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Testimony of Gen. James B. Ricketts
Report on the Conduct of the War, Vol. 2, pp. 242-246
WASHINGTON, April 3, 1862.
General JAMES B. RICKETTS sworn and examined.
By the chairman:
Question. What rank and position do you hold in the army?
Answer. I am at present a brigadier general of volunteers.
Question. What was your rank on the 21st of July last, the day of the battle of Bull Run?
Answer. I was a captain of the first regiment of artillery.
Question. In whose brigade?
Answer. General Franklin's brigade.
Question. Will you please give us an account, in your own way, of what you saw of the battle?
Answer. I saw very little except what concerned myself. You must know that any one who has charge of six pieces of artillery has as much as he can attend to to manage them and obey orders. I went on the field at Sudley's Spring, in General Heintzelman's division, General Franklin's brigade. After crossing the stream, where I watered my horses, my first order was to take to the right into an open field, to effect which I had to take down the fences. I then came into action about a thousand yards from the enemy, I should judge. There was a battery of smooth-bores opposed against me, doing some damage to us; it killed some horses and wounded some few of my men; I myself saw one man struck on the arm. My battery consisted of six rifled Parrott guns, consequently I was more than a match at that distance for the smooth-bore battery. It is difficult to judge of the passage of time under such circumstances, as we never look at our watches then. But after firing, I should judge, twenty minutes or a half an hour, I had orders to advance a certain distance. I moved forward, and was about to come into battery again, when I was ordered to proceed further on, up on a hill near the Henry House.
By Mr. Chandler:
Question. About what time was it when you first came into action?
Answer. We had marched twelve miles. I should judge my first coming into action must have been somewhere about noon. That, of course, is a mere guess. I received this order to move forward. I told the officer that he must indicate the spot, so that there should be no mistake about it. I saw at a glance, as I thought, that I was going into great peril for my horses and men. But I did not hesitate to obey the order, merely asking to name the spot clearly indicated to me. The ground had not been reconnoitred at all, and there was a little ravine in front that I had to pass. As I marched at the head of my company with Lieutenant Ramsay, he said to me, "We cannot pass that ravine." I told him that we must pass it. As we were under fire, to countermarch there would be fatal. The confusion consequent upon turning around there would expose us to great danger. As it was, we dashed across, breaking one wheel in the effort, which we immediately replaced. I called off the cannoniers and took down the fence and ascended the hill near the Henry House, which was at that time filled with sharpshooters. I had scarcely got into battery before I saw some of my horses fall and some of my men wounded by the sharpshooters. I turned my guns upon the house and literally riddled it. It has been said that there was a woman killed there by our guns. It was in that house that she was killed at the time I turned my battery on it and shelled out the sharpshooters there. We did not move from that position—that is, we made no important movement. We moved a piece one way or the other, perhaps, in order to take advantage of the enemy's appearance at one point or another. But our guns were not again limbered up. In fact, in a very short time we were not in a position or a condition to move, on account of the number of our horses that were disabled. I know it was the hottest place I ever saw in my life, and I had seen some fighting before. The enemy had taken advantage of the woods and the natural slope of the ground, and delivered a terrible fire upon us.
Question. Was that the place where your battery was lost?
Answer. Yes, sir.
Question. And where you yourself was wounded and fell?
Answer. Yes, sir.
Question. Who gave you the order to march forward there?
Answer. Lieutenant Kingsbury, of General McDowell's staff, brought me the order. Lieutenant Snyder was also near, and I told him I wanted him to bear in mind that I had received that order, although no point was indicated.
Question. Had you a sufficient infantry support for your battery?
Answer. At that time I knew of no support. I was told a support was ordered. One regiment, the Fire Zouaves, I know came up to support me, and, when I saw them in confusion, I rode up to them and said something cheering to them. I had not much time to speak to them, but I thought I would say a little something cheering to them, as it might have some effect upon them.
Question. How long did you continue to operate your guns after you took that position?
Answer. Somewhere between a half an hour and an hour, I should judge.
Question. Was Griffin's battery near you?
Answer. I do not know, except from what I have heard. I know there was a battery a little to the rear on my right, and from all accounts I suppose that to be Griffin's battery. They were on my right in my first position, and moved up with me and took a position a little on my right.
By the chairman:
Question. How came they to order you to advance without infantry to support you? Is not that unusual?
Answer. The infantry came up directly afterwards. I do not know where the position of the infantry was. All I saw were the Fire Zouaves, who came up on my right to support me.
Question. In what number?
Answer. I should suppose, when my attention was called to them, that there were from two hundred to three hundred men.
Question. What number of infantry is supposed to be sufficient to support a battery?
Answer. To go into such a place as that, I should say there should have been two full regiments to have supported my battery.
By Mr. Odell:
Question. Was the smooth-bore battery of the enemy supported?
Answer. Yes, sir; and we drove them away. They retired some distance as we advanced. They must have had a heavy support, judging from the amount of lead they threw from their muskets, for long after I was down the hail was tremendous. The ground was torn up all around me, and some bullets went through my clothes. I never expected to get off at all.
By Mr. Chandler:
Question. How many of your men were hit?
Answer. I do not know. I was five months in Richmond as a prisoner. I, of course, made no report, and have made none yet. No report has been made, though I think it should have been made by the next officer, as I was virtually lost; was away from the battery, and knew nothing of what occurred to the men.
By Mr. Odell:
Question. Who was in command of the artillery—the chief of artillery?
Answer. Major Barry—now General Barry.
By Mr. Chandler:
Question. Did he direct the movements of the artillery?
Answer. I did not see him.
By the chairman:
Question. Was the place where you were posted before you were ordered to advance more advantageous than the one to which you did advance?
Answer. I think it was, up to the time that I left it; and I think it would have been for a little longer time, considering that I had longer range guns than the enemy had.
Question. Could you have sustained yourself in your first position?
Answer. I think so. Yes, sir.
Question. From whom did the order to advance emanate?
Answer. General McDowell's aid brought it to me. Major Barry had no aid. Whether it was Major Barry's order or not, I could not tell. He had charge of the artillery, and was supposed to have directed its movements.
Question. Was it good generalship to order you to advance with your battery without more support than you had?
Answer. Do you mean the one regiment?
Question. Yes, sir; the Fire Zouaves you speak of.
Answer. No, sir; I do not think it was. I desire to state here that I have seen it mentioned that I made some mistake as to the enemy. Captain Griffin and myself are coupled together as having made some mistake on the field as to the character of the enemy. I wish to say that I made no mistake in regard to the enemy.
By Mr. Chandler:
Question. You refer to mistaking a regiment of the enemy for one of our own troops?
Answer. Yes, sir.
Question. You are not connected with that in our testimony.
Answer. I am very glad to hear it. I had noticed that, among other things, in the papers; and when I came back from Richmond, I saw the President, and he said to me: "You thought you were going to certain destruction in going up there, so you said," referring to our last position. I replied, "That is a mistake, I made no remark at all, except that I wanted the place clearly indicated to which I was to move."
By the chairman:
Question. Were you present at the council of war the evening prior to the battle?
Answer. No, sir.
Question. At what time on the day of the battle did you learn that Johnston's troops were coming down from Winchester?
Answer. Well, sir, I heard before we left little Rocky Run, this side of Centreville, that there was danger of meeting Johnston's men on that day. I cannot tell you who told me.
Question. In your judgment, as a military man, after it was ascertained that Johnston would be down, was it prudent to fight that battle, unless you could have, for instance, Patterson's army to follow Johnston's down?
Answer. Yes, sir, I think so. I think we could have fought with the army we had. We had apparently as good men as ever were.
Question. Suppose that battle could have been fought two weeks before it was fought, what would have been the probable result?
Answer. I believe if we had fought it even two days before we would have walked over the field. I saw on the field of battle a number of officers who had resigned from our army, whom I had known; and while I was at Richmond some of them told me that at one time they were giving away, and that our panic was perfectly unaccountable to them. We gained the battle with the force we had. I believe there was a time when we had really won that battle, if we had only kept at it a little longer.
Question. As a military man, to what circumstances do you attribute our disaster on that day?
Answer. I impute it to the want of proper officers among the volunteers.
By Mr. Wright:
Question. Do you mean the colonels and generals?
Answer. I mean throughout. I cannot say particular colonels and particular captains, because some of them were excellent. But, as a general rule, many of the officers were inferior to the men themselves. The men were of as good material as any in the world, and they fought well until they became confused on account of their officers not knowing what to do.
By the chairman:
Question. Were you present and able to know the last charge of the enemy which was decisive?
Answer. Which charge was that?
Question. The same one that captured your battery, I believe. All the witnesses speak of a certain charge that was made there by the enemy.
Answer. My battery was taken and retaken three times. For a part of the time the struggle was going on over my body; and I think that for a part of the time I must have been insensible, for I bled very freely.
By Mr. Chandler:
Question. Which of our regiments fought over your body for the battery? Not the zouaves?
Answer. I did not know which regiment it was. It was not the zouaves. I saw a regiment, after I was down, move very near my battery, and I saw a shell explode among them, somewhere, I should judge, about the color company; and in speaking of it to Dr. Swan afterwards, the surgeon of the 14th New York regiment, who went over the field the next day, I concluded it was the 14th regiment, because he said he saw a great many of his regiment killed there. I therefore supposed that that was the regiment engaged in that struggle for the battery.
Question. Were you captured with your guns?
Answer. Yes, sir; I suppose I may say I was taken with my guns. When I was found I was asked my name, and I told them my name was Captain Ricketts. They asked if I was captain of that battery, pointing to one that was moving towards them, and I told them I was.
Question. Your guns were turned upon our troops after they were captured, were they not?
Answer. They say they were turned upon us; and I remember hearing one or two explosions.
By Mr. Julian:
Question. What kind of support did you receive from the Fire Zouaves?
Answer. Well, sir, these Fire Zouaves came up to the ground, but they soon got into confusion and left.
By Mr. Odell:
Question. Was that in consequence of want of proper directions from their officers?
Answer. I should judge, from the manner in which the men stood there, and from their not being properly in line, that it was from want of officers; either that their officers were ignorant of their duty at that time, or that they were not there. I cannot say how that was. Our men really behaved very gallantly up to a certain time.
Question. Did the 14th New York regiment support you at all while you were in position?
Answer. That I cannot tell you. They were in the woods on my right, I know; because a number of officers told me about them, though they took them for the Fire Zouaves on account of their red uniform.


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Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) has succeed to operate the Korean first geostationary meteorological satellite, Chollian (launch: 2010, in operation: 2011). In order to implement the stable operation of the satellite, the necessity for space weather observation and forecast of its surroundings was on the rise. The space weather team in the KMA/NMSC has been supported the KMA's weather service duties by mounting some space weather sensors on the GK2A (Geo-KOMSAT-2A). Although a hazardous event of space weather does not occur frequently, when it occurs, it can cause a highly dangerous situation in space weather. Therefore, in order to prepare for a potential disaster, it is necessary to develop the satellite-based realtime monitoring system for the space wather and environment at the geostationary orbit.
To this purpose, KMA has been developed the Korean Space Weather Monitor (KSEM).
KSEM is comprised of energetic particle detector, magnetometer (SOSMAG from ESA), and satellite internal charging monitor. It observes near-Earth environment on a geostationary orbit.
The energetic particle detector provides information on the high energy particle environment of the geostationary orbit by detecting electrons with energy bandwidth of 100KeV - 2MeV and protons with energy bandwidth of 100KeV - 20MeV in each 6 directions.
The magnetometer is the equipment to measure the Earth's magnetic field. It measures variation of geomagnetic field caused by a geomagnetic storm.
The satellite charging monitor is the equipment to measure the amount of charged electric current between -3pA/cm2 and 3pA/cm2. It can be useful to analyze charging phenomena that affect satellite system.
KSEM was mounted on the second generation of the Korean geostationary meteorological satellite (Geo-KOMSAT-2A, GK2A) that was launched on Dec. 5, 2018 (in operation on July 25, 2019), and it performs the space weather observation as the first mission at the geostationary orbit in Republic of Korea.

subset: commoncrawl


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Welcome to our website! As we have the ability to list over one million items on our website (our selection changes all of the time), it is not feasible for a company our size to record and playback the descriptions on every item on our website. However, if you have a disability we are here to help you. Please call our disability services phone line at (203) 934-9258 during regular business hours and one of our kind and friendly personal shoppers will help you navigate through our website, help conduct advanced searches, help you choose the item you are looking for with the specifications you are seeking, read you the specifications of any item and consult with you about the products themselves. There is no charge for the help of this personal shopper for anyone with a disability. Finally, your personal shopper will explain our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service, and help you place an order if you so desire.
White's Plumbing Supplies in West Haven, CT is an authorized dealer of Ryvyr Products. Ryvyr designs and manufactures a diverse selection of products for the bath, including vanities, faucets, mirrors, and sinks in traditional, transitional, and contemporary styles.
At Ryvyr, their ingenuity is deep-rooted in a tradition of delivering on customer expectation of product that is outstanding in the marketplace. Where Ideas Flow is the motto that challenges their team to continuously reinvent themselves creatively and stretch to the far reaches of their imagination to provide customers with the most innovative products, compelling designs, and quality craftsmanship.
Their mission is clear: To offer customers unique and outstanding bath furniture, fixtures, counter tops, and fittings at a fair price and with superior customer service.
So if you are looking for Ryvyr products in West Haven, New Haven, Milford, Fairfield, Norwalk, Branford, Guilford, Madison, Old Saybrook, Bridgeport and Hartford, or if you have any questions about Ryvyr products, please feel free to call us at (203) 934-9258 or simply stop by White's Plumbing Supplies at any time and we would be glad to help you.


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Photoshop CS4's new Adjustments panel (Screenshot courtesy Adobe)
Today Adobe has announced the availability of Photoshop CS 4 and the entire Creative Suite 4. It features a tabbed interface, enhanced color correction and non-destructive editing tools. After using Photoshop CS4, I noticed quite a bit of areas where they speed things up. The interface is also much smoother and fluid than CS3.
Here are a list of things to look for in Photoshop CS4:
-Smoother panning and zooming and fluid canvas rotation
-Adjustments panel
-Auto-blending of images
-Improved Adobe Photoshop Lightroom workflow
-Masks panel
-Better raw image processing (for us Photogs)
-Extended depth of field
-Content-Aware Scaling (this is very cool)
-Ability to work with 3D objects with one Click
Check out all of these features and more.
Also available today are the following: Photoshop® CS4, Photoshop CS4 Extended, InDesign® CS4, Illustrator® CS4, Flash CS4 Professional, Dreamweaver®CS4, Fireworks® CS4, Contribute® CS4, After Effects® CS4, Adobe Premiere® Pro CS4, Encore® CS4, Soundbooth® CS4 and Adobe OnLocation™ CS4. Pricing for the new programs is available at Adobe's online store.


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Essay: Remembrance
Andrew Gow examines the creative legacies of fashion director Isabella Blow (1958–2007) and John Galliano's right-hand man Steven Robinson (1968–2007), alongside a photographic tribute by Nick Knight.
Andrew Gow examines the creative legacies of fashion director Isabella Blow (1958–2007) and John Galliano's right-hand man Steven Robinson (1968–2007), alongside a photographic tribute by Nick Knight.
With its relentless trend cycles and social whirls, the fashion industry is not the most befitting place for mournful reflection. However, in these last months it has had to face up to the loss of two key figures at a desperately young age, a time in which it must also carefully consider the precious source of its creativity.
Steven Robinson, the right-hand man to John Galliano for over twenty years, died in his Paris apartment at just 38 in early April. A modest number of newspaper obituaries were testament to a figure little known outside the industry. Yet Robinson's talent and loyalty had been crucial in resurrecting the House of Dior. It was in 1994 that both he and Galliano were found in a state of bohemian impoverishment by Anna Wintour and André Leon Talley of American Vogue. After one legendary comeback show, staged on a shoestring at a Saint Sulpice mansion, the two acquired tenure at the House of Dior and were catapulted into fashion history.
In one of the most dramatic career ascents in twentieth century fashion, Robinson became the fellow-custodian of Galliano's creative inner world. The few existing written accounts tell of a dedicated pragmatist who harmonised with Galliano's operatic intensity, a man whose sole objective never strayed from the challenge of executing a shared vision to the most exceptional of standards. Galliano has publicly lamented the loss of the 'rock' that he found in Robinson and questions have abounded concerning the future dynamic of the House.
Robinson's work ethic and early morning starts had become the stuff of industry legend. Through disciplined research into the historical legacy of Dior, Robinson helped Galliano to accomplish the most exacting task to face any designer: to maintain the tenets of a highly nuanced vision that had etched an indelible mark in history, and to bring this faithfully into the millennium.
The recent critical acclaim of Dior's 2007 haute couture and ready-to-wear collections, in which Puccini's Madama Butterfly was cross-referenced with Dior's New Look of 1947, affirmed the historical rigour that Robinson had breathed into the House, a stylish season that would become one of its greatest triumphs.
It was little over a month later that Isabella Blow was found dead at her country home in Gloucestershire. Unlike Robinson, on whom information is scant, Blow was complicit in the documentation of her life in print: the late fashion editor of Tatler and former fashion director of The Sunday Times' Style magazine was never one to be troubled by the rules of propriety.
Blow was an aesthete of the original Wildean order, with a temperament so sophisticated in its cultural breadth and outlandishness, it seemed to exist beyond the law. The idiom that Blow brought to her art direction was one of the last glimmers of a golden age in fashion publishing; an era when editors like Diana Vreeland could coordinate photoshoots on Tahitian beaches from an office in Manhattan. A reputation for artistic extravagance marked Blow out from her contemporaries but her astronomical spending on shoots created unease.
Later in her career, perhaps thanks to the bourgeois corporate unction that smothers so many fashion offices, her ideas could leave colleagues perplexed, costing her jobs and leaving her struggling financially. With low points that would converge with Vreeland's, an editor also made to feel the cold shoulder of publishing toward the end of her career, Blow's story is perhaps proof that fashion does not value eccentricity as much as it would first have you believe.
Blow was, however defiantly resolved in her mission to champion the artists and designers about whom she felt most passionately, even if this meant putting them up in her mother-in-law's basement for months on end. Without such displays of altruism, she would have been unable to bring designers like Alexander McQueen and Philip Treacy to pre-eminence. She claimed that her passion for fashion bordered on insanity, yet it was through her pragmatism in helping new artists that her own creativity flourished most gloriously.
In contrast with Robinson's discreet obituaries there was much coverage speculating on the circumstances of Isabella Blow's death. Blow was notoriously candid with her emotions and known for opening up over the telephone to those she barely knew.
A self-confessed depressive, it was no secret that she had made several attempts at suicide. Neither did she conceal her rarefied but traumatic upbringing, during which she suffered the loss of a close younger brother and experienced the froideur of a mother who walked out of her life at age 14.
Life trajectories all too often seem to take on a nightmarish storybook quality when viewed on completion. In fact with the classic hallmarks of a 'fast' background and a thwarted childhood, the final chapter of Blow's life might even appear pre-destined.
Many tags have been pinned on Blow, 'eccentric/bonkers' being the most common, yet these are sorely inadequate in describing an individual who, on account of her background, was placed in an atypically difficult position. From an upper class family, she was abandoned by her mother, disinherited by her father, and left £5,000 from a family fortune of millions. This meant she had to scrape it together as a cleaner along with a string of other menial jobs before moving to New York to begin her career.
Blow's death raises uncomfortable issues of class, identity and understanding in an industry where it is doubtful her personal history ever elicited much real empathy.
Blow was a rarity in the British fashion press, an area of the industry currently sorely at risk of becoming overwrought by stale and excessively self-referential content. British fashion was very fortunate to have such an unrelentingly un-bourgeois doyenne in its ranks, especially one who could summon a repertoire of far-flung cultural references with such fearless irreverence.
If the future of fashion print lies in the hands of the Fashion Communications or Media graduate who may choose to rely on the formulaic solutions they are supplied on lecture handouts, then the British fashion media may find itself in a state of crippling mediocrity sooner than it thinks.
Fashion is not a sensibility that can be taught after all; it is an arena that is pushed forward by febrile originality and visual extremity. Qualities represented in the legacies of Steven Robinson and Isabella Blow.


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And so 2006 is almost gone. While many people see the end of the year as something sad, I tend to look forward more than back. What will the new year bring? What exciting or new thing will happen to me? What can I do differently? Should I start a new project? In general, a couple of ideas do come up and I am typically a great one for coming up with off the wall ideas about what I want to do that is new. And typically, I do it.
2006 did not bring the things I wanted in my country's life, even if I was quite happy with my own personal life. And therein lies the paradox, things went well personally, while all the time I devoted to trying to change how this country works went to waste with Chavez' victory on Dec. 3. The satisfaction is that I lived up to my principles and will continue to do so in the new year.
And thus my friends, Happy New Year from your blogger, hoping that in 2007 you have all your wishes fulfilled and wishing that in the new year you will be able to follow that remarkable wisdom: "Stay hungry, stay foolish"


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Rockford aldermen approve Ingersoll redevelopment, Watch Factory purchase
ROCKFORD — Aldermen approved plans to rebuild the former Ingersoll building into a downtown sports complex and agreed to purchase adjacent property for parking.
City Council members voted 10-3 Monday to express official intent to renovate the former industrial building on the east bank of the Rock River into a 100,000-square-foot, multi-sport facility and trade show space. Aldermen Venita Hervey, D-5, Frank Beach, R-10, and Ann Thompson-Kelly, D-7, voted no after expressing concerns about the city's ability to pay for the project.
Ald. John Beck, R-12, abstained because of his employment with the Rockford Park District, a partner on the proposal.
Supporters herald the project because it may create 210 construction jobs and 250 full-time equivalent jobs within the first five years, according to an economic analysis. The downtown sports complex is project to pump $7.2 million into the private sector and generate more than $880,000 in tax revenue each year.
It's projected to draw 235,000 people in its first year and 306,000 by its fifth year, bringing new potential customers to downtown businesses. The sports complex is also essential to a developer's plans to build a downtown hotel and convention center.
Aldermen also voted Monday to buy the half-empty buildings of the former Watch Factory on 3.4 acres at 325 S. Madison St. for $580,000.
It's a price aldermen weren't willing to pay a little more than a year ago, when it was rejected at the committee level. But seven new aldermen — half of the City Council — have been seated since that vote.
Buying the property helps the city boost its parking for the proposed riverfront sports complex to more than 500 spaces. There would have been less than 200 spaces without the property. The city plans to demolish portions of the factory building that were built after 1930. The original building, which dates back to the late 19th Century, would be left for potential redevelopment.
Architects are creating the blueprint for the construction of the downtown sports complex. The total project, including purchase of adjacent land, will cost about $22.4 million. The project is being funded through a mix of state grants, a portion of the new 2 percent hotel/motel tax in Winnebago County, and city and Park District funds.
Hervey was one of several aldermen who questioned what the city will have to sacrifice to pay for the overall cost of the sports complex. She said she supports the proposal and believes it will reap economic benefits, but she wanted more details from city administration about the potential ramifications of the extra debt on road projects, public safety and other city services.
"This isn't magic. Somebody's got to pay for this. We're going to take a huge hit somewhere," Hervey said. "I'm not willing to not add to our police department. I'm not willing to cut public works ... and some other areas that deal with the quality of life for our city."
Other aldermen said the project is a worthwhile risk that will encourage more economic investment in the city, including new restaurants and businesses downtown to support the extra visitors.
Alderman Linda McNeely, D-13, votes "no" more often than any other member of the City Council. On Monday, she joked on the council floor that the Register Star should make room on the front page because "Alderman McNeely is voting yes."
She said the sports complex earned her "yes" vote because it will benefit kids on the west side of Rockford, an area she represents. She also said she thinks the city and Park District, which she noted has a good track record on projects, will be able to pay for the work.
"This is going to be a world class center and I want to see those kids go there. I want to see those doors open for those kids," McNeely said. "My vote tonight is a yes vote for the kids."
Kevin Haas: 815-987-1410; firstname.lastname@example.com; @KevinMHaas


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Google is prepping for a big announcement here in Los Angeles today and the rumor mill is buzzing about what the company could possibly be unveiling. I'll be covering the event later this afternoon, but we have a pretty good idea about what Google's next venture will be: A final version of Google Music with a full-fledged music store.
While Google didn't explicitly state what the event was about, the invites imply that it is music related (complete with a "Spinal Tap" reference). More than likely, Google is releasing the final version of its Google Music cloud service, which was launched in beta at Google I/O this past May. Earlier this week, Venezuelan site T ecnoDroidVe stumbled upon some screen shots of the Google Music Store, which will supposedly feature song previews, a free song of the day and music discovery features. According to these screenshots, you'll get recommendations based on artists you've searched for previously.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Google has secured deals with three out of the Big Four record labels: Sony Music Entertainmant, Vivendi SA's Universal Music Group, and EMI Music. Warner Music Group is the odd label out.
Being limited to only three of the major music labels might hurt Google Music's success right off the bat. But Google Music still has a fighting chance. The Android OS desperately needs a good music player–just ask one of the many Android phone or tablet owners out there. The Google Music store needs to seamlessly integrate with the native Android player. For example, say you're listening to an album you haven't played in awhile. Google Music tells you (unobtrusively, of course) that this artist has a new album out that you currently don't own. From the Google Android player, you can purchase that album–while still listening to that other album–and queue it up. This is all hypothetical, of course, but if Google can pull off a user-friendly interface that tightly integrates with the store, I can see it being a big hit with Android enthusiasts.
But will it be a main source of music consumption? I'm not so sure. Apple's iTunes Store and Amazon MP3 have been around for years now and with Spotify and Rdio quickly gaining traction among music fans, there might not be room for yet another music store/cloud service.
Google might have a few other tricks up its sleeve this afternoon. The T-Mobile logo is featured prominently in both the press event and after party flyers. Will T-Mobile be launching the first phone with Google Music? And could that phone be the coveted Galaxy Nexus with Android Ice Cream Sandwich? It's possible. Another speculation is that it will reveal some more information about the @Home project, which is an Android platform for connecting home devices like lights, speakers, etc.
We'll find out for sure this afternoon at Google's event this afternoon in Hollywood, starting at 2PM PST. Stay tuned for full coverage and analysis from the event.
In Video: Google's Next Targets: iTunes and Amazon Music


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Pre-Order the Film on DVD or Blu-ray
"The electric guitar has dominated popular music for the last half century. Anyone who has ever plugged into an amp understands its power. So does the average stadium crowd. But if you have too much exposure to amateurs, you might forget the incredible range of expression that the creation pioneered by Les Paul can achieve in the hands of masters.
"Director Davis Guggenheim, well-known for his Academy Award-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth, deepens our appreciation for going electric by bringing together three virtuosos from different generations: Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, The Edge of U2 and Jack White of The White Stripes. It Might Get Loud weaves together their stories to reveal how each of them developed a unique sound.
"Unlike rock 'n' roll documentaries that focus on backstage drama, this one concentrates on the music, giving us intimate access to the creative process. Each guitarist describes his own musical rebellion: Page against the saccharine pop of the sixties; The Edge against the self-indulgent solos of the seventies; White against the soulless bass machines of the eighties. The film also travels to the locations that left a mark on each player. Page visits the stone halls of Headley Grange where "Stairway to Heaven" was composed. In Dublin, The Edge pulls out the original four-track rehearsals of "Where the Streets Have No Name." And in Tennessee, White describes being inspired by the raw style of bluesman Son House. What's more, we see each musician play new work that has yet to be released.
"The trio comes together for a jam session, during which they demonstrate their varying tastes in gear, from Page's double-neck guitar to The Edge's array of accessory pedals to White's cheap plastic instrument. Contrary to the stereotype that rock 'n' rollers are sullen and guarded, these three display an infectious joy when discussing their craft. Anyone who has ever played air guitar along with a Zeppelin song will be thrilled watching Page mimic the licks of one of his own favorites, Link Wray's "Rumble."
"You don't need to be an aficionado to enjoy the pleasure of this company. This film might not affect how you play, but it will change how you listen."


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Andrey Melnichenko enjoys shaking up the yachting world.
The 40-year-old Russian billionaire first made waves when he launched "A," the 396-foot motor yacht that became one of the most famous in the world for its radical design.
That ship, styled by the architect and designer Philippe Starck, has a stealthy, knife-like design that many likened to a submarine or battleship. (I took a rare tour of the boat, including it's "Nookie Room," which you can see here).
Now, Melnichenko is planning an even more revolutionary entry in the mega-yacht wars. According to industry executives, Melnichenko and his yacht team are in the early stages of building a ship that will likely become the largest sailing yacht in the world.


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NEW YORK, N.Y.—Gimme a break, Google. Break me off a piece of that Kit Kat bar.
The tech giant, which is known for nick-naming its Android mobile operating systems for smartphones and tablets after desserts, has for the first time chosen a brand-name candy for version 4.4 that's expected to launch this fall: Kit Kat, the chocolate candy bar with the well-known "Gimme a Break" jingle. Kit Kat packaging will show Android's green robot mascot breaking a Kit Kat bar.
Financial terms weren't disclosed for the sweet deal between Google and Hershey Co., which makes Kit Kat. But the deal shows that naming a stadium or sponsoring a TV show can be seen as old school. The latest marketing craze is slapping your brand name on a tech product.
Google approached Hershey about six to nine months ago for permission to use the name, said Jennifer Podhajsky, vice-president of U.S. chocolate at Hershey, which licenses the Kit Kat brand in the U.S., while Nestle owns the worldwide brand.
Podhajsky said that Kit Kat's jingle is a good fit for people taking a break to look at their smartphones or tablets. She added that the deal appeals to Hershey because Android hits the sweet spot of Kit Kat eaters, who are typically between the ages of 18 and 34.
"Kit Kat consumers are young, vibrant consumers of candy and chocolate bars, and that's a nice match with Android," Podhajsky said.
The Kit Kat name was unexpected since tech pundits have speculated for months that the next operating system would be called Key Lime Pie. Marc Vanlerberghe, director of Android Marketing, said the name was chosen because Kit Kat bars have been a "favourite go-to snack among the team since the early days of Android."
The Android 4.4 Kit Kat system is expected to launch in October. The software is now running on more than 750 million smartphones and tablets throughout the world, making it the world's most widely used mobile operating system.


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Holidays, lost business in Brazil WCup's lazy days
By Jenny Barchfield
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) - Lucky students in Chile went home early, many Brazilian offices and stores went dark, and across the megalopolis of Mexico City traffic was as calm as midnight. With three Latin American countries playing for their World Cup futures Monday, fans across the region succumbed to soccer fever, slowing regular business to a crawl.
Brazilians, who already are used to generous time off for Carnival celebrations and Catholic observances, have enjoyed even more holidays during the monthlong soccer tournament.
When Brazil's national team plays, many workplaces across the country shut down. In host cities such as Rio de Janeiro, the government declared half- or full-day holidays on game days to clear the streets of commuters and enable soccer fans to move about with greater ease.
Last week, there were only two regular work days in Rio, a city of 12 million people. This week will be much the same.
On Monday, before Brazil defeated Cameroon 4-1 in Brasilia, Catia Santiago was soaking up the sunshine on the golden sands of Copacabana beach rather than head to work to sell hair products.
"I'm going to take a hit financially," Santiago said. "I'll probably earn about 30 to 50 percent less, but I will have had 200 percent more fun than usual."
Indeed, critics contend all of the time off is bad for business.
Financial newspapers have reported the volume of trade on Sao Paulo's Bovespa stock exchange began to slow even before the June 12-July 13 tournament. Fecomercio, a Sao Paulo-based group representing the goods, services and tourism sectors, warned that those businesses may lose up to $13.5 billion due to lost productivity and the need to pay double salaries to people who work government-declared holidays.
However, Brazil's Tourism Ministry has said the World Cup itself will inject that much money into the nation's economy, offsetting any such losses.
Katia Andrade, a saleswoman for a Rio online data storage company, complained that the extra time off was putting her way behind on her yearly revenue target.
"The World Cup is literally costing me money," Andrade said. "Since the beginning of the year, projects have been lagging behind, with everybody putting things off until after the Cup. And now, with almost every day a public holiday, it's totally impossible to get anything done."
Mexico City started to resemble a ghost town by midday Monday as locals geared up for the afternoon game between Mexico and Croatia in the northeastern Brazilian city of Recife, which Mexico won 3-1.
During the national team's matches, "one can cross Mexico City as if it were the middle of the night, stopping only at a few stoplights," taxi driver Alejandro Ramirez said, adding that traffic Monday morning already was about 20 percent lighter than a regular day.
After the game, thousands of fans wearing the national team's green jersey and waving Mexican flags jammed the traffic circle around the Angel of Independence statue on the capital's main avenue, disrupting traffic in the business zone.
In Chile, some schools and universities suspended classes ahead of the national team's match with the Netherlands in Sao Paulo, while thousands of people congregated on a central square fitted with a giant screen to follow the game. Chile lost 2-0, but still advanced to the tournament's second round.
Schools in Brazil also pushed winter break forward to coincide with the World Cup, as the drop-off and pick-up of school children is a major source of traffic jams.
While students may be rejoicing, a recent column on the website of Veja, a right-leaning newsmagazine, called such school and business holidays a "confession of incompetence" - evidence that authorities' failure to build adequate infrastructure forced them to concoct a fix to Brazil's traffic woes.
"The government has seven years to prepare for the event - seven years! Of course they weren't capable," the column by Rodrigo Constantino said. "And now they adopt a typically Brazilian solution, which is jerry-rigging and cobbling together a way out.
"This is definitely not a serious country," he concluded.
Honduras' president also has been criticized for making an extended visit to Brazil, where his country's national team is playing in the World Cup for only the third time.
President Juan Orlando Hernandez skipped talks in Guatemala with U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, sending his chief of staff to discuss a rise in unaccompanied children crossing into the United States while he attended Honduras' debut match against Ecuador.
The Central American country lost the game 2-1, and the U.S. ambassador to Honduras, Lisa Kubiske, remarked, "You have a very important soccer game in Brazil, no one can deny it, but the country has priorities that need the one in command to be present."
Associated Press writers Alberto Arce in Tegucigalpa, Honduras; Eduardo Castillo and Michael Weissenstein in Mexico City and Eva Vergara in Santiago, Chile, contributed to this report.


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The endless EU vs US debate rolls on, but now with an odd twist. Although the objective facts about economic inequality, immobility and so on are far worse in the US than the EU, the political situation seems more promising. (I'm not talking primarily about electoral politics but about the nature of public debate.)In the EU, the right has succeeded in taking a crisis caused primarily by banks (including the central bank, and bank regulators) and blaming it on government profligacy, which is then being used to push through yet more of the neoliberal policies that caused the crisis. And, as we've just seen, formerly social democratic parties like New Labour in the UK, are pushing the same line. By contrast the success of Occupy Wall Street have changed the US debate, in ways that I think will be hard to reverse. Once the Overton window shifted enough to allow inequality and social immobility to be mentioned, the weight of evidence has been overwhelming. This post by Tyler Cowen is an indication of how far things have moved. Cowen feels the need, not merely to dispute some aspects of the data on inequality and social mobility in the US, but to make the case that a unequal society with a static social structure isn't so bad after all.
Update Cowen offers a non-response response here. Apparently, disliking arguments for inherited inequality, such as his point 3 (because of habit formation, social mobility reduces welfare) is a "Turing test" for reflexive leftism. Cowen makes seven arguments, ranging from weak to risible. He is an able economist, and no fool, so the weakness of the case he makes reflects the difficulty of making bricks without straw. I'll reorder his arguments from weakest to strongest and respond to them in turn. 3. For a given level of income, if some are moving up others are moving down. Do you take theories of wage rigidity seriously? If so, you might favor less relative mobility, other things remaining equal. More upward — and thus downward — relative mobility probably means less aggregate happiness, due to habit formation and frame of reference effects. This is an ancient argument against income redistribution (Bentham had a version of it, IIRC) but it's surprising to see it extended to the case of intergenerational mobility. Apparently, expensive tastes, once acquired in childhood, can't be dispensed with without great suffering. 5. How much of immobility is due to "inherited talent plus diminishing role for random circumstance"? Is not this cause of immobility very different — both practically and morally — from such factors as discrimination, bad schools, occupational licensing, etc.? What are you supposed to get when you combine genetics with meritocracy? I do not know how much of current American (or other) immobility is due to this factor, but I find it discomforting that complaints about mobility are so infrequently accompanied by an analysis of this topic. A lot of handwaving here. The supposed genetic role is assumed, not supported by any evidence to produce a suggestion that declining mobility arises because the US has now become more meritocratic, and therefore more efficient at promoting people of high ability. There's plenty of evidence going the other way, notably including the fact that class matters much more than it used to in getting admission to high-status colleges.. 4. Why do many European nations have higher mobility? Putting ethnic and demographic issues aside, here is one mechanism. Lots of smart Europeans decide to be not so ambitious, to enjoy their public goods, to work for the government, to avoid high marginal tax rates, to travel a lot, and so on. That approach makes more sense in a lot of Europe than here. Some of the children of those families have comparable smarts but higher ambition and so they rise quite a bit in income relative to their peers. (The opposite may occur as well, with the children choosing more leisure.) That is a less likely scenario for the United States, where smart people realize this is a country geared toward higher earners and so fewer smart parents play the "tend the garden" strategy. Maybe the U.S. doesn't have a "first best" set-up in this regard, but the comparison between U.S. and Europe is less sinister than it seems at first. "High intergenerational mobility" is sometimes a synonym for "lots of parental underachievers." Another version of the same argument. The only notable point is the observation that "smart people realize this is a country geared toward higher earners". 6. I am more than willing to hear arguments than a less mobile society is a less stable society, or otherwise a society which makes worse political decisions. But I haven't seen serious arguments here. By "serious arguments" I mean those which take endogeneity into account and go beyond noting that Denmark is a better polity than Brazil, and so on. Granted, there doesn't appear to be a lot of hard statistical evidence here (commenters, please prove me wrong on this). But there is a ton of US political rhetoric from the past (right up to the last six months or so) that would suggest great social and political benefits from living in a 'land of opportunity'. 2. Measured mobility in the United States does not seem to be falling, or at least not falling much, as shown by Scott Winship. This is a general class of argument I find unimpressive. Although statistical evidence is hard to find after a point, it seems pretty clear that at some point in the past income mobility was greater in the US than in Europe. And the evidence is clear that the reverse is true now. So, arguments of this kind amount to picking particular subperiods where you get negative results. There's a further problem in that Winship's summary of the data is unreliable. For example, this study shows that "transmission of high-income status significantly increased" but Winship only reports the finding that "he transmission of low-income status remained stable". 1. If the general standard of living is rising (and I am more than willing to admit problems in this area for the United States), mobility takes care of itself over time. I find it more useful to focus on slow growth, if indeed that is the case. Just look at income growth for non-wealthy families and that is more useful than all the mobility measures put together. Maybe so, but as Cowen admits, the evidence is in, and median household income has been falling for a decade. Lower down the scale, the poverty rate is rising. Over the last 40 years, income growth for non-wealthy families has been much weaker than for wealthy families, and much slower than in the postwar decades. As Cowen must surely remember, when this fact was pointed out, defenders of the US system used to claim that it didn't matter because the US system allowed lots of economic mobility. Some, like Paul Ryan are still pushing this claim., 7. I would like all measurements in this area to take into account the pre-migration incomes of incoming entrants. Denmark, which doesn't let many people in, is a much less upwardly mobile society once you take this into account. Sweden deserves more praise, and in general this factor will make the Anglo countries look much, much more supportive of mobility. This is about the only argument worth taking seriously. But, in previous debates of this kind, it's turned out that taking migrants into account doesn't change much. The US would be a particularly complicated case because of the large number of undocumented migrants, many (most?) of whom return home at some point.
To sum up, Cowen's post is an exercise in defending the indefensible, and its weaknesses reflect that. As Mitt Romney's tax returns show, wealthy Americans have the rules rigged in their favor from day one. And that's assuming they obey the rules. Unlike the poor, they can mostly cheat with impunity. In these circumstances, it's unsurprising that US inequality is so deeply entrenched. The only surprise is the suddenness with which the facts have become common knowledge.It remains to be seen how this will play out electorally, but there are at least some promising signs. Eight months ago, the situation in the US, seemed if anything even worse than in Europe. Obama seemed determined to capitulate to the Repubs, with the support of the entire centrist establishment, still committed to the idea of bipartisanship. Political discussion was dominated by the claims of the Tea Party, essentially identical to those of the European Austerians. The debt-ceiling debacle, the success of Occupy Wall Street and the recent Romney revelations have changed that. First, the fact that the Repubs are extreme reactionaries, uninterested in any kind of bipartisan compromise, has finally sunk in to all but the most obtuse centrists.[1] Second, the point that the rich play by different rules from the rest of us has been made glaringly obvious.[2]
Given the weakness of the economy, and the absence of any real action from the Administration between the initial stimulus and last year's Jobs Plan, Obama's re-election can't be taken for granted. But it's looking increasingly likely, and his SOTU speech will hopefully make commitments that will be hard to retract after November.
fn1. I don't buy the 11-dimensional chess version of this story, but the slapdown of Obama's painfully sincere attempts to reach across the aisle was exactly what was needed
fn2. It would be great if we could see a similar transformation regarding civil liberties, the permanent War on Terror and so on, but I'm not holding my breath. SOPA and the TSA can provoke outrage, but NDAA not so much, at least for the moment.


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The year was 1700 BC. Severe climate change had been engulfing the entire Earth for several years. People from every corner of the globe were traveling to Egypt to buy grain which Joseph has stored up as a result of a vision that God had given to Pharaoh nearly a decade before. During this time no field was plowed nor was any field harvested for the rain had been held back in order that Joseph—an archetype of Christ—might provide salvation to all the people of the Earth. In particular, Jacob—now called Israel—would find temporary refuge in Egypt through God's provision of Jacob's son Joseph.
Today, a literal seven-day creation, the Garden of Eden and Noah's Flood get all the attention when it comes to globally transformative events in the Earth's history. Sadly, Joseph's Global Famine, recorded for us in Genesis 41, has long been overlooked—or even dismissed—by many Biblical scholars and scientists. Because of his miraculous ability to interpret the dreams of the Pharaoh, Joseph was able to put into action a plan that saved countless thousands from starvation. However, while Noah saved the entire human race from extinction during a planet-wide flood, the famine of Joseph has been relegated to a mere, local event. But surely, since each verse of the Bible is inerrant in every detail—including all aspects related to biology, geology and meteorology—the plain meaning of the account of Joseph's saving the entire world from starvation needs to be properly told and vigorously defended. To deny this eyewitness testimony of a global catastrophe is tantamount to denying the global flood and will inextricably lead to the denial of the resurrection of Christ. To suggest that the scope of the famine was other than planet-wide is to compromise the authority of scripture.
The Bible is clear: a catastrophe of global proportion occurred around 3700 years ago. This global catastrophe recorded in Genesis 41 was neither by flood as in Noah's day nor by fire which is reserved for the final destruction of the Earth (II Peter 3:10) but instead resulted from rain being withheld. That rain would normally have flooded the Nile, bringing life-sustaining nutrients into the farmlands of Egypt. That rain would also have normally watered the fields in Canaan, the pastures of southwestern North America and the rice-paddies of Asia.
This historical fact, as plainly revealed in God's Word, can be found in Genesis 41 and specifically in verses 56 and 57 (ESV) which read: "So when the famine had spread over all the land (erets) Joseph opened all the storehouses and sold to the Egyptians, for the famine was severe in the land (erets) of Egypt. Moreover, all the earth (erets) came to Egypt to Joseph to buy grain, because the famine was severe over all the earth (erets)."
Notice that even the liberal ESV scholars responsible for this less-than-literal translation could not deny the author's (Moses) intent regarding the scope of the catastrophe: "all the earth came to Egypt" and the "famine was severe over all the earth." However, they still try to subvert the text by translating erets as "the land" in the beginning of verse 56, the same word translated "earth" later in the same verse.
The translators of the King James Version, who were not biased by worldly modern science and evolution, translate Genesis 41:56 accurately as: "And the famine was over all the face of the earth." It should not escape our notice that these are the same Hebrew words used in Genesis 1:2 (ESV) which describe the original state of the whole creation wherein the Spirit hovered "over the face of the deep."
The global intent of the phrase "the face of the earth" from the creation account is also implicit in another global event, Noah's Flood. In Genesis 8 we find multiple uses of the same phrase, for example, in reference to Noah's Flood Genesis 8:9 (KJV) states: "for the waters were on the face of the whole earth." (using the same word, "erets," used to describe the scope of Joseph's famine) Clearly, the author's intention was to explain that the entire planet was completely under water.
Similarly, we can see that the plain reading of the authoritative Word of God absolutely requires that this severe famine causing "neither plowing nor harvest" (Gen 45:6 ESV) must also have covered the entire planet Earth. Even though God's eyewitness testimony should be enough for us to believe this historical fact, He has further blessed us with confirming physical evidence of this worldwide calamity, leaving no excuse (Romans 1:20) for denial of this dramatic global event.
Amazing confirmation of Joseph's Global Famine
Based upon that clear description of a real historical event, it is quite rational to conclude that one should expect to find evidence today of a devastating global famine in historical records and of its physical effects on the surface of the earth. And indeed, that is exactly what we find.
Observational evidence and historical records from around the world attest to a global famine around the year 1700 B.C. We will limit ourselves to just a few of the many examples.
The respected website Ancient Patriarchs reports that research shows that Chinese emperor Cheng Tang recorded a seven-year famine from 1704-1697 B.C which directly overlaps possible dates of Joseph's famine. Civilizations such as the Olmecs who migrated to the Yucatan Peninsula in 1700 B.C. invented plumbing, demonstrating a sudden need and interest in water conservation in land not usually lacking water. Other civilizations, such as the South American peoples who had their origins around 1700 B.C., established their kingdom in what is today known as Bolivia. This high volume of migration attests to a time in which food supplies were waning and people were moving to find new sources of food but not realizing that the entire world was engulfed in this severe famine as well.
Lastly, echoes of advances, first made by the Egyptians, in other parts of the world are a direct testimony to the fact that people from the "whole face of the earth" came to Egypt to find food. These people who witnessed Egyptian culture, took certain aspects back to their homes once the famine had ended. For instance, consider the Mesoamerican pyramids in South and Central America, and the fondness for cats in North America. These are both clear evidence, visible even today, of the planet-wide famine of 1700 B.C.
South Americans that traveled to Egypt during Joseph's famine even copied the general layout of the pyramids. Top: Giza, Egypt, Bottom: Teotihuacan, Mexico
God used Joseph's famine for the good of not just Israel but all the earth's inhabitants
We know that the Bible is accurate in every detail and this helps us to understand that this global famine attests to an extreme global warming event brought on by God, similar to how Job's life attested to the reality of the single Ice Age following the global Noahic Flood. The Ice Age was an after-effect of a global Flood; but such an icy world would have presented problems for future generations. Similarly, the famine caused by global warming and lack of precipitation, though it was a great blessing since it reshaped the physical world, was also a judgment on the people of the Earth,
We propose that the seven-year famine was used by God to quickly remove the vast ice fields that covered the land (the entire planet). The massive melting caused the formation of the astounding Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, Yosemite Valley and many other erosional features of the earth including large deltas that would become valuable agricultural land in the future. Through God's gracious provision, people could now spread across the world into regions previously made uninhabitable by the ice caused by Noah's flood.
Since we have abundant evidence of a world-wide famine we can ask what might have caused such an effect. Of course God is the primary cause but in Noah's day he used many secondary causes—i.e. natural mechanisms—to achieve His purposes. For example, to initiate the Flood, an asteroid or a passing planet may have been providentially timed to pull on structural weaknesses in the Earth—placed there during the creation in anticipation of this future event—causing the storehouses of water below the surface to be released. For the Famine of Joseph, we propose that a second interloping planet passed close to the Earth causing a disturbance in the axis of the earth causing more extreme weather patterns for several years. Our omniscient God, knowing the position of every object in the solar system, set the object on its trajectory years prior in anticipation of this event, likely during the creation itself. Later, God related to Pharaoh a vision and gave Joseph the insight to properly interpret this vision thus preserving Israel and the seed of Abraham.
It is worth noting here that this is real global climate change and it is recorded for us right there in our Bibles. Today, our politicians and even some of our church leaders look at changes in polar ice caps and increasing carbon dioxide levels in our atmosphere and worry about climate change but ignore and belittle real climate change that caused a massive famine throughout the whole world just 3700 years ago. We deny real global catastrophes while gnashing our teeth over minor blips in temperature changes that may take decades to cause lasting impact.
It's a Biblical Authority issue
This is ultimately about the authority of God's Word, which plainly teaches that the Famine of Joseph was global in extent. Indeed, if the text of Genesis 41 clearly teaches—as it does—that the Famine of 1700 B.C. was global and we reject that teaching, then we undermine the reliability and authority of other parts of Scripture, including John 3:16. God's Word is trustworthy and authoritative in all that it affirms. (1)
These and many more biblical, theological, and scientific considerations make the compromise of a mere local famine, so often promoted by liberal seminary professors, totally untenable. This is all ultimately about the authority of all of God's Word, which plainly teaches that the Famine of Joseph was global in extent. (1)
We all have the same data. It's really a question of the worldview we interpret that data though and when viewed with the right worldview "glasses" the biblical and scientific evidence support a global famine.
It is time to recognize and defend the historicity of one of the most profound events that has taken place in earth's history. No less than biblical authority is at stake. (2)
- This text was copied from The New Answers Book 3 published by leading Young Earth Creationist' apologetic ministry Answers in Genesis except I replaced references to Noah's Flood with Joseph's Famine.
- This is a work of satire but should not be interpreted as promoting a mythological view of Joseph or a low view of biblical authority. I believe Joseph was a real person in history and that there was a severe famine in the land as is recorded in scripture. That said, I don't believe biblical exegesis requires that famine to be global in extent and that peoples from literally the whole earth came to Egypt to buy grain. Does that make me a compromiser or biblical authority? I don't think so. Those who promote such "literal" interpretations of words used to describe the scope of events or the length of days must understand that such interpretations, if followed to their logical conclusions, will cause scripture to be understood in ways that were never intended by the author.


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Green Snake is set in a world between myth and reality. Zhao Wen-zhou stars as a young monk who spends his days hunting down demons and spirits who have crossed over from their own realm into the realm of mortals. Some of them come with malicious intent, but many of them seem only to want to run wild and free in the physical world for a brief time. The monk operates under the notion that the two worlds simply cannot cross paths, harmless intentions or not. The opening scene of the monk chasing an old wiseman who is actually a spider demon through a field as they both run through mid-air sets a beautiful but disturbing tone for the film. It's incredibly lush and over-saturated with dreamlike color. The hallucinatory beauty seems eerie, however, not at all peaceful, sort of like those old fairy tales where things are actually creepy and sinister.
Monk Fahai is also immediately established as a complex character who is unsure of his Buddhist vows. He is determined to fight against the world of demons (keep in mind that in Chinese mythology, a demon is not necessarily an evil being), yet he also seems to find something fascinating about their realm. Likewise, he wrestles with physical temptations from his own world. On a rainy night, he witnesses a peasant woman giving birth to a child in the woods and finds it difficult to avert his eyes from the spectacle. He also notices that the woman is being protected from the rain, and quickly spies to giant snakes in the trees, serving as umbrellas. His initial response is to dispatch them quickly to the nether-realm, but he soon has second thoughts and decides that since they were helping the woman out, he'll let them slide by this time.
The two snakes are played in human form by the beautiful Joey Wong and Maggie Cheung. They are two sister snake spirits who have decided they prefer the human world to their own, and so are doing their best to maintain human form and pass as mortals. Causing them untold amounts of grief is a blind Taoist ghost hunter and his assistants. Unlike Fahai, the priest has no doubts about his holy crusade to rid the world of demons and spirits. He goes about his quest with an unfaltering, blind conviction. Luckily for the sisters, he's about as good at his vocation as the Three Stooges were at their jobs as exterminators or movers or guys who carried around those big blocks of ice. He's a minor annoyance to them, but not a real threat.
Rounding out the bizarre cast of characters is a young scholar named Hsui Xien who would much rather be drinking wine and writing love poetry than learning the ins and outs of Confucian philosophy. He's the classic "dreamer" character. You admire his idealism, but sometimes you just want him to shut up with his "my heart's so full of dreams" nonsense. And could someone tell me what is the deal with the head rolling? As the scholars regurgitate the Confucian wisdom, they all roll their heads back and forth. I've seen monks and other assorted wisemen doing the same thing in various movies. Now I'm no Confucian gentleman. I've always been more along the lines of one of those drunken Taoists who lives in a cave and gets in arguments with the moon. So I guess the rule was you had to loll your head about while reciting your lessons, but you know if I tried that in school the teachers would tell me to quit nodding off, not unlike how they made me quit reading in "the robot voice" when I was in second grade. Seriously though, if someone can tell me exactly why they made scholars roll their heads around like that, I'd appreciate it. I'm not above learning some new bit of history.
On a warm summer night, the two sisters sneak into town. Maggie Cheung breaks hearts by dropping in, nude and covered in rain, on a lavish party being thrown by some vaguely Indian guy. She proceeds to stomp mercilessly on said broken hearts with her suggestive semi-lesbian dance involving one of the female Indian dancers. Joey, in the meantime, slips into the river and catches a glimpse of the young scholar. She's instantly taken with him. Things get complicated quickly. Although she and Hsui Xien hit it off well, there's this whole issue of her being a giant snake. Maggie also attracts the attention of Monk Fahai, who is torn between his sworn duty to combat the spirits and send them packing and his feeling that they are benevolent creatures doing far more to help their "fellow" humans than most of the actual humans are doing. Plus, he finds himself seized by a strong attraction to her, which shouldn't really surprise anyone. Fahai's confusion mounts as he witnesses people wallowing in filth and greed, far more destructive and nasty than any demon he ever vanquished. You could probably have a pretty good fire and brimstone movie featuring Monk Fahai and Robert Duvall's character from The Apostle, but you'd have an even better movie it was Monk Fahai and Robert Duvall's character from Apocalypse Now.
Monk Fahai considers the romance a blasphemy. Humans and spirits should not interact, plain and simple. He vows to put a stop to the relationship. Obviously, he's focusing his anger on the two lovers in an attempt to compensate for his own feelings of temptation and doubt. It's no surprise to anyone that the most wild-eyed, fire-and-brimstone preachers are often the ones with the most to hide. Nothing fuels a little righteous indignation quite like wishing you yourself could indulge once in a while. Fahai deals with his own guilt by projecting it on others and attempting to interfere in their lives despite the fact that they have no affect on him at all. Like most religious zealots, his divine call is pretty much what the rest of call "dickishness." Face it: it's pretty difficult to get behind a guy who's goal in life is to rid the world of Joey Wong and Maggie Cheung.
The blind priest, on the other hand, is a different type of corrupt religious leader. To him, battling "sin" is just a way to garner more attention and power for himself. It's not about righteousness; it's about career advancement. It's about the rush he gets by forcing his will onto others. Tsui's criticism of religion in these two characters is harsh but certainly not without sound foundation. Whether its nature is of a political or religious nature (if indeed there is any difference between the two), intolerance is, well, intolerable. It leads ultimately to destruction, alienation, and disaster. Things get bad when Green (Maggie Cheung) starts getting jealous of her sister's romance. She was already a bit jealous of the success her sister had in adopting human form. Sou Ching pretty much has it down, while Green still has trouble walking and maintaining her human form. She begins doing little things to sabotage the relationship, culminating in Hsiu Xien discovering Sou Ching is a snake spirit. The shock of the revelation sends him into a coma which only a magic herb can cure. Sou Ching is emotionally destroyed, vowing to do everything she can to shed her spirit self and become a real human. Green, in turn, realizes how her pettiness has potentially destroyed two people, and agrees to seek out the magic herb. Unfortunately for the two sister, Fahai is waiting to trap them and send them back to their own realm.
The whole ordeal is further complicated when the battle between Green and Fahai results in severe flooding. The entire village will be destroyed. Using their combined powers, Green and Monk Fahai could potentially stem the rising tide, but they are too caught up in their own vain battle with one another. By the time they realize the error of their ways, it's far too late, and their efforts to prevent the flood are a failure. The town has been destroyed. Hundreds have died in the flood waters, among them Hsiu Xien and Sou Ching. The final scene of Fahai and Green finally reaching a state of revelation as the world around them is washed away is powerful in the extreme. It's like a punch to the gut, and where most film makers would attempt to tie things up with some glimmer of hope, Tsui Hark just leaves it as it is. In a theme similar to Zu, the central characters discover their inability to compromise, work together, and put aside their own petty differences and jealousies has resulted in them losing everything they ever cherished.
Parallels to Hong Kong's situation going into 1997 are not difficult to make, of course. This movie seems like Tsui Hark attempting to come to terms with his own feelings toward Mainland China. His final resolution is bittersweet, to say the least. China has problems. The blind Taoist priest could easily be seen as the embodiment of China's history of intolerance and political persecution. If the reasonable people from both sides work together, however, perhaps progress can be made in healing China's ills. It's a message of hope, though Tsui's prognosis for whether or not it will actually happen seems doubtful, at best. He is, after all, a notorious pessimist when it comes to human character.
The acting ain't bad. Though Zhao tends to overdo stoic a bit, Maggie shines. And while she's outclassed by her "sister," Joey Wong manages to hold her own as the coy, innocent Sou Ching. It's a shame she disappeared from the scene soon after making this movie. Along with her role in Chinese Ghost Story, Joey Wong seems to be unmatched in making people wish they could just meet a nice ghost and settle down in some haunted temple or something.
The most subversive thing Tsui Hark pulls with this film is wrapping such a bitter pill in such a sumptuous package. Although a few of the wildly ambitious effects fall flat, Green Snake is a stylistic triumph. The beauty of every shot, the care that went into making every scene seem like a vibrant technicolor dream, is staggering. Few films are as overwhelmingly gorgeous as Green Snake. On that note, you'd be hard pressed to assemble a cast more entrancing and beautiful than Joey Wong, Zhao Wen-zhou, and Maggie Cheung. There's something unusual about all three of them. They're not just physically attractive. Something about each of the actors, even outside their roles here, is engrossing. Constant shots of flowing waters, billowing silks, mists, and swaying blossoms make the film unspeakably exquisite. Likewise, the scenes of magic and sorcery are breath-taking. There are no martial arts, but there's plenty of flying and summoning of natural elements.
As with most Tsui Hark films, it's possible to overlook the political and social commentary and simply let the grace and beauty flow over you, but you'd be missing out on what makes this far more than just a lovely little tragic fantasy film. If you go into it wanting tons of action and excitement, you're going to be disappointed. After providing us with some of the most wildly over-the-top fantasy action films in Zu and Swordsman, Tsui seems to be looking for a middle ground here between his early martial arts fantasy films and his later romantic tragedies like The Lovers. He hits the nail on the head. With the exception of a few weak visual effects, he creates the perfect fairy tale mood: lush, haunting, dreamlike, and ultimately foreboding.
The failure of this film followed by the failure of The Blade was a good part of what lead Tsui Hark to seek success in America. Of course, that didn't work out either, and it's only very recently — with the success of Detective Dee — that Hark seems to be clawing his way back into the limelight. Joey Wong went into semi-retirement, shifting her base of operations from Hong Kong to Japan.
Zhao Wen-zhou should have been a huge star, but fantasy/martial arts films went out of style, and he found himself stuck is some astoundingly abysmal action cheapies that have done little to establish him as the future of Hong Kong action cinema, which is the title he seemed perfectly capable of inheriting. Maggie Cheung, of course, went on to become Maggie Cheung, and her journey from wimpy, shrieking girlfriend roles in Jackie Chan films to one of the most internationally respected and well-known Hong Kong actors makes me happy.
Green Snake accomplishes what it sets out to do, which is to pull people into its rapturous beauty then leave them confused and depressed at the tragedy of human stubbornness and greed. As a tragic love story, it operates well. As a indictment of political and religious intolerance and persecution, it works even better. Too bad it wasn't as successful at the box office as it should have been, but then, no one wants an unhappy ending. Tsui Hark was hoping that an unhappy ending in the film would make a real-life happy ending a little more feasible.
Whether or not that's the case remains to be seen, but no amount of politics can change the fact that Green Snake is a profoundly affecting, ambitious, heart-breaking story. Even a hardened old curmudgeon like myself has a soft spot for terribly tragic romance, especially if it's between snake demons and flying monks and lazy scholars. Taken as Hong Kong fantasy spectacle or political allegory, Green Snake is one hell of a film, and it's the perfect final note for the Hong Kong New Wave to end on. It's only fitting that the man who started it with Zu would also signal its closing with this film so similar in theme and (lack of) resolution.
Ironic that the entire New Wave cycle would end up so closely reflecting the events in Zu. There was lots of flash, lots of innovation. There was a noise that, for a spell, shook the world and attracted everyone's attention. But at the end of the day, everything closed on the same note of doubt on which it opened. We were right back where we'd always been. With any luck, the seeds of dissent and dissatisfaction continue to burn in Tsui Hark, and he'll surprise us yet again.


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Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. may launch its initial public offering process as soon as the end of the month, a timetable the Chinese e-commerce company shared with some investors in an email, people familiar with the matter said.
Alibaba has been laying plans for a public listing this summer in New York, a deal that could be one of the largest IPOs ever.
The email communication formally sets out a planned kickoff for the deal, which could raise more than $20 billion. Including a "roadshow" pitching the deal to investors, the IPO process for a deal of this size typically takes about two weeks from start to finish.
The notice said timing remained dependent on market conditions, the people said.
The timing was mentioned in a notice to investors asking them to agree to a standard "lockup" period, which would block them from selling their shares for a period of 180 days after the IPO, the people said.
An expanded version of this report appears at WSJ.com.
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