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BlackBerry CEO supposedly says dumb things about the future of tablets, but what are the smart things?
BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins was quoted today as saying tablets didn't have much of a future, product or market-wise. Given the huge, and still growing success of the iPad, even the idea sounds ridiculous. Here's what Bloomberg posted:
I love a good CEO-snap story as much as the next blogger. Almost every time Ballmer or Schmidt open their mouths, it's gold for everyone in our industry. Hell, the previous leadership at BlackBerry, co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, said amongst the dumbest things in the recent history of mobile. To see such affluent, powerful people come off as utterly out of touch with reality is about as great a shot of schadenfreude as it gets. So to think the only man currently responsible for a purely mobile computing company on the planet -- BlackBerry carries no legacy desktop or services business -- doesn't think there's a future in the most computer-like form of mobile technology today is... stupefying.
Granted, he wasn't talking about today, but about 5 years from now -- and the velocity of mobile makes it difficult if not impossible to predict the market even a couple of years out, never mind five -- but I'd put good money on the tablet having a bigger future than the desktop for most people, most of the time. That's why Steve Jobs reportedly said the iPad was the most important product of his life.
BlackBerry's version of the tablet, the PlayBook, hasn't been anywhere nearly as successful to date. I've gone on record as saying the PlayBook was probably an ill-advised distraction that led to BlackBerry being even further behind in the phone business than they might otherwise have been, and for BlackBerry it certainly doesn't seem to have been a good business model.
Here's BlackBerry PR's response:
And Kevin Michaluk of CrackBerry sums it up this way:
The futurist in me wants to take that a step further, to where the computing is decoupled from device, and the "brains" are a constant thing we always have with us, hooked in everywhere, capable of being expressed as a phone or tablet or laptop or desktop or holodeck for that matter. All my stuff, existing everywhere, accessible everywhere, through any hardware interface available.
In that world, interface becomes commoditized. Panels, even beautiful ones, would be utterly interchangeable and transfigurable. In that future, what would an iPhone or iPad look like? What would an iTV or iWatch look like? Manifestations?
Yes, Heins' comment came off sounding ludicrous in the context in which it was presented, and if that's how it was given, he deserved the headlines he got this morning. But funny blog headlines only last a few hours or days. In the greater context, and in the way BlackBerry has been positioning themselves, and in the way Apple has been building out iOS, and in the way Microsoft could figure out 3 screens and the cloud, and in the way Google could take Android or ChromeOS, given some time and coherent thought, the idea of ultra-personal computing 5 years in the future is fascinating.
Feel free to lay into the CEO of BlackBerry in the comments if that's your thing, but also let me know -- where do you see the future of tablets and of computing in five years?
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Rene Ritchie is one of the most respected Apple analysts in the business, reaching a combined audience of over 40 million readers a month. His YouTube channel, Vector, has over 90 thousand subscribers and 14 million views and his podcasts, including Debug, have been downloaded over 20 million times. He also regularly co-hosts MacBreak Weekly for the TWiT network and co-hosted CES Live! and Talk Mobile. Based in Montreal, Rene is a former director of product marketing, web developer, and graphic designer. He's authored several books and appeared on numerous television and radio segments to discuss Apple and the technology industry. When not working, he likes to cook, grapple, and spend time with his friends and family.
I watched to interview on bloomberg and I think everything was taking out of context and I don't think he said anything horrible, i think it's just it's blackberry so dump on him. He basically said that other than apple nobody has figured out a way to make money on tablets because you can't make money off the hardware, it's the services you deliver on them. Apple has said the same thing. Tim Cook basically said they are strategically given margin up on the ipad mini as it's the introduction of apple to emerging markets. So unless you have some idea of what type of service you're going to provide on the tablet It's difficult to make money on it. I think that view point is right. I think he's also said that blackberry isn't going to compete in that market because they can't provide a useful servce on a tablet. They have a phone and their core competency is managing devices for enterprise and making sure they are secure in a BYOD world. I think those are fair statements. I think the whole tablet is dead in 5 years is dumping by the media to get clicks, apple has been getting a fair bit of this lately also
It's a "man bites dog" story -- something people will buy/click on. We tell the media what gets our attention, they feed us back more and more of it. Media gets some blame, but we get some blame too. (I'm both, so I get double blame.)
Hey Rene Ritchie I'm new on here and I barely know how to do this and I can see the future too just like you and my real name is alexis and I'm 12 years old and this is driving me crazy can you help me because I haven't told my mom yet and I'm planning on not telling her because she'd think I'm crazy and she never beleve's me and sorry because I'm a bad speller but is there any way to stop this without my mom finding out please help me your my only help I really Thot that didn't have this web site but praise The Lord they did I really hope you replay because this has bin happening sense I was a baby girl.
This was the same thought I had. He thinks the phone will be powerful enough to simply be docked in different contexts. Desktops and Tablets would go away with this. I don't think this is a bad vision of the future. It's certainly possible, but generally the bigger the device the more power. I can see the phone being the CPU being the center if we don't come up with things needing more power than we currently use tablets for. If games or some other interfaces get developed that need significantly more power than even 5 years from now mobile units will posses than I can see that as a possibility. Mind/computer interfaces might be one area where a significant amount of processing power or large amounts of memory might be needed.
I think there are several sizes of things that have transcended media evolutions. We have the small pocket size, be it paperback or phone, the larger lap size, be it hardcover or tablet, and the even large desk size, be it tome or desktop. That likely won't change until stuff is injected straight into our brain.
IMO, he may be right. Tablets took off primarily, imo, because people want something bigger than a phone, more portable than a traditional laptop and more useful-powerful than the Netbook was. But now with Ultrabooks taking off and starting to come down in price, I think that will eat into tablet sales moving forward. Why settle for a boxed in system (regardless of whether iOS, Android or Win8) when you can, for not much more money and about the same portability, have a "full" computer experience? If I had the money for it last year, I'd have gotten a Win7 ultrabook instead of the iPad2 for that very reason.
Trucks vs. cars :)
In that analogy, Heins merely opined that 5 years from now, dome people will still need trucks, but that tablets will no longer be the car of choice - the smartphone. I already never use my iPad over my iphone (except for Netflix and Fantasy Football) - so I understand what he means. However, the limitations of the phone have little to do with power, as smartphones already have enough for most tasks, but with viewable space and inputs. *That* is what has to be addresses if the smartphone is to decimate the tablet market. And, of course, it has to be as convenient - most people would prefer carrying a single tablet to a phone + screen + larger input device. 5 years is a long time in tech; by 2018 there may be daring solutions to those problems. If Heins truly believes tablets will be short-lived, he had better have BB labs hard at work on those issues.
I so agree with you on your last statement. However, I am trying to break the dependency on Windows. As I see it I can use my smartphone for just about anything accept developed application which is how I make my living. That's the only reason I keep my Windows Laptop. Otherwise I would design my own docking station, charging block with mouse, keyboard and screen and ill be using my smartphone only.
I have been saying this for the past two years, and I am seeing my predictions come true, the laptop is on it's way out. Laptops have always been bulky, but ever since tablets have hit the scene, many companies have been trying to streamline their laptops, by making, ultra books, but people are buying more tablets now, than laptops. What did computer companies do in response to this growing trend, they have created hybrid tablet/computers with removable keyboards, thus turning it back into tablet. Truth is I actually use my tablet more then my ultra book. I use my ultra book to make changes to my website and edit pictures. I use my tablet more because it is more compact, and easier to carry around.
The issue isn't whether or not his dubious prediction is going to come true; the issue is poor judgement in making a statement that can readily be perceived as a self-serving excuse for why the Playbook didn't succeed or make the Playbook obsolete ala the HP Touchpad. Also, as the CEO of a company that's trying to regain lost ground, you probably want to avoid putting your foot in your mouth, and getting mocked and pilloried by the tech press.
That's why the issue is about whether this prediction will come true. Because it's not "putting [his] foot in [his] mouth" if he is telling the truth.
The future where we hold the brains In our pocket and connect them to other devices as we move through the world is fascinating. Would eliminate a lot if problems we have with cross compatability. And it is totally in line with what QNX is designed for. As far as tablets, do we really need a tablet with its own core and everything. Why not just a screen, possibly flexible sold as an accessory to our phone. With a battery nfc and bluetooth. That simply streams what's on your phone. Is buy one. in previous interviews he has mentioned blackberry can't beat the ipad in ipad game. Which is apps and games. And to a less extent browsing and cloud sharing. But he's willing to release a tablet if it means something new. If u knew what that was I'd be a rich man lol. The headlines will be gone tomorrow. Stuff out of context is what you can expect in 5 minute interviews and 5 minute blog reposts. Thanks for putting in some thought to the subject Rene, why I come to mobile nations
Re: "The headlines will be gone tomorrow."
And BlackBerry will be gone the day after tomorrow.
Kicked down the Palm staircase.
Blackberry isn't going anywhere. And unfortunately neither are idiots like you who blindly cheer for a tech product like its your religion. Thankfully I think the fanboy crap is changing, you will be an annoying minority more and more everyday. Imore and mobile nations isnt your home though, move along.
I love how people can pass judgment when a CEO of a tech company provides a little insight to what he holds for the future... Steve Jobs can go on conference calls and say how bad Android and BlackBerry is and that's ok? That's some illogical thinking on everybody's part for not letting Thorsten talk on what he holds for the future. Is everybody really gonna be biased and say that no matter what Thorsten does or says is wrong like that Jack Rabbit Boy Genius? Give me a break Rene. It's dump on BlackBerry once again cause Apple is throwing 60 billion and iBonds to it's shareholders. It's crap and everybody knows it! Would it be as funny if Thorsten would have said 5 years ago that the SmartPhone is gonna replace your digital camera? Tell me how well it goes to sync your 10" iPad to your iCar on the dashboard.
What Heins said: "In five years I don't think there'll be a reason to have a tablet anymore."
What Heins meant: "We give up. Apple won."
I agree with Thorsten Heins. To me the Tablet is already obsolete. It's to much of an inconvenience using and moving around with a 10" device. My smart phone is all I need. There is nothing I can't do on my smart phone that demand that I carry a tablet. The fact of the matter is, I haven't used my iPad in months. My five year in the future is now.
My Vision of table in five years. Its going to get much better, more lighter, better processing capabilities, touch responses, new sensors, a much better speech AI, (kind of jarvis in Iron Man), more and better apps, more communication with other devices (already started are cars, philips hue).
I dont see tablet going away now in five years, as the kind of impact they have make, its made human computer interaction more natural, a device which can be easily used by any age group, with such a less learning curve, it has limitations though, and so does with any product, their is no silver bullet, but yah I am sure its going to get better and better. Take first generation iPad and current one, you can see the difference.
Sorry, Rene. Sometimes you are too much of a diplomat for your own good. T. H. said what he said. Trying to massage the meaning into something more rational may sooth a few, frayed nerves on the Blackberry side of the MN empire, but it does nothing for the integrity of the story, IMO. T. H. would like nothing more than to roll back the clock, and make the PlayBook un-happen. He still has to deliver BB10 for the PB, but probably would rather not. The PB is a constant reminder of the stupidest failure in the history of the company. Chasing Apple into that market, especially at that time, was asinine, and everyone outside of RIM knew it. Since he can't talk about tablets of the past, he has to talk about the future of tablets. Once again, the PB is causing the company to position itself in stupid terms with regard to the tablet market. Of course, tablets are profitable. Apple has made it so. And tablets: the iPad, will go on being profitable well beyond five years. The PC has done just fine for 30 years. What makes him think tablets won't stick around on the profit sheet for eight? He has to justify why his company is pulling the plug, by dumping on the tablet's prospects for the near future. As for his vision for a world where our only computing device is a Blackberry phone with keyboard, plugged into different terminals, ask him how he's enjoying his Atrix. I don't think a Blackberry Atrix is going to work any better than a Motorola Atrix, do you? That is not a vision of the future; it is a return to the junkyard of failed ideas. People like tablets. On the Android side, flagship phones are approaching the size of tablets. The next generation of the Galaxy Tab will be a 7" phone. Apple just sold 19.5 million iPads in an off quarter. There is a certain screen size that, below which, common tasks become difficult. People do not want a phone plus several, dumb terminals. If that is the direction Blackberry is headed, then they absolutely deserve the scorn being heaped on them now. Personally, I think T. H. just wanted to poo-poo the thing that their competitor is good at, and they're not. Trying to turn it into something more thoughtful does a disservice to the comment that was actually made. By the way, does disagreeing with you mean that I should not bother to apply for the next writing job for iMore? :)
The future if tablet computer is so important, so many kids have grown up to the device that it is second nature to them. So this is a part of our culture as the PC was to most. Some of the guys speak on trying to think they can vision the future. If they could see that, then state what he sees replacing tablets or being used in its place. Who knows all you can do its keep working on the next thing.
It's an opinion of a person... Might be dumb to most but might possibly be valid in his own reasoning. I'm still a bit skeptical of the likes of iPad and Surface RT not seeing much use of either, but I love both of em regardless. What the future holds, we can never be sure: perhaps tablets may be replaced my holographic watches that give you an entire operating system right at your palm... You never know! ;)
I bet he owns an ipad...
And an iPhone...
Rene, I find the concept of using the phone as the primary device, and using bluetooth to hook it up to monitor and keyboard for desktop computing to be interesting. I presently carry around an IBM-issue laptop so I can work from wherever I might be. Using the phone for the same purpose would be much easier. I currently use the laptop in much the same fashion, a monitor and keyboard at home, and a monitor and keyboard at the office. The biggest challenge to using the iPhone instead would be the security that IBM requires on the laptop. Putting that on my iPhone would interfere with my personal use of the iPhone.
My guess is TH's answer to this would be BB Balance.. and if you still wanted to keep the Iphone then BB Mobile Fusion services. :P Either way BB makes some money off of it.
There's a lot of childishness and groupthink in the media and the blogosphere. I'm happy to see that a site that I've stuck with over the years at least has the intelligence to understand the comments and extend them. Kudos to you Rene and to Kevin too. 5 years is a long time not just for mobile but for computing as well. If anyone thinks that cloud is a reality today is either smoking something that's only legal in Colorado or likes the taste of Cool aide. What we see there today is merely an infrastructure play. The applications and services that follow are some way off and will come about when the infrastructure architecture settles down. Analytics will be pervasive on the service side but has only begun to penetrate in the broader corporate world that will running these future services. With all three of these key technologies needing maturation you will see a tomorrow far different than today. So, Thor's comments seem funny today but may not be tomorrow.
This is why I like reading iMore. The blogs were ridiculous with this quote, taking it out of context. That's what's wrong with the web: every news and blog site basically copy/pastes stuff from other sites. Thanks for taking the time to read the quote in context, and actually put some thought in an article about it.
There are some seriously dumb comments here (smart ones, too). It is taking a lot for me not to respond to them, individually. I'll just say that the best I can give Heins is to consider that fablets will play big part of the future. The greater truth is probably that mobile phones and tablets may become indistinguishable from each other as simply being different sizes of the same computing form factor. But I don't think it changes how stupid this comment was. I am really surprised that the first thing I read wasn't that BlackBerry stock took a dive immediately after his comment was revealed.
The reality is that Heinz is drinking the same koolaid that lazardis and balsillie did. Seems like it mught have some hallucinogenic properties to it...
Heins is a clever guy, I have trust in what he says ... may be be they are planning something special ?
I don't know about others but the iPad has made parts of my job much more streamlined. I love my iPhone when I am on the move but when I am working in the courtroom (not an attorney but in a correctional field) my iPad just works better. I can pull case files up, handle emails, and have better access to information verses dragging out my Macbook Pro or trying to rely on my phone to do complex tasks and data. I also read using my iPad, play more games, and browse the web on it. It just beats the computer for most tasks and leisure as well. Plus it is bigger and more easily accessible than my phone in many situations. I don't see the tablet market going away in five years and whereas it will not completely phase out a phone or traditional computer, it has definitely created its own nitch for use and marketability.
He might be on to something. I'm a field agent for HTC and I have been using the HTC One since 2/19/13 and my iPad has sat in a laptop bag untouched! Given the larger displays on smartphones and the lack of computing power of tablets he may be right.
His comment on tablets has inspired us to create a puzzle for our iOS game, Crickler. The "Worst Tech Predictions EVER" puzzle features Thorsten Heins' claim that "In five years I don't think there'll be a reason to have a tablet anymore" and other infamous tech predictions from the past. Notable examples include Michael Dell's suggestion that Apple Computer shut down and return their money to shareholders etc.
Oh, and Rene, when you're wrong kinda like the way people harrass a tech CEO, I'm gonna call you out. You claim that the PlayBook was just a waste of "time" and they should have been focusing on phones, but if you read anything but your Apple blogs, you would find this from Sebastien from QNX: PlayBook [released in April, 2011] was a stepping stone to the phone. If you look at the lineage, we started with the automotive software, which became PlayBook, which became BlackBerry 10 for the phone. Now, a lot of that software is going back to the next generation of the car and other devices. http://ca.finance.yahoo.com/blogs/dashboard/blackberry-road-map-life-z10...
Please answer I really don't know ho you but I'm really banking on you I never ever told any body else and I really don't think that you'd actually answer to me because nobody really cares about me. And they really never replay


text:
Hello. I am living in Finland and I am senior citizen and amateur photographer. Few years ago I retired from airline business or more precisely, I was forced to retire with other 999 employees due to the company's productive and financial reasons in 2004; so I was told.
First: The aim of my blog is to present my Finland thru my photos. Every post tells a story thru the set of photos with related text.
I worked for our national airline Finnair about 38 years. I did all kind of jobs one can imagine, like airline officer, IT instructor, Excel work sheet specialist, boss, chief of Ramp Control, manager of Load Control, making rosters, quality reports and programming. These are some examples of works I did in my airline. I started my career at checking and did my best.
I also calculated Balance Charts and made Load Sheets for all kind of airplanes types. I was specialized to Pan Am. That is Pan American Airways or PAA as it was called also, which does not exist no more. As You saw, I was so called ground staff, but I also flew during five years as flying officer.
I was lucky when I saw how airplanes were developing from 1966 to 2004. When I started my job we had in use DC3, Convair Metropitan 440 and Super Caravelle. in 1968 we got our first DC8, then some Fokker, DC10, MD11 and Airbus. Air traffic had huge development during these years. Of course there were some setbacks as Supersonics airplanes and huge collision of two Boeings 747 at Tenerife (Canary Islands, Spain). It happened in 1977 and 583 people were killed in that accident.
Before leaving my career, I received the decoration due to my merits and services which I made for my company. Medal was granted by our president. I maintain my fitness by walking daily, eating healthful food, vitamins etc.
Look at how I was flying in Flight simulator of commercial airplane DC9-51.
Spanish, not literally language, I learned to speak when I worked on Canary Islands few months. French I learned by reading French books during 45 years which I have about 1500. I also make video films. Many of them can be seen in my YouTube site.
Serious photographing I started in 2004, but as an amateur of course. I try to find different interesting things to be viewing. Because I worked in travel business, I can easily compare what kind of things are not generally found abroad. One example from this is our bell towers which are mainly from wood or stone or combining both and in many cases separated from church building. Also ships inside churches are not so general and wooden poor man statues.
I love reading and that is why on my bedside table there is always a book, mainly in French or Spanish. My music style differs generally speaking from that what people in Europe are listening. I love most of all South and Central American music and especially Cumbias. Cumbias are originally from Colombia. The music style of Cumbias is happy, danceable, tropical music that makes you feel good and what is the best, its has distinct rhythm. I like most of from those coming from Chile, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia. Elvis is my favorite singer yet today. Example of Cumbia music
I love fast cars and especially I love driving fast, although I am senior citizen, on German "Autobahnen", where are no speed limits. Maybe I am some kind daredevil. I have driven since 1972 since 1300000 kilometres / 807783 miles. So, as You can notice I am fond of cars and photographing. Also I love being in the nature, getting my strength from there, feeling myself free and feeling part of it.
If You say that You do not have any idea about Finland, then on Monday, November 13, 2021, I had more 20000 photos and 428 posts which help You to get information about Finland, its people, landscapes, hobbies (stained glass, 3D Origami, porcelain painting, icon paintings, quilting and patchworks, beading, bobbin laces, shopping bags and evening from empty coffee bags), culture, history, historic buildings, bear carving contest, memorials, world's biggest cruise ship made in Finland (Allure of the Seas), cruises on our lakes onboard more than 100 years old steamboats, national parks, castles, art, buildings, monastery, design, habits, travel destinations, museums, carved animals, secrets of Finnish Sauna, Mobile Saunas or Saunas on wheels, summer cottages, rock paintings, giant kettles, semi precious stones, vintage cars, vintage, vintage steam ships, air planes, vintage post cards, Christmas traditions, Christmas markets, Christmas decorations, Himmeli Finnish traditional Christmas decoration, church chandeliers, pulpits, altar paintings, Hanami / Sakura, Hobby horses, lakeland area, ship passing thru narrow canal, holiday log cabins, traditional carpet washing, hobbies by ordinary people (Orthodox icons, Porcelain paintings, Glass paintings), traditional colorful vintage windmills, traditional hay-making, Kantele – Finland's national instrument, rivers and rapids, rafting competition standing on log in white water, unique wooden pauper statues in the world (57), road side art, DC-3, flight simulator, gazebos, riding, horses, handicraft, matchboxes, church scale models from matches, world's oldest surviving diving suit, outdoor activities, walking, biking, marathon, ice hockey, old tractors, garden, flowers, Arctic hills, tall ships, Votive ships inside our churches, jousting, Samba in Helsinki, best places to visit, towns with old wooden houses, 32 towns in Finland, peculiarities in Finland, reindeer driving competition, laces, crochet, wooden churches included world's biggest one, beautiful bell towers which are separated from churches, ice art, sand statues and not forgetting to present Arctic Circle, world's biggest snow castle, winter wonders, winter fun, snow and ice photos, hiking, reindeer races open for everybody and our road trips in the Northernmost part of Finland which is called Lapland etc.
My visitors came from 212 (September 4, 2020) different countries around the world. Number of visitors November 13, 2021, 682096.
All these You find when clicking "select categories". Welcome and to make armchair trip and to explore Finland as I see it thru my photos!
Beneath there are some of my photos to get better idea of these items on one page which I just mentioned above. Your comments are appreciated highly.
En español:
Hola! Vivo en Finlandia y soy jubilado desde 2004. Mira mi mundo através mis fotos.
En francais:
Salut, je vis en Finlande et j'suis retraité depuis 2004. Bienvenu à connaître mon monde à travers mes photos.
Em português:
Oi! Eu moro na Finlândia e sou aposentado já desde 2004. Moro em Mikkeli desde 2013, mas nasci em Helsínquia. Eu falo inglês, espanhol, francês, sueco e também alemão mais ou menos. Agora estou aprendendo portugues que é uma linguagem muito interessante.
Toda a minha vida eu trabalhei no aeroporto de Helsinque cerca de 39 anos. Quando eu era jovem, meus sonhos eram me tornar ou o piloto de vôo ou o piloto de rall e por isto eu gosto conduzir o meu carro rapidamente, pero só em Alemanha em suas rodovias, mas hoje não é possível. Os meus hobbies são por exemplo a fotografia, o ciclismo, a caminhada, a música e a leitura. Eu viajando com minha câmera aqui e ali na Finlândia fotografando a natureza, as igrejas, os campanários, a arquitetura, nossa própria cultura e muitas outras coisas. Umas coisas peculiares que eu encontrei perto das igrejas são as estatuas de homen pobre. Eu gosto da natureza da Lapónia e isso e porque vamos visitar lá com minha esposa de vez em quando.
Os ritmos da Cumbia são a música que aquece a minha mente e faz meu coração bater mais rápido. A Cumbia e uma música tropical alegre e é originalmente da Colômbia. É tocada no Equador, no Peru, no Chile e também na América Central. Eu ler muito e eu gosto de ficção científica relacionada ao espaço em francês. Na mesa de cabeceira eu tenho sempre um livro que eu li antes de dormir. Para conhecer melhor o que acontece em nosso mundo moderno, eu li as revistas de tecnologia e revistas de informática.
Olhe o meu país através das minhas fotografias. Bemvindo!
What I achieved in my work employed by Finnair nearly 40 years? Two letters.Every aircraft, just like cars, has its own Aircraft registration name. Normally they can be seen on the both side of aircraft at the rear part. The registration name for this airplane is: OH-LZO. The Finnish country code is OH. Above the cockpit there are two letters ZO clearly visible. So, they are two last letters of this aircraft.
Why there these last two letters of the registration name are painted above cockpit and who got the idea that they must be painted them there? It was me who got the idea. It was in the mid-1970s when I suggested this to the Finnair technical department this. The reason was that the person approaching straight ahead the aircraft did not know what its registry was.
This was a problem for several departments, for example for me, who worked in Ramp Controller and for aircraft maintenance technicians working in hangar. Without these two letters, one had to walk to the either side of plane to find out the correct aircraft's ID, because it was not seen directly from the front. My suggestion was examined and found good.
Since then, my handprint has been visible every day around the world since I left Finnair in 2004! In other words. These two letters are only things, which I achieved nearly 40 years working for my company. Not so much! LOL.
Photos from abroad:
Newest post:

subset: commoncrawl


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You are currently browsing the tag archive for the 'Soledad' tag.
In the kitchen of his Brooklyn home, Ruiz flicks through his "portfolio" of prison images.
Stefan Ruiz has made photographs inside San Quentin State Prison, Soledad Prison and the notorious maximum-security Pelican Bay State Prison. His photography from within California's prisons was not accomplished by conventional methods; at no time was Ruiz on press assignment; making documentary work or running a photography workshop.
Ruiz worked for seven years as an art instructor at San Quentin, during which time he regularly made photographic records of individual artworks. He took some portraits of his students on the side. He got inside Pelican Bay as a court-appointed photographer making photographs for use as trial evidence.
It's a bit of a family affair. Ruiz's mother, a professor at UC Santa Cruz, was teaching art at Soledad. Ruiz had studied Islamic art in West Africa and went to deliver a talk to Muslim prisoners at Soledad. He delivered the same lecture later at San Quentin, at which time he was introduced to the art program coordinated by the William James Association.
Ruiz's father is a criminal defense attorney, who in the mid nineties represented a prisoner at Pelican Bay. Ruiz was the case-for-defense's chosen photographer, documenting conditions the of client's confinement.
In addition to his photography, Ruiz made sketches, collected his students' artwork, and acquired objects typical of prison culture. When he showed me a photograph of a DIY prison tattoo gun, I asked, "Is that something an inmate showed you or is it something that had been confiscated?"
"It's something I have," Ruiz replied.
The first photos Ruiz made inside were portraits of Soledad prison-artists holding their work. He took six rolls of film. At the age of 23, Ruiz began teaching art at San Quentin. One of his students had been a student of his mother's at Soledad years prior. Prison-art hangs in Ruiz' house and he has collected mug-shots for years.
In the mid-nineties, Ruiz cobbled together a photo "notebook" of his pictures of people and vernacular art. He keeps it in an old Fujifilm box bound with packing tape. "I used to take this with me everywhere; it was my portfolio."
From humble and organic beginnings, Ruiz is now one of the most respected portrait and editorial photographers in America. Until recently he had never spoken about his experiences in California's prisons. We sat down in his kitchen to unpack his memories and his homebrew portfolio.
PP: Your mother introduced you to prison-life?
SR: My mother organized exhibitions of the prisoners' artwork. I helped out by taking photos of the artwork and making slides of their work. Some of that would go to William James Association to help them appeal for funding or for entry into competitions. That's how I got cameras into the prison at first. Whenever I took a camera into a prison it was legal, and it was generally to photograph some type of art object.
PP: Of your prison work, it is your portraits that are known, however minimally, in the public sphere. I wasn't aware of them until you were featured on VICE TV's Picture Perfect.
SR: There are more photographs than just portraits. I taught at San Quentin for so long, and my boss had such a good relationship with the officials that gave access, that we were allowed to do quite a few things.
The first portraits I did were of the guys in my mother's art class at Soledad who were to be involved in an exhibition. The way we were allowed to make portraits was to say, since they couldn't make it to their show, their portrait would.
Prisoner art
Prisoner art
PP: Describe the art program.
SR: My boss played bass and the main emphasis of the art class was music but there were two visual artists who taught and I was one. The other was Patrick Maloney, who I guess is still teaching there. Patrick would also teach on Death Row. Sometimes, I would fill for him or accompany him on Death Row.
PP: How did you find working on death row?
SR: You move along the tiers and talk [through bars] to students individually, whereas on the mainline they come out their cells and they come to you.
There are two different sections of death row. In the first, there are a couple of tiers of just death row inmates. You'd need the key to get on the tier, and then you'd go from cell to cell, depending on who was part of the program. There might be three or four guys on a single tier. They had to buy their own supplies but through William James we also gave them supplies. Mostly you'd spend time talking to them. Each day, they might get half an hour outside their cell.
In the other section, the prisoners could leave their cells and go to a common space with some tables. There you could have two or three people in the class. That seemed like a better place to be on death row. The tiers are quite dark. Five tiers. And the other side is just open. One of our students was executed. He had killed a shopkeeper and his wife robbing a store in Los Angeles. He was a good student.
PP: Your mother was a professor at Santa Cruz, teaching art classes at Soledad. Those two institutions have a long and significant relationship going back to the protests and counter culture of the late sixties, Black Pantherism, and the book Soledad Prison: University of the Poor (1975) which was a collaboration between UCSC students and prisoners at Soledad.
PP: You gave a talk to Muslim students at Soledad, then to Muslim students at San Quentin and then you began in the art program. That trajectory explains your path but not your motivations. Why did you decide that leading arts education with prisoners was something you wanted to commit to multiple times a week, and eventually over seven years.
SR: Because it is interesting. I have to say; I think I learnt more from them than they learnt from me.
My father is a lawyer in criminal defense and labor law. His family is Mexican and he's pretty liberal, so I grew up with that element too. Teaching art in prison was an activity that brought together both sides of my family.
PP: A context in which prison teaching is not a radical act?
SR: My mother was more or less a hippie. My father couldn't really be one, he was just trying to assimilate, but he was definitely liberal. Growing up in Northern California at that time it was more of a norm than not to be on the left. To do things such as teaching in prison was not considered wild. There was no whole movement about victims' rights as there is now.
Fair enough. There's a lot of bad people in prison and some people who deserve to be there but …
When I was a kid, my parents were involved in a free school. We grew up in the country growing organic food. That was way before the trends of today. We composted everything; we weren't allowed to have plastic bags for lunch. We had wax paper and baked our own bread.
The thing is the prison was interesting to me. At San Quentin they allowed me to take keys. The room where I taught art used to be a laundry room. There was a bunch of people that got murdered there, I guess in the seventies or eighties so they closed it down and eventually opened it up as an art room.
There was never a guard in our room. It was two levels but we would teach on the lower level. The closest guard was in what we would call the max-shack – a checkpoint, probably about 30 yards outside the door. I was really young when I was teaching there and a lot of the guys were way bigger than me. It was interesting to learn how to navigate that. There were anywhere from 5 to 15 people in my class. 15 would be a little bit hectic. Often we'd just get someone from the yard and have him come and sit. Students who wanted could draw him, and if not, they could work on other projects.
PP: Were any of them reluctant to paint or draw other prisoners? My experience teaching art in prison was that collectively they decided it was "suspect", for want of a better term, to spend the time and energy painting another prisoner. Most of them made portraits of wives, girlfriends or children in a devotional way so to paint another prisoner made no sense to them and was in fact considered strange. They felt other prisoners would misconstrue it as a gesture of adoration or romantic attraction to the subject and that is something most guys wanted to avoid.
SR: No, most of them were into it. They didn't have to do it but one thing is that since cameras aren't allowed in prison you can make money if you can draw well, by drawing portraits, usually by copying photographs of prisoners' family members. If you're good you can make money. It's like a throwback to an era before the camera; I can draw fairly realistically and that kind of saved me when I was in there because …
PP: … there's a lot of respect attached to that ability.
SR: Yes. They'd give me a lot of shit and then we'd start drawing and it'd be fine. I generally had quite a few lifers in the class, because they are the ones who are more serious – eventually they decide to try and use their time. Young guys, who were only in for a little while, might joke around. The older guys kept the class in order.
PP: At what other times did you use your camera?
SR: There's some really famous murals in San Quentin. I photographed them all.
PP: Was that the San Quentin administration that asked you to do that, or was it William James or was it self-initiated?
SR: My boss, Aida de Arteaga and I, decided it was a good thing to do. There are four dining halls. It used to be one huge one but it was divided because they were worried about riots. Three walls. Six sides on which the murals were painted. A Mexican-American inmate who had been busted, I think, for selling heroin painted the murals in the fifties. When I was still there, he came back to San Quentin, for the first time since his incarceration.
Photos from the San Quentin Prison dining halls. One of Ruiz' students stands in front of the famous murals.
PP: In Photographs Not Taken you close with a bittersweet statement in which you said while you managed to take photos you still thought about the ones you weren't allowed to take in such a "visually rich environment." Did the staff or inmates think of their environment as visually rich?
SR: Obviously, most of the prisoners wanted to be out of there. I'm sure quite a few of the guards would like to have taken photos. Some did. Various guards had cameras for different reasons.
PP: What reasons?
SR: To photograph events. I photographed some of those too. We had concerts in the main yard, which is pretty impressive at San Quentin when you are down there with all the inmates. One time we had Ice Cube come in. On that billing, they had a white performer, a Hispanic performer and Ice Cube was the black performer. The administration has to play it like that.
Ice Cube performed in one of the dining halls and that was pretty crazy. You could see the guards were quite nervous. Some of the inmates were getting fired up. I don't think they had another concert like that.
The prison liked the art program quite a lot and there were some guards who were supportive of our classes. Guards will either make things easy or hard for you. Basically, I think we were lucky for a lot of the time; we had people who were kind, trusted us, let us do more.
The thing about being there for so long is that you got know people fairly well. Especially being in a classroom when you're with students for three or four hours at a time just drawing and talking. The thing that struck me was that I had a few guys who were lifers and had been in for 20 to 25 years; that's a pretty crazy concept, especially now given all the changes that have happened, specifically with technology. I am sure – unless they were using them with their jobs within the prison – none of them had used a computer.
PP: Did you ever think there was an opportunity for you to do a photography workshop?
SR: The administration didn't want us to do that at all. Even toward the end, they started to question me taking drawings out of the prison because many of them were realistic to the point that you could identify people in the drawings!
PP: What did the administration think of the portraits you did manage to take?
SR: They didn't see most of them. They had signed-off on me doing photography, but they didn't necessarily see the photographs. We got releases form the guys too. Guards might follow me round for a while, but I can take photos for days and bore the shit out of anyone. [Laughs].
I've probably got one of the best [records of the murals]. They were done on 4×5. I even did some on 8×10. I got in there at different times. Once, I'd used a Linhof 617 lens and camera on a commercial job, then I got access and so I used it in the prison.
PP: Did I hear that the Smithsonian has come to some sort of agreement, where by if and when San Quentin is demolished, they'll remove and preserve the murals?
SR: They've been saying that for years, but I don't know. The murals depict the history of California. The prisoners love the cable-car because the perspective is right so as you walk around it works.
"This guy before he took his shirt off warned me that his tattoos were considered some of the most racist in the prison. There's the SS helmet skeletons." Tattoos read '100% Honky' and 'Aryan'.
Ruiz used a chalkboard as a backdrop, "I liked the color and I liked the reference to education." Some prisoners shaved their heads ready for the shoot. "They knew I was bringing in the camera so they prepared," says Ruiz.
PP: It seems like the prison administration's policy toward camera use was ad hoc?
SR: I photographed in Pelican Bay and Tehachapi, but I actually did that through a court order. My father was representing a prisoner who the CDC said was one of the heads of the Northern Mexican mafia and that he was ordering murders from his cell in Pelican Bay.
In Pelican Bay I had to use the prison's cameras; they wouldn't let me take in any of my own equipment, except film. This was 1995. They held on to the film, processed it, and then gave everything to me, negatives and all. The images are a bit … the lenses were a bit crazy. It's not what I would've used but it was fine.
In Tehachapi, I got to use one camera and one lens. Both were mine.
PP: What was your brief for the court order?
SR: I had to photograph the cells and so the reason these photos are joined together is that they only allowed me the one lens.
Ruiz photographs of Pelican Bay State Prison, CA made in 1995 for use as court evidence.
4/4/95, Pelican Bay – "The defendant was in one of these cells."
"Pelican Bay is obviously freaky."
"This is the yard at Tehachapi. This is a common area, these are the cells."
PP: It's because of the connection through your father that you got the court ordered gig?
SR: As a defense attorney, he was allowed to bring in his own photographer. As an art teacher, I'd actually spent more time inside of prisons than my father had. Normally, he would only go to a visiting room where he would talk to his client. Whereas, I used to go on tiers, I went in cells. There were times at San Quentin when I was totally unsupervised and there were times it felt a little freaky.
PP: Were any limits placed or pre-agreements made by the courts on your photographs to limit their circulation, or are they just yours?
SR: They're just mine.
PP: Is there a reason why you've not shared them widely yet?
SR: There are some that I considered might be a bit sensitive and I didn't want to get my boss into trouble in any way. The photographs from Pelican Bay and Tehachapi are fine. The ones from San Quentin; she'd help me get the camera in. We had an understanding. I wasn't going to screw her over.
It's more important for me to be cool with her than it is to profit from the photos. I've done fine with photography without having ever shown these. I probably could've done a book with these and with some of the writing and artwork I have a long time ago, but I've never been about just promoting myself at all costs without taking others into consideration.
By now, enough time has passed. I'm going through everything. I think I have enough for a book. I have boxes of stuff that just accumulated.
PP: How did all of this work and exposure across three Californian prisons inform the rest of your career?
SR: I always knew I was going to do art. I didn't know I was going to do photography. I always thought I'd be a painter. The thing that I learned? I learnt that if I couldn't take any photos, I would collect things!
I took my portfolio everywhere. I got jobs off of the stuff but I never let it out of my hands. You're the first person to have photographed it, with the exception of the VICE crew who put it in their video. I'm okay with that now. I always guarded it.
I met the guys who were doing COLORS magazine in the late nineties and it definitely influenced them. It influenced their 'Prison' issue (June, 2002). I was actually supposed to go to Gaza for COLORS, but the Israelis had bombed the prison right before I was due to leave, so the trip was cancelled. So, I've definitely used this stuff to my advantage.
PP: Did you ever give prints to the prisoners?
SR: I'd give them stuff but we kept it low key because I didn't want any trouble for the program.
PP: Did the guys you taught appreciate that San Quentin had more programs than most prisons?
SR: They liked San Quentin. It's an old prison. It has a lot of nooks and crannies. There are weird things that go on there that you wouldn't get in a modern prison.
There was the old hospital built in the 19th century and out of brick. It was structurally unsound after the earthquake and left empty. They'd let certain prisoners go in there at their own risk. The deputy warden or someone in authority allowed one of my students to set up an art studio in there. And he had it for a couple of years! You wouldn't get that at a lot of other places.
PP: Your photographs form a weird mix.
SR: I've always thought it was valid because it was about what I could get and how I could get it.
Soledad prisoners.
PP: Do you think prison systems in the U.S. are racist?
SR: If 11% of California's population is Black but then at least 36% of the prison population is Black something's not proportional. That says something about this society. Obviously the system can be racist, but it is also classist. You have a hell of a lot more poor people in prison than you do wealthy people and that's because wealthy people can afford lawyers.
There weren't many well educated guys in my classes. They're obviously smart guys who could do all sorts but they weren't well educated. I had a blonde white guy who I asked him to read something one time, not even thinking that he didn't know how to read. It was a horrible thing for him and, of course, for me. I didn't expect it at all. After that he started taking some of the high school classes and learnt to read.
Prisons are a control thing. [Upon release] if you have people who can't travel, can't get housing and can't vote you can keep a whole population controlled. You can keep a whole population one little step away from being thrown straight back into prison.
PP: So the prison system is failing?
SR: I definitely think some people should be in prison.
There was a child molester who was quite collectible. People like to collect his art. He creeped me out. He made drawings of the kids he had killed from newspaper clippings. I took photographs of them, but I didn't know that's what they were until he explained them to me later. He had a scrapbook and the first 20 pages were pictures of Hillary Clinton smiling and then after that it was all these pictures of kids. Innocent pictures – many of them from National Geographic, but when you know what he was about, it's pretty disturbing.
There's some fucked up people in the world.
But I also saw, all the time, guys in prison for stupid drugs convictions and I think that is just a waste. The three strikes law was foolish. Keeping someone in prison, which at the time cost something like $30,000 – I'm sure it's more now – is just a waste of money. You can give people education with that money to help them get better jobs.
I used to go to the visitor center a lot. You'd see the damage being done when families would come up from Los Angeles for the day. Wives would go in and the kids would stay in the guesthouse for the day. The separation of families when they have to travel so far [to where loved ones are imprisoned] is harsh.
Obviously, I believe in education over other things. Otherwise, I wouldn't have done what I did.
Stefan Ruiz
Ruiz was born in San Francisco, and studied painting and sculpture at the University of California (Santa Cruz) and the Accademia di Belle Arti (Venice, Italy). He took up photography while in West Africa, documenting Islam's influence on traditional West African art. He taught art at San Quentin State Prison from 1992-1998, and began to work professionally as a photographer in 1994. He has worked editorially for magazines including Colors (for whom he was Creative Director, 2003-04), The New York Times Magazine, L'uomo Vogue, Wallpaper*, The Guardian Weekend, Telegraph Magazine and Rolling Stone. His award winning advertising campaigns include Caterpillar, Camper, Diesel, Air France and Costume National.


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On April 18, 2012, Their Royal Highnesses Grand Duke Henri and Hereditary Grand Duke Guillaume of Luxembourg held an audience at the Grand Ducal Palace with leaders of diplomatic missions and representatives from the Diplomatic Conference 2012.
Meanwhile, it is with regret to announce that Carl Alexander Prinz von Hohenzollern and his bikini princess bride, Corinna, have announced they have separated.
The regal princely couple were married last February in a lavish wedding held at the Little White Chapel in Las Vegas, Nevada with Frederic faux Prince von Anhalt in attendance. Days later a glamorous princely wedding reception/press conference/photo-op took place at Château du Bel Air, and by all accounts the beautiful couple, wearing traditional Lederhosen, were deeply in love. During the wedding reception/press conference/photo-op Princess Corinna was presented with a unique faux gold tiara from Claire's Accessories. A gift from her new husband and Frederic faux Prince von Anhalt.
During their honeymoon phase of their relationship the couple spoke to the press many times to announce they were beyond happy. Carl Alexander even exclaimed that he was excited to start his own family with Corinna and move back to Germany "…once my wife is knocked up!"
Soon, the regal princely couple were seen out and about in Europe attending various high society and glamorous events including the 2012 Orange Weiner Filmball held at the Wiener Rathaus in Wien, Austria last March. Rumors were running rampant that the couple were about to star in their own reality show on the German network, RTL. Sadly, that will never happen.
So, you are probably wondering to yourself, "I'm so sadden by this news. What happened? Why are they separating?!!" Well, Carl Alexander explained to his favorite German magazine, Bild, that the couple never had sex. "I wasn't even allowed to touch her!" he said in complete frustration "And, I wasn't allowed to have sex with her nor could I kiss her!!"
According to Bunte magazine, Corinna flew back to Austria a couple of weeks ago without her husband. She then, allegedly, phoned Fredric faux Prince von Anhalt to tell him that she did not love Carl Alexander and will never return to Château du Bel Air. Ever! Carl Alexander was devastated, "For me, it was love, but she has just used me!" Von Anhalt was outraged calling Corinna:
… a criminal! CRIMINAL!! She only wanted the title of 'princess'. She even sent her Austrian manager to fly to my house in Los Angeles to fob off Carl Alexander Prince of Hohenzollern with money so that she may continue use the title Prinzessin von Hohenzollern (Princess of Hohenzollern).
Once the sleazy Austrian manager was at Frederic faux Prince von Anhalt's house, Château du Bel Air, von Anhalt reportedly told them that he would comply with the sleazy Austrian manager's demands. Then von Anhalt called the police.
Meanwhile, Carl Alexander was in his room… alone. Deeply hurt. Crying. Crying over the loss of his wife, Corinna. "I'm sad. But, I know I will find love again" he said whilst tears flowing down his princely face, "I know I will be married again to a beautiful wife who has great character and nice large tits!"
As for Corinna, the Bikini Princess von Hohenzollern, well, she is still living it up in Wien, Austria with her fabulous faux gold tiara. Besides hiring a manager, she started her own website and Facebook fan page.
Frederic faux Prince von Anhalt announced that the marriage between Carl Alexander and Corinna will be annulled.
Sources: Cour Grand-Ducale de Luxembourg, Bild, and Bunte
Photos courtesy of Bild and Frederic Prince von Anhalt 🙂


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The annual event unites over 4,500 young theatre lovers from 26 states and the District of Columbia, who gather over Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend to participate in workshops and lectures, as well as perform highlights from their respective productions.
JTF 2014 will take place Jan. 17-19, and Playbill.com will be reporting live from the event, keeping readers up to date on the exciting weekend of performances and special events.
The festival will also premiere selections from upcoming licensing titles including Shrek Jr.; Legally Blonde Jr.; 101 Dalmatians Kids; Mary Poppins; and Magic Tree House: The Knight At Dawn.
In addition to Pasek and Paul, Blickenstaff (The Little Mermaid), Brown (Mary Poppins) and Keenan-Bolger (Newsies), the weekend will feature Andy Jones (Cinderella), Merle Dandridge (Tarzan, Aida), Josh Strickland (Tarzan), Alton Fitzgerald White (The Lion King), Jenifer Foote (Follies), Henry Hodges (Beauty and the Beast), Carrie Manolakos (Mamma Mia!), Jacob Brent (Cats), as well as cast members from Pasek and Paul's James and the Giant Peach, including Mike Spee, Julie Briskman, Richard Gray, Diana Huey, Kendra Kassebaum, Greg McCormick Allen, Jayne Muirhead and Heath Saunders.
Pasek and Paul will offer a discussion and concert featuring a performance with the cast of James and the Giant Peach; while JTF will also present Broadway and Beyond: An Evening with the Stars of Disney on Broadway!, featuring Blickenstaff, Brown, Dandridge, Strickland and White singing songs from the Disney Broadway catalogue. The festival will also include Tony Honoree and Music Theatre International CEO Freddie Gershon, author Tim Federle ("Five, Six, Seven, Nate!"), Tony-winning lighting designer Ken Billington (Chicago), designer Theresa Squire (The Lieutenant of Inishmore), "Magic Tree House" author Mary Pope Osborne and artistic directors from three of the leading children's theatres, Michael Bobbitt of the Adventure Theatre, Rosemary Newcott of the Alliance Theatre and Linda Hartzell of the Seattle Children's Theatre.
Founded in 2003, the Junior Theater Festival is the largest of its kind in the world. It is produced by the Junior Theater group in partnership with leading arts education consultancy firm, iTheatrics (founded by chairman Timothy Allen McDonald). This year's title sponsors are Music Theatre International, Disney Theatrical Group and Playbill.
JTF will also present the inaugural Sharidan Giles Technical Theater Award Scholarship to the technical theater student who most exemplifies commitment, curiosity, collaboration and creativity in technical theater; as well as the Playbill Community Service Award, which acknowledges how young people at the Junior Theater Festival are giving back across the country.
You can vote for the Playbill Community Service Award here.
"At the Junior Theater Festival, students, teachers and Broadway's brightest will raise their voices in song, dance as if nobody's looking, celebrate art for art's sake and remind the world that our young people are better prepared for the challenges ahead if they have access to quality arts programs," McDonald said in a statement. "Music theatre is the super food of the arts, because a musical brings together all of the art forms—music, dance, language, visual and even the most cutting edge digital arts— in one tasty bite."
Various student groups will also be honored with the "Freddie G Awards," which recognize achievements in teamwork and production excellence. The awards were named for MTI's Gershon.
Click here for more information about the Junior Theater Festival.
Highlights from the 2013 Junior Theatre Festival; Kara Lindsay, Andrew Keenan-Bolger, Bryan Batt and More in Attendance


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Jimmy Fallon had one dream as a teenager—to be on Saturday Night Live. In his puritanical devotion, he insisted on watching the show alone. "I just didn't want anyone ruining my experience," Fallon tells contributing editor David Kamp in Vanity Fair's February cover story. "No small talk. I wanted to see the sketches, the new characters, what the angle was." His parents were unusually overprotective—"We weren't even allowed to cross the street on our own until we were 10 or 12," says Fallon's sister Gloria—but in a characteristically offbeat gesture, they allowed the high-school-age Fallon to drink beer while watching S.N.L. at home. "As long as I wasn't doing anything at night, I'd just sit by myself, and I would have a six-pack of Pabst," he says. "I don't know if I made it all the way through the six, but I'd just sit there and watch the show. And tape it."
His obsession helped him ace the notoriously difficult audition at the age of 24. "I was there in the room that day," former S.N.L. writer Tina Fey tells Kamp. "He's one of two people I've ever seen who was completely ready to be on the show. Kristen Wiig is the other one…. And Jimmy was ready—like, if there had been a show to do that night."
Fallon also discusses the close relationship he developed with Lorne Michaels while a cast member on S.N.L. "Lorne helped me with everything—with relationships, with me getting famous," Fallon tells Kamp. "I was going through certain steps, and there were certain things I couldn't talk to my dad about, because he wouldn't know. Like 'I have money now. Do I still rent? Do I buy an apartment?' Or 'I'm in L.A., and I have to rent a car.' ["Lorne" voice] 'You should get a Lexus, because you want to be quiet.' Or 'Should I date this actress?' ["Lorne" voice] 'You can date her, but you probably shouldn't marry her.' And he'd be totally right."
Fallon left S.N.L. in the spring of 2004, having not yet turned 30, and he moved to Los Angeles to try his hand at movies, with poor box-office results. He tells Kamp that he considers his L.A. years a kind of lost period. "I was probably drinking more than I should have been drinking," he says. "It wasn't, like, sitting and watching old tapes of me on S.N.L., with the screen flickering in front of me. But I was like: 'I can't figure out what I want to do.'"
It was Michaels who intervened, broaching the idea with Fallon that perhaps a job hosting Late Night would be a good fit. As Fallon prepares to take the helm at The Tonight Show, he and his team are proceeding carefully, wary of scaling things up too significantly, lest they sacrifice the charm of what they currently have. "It's still going to be the same show," Fallon tells Kamp. "What I can tell you is it will be the best of what we do."


text: Hard hit by the global financial crisis and trouble in the eurozone, Spain is suffering its second recession in three years, with unemployment rates at record levels. People in all areas of society face hardship, sparking widespread anger across the nation. Ordinary Spanish people explain how they have been affected -- and what they're doing to change their future. Related: Welcome to Madrid: City of protests


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This is an update of a "Street Sweeper" column that originally ran on May 2, 2011.
Kenneth Starr was the owner and president of Starr & Company, LLC, which purported to be in the business of managing the assets of, and providing financial planning advice to, high net-worth and celebrity clients. As you likely figured out already, it's that word "purported" that makes all the difference in the world - particularly when we're talking about criminal fraud.
Starr presented himself as being in the business of managing the assets of (and providing financial planning and investment advice to) high net-worth and celebrity clients. Among other things, Starr paid bills for his clients, assisted them with tax filings, and recommended investments to them. For some clients, Starr assumed what amounted to nearly total control over their financial lives.
Without a doubt, you need to really know who you're trusting when you turn over cradle-to-grave control of your cash flow to anyone. Unfortunately, Starr's victims had no idea as to how superb a con man he was.
Starr would often talk to his clients about "sure deals." Unfortunately, the only thing sure about these scams was that the money never quite got invested in what folks thought they were being sold, and the conflicted interests of Starr, his wife, and his close associates were never quite divulged.
Of course, as with all Ponzi schemes, this one started to run out of steam and eventually deflated. As the pressure mounted, Starr transferred funds between clients in order to cover demands for payments when he lacked available funds.
On May 27, 2010, Starr was arrested on allegations of wire fraud, fraud by an investment advisor and money laundering. On June 10, 2010, Starr was indicted (read the complete Indictment here) on
The Indictment alleged that Starr defrauded or attempted to defraud at least 11 victims of approximately $59 million.
On September 10, 2010, Starr pled guilty inManhattan federal court to wire fraud, money laundering, and investment adviser fraud. Among other things, he admitted that between 2009 and 2010, he stole his clients' money and laundered the stolen money by routing it through an attorney trust account to disguise the true source of the funds. The total loss associated with Starr's fraud was between $20 million and $50 million.
Based upon his plea, Starr faced a statutory maximum sentence of 45 years, which likely would have been fashioned into a sentence of 121 to 151 months' imprisonment. Also, Starr agreed to forfeit the multimillion-dollar Upper East Side condominium he purchased using clients' money. Further, the government reserved the right to seek to forfeit up to $50 million in assets owned or controlled by Starr, and reserved the right to seek up to $50 million in restitution for victims.
On March 2, 2011, Starr, was sentenced to 7 1/2 years in prison.
From November 2008 through May 2010, Jonathon Bristol, an attorney admitted to practice law in New York and New Jersey and a law partner at the prestigious Winston & Strawn LLP, helped Starr defraud his clients and concealed his criminal conduct by using two separate attorney trust accounts that were under his control to launder Starr's defrauded funds.
When Starr's clients confronted Bristol about why their money, entrusted to Starr, had been transferred to Bristol's escrow accounts without their knowledge, the lawyer lied to them about the purpose of the transactions. By February 2010, Bristol faced increasing pressure because of Starr's failure to pay Winston & Strawn's legal fees. In March 2010, Bristol reported to senior management that Starr would be paying $100,000 of about $750,000 that Starr owed. Although the law firm recieved a $100,000 payment that month, that was obtained by Bristol from Starr's clients' laundered funds.
On December 16, 2010, Bristol surrendered to law enforcement and was charged with money laundering in connection with Starr's fraud. If convicted, Bristol faced a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
On May 2, 2011, Bristol pled guilty to conspiracy to launder nearly $19 million of Starr's funds. Bristol admitted to allowing Starr to wire funds in and out of his attorney escrow account, notwithstanding that the lawyer knew the funds were proceeds of an illegal scheme by Starr to steal money.
Bristol faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a maximum fine of $250,000 or twice the gross gain or loss from the offense. Further, as part of his plea agreement with the government, Bristol agreed to pay restitution in the amount of $18,860,282.69. He is scheduled to be sentenced in September 2011.
In the Department of Justice's May 2, 2011, press release announcing Bristol's plea, we were offered this observation:
Manhattan U.S. Attorney PREET BHARARA stated: "Attorneys are supposed to promote respect for the rule of law. But Jonathan Bristol abused his position as a partner at a prominent New York City law firm to break the law over and over again. Bristol should have been a gatekeeper; instead, he was an enabler to Kenneth Starr and his multi-million dollar fraud."
So, waddya think happens to a law partner at a prominent law firm who abuses his position to repeatedly break the law as an "enabler to Kenneth Starr and his multi-million dollar fraud?"
On December 18, 2012, Bristol was sentenced to time served, three years of supervised release, and a $100 special assessment fee; and he was ordered to pay $18,860,282.69 restitution.
Yeah, you read that right: time served! Seriously? Time served?? For a lawyer involved in $19 million worth of money laundering for a high-profile Ponzi scheme?
I'll save my sarcasm. Feel free to add your own.
The Department of Justice, the Securities And Exchange Commission, and other so-called Wall Street cops have an odd concept of justice and effective deterrence. Sure, Starr got 7 1/2 years and Martha Stewart got five months, but Bristol gets time served? Worse, when it comes to going after the big boys and the too-big-to-fail, prosecutors and regulators have a penchant for issuing all sorts of tough-talk press releases but closing out those cases on the basis of the payment of fines and restitution but no meaningful jail time: HSBC, Standard Chartered, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Wells Fargo - hey, I'm too tired to add to that list, you give it a shot.
As for me, I just can't wait, can't wait I say, for that next clarion call of hyperbole in the form of yet another DOJ press release trumpeting the next most important, highest-profile Ponzi case or mortgage fraud or LIBOR case in the history of mankind, and how Wall Street's cops are sending a message that Wall Street's malefactors will be trembling in their boots while standing in their bank's vaults amid all the dirty dollars amassed from all their dirty dealings. Whoa - yer all gonna get time served!
Oops, I think some of my sarcasm dripped out. Sorry.


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This colorful vegetable tart is the reason favorite Daughter is hooked on asparagus! I came across this simple recipe in Martha's vast recipe collection several years ago and it has been requested many times. Served as an appetizer or main dish when accompanied with a soup or salad, this tart has a handful of ingredients and is very easy to prepare – it fits right into a young lady's busy college schedule.
I have been fortunate to have children that love vegetables. We were never a fast-food family as that option was not available to my parents in South Africa when I was little. My kids ate what was served at our dinner table and our extended family feasts from the get-go. I was spared the drama of picky eaters and watched their friends exhibit some strange behaviors. One young neighbor never ate at our home. He subsisted on a diet of chicken nuggets alone. I'm sad to see that he is now an obese young man. Another young girl asked me what that whole bird was I had sitting in a roasting pan. It was a chicken… And I once come across a kid at the check-out counter that could not recognize broccoli (!) so he couldn't look up the PLU code. It's no wonder we are now in the midst of a health crisis with no change in sight.
When it comes to asparagus, I always buy the bunch with the thinnest spears and fresh buds. It's just a personal preference, but any thickness is good. An excellent provider of Vitamin K, folate, Vitamins C and A, asparagus is also a natural diuretic and is high in antioxidants.
This recipe combines the flavors or asparagus and Swiss-made Gruyère cheese. They pair beautifully together and it's no wonder – they are both common items in the Swiss kitchen. Here I have added sliced cherry tomatoes to the mix for a beautiful and delicious presentation.
Asparagus, tomato and Gruyère tart adapted from a recipe by Martha Stewart
a little flour for the work surface
1 sheet frozen puff pastry
5½ ozs (2 cups) Gruyère cheese, grated
1½ pounds thin or medium asparagus
8 cherry tomatoes, sliced in half
1 tablespoon olive oil
salt and pepper
Preheat oven to 400ºF.
On a floured surface, roll the puff pastry into a 16-by-10-inch rectangle. Trim uneven edges. Place pastry on a baking sheet (I line mine with a silpat). With a sharp knife, lightly score pastry dough 1 inch in from the edges to mark a rectangle. Using a fork, pierce dough inside the markings at 1/2-inch intervals.
Sprinkle pastry with Gruyère. Trim the bottoms of the asparagus spears to fit crosswise inside the tart shell. Arrange asparagus and tomato halves in a single layer over Gruyère. Brush with oil and season with salt and pepper. Bake until spears are tender, 20 to 25 minutes. Remove from oven and cool for 5 minutes.
Cut tart with a pizza cutter into desirable pieces. Serve hot.
Make sure you sprinkle some cheese on the edges too!


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As I've implied through my other posts, I'm still fairly new to the workforce. During team meetings, I tend to be able to keep up with technical discussion, but when my project manager starts talking about how we've won a new contract, or we're involved in a new proposal bid, or... anything that's business rather than technical, really... I can get lost pretty quickly.
What is the bare minimum all developers need to know about project management/business to function?


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|The World Bank
|World Development Indicators (WDI)
|Start Date
|End Date
The World Bank Development Indicators is the premium annual statistics of the World Bank which compiles data on development. The WDI contains over 900 indicators per country and covers topics including BOP, business, demographics, external debt, education, tourism, tax, etc. Geo coverage is over 150 countries. Series are annual from as early as 1960.
In an attempt to create cross country comparable datasets the World Bank adopted strict methodologies for their quantitative analysis to create the World Development Indicators (WDI). These methods include using averages and growth rates to calculate the range of average, and least squares growth rates.
Income and regional totals are also estimated by identifying country classifications for socio-economic variables. Please note many developing countries have missing data. The WDI has also instituted grouping strategies for regions, income, and lending. This helps to maintain conditions when researching developing countries.
Many of the WDI concepts are shares or ratios based on a specific population. For these, the universe is expressed as the last phrase of the text-descriptor (prefaced with the word "As") and the unit-descriptor is reduced to "%", for example:
World development indicators: Account at a financial institution - Male - As pct. of ages 15+, (%)
Some of the concepts use standard measurements but non-standard unit-descriptors:
Many of the WDI concepts use specialized measurements outside the typical run of Data Buffet series, and require specialized unit-descriptor metadata. These include:
Data are updated at least once a year, with possible interim updates throughout the year. Revisions can be extensive and cover the entire history.
Previously available and published data can be removed by the World Bank if quality or integrity of the data is questioned. For more detail on what has been removed, revised and added please see the Revision history from from the World Bank.
ETC means that series includes any statistical discrepancy in the use of resources relative to the supply of resources.
Due to redistribution restrictions imposed on Moody's Analytics the series shown by the World Bank Restricted Data are not made extracted on Data Buffet.
New Labor Froce Survey Methodolog: http://www.ilo.org/ilostat-files/Documents/LFEP2017.pdf.


text:
The next generation of face-mask is here!
Start benefiting from the additional protection of an AM99™ face-mask today. You can learn more about our patented technology here.
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In this pack, you will receive 5 masks in assorted colors.
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This product has been made using a patented Japanese nanotechnology to create a washable, reusable, antimicrobial facemask. It effectively neutralizes Coronaviruses and at least 17 other microorganisms upon contact (including: E. coli, MRSA, Measles and Candida).
Our nanotechnology works by puncturing the outer cell wall of a potentially harmful pathogen, thus rendering it inert and unable to cause harm to you or others around you. This antiviral antibacterial action works non-stop to keep your mask sanitary and safe.
By wearing an AM99™ cotton-based face-mask, you are protecting yourself and those around you from potentially harmful respiratory droplets and surface-to-surface transmission of viruses and bacteria.
Directions: Cover your nose and mouth with the mask, placing the ear loops securely over your ears with the nose bridge on top. Tighten if necessary.
How to care for your mask: We recommend washing your mask once daily and using this package to store it when not in use. To wash your mask simply handwash using a mild detergent under warm running water (approx. 30°C), pat dry using a clean towel and hang to dry.
Certifications: ISO 18184, ISO 18184:2019, JIL L1902.
Made in Hong Kong.


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I'd like to ask if anything like this exists. A browser-based tool for looking at a Linux system, managing it, and helping newbies diagnose problems.
What I'm thinking of is something like this :
it's a program that you install and run locally, but acts as a web-server so that the user interface is a browser
it's a combination of documentation, sys-admin tool and tutorial. So that, of course, you can look at man pages through it, or run commands. But more interestingly, you might read a "HOW-TO" page that says "look at the apache config files at /etc/apache2/apache2.conf " and that becomes a link to the file itself, letting you open it up and read it.
can be extended with plug-in editors / highlighters. Perhaps a log file will be easier to read if it can be syntax coloured and errors highlighted in red.
plug-ins can be shell scripts. And can be used to write diagnostic tests. So, for example, if you need to look in one of 8 different places to find out what sort of audio setup your linux box has, someone could write a shell (or perl) script that looks in these places, extracts the relevant information and displays it on a page alongside tutorial information about how to solve a particular problem.
I'm sure you can think of many similar scenarios.
So, does anything like this exist? Unix is an awesome system with built-in man support, command-line tools and scriptability. But is an impenetrable jungle for the uninitiated. On the other hand, hypertexts with linked html pages are much easier to navigate and aid discovery. And the browser can display diagrams and documents more readably than the terminal or Emacs. Is there any project that tries to bring the best of these two worlds together?


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Eleven years ago, a scrawny kid showed up on the sands of Manhattan Beach with another tall, gangly newcomer. They were bringing their Florida game to the Wimbledon of beach volleyball.
They got out of the qualifiers and went 2-2 in the main draw and picked up 50 bucks.
Nice games, guys. Thanks for showing up.
Little did anyone know what a revelation, even a revolution, had sprung from that little ripple.
In 2004, Nick Lucena and Phil Dalhausser kept plugging away on the AVP tour, even taking a third-place finish as the partnership developed, as each scratched and clawed to forge his game.
In 2005, Lucena and Dalhausser finally won in Austin, defeating Karch Kiraly and Mike Lambert along the way, avenging their only defeat of the tournament to Dax Holdren and Jeff Nygaard, and toppling top seeds Jake Gibb and Stein Metzger in a marathon final.
Dalhausser, of course, went on to pair with Todd Rogers to become the most dominant force in the world at 6-foot-9 and capture Olympic gold in 2008.
He didn't find the winner's circle quite as much, but developed the reputation as a fiery, crafty shotmaker. In fact, he was a crafty veteran even before he became a veteran in the sport.
But it's back to Plan A for Lucena. After the 2013 season, he latched onto Ryan Doherty, another project from the Todd Rogers School of This is How to Play Beach Volleyball.
A former pitcher at the University of Notre Dame, Doherty not only looked taller than Dalhausser. Only thing was there was a tape measure long enough. Some estimated 6-10 or so, and now he's listed as 7-1.
But it's Doherty's growth as a player that has the pair on a pretty good trajectory that could land them in the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics.
"I hadn't played against him at all. I practiced against him and Todd, saw him play," Lucena said. "He was so much bigger than everyone else. He's the biggest on the world tour and learning the game.
"He could be really dominant. He's pretty athletic and I think he's improved a bunch this year. The more he plays, the better he can be."
It's easy to see the comparison with Dalhausser, but no one is expecting that. But Doherty keeps improving and the team keeps knocking on the door this season.
""He's got a lot of potential, he can get to that level," Lucena said. "Phil is the best in the world and there are not many like him. Ryan can hand-set, he's 7 feet tall. It would be nice if he turns into that player."
They went to Sao Paulo, Brazil, for the FIVB's last tournament of 2013 and the duo liked what they saw.
This season, they reached the semifinals at the AVP Milwaukee Open. Last week, they reached the final in Salt Lake before falling to Gibb and Casey Patterson (17-15 in the third game).
They've had their shots internationally, too. They reached the final in Berlin only to fall to fellow Americans John Hyden and Tri Bourne. They took bronze in Gstaad, Switzerland.
"It's hard for me to say I expected making it to semifinals and finals when last year we had nothing but a 17th place on the world tour," Doherty said. "I knew how good Nick was and we've done as well as I could have hoped."
It's been about 4 1/2 months without a break for the players on both tours, but there's nothing like Manhattan Beach to spark the fire for the pros. That's not new to Lucena, who nearly qualified for the 2012 Olympics with Matt Fuerbringer, but it is for Doherty.
"I feel all right," Doherty said. "Sometimes you're a little beat up, but for the most part, I'm happy with where I'm at. Nick and I are in good position to make a run in the last couple of tournaments.
"You get your name on the (Manhattan) pier and all of a sudden you're a big name in USA volleyball. That's a big deal.
"Obviously, I'd love to be able to show my kids my name on the pier."
Slowly but surely, he's making progress. His game has matured rapidly, and he's not the statue one might picture out of someone that tall trying to maneuver in the sand. And his feel for the game has advanced just as fast.
"I think I've gotten quite a bit better," Doherty said. "I'm a lot more consistent. Last year with Todd, teams could pretty much wait for me to make mistakes."
I have a better understanding of what's going on out there, so I don't make as many boneheaded mistakes, silly mistakes that veteran guys wouldn't make."


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This morning the radio and television stations in Vancouver were broadcasting the results of an investigation by Estefania Duran from CKNW. Her story had the click-baiting title "What dog breed is behind the most attacks in Metro Vancouver? It's not what you think" and presented the results of a investigation that included Freedom of Information requests from the various municipalities in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia.The outcome of her investigation was a graphic that showed that German Shepherds were the dogs most frequently declared by municipal governments as "dangerous" followed by Pit Bulls, Labrador Retrievers and Rottweilers. Wait you must be thinking, one of these things is not like the others? Yes, you read that right; according to this investigation Labs are the breed with the third most incidents standing behind only the Pit Bull and the German Shepherd. Now if this was the entire story then it wouldn't be a big thing but this one data point is being expanded and stretched dangerously out of context to imply that Labs are an "aggressive" breed. You might ask: how could that be? and why would anyone do that? Well that is what this blog post is going to be about. How, when placed out of context, good data can result in the spread of bad conclusions and can ultimately lead to bad decision-making.
Let's start with the potential conflicts of interest. I am the owner of a Labrador Retriever. We got our English Black Lab puppy six months ago and she has grown into a great big friendly lug. She joins us daily as I walk the kids to school. Only today, I was informed by a grandmother dropping off her grand-kids that our puppy is the third most dangerous dog out there. Since I hadn't turned on my radio yet I had no clue what she was talking about and simply nodded but once I got plugged into the media I realized what she was talking about and that this was becoming a "big" news story, at least in our little part of the world.
Now our having a Lab is not a big surprise because Labs have been the most popular family dog in the US for over the last 22 years and in Canada for at least the last 20+ years with the German Shepherd coming in second on that list. On our street alone there are five Labs, one golden retriever and three other breeds that I now of. Labs make up 55% of the dogs on our street. So why is this important? Because were population stats included in the story it would change the entire dynamic of the discussions about this story.
Sadly, as Ms. Duran noted on the radio, none of the useful dog stat information is readily available so this next section will depend on info I have picked up where I could. According to a Georgia Strait story, in Burnaby pit bulls that made up only 2% of the licensed dogs in the city but were responsible for 24.7 % of the bites in which the breed could be identified. German Shepherds made up 5.4 % of all licensed dogs and 7.3 % of all dog bites. Anyone notice a slight difference there? Now to be clear I am not trying to be mean to Pit Bulls but by providing the numbers in context a different pattern appears. Per capita, German Shepherds look a bit less menacing but because of their higher numbers they end up with more total attacks.
As for Labs, well getting numbers of dogs by breed is a surprisingly hard thing to do online but a study showed that in Toronto there were approximately twice as many Labs as German Shepherds. If those numbers hold for Greater Vancouver, that would suggest that they might make up as much as 10% of the dog population and yet according to the report there are half the number of aggressive Labs as German Shepherds. When compared to Pit Bulls the numbers are even more telling: Labs are at least five times as popular as Pit Bulls but make up a smaller number of "aggressive" dogs than Pit Bulls. See how putting the numbers into context makes all the difference?
So why you ask is Blair getting all annoyed by this story? Well my interest is in evidence-based decision-making and this story is already being used to advance/promote bad decision-making. If you go back to the online version of the story, who do they quote? A pit bull advocate; and what does the advocate say? That she "is hoping the new numbers will shift the conversation from breed to owner." Other folks were also on the band-wagon, with the Georgia Straight running a similar story that once again highlighted the Labs while suggesting that we shouldn't be banning Pit Bulls.
Now I am going to keep this post short as I just blew my lunch hour writing it and have to get back to my paying job. But I just want to make it clear that putting numbers into context makes a big difference for policy purposes. Since this report has come out I have seen it already used by supporters of Pit Bulls to discourage breed-specific bans. This story has already appeared on Global News and both online and on the radio at CKNW. As I noted, I have already had it mentioned to me on the street. I'm betting that by tonight I will be seeing it on the t.v. news and will hear about it more on the radio on my way home and I'm betting that few will point out the population demographics that underpin the story. To summarize, no Labs are not more aggressive than Rotweilers no matter what that out-of-context numbers appear to imply. There are just a whole lot more Labs out there than Rotweilers and a small percentage of a big population can often outnumber a large percentage of a small population. To conclude, any municipal politician who uses this data to pursue a decision about breed-specific dog bans is barking up the wrong tree.


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5 U.S. bikini baristas accused of prostitution
EVERETT, Washington (AP) -- Five Washington state baristas charged customers to touch their breasts and buttocks at an espresso stand where servers wear bikinis to draw business, police said.
EVERETT, Washington (AP) -- Five Washington state baristas charged customers to touch their breasts and buttocks at an espresso stand where servers wear bikinis to draw business, police said.
The five were charged Wednesday with prostitution. Charging money for that kind of touching falls under the city's definition of prostitution.
The Everett Herald reports the women were charging up to $80 to strip down while fixing lattes and mochas.
During a two-month investigation, detectives also saw the women lick whipped cream off each other and pose naked for pictures at the Grab-n-Go Espresso stand in Everett, about 30 miles 950 kilometers) north of Seattle.
Owner Bill Wheeler told KCPQ-TV employees sign a policy prohibiting the kind of behavior alleged by police. He said anyone caught doing anything illegal would be fired.
The women, ages 18 to 24, were not arrested, said Sgt. Robert Goetz. They were expected to be in Municipal Court in a few weeks to answer misdemeanor charges.
Police have received more than 40 complaints in the past year of women exposing themselves at coffee stands. Goetz said the department investigated Grab-n-Go because it had the most complaints.
"This was about alleged conduct, not about what the women were wearing," he said. "They could have been wearing parkas and if they continued to conduct themselves that way, we still would have filed the criminal charges."
Undercover detectives began posing as customers in mid-July.
During one visit, a barista allegedly told a detective that for $20, she and another barista would give him a show. He paid and they bared their breasts and pulled down their undergarments.
The women also charged customers to play "basketball," a game in which customers threw wadded up money at the women, who caught the money in their underwear, detectives said.
The city council is expected to decide next week whether to change the city's lewd conduct ordinance to cover espresso stands.


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My 4 year old daughter had shown interest in learning how to make wudhu properly. I thought what a great way to teach her by using a lapbook for her reference, masha Allah it worked!
First section of the lapbook is the Bismillah Puzzle which was great fun making but I'm sure much more fun for my daughter to color, masha Allah.
I simply created this by finding the right image I was happy with and editing it. I then found a puzzle template and made it transparent in psp and placed it over the image. Voile the puzzle was ready for print.
Here is the file for the Bismillah puzzle: Bismillah Puzzle File
My daughter colored it after I printed it out. I used regular copy paper although I am sure a heavy cardstock might be easier. After she colored it I then glued it on to half a file folder for stability ( I didn't have cardstock at the time so I improvised, lol)
Cut the pieces and your puzzle is finished!
Here is the envelope we made freehand, no template although I am sure there are some out there. We just used a piece of construction paper and folded it half way to fit the section of the lapbook.
Our Next section was the Wudhu Sequence Card Game. Again, this was a fun one and I think the more hands on the better for young children. My Daughter still plays with this!
I again found images I was pleased with online. I edited them and printed them on regular copy paper. This one is another good one to print on cardstock for stability since the lil ones will be handling them alot. I just glued them on a half a file folder again, lol. I couldn't wait to go to the store and buy cardstock since I was so excited to get it finished for my lil one to play with.
If you would like to use this file here it is: wudhu-sequence-game file
We freehanded a pocket to hold the Cards. I know there are templates for folders, but I just wanted to be sure that mine was big enough to hold the cards.
Okay, now for a little comedy. Our next part of the lapbook was What Nullifies the wudhu, or in more simple terms "make wudhu after" section.
My pictures may seem a little graphic or even offensive in a way, but as I said earlier I believe children learn with more visual things. Please take no offense if you see it to be that way or if you look at it the way I do…Have a chuckle or two..Teehee!
If you would like the file for this one Click here: tayammum- Dry Wudhu File
Now just for reinforcing the steps of wudhu and the proper order we made a flap book with the different steps of wudhu but a little more broken down and I captioned it to read to my daughter each time and have her show me that step. Here is the file in which I used images from. This is a book made from another sister, but I only cut the images out and pasted them in a flap book as you can see in the picture. I am sure you can probably use the book if you would rather do so.
For the file click here: steps-for-wudhu-file
The last part is the "After Wudhu we Pray" section. I used a coloring page I found and just printed it out, had my daughter color it and then I cut out each section of children praying.
Here is the file for the children praying: Children Praying coloring page file
The rug the children are praying on I actually got off a wonderful homeschooling/Islamic website that I refer to all of the time when teaching my children. May Allah Reward That Sister with Much Good in this Life and the Hereafter. Ameen.
Here is her site: http://www.talibiddeenjr.com/
I actually found the prayer rugs on her ramadan sister site but thought I would reference her direct site and you can navigate through it. She has many beneficial teaching tools. Masha Allah, but here is the file for the rugs: prayer-rugs file
This lapbook was so much fun for my daughter. She loves walking around showing her siblings and her father or even anyone who comes to visit. She is so proud of herself for putting it all together on her own. Having 4 other siblings can prove some difficulty in finding time alone with one parent so this really helped her feel special and she learned on top of it. Alhamdulilah!
Can't wait to start our next lapbook insha Allah!
GO AND TAKE A LOOK AT About My Religion's Blog SHE DID A NICE WHUDU LAPBOOK. VERY COLORFUL, SIMPLE YET TO THE POINT IN TEACHING YOUNG CHILDREN ABOUT WUDHU.


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- JDPenn Law78
- BS/MSUniversity of Pennsylvania74
Perry Golkin is a Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Public Pension Capital Management. Formerly, he was at Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., a private equity firm that he joined in 1986. At KKR, Mr. Golkin has been involved in numerous acquisitions and has served on key committees supervising KKR operations. He has been a director for a number of KKR portfolio companies including Willis Group, Primedia, Inc., Walter Industries, Rockwood Chemicals, and American Re-Insurance Company. He also plays a major role in KKR investor relations and capital raising activities. Mr. Golkin practiced corporate law at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett prior to joining KKR and is also a certified public accountant.
While attending Penn Law, Mr. Golkin taught financial and managerial accounting at the Wharton School. He was a keynote speaker on Law and Entrepreneurship at Penn 's Institute for Law & Economics (ILE), has lectured at the Law School and the Wharton School, and served as Dean's Roundtable speaker. He is a Trustee of the University of Pennsylvania, an Overseer at the Law School, a Trustee of Penn Medicine and on the Board of Advisors of the Institute for Law & Economics. Mr. Golkin also serves as a director of the Biomedical Research Alliance of New York.