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Dead Good - A look at funeral options today..
Last week I attended the funeral of a very close friend. She was a vivacious, popular lady with more friends than anyone I have ever known. Her funeral was representative of her life and personality: lavish, expensive, warm, generous and humorous. Her devoted family had taken her body home for three days before the funeral as her son, a florist, seeing things at the sharp end, didn't want his cherished Mother shunted in and out of cold storage in some funereal warehouse hub. It was immensely touching.
Last month I went with an open mind to my first Humanist funeral. The deceased had been a devout atheist so it was fitting for him in spite of the family having Christian leanings. I arrived at the crematorium early having travelled almost two hundred miles on the morning of the funeral. It was the first service of the day so I went into the chapel to sit and be quiet, and reflect on the life of the deceased who had been kindness personified and very good to me. I was ushered out sharpish by the Humanist celebrant; this wasn't the waiting room I was told.
The funeral was well attended, and the celebrant spent a good deal of the ceremony speaking about the basis of Humanism which, essentially, is non religious. There were no hymns, no music that anyone could sing to, obviously no prayers, no group participation in any shape or form. We, as a congregation of mourners, sat mute for the entire service. No touching of the coffin to say goodbye either; nothing.
When it was over, some 25 minutes later, the next batch of mourners were outside, ready for their own service so the conveyor belt ran smoothly not unlike the changes of passengers on a tube train. I left questioning my own values and what I want for my own funeral and, as is sometimes the case, an experience can just as often confirm what we don't want as much as what we do. Seemingly, at the wake afterwards, it had a similar effect on others; the service which just didn't fulfil our need to say our goodbyes to this lovely man.
So, with such recent experiences fresh in my mind, it was with great interest that I watched the first of three programmes of the BBC2 series Dead Good Job and it didn't fail to produce fascinating television. Educational, poignant, and at times humorous going some way to explaining the various choices that we, as a nation, are making for our funerals; the Muslims with the simple, time honoured rituals and the need to be buried within 24 hours of death because only then can the soul start its journey; the Quicker Vicar with a motorbike and sidecar as a hearse conducting a rock biker's funeral, the desperately touching terminally ill middle aged mother of two arranging her own funeral and a husband burying his dearly loved wife of forty years. Diverse and different; each with its own distinctive story.
Then, a day later, a timely report released by Sun Life on the Cost of Dying paying particular attention to funeral costs which have increased by a jaw dropping 71 percent in the last eight years; today the average funeral costs around £3,284. Simon Cox of Sun Life said "Debt, despair and distress are the common hallmarks of arranging a funeral and there is no light at the end of the tunnel to suggest funerals will become more affordable."
As consumers there is a bewildering array of funerals available; almost any choice, no matter how seemingly wacky, is possible. From firework displays using the cremated ashes of the deceased, to boat trips commissioned specially for ash scattering, woodland burial in green pastures, woollen, rattan, and banana leaf coffins, and funeral directors offering themed funerals as we are told to celebrate the life of rather than mourn the loss of the deceased.
But there are those who do not want a funeral at all. These people are not religious, do not wish to line funeral directors' pockets, nor have the traditional Victoriana paraphernalia in a church, nor a service of any description conducted by a stranger in a crematorium. So no hearse, no limousines, no flowers, no service; nothing. I have had more people tell me than I ever thought possible that this would be their choice and recently had a very interesting conversation with a gentleman who set up a business to answer this demand. Seemingly, he collects the deceased and delivers the ashes back to the families within days. Business, apparently, is booming. It was started with the view of keeping costs to a minimum in order to assist families who are financially challenged but has found that the largest sector of his business is from solicitors and doctors; not exactly professionals which are likely to be short of a bob or two. The savings made leaves a tidy kitty for a jolly good shindig to commemorate the deceased in the presence of the ashes.
Funerals should be unique, meaningful and representative of our lives, but we also need to take into account the comfort that a well thought out funeral can bring to the bereaved; what consoles one can be an anathema to another.
We all have very different needs which may or may not be fulfilled by any given funeral but with such a vast array of choices to make in terms of religious content, style, timing and expense, if there are no guidelines from the deceased in place, there is more than enough fuel for family fallouts over a funeral.
More reason then, is it not, to give some thought to your own.


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Thursday, January 8, 2009
tomb raider: underworld
so, while at crystal dynamics, i was fortunate enough to have a chance to work on tomb raider: underworld--if you haven't played this yet, i recommend it--the game looks pretty darn amazing...
i got to work on lots of different outfits for lara, which was fun...i also got to help with the box art, which was also pretty neat--here's some costumes i got to help with...
10 comments:
- John said...
Awesome... I like the more mature face you've done there over the 12-year-old-Jolie-ish Lara from the last game.
Very cool that you got to work on a major title like that. Are those monster pics in the other post something for another game or movie? If so... whatever it is will be pretty sweet.
- January 8, 2009 at 3:22 PM
- Paul J. Sullivan said...
Nice stuff Seamas! I saw that they put your stuff in the art book that was released with the game. Looks like you had fun with it. Post more!
- January 8, 2009 at 7:18 PM
- Björn Hurri said...
nice stuff!
- January 9, 2009 at 1:22 PM
- . said...
Awesome art :)
- January 11, 2009 at 1:26 PM
- Dave McNeal said...
pretty damn amazing sir. great work these last few posts. Top notch!
- January 15, 2009 at 4:38 PM
- Emrah ELMASLI said...
Great stuff mate. It's really good to see your non-personal work here. This game is pretty amazing like you said...
Hope you're doing well. Take care!
- January 15, 2009 at 5:33 PM
- Parka said...
Nice. Just love Lara Croft.
- January 17, 2009 at 5:55 AM
- Adam Ford said...
We were actually just playing that and commenting on how amazing it looks!!! Congrats! I didn't know that you worked on that. Did you all you SH to light it?
- January 19, 2009 at 3:54 PM
Seamus - I hate you. How dare you draw Lara behind my back! You womanizing bastard! When will it end!?
Damn it - but it is amazing work. Even beyond the drooling fanboy reaction - great work as always man!
- January 23, 2009 at 12:22 PM
- Israel Oliveira dos Santos said...
Wow!! Your blog is AMAZING!!
I really like your character design, especcially the Dragons!!
Success and Welcome to 2009!!
- January 29, 2009 at 7:42 AM

subset: commoncrawl


text: Depending on what's burning, many other harmful chemicals can also enter the air during a fire. Direct exposure to smoke is harmful to your respiratory system, but smoke damage can also affect a building's structure, sometimes in unexpected ways. It's easier to understand how smoke behaves during a fire when you learn how temperature, the surrounding environment, particle ionization and airflow patterns affect smoke distribution.


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About the Artist
Ramon Rivas
I was Born in Ciudad Real (Castilla-La Mancha / Spain). To define what art is to me, I have to incorporate into my work area, in addition to my family, multi professionals, and social experiences, the figure of the invisible, non-human witness, who receives information through multiple channels. That retains it to be processed by a brain that promotes creativity, novelty, surprise, imagination, and freshness to art. Above all, it gives freedom to material and immaterial elements, so that they participate on equal terms as if they were people.
"Unicellular Surgery" 2020 – Mixed Media / Rivismo – Canvas , 76.7" x 76.7"
"Experiential Puzzle" 2018 – Mixed Media / Rivismo – Canvas , 76.7" X 76.7"
Materials and mathematical or physical expressions, among others, participate in functions and feelings typical of human relationships. Hence, a conceptual balance is established between non-human elements; the strong and the weak, equality, empathy, or reassignment of roles. Weak or brittle materials come to occupy the characteristics and functions of strong materials. All this explanation is present in the textual content of the Philosophy and the Concepts of Rivismo.
My works, too, show a balance between the basic elements such as; the composition, textures, colors, etc. and above all, with the creation of an energetic current that circulates throughout the stage, between the material, immaterial and human elements, which is projected outwards, enveloping itself with the energy of the observer.


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Best Linux Distros
Is your current Linux distribution really the best in town, or are you missing something even better?
We're going to get a lot of flak for writing these words, but we're not scared – Linux Voice drops ice cubes down the vest of fear. So here we go: you might be using the wrong Linux distribution. Or to put it more diplomatically, you might not be running the distro that's best suited to you. "What a load of codswallop!", you respond. "My distro does exactly what I need it to do. I've been using it for years and I'm happy with it."
That's great, but could it still do a lot more? Have you really tried all of the big-name distros in depth? Could there be another distro out there that's better than yours in a key area such as security, performance or documentation? Is your distro really the best when you're trying to convert newbies to Linux? It's good to settle on a single distro and learn its ins-and-outs, but given the rapid pace of development in Linux, it's always worth keeping your eyes open for something better.
With all these things in mind, we decided to look at the current state of play in the Linux distro world. We wanted to see which distros excel in certain important areas, to find out who's leading the charge here in mid-late 2014.
In tests like these, it's often possible to bundle certain distros together as they're so closely related. In the Packages section, for instance, we look at Ubuntu and Mint together because they share the same repositories. In any case, we want to give you all the information you need to make an informed choice about the best distro for you. So if the one you're currently using comes up tops in the categories important to you – congratulations! And if not, fire up VirtualBox and start exploring…
For beginners, two things are important. One is whether you can work out how to do something by yourself. The second is how easy is it to find a solution if you hit a problem.
For a long time, the standard distro for any beginner was Ubuntu. However, since the introduction of the Unity interface, it has become less popular. The non-traditional layout of the desktop could lead to beginners feeling unfamiliar, and the Launcher and scopes can take a little getting used to. People coming from Windows may also get confused by the way the window menu bar blends into the top menu bar.
The others distros we've looked at are all based on a traditional desktop, and the layout should be familiar to anyone who's used a computer at any time in the last 20 years. They have a task bar along the bottom and an applications menu in the lower right-hand corner.
Mint is the most popular of these. Its two main flavours (Mate and Cinnamon) are sufficiently similar that we'll consider them together. The last of the contenders in this category is Mageia.
Overall, we feel the KDE environment of Mageia is a bit too cluttered to be ideal for beginners, though it does have an important place. Both of the main Mint desktop environments (Cinnamon and Mate), are clean with unnecessary detail tucked away. It also looks really nice, which helps give a good first impression – no one wants their new operating system to look worse than their old one.
The biggest difference between Ubuntu and the others from a beginner's point of view isn't the interface, but the huge amount of help online in the form of tutorials, forum posts, and solutions to problems. If you get stuck on Ubuntu, you're far more likely to find a solution online than if you're using another flavour of Linux. Of course, an experienced user will know that if they have a problem on Mint or Zorin (another distro aimed specifically at new Linux users, with an interface designed to look and feel like Windows), they could look for a solution for Ubuntu and it would probably work. However, we can't really expect a new user to know this.
Ultimately, we think that the amount of help available for Ubuntu outweighs the unfamiliar user interface. However, everyone is different, and any of these distros would make a good choice for beginners. We would recommend Mint (either version) for beginners who had trouble getting used to Unity, and Mint Mate edition for people with lower-powered hardware.
This category is particularly contentious for two reasons. First, what is beauty, and who gets to define it? Second, since almost any distro can be made to look like almost any other distro, how do we decide which is the best looking? These are both valid questions, but we will crush them both with an authoritarian boot. Firstly, we know beauty when we see it, so we get to define it (if you don't like that, start your own magazine). Secondly, we'll look at each distro naked, straight after installing it.
Bodhi Linux is based on Enlightenment, which bills itself as the original eye-candy desktop environment. Perhaps the most impressive thing about Bodhi (and Enlightenment) is how many graphical treats it can supply with very little strain on the hardware. This makes it a good choice if you're after a slick distro for a low-powered machine. However, some of the graphical niceties feel a bit like they're there to show off, rather than to make using the desktop a more pleasing experience.
Lots of distros come with KDE, but default KDE is a bit lacklustre. OpenSUSE and Mageia do quite a good job of improving it, but they're not in the top tier. Our favourite KDE flavour is Rosa Desktop Fresh. As soon as the desktop loads, you can see it's not standard KDE. At the bottom of the screen, the RocketBar replaces the panel, but looks a lot nicer. Along with the usual icons and widgets, there's a Downloads stackfolder that enables you to see the contents of ~/Downloads without having to open up the file manager. Simple Welcome takes the place of the KDE menu, and works a little like a souped-up Gnome Dash. All these enhancements mean it's not the best distro if you prefer to use your own KDE configuration, but for people who want a good-looking distro on first boot, it's great.
Mint Cinnamon does a good job of getting out of the way, while still being pleasing to the eye. It's the least ostentatious of the environments we've looked at here, and this comes from having a clean desktop and a well-themed set of GTK widgets.
Pantheon – the desktop environment of Elementary OS – also uses GTK to provide a clean and elegant look. Elementary takes this approach further than Cinnamon, and the environment is stripped down to its bare essentials. Every icon feels like it's been placed for a good reason, and every pixel tweaked to fit in perfectly.
All of these distros look good. However, Elementary OS does the best job of carrying its style through the wide range of apps that comprise it, and so we're declaring it the best-looking desktop distro.
Brace yourself for some controversial statistics. Counting the exact number of packages in a distribution can be tricky, and different distributions package up software in different ways. For instance: imagine you've got a program called FooApp that has support for 10 different languages for its interface. One distro might bundle everything together into a single package – whereas another may give each language its own package. Multiply this over thousands of programs with multi-language support, and it drastically changes the package counts between distros, even if they have the same number of applications.
Similarly, many programs support the use of plugins and extensions; again, these may be placed into the main package in some distros, or split out across dozens of extra packages in others. Quite a few distros make use of "virtual" packages, so installing, for example, the package xfce4 actually pulls in 20+ other packages. And some distros that provide long-term support include multiple versions of packages for maximum compatibility (eg older versions of SDL, SDL-mixer, SDL-image etc).
So the end result doesn't necessarily reflect the range of software in a distro. Although it has twice the number of packages in its repositories, Debian doesn't simply have twice as many standalone programs as OpenSUSE. But one thing is for sure: if you're looking for a lesser-known or obscure piece of software, you're more likely to find it in the distros with the high package counts. A big chunk of the programs in Arch and Debian are old and haven't been updated in years, but they're still being rebuilt to work with the latest distro versions.
Now, let's talk about Arch Linux. We separated its package statistics into two parts here: one for the main distro (community, core, extra etc. repositories), and the other for AUR, the Arch User Repository. The latter is enormous and updated at a breakneck pace, but the packages are not in the "official" distribution (although they often end up there after extensive testing). Officially, Arch only had 6,836 packages at the time of writing – not actually that many, but that's what you get if you stick to the main distro.
"But hang on", you say, scratching your head. "I've just been to www.archlinux.org/packages, and it says there are 11,459 packages. What gives?" Well, that's the total for i686 and x86_64 packages – there's a lot of overlap. It's unfair to count the packages for all architectures (otherwise Debian's bar in the chart below would extend beyond the top of the page), so in the case of Arch and other distros, we chose the x86_64 and any/noarch repositories. Basically, the stats below show the number of packages you can install on an x86_64 box.
After all that a caveat: quality does not mean quantity. If you're looking for a server box, packages of synthesizers, games etc aren't going to be much use to you.
Quality is a lot more important than quantity when it comes to documentation. Over the years we've seen many free software projects that have reams of guides, tutorials and FAQs, but if the content is badly written, unorganised or out of date, it's not much use. The same applies to distros: a short, concise and well-written guide is much more useful than poorly maintained scraps of information scattered around the web.
Debian's official documentation is generally well crafted, but it suffers from a lack of centralisation. Go to www.debian.org/doc and you'll see that there are plenty of resources, but it's not clear where to start if you're seeking help about a specific problem. Should you look at the FAQ? Or Debian Reference? Maybe the wiki has the answer… It gets a bit messy, but we have to give a mention to the separate Debian Administrator's Handbook (http://debian-handbook.info). This is exactly what we're looking for as end users and admins: everything you might need, in one place.
Ubuntu's docs (https://help.ubuntu.com) are mainly focused on desktop end-users, with well categorised mini-guides to common tasks. The Server Guide has more advanced user material – but it's not exhaustive. Plenty of other tips are scattered around the wiki at https://help.ubuntu.com/community, and there's also
www.askbuntu.com, which is a good way for getting quick-fire responses to questions.
Many guides for Debian and Ubuntu apply to Mint, but the latter also has its own PDF installation guides in various languages: www.linuxmint.com/documentation.php. Some of the versions are very out-dated, however, missing the latest Mint releases.
Mageia, meanwhile, doesn't really impress with its limited range of guides at
www.mageia.org/en/doc; there's some information on the installer and control panel, presented in an unwelcoming fashion, but not much else on the wiki.
Back in the days of dial-up modem connections, SUSE Linux was our absolute favourite for documentation. You'd order a boxed set over the phone, and a few days later a hefty lump of Linux goodness would arrive at your door, containing three chunky manuals. It was bliss. Today, OpenSUSE still has an excellent set of documentation at http://doc.opensuse.org: the Startup guide (for regular end users), Reference (for administrators) and extra guides for security and virtualisation. There's some overlap and we'd like to see them combined more effectively, but the information contained therein is clear and well presented.
Then we have Fedora and CentOS. The former, at http://docs.fedoraproject.org, is in a sorry state: you're told to select a language and then Fedora version, and read the docs from there. Our test case was to find a guide to adding new user accounts – and for Fedora 20, it wasn't there. Nothing. When we opened up the documentation list for Fedora 18, however, we saw the System Administrator's Guide, which had the information we needed. So lots is either outdated or badly sorted – it's hard to navigate and needs to be cleaned up.
CentOS doesn't fare much better. The manuals at www.centos.org/docs don't cover the last two major releases, while the wiki has some useful guides, but they're scattered around and would be better organised into a single reference document. Of course, CentOS users can read the official Red Hat documentation at http://tinyurl.com/rheldocs, which is very thorough, straightforward, and polished. You can see the results of Red Hat paying people to work full-time on documentation.
Finally we come to Arch Linux, and we've saved the best until last here. Arch's documentation is almost entirely provided on the distro's wiki at https://wiki.archlinux.org, which has some of the most in-depth and detailed guides we've seen of any software project. The Beginner's Guide is especially good, if a bit long-winded (but then, Arch is targeted at experienced Linux users). Then there's the General Recommendations page, which is a superb one-stop-shop for all things administration: user management, packages, power management and so forth.
But what makes Arch our winner is this: for the large part, its information applies to other distros. In discussions on the web, we've seen users of Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora and other distros paste links to the Arch wiki, simply because its guides are so good.
There are lots of different aspects to security – enough for eight pages on its own. Your first step is to understand your own requirements. If your first priority is the security of your own data, for example, you would require a distribution that's happy to encrypt your home folder or root partition and handle the complexity that that involves. You may also want to extend that requirement to easy integration of GnuPG into the default email client, or even making sure Firefox is pre-configured to always use HTTPS. But most importantly, security needs to be easy, because if you don't understand what you're doing, a bad configuration is worse than no configuration at all, because it gives you a false sense of security. This is the problem with Arch. It can be the quickest distribution to patch a vulnerability, and it makes an excellent server, but you need to know what you're doing, because a mistake could be costly.
We have to give credit to Ubuntu here. It took the relatively brave step of moving its full-disk encryption option from behind the advanced settings in its installer to the forefront of the installation processes, giving many more users the opportunity to encrypt their data. For a distribution as user-friendly and as popular as Ubuntu, this was a brave move. Even the EFF was impressed.
Ubuntu also made a lot of noise when its shopping scope searches from the dash sent unencrypted data through its own servers to Amazon. Many of us had strong feelings about this, especially as there was no way of turning it off. But these problems have been mostly addressed, and while it's still turned on by default, there's a simple way of turning the shopping scope off. If you wanted to be certain, for course, we'd recommend using an Ubuntu derivative, but Ubuntu is still a good choice for easy, comprehensive encryption.
The other principal concern is online security. This always used to mean the pre-configuration of a firewall blocking external access to services running on your machine. This can still be important – you may only want a web server accessible on your LAN rather than across the internet, for instance. But it's more important to worry about the services and applications you run. This is where most problems occur, and the recent Heartbleed bug in OpenSSL highlights this issue perfectly. It's used by so many applications and services that many became vulnerable as soon as this bug was found, and consequently, the best distribution for security became the quickest distribution to patch the vulnerability.
But it's not just speed of deployment that's important, it's the quality of any patches as well as the testing that goes into the original distribution. And for that reason we'd recommend a distribution with a proven track record of defending itself online. CentOS, for example, with its Red Hat provenance is rock solid, although it still requires some know-how.
However, if security and privacy are of the utmost importance, nothing can touch Tails, a distribution designed for anonymity and secure communication, so we're putting that top of our list, followed by more pragmatic solutions that can be used more as day-to-day installations.
Back in the olden days, when every megahertz was sacred and PCs were beige, the performance of your distribution was important. It would make the difference between a system being snappy and usable, or a system being re-installed or consigned to the bin.
Nowadays it's the case that in some ways, especially for desktop use, performance has plateaued. Multi-core CPU cycles, storage and memory are cheap, and most of us barely touch their limits. Your choice of distro normally has much more to do with package provision and the default desktop environment than whether it's making best use of your hardware. And because that hardware is always so different from one user to the next, it's almost impossible to provide a comparative metric that's going to have any meaning.
Therefore, if you care about performance it's because you need to get the best out of limited hardware, and we can, sort of, test for that. In a completely unscientific way, we installed six diffeent distros alongside Windows 8 on the same PC and onto the same (large) hard drive. This is a real working computer (3.3GHz Core i5 with 16GB RAM) with dozens of devices connected, so it was a good real-world test. It also meant that the test was unfair on some distributions, as they made a much better job of parsing the many USB devices than others while taking longer to load for their trouble. This is why Arch does well at boot time – we haven't installed anything to make it do otherwise.
All of which is a long way of saying benchmarking and tests say very little about the performance you can expect on your own hardware, but there are three lessons we've learnt from these tests:
- Firefox runs almost identically, regardless of your distribution or desktop. If all you do is browse, don't worry about it.
- GUI tools for file management can have an effect on file operations, especially if you're installing third-party applications. Use the command line if you can. If not, take the time to configure a cut-down window manager or desktop.
- If you're looking for a distribution for low-powered hardware, use a low-powered distribution. Slacko Puppy 5.7.0 easily won nearly all the performance tests, only failing on the GUI compression. That's mosty because its creators wouldn't imagine the typical user not using the command line.
That makes Slacko Puppy our choice of distro if you need something to run on limited hardware. It's also pretty addictive running it on fast hardware, as you suddenly realise the reason why the window isn't moving immediately after you click it is because your desktop is drawing shadows and wobbly windows. Everything else suddenly feels sluggish.
But we also have to say that Lubuntu, the LXDE-based derivative, did remarkably well, which makes it our recommendation if you're looking for modern fittings on a frugal desktop, and one that still looks fantastic. Our third place goes to Arch simply because it's the easiest way to build your own minimal distribution for your own hardware, only installing exactly what you need.
Just as the sports team with the best stats doesn't simply win the game, the distro with the best scores in six areas doesn't simply get awarded the best distro status. To come up with an ultimate winner, we stared deep into each distro, and drew on our personal experience. We looked into every option, and meditated on the concept of distro nirvana.
We were looking for a distro that performs well in every area, and excellently in many, making it a good all-round distro. However this alone isn't enough. It needs to have something that pushes it ahead of the competition – and the competition is getting better every year. It needs that certain X factor to make it stand out. It should be a distro people want to install; a distro that people get passionate about; a distro that makes you remember why you love Linux.
Arch Linux does all this and more. The two things that make it stand out aren't fancy bits of software, or slick user interfaces, but its philosophy and its community. Arch is built around the simple principle that the user should control the system. Instead of fancy graphical tools to autoconfigure everything you need, it provides you with just the bare essentials you need to build your own system.
Just as a mountain climber becomes one with the raw mountain in order to climb it without technical assistance, and a surfer needs just a carved plank to harness the power of a wave, so a computer user needs just the basic tools that Arch Linux provides to get the most out of their system.
The community keep the documentation up to date, and build the Arch User Repository – one of the largest collections of software in the world.
All this doesn't mean that we think everyone should stop here while they go and install Arch on every computer they have. While we think it's the best Linux distro currently available, it's not perfect for every situation. For example, Tails is still the best distro for online anonymity, and the cutting-edge nature of Arch means that only the bravest sysadmins will use it on public-facing servers.
There are hundreds of Linux distros for a reason, and that reason is the hundreds of different uses people have for Linux. It's an endlessly flexible system, so there will never be just one form that is perfect for everyone.
That said, we think that Linux users should try Arch at least once. Even if you don't fall in love with the distro, you'll learn a lot about how Linux works, and get a better understanding of why other distros do the things they do. It's not just for super-geeks – it's a distro for the masses.


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10 Low-Carb Chocolate Peanut Butter Desserts You Have To Try
Chocolate and peanut butter is such a classic combination and I know why - it's delicious! There's just something about the contrast between the sweet chocolate and nutty peanut butter that makes you say yum. That's why keto chocolate peanut butter desserts are probably my favorite kind ever.
I've been on a huge peanut butter kick lately. I just can't get enough of the classic combo! Luckily, it's so easy to makeover my favorites into sugar-free, low carb chocolate peanut butter desserts. At the top of my list, these Healthy Chocolate Peanut Butter Bars are one of the best ways to enjoy peanut butter and chocolate together.
If you're as in love with this flavor combination, you're going to want to check out all of the wonderful low carb chocolate peanut butter dessert recipes I've found. Fudge, cheesecake, cookies and more! Peanut butter and chocolate can be made into any kind of dessert you're craving. With these sugar-free and low carb recipes, you can treat yourself without guilt.
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Low Carb Chocolate Peanut Butter Desserts You Have To Try
Launch the gallery and find your new favorite low carb chocolate peanut butter recipe now. Or, pin the image below to come back when you're craving something sweet!


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Here's a conspiracy theory: The 1975 are influenced by The Japanese House, not the other way around. When 23-year-old British musician Amber Bain's solo project emerged with the first of four EPs in 2015 (Pools To Bathe In—think James Blake interpreting Imogen Heap), The Japanese House—named after a vacation cottage she visited once in Devon, England—was a mystery. All listeners knew was that The Japanese House had signed to Dirty Hit, the label run by The 1975 frontman Matthew Healy and their manager. So, naturally, fans decided it was a made-up name for a Healy side-project with his bandmate George Daniel. "The 1975, that you?" asked one commenter on an early Instagram post of the sky in 2015. Just imagine the four men in The 1975, disguising themselves as a fictitious teenage gay woman.
In a Vulture interview from 2018, Healy said he first came across the then-teenager through a then-girlfriend, Bain's friend. "When I heard Amber for the first time, I was like, 'The fuck is this?!'" Healy said. "It was some weird post-apocalyptic Alison Moyet. I said, 'How old is she? Is she a girl?' She was 17. She was gay. She had this line: 'I watched him kiss her and it felt so boring.' It wasn't like, 'Ooh quirky gayness,' or a woman 'taking control.' It was new."
In some ways, her vision is so singular and specific to Bain you wonder how her authorship was ever a debate. She is a producer, a songwriter, a vocalist, a guitarist (and, it turns out quite the social media comic—her pinned tweet is a photo of her and her dog Calvin reimagining the Call Me By Your Name film poster) whose EPs contain such depth and space your brain will fog and you'll find yourself traveling over and under while standing still. Her debut LP Good At Falling is staggering in its fluency and directness. It's the gentlest of revolutions, a sonic delight that lyrically details Bain's encounters with women. Some of the nuances are so particular to lesbian relationships that they don't often appear in mainstream culture. The closest analog might be the '00s sitcom The L Word.
"Men think we must have sex all the time because we're gay and obsessed with sex," says Bain, thinking back on her relationships, including her last serious relationship with ex-girlfriend Marika Hackman, another British singer-songwriter. "I guess at the beginning of all relationships that's true, but women do become so attached to one another and—I'm literally gonna quote the therapist from The L Word."
In the show's pilot, its main couple Tina and Bette sit as their therapist tells them that emotional dependency is a deterrent to sex among female couples. To which Tina exclaims: "The lesbian urge to merge!" Bain explores that phenomenon on "We Talk All The Time," which is about her enduring friendship with Hackman. "We don't fuck any more, but we talk all the time so it's fine," she sings. On the bridge she asks: "Should we start again?" There's an open-endedness to their relationship, a blurring of lines. It was written way before they'd broken up.


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Spend today through Sunday in lovely Northeast Minneapolis for the city's most celebrated weekend. Every gallery and artist's studio is open to the public, with tons of great art, jewelry and clothing for sale, plus food, drinks, and live music at all your favorite Northeast hangouts.
What's already officially the coolest neighborhood ever (and not just because I live here) gets even more fun this weekend. Come on down and buy me a Strongbow.
Weekend highlights in Vita.mn: Art-A-Whirl 2010: Whirl pool


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From advertising to fashion, music and aviation, AirAsia's president of China Kathleen Tan has certainly done the rounds. To her, what is most important at the end of it all is encouraging and promoting homegrown Asian talent. In a no-holds-barred interview that went well past its allotted time, Tan talks to Anandhi Gopinath about her fascinating career in marketing, how she arrived at AirAsia's doors and the difference she aims to make in the business.
A particularly unsettling incident during Kathleen Tan's time at an advertising agency in Singapore left a bad taste in her mouth, and changed her life forever. More importantly, it was the first step in the long journey that led her to the job she holds today: AirAsia's president for China. She was personally hired by CEO Tan Sri Tony Fernandes, and the growth of her career mirrors the trajectory of the Malaysian low-cost carrier's journey as it went from burgeoning airline to successful aviation behemoth.
"In the early days in advertising, the top jobs were all held by foreigners. That was why I left Leo Burnett," Tan begins. "I was in my early thirties and so proud to be Asian. I was working on the Shangri-La account and at the last minute, I was told that I would not be able to attend the pitch that I was working on. Instead, the art director — a white guy — would do it. This was 11pm and I was still working on perfecting the pitch boards as the next morning, I was meant to fly to Bangkok. And then they picked someone else. That was when I realised that this is the time for Asians to rise — I am as smart as a lot of Westerners, and so were a lot of the young Asian talents in the agencies at the time."
While someone else was presenting her own painstakingly prepared pitch in Bangkok, Tan wrote out her resignation letter and made up her mind — she had to be somewhere that recognised the value of homegrown, Asian talent. "I love the company and I remain friends with some of my former colleagues, but I decided it was time for me to move on — I needed to control my own destiny," she says. Tan was glad for her experience in the agency, but she was also ready for a new challenge.
Her decision, which may seem rash in retrospect, turned out to be the right one as that very morning, she received a call from FJ Benjamin, which wanted her to manage advertising and promotion for its fashion brands.
Tan's move into contemporary fashion has left a permanent mark — she has a great sense of style. We meet, naturally, at AirAsia's massive headquarters in Sepang. It is located next to the sprawling klia2, which Tan flies into from Singapore just in time for our interview. Her travel outfit is on point, consisting of a crisp white cotton blouse, embroidered olive trousers and bright yellow slides. We are quite happy to photograph her as is, but she insists on changing into a more feminine ensemble of a lace blouse and floral printed skirt.
As we get her pictures taken, I get a glimpse of the steely determination and eye for detail that led to Tan's success — she is happy to do whatever it takes for the perfect shot, responding positively to photographer Soo's directions. She is full of laughs too, and takes an avid interest in both our lives — where we are from, how long we've done what we've done, and why we love our jobs so much.
Once the photography wraps up, we settle into one of the many glass-walled meeting rooms in AirAsia's headquarters, where over some coffee — a mid-morning necessity for Tan — she tells us more about her time in luxury fashion, and what it was like in Singapore then.
It was not, according to Tan, necessarily very exciting. Brands such as Gucci and Lanvin would attract high-net-worth customers from Japan and Indonesia, so marketing efforts were strictly controlled by the brands' headquarters in Europe.
"Nash wanted to bring [American clothing brand]Guess in, but Frank was unsure," Tan recalls, referring to the Benjamin siblings. "I told Frank, 'I think we should bring this brand in, it's so much fun! Consumers are like me, they are young confident women. The market has changed!' I was very passionate, and I think my conviction won him over. So he gave us 'young people' S$20,000 to do advertising and marketing for Guess. I agreed, without having any real background in fashion marketing," she laughs. The runaway success of the quintessential American label in both Singapore and Malaysia made her realise that she had a natural flair for marketing, but she soon outgrew her role at FJ Benjamin.
Just then, she was headhunted to work for Warner Music, which was looking for someone outside of the industry to grow the market in the region. Making the transition from the glitzy world of fashion to the gritty music scene was tough. "It was a company with a lot of industry veterans who didn't quite understand marketing. They would go and see retailers and export a lot of albums, which were flooding another market and therefore artificially inflated sales," she recalls. Her first project was to market contemporary R&B band All-4-One. It saw sales of 40,000 CDs — an impressive feat.
Warner's offices in Singapore and Malaysia were very competitive, and news soon spread of this smart, well-connected and stylish marketing star who was making waves in the industry. "All my contacts in Singapore informed me that the guys from Warner Malaysia were checking me out," Tan laughs. "So I said to pass the message around that I am very scary." One of the people doing this undercover sleuthing was Fernandes, who grew to respect and admire Tan's talent and drive, and of course, her knack for marketing.
It was an encounter that would also change Tan's life, and the two remained friends even after Fernandes resigned from his role as Warner's regional vice-president to famously acquire debt-laden AirAsia for a token sum of RM1 in 2001. Fernandes offered Tan a job in his fledgling airline a few years later, and the rest, as the adage goes, is history. But in no way does the story read like your average history book, that's for sure.
"Fernandes basically offered me a job at a Linkin Park concert. During the first song, I felt someone tugging at my T-shirt and I kept flicking it away because I was so busy enjoying the music. When I finally acknowledged him, he said, 'Come and work for my company! Help me run my airline in Singapore.' I wanted to get him off my back so I said, 'As long as you can pay me as well as you did when you were with Warner?' He agreed, and I went back to the concert. That was my priority," she laughs.
Tan kept her word and quit her job at Warner, but Fernandes' plans to expand into Singapore hit a brick wall, so his plans for her were derailed a little. She would have to move to Kuala Lumpur instead of remaining in Singapore, and take on the role of vice-president for marketing, Greater China. Tan was, by this time, very much sold on the idea of low-cost airlines and was ready for the new challenge. She arrived in KL with all her possessions in two new Samsonite suitcases.
For the second time in her career, Tan was greeted by a huge shock — after getting used to Warner's new office in Singapore that was fitted with stylish accents such as Philippe Starck furniture, she was given a former engineering office, where AirAsia's 200-odd staff worked in a space that looked like a warehouse. Getting to her office required a trek across an asphalt tarmac. "On my first day, I stood there in my Armani suit and high heels, and I was shocked. There was no pantry to make my 11am coffee, and I couldn't simply smoke anywhere either. I also wouldn't see Tony for a whole month upon joining."
In reality, Tan's experience was not unique as many people from Warner had joined Fernandes in his new venture. However, they bowed to their new working conditions. But Tan did not — she insisted on a proper office, for example, and maintained her self-imposed stylish corporate dress code. It was an environment she was completely unfamiliar with and she was far away from home, but she was determined to not just survive but also thrive. "In Singapore, I was somebody and everyone knew who I was. I told myself that I was going to be somebody in AirAsia and be a mover and shaker."
Despite her ambitious nature, things were not easy as Tan struggled to adjust to a new country, new working environment and, of course, a completely new industry. There was no more chauffeur-driven BMW, no more golf memberships — instead, it was the arid plains of Sepang day after day, where Tan increasingly felt very much alone since many people were used to reporting to Fernandes and saw her as an outsider.
"It was all very humbling for me. No Singaporean would come to Malaysia for work in those days. After a month, I was struggling and I told Tony that I couldn't take a salary from him anymore. I sent him an SMS, saying that I wanted to quit. About three weeks in, the sole of my heels had come off after walking on the tarmac and rushing for the train and that was when I felt like I was done. I missed my sports car and my comfortable life, so I told him that I wanted to quit and move back to Singapore. He was in New York, and he replied with these three words: Go change China."
To this day, Tan feels that Fernandes only told her this because he knew she had handled several Chinese artists during her years at Warner. "Tony wanted to start flying to Macau and we were having issues, so he told me, 'Go to Guangzhou and get the best airport deal for me. Come on Kat, I believe in you!' I was already ready to go home, and could quite easily have checked out of the Pan Pacific Hotel with my two bags. But Tony's words weighed heavily on me, even though I'm quite certain he's forgotten them by now. So I put down the phone and took the deepest possible breath: I had to commit to staying in Malaysia. This man believed in me and I could not let him down."
Tan, desperately homesick by this time, took things into her own hands and remembers writing down on a piece of paper all the people she needed to see in order to work out this China deal Fernandes spoke of — and not giving them the option of saying no. "I am Kathleen Tan and you have to see me — that was my stand. I was so clueless and they would all throw around all sorts of industry jargon. I had heaps to learn but I insisted on learning it," she says.
Tan ordered the largest bilingual Chinese map that she could find and tried to comprehend the magnitude of the job ahead. The Chinese did not quite understand the idea of low-cost airlines, and certainly was not at all used to a woman doing business with them. Tan was an enigma in the industry but the Chinese could not help but be enthralled by this well-dressed and extremely intelligent woman who wowed them with her fluency in Mandarin and her knowledge of local history. Likely, they were also impressed with her ability to imbibe — she once downed 22 shots of Maotai in one sitting.
Within six months, Tan managed to cut her first deal with the Xiamen Gaoqi International Airport — it was one of many to come, and Fernandes was suitably impressed. AirAsia's footprint in China continued to grow as the company made global headlines as one of the most interesting and dynamic low-cost carriers in the world.
In 2011, AirAsia and American travel company Expedia went into a joint venture that would create new opportunities for both companies in the region, simultaneously transforming the way consumers research, book, plan and share their travels. In 2013, at which point Tan had clocked up nine years as AirAsia's regional head of commercial, she moved back to Singapore as CEO of AirAsiaExpedia. She learnt a great deal about travel and e-commerce, and would continually share her knowledge with Fernandes.
Tan spent two years with AirAsiaExpedia and then decided it was time for a break. "I was burnt out and I wanted to smell the roses," Tan says wearily. "I was moving so fast for so long! I'd wake up at 5.30am and sleep at 1am — because the early years were the hardest. I had to educate people in every country we fly to on what low-cost airlines mean and why our flights were so cheap. No one bought airline tickets online then, even though we do it all the time now. This was before social media, so we did everything the hard way. We travelled and explored every destination we went to before we could sign any airport deals. There was so much pushing and convincing to do, and it was exhausting."
Up to this point, Tan's marketing and branding chutzpah had been proved time and again. She was the one who insisted on red livery for AirAsia's planes and a sponsorship deal with Manchester United — something Fernandes especially liked. She even mooted the idea of the 1,000,000 free seats deal. She hired fresh graduates with fresh ideas, and made the AirAsia brand a clever and endearing one.
Her year off was well earned and much deserved, and she returned to AirAsia in 2016 as president for North Asia, but this time, based at home in Singapore. "I wasn't going to come back, but Tony needed my help," she smiles.
Today, Tan has become something of a social media sensation in China, with scores of followers on Sina Weibo — China's version of Twitter. Her followers eagerly lap up anything and everything she posts about, from her favourite eats in Penang to a favoured holiday haunt in Ipoh. "The digital phenomenon has changed the tourism playbook — young people use Instagram and Facebook. When I post a video on Ipoh, I get 145,000 views! So it indicates that the Chinese do respond to things like this," she says.
Apart from the actual work of conquering China, today, Tan is still adjusting to her return to AirAsia. "The AirAsia I have come back to has changed," she muses. "You have a lot of young people in high positions now, so it's about meeting them halfway — they didn't go through what I did but their challenges are different. The digital space is very different these days but I am glad for my time at Expedia where I learnt about all this. Social media is no more about a still photo but videos and creating compelling content. In China, my job is to build the brand in second and third-tier cities. There's still a huge amount of people who want to travel and we have a lot of positive things going for us."
She stops, and thinks for a second. "But as a leader, I want my focus to be building local talent in China. They are very tech savvy and I want to recruit these talents into the company. If you want to be global, you need global talent. Also, in China itself, we don't want to be a foreign brand that only hires Malaysians — we want to give something back. We want to ensure that the team in China is a strong one, and staffed with native Chinese."
I notice that we have come full circle — inspired by her own need to fight for local talent, Tan is now in a position to encourage it further. Few people have this opportunity in their lifetime; to recognise a discrepancy in the system and work hard towards fixing it in their own way. Although Tan's hard work in successfully managing the AirAsia business in China may be what she is known for, it is her passion to grow the human aspect of the business that is most outstanding.


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Soledad O'Brien speaks with investigative journalist Richard Miniter about the Obama administration and Romney campaign's views on politicizing the 1-year-anniversarry of the death of Osama Bin Laden.
CNN welcomes a lively and courteous discussion as long as you follow the Rules of Conduct set forth in our Terms of Service. Comments are not pre-screened before they post. You agree that anything you post may be used, along with your name and profile picture, in accordance with our Privacy Policy and the license you have granted pursuant to our Terms of Service.
Starting Point airs weekdays from 7am to 9am ET on CNN. Check in often to join the daily conversation.


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Tanghalang Ateneo celebrates its 35th Season: Reimagining the Greeks by staging four classic Greek plays with a contemporary edge.
Euridice is grounded on the Greek legend of Orpheus and Eurydice. However, Sarah Ruhl's modern take on the tale focuses on the female character of Eurydice. It exhibits romantic love between a man and a woman. At the same time, Sarah Ruhl introduces a new dynamic to the story with the addition of a new character, Eurydice's father, and it shows the story of a woman's relationship with her father – the love between a father and his daughter.
Euridice is a workshop production featuring the Tanghalang Ateneo ensemble. Along with theater veterans Dennis Marasigan and Garry Lim alternating for the role of Father, Teresa Barrozo for sound and music design and 2013 Carlos Palanca Memorial Awardee, Guelan Varela-Luarca for the Filipino translation of Sarah Ruhl's original script.
Contact Details:
For inquiries and reservations, contact Hannah Tolentino at (63 917) 576-0805.


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1st May 2014 | IGT Challenge Tour
IGT latest Sponsor PMR Nutrition
PMR Nutrition is a business that was started under the name Professional Nutrition by JJ Janse van Rensburg about 10 years ago. JJ has lots of years of experience in the nutritional field and is still involved in the formulation of our product range.
The name has been changed to PMR Nutrition in 2011, although the products are still the same as always. The name was changed to make it possible to trademark the brand. There are new products out under the new name and still new one's in the making. Our products are available at health shops, pharmacies and people with scio practices. At the moment we are mainly in Gauteng and a few other distributors in Nelspruit, Brits, Rustenburg, Pietersburg, Potchefstroom, George and Bloemfontein. We plan to expand to the rest of South Africa.
The PMR Nutrition Team Consist of CEO – Alwyn Prinsloo, GM – Elané Lewies, Account & Marketing Manager – Ettienne Lewies and Formulator – JJ Janse van Rensburg together with our Local Manufacturing team at CW Pharmaceuticals in Sunderland Ridge, Centurion.


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Pope Francis laughs with choir members during his visit to All Saints' Anglican Church in Rome • Alessandro Bianchi/Reuters
On Feb. 26 Pope Francis became the first Catholic pontiff to visit an Anglican parish in Rome. He used the historic occasion to press for greater unity after centuries of mistrust, prejudices, and hostility between the two churches, the Associated Press reported.
Francis and the Rt. Rev. Robert Innes, the Church of England's Bishop of Gibraltar in Europe, prayed side by side in All Saints' Church, not far from the Spanish Steps.
In his homily, Pope Francis acknowledged that Anglicans and Catholics had long "viewed each other with suspicion and hostility" and that there were "centuries of mutual mistrust."
"At times, progress on our journey toward full communion may seem slow and uncertain, but today we can be encouraged by our gathering," the pontiff said.
In turn, Innes praised the pope for his work on behalf of refugees and migrants.
Francis also said he is studying the possibility of visiting South Sudan, which is suffering from famine and civil war.
He said Anglican, Presbyterian, and Roman Catholic leaders from South Sudan had asked him to make the trip with the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Archbishop Justin Welby has described the famine in South Sudan as a dire situation requiring urgent humanitarian and prayerful response. The United Nations reports that 275,000 children are severely malnourished and more than 5 million people urgently need food, agricultural, and nutritional assistance.
One worshiper, who cited Pope Benedict XVI's concern about stressing shared social actions over seeking theological agreement, asked Francis if he preferred working together on practical matters to holding theological discussions.
Both are important, Francis said: "You have to search through dialogue, through roots, through sacrament. There are things we're not in agreement on, but you cannot do this in a laboratory. You have to do this walking together."
The mood was informal. At the end of the gathering, one parishioner gave Francis a traditional Lenten cake, while another woman presented him with a basket of homemade marmalades and chutneys.


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This article, part of a major research project dealing with return migrants, delves into the feeling of loss experienced by female return migrants who migrated in their youth and returned home as older women. Analysis of both qualitative and quantitative data confirms that most of the respondents regretted their decision to migrate mostly because they thought it had harmed their marriage prospects. Many of them also felt that their long absence from home had weakened their roots in the family and community. A substantial number of respondents rued that the professional skills they possessed before migration had become redundant in the country of their origin as they were not able to use these while they were away.
The purpose of this study was to map the different forms of Assisted Return that are in place in the EU Member States, thereby facilitating a comparative analysis and providing a basis to support any further policy development at national and EU level that might be undertaken. It does this by outlining inter alia the various approaches of Assisted Return programmes of the Member States in order to identify lessons learned, best practices and possible synergies to further develop and improve Assisted Return programmes in the EU.
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Schlock-Wire: Year Zero Brings You Into New York's Musical Heritage In WATCH THE CLOSING DOORS VOL. 1
This news isn't specifically schlock material but it does touch on the broad spectrum of musical culture, high to low, so it merits mention here. Watch The Closing Doors, Vol. 1 is the first installment of new CD compilation series curated by journalist Kris Needs. This new series is designed to chronicle the history of New York's varied musical culture between the years of 1940 and 2000. As you'll see from the track listing, it's an ambitious undertaking that covers everything from jazz to doo-wop to early electronic experimentation. It will be released on May 10th by Year Zero Records. Read on for all muso-minded details…
Watch the Closing Doors – A History of New York's Musical Melting Pot
Renowned journalist Kris Needs embarks on mammoth project documenting the history of New York's Musical History from 1945 through to 2000s…Watch the Closing Doors!
Watch The Closing Doors: A History of New York's Musical Melting Pot is a six volume, double CD series, by renowned journalist and author Kris Needs. This ambitious project is released throughout 2011 via Year Zero (www.watchtheclosingdoors-ny.com) and it is aiming to capture the fast-vanishing magic of New York City while documenting major musical landmarks and developments, decade –by-decade from post-war New York of the mid 1940s through to 2000s.
The first volume focuses on the 1940s and 50s in released on May 10th and it's setting the scene for a further five sets, straddling the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and 2000s, each accompanied by a book containing the relevant musical and social history, artist biographies, illustrations and Needs' own stories and recollections of the city that once never slept. For some local perspective and occasional advice on inclusions, Needs is pestering names he has encountered during his 35 years as a writer, starting with Suicide's Martin Rev.
Since time immemorial, those who visit New York for the first time have come back reporting epiphanies, whether that first senses-blasting glimpse of the skyline from a yellow cab, or the unique energy coursing through the teaming streets and whichever gigs and clubs selected from the multiple choices available every night of the week. This century has seen those feelings increasingly tempered with a realisation that the funky New York of legend and infamy is vanishing as Times Square turns into Disneyland and once no-go Lower East Side streets become safe to navigate through the next trendy bar or café. The Downtown spirit which fired up so much great music has been smothered by sky-high rents, Mayor Giuliani's 'zero tolerance' crime blitz and closing of long-running venues such as CBGBs. August Darnell, one of New York's most celebrated exports in his Kid Creole persona, says he cries when he goes back to the city where he grew up. "New York has changed so drastically. The thing that bothers me most is the melting pot aspect is gone. Manhattan has become an island for the very wealthy."
One of the aims of the series is to document and celebrate this lost world before it totally disappears, give it some unity and due respect, while striving to explain why the New York of the last half of the 20th century was the most exciting place on Earth. The buildings and individuals might be disappearing, but that indefinable spirit which affected so many has thankfully been captured for posterity on countless records, standing like snapshots of a bygone age, the tip of a mighty iceberg which will be gathered on these albums like an old photo album.
Like the subway system is the lifeblood artery of the city, we will pinball through neighbourhoods and boroughs, musical trends and styles, accompanied by a bit of local background to conjure something of a backdrop as, quite often, the music was born out of the environment, whether positive or negative. There will also be the odd incident which may prompt the age-old sigh, 'Only in New York'.
1. DUKE ELLINGTON – Take The 'A' Train **
2. COZY COLE – Bad **
3. FRANKIE LYMON & TEENAGERS – Why Do Fools Fall In Love **
4. MACHITO – Mucho Mambo
5. FAYE ADAMS – Shake A Hand **
6. LOUIS ARMSTRONG – Yellow Dog Blues **
7. ALMANAC SINGERS – Talking Union **
8. HARRY BELAFONTE – Matilda **
9. CAB CALLOWAY – Minnie The Moocher **
10. DANNY TAYLOR – Coffee Daddy Blues **
11. DIZZY GILLESPIE – Manteca **
12. NINA SIMONE – Little Girl Blue **
13. FIVE SATINS – In The Still Of The Nite **
14. BILLIE HOLIDAY – Autumn In New York **
15. MILES DAVIS – Summertime **
16. CHARLES MINGUS – Goodbye Pork Pie Hat **
17. JOHN CAGE – Indeterminacy Pt 2
1. COZY COLE -Topsy Pt 2
2. HONEYCONES – Op
3. HORACE SILVER – Senor Blues [Newport Jazz fest]
4. JOSH WHITE – Southern Exposure **
5. NEW LOST CITY RAMBLERS – How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live ** 6. DAVE VAN RONK – Duncan & Brady **
7. SONNY TERRY – Custard Pie Blues **
8. DRIFTERS – Money Honey **
9. BIG JOE TURNER – Morning Noon And Night **
10. THE EMBERS – Paradise Hill **
11. PARAGONS – Twilight **
12. BIG MAYBELLE – One Monkey Don't Stop No Show **
13. THELONIOUS MONK – Brilliant Corners
14. RAYMOND SCOTT – Ripples **
15. ALLEN GINSBERG – Howl
Tracks marked ** also appear on 2LP format


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UK singer songwriter Lewis Watson has signed a global services deal with Cooking Vinyl.
Watson achieved early recognition when, after several years of uploading his own videos to YouTube, his self-released EP It's Got Four Sad Songs On It BTW became a Top 10 iTunes hit in 2012.
He subsequently signed to Warner Bros Records at just 18-years-old to release is debut album The Morning.
His new as-yet-untitled album, which was self-funded and produced and co-written with Ant West is scheduled for release in February 2017.
Rob Collins, general manager of Cooking Vinyl, said: "At just 23 years old Lewis has already achieved an amazing amount and is still just getting started. His energy and drive have seen him produce an impressive body of work and tour the world picking up new fans wherever he goes. He is an exceptional talent with a very clear vision of where he is heading."
Matt Johnson of Red Light Management added: "We are delighted to be working with Rob, Martin and everyone at Cooking Vinyl for Lewis' second album. The album is truly fantastic and a real sign of growth in a young artist. We're excited about the enthusiastic new team and infrastructure in place."
"I'm absolutely thrilled to start the process of releasing album two with such a great company," Watson commented. "With the guy (Dallas Green) who made me pick up a guitar in the first place on their roster, it can't go wrong."


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re·lent /rɪˈlɛnt/
Re·lent v. i. [imp. & p. p. Relented; p. pr. & vb. n. Relenting.]
1. To become less rigid or hard; to yield; to dissolve; to melt; to deliquesce. [Obs.]
He stirred the coals till relente gan
The wax again the fire. --Chaucer.
[Salt of tartar] placed in a cellar will . . . begin to relent. --Boyle.
When opening buds salute the welcome day,
And earth, relenting, feels the genial ray. --Pope.
2. To become less severe or intense; to become less hard, harsh, cruel, or the like; to soften in temper; to become more mild and tender; to feel compassion.
Can you . . . behold
My sighs and tears, and will not once relent? --Shak.
Re·lent, v. t.
1. To slacken; to abate. [Obs.]
And oftentimes he would relent his pace. --Spenser.
2. To soften; to dissolve. [Obs.]
3. To mollify ; to cause to be less harsh or severe. [Obs.]
Re·lent n. Stay; stop; delay. [Obs.]
Nor rested till she came without relent
Unto the land of Amazons. --Spenser.
◄ ►
v : give in, as to influence or pressure [syn: yield, soften]
[ant: stand]


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Hotel information and group rate for this camp will be posted soon!
- John Wayne International Airport (SNA) is the most convenient airport to Hart Park and is 15 minutes away
- Ontario International Airport (ONT) is 35 minutes away
- Long Beach (LGB) is 35 minutes away
- Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) is 45-60 minutes away
Players traveling solo must arrange their own mode of transportation to and from airport/hotel/field. Rising Prospects staff and/or college coaches are not allowed to provide rides. Out of state players are encouraged to request an earlier camp group via email (firstname.lastname@example.com) in order to properly schedule their return flights.


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[miau] Like many other land based casino slot machines, IGT has decided to try Coyote Moon as an online machine. Coyote Moon and Wolf Run are two of IGT's most sought after slot machines. There are not any differences between the online version and the actual casino version. So this overview is based on the game in either setting. It is important to note that not all jurisdictions allow online slot machine play. It is okay to play for amusement only, but not for real money. So when reviewing this slot big payouts can mean large amounts of credits won online or large amounts of cash at actual casinos.
Coyote Moon is one of the most played games at casinos. It resembles IGT's other famous machine Wolf Run. The graphics are simple and the colors are neutral. This is unique compared to many machines that offer vibrant, colorful screens and graphics full of detail. This particular game is a five reel machine with a total of forty paylines. One can choose how many lines to activate and how much to wager when playing Coyote Moon. The most common way to win is to match three or more similar symbols on an active payline. Certain symbols pay higher amounts and the payout is also dependent on where they are in regards to the payline. If you want to know exact payouts, most machines have a help screen that can show you which symbols pay the most. To keep with the Wild West theme, some of the symbols included are a deer, hummingbird, lizard and a cow skull. These symbols come to life when they are in a winning combination.The coyote howling at the moon symbol is wild and it is featured in stacked forms allowing for even larger payouts. So, always hope to see plenty of these coyotes in each spin.
There is also a bonus within this slot machine.
The Ancient Singing Coyote Bonus is represented on reels two, three and four. When the bonus is initiated you automatically win five free spins. You can accumulate up to 255 free spins in the bonus round if you continue to get the scatter symbols on the middle reels. Your chances of winning larger amounts are increased during this round because the amount of stacked wild symbols also increase. The colors become darker and more enchanting during the bonus and the music also changes making it a little more exciting than basic play.
Although it lacks the glitz and glitter of many of the newer machines, Coyote Moon will always have a large following both in online casinos and land based casinos. These machines are generally featured at nearly every casino. They are hidden within the newer machines, so make sure you keep your eyes open for games like Coyote Moon. Many people gravitate towards them because they are very easy to understand. If it happens to be someones first time playing a multi-line machine, this is the perfect slot to introduce them to. It's not at all overwhelming and the bonus isn't interactive.
The bonuses occur fairly often on these machines and depending on the wager, one can end up being quite lucky playing Coyote Moon.


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Complimentary notary services are provided at City Hall (1025 Campbell Road) to all Spring Valley Village residents. All that is required is your Texas driver's license or identification card which displays your Spring Valley Village address. For more information, please contact the City Secretary's office at (713) 465-8308 or firstname.lastname@example.com.


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Making the Case for Restorative Practices
Another great blog post from friend of EdVisions, Dr. Nancy Allen-Mastro! This time she's taking a look at the powerful results that can come from incorporating restorative practices into schools and how it's being done at Paladin Career and Technical High School.
Dr. Allen-Mastro began her career in education as an elementary school teacher and later spent 26 years as a school administrator, serving in a variety of roles, including Principal, K-12 Director of Curriculum, Instruction, & Assessment, Assistant Superintendent, and Superintendent in rural and suburban schools in Minnesota. She earned her Bachelor's degree from Montana State University, a Master's degree from Bemidji State University, and a Doctorate from the University of North Dakota. She retired in 2017.
Making the Case for Restorative Practices
By Dr. Nancy Allen-Mastro
"If you do things to kids, that's punishment. If you do things for them, that's permissive. Do nothing at all, and that's neglect. But if you do things with them, that's restorative." -Brandon Wait, Paladin Career & Technical High School
School discipline is something few people really like to discuss. Let's be honest – the topic is rife with negative connotations. The conversation usually focuses on negative behaviors, and an inordinate amount of time is usually spent on determining the appropriate punishment. "We need to hold kids accountable," we say. "They must suffer the consequence of their choices."
Traditional discipline models were designed for one purpose: to keep kids in line. This was usually done by threat of what would happen if students didn't behave. In the second half of the 20th century, we started to include incentives and a progressive plan of attack in hopes of modifying behavior before it went too far. But even such good intentions as these were still dependent on denying privileges. Missing recess, being sent out of class, suspension, and the big daddy of them all – expulsion – prevailed and continue to this day.
But has a system of threats really worked? Perhaps it has acted as a deterrent for some students. After all, if you go through a red traffic light, you know you'll get a ticket. We all get that. However, as teachers and administrators it's as much our duty to teach students about appropriate behavior and how to make good choices as it is to teach them how to read and write. Unfortunately, we are quick to judge and dish out consequences. For some students that just doesn't work. In fact, we may be doing them more harm than good.
We are also perpetuating inequity in the system. Take for example the disproportionate suspension and exclusion rates for students of color and students with disabilities, as well as the prevalence for boys to be punished at much higher rates than girls. This is a topic of grave concern throughout the nation. Moreover, at a time when school staff report alarming increases in mental health issues in students, our standard practice of crime and punishment is simply unacceptable.
Gradual changes in practice show that better options exist. Some immediate examples that come to mind are Responsive Classroom, Conscious Discipline, and Positive Behavior Intervention and Supports, in which each seeks to promote pro-social behavior in an intentional, proactive way.
Preceding them all, however, was restorative justice. Restorative justice began in the early 1970s as an alternative to the court system. At its core was restitution, used as a way to compensate for a victim's loss. Gradually, victim-offender mediation and victim-offender dialogue were added. The idea migrated to schools and since the early 1990s has gained in popularity as a model for discipline. Today, a broader set of strategies known as restorative practices are dotting the landscape.
Restorative practices begin with a different end in mind. Rather than seeking to control student behavior through external reward and consequence, practitioners seek to teach students to manage their own behavior. Trust, relationship, and community-building are key elements in developing social-emotional skill and awareness. These can be cultivated in a variety of ways, which means how restorative practices look in one school to the next varies widely.
One school that has embraced restorative practices with sustained dedication is Paladin Career & Technical High School, a public charter high school in Blaine, Minnesota. Their curriculum specializes in experiential learning, project-based learning, work-based learning, and service learning. But what makes them special is their trauma-informed lens for working with students.
In existence since 2002, Paladin became keenly aware that many of their students were coming to school having experienced significant trauma, which was affecting every aspect of their lives, including learning. Five years ago, they decided to develop a trauma-informed approach to managing behavior. They wanted to take into consideration whether a student had experienced trauma and how it may be affecting how they responded to a situation, why they were withdrawing, or why they were acting out. Today, they are proud to consider themselves a trauma-responsive school.
The cumulative effect of childhood trauma has been examined, and the data are heartbreaking. An oft-cited study on the topic is the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study, more commonly referred to as ACEs. ACEs was conducted by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and Kaiser Permanente in the mid to late 1990s. According to the CDC, ACEs "is one of the largest investigations of childhood abuse and neglect and later-life health and well-being."
The CDC continues to collect data on the original participants. What has become clear over time is that childhood trauma is likely to have an adverse effect on a child's growth and development, as well as their overall health condition. The more adverse childhood experiences a person has, the greater the risk for a list of potential negative health, social, psychological, physical, and academic outcomes.
According to the study, adverse childhood experiences disrupt neurodevelopment, which in turn affects social, emotional, and cognitive development. When their development is negatively impacted, students are likely to take on behaviors that present risk to their health and safety, which can lead to disease, disability, and social problems. Ultimately, this can mean early death.
I spoke recently with Brandon Wait, the Executive Director at Paladin. He began his tenure at Paladin as the school counselor in 2008 when he was asked to create the student support program. It was a "dream job" for him, he said, because he could really counsel students. He took over as director five years ago.
Staff and students will say Paladin used to be a violent place. Wait himself recalls the school environment five years ago. "We were suspending students at an unfair, high rate. We were only treating the behaviors, not addressing the causes. In fact, we were inflicting more harm and re-traumatizing students [with suspensions]. We had to change our approach."
The ACES study spawned the work around becoming a trauma-informed school. When they read the study, he noted, "there was this aha moment when we knew our students had adverse childhood experiences and traumatic events. Our students had been used and abused and beat up. As a counselor, I knew that stuff comes out different ways. Some students act out, others turn inward." The ACES study showed that without addressing their previous trauma, students can't thrive. They decided to take action and become informed about the effects of trauma.
The first stage in becoming trauma-informed, Wait says, is trauma awareness. Saff learned what trauma was and how it manifests itself. "For us, it was the awareness that childhood trauma events exist. Then it was realizing, 'now that you know they exist, what are you going to do about it?'" Only then did they begin to change policy. Their search for solutions eventually brought them to restorative practices.
The International Institute for Restorative Practices (IIRP) defines restorative practices as "a social science that studies how to build social capital and achieve social discipline through participatory learning and decision making." They further state,
"The use of restorative practices helps to:
- reduce crime, violence and bullying
- improve human behavior
- strengthen civil society
- provide effective leadership
- restore relationships
- repair harm"
The IIRP considers restorative justice one of many restorative practices, noting that restorative justice is in response to a harm done. Restorative practices, on the other hand, are proactive and seek to build culture and community so as to avoid harm altogether.
Now, five years later, suspensions are extremely rare at Paladin. Students still come to school with a host of issues they must deal with, but they are finding success. "It's not just because we aren't suspending kids," said Wait. "It's because we get to the root cause. As a result, kids are growing. We are helping them get to where they want to be."
What is most compelling about Paladin is that students who've experienced trauma are finding a way to restore themselves. They find their voice, they gain self-control, and they begin to feel empowered to make better choices. At the same time, they learn how to contribute to a restorative community.
Just how does a turnaround like this happen in a school with roughly 200 students ages 14-21?
Wait explained. "Instead of asking why did you do that or what's wrong with you, we started asking, what happened – what's going on with you? What do I need to know that I don't that maybe I should?" In short, they probed the behavior to get at the root cause. Usually, he says, it can be traced to a prior event. "There is always more story to the outburst. Finding out more, you will likely be surprised."
At first, they started with restorative justice. Staff also embraced a belief supported by research that a trusted adult in a student's life can mitigate the impact of the trauma. They wanted to be those trusted adults and help students find other trusted adults in their lives. But they realized they were still doing things to students, not with students. "That's when the flip happened," he notes. "Now it [responsive practices] is a way of being. It's how we run our school; restorative practices happen everywhere."
The school recently reaffirmed their commitment to the work underway. "Paladin Career & Technical High School seeks to inspire education systems to cultivate resilience in all students by engaging their strengths through innovative, individualized learning with a restorative and trauma-responsive approach." So says their newly minted vision statement where the reference to trauma is explicit.
Their mission statement is equally clear: "Paladin Career & Technical High School nurtures a learning community that empowers students in their pursuit of social, emotional, and academic growth, thereby creating a foundation for a successful future." To them, it's all about equipping students with the skills to overcome the effects of trauma in order to live successfully in whatever future awaits.
A central component of Paladin's restorative approach is circles. "We are in circles all the time," said Wait. "Every staff meeting starts in a circle. Every school day starts in a circle." There are guidelines for circles even though some staff use a modified approach. But in all circles, participants are given a voice and choice. This allows all voices to be heard, and people can participate in a way that feels comfortable for them. Participants practice listening skills when everyone has a chance to speak their truth. Circles also create a space where students can feel safe and build confidence.
Paladin learned a lot about their progress in implementing restorative practices when a University of Minnesota graduate student, Jennifer Blevins, completed a case study of Paladin during the 2017-18 school year. The study affirmed Paladin's work in this area and contributed greatly to the growing body of research on restorative practices. In her dissertation, Disrupting the Status Quo: Case Study of Paladin Career and Technical High School's Use of Restorative Practices, Blevin stated in her findings that, "Paladin disrupts the status quo for students and staff by making the system fit the individual, not the individual fit the system, restoring self, strengthening interpersonal relationships, being a safer school, and focusing on solutions not suspensions (p. iii).
Paladin's success is good news for those seeking a different way to support students. But by all accounts, restorative practices embedded in the system on a school-wide level is time and staff intensive. Even Wait, as passionate as he is about restorative approaches, is honest about the challenge in taking on a whole-school approach. "You can't put restorative practices in a box," he cautions. "You can't have a policy manual for it. You have to treat each situation on a case-by-case basis." He went on to say it must be embedded into a larger strategy. They talk about student strengths. They talk about and teach resiliency. They help students see they have resiliency within them, all in an effort to help students confront and overcome the trauma they have experienced, rather than letting the trauma defining them.
One has to ask, could a traditional school do what Paladin is doing to individualize support for students in a restorative as well as educational context? Or is it reserved for smaller learning environments such as Paladin?
"It would look different," said Wait, who teaches restorative practices at the post-secondary level and is frequently asked to speak to schools on the topic. He is convinced that if more people were aware of trauma and how trauma comes out in behavior, teachers and administrators would start treating behavior differently. They would come to understand how punishment re-traumatizes students. "Suspension is easy. It's what we're used to. I'd like to see schools begin with learning about trauma-informed care, which everyone can do in their own classroom. Being aware and understanding gives you the tools and the ability to dig beneath and understand the behavior and will bring you to a better solution than suspension. Nine times out of 10, the story behind the behavior won't make you angry; it will break your heart."
Not surprisingly, restorative practice has its critics, too. Some argue it is a soft and permissive approach to discipline that doesn't hold students accountable. Wait offers a different view. "If you do things to kids, that's punishment. If you do things for them, that's permissive. Do nothing at all, and that's neglect. But if you do things with them, that's restorative."
Wait also challenges the traditional meaning of how to hold kids accountable. "Being accountable literally means to hold one's self responsible for one's action. There's no accountability in suspension," he insists. "Using restorative practices, we say to a student, 'You caused this harm; what are you going to do to repair it?' Kids hold themselves way more accountable than adults do. If you did this, it would change your traditional school."
What's his advice to schools that want to embed restorative practices in their school culture? Wait urges schools to be realistic about the commitment they are taking on. "It's not a one-day training. Too many times schools grab on to the next buzzword and move on to something else. You have to stick with it. This is a journey, and it will take time."
But if schools are willing to go on that journey, Wait's advice is simple:
- Understand that it's a way of being, not a program
- Highlight the importance of trauma and start there, and
- Look at your current approach and determine what needs to change
Most of all, Wait says, be open, not judgmental. "If we're curious about why a student acts out and not jump to judgment, we get more information. With more information, we have more understanding. With more understanding comes better resolutions and better outcomes."
Maybe, just maybe, student discipline is less about what students do, and more about what the adults in your school do. What do you think?
You can reach Brandon Wait at email@example.com or by calling 763.786.4799.
Click here for an American Public Media podcast on Paladin's trauma-informed approach.


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They say: "That it is the Art of Politics that makes all the difference." D.J. Trump is adding to this proliferation of thought. When someone is arrogant, self promoting and disregards the feelings and knowledge of others, they become very unattractive and are destined for the ash heap of history no matter how right or wrong they may be on issues. "It's not what you say, it is how you say it…..", the pundits of old had adhered to this concept for years. When the Ultra Liberal Gore Vidal debated William Buckley on National Television back in the 1960's, the great intellectual divide between the and vision and world that Barry Goldwater saw and that of LBJ were immense. The dialogue was not only stimulating but also cohesive and within the greater parameters of common decency. Anything else would have been vile and repugnant.
During the election of 1964, Goldwater was considered an Ultra Conservative, believing in Tariffs, Job Protection for American Workers and Domestic Fiscal Responsibility. Barry was an Air Force Reserve General and believed in a strong US Military, but one that cut out the waste, fraud and abuses. Barry certainly wanted to take care of the Defense Industry and was strong on Social Justice Issues in spite of being portrayed as a stealth Zionist and War Monger. Barry wanted to bomb Hanoi back in 1962! By the way, Barry Goldwater did not have anything to do with the JFK Assassination that we can find. The famous LBJ political ad of the young girl holding the flower as the nuclear bomb is detonated in the background….was a not so subtle hit on Goldwater…..that Nuclear War would ensue and be a certainty during a Goldwater Administration. LBJ won in a landslide! To be fare, Goldwater did say….that he would not take off the use of nuclear weapons in certain conditions.
LBJ was simply in the pocket of Big Money in this country. The Cabal that took out Kennedy, fully supported LBJ and the expansion of the Vietnam War. Those of us can remember that the Cars of the 1960's were the most powerful, stylish and beautiful. We still had 2nd Amendment Guns rights until the passage of the 1968 Firearms Act. We still had 4th, 5th and 10th Amendment Rights and personal freedom of expression. There were plenty of jobs to choose from too! When LBJ was elected, he got his own larger piece of the action and pound of flesh, in exchange for following up and taking credit for the Civil Rights Act, (that the Kennedy's had already promoted) and the Voting Rights Act. As the former Dean of the Senate, he used his political skill like a razor when dealing with Southern Democrats or Moderate Midwest Senators. As every college drop out and black kid in the nation got taken off streets that were exploding – they were sent to Vietnam to kill little yellow people in the name of protecting the Oil Reserves of Southeast Asia and the Domino Theory. Even though, Mao's Mainland Red China already held 60% of the land mass of Asia. The Governments of India and Pakistan also stood with Mao, Cuba and Central and South America were also Communists, so the concept was to stop the flow "someplace". The French Colonialists couldn't do it and that left the United States…..they said.
Meanwhile, all of Colonial Africa was inflames; Angola, Rhodesia and the Congo, plus most of West Africa. Only Liberia stood against the tide of Anti-Colonialism on the Dark Continent, with its so-called democracy and relationship on shipping with and for the United States. The LBJ Great Society Idea….of colonizing Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos and taking their oil and natural resources never panned out,even with the eventual help of Kissenger and Nixon. The Russians stayed out of most things except a tiff with China on that border and sending a few troops along with Cuba to Africa. They were also making nice, nice in the middle east with Egypt and Libya!
Social Justice in the World was the issue that no one seemed to find an answer to, unless it involved military intervention. The Rich had their money, the powerful had their control and lifestyle. Middle Class American had pretty good food, affordable housing, affordable health care and the ability for one member of the family to put a roof over the heads for a family of four. Jobs were competitive but available for high school graduates. Hispanics worked the fields and hard physical work of all kinds. Blacks worked in car washes, on construction sites and even the steel industry. Anything that required huge physical effort. From the days of John Henry through the 1960's blacks and hispanics were relegated to their own neighborhoods. They mostly lived in peace, with occasional Church Preachers and Drug Dealers adding it all to the social mix of consciousness. MLK and RFK brought and kept hope alive for these folks. The social changes they thought "were possible – if not probable". Maybe Malcolm X, maybe the alphabet soup of different Black Rights Groups could make a difference. Maybe Jim Crow laws that restricted the voting of blacks in the South, would change. Maybe! With Malcolm X, MLK, JFK, RFK, Marvin Gaye gone…….so went the hope!
Women found their freedom in the 1960's, with the Pill, 8-Track audio tapes, sexual freedom, moving from Tiajuana comic books to full fledged 8 Millimeter Pornography Films. Bra Burning, Short Skirts, Inter-racial dating, Women in Politics, Women proliferating the work place, because all the youth had been taken to the war in Vietnam. Those jobs would become harder for the boys to get back, once they returned. Women were very efficient, smarter in most cases and only held back because: "you're a women and will just get knocked up and leave this job anyway!" or "You just want to find a place to find a husband! You don't want a career!" "its a waste to send you to college, you're just going to get married anyway!" was the mentality. Women also could be paid half of what a man would be paid for the same job.
Globally, Europe was catching on to the United States game plan: Control the price of Oil, Gold and all the Commodities, borrow money and cause inflation in the the Military, Industrial Complex. Charles DeGaulle called it as it was and was soon seen as a French Commie Sympathizer. DeGaulle called in the trade deficit we had with France for French Wine and Cheese with a demand for Fort Knox Gold in Payment – Not Fiat, Fed Printed Bank Notes. Soon our Gold Reserves were plummeting and others in the Global Community followed suit. Nixon panicked and changed the payments from Solid Gold to "A basket of Currencies – which included the prime factor – the US Dollar as the center piece." Obviously, the other currencies selected were very accommodating to our US Dollar. International Banks soon flourished – passing American Currency around the Globe physically – before Windows and the Digital Revolution.
Those Republican 1960's included a grand divide within the Republican Party….the Extreme Moderates 20%, the Moderates 58% and the Conservatives which only amounted to about 22% of the party. The Extreme Moderates included Earl Warren, Nelson Rockefeller and his brother David, the Moderates included Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon and the Conservatives – a few leftover Goldwater Girls, some Radio and Television Talk Show hosts which included, Joe Pyne, Robert K. Dornan and the Southern Democrats…called Dixiecrats in the 1940's. Many Republicans were taking the traditional places of Democrats in the South and in the Farm Belt Areas. Farm Subsidies was a huge issue….being paid by the Federal Government to either plant or NOT plant certain crops. This of course soon created the Big Pharma and Mega-mergers of Farm Communities from being just considered Independent Co-ops, to the likes of Arthur Daniels Midland and others. Big Unions called the shots for wages for Auto Workers, Steel Workers and the Transportation Industries.
The Globalization of Big Pharma was underway with the likes of Bayer of Germany and Merck and Johnson and Johnson, Squibb and 100 more all joining forces, first in research facilities in Universities around the world, the Independent Researchers and with the assistance Major Chemical Companies like Dow, Monsanto and others. You have to remember that most individual prescription drugs were manufactured in the countries that developed those drugs – Germany, France, Great Britain and the United States. The now eternal connection between Big Pharma and Big Chema had its beginnings in the 1960's! We had a population of a little under 195 million people back then. We stood on the precipice of Equal Rights, Gender Equality and a Society based on Social Justice.
So, as we stand here some 50 years later and look at our country, its infrastructure, the composition of its Industries, the social fabric and wonder what we have accomplished and what we have not. Some facts: We live in a Global Society, with Global Responsibilities and Global Economic Implications. A sustainable Health Care System will include a system that is comparable and competitive with those in the Global Society in which we live. Without accelerated Immigration, our society will fail, because it is solely based on consumerism and a very aging population. The only things we are exporting are Military goods and our Arga products. All pricing for goods has become Global via Internet Transfers and Buying. The only new businesses that will be sustainable are those "yet to be invented". The race to the bottom is here. The Aging of America is here. The Cost of Healthcare will rise exponentially unless the entire Health Care system is adopted to a Medicare/Medicaid System for all. The rich will always be able to buy "better coverage", but only if – they are willing to pay for it. Doctor's may soon be put on a Retainer, much as they do in China and be on call for any patient that has a policy with them. The concept will be simple, The Lead Doctor you have Retained, pays each and every other Doctor, Lab or Imaging Center that he sends you to. The rest of us will simply insert our chip Health ID card: to identify ourselves as having been serviced by the rationed Health Care System that the Republicans can't wait to put in place. The good news is….that all our Health Records will be Digital and available to anyone that wants to see them or use them or edit them…..much like our voting record and/or our bank accounts.
As everyone can see – Political Town Halls are very popular – even today. As the saying goes: "Be Afraid Republicans….be very afraid of a motivated public!". Those politicians that do not have town halls, will be gone soon enough. The time has come for the Republican Party to declare itself "available" to and for all walks of life, all ethnic backgrounds and against all efforts by moneyed interests to thwart their quest for Social Justice and Equality for all – it is time for a new Republican Progressive branch of the party. The Democrats are doing so as we speak to these issues. The Republicans desire to go shoulder to shoulder over the cliff with Donald J. Trump is not advisable. The elections of 2018 will be monumental, and the Republicans are already behind the curve on that one….with the elections of 2020 following quickly and again monumental. It is the time NOW to declare your Independence of thought Republican Electeds, have that vision thing and deal right to take full responsibility for your every action, vote and comment you utter.
The New Republican Progressive Party………..or do you want to never see another West Coast or East Coast Voter again?