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What is your first memory of the piano?
I was learning a piece called 'Baby Bear', and I was having difficulty with it. It was about the sixth piece in my grade one book, and I think you actually had to play hands together or something incredibly challenging like that. My mother sat down with me and patiently helped me through it. For some reason that always stuck in my mind – it's one of the few memories I have of a warm and caring feeling between my mom and I.
Who or what inspired you to start teaching?
The lack of good piano teachers. I figured there has got to be some way of offering students better than what I received. But it was also just by chance – some neighbourhood kids needed lessons, so I taught them. I was 16 which means I've now been teaching over 40 years.
Who were your most memorable/significant teachers?
First off the bat is Richard Hunt, an Englishman who ended up in Montreal and later founded Quartango, one of the best tango groups around. He taught me for only two years when I was 8 and 9 years old, but he instilled a love of music in me that I carry to this day. He was very clever and he let me have fun! We even had some of our lessons on the church organ instead of the piano.
Then there was Phil Cohen who had been Yvonne Hubert's assistant (she had been a student of Cortot and taught such Canadian greats as Janina Fialkowska, Marc-Andre Hamelin, Ronald Turini who later studied with Horowitz, Andre Laplante and Louis Lortie). Phil was fascinated with the psycho-physical aspects of performance and would do strange things with your hand that made you play way better but you weren't sure what exactly was going on.
When I finished my studies with Phil I wanted to understand what had just happened to me, so I did a training in Feldenkrais Method, and I count Moshe Feldenkrais as my next most memorable and significant teacher.
I concluded that Phil had given me an amazing degree of refinement, but I had never acquired the firm foundation upon which such sophistication needs rest. So I went to study with Kemal Gekić in Yugoslavia. More or less a product of the Russian School, he rebuilt everything from the ground up and indeed gave my hand a strength and security it had never had before.
Finally, in the past few years I have again been having occasional sessions with Phil – getting some reminders about that sophisticated part and synthesizing what I've learned from both Phil and Kemal to develop what I call Craft of Piano Method, the approach presented in my three books on piano technique.
Who or what are the most important influences on your teaching?
All of the above. Also Richard Feynman, the physicist and author of 'Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman – Adventures of a Curious Character', and Werner Erhard, whose work now goes by the name Landmark Education. Also G. I. Gurdjieff. And various psychological disciplines…… what they gave me is the idea always to make it a positive, creative experience. To respect the person. To try to discover the person. Never to fault the student for not understanding but to fault myself for failing to discover the language that would have him or her understand.
Most memorable/significant teaching experiences?
Hoo boy, there are hundreds of those… Recently I worked with a violinist in Pensacola, Florida, who had shoulder pain. I had him continue his up bow way past the violin, towards the ceiling, then around in a big circle. Then his down bow expanded into a big circle in the other direction. Then I had him play not moving his bow at all but moving his violin back and forth underneath the bow. Finally I explained to him where his arms are attached to his body: do you know? It is only at the central end of the collarbone where it attaches to the sternum. I put my bunched fingertips one on each of these collarbone-sternum joints and palpated them while he played, just kept physically in touch with them. His sound went through the roof. It had been improving steadily but this was a quantum leap, it had power, sonority, richness, expressivity – it gave us all goosebumps.
I recently worked with a young Italian pianist in Geneva. She had been given a steady diet of arm weight technique and told not to move her fingers too much. When I showed her a way of moving her fingers which gave them activity and tonus without stiffening them or causing any stiffness elsewhere, her playing became amazingly poetic. I was blown away because I didn't have to tell her to be more expressive or poetic, we just worked to undo the physical block which had been preventing her natural expression from finding its voice.
I taught an American pianist in Trossingen, Germany many years ago. Her hand suffered (as so many do) from over-relaxation, and I worked to build up its structure, just to get it to stand nicely on the keyboard even before we tried to play anything. All of a sudden she says, "Gee, I feel so muscular!" We all laughed, because of course, it wasn't her muscles at all that were giving her the sense of power, it was her skeletal structure.
I remember teaching a Chinese student during my year in Wuhan. She was playing Liszt's Dante Sonata and couldn't really get the special atmosphere of the second theme. I tried explaining to her how Liszt was pulled in two directions, towards divine love but also towards carnal love, and that we don't really know which one this theme represents. I myself feel it as towards the divine, how about you? No result. I try another tack: "Imagine you are the Emperor of China and it is your yearly pilgrimage to the Sun Temple. You must pray to the Gods for rain, and if you fail, your people will die of famine. You enter the temple, you pray with all your heart, and suddenly, a sound of brass from the sky, a divine melody descends from the clouds – you know your prayers have been answered. Play this theme as if it was that heavenly melody." She played and we were literally in tears. It was indeed heavenly. It was a prayer. I was fascinated because I had to go into her culture to access the universal quality of that theme. Trying to get her to understand Liszt's culture met with no success, but her own culture proved an admirable path for her to understand that music, music which does indeed speak to us all. She needed her own culture to access the right side of her brain, which of course possesses a perfect understanding of the spiritual element in this theme.
What are the most exciting/challenging aspects of teaching adults?
Exciting: their intelligence, their sensitivity, their curiosity, their receptivity, and their willingness to be beginners. Challenging: 1) the slightly rusty nature of their brains, compared to the incredible flexibility and speed of their younger colleagues. 2) having to fix the sometimes vast amounts of garbage they have been taught over the years…
What do you expect from your students?
Curiosity, engagement, dedication….
What are your views on exams, festivals and competitions?
They are excellent, a stimulus to high level work. Competitions are the equivalent of a scientific congress where people go to meet their colleagues, share ideas and be stimulated. It's a chance to feel like you are part of a community instead of this weirdo who mostly sits between four walls practicing on his or her own. Whenever I prepared a competition I played better, because I knew I had to. Perhaps theoretically I should play my best simply out of love for the composer, but I find the practical stimulus of a concrete goal a much more effective kick in the pants.
What do you consider to be the most important concepts to impart to beginning students, and to advanced students?
- Sing a simple song, sense your own voice. Let your fingers begin to find that song on the piano. Experience your fingers on the piano as an extension of your voice.
- Tap simple rhythms, one hand on your knee, the other on a piano key. Let rhythmic sense be as important as the sense of the notes from the very beginning.
- Play first, read second.
- Never let the task of reading distract you from the task of making music.
- Never let relaxation lead you into a state of emasculated collapse.
- "Don't bang" does not mean "play like a wimp," it means "find a way to play where you stand up into your hand's structure instead of letting it collapse. Banging mostly comes from weakness not too much strength.
- Have your hands learn to stand, walk, run and jump well on the keyboard, then give them musical tasks that give them a reason for doing these things.
- Never let technique distract you from the sound you are making, the music you are making. They are intimately connected.
- Understand your hand's structure and function, then find out where it is not working optimally for you. Find out how the body participates in supporting the hand in working well.
What are you thoughts on the link between performance and teaching?
They feed each other. I couldn't really do one well without the other.
Who are your favourite pianists/pianist-teachers and why?
Passed on: Horowitz, Rubinstein, Rachmaninoff, Ignaz Friedman, de Pachamann. They all had supreme virtuosity, compared to which most of the best pianists today only move their fingers well. This virtuosity is way beyond digital dexterity – it's creating orchestral sonorities and emotional characterizations that grow naturally and organically out of the soundscapes the composers created.
Living: Kemal Gekić. He is the one pianist today who is breaking new ground in this realm. He is using his transcendent mastery of the keyboard to explore new emotional and spiritual elements in the music he plays, and dealing with adjustments to the sonority at the micro- or even nano- level to evoke unbelievably huge changes in the expressive dimension.
Canadian pianist Alan Fraser is best known as the author of three major volumes on piano technique: The Craft of Piano Playing (also in DVD), Honing the Pianistic Self-Image, and All Thumbs: Well-Coordinated Piano Technique. Fraser's new approach grows out of his many decades' study with Phil Cohen and Kemal Gekić, synthesizing the best features of previous schools of piano technique in order to move beyond them. Analyzing piano technique in the light of the Feldenkrais Method of neuromotor reeducation (Fraser is a senior Feldenkrais practitioner) allows Fraser to unlock the hand's innate potency at the keyboard by returning to its inherent structure and function. Instead of distracting from musical aspects of piano playing, Fraser's focus on the physical brings the pianist, by improving his physical relationship to his instrument, back into contact with his essential artistic self. Thus Fraser's students gain not only in technical mastery; but in their artistic expression which develops a whole new dimension of tonal breadth, emotional subtlety and spirituality.
In 2011 Fraser inaugurated the Alan Fraser Piano Institute, a week-long intensive course designed to create a breakthrough in one's piano technique. Branches of the Institute have already sprung up at Smith College, Massachusetts; Salt Lake City, Utah; Concord New Hampshire; Stuttgart, Germany; Geneva, Switzerland; Nice, France; and Haarlem, the Netherlands. In addition to his Institutes, Alan Fraser gives recitals and master classes throughout Europe and North America, and continues to teach at the University of Novi Sad, Serbia. He has composed several vocal works including two masses and a Magnificat, and is a respected digital sound engineer who edited Kemal Gekić's monumental recording of the 27 Chopin Etudes.


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The History and Production of Marsala Wine
It became popular in 1773 after being introduced to the wider European market by an Englishman named John Woodhouse. Woodhouse realized that fortified wines from Spain and Portugal were very popular and aimed to do the same with Marsala. Vincenzo Florio was an important producer and exporter during the mid 1800s.
Marsala's high alcohol content allowed it to be transported long distances before refrigeration. It is made in a very similar way to Sherry in Jerez, Spain. Rather than using the solera system, Marsala is made in perpetuum. Several obscure white grape varietals are used, including Inzolia, Grillo and Catarratto.
Marsala has DOC status in Italy and is made in several different quality levels. Beginning with the least expensive, these are: Fine, Superiore, Superiore Riserva, Vergine e/o Soleras and Vergine e/o Soleras Stravecchio e Vergine e/o Soleras Riserva. The major distinction is how long these wines have been aged; this ranges from under a year to over 10 years.
With meals, Marsala is usually served after the first course. It is also a very popular ingredient in cooking and is often used in sauces. Chicken Marsala is a famous recipe that uses the wine.
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subset: commoncrawl


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WIMBLEDON, England — Serena Williams relishes her role as copycat little sister. Even if it takes her 12 years.
Now she has that Olympic double – just like Venus.
RELATED:Serena Strikes Again! Defeats Sharapova For Olympic Gold [VIDEO][1]
The overpowering American pair won the doubles title at the Olympics on Sunday, with Serena adding to the singles gold she won on Centre Court at Wimbledon a day earlier.
"Crazy," Serena said. "I'm always copying her. I forgot that she did it in Sydney and I do it here. We're the same doubles team, we just split this to singles, so it's cool."
The sisters beat Andrea Hlavackova and Lucie Hradecka of the Czech Republic 6-4, 6-4 under the roof on a rainy afternoon at the All England Club. Venus – with her red, white and blue braids pulled back into a bun – closed the match on the very grass she has long loved with a backhand volley winner after the Czechs saved a pair of match points.
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"We all talk about this, 'We have so many medals,' but to be able to add to that, it's like an unbelievable feeling," Venus said. "You know that in that count, there you are. It feels amazing."
On Saturday, Serena beat Maria Sharapova 6-0, 6-1 for the singles gold. She joined Steffi Graf as the only women to complete the Golden Slam – winning the Olympics and the four majors.
When the Americans in the crowd at Centre Court broke into a chant of "U-S-A! U-S-A!" as the players left the court, the sisters pumped their fists, turned to wave, then slapped a high-five. This was a command performance – the sisters didn't drop a set through their five matches in London.
The medal ceremony had to wait some five hours after the outdoor bronze-medal match which was delayed by rain – and both sisters literally let their hair down for their moment on the podium. Venus sported bright red lipstick, and Serena put her arm around her sister's waist and embraced her from the side.
Third-seeded Maria Kirilenko and Nadia Petrova of Russia took the bronze by beating the top-seeded U.S. pair of Liezel Huber and Lisa Raymond 4-6, 6-4, 6-1.
With Bob and Mike Bryan taking the gold in men's doubles Saturday, U.S. tennis made it three golds in two days.
"I feel great to be a part of this U.S. team this year," Venus said.
Serena became tennis' first double gold medalist at an Olympics since Venus won singles and doubles at the 2000 Sydney Games. The sisters also won the doubles gold at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. And with Sunday's victory, each has a record four Olympic tennis gold medals.
While Serena was thrilled to win on her own Saturday, with Venus cheering from the family box, the doubles is what she most cared about coming to London. Especially considering all the emotional and physical struggles for Venus, who was diagnosed last year with an autoimmune disease that causes fatigue.
"This is all I wanted," said Venus, who had all of about two months to raise her ranking and qualify for the Olympics. "Boy, was that a battle. That was one of the hardest things I've ever done. I really feel proud of what happened here at the Olympics."
It was one more triumph for a player who has won five of her seven Grand Slam titles at Wimbledon.
"Venus has been going through so much and she's so strong and so she's so amazing," Serena said. "And to win this was my goal."
The Williamses are the first tennis players to win Olympic gold indoors since the 1912 Stockholm Games, a match played in a pavilion on wood courts painted black.
Venus Williams joins Conchita Martinez of Spain as the only tennis players to win medals at three Olympics. Martinez's medals all came in doubles – silver in Barcelona in 1992, bronze in Atlanta in 1996 and silver in Athens in 2004.
Gigi Fernandez and current U.S. coach Mary Joe Fernandez are the only others to win back-to-back Olympic tennis gold medals after they teamed for doubles titles in 1992 and 1996.
And the sisters insist they're not done yet.
"We're looking forward to Rio," Serena said, "and trying to get some sort of medal there."
Dibaba, Kipyego, Cheruiyot: Sisters Dominate The Olympics![2]
Gabrielle Douglas Becomes 1st Black Woman To Win Gold In All-Around Event[3]
Gabrielle Douglas Helps Gymnastics Team Win Gold Medal[4]
- ^Serena Strikes Again! Defeats Sharapova For Olympic Gold [VIDEO] (newsone.com)
- ^Dibaba, Kipyego, Cheruiyot: Sisters Dominate The Olympics! (newsone.com)
- ^Permalink to: Gabrielle Douglas Becomes 1st Black Woman To Win Gold In All-Around Event (newsone.com)
- ^Gabrielle Douglas Helps Gymnastics Team Win Gold Medal (newsone.com)
Read more https://newsone.com/2028910/venus-serena-williams-olympic-gold/


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Carpet installation doesn't have to disrupt your life. With a little planning and preparation, you can have your new carpeting installed and your furniture back in place in just a few hours.
You may be tempted to save money by installing the carpet yourself, but this is a job best left to the professionals. Professional carpet installers like those from Floor Coverings International in El Paso, TX use special tools and have years of experience.
During carpet installation, our professionals will prepare the subfloor by filling in any holes or cracks, lay the padding and the carpet and then move your furniture back into place.
Carpet installation is a big job for do-it-yourselfers but not for the professional carpet installers at Floor Coverings International in El Paso, TX. You'll be glad you did once you see the way new carpet can transform the look of a room.


text: Prisoners Drama. Starring Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhaal, Viola Davis and Maria Bello. Directed by Denis Villeneuve. (R. 144 minutes.) \u00a0 It's easy to get lost in the first hour of "Prisoners," and that's a terrifying thing. A superb acting ensemble and smart filmmaking choices help to create an honest portrait of struggling middle-class America, before their relative serenity is disrupted tragically. Two young girls go missing, and there are no tip-offs in the narrative or performances that suggest whether the ending will be happy or unspeakably sad. The last 40 minutes betray this truth, in ways that are often perplexing. It's difficult to remember a recent movie that soared so high, before plummeting with a series of bad story choices. But the end result is still a strong piece of cinema, a failure only if you dwell on what might have been. "Prisoners" begins with a bold touch: A father teaching his son to shoot a deer, but not until he says a Hail Mary. So much subtlety is conveyed in this scene, and the truck ride after, where Keller Dover (Hugh Jackman) passes on the family's code of honor to his son Ralph (Dylan Minnette). This scene is packed with information - Keller is a moral man, an angry man and a little paranoid - and yet it doesn't feel like obvious exposition. Nothing in the beginning of the film feels forced or cliched, as we see the Dover family join the Birch family for Thanksgiving, and then watch their lives unravel as a daughter from each family disappears. Traits that we barely noticed in the first scenes are amplified by the experience. Keller and his wife, Grace (Maria Bello), spiral into alcohol and drug abuse. Franklin and Nancy Birch (Terrence Howard and Viola Davis) are not prone to action, and their indecision becomes its own liability. The driven lead detective who seemingly has no life (Jake Gyllenhaal) must confront a lonely existence where his self-worth hinges on solving every case. The twists and turns are initially gripping, especially after an emotionally vacant suspect played by Paul Dano is thrown into the mix, and draws out Keller Dover's capacity for brutality. Jackman is particularly convincing playing against type, in a bad haircut and layers of clothing that hide his matinee looks. He's the type of guy whom a partner might marry for security, knowing that romantic gestures will be few and far between. Director Denis Villeneuve makes wonderful choices throughout the first two acts. He's aided greatly by perhaps the greatest living American cinematographer, Roger Deakins, once again in top form. But an uneasy feeling creeps up, when some too-obvious clues start to cross the investigator's path. Later, a series of coincidences, lucky and unlucky breaks and flat-out nonsensical decisions by key characters further sabotage the plot. By the end, you'll swear you ran to the bathroom and missed something - or nodded off and sleepwalked into another theater. What started out feeling like a Cormac McCarthy novel ends like one of the more far-fetched James Patterson "Alex Cross" thrillers. Running at nearly 2 1\/2 hours, "Prisoners" feels oddly incomplete. How audiences feel about the film depends on their level of pessimism. Was a great movie ruined by poor story choices? Or did the excellent filmmaking rescue the poorly executed finish? Mitigating circumstances in Villeneuve's favor: Even when audiences start to question the logical leaps, the performances and visuals remain first-rate. The movie doesn't feel bloated. And the final scenes are anything but a cop-out. The resolution may seem like a stretch. But it's terrifying nonetheless. \u00a0 Peter Hartlaub is The San Francisco Chronicle's pop culture critic. E-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com Twitter: @PeterHartlaub


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SURPRISE, Ariz. (AP) Felix Hernandez allowed one run and two hits over two innings in his spring training debut and Stefen Romero homered twice and had seven RBIs and a Seattle Mariners split-squad pounded Kansas City 12-2 on Thursday, ending the Royals' 11-game winning streak.
Hernandez, who signed a seven-year $175 million deal last month, struck out two and threw 33 pitches.
Romero finished 4 for 5. He had a grand slam in the fourth inning and a three-run shot in the ninth.
Casper Wells hit a three-run homer in the eighth. The Mariners have 10 consecutive multi-homer games and top the majors with 29 home runs.
Hisashi Iwakuma allowed one hit in three scoreless innings for the victory.
Royals starter Ervin Santana struck out four in three innings and allowed a run and three hits.


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Use this cable to connect Apex Systems and modules together.
Neptune Systems Aquabus Cables – 30′
Use this cable to connect Apex Systems and modules together.
The Apex is a modular system that allows you to connect many modules together in either a "daisy-chain" or star topology method. Use this cable to connect together the Apex, Modules, and Energy Bars together. Remember, although this is a USB type cable, the Apex does not have a USB interface.NEVER plug it into any computer or other USB device or it will very likely cause severe damage to your Apex or the device you connect.
Additional information
|1 lbs
|Aquabus Cable Length
3 Feet (M/M), 6 Feet (M/M), 15 Feet (M/M), 15 Feet Extension (M/F)


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If you're like me, you've played enough Trauma Center to know that open heart surgery is super duper easy. I mean, I'm practically a doctor over here! Which is why I'm loving the ultra realistic Global Game Jam game Surgeon-Simulator 2013 by Bossa Studios.
The Week In Games: Fishing For Mysteries And Gang Wars
In the video above, I'll walk you through the basics of cardiac surgery. It's so easy, you could perform your own 'QWOPeration' in the comfort of your own home!*.
*(Oh God, please do not try this at home, seriously guys.)


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A great gift for someone very special in your life which will last for a long time.
Red rose bear made of roses is a perfect gift for Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, Anniversaries, Birthdays, Baby Showers, Proposals, Weddings , a Special Success
A large size rose teddy bear : 16 in. (Approx.)
- Artificial Flowers
- Flower Head
- Rose
- Plastic
- Teddy Bear
- Bear of Red Rose


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The B+W 82mm Orange MRC 040M Filter can be used to increase image contrast when photographing using a film camera system with black-and-white film installed.
This filter's effect corresponds to that of a Wratten 16 filter. Wavelengths of visible light that are apparent as green, blue, and violet colors to the human eye are suppressed, while visible light associated with yellow, orange, and red colors are able to more easily pass though the B+W 82mm Orange MRC 040M Filter and into the lens it is mounted in front of. When photographing with this filter along with black-and-white film, green, blue, and violet-colored subjects within a scene are reproduced in dark shades of grey than if a filter was not used. Simultaneously, yellow, orange, and red subjects are rendered in light shades of grey.
When applied to black-and-white photography, the increased contrast provided by the B+W 82mm Orange MRC 040M Filter can result in dark skies with very defined clouds. Shades of green among foliage can be much more differentiated relative to skin tones, while the appearance of freckles and skin blemishes is reduced. Additionally, this filter can also minimize the presence of haze caused by the bluish cast of daylight.
To prevent internal ghosting and reflections, each glass surface includes eight layers of anti-reflection coating. This Multi-Resistant Coating (MRC) also offers greater protection to the filter substrate and helps it to stay clean for longer than with uncoated filters. B+W filters are constructed from Schott glass for increased optical clarity. This filter features an F-Pro brass filter ring for durability as well as jamming prevention.
|Filter Factor/Density
|0.6 (2 Stops) 4x
|Circular Size
|82 mm
|Front Accessory Thread / Bayonet
|82 mm
|Filter Material
|Equivalent to Wratten 16
|Color Type
|Black-and-White Contrast
|Тип фильтра
|Размер фильтра


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If you are a painting wholesaler or distributor, you are lucky in this page! Artisoo provides the best valuable wholesale service (Chinese painting wholesale, oil painting reproduction on canvas wholesale, and custom painting wholesale) for wholesale distributors, hotels, galleries, restaurants and interior designers in large quantity. If you let us know what subjects/ size/ quantity/ price you are interested in, we could start a nice cooperation to create a win-win situation.
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You can choose paintings in different style or different quantity on our web, we support mixed wholesale.
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Job Details
|City of London, London
|Salary: Plus benefits
|Sector: Accounting & Finance
|Type: Permanent
|Start Date: ASAP
|Contact: Sarah Cairns
Join a Top 20 chartered accountancy firm with offices in London that offers competitive salary plus benefits including life assurance, paid overtime or time off in lieu, interest fr ee season ticket loan, pension, annual salary reviews, profit sharing, childcare vouchers as an Audit Manager. Our client is looking for an experienced and confident Audit Manager to work in the Business Advisory Group who will have responsibility for managing a wide range of clients that operate in different sectors. They will run a portfolio of around 15 to 30 clients totalling around £400-£500k.
Duties include but are not limited to:
- Managing the audit process
- Ensures agreed deliverables are within the set time frame
- Budgeting and invoicing clients
- Staff planning and management of them during the course of the audit
- Inclusion of tender process when necessary
- Networking opportunities
- Opportunities to do corporate finance work when required
Specialist Skills and Experience required:
- ACA/ACCA/ICAS qualified with a good exam record
- Degree educated
- Successful candidate will possess a wide range of audit experience
- The candidate will need to have experience in managing a portfolio of small to large clients as well as having the required understanding of FRS102 and IFRS.
- Professional training experience and exposure to a range of sectors and clients
- Excellent communication skills
- Ability to work as part of a team
The Company
Our client is a well established Top 20 chartered accountancy firm, with offices across the UK. They provide their exceptional training and long term career development opportunities. This is an exciting opportunity to join a leading company.
To Apply
If you would like to proceed to the next stage press apply now, if you want to know more e-mail us at email@example.com or call us on 0207 183 6462 we look forward to hearing from you.
Skills: Audit, Audit Manager, ACA, ACCA, ICAS


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"Doctor Who" will return to BBC America Aug. 27 with the final six episodes of the current season, and with the Doctor, Amy and Rory in an adventure called "Let's Kill Hitler."
That news came out of the "Who" panel at San Diego Comic-Con Sunday, where stars Matt Smith and Karen Gillan, as well as producers Piers Wenger and Beth Willis and writer Toby Whithouse, talked about Season 6 past and present.
During the press event before the panel, Smith and Gillan teased the second half of the show's sixth season. Here is a quick rundown of what they had to say. As River Song would say, spoilers!
According to the stars, "Let's Kill Hitler" is a wonderful episode.
"I think it's my favorite title of the season so far," Smith told reporters. "Alex Kingston [River Song] is on fine fiddle through the episode. She is just brilliant in it. There are some great science-fiction moments where you are going 'no way!'"
Gillan called Kingston's performance her best to date, but was equally excited about "this really cool robot/villain." But after telling us that "it goes back in time and fixes people that have done [something] wrong in history," she questioned whether it is indeed a villain.
Amy's relationship with River also will be examined more closely after the "big revelation" in the first half of the season. "We'll see parental instincts coming into play," Gillan said. "It is really weird."
Smith also gave kudos to Gillan for her performance in Episode 10, where something "really, really bad" happens to Amy, "And the Doctor is part of it."
The duo teased a few other things to look forward to seeing, including Cybermen, James Corden returning as Craig Owens (from last year's "The Lodger"), crazy dolls and, of course, a massive twist in the finale.
Below find video of the panel:
Copyright © 2023, RedEye Chicago


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It's always disconcerting when news networks say things like, "With 0% of the ballots reported, it looks like Wisconsin is going to go to Obama."
One of my favorite things to do on election night is surf the different networks the moment they call it, before they've had time to polish. Last night the more liberal networks announced that "AMERICA HAS SPOKEN!!". The more conservative networks (okay, Fox), announced that, "Well… technically… technically… it looks like… technically… Obama has… *cough*… 'won.'"
Nothing beats Karl Rove just denying the whole thing. "Ohio goes to Obama." "No, it doesn't." "Um, yes, Mr. Rove, it does." "No, it doesn't. It doesn't. IT DOESN'T IT DOESN'T IT DOESN'T."
Hold on a second… Washington and Colorado legalized marijuana but Oregon – hippie freaky Oregon – didn't? Has the world gone insane? Sure, Oregon's law was going to be far more permissive and the campaigners were far less organized (which probably isn't that shocking), but still…
The fact that people look at the map turning red and blue, and believe that because the physical landscape has bigger red that blue that voting is unfair is all the more reason that it's terrifying that democracy is the best we can come up with.
It's still on the border, but now it might be the Republicans turn to complain about the Electoral College and why the hell don't we elect by popular vote. Maybe the Democrats can just email them their materials from 2000.
I like how they can't announce the winner until the polls close, so at 7:59pst the networks kind of go silent and say, "And so it looks like California wiiiiiiilllll…. Goooooo… tooooo… " *clock turns to 8:00* "Obama."
It must have been tempting to say, "And Utah has voted for Romney. Duh."
It's always interesting seeing the discrepancy between what news networks can say and what they know. For a couple of hours Romney was leading and yet you could hear "This thing's over: it's Obama" in the voices of the reporters the whole time.
Donald Trump apparently tweeted that it was time for a revolution in America. An actual revolution. Dear Mr. Trump: You might consider what tends to happen to super-rich plutocrats in a revolution…
It'll be nice to stop with all the campaign stuff for a few days until Election 2016 kicks off.


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It was the best of times, it was the worst of times for consumer VoIP services vendor Skype.
The Christmas holiday season is one of the busiest times of the year for Skype with tens of millions of users around the world relying on the service to talk to friends and family. Beginning on December 22nd, Skype first reported that they were investigating user reports about disruptions to Skype services. The disruptions left millions of Skype users without access to VoIP audio or video calling. Full services including group video calling were not restored until December 24th, just in time for Christmas.
"Our engineering team and operations teams have worked very hard to bring back our services, and they are very dedicated, working through their holidays, to monitor and ensure Skype is available to you," Skype CEO, Tony Bates wrote in a blog post. "Some of the outstanding areas our engineers are continuing to work on include bringing back offline IM and adding further robustness to the Skype infrastructure."
So what happened?
According to Skype staffer Peter Parkes, the pre-Xmas disruption to Skype services was the result of a supernode failure. Parkes explained that Skype's infrastructure relies on millions of connections backed up by supernode connections that act as directories for Skype connectivity.
"Under normal circumstances, there are a large number of supernodes available," Parkes blogged. "Unfortunately, today, many of them were taken offline by a problem affecting some versions of Skype. As Skype relies on being able to maintain contact with supernodes, it may appear offline for some of you."
In order to fix the problem, Skype engineers began the process of building new mega-supernodes in order to alleviate the traffic disruption. Skype has not yet provided a complete technical report on how or why their supernode structure failed.
"We now understand the cause of the problem and we believe it was not caused by a malicious attack," Bates blogged. "But, we are still doing a full analysis and we will provide an in-depth post-mortem."
As a gesture of good faith to Skype users, the company plans on sending pay-as-you-go Skype users a voucher for 30 minutes of free SkypeOut minutes. For subscribers to Skype's services, the company plans on crediting users with a week of extra service.
Skype's users aren't the only ones that the VoIP vendor will need to placate. Skype is also being sued over alleged patent infringement related to the technology that might be behind the supernode structure. Gradient Enterprises filed a patent infringement suit against Skype on December 23rd in relation to U.S. patent number 7,669,207. That patent describes a, "method for detecting, reporting and responding to network node-level events and a system thereof."
Overall 2010, was a busy year for Skype as it ramped up its enterprise credibility. In September, Skype announced a partnership with Avaya for integration with unified communications equipment. Skype also got a new CEO during the year, with the recruitement of former Cisco executive Tony Bates in October, to lead the VoIP services vendor.
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of Internet.com, the network for technology professionals.


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To the Death: Inside Catalunya and Ridiculously Hard Sport Climbing
Catalunya, Spain, is to sport climbing what Camp 4 was to climbing in the 1970s—a boiling crucible with all the baddest routes and best climbers in the world.
This article appeared in Rock and Ice issue 196 (September 2011).
Oliana, evening, 58 degrees F, a magic wind blows. Chris Sharma screamed and everyone froze.
"Venga, venga!" the chorus shouted.
"Venga, tio!"
"Venga, vicho!"
"Venga, venga, venga! A muerte!"
Again Chris produced his distinctive animal yell. We kept screaming for him to Go! Go! Go!
Chris clung to the wall by infinitesimal points, moving upward by leaps and bounds and making quick and deft adjustments to his body position. He was a fluid, light-footed machine. No hesitation.
All power and grace.
He rode that ferocious fringe that's only found in sport climbing—the quickening margin where a climber is so barely attached to the wall, so close to falling, but somehow still moving up, fighting to reach that next new point.
In the teeth of a lonesome run-out, 20 feet above his last draw (having skipped one), Chris adjusted on a pinch as poor as a baseball bat sliced down its Y-axis and nailed to a 15-degree overhanging wall. He kicked his left foot onto a high step, turned his knee in by a few degrees, and launched an all-out double dyno.
All the movies and myths that have come out of Catalunya—the eastern province of Spain—seemed to me, in that moment, to fall short of truly
capturing what it means to climb 5.15 and beyond, to see someone up so high and breaking through in this utter phantasmagoria of midnight-blue rock and flushed evening air. All the climbers at the crag seemed stirred and alive. The passion for free climbing fully bled here at last, from this place and the people and the very stone that congregated this intense extolment.
Presiding over grassy idylls that unroll like green carpets from the old-world town of Oliana, this namesake crag has all the right ingredients. Fifty meters tall, consistently steep the whole way and most important, not featured enough to make any full-length route easier than 5.13c. Yet, incredibly, it's featured enough—just barely—for routes to be climbed free.
That's what's so cool. The routes look impossible. But they go.
A ledge, blockier rock on which to scum more kneebars, generally bigger holds (even by a half pad)—any one of these common lithic characteristics
would take away from what's unique about this place and time. As 5.15b enjoys its hot minute as the hardest grade established, Oliana puts everything into perspective. This cliff, with less than 30 climbs total, has more 5.14d-and-harder routes than all of North America combined.
That is why I came here, even though I don't climb nearly that hard. I came to be in a place where warming up on 5.14b—as Chris did prior to trying his project—somehow begins to seem reasonable. I came to Catalunya because it is to sport climbing what Camp 4 was to climbing in the 1970s—a boiling crucible with all the baddest routes and best climbers in the world. I came to have my perspective changed and moved forward, and of course to climb completely badass limestone routes.
Despite perfect conditions, the right beta and the positive energy from our shouted encouragements, Chris still came up short on the double dyno. He dropped 40 feet into the wind and cursed, "Joder!"
Two days before: Delta flight 514, Atlanta to Barcelona, stuffy and humid. The sheer potential that lies ahead in sport climbing is what
makes it such a cool scene to be a part of right now. Top climbers are only scratching the surface of what can be done at the sharp end of a 100-meter rope. While it has taken 20 years for world standards to progress two letter grades, from 5.14d to 5.15b, the climbing scene in Spain is hurtling toward the 5.15c and 5.15d benchmarks.
On March 27, I was at 35,000 feet above the Atlantic Ocean en route to three weeks of slamming $2 Rioja and getting some "resistance" (Euro word for power-endurance). And on that day, the 18-year-old Adam Ondra was making history at Oliana with the first ascent of Chaxi Raxi (5.15b) and by onsighting the very resistant 5.14c Blanquita.
Has progress ever felt so palpable? Routes are getting longer and steeper, and have more, harder boulder problems stacked on top of each other without respite. More creativity, more talent, more resistance!
At the forefront of this movement is Dani Andrada, arguably the most important route developer of the last decade. Andrada put Spain on the map with hundreds of hard lines. His tenacious efforts created the primordial gunk from which emerged all the strong climbers you run into in Spain, a place where nobody blinks an eye until you are climbing 5.14c. Dani Andrada is probably the only person on earth who routinely bolts, cleans and redpoints 5.14 in a single day.
Andrada is credited as inventing the battle cry "a muerte"—literally meaning "to the death"—which is more than just the local vernacular used to cheer on a climber fighting on redpoint. A muerte embodies the spirited and passionate lifestyle of Spanish climbers. It means giving your
all and doing your very best, not just in climbing but every aspect of life. Don't hold back. Go for it a hundred percent, with passion and pride.
The a muerte mantra is distinctly aligned with the rock and the style of climbing it demands. Catalunyan limestone is typified by long, power-endurance routes. With rock that has generally good holds and straightforward sequences, you can almost always make just one more move. It's quite an exciting and fun way of moving over stone: You must maintain a continuous flow, as if climbing to a metronome, in the face of exponentially escalating fatigue, but fatigue that can be mitigated with proper technique, fitness and psych. This style of climbing, on a route that's near your physical limit (whatever that may be), is the essence of a muerte.
The climbing, and the vision of the route developers—particularly Andrada and, more recently, Sharma—are the reasons why Spain has superseded Southern France as the new epicenter. The talent is here. The routes are equipped. It's all coming together like a supernova in the still relatively young galaxy of sport climbing.
Casa de Sharma, around noon, 72 degrees. We arrived late at night after our hosts were asleep, and promptly put a dent in our jetlag with 14 hours of dead sleep in a separate
studio adjacent to Chris Sharma's house. By noon, we were stirred awake when Chris knocked, slid open the glass door and waved a percolator and a box
of espresso.
"Welcome, welcome. Hey, psyched you're here," Chris said in his sleepy California voice. I got out of bed, slapped hands and said hi, and stepped into the harsh and bleary mid-day light, shirtless, barefoot and in pajama pants.
We walked around the patch of yard with a copse of fruit trees that Chris identified as olive, pear, prune and kumquat. Spring was in full bloom. Lusty bees ravaged cherry blossoms. The trees were loud with buzzing and birdsong.
Daila Ojeda, Chris's girlfriend, emerged from their house, smiling and giving us each two kisses on the cheek. Behind her trailed a perfectly black Labrador, Chaxi, and a perfectly white cat, Calissa—a name meaning limestone. Daila is always laughing and seems preternaturally happy. Her English has improved immensely since I last saw her three years ago.
"Your English is getting good, Daila," I said.
"Eh, it's OK," she said. "It's hard 'cause we mostly just speak in Spanish here."
"Yeah, it's strange," Chris said. "Now I have to translate the thoughts in my head into English."
Two years ago Chris invited me to come stay here at his house, and it took that long for all the components—money, partners, time away from work—to come together. Chris has long lived an itinerant life, never spending more than a few weeks at a time with either of his divorced parents. From age 16 onward he traveled to climb. Rooting down in one place for the past three years has been a huge change for a guy who, at the time of our visit,
was slated to turn 30 in a few weeks.
Chris's new home is charming and austere—a single-story, single-bedroom fixer-upper into which he has put a lot of work. We were staying in a comfortable guest studio adjacent to the house. Formerly a tool shed, it now had a bathroom, two futon beds, a refrigerator and a two-burner camping stove. Chris said that he has had guests staying with him nearly constantly for the last year, and it has only worked due to this separation of living spaces, which he asked us to respect.
"Andrew and I always have friends staying with us," said Jen Vennon, my girlfriend and trip partner. "Especially in the summer, when Rifle is good. It's so much fun. But, yeah, having guests wears you down."
"I actually see my friends from home more now than ever before," Chris said. "They all come to visit. It's great, 'cause I don't have to leave anymore. My whole life, I've been crashing on everyone else's couch. It's nice to be able to return the favor."
While it has taken 20 years for world standards to progress two letter grades, from 5.14d to 5.15b, the climbing scene in Spain is hurtling toward the 5.15c and 5.15d benchmarks.
Outside was an empty sludge-filled pool, and adjacent to the yard were the remains of a tennis court: a weed-cracked concrete blot now used for parking, skateboarding, and having fires and barbeques. Recently, Chris built an EntrePrises wall at the head of the tennis court, to which he installed a kaleidoscope of holds—including special holds with amazing texture that one friend made using Mallorcan sand. A few suitable tree branches—good proxies of tufas, ostensibly—were also screwed to the wall.
"Let me show you the view," Chris said. Chris had harvested some intact, real rock tufas from the debris at the base of local crags and Sika'd (glued)
them onto the exterior wall of his chimney—essentially creating a little ladder/boulder problem to summit the roof.
"This tufa came off First Round, First Minute," Chris explained as he climbed the chimney and manteled onto the rickety red shingles.
"Are you ever going to finish that one up?" I asked, following behind him.
"Yeah, but I'm not that psyched on it right now," he said. "I've fallen above the hard part so many times … it almost feels like I've sent it already."
"Yeah, I know that feeling," I said. "It sucks. I usually go with beating my head against the route until I'm completely miserable. And then I don't send. And then the season ends."
Chris smiled an ancient smile.
From the roof, we gazed at the peaceful village where Chris and Daila live. The village, like all Spanish villages, is a collection of white-walled buildings so tightly built that a road can barely run through them. There was a reservoir, as placid as a puddle, in the sink of the mountainous cirque that encased us on three sides with flanks and tiers of orange rock.
"Those caves over there have good climbing," Chris said, pointing to two round chambers, side by side like shotgun barrels, in the shrub-studded rise.
"What about up there?" I asked, pointing to some walls on a rim, probably an hour's hike uphill.
"Nope," he said. "The rock gets bad up there. Generally, the farther from the road, the worse the rock is."
"Funny how that works," I said.
Chris listed off all the areas nearby and how long it takes to drive to them. Thirty minutes to Terradets, 20 to Santa Linya, five to Camarasa. Within
90 minutes, you could be at Margalef, Oliana, Tres Ponts, Siurana, Rodellar and many other smaller and lesser known but equally fun crags. Rock is everywhere and there are thousands of routes to climb, everything from trad to sport, single-pitch to big-wall. Making a decision about where to go seemed to be the hardest choice of any given day.
"We're going to Oliana this afternoon," Chris said.
"Sounds awesome," I said. "We'll be ready."
Within that next hour, during which time we packed bags, ate food, and drank coffee, Chris said, "Hey, I think we should go to Margalef, not Oliana."
"Cool," I said. "Sounds good."
We loaded the car, filled water bottles, stretched, rode the skateboard, threw a stick for Chaxi, and sat with our legs dangling into the empty concrete pool where we volleyed around topics such as climbing ethics and the lingering effects of Franco's Fascist regime on the people, lifestyle and even architecture of Spain. Then Chris offered, "I think I'm more psyched to go to Oliana instead."
Though I'd been dreaming of climbing here for two years, there were no particular routes or areas that I needed to see, no grades I wanted to tick, and no big dragons to slay. All I knew was this was a place to be. Work and the never-ending winter wonderhell of Colorado had kept me away from the rock for almost six months. During that stretch, climbing had become ghostlike. Present but ethereal. As cold and spectral as the winter air itself.
I didn't feel the need to perform or climb well. The only thing I needed was to return to a life in which climbing was the daily purpose. To fall back into that circadian rhythm of day-on, day-off, day-on, day-off, day-on, day-off. I can imagine no better life than one marching forward to that tune.
Oliana, 78 degrees, humid, dusk. The "magic wind" that frequently and famously bestows climbers with good conditions in the evenings here at Oliana was absent, a presence as missed as water in the desert. Yet despite the languor imbued by the heavy air, one kid, who was part of a large Slovenian climbing team of teenagers on spring
break, was giving 'er on Humilides pa Casa (5.14a), a strikingly obvious 50-meter tufa that is fashioned like a 4"x4" spackled with sticky stone. He onsighted about 40 meters up the wall, screamed and fell. It seemed like a fantastic effort to me. Daila shrugged.
"Eh, a lot of people fall there," she said, laughing.
The group of climbers, mostly Spanish and American, lounged tranquilo in the purple gloaming—chatting, smoking rolled cigarettes and occasionally
stepping up to tie in and hangdog. Despite the wide promulgation of this catchy myth, it's not a muerte all the time.
On a highway, 85 km/hr, en route to Oliana.The somnolent countryside of Catalunya yawned before us as we drove up and down rolling roads
that passed through tranquil villages. Spain's innumerable megalithic monuments emerged all around us. As I drove Jen and me toward another page in this storybook world of rock, I longed for a way, and the words needed, to bring this place home—to bottle it all up and take it with me like a present to be shared.
I realize that anytime you discuss high-end climbing, especially sport climbing, in glossy American magazines, eyes roll and knees jerk. We live in the age of the Everyman: when elitism is a dirty word, when we feel it's our birthright as Americans to judge Idols, and when all media channels are made for you—your Tube, your Space. Your perspective affirmed and put on a pedestal.
Climbing magazines have prostrated to this trend as well. Trips you can take. Climbs you can do. Best 5.9s at your local crag.
Climbing isn't a spectator or fan-based sport. Whether we're on 5.5, 5.9 or even 5.14, it's easy to feel like we should be the one starring in the next Dosage film. Consequently it's difficult for many of us to care deeply about anything outside of our own experience. Moreover, most of the best free climbers in the world are weird, shy, awkward or otherwise completely average people—anti-celebrities. In what other sport is the world's best athlete an 18-year-old tantrum-throwing kid who looks like a skinnier, less cool version of Harry Potter?
I get the sense that what's raddest about this sport—the practice, progression, and art form of free climbing, and what I consider to be its highest expression: high-end sport climbing—doesn't matter in America beyond a superficial, amateur experience.
Of course, it isn't important how hard you climb. No one has ever said that grades are the most important thing in climbing, and the only people who think that's the case are insecure about their level and abilities in the first place. To me, it's not about where you currently are on the scale—only
that you are passionate about moving up it, or are at least deferential to that process. The fact that the Spanish, in general, are a step or two ahead
of us isn't important; it's why they are that matters.
Spanish climbers don't hold themselves back by making climbing into a competitive or self-loathing thing. They approach the sport with a distinct lack of structure: rest when tired; climb when not. No one follows any kind of regimented training outside of climbing on real rock as much as their lives and jobs will let them. Most important, people don't have hang-ups about trad vs. sport—no one is out to prove anything. People are psyched on climbing hard and hard climbing, and they try really, really hard when they're on a route.
Spanish climbers don't hold themselves back by making climbing into a competitive or self-loathing thing. They approach the sport with a distinct lack of structure: rest when tired; climb when not. No one follows any kind of regimented training outside of climbing on real rock as much as their lives and jobs will let them.
I turned my head to Jen, nestled into the passenger seat next to me, herself a 5.14 climber with a fulltime job teaching kindergarten. Jen had pulled some strings with her principals to take off the second week after spring break, which allotted her the bare minimum number of days needed to make any climbing trip worthwhile. With two weeks, she'd be able to warm up; then, she'd go home. (Greedily, I planned to stay five days longer.)
During the school year, Jen consistently comes through the door completely spent after a typical 10-hour workday, only to hear TV talking heads blame teachers like her for the country's debt and lackluster enthusiasm for learning. She's never received a raise, having been on a pay freeze for her three-year tenure because no one wants to pay taxes in a recession. Still she spends hundreds if not thousands of her own dollars each year on classroom supplies because, she says, "Of course that's what you'd do."
We all know the American Dream is dead, and its absence has left a hole in the psych of many people 30 and under. The price of a college degree has risen to hundreds of thousands of dollars, putting young people up to their ears in debt, while simultaneously a bachelor's degree has never been less valuable. How can you get ahead anymore? One friend from high school went to college, studied economics, landed on Wall Street, made a good salary, and then was sacrificed by his bosses to save their own hides. Where did I randomly run into him, after all these years? In a climbing gym.
Sport climbing, though completely frivolous, is the only institution in my life that offers me any sense that I can get ahead and make progress. When I'm out at crags with likeminded peers, and we are working on and occasionally succeeding in doing the hardest redpoints of our lives, it feels like we are the ones at last in control and speeding ahead on a beautiful crest.
I imagine my feelings toward sport climbing are parallel to how my grandparents felt toward America—that the whole thing is brimming with potential, in both the collective and individual sense. That with enough hard work, even you, YOU! can climb 5.15. And that's why I care about it, why Spain is my America of the 1950s, and why Jen and I both had to make this trip happen.
Hotel Terradets, 4 p.m., very, very hot. I drank from my glass of "xampoo" (sham-poo), also known simply as cervesa con limon. It's
a delicious and refreshing local cocktail containing equal parts Fanta Limon and the generic-tasting pilsner ubiquitous in Europe.
"Team Slovenia sucks," I wrote, typing the status update into my iPhone using a single finger. I love Facebook because I can voice in a very pithy way every frustration I encounter in life; though a completely ineffective use of energy, these passive-aggressive tweets to no one somehow make me feel better.
In the last few days, we'd split our time between the castle of Oliana and the petrified white wave of Les Bruixes (aka Terradets), a 35-meter-tall utopia of tufa climbs mostly falling in the 5.12d to 5.13b range, all lined up like fence pickets. But no matter where we went, the dozens-deep high school climbing team was there, making a scene, hogging the best routes and enjoying their spring break to the detriment of my good time.
I'd gone down the wall giving onsight burns to one route after another. Usually on a trip to a new place, I try not to get sucked in by trying any route more than two or three times. Redpointing takes too much time, the most precious commodity on a climbing trip. This relegates me to easier grades, but at least I get to tick off climbs and feel like I'm accomplishing something.
When the sun struck Les Bruixes, we fled like thirsty vampires to the Hotel Terradets bar, minutes down the road from the crag. I felt like I'd spent the day in a tomb of salt and dirt. The re-entry into climbing fulltime was rough. In general, I felt uncoordinated and tired. My skin hurt, my back was sore, my knees were scuffed and my waist was chafed from my harness.
Jen and I had rendezvoused with our American compatriots Clay Cahoon and his wife, Rozella (Rosie). Hailing from Salt Lake City, Clay and Rosie had moved to Andalucia, in Southern Spain, nine months ago to spend a year climbing. Rosie is fluent in Spanish, while Clay speaks none at all.
"I'm so glad you guys are here," Clay said. "I feel like I haven't spoken to anyone in almost a year. No one gets my jokes." He sipped his beer, a doble malt, the strongest, darkest brew you can find in Spain. "I miss home. I miss hops. It's like they've never heard of hops in Europe."
Clay loves three things in life: good beer, rock climbing and Rosie. (Not necessarily in that order.) He seemed happy with two out of three.
"Do you think the Sun King is still up there?" I asked, and Clay chuckled. Though all the teenagers on Team Slovenia were extremely talented—the
12- to 13-year-old ones working on 5.12d's, the older ones onsighting 5.13c's and up—one kid in particular seemed to be completely unfazed by
the iridescent heat. Clay had dubbed him the Sun King.
Climbing in the sun is one of those things that become more unbearable with age—just as hangovers get worse, bellies get fatter and life gets more
complicated. Grabbing small, hot holds destroys my skin—the second-most precious commodity on a climbing trip—so as a rule I try to avoid
it. Nothing is more frustrating than failing because a tip is torn or your skin just plain hurts too much. It's ridiculous that a little cut in your
finger can cause complete failure, but it's the nature of the game.
Earlier, as our day was ending with the sun's peek around the sub-alpine Pyrenees, Team Slovenia had appeared to be just getting started.
After falling high on his route and deeming the entire wall currently unclimbable, Clay had lowered. He looked melted and was covered in chalk.
"Let's go get some ice cream!" Jen said.
All the boys and girls of Team Slovenia, who were huddled under the shade of a tree, overheard Jen and perked up. They turned and looked at their coach with deliberately sad eyes.
"No ice cream for you!" the coach said in a harsh accent. Then he said, "You, climb now!" and gestured at the Sun King, who stepped into the white light and tied into the rope like a child slave. The Sun King then onsighted the 5.13b route Clay had just fallen from, while the coach gleamed and drummed his fingers. We split, the dejection of our inferiority alleviated by the fact that we could go drink beer and eat ice cream, and Team Slovenia couldn't.
Tres Ponts, windy, 69 degrees. Tres Ponts promised good temps and an expanse of routes from 5.9 to 5.15, so we went there. The 50-meter wall sat above a river in a shady and breezy corridor. The rock undulated like a sail rippling in the wind, flash frozen and containing sectors of clean blue slab and tufa-ridden grottos.
I stood beneath a 35-meter 5.13a that I sensed I could do first try, and with my eyes followed the line of holds, mostly trying to spy rests, intending to rely on instinct to move through what I hoped to be a short-lived crux. I became unsettled, as I often do before any hard (for me) onsight or flash. It's ironic how genuinely wanting something badly usually sabotages the whole thing. I put on my shoes, strapped on my kneepads, and tied my chalkbag around my waist.
I started climbing and time assumed the dimension of existing only in the moment. The holds through the crux felt bigger than they looked, and soon they were beneath me, and I tried to recover by kneebarring in a divot in the wall. I scoped the next 20 meters of thin underclings.
In onsighting, all actions must be righteous and in accord with what is appropriate for the moment. You rest when you reach a rest. You climb dynamically when the sequence demands it. I tried to maintain that balanced pace of finding the right and appropriate behavior for each moment as this unknown verticality unfolded hold by hold. It felt as if I were climbing out the bulging underbelly of a massive dragon by using its scales, amazingly solid scales of iron rock—I have no idea how these paper-thin flakes remained attached to the face, yet they were solid and juggy and fun. When I clipped the chains, I felt like I'd emerged finally from the coma of winter.
Sharma's house, 2:30 p.m., 80 degrees. We spent our rest days helping Chris do chores. Though Chris has become quite the handyman since becoming a homeowner, his spacey idiosyncrasies emerged when it came time to clean the house.
For example, most people mow their lawns by strictly following their own preferred patterns. Maybe you're the type of person who likes to make concentric circles. Most people go back and forth making straight lines. Show-offs might mow their grass in a fancy diagonal design. Chris, however, is endearingly unmethodical, and his "method" is to push the mower around aimlessly. He spots a tuft of grass and mows toward it. Then he spots another tuft across the yard, and walks over there. Though the job gets done, this desultory approach takes longer. But this is Chris in a nutshell. From this freewheeling chaos emerges order, a path, and he stays true to it. He doesn't fight the entropy of the universe, but goes with it, taking however much time is needed to finish the job—whether mowing the lawn or redpointing a project—even if his method is not the easiest, most refined way.
Las Finestras, Margalef, lunchtime, breezy, shady. It's a car-sickening drive down a tortuous road, passing under, over and around outcrops
of conglomerate limestone, to reach the basin of this impenetrable mountainous belt. The town of Margalef is here, and it's the navel from which a huge and diverse expanse of vertical terrain rises, with many crags lining the finger-shaped corridors and canyons. There are hundreds of routes, and dozens of walls and crags, with a variety of grades side by side. The conglomerate is as varied as stone comes—pockets, jugs, tufas and crimps; steeps and slabs; long and short, and often all combining on single lines. The famous Catalunyan architect Antoni Gaudi was said to have found inspiration for his hallucinogenic motifs here at Margalef.
Chris actually climbs very little on any given day. Typically, he does one warm-up, anywhere from 5.12d to 5.14b, and then tries his project once, maybe twice. If he's working the route, he makes each one of those burns count: lowering down, retying in, and trying to make increasingly bigger links or get "low points" (climbing from the fifth bolt to the top, then from the fourth bolt to the top, etc.). If he's in redpoint mode, and comes close to sending on the first attempt, he'll stop climbing and come back the next day. But if he's planning to rest the next day, he'll hop on another hard project and boulder around on it, trying to keep his power up. He rarely climbs more than three to five pitches a day, and tries to rest every other day.
Chris started with a 5.12d, climbing it twice back to back. He rested and belayed me as I climbed a gothic 5.11 with stone that looked like melted wax. Then I climbed two 5.12d's that were nearly as brilliant as the 5.11. Chris suggested I try the sandbagged pocket climb El Fustigador (5.13c),
an area classic. I hung and fell, but managed to do all the moves.
Iker Pou, who has climbed the 9a+ (5.15a) Demencia Senil (a Chris Sharma FA also at Margalef), was there with his brother, Eneko—a good
climber though considerably worse than his bro, but equally passionate. The two of them together are hilarious, especially when Iker laughs, because it sounds like a cackling goblin.
Sam Elias and Emily Harrington were there, too, and they were psyched to climb with me on El Fustigador as well. Iker tried to explain to us what
the route's name means, but his English is only so-so.
"You know, Clean is Good?" he asked. We looked at him with blank stares. Then Iker made his hands into the shape of pistols, pretending to pull the guns from holsters and firing them into the air. "Clean is Good! Clean is Good!"
"Oh!" Emily said finally. "Do you mean, Clint Eastwood?"
"Yes, yes! Clean is good!" Iker said. "HAHAHAHAHAHA!"
"Wow, that's a crazy laugh," I said, causing Iker to laugh even harder and more crazily. (We never figured out what El Fustigador actually means.)
"All right, Andrew," Chris said. "You wanna give me a catch on the big bitch?"
The big bitch is an unclimbed project called Perfecto Mundo on a 50-degree overhanging wall. No route here is easier than 5.14c.
"I think this one could be 9b+," Chris said, which means 5.15c.
Iker agreed. "Oh, yes. 9b+! 9b+! HAHAHAHAHAHA!"
Chris actually climbs very little on any given day. Typically, he does one warm-up, anywhere from 5.12d to 5.14b, and then tries his project once,
maybe twice. If he's working the route, he makes each one of those burns count: lowering down, retying in, and trying to make increasingly bigger links or get "low points".
Chris tied in, took off his shirt and began climbing. I heard his knee joints crack and pop, indicating he probably wasn't as warmed up as he could've been. Still, he cruised right through the opening section of 5.14c to reach a rest—a place to match hands and shake, but with only one foothold. His left leg dangled blindly beneath him while he shook for two or three minutes amid the 50-degree overhang.
"OK," he said. "I'm going."
"C'mon," I said. "You got it."
He made a series of lock-offs and high steps, grunting and exhaling, and then right before the crux, he fell. He rested on the rope and talked me through the upcoming difficulties, seemingly as much to explain to me what the climbing was like as it was to drill the sequence into his own head. As you get on routes that are near your limit, the moves get so hard and the beta so fastidious that redpointing becomes as much a matter of deep comprehension as physical execution.
"There's this mono," he said. "It's not a pocket, just a flat edge for your middle finger. Barely one pad deep. You don't really load it; you just place
it there for balance. Then you dyno up to this pinch. The pinch is weird, like a Spock grip—so you have to be accurate to get your fingers on it just right. The hard part isn't generating the dyno, it's controlling the swing out. That's when you load the mono. It's like you have to hold yourself from swinging too far away from the wall with that one finger. It's really strenuous."
"What's the next section like after that?" I asked.
"Big lock-offs to crimpers. It's like climbing a system's board, or something. Probably V9 bouldering. Then at the end, you get this mantel onto a sloper."
The climbing looked so hard, even impossible except for the fact that Chris seemed close to doing it.
"It's getting there," Chris said. "But look, finger's split." He raised his pointer finger, and there in the crease of his first pad gaped a sliver of red.
"Shit, that sucks," I said.
"So … in hospitals, they will make incisions into the torso and insert a hand with a bad flesh wound inside the body to help it heal."
"What? Really?" I said.
"Yeah, for real. So, we have this joke here," Chris continued. "It's the next best thing. We call it El Tratamiento. The Treatment. When you have a split tip … you can take your finger and shove it up your own ass."
"So what are you saying?" I asked, laughing.
"I'm saying if I want to climb tomorrow, I might have to resort to giving myself The Treatment."
"Ouch," I said.
The next day we rested.
Margalef, 67 degrees, some humidity, last day. We returned to Margalef as a huge gang that included Joe Kinder, Colette McInerny, Sam Elias and Emily Harrington. Chris and Daila came to the crag as well with their good friends and neighbors Cristian La Miel and his girlfriend, Ana Carreras.
We were all hoping to see Chris send Perfecto Mundo, the next "hardest route in the world," and though he came close, sticking the pinch off the mono/dyno, he fell while adjusting on the hold.
It was my last climbing day in Spain, and I debated how to spend it. Around the corner were some amazing-looking 5.12d to 5.13b routes that Chris and Daila enthusiastically recommended. I guessed I could maybe onsight or flash one or two of them, or at least try. Bringing home another onsight would be nice, I thought.
But I wasn't psyched on that. All I wanted to do was get back on the 5.13c pocket route that I had tried the day before. All I wanted was to execute the hardest moves I could on a route that's near my limit.
I'll give away the ending, and tell you that I did not redpoint El Fustigador. I tried it three times, each time making bigger links, but never having the energy and resistance needed to put it all together. On that third redpoint attempt, my last pitch in Spain, I experienced something of an epiphany. It was a recognition of what I enjoy most about climbing—hard, creative, wild free climbing. What made it memorable was that I was able to enjoy that acceptance in the very moment of placing my feet on dime-sized smears while cranking through two-finger pockets, climbing up and onto that fine line where you are so barely attached to the rock but somehow you are able to keep going. In a fever of confidence, I felt completely unattached to the desire or need to attain successes, ticks and trophies. All I craved was to be on the sharp end of a long, skinny rope and riding the stone, fully a muerte, toward that arterial blood-red horizon in which there's a future holding the promise of greater things to come.
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West Boylston man relishes sports painting career
By Lynne Klaft, Telegram & Gazette
On October 30, 2013, the Boston Red Sox won their first World Series at Fenway Park since 1918 and Mark Waitkus was there to record the historical moment, first with his camera and then in a painting.
He has been with the Red Sox since 2002 as the team's official in-house artist and has witnessed two other World Series championships, but thinks that last year's victory over the St. Louis Cardinals the sweetest.
"I capture moments of Red Sox history, and that day one of the guys tipped me off about where the fireworks would be set off, and then it happened, the guys were running out on the field. History was happening right there in front of me. It's been 95 years since they won it at Fenway," said Waitkus.
The 2014 season for the Red Sox begins Monday in Baltimore, but Opening Day at Fenway Park on April 4 is going to be a very special day for fans and Waitkus. He will be there to record the raising of the 2013 World Championship banner and it will be included in a book he is compiling of moments during that championship year.
Waitkus grew up in Sterling and has been a Red Sox fan as long as he can remember. He played baseball for his high school team, and the family is related to Eddie Waitkus, a first baseman from Boston who played in the National and American leagues.
But art has been Waitkus' first and enduring passion. He started drawing at age 5, took all the art classes he could during high school and traveled to Worcester to study with Alex Gazonas, a well-known local commercial artist and teacher.
"My art connection with sports? I was inspired by Sports Illustrated. I couldn't wait for the next issue to come out. Sports and architecture, old ballparks, historic buildings in New England, that's what I love to paint now," said Waitkus.
He worked for an ad agency in Boston for a few years and decided in 1996 to go out on his own. Worcester's Chuck Steedmen gave Waitkus his first break.
"He asked me to do a painting of Ted Williams in 2002 for the memorial service they held at Fenway Park. The park was opened to fans, former players came out. They put flowers on the red seat that marks his longest home run up in the bleachers," said Waitkus, who did a painting of that famous seat that is still the only red seat in what is now called the lower bleachers.
Since 2002, Waitkus has been to almost all of the American League baseball stadiums, has painted Fenway Park covered in snow, captured the January 2010 Winter Classic game at the park with the Boston Bruins playing against the Philadelphia Flyers on an outdoor rink, and the 2009 Boston Marathon. He did a painting of Mariano Rivera, which the Red Sox gave to the Yankee pitcher before his last game in Boston last year, the Bruins coming into the park in 2011 with the Stanley Cup, the 100th anniversary celebration of Fenway Park, and, in his spare time, he did a painting for the Cooperstown Baseball Hall of Fame for its 75th anniversary, two paintings for the Worcester Bravehearts and a painting of Derek Jeter that will be given to the Yankee shortstop during his last game at Fenway this year.
He gets up at 4 in the morning, every morning, at his West Boylston home to work on his paintings.
Edward Turner, fellow artist and owner of the Art and Frame Emporium of Westboro, has a special corner for Waitkus' paintings.
"He has a lot of fans. When he does signings, they come early and stand in line," said Turner.
Waitkus says he likes the competition of sports and with other professional sports artists.
"If you have the passion, it can take you wherever you want to go. It's a dream to have the access at the park. The people I have met there, it's like a home away from home," he said.


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'The Lithographs of Peter Fendi are well know for their hedonistic, entertaining and humorous takes on idealised sexual encounters, from the mind of a 18th century gentleman. Peter Fendi who was born in and trained as a prodigical court painter in Austria, was a master of watercolours, oil paints and lithrographs; his multicoloured use of which was of a fairly notable merit for the time period.
His renowned series of forty erotic lithographs all appear deliberately explicit and created from his own fantasies and day-dreams, as opposed to the likes of Avril or Schiele, who sought to convey more seriousness in the reception of the figures; positions, expressions and scenarios. Being somewhere between traditional art and cartoons, they served as a quasi-realistic insight into the sexuality present in 18th century.'


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Tea As A Work of Art
Most teas have pretty generic labels, but Triptea is certainly not one of them. That's because they hired artist Andrew Gorkovenko to create their labeling. The medium? Crushed tea leaves.
The end result is not only fantastic, but also incredibly appropriate. Not only are the artworks made with the product the company is selling, but the imagery also depicts stunning scenes from where the teas are grown. For example, the first image, a label for Ceylon tea, depicts Sri Lanka and the second, made for a green tea, shows the Great Wall of China.


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I know I mentioned this only in passing, but the more I think about updating the current Battleground queueing system to work like the Dungeon Finder, the more I like it. Give me a battleground, any battleground, and if we win, I get rewarded. Losing the BG gets me nothing special, but winning the first one of the day counts as my daily BG quest.
Generally speaking, I don't really care which battleground I do. (Yes, that even applies to the Isle of Conquest.) The daily quests help give extra incentive to some of the less popular battlegrounds, but the quest givers are in out-of-the-way locations in cities, whereas you can now queue from anywhere – fishing, at the Argent Tournament, questing, wherever. Back in the days when you had to talk to actual Battlemasters to queue for an instance, those out-of-the-way places were anything but — they were happening PvP spots! The War Room in Stormwind was where a lot of folks hung out, buffing each other as they waited for their chosen field to pop. You would pick up the daily quest as you queued, because it was right there. What else did you have to do?
But now, queueing is completely separate from picking up the quests. I'd wager that even with the Arena point buff, fewer daily battleground quests are getting done now.
The introduction of the Dungeon Finder highlights this disconnect. I don't think I noticed it when the Battleground Queues were revamped because the quests were an incidental bonus, a tip, a hey-thanks-for-playing, not a real reason for playing. This is a separate issue, where the rewards for playing battlegrounds are too low to drive people there. 1400 honor and a few gold? I won't say no, but it pales in comparison to what you get in Wintergrasp. It's not enough for me to take the extra time to hearth to Dalaran and run to the back of the Silver Covenant war room. On my level 19 twinks, it's an even more inconvenient task.
But with the Random Dungeon of the Day, these small barriers are removed for picking up the daily. Queue up and you're ready to go. Keep questing, gathering mats, whatever – when a group is ready, you'll have a shot at getting your reward. The act of signing up for the queue signs you up for the daily. You are automatically rewarded for success.
A side effect of the Random Dungeon Finder has been to expose people to a instances they wouldn't or didn't run before. A Random Battlefield Finder would not only give people a chance to see new things, but address the population imbalances which exist in certain brackets of certain battlegrounds. This varies from Battlegroup to Battlegroup, but my canonical examples are Alterac Valley and Warsong Gulch in the 50s bracket of the Ruin Battlegroup. Alliance had a slightly unfair advantage in AV, which led to the Horde not playing it, which led to a massively unfair advantage for the Alliance, which sent all the good Horde PvPers to WSG, which caused Alliance to stop playing it. Randomizing your participation can help correct this imbalance.
A Battleground Finder won't solve all the problems affecting battlegrounds in 3.3. The rewards are still too low, even selling honor for cash. It's easier to get battleground gear by running dungeons than it is playing battlegrounds. And, as much as PvE raiders, battleground enthusiasts are at the mercy of Arena nerfs that solve balance problems that don't exist in our chosen realm.
But at least a Battleground Finder would put us on equal footing with 5-man dungeons again in terms of convenience, if not rewards. It would be a start.


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Winter knock you off your game? You're not the only one. Thankfully, your favorite M.D., Dr. Lodge, is on the case.
There's no secret formula, so you'll need to try treatments one a time to see what works for you. Use this primer on some common decloggers; as always, read labels for directions and side effect information.
Antihistamines: They fight histamines, chemicals that cause congestion and stuffiness during an allergy attack. Older ones such as Benadryl may make you sleepy, so look for newer formulas marked nondrowsy.
Decongestants: Oral decongestants with pseudoephedrine work to clear you up by shrinking swollen nasal tissues, but they could make you jittery. Nasal sprays are great for occasional reflief, but they lose effectiveness with prolonged use.
Nasal Irrigation: Neti pots and the like can help literally wash out congestion. Saline sprays moisture nasal passages and ease inflammation to relieve stuffiness. Both can be used in tandem with most over-the-counter or Rx meds, too.
Natural Cures:Sprays with capsaicin, the stuff that makes chiles spicy, may clear congestion, but there's not a ton of research to back this up. I say: Natural treatments may work, but use them carefully--too much of anything can hurt you.


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A year has passed since Congress passed and President Obama signed into law the Budget Control Act-the legislation mandating sequestration. Funding cuts that once seemed politically remote now loom large for leaders increasingly anxious about the impact $1.2 trillion in automatic budget reductions will have upon their respective districts and states. An estimated two million jobs at risk is a possibility no lawmaker can ignore.
Sequestration threatens the country's ability to allow those in uniform to do their jobs. To understand what it means in real terms, look at the Air Force. Over the past decade, the service has been hit with numerous cuts and now the 2013 budget risks pushing airmen over the brink. There comes a point when people simply cannot do more with less. Unless Congress passes a sustainable and viable alternative to the Budget Control Act, challenges arising in the Air Force will be mirrored throughout the Army, Navy and Marine Corps — curtailing the number of key policy options upon which our nation's leaders depend.
Pentagon Seeks To Tread Water in Asia; Lacks Resources for Pivot
When Defense Secretary Leon Panetta introduced the Pentagon's new strategic guidance this past January, he said that the country faced a "strategic turning point." Panetta highlighted that the time had come for the nation to rebalance its broader security priorities-especially those in the Asia-Pacific region. A change in strategic focus involves a new set of mission requirements and associated capabilities. The tools optimized for missions in Iraq and Afghanistan tend to be very different than those needed elsewhere. That means a meaningful Asian pivot demands investment, not just rhetoric.
Unfortunately, recent defense budget decisions made by the Obama Administration and Congress illustrate that leaders are not adequately resourcing the military's new global strategy. Between the existing reduction of $487 billion and sequestration's additional half-trillion dollar cut, the Pentagon faces a very profound strategic turning point — one entirely different than that articulated by Secretary Panetta. Instead of prudently posturing for future successes, America's armed forces are headed for a crash.
These pressures are perhaps best illustrated within the Air Force. The service absorbed 90 percent of the cuts levied on the Department of Defense in the 2013 budget — $4.8 billion of $5.2 billion. The effects have been immediate and pronounced: nearly 10,000 airmen are being cut; 227 aircraft are being prematurely retired; and critical capability shortfalls are on the rise.
The Air Force's planned purchase of 54 aircraft in 2013 translates into a 100-year replacement rate. That's like asking current airmen to leave their jets on the tarmac and instead fly into harm's way in one of the Wright Brothers' kite-like biplanes. One has to look back to 1916 to find a year when the Air Force purchased fewer aircraft. While DoD's new strategic guidance emphasized the need to pursue "acceptable risk," these numbers demonstrate a clear divide between the Department's rhetorical goals and budget realities.
Today's Defense Builddown Is Not Like the Past
These budget cuts would not present such dire effects if the Air Force had been able to use the past decade to recapitalize its fleet and overarching infrastructure. At the end of World War Two, the Korean War, Vietnam, and the Cold War, the service was able to weather post-war budget downturns precisely because it had reset the majority of its capabilities during wartime.
Circumstances were different this past decade. The Air Force, already stretched thin by the 1990s procurement holiday, actually saw its percentage of the defense budget decline by one-third during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The service canceled or delayed the vast majority of its modernization portfolio to sustain wartime operational demands.
So 20 years of underfunding has given us an Air Force on the brink. Its aircraft average a quarter of a century in age-with many dating back to the Eisenhower Administration. The wings of Carter-era A-10 ground attack airplanes are riddled with structural cracks. Airmen learning to fly are strapping into T-38s over twice their age. B-52s, all of which pre-date the Cuban missile crisis, are spending up to a year in depot-level maintenance. In light of the F-22 shortage, the Air Force is now extending the lifespan of its 28 year-old F-15s to 18,000 hours — more than three times their original design life.
The Air Force also spent the last decade retiring nearly a quarter of its bombers, fighters, and cargo aircraft in an attempt to free up money for immediate priorities. While helpful on a budget spreadsheet in the near-term, this has stretched the remaining tails even thinner. Shrinking the fleet makes little sense when the mission demand is constant. Aircraft availability rates and maintenance statistics clearly illustrate the rising costs associated with this decision.
Approaching the Point of No Return
Budget pressures have also shaped the type of Air Force that now exists. Key leaders over the past decade adopted a myopic litmus test when assessing the relative value elements the U.S. military offered policymakers. Since al Qaeda did not have an air force, many firmly asserted that there was no need for an aircraft with the survivability and speed of the F-22. With regional basing and air dominance secured, many perceived there was little need to think about a next-generation of ISR platforms beyond Predator and Reaper drones. With B-52s and B-1s safely flying over Afghanistan and Iraq, virtually no thought was given to the operational challenges associated with projecting power in a denied environment.
Pentagon leaders, acting upon these false perceptions, restricted the Air Force from building an air arm capable of operating in domains that differed from Iraq and Afghanistan. Numerous air leaders who challenged these notions were fired or prematurely retired. "Go along to get along" became a defining element of modern Air Force culture. Retiring Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz has indicated as much on his way out the door. In his own words, he made a "conscious choice" for the service to not promote air power and instead focus on being a supporting agent to forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In mortgaging the long-term health of the Air Force for the present, officials took significant risks when they decided against maintaining and building a balanced force reflective of America's global interests. The Air Force now lacks the capability and capacity to project power on a sustainable basis throughout vast swaths of the globe-especially in the Pacific domain. In a region defined by vast distances and a burgeoning anti-access environment, today's Air Force simply falls short. The service has 20 long-range bombers and 185 air superiority fighters that are capable of projecting credible, survivable and sustainable power in this region.
Given combat force generation needs, that equates to about four B-2s and 20 F-22s engaged at a given moment. Newly-acquired platforms like the Predator are of immense value over Kabul, but they simply lack the range and survivability to be of any use in a demanding environment like the Pacific. Airframes like the F-16, KC-135, C-17, and U-2 present immense value to a combatant commander, but they can only be employed once the threat environment is sufficiently degraded. The same holds true for a Navy carrier strike group, a Marine air-ground task force, or an Army Stryker brigade.
Few Ready to Give Up Military Supremacy
The military does not exist for its own benefit. They train, organize, and equip to give national leaders policy choices. For the Air Force, this translates into shaping regions, deterring potential aggressors, and reassuring allies. This could take the form of a C-17 delivering disaster relief supplies or a fighter squadron deploying abroad to help cultivate allied capacity. In wartime, this means giving leaders a global set of options to net results without projecting undue vulnerability-i.e. getting the mission accomplished without reverting to attrition warfare or occupation-based strategies.
These missions include securing and maintaining air dominance; long range strike; intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance; global logistics; and much more. These are all capabilities essential to our nation's leaders, combatant commanders, the joint team, and allied partners.
Today's Air Force leaders are aware of the challenges facing their service and the overwhelming need to reset the fleet. That is why the 2020s are so heavily laden with necessary and overdue acquisition programs – including the F-35, a next-generation bomber, KC-46, a new trainer, CSAR-X, and various initiatives to upgrade the legacy fleet.
Modernization really must start today, but contemporary systems require several years to prep for production. The bills associated with these programs will be significant, especially in light of concurrent execution. However, after decades of underinvestment, the 2020s are a make-or-break moment for the Air Force. And the fates of those outyear budgets are largely being set now.
Failing to recapitalize the fleet would yield a mix of planes that would no longer be survivable in a contested environment or would simply be grounded due to structural fatigue. This would rob the country of several irreplaceable national security options. That is why draconian budget measures like sequestration are so harmful.
Air Force Fratricide a Symptom of Budget Cuts
In this budget environment, it is tempting for leaders to fixate on parochial interests at the expense of the country's broader security concerns. Once again, the Air Force serves as an illustrative example. Faced with nearly $5 billion in cuts in 2013 alone, there were precious few new "efficiencies" to offer. Instead, the Air Force has begun cutting into core capabilities.
Air Force leadership opted to divest over two hundred aircraft — primarily A-10s, F-16s, C-130s, Global Hawks, and C-5s-airframes necessary to sustain global operations, but no longer deemed affordable. This mass retirement represented a major gamble since new replacement tails are far from a certainty. Realizing that there are too few aircraft to sustain existing units, the service components — Active, Reserve, and Air National Guard – – spent the past winter and spring fighting one another to gain control of the remaining airframes. This struggle rapidly spilled into the Congressional domain, with members of Congress eagerly defending their local air assets. Instead of recognizing the contributions all airmen make to the nation, congressional hearings devolved into parochial battles at the expense of debating the service's true requirements.
Such contests distracted from the core issue that regardless of whichever bases survive in the near-term, the Air Force is slowly going out of business over the long-term because it cannot sustain its force structure based on a 100-year replacement rate. While lawmakers may win short-term victories today, a failure to focus upon the bigger picture will ultimately drive their units into extinction. It is simply a matter of basic math.
Most importantly, this steady erosion of deployable tails deprives combatant commanders of the tools they need to facilitate key policy options for the country. While the number of deployable F-16s the country possesses today may seem rather academic, the time will come when world events will leverage stark clarity upon the issue. A commander cannot employ aircraft that no longer exist or were never procured. Leaders need to consider such possibilities before it is too late.
Air Force Cuts Foreshadow Other Services' Next Steps
The problems facing the Air Force are but a harbinger of what will soon confront the other services. The Navy is dealing with a historically small fleet, while the Marine Corps and Army must reset after a decade of combat operations with precious little funding in sight. Addressing these problems demands responsible requirements-driven resourcing, not reckless cuts. It is important to realize that these resources represent an investment in the nation's future survival and success.
The defense strategic guidance was right on target in highlighting that "U.S. economic and security interests are inextricably linked." As Secretary Panetta and others have illustrated, this nation faces very serious challenges around the globe. While previous leaders failed to maintain a balanced force, that does not excuse those in power today from ensuring that our national security establishment is properly resourced.
Mackenzie Eaglen, former congressional staffer and defense analyst at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, is a member of the AOL Defense Board of Contributors. Doug Birkey is head of government affairs for the non-partisan Air Force Association.


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Israeli airstrike in Gaza: Hamas confirms its top commander killed
Ahmed Al-Jaabari, who ran Hamas's armed wing, died along with a passenger after their car was targeted by an Israeli missile strike in Gaza, according to the Islamist group.
| Gaza
Israel killed the military commander of Hamas in an airstrike on the Gaza Strip Wednesday, bringing the two sides to the brink of a possible new war.
The attack came despite signs that Egypt had managed to broker a truce between Israel and Palestinian militants after a five day surge of violence which saw more than 100 missiles fired out of Gaza and repeated Israeli strikes on the enclave.
Islamist Hamas said Ahmed Al-Jaabari, who ran the organization's armed wing, Izz el-Deen al-Qassam, died along with a passenger after their car was targeted by an Israeli missile.
Israel's Shin Bet domestic intelligence service confirmed it had carried out the attack, saying it had killed Jaabari because of his "decade-long terrorist activity".
"The purpose of this operation was to severely impair the command and control chain of the Hamas leadership," the Israeli military said in a statement.
Immediate calls for revenge were broadcast over Hamas radio and smaller groups also warned of retaliation.
"Israel has declared war on Gaza and they will bear the responsibility for the consequences," Islamic Jihad said.
A Reuters witness reported there were multiple Israeli airstrikes against the coastal enclave, but it was not immediately clear what else had been targeted.
Hamas has governed Gaza since 2007 and does not recognise Israel's right to exist. It has been emboldened by the rise to power in neighbouring Egypt of its spiritual mentors in the Muslim Brotherhood whom it views as a "safety net".
Israel last staged a full-scale attack on Gaza during a three week conflict in 2008 and 2009 in which 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed.