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Eviction moratorium in the VIII. district – A reply from The City is for all to mayor Máté Kocsis
A Város Mindenkié csoport
The city is for all welcomes the announcement of the mayor of the VIII. district of Budapest, Máté Kocsis made in front of the municipal assembly about suspending the evictions in the district and ordering the municipal government to review the processes leading to evictions. In the last months a wave of evictions never seen before started in the district. Dozens of families were evicted by the bailiffs of the municipality, many others left their apartments willingly after receiving the evictions notice. There are a number of evictions scheduled until the 1st of December, the start of the winter evictions moratorium. After the announcement of the mayor, many families can heave a sigh of relief knowing that they will have a roof over their heads during the winter.
The announcement and change of course by the mayor can mostly be attributed to the residents facing eviction in the last weeks, who, through different ways dared to defy the will of the local government. There were people who had the courage to share their views with the public, many took part in demonstrations against the evictions and have shown solidarity with the activists trying to stop evictions by forming human chains at the scene. Many residents of the VIII district attended the protest organized by the City is for all and the Hungarian Network against Poverty last Saturday, many of whom have lost their homes, and many, who's evictions have been scheduled for the following week. There is a sense of desperation and rightful anger in the parts of the district affected by the wave of evictions ordered by the local government.
But the mayor is not honest when he makes the municipal bureaucracy responsible for the local resistance against evictions, when in fact the bureaucracy is executing a clear political will.
As we wrote earlier, behind the measures of the local government one can discover the intention of changing the structure of resident's in the district. Besides many media appearances of the mayor one can derive this conclusion also from the fact that in the last phase of the Magdolna city renewal program the the local government chose the participating houses based on the high numbers of residents with outstanding rent payments, but did not make sure that the residents can stay in their rented apartments after the renovations. Thus, not surprisingly, after the renovations the evictions started. But the citizens of the VIII. district, as all citizens, need proper housing. The renewal of an area cannot lead to the persecution of the poorer citizens.
But if this happens, the local decision makers have to bare the political consequences of dispossessing the citizens. The decision of the mayor make it possible for the local government to change course from its inhuman practice and dedicate its housing resources and policy to the service of its citizens.
A responsible housing policy should consist of
Renting out the empty apartments in owned by the local government, on a subsidized, reduced price (not on market price) to citizens chosen through a tender (not assigning them in an untransparent manner)
Using the Eu funds allocated for urban rehabilitation in a manner that helps the most needy in improving their housing conditions
Providing substantive subsidies for housing
Expanding the range of people eligible for social housing
Creating a social housing agency
And in general, recognising that housing problems pushing the residents of the district into deeper and deeper poverty cannot be solved with evictions.
For this a responsible housing policy is needed, which obviously cannot stop at the border of the district. We hope that mayor Máté Kocsis, who also serves as the head of the ruling party Fidesz in Budapest and is the part's director of communications will recognise the depth of the problem caused by housing poverty and the need for the missing political answers to the problem.
Today's decision gave many families struggling for a long time a pause to take a breath, yet we should not forget that delaying evictions is not a permanent solution. We should also keep in mind that the municipal government of Józsefváros evicted more than 300 families in the last 18 months according to their own data. If the mayor is serious about his announcement made yesterday, then these families should also receive some compensations, since they are the victims of the same process that has now been temporarily halted.
Máté Kocsi, as the mayor of the 8th district should represent all residents of the district, not only those deemed worthy based on some vaguely defined criteria. The residents cannot get an appointment with the mayor and the municipal representatives are not willing to consult the people who voted for them. We think this is unacceptable. It is the responsibility of the mayor to consult with the residents affected in order to assess the housing situation in the district. The City is for all thus have sent a letter to the municipal government of Józsefváros: we are initiating a consultation between the residents affected by evictions, the mayor and the representatives of AVM.
józsefváros

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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As far as Hamas is concerned, any peace deal in the ongoing Gaza conflict would have to lift the economic blockade that has largely cut off Gaza and its people from the rest of the world. CBS News correspondent Barry Petersen spoke to people there.
When people returned to neighborhoods today where Israelis said their offensive is done, most found little to save from war's destruction. Israel cut off cement during its eight year blockade, saying it was being used not to build a better life but Hamas tunnels to attack Israel.
But no cement, according to American educated engineer Mustafa El Hawi, means nothing gets rebuilt.
"Cement is the basic material," he said. "In Gaza cement is the key for every construction. Homes, mosques, schools."
So is Gaza's lone power plant gone. With help from the outside world, it might be repaired in months. Without help, it may never work again.
And without light many of Gaza's 1.8 million people will live in a modern day dark ages.
When talking about what's been destroyed, you are also takling about food. One facility used to produce cheese, yogurt and milk. Now it's gone.
Chicken farmer Hussein Al-Suwari opened stall and sold out in two hours. He had almost no chickens because his farm was destroyed by an air strike.
We visited his home that he opened to 60 relatives and neighbors who lost theirs. As many as 12 now sleep in the bedrooms. In living rooms, people crowded around the one piece of furniture -- a table.
"They are all homeless," he said. "I can't let them live on the streets.
Tonight, 60 people will make a meal from beans, a can of meat, cheese, some tomatoes. There is not much else because of the war and the blockade. So they survive the only way they have left -- by having and helping each other.


(from Lifetime's press release, December 2012) Golden Globe(R) and Emmy(R) Award nominee Rob Lowe stars in the Lifetime Original Movie Prosecuting Casey Anthony, which will make its world premiere on Saturday, January 19, at 8:00pm ET/PT. In the gripping film, Lowe portrays Jeff Ashton, the Florida prosecutor in last year's controversial Caylee Anthony murder trial, and author (with Lisa Pulitzer) of the best-selling book Imperfect Justice: Prosecuting Casey Anthony, upon which the movie is based. Prosecuting Casey Anthony reveals Ashton's inside story of the true crime drama that captivated and then shocked the nation when Caylee Anthony's mother, Casey, was acquitted of killing her daughter, despite what many thought to be overwhelming evidence of guilt. But much of that "evidence" had nothing to do with direct evidence of guilt, but rather her behavior in the weeks between the disappearance of Caylee and Casey's mother's call to the police.


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The Lord of the Dance: The Elevator, #3
By Sam Kates
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Sam Kates
Face your demons. Save humankind.
A future hangs in the balance. Many futures.
Only one person has the power to prevent it all unravelling and he can't do it alone. Aided by companions old and new, Jack returns to the near shore. Foes must be faced, fears conquered.
But for humanity to prevail, the choreographer of chaos must also be vanquished. Insanity and depravity overcome. The Lord of the Dance lies in wait…
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The Elevator: Book One: The Elevator, #1 by Sam Kates
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Occult & Supernatural
The Lord of the Dance - Sam Kates
No sober man dances,
unless he happens to be mad.
—Marcus Tullius Cicero (Pro Murena)
Part 1: Return to Oz
Time can mellow a man. Lend him fresh perspective. Smoothe out the kinks in his character, while adding wrinkles of the physical kind.
Fatherhood, too. What a life-changer, that is. One moment you've nothing of more import to concern you than how to pay your rent, the next you find yourself cradling a fragile bundle of new life, gazing down into freshly minted eyes, which seem to stare directly into your soul as if to say, Okay, buster, you're my dad, well I guess you don't get to choose your sire so I'm stuck with you for good or ill and I'm lying here 'cause I can't do much else 'cept poop and wail, and I see you for all your frailties and flaws and, man, I don't like what I see but, like I said, I'm stuck with you and you with me so we'd both better get used to the idea and make the best of it, right? and—kaboom!—suddenly you're responsible for the life of another person, one who can't do the simplest things like wipe the dribble from his chin, much less watch telly or accompany you for a pint down the pub, and you're not ready for the unbearable weight of that responsibility and never will be.
God knows, you try, but there's a nagging doubt in the back of your mind that you'll never be good enough, will never measure up to the other dads who take their kids to Little League—what a peculiarly American pastime—that you'll forever be a disappointment.
And there's always that other thing, that shifting thing of shadow, waiting to clutch you in its icy tentacles of despair, engulf you in a cloud of melancholy, and you grow so powerless you can't feel the sense of impotence in which you're floundering.
It's then, when the darkness is about to suck you towards its limitless, spiralling depths that you turn to...
No. Not yet. I'm too easily side-tracked. I was talking about how time can alter a man. On the inside, as well as the more obvious external changes.
In most cases, anyway.
Twenty-three years had passed since a young man of around twenty, six years or so my junior, whom I barely knew, had flipped me the finger from the deck of a raft, grinned and disappeared into a bank of fog. Twenty-three years, during which I'd become padded with accumulated flab, creased with lines of care, begun to turn grey like a fading photograph.
Jack hadn't aged a day.
The fog closed around us like a damp blanket, muffling the gloopy drips of water falling from the chain. An unpleasant, waxy taste coated my lips.
Assuming we come out of this fog sooner or later, I said, my voice sounding like I was talking into a pillow, what d'you think awaits us on the other side?
Kim glanced at me from eyes wide with apprehension, but she didn't reply. Her bottom lip was tucked between her teeth in a gesture of worry I knew well.
Despite the syrupy consistency of the river and the size of the raft upon which we stood—large enough to hold up to twenty people at a push, I reckoned—the effort required to haul us hand-over-hand with the chain was not onerous, even for someone as out of shape as me. The thick hide gauntlets I wore enabled a sure grip on the uncorroded metal links and the raft moved across the surface like an oiled toboggan on ice.
Of course, when we'd stepped aboard she'd made to pick up the gauntlets and I'd had to move quickly to grab them first. Possesses a great deal of strength does that woman, physical as well as mental, and she'd have had little trouble pulling us across the river, but I still retain a flicker of pride. Can't have your woman do everything, can you?
My woman. Maybe once, before the drinking grew out of hand, but she had been no one's woman, except her own and her son's, for many years.
The air didn't appear as consistently grey ahead. I continued to haul steadily on the chain and narrowed my eyes against the increasing brightness.
We're coming out of it, I muttered.
Another scared glance from Kim. Scared but removed. There was a time she might have grasped my hand or stood nearer for the comfort being close to another can bring, but I struggle to be strong for myself, let alone her, and she remained standing yards from me, arms hugging herself the only concession to fear.
The fog continued to thin, grew misty, became infused with yellow warmth. A few more hauls on the chain and we broke into clear air. I squinted against the glare and blinked to try to see ahead.
The bank of the river stood maybe fifty yards away. Not that easy to be sure with the eyesight of a forty-nine-year-old who's lost his spectacles, but it looked as though the chain led to another jetty like the one from which we'd embarked. Beyond that I could make out little more than an impression of fields and forests, perhaps distant mountains. A sharp smell, like that of a school chemistry lab, arose from the river.
Kim still hadn't spoken. She peered at the land ahead, one hand raised to shield her eyes from the sun.
The only sound was the gurgling of water beneath the raft.
People born and bred in the United States say things like 'gotten' and 'off of' (I know The Stones did it in Get Off of My Cloud but, hey, that's rock 'n' roll). They say 'erbs' where we Brits would pronounce the aitch and, speaking of herbs, what's with their pronunciation of basil? They make it sound like an exotic colour or a term used in heraldry, rather than a simple accompaniment to pasta. And their spellings are weird; it took me years to realise that their aluminum is the same thing as our aluminium. Course, Kim says we are the weird ones.
Come on, Matt, she'll say, 'disorientate'? Why the extra syllable when 'disorient' does the job perfectly well?
Not that I'll ever admit it to her, but I suppose she has a point.
I find the differences between our use of the same language less weird after being immersed in American culture for the past eighteen years. Shoot (see what I did there?), I use the occasional American idiom myself and my accent probably contains an American twang. I call a lift an elevator, except for the one we rode in in Claridge House all those years ago. That one I refer to as the Elevator.
We moved to the States two years after the wedding. It had been a simple affair; well, I could hardly expect my folks to fork out thousands after I bailed out of uni after barely a term and used what was left of the money they'd saved to help me survive the first year to pay a deposit on a flat twenty miles from home.
Despite Mum's failing health, both my parents attended the ceremony. My frosty relationship with my father had thawed somewhat with Kim's help, and his preoccupation with Mum meant a blessed minimum of disapproving glances as I ordered the next drink.
When Mum lost her fight to the big C six months later, he withdrew into himself, becoming a shadow of the forceful character who'd tried his best to mould a man out of his son when he didn't have the best raw materials to work with. Within another year, I watched dry-eyed beside my sobbing sister his coffin sink into the recess at the crematorium when the vicar pressed the button during the Committal. One thought consoled me: at least I could no longer be a disappointment to him.
Of course, there are always other people to disappoint.
Kim made a noise, a grunt of surprise, and I paused hauling on the chain to look at her.
The passing years had served her well. She had added a few pounds to an already full figure, but conveyed an impression of voluptuousness rather than plumpness. The generally drier and warmer Connecticut summers suited her better than the damp UK. In her early fifties, she didn't attempt to conceal, other than with the lightest touches of cosmetics, the lines which crinkled the edges of her eyes and mouth when she smiled or frowned. They lent her a sense of grace.
She was frowning at me now.
There are people over there, Matt, she said in a hushed tone. A lot of people.
Since emerging from the fog bank, I had probably halved the remaining gap to the far shore. But one glance was enough to know that the distance remained too great for my myopic eyes to make out details like people.
Kim shrugged. Twenty? Thirty? Can't tell at this range.
But you're sure they're people?
The corner of her mouth twitched as it always did when she thought I was doubting her. I'm sure. The edge to her tone betrayed more than mere apprehension.
Sorry, sorry, I muttered. What are we going to do?
Kim's frown deepened as if I was being stupid. Don't know why that would cause her to frown; she should be used to it by now.
We either return from where we've been, she said, with a brief inclination of her head to the bank of fog, or we continue to the other side and find out what welcome awaits. We can't stay here: we have no food or water and the stink of chemicals is making my eyes smart. Don't see we have any other choices.
"We can't go back. He might be waiting for us. The quiver in my voice was unavoidable and I didn't make any effort to hide it. Kim didn't regard the monk with quite the same level of terror that I did, but she hadn't seen behind his mask; she hadn't seen the Lord of the Dance. Shall we go on then?"
Like I said, sugar, we are short on alternatives.
Sugar. I hated it when she called me that or honey or sweetpea. She reserved these terms of address for people whom she held in contempt. She had called Jack something similar on the first occasion we'd met. Although we worked in the same building, I had never noticed Kim until she stepped into the Elevator on that fateful morning as I willed the bloody contraption to get moving to take me to the Sixth Floor and much-needed coffee. Despite my hangover, I'd been impressed at the sassy way she'd dealt with Jack's snide remarks about her accent.
Despising myself a little more, if that was possible, I allowed my expression to reveal hurt, but she had already turned away to stare at the river bank. Had already dismissed me.
I grabbed the chain and began to haul on it once more.
The distance halved again and I began to make out details of what lay beyond the jetty. Grassland led to a thickly wooded area in the middle distance and a ring of purple-tinged mountains formed the backdrop. But my gaze was drawn to the people.
Two male figures stood facing us on the jetty; the nearest one appeared to be holding some kind of metallic briefcase. Behind them was a clutch of people also staring our way. Around thirty of them, I estimated.
I hauled on the chain—like Kim said, what other choice did we have than to proceed?—until the remaining distance to the jetty was only a few yards. I let the chain fall from my hands and tugged off the gauntlets, dropping them to the deck. My movements had become automatic, unthinking, for my thoughts were wholly occupied by the man holding the briefcase.
More boy than man, complete with a smattering of rash on cheeks and nose, a leftover of recent teenage acne. A feeling of guilt flickered as I recalled referring to him privately as Rudolph before I'd learned his name, but a sense of wonder at seeing him again after all these years, looking exactly as I remembered him down to the scruffy shirt and chinos, snuffed it out.
The raft's momentum carried it to the jetty where it bumped gently to a halt.
Jack? I said. Is that you?
The man narrowed his eyes and peered at me closely. I had to resist the urge to squirm under his inspection for while he stood before me as the same spotty twenty-year-old I'd last seen disappearing into a bank of fog, I had added twenty-three years of not-so-gracious living to the clock.
At last he spoke. Matt?
I nodded and gestured to my companion. And you remember Kim?
Kim's pregnancy proceeded smoothly; no complications or scares along the way. She surprised me by not wanting to know the sex of the child in advance, which was quite out of character for my pragmatic American bride.
Let it be a surprise, she said. More fun that way.
Male, female, it didn't make much difference to me. All I hoped was that it was emphatically one thing or another. I did, however, care about naming the baby when it turned out to be a boy.
We have to call him Jack, I said to Kim as she lay in bed in the Maternity Unit, the twelve-hour-old babe suckling at her breast.
She frowned. Her weariness made her appear more severe than she perhaps intended. You said that when you first met him you thought he was a... let's see how you put it, oh yeah, 'a snivelling toe-jam'.
"Toe rag."
Oh, that's much better, then. A fine basis on which to name our son.
But look what he did. He probably saved our lives.
Yes, he probably did. She considered for a moment. I want to name him for my mom's father.
In the end, we compromised. We still could, back then. Our son was named Samuel Jack Tyler-Grayson. Someone else for me to disappoint.
Never mind that we had aged twenty-three years while he hadn't aged a day; never mind that he was gawping at us as if wondering what the heck had happened to us, and that we gawped back wondering why nothing appeared to have happened to him; never mind the clutch of strangers watching us who looked like extras from BBC period dramas. Only one thing at that moment seemed vitally important to my mind and that was to tell him.
I blurted it out. We named our son after you.
He looked from me to Kim and back again, his brow so creased his eyes had become slits. His knuckles grew whiter where they clutched the metallic case as if it was some form of crutch. What? he managed.
Uh, we named our son after you, I repeated, though it sounded lame and irrelevant the second time. He's, er, in high school.
"You
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I'm a professional coder who also loves to play video and board games in my spare time. I also love all things geek. This website is a repository of projects, ideas and general riff-raff, which can be browsed via the links above. Hope you like something in here!


So much has transpired in the nearly 2 1/2 years since Maria Sharapova and Justine Henin last played each other.
Sharapova needed right shoulder surgery and was off the tour for 10 months, then missed time with a right elbow injury. Henin abruptly announced her retirement and stayed away for 20 months, then returned, happier off the court and, so far, almost as good on it.
The two former No. 1s, owners of a combined 10 Grand Slam titles, set up an attention-worthy showdown in the French Open�s third round today by wrapping up matter-of-fact victories on a sun-soaked, busy day yesterday.
Relentless rain Thursday created a backlog of matches, meaning that nearly every big name in tennis was swinging a racket somewhere around Roland Garros a day later. Both Williams sisters, Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, Andy Murray, Lleyton Hewitt � all played and won.
The only upset of real significance came when defending champion Svetlana Kuznetsova lost, 6-3, 2-6, 6-4, to 30th-seeded Maria Kirilenko in a third-round match that lasted nearly 2 1/2 hours. Even that wasn�t exactly shocking when you consider Kirilenko already beat Kuznetsova on clay in Rome this month and knocked out Sharapova at the Australian Open in January. Plus, Kuznetsova arrived in Paris with a losing record this year and barely eked through the second round by saving four match points.
With so many other top players still around, some must start facing each other. Four-time French Open champion Nadal meets past Wimbledon and U.S. Open winner Hewitt today. That is scheduled to be followed in the main stadium by Sharapova vs. Henin, two women with decidedly different ways of looking at their most recent encounter � a straight-sets win by Sharapova in the 2008 Australian Open quarterfinals.
It turned out to be Henin�s last Grand Slam match before her hiatus.
Like Henin�s second-round match, Sharapova�s was halted in the second set because of darkness Thursday night. Like Henin, Sharapova wasn�t challenged much in a 6-3, 6-3 victory, hers coming against 71st-ranked Kirsten Flipkens of Belgium.
Clay has never been the 6-foot-2 Sharapova�s preferred surface. Only once has she been as far as the semifinals in seven previous trips to the French Open, while she won each of the other Grand Slam tournaments.
The 5-foot-5 3/4 Henin, in contrast, excels at Roland Garros, where she has earned four of her seven major titles.


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Hainer Hill (born Heinrich Hill; 28 July 191320 August 2001) was a German scenic designer, costume designer, painter, graphic artist and theatre photographer who was based in Berlin and worked internationally. After studying painting in Frankfurt, he worked at the Oper Frankfurt, assisting Caspar Neher. Together they moved to Brecht's Berliner Ensemble where Hill created an iconic stage for Mutter Courage and took hundreds of scene photographs now archived at the Akademie der Künste. When the Berlin Wall was erected, Hill, who lived in the West and had worked in the East, began to work freelance, including at the Royal Opera House. In 1966 he became director of scenery (Ausstattunggsleiter) at Opernhaus Dortmund, and there he created the stage for the world premiere of Eli by Walter Steffens, which was followed by 45 other productions. Hill is best remembered for his focus on light projection.

Life and work

1913–1945
Born in Eberstadt (now part of Darmstadt), he was called Hainer at an early age. His mother was a tailor and his father a decoration painter. Beginning in 1927, following elementary school, Hill was trained as a house painter. Simultaneously, he took a course in decoration painting at the Städtischen Gewerbeschule in Darmstadt. Starting in 1931, he continued his education at the Staatsschule für Kunst und Handwerk, studying painting under  Richard Throll. He received his diploma in May 1935. While at university, he created many watercolours, drawings, and oil paintings. He then worked as an assistant to Ludwig Sievert, the chief scenic designer at the Städtische Bühnen Frankfurt. In December 1935, with a scholarship, he was a 'master student' () of Franz Karl Delavilla at Städel'sche Kunstschule. Hill's focus became the use of lighting, and its influence on the space on stage and its relation to the dynamic of music. At the Oper Frankfurt, he met the designer Caspar Neher, and made projections realising Neher's ideas, for projects in Frankfurt, later also in Berlin, Darmstadt, Hamburg, Glyndebourne, Berlin and Vienna, for 34 productions between 1936 and 1951.

1945–1961
After World War II, Hill worked as scenic designer at the Städtische Bühnen Gera and then at the , where he met Bertolt Brecht in 1950. He followed him to Berlin, working until 1953 as scenic designer and assistant director, with Brecht, Therese Giehse, Benno Besson and Egon Monk. He introduced the technique of projections, which impressed the critic Friedrich Luft and the playwright Heiner Müller.  He also turned to theatre photography, producing hundreds of photographs of scenes from such Berliner Ensemble plays as Mutter Courage, Urfaust, Dom Juan, Die Gewehre der Frau Carrar and Der Kaukasische Kreidekreis. He worked as a guest at the Schillertheater, the Komische Oper Berlin, the Hamburg State Opera and again in Frankfurt. From 1953, he was chief scenic, light and costumes designer (Ausstattungsleiter) at the Staatsoper Berlin, which then played at the Admiralspalast. He moved to West-Berlin in 1954, which made later international work possible. When the opera house Unter den Linden was reopened, he designed the stage for Alban Berg's Wozzeck, played on 14 December 1955, conducted by Johannes Schüler and staged by Werner Kelch, which became an unexpected success. He created designs for Elektra by Richard Strauss, Gluck's Orpheus und Eurydike, Borodin's Fürst Igor, Egk's Der Revisor, Jean Kurt Forest's Tai Yang erwacht and Mussorgski's Chowanschtschina.  In 1959, Hill held a Master class for projection painting at the Bayreuth Festival. He designed the set for the first scenic presentation of Bach's St Matthew Passion in Europe at the Teatro Massimo in Palermo, conducted by Hermann Scherchen

1961–2001
The building of the Berlin Wall in 1961 caused a break in his career. As all positions in West Berlin were taken, he began to work freelance in the world, carrying a mobile workshop. In 1961 he designed for Wagner Der Ring des Nibelungen at the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma, well received by the press. In 1962 he was a guest at the Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe, and received a contract the following year. He created, beginning with Tchaikovsky's Pique Dame, scenes for 27 plays and operas. In 1963, he designed stage and costumes for Wagner's Lohengrin at the Royal Opera House in London, conducted by Otto Klemperer, with Sandor Konya in the title role and Régine Crespin as Elsa. In 1966 when the new Opernhaus Dortmund opened, he designed the stage for Hindemith's Mathis der Maler, conducted by Hans Swarowsky. He remained at the house from 1967 to 1976 as Ausstattungsleiter and Erster Bühnenbildner, working with conductors Wilhelm Schüchter, Werner Egk, Hans Wallat and Marek Janowski, and directors Hans Hartleb, Paul Hager,  and Karl Paryla. Among his 45 projects there, he designed the stage for the world premiere of Eli by Walter Steffens.  His last major project was a collaboration with Harry Buckwitz in 1977 at the Schauspielhaus Zürich Schweyk im Zweiten Weltkrieg, with Helmut Lohner and Christiane Hörbiger in the leading roles. He then turned to designs and drawings.

Hill died on 20 August 2001 in Karlsruhe. His gravestone shows his motto: "Die Seele des Bühnenraums ist das Licht. Es gibt der Phantasie des Betrachters die notwendige Orientierung" ("The lighting is the soul of the stage. From it, the imagination of the audience gets the orientation it needs".) His estate is held at three locations, by Deutsches Theatermuseum, in the , and in the , especially his photographs of Brecht's performances with the Berliner Ensemble.

Further reading

References

External links

 Hainer-Hill-Archiv in
 Nachlass Hainer Hill (1913-2001): Korrespondenz, Fotos, Zeichnungen (Bestand) (in German) deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de
 Hainer Hill: Bühnenbilder: 22.9 - 3.11.72 ; Entwürfe, Skizzen, Figurinen, Modelle, Fotos ; Ausstellung im Theater d. Stadt Marl (catalogue, in German)

German scenic designers
German costume designers
20th-century German painters
20th-century German male artists
20th-century German printmakers
20th-century German photographers
Theatrical photographers
1913 births
2001 deaths

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Below are a few ideas we've learned along the way that might help you plan for the biggest party of your life.
Decide early on whether you want a quieter morning of getting ready alone; getting ready with just a couple of your closest friends; or having a room full of people around. Each arrangement provides a very different energy and environment. And it's important to know ahead of time how your own demeanor and personal needs will mix with each situation.
One of the most important parts of your wedding day is taking the time to make creative portraits of the two of you. Make sure to carve out 30 minutes to an hour for this. We will guide you through everything, but it's important to remember these portraits require patience and tenacity, and occasionally an adventurous endeavor or two.
Before you book your church, please be sure to ask whether photography is allowed and if there are any restrictions. We are happy to work with anything, but it's important for your own peace of mind to have realistic expectations in advance.


text:
Q: SSE2 intrinsics: access memory directly Many SSE instructions allow the source operand to be a 16-byte aligned memory address. For example, the various (un)pack instructions. PUNCKLBW has the following signature:

PUNPCKLBW xmm1, xmm2/m128

Now this doesn't seem to be possible at all with intrinsics. It looks like it's mandatory to use _mm_load* intrinsics to read anything in memory. This is the intrinsic for PUNPCKLBW:

__m128i _mm_unpacklo_epi8 (__m128i a, __m128i b);

(As far as I know, the __m128i type always refers to an XMM register.)
Now, why is this? It's rather sad since I see some optimization potential by addressing memory directly...

A: The intrinsics correspond relatively directly to actual instructions, but compilers are not obligated to issue the corresponding instructions.  Optimizing a load followed by an operation (even when written in intrinsics) into the memory form of the operation is a common optimization performed by all respectable compilers when it is advantageous to do so.
TLDR: write the load and the operation in intrinsics, and let the compiler optimize it.
Edit: trivial example:
#include <emmintrin.h>
__m128i foo(__m128i *addr) {
    __m128i a = _mm_load_si128(addr);
    __m128i b = _mm_load_si128(addr + 1);
    return _mm_unpacklo_epi8(a, b);
}

Compiling with gcc -Os -fomit-frame-pointer gives:
_foo:
movdqa      (%rdi), %xmm0
punpcklbw 16(%rdi), %xmm0
retq

See? The optimizer will sort it out.

A: You can just use your memory values directly. For example:
__m128i *p=static_cast<__m128i *>(_aligned_malloc(8*4,16));

for(int i=0;i<32;++i)
    reinterpret_cast<unsigned char *>(p)[i]=static_cast<unsigned char>(i);

__m128i xyz=_mm_unpackhi_epi8(p[0],p[1]);

The interesting part of the result:
; __m128i xyz=_mm_unpackhi_epi8(p[0],p[1]);
0040BC1B 66 0F 6F 00      movdqa      xmm0,xmmword ptr [eax]
0040BC1F 66 0F 6F 48 10   movdqa      xmm1,xmmword ptr [eax+10h]
0040BC24 66 0F 68 C1      punpckhbw   xmm0,xmm1
0040BC28 66 0F 7F 04 24   movdqa      xmmword ptr [esp],xmm0

So the compiler is doing a bit of a poor job -- or perhaps this way is faster and/or playing with the options would fix that -- but it generates code that works, and the C++ code is stating what it wants fairly directly.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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text:
Can Americans collect 'Canadian Social Security'?
Published Tue, Sep 15 201512:26 PM EDT Updated Tue, Sep 15 20152:40 PM EDT
Tom Anderson@bytomanderson
Philip and Karen Smith | Getty Images
The pitch is seductive. Advertisements, which ran online and on the radio, claim that Americans are now "legally piggybacking [on] Canadian Social Security," exploiting a potential loophole to "begin collecting 'work-free' income checks running from $400 to $4,700 per month."
There's only one problem: that's not the way it works, according to authorities.
The ads promote an investing newsletter published by Agora Financial that claims it can help subscribers mimic the portfolio and returns of the Canada Pension Plan, the country's national retirement plan.
"In order to participate in the Canada Pension Plan, you must have worked and contributed to it in Canada," said Marie-France Faucher, a spokeswoman for Employee and Social Development Canada, the department of the Canadian government that administers the plan.
When CNBC.com showed Faucher the ads, shesaid, "The department takes every allegation of possible errors, fraud or abuse very seriously, and, as such, we have referred this matter to the appropriate authorities."
Some people who have seen or heard the "Canadian Social Security" ads aren't happy. One disgruntled senior complained to the AARP Fraud Watch Network specifically about the ads.
AARP spokesman Mark Bagley said the Fraud Watch Network has received "only a minimal number of complaints citing financial newsletters." Although he added, "That does not necessarily mean it is not a problem. Someone seeing an investment pitch in a financial newsletter that they think is questionable may not perceive it to be 'fraud' and may not be prompted to report it to the FWN."
Agora Financial did not return calls and emails seeking comment.
This is not the Baltimore-based financial newsletter publisher's first time receiving criticisms about its advertising. In 2003, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed a complaint against Agora, a subsidiary of Pirate Investor LLC, and editor Frank Porter Stansberry for falsely claiming one of its newsletters had insider information on a publicly traded company that enriches uranium.
In 2007, a federal court ordered Pirate Investor and Stansberry to pay $1.5 million in restitution to investors and civil penalties. Pirate Investor and Stansberry fought the decision all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which refused to hear its appeal last year. Stansberry continues to insist that his reporting was "honest, materially correct and is certainly protected by the First Amendment."
The SEC filed a complaint against Agora, Pirate Investor and Stansberry because they claimed to have insider information, said Bonnie Patten, executive director of Truth in Advertising, an advertising watchdog organization.
The Federal Trade Commission regulates truth-in-advertising practices for financial newsletters and most other companies.
"We can't opine on whether a particular business practice is legal or not," said Frank Dorman, an agency spokesman. The FTC hasn't filed any cases against Agora Financial, he said.
Patten, who reviewed the "Canadian Social Security" ads, said they don't appear to conform with truth-in-advertising guidelines because they don't clearly disclose the risks associated with the investment strategy or what type of returns an average investor can expect.
Last year, Truth in Advertising sent a complaint letter to an Agora Financial subsidiary, Stansberry & Associates Investment Research, which is run by the same man who was named in the SEC complaint, about hundreds of testimonials touting its newsletters. Truth in Advertising threatened to file complaints with the SEC, FTC and Maryland attorney general if Stansberry & Associates did not remove the testimonials. The company took the testimonials down as requested.
"Deceptive advertising is a moneymaker," Patten said. "Most companies that engage in it see it as a cost of doing business."


Age UK North Yorkshire & Darlington, a local independent charity offering support and services to older people, has expanded its successful Information and Advice service to cover the Skipton area.
Craven Herald reports that based at the Swadford Centre at the heart of the town, the charity's Information and Advice Advisors provide accredited, free and impartial advice to over-50s their families and carers.
The service can advise and assist clients with a broad spectrum of issues including general benefits checks, Attendance Allowance applications, Personal Independence Plans, Welfare Rights, Housing, Utilities, Community Care Services and Consumer Advice. Advisors can also help with signposting to other sources of help and advice where needed.
Last year alone, Age UK North Yorkshire & Darlington's Information and Advice services helped its clients to claim in excess of £2 million of benefits.
The product of a recent merger between two neighbouring local Age UK partners, the charity has big plans for the Swadford Centre including reopening the once popular café and providing a range of low cost services and activities for older people in the surrounding area.


He moved to Paris at the age of 19 to study art, although his father wanted him to be a rabbi. In Paris, he became one of the prominent artists of the "Ecole de Paris", a group of young artists who came to Paris from Eastern and Central Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century. These artists grounded the status of Paris as the global center for the avant-garde artistic activity. Mané-Katz's style was early on classical and somber, but his palette changed in later years to bright, primary colors, with an emphasis on Jewish themes.
Mané-Katz decided to immigrate to Israel in 1957 after he came into an agreement with the mayor of Haifa that he would bequeath his entire estate and works to the city of Haifa, while the city will provide him with a house and after his death establish a museum that would commemorate his name and work.


A statue of suffragette Alice Hawkins – we're almost there!
We are very pleased to have another blog from Peter Barratt, great grandson of suffragette Alice Hawkins. Peter has been bringing her amazing story to life through talks and, this summer, performances at Edinburgh Festival. Now he gives us an insight into the making of her statue….
After much debate and argument over whether it should be suffragette leader Emily Pankhurst or suffragist leader Millicent Fawcett whose statue should be first to stand in Parliament Square, readers of UK Vote 100 blogs will be well aware that the recently granted planning approval means it will be the statue of Millicent Fawcett that is unveiled next February in the Square on the centenary of the Act of Parliament that finally gave women the right to vote. No decision has yet been made regarding the planning application for the statue of Emmeline Pankhurst.
The issue has been much covered in the media over the past few months, however what has not made national headlines to-date is that there will after all be a statue of a suffragette unveiled in the UK next February, of my great-grandmother Alice Hawkins.
Whilst statues both of Millicent Fawcett and Emily Pankhurst give them true credit as leaders of their respective organisations, it can be rightly said that a statue of Alice will indeed be representational of the working class rank and file suffragettes of a 100 years ago.
Alice, a shoe machinist by trade and mother of six, campaigned throughout her life for equal pay for the women in the shoe factories where she worked, she joined the suffragette movement in 1907 and became the founder of the WSPU branch in her home town of Leicester.
Recognising her contribution to the campaign for women's rights, I was approached some four years ago by local councillor, Adam Clarke, and asked if I would join him in a campaign to raise funds for a statue of Alice, to be sited in the city market place where the suffragettes held their public meetings over a 100 years ago. The early fundraising years were hard and rocky but late in 2015 Leicester businessman, Jamie Lewis, who today owns the very building where Alice worked all those years ago, came forward and offered to fund the statue in full. A true benefactor and so we now had a funder, the backing of the Leicester City Council (who offered to fund the plinth and provide the site) and after a short selection process, a sculptor in Sean Hedges-Quinn.
Things were very quickly dropping into place, but when we worked out the project timescales, another major gain was realised. With a following wind, its completion and unveiling would coincide with the very date of the centenary of the 1918 Representation of the People's Act, giving some women the vote for the first time. I recently described this to a friend as a confluence of events and timing, but was told that it was in fact serendipity. Not knowing the word, I looked it up. She was right.
Fast forward to just a few days ago as I travelled from my home in Northamptonshire to Sean's workshop in Suffolk. For as part of a small group that day we were to view the full sized clay statue for the first time and, if OK, give it the thumbs up to be sent off to the specialised foundry to be cast in bronze. We had all viewed the scale model (maquette), a month or so ago, but today we were to see it for the first time at life size and a quarter. Over seven feet tall.
Arriving at the workshop Sean asked us to wait in another room for a few minutes and then finally invited us in to view the statue. Whilst an outgoing character by nature, on seeing it I found myself lost for words for several minutes as it was awesome in its size and pose. Recognising that Alice would be sited at the very spot in the market place where she would have spoken out to the crowds, urging them to support the women's cause, the statue of Alice had been designed with a formidable stance and posture.
Not only was it impressive in its size and design, the attention to detail was second to none and we all spent some time circling the statue, highlighting the features such as her boots, the sash and the 'Gates of Holloway Jail' brooch that Alice wore all in her life in commemoration of her campaigning years.
After years of fund raising and speaking to schools, groups and societies on the inspiring life of Alice Hawkins, the day of the unveiling will soon be here and will be the day of days and one to remember.
And finally and for those who have followed the debate on whether the statue in Parliament Square should have been Emily Pankhurst rather than Millicent Fawcett, I add this for thought. As a young boy, over fifty years ago, I remember my grandfather speaking proudly of his suffragette mother's fight for 'the vote', but he told me that he truly believed throughout his life that it was the contribution of women in the First World War, going into the factories and on to the land, that convinced the government of the day to give women the vote in 1918. So whether we unveil statues of suffragettes or suffragists in centenary year, all are welcome and should truly be recognised for their contribution to the campaign for women's rights.
Brilliant! Such inspiring women that need to be more widely taught about! Young women need to learn exactly why we should vote!


SAN ANTONIO – There is a possibility that taxing the inside buildup of life insurance products will not be included in the tax reform package being developed in Congress, according to Danae Kehoe, a member of the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors (NAIFA) government relations team.
The news brought NAIFA members to their feet with shouts and cheering and much clapping here during the association's legislative forum this morning at its annual meeting.
The proposal she was referring to is the tax legislation that will be needed to address the nation's debt ceiling, which the nation will reach on Oct. 17 unless the debt limit is raised.
The House Ways and Means Committee appears to have been successful in its effort to include debt ceiling legislative language requiring Congress to vote on tax reform, Kehoe noted. That will entail committee action and conference committee action. That creates "a legislative challenge for us for the foreseeable future," the lobbyist said.
Still, news that that Congress may leave the inside buildup alone prompted Kehoe to praise NAIFA members for their persistent advocacy in this area.
In the past year, NAIFA members have visited Capitol Hill to discuss with legislators the value of the tax benefits in insurance products to American families. Some have made these trips more than once. This is in addition to the lobbying efforts of the association's legislative team.
"You are so fantastic," Kehoe said.
There may be proposals affecting corporate owned life insurance, for example. In addition she said, there may be proposals to limit retirement savings and proposals to limits employer benefits and capital gains for investment income versus compensation income.
Several other members of the NAIFA government relations team listed a host of other proposals that could affect the life insurance industry in the future. They pointed not only to implementation challenges with the Affordable Care Act but also the possibility of expansion of fiduciary standards to broker-dealers and the thousands of bills in the states that are looking to raise more money — and many other issues as well.


text:
Q: How to check two strings for difference in casing only? Following pairs of string are possible. Now my goal is to detect only the casing difference in the first example:

*

*"abC","abc"

*"abc","abc"

*"abDef","abc"

My approach would be first to compare the strings with ignorecase = true in C#:
String.Compare(string1, string2, true) returns 0 for 1.+2. and returns 1 for the 3. possibility
So checking for 0 as result I can narrow down my results to two possibilities which I check now with ignorecase = false:
String.Compare(string1, string2, false)
So checking now for 0 would give me the right result. Is there any better solution to achieve this in one compare step?

A: String.Compare exists to cover the reverse scenario you have suggested, but in the context of sorting scenarios, you can use it for equality using == 0 or inequality  !=0
String.Equals performs the same evaluation logic as String.Compare, but specifically for equality scenarios.
The issue in your case of detecting in-equality based only on casing means that you will have to do it in two checks, otherwise the strings not equalling at all would return a false negative response.
The following options come to mind:
public static bool IsSimilarButDifferentCase(string input1, string input2)
{
    // satisfy the first criteria
    if (input1.Equals(intput2, StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase))
    {
        // check that it is now NOT the same
        return !input1.Equals(intput2, StringComparison.InvariantCulture)
    }
    return false;
}

You could also do the following inline by converting to the lower (or upper case) and using the comparison operators directly:
input1.ToLower() == input2.ToLower() && input1 != input2

Feel free to us different culture overloads or variations to all the above as your business needs dictate.


text:
Zimica je naselje v Občini Duplek.

"Zimica leži v jugozahodnem delu Slovenskih goric, v občini Duplek, med Mariborom, Lenartom in Ptujem. Zimica se nahaja na nadmorski višini 323m in ima približno 530 prebivalcev. Večina prebivalcev ima službo v Mariboru. Gre za razloženo naselje z gručastim jedrom. Sestavljajo ga zaselki Velika in Mala Zimica, Gočice severno od Zimičnika (402m) in Hum na pobočju istoimenske vzpetine (424m) iz litavskega apnenca. V dolini in na pobočjih so travnik, temelj živinoreje, med njimi pa so manjši vinogradi in sadovnjaki.
Zimica meji na Spodnji Duplek, Zgornji Duplek, MO Maribor, Viničko Vas, Jablance, Zgornjo Koreno in Spodnjo Koreno."

Priročni krajevni leksikon Slovenije(Milan Orožen Adamič, Drago Perko, Drago Kladnik(uredniki):DZS, Ljubljana, 1996,376 strani.)

Zanimivosti:
 Največja znamenitost Zimice so verjetno vaške igre, ki jih prirejajo vsako leto v avgustu.
 Za športne aktivnosti pa skrbi ŠD Zimica, ki prireja nogometni turnirje na igrišču, ki se nahaja v dolini poleg jedra Zimice
 Se prvič omenja 1265 kot Winterpach. Je naselje ob cesti Zg. Duplek - Zimica. Tu je bila najdena prevrtana kamnita sekira.
 Od tod je doma Ivan Senekovič, pomemben sodelavec generala Maistra v Mariboru.

Sklici in opombe

Glej tudi
 seznam naselij v Sloveniji

Naselja Občine Duplek


text:
Our partners and governance
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ISCRR Clearinghouse
What is Program Logic?
November 16, 2021 - Blog
By Dr. Sarah Oxford, ISCRR Senior Research Officer (Evaluation).
Let's start with a scenario. Your supervisor calls and requests that you spearhead a new program targeting behaviour change among Australian citizens. They iterate that the program must be on budget, and evaluated for efficiency and effectiveness. You'll be leading a team of 10 people, including various stakeholders. You'll need to communicate your team's thinking underpinning the actions or interventions planned, how the evaluation will work and the translation goals.
You've been asking to lead a behaviour change program for months. You're so excited about this new opportunity! You look more intensely at the needs assessment and some documents provided and then you realise this is going to be very challenging. The excitement of this opportunity starts to feel different as you question, what do I do now?
This is one of many scenarios when program logic models can be your hero because it will help you and your team figure out what your program will do and how it will do it.
Image: By Chris Lysy, Freshspectrum.com
Program logic: What and Why?
A logic model is heroic for multiple reasons, but here are three of the core ones. First, it is a roadmap that helps clarify the program goal, resources, activities and pathways required to create change, thus informing program delivery and implementation.
Second, it is a visual tool that can be used to summarise complex programs for communications. The Australian Institute of Family Studies display an example logic model framework that details the: Problem Statement → Inputs → Outputs (activities and participation) → Outcomes (short, medium and long term).
Third, and arguably the most important, is the brainstorming process required to develop your logic model. This thinking process underpins the program's theory of change. Designing the logic model requires stakeholders to converse directly, which allows for understanding and consensus, identifying gaps in logic, and clarifying assumptions. If you have clarity on the page, you have it in your head.
When to use program logic?
Ideally, a program logic is designed as one of the first steps taken when planning a new program, but they're also beneficial for program evaluation − especially when evaluation is considered in concert with creating the logic model at the early stages of program development. However, the benefits of creating a logic model can be applied at any time during the life of the project.
Logic models are living documents that should be referred to and edited throughout the life of the program. They help guide a program as it evolves and ensure that the work remains focused on the key goals and outcomes.
An example of an iterative design
The organisation Community First Development provides an excellent example of how the iterative brainstorming and reflection process occurs when developing a logic model. Below is the first version of their logic model, which is designed in a square, linear fashion.
Image: Community First Development
First Nations staff identified that strong governance is as an assumption that does not lead to long-term outcomes. Further, they believed all outcomes are interconnected and equal in value. This feedback led to a redesign that resulted in a concept that reflects a circular and non-linear ecosystem and a more accurate communication tool.
How does this apply to ISCRR?
ISCRR regularly facilitates program logic workshops to stakeholders to help create theories of change and communication tools. Workshops length of time are project dependent, but ideally are organised over two brainstorming sessions that last between two and four hours. At the end of the second session, the team will have a nearly completed logic model and have openly discussed problems, goals, assumptions and external factors. If you are interested in learning more about our program logic workshops, please get in touch!
This article was written by Dr. Sarah Oxford, ISCRR Senior Research Officer (Evaluation). If you've found this article useful, please let us know via social media: Twitter (@SarahWOxford) or LinkedIn
Australian Government, 2021, Australian Institute of Family Studies, How to develop a program logic for planning and evaluation, aifs.gov.au, viewed 15 November 2021, https://aifs.gov.au/cfca/expert-panel-project/program-planning-evaluation-guide/plan-your-program-or-service/how-develop-program-logic-planning-and-evaluation
Chris Lysy, 2021, Michael Quinn Patton's Evaluation Flash Cards 5 Cartoons, freshspectrum.com, viewed 15 November 2021, https://freshspectrum.com/mqp-evaluation-flash-cards/
Community First Development, 2019, Creation of a new story of change, www.communityfirstdevelopment.org.au, viewed 15 November 2021, https://www.communityfirstdevelopment.org.au/stories/storyofchange
January 17, 2022 - Blog
Protected: How social prescribing benefits injured workers
December 16, 2021 - Newsletter
ISCRR Learning Series launch
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Hello, I'm Ben! Happy to present you the expedition "The Long Ride" In March 2019 I will go with my baggage surcharge to Moscow in Russia, a flight of 6686 Km then take an internal flight to Irkutsk! Still 5200 Km. I will take a day to buy a gas for my little stove and fresh food, dried sausage cheese, pastry kind donuts, I lost 15 pound in 12 days during my expedition last April from a huge job to go to crater Pingualuit and poor nutrition at noon, not enough protein. I should leave in the evening or the next morning for Koultouk where will start the expedition! Lake Baikal is 640 km long in a straight line to reach its north I should surely achieve a distance of 750/800 km see more! Rendered the top I will have reached the first stage of the project if my physical condition is correct and the time I have left is also correct I will take the opposite route in kite to make a first at this place or a return trip of more 1500 km, or else! Take the Trans-Siberian train to return to Irkutsk. A 22-day trip with all these hassles and discoveries of people and fantastic landscapes that are worth the detour! Thank you for following me throughout this journey, which for me has been going on for several months and will follow me a long time afterwards in learning and remembering another world!


The Resort Village of Lumsden Beach Council holds meetings at various times throughout the year, but not according to a regular schedule. Ratepayers wishing to appear before Council or wishing to make a submission to Council can request to do so in writing submitted to the Resort Village of Lumsden Beach Administrator or Mayor.
Ratepayers are welcome to attend the Resort Village of Lumsden Beach Annual Ratepayers Meeting to hear reports from Council, including the audited financial statements, and to provide information or feedback to Council (the date of the annual meeting appears on the Events Calendar on this web page).


text:
Ariadna Reyes, 2018
Dissertation: Energy Justice and the Consolidated Informal City: A Case Study of Isidro Fabela, Mexico City
Perry World House Post-Doctoral Fellow, University of Pennsylvania.
Laura Alejandra Reyes, 2018
Dissertation: Mexico's Housing Paradox: The Political Economy of Inaccessibility and Vacancy
Post-Doctoral Fellow, Institute on Municipal Finance and Governance at the University of Toronto, Canada
Thomas Warren Hilde, 2017
Dissertation: Green Infrastructure for Disaster Resilience: Exploring Connections with Scenario Planning
Assistant Professor, Cleveland State University
Juan Guillermo Yunda, 2017
Dissertation: "Juntos Pero no Revueltos:" The Influence of the Social Stratification System on Urban Densification Patterns in Bogotá, Colombia
Assistant Professor, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Colombia
Kwangyul Choi, 2016
Dissertation: Unpacking the Complex Relationship among Land Use, Vehicle Travel, and Transportation Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Metropolitan Growth and Change at University of Calgary, Canada
Andrea R. Roberts, 2016
Dissertation: The Texas Freedom Colony Diaspora: The Role of Foundational Stories in African American Placemaking and Preservation in Deep East Texas
Assistant Professor, Urban Planning and Faculty Fellow of the Center for Heritage Conservation at Texas A&M University
Alan Christen Bush, 2016
Dissertation: Leadership for Resilient Urban Systems: Two Cases in Asheville, NC
Honors College Faculty, University of South Florida
Marla Judith Torrado, 2016
Dissertation: Planning and Knowledge: Industrial Agriculture, Grupo de Madres de Ituzaingó Anexo and Gendered Community Organizing
Program Coordinator, Austin Community Design and Development Center
Jane Futrell Winslow, 2015
Dissertation: Linking Public Health and Community Design through Green Infrastructure
Assistant Professor, Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning at Texas A&M University
Wenjia Zhang, 2015
Dissertation: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations of Excessive Congestion as a Result of Market and Planning Failures
Assistant Professor, School of Urban Planning & Design at Peking University Shenzhen Graduate School, China
Sara Marie Hammerschmidt, 2015
Dissertation: Healthy People, Healthy Places: Incorporating a Health Focus into the Practice of Planning
Senior Director, Urban Land Institute
Kristine Stiphany, 2015
Dissertation: Learning Displacement: Self-building, Educational Infrastruture, and the Politics of Development in Brazilian Informal Settlements
Assistant Professor, College of Architecture at Texas Tech University
Elizabeth Walsh, 2015
Dissertation: Home Ecology and Challenges in the Design of Healthy Home Environments: Possibilities for Low-Income Home Repair as a Leverage Point for Environmental Justice in Gentrifying Urban Environments
Visiting Assistant Professor, University of Colorado Denver
Leah Hollstein, 2014
Dissertation: Planning Decisions for Vacant Lots in the Context of Shrinking Cities: A Survey and Comparison of Practices in the United States
Assistant Professor, University of Cincinnati
Kathryn Howell, 2013
Dissertation: Transforming Neighborhoods, Changing Communities: Understanding the Implications of Physical and Demographic Change in Washington, DC
Assistant Professor, Virginia Commonwealth University
Jennifer Minner, 2013
Dissertation: Landscapes of Thrift and Choreographies of Change: Reinvestment and Adaptation along Austin's Commercial Strips
Assistant Professor, Department of City & Regional Planning at Cornell University
Nishtha Mehta, 2012
Dissertation: "Water Thieves:" Women, Water, and Development in New Delhi, India
Water and Sanitation Specialist, The World Bank
Khaled Abdulrahman Alawadi, 2012
Dissertation: Rethinking Dubai's Urbanism: Generating Sustainable Form-Based Urban Design Strategies for an Integrated Neighborhood
Associate Professor, Industrial and Systems Engineering Department at Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates
Bige Yilmaz, 2011
Dissertation: A National Innovation System Building Process in a Developing Country Context: The Case of Turkey
Projects Manager, work2future
Eric Marsh, 2010
Dissertation: The Role of Collaborative Planning in Contaminated Site Redevelopment and Plan Implementation
Analyst, Skeo Solutions
Ahmed Baha Abukhater, 2010
Dissertation: Equity in the Context of Bilateral, International Water Allocation Treaties in Arid Regions: An Interdisciplinary, Transformative Approach to Conflict Resolution
Visiting Assistant Professor, University at Albany College of Arts and Sciences
Barbara Brown Wilson, 2010
Dissertation: Social Movement towards Spatial Justice: Crafting a Theory of Civic Urban Form
Assistant Professor, University of Virginia School of Architecture
Chang Yi, 2009
Dissertation: Role of Transportation in Employment Outcomes of the Disadvantaged
Research Fellow, The Seoul Institute, South Korea
J. Rosie Tighe, 2009
Dissertation: Public Perceptions of Affordable Housing: How Race and Class Stereotyping Influence Views
Associate Professor, Cleveland State University
Hugo Rodolfo Rincon, 2009
Dissertation: Study of Dialogic Approaches and Responses in Planning Low-Income Communities in Maracaibo, Venezuela: the "Promotion of Full Citizenship" Plan
Planner, Policy and Urban Design, The Corporation of the Town of Milton, Canada
Stacey Bricka, 2008
Dissertation: Trip Chaining: Linking the Influences and Implications
Senior Research Scientist, Macrosys Research & Technology
Jin-Oh Kim, 2008
Dissertation: An Integrative Area Selection Method for Biodiversity Conservation in the DMZ and the CCZ of South Korea
Assistant Professor, Kyung Hee University, South Korea
Andrew Paul Karvonen, 2008
Dissertation: Botanizing the Asphalt: Politics of Urban Drainage
Associate Professor and Director of Doctoral Studies, Division of Urban and Regional Studies at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
Lisa Marie Weston, 2005
Dissertation: What Helps and What Hinders the Independent Mobility of Non-Driving Teens
Research Associate, Center for Economic Development and Research at the University of North Texas
Juchul Jung, 2005
Dissertation: The Impact of Institutional Settings on Local Hazard Mitigation Efforts: A "New Institutional" Perspective
Program Director of Urban Engineering, Pusan National University College of Engineering, South Korea
Mehmet Bengü Uluengin, 2004
Dissertation: Preservation under the Crescent and Star: Using New Sources for Examining the Historic Development of the Balat District in Istanbul and Its Meanings for Historic Preservation
Associate Professor, Bahçeşehir University Department of Interior Architecture and Environmental Design, Turkey
Up Lim, 2003
Dissertation: Knowledge Spillovers, Spatial Dependence, and Regional Economic Growth in U.S. Metropolitan Areas
Professor, Department of Urban Planning and Engineering at Yonsei University, South Korea
Ralf Gregor Brand, 2003
Dissertation: Co-Evolution toward Sustainable Development: Neither Smart Technologies nor Heroic Choices
Senior Mobility Expert, Rupprecht Consult – Forschung & Beratung GmbH, Germany
Kelly Jean Clifton, 2001
Dissertation: Mobility Strategies and Provisioning Activities of Low-Income Households in Austin, Texas
Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Portland State University
Valeen Adams Silvy, 2000
Dissertation: The Social Constitution of the Texas Water Planning Process: A Phenomenological Description and Analysis
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Jennifer Minner is Assistant Professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning at Cornell University.
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Andrea Roberts leading a community discussion
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Juan Yunda with students
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Sara Hammerschmidt presenting at Urban Land Institute


Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Spray a 13x9-inch baking dish with nonstick cooking spray; set aside. Cook and drain pasta according to package directions; keep hot.
Melt butter in a large saucepan over medium heat. Stir in flour and cook 2 minutes, stirring frequently. Whisk in milk, mustard, hot pepper sauce, Worcestershire sauce, salt and pepper. Cook, stirring constantly, about 10 minutes or until sauce thickens. Stir in onion, carrot, mushrooms and Cheddar until cheese is melted. Remove sauce from heat.
Mix pasta into sauce and pour into prepared pan. Arrange sliced grilled chicken over pasta. Mix bread crumbs and parsley together and sprinkle over pasta.
Bake about 25 minutes or until pasta is heated through and edges are bubbling.


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Just published – White Woman Black Heart
Mapoon community is situated on the traditional lands of the Tjungundji people. A church mission commenced near Trathalarrakwana (unconfirmed spelling of a Tjungundji word meaning 'Barramundi story place') or Cullen Point on 28 November 1891. Mapoon Mission was established under the name Batavia River Mission by Moravian missionaries on behalf of the Presbyterian Church of Australia, with Queensland Government financial assistance, on land reserved by the Government under the Crown Lands Act of 1884. Within a few years the mission became known as Mapoon, a Tjungundji word meaning 'place where people fight on the sand-hills'. Mapoon is also known as Marpuna. As the influence of the mission widened in the surrounding lands, the reserve was extended south to the Mission River near Weipa. Some of the traditional owner groups who eventually came to live at Mapoon included the Mpakwithi, Taepithiggi, Thaynhakwith, Warrangku, Wimarangga and Yupungathi people.
The story of the closure of Mapoon in 1964 meshes into the sad history of resettlement that was occurring widely. By 1984 traditional owners were coming back. I (Paul Inglis) visited Mapoon in 1985 while doing research for Comalco in Weipa and saw where the settlement had been destroyed and the beginning of rebuilding.
Barbabra Miller tells the story beautifully. Thanks Noel Preston for sending the details.
White Woman, Black Heart recites, with powerful eloquence, an amazing story: the personal journey of the author and the heroic resilience of the Mapoon Aboriginal Community from the Western Cape. The author, Barbara Miller, has lived in Cairns for more than four de cades. I (Noel Preston) first met her soon after she published the story of the Aboriginal people ejected from the Mapoon settlement on Cape York in the late 1960s. This community had been conducted by the Presbyterian church in conjunction with the State government. The devastating impact on these indigenous Australians was an injustice inherited by the Uniting Church. Miller's account weaves her own story with that of the Mapoon people (some of whom have now returned to their original land). Miller continued her advocacy for First Australians in various roles in the north such as being part of the original founding team of the North Queensland Land Council with her first husband, Mick Miller, and in the 1990s as CEO of the Aboriginal Coordinating Council which represented Aboriginal local government councils.
This enthralling personal memoir, with its incredibly detailed recollections, extends from the turbulent times of the sixties and seventies to the present which she shares with husband Norman in pastoral ministry. White Woman, Black Heart is also an inspiring testimony to the empowering convergence between her authentic spirituality and her never-ending struggle for social justice. As a contribution to the history of that political struggle in Queensland and the Western Cape particularly, it is important for scholars, activists and all who are committed to supporting the First Australians find their rightful place in Australian society.
To purchase: Either through Amazon or from Barbara Miller. Other publications by Barbara Miller are also available at this site.
This entry was posted in Publications on May 31, 2018 by Paul Inglis.
← SoFiA – One-Day Conference in Brisbane The House Church – a quick survey of some literature →


09/03/2016 300+ common dolphins Our last day on the water for the blue whale season! As hard as Captain Jules tried, we couldn't find any large whales! Our small group of passengers were delighted with 300 common dolphins with many calves. The ocean was mostly calm and the sun finally came out as we were coming back in. The many kids onboard enjoyed making origami whales and whale tracings.
09/02/2016 200+ common dolphins, Risso's dolphins, 1 mola mola We began our cruise with calm seas and partly cloudy skies that later cleared to a beautiful sunny day. While baleen whales eluded us today, guests enjoyed watching about 200 common dolphins and 30 Risso's dolphins- a larger dolphin species that reaches 10 to 12 foot (3-3.8 meter) lengths. Adult Risso's dolphins are typically gray with white scars covering much of their body, especially the head region. This scarring is from a combination of rake marks (scratches from the teeth of other Risso's during dominance interactions), bites from squid (their main prey) or circular bite marks from cookie cutter shark parasites. Since we don't often see Risso's dolphins, it is always a treat to watch this unusual species!
08/29/2016 300+ common dolphins, 2 hammerhead sharks We traveled almost 20 miles out of the Bay today searching for whales. While we didn't find any large whales, guests enjoyed watching several large pods of common dolphins. We also spotted two hammerhead sharks. Another beautiful day on the water!
08/28/2016 1 humpback whale, 200+ common dolphin, 1 mola mola We began our whale watching cruise with calm seas and somewhat overcast skies. Captain Chad spotted a mola mola (ocean sunfish) and we enjoyed watching a humpback whale that repetitively fluked and seemed intent on feeding. In addition, a couple hundred common dolphins joined us for a while riding the bow of the ship. A perfect way to start the day!
08/27/2016 300+ common dolphins It was an overcast day, not too hot – not too cold. We saw spotted jellyfish before we left the dock and on the way out of the harbor and numerous sea lions resting on the channel markers. Once we were out in the ocean, we came across over 300 Common Dolphins in several different pods throughout the day. The dolphins were very active, jumping out of the water and surfing the boat wake. Unfortunately, we did not see any whales. Still, it was a beautiful and relaxing day on the water!


text:
Dangerously In Love Tour é a primeira turnê solo da cantora americana Beyoncé para promover seu primeiro álbum de estúdio em carreira solo, Dangerously in Love. A turnê passou pelo Reino Unido, Irlanda e Holanda.

Sobre o show
O palco possuiu uma estrutura simples e incluiu uma grande tela de LED na parte superior do palco, a qual durante todo o show ela é movida para cima e para baixo. Nessa tela são exibidas cenas da performance de Beyoncé no palco e alguns vídeos. No meio do palco, existe uma pequena escada, e nas duas laterais existe uma plataforma para a banda que toca no show.

O show contém músicas do primeiro álbum solo de Beyoncé, Dangerously in Love e também músicas do grupo feminino Destiny's Child. Além disso, as músicas "Fever" e "Summertime" do filme The Fighting Temptations também fazem parte do show.

A marca registrada desta turnê é a abertura dos shows, onde Beyoncé entra no palco de cabeça para baixo cantando a música "Baby Boy". Essa performance também aconteceu no MTV Video Music Awards de 2003.

Lista de músicas
"Baby Boy"
"Naughty Girl"
"Fever"
"Hip Hop Star"
"Yes"
"Work It Out"
"Gift from Virgo"
"Be with You"
"Speechless"
"DC Medley":
"Bug a Boo"
"No, No, No"
"Bootylicious"
"Jumpin' Jumpin'"
"Say My Name"
"Independent Women Part I"
"'03 Bonnie & Clyde"
"Survivor"
"Me, Myself and I"
"Summertime"
"Dangerously in Love 2"
"Crazy in Love"

Datas

Gravações

No dia 10 de Novembro de 2003, Beyoncé gravou na Wembley Arena em Londres, Inglaterra, o seu primeiro álbum de vídeo, Live at Wembley, que foi lançado em Abril de 2004.

Ligações externas

Turnês de Beyoncé
Turnês musicais de 2003


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'Calamari comeback,' topless voter: New England's weird 2020
WILLIAM J. KOLE, Associated Press
Dec. 23, 2020 Updated: Dec. 23, 2020 8:02 a.m.
1of2FILE - In this June 27, 2014, file photo, plates of fried calamari are served at the town dock in Narragansett, R.I., after Gov. Lincoln Chafee signed legislation to give the squid dish official status as Rhode Island's state appetizer. During the August 2020 televised virtual Democratic National Convention's roll call voting, the state's Democratic Party chair Joseph McNamara stood on a beach with a restaurateur holding a heaping plate of the squid and proclaimed Rhode Island the "calamari comeback state."Jennifer McDermott/APShow MoreShow Less
2of2FILE - In this Monday, July 27, 2020, file photo, farmer Joe Marszalkowski holds a prosthetic leg that he found the day before in a soybean field on his farm in West Addison, Vt. The leg was lost by double amputee Chris Marckres while skydiving on Saturday. (Jack Thurston/NECN and NBC10 Boston via AP, File)Jack Thurston/APShow MoreShow Less
It's difficult to imagine a year when we needed a little comic relief more desperately than in 2020. No yuks? Yuck.
Fortunately, New Englanders came through with some welcome pandemic distractions.
Rhode Island's signature squid took center stage at the Democratic National Convention. A Connecticut city named a sewage treatment plant in comedian John Oliver's (dis)honor. And a soybean farmer in Vermont harvested a prosthetic leg that a skydiver had lost during a jump.
A guide to some of the region's stranger stories from the past 12 months:
CALAMARI COMEBACK
Rhode Island was a big sensation at the virtual Democratic National Convention for its unconventional video plugging calamari — the state's official appetizer. In a nationally broadcast made-for-memes moment, a lawmaker and a restaurateur with a heaping plate of sauteed squid stood on a beach and proclaimed Rhode Island the "calamari comeback state." State Democratic Party chair Joseph McNamara said he wanted to highlight how the coronavirus pandemic has decimated the seafood industry. Rhode Island's 30-second spot, part of the DNC's roll call where states formally nominated Joe Biden for president, was an instant social media sensation.
REAL-LIFE BUDDY THE ELF
The story of Buddy the Elf meeting his biological father came to life just in time for the holidays. Doug Henning of Eliot, Maine, wore a costume to look like Will Ferrell in the movie "Elf" while meeting his father face to face for the first time last week at Boston's Logan International Airport. He even broke into the same awkward song from the movie. Henning said his biological father "probably thought I was a lunatic." The dad didn't get the joke because he hadn't seen the movie, but that didn't stop him from giving his son a big hug. Other family members laughed and cheered.
JOHN OLIVER SEWAGE PLANT
Comedian John Oliver made a secret trip to Connecticut to help cut the ribbon on a new sign naming the city's sewage treatment plant in his honor. Danbury's City Council voted to rename the sewage plant "The John Oliver Memorial Sewer Plant," following a tongue-in-cheek battle that began with an expletive-filled rant against the city on HBO's "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver" in August. Mayor Mark Boughton responded to the attack by posting a video of himself at the sewage plant, saying the city was going to name it after Oliver "because it's full of crap just like you, John."
TOPLESS VOTER
A New Hampshire voter who was told she couldn't wear an anti-Trump shirt at a polling place because it violated electioneering rules simply whipped it off and did her civic duty topless. The woman wore a "McCain Hero, Trump Zero" T-shirt to the polls in Exeter for September's primary election. Moderator Paul Scafidi told her she couldn't wear a shirt featuring a political candidate. He said the woman took her shirt off before he could react, and because he didn't want to inflame the situation, he just let her vote.
IT'S A BIRD, A PLANE ... A LEG?
A Vermont skydiver who lost his prosthetic leg during a jump got it back, thanks to a farmer who spotted it in a soybean field. Double amputee Chris Marckres went for a jump at Vermont Skydiving Adventures in West Addison and lost one of his prosthetic legs after leaping from the plane while harnessed to an instructor. Marckres said he was experiencing an adrenaline rush and didn't realize he'd lost the expensive limb. When he spread the word on social media about the missing prosthetic, farmer Joe Marszalkowski saw the post, kept an eye out and found it. Except for scratches, the leg was undamaged.
DOGGONE CORONAVIRUS
A lost dog's journey across the Canadian border and back was complicated by coronavirus restrictions limiting movement from a town on one side of the St. John River to a Maine town on the other. The German shepherd named Diamond escaped from her home in New Brunswick and crossed into Fort Kent, Maine. Coronavirus restrictions prevented her caretakers from following. Diamond's owner, Paryse Michaud, posted a plea for help on Facebook. After six hours, friends on the Maine side found Diamond and coordinated with friends to hand her off through a border station.
WILLIAM J. KOLE


Arlington Heights police responded about 3:52 p.m. Saturday to a report of found property in the 1300 block of West Sigwalt Street. While investigating, police found a man hiding in a garage. No word on the connection with the found property. Police transported the man in custody to Arlington Heights Police Department Headquarters. Police had contact with the subject earlier in the day — possibly near the U.S. Post Office, but this is not confirmed. No word on the charges or why the man was arrested.


text:
A Bit About Pearl Mackie
Pearl Mackie (born 29 May 1987) is a British actress, dancer, and singer. She was named on 23 April 2016 as having been chosen by the BBC to play Bill, the next companion to The Doctor, in the long running television series Doctor Who. Mackie is a 2010 graduate of the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. Her first major TV role came in 2014, when she played Anne-Marie Frasier in BBC One weekday afternoon Soap Opera Doctors.
Mackie grew up in Brixton in south London and is of paternal West Indian and maternal English descent. She earned a degree in Drama from the University of Bristol, and speaks French and Spanish. During her studies she went to workshops and took part in many extra-curricular plays. In 2010 she graduated from the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. In the same year Mackie was nominated along with Roddy Peters for the BBC Carleton Hobbs Award for outstanding duologues in the school play Noughts & Crosses.
Alongside Martin Freeman, Maxine Peake, Morwenna Banks and Matt Berry Mackie appeared as a front of house girl in the 2013 music comedy Svengali. In 2014 Mackie played Anne-Marie Frasier in Doctors. In the same year she played the young computer genius Mia in Crystal Springs at the Park Theatre in London. She could also be seen in the political satire Obama-ology at the Finborough theatre in London. She played Cece and Caits, two young women finding their voice. In 2015 she performed in the National Theatre's West End production of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time. In the same year Mackie appeared in the short film Date Aid by Bond, a satirical PSA. Mackie played Sarah, a girl that the date maker Dawn wants to pair off to the desperate single Bob. The story turned out to be a spoof. The film criticises NGOs for using negative messaging when talking to the public on development issues. By using sensationalistic, voyeuristic and exploitative images the NGOs over-simplify development issues and promote stereotypes. Mackie has also worked as an acting tutor for Troupers, a company who teach theatre skills to children and young people. In 2016 it was announced that Mackie was going to play Bill, the next companion of The Doctor in the British television series Doctor Who.
Labels: Companion, Pearl Mackie
Stained Glass Dalek
Sontaran Or Potato
2016 Doctor Who Christmas Special Casting News
Pearl Mackie's First Interview As Doctor's Companion


/ First published in Tom Dispatch, 9 March 2014.
Like many days, March 3rd saw the delivery of a stern opinion by President Obama. To judge by recent developments in Ukraine, he said, Russia was putting itself "on the wrong side of history." This might seem a surprising thing for an American president to say. The fate of Soviet Communism taught many people to be wary of invoking History as if it were one's special friend or teammate. But Obama doubtless felt comfortable because he was quoting himself. "To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent," he said in his 2009 inaugural address, "know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist." In January 2009 and again in March 2014, Obama was speaking to the world as its uncrowned leader.
A large portion of his experience of the presidency should have discouraged that idea. Obama's approval ratings for several months have been hovering just above 40%. But whatever people may actually think of him, the evidence suggests that this has indeed been his vision of the presidential office — or rather, his idea of his function as a holder of that office. It is a subtle and powerful fantasy, and it has evidently driven his demeanor and actions, as far as reality permitted, for most of his five years in office.
This pattern — the ascent to become presider-in-chief over large projects without any encumbering record of commitments — followed Obama into a short and uneventful legal career, from which no remarkable brief has ever been cited. In an adjacent career as a professor of constitutional law, he was well liked again, though his views on the most important constitutional questions were never clear to his students. The same was true of his service as a four-term Illinois state senator, during which he cast a remarkable number of votes in the noncommittal category of "present" rather than "yea" or "nay." Finally, the same pattern held during his service in the U.S. Senate, where, from his first days on the floor, he was observed to be restless for a kind of distinction and power normally denied to a junior senator.
Extreme caution marked all of Obama's early actions in public life. Rare departures from this progress-without-a-trail — such as his pledge to filibuster granting immunity to the giants of the telecommunications industry in order to expose them to possible prosecution for warrantless surveillance — appear in retrospect wholly tactical. The law journal editor without a published article, the lawyer without a well-known case to his credit, the law professor whose learning was agreeably presented without a distinctive sense of his position on the large issues, the state senator with a minimal record of yes or no votes, and the U.S. senator who between 2005 and 2008 refrained from committing himself as the author of a single piece of significant legislation: this was the candidate who became president in January 2009.
Many of these facts were rehearsed in the 2008 primaries by Hillary Clinton. More was said by the Republicans in the general election. Yet the accusations were thrown onto a combustible pile of so much rubbish — so much that was violent, racist, and untrue, and spoken by persons manifestly compromised or unbalanced — that the likely inference was tempting to ignore. One could hope that, whatever the gaps in his record, they would not matter greatly once Obama reached the presidency.
By the terms of the 1973 War Powers Resolution, a president needs congressional approval before he can legally commit American armed forces in "hostilities" abroad. But according to the argument offered by Obama's lawyers, hostilities were only hostilities if an American was killed; mere wars, on the other hand, the president can fight as he pleases — without the approval of Congress. No American soldier having been killed in Libya, it followed that Obama could lead the country from behind without congressional approval. This delicate legal sophistry served its temporary purpose and the bombing went forward. Yet the awkward description, "leading from behind," would not go away. These days, the phrase is mostly used as a taunt by war-brokers whose idea of a true leader runs a remarkably narrow gamut from former president George W. Bush to Senator John McCain. These people would have no trouble with Obama if only he gave us more wars.
The movements had never been consulted. Yet Obama presumed an intimacy with their concerns and a reliance on their loyalty — as if a telepathic link with them persisted. There was a ludicrous moment in the late summer of 2009 when the president, in a message to followers of "Obama for America," told us to be ready to knock on doors and light a fire under the campaign for health-care reform. But what exactly were we to say when those doors opened? The law — still being hammered out in congressional committees in consultation with insurance lobbyists — had not yet reached his desk. In the end, Obama did ask for help from the movements, but it was too late. He had left them hanging while he himself waited for the single Republican vote that would make his "signature law" bipartisan. That vote never came.
The proposal, the handoff to Congress, and the final synthesis of the Affordable Care Act took up an astounding proportion of Obama's first year in office. If one looks back at the rest of those early months, they contained large promises — the closing of Guantanamo being the earliest and the soonest to be shelved. The most seductive promise went by the generic name "transparency." But Obama's has turned out to be the most secretive administration since that of Richard Nixon; and in its discouragement of press freedom by the prosecution of whistleblowers, it has surpassed all of its predecessors combined.
In the absence of a performance to match his promises, how did Obama seek to define his presidency? The compensation for "I can't hear you" turned out to be that all Americans would now have plenty of chances to hear him. His first months in office were staged as a relaxed but careful exercise in, as was said at the time, "letting the country get to know him." To what end? The hope seemed to be that if people could see how truly earnest, temperate, patient, thoughtful, and bipartisan Obama was, they would come to accept policies that sheer ideology or ignorance might otherwise have led them to doubt or reject.
To be known as the voice of the country, Obama believed, meant that he should be heard to speak on all subjects. This misconception, evident early, has never lost its hold on the Obama White House. The CBS reporter Mark Knoller crunched the first-term numbers, and some of them are staggering. Between January 2009 and January 2013 Obama visited 44 states, led 58 town hall meetings, granted 591 media interviews (including 104 on the major networks), and delivered 1,852 separate speeches, comments, or scheduled public remarks. From all those planned interactions with the American public, remarkably few conversions ever materialized.
Obama's practice of recessive management to the point of neglect has also thrown up obstacles entirely of his devising. He chose to entrust the execution and "rollout" of his health-care policy to the Department of Health and Human Services. That was an elective plan which he himself picked from all the alternatives. The extreme paucity of his meetings with his secretary of health and human services, Kathleen Sebelius, in the three years that elapsed between his signing of the law and the rollout of the policy makes a fair epitome of negligence. Indeed, the revelation of his lack of contact with Sebelius left an impression — which the recent provocative actions of the State Department in Ukraine have reinforced — that the president is not much interested in what the officials in his departments and agencies are up to.
What, then, of Obama's commitment in 2008 to make the fight against global warming a primary concern of his presidency? He has come to think American global dominance — helped by American capital investment in foreign countries, "democracy promotion," secret missions by Special Operations forces, and the control of cyberspace and outer space — as the best state of things for the United States and for the world. We are, as he has told us often, the exceptional country. And time that is spent helping America to dominate the world is time that cannot be given to a cooperative venture like the fight against global warming. The Keystone XL pipeline, if it is built, will bring carbon-dense tar sands from Canada to the Gulf Coast, and probably Obama would prefer not to see the pipeline built. Yet it would be entirely in character for him to approve and justify its construction, whether in the name of temporary jobs, oil industry profits, trade relations with Canada, or all of the above.
He has already softened the appearance of surrender by a device that is in equal parts real and rhetorical. It is called the Climate Resilience Fund: a euphemism with all the Obama markings, since resilience is just another name for disaster relief. The hard judgment of posterity may be that in addressing the greatest threat of the age, Barack Obama taught America dimly, worked part time at half-measures, was silent for years at a stretch, and never tried to lead. His hope must be that his reiterated preference will count more heavily than his positive acts.
Journalist, he writes on civil liberties and America's wars for the Huffington Post. A TomDispatch regular, as well as contributor to the New York Review of Books, his latest essay, "How Lincoln Explained Democracy", appeared recently in the Yale Review.