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Unlawfully Using Fresh Lease Agreement Involving Rent Increase Beyond Statutorily Allowable Guideline PercentagePage last modified: March 02 2022
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If a Landlord Requires a Fresh Lease With An Above Guideline Increase Will the Rent Increase Be Legal?
Using a Fresh Lease Agreement to Impose a Rent Rate Increase Beyond the Statutorily Allowable Increase Is Unlawful. Even If a Tenant Agrees and Signs a Fresh Lease the Tenant May Subsequently Apply to Nullify the Increase and Obtain Reimbursement of Money Collected Unlawfully.
Similar Questions About Using a Fresh Lease or Renewal Lease to Increase Rent Include:
- Can A Fresh Lease Be Used to Increase Rent Beyond the Guideline Percentage?
- If a Landlord Requires a Renewal Lease With a Big Rent Increase Is the Increase Legal?
- Can a Renewal Lease Be Used to Increase Rent Beyond the Allowable Amount?
- What Happens If a Landlord Uses a Renewal Lease to Increase the Rent?
- If a Tenant Signs a Fresh Lease With a Large Rent Increase Is the Increase Legal?
Understanding When a Fresh Lease Can Be Used to Increase the Rent Charged
A typical lease provides for a one-year term of residential tenancy and will be negotiated prior to the start of the landlord and tenant relations. Also typical is a requirement for payment of rent on the first of each month or on an alternative date. Subsequently, when the one-year term ends, or other period if the term was atypical, the tenancy relationship statutorily converts into a month-to-month arrangement as per section 38 of the Residential Tenancies Act, 2006, S.O. 2006, Chapter 17. Furthermore, the statutory rent control guidelines as per section 120 of the Residential Tenancies Act, 2006 restricts the amount of rent increase that may be applied at the end of the typical one-year lease period as being when the tenancy statutorily converts to the month-to-month arrangement; and accordingly, only the allowable rent rate increase may be imposed as per the Court of Appeal decision within Honsberger v. Grant Lake Forest Resources Ltd., 2019 ONCA 44 which says:
[24] According to s.120(1) of the RTA, "No landlord may increase the rent charged to a tenant, or to an assignee under section 95, during the term of the tenancy by more than the guideline …" [emphasis added] subject to certain inapplicable exceptions. The guideline is established by the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing each calendar year and shall not be more than 2.5%. Under s.119, a landlord may only increase the rent once every 12 months.
[25] Section 38 (1) of Part VII of the RTA is entitled 'Deemed renewal where no notice'. That subsection provides:
If a tenancy agreement for a fixed term ends and has not been renewed or terminated, the landlord and tenant shall be deemed to have renewed it as a monthly tenancy agreement containing the same terms and conditions that are in the expired tenancy agreement and subject to any increases in rent charged in accordance with this Act.
Attempting to Issue Fresh Lease to Circumvent
When a Lease Ends Can a Higher Rent Rate Be Required Within a Renewal Lease?
Within some situations a landlord may want to to impose a rent increase that goes beyond the rent increase that is allowed per section 120 of the Residential Tenancies Act, 2006. In such situations, the landlord may try to use a fresh lease, described as a renewal lease or update lease, or another similar term; however, and despite whatever term may be used to describe such a fresh lease, circumventing the statutorily prescribed rent increase limits using a fresh lease is unlawful. Very directly stated, at the end of a lease period, it is improper and unlawful to use a fresh lease as the means to alter the terms of rent with an existing tenant. This unlawfulness was clearly expressed within the Honsberger case where it was stated:
[26] As mentioned, the crux of the appellant's argument is that when the Tenants entered into the new one-year tenancy agreements, the term of the tenancies was severed, and thus the rental increase and notice provisions of the RTA were inapplicable, and the new rent lawful.
[27] There are strong factors weighing against the appellant's interpretation of the RTA.
[28] First, s. 113 of the RTA expressly permits the establishment of a new rental rate with a new tenant. Recognition of a similar carve-out for an existing relationship involving the same tenant, the same landlord, and the same premises would undermine the purpose of the Act. A renewing tenant is not a new tenant. Put differently, the appellant's proposed statutory interpretation is inconsistent with the scheme of the RTA's rent control provisions considered as a whole. The structure and purpose of the Act would be undercut if at the commencement of each year, a landlord could increase the rent simply by entering into a new tenancy agreement. A tenancy agreement involving the same parties and the same premises requires the landlord to give 90 days' notice of an increase pursuant to the clear provisions of the RTA. This conclusion is also consistent with this court's decisions in Matthews and Nanne v. 3011650 Nova Scotia Limited (Michipicoten Forest Resources), 2015 ONCA 391.
[29] Second, the words "during the term of their tenancy" found in s. 120(1) must be read in context. The language in this section addresses the amount that a landlord may charge; it does not detract from or limit the Part VII provisions of the RTA, including the notice requirement. Any increase in rent required notice under s. 116 of the Act. Additionally, the increase could not exceed the annual guideline amount.
[30] Third, the appellant did not advance the s. 120(1) argument before either the LTB or the Divisional Court. Entirely new issues should typically not be entertained on appeal: Orr v. Metropolitan Toronto Condominium Corp. No. 1056, 2014 ONCA 855, at para. 87
[31] As for the appellant's argument that the LTB inappropriately relied on s. 38(1) of the Act, the Divisional Court recognized that s. 38(1) was inapplicable to this case but agreed with the LTB that the landlord was required to give 90 days' notice of an increase pursuant to Part VII of the Act. I agree with that determination and would not give effect to this ground of appeal. The Divisional Court did not err in determining that the decisions of the LTB were reasonable.
[32] There is also no basis for the appellant's remaining arguments. As is clear from the RTA and particularly s. 3 of the Act, the parties' freedom to contract is expressly made subject to the RTA's application. The Divisional Court did not err in refusing to validate rental increases that, despite their origin in contract, were constrained by the provisions of the RTA that required written notice. See also 1086891 Ontario Limited v. Barber, 2007 CanLII 18734 (ON SCDC), 284 D.L.R. (4th) 568 (Div. Ct.).
Permissible Exceptions
Can the Rent Be Increased If the Tenancy Arrangement Is Changed?
Interestingly, in Schell v. Clarke, 2020 ONSC 7169, while relying upon the Honsberger decision, the Divisional Court suggested, that a fresh lease may be permitted where the nature of the tenancy significantly changes by adding tenants or adding to the rented space. Specifically, the Divisional Court stated:
[4] The following facts are uncontested. The tenant rented a house in Wingham, Ontario from the landlord from May 1, 2015 to April 21, 2017, when the tenant vacated the house. The tenancy agreement was originally a month-to-month oral agreement, with the tenant agreeing to pay $650 per month. In February 2016, the landlord informed the tenant that he was planning to sell the house, thereby ending the tenant's tenancy. In February 2016, the tenant made the landlord an offer to pay more to remain in the house. The parties negotiated a rental increase of $200 per month, changing the rental price from $650 per month to $850 per month. A written lease recording the $850 per month rental price was signed in February 2016. The landlord did not serve a notice of rent increase on the tenant.
[5] The LTB found that notwithstanding that the landlord did not give notice of the rent increase, on these facts there was an express agreement to the increase between the landlord and tenant which was therefore not an illegal charge. The LTB found that the parties negotiated a new tenancy agreement and dismissed the tenant's claim of an illegal rent increase. Price v. Turnbull's Grove Inc., 2007 ONCA 408 was relied upon as authority for the proposition that where there was an express agreement, this was not an illegal charge.
[6] Subsequent to the LTB's Decision, the Court of Appeal for Ontario released its decision in Honsberger et al. v. Grant Lake Forest Resources Ltd., [2019] ONCA 44, which clarified that upon the expiry of an existing lease, where the parties and premises that are the subject of a tenancy agreement do not change, a new tenancy agreement cannot be created outside of the rental increase constraints of s.120 of the RTA.
[7] The landlord asserts that it comes within the exceptions set out in Honsberger. He submits that the written agreement changed the oral agreement by (a) allowing the tenant's spouse to be an occupant of the house and (b) allowing the tenant to rent the garage, which were not parts of the oral agreement.
[8] Paragraph 2 of the Decision states that the tenant and her children were the only occupants during the tenancy. If this was meant to refer to both the oral tenancy and the written tenancy, this was not correct because the written agreement refers to the tenant's spouse as an occupant. The written agreement refers to the rental premises as 86 Mary Street, Wingham, Ontario and gives the tenant the use of the "full driveway and garage". The rent of $850/month is attributed to the rental premises. No amount is attributed to parking or additional services.
[9] The tenant points out that the LTB is directed to ascertain the real substance of the transaction pursuant to s. 202 of the RSA. The LTB found that the tenant agreed to a new rental amount of $850/month largely to deter the landlord from his plan to sell the rental unit. The tenant submits that the real substance of this transaction was to preserve the tenancy, not to end it. The tenant argues that the fact that her spouse was not named as a tenant and that no monetary value was attached to the use of the garage underscores that the real substance of the transaction was that the written agreement was entered into to deter the landlord from his plan to sell the rental unit and not to create a new tenancy. She submits that the LTB erred in law when it found that this ended the tenancy.
[10] I agree that it was a misapplication of the decision in Price for the LTB to rely upon it to support its finding that the increase in rent was not an illegal charge because there was an express agreement. The decision to dismiss the tenant's claim of an illegal rent increase cannot be sustained on this basis. However, that does not end the matter.
[11] The hearing in this case was held prior to the release of Honsberger. Counsel who appeared in this court were not counsel before the LTB. The matter does not appear to have been argued before the LTB on the basis of whether or not the parties or premises changed under the written agreement.
[12] There is no finding in the Decision regarding a change to the leased premises. The written lease naming the tenant's spouse as an occupant and designating the garage as part of the leased premises does not answer whether this was a change to the parties or premises from under the oral lease. I am unable to agree with the landlord that the reference in Paragraph 59 of the Decision to the tenant's spouse denying a contractor entry into the unit is sufficient to infer that there was a change to the parties under the written agreement.
[13] Unfortunately no transcript of the hearing exists which might assist the court in determining whether or not there was evidence to find that the exceptions in Honsberger applied. In these circumstances, I have concluded that the correct result is to refer this matter back to be heard by the LTB to determine whether the parties and premises that are the subject of the written tenancy agreement changed from under the oral lease sufficient to meet the exceptions set out in Honsberger. It shall also determine the amount owing if this was an illegal rent increase and whether the limitation period under s.135.1(2) of the RTA applies.
Summary Comment
What Is the Short Answer?
When a tenancy period ends and a fresh lease is entered into, the fresh lease may be used to extend the tenancy relationship; however, the fresh lease is unable to treat the tenancy relationship as if the tenancy is an entirely new relationship; and as such, a fresh lease may contain only terms and provisions as allowable for extending or continuing a tenancy. It is unlawful to use a fresh lease to increase a rent rate beyond that which is contained within the rent control provisions of the Residential Tenancies Act, 2006, and such applies regardless of whether the tenant agrees to the fresh lease, the terms within the fresh lease, signs the fresh lease, and even if the tenant actually pays the rent rate increase imposed within a fresh lease.


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Peering into the Ozone Hole
The bad news is that NASA satellites spotted the largest Antarctic ozone hole ever recorded on September 9, 2000, and the effects of global climate change may exacerbate the problem.
Right: Image of the record-size ozone hole taken by NASA satellites on September 9, 2000. Blue denotes low ozone concentrations and yellow and red denote higher levels of ozone. Notice the "croissant" of high ozone concentrations formed when the Antarctic vortex blocks the southerly migration of ozone formed in the tropics. [More images and credits]
Why are we seeing the worst-ever ozone hole when 13 years of regulation are finally bringing CFC levels under control?
"The first point is that these processes are really slow," said Dr. Richard McPeters, principal investigator for NASA's Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC).
"It takes a long time for the CFCs to get up into the stratosphere in the first place, so it's going to take a long time for them to come back out," McPeters said.
In fact, it can take a CFC molecule about 2 years after being released at the ground to make it to the stratosphere where the ozone is. And it can take decades for it to be converted by sunlight into a form that is harmful to ozone, according to Dr. Charles Jackman, an atmospheric modeler at GSFC.
Once a CFC molecule is converted to its destructive form, it can linger in the stratosphere for a few years before it drifts back down into the troposphere in the form of hydrogen chloride (HCl) and is washed out of the atmosphere by rain, Jackman said.
In 1994, NOAA scientists first measured a decrease in the amount of CFCs in the lowest layer of the atmosphere. Since these CFCs would eventually work their way up to the stratosphere -- where the ozone is -- this finding gave hope that CFC concentrations in the stratosphere would also soon begin to decline.
"It'll be a number of years before you start to see real reductions in the CFCs in the stratosphere," McPeters said.
Model calculations suggest that ozone recovery to pre-1980 levels could take 20 to 40 years, he explained. "So it's not something where you'd expect to see a big change this year."
Above: A graph showing the concentrations of one type of CFC over time. Notice the steady rise until about 1990 -- three years after the Montreal Protocol established a phase-out program for CFCs. Concentrations of CFCs have started to decline. In the graph, "ppt" stands for parts per trillion, not parts per thousand. [more information]
Although the concentration of CFCs in the stratosphere appears to have leveled off, the size of the ozone hole won't necessarily level off with it.
"What's happening right now is you have the CFCs at a very high level, and this gives you a background of low ozone," McPeters explained. "And then from one year to the next, whether you have a particularly deep hole or not sort of depends on the stratospheric 'weather' that you have in the Southern Hemisphere."
"Because of the overwhelming role of weather in the ozone hole, it means it's really unpredictable," McPeters said. "That's what makes it fun to measure ozone -- every year it surprises us."
This year's record ozone hole occurred largely as a result of the particularly cold winter in Antarctica, McPeters said.
These ice crystals are bad news for ozone. The crystals provide a surface for a chemical reaction that changes chlorine in molecules that do not affect ozone (such as hydrogen chloride) into more active forms that do destroy ozone.
"That's the accelerator," McPeters said. "If you didn't have the ice crystals, you would not be seeing the kind of ozone destruction that you see every year."
A colder winter will result in more extensive polar stratospheric clouds, greater destruction of ozone, and a larger ozone hole.
Left: An illustration showing the layers of the atmosphere. Most of the protective ozone layer lies in the stratosphere, while nearly all weather occurs in the troposphere.
Increases in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere can also create this same effect, noted Dr. Mike Newchurch, senior research scientist at the Atmospheric Science Department of The University of Alabama in Huntsville and a member of NASA's Global Hydrology and Climate Center.
While higher carbon dioxide concentrations are thought to cause a warming of the atmosphere's lowest layer (the troposphere), scientists know that this same carbon dioxide actually causes the stratosphere to cool down. This cooling can exacerbate ozone destruction just as a particularly cold winter does.
"Although the magnitude and direction of the lower atmosphere's temperature change has been very hotly debated for several years, the cooling of the stratosphere is very clear and not a matter of question," Newchurch said.
"Its effect in the Southern Hemisphere is to deepen the ozone hole," he continued. "In the Northern Hemisphere, this temperature decline and the resulting changes in circulation (winds) is one of the key ingredients for a possible Arctic
ozone hole."
Winds also play a key role in ozone destruction.
The cold air over Antarctica in winter creates a huge "whirlpool" of fast-moving air circling Antarctica called the "Antarctic vortex."
This vortex effectively insulates Antarctica from the rest of the atmosphere.
"It forms up almost as a whirlpool that sits there and is very stable. It locks in that body of air and it keeps the outside high-ozone air from coming in," McPeters said.
Most stratospheric ozone is created in the tropics, because the intensity of the solar radiation that causes formation of ozone is higher nearer the equator. The ozone is then transported by stratospheric air currents to the Arctic and to Antarctica.
The strong and stable vortex prevents the migration of ozone into the stratosphere over Antarctica, exacerbating the low levels caused by the ice crystal-catalyzed destruction of ozone.
By virtually sealing Antarctica off from the warmer air surrounding it, the vortex causes temperatures in Antarctica to drop even lower. Lower temperatures cause the formation of more ice-crystal clouds and the destruction of even more ozone.
"The (Antarctic) vortex sets up in the (Southern Hemisphere's) fall and runs all winter," Newchurch said. "The ozone depletion occurs in the springtime when sunlight becomes available. Then toward the end of the spring the vortex breaks down, and over the summer there really isn't a vortex. And then it sets up again the next fall."
The relative warmth of the Arctic is the main reason why a similar ozone hole doesn't form over the North Pole.
"The weather systems (in the Northern Hemisphere) are a lot less stable than they are in the South," McPeters said. "You just don't get temperatures as cold; you don't get a vortex that will last as long."
Right: Images from a NASA satellite showing ozone levels over the Arctic (top) and the Antarctic (bottom) at similar points in each hemisphere's seasons. Blue indicates low ozone and red indicates high ozone. Notice the pronounced hole over the Antarctic and the lack of a distinct hole over the Arctic.
If weather in the North Hemisphere does create a long-lasting vortex, a mini-ozone hole can be created. This happened in 1997, but it's unusual, McPeters said.
While this dependency on weather makes year-to-year predictions of the size of the ozone hole nearly impossible, the long-term trend can be estimated with computer models.
"If you ask, 'How low is (the ozone hole) going to get?' Well, we don't know either. Every year we just have to watch it and see what happens," McPeters said.
"But in the long term, we have quite a bit of confidence in the models at this point," he said. "In the long term, it has to get better."
The Global Hydrology and Climate Center is a joint venture between government and academia to study the global water cycle and its effect on Earth's climate. Jointly funded by NASA and its academic partners, and jointly operated by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., and the University of Alabama in Huntsville, the Center conducts research in a number of critical areas.Web Links
Glossary of ozone-related terms -- Index of terms related to the ozone layer
Stratospheric Ozone - an electronic textbook
TOMS Web site -- Homepage for NASA's TOMS instrument, which takes daily snapshots of ozone concentrations and UV levels around the Earth
The Montreal Protocol of 1987 -- Text of The Montreal Protocol, which set provisions for phasing out the use of chemicals determined to hasten ozone destruction
Join our growing list of subscribers - sign up for our express news delivery and you will receive a mail message every time we post a new story!!!
|For lesson plans and educational activities related to breaking science news, please visit Thursday's Classroom
|Author: Patrick L. Barry
Production Editor: Dr. Tony Phillips
Curator: Bryan Walls
Media Relations: Steve Roy
Responsible NASA official: Ron Koczor

subset: commoncrawl


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Today's News: Our Take - Jack White and Karen Elson's Divorce Finalized
Jack White and Karen Elson's divorce is finalized, two years after their initial separation.
According to The Associated Press, a Nashville judge signed the divorce agreement on Nov. 26, naming Elson as primary caregiver for the couple's two children, Scarlett, 7, and Henry, 6. White will be given 150 days a year with them.
The most shocking celeb splits
White also will retain rights to all his musical businesses, including The White Stripes, The Raconteurs, Dead Weather and his record label, Third Man Records.
The couple married in June 2005 in a canoe in the Amazon, but announced their separation in 2011. Though they threw a divorce party to celebrate the occasion, the split turned ugly earlier this year. Elson filed a restraining order in which she accused White of threatening her. White denied the allegations.
View original Jack White and Karen Elson's Divorce Finalized at TVGuide.com
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You'd be surprised how many different ways your husband could be fooling you about your finances—and how common it is for spouses to do that. In fact, one in three attached Americans lie to their partner about their finances, according to a newNational Endowment for Financial Educationstudycontributors to divorce
survey. This is no small thing, since a recent Kansas State University found that money fights are the biggest . Here are the top 10 red flags, plus how to prevent financial infidelity from destroying your relationship.
1. He doesn't want to talk about money—ever. If you try to discuss your finances and he changes the subject, he could be hiding something. To get your man to open up, try providing an incentive. Sounds silly, but "one of my patients does the money talk with her guy in sexy underwear and then the couple makes love after. He now looks forward to those chats," says New York City psychotherapist Bonnie Eaker Weil, PhD, author of Financial Infidelity: Seven Steps to Conquering the Number One Relationship Wrecker.
2. He has a secret account. Check the mail regularly, since there's usually a paper trail (unless he's super sneaky and receiving notices at his office, a P.O. box, a friend's house or via email). "Most interest-accruing investment and bank accounts also show up in your taxes," says Susan Bradley, a certified financial planner and founder of the Sudden Money Institute in Palm Beach Gardens, FL. So don't leave the taxes solely to him each year. Read everything thoroughly, and hire a financial advisor to translate information you don't understand.
3. He's opening new credit cards, extending limits or taking out loans. He could be doing these through a joint account or in his name only, but the result could be a low credit score. And that may make it harder to get a mortgage, get new credit cards, move into an apartment or even snag certain jobs. Pull your credit reports at the same time at least once a year and look at both of them together, suggests financial psychologist Bradley Klontz, author of Mind Over Money: Overcoming the Money Disorders That Threaten Our Financial Health. Get a free credit report from AnnualCreditReport.com once per year and free credit scores from CreditKarma.com.
4. He's always got a story. Perhaps your husband told you that your bank account was hacked, he got robbed or he lost his wallet. Any of these could happen, but if he's constantly issuing excuses for dwindling savings, see if there's evidence he really is lying. If, for instance, he claims an account was hacked, call customer service for verification. Or if he said that he lost his wallet at a basketball game with his friend, casually bring it up to his pal to see if he noticed. "Somebody who always has a story isn't a reliable financial partner," says Bradley.
5. He's in serious debt. Maybe he let student loan interest accumulate or he's got thousands in credit card debt—and he never told you. You're likely to notice this when you try to buy, say, a car or a house together because debt impacts his credit and, therefore, your ability to get a loan—and those realizations may come as a huge shock. If he hasn't come clean about how much he owes and to whom, "it makes you wonder, 'What else is he lying about?'" points out Bradley.
6. He didn't pay your joint taxes. "One day, she just got a letter from the IRS," says Dr. Weil of one of her female patients. This can lead to a host of late penalties, so it's yet another reason to watch the mailbox and insert yourself into the process during tax season. If it happens, don't berate your husband, since that won't solve the problem. Instead, crunch numbers together to show him what he's doing to your finances. Klontz recommends also asking him, "What can I do to make this a safer place for you to be honest about your money habits?"
7. He's betting big bucks. Gambling doesn't always happen at casinos. You probably already know if he's playing fantasy baseball, weekly poker games or golf with buddies, but have you ever asked if he bets on those games—and if so, how much? There are even opportunities to gamble online, which he could easily do behind your back. "Throwing $20 into the occasional pool isn't a big deal. But if the betting becomes habitual or he's spending a lot and not telling you, then it's worth discussing," says Bradley.
8. He buys big-ticket items. Dr.Weil has seen some of her wealthier male patients spend thousands on second homes, cars, helicopters and vacations without first checking with their wives. One of them justified it by saying, "I deserve it. Life is short." Other guys simply shell out for tools, sports equipment, clothing or electronic gadgets. If you notice an expensive purchase, propose an agreement (if you haven't already) like the one Klontz has with his wife: "If we want to buy something over $100, we discuss it first," he says.
9. Your insurance has lapsed. This can happen with all types of insurance, including health, dental, homeowners', disability and life, explains Dr. Weil. But unless you're regularly looking at your bills and bank accounts, you might not discover you don't have health or dental insurance until you're slapped with an unusually high doctor's bill. That's why it's key to sit down with your partner at least monthly to discuss your financial goals and the money that's coming in and going out. When you're in the loop, it's easier to spot inconsistencies.
10. You're excluded from meetings with the financial advisor. Let's say you call your financial advisor and he says, "By the way, it was a pleasure seeing your husband last week." Yet your partner never mentioned it. "It's a sign he doesn't want you to know something. You need to insist on being part of the meetings," urges Klontz. It's morbid, but use this to strengthen your argument: "Odds are, he'll die before you do, and you're probably going to have to be in charge of the finances at some point." So get involved now.
See also: The Most Important Money Conversation to Have


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Our nation is currently embroiled in a turmoil over finances, the debt, and the potential fall of the American Republic, indeed, of the West itself. This blog sketches contrasting theories of progress and decadence. The purpose is to identify the eclectic character of history as written by the Progressives and their progeny. I propose that there are three primary schools of interpretation: one is entirely religious, and two are secular, but are not identical. All three are infused with what historians call "the luxury debate," the secularism debate, and the danger of cities.
1. Many Christians take the position that there was a Golden Age in Eden before Eve ate of the Apple. Since that fatal bite, the world is fallen, and all hopes for amelioration are transferred to Paradise. The world we inhabit is a vale of tears and we "see through a glass, darkly." The author Hilaire Belloc was of this view, and, like other ultra-Catholics, fixated his attention on the Crucifixion as the moment when Christ's passion purified humanity of its sins, promising a better place for the faithful after death. Arthur Lovejoy's book, The Great Chain of Being, spelled out the Platonic-Christian world view very clearly. If an historian is known by the ability to distinguish between change and continuity through the accumulation of empirical evidence, then such "periodization" is irrelevant within this anti-materialist world view. See my blog on Nicholas Boyle for an example: https://clarespark.com/2009/07/04/unfinished-revolutions-and-contested-notions-of-identity/.
2. In the eighteenth century, Volney and others (Vico, earlier) dramatically intervened in the conservative Christian world-view with the cyclical view of history. That secular and "scientific" view is illustrated in Thomas Cole's famous series The Course of Empire. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Course_of_Empire.) Cole's bleak prognosis remains the preferred interpretation for organic conservatives who liken the course of history to the life cycles of plants (Goethe, for instance). A seed germinates, flourishes, then drops to the mold. Similarly, a warrior class is feminized by excessive love of luxury, and fails to maintain its defenses, hence is invaded by warrior-barbarians, is destroyed, and we are left with romantic ruins only. Such was the vision of those who posited a sequence of inevitable stages in the history of humanity. Keep in mind that "the Jews" have been seen as agents of feminization, illicit luxury, and debauchery by such as the Nazis and New Dealers alike. Asceticism was the ticket to neoclassical order, a point challenged by romantic Nietzsche in Genealogy of Morals.
3. With the development of capitalism and industry, innovations grounded in a scientific (materialist) and worldly view of humanity and its future, various optimistic proposals emerged before and during the American and French Revolutions. The most famous intervention was by Marx, but he was competing with various Utopians, also believers in Progress: Turgot, Condorcet, Saint-Simon, Fourier, and Comte. But in all these cases, human nature was not fallen or doomed, but rather susceptible to changes in the environment and particularly in institutions that brought out the best in [malleable] human nature. Although the new industrial working class did not turn out to be the revolutionary class that would bring about emancipation and utopia(for Marxists), there was enough servile revolt (actually starting with the English Civil War) to implant the continued fear of the red menace in the upper classes. Their pre-emptive strategy was to make concessions to social movements originating from "below" or to attempt to co-opt them through various motions of conservative reform. The Populist-Progressive movement is the most prominent and still powerful of these tendencies in America; they were following that master strategist Bismarck, originator of social insurance even as he made the German Social Democratic Party illegal. Populist-Progressives may be found in either the Democratic or Republican Parties (the latter as "moderates") and are spurned by "social conservatives" today.
Since the moderate men must deal with a constituency that is internally conflicted, they take pieces of earlier world-views and incorporate all of them in an incoherent and confusing mix. But mostly, they are slippery and hard to pin down, except where the Marxist-Leninist Left is concerned. That Left is either purged or marginalized, so that current journalists can simply describe what was originally a "moderate conservative" movement as "the hard Left" fading gently into left-liberalism. State power in the service of redistributive justice unites all these tendencies—Marxist-Leninist Left and progressives alike. The moderate men support science, but attempt to halt the inevitable warfare between science and religion. The recent British movie Creation (2009), a recounting of Darwin's emotional struggles as he moved toward publication of The Origin of Species (1859), is one example. Yes, Darwin finally puts out into the world his completely destabilizing view of evolution and natural selection, removing God from direct interference in the plan for humanity, but he is buried with full Christian honors in Westminster Abbey. Goethe, with his Pelagian heresy (we are not fallen, there is no original sin), is memorialized throughout the progressive West as the greatest cosmopolitan intellectual ever, but Goethe's view of human society and progress is grounded in the life of plants and follows Herder's cultural relativism and rooted cosmopolitanism. His American utopia has no modern Jews—they lack "reverence" and "roots."
Who then are the moderns? We are left with the classical liberals or libertarians. These thinkers, following Adam Smith, von Mises, Ayn Rand, Hayek, and the Friedmans, see competitive markets as the route to wealth creation and a better life on earth. They are worldly, but not immoralists, for some see the need for state action (see especially the legal theorist Richard A. Epstein). Their European predecessors were the "mechanical materialists" denounced by all the ultra-conservatives, faux liberals, and dialectical materialists who followed. It is this school (not necessarily united within their ranks) , who put the future in the laps of our assessing, choosing, individual selves, who reject the fatalism of Vico, Volney, or their Greek and Christian-Platonic predecessors. (For more on this subject see https://clarespark.com/2012/09/22/materialist-history-and-the-idea-of-progress/.)


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Marte's HR keys 4-run 8th as Pirates beat Brewers
Loss snaps Brewers 8 game home winning streak
Starling Marte hit a tying two-run homer in the eighth inning and Brandon Inge had a go-ahead RBI single to rally Pittsburgh to a 6-4 victory over Milwaukee on Wednesday, snapping the Pirates' nine-game losing streak against the Brewers.
Pedro Alvarez, who homered earlier in the game, added a run-scoring single to cap a four-run eighth as Pittsburgh won for the 10th time in its last 15 games and ended Milwaukee's eight-game home winning streak.
Bryan Morris (1-1) got the last two outs of the seventh for his first career victory. Mark Melancon pitched the eighth and Jason Grilli the ninth for his sixth save.
John Axford (0-3) gave up all four runs while getting just two outs in the eighth for the Brewers.
Axford, removed as the Brewers' closer earlier this season, replaced starter Hiram Burgos to start the eighth leading 4-2, and gave up a broken-bat, infield single to pinch-hitter Travis Snider.
Marte followed with his two-run homer to left-center, his third of the season and second in two days, to tie the score.
Jose Tabata singled and stole second two outs later. He injured his left leg on the slide and was replaced by James McDonald.
McDonald scored the tiebreaking run when Inge blooped a single over the head of second baseman Rickie Weeks, who inadvertently kicked the ball toward the outfield for a two-base error that allowed Inge to advance to third.
Axford was booed off the field when he was replaced by Michael Gonzalez, who quickly allowed a single to Alvarez to put the Pirates up 6-4.
In the seventh, Pittsburgh's Michael McKenry hit a solo homer to right-center off of Burgos to trim Milwaukee's lead to 3-2. The Pirates have hit 11 homers in the last four games.
Burgos allowed four hits and two earned runs in seven innings. The right-handed rookie struck out six and walked one.
The Brewers regained their two-run lead in the bottom of the seventh on Jean Segura's run-scoring single.
Milwaukee took a 3-1 lead in the fourth on consecutive solo homers by Carlos Gomez and Yuniesky Betancourt.
Ryan Braun had an RBI single in the first to put the Brewers up 1-0.
Alvarez's fifth homer, a solo shot in the second, tied the score.
Pittsburgh's Jeanmar Gomez made his first start of the season after five relief appearances. The right-hander threw four innings and allowed four hits and three runs - two earned - to go with three strikeouts and two walks.
Gomez replaced left-hander Jonathan Sanchez in the rotation after he was moved to the bullpen Monday with an 0-3 record and 11.85 ERA. On Tuesday, Sanchez was designated for assignment.
NOTES: Pittsburgh finished its 10-game road trip with a 6-4 record. ... C Jonathan Lucroy's stolen base in the first inning was his first of the season. ... Pittsburgh will play 18 of its next 28 games at PNC Park. ... Before the game, Milwaukee manager Ron Roenicke indicated Betancourt would become the regular first baseman once Aramis Ramirez (left knee sprain) returns. Betancourt has been filling in for Ramirez at third base, but he's expected to come off the disabled list any day.


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Myles Allen recently asked that more attention be paid by critics to work on climate sensitivity, rather than paleoclimate. Nic Lewis, a coauthor of O'Donnell et al 2010, has been parsing climate sensitivity calculations for some time and with considerable frustration. Nic Lewis has a very important article at Judy Curry's here.
One of the seminal sensitivity estimates is Forest et al 2006. Nic reports that he tried for over a year to get data for this study with Forest finally saying that the raw data was now "lost".
I have been trying for over a year, without success, to obtain from Dr Forest the data used in Forest 2006…. Unfortunately, Dr Forest reports that the raw model data is now lost.
Nic was able to to get data for two predecessor studies and has concluded that the calculations in Forest et al 2006 were done erroneously:
If I am right, then correct processing of the data used in Forest 2006 would lead to the conclusion that equilibrium climate sensitivity (to a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere) is close to 1°C, not 3°C, implying that likely future warming has been grossly overestimated by the IPCC.
This is important stuff. Nic is very sharp, Forest et al is an important paper and Nic's conclusions are damning. It's frustrating that, after all the controversy, climate journals don't require authors to archive data and that IPCC authors continue to "lose" data.


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Tom Atlee alerted me to this report which I think provides some good insight into the popular movements that have been ongoing in Europe over the past few months. It may be helpful in determining how the Occupy movement might avoid losing momentum and move on with strength to the next level of planning and organizing. What comes after the protests and expressions of dissatisfaction? Is it really necessary to reach consensus in presenting demands and moving toward positive action? –t.h.g.
Occupy to Self Manage
By Michael Albert
I have yet to see my nearest large occupation, Boston, or the precursor of all U.S. occupations, Wall Street. Instead, I have been on the road for the past six weeks in Thesselonika and Athens Greece; Istanbul and Diyarbikar Turkey; Lexington, Kentucky; London, England; Dublin, Ireland; and in Barcelona, Madrid, and Valencia Spain.
In all these places, I talked with diverse individuals at many meetings and popular assemblies. I met people involved in occupations, as well as audiences assembled by my hosts to hear about participatory economics. Beyond addressing assigned topics, my own priority was to learn about local movements. I repeatedly asked what folks struggling for many months wished to say to other folks first embarking on similar paths.
Boredom, Disempowerment, and Consensus Obstruct Growth
In Greece and Spain, a single message predominated. It had nothing to do with analyses of capitalism or other analytic focuses. Instead, Greek and Spanish activists reported that they had massive assemblies in widespread cities and their occupations grew, grew, grew, so that assemblies were up to 12,000, 15,000 – and then they shrunk, shrunk, shrunk, so that assemblies are now not meeting, or are meeting in the hundreds, or less.
Yet I heard, time after time, that nothing had diminished regarding the population's rejection of unfolding injustices. The people remain fed up in huge numbers and still turn out massively for demonstrations, marches, and strikes. So why were most people who were rallying and marching no longer assembling? The reply I heard at every stop was that the decline of the assemblies wasn't due to repression, or to people being co-opted, or to people being tricked or saddened by media distortion or dismissal. In fact, the assemblies shrinking wasn't due to anything anyone else did to the assemblies, or said about them, or didn't do to them, or didn't say about them, activists repeatedly reported. Instead, they told me, the problem emanated from within.
For example, Greek and Spanish activists said that at assemblies initially people spoke with incredible passion of their plights and desires. Their voices often broke. Their hands shook. Each time someone rose to speak, something real, passionate, and persistent happened. It was enchanting and exciting. People were learning not only new facts and interpretations – and, indeed, that kind of learning was relatively modest – they were also learning new confidence and new modes of engaging with others. But after days and then weeks, the flavor of the talks shifted. From being new folks speaking passionately and recounting their reasons for being present and their hopes for their future by delivering deeply felt and quite unique stories, the speakers shifted toward being more seasoned or habituated folks, who lectured attendees with prepackaged views. The lines of speakers became overwhelmingly male. Their deliveries became overwhelmingly rehearsed. Listening to robotic repetition and frequent predictable and almost text-like ranting got boring and alienating. Sometimes it was even demeaning.
At the same time, new people, who were still far more prevalent, didn't know what to do while they were occupying. We could assemble, they reported. We could talk and engage with each other. We could listen to others and sometimes debate a bit – the Greek and Spanish Assemblers reported – but, how long could we do that and feel it was worth the time we had to spend away from our families, friends, and jobs, not to mention from rooms with a roof?
As they first formed, the assemblies were invigorating and uplifting. We were creating a new community, I was told. We were making new friends. We were hearing from new people. We were enjoying an environment where dissent was the norm. But as days passed, and then weeks, it got too familiar. And it wasn't obvious to folks what more they could do. There weren't tasks to undertake. We weren't being born anymore, we were dying. It was hard. For many it was impossible to keep learning and keep contributing. There was a will, but there was not a way. Folks didn't have meaningful things to do that made them feel part of a worthy project. We felt, in time, only part of a mass of people.
After a time, many asked, why should I stay and listen to boring talks? Why should I be hugely uncomfortable and cut off from family and work, if I have nothing to do that is constructive, nothing that is empowering, nothing that furthers worthy aims? And so people started to attend less, and then to leave.
Another factor that was initially exciting but later became tedious, was seeking consensus. At first it was novel. It implied trust, which felt good. It implied shared intentions, which felt inspiring. But after awhile, seeking consensus became tortured, a time waster, and its reason for being the only decision making approach became steadily less compelling.
Why can't we arrive at decisions which some people do not like and don't even want to participate in? Why can't we arrive at decisions, and have a strong minority that dissents, and then respect that minority, and even have it pursue other possibilities to see their worth? Why do we allow some small group to cause discussions to continue without end, turning off many from relating when the small group has no legitimate claim to greater influence than anyone else – save that our mode of decision making gives them a veto?
Folks recounted all these dynamics very graphically and movingly. No one said that people stopped participating in assemblies because of fear or the cops or depression over the newspapers. No one said people left because they had developed doubts about protest or resistance, much less about the condition of society. Instead, everyone I spoke with, and it was a lot of very committed people, told me participants left due to lacking good reasons to stay. The bottom line was that the assemblies got tedious and, ironically, even disempowering. Folks wondered, why must I be here every day and every night? The thought nagged. It led to legions moving on.
Making the Very Good Even Better
What is the solution, I asked, in each new city, and we discussed possible answers. Occupy but better yet, self manage, I was told. The former option is basically passive – the latter is active and yields tasks and opportunities to contribute.
Grow in numbers and awareness, but those who become well learned must stay in touch with new people, and always remember that new people's involvement matters most. Otherwise old timers are getting more knowledgeable but also more aloof, and new people will not stay.
Why not have classes for learning? Why not have activities for creating? Why not have actions for winning changes? Always speak to the new people. Always speak from experience, from events, not from preconceived lines. Always involve yourself and new people in tangible and worthy activity. Make the options evident and easy to become involved with.
Of course some things can't be solved at occupations themselves. Sleeping out is a young person's passion – but not an option for everyone. In Dublin, this was particularly evident. So, while sleeping in an occupied space makes sense for some young or homeless folks, why not proactively take for granted that many other folks, particularly with families, will not and cannot sleep under the stars? Why not have a program of activities that returns people to their home locales for organizing purposes each night, or even for all but the explicit time of assembly meetings, perhaps?
Ideas that resonated in the many discussions, and that activists involved felt needed preponderant support, included: once an occupation has a lot of people, have subgroups initiate other occupations in more places, all federated together and providing one another mutual aid. In the most local, neighborhood occupations, visit every home. Talk with every resident. Involve as many neighbors as possible. Determine real felt needs. If what is most upsetting neighbors is housing concerns, daycare issues, traffic patterns, mutual aid, loneliness, whatever, try to act to address the problems.
Have occupations self manage and create innovations artistically, socially, and politically. Have occupations occupy indoors, not just outside. It is a leap, perhaps, but not much of one. In Barcelona and Madrid – some have tentatively begun occupying abandoned apartments and other buildings, preparatory, I believe, to inviting the homeless to dwell in them, as well as to using them for meetings and the like. In Valencia I was at a very fledgling university occupation, begun, indeed, after a talk. But to occupy buildings, especially institutions like universities or media, isn't just a matter of call it, or tweet it, and they will come. It is a matter of go get them, inform them, inspire them, enlist them, empower them, and they will come.
In Greece and Spain, and to an extent the other venues I visited too, violence was another focus. All who I talked with agreed it was a suicidal approach on two counts. First, violence is the state's main strength. Shifting the terms of conflict toward violence shifts it precisely where the state and elites want it – toward their strength. Second, violence distorts the project. It makes it inaccessible for many. It makes bystanders critical. It diminishes outreach, and outreach is the basis of all gains.
I have been to Greece a number of times, and in earlier trips this view was quite weak among young Greeks, who were more typically ready and eager to rumble. But now the non violence stance has growing traction in Greece. In Spain, from the start, it was predominant and Spanish activists have successfully avoided giving the state an excuse for violence, thus causing every act of violence by the state to reverberate to its disadvantage.
Forget about violence and rioting, develop campaigns emanating from occupations, which means, said activists in Spain, developing demands to fight for. Indeed, over and over activists involved asked about demands that could unite constituencies and which could be fought for in creative and participatory ways so that victories were possible which would really matter to people's lives and enthusiasm and spur further struggle. They felt that while the open ended character of dissent worked fantastically initially, and was warranted while waiting for enough outreach so demands would represent a real constituency's views, not just those of a few leaders, over time, one needs focus.
Some suggestions for demands that arose were welcome. Others less so. For example, everyone liked demanding big cuts in military spending and reinstatement and enlargement of funds for social programs. But what folks really liked was when that demand was explored and enlarged to include transforming the purposes of military bases that would otherwise be shrunk or closed due to budget cutting to instead stay open and do worthy public works such as building low income housing, first for base residents who would need and appreciate it, and then for the homeless.
And regarding the homeless, a demand that hit home was freezing foreclosures, returning homes, distributing vacant homes, housing the homeless – including the idea of enacting occupations to undertake these results directly, a process that has begun in Barcelona and Madrid which also have robust movements to block foreclosures.
Another approach that seemed to gather considerable support was to demand full employment. But that wasn't all. Recognizing the lack of current demand for produced goods people realized a sensible full employment demand would require also reducing the work week by 10 – 25 percent, depending on the country's unemployment rate. Of course if most people saw their incomes decline by a corresponding amount, they would face catastrophe, and thus the reduced hours demand has to be combined with a demand that most people would incur no loss of income. (Living wage policies and redistributionist progressive taxation would also be part of the mix.) Full employment additionally strengthens working people because when they all have jobs, the threat of being fired declines to near irrelevance. Winning this demand also means workers enjoy more leisure and higher hourly wages for those in need. Additional costs would have to be born by owners, and if they don't agree, that's fine – workers might want to occupy those factories, and then move to self manage them.
Another popular notion was going after media. One option that resonated as a possible campaign goal, even while obviously falling short of total transformation (though certainly on the way toward it), was demanding one or more new sections of mainstream newspapers, or shows, or whatever which would be devoted to, for example, labor dissent, or feminism, or peace, or ecology, and so on. Crucially, these would not be managed in the usual corporate fashion, but, instead, via self management of their participants under the umbrella of major labor, women's, peace, or ecology organizations, for example.
In these exchanges, activists were imagining a worldwide campaign against mainstream media, against military spending, for low income quality housing, and for full employment including accompanying income redistribution and increased leisure. They envisioned these campaigns unifying protest into resistance and then unifying resistance into creative self management, even as each occupation also related to its own local concerns.
Self Managements!
Occupations – or what might come to be known, in time, as self managements – would occur in local neighborhoods and federate up to cities and beyond, but also at the entrances to, and perhaps even inside, mainstream media, and at military recruiting stations and bases, at government ministries and branches, and finally, one can envision, even at factories and other workplaces. And in such endeavors not everyone would have to sleep outdoors but everyone would have to give some of their time, resources, insight, and energy to aid one or another campaign of the overall project.
The revolution, so to speak, is not immediately at hand. In my youth we bellowed – "We want the world and we want it now!" It was fine as a rousing chant. But we need to also understand that it takes time, it takes sustained effort, traversing not weeks or months, but years.
Indeed, even with the incredible speed and ingenuity of current outbreaks of activism, there are undeniably pessimistic scenarios in which occupations wind down and then demos happen for a time but manage to win only minor if any gains until movement morbidity sets in. This is what the Greeks and Spaniards are trying to avoid. It is why they are beginning new kinds of occupations aimed at media, housing, universities, and at the transformation of budgets, and soon, perhaps at hiring and firing. Projects that are designed to enhance and widen participation in ways leading to massive involvement of masses of people – all knowing what they want and how they can contribute to attaining it.
There are, however, also optimistic scenarios in which occupations diversify and morph into self managing projects radiating out campaigns for change while also welcoming into sustained participation countless actors of all ages and orientations. In this picture, daily marches to support other campaigns in a city – like in New York currently – with growth in numbers and confidence, leads to empty buildings becoming residences and meeting places, to mainstream media businesses becoming targets for occupation, and likewise for universities, and other workplaces of all kinds. Simultaneously, local neighborhoods generate their own assemblies, again, like in New York, initiated by the residents who had been schooled in the earlier, larger, city-wide endeavors, and then local participants patiently and empathetically enter every house, every kitchen and living room, and elicit desires, and, in time, participation.
Paths Forward
Envisioning all this and much more, once people's ambition is unleashed from the shackles of daily pessimism, was not hard for folks I talked with. The optimistic path is a scenario involving planting the seeds of the future in the present. It is a scenario that marshals energy and insights to building alternatives, but also winning gains now all fought for and implemented in ways that build desires and organization aimed at winning still more gains in the future.
We need a sense of proportion and pacing. The occupations now underway still involve only a small fraction, indeed a tiny fraction, of the people in pain and angry about it. To grow, the occupations need to very explicitly conceive themselves in ways that address immediate needs, are aimed at viable and worthy long term goals, and develop modes of participation that cause normal folks, enduring normal harsh conditions, to feel that giving their time makes good sense because it can eventually lead to a new social system with vastly better outcomes than those presently endured. Occupations that began in response to economic insanity need, as well, to broaden and adopt a more encompassing focus taking into account not only the economy, but also, and equally, matters of race, gender, age, ability, ecology, and war and peace. This is what makes a movement a threatening project able to induce capitulation from authorities afraid to make it grow even larger. It is what makes a movement worthy of winning, as well.
We need not only patience in the face of a long struggle, but also a sense of optimism and desire. The occupations are a start, a veritable firestorm of initiation, and they already have vastly wider support than their direct participation evidences. There is a possibility lurking in these events that is awesome in its potential implications. We should all be patient and keep our heads, yet we should all also realize that this may be a very special time, especially for young people, during which it is possible to make an indelible, enduring, and incredibly desirable mark on history.
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Archive for the 'Obama' Category
Federal Mandates for Dummies
Well, I just picked up my Sunday morning mail. Yes, it was actually Saturday's mail, but I digress. There's almost usually nothing that I look forward to about getting the mail, and this morning is just one prime example of the many wonderful surprises awaiting most of us.
The electric bill. Yippee…
Now I don't know where you live, but lately in Missouri it has been hotter than the flames surrounding Obama's Healthcare Proposal. So, of course I was curious to see how much more I might have to pay the electric company than usual considering the air conditioning has been running non-stop (kind of like the federal deficit).
Actually, the bill was lower than I might have guessed by about $70.00 compared to winter rates and $10.00 less than last month. This was a pleasant surprise considering we run the ceiling fans most of the time also. (But I've heard that ceiling fans help lower the cost of air conditioning a bit.) And then I thought about the savings that I expected when I changed every single light bulb in my home to extremely expensive energy efficient light bulbs. Maybe I'm doing something right. Right?
Then I read this in the electric company's newsletter:
"[W]e recognize that this is a challenging time…" Well, thank you. That makes me feel not at all better.
"… this [16%] rate increase will help…." Help what? Help me?
"… help KCP&L pay for environmental investments… and allow us to meet federal environmental mandates." Oh, I see. The new rate increase will help the electric company pass the costs to me.
Lesson: EVERY TIME the federal government MANDATES something to energy corporations, insurance companies, healthcare providers, or even educators, YOU and I are the ones who get the privilege of paying for ALL OF IT.
This is precisely why the President's current policies are so aggravating: that despite his "Ivy League" education, his basic economic understanding is that money grows on trees. (That's the technical term for his fiscal policies.) Or at least he truly believes that the federal government can create wealth by printing more money and leverage the expected output of future generations yet unborn by continuing to charge the giant Red China credit card.
And what ever happened to the President's promise to not raise taxes on the middle and lower class to help me? Federal mandates are just another type of sneaky tax — they just come around and in through the back door (or in this case my mailbox).
Apparently, I have been helping myself just fine. My electric bill was lower than expected. I was saving energy and saving money. But thanks to the government's "help" I will now be experiencing a 16% increase in my electric bill despite all my attempts to lower it. Thank you big government — I couldn't have done it without you.
And for what it's worth, the government cannot promise something for nothing. Healthcare — whatever its final form — will never be free. "Rich" people and the businesses run by them will not be paying for government programs or mandates. You and I will be paying for them one way or another. The costs are ultimately passed down to the end-user, the consumer, and the very citizens the government proclaims to "help".


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I'm going through a dilemma right now. It sounds ridiculous, and for me it feels like the biggest first world problem I've ever had, but I'm getting stressed out and cannot for the life of me decide what to do – or where to go – next.
I never had my heart set on living in Canada, but that's the general plan for a few months. I have my work visa. Ash does not. Every process of his application has thrown a curveball our way, and with every curveball I question whether it's a sign that we shouldn't go.
And then I shake it off and think of all the wonderful things about Canada and my heart soars and I get excited all over again about the prospect of going back.
Part of it, I fear, is the feeling of comfort and familiarity I have at the moment. I remember arriving home after our 18-month trip and being terrified of the idea of settling down. I was still wide-eyed from everything we'd seen, and I told myself there and then, that if I ever get to the point of feeling too settled to want to up and leave on a big adventure, that's when I know I've gone wrong somewhere.
Yet here I am, questioning whether to use my visa which wasn't even that easy to get. (Though easier than Ash is finding it) So what do I do? Ash is adamant that I book my flight soon, and I know deep down that I will regret it if I don't, just as much as he will feel awful that I don't go because of him. After all, this is literally last-chance saloon. Even if Canada allowed you to apply for another visa the next year, it would be too late for me. As it happens, they don't – so if I don't go, I'll never get the chance again.
I make it sound all dramatic, because of course I'll be able to visit on a tourist visa, but to get the chance to live in Vancouver, one of my favourite cities? Or perhaps work in the middle of the Rocky mountains? Damn, that's why I applied in the first place, and even the thought of it makes me giddy.
But what if I'm doing it for the wrong reasons? "I'll never get the chance again"? Is that a reason to travel? Is it a reason to pack up all our things once more and live out of a suitcase for a few months? A few months ago, I would have been reading this incredulously and going, "uh, DUH, girl! Just do it!!" – so what's changed?
Maybe it's because I keep pining for different places. I keep seeing deals to Europe, and find myself wishing that I could go and explore new countries like Croatia or Slovenia or Latvia or Norway, but I can't because I'm going to Canada. But it's not all about visiting somewhere new; I keep dreaming of returning to Australia to see the bits that we missed, or Asia because well, we loved it so much. Or even small trips around the UK, or even Ireland, which isn't even on the list of countries I've visited despite being the closest.
And it's not that I'm scared of change either. If we don't go to Canada, we'll be moving to Edinburgh, and despite everything I said about settling down, I'm actually really excited to start a new life there. That comfort and familiarity feeling I said I have now? Everything will change regardless of whether I go to Canada. We're not in a good situation at the moment (I'm not going to get into that), so frankly we'll be leaving nothing behind except the friends who we've managed to keep despite living on the other side of the UK for almost a decade. I have nothing to fear when it comes to that, but there's still a niggling feeling that whatever I decide to do will be wrong.
So what is it? Am I finally growing up and want to settle down? Am I fatigued by the idea of long-term travel? Will I get on the plane and not feel the spark I always get when I travel, or will that be a turning point and my heart will fire up and everything will suddenly feel just right?
I think it would be a stupid decision to never find out. My life's motto is you regret the things you don't do more than you regret the things you do. And because this isn't a life-long dream, it makes it easier to back down if it all goes wrong, and to come home with no regrets. Australia was different – it was the "middle" of our trip and we had tons of travel planned afterwards. Everything weighed on how much we saved in Australia.
But Canada? I mean, I'm thinking it would be a good idea to do some serious road trippin' while we're out that way. But if we don't, it's not the end of the world. It's half the price to go back there as it is to go back to Australia, and a third of the time. There's less pressure to "do it all" (not that we did even half of Australia!) or rather "do it right".
So I think it's all down to the uncertainty. The fact Ash doesn't have his visa yet, and perhaps won't even get it. What if I fly all the way out there and it turns out our goodbye was for months because he can't come? What if this was all for nothing, and I come home because I can't find a job anyway and I'm miserable doing it solo?
But then I think so what? No matter what happens, it'll be another adventure; another time in my life that I can look back on and say "that was crazy". Because that's what I want my life to be – a series of crazy moments where half the time I didn't have a clue what I was doing, just to prove that I could. Sometimes I feel like I "wasted" half of my 20's by owning a business, but then I look back and think, actually, what an incredible achievement.
Sometimes uncertainty shouldn't hold you back because it helps you find your feet and push yourself to do something you never dreamed of doing. After all, what I did in Australia was a world away from what I imagined myself doing, and I had a fantastic time! Why wouldn't Canada be the same?
I don't think there's anything wrong with admitting when something isn't right for you, but at the same time, I'm not going to give up that easily on this literal once-in-a-lifetime opportunity or I'll definitely regret it. Even if I come back with my tail between my legs, I think I should try. I feel like I owe myself that much.


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Greg Lindsay: Reclaiming a space like Bryant Park in the middle of Manhattan's grid is easy; how do you do the same in auto-driven cities like Phoenix or Houston?
Jan Gehl: It's not complicated. We can use the example of Times Square. If you look into the fabric of a city, there is so much leftover space—parking lots, or in this case a street. Why have two streets with traffic going in the same direction, and one at a funny angle? We were commissioned to survey how pedestrians and cyclists were faring in the city [in 2007] as part of PlaNYC. Two weeks after Janette Sadik-Khan was named commissioner [of the Department of Transportation], she popped up in Copenhagen to see a city that, since 1962, has done a lot of thing to invite people to walk and cycle as much as possible. It's a city dominated by people, and not dominated by traffic. What's interesting about New York is that not much had happened along these lines between Jane Jacobs and 2007. Having worked with many cities [e.g. London, Melbourne, Mexico City, Seattle, and San Francisco] it all comes down to visionary leadership, and the political courage to make a change. It's amazing that it took this long in the United States when European cities have been at it for 20, 30, 40 years, and they've done miracles in Australia. The same things can be done here.
Greg Lindsay: In the developed world, why were Americans the last to embrace this, especially when many of our cities are older and smaller than Sydney or Melbourne?
Jan Gehl: Ever since planning was professionalized around 1960, instead of adding new streets and new houses to existing cities, they switched to big scale stuff–big buildings, new districts, and handling the influx of automobiles. They were good at handling big blocks, but weren't paying attention to people. In the book, I talk about three levels in city planning: the big story seen from above; the medium story–the site plans, and the little story–the people landscape seen at eye-level. Planners tended to the two bigger scales, but would not come down to eye-level and see the results. And architects became more and more interested in single buildings and in forms than in society. They were concerned with the skyline than the sidewalk. But the people scale is the most important scale, because that's where the biggest attractions are–other people–and that is exactly the scale that has for years been forgotten and mishandled. Nobody has been commissioned to look after it in any systematic way. We know more about the habitat of panda bears and mountain gorillas than we do about cities at eye-level. It's intriguing why so little research has been done on the urban habitat of homo sapiens in urban settings. Since Jane Jacobs, maybe 10 people have studied it seriously: Holly Whyte; Christopher Alexander; Allan Jacobs and Donald Appleyard among them. Ten years ago, we started our consultancy firm to put all of their theories to work. And we've learned a lot about what works and doesn't work. It's partly a cultural question and partly it's a matter of biology and what kind of animal we are–how far we can move, and see. Why is it that shops are four or five meters apart on all the good shopping streets all over the world? Because if you're walking past, there is a new experience every four or five seconds, which is ideal from a stimulus point of view.
Greg Lindsay: How do social networks, ambient awareness, augmented reality and other communication technologies change our experience of the city?
Jan Gehl: It's interesting how the surge of interest in walkable urbanism has happened in places where residents pride themselves on their connectivity. Ever since the emergence of cyberspace, there's been all these predictions that public space was redundant and cyberspace would take over. We have no evidence whatsoever that this is taking place. On the contrary, I think that all these indirect contacts possible inspire people to experience something themselves, rather than sit and look at pictures of it.
There's been a renaissance in public spaces over the last 20 years worldwide–wonderful boulevards, parks, and squares. Whenever it's done properly, we have seen people come by the thousands. If we go back a hundred years, there was enormous activity in the streets because people were forced to be there. They were forced to drag their merchandise to the street, forced to walk, forced to play. The quality of the public spaces wasn't an issue, because people were forced to be there, regardless. Today, we have a very different situation. Sometimes we call it the "leisure time" or "experience-oriented" society–a consumer society. We live more scattered and isolated, and households are shrinking. In Australia and Denmark, every other household consists of just one person. But the one thing homo sapiens has always been interested in is other people. The number one attraction in any city isn't the buildings, the parks, the sculptures or the statues. It's people. First we need people, then spaces, then buildings.
Greg Lindsay: But cities in the developing world are experience just the opposite. Three billion people will urbanize in the next 40 years, and countries like China face a choice of building cities as fast as they can, or else risk cities of vast slums, like Lagos. How do you apply the lessons of Copenhagen and walkable places to cities like Shenzhen or Lagos?
Jan Gehl: If we're not looking properly after people here, the challenge is so much more urgent in these developing cities, where every day more and more traffic comes in, and people with no access to transportation become more downtrodden. We've seen it happen here in the 1960s and 1970s. As some people became more mobile, others became less mobile.
Many of the things I'm writing about are a mindset, and it costs nothing. The major investment is to simply think about it. We are presently working in China educating planners, because this is a set of truths they have never thought about or heard about. And they never thought it made any difference. They have these ideas that most of them should have a car and that bicycles aren't a sign of progress. They have forbidden bicycles in a number of cities, but hopefully they'll start to reverse this. I am absolutely sure that they can never make those cities more mobile in any conceivable way by simply adding more cars. That has already been tried. But perhaps they will have to try for a while before they realize that is not the way forward.


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Senior Member
Sven Jonsson
Senior Member
Senior Member
Recovering Megalomaniac
Ok, so i havent got up to much today,ive done about 3 hours revision for some GCSE mock exams in a few weeks, and i did a bit of homework. Hopefully tonight i will be able to get some painting done. I'm thinking of filming this project and putting it on youtube, mainly to test the camera but also because my parents lost out digi camera. The camcorder can focus up to 5cm so its pretty good for "WIP" films.Might post again later, we will see.Alex.
Abuse. I may be young and naive but! but!, i do know what respect is. Today when going to the gw store, i met a GW staffer who was on a transfer because the regular staffers were ill. He seemed a nice enough guy, but when i sat at the modeling table, i soon found that he was a GW brainwashed zombie. When rumaging through my paints, i seleced a vallejo white, straight away he was breathing down my neck, ranting about getting paint in my eye...??!? WTF! what kind of a retard did he think i was?
Been very busy this week, lots of revision for GCSE mock exams in December. Not had a chance to get up to much painting. I made a start on a new high elf wizard for my brother (little does he know this will be his only xmas present). I put the finishing toutches to Grimgor Ironhide, which i had been painting for a while. I also made a start on a large base for an Inquisitor minature i'm going to purchasce. I'm thinking of going to GW Derby today, as i have the day off, i'm thinking of picking up
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The Magnificent Bastards look back on a key Iraq battle
The men of 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines arrived in Ramadi in 2004 prepared to support the economy and government of a critical Sunni city in western Iraq.
On April 6 those plans were cast aside when insurgents launched deadly attacks on the Marines throughout the city.
"We we're going there to improve the quality of life," said Lt. Col. Robert Weiler, who was a company commander with the battalion in 2004. "They basically started a jihad."
Marines fought with insurgents throughout the city in running gun battles that day. By the time the dust settled 12 Marines had been killed in action that day, a devastating loss for a single infantry battalion.
Under clear blue skies this past weekend the veterans of the battalion, called the Magnificent Bastards, gathered at Camp Pendleton in California to mark the 10th anniversary of the battle and the battalion's seven-month deployment. Hundreds of veterans of the battalion as well as families of the fallen gathered Sunday to reunite and reminisce.
Many wives and parents heard many stories for the first time, as veterans began opening up about their experiences.
Marines from the battalion had been getting together informally for years but this was the first formal gathering, which started as an idea from some families whose sons were killed in battle there.
Ramadi never dominated the headlines like Baghdad or Fallujah, a nearby city in western Iraq. But it was among the most violent cities in Iraq and played a critical role in ultimately turning the tide against the insurgency.
Only now is the significance of the city coming into historical focus, thanks to veterans who have kept the memories alive.
Years later American reinforcements would flood into Ramadi and tribal leaders would join the Americans in opposing al-Qaeda militants.
But back in 2004 the Pentagon still planned on reducing U.S. forces in Iraq and turning security responsibility over to Iraqis. Washington had yet to realize the size of the insurgency it was facing.
The Magnificent Bastards found out. They fought back hard against the insurgents after the initial April 6 attack, refusing to give an inch. "The next day we ended up killing a hefty number of bad guys," Weiler said.
On the third day, the Marines went around with megaphones, challenging the insurgents to come out and fight. "We ridiculed them and antagonized them and begged them to come out and fight," Weiler said.
There were no takers.
In a four-day period the battalion had killed 250 insurgents, according to the Marine Corps.
By the end of the battalion's tour in September 2004 they had lost 33 Marines and a sailor.
Marines and soldiers would continue fighting in Ramadi for several years, but in several days of aggressive fighting by Marines Ramadi had been saved from falling into the hands of insurgents.
Brig. Gen. Paul Kennedy, who had been the battalion commander at the time, said in an email read at the memorial that that the Marines "were not victims of this fight."
"They're not there to feel sorry for themselves," Sgt. Maj. Jim Booker, added in an email from Afghanistan where he is now deployed. Booker had been the senior enlisted Marine in the battalion.
"They stood their ground," Kennedy said. "They took a bloodied nose and gave it back a thousand fold."
Follow @jimmichaels on Twitter.


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'Don Jon': Thoughtful revelations and surprisingly sweet heart
Joseph Gordon-Levitt has certainly grown up since playing the whippersnapper on "3rd Rock From the Sun." In "Don Jon," his feature-length writing and directorial debut, he stars as Jon, a New Jersey bartender who has no trouble bedding ladies but finds pornography so much more transcendent.
"Don Jon" is a disarming film that proves Gordon-Levitt's deftness both behind the camera and in front of a computer screen, writing. The movie starts as a raunch-fest, reveling in crass language and frank discussions about the relative merits of computer-generated ecstasy over the old-fashioned kind. But somewhere along the way, the comedy seamlessly morphs into an incisive satire and, finally, an extremely affecting story about the value of intimacy between two real people – not actors, not avatars.
The film switches gears from simple comedy to something more once Barbara (Scarlett Johansson) enters the picture. Jon, who tends to rate girls on a 10-point scale when he's out with his posse of dudes, labels her a "dime." In a more simplistic film, this bombshell with her tiny dresses and oversized hoop earrings might be the thing that gets Jon away from his laptop.
Instead, Gordon-Levitt makes Barbara a foil for Jon. But rather than harboring an addiction to pornography, she believes in a different kind of fakery: the happy endings and prince charmings of romantic comedies. While their predilections look different, they aren't. Both characters have confused moving pictures with reality, so when everyday life unfolds before them, it tends to look less vibrant than the fantasy worlds they've virtually inhabited.
The story makes clever use of repetition, demonstrating evolution by the way Jon approaches certain routines that become familiar to the viewer. He goes to the club with his boys, he eats dinner with his family (Where have Tony Danza and Glenne Headly been? Both are wonderful as the loud, sports-obsessed father and the oppressive mother who yearns to be a grandma), he goes to church and confesses his sins – including his vast computer usage – and pumps iron at the gym. Barbara also convinces him to start taking a class, which is where he's befriended by a flighty oversharer, Esther (Julianne Moore).
With the exception of Jon's sister Monica (played by Brie Larson), who has a twisting-yet-predictable trajectory, the characters all are nuanced and expertly crafted. Jon may look like a caricature, with his white tank tops and slicked-back hair, but there's plenty happening behind that familiar facade.
Better yet, the film manages to be extremely efficient, conveying its points, making the audience laugh, getting viewers invested and even breaking our hearts in just 90 minutes.
The only real down side of "Don Jon" is the extreme vulgarity, especially early on. It's easy to imagine that some of Jon's audacious admissions could alienate certain audience members, and it would be a shame if the outrageousness overshadowed the movie's thoughtful revelations and surprisingly sweet heart.


text: Dear friend, I am glad to know you,but God knows you better and he knows why he has directed me to you, at this point in time so do not be afraid. I am writing this mail to you with heavy sorrow in my heart, My Name is Bahja Afshin I'm from Algeria am a woman of 46 years old. And am contacting you from the hospital were am taking my treatment here in Dakar Senegal. I want to tell you this because i don't have any other option than to tell you as i was touched to open up to you, I am married to Mr. Afshin Basem who worked with Algeria embassy in Burkina Faso for nine years before he died in the year 2005.We were married for eleven years without a child. He died after a brief illness that lasted for only five days. Since his death I decided not to remarry, When my late husband was alive he deposited the sum of US$ 8.2m(Eight million two hundred thousand dollars)in a bank in Ouagadougou the capital city of Burkina Faso in west Africa Presently this money is still in bank. He made this money available for exportation of Gold from Burkina Faso mining. Recently, My Doctor told me that I would not last for the period of seven months due to cancer problem. The one that disturbs me most is my cancer sickness. Having known my condition I decided to hand you over this money to take care of the less-privileged people, you will utilize this money the way I am going to instruct herein. I want you to take 30 Percent of the total money for your personal use While 70% of the money will go to charity" people in the street and helping the orphanage. I don't have any child that will inherit this money and my husband relatives are not good not even good at all because they are the one that responsible for the death of my late husband in other to have all my late husband properties and I don't want my husband's efforts to be used by those that conspired for his death. I grew up as an Orphan and i don't have anybody as my family member, just to endeavor that the name of God is maintained and God will forgive my sins and accept my soul because this sickness has suffered me so much. As soon as i receive your reply I shall give you the contact of the bank in Burkina Faso and I will send authority letter that will prove you the present beneficiary of the money in the bank that is if you assure me that you will act accordingly as I Stated herein. Hoping to receive your reply. Mrs Bahja Afshin -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/debian-science-maintainers/attachments/20100717/c20caa50/attachment.htm>


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Rouge Dior Ultra Rouge Ultra pigmented hydra lipstick - 12h* weightless wear
Rouge Dior Ultra Rouge is the first incredibly long-wearing lipstick with the comfort of a lip ink**: a true revolution in the history of lipstick. Ultra Rouge offers a lightweight, ultra-comfortable formula and all the colour of a high-pigmentation lipstick. The colours seem more saturated with a luminous, semi-matte finish* for incredible sensoriality and hydration.
Always at the cutting edge, Dior challenged its research department to combine the desire for dazzling colour with the need for long-lasting comfort.
The fruit of long research and in-depth scientific studies, Rouge Dior Ultra Rouge is the first** lipstick composed of a polymer combined with a plant-based oil to deliver absolute hydration and comfort, along with 12-hour*** wear with no tight or dry sensation.
* Instrumental test carried out on 20 subjects.
** At Dior.
*** Except shade 000.
Reviews are moderated by our service partner BazaarVoice.
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I don't know what has happened to my knitting. You'd think that with January's dim light and grey palette I'd be longing for colour, but somehow, all I want to do is knit teeny tiny cables in neutral wheat and putty shades.
These two swatches were knitted with two of my current favourite yarns. The swatch at the top of the post was knitted in Sue Blacker's Swan DK – a rather lovely, smooth and very well-spun Falkland Island merino with a bouncy hand, good stitch definition, a pleasing matt quality, and a lot of life and spring.
The second swatch was knitted in Baa Ram Ewe's delicious Titus — a wensleydale, BFL and alpaca blend that is so popular that it keeps selling out!
Titus is, in many ways, the complete opposite of Swan — drapey and fuzzy with a slight honey-coloured sheen. While cables pop right out of Swan, they flow through, and merge into Titus. Very different effects, but both are equally pleasing.
There is something so quiet and meditative about these netural shades, and I am really enjoying knitting with them. I think these swatches might want to be designs. We'll see.


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Bandung (Blush Nude) , 3.8g
From our award-winning Warung Liquid Lipstick collection, here comes a brand new addition to the family - Warung Matte Bullet Lipsticks! Formulated with hypoallergenic creamy textures that hydrates your lips with matte finishing ( It's best of both worlds!) This collection includes all your favourite shade in different form!
Use the applicator and swipe the shade on your lips. For extra oomph, swipe the applicator above your natural lip line for a poutier look and you're done! NITA Warung Collection dries matte yet highly hydrating!
Hydrogenated polyisobutane, diethylhexyl adipate, synthetic wax, talc, microcrystalline wax (cera microcristallina), propylene carbonate, isononyl isononoate, euphorbia cerifera (candalila wax), c30-45 alkyl dimethicone, dimethicone/vinyl dimethicone crosspolymer, cetyl dimethicone, dimethicone, ethyl vanillin, dicalcium phosphate, pentaerythrityl tetra-di-t-butyl hydroxyhydrocinnamate, laureth-4


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The Golden Globes aired tonight on NBC and were hosted by The Tonight Show's Jimmy Fallon. The big winner of the night was La La Land which walked away with a record 7 trophies which included Best Screenplay and Best Picture Comedy or Musical. In the TV categories, AMC's The Night Manager surprising took the most awards (3) which included Best Limited Series or TV Movie. Atlanta and The Crown also took away big awards.
Take a look at the complete list of winners.


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(Umbrella – by Existrance/deviant art)
This is where I come to talk to myself by dredging up an old photograph or a memory and beating it to death with my keyboard. One day all this blather will be treasured by my progeny. Deluded as that notion might be, it's what keeps me here. Just to clarify things a little, no part of my past or present life was ever spent actually living on a sidewalk. Life in the fast lane would have been a big fat lie; life on a skinny railing high above the railroad tracks with an umbrella at dawn – damn. Didn't think of that one fast enough. But it's sometimes how life feels. Precariously tense, but insanely fun.
"I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing." (Agatha Christie)


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Realty ONE Group Gold Standard
Realtor McMurray
Have you been looking for your dream home to no avail? We can help you at Realty One Group Gold Standard. With many years of experience assisting local sellers and buyers like you, we understand how to find your dream home and negotiate the best deal. We must know about the newest market status, government regulations and laws, and upcoming developments. When negotiating an offer, we ensure that you get the best price. We can help you understand the contract terms and the details of your closing agreement. We handle all documentation. We can help you through the entire selling or buying process.
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Secretary of the British Academy; born in London 1864. He was educated at the City of London School and Cambridge University (B.A., 1887). He was lecturer in English at University College 1892-95; lecturer at Cambridgeunder the Special Board 1888-96; and examiner for the medieval and modern tripos 1895-96. He was elected lecturer in English at the University of Cambridge in March, 1896. When, owing in large measure to Gollancz's initiative, the British Academy was founded in 1902, he was appointed secretary. In 1903 he became professor of English literature at King's College, London. Gollancz has always interested himself in communal affairs; he is connected with several of the chief institutions, has been for several years theological tutor to the Jewish students at Harrow School, and in 1903 was elected president of the Union of Jewish Literary Societies.
Gollancz has edited: "The Pearl," a Middle-English poem prefaced with a special verse by Tennyson, 1891; "Cynewulf's Christ," 1892; "Exeter Book of Anglo-Saxon Poetry" (Early English Text Society), 1895; "Temple Shakespeare," 1894-96, of which nearly three million copies have been sold, and which led to the publication of the "Temple Classics," a series of the best books; "The Parliament of the Three Ages" (Roxburgh Club), 1897; and "Hamlet in Iceland," 1898. Gollancz is now (1903) editing another series entitled "The King's Classics."
- Who's Who, London, 1903;
- Jew. Chron. March 20, 1896;
- Jewish Year-Book, 1903.