text:
COLLEGE PARK — History will smile on the University of Maryland's move to the Big Ten, and the school's football and other athletic teams can compete in the new conference right away, Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany said in an appearance on campus Tuesday.
"We're ready for Maryland," Delany said. "Everyone in the Big Ten is excited. We believe it's going to be a mutually beneficial partnership."
Delany was in College Park for a symposium on the school's move to the Big Ten, held by the university's Shirley Povich Center for Sports Journalism. He was joined in the broad-ranging conversation at the Adele H. Stamp Student Union by Maryland athletic director Kevin Anderson and several influential alumni, including Regent Tom McMillen and broadcasters Bonnie Bernstein and Scott Van Pelt.
University president Wallace Loh announced the change in conferences nearly a year ago, saying Big Ten television money would bring long-term stability to a financially strapped athletic department. Maryland teams will begin Big Ten play next year.
But the departure from the Atlantic Coast Conference has been contentious, with the university and conference locked in a legal battle over the $52 million exit fee ACC officials are demanding. That dispute is unfolding in a North Carolina courtroom.
Delany said the Big Ten would not help defray the ultimate cost of the exit fee.
The planned move also has caused unrest among some students and alumni, who have become accustomed to the university's ACC rivalries after 61 years in the conference.
"I think some people are still having difficulty putting their arms around it," Anderson said. "Every day, more people see that it was a great opportunity for the institution. It will allow us to be global."
Several critics sat on the symposium panel.
McMillen praised the boldness of the move but said he remains troubled by the haste of the decision. Many regents learned of the impending move only a few days before it was finalized last November.
"I just don't think a university should run that way," McMillen said.
He recalled ACC officials calling him as the decision was pending, searching for some scrap of information on the university's plans. "When you've been in business for 60 years and you can't pick up the phone because of a confidentiality agreement, I don't think that's how the process should work," he said.
Delany agreed that the process wasn't ideal but said the conference had to move swiftly and quietly because several other institutions were seeking the same spot.
"Overall, history will judge this well," he said. "In the short term, it wouldn't judge the process well."
Bernstein said she was furious when the news broke. "I was shocked," she recalled. "Who am I going to hate in the Big Ten as much as I hate Duke?"
Van Pelt recalled his own negative reaction but said the university will benefit from the Big Ten's TV riches. The ESPN anchor and radio co-host joked that his network would be among those filling the coffers.
He said the Big Ten's interest showed that someone "finally sees us at the prettiest girl at the dance, which we are."
The panel also discussed the Maryland football team's chances of competing in the Big Ten, which includes such traditional powers as Ohio State, Michigan and Penn State.
"We are going to compete right away," Anderson said.
Delany said Maryland has the "assets and capacity to fully compete." He added that winning will be important to the university's adapting to its new home. "Texas A&M; fell in love with the SEC when they beat Alabama [in football]," he said, alluding to another high-profile conference shift.
Van Pelt dismissed concerns about Maryland football. "I don't know who's terrified of this," he said. "The idea that we're going to get our doors blown off by this conference that isn't frightening anyone right now, I don't know who's saying that. I'm not saying that."
He also fielded a question about his recent on-air criticism of student support at football games. "I don't pick on them," Van Pelt said. "I know they have it in them to be great supporters of the university."


text:
By David Crane defrev (at) gmail (dot) com All photos contained in this article were taken by DefenseReview.com, and are copyrighted. DefenseReview.com owns the copyright on these photos. The photos were shot with a Canon PowerShot S90 10-megapixel digital camera (still camera with video capability). February 28, 2010 Updated on 4/01/10 There were a few new pistols that DefenseReview viewed …Read More »
Tag Archives: ggmain
A Tale of Two Custom Mid-Length AR Carbines: The Frankengun (Frankencarbine) Project
By David Crane defrev (at) gmail (dot) com All photos contained in this article were taken by DefenseReview.com, and are copyrighted. DefenseReview.com owns the copyright on these photos. The photos were shot with a Canon PowerShot S90 10-megapixel digital camera (still camera with video capability). February 23, 2010 DefenseReview plans to run two custom-built tactical AR carbines (AR-15 carbines) through …Read More »
Smith & Wesson M&P15R 5.45x39mm Tactical AR-15 Carbine: Have your AR-15 with a side of Russian.
by David Crane May 6, 2009 The April 2009 issue of Special Weapons for Military & Police (SWMP) (Gun Buyer's Annual #74) has an article on the Smith & Wesson (S&W) M&P15R 5.45x39mm Russian (a.k.a. 5.45x39mm Soviet a.k.a. 5.45x39mm Kalashnikov) semi-auto tactical AR-15 carbine. It's an interesting offering, since the 5.45mm Russian is an interesting little cartridge, and combining it …Read More »
R&R Racing Custom Saiga Mag-Fed (12+1 Rounds) Semi-Auto Tactical/Combat Shotgun
By David Crane defrev at gmail dot com All photographic images contained in this article were taken by DefenseReview.com, and are the exclusive property of DefenseReview.com. DefenseReview.com owns the copyright on these photos. All photos were shot with an Olympus Stylus 790 SW 7.1-megapixel digital camera, which is advertised as "shock + waterproof". February 19, 2009 The CMMG AR-type semi-auto …Read More »
KSEE 24 News Video Story on Attempted Sale of Dragon Skin Body Armor on eBay
by David Crane defrev at gmail dot com "Central Valley News Station" KSEE 24 News has a video report on the federal investigation that is now underway due to the attempt to sell Pinnacle Armor Dragon Skin body armor on eBay by mystery sellers. Click on the link below to watch the story:… Dragon Skin: Ebay Investigation Click here to …Read More »
M16 Viper Series: Custom 5.56mm Weapons Packages for Special Ops (Video!)
by David Crane [email protected] DefenseReview first reported on the M16 Clinic AR-15/M16/M4/M4A1-platform 5.56x45mm subcarbine/SBR (Short-Barreled Rifle) weapons packages back in December, 2004. That first article discussed the select-fire/full-auto, SOPMOD M4 CQBR (Close Quarters Battle Receiver)-style M16 Viper and M16 Viper-XRP (eXtra-Range/Perimeter) 5.56mm subcarbines/SBRs, which are built specifically for military Special Operations applications, including anti-terrorism/counterterrorism operations. These weapons would appear to …Read More »
Auto Assault-12 (AA-12) Full-Auto Machine Shotgun/FRAG-12 High-Explosive Round Combo/Weapon System!
by David Crane [email protected] June 03, 2005 DefenseReview.com was given exclusive permission/rights by SOF Magazine to display the complete SOF Magazine article, below (at the bottom of this story). All SOF Magazine article photos were scanned by DefenseReview.com, specifically for this story. Click on digital photos below to view them full-size. DefenseReview readers may remember the short article we published on the …Read More »
.408 CheyTac Long-Range Interdiction Rifle Demo Video from AFJI Shoot-Out
by David Crane [email protected] The following story has been updated (5/10/04): DefRev wrote a short piece on the .408 CheyTac M-200 "Intervention" long-range interdiction (sniper) rifle awhile back. The CheyTac M200 rifle can be used by a skilled operator to effectively engage enemy targets at distances out to 2500 yards. While it looks like a scaled down Windrunner M96 .50 …Read More »
Blackwater Training Center. Tactical Training For Professionals and Civilians.
by Tim Chandler So you have the perfect AR15 with a properly tweaked extractor and equipment setup… And you have the perfectly reliable handgun on your hip for daily concealed carry… But do you really know how to use either of those tools well enough to save your life? Unfortunately, the answer to this question for many out there is …Read More »
If You Have a Pump Shotgun, Watch Out for the Sidewinder.
by David Crane [email protected] If you have a Mossberg or Remington pump gun lying around somewhere, you might want to try to get your hands on a Knoxx Industries Sidewinder Conversion Kit/(snail) drum magazine. The Knoxx Industries Sidewinder™ 10-round drum magazine system changes the game real quick when it comes to firepower out of a pump action shotgun. Once you …Read More »

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text: Deep focus on new – Sony Cyber-shot DSC HX9V. Cyril Sebastian 27/10/2011 Deep focus on new – Sony Cyber-shot DSC HX9V.2020-06-11T07:42:30+05:30 Camera 4 Comments Two weeks back when I was planning a tour to Agra with family, I got the Sony Cyber-shot HX9V for review. Sorry for the late review, but I thought its… Continue Reading


text:
In response to the subpoena, Mr. Tice issued the following statement: "This latest action by the government is designed only for one purpose: to ensure that people who witness criminal action being committed by the government are intimidated into remaining silent." He continued: "To this date I have pursued all the appropriate channels to report unlawful and unconstitutional acts conducted [by the government] while I served as an intelligence officer with the NSA and DIA. It was with my oath as a US intelligence officer to protect and preserve the U.S. Constitution weighing heavy on my mind that I reported acts that I know to be unlawful and unconstitutional. The freedom of the American people cannot be protected when our constitutional liberties are ignored and our nation has decayed into a police state."
On December 22, 2005, the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition made public a request by Tice to report to Congress probable unlawful and unconstitutional acts by the government while he was an intelligence officer with NSA and DIA. In a press release, NSWBC urged the congress to hold hearings and let Mr. Tice testify. Mr. Tice, a responsible veteran intelligence officer, tried to use the so-called appropriate channels, including the United States Congress, to responsibly and lawfully disclose government wrongdoing. [To read the release click here].
"What we are seeing here is a government desperate to cover up its criminal and unconstitutional conduct. They now are going beyond the usual retaliation against whistleblowers who courageously come forward to report cases of government fraud, waste, abuse, and in some cases such as this one, criminal actions. Their old tactics of intimidation, gag orders, and firing, have not stopped an unprecedented number of whistleblowers from coming forward and doing the right thing. Desperate to prevent the public's right to know, they now are getting engaged in a witch hunt targeting these patriotic truth tellers." stated Sibel Edmonds, the Director of National Security Whistleblowers Coalition.
In addition, the timing of the subpoena appears to be more than a little suspect. On July 25, 2006, Judge Matthew Kennelly upheld the government's assertion of the state secrets privilege in Terkel v. AT&T. The crucial issue in the case was whether or not the government's program of surveillance had been publicly acknowledged, and Kennelly wrote "the focus should be on information that bears persuasive indication of reliability." If there were reliable public reports of the program then the fact of the program's existence could not be a state secret. Kennelly found that there were no reliable sources of public information about the contested program's existence sufficient to thwart the government's need for secrecy. In other words, the existence of the program had not been conclusively established, and the government therefore had a right to prevent probing into the matter. This stops a case that represented a serious threat to the Bush administration.
Professor William Weaver, NSWBC Senior Advisor, stated: "Russ Tice is the only publicly identified NSA employee connected to the New York Times in its December 2005 story publicizing warrantless Bush-ordered surveillance. Tice is also publicly perceived as someone who could authoritatively establish the existence of the program at issue in Terkel; Tice could remedy the defect in the plaintiff's case cited by Kennelly that allowed the government's assertion of the state secrets privilege to be successful. Later, on the same day Kennelly's opinion was filed, the Department of Justice sent out Tice's subpoena. The date on the subpoena is July 20th, before Kennelly's decision was filed, but the issue in the Terkel case was so pregnant that it would be easy for the government to anticipate the ruling and only issue the subpoena to Tice if necessary. It has now become necessary, and the government seems to be moving to put pressure on Tice not to reveal information that would confirm the electronic surveillance program at issue in Terkel by threatening him with investigation and possible indictment."
# # # #
� Copyright 2006, National Security Whistleblowers Coalition. Information in this release may be freely distributed and published provided that all such distributions make appropriate attribution to the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition.


text: While others are filing this under "certainty" we are still going to have to classify this one as a "class 1 rumor." Gizmodo is reporting that it has a trusted source, of sound mind and body, proclaiming that Google's Android operating system will be running on Google developed/branded hardware in the imminent future. The article goes on to say, not only will Google be making its own hardware but it will also be running a version of Android that the world has yet to see. Gasp. The article is pretty light on facts and fairly high on speculation so we'll let you guys decide how high this one ranks on the certainty meter. While we don't see a reason that Google would want to royally piss off their hardware partners, we also don't see them letting much get in their way of world domination.


text:
Peter Roskams Style Lays Ground for Leadership
Rep. Peter Roskam's decision to stay out of the messy Illinois primary that pitted a freshman incumbent against a veteran lawmaker was a prescient strategy for a rising leader, Members and political observers said of the GOP's Chief Deputy Whip.
While some Illinois junkies complain of Roskam's cautious style when it comes to state politics, others noted that the three-term Republican is wisely picking his spots and building goodwill in a diverse Conference that widely views his future as bright.
"I think he's trying to build, especially from a Whip position, all the way through, a way of keeping people united," Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) said of his chief deputy. "He's one who unites; he doesn't divide in the process."
Another Republican lawmaker was more direct, noting that Roskam's decision to stay out of the primary between Reps. Don Manzullo and Adam Kinzinger, the latter of whom won the messy March contest, "will pay him dividends down the road" as he tries to climb up the leadership ranks. Whereas Majority Leader Eric Cantor (Va.) caught heat for endorsing and financially supporting Kinzinger, Roskam emerged from the contest in his own home state unscathed.
Roskam said the decision to stay out of the primary was driven by his relationship with both Members and that he did not feel any pressure to jump in once Cantor, a member of elected leadership, made his endorsement announcement.
"My role as Chief Deputy Whip is to spend a lot of time listening to members and working with Kevin and trying to build consensus internally," he said. "So, consistent with that approach, I decided to wave off that whole situation."
Rep. John Shimkus, a veteran Republican in the Illinois delegation, agreed that Roskam's decision to stay out, and Rep. Aaron Schock's decision to aggressively pull for Kinzinger, is illustrative of the lawmakers' styles and posture. Both lawmakers served in the state Legislature, and both are on the exclusive Ways and Means Committee, but that's where their similarities end. Roskam holds a prestigious leadership position and largely wields his influence behind the scenes. Schock is a frequent cable news guest who is building up his power network back in the state.
"I think Aaron is teeing things up well for a statewide run someday. I haven't talked to him about it, but I can see that," said Shimkus, who joined Schock in backing Kinzinger last month. Meanwhile, Roskam "could become a Whip, sure. I could see him becoming Speaker someday, if he decides he wants it and tries to go for it."
Of Roskam, Shimkus noted that "you don't hear anything bad, and you don't hear a ton great, so he's probably doing OK." Republican Policy Committee Chairman Tom Price spun it another way, saying, "He's not excitable, which is what you want."
"He understands the machinations of the political process here and the policy process," the Georgian said. "I think he's got a very bright future."
While Roskam consistently wins praise in Washington, D.C., a few Illinois insiders complained that he is less involved back home. Democrats aggressively redrew the Illinois map to favor themselves and have targeted several districts as prime pickup spots in their uphill pursuit of the House majority. Several Illinois sources said Schock and Shimkus are regulars on the fundraising circuit for state legislators and endangered House Members but that Roskam is less of a presence in those circles. Roskam backers note, however, that he helped launch a grass-roots campaign known as the "Illinois Project" for the 2010 cycle that eventually helped the GOP win five House seats including Kinzinger's.
Kinzinger said there are no residual hard feelings from Roskam choosing to stay out of his contest.
"From my perspective, truly, the primary's over," he said.
Roskam could be more helpful to Kinzinger and other freshman lawmakers, as well as endangered incumbents, in other ways. While fundraising and campaign appearances are obvious ways to help colleagues, McCarthy noted that Roskam assists his colleagues as a cautious voice at the leadership table. Unlike the rest of the GOP roster, Roskam hails from a swing district in the Chicago suburbs. In 2008, President Barack Obama won his district, and Roskam himself won a tight battle in 2006 against Democrat Tammy Duckworth, a bright spot for Republicans in an otherwise Democratic year.
"He brings something to the leadership table that I don't think anyone else has," McCarthy said.
Colleagues say Roskam's understated style is reminiscent of another Illinois Republican, former Speaker Dennis Hastert, who unexpectedly rose to the top House office from the same leadership position Roskam now holds. Hastert's ascent was unique, coming amid the fallout from the resignation of Newt Gingrich and a Speaker-in-waiting, former Rep. Bob Livingston (R-La.), but the similarities between Hastert and Roskam, particularly their work ethic and modest approach, engenders the respect of colleagues.
Said Shimkus, who was close to the former Speaker: "If you look at Hastert, who didn't make waves and just kept his head down, he was respectful, he didn't arm-twist. … I guess being under the radar pays off."


text:
JONES, CHAIRMAN OF NAVAJO TRIBAL COUNCIL v. HEALING(1963)
[ Footnote * ] Together with No. 1050, Healing, Chairman of Hopi Tribal Council of Hopi Indian Tribe, et al. v. Jones, Chairman of Navajo Tribal Council of Navajo Indian Tribe, et al., on appeal from the same Court.
210 F. Supp. 125, affirmed.
Norman M. Littell and Frederick Bernays Wiener for appellant in No. 985 and for appellee Jones in No. 1050.
John S. Boyden, Allen H. Tibbals and Bryant H. Croft for appellants in No. 1050 and for appellee Healing in No. 985.
The motion to substitute Raymond Nakai in the place of Paul Jones as the party appellant in No. 985 and as a party appellee in No. 1050 is granted. The motion to substitute Abbott Sekaquaptewa in the place of Dewey Healing as a party appellee in No. 985 and as a party appellant in No. 1050 is granted. The motion to affirm in No. 985 is granted and the judgment which is common to both cases is affirmed.
MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS is of the opinion that probable jurisdiction should be noted and would decide the cases only after argument.


text:
By Tom Cohen
Get real, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told America on Monday in proposing a scaled back, modern military that would cut the Army to its pre-World War II size, retire the A-10 "Warthog" attack jet and reduce some benefits for fighting forces.
"This is a budget that recognizes the reality of the magnitude of our fiscal challenges, the dangerous world we live in, and the American military's unique and indispensable role in the security of this country and in today's volatile world," Hagel said in unveiling the Defense Department spending plan for 2015 and beyond.
"There are difficult decisions ahead," he added. "That is the reality we're living with."
Downsizing due to modernization and budget constraints began under Hagel's predecessor, Robert Gates, and the proposal outlined on Monday described a new phase in the transition.
"Not a war-footing budget"
"For the first time in 13 years we will be presenting a budget to the Congress of the United States that's not a war-footing budget," Hagel said in response to reporters' questions. "That's a defining budget because it starts to reset and reshape."
Under it, the former senator from Nebraska said the military would become a smaller, more tactical force capable of fighting on one war front and maintaining effective defenses for a second while shifting to more specialized capabilities.
"Our analysis showed that this force would be capable of decisively defeating aggression in one major combat theater - as it must be - while also defending the homeland and supporting air and naval forces engaged in another theater against an adversary," he said.
The proposal endorsed Monday by Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey, who appeared with Hagel at the Pentagon news conference, is certain to face strong opposition in Congress - especially with midterm elections coming up in November.
Hagel's budget will be formally proposed next week and legislators from states or districts with major military bases or a heavy presence of contractors are expected to rail against it.
In recent years, Republican hawks have battled military force reductions under President Barack Obama's attempts to reduce defense spending as part of overall deficit reduction.
Conservative Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, a possible GOP presidential contender in 2016, questioned the planned cuts in forces at a time of varying threats and a U.S. shift in emphasis to the Asia-Pacific region, saying it "does not make strategic sense."
"It's going to be a far slimmer military," noted CNN Military Analyst and retired Maj. Gen. James "Spider" Marks, predicting a rough reception in Washington. "This is the toughest part - the political part."
Retired NATO commander: It's necessary
Retired Army Gen. George Joulwan, a former NATO supreme allied commander in Europe, said he thought the changes were necessary.
"Whether it's smart or not is yet to be seen. But I think it's necessary to do, given the constraints that we face fiscally within the United States," he told CNN.
For now, the Pentagon budget for the rest of this fiscal year and for 2015 is about $500 billion for each, as set by a congressional compromise in December.
Hagel acknowledged the changes he proposed mean assuming more risk, but said the military would be better situated to respond to the evolving security challenges facing the country.
The recommendations in the budget plan for 2015 and ensuing years "favor a smaller and more capable force - putting a premium on rapidly deployable, self-sustaining platforms that can defeat more technologically advanced adversaries," Hagel said.
He added that the proposal includes "important investments to preserve a safe, secure, reliable, and effective nuclear force."
All military forces, both active and reserve, would be cut under the budget plan.
It calls for reducing the Army to a level of 440,000 to 450,000 troops, which would be the lowest total in more than 70 years. At its height, the Army had 570,000 troops after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and currently has about 520,000.
According to Hagel, the budget proposal protects funding for cyberwarfare and special operations, and preserves money for the controversial and costly F-35 fighter jet.
Warthogs retired?
His plan would retire the A-10, which Hagel called a 40-year-old, single-purpose aircraft designed for Cold War operations, at a cost savings of $3.5 billion over five years.
Separately, Hagel said 900 additional Marines would be assigned to bolster security at embassies around the world under his proposal.
Diplomatic security has received close scrutiny since a terror attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012 killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.
Also, Hagel said the plan envisions increasing special operations forces from 66,000 today to 69,700 in the future to better meet tactical needs of a modern military requiring counterterrorism and crisis response.
Other provisions would reduce some benefits for military personnel, resulting in them having to shoulder more of their housing and medical costs. Reducing the federal subsidy to commissaries would mean smaller discounts for groceries on U.S. bases.
Through his remarks, Hagel warned that if Congress fails to eliminate planned across-the-board spending cuts beyond 2016, the military reductions would be on a greater scale and significant enough to compromise U.S. national security.
Some of those forced cuts, known as sequestration, were eased for this year and next under the budget deal worked out by Congress in December.
CNN's Halimah Abdullah and CNNMoney's Jennifer Liberto contributed to this report.
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From Alexandre Dumas, a precise and candid description of his particular view of history:
I start by devising a story. I try to make it romantic, moving, dramatic, and when scope has been found for the emotions and the imagination, I search through the annals of the past to find a frame in which to set it; and it has never happened that history has failed to provide this frame, so exactly adjusted to the subject that it seemed it was not a case of the frame being made for the picture, but that the picture had been made to fit the frame.
This is the point of view of the historical novelist, who approaches the past as theater–the unending melodrama of saints and sinners, and who knows that history, eternally surprising, inspiring, disheartening, sometimes described as "one damn thing after another," will never fail him. It is all there. And it is all there to be used.
Dumas was in his early forties when he wrote The Three Musketeers, an age when novelists are believed to be entering their best creative years. He is traditionally described as "a man of vast republican sympathies," which, in contemporary terms, made him a believer in democracy, equality, and the rights of man. He had fought in the streets of Paris during the July revolution of 1830; would man the barricades in 1848; would aid Garibaldi, with guns and journalism, in the struggle for Italian independence in 1860.
Such politics came to him by inclination, and by birth. His father, Thomas-Alexandre Davy de La Pailleterie, had taken the name of his African slave mother, Marie Dumas, and spent the early years of his life on the island of Santo Domingo. When the French Revolution made it possible for men without wealth or social connections to rise to power, the soldier Alexandre Dumas became General Alexandre Dumas, commanding the Army of the Alps in 1794, serving under Napoleon Bonaparte in Italy, and later in Egypt. But his relationship with Bonaparte deteriorated; his health was destroyed by two years in an Italian prison; and he died, a broken man, in 1806. His son, in time the novelist Dumas, was then four years old, but he would be told of his father's life, and he knew what it meant.
By 1844, France was ruled by Louis-Philippe, duc d'Orleans, a constitutional monarch known as "the bourgeois king," who presided over the golden age of the French bourgeoisie, a propertied class animated by the slogan "Enrichissez-vous!" (Enrich yourselves!) This was a period of transition, when corrupt capitalism was opposed by passionate idealism–the age of monarchy was dying, the age of democracy was just being born. The best insight into the period is to be found in the novels of Honoré de Balzac–Dumas's fierce literary rival. Balzac was virtually the same age as Dumas, and, like Dumas, rose from social obscurity and penury by producing a huge volume of work at an extraordinary pace. But Balzac wrote about contemporary life–the vanity, corruption and sexual politics of Paris in the 1840s–and was, throughout his fiction, essentially a novelist of vice. Dumas, on the other hand, was a novelist of virtue, though he had to go back two hundred years to find it.
Setting The Three Musketeers in the year 1625–at that distance, a contemporary American novelist might use the revolution of 1776–Dumas was summoning up a remote and heroic era. Yes, it was all different back then. Better. Still, it may be worth remembering that Dumas's musketeers are proud, courageous men, men without inherited money or the support of prominent family, who must fight their way through a world of political intrigue dominated by predatory, immoral people who scheme and connive, who will do virtually anything, to keep their wealth and position. So, if it is about anything, The Three Musketeers is about betrayal, fidelity, and, like almost all genre fiction, it is about honor. Honor lost, honor gained, honor maintained at the cost of life itself. By 1894, the sale of Dumas's works totaled three million books and eight million serials.
The Three Musketeers, the first book of the d'Artagnan trilogy, with Twenty Years After and The Vicomte de Bragelonne to follow, appeared in installments in the journal Le Siècle from March to July in 1844. It was written with help of a collaborator, Auguste Maquet, who also participated in the writing of The Count of Monte Cristo. Maquet would later claim significant authorship, and haul Dumas into court.
Dumas was accused, as well, of plagiarism, having used The Memoirs of Monsieur d'Artagnan, by one Courtilz de Sandras, published in Cologne in 1701, as source material. There he found not only d'Artagnan but Athos, Porthos, and Aramis; Tréville and his musketeers; Milady and her maid; and the Cardinalist Guards. From the annals of French history, he took the machinations, real or reputed, involving Louis XIII, Anne of Austria, Cardinal Richelieu, and the duke of Buckingham. Then he threw out whatever reality he found inconvenient and wrote what he liked.
In the real world of Europe in 1625, the continent was being torn apart by the Thirty Years War–a rather pallid name that obscures the cruel and brutal nature of its reality. Fighting on behalf of royal houses in conflict over religious issues and rights of succession, mercenary armies were paid by the right of pillage and ravaged the countryside, a strategy described as "war supports the war." In France, French Catholics suppressed a French Protestant minority, the Huguenots, who were supported by English Protestant money and arms. Serving as virtual regent for a weak king Louis XIII, Cardinal Richelieu was perhaps the greatest political figure of his time. Famously eloquent, determined and brilliant, Richelieu was a deeply ambitious man, but a devoted and faithful servant of king and country.
A popular novelist, however, must produce an archvillain, and Dumas gave the job to Richelieu. As the servant of Dumas's fictional requirements, Richelieu is merely political on the surface, as he undertakes a series of intrigues in a struggle for power with the king or with his English Protestant enemy, Buckingham. In The Three Musketeers, Richelieu is discovered to have deeper motives, a lust for revenge inspired by a romantic slight–a spurned advance–and, in general, by sexual jealousy. The cardinal, according to Dumas, was in love with the queen, Anne of Austria. The reader of 1844, hurrying off to buy this week's chapter in Le Siècle, likely suspected as much.
Serialized fiction read as a novel can, at times, be a slightly bumpy ride. The twists and turns of the story are intended not only to keep the reader reading, but to keep the reader buying. Thus the plot tends toward precipitous dives and breathtaking ascents, as peril and escape follow each other at narrow intervals, characters disappear and are brought back to life, and what seemed like the central crisis of the narrative is suddenly resolved, to be replaced by a second crisis.
The perfidious Cardinal Richelieu is a good example of this principle at work. He's a useful éminence grise at the beginning of the novel, as Cardinalist guards fight the king's faithful musketeers. But, when it's time for the story to end, he's too historical a figure to be vanquished with all the force that the conclusion of a romantic adventure demands. Thus the role of villain is shifted to Milady; the story can then take its chilling and violent turn; and justice, when it is at last achieved, can be, to say the least, severe.
Since writers of serials wrote for a weekly deadline, there was no such thing as regret or revision, and the reader may see rather more of the novel's scaffolding than the author would like. Dumas, characteristically, solved this problem with talent, and produced the best writing in The Three Musketeers in the latter third of the novel, for example the combination of battle and picnic at the Bastion Saint Gervais, during the attack on the Protestant stronghold at La Rochelle. This is easily one of the most insouciant scenes in all of literature, as the musketeers, intent on winning a tavern bet, occupy the bastion; sip wine; discuss matters of love and strategy; push a wall over on a raiding party; use the dead as mock defenders; and, finally, after four-hundred pages of action and intrigue, actually fire muskets!
This is but one pleasure among many. There is, throughout The Three Musketeers, a vast and magnanimous intelligence at work. The critic Jules Michelet described Alexandre Dumas as "an inextinguishable volcano," and "one of the forces of nature." He was certainly that. Born to write, and born to write about mythic times and mythic deeds, Dumas loved his characters and the elaborate story he fashioned for them. This is a telling trait in a novelist, the reader instinctively feels it, so gives himself to the story, lives in the time and place of its setting, and escapes, as surely as d'Artagnan ever escaped, from the drone of daily existence. That's the job of romantic fiction and it's done in The Three Musketeers on virtually every page. "All for one, and one for all!" And all for us.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
Excerpted from The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas Copyright © 1997 by Alexandre Dumas. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.


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Realistic Medicine: The Kind To Look For
There are several stages in becoming an empowered, engaged, activated patient — a capable, responsible partner in getting good care for yourself, your family, whoever you're caring for. One ingredient is to know what to expect, so you can tell when things seem right and when they don't.
Researching a project today, I came across an article* published in 2006: "Key Learning from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute's 10-Year Patient Safety Journey." This table shows the attitude you'll find in an organization that has realized the challenges of medicine and is dealing with them realistically:
"Errors are everywhere." "Great care in a high-risk environment." What kind of attitude is that? It's accurate.
This work began after the death of Boston Globe health columnist Betsy Lehman. Long-time Bostonians will recall that she was killed in 1994 by an accidental overdose of chemo at Dana-Farber. It shocked us to realize that a savvy patient like her, in one of the best places in the world, could be killed by such an accident. But she was.
Five years later the Institute of Medicine's report "To Err is Human" documented that such errors are in fact common — 44,000 to 98,000 a year. It hasn't gotten better: Last November the U.S. Inspector General released new findings that 15,000 Medicare patients are killed in U.S. hospitals every month. That's one every three minutes. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at e-Patients.net*


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1649: Charles I
January 30th, 2008 Headsman
On this date in 1649, the struggle between parliament and crown cost the Stuart monarch Charles I his head.
Charles' political clumsiness and unreconstructed authoritarianism had seen the realm whose unitary sovereignty he insisted upon blunder from disaster to disaster: into bankruptcy, military defeat, religious conflict and the English Civil War.
The assignation of cause and consequence in that war's genesis has much exercised historians.
What is beyond dispute is that the confrontation between monarch and subject, pitting against each other political and economic epochs, theories of state and power, rates as one of history's most captivating courtroom dramas.
Charles refused to answer the court's charge of treason, occasioned most particularly by the king's fomenting the Second Civil War while already a defeated prisoner of parliament following the first Civil War. He rested firmly on royal prerogatives against what some interlocutors take to be an almost desperate plea by his judges for some hint of acknowledgment that could open the door to compromise:
[A] King cannot be tried by any superior jurisdiction on earth. But it is not my case alone — it is the freedom and the liberty of the people of England. And do you pretend what you will, I stand more for their liberties — for if the power without law may make laws, may alter the fundamental laws of the kingdom, I do not know what subject he is in England that can be sure of his life or anything that he calls his own. Therefore, when that I came here I did expect particular reasons to know by what law, what authority, you did proceed against me here.
It must be borne in mind that the trial of a king was a completely unprecedented event. Charles might be forgiven his attitude, even if it smacked of the impolitic high-handedness that had forced this deadly test of powers.
Parliament's position — here in the words of its President — is distinctly in the stream of political discourse (if not always actual practice) ascendant in the West to this day.
Sir, as the law is your superior, so truly, sir, there is something that is superior to the law and that is indeed the parent or author of the law — and that is the people of England.
And therefore, sir, for this breach of trust when you are called to account, you are called to account by your superiors — "when a king is summoned to judgment by the people, the lesser is summoned by the greater."
The modern and the medieval, facing each other at the bar.
A fragment from a World War II bomb-damaged and only-recently-rediscovered Hippolyte Delaroche painting situating Charles in the Christlike pose of enduring the mockery of his captors.
Charles played his lordly disdain to the end, refusing to admit parliament's jurisdiction by making any sort of plea.
The line between heroic defiance and pig-headed obstinacy being very much in the eye of the beholder, the confrontation is typically played straight-up for its arresting clash of principles — as in the 1970 biopic Cromwell, with Alec Guinness as the monarch:Probably more troubling for the parliamentary party than the regicide taboo was consideration that the execution would transfer royalist loyalties from a man safely imprisoned to an heir beyond their power, who could be expected to (as in fact he did) resume the civil war.
Competing philosophies expounded for the competing interests; the dispute involved the era's intellectual titans, in conflict over the most fundamental concepts of the state. Thomas Hobbes wrote his magnum opus The Leviathan as a royalist exile in Paris, and its abhorrence for rebellion and divided sovereignty unmistakably reflects the English Civil War experience. John Milton earned his bread as a republican polemicist; his poetic celebration of Satan's failed rebellion in Paradise Lost, written after the Stuart restoration, can be read as a political critique.
It's conventionally thought that the beheading was conducted by a radical minority, though that supposition is debatable, colored as it is by the ultimate restoration of the crown. But although England would have a king again, the weight of political authority would steadily, permanently, gravitate towards parliament, organ of the merchant classes who would steer England henceforward.
Did it have the right? Two implacable powers each claimed an indivisible object; "between equal rights, force decides." So on this cold winter's afternoon — Charles wore thick undergarments, so he would not shiver with the appearance of fright — the deposed king was marched to a scaffold erected at Whitehall. He gave a short final address, with the famous words for his principle of martyrdom — "a sovereign and a subject are clean different things" — then laid his head on a low block, where a masked executioner (never definitively identified) cleanly chopped it off.
After the monarchy's restoration, Charles was canonized as a saint by the Church of England: he's still the last person so venerated, an odd salute to a mortal career of unalloyed arrogance and incompetence. Observance of the cult was toned down in the 19th century, although a Society of King Charles the Martyr dedicated to its preservation still exists; monarchists of a more secular inclination also continue to mark his martyrdom on this anniversary.
Less reverent by far was Monty Python's homage:
"The most interesting thing about King Charles the First is that he was five foot six inches tall at the start of his reign, but only four foot eight inches tall at the end of it."
Part of the Themed Set: The English Reformation.
On this day..
- 1953: Mat Indera, for the Bukit Kepong incident - 2020
- 1945: Andrew Brown, Leading Aircraftsman - 2019
- 1937: Georgy Pyatakov, Anti-Soviet Parallel Trotskyist - 2018
- 1944: The Homfreyganj massacre of the Andaman Islands - 2017
- 1744: Skinnar Per Andersson, legislator - 2016
- 1801: Four entrapped Jacobins - 2015
- 1857: Jean-Louis Verger, doctrinaire - 2014
- 1913: John Williams, the Case of the Hooded Man - 2013
- 2011: Ahmed Ali Hussein, enemy cleric - 2012
- 1474: Not the Archer of Meudon - 2011
- 1996: William Flamer, Alito'd - 2010
- 1661: Oliver Cromwell, posthumously - 2009
Entry Filed under: 17th Century,Beheaded,Capital Punishment,Death Penalty,England,Execution,Famous,Famous Last Words,Heads of State,History,Martyrs,Milestones,Notable Jurisprudence,Notable Participants,Notably Survived By,Power,Public Executions,Religious Figures,Treason
Tags: 1640s, 1649, alec guinness, capitalism, charles i, charles ii, cinema, English Civil War, hippolyte delaroche, january 30, john milton, leviathan, london, monarchism, monty python, paradise lost, philosophy, Protestant Reformation, regicide, saint, satan, thomas hobbes, whitehall
34 thoughts on "1649: Charles I"
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die charles
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P.S Thanks for the fim clip. I went to see it was a equally history fanatic friend, and we wept throughout most of the film ! Alex Guiness was marvellous, but Cromwell wasn't a quarter as handsome as Richard Harris!
I'm not sure how I feel about this. I'm a history graduate and specialised in this period in UK and European history at this time (and the French Revolution). Have you heard of Sellars and Yeatman, Headsman? They wrote a famous "Brief Study" of UK history as people remembered it, so it was all jumbled up and quite crazy! They christened the Cavaliers "Wrong but Wromantic" and the Puritans "Right but Repulsive", and I feel much the same. However, legalistically, Charles was a fool to think he could emulate Elizabeth and to proclaim "The divine Right of Kings" – if there was one, his brother Henry should have been king, not him. He drove a coach and horses through UK rights and privileges by ruling without Parliament and imposition of various illegal taxes (much like the American Revolution, really) . So the Wromantic side of me loves the Van Dyke "Happy Families" paintings of the Royal family at that time, and the hardheaded bit says he asked for what he got!


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The December 16, 2012 gang rape/murder of a female student on a Delhi bus helped spark a major upsurge in anti-rape activism across India. This activism has continued despite a harsh police crackdown and has targeted not only India's epidemic of sexual violence against women but also, to a more limited extent, the entrenched patriarchal beliefs, practices, and institutions that foster it. Some critics, such as Soma Marik of the Forum Against Oppression of Women, Calcutta, have also highlighted the ways that both the state and the Hindu nationalist far right in India use rape as a weapon against specific groups of women. That's what I want to focus on in this post.
Writing some eight months before the recent anti-rape protests, Kavita Krishnan, national secretary of the All India Progressive Women's Association (which is affiliated with the maoist CPI[ML]), argued that rape must be seen as "part of a larger web of violence and subjugation of women" and "we need to assert the nature of rape as a crime of power rather than a crime against innocence, chastity, or property" [i.e., women as sexual property of someone else]. She also pointed out that "safety" for women "is often tied up with the patriarchal ideology of masculine guardianship" and typically means restrictions on women's freedom of movement, although most rapes are committed by family members, friends, and neighbors -- not by strangers. Although the details vary, most of Krishnan's basic points apply not just to India but also to the United States and other patriarchal societies.
While emphasizing that "rape and other forms of sexual violence are an assertion of patriarchal dominance and power," Krishan also noted that "other centres of power -- caste, religion, and State -- also draw upon this form of patriarchal violence to assert their own dominance, and so we have rapes as part of caste and communal violence, and custodial rapes by police or army."
The Indian state is a major perpetrator of rape. In recent decades, Indian security forces have used rape extensively as part of counterinsurgency operations in regions such as Kashmir. A 1993 report by Asia Watch and Physicians for Human Rights, entitled "Rape in Kashmir: A Crime of War," found that "the use of rape [by Indian army and paramilitary forces] is common and routinely goes unpunished" (p. 3). The main targets have been women civilians who are suspected of sympathizing with the insurgents. In nearly all such cases, the government has rejected the evidence and tried to discredit the accusers, for example regarding the 1991 Kunan Poshpora incident, in which soldiers reportedly gang-raped at least 53 women in the Kashmiri village of Kunan Poshpora. In 2005, according to Wikileaks, almost one-fourth of the 1,296 Kashmiri detainees interviewed by the International Committee of the Red Cross said they had been sexually abused by Indian security forces (out of a total of 681 who reported some form of torture).
Looking more broadly, the following passage from the AW/PHR Kashmir report probably describes the situation today as well as it did in 1993:
"Rape by Indian police is common throughout India; the victims are generally poor women and those from vulnerable low-caste and tribal minority groups. In some cases, women are taken into custody as suspects in petty crime or on more serious charges; in others, women are detained as hostages for relatives wanted in criminal or political cases; in still others, women are detained simply so that the police can extort a bribe to secure their release. In all of these cases, women in the custody of security forces are at risk of rape. Rape has also been widely reported during counter-insurgency operations elsewhere in India, particularly in Assam and other areas of conflict in northeastern India. In both conflict and non-conflict situations, the central element of rape by the security forces is power. Soldiers and police use rape as a weapon: to punish, intimidate, coerce, humiliate and degrade" (p. 3).
The Asian Center for Human Rights has documented 45 cases of Indian women being raped by police officers while in custody between 2002 and 2010, according to Jason Overdorf in the Global Post. Given that rape is heavily under-reported even when the police are not involved, the real figure may be much higher.
Rape is commonly perpetrated not only by soldiers and police officers, but also by members of India's political class itself. According to the watchdog group National Election Watch (as cited by Overdorf), over the past five years 260 candidates from all the major political parties in India have faced charges for rape, sexual harassment, or other crimes against women. Two current members of the national parliament and six members of state legislatures are facing rape charges.
India's far right Hindu nationalist movement promotes rape in ways that are closely bound up with the movement's anti-Muslim politics and dream of a culturally pure hierarchical society. Hindu nationalists demand Hindu cultural and political dominance of India and have perpetrated some of the most horrific mass violence of recent decades, including the torture and murder of thousands of Muslims. The movement includes India's largest opposition party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), as well as the country's biggest labor union, biggest student organization, and many other groups. Most of these groups are part of a network centered on the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), an all-male cadre organization that aims to reshape Indian society along authoritarian corporatist lines. (See my "Hindu nationalism: an annotated bibliography of online resources.")
During the recent public outcry about rape, the BJP called for the death penalty in many rape cases while some of its leaders trivialized rape or engaged in victim-blaming. A more sophisticated response came from Shiv Sena, a Hindu nationalist political party in Maharashtra state, which handed out knives to thousands of women in Mumbai for self-defense, to show that "women are empowered and they can take care of themselves." Like the fascist Golden Dawn party in Greece offering self-defense classes for women, Shiv Sena's "symbolic gesture" (as they called it) appropriated an element of feminist politics in the service of a violent ethnic-chauvinist program.
But Shiv Sena's progressive-sounding response was unusual among Hindu nationalists, and it's probably no coincidence that Shiv Sena is the only major Hindu nationalist organization in India not affiliated with the RSS. By contrast, RSS head Mohan Bhagwat, who is arguably the most influential Hindu nationalist in the world, blamed rape on the decline of traditional patriarchal relations, as quoted by Devika Narayan:
"A husband and wife are involved in a contract under which the husband has said that you should take care of my house and I will take care of all your needs. I will keep you safe. So, the husband follows the contract terms. Till the time, the wife follows the contract, the husband stays with her, if the wife violates the contract, he can disown her. Crimes against women happening in urban India are shameful. But such crimes won't happen in Bharat [roughly: idealized traditional Hindu society] or the rural areas of the country. You go to villages and forests of the country and there will be no such incidents of gang-rape or sex crimes. Besides new legislation, Indian ethos and attitude towards women should be revisited in the context of ancient Indian values. Where Bharat becomes 'India' with the influence of western culture, these types of incidents happen."
Many critics, such as Narayan, have pointed out the utter fallacy of Bhagwat's claim that rape does not happen in traditional Indian villages, and have argued that sexual violence against women is in fact integral to the kind of patriarchal traditionalism that Bhagwat and his followers glorify. Yet Bhagwat's view was echoed by Ashok Singhal, of the Vishad Hindu Parishad (VHP), an RSS-affiliated cultural organization. Singhal claimed that the rise of sexual assault on women reflected the growth of a western lifestyle in Indian cities. "This western model is alarming. What is happening is we have imbibed the US. We have lost all the values we had in cities," notably virginity.
The Hindu nationalist movement doesn't just rationalize or hide rape -- it has actively promoted it on a large scale. Rape and other violence against women and girls have been central to a number of the anti-Muslim pogroms that Hindu nationalist groups have fomented or organized over the past twenty-plus years. The largest and most horrific example was the month-long Gujarat pogrom of 2002, when Hindu nationalist mobs killed at least 790 and probably more than 2,000 Muslims. Many women were raped, tortured, and then hacked to death or burned alive.
In an important analysis entitled "The Semiotics of Terror: Muslim Children and Women in Hindu Rashtra," historian Tanika Sarkar highlights three aspects of the Gujarat pogrom: "One, the woman's body was a site of almost inexhaustible violence, with infinitely plural and innovative forms of torture. Second, their sexual and reproductive organs were attacked with a special savagery. Third, their children, born and unborn, shared the attacks and were killed before their eyes." The focus of this violence, Sarkar argues, reflected Hindu nationalists' fears of the supposedly super-fertile Muslim woman as well as "a more virile Muslim male body that lures away Hindu girls."
Sarkar also emphasizes that the pogrom followed "months of systematic planning," such as compiling lists of Muslim addresses, and pointed to Hindu nationalists' extensive "penetration of state and grass roots institutions -- from police to hospitals" in Gujarat. The Gujarat state government was controlled by the BJP, and state organs protected and sometimes actively participated in the pogrom. Narendra Modi, Gujarat chief minister and a leader within both the BJP and RSS, rode the pogrom's success to victory in the state elections a few months later, and is still in power today.
Both the Indian state and the Hindu nationalist movement have used rape to terrorize and control specific groups of women. But Hindu nationalism has gone much further -- both in its level of cruelty and in its use of rape to mobilize and build up supporters. As the International Initiative for Justice in Gujarat declared in its interim report about the 2002 pogrom, "We find chillingly unique the incitement to sexual violence as a means of proving the masculinity of the 'Hindu' man, as reflected in the political propaganda of the forces of Hindutva [Hindu nationalism] prior to, during and after the violence in February/March 2002..." (See also the Initiative's full 197-page report, "Threatened Existence: A Feminist Analysis of the Genocide in Gujarat.")
Yet the same report also noted, "The use of systematic rape and sexual violence as a strategy for terrorizing and brutalizing women in conflict situations echoes experiences of women in Bangladesh in 1971, and in countries such as Rwanda, Bosnia and Algeria. In Gujarat, as in all these other countries, women have been targeted as members of the 'other' community, as symbols of the community's honor and as the ones who sustain the community and reproduce the next generation. This has become an all too common aspect of larger political projects of genocide, crimes against humanity and subjugation."
All of these political projects feed on and feed back into the larger, global system of male power and violence against women -- violence that is often less visible and less "newsworthy" than what happened on that Delhi bus.
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"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt"Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Posted in: e-pubbed authors behaving like fucktards?, E-publishers Behaving Very Badly, there's a fucktard born every minute
Aint that the truth?
Dear Ravenous Romance Peeps
Sometimes, it's best to let the work do the talking. Know what I mean?
Getting into fisticuffs with your potential customers isn't the greatest PR move methinks.
Letting some of your authors,
Keta Diablo, Jamaica Layne run their mouths off on romance blogs is just not a smart move. Freedom of speech is all well and good, but surely you know that good PR is everything when starting a new business? You gotta be smarter than you've shown to be in the last few months. Seriously.
I'm just a reader, who along with a few others may have given you guys a chance in the beginning, had you taken the charm offensive route from the beginning. Unfortunately though, Ravenous Romance has now become synonymous with 'Those Effing Crazies'. Unfair I know. Life's a bitch that way.
One of your more vocal representatives once claimed that Ravenous Romance would "blow the competition out of the water" Do you think you've managed to do that?
You definitely made a splash, I'll grant you that, but I'm not sure that all the negative attention you've garnered was part of your overall PR plan for Ravenous Romance, was it??? Also, I have to say, since becoming familiar with RR, the higher-ups at Elloras Cave seem positively normal to me now, which is quite scary. Believe me.
Anyway, I thought I'd offer up some advice, take it or leave it, but at least consider what type of image you wish to promote to your potential readers. The world outside Romanceland is massive, but online, it's a very small world indeed.
Also, you may just want to label your books correctly. Readers get really mad when they get something different to what it says on the tin.
Just saying.


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Talks to save the planet from catastrophic climate change were on the brink of collapse this morning as officials from the three main blocs – rich countries, major developing economies, and small island states – said they had given up on getting a substantive deal.
Even as 115 world leaders began arriving to put their personal imprint on a deal, the summit hosts were admitting they had failed to broker an agreement.
The chaotic end game to the negotiations could mean that world leaders only have time to hastily paper over a face-saving agreement.
In a story headlined Denmark gives up, the influential Berlingske newspaper quoted a senior source in the host delegation, saying the failure was a monumental disappointment to the Danes.
"During the whole process, the problem is that this is a huge puzzle where all the pieces had to fall in place at the same time. But to do that, the countries had to make a serious effort and they have been unwilling to do so," the source was quoted as saying.
However, Denmark could try to revive the process by formally introducing a version of a negotiating draft from last week and imposing it on the summit. However, the draft – the Danish text leaked to the Guardian last week – has infuriated developing countries, and its re-entry could trigger chaos.
Other countries were also working to resuscitate the talks. A UK official said: "We are not giving up. The irony is that on substance we have had considerable movement in the last few days. For the talks to be in this state simply over matters of procedure rather than substance is immensely disappointing."
The sense of collapse was compounded further still when China – the world's biggest emitter and an essential component to any deal – said it saw no possibility of achieving a detailed accord to tackle global warming.
An official from another country told Reuters the Chinese had instead suggested issuing "a short political declaration of some sort", but it was not clear what that declaration would say.
China was still committed to the negotiations, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu told reporters in Beijing today. Jiang said: "China hopes the Copenhagen meeting is successful, and has always taken a constructive attitude."
In the final nail in Copenhagen's coffin, the Maldives president, Mohamed Nasheed, whose island country could be almost entirely swallowed up by rising seas, said he was staring at failure.
"We will not have a draft. There is no draft. We are facing a situation where it is possible that nothing comes out of COP15 unless the heads of state decide to come up with it themselves," Nasheed told an NGO meeting last night. "I am very nervous and very disappointed. During the course of the last two years, negotiators were supposed to have come up with a document for us to see and consider tomorrow, but they have failed."
Dino Patti Djalal, an Indonesian presidential spokesman said: "Obviously we are considered at the prospect of negotiations are having some kind of a deadlock. We are thinking it's going to need the leaders pushing very hard until the last minute." He said uncertainty about emissions cuts from the major developed countries plus America's insistence on a monitoring regime for emissions cuts by rapidly emerging economies had led to the impasse.
The Indian environment minister Jairam Ramesh said, "We have lost a day and a half. I don't want to point fingers. We must get talks back on a sold substantive track by the time the world leaders meet tomorrow...I am hopeful that negotiations can resume."
The sense of despair from the Danes comes after nine days of working negotiations which has seen increasing acrimony and distrust between rich countries and poor countries, and industrialised countries and the rapidly emerging economies.
African countries and small island states which are on the frontline of climate change accused Denmark of trying to railroad them into a deal without getting strong enough commitments to act on climate change from the developed world. "The Europeans have broken the African solidarity," said a negotiator from Mauritania. "If these talks produce a good deal for Africa that would be a big surprise for me. There is enormous pressure on the heads of state of Africa. They are very weak – especially in financial terms. Any African country that depends on French or British aid will not be able to raise its voice to object."


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#153 PDFs with Prawn
- Download:
- source codeProject Files in Zip (121 KB)
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In this episode we're going to show you how to generate PDFs from Rails Applications. Below is the order page from an e-commerce application. What we'd like to be able to do is add a link to it that will allow the customer to download the order as a PDF.
Railscast 78 showed how to generate PDFs with the
PDF::Writer gem. That is still a good way to generate PDF files, but there is now a much newer gem called Prawn available and all the cool kids are using that. Prawn is a very fast Ruby PDF generator that is installed as as gem, but it isn't specifically targeted towards Rails. There is a Rails plugin called Prawnto, however, that makes it easier to work with Prawn in Rails. It adds a new template handler class that will process any views with a .prawn extension, so we can generate PDF files in the same way we generate any other file format.
Installing Prawn and Prawnto
To start off we'll need to install the prawn gem. It's installed in the usual way.
sudo gem install prawn
Once we have Prawn installed we can install the Prawnto plugin from GitHub. In our application's directory we just run the following comand.
script/plugin install git://github.com/thorny-sun/prawnto.git
Now we're all set and can start generating PDFs.
Generating our Order
In our e-commerce application the show page for the order renders the order summary as an HTML table. For the PDF version we'll need to create another view file. Note that unless we already have a
respond_to block in our order controller there's no need to add a new block for the PDF format, we can just create the new view template. The template file should be called
prawn for the template handler that will generate the file.
prawnto gives us a
text method to print "Hello, World!".
pdf.text "Hello, World!"
We can view our PDF file by just adding .pdf to the URL of the order page. We should then see the generated PDF.
Populating The Order Data
Obviously we want our order information on the screen rather than "Hello, World!". At the top of the page we'll put the order number, which we'll render in 30 point, bold text.
pdf.text "Order ##{@order.id}", :size => 30, :style => :bold
Below that we'll want to render our list of products.
@order.cart.line_items.each do |item| pdf.text item.product.name end
We could just render the names out as a list, but it would look better if we displayed them as a table along with the price and the quantity bought. Prawn has support for rendering tables with the
pdf.table method, which takes a two-dimensional array of items to render in cells. To create the array we'll loop through the line items in the order's cart and use
map on each item.
items = @order.cart.line_items.map do |item| [ item.product.name, item.quantity, item.unit_price, item.full_price ] end pdf.table items
When we reload our PDF file now we'll see the order's items in a table.
Formatting The Table
Our order's items are now listed but the table looks quite basic. Fortunately, the
pdf.table method takes a lot of parameters that enable us to customise the table to suit our needs.
pdf.table items, :border_style => :grid, :row_colors => ["FFFFFF", "DDDDDD"], :headers => ["Product", "Qty", "Unit Price", "Full Price"], :align => { 0 => :left, 1 => :right, 2 => :right, 3 => :right }
The complete list of parameters can be found on the Prawn documentation pages. We're going to add some to render the borders as a grid; to provide alternating background colours for the rows; to supply header text and to align the cells so that the three numeric columns are right-aligned. Reloading the document again shows the changes.
Adding Spacing
Although the table looks better now, it's pushed up against the header. We can adjust the gap by using
move_down. We'll move it down by 30 points by adding the following line between the header and table.
The next thing we'll want to add to our table is the total price of the order. To do that we'll just use
move_down again then add the text in 16 point bold.
pdf.move_down(10) pdf.text "Total Price: #{@order.cart.total_price}", :size => 16, :style => :bold
Formatting The Currency Fields
The PDF order is nearly there now, but the currency fields aren't formatted correctly. One of the benefits of using Prawnto with a PDF template is that it gives us access to all of Rails' helper methods so we can use
number_to_currency to format the fields. The final code is below.
pdf.text "firstname.lastname@example.com}", :size => 30, :style => :bold pdf.move_down(30) items = @order.cart.line_items.map do |item| [ item.product.name, item.quantity, number_to_currency(item.unit_price, :unit => "£"), number_to_currency(item.full_price, :unit => "£") ] end pdf.table items, :border_style => :grid, :row_colors => ["FFFFFF", "DDDDDD"], :headers => ["Product", "Qty", "Unit Price", "Full Price"], :align => { 0 => :left, 1 => :right, 2 => :right, 3 => :right } pdf.move_down(10) pdf.text "Total Price: #{number_to_currency(@order.cart.total_price, :unit => '£')}", :size => 16, :style => :bold
Note that, unlike when we're generating HTML, we don't have to escape currency symbols such as the pound sign (£). The final PDF document now looks like we want it to.
Adding The Link
The final thing we have to do is add a link from the HTML order page to the PDF one. We'll just have to add a normal
link_to to the PDF, but there's a slight change from Rails 2.2 to 2.3 that changes the way the link's path is written. In Rails 2.2 and below we'd use
link_to "Printable Invoice (PDF)", formatted_order_path(@order, :pdf)
Rails 2.3 has removed
formatted_x_path. Instead we just use
order_path and provide the format as a parameter. Removing the formatted path routes saves memory as it reduces the number of named routes in the application.
link_to "Printable Invoice (PDF)", order_path(@order, :format => "pdf")
Our customers can now click a link on the order page to be taken to the printable PDF version.
Passing Options to Prawnto
In the controller we can specify options to pass options to Prawnto to control how the PDF is generated. If, for example, we want to add a 75 point margin we can add
prawnto :prawn => { :top_margin => 75 }
at the top of our
OrdersController. More details about the options you can pass are available on the Prawnto documentation pages.


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Just about everyone has heard the hype surrounding solid-state drives, but only now are we starting to see SSDs get a foothold as a storage alternative for everyday use. The market is flooded with options, and the performance we've seen from several of the latest drives in our tests back up some of the claims that SSD supporters have made about the technology's advantages.
The PC World Test Center evaluated eight SSDs and found that performance diverged widely among them, as well as compared with magnetic hard-disk models. To see the test results for the top five SSDs, consult our solid-state drives chart.
Until the advent of SSD, standard PC storage relied on magnetic hard-disk technology, which has numerous moving parts (including a spindle motor, an actuator assembly, and read/write heads that float barely 10 nanometers above the spinning platter surface).
By contrast, SSD storage consists of NAND flash-memory chips. SSD's lack of moving parts gives it an edge over regular drives on multiple levels. First, SSDs are more shock-resistant than magnetic hard-disk drives; SSDs have fewer potential points of mechanical failure, and are able to withstand jostling and sudden impacts. Second, SSDs are silent, which makes them great for PCs that sit in living areas. They also generate less heat and use less energy, so they don't require fans, which contributes to their quiet operation as compared with a spinning hard-disk drive. Finally, because of their compactness, SSDs can be designed to fit in tight spaces.
That said, today's SSDs primarily adhere to the current 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch hard-disk sizes, and typically they use the same connectors as hard-disk drives do (first Parallel ATA, now Serial ATA-300). An SSD can easily fit into a current laptop or desktop chassis using existing industry standards. As a result, buyers should think of SSDs not as replacements for regular hard-disk drives but as complements to them.
In pricing, SSD currently has little hope of competing with standard hard drives, and this won't change anytime soon. Expect to pay upward of $2.75 per GB for an SSD, versus about $0.25 per GB for a regular hard drive. Capacity remains relatively limited, too: 256GB is the current high end for mainstream SSDs. (A few outliers, such as the OCZ Colossus, reach 500GB or even 1TB, but they have a stratospheric cost and come in a 3.5-inch chassis.) Because of that limitation, SSD makers don't target storage-hungry users. If you need high capacity, look to standard hard drives; they can offer more than triple the capacity of SSD at a fraction of the price. (Another possibility for desktop PC owners who want the best of both worlds: Use an SSD as the primary boot volume for your apps and operating system, and use a roomier regular hard drive to store data.)
Despite its disadvantages, SSD is breaking into the mainstream due to the proliferation of models and the lower prices that have come in the last year from increased competition and improved production processes. Notably, Intel recently introduced its smaller and less expensive 34nm NAND multilevel cell flash memory.
Next: SSD Pros and Cons
SSD Pros and Cons
Performance sees improvement, too, but the benefits of using an SSD are not apparent across all applications. For now, SSDs force you to accept a trade-off: They offer faster read speeds, but in write speeds they trail 7200-rpm magnetic hard disks (and can even fall short of 5400-rpm hard disks).
Compared with standard hard drives, SSDs are capable of reduced latency, which translates into greater speed in accessing data. For example, Intel says a typical hard-disk drive's latency is 4000 microseconds, while the company's X-25M is rated at 65 microseconds. SSDs have faster seek times than hard-disk drives do, too. Newer drives, such as the X-25M, boost random write performance, which can have a positive impact on system and app responsiveness.
But not all SSDs are created equal. Everything from the source of the NAND flash to the chipsets and controllers to the wear-leveling algorithms used (more on that in a moment) can affect performance. Single-level cell (SLC) flash, for instance, is costlier than multilevel cell (MLC) flash, but it's also capable of greater endurance. Most consumer SSDs today have MLC flash; when drives are significantly pricier or are sold as "enterprise" drives, the reason may be that they have SLC flash.
Although the SSD market is crowded with contenders, only a few companies, such as Intel and Samsung, manufacture the flash memory. They supply the flash–and often the drives themselves–to other vendors, which "rebadge" the drives as their own. For example, the Corsair model I reviewed for this story is a Samsung drive inside. (Even though we list a Samsung model in our SSD chart, the company does not sell its drive directly to consumers. Instead, it sells the drive to laptop makers and other drive vendors.) Next year I expect the market to thin out, with a few makers rising to the top, as SSDs aim for broader, mass appeal.
One largely unpublicized, but critical, aspect of SSDs slightly reduces the technology's attractiveness. In comparison with hard-disk platters, NAND flash memory cells can rapidly wear out with use. As a result, SSD makers employ wear-leveling algorithms to make the drive write data evenly across the flash cells. Whether the algorithms are effective in the long run remains to be seen, however. And consumers must accept a manufacturer's word as to how well its algorithm will safeguard their data; users have no way to gauge the drive's actual wear-leveling effectiveness.
Another little-discussed issue: Out of the box, SSDs can offer blazing speed, but over time their performance may degrade, depending on how you use the drive. Unlike with standard drives, with SSDs the sequential or random nature of the writes will affect future performance. Sequential writes generally leave a few large blocks of free space that make recycling, or garbage collection of data, faster. Every operating system, however, performs random writes that users can't control; in random writes, the remaining space is very small, and that causes garbage collection to take a lot of time.
Some manufacturers, Intel among them, estimate the lifetime of an SSD in its specs (Intel says five years). Along with other SSD makers, Intel also uses the same measurement that standard hard-disk drive manufacturers use, referring to the drive's life expectancy in terms of the mean time between failures. Among the SSD drives whose makers list this spec, the typical MTBF is between 1 million and 1.2 million hours, though at least one (Samsung) goes as high as 2 million hours, putting SSD at or above enterprise-class hard-disk drives in reliability, and far above consumer-class hard-disk models; manufacturers don't even list this spec for consumer hard-disk drives. (See "Hard-Drive Failures Surprisingly Frequent" for more about hard-drive vendors' MTBF claims.)
Next: Hits and Misses
Hits and Misses
In our tests of eight drives, three eclipsed the rest of the field. (To see test results for the top five, check out our solid-state drives chart.) Leading the way was Intel's X25-M Solid State Drive 160GB. The newest Intel SSD drive bested last year's model, whipping through our tests and coming out ahead or in a statistical tie with our number two, the Samsung MLC SSD 256GB. A few seconds behind them was the Corsair P256–not a surprising result given that it has the Samsung drive inside.
In the middle were Patriot's Torqx 128GB and Super Talent's Ultra SATA SSD (also 128GB), decently priced at $405 and $355, respectively.
Bringing up the rear were two Ritek models (the RiData Ultra-S SATA 64GB and 128GB SSD) and Imation's 128GB M-Class Solid State. All three struggled in copying 3GB of files and folders, as well as in copying a single large file; they may not have been doing parallel writing, which can be necessary in a drive for dealing with the fact that flash's erase-write cycle is intrinsically slow.
Even though the Imation drive was slow, I liked two of its features: It sports a housing for use inside and outside a PC, and it includes a USB adapter for external use. You don't get that kind of long-term flexibility from the other drives here.
Given their still-high per-gigabyte price, SSDs have mixed appeal. The greatest value potential comes when you use an SSD in conjunction with an internal, standard hard drive (clearly, a less viable option for laptop users). SSDs are strong performers, especially on disk-read-intensive tasks, and an SSD can give an aging system new life; but before you grab one, you should consider whether the speed gains justify the sacrifice in storage space.


text:
Misty Corts, Broker Associate & Property Manager
Seeking a home in the outlying Northwest area of Hattiesburg?
Did you assume you must call the listing agent on the sign to view a house? Absolutely not. Misty Corts is a licensed full time Broker Associate, Listing Agent and Buyer's Agent. She has experience in Hattiesburg, Sumrall, Purvis and Petal. Simply call Misty at 601.310.5918 or email email@example.com to discuss your real estates needs and how RE/MAX can work to make them a reality!
Out Northwest Subdivisions


text:
Roll out the red carpet!
Open the champagne!
It's time to enter the Hall of Fame!
Please join us in celebrating as my fellow Sapphire Star Publishing author, Gary Kassay, launches Murder in Silence, the first book in the Duke Becker Series! I'm partial to a cracking crime thriller, so I can't wait to get stuck into this one later today… Meanwhile, I give you:
Gary Kassay!!!
First I would like to thank Nicky Wells for inviting me to her Hall of Fame blog. It is an honor to be included here and to be a part of the same family with Nicky, Sapphire Star Publishing.
You're welcome, Gary, I'm excited you're visiting today, on such a big and important day for you! Tell us a bit more about your work…
The first of the Duke Becker series, Murder in Silence, is being released on today! Let me give you a little background on myself and the inspiration for Inspector Duke Becker. Back in 1982 I was in training with the New York Transit Police Department for the Canine Unit. The training was intense and probably the best time I ever had. One day an event occurred and I immediately thought to myself what a great plot for a book! (No, I am not going to tell you what that event was…it would spoil everything.) In any case, I thought about that book till 2004, 22 years of developing the plot, characters and dialogue. The result is Murder in Silence and the sequels that will follow.
22 years… wow, Gary: good things come to those who wait! And what a fabulous cover! Can we have a little excerpt to get a flavour for what's in store?
Of course! Here is a small sample from Murder in Silence…I hope you enjoy it!
The front door opened and Ms. Marielle Wilson, a.k.a. the Wicked Witch, entered Dudley's looking as if she was ready for a night at the Academy Awards and this was the red carpet. She looked to be in her thirties, which I knew she wasn't, with long, silky blond hair that framed her oval face. She was pretty, but way too thin for my taste. Her eyes were a very deep blue, probably colored contacts, and her lips were ruby red. I figured that she was about 5'10" without her heels, which now made her closer to 6'2″. Her dress was made of some iridescent material that sparkled and was the exact shade of blue as her eyes. There was no broomstick or flying monkeys present.
Somehow she must have known who I was because she walked directly up to me. I stood up. "Good evening, Ms. Wilson. Would you care for a drink or would you prefer we get a table for dinner?" She gave me a smile, which had the effect of sending chills down my spine. Something about those white, perfect teeth, of which there seemed to be too many, and the total insincerity in her smile made me think of her not as the Wicked Witch from Oz, but as a shark. Beautiful but dangerous.
"Actually, Inspector, I'm on my way to dinner with someone in…um…about twenty minutes, so let's just stay here."
At that moment, I was happy that we were on dry land because if we had been in the water, I had no doubt that I would be eaten alive.
Wow! I certainly did enjoy the excerpt, and can't wait to read more on my Kindle tonight! Congrats on launch day, Gary, and I hope it goesfantastically well!
Murder in Silence is now available in Kindle and paperback editions from amazon.co.uk and amazon.com.
Let's find out more about Gary Kassay, the man behind the book:
Gary Kassay, author of the Duke Becker Series, is a former member of the NYPD Transit K-9 Unit. Besides a career as a Police Officer, he has been the owner of a commercial photo company, an X-ray tech for humans and animals, and a TSA employee. He now resides in Casper, Wyoming with his wife Raella, three dogs, and one black cat.
When Gary is not working on the next installment of his Duke Becker series, he enjoys spending quiet times with his wife, writing the Duke Becker series, reading, and when there isn't snow on the ground, a good round of golf.
You can follow Gary on Twitter and on Facebook, visit his website or blog. Gary also has an author page at Sapphire Star Publishing and a Murder in Silence fan page on Facebook.
Now, then, crime written by an ex cop: the epitome of 'write what you know'! Do you have any questions for Gary? Let's hear them…