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Johann Georg Schrepfer (peut-être né en 1730, baptisé en 1738 à Saint-Sebald de Nuremberg et mort le  à Leipzig) était un charlatan allemand, franc-maçon indépendant et nécromancien. Il a réalisé des séances d'apparition de disparus pour lesquelles il a secrètement utilisé des effets spéciaux, comprenant des projections de lanternes magiques de fantômes sur des volutes de fumées, ce qui a inspiré de nombreux spectacles de fantasmagorie populaires en Europe entre les années 1790 et les années 1830.

Biographie

L'année de naissance la plus souvent avancée pour Schrepfer est 1730 et parfois 1739, mais il a été baptisé à Nuremberg le . Il a été décrit comme étant le huitième enfant de l'hôtelier de Zum Rothen Roße. Le père de Schrepfer dirigea plus tard le Goldenen Lamm et semble avoir fait faillite en 1753.

Johann Georg aurait servi pendant un certain temps comme hussard dans l'armée prussienne au début de la guerre de Sept Ans. Cependant, il a également prétendu avoir été commandant de cavalerie dans les troupes impériales et avoir reçu de nombreuses blessures au cours de batailles (bien que son rapport d'autopsie ait clairement indiqué qu'aucune cicatrice ou signe d'anciennes blessures n'ait été trouvé sur son corps). Il est venu à Leipzig en 1759 et a débuté une activité de Küper (contrôleur des marchandises) dans l'Hôtel de Saxe. Il est devenu citoyen de la ville en  et a été enregistré comme serveur. Le , il épouse Johanna Katharina Herr, fille du quartier-maître des tailleurs locaux. Elle était déjà très enceinte et a bientôt donné naissance à leur première fille. En 1769, ils achètent la Weisslederische Coffeé-Hauß avec l'argent de Johanna. C'était un café avec une salle de billard dans le centre de la ville (à l'angle de Klostergasse et le Barfußgäßchen, à l'emplacement du restaurant "Zill's Tunnel" depuis 1841) .

La Saxe a traversé des années de famine en 1770-1771. Schrepfer avait des dettes et sa famille semblait vivre dans une relative pauvreté, mais il aurait poursuivi une vie frivole et aurait souvent beaucoup bu avec ses disciples. On pensait qu'il recevait un soutien financier d'une loge maçonnique française ou d'un prince extérieur au pays, tant il quittait souvent Leipzig (pour les visiter ?). Il a créé sa propre loge maçonnique, probablement pour acquérir du pouvoir et pour gagner de l'argent. Il promettait souvent aux gens de grosses sommes d'argent et de les rendre heureux. Parmi les nombreux mensonges qu'il a racontés, il a affirmé être un prêtre catholique et qu'il était le fils du prince français de Conti .

Schrepfer portait toujours des pistolets chargés, dont il disait qu'ils devaient servir contre lui-même, au cas où il tomberait sous le pouvoir de mauvais esprits.

Schrepfer a été décrit comme un grand et bel homme, instruit, mais avec un comportement souvent déplacé.

Deux des frères aînés de Schrepfer vivaient aussi à Leipzig. Georg Wolfgang Schrepfer est devenu commerçant en vins, homme respecté ainsi que banquier et un propriétaire immobilier. Johann George Friedrich Schrepfer était restaurateur à Leipzig entre 1770 et 1776. Johann Georg Schrepfer semblait ne pas s'entendre avec ses frères , mais il a écrit une lettre d'adieu peu avant sa mort à Johann George Friedrich: Mon frère bien-aimé. À ma femme et à son soutien, ou Dieu va vous punir. Que tout soit bien pour vous et la vôtre. Je vous aime jusqu'à la mort
. "

Séances nécromantiques maçonniques

Schrepfer n'avait très probablement jamais vécu de réunion maçonnique quand il a créé sa propre loge de vraie maçonnerie. Néanmoins, il a prétendu être la seule personne ayant la connaissance des vrais secrets de la maçonnerie et à pouvoir communiquer avec le monde des esprits. Il a également prétendu être en contact avec les vrais Maçons en Angleterre. Interrogés à ce sujet, ils écrivirent : M. Schrepfer est totalement inconnu dans notre grande loge, et il nous a été récemment représenté de Berlin, en tant que ridicule, très insignifiant, peu digne de l'avis ou de l'apparence. On pense qu'il a acquis la plupart de ses connaissances sur la maçonnerie à partir de magazines, de livres et en écoutant les nombreux clients francs-maçons qu'il a servis et qui ont parlé assez librement de leurs secrets et de leurs activités de francs-maçons. Il aurait volé des documents magiques et des écrits maçonniques du duc Von Holstein-Gottorp pendant la guerre de Sept Ans et a acquis de nombreuses connaissances sur la magie d'un marchand de Francfort-sur-le-Main. Ce marchand l'aurait soutenu financièrement et l'aurait mis en contact avec des francs-maçons à Brunswick. À la fin de 1771, il avait de très bons contacts avec la riche noblesse et les monastères catholiques près des frontières avec la Bohême et la Silésie. Il a réalisé des travaux magiques à Sorau (maintenant Żary, Pologne), avant que les Maçons de Leipzig ne le connaissent    .

Pour une nuit typique d'activité nécromantique, les adeptes de Schrepfer jeûnent pendant 24 heures et on leur sert une salade italienne (probablement droguée) et beaucoup de punch juste avant minuit, plongés dans une pièce sombre avec un autel drapé de noir. Schrepfer habillé exécute les rituels et exige que ses disciples restent assis à une table faisant face à de terribles dangers. Il utilise un mélange de symbolisme maçonnique, catholique et kabbalistique, y compris des crânes, un cercle de craie sur le sol, de l'eau bénite, de l'encens et des crucifix. Il commence par une longue prière adressée à Jésus-Christ, à Dieu et à la Sainte Trinité, demandant la protection des bons esprits. Il révèle habituellement trois fantômes différents : une âme bonne dans le beau blanc, une neutre dans le blanc subjugué et une mauvaise dans le brun et le noir affreux. L'arrivée des fantômes était surtout accompagnée d'un son semblable à celui des doigts mouillés sur le verre, qui parfois augmentait et pouvait se poursuivre pendant environ une heure. Les esprits qu'il révélait étaient réputés être clairement visibles avec des traits reconnaissables, planant dans l'air avec leurs bras croisés. Ils paraissaient vaporeux, pas faits de chair, et parfois ils criaient terriblement. Les fantômes pouvaient répondre à ses questions. Parmi les apparitions qui auraient été révélées par Schrepfer au cours de ces années figurent Frédéric le Sage, les traîtres danois Johann Friedrich Struensee et Enevold Brandt, le comte Brühl, Maurice de Saxe et le dernier grand maître Jacques de Molay. Lors d'une séance à Dresde, Schrepfer ordonna à un esprit d'apporter une lettre à un habitant de Francfort. L'esprit obéit et revint une demi-heure plus tard avec une réponse signée à Francfort par le dit habitant. Un autre esprit semblait englouti dans les flammes en priant Schrepfer de ne pas le torturer ainsi. En dehors de la mise en évidence de fantômes, Schrepfer a également démontré ses pouvoirs en faisant briller une étoile à son commandement et en soulevant une tempête dans une forêt.

La plupart des spectateurs des séances de Schrepfer étaient convaincus que les apparitions étaient réelles. Aucune preuve évidente de tromperie ne semble jamais avoir été trouvée, mais les critiques ont fait part de soupçons. Un marchand local qui fréquentait la loge de Schrepfer prétendait dans son journal qu'une fois il avait barré la porte derrière eux avant que la séance eût commencé. De fait, le fantôme attendu a été entendu jouer avec la serrure, mais n'a pas réussi à entrer. Une autre fois, il se cachait sous la table et reconnaissait les chaussures d'un fantôme comme les chaussures qu'il avait vendues la veille à un vieux compagnon. Schrepfer avait une fois, plutôt méfiant, refusé de révéler l'esprit du fameux poète Christian Fürchtegott Gellert qui avait été connu de certains des spectateurs. Parmi les techniques que Schrepfer utilisait pour ses effets élaborés figuraient des acteurs qui se produisaient sous la forme de fantômes, de ventriloques, de sons d'harmonica de verre, de fumée aromatique, de projections de caméra obscura, de projections de lanterne magique sur la fumée, de projections de miroir concaves et de tonnerres.

Schrepfer avait été ami avec le pharmacien et franc-maçon Johann Heinrich Linck et a tenu régulièrement des réunions de loge dans le jardin de Linck. Schrepfer a même accueilli la femme de Linck dans sa loge, alors que les femmes étaient habituellement exclues des loges maçonniques. Linck a été expulsé d'une autre loge et a probablement dit à Schrepfer tout ce qu'il y avait appris. Schrepfer avait besoin de produits que seul un pharmacien pouvait fournir et Linck savait aussi des connaissances sur les dispositifs optiques et acoustiques. Une lanterne magique et un autre type de boîte de projection de sa collection sont maintenant dans le musée Waldenburg. La boîte de projection est décorée d'un crucifix et d'un crâne avec des ailes.

Conflits avec la loge maçonnique Minerva

Schrepfer a eu plusieurs conflits avec la loge maçonnique de Leipzig Minerva zu den drey Palmen, de l'Ordre de la Stricte observance templière, dont il a essayé de recruter les membres pour sa propre loge. Il existe des indices que Schrepfer était relié à l'ordre rosicrucien secret de la Rose-Croix d'Or, qui voulait infiltrer les loges maçonniques pour les affaiblir de l'intérieur. Schrepfer réclamait le soutien des jésuites pour cacher ce lien et prospecter pour sa propre loge. Après de nombreux refus, Minerva a permis à Schrepfer de parler lors d'une réunion le . Avec beaucoup d'aplomb il s'est déclaré être le vrai Franc-maçon de la connaissance et du pouvoir. Les dirigeants de Minerva ont exigé plus de respect pour leur loge, car ils avaient entendu qu'il les avait accusés d'être des imposteurs. Ils ont rappelé à Schrepfer que Minerva était sous la protection du prince Karl von Sachsen, ancien duc de Courlande et ont dit qu'ils lui soumettraient son cas s'il proférait d'autres accusations, puis ils l'ont laissé aller.

Au cours de l'été 1783, Schrepfer aurait participé à une conférence de la loge Minerva et les aurait menacés avec ses pistolets en leur demandant d'abandonner leur système mensonger.

Minerva envoya une lettre pour demander l'aide de Karl von Sachsen. Schrepfer, dans l'intervalle, est allé quérir le soutien du membre de la cour saxonne et commandant de l'infanterie Albert Christian Heinrich von Brühl, qui était également lié à l'ordre rosicrucien. Un soir de cette période, quelques hommes de Schrepfer, probablement ivres, avaient envahi Minerva en énonçant à haute voix et à plusieurs reprises le mot de passe principal de la loge sous les fenêtres de deux hommes de Minerva. La réponse de Karl von Sachsen aux demandes  d'aides de Minerva a été apaisante et la loge a commencé à craindre pour son avenir, a décidé de cacher ses documents secrets et a essayé de trouver un accord amical avec Schrepfer. Dans la nuit du , Schrepfer distribua 40 exemplaires d'un pamphlet indiquant que Minerva ne connaissait rien à la maçonnerie et que les gens n'obtiendraient rien qui vaille de leur loge. Le dépliant avait révélé les secrets des trois premiers degrés de maçonnerie et les coûts élevés de l'adhésion. Schrepfer a promis de révéler d'autres secrets huit jours plus tard, mais n'est jamais passé à l'acte.

Karl von Sachsen s'estimant offensé par la conduite de Schrepfer  a ordonné son arrestation et a envoyé un officier à Leipzig pour le capturer le . Plusieurs récits contradictoires de l'incident existent. Selon certains, Schrepfer a reçu 100 coups de bâton et a dû signer une confession. Cette confession a été publiée dans les journaux locaux. Schrepfer a nié dans une déclaration au Frankfurther Zeitung l'existence de ses confessions, ainsi que la peine elle-même ou toute raison de punition. Il a déclaré avoir déposé une plainte concernant son arrestation, qui avait duré 20 heures, auprès du conseil de Leipzig. Il conclut subtilement à une société qui, sous la couverture de la franc-maçonnerie, a cherché à restaurer l'Ordre du Temple. Un autre récit de sa punition prétend que Schrepfer a couru dans un coin, s'est jeté à genoux et a appelé des esprits à son aide. Après cet incident honteux, Schrepfer quitte Leipzig quelque temps .

Séance au tribunal de Dresde

Schrepfer parait à Dresde sous un faux nom, prétendant être un colonel français. Il a demandé à être présenté à l'électeur Friedrich August III, mais cela lui a été refusé par François Barbé-Marbois. Le vrai nom de Schrepfer fut bientôt découvert et des rapports de ses pouvoirs surnaturels arrivèrent à Karl von Sachsen. Le prince a décidé de chercher une réconciliation et a personnellement rencontré Schrepfer pour s'excuser des châtiments qu'il avait commandés à son encontre. Schrepfer accepta les excuses et promit à contrecœur de convoquer un esprit au palais aux demandes répétées du prince.

Le prince choisit l'esprit de son oncle, le gouverneur Johann Georg, le chevalier de Saxe, en partie dans l'espoir que cela révélerait où dans le palais le gouverneur avait caché les grosses sommes d'argent qu'il aurait amassées. À la nuit nommée, une troupe de 19 témoins s'était rassemblée dans la grande galerie du palais. Toutes les fenêtres et les portes étaient sécurisées. Certains ont facilement accepté la boisson, tandis que d'autres ont refusé afin de garder un esprit clair. Schrepfer commença la cérémonie, agenouillé dans un coin de la galerie. Il fallut beaucoup de temps avant que quelque chose ne se produise et Schrepfer se fatiguait, en sueur, et convulsait. Ensuite, un bruit intense se fit entendre à l'extérieur et un second bruit suivit qui ressemblait à un harmonica de verre. Selon Schrepfer, cela annonçait l'arrivée de bons esprits protecteurs. Peu de temps après on entendit des cris effrayants, que Schrepfer attribuait aux esprits malins nécessaires au commencement de la séance. Il continua ses évocations jusqu'à ce qu'une porte s'ouvrit avec violence et un orbe noir roula dans la pièce, investi de la fumée. Au milieu de la fumée, on voyait un visage humain ressemblant au chevalier de Saxe. Il criait haut et fort; Karl, wolte du mit mich? (Karl, qu'est-ce que vous voulez de moi, pourquoi me dérangez-vous?) Les spectateurs étaient tous pétrifiés et personne n'osait vérifier la nature surnaturelle du phénomène. Le prince se jeta à genoux et demanda grâce à Dieu. Pour faire disparaître l'apparition. Il sembla qu'une heure passa avant que les invocations de Schrepfer ne renvoyassent l'esprit, pour revenir au moment où les spectateurs venaient de commencer à se sentir soulagés de l'horreur. Les exorcismes réitérés de Schrepfer ont fini par expulser l'apparition pour de bon et ont laissé les spectateurs dans la crainte des pouvoirs surnaturels de Schrepfer.

L'électeur a rapidement entendu parler de l'événement et a interdit toute répétition. En secret, le prince Karl et Schrepfer continuèrent à faire des séances, avec seulement un ou deux autres maçons. Schrepfer retourna à Leipzig, mais continua à visiter Dresde régulièrement.

La grande escroquerie

Schrepfer a recueilli de nombreux soutiens du clergé et de la noblesse, et au printemps 1774, il a été en contact avec le ministre Friedrich von Wurmb qui est devenu le personnage principal de la plus grande arnaque de Schrepfer. Schrepfer a convaincu Wurmb qu'il avait accès à un trésor scellé constitué de titres déposés à Francfort-sur-le-Main, qui comprenait un brevet royal français et assurerait à la Saxe des millions de revenus et aiderait à se relever d'une crise. Les spéculateurs ont confié à Schrepfer d'importantes avances, s'élevant à environ un million d'euros d'aujourd'hui. Le  Wurmb ouvrit les paquets contenant les trésors, à Leipzig en présence de l'avocat Johann Heinrich Hoffmann, du marchand François DuBosc et de son fils. Schrepfer n'était pas présent; il avait apparemment des affaires urgentes à régler près de la frontière prussienne. Les paquets ne contiennent aucun objet de valeur : papiers sans importance, capsules d'étain et boîtes remplies de sable et de pierres, sous-vêtements et chaussettes. Ils n'osèrent pas déférer Schrepfer devant les tribunaux car il y avait trop d'enjeux. Même Karl von Sachsen avait été plus ou moins directement impliqué dans la spéculation douteuse et le réseau Rosicrucien secret auquel certains d'entre eux appartenaient aurait pu être exposé.

Mort
Selon plusieurs témoins, Schrepfer fit un joyeux dîner avec des amis le soir du  qui a duré jusqu'à 1h00 le lendemain matin avec une forte consommation de punch. Schrepfer et cinq de ses associés - dont les chambellans de l'avocat Hoffmann et de Karl von Sachsen, Hans Rudolph von Bischoffswerder et Christian Friedrich von Hopfgarten - ont accepté de se promener dans la forêt de Rosenthal en bordure de ville à 5 heures du matin, bien avant l'aube. Après son réveil à 4 heures, Schrepfer a écrit plusieurs lettres d'adieu dont quelques transcriptions sont conservées dans les archives de la ville de Leipzig. La lettre à DuBosc dit: Mon ami bien-aimé, vous et W. ont fait en sorte que je sois maintenant dans l'autre vie! Ceux que j'appelle doivent me suivre, m'entendre mon ami, je prierai Dieu pour vous : mais je vous conseille de votre vie, n'aidez pas Bisschofswerter. Avant la foire de l'an prochain, une main étrange va payer pour moi. Que Dieu rende votre fin aussi paisible que la mienne! Je suis votre ami jusqu'à la mort, deux heures avant ma mort. Il aurait dit adieu à son plus jeune enfant de la manière la plus douce et aurait mis sa bourse et montre en or dans le sac de sa femme.

Un des témoins a déclaré que Schrepfer avait voulu leur parler sur le chemin. Selon la légende, Schrepfer leur a promis un événement tel qu'ils n'avaient jamais rien vu de tel auparavant et ne verraient probablement jamais plus rien de tel. Schrepfer a disparu de leurs yeux pendant un moment, le bruit d'un coup de feu a été entendu et Schrepfer a été trouvé mort. Certains des témoins ont affirmé qu'il avait magiquement disparu ou que seul un rituel nécromantique serait nécessaire pour le ressusciter. Une demi-heure après sa mort, le corps de Schrepfer a été amené à l'hôpital voisin où une autopsie a été menée. Ses restes ont été enterrés discrètement dans le cimetière de l'hôpital pour les suicidés le jour même.

Le suicide apparent a été souvent, plus tard, décrit comme le résultat des illusions supposées de Schrepfer au sujet de ses capacités nécromantiques, probablement en partie à cause des drogues qu'il peut avoir vaporisées à ses séances et doit avoir à plusieurs reprises inhalées lui-même. Il aurait été perpétuellement tourmenté par des esprits mauvais rendant sa vie misérable,

Il y a plusieurs indices sérieux selon lesquels Schrepfer a été effectivement assassiné ou persuadé et aidé à se suicider. Une preuve importante pour le meurtre a été trouvée dans le fait que la balle était entrée par la bouche de Schrepfer, comme si l'arme avait été forcée entre ses lèvres par une autre personne et la victime a résisté en serrant ses mâchoires. Il y a aussi des aspects contradictoires inexplicables dans les déclarations des témoins et il y a de nombreux motifs possibles pour expliquer le fait qu'il ait été tué. Wurmb a écrit une lettre à l'électeur Friedrich August III, neveu de Karl von Sachsen, déclarant que l'enquête judiciaire était impossible sans impliquer le prince. Aucune autre enquête n'a eu lieu.

Conséquences et héritage
Quelques années plus tard, plusieurs associés de Schrepfer - dont Wurmb, DuBosc, Hoffman et Von Bischoffswerder - devinrent leaders des cercles rosicruciens et quelques-uns d'entre eux furent parmi les fondateurs de la nouvelle loge de Mason Balduin à Leipzig en 1776. Von Bisschofswerder eut une influence sur Friedrich Wilhelm II de Prusse à travers une loge rosicrucienne et des séances de révélation de fantômes. Il a été suggéré qu'il a possédé et utilisé l'appareil optique de Schrepfer pour évoquer les esprits.

Peu de temps après la mort de Schrepfer, il y eut une pléthore de publications polémiques attaquant ou défendant ses capacités supposées à élever des fantômes, y compris des écrits de Moses Mendelssohn, de Christian August Crusius, de Balthasar Bekker et de Johann Christian Wiegleb. Schrepfer est devenu célèbre à travers l'Europe. Plusieurs publications comprenaient des explications des techniques qu'il aurait pu utiliser pour provoquer des apparitions, ce qui a inspiré plusieurs personnes à recréer les séances de Schrepfer.

En 1791 et 1792 Phantasmagoria pionnier Paul Philidor a annoncé ses spectacles sous le titre "Schröpferische Geister Erscheinungen" (Apparition de fantômes à la manière de Schrepfer).

Le roman inachevé de Friedrich Schiller, Le Visionnaire (), dont les chapitres ont été publiés entre 1787 et 1798, aurait été inspiré par Schrepfer.

Références

Annexes

Articles connexes
 Étienne-Gaspard Robert

Liens externes

 Otto Förster, Der Geisterseher Johann Georg Schrepfer, Die Legende vom Selbstmord 1774, Leipziger Recherchen 2015 (nach dem Buch von Förster)
 Schrepfer und der Leipziger Löwenapotheker Johann Heinrich Linck
 Eintrag zu Johann Georg Schrepfer bei freimaurer-wiki.de
 Der »Geisterseher« Johann Georg Schrepfer. Die Legende vom Selbstmord, 1774
 Johann Georg Schrepfer (also known as the baron de Steinbach) (1730-1774) conjures spirits at Dresden, but shoots himself when things start to go wrong
 Johann Georg Schrepfer dans http://www.vrijmetselaarsgilde.eu

Bibliographie
  Internationales Freimaurer-Lexikon - Eugen Lennhoff et Oskar Posner (1932)
 Friedrich Kittler, Optical Media, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2010, .
 , Tod eines Geistersehers. Johann Georg Schrepfer. Eine vertuschte sächsische Staatsaffäre, 1774. Taurus Verlag Leipzig, 2011, 112 pages, mit Abb. von Originaldokumenten
 Nachricht von dem berüchtigten Johann Schroepfer in Sachsen und seinen Geisterbeschwörungen. 1775. 8 pages
 Alec Mellor:
 Histoire des scandales maçonniques (Franc-Maçonnerie) - Editions Belfond, 1982.
 Strange Masonic Stories -  - Édité par Richmond: Macoy Publishing & Masonic Supply Co Inc, 1985.
 Johann Salomo Semler : Sammlungen von Briefen und Aufsätzen über die Gaßnerischen und Schröpferischen Geisterbeschwörungen : Halle, 1776
 Walter Kunz: Johann Georg Schröpfer, ein Magier des 18. Jahrhunderts. Rechtshilfe-Verlag, Zurich, 1957
 Joachim Kalka: Phantome der Aufklärung. Von Geistern, Schwindlern und dem Perpetuum Mobile. Berenberg Verlag, Berlin, 2006
 Brockhaus Bilder-Conversations-Lexikon, volume 4. Leipzig 1841., p. 109.
 Pierer's Universal-Lexikon, volume 15. Altenburg 1862, p. 428
 Antoine Faivre, Eckartshausen et la théosophie chrétienne, Klincksieck, 1969, 788 p.
 Antoine Faivre, ROSE-CROIX, Encyclopædia Universalis , consulté le .
 Revue des Deux Mondes - 1866 - tome 61.djvu/906
 Strange Masonic Stories - Alec MELLOR -

Mysticisme
Théosophe
Naissance en 1730
Naissance à Nuremberg
Naissance dans la ville libre de Nuremberg
Décès en octobre 1774
Décès à Leipzig
Décès dans l'électorat de Saxe

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
Q: Как организовать ввод с клавиатуры множеств из нескольких интервалов (-∞, 5.7] U [5.8, 8.7] U [9.5, +∞)? Посоветуйте как ввести с клавиатуры несколько множеств вещественных чисел

*

*(-∞, -4.7] U [3.8, +∞)

*(-∞, 0] U [2, 7] U [8, +∞)

*Таких множеств будет несколько. В каждом несколько интервалов. Только такие [] скобки в общем.

Какой тип данных использовать с учетом того, что не известно количество интервалов в каждом множестве и сколько таких множеств будет?
Потом нужно иметь возможность найти пересечение этих множеств. Те сравнивать введенные данные между собой. Как сравнить я тут не спрашиваю. Я спрашиваю какую переменную использовать для множества.
Символ бесконечности вызывает отдельный вопрос. Как его ввести и как обрабатывать? Может заменить на букву b его?
Я предполагаю, что возможно вариантом будет прямо и писать на экране
(-b,7.7][8,9][7.7,+b) потом enter, и далее вопрос "Хотите продолжить y/n". Если ответить у то можно еще задать множество. Если n, то пошло сравнение.
В общем, какой тип использовать для ввода множества, с учетом неизвестного количества интервалов и количества множеств?

A: Вот вариант решения задачи со следующими предусловиями/оговорками:

*

*Интервалы корректны (для реального использования необходимо добавить валидацию для проверки корректности)

*Предполгается, что все границы нестрогие (кроме бесконечности) и, следовательно, тип границы можно определить из значения

*Для разделения диапазонов используется символ U

*Для значений бесконечности используется i/-i
Класс для хранения диапазона:
private static class Range {
    private Double from;
    private Double to;

    public Range(Double from, Double to) {
        this.from = from;
        this.to = to;
    }
    //getters, setters ...
}

Основная логика:
public static void main(String args[]) throws IOException {
    List<List<Range>> ranges = new LinkedList<>();
    Scanner scanner = new Scanner(System.in);
    String s = "";
    while (!s.equals("n")) {
        s = scanner.nextLine();
        ranges.add(parseRange(s));
        System.out.println("Хотите продолжить y/n?");
        s = scanner.nextLine();
    }
    scanner.close();
}
//парсинг диапазона
private static List<Range> parseRange(String line) {
    // делим интервалы по символу U
    return Arrays.stream(line.split("U")).map(String::trim).map(r -> {
        //отрезаем скобки
        String[] pair = r.substring(1, r.length()-1).split(",");
        Double from = parseDouble(pair[0]);
        Double to = parseDouble(pair[1]);
        return new Range(from, to);
    }).collect(Collectors.toList());
}
//парсинг числа
private static double parseDouble(String s) {
    return s.contains("i")? (s.startsWith("-")? Double.NEGATIVE_INFINITY: Double.POSITIVE_INFINITY): Double.parseDouble(s);
}

Пример работы:
(-i, 0] U [2, 7] U [8, +i)
Хотите продолжить y/n?
y
(-i,+i)
Хотите продолжить y/n?
y
[6,7.8]
Хотите продолжить y/n?
n

В результате выполнения кода в ranges будет список, состоящий из списков диапазонов:
-Infinity - 0.0, 2.0 - 7.0, 8.0 - Infinity
-Infinity - Infinity
6.0 - 7.8

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<title>SharedWorker: WorkerOptions 'type'</title>
<script src="/resources/testharness.js"></script>
<script src="/resources/testharnessreport.js"></script>
<script>

promise_test(() => {
  const worker = new SharedWorker('resources/post-message-on-load-worker.js',
                                  'default');
  return new Promise(resolve => worker.port.onmessage = resolve)
      .then(msg_event => assert_equals(msg_event.data, 'LOADED'));
}, 'Test worker construction with the default worker type.');

promise_test(() => {
  const worker = new SharedWorker('resources/post-message-on-load-worker.js',
                                  { name: 'classic', type: 'classic' });
  return new Promise(resolve => worker.port.onmessage = resolve)
      .then(msg_event => assert_equals(msg_event.data, 'LOADED'));
}, 'Test worker construction with the "classic" worker type.');

promise_test(() => {
  const worker = new SharedWorker('resources/post-message-on-load-worker.js',
                                  { name: 'module', type: 'module' });
  return new Promise(resolve => worker.port.onmessage = resolve)
      .then(msg_event => assert_equals(msg_event.data, 'LOADED'));
}, 'Test worker construction with the "module" worker type.');

test(() => {
  assert_throws_js(
      TypeError,
      () => {
        new SharedWorker('resources/post-message-on-load-worker.js',
                         { name: 'blank', type : '' });
      },
      'Worker construction with an empty type should throw an exception');
}, 'Test worker construction with an empty worker type.');

test(() => {
  assert_throws_js(
      TypeError,
      () => {
        new SharedWorker('resources/post-message-on-load-worker.js',
                         { name: 'unknown', type : 'unknown' });
      },
      'Worker construction with an unknown type should throw an exception');
}, 'Test worker construction with an unknown worker type.');

</script>

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
This 'Pretty Little Liars' Deleted Scene Is so Revealing
Horrible News: Beauty and the Beast Is Leaving Netflix Next Month
Winteritis
10 YouTube Rabbit Holes to Fall Down If You've Already Watched Everything on Netflix
12 TV Shows and Movies to Watch That Will Drastically Improve Your Week
A new Amy Schumer special? A Pretty Little Liars spin-off? Happy days are here again.
Dreading the week ahead? Don't! Pop culture has you covered with a slew of new TV shows and movies that will make your Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday infinitely better. Friday will be here before you know it—and you can celebrate by checking out Jordan Peele's new horror movie, Us. Who needs human contact when there's so much good stuff to watch?
Below, all the TV shows and movies to make time for this week:
Heads Will Roll This upcoming series from Audible stars Kate McKinnon and Emily Lynne and features additional vocal work from Aidy Bryant and the Queer Eye guys. Available for preorder on Audible
Billions The fourth season of this ruthless Showtime classic kicks off tonight. 9:00 P.M. ET on Showtime
9-1-1 Season two of Ryan Murphy's hit police procedural, with new star Jennifer Love Hewitt, marches on this evening. 9:00 P.M. ET on Fox
The Fix Marcia Clark is the brains behind this new legal drama, which centers on a lawyer who loses a high-profile murder case but is pulled back in years later when the suspect kills again. 10:00 P.M. ET on ABC
The Village This Is Us 2.0, is that you? Maybe. Tune in to NBC's latest weepfest, about the sometimes-connected lives of tenants in a Brooklyn apartment building, to find out. 10:00 P.M. ET on NBC
Teachers Tonight's season finale is going to be so good. 10:00 P.M. ET on TV Land
Amy Schumer: Growing Schumer tackles marriage and pregnancy in her latest hilarious stand-up special. Streaming on Netflix
Pretty Little Liars: The Perfectionists Alison DiLaurentis (Sasha Pieterse) thinks her new teaching gig at Beacon Heights University is a fresh start from Rosewood, but the drama follows her. Oh, and so does Mona (Janel Parrish). 8:00 P.M. ET on Freeform
The Act This gripping true-crime series centers on Dee Dee Blanchard, a woman who intentionally made her daughter, Gypsy Rose, sick for years. Gypsy later retaliated by conspiring with her online boyfriend to murder her mother. Streaming on Hulu
Losers This new Netflix docuseries features several high-profile athletes talking about how to overcome failure. Streaming on Netflix
Us Jordan Peele's new nightmare is here, and it's even scarier than 2017's Get Out. Check out the trailer, below. In theaters
Funny Women of a Certain Age Fran Drescher spearheads a cast of hilarious female comedians who perform one night of uninhibited comedy. Carole Montgomery, Luenell, Lynne Koplitz, Kerri Louise, and Vanessa Hollingshea are featured. 9:00 P.M. ET on Showtime
Topicsnetflixwatch this

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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text:
Senate GOP readies policing bill after Floyd death, protests
by: LISA MASCARO, Associated Press
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Ky., left, speaks to reporters following the weekly Republican policy luncheon on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, June 9, 2020. Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., center, and Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., right, listen. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Venturing into a new priority, Senate Republicans are quickly compiling a package of policing changes after George Floyd's death that would create a national database of use-of-force incidents, encourage police body cameras and include a long-stalled effort to make lynching a federal hate crime.
The burst of political energy reflects how swiftly the national conversation over police and racial injustice is upturning business as usual in Washington. The emerging GOP bill doesn't go as far as a sweeping new Democratic package,but it includes several similar provisions. What's unclear is if President Donald Trump will back any of the proposed changes.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, whose home state of Kentucky faces unrest over the police shooting of Breonna Taylor, indicated Thursday the legislation would be ready soon.
"The killing of black Americans like George Floyd and Breonna Taylor have accelerated important conversations," McConnell said as he opened the Senate.
The party that has long favored a "law and order" approach — seen in Trump's reaction to the nationwide demonstrations over Floyd's death — finds itself trying to adapt to a fast-changing national dialogue on police and race as the Black Lives Matter movementgains worldwide prominence.
"This is an issue whose time has come," Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., the GOP's only black senator, said Thursday on the "Today" show.
A group of GOP senators led by Scott is meeting behind closed doors and with the White House on the legislation. Despite a push to produce a package this week, the deadline is slipping as details are being compiled. It is expected to be released early next week, according to a senior GOP aide unauthorized to discuss the situation and granted anonymity.
Central to the package will be a new national database of use-of-force incidents, similar to one included in the Democratic bill. It's a concept both parties support as a way to track potential police misconduct and ensure officers cannot simply transfer from one department to another without public disclosure of their records.
Scott said the provision would be named the "Breonna Taylor Reporting Act" and it would include not only the tracking of use-of-force incidents but also no-knock warrants such as police used to enter the 26-year-old woman's home. The database proposal expands on a similar bill Scott introduced in 2015 after Walter Scott — no relation — was killed by police in South Carolina.
Unlike the House Democratic bill, which would ban police choke holds, the Republican bill appears to be more focused on providing training for officers to de-escalate confrontations.
It would also include "duty to intervene" provisions so other officers would step up to stop misconduct, Scott said.
"We're trying to provide the resources necessary to retrain these local departments," he said.
One area of uncertainty is over so-called "qualified immunity," which the Democrats' bill adjusts to make it easier for injured individuals to claim damages in civil suits against police offices. The White House has said it was a nonstarter and it is not likely to be included in the Senate bill.
Agreement, though, is quickly forming around the anti-lynching bill, a long-stalled effort that has previously been approved by both the House and Senate but was being held up last week by objections from a lone Republican, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky.
Paul has pushed instead for other measures, including changes to no-knock warrants and an end to the practice of sending surplus military equipment to local police departments. Both of those are included in the Democrats' bill but not likely to be included in the Senate GOP package.
Democrats have so far panned the GOP effort as insufficient compared with their own far-reaching proposal, built from decades of work by the Congressional Black Caucus tracking police and racial issues. The House is expected to approve the Democrats' bill in mid-June.
"The moment does not call for cherry-picking one or two things to do. It calls for bold and broad-scale change," said Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York.
Schumer has compared this moment in the aftermath of Floyd's death with the GOP approach to gun violence legislation after mass shootings, when lawmakers try to find consensus but end up doing nothing.
"We cannot go through those same motions again," he said. "This is about the original sin of America, that we must try to deal with head-on."
In the House, GOP leader Kevin McCarthy of California signaled a willingness to engage on the issue.
"I think there's a lot of concepts that we agree upon," McCarthy told reporters.
McCarthy said he favored a ban on choke holds.
It was a changed tone to match a national mood that is shifting after the death of Floyd and many other Americans at the hands of police, especially as ubiquitous cell phones often catch videos of the incidents.
McConnell said the Senate is "preparing to add to the conversations surrounding law enforcement with our own serious proposal." He said the policies would "take smart steps without attacking the vast majority of police officers who bravely do their jobs the right way."
Trump and Republicans have criticized activists' calls to defund the police — and Democrats also distanced themselves from that approach, which is not part of their bill. The defund movement is an overarching term to describe a range of options, from dismantling departments to shifting resources to mental health and other community services. The Democratic bill would instead provide grant money to departments that want to consider new ways of policing.
The White House has dispatched top aides to work with Senate Republicans, and Trump's views on any final deal will remain key to its support.


text:
« Heir to the Glimmering World, by Cynthia Ozick
Two early novels by William Maxwell (Part One) »
February, by Lisa Moore
Lisa Moore is a Newfoundland-based novelist who has attracted substantial attention in Canadian book prize circles despite have only published three books. Her second volume of short stories, Open, was shortlisted for the Giller Prize. Her first novel, Alligator, was also Giller shortlisted and won the Canadian-Caribbean section of the Commonwealth Prize. So when word went out that her second novel, February, would be a story based on the tragic sinking of the Ocean Ranger oil rig in 1982, many Canadian readers — including this one — awaited the book with anticipation.
The Ocean Ranger disaster took the lives of all 84 men on board. Throughout its history, Newfoundland has been accustomed to the sea claiming its men — in some ways this (entirely preventable) tragedy was a reminder that while the world and Newfoundland's economy has changed, the destructive power of nature and the ocean has not changed at all.
Moore's central character, Helen O'Mara, lost her husband of eight years, Cal, in that sinking. She was left with three children, five, six and seven years old, and another on the way. While all that happened many years ago, the author tells most of the story from a viewpoint 26 years later in 2008, with periodic flashbacks to 1982 and even earlier in Cal and Helen's relationship.
Helen is still haunted by the loss — while Moore never actually says it, it is hard not to assume that Helen has thought about it every single day since. Life has been lonely throughout that quarter century, but has become even more lonely since her children left home. At least when she was rearing them, Helen had something to pay attention to. Now, even though her three adult daughters have remained in St. John's and are nearby, that loneliness has become even more oppressive and her memories even more haunting:
Her black cardigan hanging on the closet door. Always there is that high-pitched terror when the phone rings at night: Is someone hurt? Louise (her sister) has had a few scares with angina. An ambulance last winter. Helen is frightened of the phone.
Her cardigan looked like a presence, a ghost. She was old, after all, and yes, years had passed. The bed flying over the edge of a cliff and a siren ringing out across the water and her body seemed to fall at a slower rate than the bed and she felt the bed hit with a plosh and then she hit the bed and began to sink, but it was just the phone, not a siren. The phone. Answer the phone. I'm certainly not old, she thought, snatching the receiver before she missed the call.
The phone call that provokes this is from her son John, the most independent and rebellious of her children, the only one who has not fallen into a "traditional" Newfoundland life. He is a consultant with a firm that specializes in reducing costs for energy firms by "rationalizing" their safety procedures, eliminating the waste of both time and money (the irony is rather crude). He is phoning from Singapore where he has just got a call from Jane Downey, a woman with whom he had a one week fling in Iceland, has not heard from since and who has just called him to say that she is seven months pregnant. John is headed home, he is not sure to what.
Moore does keep both these story lines going in the present, interspersed with flashbacks centred around Helen's married life, the Ocean Ranger and the days, months and years immediately following the disaster. It is an awkward structure but she does make it easier to follow with helpful subheads that introduce each section with both subject and date.
I will admit I had problems with both Open and Alligator and have the same problems with February. For this reader, Moore's books have a lot of breadth and not a lot of depth. She loves description, she loves a geographically roaming narrative (this book goes to Florida, Greece and Mexico in addition to Singapore and New York). I find it distracting and as the book goes on increasingly annoying — given the recognition her previous books have received it would seem that other readers don't find this to be the case.
Consider this example. It is a description of Jane's academic work for her master's thesis where she studied the street people of New York City:
But she had learned things she didn't put in the thesis. The street people had frightened her. Some poor people were right-wing and violent. Some were avaricious. They were hungry and cold. They had runny noses and glittery snot-caked sleeves. They ate with their mouths open. They had glazed eyes and addictions. They were illiterate and they had lice. Or they were brilliant and meticulous with their appearance and saintly. They could see ghosts. They were fair-minded. They shared what they had. They had nothing. They fed the pigeons. They were full of wisdom. They were full of worms. They were full of AIDS. They were spiritually bereft. They were luckless. They were a they. Best of all, they knew the scope of a single lifetime and how not to make a mark.
Jane is a minor character in the book, not fully developed, and that section is the only reference to her work in New York. The novel has numerous other similar digressions, most of which feature the same clipped sentences and shotgun prose that that quote has. It wouldn't be so bad if these flights reflected on the author's central themes — instead I can't help but wonder if the author is using them to avoid fully addressing and developing those themes or, worse yet, doesn't know how to do that.
I plead guilty to having a preference for depth over breadth. I would make the same criticism of Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger and it won the 2008 Man Booker Prize. Certainly, it is consistent with Lisa Moore's style in her previous books — I'll just have to acknowledge that writing which disturbs some readers like me is attractive to others.
Lisa Moore deserves credit for taking a significant, tragic event and examining how it wounded and effected not just individuals, but an entire community — some of the best parts of the book are the sections describing what it was like in St. John's immediately after the Ocean Ranger tragedy. I would have liked more of that. For me, February ultimately fails because it does not deliver on that promise.
This entry was posted on June 17, 2009 at 5:20 pm and is filed under 2010 Booker Prize, Author, Moore, Lisa (2).	You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
11 Responses to "February, by Lisa Moore"
How sad that it didn't stay in Newfoundland.
But thanks for introducing her works to me.
Interesting Kevin, that second quote didn't work at all for me, it seemed ultimately a bit contentless. What, other than that New York is a large and heterogeneous city, does it say?
It's also very romantic, I would imagine most street people were neither illiterate with lice or brilliant, meticulous and saintly. I would guess too that few saw ghosts. Taking such extremes suggests a shallowness of vision, a lack of real insight, a lack one might say of depth.
"Best of all, they knew the scope of a single lifetime and how not to make a mark." is particularly meaningless, and again it's very romantic. If they are anything, they are most certainly not simply a "they".
I'm happy for her success, but I think I'll check in when she writes a more focused book, I suspect my patience for this one would have been less than yours was Kevin.
Or it may be my long hours at work these past few weeks are making me churlish, who can say? An excellent review in any case Kevin, I felt I had a good feel for what in the work would draw me in, the episodes with Helen, and what would not and I think too if my tastes departed from yours here (which I think they don't) I'd be well placed now to form my own view.
Thanks for the comment, Max. I did put that second quote in because I feel it does illustrate some rather undisciplined writing which I think is all too prevalent in the book. I do think Moore has the potential to be quite a good novelist, based on the larger themes she chooses to address. I don't think she has realized that potential yet.
Esther Silverman Says:
I enjoyed your review of the book. It is the only one I will be reading since it is very accurately voices how I feel.
Unfortunately, I am enjoying the topic of the novel much more than its actual contents. The writing is often sloppy and rambling. Was it even edited? I don't want to be overly critical as I am only the reader and any published book must take some talent. I just think such a fine topic could have been handled with more care.
And yet,it's still a good read.
Your reaction is the same as mine — there is a lot of potential to this book but the author does not realize it.
And I agree that it is still a good read, despite that failing.
After reading half of the Booker longlist so far, this one is in my top two. I really liked it. I must not think of the word "depth" in the same way as you do, as this novel doesn't strike me as lacking in depth. The flitting from one place and time to another was surprisingly easy to follow and not distracting, and added to the book for me.
Colette: You are quite right that Moore does explore some of her themes in significant depth (or at least my memory is that she does — I haven't reread the book). What I meant by being distracted by breadth was that she opens up a lot of story avenues that seem to be there more for convenience than development. I suspect a large part of that frustration is that her writing style — which many readers see as her greatest strength — very often grates on me.
I will give February a reread if it makes the shortlist.
February – Lisa Moore – Farm Lane Books Blog Says:
[…] just have to acknowledge that writing which disturbs some readers like me is attractive to others. Kevin From Canada var linkwithin_div_class="linkwithin_hook"; var linkwithin_site_id = 79234; Share and […]
nancy roberts Says:
I am only just beginning to make my way through the Booker longlist, and found this site while searching for more info on the extraordinary Damon Galgut whose "In a Strange Room" has absolutely blown me away. I've much enjoyed the posts and was particularly heartened by the David Mitchell entry b/c so much of his earlier work has meant so much to me. But I can't agree with your assessment of Lisa Moore's "February." Can't help but think that you are applying the wrong standards, looking thru the wrong lenses and entirely missing the novel's beauty, its heat and its light.
The depiction of Helen's grief, her wonderful relation with her sister, the way the characters speak to each other. I loved the book and the characters lived on in my mind for days afterward.
Nancy: Thank you for commenting. And my remarks on February are only my opinion and I would be the first to admit that I might well be wrong — thank you for offering another view. The best ways that blog reviews work — and why comments are so important — is when other readers show why the original writer of the review (that would be me) is way off base.
I read this today Kevin: http://shigekuni.wordpress.com/2010/09/15/lisa-moore-february/ It's shigekuni's thoughts on the same novel. I thought they might interest you.


Journal of Water Supply: Research and Technology-Aqua (2016) 65 (2): 162-171.
This study investigates the formation potential (FP) of nitrogenous disinfection byproducts and haloacetic acids (HAAs) during ozonation and biofiltration. Ozonation of raw waters was performed in batches with 1 mg O3/mg dissolved organic carbon (DOC). The ozonized waters were subsequently passed through a biofilter with 25 minutes of empty bed contact time. The results show that the increases of biodegradable DOC in hydrophobic fractions were higher than those in hydrophilic (HPI) or transphilic fractions. Ozonation reduced the DOC (<10%), and FPs of haloacetonitriles (HANs) and HAAs by 23–70%. Subsequent biofiltration removed up to 35% of DOC, whereas the additional removals of HAN and HAA FPs were negligible during biofiltration. Trichloronitromethane FPs tended to increase by a factor of 5–10 after ozonation and slightly decrease (15–20%) during biofiltration. In the two nitrogen-rich natural organic matters (NOMs), transphilics and HPIs constituted half of the organic carbons and contributed 64–70% of the total N-nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA) formation. Ozonation-biofiltration reduced NDMA precursors in these two water sources but significantly enhanced NDMA formation in Suwannee River NOM. The increase of NDMA formation was attributable to the alteration of NOM characteristics of the HPI fraction by ozonation; the NDMA FP increased 214% in the HPI fraction after ozonation.


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text:
Reviews and analysis of significant films
Ruminations on film from a part-time cinephile
Gravity7 Home
movies dvd cinema foreign film reviews analysis
Contemplating Babel in many tongues and voices
Posted on January 17, 2007 by Adrian Chan
Gun barrels and bullets may be a blast to many American film-makers, but "foreign film-makers" find them to be riddled with cliche and only limited opportunities. At least how the story goes, or is often told. But Inarritu's Golden Globe success with Babel tells a different story, in other tongues, putting gun barrels and bullets to service as a means opening up the field rather than setting it off to run its natural course.
Guns, of course, are an excellent match for film. They execute story lines and create action at the same time. When fired, a bullet may drop a man whose pursuit has held the audience in strangely -posed pauses, popcorn so ever close to the mouth, but not yet in, because the logic of the Western, like the logic of popcorn, requires that the bad man drop before the rest of us can enjoy our (now doubly pleasurable for having acquired a guilty complicity) popcorn; the popcorn itself a strangely historic nod to the genre, what with tall stalks of corn on fields, sunlit and fertile, a field of dreams if not days of heaven, the success story of a civilized and settled western territory but for the ominous threshing promised by an off-screen and future reaper… a grim reminder that the children of the corn may eat now, but pop tomorrow… Popcorn placed into mouths, and it's never just one but it must be several, enough that there are stakes involved each time, enough that simply attempting to get it into our mouths while anticipating, like the rest of the crowded theater, the pop of the gun, and the bad man's fall, that will release own own trigger elbow so that we and numerous others might unleash a hail of falling kernels and puffy targets made.
Gun barrels and bullets might double up action, even involve the audience directly in the production of entertainment from something horrible and terrifying (namely the threat of bad men, and death). But there is more, of course, to the genre than just lock n load (though it is true that this statement may not always apply).
Guns and bullets may execute justice, but they don't make its case. Guns make sense if fired at the right person, for the right reason. A bad man dropped creates a relief in tension only if we know the bad man is a bad man, that he has done bad things, and that the man who shoots him is the right man for the job. In fact, we prefer to let our criminals escape from jail in order that we can see them hunted down and finally killed by the men they pissed off in the first place; we prefer that even to the courtroom drama of preparatory statements, lawyers interrupted mid-sentence and mid-stride by objections launched from on high, judges and juries, a reflection of the intrinsic freedom invested in the political system so uniquely rendered in examples of democracy such as American Idol and captured occasionally on CSpan, again poised and ready to utter that phrase whose terminal authority becomes a release with the simple addition of the prefix "Not"…
Guilt and guns, it is, perhaps, more than it is bullets and guns. Or they might all share a connecting line, and a trajectory if you will: righting a wrong, rendering justice. Without guilt, there is no morality (suggested); without morality, no moral. Guilt creates the possibility of justice, justice, the possibility of the holster (enforcement).
This cinematic field is strong and will always be strong, for its logic is as simple as it gets, and clear at the same time. The crime is defined by the social body against which it is committed, which by Biblical reasoning is entitled to demand justice, if not also mete out a bit of punishment, too. Contemporary action films still have the western embedded within them, borrowing and extending the chilling, thrilling and the harrowing, not unlike the journalistic practice as deployed during wartime military campaigns (notably during the campaign bits, less so during the clear, hold, and gradually lose control bits). These days we still have guys with rifles on rooftops overlooking main street, checking the time, and waiting for the two men mortally and philosophically, if not also morally opposed, to face off against one another. These days men on rooftops tend to offer numerous additional Guns n Ammo product placement opportunities, what with the varieties of caliber, sights, infra-red targeting (did you know those beams show up if you're using night vision goggles, while the poor target has no idea his torso has become a momentary display of sol et lumiere dancing spots of red light, fireworks of course imminent…), but this is just a cliche'd way of layering the Western with technical progress (an achievement in its own right, for the Western chapter of American history was brought to a close by the arrival of industry and practitioners of the law).
Inarritu, in Babel, was aware of all of this, though he may not have thought about it in this way. His stripped-down, high caliber gun is a Soviet issue commonly used to execute territorial justice in the highlands of Central Asian republics. In this case it is fired, however, for no good reason, and at nobody in particular. The violence has no logic. It is in fact illogical, for it is arbitrary. This is Inarritu's style, and it's a style common to relational films—films in which social relations are thematized by or through random acts of senseless violence, beauty, or both. Crash, too, and Hustle and Flow, not to mention Capote, each used this theme. So, too, have Michael Haneke's films (though not always involving gun barrels and bullets); the Dardenne brothers, Gus Van Sant's Elephant, and countless other films which, for the past ten or fifteen years, have produced a genre of relational film along many different lines and variations.
Inarritu, in Babel, plays with the notion of causality by pursuing the question of the gun's owner, and that owner's personal story, in an attempt to pose the Why question (which must be addressed because the violence has no proximate cause). He suggests in this way that in an interdependent world, local violence may have global causes and consequences. Arms trade is of course the topic here, though presented without the apparatus of gun runners, organized crime, internationalized detective work, and so on (that would be Bond). But as we know, it's not just guns that kill people. So a social logic appears, organizing relations among those involved through choices and acts that are good or bad, right, and wrong (the bus passengers, the embassy, the families, the press), and the reaction shots to the random (gun)shot now appear against backdrops that each provide their own degree of sense and organization. For what is or would be the correct thing to do, if as is the case in the film, we must have some compassion for those who committed the accidental crime? What do we do, what is the right thing to choose, what is the appropriate response or retaliation, if conditions themselves pulled the trigger, if the shot fired was a social shot, not a bad man's shot? If the gun belonged neither to the cops regime nor the robbers regime, but to an animal hunter's regime? If we cannot use the logic of the gun because it was not that kind of gun, not that kind of shot, is the violence it has started a violence we can reverse?
Films about social relations work by destabilizing fields in which simple cliches of justice, punishment, retribution, pursuit, and so on must be reassembled by acts of a different order. In Crash it was personal redemption by act of kindness (thus healing the social). In Capote, an author investigating a terrible and senseless crime repeats the crime by sending his man to the gallows (for the sake of good writing). In Cache, the threat of violence against a French television personality recalls a forgotten crime against Algerians, redoubled in a family's own complicitness, and explicated by personal forgetting, rage, and resentment. And there are numerous others.
Films are set up around a shot and reaction shot. The question of a response, which is to say the organization of a cinematic narrative, depends on the intentions and motives of the opening shot/shooter. Babel, though it risks losing its connecting threads at times, successfully raises the question and then presents an even more compelling response, by suggesting, I think, that it's not just in making sense of the shot fired, but in making sense through one's response, that society, if not humanity, might still have a shot at its own redemption.
(also postsed to the Contemplative Cinema blogathon.)
My related reviews and analyses:
outline for a review of the film Capote
review of the film Crash
movie review of L'Enfant
All film blog posts
Technorati tags: analysis, cinema, dvd, films, foreign, indie,movies, movie-reviews, movie reviews, reviews, videomovies, movie-reviews, movie reviews, reviews, video
The Navigators by Ken Loach
Three Times by Hsiao-hsien Hou
5 Replies to "Contemplating Babel in many tongues and voices"
Dude, this was way too complex. You clearly have no idea what the film is about.
The film is simply about the difficulties all people face in communicating with one another.
what the hell is this guy going on about?guns…wtf?is he retarded
Free Ringtones says:
RUY says:
in méxico, we don´t like Babel, we prefer Pan´s labyrint or Children of men, those guys really know how to make a film and tell a story
movies blogathon
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© 2018 Adrian Chan, All Rights Reserved


text:
Auguste Reymond,  né le  au Brassus et mort le  à Prilly, est un photographe suisse.

Biographie
Après avoir suivi un apprentissage d'horloger, il se lance dans la photographie avec, comme sujet unique, la vallée de Joux. Il part ensuite à Genève de 1861 à 1870 pour se spécialiser dans la reproduction d'œuvres d'art. Il retourne ensuite dans la vallée de Joux où il photographie des éléments locaux, aussi bien des paysages que des montres et des instruments astronomiques ou des évènements locaux, offrant ainsi de nombreux documents historiques et ethnographiques sur la vie de la région au début du .

Références

Biographies

Personnalité liée au canton de Berne
Photographe suisse
Naissance dans le canton de Vaud
Naissance en mai 1825
Décès en juillet 1913
Décès à 88 ans


text:
8Jun/11Off
The Kill / Doubled Over: The Dirty Filthy Yank Perspective by Gingerbelly
Posted by Matt
Somewhere on Park Street in Montclair, New Jersey, wedged modestly between two upscale restaurants, sits a simple and inconspicuous-looking door. Behind that door is a stairwell that descends and expands into a cavernous basement area. Nearly every inch of it is covered in graffiti and stickers, the side walls support rows of beaten couches and seats torn out of old cars, and an elevated section at the far end serves as a makeshift stage. For years, this basement has been referred to as The Meatlocker, and on the night of Friday, May 20th, it was home to an unrelenting maelstrom of grinding noise.
The Meatlocker was just one stop along the US East Coast tour of The Kill before their major event at Maryland Deathfest IX in Baltimore the following week. Joined by partners in grind Doubled Over, the two bands comprise a lethal duo, paragons of Aussie grindcore excellence. This night's portion of the tour featured a stellar cast of supporting bands, all in top brutal form. Up-and-coming grindcore act Nemesis Complex took the stage first, ensuring that the audience's ears would be properly broken in for all the following bands with a wall of harsh, blasting noise. Picking up swiftly afterwards was the two-man cannibalistic squad Rogyapa, satisfying any lingering cravings for more grind. Following was a violent thrashing from Amputee, featuring members of New Jersey grind act Chainsaw to the Face. The Communion from New York was up next, lashing out a slew of chilling riffs and dynamic vocals. Also churning through the stage amps was a storm of thick and fuzzy sludge grooves laid down by local band Dutchguts.
By 1:00 AM, as Doubled Over was setting up, many in the crowd had either caught their second wind or reached a suitably drunken state—just in the nick of time. A two-piece for this show, they wasted no time in sending the audience into submission: careening through sharp tempo changes, throttling into high-velocity, slashing blasts only to yank it suddenly down to a painful, doomy trudge, all before rocketing back up to speed again. A powerfully driving snare pulled many into the pit with ease, backed by solid guitarsmanship and guttural growls to complete the sound. Doubled Over delivered on both intensity and the ability to transfer its unyielding energy directly into the crowd. At the end of the set, they were joined by The Kill's vocalist to punctuate with a cover of the legendary Excruciating Terror. Even if some audience members may be unfamiliar with Doubled Over, their stage magic compels all in the vicinity to thrash without compromise.
With both bands playing on rental instruments that they only received after arriving in the US, The Kill shared the same drum kit and likewise decimated it with the same breed of fury from down under. It seemed apparent that rental or not, no instrument would be unfamiliar enough to prevent itself from being shredded as they started their set. With the shout of a song title, followed by a swift dive into the first track, the grind was soon underway. The line between the stage and the pit blurred to the point where not even the band was safe from the rumpus of the hordes. High-pitched, serrated screams cut their way to the surface of waves of thrashing bodies as the vocalist was pulled into the crowd. It seemed that the final reserves of utter insanity were stored up over the course of the show for this moment, as thunderous blast beats pummeled skulls left and right, and searing guitar riffs needled flesh with little to no regard for mercy. The Kill opened up a cataclysmic can of grindcore that washed over the entire Meatlocker with incendiary force. The setlist unloaded like fully automatic rounds and concluded the night with proper devastation.
I type this now with a face that is still half-melted after the experience, flecks of skin dripping down onto my keyboard. New Jersey is quite often considered the "armpit" of the United States, and if the arrival of these bands on the night of May 20th was intended to be a tactical strike to wipe us off the map, then I would not be surprised—we were obliterated in the best way possible.
Thank you, our Australian friends, the rest of the bands, and everyone who came out, for reminding us what it means to fucking grind.
"Gingerbelly is the current bassist and noise-shitter for Nemesis Complex. He doesn't usually write blog articles, but may consider doing it more often in the future for cash to help pay for his facial reconstruction surgery. He also (quite shamelessly) suggests that you should check out the Nemesis Complex blog for a free download of the band's new album, "Enemy." And he's not even done with the self-whoring yet, because he also notes that you can find plenty more cool stuff at the NxCx YouTube channel. If you found all of this to be a vile and offensive load of tripe, you can send him hate mail (nemesiscomplexnj[at]gmail(dot)com) and personally call him an insufferable prick."
Tagged as: american perspective, amputee, Chainsaw to the Face, doubled over, Dutchguts, Excruciating Terror, gingerbelly, grindcore yanks, Maryland Deathfest, Meatlocker, nemesis complex, new jersey, Rogyapa, The Communion, The Kill No Comments
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Hi scrappers. I bring you a page that seems better suited for Valentine's Day than for summer. This photo was taken outside B Sweet Bakery in West LA, an eatery known for their Ube (purple yam) flavored baked goods. If you're every in the neighborhood, I recommend checking them out!
Most of my pages start with a color scheme and a sketch. Apart from that, I don't really have plan. I didn't expect this page to turn out so...pink. The butterfly and rose embellishments by My Mind's Eye made this page extra girly. The pink wood grain paper from My Mind's Eye's Bramble Rose stack made for even more pink. The white floral paper is from Colorbok's Tracy Porter paper collection and is something that's been in my stash for probably over a decade. forgot I had it!
This color scheme was inspired by Color, Story, Inspiration's July challenge. While their inspo photos were quite summery, that didn't seem to translate to my page.
This layout was done for the Let's Get Sketchy July 15th sketch. I used more ribbons and stripes than the single one in the sketch and took a cue from dedign team member Astrid's page with the torn paper details.


text:
Q: boost::function on member functions I am trying to make use of the boost::function, I am a newbie on C++ and doing a course.
What I have:
class OptionPricer {
    [constructor etc..]
    double CallPrice(const double S);
    double PutPrice(const double S);
    double CallPrice(const double S, const double putPrice);
    double PutPrice(const double S, const double callPrice);
    vector<double> OptionPricer::Mesher(const double start, const double end, const double h, boost::function<double (const double)> funct);
};

I would like to use boosts function pointers so I do not have to replicate the Mesher function, instead just passing the *Price functions.
What I try to do:
boost::function<double (double)> functCP = &OptionPricer::CallPrice;

But I get:

ClCompile:   OptionPricer.cpp   Main.cpp
  c:\c++\9.a.1\9.a.1\main.cpp(34): error C2440:
  'initializing' : cannot convert from 'overloaded-function' to
  'boost::function'
            with
            [
                Signature=double (double)
            ]
            No constructor could take the source type, or constructor overload resolution was ambiguous

I also tried without the addressof operator but my experience is too little to understand this type of issue in full extent. If someone can advise it would be great.
Thank you for the comments, I tried the const double as well before.
Given the advise I tried this now, which works, out of that another question arises.
I got this now, after advise from Mike Seymour:
    // Calculate meshes
    double start = 0, end = 20, h = 0.5;
    boost::function<double (const double)> functCP = boost::bind(&OptionPricer::CallPrice, &pricer1, _1);
    boost::function<double (const double)> functPP = boost::bind(&OptionPricer::PutPrice, &pricer1, _1);
    cout << "Calculate meshes:" << endl;
    cout << "Mesh1 Call: " << pricer1.Mesher(start, end, h, functCP) << " Mesh1 Put: " << pricer1.Mesher(start, end, h, functPP) << endl;
    cout << "Mesh2 Call: " << pricer2.Mesher(start, end, h, functCP) << " Mesh2 Put: " << pricer2.Mesher(start, end, h, functPP) << endl;
    cout << "Mesh3 Call: " << pricer3.Mesher(start, end, h, functCP) << " Mesh3 Put: " << pricer3.Mesher(start, end, h, functPP) << endl;

Why I did not want to use an instance was because I would then need to bind it to all 3 pricer instances, they contain the data to build the mesh from e.g. they differ in their instance values, I think I might need to make the bind more dynamic somehow.
E.g. above function is not correct since I use only pricer1 function bindings on pricer2 and pricer3 instances.
What I would do at current stage is duplicating that for pricer2, pricer3 etc. Actually I wanted to get rid of redundancy and not duplicate the mesher since it is just iterating over a range, now I still have kind of duplication but definitely better than having a kind of duplication on the function side.
boost::function<double (const double)> functCP = boost::bind(&OptionPricer::CallPrice, &pricer2, _1);
boost::function<double (const double)> functPP = boost::bind(&OptionPricer::PutPrice, &pricer2, _1);

Got rid of redundancy, might not be the most technical solution but:
boost::function<double (const double)> bindCPricer(OptionPricer &pricer) {
    return boost::bind(&OptionPricer::CallPrice, &pricer, _1);
}

boost::function<double (const double)> bindPPricer(OptionPricer &pricer) {
    return boost::bind(&OptionPricer::PutPrice, &pricer, _1);
}

cout << "Mesh1 Call: " << pricer1.Mesher(start, end, h, bindCPricer(pricer1)) << " Mesh1 Put: " << pricer1.Mesher(start, end, h, bindPPricer(pricer1)) << endl;
    cout << "Mesh2 Call: " << pricer2.Mesher(start, end, h, bindCPricer(pricer2)) << " Mesh2 Put: " << pricer2.Mesher(start, end, h, bindPPricer(pricer2)) << endl;

Thank you very much for your input!
Btw. I have been programming Java for more than 10 years, I am wondering why I haven not learnt C++ earlier, so far it looks much more powerful to me, boost is awesome, templating is also more sophisticated than Java Generics.

A: The function object needs to be called on its own, while a member function needs an object. So you'll need to bind it to one:
OptionPricer pricer; // The object you want the function to use
boost::function<double (double)> functCP =
    boost::bind(&OptionPricer::CallPrice, &pricer, _1);

This binds the function to a pointer to pricer, so that calling the function functCP(x) is equivalent to pricer.CallPrice(x). Beware that, if the object is copyable, it's easy to accidentally bind to a copy of it, which probably isn't what you want.
Alternatively, in modern C++, you could use a lambda (and you'd also use the standard library rather than Boost):
std::function<double (double)> functCP =
    [&pricer](double x){return pricer.CallPrice(x);};

I find that more readable than a bind expression; your aesthetics may differ.


text:
Q: Preserve newlines in Twitter Oneboxes For several years now, Twitter supports newlines in tweets.
However, when oneboxed in chat, the lines are lost and it's showing everything in one line.
For example, compare the following:

Can newlines in oneboxed tweets be preserved please?
One possible solution is applying the following CSS:
.ob-status-text {
  white-space: pre-wrap;
}


NEW YORK, Jan 23 (Reuters) - The dollar fell to a seven-week low against a currency basket on Monday, weighed by concerns about the early days of U.S. President Donald Trump's administration that have so far been marred by protests, a protectionist inauguration speech and angry comments on Twitter.
The safe-haven yen has been the main beneficiary of U.S. political uncertainty, rising for a second straight session against the dollar. The yen has gained nearly 3 percent since the start of the year.
In mid-morning trading, the dollar index, which measures the greenback against six major rivals, fell 0.3 percent to 100.43 led by a 0.9 percent drop versus the yen to 113.64 yen.
"The new Trump administration did little to reassure nervous investors that the direction of the government will be more towards growing the economy and less toward the divisive and protectionist rhetoric that characterized much of the campaign period," said Omer Esiner, chief market analyst at Commonwealth Foreign Exchange in Washington.
Trump said he would begin renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement and withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).
That, and the declaration of a "running war" with parts of the media, fed uncertainty about the direction policy will take and pointed to a bumpy few months ahead for the new president.
The dollar index rose around 4.2 percent between Trump's election in November and the end of last year, but has since given back more than 2.5 percent.
The dollar's steep rally following Trump's victory was spurred by expectations that the new administration would focus on pro-growth fiscal stimulus, tax cuts, and regulatory reform that would likely lift inflation and prompt the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates more quickly this year.
Sterling was the other big gainer, hitting a five-week high as investors bet Britain's Supreme Court would rule on Tuesday that the government needs parliamentary approval to trigger formal Brexit talks.
It climbed as high as $1.2477, its strongest level against the dollar since Dec. 19, and pushed its way towards a two-week high against the euro at 86.20 pence per euro. .
The euro was up 0.4 percent at $1.0736, on course for its seventh daily rise in the last nine.


text:
Q: How to prevent recursive with from full table scan in the start statement I have a tree database structure with id and parent_id, and want to create a view which returns all superior for a given child id.
It always results in a execution plan with a full table scan.
Adding hints or calculate statistics did not help.
The issue is reproducible even with a view records.
If I add the start condition direct into the start statement, the index is used and performance is good.
-- Oracle Database 12c Enterprise Edition Release 12.1.0.2.0

CREATE TABLE t AS (
  SELECT   10 parent_id,   1 child_id FROM dual UNION ALL
  SELECT  100 parent_id,  10 child_id FROM dual UNION ALL
  SELECT NULL parent_id, 100 child_id FROM dual
);

CREATE INDEX child_idx ON t (child_id);

CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW parents_v AS
WITH recu(
  start_id, child_id, parent_id
)
AS(
  -- start
  SELECT
     child_id start_id, child_id, parent_id
  FROM  t
  UNION ALL
  SELECT
      recu.child_id, pre.child_id, pre.parent_id
  FROM  recu, t pre
  WHERE recu.parent_id = pre.child_id
)
SELECT * FROM recu;

Query to test index:
  SELECT * FROM t WHERE child_id = 1;

Explain plan:
SELECT * FROM table(DBMS_XPLAN.DISPLAY_CURSOR);

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id  | Operation                   | Name      | Rows  | Bytes | Cost (%CPU)| Time     |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|   0 | SELECT STATEMENT            |           |       |       |     2 (100)|          |
|   1 |  TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID| T         |     1 |    26 |     2   (0)| 00:00:01 |
|*  2 |   INDEX RANGE SCAN          | CHILD_IDX |     1 |       |     1   (0)| 00:00:01 |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Result Ok,index CHILD_IDX is used
Query to test recursion:
SELECT * FROM parents_v WHERE start_id = 1;

Explain plan:
SELECT * FROM table(DBMS_XPLAN.DISPLAY_CURSOR);
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id  | Operation                                 | Name | Rows  | Bytes | Cost (%CPU)| Time     |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|   0 | SELECT STATEMENT                          |      |       |       |     7 (100)|          |
|*  1 |  VIEW                                     |      |     6 |   234 |     7  (15)| 00:00:01 |
|   2 |   UNION ALL (RECURSIVE WITH) BREADTH FIRST|      |       |       |            |          |
|   3 |    TABLE ACCESS FULL                      | T    |     3 |    78 |     2   (0)| 00:00:01 |
|*  4 |    HASH JOIN                              |      |     3 |   156 |     5  (20)| 00:00:01 |
|   5 |     RECURSIVE WITH PUMP                   |      |       |       |            |          |
|   6 |     TABLE ACCESS FULL                     | T    |     3 |    78 |     2   (0)| 00:00:01 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Result Not Ok,index CHILD_IDX is not used, always a full table scan is done.

A: It looks like it is not possible to tell the DB that a column of a recursion has an one to one relation to the "start select" of the recursion. The only workaround I found is using a select statement with parameters, instead of using a view.
In the select statement the start_id constraint can be added direct to the "start select".
View and star_id_parameter (bad execution time)
DB builds up the complete datastruture in memory and filters at the end.
CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW parents_v AS
WITH recu(
  start_id, child_id, parent_id
)
AS(
  -- start
  SELECT
     child_id start_id, child_id, parent_id
  FROM  t
  UNION ALL
  SELECT
      recu.child_id, pre.child_id, pre.parent_id
  FROM  recu, t pre
  WHERE recu.parent_id = pre.child_id
)
SELECT * FROM recu;

SELECT *
FROM parents_v
WHERE start_id = start_id_parameter;

star_id_parameter in the start select of the recursion (fast execution)
DB uses index and only requests the view records in the path of the tree.
WITH recu(
  start_id, child_id, parent_id
)
AS(
  -- start
  SELECT
     child_id start_id, child_id, parent_id
  FROM  t
  -- CHANGE start_id CONSTRAINT ADDED
  WHERE child_id = &start_id_parameter
  --
  UNION ALL
  SELECT
      recu.child_id, pre.child_id, pre.parent_id
  FROM  recu, t pre
  WHERE recu.parent_id = pre.child_id
)
SELECT * FROM recu;

-- CHANGE NO VIEW ANY MORE
-- SELECT *
-- FROM parents_v
-- WHERE start_id = start_id_parameter;


text:
The Agence de Presse du Mali (Malian Press Agency - AMAP) is the only agency that redistributes national news to local media and provides them with national news. Created by Law 036 of 24 December, 1992 to replace the Agence Nationale de l'Information du Mali (National Agency of Information of Mali - ANIM), AMAP is the only agency that redistributes information to local media and provides them with national information. It is a public institution with administrative functions whose mission is to ensure the publication of public press titles in French and national languages and the dissemination of all information likely to interest Malian citizens; it also publishes books and searches, disseminates and distributes national information in the country and abroad, at a cost. AMAP is also in charge of implementing legislation on advertising in the Republic of Mali and to realise or facilitate the reaching of objects or advertising works; it ensures the control of state media to any third parties that request it and participates in the establishment of all entities allowing the development of advertising in Mali. The agency also owns the daily Essor, issuing between 8,000 to 10,000 copies per day, and three community-press monthly titles: Kibaru in Bamanankan (6,000 copies), Kibaru in Peulh (2,000 copies) and Xibaaru in Soninke (2,000 copies).
< Journalists associations
Audience measurement organisations >


text:
Drasa viridipennis es una especie de insecto coleóptero de la familia Chrysomelidae.

Fue descrita científicamente en 1890 por Allard.

Referencias

viridipennis


text:
VIC Government's Hotel Quarantine conspiracy exposed
By Unconventional Economist in Australian Politics
at 12:20 pm on October 15, 2020 | 9 comments
Sky News' Peta Credlin has spent weeks trawling through thousands of pages of evidence from the Hotel Quarantine Inquiry. In the above investigative report, she exposes in no uncertain terms the conspiracy surrounding the Victorian Government's hotel quarantine debacle:
Sky News host Peta Credlin says the story of how the Andrews government went it alone using nothing much more than private security guards to run hotel quarantine continues to get "murkier and more unorthodox".
Ms Credlin has trawled through the evidence submitted to the hotel quarantine inquiry in an attempt to finally ascertain who made the fateful decision to use private security guards.
On Tuesday Ms Credlin uncovered how security firm Unified Security CEO David Millward sent an email to employees on March 27 at midday to complete the federal government's COVID training by 2:30pm.
On that day, National Cabinet met to discuss hotel quarantine, which was eventually announced by the prime minister at 2:30.
Unified Security – without being on the preferred tenders list – was given a $30 million three-month contract later that night to start immediately.
Ms Credlin outlined how Unified Security was given the job as she found in evidence a secret WhatsApp group called 'Working with the Vic A Team' which at 10:30pm featured a message that confirmed the firm for the job.
"We can't see what was said that made Unified so critical to include – against all the Victorian Government rules – because that's been redacted from evidence, but it must have been good because here's the response – 'OK, Unified are in,'" said Ms Credlin.
"Clearly someone on that Friday, at that time, was close enough to Millward to have his private mobile.
"Who is the person, why did they have this mobile number and did they use at any time earlier in the day – earlier in the day – when they knew, via Chris Eccles, what was coming out of the National Cabinet meeting?"
It's an extraordinary display of investigative journalism that surpasses anything we've seen from the army of lawyers at the Coate Hotel Quarantine Inquiry, which according to Peta Credlin is shaping up as a white wash:
Among Melbourne's legal circles there is growing embarrassment about what this inquiry isn't asking for, who it is not recalling to the box, and the manner in which hearings were conducted by counsel assisting. The job of counsel assisting is to assist the inquiry chair to get to the truth. That's not what appears to have happened; counsel assisting appears to have read back the written witness statements before asking rudimentary questions. The witness statements were not pushed and probed enough. And what about this nebulous nonsense in the closing submission about a "creeping assumption"?
All ministers are sworn in by the Governor of Victoria — under law, to have authority over specific pieces of legislation, or acts. It's not a collective authority. It's one minister with a Bible in hand, sworn in, and in government decisions are made by that minister under those specific laws, paper is signed off, contracts signed and taxpayer money spent.
Much has come to light since the hearings closed; Justice Jennifer Coate should consider reopening hearings and recalling witnesses. It's not credible that Victoria went off on a frolic, no one making a specific decision to do so…
There was no creeping assumption; according to the police submission "a decision was made to engage private security … before the 2pm meeting" involving the police chief, Police Minister and emergency management commissioner. The Premier's chief of staff was the first person Eccles briefed on the national cabinet decision to introduce hotel quarantine. Jobs Department head Simon Phemister then put the process in train that led to the engagement of Unified Security, a company not on the list of preferred tenderers, but that somehow won the lion's share of the work — a $30m contract for three months' work. How can this inquiry regard its job as done without calling the Premier's chief of staff to give evidence? I know what chiefs of staff do; they don't get briefed on cabinet meetings and then sit twiddling their thumbs.
How could Phemister have set up the private security contracts without knowing how this had come to be authorised? What public servants would spend $30m without being clear about the authority for it? And how did this escape detailed probing by the counsel assisting this inquiry? And what about the Premier? He announced private security was doing the job at 3.15pm that Friday, but now can't remember who made the decision…
Once it was clear Victoria's second wave of COVID-19 deaths flowed from the hotel quarantine bungle, and once the Premier set up an inquiry without coercive powers to compel the appearance of witnesses and the production of documents; and given that he then avoided questions from the media by hiding behind this inquiry — the suspicion must arise that government was not seeking to uncover the truth, but to hide the guilty.
Keep going Peta. The cover up is always worse than the crime.
CCP instructs media on how to report Aussie trade war on itself
Via CCP mouthpiece, The Global Times: The price
The Strayan: Stan Grant rushed to hospital
Sir Fomo McSpruikerson is an expatriate
Biden appoints China hawk to run Asia foreign policy
Via Micheal Green at Foreign Policy: First,
Can Labor break Keating's China chokehold?
Who knows? All of the evidence says not. But it


text:
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U2's 'No Line on the Horizon': Three stars
February 24, 2009 | 1:16 pm
"No Line on the Horizon"
When he was 20, Brian Eno scribbled a phrase in a notebook that later proved relevant to his entire career: "The edges around nothing." As the writer and Roxy Music biographer Michael Bracewell has noted, the approach Eno would develop in that band and as a mastermind of art rock centers on devising formulas that "reconfigure subject, concept, material, purpose and process" -- methods for drawing lines around the "nothing" experience of random sound or half-formed self-expression and giving it meaning.
Or, to put it another way, tools for finding lines on the horizon.
A decade later, teenage guitarist David Evans developed a nickname -- the Edge. It suited the sound he was creating with the band he'd signed on to for life. U2, like its eventual producer Eno, always has approached rock as a tradition worth honoring through acts of reconfiguration and renewal; Roxy Music, in an early song, dubbed this process "Re-Make/Re-Model."
Or, to put it another way: Draw new lines on the horizon.
U2 has become such an edifice in pop that it's hard to remember its emergence at the dawn of the 1980s, all knees and elbows, startling our ears with guitar drone, delay and those slightly stoned yet bracingly direct rhythms, topped by the unhinged yelp of Bono, a born believer following Ezra Pound's modernist dictum to "Make it new!"
From the first, U2 was more fervently reckless than any classic rock band yet more respectful of its roots and determined to be part of a lineage than the art punks with whom they'd started out.
The sound the band hit upon, which became transcendent on the mid-period albums Eno co-produced, is big enough to contain rock's historical essence and overshadow it. "No Line on the Horizon," which is due out next week and currently is available for streaming on the band's MySpace page, celebrates, dissects, reconfigures and sometimes pokes holes in that sound.
The band's 12th studio album, it comes 30 years after those first face-slapping singles. It's a pilgrimage -- the religious metaphor is inevitable -- along the path forged by U2 itself.
The title track starts things out and shows the road. One of seven not only produced but also co-written by Eno and fellow senior team member Danny Lanois, it's built on a multilayered drone that recalls the peers of U2's youth, especially Echo and the Bunnymen and The Teardrop Explodes, when psychedelia went post-punk.
The limitless sky doesn't signal hope but the need for a map. Bono's typically semi-surreal lyric evokes nonlinear time and the need for, and peril of, change. We are in a dream time.
Dream time is a mythical force that governs internal quests, not social movements or festive gatherings. Despite the playful exhortation of the first single, "Get on Your Boots," "No Line on the Horizon" is mostly reflective. Lengthy songs grow up around lyrics that read like cinematic flashbacks and unspooled skeins of guitar and keyboard effects.
This music doesn't always land softly -- on "Moment of Surrender" and the Steve Lillywhite-produced "Breathe," the band reminds us that its roots include 1970s heavy metal -- but it's still a fairly gentle ride. No song is focused enough to be an instant anthem, unusual for a band born to raise cellphones and consciousnesses. Hooks aren't what make U2 special, however, even if they've crafted a ton of them.
Rapture is a U2 fan's essential experience. The band creates and communicates this enmeshed emotional state through insistent repetition of imposing musical elements (that guitar delay, Larry Mullen Jr.'s unwavering beats) paired with the wafting, waning, swooningly human sound of Bono's voice.
"No Line on the Horizon" doesn't aim for the headiest transport U2 can muster; Eno and Lanois slow things down and make the players examine the ways they get there, each, including the producers, adding their own touches to the mix.
One notable motif on "No Line on the Horizon" is a huge instrumental build followed by a single word or phrase in adulation of the music surrounding it. When Bono moans "magnificent" in the track that bears that title, sounding rather like Donna Summer, or he murmurs, "Sunshine . . . sunshine," in a slow-motion falsetto at the start of "Unknown Caller," he's expressing a rapture well-known to U2's devotees.
"No Line on the Horizon" contains some evidence that Bono might have been the U2 member most in need of this hajj. His exhortations aren't as sticky as usual, except for one -- "I'm running down the road like loose electricity" -- that owes two words each to Bob Dylan, Jim Morrison and Patti Smith. And at times, his vocals sound alarmingly raw.
The references to singing that pepper the album seem partly inspired by anxiety over the state of his instrument, so who can blame him for savoring what beauty still comes?
U2's celebration of life has always also been a celebration of itself, and Bono still has a gift for radiating joy in a way that feels inclusive, not egotistical. At the same time, "No Line on the Horizon" is most interesting when the band and its producers let their well-deserved wallowing become a drift down the river toward something different.
"Fez -- Being Born" will only sound experimental to those who haven't heard Eno's other collaborations (he pulls a sample from one, his exquisite 1984 collaboration with Lanois and pianist Harold Budd, "The Pearl," on "Cedars of Lebanon"), but the song's Radiohead-style cutting beats and dusty undertones work productively against the band's instinctive upward thrust.
At the other extreme, "White as Snow" and "Cedars of Lebanon" are monologues, simply rendered and grounded in the present-day realities of war in the Middle East -- one gives voice to a soldier, the other to a journalist. Both nicely bring this cloud-busting album down to Earth.
In recent years, the romance of U2 -- the quadrilateral energy the four members generate, the love so many have for its music and its redemptive effect, not just for fans but for the whole silly, serious project of rock -- has sometimes overshadowed its music.
"No Line on the Horizon" partakes of that romance by trying to expose its inner workings. It's risky to expose those delineations; as the band said long ago, it's like trying to throw your arms around the world. But the effort has its payoffs. An edge discovered is an edge that might be moved.
--Ann Powers
Albums are rated on a scale of one to four stars.
Photo credit: EPA
Related: 'Spider-Man,' with music and lyrics by Bono and Edge, gets opening date


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