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Newt Gingrich apologizes to Ryan
Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich apologized in a telephone call to House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) on Tuesday afternoon for his remarks on "Meet the Press," where the presidential candidate referred to Ryan's Medicare proposal as "radical change."
"Newt apologized," said Rick Tyler, his press secretary and longtime aide. "The call went very well."
Gingrich, his nascent campaign in jeopardy, has shifted into fervent damage control following a furious conservative reaction to his comments — and is even expressing a rare bit of contrition.
From Iowa, Gingrich held two conference calls with tea party leaders scattered throughout the nation – one on short notice Monday night, and another Tuesday morning. Aides said Gingrich started each of the half-hour calls by explaining what he meant on "Meet the Press," and acknowledging that he could have expressed it better. "We've tried to correct the record and admit it could have been done better," Tyler said. "We move on."
After exchanging conciliatory emails with Ryan, Gingrich had the phone conversation from Minneapolis, where he was campaigning before the Minnesota Family Council.
Ryan had said on Laura Ingraham's radio show on Monday, "With allies like that, who needs the left?"
On the Sunday show, Gingrich had referred to the GOP Medicare proposal as "right-wing social engineering." When moderator David Gregory pressed specifically on Ryan's plan, Gingrich added: "I think that that is too big a jump. … I'm against Obamacare, which is imposing radical change. And I would be against a conservative imposing radical change."
On Tuesday, after the two tea-party calls, Gingrich held a third call with conservative bloggers.
The Gingrich team was encouraged when questions on the calls migrated from Medicare to other subjects, ranging from the United Nations to education. By the accounts of Gingrich and his advisers, he meant what he said, and just phrased it clumsily. The campaign admits to "missteps" and believes the damage is serious but survivable.
"Newt will get up to bat again, and he'll hit a home run," Tyler said. "This is just one event. I don't think it's a defining event. I do think it's serious, and we've taken it seriously."
Gingrich believes that whatever the merits of the Ryan plan, the introduction has been politically awkward.
"Medicare is going to be part of the 2012 campaign, one way or another, and Newt would like to help the Republicans design a winning plan that the country will support," Tyler continued. "If you try to impose it on the country, you'll pay a huge political price, you'll be out of power and you won't get it done."
In a sign that Gingrich plans no retreat, Tyler added: "Newt Gingrich has a record of achievement on large-scale, historic change. When he offers advice on Medicare reform, I'd listen to him. And part of that advice is: You need a political plan to go along with your policy plan, so that you can convince the country that where you want to take them is where they want to go."


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The Year of the Monks
Photo courtesy of Larry Clark, © 1966 The Monks
by Will Bedard (March 1999)
Special thanks to Jamie Goodman of the official Monks site
1966. London was swinging, the Byrds soared on the wings of their most innovative single, "Eight Miles High," Brian Wilson labored in the studio on a legendary lost masterpiece and the Yardbirds fronted the mightiest lineup in rock'n'roll, with Messrs. Beck and Page on dual lead guitars. Pop Art and its bastard stepchild, Psychedelia, were about to rule the airwaves. But from Germany there came dark rumblings that hadn't been heard since the Nuremberg Rallies of the 1930's. Guitar and organ howled in orgiastic competition as a thunderous tribal beat bludgeoned song structures into strange forms. Rhythmic cadences echoed the slap of jackboots goose-stepping down Berlin's boulevards. There were also strained and shrill vocals, eerily reminiscent of a sputtering orator disposed of only 20 years before in the ruins of the Reich Chancellery's garden.
All that was missing were the chorus of hoarse "Sieg Heil"s. Even then, there were aural equivalents in a song called "Complication." The lead singer chanted: "complication, complication" as the backing vocalists intoned "people cry for you, people die for you" over and over. The effect is mesmerizing, as is the rest of the Monks' 1966 debut album, Black Monk Time.
Strangely enough, there wasn't a war criminal in sight, just five decent, clean-cut American boys playing rock'n'roll. It's taken over thirty years for music to catch up with the ground work laid by the Monks on their one and only album.
Recorded in the waning days of '65, the album was an anomaly. Harsh and abrasive, the music has not only withstood the test of time, it's grown more pertinent with every passing year. A grotesque and fantastic tale precedes the release of Black Monk Time, though.
Formed in 1964 by five American GI's stationed in Germany, the Monks started off as a very traditional rock'n'roll outfit. Initially called the Torquays, the band played the standard beat music of the day. The musicians (Gary Burger, lead guitar/vocals; Larry Clark, organ/vocals; Dave Day, rhythm guitar/vocals; Roger Johnston, drums/vocals and Eddie Shaw, bass/vocals) covered Chuck Berry tunes, surf music and various songs by British Invasion artists.
Fortunately, the band was comprised of highly imaginative musicians. They soon tired of the expected format and began experimenting with their sound, focusing almost solely on rhythm. "We got rid of melody. We substituted dissonance and clashing harmonics," bassist Eddie Shaw said. "Everything was rhythmically oriented. Bam, bam, bam. We concentrated on over-beat." The music did not come out of the blue, however. The lead guitar player, Gary Burger, elaborated on the process. "It probably took us a year to get the sound right," he recalled. "We experimented all the time. A lot of the experiments were total failures and some of the songs we worked on were terrible. But the ones we kept felt like they had something special to them. And they became more defined over time."
One of the components in this alchemy of sound was feedback. Burger discovered feedback independently of the many English players who have all been heralded at one time or another as the inventor of said effect.
"We were practicing and I had to take a leak," Burger said. "I laid the guitar against the amp and walked off the stage. I forgot to turn it off and the thing began to make this god-awful racket. It started off humming and then it increased in volume. Roger started hitting his drums and it sounded so right together."
Eddie Shaw went one step further when describing that initial bout with feedback. "Just imagine the sound of the Titanic scraping along an iceberg," he said. "It was like discovering fire." Gary Burger quickly learned to control the feedback. Wielding a Gretsch Black Widow guitar, his lead lines were run through an audio atom-smasher that masqueraded as a Fender amplifier. A thick and distorted cacophony of black sound emerged. Burger trashed the speakers so often, however, that he had to switch to a heavy-duty Vox Super Beatle that had a custom-made 100 watt amp.
Around this time, the rhythm guitar was traded in for a six string banjo. The band wanted to sound as grating as possible and a banjo fit the bill quite nicely. Dave Day played this instrument, an oddity in rock'n'roll. To amplify the banjo, he stuck two microphones inside it. He chorded it like a guitar and the horse gut strings produced strange clacking sounds. Day's frenzied attack is one of the most unique aspects of the group's departure from conventional rock'n'roll music. The slashing banjo stays on the beat for the most part, but at times it introduces a counter-rhythm. The effect can be quite disconcerting. Day was also the band's original rock'n'roll citizen, having been an Elvis devotee since the mid-50s.
Gary Burger was never a flashy lead player, but he sought levels of dementia unknown to other guitar players of the era (except for the fretwork of Syd Barrett, original guitarist/vocalist with the Pink Floyd). Burger's guitar was employed in either short, stinging riffs or abrasive chordal poundings that dissolve into waves of feedback. A devotee of the Gibson fuzz box, Burger painted twisted, Bosch-like aural hallucinations.
Also a nominee for the greatest rock'n'roll singer ever, Gary Burger's vocals often crack, confirming the confusion and fury of a young man frightened of Vietnam and nuclear bombs. Spitting and strangling on the lyrics, Burger conveys rage in a way no punk vocalist has ever matched.
The backbone of the unit was the drummer, Roger Johnston. Initially a jazz influenced percussionist, he dispensed of complex fills and adhered strictly to the beat. This produced a primal effect, which was enhanced by his use of huge sticks on a French-made Asba kit. He was the band's whipping post, laying down a thick bottom upon which they ran amok. To accentuate the aboriginal nature of the music, Johnston rarely used a cymbal. Whereas another percussionist would have used a cymbal flourish, he substituted vigorous thwacking on the tom toms. "I dogged it. I wanted it to sound as raw and thumping as possible," Johnston said in a phone interview. Indeed it does, invoking primeval nightmares. His drumming conjures images of Roman centurions pounding spikes into crosses at a crucifixion.
Then there was Eddie Shaw's bass playing. As the other half of the rhythm section, Shaw was also initially a jazzophile. Fortunately, he had none of the pretensions associated with that genre of music. Shaw was a lycanthrope: a jazz man by day, a rock'n'roller by night. And in the Monks' world it was always dark. Shaw's fluid bass patterns pulsate and moan, breaking down into jagged chunks of noise. He played extremely loud, raising legions of stigmata on one's skin. He turned his Gibson bass and Selmer amp up until the 18" speakers rattled. The resultant bass lines buzz and throb, snapping and popping like hell's own spawn.
Last, but not least, there's the crazed fingers of the keyboard player. Larry Clark summoned different tones from his organ, ranging from something out of "The Phantom of the Opera" to interstellar delta pinging. Clark's playing was usually methodical, anchoring the band to terra firma. He would often introduce melody into the song during the bridge. These melodic breaks did not last long, however. Clark would bear down on the keys, fighting to be heard above the guitar feedback. The resulting discord is not unlike Booker T. Bach and Bo Diddley dropping acid together.
The rhythm section, Johnston and Shaw, along with Day's propulsive banjo, insisted on lockstep syncopation. Consequently, the music took on something akin to modal qualities. In this regard, they anticipated the Beatles' one chord raga "Tomorrow Never Knows" and the Butterfield Blues Band's legendary noisefest "East-West." Both of those songs were long thought to be harbingers in western pop, but the Monks ushered in the repetitious drone a half-year ahead of schedule. Burger and Clark stacked layers of noise on top of this modal effect. These discordant textures added depth, giving the lie to the simplicity of rhythmically-bound music. The band also introduced arbitrary key changes to the songs, producing tension. Taken altogether, the music virtually explodes, achieving a riot of sound that no other band was creating at that time. Out of this voodoo stew, twisted songs with dadaist titles began to coagulate; "Oh, How To Do Now," "Shut Up" and "Higgle-dy-Piggle-dy" to name just a few.
After being discharged from the Army, their image evolved. They dropped the first name, exchanging it for a new moniker, the Monks. Momentous changes were ensuing in their style, both musically and sartorially. "We went into a barbershop on the spur of the moment and either me or Dave Day got our head shaved in a tonsure like a monk's," the drummer, Roger Johnston recalled. "Then the rest of the guys did. I really don't know why, but we did it."
There was initial reluctance on some of the members' parts. It had taken them many months to
grow their GI haircuts out to an acceptable length that was in keeping with a hip band's image. Once shorn, though, the musicians realized they were no longer just a beat group. The Monks dressed in black at all times, wearing ropes tied around their necks. Eddie Shaw explained the unusual reason behind this. "I think we all live with ropes around our necks. Ours were plain and visible. It caused people to stare at us," he said. "The people with the painted silk ropes are the ones you have to watch, but even then, when they get smart, many of them trade theirs in for either an invisible one or a plain one. No matter what the ropes look like, they are all used for the same thing."
The image, in conjunction with the music's ongoing mutation, startled German audiences and induced an anarchy of perception. The reaction ranged from enthusiastic paeans in some urban areas to outright hate in the rural regions. At a provincial show, a young man became enraged at what he took to be blasphemy; a mere beat group dressed as religious ascetics.
"I had a guy jump on stage one night and begin choking me," reminisced Burger. "He kept it up with diligence until he received the tuning-peg-end of my guitar in the chops. That pretty much settled the issue."
The band also assaulted the crowds sonically, demanding their complete and undivided attention. If the audience tried to interact socially with one another, the Monks turned the volume up to ear-splitting levels. "We didn't want anybody to do anything but listen to us," Roger Johnston said. The results were electrifying. Phil Spector might have invented the legendary "Wall of Sound," but the Monks hammered out a "Steamroller of Sound."
A residency at Hamburg's famed Top Ten Club solidified the band's approach. The Monks gigged incessantly, playing six hours a night on the weekdays and eight or more hours a night on the weekend. They still played some of the standard beat material, but their originals became the core of the sets. The crowds were perplexed, to say the least.
"Some of them loved us. But others . . . well," Gary Burger said, pausing to laugh. "They didn't have a clue what was going on. I think the image confused them as much as the music. We were a freak show to them."
He recalled the city's rock'n'roll fans and their affect on the Monks. "They'd been the first to recognize the Beatles. The Star Club and the Top Ten were where the Beatles really learned to play rock'n'roll. The same with us. Hamburg's where we got our education. The fans made us work hard to entertain them. They knew their rock'n'roll, that's for sure."
Even in jaded Hamburg, though, the Monks were a tad different than the usual rock'n'roll fare. "The image was sometimes a little too strong, but we got used to it. We were generally safe on the streets, even in the worst parts of Hamburg at four in the morning," Eddie Shaw said. "We looked too serious and officious to mess with. Strangers were generally confused by us because our actions didn't reflect the dress. It was strangely androgynous and almost artificial looking. Some people told us we didn't look real. Walking through a crowded nightclub, I could feel people touching my head to see if everything was indeed real."
He elaborated on the audience's reaction to their strange garb and coiffures. "If a certain person had enough courage they would walk up and ask if they could touch our heads. Girls would draw back their hands and squeal. The whores of Hamburg considered us kinky. They loved us," Shaw said.
By this point, the band members had been in Germany for some time, beginning with their years of service in the Army. "We'd been in Germany for so long that some of us even dreamt in the language," Shaw related. On their off hours, the group sometimes suffered from boredom and loneliness. As young men far from home are wont to do, they indulged in sex and carousing. There were always willing groupies and plenty of beer and liquor. Larry Clark, however, proved to be an exception when it came to the intake of alcohol. A teetotaler, Clark told of the one time he did indulge in spirits. "I just didn't like the taste. I drank too much one night and decided to never repeat that experience," he said.
Roger Johnston reminisced about the band's pursuits offstage. "We all drank. Especially me and Gary and Dave. Eddie was married, so he didn't hang out with us as much," Johnston said. "But Larry didn't party. He was off on his Harley or playing chess somewhere. Everybody except for Eddie chased girls, though."
Unfortunately, there was some friction between two members of the band. The tension went back to their days as the Torquays. For a short time, an English girl had sang with the group. As is usual in these situations, one of the musicians had sex with her. Then, another one did. The two members involved in this triad were Dave Day and Larry Clark. The girl left the Torquays shortly thereafter, but the damage had been done. Consequently, Day and Clark sometimes went out of their way to subtly harass one another.
Drugs, in the form of speed, entered the Monks' world during their tenure in Hamburg. "I'd be tired, playing all night and drinking late to unwind when we got off," Roger Johnston reminisced. "Oma would give me a pill to pep me up, so I could play a show the next night." Oma was an elderly German woman, who had also introduced the Beatles to speed a few years earlier. Johnston began to rely on the pills to help him get through the long grinding sets. Some of the Monks, barring Larry Clark, also took speed on occasion. This indulgence and immersion in German culture had strange ramifications on the music, which would be apparent within a short time.
By November of '65, the Monks were ready to enter the studio. They had already laid down some demos, but now their management secured them a recording contract with Polydor. The album opened with their theme, "Monk Time." This song often caused tension when they played it live for off-duty American servicemen. In it, Burger waxes inarticulate vehemence, damning the conflict in southeast Asia. "Why do you kill all those kids in Vietnam/ Mad Vietcong!/My brother died in Vietnam." He invokes a pop cultural touchstone, James Bond. All to no avail. "Stop it/ stop it/ I don't like it!" Burger howls. Nobody can figure out what the hell's going on over there, least of all the super spy. The Monks are sitting this one out, but they have garnered one tarnished nugget of wisdom: "Pussy Galore's coming down/ and we like it!" One must wonder if this is in reference to 007's nemesis or the groupies that the band serviced on a regular basis.
The second song kicks off with a martial beat, summoning visions of SS troops massed on Russia's borders. Young men's militant voices demand everybody listening to "shut up/don't cry!" Make us feel at home why don't you, fellows. Clark's organ moans and wails, making way for the scorched earth policy of guitar and bass. During the break, the Ukraine burns as Monkish hordes loot and pillage. Then, Burger's back. His voice strains under the pressure of reaching for notes out of his range. Or maybe its just that the whiskey he was drinking throughout the recording sessions had charred his vocal cords, leaving lesions and third degree burns. The name of this tune is "Shut Up." A most sixties-type mantra, eh?
Nursery rhyme lyrics, suffering from delusions of schizoid simplicity, are next. Yes, we know "girls are girls/ and boys are boys," but does anybody have any idea what the hell the rest of the song is supposed to mean? Mail your answers care of this magazine and they'll remain confidential. This reviewer often runs out of toilet paper and grabs whatever's handy. Then, Gary Burger shouts "Higgle-dy-Piggle-dy!" Chaos comes down like sniper's bullets in Dallas, converging somewhere near heaven. Insistent, biting leads from the fingers of Gary Burger, puckering bass lines and staggered rhythms courtesy of the damn drummer make for a green fuzz of gunsmoke, which sticks in your brain like carbolic acid taffy.
Ah, then there's the fifth track, which is really a black mass held incognito. The banjo snickers like a guillotine. Suddenly, Clark's organ fills cathedrals in one's head, driving Gary Burger into spastic exorcisms of contempt and infatuation. "I hate you with a passion, baby," he squeals. "But call me!" his demonic henchmen hollowly chant. "You know my hate's everlasting, baby," Burger sputters. "But call me!" the sacrilegious congregation intones again. The keys perform precise lobotomies as bubonic bass lines spit and hiss. Burger's feedback snarls like the grim reaper's rusty scythe ripping through mildewed cowls. Congress should pass a law against Gary Burger. He should be banned from playing guitar until 2010. He's armed and dangerous. Hopefully, by that year he'll be hooked up to a dialysis machine, unable to wreak havoc on nerve endings ever again, the evil son of a bitch.
"Oh, How To Do Now" is next in this savage sideshow. Its a parade of pinheads and Siamese twins, escapees from Dr. Caligari's cabinet. There's so much fuzz in this song, you could make hair shirts for an entire convent of flagellants. Johnston's drumming sticks toothpicks under your fingernails. Once again, enduring Gary Burger's feedback discombobulates and self-immolates synapses. Eddie Shaw trades in his bass for a bazooka on this one. Or maybe its a Panzerfaust. And there's a key change toward the end that doesn't help matters one bit. The tension builds and Day's banjo clicks like a pressure cooker rattling on the stove. How many times do they repeat the damn title? 50! But what hell does it mean? Finally, the Monks let you off the rack, just so they can take you into another funhouse.
Rock'n'roll has never gotten heavier than the Monks did on "Complication." Hooded night riders gallop through this tune. Clark's organ caws like a crow above the skeletal scarecrow terror of lynchings. For pure white Christianity. Burger, some dreadful magi, issues orders. First, to his assassins as they penetrate the night and perpetrate mayhem, all for the glory of Allah. Thugees crouch in the bushes, waylaying unwary travelers. For Kali, the bloodlusting bitch and devourer of men's souls. For the crimson god, Mars. War, baby, war! Death! Burn them hootches, Marines! Search and destroy, body counts, kill them VC! Wallow in it, boys! The way down is the way out! Whew! The first seven songs on Black Monk Time make up the most intense experience a rock'n'roll connoisseur will ever encounter. Thankfully, the Monks sense of humor comes into play on a few of the remaining tracks.
The next song is some inbred idiot savant offspring of the Ikettes' "I'm Blue (the Gong Gong Song)," which tells you that when these boys decided to steal something, it wasn't a Willie Dixon tune that everybody knows they didn't write (this is a hint for Led Zeppelin; nick something goofy and occult). Anyway, the song lurches like some love sick wino, raving and drooling and mewling all over the premises of the song structure. The bridge is a visit to an absinthe ward, where all the patients suffer from eternal kinetic katzenjammer syndrome. That long guttural word is German for "the squalling of cats in your head," used in reference to a hangover. "We Do, Wie Du" is a two week bender soaked in vodka. Shaw's bass stumbles like the somnambulistic Frankenstein monster with Johnston's drumming playing the part of Ygor. Of course, Burger is the mad scientist in this movie. Day rattles his chains down in the dungeon, demanding release.
"Drunken Maria" is a song about some boozy Spanish harlot. But the Monks are in Germany, damnit! Why are they doing this to me? Clark's keys, well, have you ever heard that saying "Support mental health or I'll kill you"? Thankfully, Shaw bails you out, depositing you in purgatory. "Love Came Tumbling Down" like what, the clap? It's got to be some incestuous ode to groupies and penicillin. Any other comments would be superfluous. Insights Messrs. Burger, Clark and co.? "Blast Off" commences with, what else, the roar of engines. It's early surf music played on a haunted spaceship as a galactic fleet burns off Orion's shoulder. Clark's ghostly keyboards send frantic SOS morsecode messages back to earth. Supposedly, space is a vacuum where sound doesn't exist. Tell it to the Monks. Thunder rolls around the shores of the Milky Way as Lucifer's host plummets from a schism in time into uncharted nether regions. The rip in the sky mends as the Sputnik organ bubbles from beneath the ocean.
The original album ended with "That's My Girl." It's reminiscent of the Who's "Disguises." Why? Both of the singers can't even recognize their own girlfriends. But only Gary Burger, supreme among rock'n'roll vocalists, can render the phrase "make love" so it sounds sleazy, like a piece of gum you've picked up out of the gutter to chew or a scab encrusted clitoris. Then there's the break. It's like the Brooklyn Bridge, buckling in high winds as tidal waves engulf New York. Finally, the moronic Burger realizes the girl in question is his!
Thankfully, the LP was recorded with analog technology on a four track machine. The instruments bleed together, creating dynamics that digital is sadly unable to achieve. The bare bones production on the album reflected what the band sounded like live. There was nothing on Black Monk Time they could not replicate on stage. "We sounded about the same on the album as we did live," Larry Clark said. Gary Burger qualified this statement to a slight degree. "We never played a song the exact same way twice. The structure was similar, but we'd really stretch out," he said. "And the recording process available really couldn't capture the feedback right. It was really loud on stage. But yeah, we sounded similar live and on the album."
See Part Two of the Monks article

subset: commoncrawl


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Which is the most significant expedition in U.S. history? I would put my money on the U.S. Exploring Expedition (1838-42). Today Lewis and Clark get most of the attention for their impressive trek to the Pacific in 1804. Yet they were not very well known in the 19th century and did not leave much of an impact on scientists or the general public. But the U.S. Ex Ex, as it came to be known, helped shape American exploration for the rest of the century. As America's first international discovery expedition, it was a way to show the world that the United States had come of age as a civilized nation. Where the government had frowned upon all but the most practical goals in exploring the west, it proved more indulgent of scholarly objectives in exploring the world. It was not that the government placed greater significance on the geography outside its borders. Rather, it was that the wider world offered a more prestigious stage for explorers than the American West, a place where their actions would be more keenly noticed. Under such scrutiny, U.S. expeditions put on their best face, sailing with corps of "scientifics" to advance geographical knowledge, and in the process, to persuade other nations that the United States was more than a republic of untutored farmers. In short, pursuit of knowledge gave U.S. expeditions symbolic heft. It ushered the United States into an enlightenment tradition of imperial voyaging and – its organizers hoped – into the ranks of civilized nations. Back home, the collections of the US Ex Ex became the basis of the Smithsonian Institution when it opened under the direction of Joseph Henry.
When I was in grad school at the University of Wisconsin, the university's Special Collections had all five volumes of the U.S. Ex Ex official narrative. I remember pouring over these volumes as I was working on my master's thesis. Although it doesn't quite have the same magical feel to it, one can now read the narratives of the U.S. Ex Ex online at the Smithsonian Institution, including all of the scientific publications associated with the voyage. The Smithsonian site also allows you to search for hi-def images from the narratives which also can be downloaded as jpeg files. Well done, Smithsonian. Google Books has the five volume collection as well which can be saved in a personal library file or downloades as pdfs. Google also has the full text account of crewman George Musalas Colvocoresses. One of the luminaries of American Science, James Dwight Dana, got his start as a scientific aboard the US Ex Ex. Even in his later works, he refers back to this voyage as the most formative experience of his career. See, for example, his book on Coral and Coral Islands which is online at the Making of America site. The Smithsonian put out a lovely edited collection of essays (with terrific plates) on the US Ex Ex called Magnificent Voyagers. Unfortunately it is no longer in print. Nathaniel Philbrick's Sea of Glory came out a few years ago with Penguin. I have not read it and those who I have talked to about it give it mixed reviews.


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Implementing the Tax Transparency Standards: A Handbook for Assessors and Jurisdictions
Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information
This handbook is intended to assist the assessment teams and the reviewed jurisdictions that are participating in the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information (the "Global Forum") peer reviews and non-member reviews. It provides contextual background information on the Global Forum and the peer review process. It also contains relevant key documents and authoritative sources that will guide assessors and reviewed jurisdictions throughout the peer review process. Assessors should be familiar with the information and documents contained in this handbook as it will assist in conducting proper and fair assessments. This handbook is also a unique source of information for governments, academics and others interested in transparency and exchange of information for tax purposes.
About the Global Forum
The Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes is the multilateral framework within which work in the area of tax transparency and exchange of information is carried out by over 90 jurisdictions which participate in the work of the Global Forum on an equal footing.
The Global Forum is charged with in-depth monitoring and peer review of the implementation of the standards of transparency and exchange of information for tax purposes. These standards are primarily reflected in the 2002 OECD Model Agreement on Exchange of Information on Tax Matters and its commentary, and in Article 26 of the OECD Model Tax Convention on Income and on Capital and its commentary as updated in 2004, which has been incorporated in the UN Model Tax Convention.
The standards provide for international exchange on request of foreseeably relevant information for the administration or enforcement of the domestic tax laws of a requesting party. Fishing expeditions are not authorised but all foreseeably relevant information must be provided, including bank information and information held by fiduciaries, regardless of the existence of a domestic tax interest or the application of a dual criminality standard.
All members of the Global Forum, as well as jurisdictions identified by the Global Forum as relevant to its work, are being reviewed. This process is undertaken in two phases. Phase 1 reviews assess the quality of a jurisdiction's legal and regulatory framework for the exchange of information, while Phase 2 reviews look at the practical implementation of that framework. Some Global Forum members are undergoing combined – Phase 1 plus Phase 2 – reviews. The ultimate goal is to help jurisdictions to effectively implement the international standards of transparency and exchange of information for tax purposes.
All review reports are published once approved by the Global Forum and they thus represent agreed Global Forum reports.
For more information on the work of the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes, and for copies of the published review reports, please refer to www.oecd.org/tax/transparency.
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Disclaimer: Keepin' it real, y'all. An update post of sorts since I've been pretty absent lately. The Christmas spirit has been a slow start for me and You may be subjected to a small pity party, but it does end on a bright note! Also, I mention Rod Stewart and Jesus both in this post. I think they would be okay with that.
Rod Stewart is crooning I'll Have A Blue Christmas in my ear and the dish suds is getting to the point that the dishes better be done soon or we'll have to have fresh water. If only I'd done them last night instead of going to Dollar General. Because mixing dinner dishes with breakfast dishes makes double the "toil and trouble".
Going to Dollar General (I live in a really small town and it's a good place to get gift wrapping supplies) was a good thing though, because finally, it was beginning to feel like Christmas. Nothing like buying empty gift boxes to get you in that Christmas spirit. But then,
I had breakfast dishes to do (at lunch time) because I woke up with a short stab of pain in my head and then felt a little heavy armed and a slight (very slight) numbing sensation in my face. So, I called my parents to come sit with me awhile just to make sure I was really okay (I'm really not a hypochondriac). I seem to be okay because we checked my blood pressure and it was close to normal (I am self-diagnosing a pinched nerve, or sinus issues, or more than likely, just plain ole stress) and then I was hungry, hence the breakfast for all of us and the extra dishes. Followed by,
A mishap with the bathroom sink. I left my Mom (who has Alzheimer's) in the bathroom with the water running, forgetting that she has trouble turning the facet off. A few minutes later when she hadn't appeared and I realized the water was still running I walked in to see the faucet skewed sideways and water running down the counter, over the cabinet front, onto the floor. Quite a nice puddle. Yep, she still has her strength, apparently, as the faucet was sideways and is now lose, but still seems to function without leaks. And, my bathroom floor needed a good mopping anyway. I was a little frazzled by this turn of events, but tried to reassure her it wasn't her fault. Lately,
I've been way stressed. Like waking up crying stressed. Like I want to hibernate from the world stressed. For no apparent, specific reason, but just life in general catching up with me, the depression that lingers longer this time of year and some nagging health related things I need to share with my Doctor when I finally dig my head out of the sand and let him start drawing blood. But first,
We have to get through Rocky's Cataract surgery (December 17) and my having to navigate big city traffic on the interstate (my nemesis) since he is having surgery in Louisville. We have known for several months that this was coming soon, but when he saw his Doctor last week she went ahead and scheduled now, during the most 'hap, happiest season of all," so that is added to the
stress to do list.
Then there is my computer which is in for a check-up as we speak. The prognosis is not good. Rocky's also needs some TLC so we are both functioning on a very slow computer, which is nothing to complain about really, in light of more important things.
I am also still playing musical tables at my house and currently have a floater table. She spent two nights ago in the Music room and last night in the Living room. she is a leggy, restless one that table. I waffle between sending her away or finding her a place all her own. Except, therein lies the rub. We are short on space. I kind of like having her around though due to my inherited thing with tables, so here we are,
Living in a space with too much furniture and feeling somewhat unorganized which has not been good for my state of mind. If I have too many things begging for my attention at once, or too many decisions to be made, I freeze and can't function. Which is why,
Today, for a little while, everything caught up with me and it did feel like it was about me. I resisted the urge to cry and started the dish water instead. Then, after a few moments of searching for the Christmas CD's, I soaped and rinsed dishes as Rod sang to me. So, now that I'm armed with clean dishes, my gift boxes and Rod, I think I'll usher Christmas in quietly, giving myself permission to do no more or no less than I feel up to. Because, as Rod just reminded me, it'a really all about,
"Silent Night, Holy night, All is calm, all is Bright. Round yon' virgin, mother and child, Holy Infant, so tender and mild. Sleep in heavenly peace, sleep in heavenly peace." (click the words to hear Rod sing.)
Holy Infant, tender, peace. This is all I need to remember. When the dishes are dirty, when the sink floods, when my computer crashes, when I have to battle traffic, when my head hurts, when my spirit is crushed, when I'm pulled too many directions, when I am chest deep in chaos and the breathing is shallow and the world is closing in, I just close my eyes, breathe in the silent night and remember the Holy Infant. His tenderness brings peace.
Peace in the Grace,


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Construction begins this month on new condominium Symphony Honolulu
The food trucks have cleared out, the construction fence has been erected and yesterday, Mayor Kirk Caldwell and developers broke ground at 888 Kapiolani Boulevard, the soon-to-be home of Symphony Honolulu, a 388-unit, mixed-use condominium.
The condo sits on 3.35 acres of land owned by JN Group Inc. In the 1990s, Honolulu developer Jack Myers owned the lot and first planned to build a luxury condo named Symphony Park—it's right across the Neal S. Blaisdell Center, long-time home of the former Honolulu Symphony and now the Hawaii Symphony Orchestra. He scrapped that plan and later floated the Symphony Park retirement community on the same lot. Neither project materialized, but the symphony name stuck. Two decades later, it looks as though Myers' original idea is finally taking shape.
San Diego-based firm OliverMcMillan is developing the tower. Its last project in town was the Pacifica Honolulu tower in 2010.
The 400-foot high rise features floor-to-ceiling windows boasting views of the Pacific, Diamond Head and downtown Honolulu. Each unit averages 1,100 square feet. When it comes to amenities, this is indeed a luxury condominium. There are plans for a multimedia center, theater, music room, yoga room and guest suites (so your out-of-town family and friends don't have to stay with you). The outside terrace includes barbeque areas, private cabanas and an infinity pool.
Since the JN Group owns the property, the lower floors will be home to an exotic car showroom (in case you're in the market for an Audi, Ferrari, Bentley, Maserati Lamborghini or Lotus).
In keeping tune with Kakaako's other developments, 100 of the 338 units are reserved-housing units for those who meet the income requirements established by the Hawaii Community Development Authority (HCDA).
Construction starts this month; Symphony Honolulu is scheduled to open by spring 2016. Nearly 70 percent of the available units sold within first two days of sales.
Money Talk: one-bedroom units start in high $300,000s; two-bedroom units start in the high $400,000s.
For more information: symphonyhonolulu.com


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Rick Perry Wears Faith On (Barn Coat) Sleeve In New Iowa Ad
In the latest reminder that he's still in the race (if apparently not in the hunt) for the Republican presidential nomination, Texas Gov. Rick Perry has a new TV ad in Iowa in which he makes a naked appeal to the state's religious conservatives who are expected to play an important role in the upcoming caucuses.
Just in time for the annual "war on Christmas" controversy, Perry's ad shows the candidate in a lush green, Garden of Eden-like setting with a soundtrack that sounds like it was influenced by the quiet parts of Appalachian Spring. Perry, rocking a barn coat, says:
"I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm a Christian, but you don't need to be in the pew every Sunday to know there's something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military but our kids can't openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school.
"As President, I'll end Obama's war on religion. And I'll fight against liberal attacks on our religious heritage.
"Faith made America strong. It can make her strong again."
And perhaps faith (and a big warchest) can keep a candidate in a presidential race when the odds against winning the nomination are so high as appears the case for Perry right now.
Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.


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This is my first month participating in ICLW (International Comment Leaving Week, or IComLeavWe if you're nasty.), and so far it has been an eye-opening experience.
First of all, I literally had no idea that so many infertility blogs existed. It makes me sad and angry and warm and fuzzy all at the same time.
And second, I am learning so much about the different paths available to women with fertility issues. By the time my appointment with the RE rolls around in June, I should be the most educated patient they've ever had.
Doctors love that. Right?
So, if you're visiting me for the first time–Welcome! And thank you for stopping by! I hope you find something you like that brings you back again soon.
If this isn't your first visit, then you know the drill: TMI, snark, over-punctuation, and too many ellipses…
Happy Commenting! 🙂


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John Trotwood Moore (1858-1929) enjoyed moderate success in the varied literary roles of novelist, historian, journalist, and magazine editor. Moore's talents as a local color writer and humorist are founded in his rural background. His first 26 years were spent in Alabama and the remainder of his life in Tennessee.
John Moore Jr. was born in Marion, Perry County, on August 26, 1858, the son of John and Emily Moore. He graduated from Howard College (later Samford University) in 1878. Like his father, Moore studied law and passed the Alabama State Bar exam; however, he never practiced. Instead, he pursued a publishing career, which began at the Howard College Magazine and continued for a short time while he was associate editor and then editor for the Marion Commonwealth.
Moore probably first used the name "Trotwood" when he wrote for the Marion Commonwealth in an article signed "Betsy Trotwood," a Charles Dickens character. Later, he used "Trotwood" as a pseudonym for many of his published writings. Although he tried to drop the name, his success was so intricately tied to it that he adopted Trotwood as his middle name instead.
After leaving the Commonwealth, Moore taught in Monterey, Butler County, before relocating to Pine Apple, Wilcox County, where he oversaw the establishment of Moore Academy in 1883. He also was principal and a teacher at the academy. In February 1885, he married Florence Allen, and at the end of the school year in 1885 the couple moved to Columbia, Tennessee. There, he took over farming his mother-in-law's land and developed an interest in the Tennessee Pacer, a harness-racing horse breed. This newfound interest led to his next significant literary activity, authoring the "Pacing Department" column in Clark's Horse Review. Initially factual and informative, it soon evolved into a forum for his fiction, poetry, and anecdotes. Two of Moore's best-known stories or characters were introduced in the Review. "Old Wash," an Uncle Remus-type of comical character, was introduced in a short story on March 14, 1893, and appeared repeatedly in Moore's work throughout his career. His most famous racing story, "Old Mistis," appeared in the Christmas 1894 issue; it tells the story of "Jake," a "loyal" enslaved man typical of the Lost Cause romanticization of slavery.
In 1897, the year after his wife Florence died, Moore published Songs and Stories from Tennessee, a collection of pieces that had appeared earlier in the Review. This volume contained many of the "Old Wash" stories and "Old Mistis." Moore married Mary Brown Daniel on June 13, 1900, and the couple would have three children: a son, Austin Merrill (who later became a poet, publishing under the name Merrill Moore), and a set of twins, Helen Lane and Mary Daniel Moore. Moore's first novel, A Summer Hymnal, was published in 1901.
From 1905 to 1910, Moore published Trotwood's Monthly and later Taylor-Trotwood Magazine, after a merger with Tennessee senator Robert Love Taylor's magazine in 1906. Moore performed most of the writing and editorial duties, which resulted in numerous published works in various genres. Intended for rural America, the magazine contained farming information, historical facts and observations, and literary works and critiques. In this forum, Moore also introduced themes and characters that would appear in many of his later novels, including his best work, The Bishop of Cottontown (1906). The novel sold respectably, but it never became a critically significant work.
In 1911, Moore published Jack Ballington, Forester, a melodramatic romance that also addressed forest conservation, and then began focusing more specifically on the history of Tennessee, especially the life of Andrew Jackson. In 1919, he became State Librarian for Tennessee, a position he retained until his death. His best known work of this period, Hearts of Hickory: A Story of Andrew Jackson and the War of 1812, a historical novel, was published in 1926.
Ultimately however, Moore's literary success was marginal. His work contains elements of both the sentimental romantic authors of the late nineteenth century and the more sophisticated modern realistic writers of the early twentieth century. Most critics have agreed that Moore's focus on character development and neglect of plot directly affected his ability to write works that could be compared in success and importance to other works of the same period and genre. Additionally, his racist views, which are expressed either directly or indirectly throughout his writings, have diminished interest in his work as significant literature. As a local-color writer and humorist, however, Moore does compare favorably to some of the most successful of the time, such as Mary Noailles Murfree, Thomas Nelson Page, and Joel Chandler Harris. Moore died on May 10, 1929, in Nashville. He is interred at the city's Mt. Olivet Cemetery.
Works by John Trotwood Moore
Songs and Stories from Tennessee (1897)
Works by John Trotwood Moore
Songs and Stories from Tennessee (1897)
A Summer Hymnal: A Romance of Tennessee (1901)
The Bishop of Cottontown: A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills (1906)
Ole Mistis, and Other Songs and Stories from Tennessee (1909)
The Old Cotton Gin (1910)
Uncle Wash: His Stories (1910)
The Gift of the Grass: Being the Autobiography of a Famous Racing Horse (1911)
Jack Ballington, Forester (1911)
Hearts of Hickory: A Story of Andrew Jackson and the War of 1812 (1926)
Tom's Last Forage (1926)
Additional Resources
Green, Claud B. John Trotwood Moore: Tennessee Man of Letters. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1957.
Additional Resources
Green, Claud B. John Trotwood Moore: Tennessee Man of Letters. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1957.
Thweatt, John H. "The Archival Tradition in Tennessee: the Moore Years." Tennessee Historical Quarterly 50 (Fall 1991): 152-156.
Warren, John W., and Adrian W. McClaren. "John Trotwood Moore." In Tennessee Belles-Lettres: A Guide to Tennessee Literature. Morristown, Tenn.: Morrison Printing Co, 1977.


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NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC) has finally unveiled Valkyrie, its "superhero robot" entry to the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) Trials, which take place on December 20 in Florida. Valkyrie will compete against fellow humanoid robots, such as Atlas, on a series of eight physical tasks to test the dexterity and autonomy of the robots, with the chance of going forward to the DRC Finals in 2014, where it could win $2 million from the US government. The DRC isn't about money, though: It's all about accelerating humanity's development of advanced humanoid robots, for use in hazardous situations such as war.
Valkyrie, so named after the supernatural female figures in Norse mythology that plucked fallen warriors from the field of battle and transported them to Valhalla for an eternity of feasting and mead quaffing, is 1.9 meters tall (6'2) and weighs 125 kilos (275 lbs). Valkyrie, or Val for short, has 44 degrees of freedom (divided up between her legs, feet, arms, hands, torso, and head) and is capable of walking over uneven terrain, driving a vehicle, and using tools. Oh, and yes, that is a glowing NASA logo emblazoned on her chest a la Iron Man.
Valkyrie. Image (and other images on this page) are courtesy of IEEE Spectrum.
To begin with, most of the robots taking part in the DRC including Valkyrie will be remotely operated. The robots will still feature a large amount of task-level autonomy the operator will instruct the robot to "grasp the tool" rather than "open hand, rotate 90 degrees, extend hand, close hand," and the robots will have built-in collision avoidance but we're not talking about robots that can walk around and automatically pluck survivors from the wreck of a fallen building. We're also not talking about robots that can engage in squad-based military maneuvers. That step comes next.
That isn't to say that Valkyrie isn't equipped to be fully autonomous, though. Val is outfitted with more sensors than you can ever imagine: cameras and LIDAR in the head, cameras and sonar in the chest, and cameras in the feet, knees, and forearms. These sensors are primary data sources for Valkyrie's automation routines, but the operator can also take a look at a camera feed to get a closer look at obstacles, what's being grasped by Val's hand, etc.
One of the more unique aspects of Valkyrie except for her female name; most utility robots, including those competing in the DRC Trials, usually have male or genderless names is the fact that she's wearing clothes. If you take a look at every other robot competing in the Trials, you'll notice that they're mostly riveted metal plates and steel tubing. NASA takes softness very seriously, it seems. "Our robot is soft. If you brush against it while you're working, you don't want to feel this cold, hard metal. You want it to feel natural, like you're working next to another human being," NASA's Nicolaus Radford tells IEEE Spectrum. It's not easy to cover a robot in clothing (think about how much your skin stretches and contorts while you move), and so NASA's JSC had to develop its own clothing lab, to create Valkyrie's clothing on-site.
NASA might seem like an odd institution to be developing a humanoid robot, but it all makes a lot more sense if you factor Mars into the equation. "NASA wants to get to Mars, and in order to get to Mars, NASA will likely send robots ahead of the human explorers," Radford says. "These robots will start preparing the way for the humans, and when the humans arrive, the robots and the humans will work together." NASA has a strong background in robotics, too don't forget that Curiosity and Robonaut are two of the most advanced and precocious robots in existence. DARPA's Robotics Challenge is mostly focused on creating robots that can replace humans in hazardous situations chemical spills, burning buildings, warfare and traversing Mars, which doesn't have an atmosphere, is pretty darn hazardous.
Now read: The human touch makes robots defter


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Last week, White House chief economist Christina Romer told reporters that there are "billion-dollar bills lying on the sidewalk" in America's health care system -- apparently there for the taking if only Washington would show the will to pick them up.
As a presidential candidate and now as president, Barack Obama has promised both universal access to health care and big savings to taxpaying households. That doesn't make a lot of sense because usually when you buy more of something, the price tag increases, but Washington seems not to have noticed.
There's a circular logic to the illogical proposition. Obama's Council of Economic Advisers (headed by Romer) issued a report on June 2, "The Economic Case for Health Care Reform," that concluded: "The central finding of this report is that genuine health care reform has substantial benefits." You have to marvel at the ability of political staffers to congratulate themselves on great successes even before their plan has been adopted.
The report does a fine job of outlining the arguments in favor of containing health care costs. Every year, the rise in these costs eats more out of workers' paychecks. For some readers, premium inflation means that their take-home pay cannot keep pace with inflation and thus they are effectively suffering a pay cut. To make matters worse, many employees also are paying higher co-payments for health care. Obviously, if Obama can put the brakes on this runaway health cost train, workers, employers and taxpayers will benefit.
But can he make health care universal -- that is, expand health care coverage to more Americans -- and still save taxpayers money without cutting back on the level of care that most Americans now enjoy?
The president's economists cited a Dartmouth Medical School study that suggests "nearly 30 percent of Medicare costs could be saved without adverse health consequences." I cannot help but suspect that if economists working for President George W. Bush talked up such economies, headlines would scream: "Bush To Slash Medicare."
And there would be stories quoting fed-up lifelong Republicans turning on the GOP. There also would be a few sneers about Obamaspeak -- including the report's suggested strategy of "creating financial incentives for patients needing complex surgeries to use high quality, lower total cost 'centers of excellence.'"
Sure, the new crew means well. Team Obama wants to save families money and make sure everyone has health care. But it's hard to be impressed at the promise for the government to provide universal health care -- because it's a moral imperative, not so morally vital that most Americans should have to pay for it.
Leading Democrats in Congress now are talking about how to pay for the $1.2 trillion cost of universal care over 10 years. It looks as if Obama will have to let go of his 2008 opposition to taxing employer-paid health premiums. Bottom line: Expanded health care won't be free. Meanwhile, it's the economists -- as opposed to politicians -- who tout rosy scenarios as they suggest that the Obama plan, and the health industry's so-called pledge to curb cost increases by 1.5 percent annually, could save a typical family of four $2,600 in 2020.
Only a Washington economist can argue with a straight face that providing quality health care to 46 million Americans who are now uninsured and assert it will save "between $75 billion and $125 billion per year."
Folks, that's how government and deficits keep getting bigger.


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Adimec Focuses on Defense Vision Applications at SPIE DSS 2011
rong>Ruggedized, high resolution digital HD cameras optimized for outdoor, military applications on display;
"See Through the Fog" demo showcases VEM video enhancement technology
BOSTON, Mass. -- Adimec, a world leader in application-specific, leading-edge industrial camera solutions, will showcase its portfolio of vision products and technology aimed at the military and security markets at the 2011 edition of the SPIE Defense, Security and Sensing event in Orlando, Fla., held April 26- 29. The company will display and discuss enhancements to its flagship OPAL family of high-resolution digital HD cameras, including new, more flexible interface options using the CoaXPress standard , military-grade customizations geared specifically for defense and other outdoor applications, and its unique VEM video enhancement technology that eliminates the effects of fog and other environmental factors to deliver high-quality images.
Adimec will be in Booth #1131 on the exhibition floor. In addition, Marcel Dijkema, Adimec's Strategic Product Manager, will present a roadmap to Digital full HD for defense vision systems on Tuesday, April 26 at 2:30 PM, in the Cypress Hall Foyer. His talk is titled "Digital HD Rugged Cameras for Enhanced Defense Vision." Full HD, in combination with Adimec True Accurate Imaging® technology, improves detection, recognition and identification capabilities of situational awareness and designator systems, resulting in decreased operation reaction time.
"Since 1992 Adimec has been supplying global defense and security systems companies with high-reliability cameras for operating in the most demanding environments and to mil-qualified standards. Our products meet the unique needs of these industries and we have a proven knowledge of working within strict defense industry requirements and COTS regulations. As vision systems in these areas continue to require higher image quality, more cost-effective and flexible solutions, and adherence to tighter security and quality standards, Adimec is well-positioned to maintain our leadership position and deliver optimized camera solutions for a broad range of applications," said David Northup, Business Director, Adimec North America.
Adimec True Accurate Imaging technology enhances vision systems
Adimec's product roadmap is focused on extending and improving vision systems for detection, recognition, identification and targeting. It uses its proprietary Adimec True Accurate Imaging® technology to deliver off-the shelf and custom solutions with optimized sensitivity, dynamic range, resolution, contrast and color processing for specific use models. Its latest cameras can operate at up to 4 megapixels with 180 fps, and 340 fps in full digital HD. Adimec also offers optional enhancements to deal with all weather conditions using its VEM technology.
Adimec's VEM technology automatically improves performance and accuracy in low contrast conditions, eliminating the effects of a hazy atmosphere due to fog and/or sunlight scattering. Even in diffused scenes it provides detail and clarity not attainable with normal CCD or CMOS sensitivity to enhance detection, recognition and identification capabilities in systems.
Adimec's cameras support all widely used interface options, including the recently-approved CoaXPress standard for high-speed, long-distance data transmission using standard coaxial cable. This promises to not only enable higher performing systems but also provide a cost effective upgrade path using legacy infrastructure (a recent industry report estimated the cost of upgrading the cabling in a military jet fighter could cost upwards of $100,000 per aircraft).
About Adimec
Adimec specializes in the development and manufacturing of high-performance cameras that meet the application-specific requirements of key market segments, including machine vision, medical imaging, and outdoor imaging. Founded in 1992, the company partners with major OEMs around the world to facilitate the creation of industry-leading cameras. Its products meet a wide range of performance, size, cost, interface and application requirements and its Adimec True Accurate Imaging® technology provides new levels of precision and accuracy to vision systems. Adimec has offices around the world focused on creating customer value and satisfaction through local, personalized support. For more information, got to www.adimec.com.
Contact Information
Adimec Advanced Image Systems b.v.
Tel: +31-40-2353900
Fax: +31-40-2353905
Press Contact: M. Raaijmakers
Vision in Life Sciences This content is part of the Vision in Life Sciences curated collection. To learn more about Vision in Life Sciences, click here.


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For once I'm gonna do it my way. This is the chorus crooned by Whitney Houston—or, rather, by the homely yet endearing Patience O'Brien, who impersonates Houston in an American Idol-type talent competition. Or, rather, by Kalup Linzy, a husky young video artist wearing a gold-sequined dress that barely covers his left nipple as he plays the role of O'Brien in his 2007 video Melody Set Me Free, which opened the artist's recent screening at Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI). (Linzy's work is also included in the Rubell Family Collection's show "30 Americans," which is on view in Miami from Dec. 3, 2008, to May 30, 2009.)
Originally from Stuckey, Fla., Linzy began gaining recognition several years ago with low-tech videos featuring schlocky editing gimmicks, stilted acting and a cast of recurring characters based on soap-opera archetypes and Hollywood melodrama stars; many are played by the artist himself, often in drag. For his most recent videos, Linzy voiced and prerecorded all the dialogue, which has the lurching pace of a stick shift manned by a driver's-ed student, and the actors, including Linzy, awkwardly lip-synch it during filming. Impersonation, narcissism and gleeful indulgence in clichés are mainstays of drag performance, but the clumsiness of Linzy's work infuses it with a raw self-deprecation that undercuts the very stereotypes and cinematic codes he uses to build his narratives.
The screening at EAI began on an optimistic note, with Melody Set Me Free's O'Brien triumphing—by landing a coveted recording contract—not only over her mother, who insists that Patience's dream to become a star is "stupid," but also over competing contestants Hope, Faith and a conniving Grace. This piece was followed by the 2008 SweetBerry Sonnet (Remixed), a series of music videos made to accompany Linzy's album of the same name. Combiningheartbreak, humor, vulgarity and hope, the series predominantly tracks Taiwan—a character played by Linzy and featured in his earlier works—as he tries to recover from a breakup with his boyfriend. Taiwan, who wears an unflattering black leotard and sports a flower behind his ear, first stars in "Dirty Trade," where he is a lounge singer provocatively stroking his microphone stand as he lies on the floor. In "Edge of My Couch" (whose melody mimics Otis Redding's "The Dock of the Bay": Sit-tin' on the edge of my co-uch . . . ), he sits dejectedly in a dingy apartment. Finally, in "Water," Taiwan discovers new love on a sun-kissed beach with a man who resembles a 1970s EST trainer.
The New York premiere of the black-and-white Keys to Our Heart (2008) concluded the screening. This piece documents the unfolding of a love triangle (or, more accurately, love square) between Lily, a misanthropic grande dame played by Linzy; Dinah, Lily's friend and a self-proclaimed "bitch" who vaguely resembles Dinah Washington; John Jay, an earnest Keanu Reeves look-alike who is dating Dinah; and the even more sincere milquetoast Sally Sue, who is a friend to John Jay and Dinah. All the characters dispense advice to one another that mostly serves their own ambitions, and the plot's—ahem—climax coincides with a raunchy encounter between John Jay and Sally Sue, which the unwitting Dinah walks in on. Attempting to "work things out," Lily orchestrates a meeting between the three lovers that unexpectedly culminates in Lily's revelation of her love for Dinah.
Such is the stuff of trashy television, but Linzy's work doesn't come off as mere camp. Nor does it indulge in theatrical flamboyance (à la Candy Darling or RuPaul) or beg a cheap laugh with not-so-subtly sexist caricatures (like Martin Lawrence's Big Momma or Eddie Murphy's Rasputia). There is, however, an impulse toward escapism. During the Q&A after the screening, Linzy commented on the racism he experienced growing up in the South, adding, "But at the same time [people] never judged the characters [in soap operas] in the same way that you would judge someone in real life." Linzy's characters similarly discourage judgment, highlighting instead the messy questions of who people are, who they aren't, whom they strive to be, how they fail or don't and, most important, everything in between.


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Henry Hazlitt (18941993) was a libertarian economist and journalist. He is most well known for his book, Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics, which is one of the most popular book on economics ever written. Hazlitt left the free-tuition City College of New York with less than two years of formal education. Hazlitt was a renowned autodidact who was a prolific writer, who would become famous for bringing Austrian School of thought, a theory of economics that advocated for limited government and free markets, to the English-speaking world.
Hazlitt began as a journalist at the Wall Street Journal and swiftly climbed the ranks of the field. He became a journalist and Literary Editor for New York Sun, the Finance and Economics Editor of the New York Times, Editor of The American Mercury, Associate Editor of The Nation, Financial Editor of The New York Evening Mail, and the American correspondent for the Revue economique internationale of Belgium. He also wrote a monthly column for Newsweek.
He was the founding vice-president of the Foundation for Economic Education and one of the first editors of The Freeman. He also authored 26 books, cementing his place as one of the most celebrated economists and writers of the 20th century.


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"Competition is good for business" – this free market maxim is almost always true, since healthy competition stimulates continual product improvements regarding quality as well as cost-effectiveness. However, safety-oriented software and hardware development is a special case where this rule may not apply. That's because manufacturers in a market economy are faced with high investment risk: there are considerable development costs with a comparatively small sales potential.
Hence, the automation sector has long been calling for a universal safety protocol, i.e. one that would give all manufacturers a solid economic base for all further development of safety-oriented products.
With openSAFETY, the EPSG introduced the world's first 100% open and license-free safety protocol. Thanks to the total independence of openSAFETY, the technology can be used for all fieldbus systems, industrial Ethernet applications or industry-specific communication solutions. The open source license of this TÜV-certified protocol stack ensures that the technology is a very secure investment for all users.


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There are a few facts to keep in mind to understand what's going on in the wake of the death this week of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.
#1. US foreign policy vis-a-vis North Korea has always sought to force the latter's collapse to pave the way for its absorption into the US-dominated South [1] — and did so well before Pyongyang began to work on nuclear weapons. US hostility toward North Korea has never been about nuclear weapons. On the contrary, North Korea's nuclear weapons are a consequence of US hostility. US hostility, now in its seventh decade, is about what it has always been about: putting an end to what Washington mistakenly calls North Korea's Marxist-Leninist system (Marxism-Leninism has been replaced by Juche ideology—a home-grown doctrine of self-reliance), its non-market system, and its self-directed economic development [2]. None of these offer much latitude for US profit-making at North Korea's expense, and hence are singled out for demolition.
#2. North Korea only began to seek nuclear weapons after the United States announced in 1993 that it was retargeting some of its strategic nuclear missiles from the former Soviet Union to North Korea. Since then the country has only been able to develop its nuclear capability to a kindergarten level. [3] The plutonium devices it tested in 2006 and 2009 produced only one-tenth the power of the Hiroshima blast. There is no evidence it has miniaturized a warhead to fit atop a missile. And its missile program is plagued by problems. [4]
#3. North Korea is a military pipsqueak, whose personnel are deployed in large numbers to agriculture. The military budgets and weapons' sophistication of its adversaries, the United States, South Korea and Japan, tower over its own. If the Pentagon's budget is represented by the 6' 9" basketball player Magic Johnson, North Korea's military budget is 1", about the height of a small mouse. South Korea's is 4.5" and Japan's 3.9", multiple times larger than the North's. [5]
#4. North Korea has no more military heft to mount a provocation against the United States than a mouse has to beat Magic Johnson on the basketball court. Nor has it the capability to wage a civil war against its southern compatriots and expect to win. North Korea is not an aggressive threat. "In the Obama analysis," writes New York Times reporter David Sanger, "the North is receding into what the president's top strategists have repeatedly called a 'defensive crouch,' trying to stave off the world with a barrage of missile and nuclear tests…Constantly on the brink of starvation, its military so broke that it cannot train its pilots, it has no illusions about becoming a great power in Asia. Its main goal is survival." [6]
#5. Because the United States is a military Gargantua compared to North Korea, and South Korea and Japan have better equipped militaries, they can safely stage provocations against the North, forcing Pyongyang into a defense-spending drain of its treasury, bringing closer the realization of the US goal of tipping the country into crisis and possibly collapse. On the other hand, North Korea's ruling Workers' Party wants to avoid confrontations at all costs, short of surrendering to the demands that it close up shop, and re-open under South Korean management.
#6. Provocations, then, are all on the other side. There are few acts more provocative than the United States' targeting of North Korea with strategic nuclear missiles, nor former US Secretary of State Colin Powell's warning that the Pentagon could turn North Korea into a charcoal briquette [7]. Six decades of Washington-led economic warfare against the country is equally provocative, and a principal cause of North Korea's impoverishment. Tens of thousands of US troops are deployed along the North's southern borders, US warships and nuclear missile-equipped submarines prowl the periphery of its territorial waters, and US warplanes menace its airspace. Pyongyang is only the immediate architect of North Korea's Songun (military-first) policy. Washington is the ultimate architect. Finally, US and South Korean militaries conduct regular war games exercises, one of which, Ulchi Freedom Guardian, is an exercise in invading North Korea. Who's provoking who?
#7. Kim Jong Il, the recently deceased North Korean leader–literally depicted in South Korean children's books as a red devil with horns and fangs [8]–has been equally demonized in the Western mass media for starving his people. It is true that food shortages have plagued the country. But the vilifying Kim obituaries don't mention why North Koreans are hungry. The answer is sanctions. [9] US foreign policy, like that of the Allied powers in WWI toward Germany, has been to starve its adversary into submission. This isn't acknowledged, for obvious reasons. First, it would reveal the inhumane lengths to which US foreign policy is prepared to reach to secure its goals. And second, North Korean hunger must be used to discredit public ownership and a central planning as a workable economic model. North Koreans are hungry, the anti-Communist myth goes, because socialism doesn't work. The truth of the matter is that North Koreans are hungry because Washington has made them so. Not surprisingly, calls by humanitarian groups for the United States to deliver food aid are being brushed aside with a litany of bizarre excuses, the latest being that food aid can't be delivered because Kim Jong-il's son, Kim Jong-eun, has succeeded him. [10] Huh? The real reason food aid won't be delivered is because it would contradict US foreign policy. The United States once considered the death of half a million Iraqi children "worth it". [11] Its leaders would consider the sanctions-produced demise through starvation of as many North Koreans worth it, as well.
#8. The death of Kim Jong-il is a potential boon for US foreign policy. There is a possibility of disorganization within the leadership, and internal conflicts leading to a fraying unity of purpose. Rather than focusing on external threats, the leadership may be divided, and pre-occupied with succession. If so, this is, from the perspective of the United States and South Korea, a pivotal moment—a time when the country may be tipped into collapse. And so, at this moment, who would you expect to unleash a provocation: Pyongyang? Or Washington and Seoul? At the best of times, Pyongyang wants to avoid a fight. At this critical juncture, it absolutely needs to. But the calculus works the other way round for the predators. Now is when North Korea is most vulnerable to predation.
#9. Predators never let on that they're the hunters. Always they portray themselves as seeking to safeguard their security against the multiple threats of a dangerous world. Through guile and cunning, the mouse might just outmanoeuvre Magic Johnson and sink a basket or two. So it is that the United States, South Korea and Japan are said to be on high alert, in case the North Koreans stage another "provocation," like the sinking of the South Korean corvette Cheonan (for which the evidence of North Korean involvement is laughably thin at best [12]) or another Yeonpyeong Island artillery barrage (which the South set off by firing its own artillery into disputed waters, that, under international customary law, belong to the North. [13])
But as we've seen, it makes no sense to expect the scenario of a North Korean-furnished provocation to unfold. The more likely explanation for why US, South Korean and Japanese militaries are on high alert is because now is an ideal time for pressure on Pyongyang to be intensified, and because the triumvirate might be preparing to intervene militarily if conditions become propitious.
1. New York Times reporter David Sanger ("What 'engagement' with Iran and North Korea means," The New York Times, June 17, 2009) notes that "American presidents have been certain they could … speed (North Korea's) collapse, since the armistice that ended the Korean War in 1953." At the same time, Korea expert Selig S. Harrison has written that "South Korea is once again seeking the collapse of the North and its absorption by the South." ("What Seoul should do despite the Cheonan", The Hankyoreh, May 14, 2010.)
2. According to Dianne E. Rennack, ("North Korea: Economic sanctions", Congressional Research Service, October 17, 2006) many US sanctions have been imposed on North Korea for reasons listed as either "communism", "non-market economy" or "communism and market disruption."
3. In an article on Newt Gingrich's fantasies about North Korea or Iran setting off a nuclear device far above US territory in order to unleash an electromagnetic pulse attack, New York Times' reporter William J. Broad cites a US military expert who characterizes "the nations in question (as being) at the kindergarten stage of developing nuclear arms." ("Among Gingrich's passions, a doomsday vision", The New York Times, December 11, 2011.)
4. Keith Johnson, "Pyongyang neighbors worry over nuclear arms", The Wall Street Journal, December 20, 2011
5. The annual military budgets in billions are: United States, $700; North Korea, $10; South Korea, $39; Japan, $34. With the exception of the Pentagon's budget, annual military expenditures were estimated by multiplying a country's GDP by its military spending as a percentage of GDP, as estimated by the CIA and reported in its World Factbook. The source for the Pentagon's military budget is Thom Shanker and Elisabeth Bumiller, "Weighing Pentagon cuts, Panetta faces deep pressures", The New York Times, November 6, 2011.
6. David Sanger, "What 'engagement' with Iran and North Korea means," The New York Times, June 17, 2009.
7. "Colin Powell said we would…turn North Korea into a 'charcoal briquette,' I mean that's the way we talk to North Korea, even though the mainstream media doesn't pay attention to that kind of talk. A charcoal briquette." Bruce Cumings, "Latest North Korean provocations stem from missed US opportunities for demilitarizaton," Democracy Now!, May 29, 2009.
8. David E. Sanger, "A ruler who turned North Korea into a nuclear state", The New York Times, December 18, 2011.
9. See Stephen Gowans, "Amnesty International botches blame for North Korea's crumbling healthcare", What's Left, July 20, 2010. https://gowans.wordpress.com/2010/07/20/amnesty-international-botches-blame-for-north-korea%E2%80%99s-crumbling-healthcare/
10. Evan Ramstad and Jay Solomon, "Dictator's death stokes fears", The Wall Street Journal, December 20, 2011.
11. Asked about a UN estimate that sanctions had killed 500,000 Iraqi children under the age of five, then US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said infamously, "It's a hard choice, but I think, we, think, it's worth it." 60 Minutes, May 12, 1996. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbIX1CP9qr4. Retrieved June 19, 2011
12. See Tim Beal's Crisis in Korea: American, China and the Risk of War. Pluto Press. 2011.
13. See Tim Beal, "Theatre of war: Smoke and mirrors on the Korean peninsula on the anniversary of the Yeonpyeong incident," Pyongyang Report V13 N2, December 6, 2011 http://www.timbeal.net.nz/geopolitics/Theatre_of_War9.pdf and Stephen Gowans, "US Ultimately to Blame for Korean Skirmishes in Yellow Sea", What's Left, December 5, 2010. https://gowans.wordpress.com/2010/12/05/us-ultimately-to-blame-for-korean-skirmishes-in-yellow-sea/


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Marcus Yam for The New York Times
It will be an asterisk in the history books, if it gets a mention at all.
A year ago this week, the Occupy Wall Street movement got under way in Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan. The loose group of protesters, frustrated by the economic downturn, sought to blame Wall Street and corporate America for many of the nation's ills.
While the movement's first days did not receive much news coverage, it soon turned into a media frenzy, with some columnists comparing its importance to that of the Arab Spring, which led to the overthrow of leaders in several Middle Eastern and African countries, spurred by social media. Images of the Wall Street protesters getting arrested were looped on news channels and featured on the covers of newspapers. Big banks — and the famous Charging Bull statue that is an icon of Wall Street — were fortified with barricades. By the end of the year, Time magazine had named the protester its Person of the Year, perhaps rightly given the revolutions taking place around the world, but the magazine also lumped Occupy Wall Street in among the many meaningful movements taking place.
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But now, 12 months later, it can and should be said that Occupy Wall Street was — perhaps this is going to sound indelicate — a fad.
That is not to say that Occupy Wall Street had no impact. It created an important national conversation about economic inequality and upward mobility. The chant, "We are the 99 percent," has become part of the lexicon. Its message has subtly been woven throughout the Obama administration's re-election campaign, in the Democrats' position on everything from taxes on the highest earners to the soaring levels of student debt.
But consider this: Has the debate over breaking up the banks that were too big to fail, save for a change of heart by the former chairman of Citigroup, Sanford I. Weill, really changed or picked up steam as a result of Occupy Wall Street? No. Have any new regulations for banks or businesses been enacted as a result of Occupy Wall Street? No. Has there been any new meaningful push to put Wall Street executives behind bars as a result of Occupy Wall Street? No.
And even on the issues of economic inequality and upward mobility — perhaps Occupy Wall Street's strongest themes — has the movement changed the debate over executive compensation or education reform? It is not even a close call.
Is there still anger and angst over the horrible unemployment problem in the United States? Absolutely. But that sentiment, and whatever conversation has emerged as result, was going to happen with or without Occupy Wall Street.
The Wall Street banks themselves hardly felt the pinch of the protesters, beyond considering them a nuisance and an additional security cost. Despite campaigns for customers to move money to smaller, community banks, few customers did.
The biggest victory, perhaps, that the movement can claim was a decision by Bank of America and other big banks to scrap plans to charge additional fees for use of debit cards. The protesters also brought awareness to banks' foreclosure practices, and even successfully petitioned to keep some struggling borrowers in their homes.
In the fall of 2011, questioning anything about the movement was not too popular. Doing so was an invitation for withering ridicule. (I experienced it firsthand after I filed what I thought was a relatively respectful column about the protests from Zuccotti Park.)
The problem with the movement, as many other columnists have pointed out before, was that its mission was always intentionally vague. It was deliberately leaderless. It never sought to become a political party or even a label like the Tea Party.
By the second or third time I went down to Zuccotti Park, it became clear to me that Occupy Wall Street, which began with a small band of passionate intellectuals, had been hijacked by misfits and vagabonds looking for food and shelter.
Given the way the organization — if it can be called that — was purposely open to taking all comers, the assembly lost its sense of purpose as various intramural squabbles emerged about the group's end game.
I vividly remember watching one protester with a sign that read "Google = Jewish Billionaires." Another protester ran over and ripped up the poster. The messages had become decidedly too mixed.
Eliot L. Spitzer, the former New York governor and former attorney general who has been a longtime supporter of Occupy Wall Street, recently reflected on the legacy of the movement.
"They are redefining and rebalancing our political discourse," he wrote in Slate. "To all those who are dissatisfied because the Occupy movement did not grow into the complete political theory or social agenda that some wished, I say: Give credit where credit is due."
Fair enough. But even Mr. Spitzer questioned, "We do have to ask, 'Now what?' "
A version of this article appeared in print on 09/18/2012, on page B1 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Occupy Wall Street: A Frenzy That Fizzled.
Article source: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/09/17/occupy-wall-street-a-frenzy-that-fizzled/?partner=rss&emc=rss


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From the author of the hitGossip Girl
series, Cecily von Ziegesar, comes this satirical look at the most elite of New England's colleges and the students who inhabit them. Dexter College in a small, second-tier liberal arts college in the quiet town of Home, Maine, but as freshman students Shipley, Eliza, Tom, Nick and Adam soon find out: this college campus won't stay calm and quiet for long.
Shipley is the blonde bombshell (think the Serena van der Woodsen of the college set) who is determined to shed her good-girl image. Good thing she's been paired with her edgy roommate, Eliza, who has the kind of attitude that ensures she gets noticed wherever she goes. As the two begin to navigate the leafy, ivy-covered campus, they come across a cast of characters (or more accurately, boys) who are also trying to re-invent themselves. There's the jock-turned-artist, Tom, his sensitive stoner roommate, Nick (Nate, anyone?) and country-bumpkin Adam, who continues to live at home on his farm to save money.
Classically von Ziegesar, the plot includes a clash between the haves and the have-nots and boasts Cecily's signature razor-sharp wit. Whether you're nervously preparing to enter college in the fall or bidding your college years farewell, you will be able to appreciate and connect with von Ziegesar's characters. After all, as they are all realizing, college is more than just quizzes and coffee-fueled nights in the library.
More From Seventeen
Cum Laude is available online and in stores now! And to find out why Cecily von Ziegesar and Candace Bushnell (author of Sex and the City and The Carrie Diaries) continue to be so interested in writing about these formative, coming-of-age years be sure to head to the Barnes and Noble in Union Square, NYC on Wed, July 14th at 7pm. Your favorite authors will be on hand to take questions and sign autographs!
What are you most looking forward to about college? (Or what do you enjoy most, for those already there?)


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Backstrom helps Caps win 14th straight over Bruins, 4-2
By GETHIN COOLBAUGH
Associated Press
BOSTON (AP) - Nicklas Backstrom is a believer in puck luck, something the Capitals have had plenty of against the Bruins in recent years.
Backstrom and his teammates had luck on their side again Thursday night as he scored the third-period winner to help Washington win its 14th straight over the Boston Bruins with a 4-2 victory.
"Sometimes hockey isn't fair," Backstrom said after the Capitals won despite being outshot 41-22. "Even if they win the shots, we got the win. It's weird sometimes."
Backstrom, who sat out Wednesday's game against Philadelphia with an illness, glided in to the Bruins' zone and ripped a left-circle wrister past Jaroslav Halak for the go-ahead goal with 14:14 remaining.
Alexander Ovechkin netted his NHL-leading 31st and 32nd goals of the season, and also had the highlight hit of the game when he sent Zdeno Chara - the NHL's tallest player ever at 6-foot-9 - flipping head over heels into the Capitals' bench on a shove late in the first period.
The TD Garden crowd gasped, but play continued and there was no immediate on-ice retaliation. The Bruins captain tumbled back onto the ice quickly and rejoined the play.
Ovechkin declined to speak with reporters after the game about the hit.
Jakub Vrana also had a goal for the Capitals, whose streak against the Bruins dates to March 29, 2014.
"Didn't happen again against this team. Have to get over that hurdle," Boston coach Bruce Cassidy said. "A lot of nights that would be good enough for points, if not two points, but not tonight."
Ryan Donato and David Krejci each had goals for Boston. The Bruins suffered a season-opening 7-0 blowout loss at Washington on Oct. 3 when the Capitals celebrated last season's Stanley Cup title.
"That was a different night, but at the same time you know they're always coming out hard at home," Backstrom said. "I feel like they're way more physical at home than maybe on the road."
Halak had 18 saves for Boston, which had its five-game win streak snapped.
"I didn't make a save on the third goal. That's the bottom line," Halak said. "I got outplayed by their goalie, and you know, they got a win, so we just need to be better."
Washington led 1-0 after the first period despite being outshot 17-5. T.J. Oshie grabbed a giveaway by the Bruins and flipped the puck from the Capitals' end to a wide-open Vrana, who beat Halak with 13:22 to play.
Tensions boiled over in the second when Washington's Lars Eller and Boston's Brad Marchand got tangled up during a play. Eller, whose celebration in front of the Boston bench after scoring the Capitals' seventh goal in the opener drew postgame criticism from Marchand, was sent to the penalty box for unsportsmanlike conduct.
Donato tied it at 1 with 5:49 to play in the second. But, Ovechkin quieted the TD Garden crowd 39 seconds later when he converted after a feed from behind the net to make it 2-1.
Krejci ripped the tying power-play goal past Holtby from the right circle with 15:23 remaining in the third.
Ovechkin scored into an empty net with 1:35 left to seal the victory.
NOTES: Bruins D Charlie McAvoy missed his seventh straight game with a foot infection. He participated fully in Wednesday's practice and could return for Saturday's game against Toronto. ... Washington D John Carlson, born in nearby Natick, Massachusetts, celebrated his 29th birthday. ... Boston announced a partnership with the Boston Pride of the National Women's Hockey League team on Thursday. The Bruins are the fourth NHL franchise to partner with a NWHL team.
Capitals: Host Columbus on Saturday night.
Bruins: Visit the Maple Leafs on Saturday night.
More AP NHL: https://apnews.com/NHL and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports
Copyright 2019 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


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I haven't had a TV since April 2008, so I am not really up to date on what's on. I have been on vacation surrounded by TVs for the last week and honestly I am really happy with my decision to give it up. Then just now on Animal Planet this show, "Whale Wars" came on. I can't believe no one ever told me about it. It is amazing and makes me have hope in people. Good people doing good things on TV. I had no idea. Check out the Sea Shepard site to see what I am talking about.
Remember, every fight for good is important. Every time we do something good for someone else or for something else we are a step closer to the beauty we all deserve in this life. Finding this show amongst all the trash that pulls us down I am inspired, hopeful. Even in darkness you will always find some light.
We must fight to win. If you can donate please do to get Steve Irwin out and back to sea. If you can't donate money here is a link to help out in other ways.
We haven't lost the war yet. Fight!