Douglas," Hawkins said. "Her name means, 'God's able-bodied one.' As you can see, she has lived up to her name."


Background: A highly efficient approach to select microRNA (miRNA) targets is a key to develop a miRNA-based therapeutic approach to cardiac ischemia–reperfusion (I/R). To reverse the change induced by disease, I/R in this case, is the traditional strategy to develop therapeutic drugs. However, examples show that it will not always serve the purpose. In this study, we demonstrate an additional approach of selecting miRNA targets with therapeutic potential following cues from cardioprotection-induced changes rather than by reversing disease-induced changes in cardiac I/R. Methods: Isolated perfused rat hearts subjected to I/R were treated with 50 μmol/L sodium hydrosulfide (NaHS) or 10 nmol/L urocortin 2 (UCN2). Cardiac miRNA regulations were determined by miRNA array. Functional screening of selected miRNA mimics, assessed by WST (2-(4-Iodophenyl)-3-(4-nitrophenyl)-5-(2,4-disulfophenyl)-2H-tetrazolium, monosodium salt) activity and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) release, was performed in H9c2 and neonatal rat ventricular myocytes (NRVMs) with hypoxia/reoxygenation. RNA-induced silencing complex (RISC)-loaded miRNAs caused by mimic transfection were quantified following argonaute-2 immunoprecipitation. Gene regulations of 1 selected miRNA were determined by quantitative polymerase chain reaction and Western blot. Results: Treatment with NaHS and UCN2 significantly improved cardiac function and reduced LDH release. The miRNA array indicated a panel of commonly up- and downregulated miRNAs. Among them, 10 upregulated miRNAs with antiapoptotic and antiautophagy potentials were selected for further screening. Mimics of miRNA-221, -150, and -206 were protective in both H9c2 and NRVM. RISC-loaded miRNAs were up by ∼20-fold above. To further prove the feasibility of this approach, miRNA-221 was studied. It reduced I/R-induced caspase 3/7 activity and LC3-II (microtubule-associated protein 1 light chain 3). Measuring genes predicted to regulate apoptosis and autophagy, miRNA-221 mimic decreased Ddit4, TP53inp1, and p27 at both messenger RNA (mRNA) and protein levels, and reduced mRNA of Bak1 and Puma and proteins of Bim and Bmf. Conclusion: Mimicking miRNA changes caused by cardioprotective agents, combined with functional screening, enables investigators to efficiently identify novel miRNAs with therapeutic potential in cardiac I/R.


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What The Hell Was Fixer Doing In Florida?
Just kidding, Fixer would have brought it back in one piece.
Mechanic traveling 163 mph in Porsche crashes in south Fort Myers
Routine maintenance on a 2008 Porsche Boxster took an unusual turn Thursday, when a Sanibel mechanic took the car on a wild test drive, reaching an estimated 163 mph, and crashed it.
Kenneth Kasten, 50, owner of the Sanibel Shell service station, was driving the Porsche on McGregor Boulevard near Punta Rassa Road at 6 a.m. when he lost control and flipped the car into some mangroves, according to the Florida Highway Patrol.
The Porsche - owned by Nanelle Wehmann of Sanibel - was the only vehicle involved in the crash, which occurred in a 55-mph limit zone.
The FHP estimated the damage to the Porsche at $50,000.
Kasten wasn't seriously injured and left the scene before emergency crews arrived, Cpl. George Kantor of the FHP said. Alcohol is not believed to have been a factor in the crash.
Authorities arrived on scene to find the car smashed, abandoned and upside down.
Initial reports were that the car was stolen, but Kantor said it quickly became clear that Kasten had permission to drive the car.
Wehmann said she has been bringing her vehicles to the Sanibel Shell for years and was surprised to learn about the crash.
"I'm just thankful he wasn't hurt," she said.
Kantor said because Wehmann knew Kasten would drive the car, Kasten wasn't charged with theft.
Kasten was found a few hours after the crash hiding in a nearby parking lot and was given a notice to appear in court on charges of willful and wanton reckless driving and leaving the scene of a crash.
I once took a Lincoln Mark 8 on an extended test drive and hit 135 before I backed out of it, that was way fast enough for me.It was raining a little and the front end was starting to float.
The guy kept bringing it in bitching about a howling noise around the top of the windshield at high speed and no one could duplicate it because when he said high speed, they figured seventy miles an hour.
I finally talked to him and he said no, it started in around ninety.
I glued the shit out of the seal at the top of the windshield and never saw him again.
Posted by Phil at 3:45:00 PM No comments:
Cruise night returns to Van Nuys Boulevard
I remember Cruise Nights on Van Nuys Boulevard. They were fun to go watch. I never got in any trouble or saw much of the stuff that made the cops shut it down. I'm glad it's back, even as a shadow of its former self. That's probably a good thing.
By the way, the photo in the article shows a '62 Chrysler Newport, which none of us would've had up our ass in those days if we'da had room for a boxcar, but I guess anything old is cool now. Hmmmm. Some of us 'old stuff' have been so cool for so long that it's just a given and nobody even notices anymore...
LATimes
As the souped-up muscle cars, restored classics and lowriders cruise through the old Rydell Chevrolet lot on Van Nuys Boulevard, Reid Stolz takes stock of a scene that was familiar to anyone growing up in the San Fernando Valley a generation ago.
Here's the crux of the biscuit right off the bat:
"Remember when we were young and the cops were old?" said Stolz, 51, watching an LAPD patrol car glide by. "Now the cops are young and we're old."
After a 28-year break, Stolz and other car lovers have brought cruising back to "The Boulevard," though the drivers are now more likely to be middle-aged guys with graying hair and grandkids, driven by nostalgia rather than teenage vanity.
Yeah, how much trouble are a buncha old farts gonna cause anyway? Wait'll me an' Fixer an' Nucks show up...
It was more than just a scene, it was an iconic ritual that was imitated, written about in hot rod magazines and captured on film. Cruise night came to represent a Southern California lifestyle that young people in the Midwest and the world over could only read about. Cruising the boulevard on a Wednesday night was about adolescent freedom, a sense that anything was possible and, above all, fun.
Back then, young people just showed up every Wednesday night. Girls and boys by the hundreds milled on sidewalks as candy-colored cars blowing rubber smoke streaked by blasting Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd from eight-track stereos.
Led Zeppelin? Pink Floyd? 8-track? Holy crap! I went to those Cruise Nights waaaaay before that! Beach Boys and Bobby Rydell days! On AM radio.
I must be older than I thought. Sigh.
The tradition dates to the late 1950s when high schools in the San Fernando Valley held club meetings each Wednesday, said Jon Billesbach, 67, of North Hollywood.
Youths in car clubs would head to the boulevard after the meetings ended for street racing, he said. Later, everyone gathered at the Bob's Big Boy restaurants in Toluca Lake or Van Nuys.
Cruising reached its zenith in the 1970s, and the boulevard was its own teenager universe.
There were a lot of people older than teenagers, trust me.
Streets lamps bathed the bikers at Arby's in an arc of white light. The van guys parked outside the Heads 'N Highs head shop and the street racers converged at Bank of America. Latino youths parked their lowrider at the June Ellen Doughnut shop, just south of the 101 Freeway, Stolz said.
Here we go again - there weren't even any head shops when I went. There aren't any now either, although there may be again. Full circle and then some, I guess.
Pretty good article. Go read.
Posted by Gordon at 2:22:00 PM No comments:


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Artists You Should Know: Betty Goodwin by Erika Jacobs
The work of Betty Goodwin is fluid, ethereal, and fragile. Figures float or fall through transparent layers, thick tarpaulins hang as sculpture, and artifacts become x-rays. Using a variety of media, Goodwin's work is frequently raw and autobiographical, revisiting themes and materials over and over again.
The Big Deal: Produces work prolifically, in collage, sculpture, printmaking, and etching. Goodwin's breakthrough takes place in late 1960s in the printmaking studio. Instead of drawing on the plate, she takes her work gloves, places them on a prepared printing plate and runs them through the press. The gloves are followed by other objects such as vests, nests, notes, and parcels. Her career spans forty years.
Life In Brief: Born and raised in Montreal to Romainian immigrant parents. Her father dies when she is 9 years old. After high school, she studies design at Valentine's Commercial School of Art in Montreal; begins career as a printmaker. She receives a Guggenheim fellowship in 1988. Shows internationally, as well as continuing to exhibit in Montreal. Is chosen to represent Canada in the Venice Biennial in 1995. In 2003, is made an Officer of the Order of Canada. She dies in December 2008 in Montreal.
artmatters.ca
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Goodwin
Erika Jacobs is a Toronto-based freelance photographer and the co-creator of the Knock Twice blog, which is where a version of this post originally appeared. It's is an online resource to assist and inform budding creative professionals. You can visit Knock Twice here.
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Category Archives: Danish fiction
I cannot surrender my soul to any nation state, or to any set of beliefs.
It's been a little while since my last update. I've had holiday (Bologna, always lovely) and started a new job (Cabinet Office, fascinating). Between all that I've not really had a lot of spare time.
Even so, with the time off between jobs and my holiday July ended up being a fairly reading-heavy month. Ten books! Some short I admit, some very short in fact, but still, ten!
Here they are.
The Gigolo, by Francoise Sagan and translated by Joanna Kilmartin
This is one of those little Penguin pocket editions – a handful of Sagan shorts. Sagan is always enjoyable and this was no exception.
The title story is about an aging woman's relationship with her younger lover. He loves her, she pays his rent. It's a nicely observed little tale about the clash between society's expectations and private emotions.
The second tale is about a wife who returns home early from a trip to find signs that her seemingly trustworthy husband may be having an affair. There's a sting in the tale, which I guessed early, but it's still well written and doesn't overstay its welcome.
For the past ten years, she had talked about pot plants, gardenias, verandahs and lawns, and for the past ten years David had said nothing in reply.
Lastly there's a tale about a dying man being comforted by his wife as he thinks about past affairs. I had actually completely forgotten that one and the description comes from Amazon, so probably not the strongest of the three…
Anyway, it's a fun little collection and perfect for popping into a pocket on a summer's day.
Ancillary Mercy, by Ann Leckie
This is the last of Leckie's space operatic trilogy. I talked about the first two here and here. If you've read number two and liked it, you'll like this. If you haven't, you probably won't. I thought it brought it all together pretty well and left the right amount unresolved (I hate overly neat endings).
I don't know if the trilogy is a future classic – space opera can age badly quite quickly – but I think it at least has potential to be. This is proper old-fashioned widescreen SF, but with a modern feel to it and good characters, setting and story.
The Beautiful Summer, by Cesare Pavese, unknown translator
Penguin doesn't identify the translator for this as best I can tell, which I think is pretty shabby.
Ginia is a sixteen year-old in Fascist Italy, caught between the fading ties of childhood and the daunting allure of the adult world – or at least what adolescents think is the adult world (more sex, bars and late night conversations; less early alarms, work deadlines and crying children).
She becomes involved through a friend with an artist who the reader can plainly tell just isn't as in to her as she is to him. Pavese captures brilliantly and with sympathy her conflicting emotions – on one side her desire to do what pleases the artist and to become part of his world; on the other her fear of the consequences and her growing sense of self and of her own life.
I read this while out in Italy and it is pretty much a perfect summer read. Cleanly written and plotted. Nothing happens here that will surprise you but as with Sagan it's very much about the emotions of the journey rather than the destination.
My only criticism is that I do wonder how much it will stay in memory. Sagan still feels sharp to me, but I don't have a sense yet whether this will in say a month's time.
Finally, I'd be very interested to hear the thoughts of any female readers who've tried this. It's written by a man and I think the reviews I've read are also by men, but it's about female experience and I did wonder if it was a slightly anodyne, idealised, version of that experience. There's none of the intensity or desire one finds in say Duras. Does it get it right?
Grant also wrote about this here, and I think others have too so views and links welcome in the comments.
The Red Tenda of Bologna, by John Berger
This is another pocket Penguin. Here it's a typically well written sort-of-memoir by John Berger. A short meditation on memory triggered by familiar locations. It's slight, and honestly I've already largely forgotten it, but I do remember enjoying it while reading it. An ice cream of a book – it may not last but it's enjoyable at the time in the heat.
The Third Tower: Journeys in Italy, by Antal Szerb and translated by Len Rix
This is a sort of non-fiction precursor to Szerb's marvellous Journey by Moonlight. A tired and troubled Szerb holidays in Fascist Italy for what he's very aware is likely the last time (and I think it really was his last time).
He experiences crowded sites, bad rooms, stultifying heat and the rising tide of fascism about him. It's slight but the sense that Szerb's world, the civilised world, is being overrun gives it a certain power and makes it regrettably timely.
I arrived at a bad moment. It was Ferragosto, the 15th of August, and to cap it all there were outdoor games in the Arena for which the whole of Italy had turned up, travelling on spectacularly discounted tickets. In the city you no sooner worked your way past one Italian tourist than you bumped into another. It was like being in Salzburg – a cut-price, petty-bourgeois, Fascist Salzburg.
There's a lovely coda to it all about the importance of carving out a place for yourself in an increasingly maddened and hostile world. Szerb, a bookish intellectual, saw no place for himself in a Europe dominated by extremists, ultra-nationalists and a rising tide of unreason. So he had to make a place, however fleeting, however fragile.
The Freeze-Frame Revolution, by Peter Watts
Next up was some distinctly gloomy hard-SF. In this novel a spaceship spirals through the galaxy creating wormholes for a humanity that may long since have gone extinct. Members of the crew are only woken for the more difficult jobs, a handful only each time, and because their ship must travel slower than light that means tens of thousands of years pass between each job.
The ship travels on, now tens of millions of years from its original launch. In all that time nobody's got in touch, nobody's said thanks or come home. If humanity still exists it must surely be nothing like the people who launched the mission all those years ago. Utterly transformed; alien.
Some of the crew now want to bring the mission to an end, find some new purpose, but how do you mount a revolt against a permanently awake shipboard AI when the conspirators are separated by millennia of frozen sleep?
I liked this, but it eventually becomes apparent it's intended to be part of a series, which I hadn't realised. The result is that it doesn't really have that satisfying an ending, leaving lots open for the next book. Still, I'll read that next book and the ideas are interesting.
There are Little Kingdoms, by Kevin Barry
This was, I believe, Barry's first published short story collection. I've previously written about his marvellous City of Bohane here and a bit about his equally marvellous short story collection Dark Lies the Island here.
For me, Kingdoms wasn't as strong as Island, but then nor should it be – it came earlier and he's developed as a writer since. Island has a powerful sense of place as you'd expect from Barry, and he persuasively captures the lives of Ireland's lost and lonely.
Barry's taste for the occasional grotesquerie shows more here than in Island, where that element is present but used more sparingly and to better effect. The dark humour I've grown to expect from Barry shows here and is as enjoyable as ever.
Ultimately though, when I came to write this I realised that every story I remembered clearly came from Island, not Kingdoms. If I hadn't read Island I suspect this would have blown me away. As it is, it's clear that I read Barry in the wrong order and for me Island is simply the better collection.
The Weird and the Eerie, by Mark Fisher
Mark Fisher was a cultural commentator who wrote a number of highly regarded essays including his excellent Capitalist Realism. Here he examines what he argues are two different horror traditions, I'll let you guess what he calls them…
The weird here is horror that comes from the intrusion of the other into the ordinary (I'm simplifying heavily here). It is something present that should be absent, perhaps which shouldn't be at all.
The eerie by contrast is the absence of that which ought to be there. For example, the sound of a woman crying but heard from an empty room. However, Fisher also cites "failure of absence" as a manifestation of the eerie – something present where nothing should be present, which seems awfully close to the weird on this taxonomy.
The difficulty is that I wasn't remotely persuaded that these genuinely are two different traditions in horror fiction and film. Rather, this seemed to me a canter through a bunch of books, TV shows and films that Fisher grew up with and loved (and fair enough, I grew up with them and loved them too), and which he then hung a post-hoc critical framework on. I thought many of his examples of one form could easily have been used for the other and the entire distinction felt artificial, and worse, not useful.
Driven, by James Sallis
This is the wholly unnecessary sequel to Drive, in which Driver turns out to be as good at unarmed combat as he is at driving. Years after the first book he finds himself being hunted by professional thugs and hit-men. He effortlessly kills them all with his bare hands and turns the tables to hunt down the hunters. I found it unconvincing and a bit silly.
Childless, by Ignát Hermann and translated by Marie Busch and Otto Pick
This novella is part of a series of short classics being published on Kindle. One of the better things about that platform is the ease with which it allows publishers to release books that might not be profitable enough to merit a full hardcopy release.
Here it's the tale of a successful and happily married banker whose life lacks lacks the one thing he feels would give it meaning – a child. Then he reads a personal letter of his wife's and everything changes…
That makes it sound potentially rather dark and usually these sorts of stories are, but what's unusual here is that it's a story of basically good people who've caused pain more through failure to trust than through desire.
Unfortunately, the kindle copy did have a fair few typographical errors, but even so it's definitely worth a read. David Hebblethwaite wrote about it a bit more here.
The Four Devils, by Herman Bang and translated by Marie Ottillie Heyl
This was my last book of the month and is another of those short classics on Kindle. Here it's the story of four trapeze artists whose tight-knit world is thrown into a tangle of resentment and desire when one of them begins an affair with a local noblewoman.
It's well written, deeply physical (as you'd expect given their profession) and has a sense of inevitability as compelling as a trapeze artist's leap across the void. It costs literally less than a cup of coffee and if the Kindle form factor isn't a problem for you I strongly recommend it. It also doesn't have the typographical issues that Childless did. David Hebblethwaite wrote about this too, here.
And that's it! A packed month in terms of reading and in terms of life too. Hopefully soon I can catch up on what others have been reading and some of the posts I've missed over the past few weeks.
Filed under Barry, Kevin, Berger, John, Czech fiction, Danish fiction, Fisher, Mark, French, Irish fiction, Leckie, Ann, Pavese, Cesare, Sagan, Françoise, Sallis, James, SF, Short stories, Szerb, Antal, Travel writing
Tagged as Ann Leckie, Antal Szerb, Cesare Pavese, Françoise Sagan, Herman Bang, Ignat Hermann, James Sallis, John Berger, Kevin Barry, Mark Fisher, Peter Watts
17 March, 2010 · 2:45 pm
an immoderate desire…
The Necklace, by Guy de Maupassant and The Pearls by Isak Dinesen
The Necklace and the Pearls are two short stories published by Pushkin Press in a single volume. The stories are by different authors, were written at different times, there's no link between them – except that each is about how a piece of jewellery transforms the life of the woman who wears it.
First of the two tales is Maupassant's The Necklace, published in 1884 and here translated from the French by Jonathan Sturges. It's the tale of a young woman who, well, she's beautifully described in the opening paragraph by de Maupassant and I can't top that:
She was one of those pretty and charming young girls who sometimes are born, as if by a slip of fate, into a family of clerks. She had no dowry, no expectations, no way of being known, understood, loved, and wedded by any rich and distinguished man; so she let herself be married to a little clerk of the Ministry of Public Instruction.
She is unhappy, as so often in French literature her husband though a good man does not understand her. As the paragraph above shows, this is not a match born of love, on her part in any event ("so she let herself be married to a little clerk", I've read nothing so chilling in any horror novel I've read). She dreams of Oriental Tapestries, dainty cabinets, perfumed reception rooms. Her actual surroundings are humble, something she is all too painfully aware of.
And yet, she and her husband are not poor. They have a servant, they eat comfortably, they are not prosperous but with time their fortunes should improve. Still:
She had no gowns, no jewels, nothing. And she loved nothing but that. She felt made for that. She would have liked so much to please, to be envied, to be charming, to be sought after.
Her husband then expects her to be pleased when he manages to arrange an invitation to a Ministry function, a grand affair to which few clerks are invited. He blanches at her demands for an expensive gown, but sacrifices his own pleasures to afford it. When then she says she cannot go without jewels too, he suggests she borrow some from an old school friend that his wife had stopped seeing since the friend's fortune has long since outstripped her own.
The husband then, cares for the wife. The old friend too is sympathetic, lending her a marvellous diamond necklace for the occasion, and the wife dazzles on the night living for the evening as she feels she ought.
She danced with rapture, with passion, intoxicated by pleasure, forgetting all in the triumph of her beauty, in the glory of her success, in a sort of cloud of happiness composed of all this homage and admiration, and of that sense of triumph which is so sweet to a woman's heart.
And that's all I shall say of the plot, save that matters do not go well thereafter. The story is well written, that opening paragraph alone is wonderful, the problem with it is that from the mid point it went precisely where I expected it to and I wasn't wholly convinced of all the characters' actions. At the end, I felt it was enjoyable, but not great, a story that started powerfully but for me became a touch obvious.
Not that that's put me off de Maupassant. I own a copy of Bel Ami, and once I've read that will almost certainly pick up a copy of Alien Hearts to follow.
So, I was a little disappointed when, some hours later, I read The Pearls. I shouldn't have been.
The Pearls was written in 1942, in English, by Isak Dinesen (of Out of Africa fame). Dinesen was a Danish writer, whose real name was in fact Karen Blixen.
In the Pearls, matters of class are again at the forefront. Here, by way of comparison, is its opening paragraph:
About eighty years ago, a young officer in the guards, the younger son of an old country family, married in Copenhagen the daughter of a rich wool merchant, whose father had been a pedlar and had come to town from Jutland. In those days, such a marriage was an unusual thing, there was much talk of it, and a song was made about it, and sung in the streets.
An old story then, a match between class and money, but here it is soon made clear that for neither is this a cynical exercise. The couple really are in love. The benefits for their families are secondary. (I wonder by the way if there's a significance to the grandfather coming from Jutland there that a local would pick up, but that is lost on me).
Soon after the wedding, having in their lives spent time unchaperoned in each other's company on only three or four occasions, they honeymoon in Norway. The scenery is breathtaking – "wherever she looked there was running water, rushing from the sky-high mountains into the lakes, in silvery rivulets or in roaring falls, rainbow-adorned – it was as if Nature itself was weeping, or laughing aloud." (By the way, having seen pictures of the Norwegian countryside, I suspect this description is no exaggeration.)
As the honeymoon progresses though, the bride – Jensine – becomes disturbed. She notes that her husband appears unconcerned by the dangers the landscape contains, indeed she realises that nothing in his life here or at home gives him any pause – he is fearless. A young woman of prudent stock, this terrifies her, he seems suddenly as an unprotected child. For his own good, he must be taught how to fear.
.. he made fun of the debts he had had, and the trouble he had taken to avoid meeting his tailor. This talk sounded really uncanny to Jensine's ears. For to her, debts were an abomination, and that he should have lived on in the midst of them without anxiety, trusting to fortune to pay up for him, seemed against nature. Still, she reflected, she herself, the rich girl he had married, had come along in time, as the willing tool of fortune, to justify his trust in the eyes of his tailor himself.
He told her of a duel that he had fought with a German officer, and showed her a scar from it.
Debts, duels, again of course class is an issue. The husband lives with the certainties he was raised to, the expectations of his station and of a Guards Officer. Jensine, however, is of a solid mercantile family raised from poverty in living memory. Her attitudes reflect that.
Matters crystallise when Jensine is given a gift by her husband, the one thing he fears for, a string of pearls that belonged to his grandmother and which he therefore cares about over all other material things. When the string breaks, and Jensine has the pearls restrung, the question arises as to whether all the pearls are still there…
Whether they are, whether they aren't, it would spoil the story to disclose. What I can say is that unlike the de Maupassant, this time I didn't know where the story was going, until the end I really had very little idea. For such a short tale (the whole volume combined is under 60 pages) there are a number of unexpected turns in it, and the closing pages had for me a haunting power that I was greatly impressed by and which I'm still thinking about.
So, two stories, both about women, about jewellery, about class and about things it would spoil the tales to disclose. The contrast between the two for me justified their being published together, I thought the Dinesen the more effective of the two but the de Maupassant was well written and the differing approaches to married life, to love, to desire and to the dangers of perhaps getting what one wishes for makes them an enjoyable paired read. This isn't a major Pushkin Press title, but it's an interesting small one, and provided you don't expect too much from it it has its rewards.
On a final note, I will look into Dinesen more after this, a writer I was previously largely unaware of. I do still wonder if it was really necessary for Ibsen to have a walk-on part in her story however…
The Necklace, The Pearls
Filed under 19th Century, Danish fiction, de Maupassant, Guy, Dinesen, Isak, French, Short stories
Tagged as Guy de Maupassant, Pushkin Press


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Q: Is $\mathbb{P}T^*M$ a sub-Riemannian manifold if $M$ is Riemannian? (this question is about a particular aspect of a previous question, which was not duly stressed)
Let $(M,g)$ a Riemannian $n$-dimensional manifold, and let
$$
\widetilde{M}:=\mathbb{P}T^*M
$$
be the $(2n-1)$-dimensional manifold of tangent hyperplanes to $M$.

QUESTION: Is $\widetilde{M}$ a sub-Riemannian manifold in a canonical way?

Remarks & my own partial answer.
Obviously, $\widetilde{M}$ is a contact manifold. Let $H\in T^*M$ be a tangent hyperplane, and denote by $\tau:\widetilde{M}\to M$ the canonical projection: then
$$
C_H:= \tau_\ast^{-1}(H)\subset T_H\widetilde{M}
$$
is the contact plane at $H$.
By definition, $C_H$ fits into the exact sequence
$$
0\to (H^*\otimes H^\perp)\to C_H\stackrel{\tau^*}{\to} H\to 0\, ,
$$
where $H^*\otimes H^\perp$ is the vertical tangent space to $\widetilde{M}$ at $H$. Now both the endpoints are equipped with a metric, essentially obtained from the restricted metric $g|_H$ and its dual (the "twisting line" $H^\perp$ can be normalised and hence neglected), so I figured that I can claim that $C_H$ possesses a unique metric which makes both arrows metric-preserving (when $TM$ is trivial, my reasoning certainly works).
If the answer to my question is positive, I would appreciate a link to the existing literature on the subject.

A: Yes. Each point of the projectivized cotangent bundle is a hyperplane in the underlying manifold, so use the pullback metric on that hyperplane. I don't have a reference, but I think this is probably in Montgomery's nice book. http://www.ams.org/books/surv/091/

A: I also believe that the answer to your question is yes, but I think that things are more complicated than indicated in the answer by @Ben_McKay and in your partial solution. The point is that while you have an exact sequence of the form claimed in your answer, requiring that the two arrows are metric does not pin down an inner product on the middle term. Essentially, the inner products which have this property are parametrized by all splittings of the sequence. (A metric gives a splitting via mapping the quotient back to the orthocomplement of the subspace and a splitting gives a metric by declaring the subspace and the image of the split to be orthogonal to each other.) You can use the Levi-Civita connection to split the corresponding sequence on the level of $TT^*M$ and then prove that this descends to the projectivization.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
https://sputniknews.com/20110503/163827696.html
Canadian observers begin flights over Russia under Open Skies Treaty
A group of Canadian observers will begin a series of inspection flights over Russian territory under the Open Skies Treaty on Tuesday, a spokesman for the... 03.05.2011, Sputnik International
military & intelligence, news, world, russia
A group of Canadian observers will begin a series of inspection flights over Russian territory under the Open Skies Treaty on Tuesday, a spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry said.
"The flights will be along the route coordinated earlier with Russian specialists, who will be on board of the aircraft monitoring implementation of agreements on the use of technical equipment for the observation," the spokesman said.
The C-130 Hercules aircraft being used was earlier approved and certified by international experts and specialists, including from Russia.
The Open Skies Treaty, signed in 1992 at the initiative of U.S. President George H.W. Bush, established a regime of unarmed aerial observation flights over the territories of its 34 member states to promote openness and the transparency of military forces and activities.
The treaty entered into force on January 1, 2002 and its regime covers the national territories (land, islands, and internal and territorial waters) of all the treaty signatory states. It is an important element of the European security structure.
MOSCOW, May 3 (RIA Novosti)


"I have a dream..." | Hire Ventures, Inc.
Monday, January 21, 2019 we celebrate MLK Day. Every year, I think about what this day means, to some it's just a day off school. Others may work for an organization that includes MLK as a company paid holiday. To me, it's so much more than a national holiday, it's a day that I try to reflect upon as it is the root of my core beliefs and what led me to my field of human resources.
We know that Martin Luther King Jr. led the nonviolent civil rights movement and made dramatic improvements possible during his life. However this legacy he left has impacted us in ways you may not realize, he has forever left a legacy that goes far beyond his life and assassination 50 years ago.
As the president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, his initiatives helped form the civil rights movement. He led massive nonviolent protests in the '60s throughout the South into DC & Chicago. These protests brought light to discriminatory hiring practices; segregated public places, restrooms and public housing; as well as denial of voting rights and so many more inequalities.
If you haven't recently listened to the "I have a Dream" address that King delivered back in 1963 at the great march in Washington for jobs and freedom, now is a great time, given all our country is going through, the divisions among us and the inequalities still happening today.
King's influence on civil rights did not end with his death. His legacy has been the enactment of numerous statutes prohibiting discrimination in the workplace, the issuance of Supreme Court decisions furthering the civil rights cause and the advancement of all people.
From SHRM, I found the following timeline which is significant as employer look at the progression of civil rights, and the reach far beyond what Mr. King may have envisioned back in 1957. This timeline outlines some of the notable milestones for workplaces around the country in the long, ongoing struggle for equal rights.


text:
Home is where the hurt is
Indiana has always used Assembly Hall to its advantage. What happens when that vanishes?
By Ben Raphel@VT_Ben Jan 26, 2019, 10:38am EST
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Last night, Gus Johnson began the FS1 broadcast saying that they were live from "The Carnegie Hall of College Basketball," better known to IU fans as Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall.
But for most of the game, there wasn't much to sing about.
Last night's 69-46 loss to Michigan was as devastating as they come, but the fact that it happened at home — the first home game in 11 days and only the second one since January 3 — really makes the loss sting. And the 17-0 start for the Wolverines felt like karmic payback for IU's 28-0 run in Crisler three years ago.
Throughout its existence, Assembly Hall has always been a neutralizing factor for Indiana. A home court advantage that makes even the toughest opponents seem beatable. So while Michigan was a top-5 opponent and I wasn't at all optimistic beforehand, there was the glimmer of hope that Assembly Hall's home court advantage would aid Indiana, as it had many times before.
And to be fair, the crowd did show up to this one. Jim Delany's wheeling and dealing has led to unusual scheduling quirks like last night's 6:30pm start time, which makes for a new experience for longtime fans. So this one isn't on the crowd, or the students, or any other spectators last night.
It's on the team.
Indiana's performances at Assembly Hall have been what's made or broken this team in past years. In 2016, the Hoosiers went undefeated in Bloomington, setting up a Big Ten title run. The previous year, however, an ugly home loss to Iowa exemplified the frustrations throughout the season. In Crean's final season, the Hoosiers lost a mid-February home game to Michigan in which they never really had a chance. And of course last season, there were the pair of losses at home to Indiana State and Fort Wayne.
But even a close loss to a good team in some of the tougher years for IU hoops has been encouraging. Last season, the Hoosiers played Duke close in Assembly Hall but couldn't quite pull it off. Last season also featured a heartbreaker to Michigan State at home. Even after the aforementioned Iowa game in 2015, IU pulled it together for the last game of the season but still left with a heartbreaking loss — again to Michigan State.
So, that's what makes the loss last night to Michigan — and the loss earlier this month to Nebraska, for that matter — so discouraging. These weren't wire to wire games where the Hoosiers had a legitimate chance of winning. In both games, Indiana started out slow, letting the opponents build a comfortable lead on its own home court. And from there, it never really was a contest. And you can't really make it one, when you only score 51 and 46 points in the last two home games, respectively.
Indiana might not be a fixable team right now. These six losses have revealed a lot of issues with what was once a top-25 team, and the Hoosiers are on the verge of being knocked out of tournament contention, despite the strong early Marquette and Louisville victories last season. But the lack of fight in front of the home crowd might be the most distressing aspect of all, especially in a conference where home court advantage has always been a huge part of the equation of who wins the Big Ten title.
The Hoosiers have two more games on the road next week, then will finish with six of their final nine games at Assembly Hall. If they can't get up for these home games, then what will they get up for?


Here's how to create the most productive 15 minutes in your day.
It doesn't matter when or where—you just need 15 minutes of completely uninterrupted time.
No shuffling papers or pounding out emails. Go for quality. Follow the Stephen Covey model and choose "Quadrant II" activities (important but not urgent). Find something that will make a real impact but where no one has a gun to your head to get it done.
You will find that these 15-minute blocksof time are incredibly powerful and exceedingly productive. In fact, you will feel amazed at how much you get accomplished.


Radio Laurier's After Class is back in full force. DJ Deej and DJ S-Goods dropped bangers of all sorts, from Frank Walker's Frosh 2015 mix, to an unreal "Touch It" remix by Hannah Wants. They are looking to return the show to its former glory, filled with wild new stories and fresh tracks that help listeners to tune out class, and just turn up.
Frosh Week turned fearful this year with BB gun incidents resulting in serious injury, and an arsonist's attack on the Albert St. Dollarama. One of the BB gun victims lost her eye, and has since had it replaced with a glass one. The plaza with the Dollarama remained closed until yesterday morning, and the damage that the store itself sustained was pretty heavy. There is still no word yet on when the store itself will re-open.
On a lighter note, the popular smartphone app Snapchat has undergone a complete makeover. Selfie game has been made even stronger; you can take photos and videos using a series of filters that can age you, make you look demonic, or vom rainbows… there is something for everyone. Users also have the option of purchasing packages to replay snaps up to 20 times. Whatever floats your boat, amirite?


Coconut Cinnamon Granola | Naturally.
I recently realized how lackadaisical I have gotten on the food I eat. When I lost weight my two main breakfast were egg whites or yogurt with granola and honestly, they always kept me going. Then I started to loose my taste for them and some how recently, I've started eating cereal again- almost everyday.
What really got me was when I saw an article about how most "natural" cereals contain GMOs. I've tried for awhile now to reduce the amount of highly-processed foods I eat and for me this was kind of a wake-up call that I've stopped paying attention and if it's labeled "natural" (from a companies I like to eat,like Kashi), I assume it's fine.
So, I'm taking my food back and I told myself that I was going to make granola to replace my cereal this week.
I've been infatuated with coconut oil and from there I decided to base my granola recipe. I also purchased from ground flax seed in hopes that it would help bind the granola together (I'm not sure how this turned out- more experimenting is needed).
In a large bowl stir all the dry ingredients together except the cinnamon. In a small pan over medium-low heat, whisk together agave, coconut butter (should be warmed until liquid), coconut milk, and cinnamon. Once mixture is hot (but before it boils) pour over dry ingredients and stir until everything is covered.
Cover a sheet tray with parchment paper and pour out granola. Pat granola down into a cohesive square , sprinkle with sucanat, and place in oven. Bake for 15 minutes, remove from oven and with a spatula, flip granola (stirring loosens any chunks that may be forming.) Place back in the oven and bake for another 10-15 minutes and repeat the flip. Finally, bake for another 5-10 minutes until granola is browned and dried out. Remove from the oven and let cool. Store in an airtight container.
I'm fighting a lot of those little things that creep back in too. Funny how that happens. The granola looks amazing and I love making my own granola! I'll save the recipe 🙂 Thank you for sharing.
What a cool combo of flavors! And looks super healthy!
I LOVE YOUR STUFF! Thank you for all your hard work! I am amazed at how healthy, yet quick your recipes are, and with three kids, a farm, and a job…I am thankful!
As for your diet coke…my way of kicking the soda habit came with brewing my own Kombucha…dont beleive the bunk on the internet from all the sceptics…I have been brewing…in my clean kitchen…for a year. My kids drink it and my husband LOVES it! I will be glad to share info with anyone who is interested:) thanks again!!
I went to the store and bought everything except the coconut butter I cant find it! Please Help!


Jamie McLeod-Skinner, of Terrebonne, has won the Democratic primary for the right to run against 10-term U.S. Rep. Greg Walden, R-Hood River, according to preliminary returns.
McLeod-Skinner held nearly a 2-to-1 margin late Tuesday night over Jennifer Neahring, of Bend. Jim Crary, the 2016 Democratic primary winner, was in third.
Walden was easily winning the Republican primary. Mark Roberts ran unopposed for the Independent Party nomination.
Calling herself a "rural Democrat," McLeod-Skinner was one of the most active of the seven Democrats in the race, criss-crossing the state with her 2-year-old Doberman, Moshi, riding along in her blue Jeep Wrangler with a mini-trailer hitched to the back.
Walden could not be reached for comment.
Democrats will kick off their campaign against Walden on Wednesday with a noon rally in front of his office in downtown Bend.
Democrats have an uphill fight in the race. Walden has won by no less than 60 percent in his re-election bids. The district has only been represented by a Democrat twice since it was created in the 19th century. According to several national political forecasts, the district is considered a "safe Republican" seat. It is the only one of five congressional districts in Oregon represented by a Republican.
Walden has raised $3.6 million while McLeod-Skinner raised under $150,000. Whether Democrats will pump significant resources into McLeod-Skinner's campaign remains to be seen.
Democrats are hoping they can add to several upsets in special elections of districts or states considered Republican strongholds.
The 2nd Congressional District is one of the largest in the country, covering more territory than any state east of the Mississippi River. The district includes all of Eastern and Central Oregon, and much of the southern part of the state.
Democrats were energized by Walden's lead role in several controversial actions by Congress. As chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Walden dealt with the tax cuts that Trump signed into law, the end to net neutrality and attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Walden was also active in discussions to reduce the size of the Cascades-Siskiyou National Monument.
The Democratic primary race was a mostly cordial contest with candidates focused on how to beat Walden instead of beating up on each other.