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It was well after midnight and the Tampa airport terminal was almost empty. Just a few late-night travelers sitting on the benches, reading, trying to sleep or, like me, watching the movie on the screen hanging above the waiting area. They were showing Pancho Villa, the 1972 Eugenio Martin film with Telly Savalas as Villa. I was identifying with Villa – his betrayal and imprisonment, his escape, his revolt against his enemy, Huerta. I could feel Villa's hot outrage. ¡Viva la revolución!
I had a couple of hours before my flight back to LA, so I was killing time, keeping one eye on the entrances, half expecting someone from Flag to come and escort me back to the Base.
No, I hadn't blown the Sea Organization. But I had left Flag after receiving specific orders from Kerry Gleeson, now Scientology's Executive Director International, to remain at Flag. Kerry wanted me to do things his way. But I knew his short-sighted ways wouldn't work. Not for what I had in mind. What I was planning had to be done thoroughly and without shortcuts for it to work.
I was returning to Los Angeles, whether Gleeson wanted it or not. I was going to continue the project Nancy and I had started. For once, I was going to do things my way.
I had first escaped from Clearwater in mid-1981, when Annie Allcock and I had been fired on a mission to locate and hire a public relations firm for the Church of Scientology. Military terminology permeated the Sea Org, so when a Sea Org member was sent to do something, they were "fired on a mission." It gave the activity a sense of precision and purpose.
"Big Blue" - The Scientology PAC Complex
Annie and I went directly from the airport to the "big blue building," the former Cedars of Lebanon hospital, which had been purchased by the Church four years earlier. It was a mixed collection of buildings – the original hospital was a hulking V-shaped relic from the 20's with ornate deco trim, while the newer additions were 50s "modern" - bland blocks of stucco and glass. The entire thing had been painted a hideous shade of bright blue, apparently on Hubbard's orders – since the color blue was associated with the spirit. Inside, it was bustling with Scientology activity.
The building complex was known within the Sea Org as the Pacific Area Command – again, the military frame of reference - or PAC for short, and housed the Los Angeles Organization (moved up from 9th Street), the American Saint Hill Organization, the Advanced Organization Los Angeles, as well as the Sea Org's Continental Liaison Office for the Western US. The idea was to have the "entire Bridge" in one place – that is, all of Scientology's levels from beginning public services all the way to the OT Levels and advanced training, as well as the continental management office.
The new Executive Director International, Bill Franks, had set up his offices in the penthouse of Lebanon Hall, a towering deco structure jutting up from the center of the building complex. It served as staff apartments. The penthouse was spacious, with cluttered desks placed throughout the large main room. A balcony looked out over the grey haze of Los Angeles.
Franks had just been appointed as Executive Director, a position last held by Hubbard himself in the 1960's, and resurrected as part of the "new management" of the Church. In theory, he was the top dog. In fact, he answered to the Commodore's Messenger Organization. He was taking his new position seriously, and the office was a hive of frantic activity. Franks sat us down at a long conference table, and briefed us on our mission, which was to locate a public relations firm that could be hired by the Church to repair its damaged public image.
Annie and I set up offices in one of the lower floors of the Main Building, and started calling around and setting up appointments. We got ourselves outfitted with proper business suits and got a couple of briefcases so we'd look the part.
For the next three or four weeks we went around LA, meeting with a list of PR firms, from some of the best-known A-list firms to lesser-known companies. At night, we compiled reports about each firm – what they had said, a summary of their firm, and a client list (to make sure they were not retained by drug companies, government agencies or psychs – the enemy!).
Then one day we got called up to Franks' office. We were to collect together all of our information and turn it in – he was firing us on a different mission altogether, something that had become urgent. He briefed us that a Scientology celebrity, Cathy Lee Crosby, co-host of TV's "That's Incredible," was putting on an anti drug TV special called "Get High on Yourself." It would include Scientologists like John Travolta as well as non-Scientologists like rocker Ted Nugent. Cathy Lee wanted the Church to launch a big Purification Rundown promotional campaign coincident with the airing of the show. Her assistant, Cathy Wasserman, also a Scientologist, was organizing the whole "Get High on Yourself" program and was the one coordinating with Bill Franks (later the allegation was made that she and Bill were involved in more than "coordinating").
But the catch was this: the TV special was set to air in three weeks. We had three weeks to put together a complete and professional TV Campaign.
I was torn. On the one hand, this was exactly what I wanted to do – launch big public campaigns for Scientology. On the downside, this was more of the same panic mentality that was destructive of any proper planning or preparation. The excitement of actually doing a big campaign won out, and I went for it.
I figured I had a little leverage at this point, so I insisted on a third missionaire, someone trained in market research and surveying – my wife Nancy. She was on the next plane. At least that part of my plan was in place.
We commandeered an office on the second floor of LA Org, and arranged for some desks and a conference table where we could have meetings. We contacted a Scientologist, Don Spector, who had worked as Creative Director for both BBDO West and Foote, Cone and Belding, and he agreed to work with us. He had a marketing researcher that he worked with, Janai Pringle, also a Scientologist.
We also had two more people added to our project, Steve Heard and Jack Dirmann. They were supposed to handle public relations. Steve was a former GO staffer, a very smart, very funny guy, and Steve, Nancy and I had each other in stitches half the time.
Steve had a clever idea to promote the Purification Rundown, which was to start a Foundation which would do scientific studies of the Rundown and thereby prove its effectiveness. He and Jack brainstormed the whole thing – it would validate the Purification Rundown, then go on to validate Hubbard's "Study Technology." They decided to call it "The Foundation for the Advancement of Science and Education" or FASE. They actually did get it established, and it still exists to this day. If you look at their website you'd never know they started in that little office above LA Org as a bright idea to promote the Purification Rundown.
Meanwhile, Nancy and I did some fast research and surveys and assembled a campaign, with TV ads, print ads, and a surveyed slogan, which was, as I remember, "Bring them back to life." It was aimed at parents whose children were addicted to drugs. I ended up presenting the whole campaign to three executives: Bill Franks, Kerry Gleeson (who was still CO Flag Bureaux and visiting from Clearwater), and John Nelson, the Commanding Officer of CMO International. I felt like I was giving the presentation to three department store mannequins. None of them moved or changed expression throughout the presentation, which went on for an hour. There were no smiles, no nods, no questions. It was eerie. At the end of it, they got up and left.
And that was the end of the Purification Campaign. It was never mentioned again. Probably they had other things on their minds, as I was soon to discover.
One afternoon in December 1981, I got a call from Bruce Wilson in Clearwater. He was all excited about a meeting that had just happened there between management and the Mission holders. Not to be confused with Sea Org "Missions," these were people who owned and operated Scientology's franchises. Scientology had used the term Franchise for many years, but in an effort to pump up "religious image," they had been renamed "Missions." These were smaller organizations, privately owned, that delivered basic Scientology courses and auditing. They had long been at odds with the GO, and some complained that their missions had been illegally taken away from them. A few had even sued the Church to try to get their missions back. With the collapse of the GO, the Mission holders saw a chance to right some of these old wrongs, and wanted a dialog with management. They were looking to the new Executive Director International, Bill Franks, to put it all right. After all, he was Hubbard's successor and could do something about it. Franks, however, arrived to the conference under CMO Int escort. It was clear that they were really pulling the strings, not Franks. The Mission holders just saw this as more shenanigans, and demanded answers. They challenged the executives who were present.
Bruce was enthusiastic about the meeting. He felt it was part of a bright new era for the Church, where ordinary Scientologists could have a voice in Church operations and a dialog with management.
I called Kim and told him about it. By this time, he was out of the Sea Org and was a "public Scientologist." With three small children to care for, including a newborn baby, Kim and his wife Deborah had found it impossible to live with the limited time and money they had in the Sea Org, so had routed out and were now living in the Valley. Kim had worked his way back into good standing with the Church. He was happy to hear that there might be some reforms. He had had his own bad experiences on staff.
But the "powers that be," the CMO Int hierarchy, saw the Mission Holders conference differently. They saw it as a mutiny against their authority. Scientology, after all, wasn't a democracy, where people could publicly air their grievances, it was a top-down authoritarian rule, and one did not question those in power. Within weeks, Bill Franks was off post, under guard, and Kerry Gleeson, still in Clearwater, had been appointed as his successor.
For me, all of these internal politics and power plays were a distraction. If we really were to put the past behind us and begin a new era for Scientology, then we had to get out into the public eye and make the subject known to people. That was what was ultimately important.
Jeff and Nancy - loose cannons in LA
Nancy and I discussed what we should do next, and we decided to make our move. I wrote a long petition to the CO CMO Int, laying out a plan to once and for all get a major public campaign for Scientology launched. I laid out the exact steps, which included exhaustive marketing research, isolation of publics, surveys, studies to find the most effective media, research into the book market, and so on. I estimated it would take six months to a year. Amazingly, the petition was approved, and Nancy and I launched the Market Research and Advertising Project.
We started systematically, working with Don Spector, the Scientologist adman. My first question was: what kind of people would be most likely to get interested in Scientology? So we started with a survey of existing Scientologists to find common demographics at the time they had gotten into Scientology – age, education, income, many other factors. And we started surveying broadly for current public attitudes towards Scientology – attitudes we would have to overcome and change. And at the same time, we began researching religious and spiritual trends in society that might work for us. I kept senior executives briefed with weekly newsletters. I knew that unless I kept up a constant flow of valuable information, my project could be cancelled in an instant. As it was, we began to be known and our work valued.
It was all off the cuff. We had the office over LA Org that we had been using, so we just kept that. We had no authorization, we were essentially squatters. The head of Bridge Publications, the Scientology publishing firm that handles all of Hubbard's books, was a friend of mine, Edy Lundeen. I briefed her on the project and got her support. With that, I was able to slip her Purchase Orders and get a little funding for operating expenses. I managed to get our food and berthing covered from the Continental Liaison Office. So with a bit of scrabbling and negotiating, we managed to stay afloat.
Getting staff was another matter. One day, a girl named Linda walked into the office.
"I heard you're going to be doing a big raw public campaign," she said. I told her that was right.
"I'd really like to work on that," she said hopefully.
"Great!" I said. "Sit down there, that's your desk. Nancy will train you on how to do surveys."
A few days later, Linda's senior showed up.
"I'm looking for Linda," he said. "She's my staff."
"She's working here now," I told him. Amazingly, he left, and I never heard another word about it.
Staff continued to wander in, and I would put them to work. Soon there were five of us. I let Nancy run them as a survey team, and spent most of my time researching publics, trends, and the ins and outs of the book industry. Gradually, the bones of a campaign began to take shape.
I never paid much attention to "organizing." I just worked out what needed to be done and then had people do it. But "organizing" things and putting everything on elaborate org charts was an obsession in Scientology, and particularly with Hubbard. At the beginning of 1982, management attention began to swing in the direction of marketing activities, and the first thing that had to be worked out by management was "how to organize it."
Hubbard had started mentioning this problem in a series of communications to John Nelson, the CO CMO Int. He stated that while he had always been able to do "seat of the pants" marketing for Scientology – putting out new courses and auditing rundowns when income needed a boost – real formal marketing required an investment of people, time and money. He seemed to be echoing what I had been saying. He told Nelson how to go about setting up a central marketing unit for the Church. He said to first start a small unit, without touching any existing units, train that unit in "wog" marketing tech, and then gradually pull all other units under that seed unit. It seemed like a simple plan. The only problem was that it actually required setting up and training a starter unit – and no one was willing to put the time or effort into actually doing that.
So the confusion about "how to set up a central marketing unit" rolled forward, getting more and more confusing and complex the more everyone avoided that first step.
Finally, in desperation, Nelson called for a conference at Flag to settle the matter. All of the heads of the existing marketing units would attend – me, the Dissem Aide Flag Bureau, the marketing people from "Golden Era Productions" and others. I flew to Clearwater for the conference, bringing Don Spector along as a professional advertising guy who had worked in agencies and might be able to throw some light on how to organize up a central marketing unit.
The conference soon degenerated into utter chaos. No one could agree on anything. I tried to present what I considered some sane ideas for setting up a marketing function, only to have them shouted down. For every suggestion I made, there were a dozen insane ones. I finally left the conference room in disgust, and sent Spector back to LA. It had been a colossal waste of time. I wanted to get back to work.
It was not to be. I was ordered to Kerry Gleeson's office in the West Coast Building. He lit into me right away.
"Your project is a failure," he said. "You're a failed Missionaire. You will never, never, get a campaign launched that way."
When I was still working at Flag under Gleeson, I would have caved under this kind of pressure, and agreed to whatever he wanted. But I was still frustrated and angry from the insanity of the "marketing conference." I was in no mood to agree with Gleeson, or to go along with any more crackpot ideas of how marketing ought to be done.
"You're wrong," I said, surprising myself a little. "What I'm doing, real research and planning, is the only way to get an effective campaign going."
He looked at me oddly, shocked that I had dared to challenge him. "You've changed," he said, narrowing his eyes. "There's something different about you…"
"You're not going back to LA," he told me flatly. "You're going to remain here as my Marketing Executive International. If you want to launch a big campaign, fine, you can do it via the Continental Liaison Offices to the Orgs."
That, I knew, was the sure route to disaster. The CLOs and the Orgs were caught up in Gleeson's week-to-week stat machine. They would never, never devote the time and resources to running such a campaign that didn't show immediate weekly stat results. No, the campaign needed to be centrally conceived and centrally funded and run – direct to the public.
"I'm not staying," I told Gleeson. "I'm going back to LA to do my campaign."
He was furious. "You are not to leave Flag. I demand a solution from you before you go anywhere. If you won't be Marketing Exec Int, then who will? You'd better have a solution by tomorrow!" With that he dismissed me.
I left his office, seething. Factually, Gleeson couldn't recall me – I was under CMO Int, not ED Int. I headed for the Dissem Bureau offices. I knew that I had friends there, and that one of them, Charlie Updegrove, had a car.
It was after midnight, but I could see lights still on. I banged on the door and peeked through the blinds. There were about five staff in there, staring at the door in a frozen tableau of fear. "Open up!" I shouted, "it's me, Jeff." Finally they let me in.
"Charlie, I need a ride to the airport," I told him. Graciously, he didn't ask any questions. We collected my luggage and headed out to Tampa International Airport. I booked the next flight to LA, an early morning flight.
Back in LA, Nancy and I set about consolidating our position. A new organization had been formed at the end of 1981 called Author Services. They were officially not a part of the Church, but were supposed to be L. Ron Hubbard's literary agency. In fact, like everything else in Scientology, they were run from the top. As my future campaign would involve selling Scientology books, and that would mean royalties to Hubbard, they took an interest in what we were doing, and in fact began running us directly. I sent my weekly reports to Fran Harris, and she started having weekly meetings with us to go over project. She would report on our campaign progress to Hubbard, and would let us know what he said back. He seemed to be pleased with the progress we were making.
Gleeson made one final attempt to stop us. He had been spreading it all over Flag that I was "blown" and sent two missionaries, Debbie Vincent and Aledia Warren, with instructions to take over our market research project and reorganize it. When they arrived and briefed me on what they were going to do, I was furious. I tried to reason with them, but they were determined not to listen to me.
Somehow, I lured them into a supply closet, on the pretext that there was something important in there to inspect. I then closed the door on them and locked it, went to a nearby desk and called Frannie at ASI. I briefed her on what was happening.
"Don't worry," she said. "I'll call you right back."
I waited, listening to the pounding and muffled curses coming from the closet. Ten minutes later, the phone rang.
"It's handled," Frannie said. "They've been recalled."
I unlocked the door and let the two furious women out.
"You've been recalled," I told them. "Now get the fuck out of my office."
And so we carried on, the surveys and research data piling up. I was getting a pretty good idea of who we should be marketing to and what their attitudes and needs were. It seemed that those most likely to be interested in Scientology were young and well-educated. They were people who were looking for change in their lives. I called them "seekers."
One afternoon, I went to the local drugstore to pick something up, and ran into Bill Franks. He looked hollow, tired. He was, I gathered, out of Scientology altogether by then. We talked for a minute, and I told him what I was doing. He wished me luck. That was the last time I saw him.
Then in April 1982, several things came together at once, like planets aligning. My old friend Foster Tompkins arrived on a mission to Bridge Publications, the Scientology publishing house for Hubbard's books. There was going to be a major book convention in June in Anaheim, the American Booksellers Association Convention. This was a yearly national convention where publishers showed their wares and made deals with the book chains and distributors. Foster was to arrange for Bridge Publications to have a booth at this fair and sell Hubbard's books.
Meanwhile, Bruce Wilson had started a new activity at Flag called the Library Donation Project. Its aim was to get Scientologists to buy books which would then be donated to public libraries. The profits were to go to major book campaigns.
At the same time, Hubbard had written a long memo to the CO CMO Int called "Planetary Dissemination" (later issued as a Policy Letter). In it, he stated that Scientology Organizations would continue to be small and static if they only sold to their existing public of Scientologists. In order to really expand, we had to reach out to new people, and the way to do that was with books. He called for a big book campaign to be launched.
The path ahead seemed clear to Foster and I. We would join forces, along with Bruce, in one overall project. That the three of us were good friends, and that all of us tended to be mavericks, only increased the appeal. I would handle the market research, advertising and media; Foster would handle the book trade sales, and Bruce would handle the funding. We would launch the biggest public book campaign anyone had seen.
We discussed what to call the combined project. "Book Marketing Unit" seemed obvious, but I could see an immediate problem.
"If we call ourselves the Book Marketing Unit," I told Foster, "then pretty soon they'll have us running the orgs' week-to-week book sales, and that's all we'll end up doing."
"Well, that's tactical," Foster pointed out. "We don't do tactical; we do strategy."
So the Strategic Book Marketing Unit was born.
And over the next four and a half years, the SBMU would reach a level of success none of us had envisioned.


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With the upcoming release of The Hunger Games (catch the trailer here), a generation of megaplex-going teens raised on misfit wizards and misunderstood vampires will get an overdue introduction to one of the more interesting sub-genres of dystopian science-fiction: ultra-violent entertainment as opiate of the masses.
In the wildly successful tween books by Suzanne Collins, an evil (of course) central government recruits teens (who else) from outlying districts to fight to the death on a "reality" TV show. The object: To mollify most folks while reminding others that the central government is powerful enough to do stuff like make your kids fight to the death on TV. Dystopia, as we said.
Hollywood (along with tween lit) seldom does anything particularly original, and The Hunger Games is no worse than a million other bits of popular fiction in borrowing from past works. Most geeks will have seen some, or perhaps all, of the films on this list — some certainly are considered canonical entries in the great '70s dystopian sci-fi wave. Think of this list as a kinda creepy holiday shopping list for nieces and nephews who you are trying to help start off right in their fledgling geekdom. And of course, lists are always fun to fight over.
And so, the five greatest Ultra-violent Entertainment As Opiate of the People movies are:
5: Logan's Run (1976): The true opiates in this semi-classic are never having to work and a futuristic version of Match.com that teleports random booty calls right to your door. However, the Carousel – a ritual / game in which the clueless populace is slaughtered under the guise of offering possible "renewal" – makes the list for two reasons. One, it offers a false sense of hope to people in a hopeless situation. Two, it's the only game show in history that requires less participant skill than "Deal or No Deal."
4. The Running Man (1987): This neon-laced set piece extravaganza is either the high point or low point of Arnold Schwarzenegger's reign atop "action sci-fi," depending on your perspective. The government keeps a ravaged population distracted by televising the struggle of condemned prisoners to defeat over-the-top gladiators en route to their freedom. So, of course, they pick a guy who looks like Schwarzenegger as their patsy. It's so dumb it's fun, and Richard Dawson just tears through the scenery in his turn as the maniacal game show host.
3. Battle Royale (2000): Collins caught flak from some critics for knocking off this Japanese film in The Hunger Games series, but again, there's nothing really new under the sun. An entire class of punk teens are served up (by their teacher, no less) to participate in a TV show where, yes, they are forced to kill each other in order to survive. Well, not entirely forced – some of the kids gravitate to the raw violence, while others use the game as the ultimate outlet for every teen pathology imaginable. As much an indictment of human nature as oppressive government, you have to work pretty hard to get the Japanese perspective to truly appreciate this film. It is ultra-violent (the safeguard device is a collar that blows off the heads of recalcitrant players), and frankly the ending is pretty hackneyed. But the performances are all remarkable, and this movie finally answers the question of how far teen boys will go for sex.
2. Death Race 2000 (1975): The high point of the Roger Corman's '70s low-budget machine (apologies, Riff Randell), Death Race follows the exploits of weirdo celebrity drivers as they race cross-country, running over hapless bystanders for bonus points. And of course, people can't get enough of the violence and the star-watching and jingoism it comes wrapped in. As directed by Paul Bartel, the movie is inherently an absurdist comedy with plenty of political commentary layered close to the surface. The sped-up-film car chases only add to the overall effect. And how can you not love a movie in which the United Provinces of America wages a disinformation campaign against the French Air Force?
1. Rollerball (1975): This Norman Jewison film accomplishes the rare feat of both condemning and celebrating sports, the current real-world opiate for a whole lot of the masses. Corporations have seized control, and to keep folks in tow, they've invented a sport that's so violent and pointless that nobody should ever be able to get good at it; the entire point of the game is "to demonstrate the futility of individual effort." But somebody (James Caan, no less), does get good at it, and what follows is a struggle of individualism against dehumanizing complacency. Scenes of homicidal fans slamming into barricades and wanton tree poaching make this movie about as '70s as you can get.

subset: commoncrawl


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From Northampton to D.C.
Check it out! Our pal Bill Scher has been invited to the the White House. We talk about how that happened, and dig into the Progressive Breakfast.
We also talk to Chris Hellman of the National Priorities Project, whose work has also been used by the White House, as well as the media, to help people see where their tax dollars are going. He's on a new task force looking at ways to cut the defense budget in order to reduce the deficit.
Download the show! | Open Player in New Window
Tuesday 25 January 2011
2011-01-25 » Jaz Tupelo


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Gallagher Fitness Resources
Salem, Oregon
On any Saturday morning in downtown Salem, Ore., up to 200 people are drawn to the running shoe store on Commercial Street. They come to be part of a close-knit community built and maintained by coaches John and Susan Gallagher. The couple owns Gallagher Fitness Resources, a 2,500-square-foot specialty retail shop that serves as the anchor to a burgeoning running community in the city of 160,000 people. This faithful band of runners divides itself according to training groups and then heads in the direction of Minto-Brown Island Park to navigate the various loops there.
Located in between the longtime running capitals of Portland and Eugene, Oregon's state capital was something of a dead zone by comparison until the Gallaghers showed up in the early 1990s.
A self-described "road-racing junkie," he trained with a post-collegiate group in Portland in the late 1980s, continued to soak up information related to and the ideas of Ken Sparks and Jack Daniels, and began to think about how it all applied to recreational runners.
Runners with injuries came to Susan, an occupational therapist. And then she would refer them to John for coaching advice. That's how, before Gallagher Fitness Resources opened its doors, Gallagher was leading 75–100 runners and walkers each Wednesday afternoon at Sprague High School.
John also writes workouts for Team GFR, a loosely organized racing team of men and women ages 25 to 56 who meet at the store on Wednesday nights for hill repeats, a tempo run or a speed session. But he admits he's as much of a lifestyle coach as he is a running coach.
The Gallaghers are more than local running gurus. John has also been a consistent advocate for improved access and maintenance of the city's trails and pathways. Susan, a former standout middle-distance runner at Kansas, left her therapist job after 22 years and devotes her time to promoting, educating and caring for Salem's runners. Also 49, she leads a popular beginner's group tailored to women.
"For the recreational runner [Boston] is the Olympics," John Gallagher says. "That's the reward for what we do."
Drop the "Go Hard or Go Home" mentality completely from your daily training. Keep your goals in perspective. Faster times are the direct result of keeping your body and your mind loose by challenging yourself appropriately in training and being recovered for your next race. Improvement in running requires patience and consistently running without injuries, nothing more.
A certified massage therapist and former school teacher, John Gallagher, 49, got his coaching start at Notre Dame, working as an assistant with the women's club team. He had an eye for good running form and for the arithmetic of formulating workouts.
Roy Benson's heart rate training
Once in Salem, the Gallaghers transformed the community. After winning road races, John and Susan would hang out at the finish line, talk to people and answer their questions.
"We're interested in them and fascinated by them," John says of the runners who show up at his door. "We're constantly inspired by the people we work with. It's easy to be motivated."
"I ask people, 'What's your hurry? Do this for the rest of your life,'" he says. "Part of what I do is back people down, channel their enthusiasm, teach them things, but turn their attention to a long-term approach. This isn't 'let's get fast in six weeks.'"
The Gallaghers helped 17 runners qualify for April's Boston Marathon, some of whom started running only five or six years ago in the 11-minute-per-mile beginner's group.


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Moulded Main Chassis The chassis is designed with a perfectly smooth, countersunk underside and angled side pods for extra cornering performance. The heavily braced, modular front end bolts on with four steel hex screws, providing the optimum amount of kick-up for top off-road performance. The rear suspension and transmission also mount onto a single modular place for quick and easy maintenance.
Battery Holder Featuring prominently in the chassis is the battery which provides all the power to the motor and steering servo. A large battery compartment allows the fitting of any standard stick pack or side-by-side pack design, even the larger 7-cell packs which provide more voltage and power for huge top speeds! In addition to fitting the industry standard nickel-metal hydride (Ni-MH) battery packs, lithium polymer (LiPo) and other newer battery designs are able to easily fit in the chassis, giving the truck a unique 'future-proof' design. Because it is the heaviest single component of the truck, special consideration was given to the placement of the battery in the chassis. The battery can be fitted all the way forward to enhance steering on low-speed race tracks, or fitted all the way to the rear to give greater traction on larger high-speed tracks. Removing the battery is simple and quick, with specially designed self-centring thumbscrews. Normally an expensive option on race-level 2WD kits, this is a standard feature on the E-Firestorm Flux! Using thumbscrews instead of the normal body clips to hold in the battery allows batteries of different sizes to easily fit in the chassis, regardless of battery thickness.
Motor Mount The rear-mounted motor provides the best balance for the rear suspension, allowing the motor to offset the weight of the battery and giving the rear tyres extra weight for maximum traction on any type of surface. The placement of the motor also allows new types of brushless motors easily fit in the chassis, giving you the best opportunity for insane top speeds!
Laydown Steering Servo The steering servo gets the same amount of attention, with 'laydown' mounting for a low centre of gravity (CG). The standard and reliable HPI SF-1 servo does the steering duties, although it's extremely easy to replace it with a faster or stronger racing-level servo should you wish. Any standard servo designed for 1/10th scale vehicles will fit and act as a suitable replacement.
Full Racing Suspension The E-Firestorm uses the tough suspension design and suspension geometry from the Firestorm 10T truck for extreme ruggedness and durability. Extra-long suspension arms are damped by adjustable shock absorbers, and turnbuckle camber links can be mounted in multiple locations for fine-tuning of the handling. This makes the E-Firestorm nimble and easy to handle in all conditions! The E-Firestorm Flux uses the same front suspension as the nitro Firestorm and electric E-Firestorm, so you know it will be tough and long-lasting. The entire front end of the nitro Firestorm can actually be removed and bolted right on the E-Firestorm Flux! This means that not only will spares be easy to find, but the tough front end parts of the Firestorm are the standard parts of the E-Firestorm Flux. The rear end of both trucks share several parts as well, including the hubs, shocks and turnbuckles.
|Threaded shocks for easy and precise ride-height adjustment
|Optional mounting points are provided on the suspension arms...
|...and on the shock towers for quick and easy suspension tuning
Hubs and Steering Knuckles The front hubs and steering knuckles, plus the rear uprights, are moulded from tough nylon to take any sort of punishment you can dish out. The optional camber link locations on the hubs and uprights also give you extra tuning opportunities at the track. The front hubs feature alloy steel axles that spin on high-quality rubber sealed ball bearings for optimum efficiency. The alloy steel is extremely strong to take the abuse of rough landings and the occasional crash. The way the axle is mounted in the steering knuckle allows the best steering action possible, giving you maximum steering input and direct feedback through the tight and twisty sections of the racetrack! The front and rear wheels use HPI 12mm 'step' type aluminium hex adapters, making them extremely strong and damage- resistant. Because the front wheel bearings fit into the steering knuckle and directly support the axle, the wheels are extremely easy to swap out to suit changing track conditions. You can also use any HPI rear wheels you have in your collection already, so any wheels you have from a Nitro MT or other HPI 4WD truck will fit on the front OR rear!
Adjustable Turnbuckles Steel turnbuckle camber links allow you to make tuning adjustments while the links are on the truck, so tuning is quick and very easy to do. You also have the option of different mounting points for the turnbuckles as well, with two inner and two outer mounting positions for each camber link, giving you the ability to change the suspension geometry to suit track conditions and your own unique driving style. The steering links also use adjustable steel turnbuckles, allowing you to quickly change the front toe setting for lighter or more aggressive steering. Optional Ackerman holes on the steering arms give you further adjustment and the ability to further alter the steering action.
'Captured' Hinge Pins The suspension pins use a 'captured' design to isolate the suspension from the chassis, with the added benefit of using no 'e-clips', making routine maintenance simple to accomplish. The front hinge pins feature a tough aluminium brace to prevent bending or suspension arm damage. The rear hinge pin mounts are also interchangeable with option mounts, which allow you to alter the rear toe setting to give you more forward traction or more grip in the corners.
3-Gear Laydown Metal Gear Transmission Getting the power to the rear wheels is a durable low-profile gear transmission that features all-metal gears for extra toughness! The gearbox uses a 2.6 to 1 gear ratio to enhance traction and efficiency in all conditions. Directly driving the driveshafts is a sealed planetary gear differential, giving you exemplary corner grip as well as longevity and minimal maintenance. The low profile transmission enhances the E-Firestorm's centre of gravity, keeping the handling tight and tidy! Tight like a tiger!
Rubber-Sealed Ball Bearings For extra efficiency, all the components of the drivetrain, from the spur gear to the wheel axles, spin on rubber-sealed ball bearings. With these bearings you get long runtimes and long engine life while the rubber seals keep out dust and grime!
Chrome Scorch Wheels & Grippy Rubber Tyres To get maximum performance on and off the track, the E-Firestorm Flux uses the same tyres as the groundbreaking Firestorm 10T and E-Firestorm: Front Line asymmetric ribbed front tyres and Ground Assault medium pin rear tyres. This combination of precise control and massive traction gives you ultimate control and speed! The tyres are also mounted on bright chrome Scorch wheels for durability and great looks.
Strong Hex-Head Hardware Securing everything in place on the E-Firestorm is a selection of high quality steel hex screws and bolts. These are especially tough and rugged, perfect for a fun racing machine like the E-Firestorm Flux! The screws on the underside of the chassis are flat head screws to prevent any excess scraping when the truck slides over jumps or bottoms out, and tough cap head bolts secure in really important parts like the shock towers, shocks and other parts.
Adjustable Body Posts Finishing off the chassis details are a set of front and rear adjustable body posts. These may not be as light as non-adjustable pure racing designs, but it does mean you can use option bodyshells from HPI and other companies to fully customize your truck!
The reliable and sturdy HPI TF-1 radio controls the E-Firestorm Flux, giving you ultimate control in a realistically designed radio! The steering wheel design makes you feel as if you're actually driving the truck, and the trigger-style throttle and brake controls provide you with finger-sensitive action when accelerating and stopping! The radio transmitter features interchangeable frequency crystals, servo reverse switches, a retractable aerial with sliding cover, easy access to radio adjustments and simple battery replacement. Taking the signals from the transmitter, the HPI RF-1 receiver uses standard RC connectors to send your control signals to the SF-1 steering servo, which controls the steering, and the Flux Motiv speed controller, which handles the throttle, brake and reverse commands to the Warp 5700 motor. You get long-range, reliable connections between your transmitter and car with the RF-1 and dependable control from the SF-1 and Flux Motiv! Because all of the electronics are standard-size RC components with standardized connectors, any or all of the components can be upgraded at any time, or moved into a different RC vehicle in the future. The E-Firestorm Flux will accept any standard 540-size brushed or brushless motor, and also any RC battery pack, of stick or side-by-side design. Lithium-polymer hard case batteries will also fit right in!
- Flux Warp 5700kV brushless motor provides high performance, efficiency, long motor life, reduced maintenance
- Flux Motiv ESC for smooth and efficient motor control
- Composite main chassis is lightweight and durable
- Suspension geometry and components from the Firestorm 10T
- Nimble handling and easy to drive in all conditions
- Many existing Firestorm option parts bolt directly on to maximize performance
- Vertically adjustable front and rear camber links are easily adjustable to suit conditions and driving styles
- Adjustable shock positions (3 upper and 2 lower) to maximize suspension performance
- Adjustable wheelbase to tune the length of the truck to suit driving conditions
- Adjustable rear toe and anti-squat for quick adjustment to fine tune handling
- High quality thumbscrews on battery retainer for secure and tool-free battery access. Fits most Li-Po packs, 6-cell NiMh batteries, and even 7-cell NiMh batteries
- Dual pad slipper clutch protects the drive train on hard landings
- Durable low-profile 2.6:1 ratio ALL METAL gear transmission is extremely durable and capable of handling very powerful motors
- Sealed planetary gear differential for nearly zero maintenance, maximum reliability and convenience of tuning differential action with heavy weight silicone oils
- Strong alloy steel dog bones for simplicity and durability
- 14 ball bearings throughout the drive train for maximum speed and efficiency
- Steel turnbuckles for each camber link and steering rod allow fine adjustment of the suspension to suit your driving style and track conditions
- Threaded shock bodies allow fine adjustment of ride height
- Silicone oil filled shocks for high performance and more consistent damping in extreme temperatures
- Aluminum 12mm wheel hex adapters used front and rear are compatible with all HPI 1/10th scale truck rear wheels. Allows many different wheel and tire combinations to adapt to driving conditions and numerous styling options
- Alloy steel front axles are extremely durable
- Captured hinge pin design used throughout - easy maintenance with no E-clips
- Lay down steering servo for the lowest possible center of gravity
- High quality hex head machine screws used throughout for simple maintenance
- Adjustable height body mounts allow a variety of body styles to fit the chassis for a custom look
- Ground Assault taper pin rear tires and Front Line ribbed front tires for high traction and long life on nearly any surface
- Shiny chrome "Scorch" wheels made from high impact nylon for extreme durabilty
- 48 pitch pinion and spur gear for maximum efficiency and reliability, protected by a molded gear cover to keep debris away from the gears
- Pre-painted DSX-2 body with custom graphics to complement your style
10554 - E-Firestorm Flux with Warp 5700kv brushless motor and Motiv ESC Comes complete with pre-painted bodyshell, electronics and radio gear (does not include stick pack or AA batteries). Includes complete instruction manual and DVD.
Specification may be subject to change


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Panasonic TH-42LF60
|Call for price
|Key Specifications
|Screen Size:
|700 cd/m2
|Contrast Ratio:
|500,000:1 (Dynamic)
|Viewing Angle:
42-inch Indoor Professional Full HD LED Displays
Indoor Displays
Panasonic offers a comprehensive range of professional displays, giving solutions to the visual needs of a number of industries, from retail stores and shopping centres to hotel receptions and airports. Each of our models offer a wide viewing angle for high visibility, sleek design that saves space, and clever displays that can adapt to the lighting environment of its location.
Full HD for optimal clarity
All of the Panasonic Professional Displays feature Full HD for excellent picture quality. Our displays offer a crisp and clear delivery of the information you are looking to communicate – vital in fast-moving public spaces such as airport terminals. We also offer a wide array of inputs, for easy system expansion, allowing you to mount a function board to suit your application.
Smart and stylish design to look good in any location
The display range offers great energy-saving features to help cut your running costs, helping both the environment and your bottom line. Backlight power consumption is reduced by the ECO mode, which detects the ambient light level and controls the backlight accordingly. Our backlights are powered by smart LEDs that are energy efficient whilst still offering brightness levels to support use in very bright places. Our liquid crystal display panels strongly resist after images to provide the durability that is essential for signage use, helping you get maximum use from your screens.
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Currently we have no brochure ..... Please check for updates.


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Key, David McKendree
Key, David McKendree, 1824–1900, American politician and jurist, b. Greene co., Tenn. He practiced law in Chattanooga, Tenn., from 1853 to 1870, except during the Civil War, when he was an officer in the Confederate army. He served in the U.S. Senate (1875–77) to complete Andrew Johnson's term. In 1877, President Hayes chose Key to be his Postmaster General, an action that provoked sharp criticism from Republicans, who felt that the presence of an ex-Confederate in the cabinet violated party principles. From 1880 to 1894, Key served as U.S. judge for the eastern and middle districts of Tennessee.
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2023, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
See more Encyclopedia articles on: U.S. History: Biographies


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One sorely missing feature from the Blend 4 Beta is the ability to have a method in which you can perform initialization work specific to design-time. Such a method is useful for tasks like loading design-time data services into a container, configuring MEF with design-time specific dependencies, and basically anything else that you might otherwise do at startup when the application runs. Since your App class won't be started up when in design mode, it would be great if there was a way for Blend to call a method designated for that purpose at design-time.
I have been thinking about this a lot recently. Initially I thought that Blend could provide an attribute that I could apply to a static method, and it would then invoke that decorated method before loading any Views. That seemed like the best solution (and still does, in my opinion). However, since Blend has no such attribute, I figured it was a moot point…until I realized that I could create my own attribute for the same purpose!
If you decorate an assembly with an attribute, that attribute must be instantiated when the assembly is inspected via reflection (which Blend most certainly does). So, I simply created a custom attribute and applied it to my assembly. In that attribute's constructor, I check to see if it was loaded into design-time. If it was, I then perform my initialization logic. How simple!
Here's the code I added to AssemblyInfo.cs in a project loaded by Blend 4 Beta:
I assume people might want to genericize this class a bit, but the basic idea is quite simple. Perhaps adding a Type parameter for a class to instantiate would be better, so that the instantiated class could handle initialization. That would leave the attribute very simple and reusable. I'll leave that up to you, if you care…
Here's the code, for copy-and-paste purposes:
// In AssemblyInfo.cs
// Apply this attribute to the assembly so
// that it will be created when the assembly
// is loaded into memory.
[assembly: DesignTimeBootstrapper]
class DesignTimeBootstrapperAttribute
: Attribute
public DesignTimeBootstrapperAttribute()
var dep = new DependencyObject();
if (DesignerProperties.GetIsInDesignMode(dep))
// TODO: Design-time initialization…
Happy coding!


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Do you need a supplier to help with managed care training? I can give you some recommendations – just e-mail (stevew at impactiviti.com) or call (973.947.7429) and I'll be glad to talk over your needs.
Recently, I've been helping one client evaluate/clean up/improve assessment questions. Many suppliers and others who write questions don't have adequate knowledge to do this right. Contact me for some resources to help get you on the right track.
Need help cleaning up your contact files?? Please, DO NOT call me! I've had enough on that one this week! (I think I've got it conquered…)
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Deutsche Bank "horribly undercapitalized": U.S. regulator
June 15, 2013 Leave a comment
Deutsche Bank "horribly undercapitalized": U.S. regulator
3:26am IST
By Emily Stephenson and Douwe Miedema
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A top U.S. banking regulator called Deutsche Bank's (DBKGn.DE:Quote, Profile, Research) capital levels "horrible" and said it is the worst on a list of global banks based on one measurement of leverage ratios.
"It's horrible, I mean they're horribly undercapitalized," said Federal Deposit Insurance Corp Vice Chairman Thomas Hoenig in an interview. "They have no margin of error."
Hoenig, who is second-in-command at the regulator, said global capital rules, known as the Basel III accord, allow lenders to appear well-capitalized when they are not. That is because the rules allow the banks to use complicated measurements of how risky their loans are to determine the capital they must hold, he said.But using a tougher leverage ratio measurement – which compares a bank's shareholder equity to its total assets without using risk-weightings – the picture for banks such as Deutsche Bank is very different, he said.
Deutsche Bank this year is almost done raising 5 billion euros in new debt and equity, boosting its core capital ratio to around 9.5 percent, which it says has made it one of the best-capitalized banks among its peers.
"To say that we are undercapitalized is inaccurate because if you look at the Basel framework, we're now one of the best capitalized banks in the world after our capital raise," Deutsche Bank's Chief Financial Officer Stefan Krause told Reuters in an interview, when asked about Hoenig's comments.
"To suggest that leverage puts us in a position to be a risk to the system is incorrect," Krause said, calling the gauge a "misleading measure" when used on its own.
Deutsche's leverage ratio stood at 1.63 percent, according to Hoenig's numbers, which are based on European IFRS accounting rules as of the end of 2012.
Deutsche said the number now stands at 2.1 percent but that it does not look at the gauge. Using U.S. generally accepted accounting principles, the ratio stood at a much more comfortable 4.5 percent, Krause said. (here)
The difference is due to the way derivatives on a bank's books are measured. Neither number directly corresponds to the Basel leverage ratio, which calculates capital in another way and sets a 3 percent minimum.
The FDIC – which guarantees deposits at U.S. banks – stressed that Hoenig was speaking in a personal capacity and that the agency did not comment on individual banks.
Hoenig staked out a reputation as a dissenting voice against the Federal Reserve's loose monetary policy in the immediate aftermath of the financial crisis when he was president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
He's also an outspoken critic of the Basel III rules – introduced globally after the crisis – which he says do not do enough to reduce the size of the riskiest banks and are easy for them to game.
Other banks with a low ratio, according to Hoenig, are UBS (UBSN.VX: Quote, Profile, Research) at 2.52 percent, Morgan Stanley (MS.N: Quote, Profile, Research) at 2.55 percent, Credit Agricole (CAGR.PA: Quote, Profile, Research) at 2.72 percent and Societe Generale (SOGN.PA: Quote,Profile, Research) at 2.84 percent.
Detailed rules for Basel III, which other U.S. politicians and regulators have questioned, are expected to come out in the United States in the next few months, well past the January deadline agreed upon internationally.
Hoenig pointed to the gain in Deutsche Bank shares in January on the same day it posted a big quarterly loss, because it had improved its Basel III capital ratios by cutting risk-weighted assets.
"My other example with poor Deutsche Bank is that they lose $2 billion and raise their capital ratio. It's – I don't want to say insane, but it's ridiculous," Hoenig said.
A leverage ratio is a better method to show a firm's ability to absorb sudden losses, Hoenig says, and he has floated a plan to raise the ratio to 10 percent. He said the 3 percent leverage hurdle under Basel was a "pretend number."
Opponents of using such a ratio say that it ignores the risk in a bank's loan books, and can make a bank with only healthy borrowers look equally risky as a bank whose clients are less likely to pay back their loans.
It also fails to take into account how easily a bank can sell its assets – so-called liquidity – or whether it is hedged against risk.
Still, equity analysts said that while Deutsche Bank likely will meet regulatory capital requirements, its ratios look weak.
"(The) capital raise was warmly received by the market," Berenberg Bank said in a note this week. "However, we still remain concerned about the leverage in the business."
"To get above the 3 percent level (mandated by Basel), required by 2019, requires four years' worth of profits and, in our view, delays dividends."


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Tag Archives: technology
Internet Destroying Office Property Demand
The IBM office park built in Westchester, NY during the 1980s is nearly empty. The team members from one particular IBM work group have never even met before… at least in person. Online, they meet everyday. This isn't some idealistic … Continue reading
Posted in Investing, Real Estate Tagged internet, office property, technology, trends Leave a comment


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Silver: with clear Swarovski crystals
L x W: 8.5cm x 1.5cm
Why not try our stunning Mini Swarovski Crystal and Pearl Beak Hair Clip?
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Phoenix Rising: Lessons Learned from Katrina
Energy-efficient homes play a significant role in post-Katrina rebuilding in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.
Julie Groth didn't set out to become a building contractor. Like her father, she intended to become a "land man," oil-patch lingo for a land management executive, the advance staffer who puts together land deals with other oil and gas producers. So she got a degree in petroleum land management from the University of Texas at Austin and went to work right after college. And not long after, the big oil bust of the late 1980s hit, putting her out of work. Not that she minded much.
By the time she got laid off, Groth had purchased a charming Victorian bungalow on Algiers Point, an historic neighborhood nestled in a bend of the Mississippi River directly opposite the city of New Orleans's modern skyline. With plenty of time on her hands, Groth undertook a major remodeling using skills she learned from her father, picking up techniques from how-to books, and trading tips with neighbors.
Before long, friends were hiring Groth to do remodeling jobs, which, in turn, led to bigger jobs and a growing number of new clients. In practically no time, Groth was out in the field most days managing multiple work crews, running a contracting business that presented her with a constant flow of problem-solving challenges and put her back in close touch with the natural and built environment.
This was closer to what she'd expected to find working in the oil patch.
By the time Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the coast of Louisiana at the end of August 2005, Julie Groth had already racked up more than 15 years working in New Orleans and the surrounding region. As a result, she had almost more work than she could handle in the long months and years of rebuilding that followed; in fact, the rebuilding veteran was on quite a roll in the summer of 2007 when a prospective client offered her what Groth thought could be an intriguing assignment.
Longtime New Orleans resident Shannon Cvitanovic was looking to renovate a classic New Orleans "shotgun" house she'd inherited from her grandmother so it could be included in a May 2008 green home-building tour. The tour, which eventually enlisted a total of seven homes, was scheduled to accompany the tenth annual National Green Building Conference sponsored by the National Association of Home Builders, which was being held that year in New Orleans. Could Groth do it? No problem, said the self-taught contractor.
But completing the job totally transformed her professional life.
"Right after I said yes," Groth recalls, "I found myself climbing a much steeper learning curve than I ever could have imagined. And it didn't take me long to realize this new way of working would mean an entire paradigm shift in the way I thought about building and renovating houses. Once I began to approach building from a systems perspective, I had to admit that even with all the experience I had, I really didn't know that much about building and renovating houses."
And, as it turns out, Groth was not alone.
Rebuilding in a Stimulating EnvironmentRebuilding in New Orleans has also been taking place in a larger environment—one that has gradually come to support a variety of alternative building solutions.
In 2008, for example, the state legislature passed a bill providing a remarkably generous 50% tax credit for the installation of residential solar systems (in addition to the existing 30% federal tax credit). That incentive sparked the founding of 25 solar companies in 2008—and another 40 solar companies in 2009.
Recently, the legislature has passed bills to extend the state's tax credit policy to include commercial projects, and to authorize the sale of municipal bonds by sustainable-energy tax districts to fund solar installations, a concept pioneered in Berkeley, California.
A $71million injection of funding through the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is also scheduled to pay for a variety of programs. A total of $41 million will finance retrofits for university and college buildings; the remainder will help to pay for commercial retrofits, new-home construction, and home renovations. Financing for the last two items extends an innovative program in place since 1999, called the Home Energy Rebate Option. This program offers rebates to builders and homeowners who hire RESNET-trained auditors to consult on and verify energy efficiency improvement projects.
The city of New Orleans, with assistance from federal agencies and local nonprofits, has been actively pursuing programs to promote renewable energy options and energy-efficient building. In 2007, for example, New Orleans was one of only 13 Solar American cities selected in the first round of DOE funding. The city along with its utility, Entergy New Orleans, and other partners was chosen because it has shown a commitment to help accelerate the adoption of solar technologies. And in addition to a host of other initiatives, the city plans this summer to roll out an ambitious $3.1million-a-year program funded by the local utility Entergy New Orleans, and monitored by the New Orleans City Council. The program encompasses a range of solar and energy efficiency incentives aimed at residential and commercial buildings; its goal is to "transform the local marketplace" by creating demand for energy efficiency products and services, and by stimulating workforce development to meet this demand.
Adding Social Justice to the Home Building Equation
Driven largely by money flowing from nonprofits, post-Katrina New Orleans has, in fact, gradually become ground zero for a regional wave of green home building. In the course of what will likely turn out to be a decade or more of intensive post-Katrina rebuilding, a host of architects, contractors, and homeowners throughout the greater New Orleans metropolitan area—and all along the Gulf Coast from the Texas border to the Florida panhandle—are in the process of scaling the green learning curve. (For a wider perspective, see "Rebuilding in a Stimulating Environment.")
When levees bordering two outfall canals and a major shipping channel gave way after Hurricane Katrina had battered the city for more than 12 hours, the resulting floodwaters rushed and slowly crept into 80% of the city's residential and commercial neighborhoods, leaving 20% of the city—primarily the high ground bordering the Mississippi River—relatively untouched. For residents and business owners in those neighborhoods, repairs mainly addressed wind damage that tore off roofing and shattered windows, letting in rain and humidity.
For the vast majority of neighborhoods, however, rebuilding presented a baffling set of choices affected by a host of imponderable factors involving public policy, insurance industry practices, and private resources. And from the very beginning, two forces began to inform the reconstruction efforts. From the top down, planners and rebuilding specialists rushed in to provide a conceptual framework based on the latest in advanced wisdom. From the bottom up, traumatized residents of a racially divided and notoriously poor Southern city insisted that everyone be included.
The first collision of these competing interests occurred in the postdisaster planning process engineered by City Hall, which established a series of panels offering both professional and citizen input. A single area of contention quickly emerged regarding advice from professional planners suggesting that the city concentrate a gradually diminishing residential base in fewer, more-manageable neighborhoods. Following that advice, of course, would mean choosing not to rebuild several existing neighborhoods, an option residents loudly denounced as unacceptable.
Since then, the post-Katrina reconstruction of New Orleans's badly damaged housing stock has progressed in fits and starts. The lucky ones were those displaced residents who managed to put together a combination of personal resources, insurance reimbursement, and federal disaster relief funding (administered through a state agency hastily commissioned and consistently plagued by incompetence) sufficient to support their rebuilding. For a great many others, negotiating the obstacle course of relocation, reconstruction, and reoccupation has so far been either extremely difficult or practically impossible.
So adopting more sustainable, energy-efficient, and environmentally friendly rebuilding strategies in post-Katrina New Orleans has been either a hassle or an astounding opportunity, depending on your perspective. For those who view post-Katrina New Orleans as an opportunity to advance the cause of energy-efficient and environmentally appropriate rebuilding, the effort to introduce new products, technology-based designs, and advanced construction methods has proceeded in concert with a requirement that has, thus far, not played a major role in the growth of the green building movement: a concern for social justice.
Aiming for Scalability and Affordability
What makes this situation unusual is the convergence of nonprofit sponsors working closely with forward-looking builders to establish a precedent for choosing energy efficiency and environmentally appropriate building options— not just because they create a superior setting for life, work, and learning, but, more importantly, because emphasizing durability, environmental awareness, and energy efficiency offers both short- and long-term economic benefits, both for communities at large and for individual residents in those communities.
Based on that assumption, the movement just now beginning to achieve critical mass in post-Katrina New Orleans has become a kind of testing ground for two related criteria: affordability and scalability.
The primary drivers behind adopting these criteria are fairly obvious. According to data compiled in 2006 shortly after the initial cleanup, storm damage had rendered approximately 275,000 homes throughout metro New Orleans unlivable, with roughly half that number inside city boundaries. The city had essentially become, according to an American Institute of Architects report released in late 2006, "a massive redevelopment zone." A recent survey of 12 neighborhoods reported that approximately one-third of housing lots throughout the city remain abandoned.
In addition, the New Orleans metro region is notoriously one of the poorest in the country, with an average family income in many areas of less than $25,000 a year.
Nonprofit involvement in rebuilding the housing stock of post-Katrina New Orleans has sought to achieve two goals in the design and construction of energy-efficient and environmentally appropriate homes. The first is to assign top priority to cost-benefit analysis, specifically to producing the best performing home for the absolute lowest cost. The second is to find a model for development that includes all aspects of home building: project management, client involvement, design and engineering, construction, performance validation, and homeowner satisfaction.
This pursuit of a replicable model for home building that delivers the maximum economic benefit at the lowest cost to homeowners is still evolving. In the end it may prove to be one of the most valuable results of the focused effort to rebuild housing stock across the Gulf Coast.
Post-Katrina rebuilding thus has the potential to do two things. First, it can add to lessons learned about market development and cost-benefit analysis. Second, it can help to expand specific markets. Rebuilding here is based on inner-city and small-neighborhood redevelopment; on subsidized efforts to supply low-cost housing for low-income populations; and on counteracting the general perception that energy-efficient and environmentally appropriate home building is a luxury—and one that ignores overall cost, widespread consumer interest, or mainstream homeowner satisfaction
High-Profile Projects with High-Flying Ambitions
The two energy-efficient housing projects that have attracted the most national attention are Make It Right, an experiment in futuristic architecture sponsored by celebrity actor Brad Pitt, and Global Green USA's triple-pronged approach to energy-efficient, affordable housing; green school construction; and homeowner outreach and education. Both are being run by publicity-savvy groups; both have set a high bar of achievement for themselves; and both have been proceeding at a somewhat slower pace than expected.
Pitt's nonprofit enterprise was actually inspired by a concept Global Green was interested in establishing: advanced-design living space constructed in recovering, low-income neighborhoods as part of a focus on neighborhood renewal.
Global Green USA's president and CEO Matt Petersen originally brought the idea to former president Bill Clinton's 2006 Global Initiative conference, where he shared it with Pitt. A dedicated proponent of advanced architectural design and enlightened construction approaches, Pitt offered to underwrite a national design competition to develop an affordable, replicable, and community-approved home building model that would showcase state-of-the-art energy strategies and environmentally friendly building materials.
Global Green was in the process of establishing operations in New Orleans while moving forward with its housing initiative, as well as its green schools and its education and resource activities, when Pitt announced his own Make It Right concept in September 2007 at that year's Clinton Global Initiative conference. Matching producer Steve Bing's $5 million contribution with a $5 million contribution of his own, Pitt laid out a world-class plan to build a neighborhood full of futuristic houses for displaced residents, using the most progressive techniques and materials possible.
Soliciting design contributions from some of the world's most prestigious architectural firms, Pitt's Make It Right has committed to building 150 homes in New Orleans's Lower Ninth Ward, an outlying neighborhood previously occupied mostly by working-class black families. Placing computer age designs in a ruined landscape of decidedly low-profile housing, Make It Right has been moving forward slowly but deliberately, embracing all manner of building advances, from using pervious concrete for road building to completing the first floating-house design to be officially licensed in the United States
In September 2009, Pitt returned once again to the Clinton Global Initiative conference to accept honors from the U.S. Green Building Council, which officially declared Make It Right "the largest and greenest single-family community in the world," a citation based on 13 certified LEED Platinum homes built and occupied, with 37 more in the construction pipeline.
Global Green's efforts are equally ambitious. An offshoot of Green Cross International, Global Green counts actor/celebrities Leonardo DiCaprio and Edward Norton among its board members. The organization began its neighborhood development by constructing a two-story, net zero model home adjacent to the Mississippi River and not far from the Make It Right project, in the historic Holy Cross neighborhood, several miles downriver from New Orleans's French Quarter.
In September 2009, the U.S. Green Building Council officially recognized Brad Pitt's Make It Right as "the largest and greenest single-family community in the world."
Currently used as a visitor/resource center, the Global Green home is the first of five the organization plans to build, all located in a single row and occupying a square city block. The block will also contain a 17-unit multifamily project and a mixed-use community/retail center. With six planned school projects also under way and a robust education effort to nurture, the organization has so far completed only two more homes, both less costly and slightly less ambitious than its net zero model.
In the race to create a replicable model based on the most cost-effective solutions to the devastation in housing in New Orleans and surrounding areas, both Make It Right and Global Green may have had their attention distracted by their pursuit of other, allied goals. These goals include introducing high-tech design and advanced building techniques to the area; establishing a community anchor; promoting the establishment of green schools; and playing a robust resource-and-education role in the community. It may turn out in the long run, however, that the pursuit of these allied goals advances our understanding of remaking communities based on the use of energy and on other environmental concerns.
An Incubator for Design Innovation
While the Make It Right and Global Green projects have been proceeding with a fair amount of media scrutiny, another homebuilding effort, Project Home Again, has been quietly but effectively working out ways to build intelligent homes, bring back residents, and repair the torn fabric of community. The effort received initial sponsorship from Barnes & Noble Chairman Leonard Riggio, who donated $20 million from his family foundation.
With significant input from both the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the Building Science Corporation, Project Home Again, with a HERS index score of 65–67, quickly built what is now the state of Louisiana's first Builders Challenge housing development. So far, an integrated cluster of 20 homes has been certified, and the organization already has plans and funding in place to build a total of 60 more—these on scattered neighborhood sites.
Project Home Again houses come fully landscaped and fully furnished, with details like back-porch floodlights already installed, making them not just well-made houses, but well-made houses specifically designed for occupants who have, in recent years, faced innumerable difficulties and now want nothing more than simply to come home. Having successfully created what the organization believes is a "tight, streamlined model," Project Home Again now rests on the threshold of a fourth stage of development: the recruitment of funding partners and the expansion of its production line.
(A full-length feature on Project Home Again's operation and building designs will appear in the next issue of Home Energy.)
Joining the effort to explore aesthetic and functional boundaries, Tulane University's School of Architecture began sponsoring a two-semester design/build course in which students plan a cutting-edge, energy-efficient prototype house in one semester and build it themselves in the next. Each design explores a different construction method (wood frame, steel frame, modular, structural insulated panel), generating design insights that have contributed to both Make It Right and Project Home Again.
So far, the program has constructed half a dozen modernist houses in some of the city's bleakest and most devastated neighborhoods. And the innovative architecture course has attracted media attention of the sort that's bound to influence younger consumers: the Sundance Channel followed the design and construction of the program's third house in 2008, resulting in Architecture School, a six-part documentary series.
Media spotlighting has no doubt played a role in the recruitment of world class talent to post-Katrina New Orleans. That talent includes Make It Right's roster of international architectural firms, as well as signature architects like Frank Gehry and visionary urban planners like Andres Duany, both of whom dropped by to work new twists on time-honored New Orleans traditions.
In the first case, Gehry helped convert the narrow, extended shotgun home prevalent in New Orleans working-class neighborhoods by adding touches to the reconfiguration of its long, rectangular shape as a series of roughly square modules. The "Modgun" was intended to provide a flexible solution to the city's oversupply of empty, narrow lots. Global Green likes the design but it hasn't built any of these houses yet.
Similarly, Duany was commissioned by the state of Louisiana to produce a temporary-housing alternative to the ubiquitous FEMA trailer that occupied so many New Orleans front lawns during the early stages of post-Katrina rebuilding. Borrowing from the city's indigenous architectural style, he combined historic decorative elements with a compact, conservatively styled bungalow, calling it the Katrina Cottage.
Unfortunately, Duany ran into his own hurricane of bureaucratic red tape, and the design is now solely available as a Lowe's build-it-yourself kit.
While outside attention elicited by this flurry of low-cost, sustainable, energy-efficient home building has focused largely on architecture and design issues, some of the opinions being expressed could easily be more widely applied. These are best summed up in a recent article in the Atlantic Monthly that surveyed a broad spectrum of rebuilding approaches. Titled "House of the Future," the article concludes:
In the absence of strong central leadership, the rebuilding [of post-Katrina New Orleans] has atomized into a series of independent neighborhood projects. And this has turned New Orleans into something of a Petri dish for ideas about housing and urban life …
In the city today, notions of modern design, advances in green materials, and the technical imperatives of sustainability are all converging toward a great leap forward in urban architecture … spurring design innovations that may redefine American architecture for a generation.
This process is unfolding in a city where the effects of environmental disregard—from disappearing wetlands to rising temperatures to encroaching seas—seem more palpable by the day, and where sustainability seems less like an annoying buzzword and more like a moral imperative.
Retrofit of a Drainage PlaneMany of the houses in the New Orleans area were gutted after Katrina. Therefore, the studs and the inside of the siding are exposed on the inside.
To correctly renovate an old house to be "green"—with its enhanced energy efficiency requirements—is new territory. When I started with the open walls and we decided to do the house green, I thought that the information about how to do that would be easy to find. Instead, after a lot of research, I discovered that the standard practices for insulating the walls (in an existing house) did not measure up. Each standard method—batt insulation, spray foam, and cellulose—fell short. As far as I know, Paul LaGrange, with colleagues, invented what we did to create a proper drainage plane (see photos). We took best practices from new construction and retrofit them to an old house.
In our hot/humid climate, managing moisture is important. In the open walls of an old house with balloon framing and leaky cypress siding, managing bulk water takes on new meaning. Wind-driven rain just pours into the wall cavity. The drainage plane LaGrange and others developed manages moisture very well. In addition to managing moisture, the wall assembly also achieved good thermal insulation required for energy efficiency. The following description is how we renovated the rain screen at 217 N Gayoso.
Starting from the inside
- Against the cypress siding, we installed a rain screen made by Homeslicker next to the siding (the yellow mesh in the photos). This created an air gap of about ³/8–½ inch.
- On top of the rain screen, we installed ½-inch rigid foam board. This helped complete the drainage plane, added air sealing and thermal properties. (When the spray foam was later sprayed into the wall cavity from the inside, the rigid foam acted as a stop so that the spray foam did not squeeze out of the siding and look bad from the outside.)
- Finally, we sprayed open-cell spray foam. This completed the air sealing and added a great deal of R-value to the entire wall assembly—close to 3 inches of spray foam and ½ inch of rigid foam.
— Julie Groth
Julie Groth is the owner of Step by Step Construction in New Orleans, Louisiana. Contact her at email@example.com.
Proposing New Solutions Sustains Momentum
From that perspective, it's possible to imagine New Orleans emerging as a leader in three related areas: in coastal flood management; in advanced construction techniques that address storm- and flood-prone communities; and as a central hub in a growing worldwide network of manufacturers, developers, and architects pushing for residential and commercial solutions that emphasize affordability in energy-efficient design and construction.
In that case, progressive homebuilders like Julie Groth can be counted among both the drivers and the beneficiaries of a post-Katrina building renaissance.
While her remodeling business began to suffer in the middle of 2008, when the initial wave of New Orleans reconstruction subsided and the economy at large spiraled into a major recession, the resourceful contractor continued on her journey to master the steep learning curve of building science, becoming more and more adept at understanding fundamental concepts and creatively applying appropriate solutions.
After gutting the classic New Orleans shotgun house she was working on for the May 2008 green home-building tour, Groth couldn't figure out how to rebuild the walls to create the most moistureproof barrier possible.
The remaining shell featured open-balloon framing and weathered wood siding. One important lesson New Orleans builders learned in the wake of Hurricane Katrina was that the prevailing practice of relying on conventional batt insulation in a hot-humid environment would have to be discarded. Home after home, gutted down to its shell, demonstrated the moisture-trapping attributes of batt insulation, with discoloration, mold, rot—or a combination of all three—almost universal.
Looking for answers, Groth turned to the Louisiana House and Landscape Resource Center at Louisiana State University, a statewide clearinghouse for the most advanced information on energy-efficient and environmentally aware home building. The Resource Center referred her to Paul LaGrange, a local energy consultant generally recognized as one of the state's leading authorities on energy-efficient home building.
He confirmed Groth's suspicion that an effective and efficient moisture barrier for historic retrofits on balloon-frame housing common to the area had yet to be fully developed. So, Lagrange and a team from the Resource Center set out to design one. Groth used the design on her retrofit and further improved it on a later project. To make the technique available to others, she also posted it on her Web site (see "Retrofit of a Drainage Plane").
The experience of delving into a problem with no obvious solution and applying building science principles to devise a solution only served to increase Groth's enthusiasm for learning more building science, and for sharing her education and insights with others, especially those just beginning to familiarize themselves with whole-system home building and renovation.
Not long after her renovation business in New Orleans began to falter, Groth took a job as construction manager for a local chapter of Habitat for Humanity located in the heart of the bayou country, midway along Louisiana's Gulf Coast. Her local chapter, like many in the Gulf Coast region, has been moving forward assertively in adopting a range of greener building approaches.
And Groth intends to help push that movement along.
In addition to managing contractors and volunteers at local building sites, she has been spending time on a set of sustainable, energy-efficient designs intended for a large housing development currently in the works. She's especially interested in learning how to produce a large number of energy-efficient homes using the most cost-effective methods and materials possible.
It's a challenge that has animated Groth's professional life beyond anything she imagined working in the oil fields. In her current pursuit of constructing more and more low-cost, well-built homes to meet the rebuilding needs of Gulf Coast residents, she has become, like dozens of others involved in Gulf Coast reconstruction, both a problem solver and the solution itself.
Roger Hahn is a freelance writer and editor based in New Orleans. His work has appeared in Civil Engineering, Historic Preservation, and American City & County.
For more information:
Curtis, Wayne. "Houses of the Future." Atlantic Monthly, November 2009.
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I guess it's fitting that Chael Sonnen should get his shot at UFC light-heavyweight champion Jon Jones via reality TV.
The whole thing is just contrived enough to feel appropriate because where else do you get to become famous for portraying some carefully crafted version of yourself for an audience that likes to think it's in on the joke? What other format so aggrandizes the person who's willing to do or say anything just to stay on TV?
It all makes so much sense, especially when you consider the dismal current state of "The Ultimate Fighter" franchise. Whether because of the coaches, the time slot or just the stale sameness of it all, people are losing interest. Ratings plummet. Executives frown. Something's got to give.
So what do you do? If you're UFC President Dana White, you call in the cavalry. You get Sonnen in there opposite his enemy of the month, who just happens to be yet another UFC champion, and suddenly you have all the manufactured conflict of a "Real Housewives" episode, only with slightly less makeup.
Will it revive interest in the "TUF" franchise? Sure, temporarily. Will it result in a big pay-per-view bout, assuming Sonnen and Jones can both make it through the filming and the training that stands between them and an April 27 title fight without getting injured, arrested, deported or disemboweled? Probably. Is any of that reason enough to justify turning the light-heavyweight title into a reality TV prop? No way.
It's savvy, in its own way. Maybe even diabolically brilliant. It gives fans what they claim to want, or at least what White and the UFC keep saying they want. Apparently there are great mobs of fight fans roaming the streets and demanding that Jones defend his 205-pound title against a man who hasn't won a single UFC fight in that division. I haven't actually seen or heard of those mobs, but White keeps telling us they exist while also impressing upon us the need to placate them. Those people, I guess they just hate seeing title shots reserved for those who have earned them.
If you really want to, you can convince yourself that a Jones vs. Sonnen title fight makes sense. After all, wasn't that the UFC's original plan to save UFC 151? Isn't that the fight people keep saying Jones should have taken back in September?
Of course that ignores the fact that, even then, it wasn't anybody's first choice. It was an arrangement of convenience, one that Sonnen was qualified for only because he was willing to do it on such short notice. Now we have months and months to plan Jones' next defense, especially while we wait for his arm to heal up from his most recent experience fighting a middleweight who hadn't earned a crack at the belt. It seems like, with all that time to think and with important light-heavyweight bouts like Dan Henderson vs. Lyoto Machida and "Shogun" Rua vs. Alexander Gustafsson on the horizon, we could probably come up with someone better than the guy who was only just barely suitable as a last-minute replacement.
And please, if you're going to be one of those people who claims any fight that puts butts in seats and adds pay-per-view buys to cable bills is, by virtue of that accomplishment alone, a good idea, then you'd better be ready to carry that viewpoint to its logical conclusion. You'd better be all for the New Year's Eve in Tokyo freak-show approach that gives Bob Sapp a paycheck just for falling down on the same fight card that includes dudes in masks fighting juiced-up science experiments. You'd better be willing to apply the same logic to anything that the masses will pay for – pro wrestling, Katy Perry concerts, ventriloquist acts – and conclude that sheer financial viability is the only measure of quality that counts.
Because if you aren't willing to go that far? If you acknowledge that some things are dumb or senseless or patronizingly contrived no matter how many people are willing to pay for them? Well then brother, you've just pulled the first thread that will unravel this whole ugly Christmas sweater into a ball of tangled yarn. From there you quickly conclude that ratings boosts alone are not reason to enough to treat a guy like Sonnen as if he is the No. 1 contender in a division in which he has yet to successfully compete. And then, once you find yourself standing in that lonely cul-de-sac, you'll have to admit that this move by the UFC has nothing to do with sports or competition or any of the other things that make professional cage-fighting appealing to reasonable, responsible adults like ourselves. Instead, it's just about easy money and cheap entertainment. It's about giving us something we can't look away from rather than something we feel genuinely compelled to watch.
I get that there's a place for what Sonnen does. The guy is funny and clever and smart. He's also a pretty good fighter, at least as a middleweight, though we have no idea whether he can beat even a middle-of-the-pack light heavyweight yet. What's so baffling is that the UFC isn't interested in finding out, and it assumes we won't care. It thinks we'll be so glad to see Sonnen on TV that we'll get swept up in his antics and his insults and his insta-feud with Jones, and then by the time April rolls around we'll have forgotten that there is absolutely no reason why he should be getting a light-heavyweight title shot in any universe in which legitimate 205-pounders such as Henderson and Gustafsson are still drawing breath.
In other words, the UFC is hoping we're at least a little bit dumb, and that we're very easily distracted by tough talk and shiny objects – like championship belts, for instance. Those make for such useful props on reality TV shows. You don't even have to explain the importance of a big hunk of leather and gold. Fight fans already know what it means to own or fight for one, or at least they thought they did. If they aren't rethinking it now, maybe they ought to be.
For more on "The Ultimate Fighter 17," stay tuned to the UFC Rumors section of the site.
(Pictured: Chael Sonnen)


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Story highlights
Ex-Cuban leader Fidel Castro greets Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, state media say
Castro has made infrequent public appearances since illness forced him to step down in 2006
Castro dismisses recent controversy of Cuban weapons found on North Korea freighter
Cuban-state media on Sunday published photos of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro meeting with former Cuban leader Fidel Castro in Havana.
Maduro arrived Thursday in Cuba to attend celebrations for the 60th anniversary of the start of the Cuban revolution. Castro wasn't at the ceremony, which was officiated by his brother, Cuban President Raul Castro.
Fidel Castro has made infrequent public appearances following an intestinal illness in 2006 that forced him to step down.
According to the official Cuban government site Cubadebate, Maduro gave Castro a painting by former Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez, who died in March of cancer, and Castro gave Maduro a letter for the heads of state who had attended the anniversary of the revolution.
In the letter titled "I Lived to Fight," Castro mentions the recent scandal involving Cuban weapons discovered hidden on a North Korean freighter trying to cross the Panama Canal.
"In recent days there were attempts to defame our revolution," Castro wrote, according to the Juventud Rebelde newspaper, which published the text of the letter. "Trying to make our head of state and government appear as if they were tricking the United Nations and other heads of state and were guilty of being two-faced."
After Panamanian authorities seized the North Korean ship, Cuba admitted to sending MiG fighter jets, missiles and anti-aircraft systems aboard the ship, which also carried 10,000 tons of Cuban sugar.
The arms, Cuba's Foreign Ministry said, were "obsolete" weapons to be repaired in North Korea and returned to the Caribbean island for defensive use.
Panama has asked for assistance from the United Nations, United States and Britain to determine whether the shipment violated a U.N. ban on sending weapons to North Korea.