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A few weeks ago, social media "personalities" and tech gurus were so busy trying to out-swoon each other over Google Glass that no one seemed to want to ask the most obvious question everyone should have been asking about Google Glass: Why should I care?
No, I mean seriously. Why should I or anyone care about Google Glass?
1. The Emperor's New Clothes: Tech Edition
In order to understand the problem, you have to go back to its source. Let's do that.
The review that earned Google Glass the most attention was one put forth by "tech guru" Robert Scoble, even though it basically boiled down to paragraph after paragraph of mostly vacuous and at times incoherent babble. You can go read the entire thing here. I hope you won't mind that I cut and pasted it here as well (to save you the trouble):
Here's my review after having Google Glass for two weeks:
1. I will never live a day of my life from now on without it (or a competitor). It's that significant.
2. The success of this totally depends on price. Each audience I asked at the end of my presentations "who would buy this?" As the price got down to $200 literally every hand went up. At $500 a few hands went up. This was consistent, whether talking with students, or more mainstream, older audiences.
3. Nearly everyone had an emotional outburst of "wow" or "amazing" or "that's crazy" or "stunning."
4. At NextWeb 50 people surrounded me and wouldn't let me leave until they had a chance at trying them. I haven't seen that kind of product angst at a conference for a while. This happened to me all week long, it is just crazy.
5. Most of the privacy concerns I had before coming to Germany just didn't show up. I was shocked by how few negative reactions I got (only one, where an audience member said he wouldn't talk to me with them on). Funny, someone asked me to try them in a bathroom (I had them aimed up at that time and refused).
6. There is a total generational gap that I found. The older people said they would use them, probably, but were far more skeptical, or, at minimum, less passionate about the fact that these are the future, than the 13-21-year-olds I met.
So, let's cover the price, first of all. I bet that +Larry Page is considering two price points: something around $500, which would be very profitable. Or $200, which is about what the bill of materials costs. When you tear apart the glasses, like someone else did (I posted that to my Flipboard "Glasshole" magazine) you see a bunch of parts that aren't expensive. This has been designed for mass production. In other words, millions of units. The only way Google will get there is to price them under $300.
I wouldn't be shocked if Larry went very aggressive and priced them at $200. Why would Google do this?
Easy: I'm now extremely addicted to Google services. My photos and videos automatically upload to Google+. Adding other services will soon be possible (I just got a Twitter photo app that is being developed by a third party) but turning on automatic uploads to other services will kill my batteries on both my phone and my glasses (which doesn't have much battery life anyway). So, I'm going to be resistant to adding Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Evernote, and Tumblr to my glasses. Especially when Google+ works darn well and is the default.
Also, Google is forbidding advertising in apps. This is a HUGE shift for Google's business model. I believe Larry Page is moving Google from an advertising-based company to a commerce based company.
The first thing I tried that it failed on was "find me a Sushi restaurant." I'm sure that will get fixed soon and, Google could collect a micropayment anytime I complete a transaction like reserving a seat at a restaurant, or getting a book delivered to my house, or, telling something like Bloomingdales "get me these jeans."
There is literally billions of dollars to be made with this new commerce-based system, rather than force us to sit and look at ads, the way Facebook and tons of other services do.
When you wear these glasses for two weeks you get the affordance is totally different and that having these on opens you up to a new commerce world. Why?
1. They are much more social than looking at a cell phone. Why? I don't need to look away from you to use Google, or get directions, or do other things.
2. The voice works and works with nearly every one and in every situation. It's the first product that literally everyone could use it with voice. It's actually quite amazing, even though I know that the magic is that it expects to hear only a small number of things. "OK Glass, Take a Picture" works. "OK Glass, Take a Photo" doesn't. The Glass is forcing your voice commands to be a certain set of commands and no others will be considered. This makes accuracy crazy high, even if you have an accent.
I continue to be amazed with the camera. It totally changes photography and video. Why? I can capture moments. I counted how many seconds it takes to get my smartphone out of my pocket, open it up, find the camera app, wait for it to load, and then take a photo. Six to 12 seconds. With Google Glass? Less than one second. Every time. And I can use it without having hands free, like if I'm carrying groceries in from the car and my kids are doing something cute.
I've been telling people that this reminds me of the Apple II, which I unboxed with my dad back in 1977. It was expensive. It didn't do much. But I knew my life had changed in a big way and would just get better and better. Already this week I've gotten a new RSS app, the New York Times App, and a Twitter app. With many more on the way.
This is the most interesting new product since the iPhone and I don't say that lightly.
Yeah, we could say the camera isn't good in low light. We could say it doesn't have enough utility. It looks dorky. It freaks some people out (it's new, that will go away once they are in the market).
But I don't care. This has changed my life. I will never live a day without it on.
It is that significant.
Before I go on with the actual point of this post, let me share a few observations:
Scoble opens his review with: I will never live a day of my life from now on without it (or a competitor). It's that significant.
What's bizarre though is that Robert Scoble never actually explains why the product is so significant or why he will never live a day of his life from now on without it. I looked for a reason. Any reason. All I could find was this:
There is literally billions of dollars to be made with this new commerce-based system, rather than force us to sit and look at ads, the way Facebook and tons of other services do.
When you wear these glasses for two weeks you get the affordance is totally different and that having these on opens you up to a new commerce world. Why?
1. They are much more social than looking at a cell phone. Why? I don't need to look away from you to use Google, or get directions, or do other things.
2. The voice works and works with nearly every one and in every situation. It's the first product that literally everyone could use it with voice. It's actually quite amazing, even though I know that the magic is that it expects to hear only a small number of things. "OK Glass, Take a Picture" works. "OK Glass, Take a Photo" doesn't. The Glass is forcing your voice commands to be a certain set of commands and no others will be considered. This makes accuracy crazy high, even if you have an accent.
Once you get past the 5th grade sentence structure and grammar (or lack thereof), what Scoble tells us is basically that this amaaaazing product he will never live a day of his life without ever again is awesome because…
a) Billions of dollars can be made from its mobile commerce system. Okay… Except this is identical to mobile commerce on smart phones. The goggles don't actually offer a new model of e-commerce or m-commerce. It's the same exact shit, only with an interface that you wear on your face instead of one you hold in your hand. Also, as a user, why should I care about the billions of dollars retailers and tech companies will make from mobile commerce? It isn't a benefit to me as a consumer. So… we haven't been presented with any concrete consumer value for Google Glass yet.
b) It can't find sushi restaurants for you, but it will someday. Yes. Amazing. Siri can do that now. So can pretty much any car equipped with a GPS system, any smart phone with a browser, and every tablet connected to the interwebs. Moving on…
c) They are much more social than looking at a cell phone? Um… no. Browsing the web and reading emails while you pretend to pay attention to someone while they talk to you isn't "more social". It's the epitome of tech douchebaggery, actually. It's both rude and antisocial, which is the exact opposite of social. Turn the goggles off and actually participate in the conversation. Make eye contact. Give a shit about someone other than yourself for just five minutes. That's what "social" actually means in the real world. So… no. Again, zero concrete reason to not go a day without Google Glass has been presented as of yet.
d) I want you to consider the following passage for a minute. Are you ready? Here we go:
The voice works and works with nearly every one and in every situation. It's the first product that literally everyone could use it with voice. It's actually quite amazing, even though I know that the magic is that it expects to hear only a small number of things. "OK Glass, Take a Picture" works. "OK Glass, Take a Photo" doesn't. The Glass is forcing your voice commands to be a certain set of commands and no others will be considered. This makes accuracy crazy high, even if you have an accent.
Once you have gotten over the suspicion that this entire review was either written by a non-English speaking intern or generated by the same Chinese algorithm that sends SPAM directly into your inbox 139 times per day, what you garner from that paragraph is this: Google glass is voice activated but it isn't super intuitive. If you don't know the right commands, you're kind of screwed.
Well, hot damn! Why didn't you say so? You can sort of talk to it, and sometimes, it does what you tell it to? Sign me up! Unfortunately, just as we were starting to get somewhere, Scoble adds a little more magic to his sales pitch:
Yeah, we could say the camera isn't good in low light. We could say it doesn't have enough utility. It looks dorky. It freaks some people out (it's new, that will go away once they are in the market).
Oh. Shit. Just when I was getting excited about yelling into a pair of goggles with a comprehension problem. So… the camera kind of sucks, it doesn't really do anything yet, it looks dorky and people who aren't trying to be quoted by Wired or Mashable or score a pair to review on their blog are suspicious of it to the point that they will run away if you even start walking in their general direction (especially when you happen to be trolling public bathrooms in search of cool photos to post to your Google Plus stream). Awesome.
So now I have even less reasons to go out and buy Google Glass than when I had zero reasons to go out and buy Google Glass. Fortunately, our favorite Tech Guru du jour attempts to redeem himself in the end with this eloquent and deeply thought out breakdown of why Google Glass is the best thing since the invention of fire:
But I don't care. This has changed my life. I will never live a day without it on.
It is that significant.
Ah. Well, okay then. I can see why so many people swooned over this thing as soon as Robert Scoble professed his undying love for a product he couldn't quite manage to talk about coherently.
Excuse me but what a massive crock of shit. Tech guru my ass. How about we start over, starting with this:
1. Before you can really be any kind of guru, learn how to string two coherent thoughts together in a cohesive sentence. Or don't. Whatever. Evidently, nobody bothers to read any of this shit before sharing it and retweeting it anyway.
2. Stop blowing smoke up our asses for just ten minutes and look at tech products objectively, starting with Glass. If they're great, explain why. If they aren't, explain why. Is that really so hard? This whole social media/guru/pseudo-futurist-douchebags-spewing-bullshit-all-day-long culture of manufactured "influence" needs to come to an abrupt end. It isn't healthy. It isn't healthy for companies like Google, for VCs, for startups, for product managers, for marketing, for journalism, and it sure as shit isn't healthy for innovation either. We are so busy trying to find ways to reward well-funded mediocrity that we completely overlook real successes in innovation. We are celebrating all the wrong things.
2. Product Management is about more than buzz and "influencer" marketing. It's about 360 degree execution
Don't get me wrong. Google Glass might be a great product someday (and I hope it is) but right now, it isn't much of anything. It's barely a prototype. It's a first stage proof of concept. It is not a product. Not yet. The worst thing Google can do is believe its own PR. This product isn't ready. Period.
Incidentally, if I hear one more tech writer or guru compare Google Glass to the iPhone launch, I am going to start getting angry. Here is a little dose of reality: when Apple released the iPhone, it wasn't a barely functional prototype. It was a working product. It did things. People understood what it was. Its value was crystal clear. Google Glass as it exists today isn't even remotely comparable to the state of the iPhone when it launched.
If you want to pinpoint the moment that Google Glass will truly become a product, look towards the day when Google finally figures out what Google Glass is. (If Google's "let's build something and figure out what it is later" pattern of behavior feels like a recurring theme, you aren't wrong. Google+ is still trying to figure out if it's a social network, a collaboration ecosystem, or a dozen other things. Google Wave was… oh, never mind.)
Even Robert Scoble wasn't able to figure out exactly what Glass is or why he liked it so much, and Google certainly isn't helping consumers figure it out yet either. Okay, sure, it's a wearable computer. Awesome. IBM introduced the idea back in 1997, then again a decade ago in this commercial; and I am pretty sure I have seen versions of this in a dozen sci-fi movies. So this isn't exactly earth-shattering innovation yet. Right now, it's more of a voice-activated camera glued to cheap eyeglass frames with limited computer-like interface capabilities. In other words, it basically takes some of the basic things your smart phone can do and repackages them into a shitty looking eyeglass gadget that doesn't really do anything novel but costs twice as much. Not exactly the game changer we keep hearing about from the tech gurus.
Let's recap. Right now, Google Glass does this:
And this:
And this:
And as far as messaging goes, this is the most significant review of the product so far:
"It's the first product that literally everyone could use it with voice. It's actually quite amazing, even though I know that the magic is that it expects to hear only a small number of things."
Awesome. I raise my glass to that, sir. Mark Twain would be proud. Maybe Google might want to look into hiring product development and product management folks from companies like Nike, Oakley, Sony, LG and Rudy Project at this point, because this smells like amateur hour. Sorry. Glass deserves better than this.
3. First to market is not the same thing as first to scale: how Google could lose its grip on the wearable computer market
I really hope that Google's product management team figures out what they want to do soon, because right now, outside of the tech hype bubble, no one is super impressed. The Glass team needs to find its legs fast, and here is why: other companies are already taking the wearable computer concept and actually moving forward with the development of real products. Cool products. Products with utility and a point.
Here are two of them that you guys should pay attention to:
1. Oakley Airwave GPS-enabled goggles: If you're a skier, snowboarder or a downhill mountain biker, the Airwave's heads-up display already allows you to track speed (GPS integration can accurately measure how fast you are moving down a slope), jump analytics (measures and tracks distance, height and airtime of your jumps), vertical travel (measures your vertical feet by run, by day and over the course of the season), and navigation (pinpoints your location on a map and finds the run or points of interest you're looking for).
It is also equipped with trip viewer capability (it lets you review your performance stats like max speed, total vert and max air, in detail, run by run or for the whole day), and has a buddy tracking system (helps you locate and track friends that have the Oakley Airwave goggle or App on their smartphone). Last but not least, the interface lets you control your music, monitor incoming phone calls and text messages while you're on the slopes.
Here's a quick video of what it can already do:
For more info, check out Oakley.com/airwave.
2. Recon Jet: a heads-up display for cyclists, triathletes, runners, and so on. As a triathlete myself, I immediately see value in this technology for me. The idea that I might as some point be able to move my bike computer's data to a heads-up display is genius. One aspect of this is safety: I like the idea of being able to keep my eyes on the road at all times. Every time I have to look down at my bike computer, I run the risk of touching someone's wheel or hitting a pothole. Also, if an aerodynamic tuck, not having to look down to see how fast I am going or what my wattage is can save me precious seconds over the course of a race. Add to that the possibility of adding biofeedback (like heart rate) to the display and even GPS features (like course maps and elevation), and you really have a product that most competitive cyclists will gladly spend upwards of $300 on. There is real functionality there. Ergo: real purpose and value.
Bonus: We still aren't looking at the style and elegance of Oakley or Rudy Project competition eyewear, but the frames don't look like something out of a skymall catalog from 2003 either. They're actually wearable.
For more info, check out jet.reconinstruments.com.
Do you see the difference between Google Glass and these two products? While Glass still struggles to figure out what it wants to be and relies on "tech gurus" to help them find their way (sorry but recording the moments of your life isn't enough unless you're Canon or Nikon), Oakley and Recon Instruments have already identified markets, purpose, and specific features and functionality to answer the needs of those markets. It won't be long now before you start seeing other applications pop up specifically for law enforcement, military personnel, hospital workers, retail sales clerks, hotel and restaurant staff, automobile drivers, customer service reps, educators, students, tourists, and so on.
Do you know what the difference is between a gadget and a product? It isn't features or branding. It's purpose. Purpose matters. It strikes to the very identity of a product. "What is this?" is as important a question as "what is it for?" and "what does it do?" These three questions form the basis for "what will this do for me?" If you can answer neither, you don't have a product. You still only have an idea, and at best, a prototype. If you can sort of answer it but not completely, what you have is a gadget. You're in infomercial territory. That's where Google Glass is right now. ("I can wear Twitter on my face? Awesome!!! Here's my money!" Good luck with that.)
Unfortunately for Google, if you really want to see where this technology is headed, you may have to start looking outside of Google for the next year or two. If Oakley and Recon Instruments are already developing cool heads-up display products with a point, it's probably a safe bet to look to companies like Bolle, Smith Optics, Nike, Rudy Project, Garmin, Polar and Specialized to follow suit. Basically any company that makes pro-quality athletic eyewear, GPS devices, heart rate monitors and head protection will find a reason to get into this tech. They will be the first to put these types of products on the shelves and see commercial success.
The second wave will come from startups and communications/data companies that plug into government and service industries, especially those that rely heavily on CRM technologies. The big question mark will be whether tech companies like Apple, Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, LG and even the Nokias of the world will get into the wearable computer game as well. If they do, assuming they care to invest in what is currently at best a niche product category, what will be Google's answer to their slick design, smooth interfaces, purpose, image, utility, device functionality overlap and cross-compatibility? It's a real question.
Google may be one of the players in this emerging market, but it certainly won't be the leader if it doesn't quickly start focusing on a) creating interfaces for specific verticals to create clear value props, scale and renewable revenues and b) developing designs that don't look like something out of a K-mart version of a Star Trek prop that only a middle-aged tech geek would be caught wearing in public.
There is a market development model for this type of tech that, while complex, isn't rocket science to figure out and put into play, but… well… right now, let's just say that Google doesn't really seem to be moving in that direction. It's a shame too, because with the right team leading the charge, Google really could do something amazing with this. It's kind of sad that it might all slip away for no other reason than a lack of direction, or an absence of product marketing leadership, or both.
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Olivier Blanchard is the author of Social Media R.O.I.: Managing and Measuring Social Media Efforts in Your Organization. (You can sample a free chapter at smroi.net.) If English isn't your first language, #smROI is also available in Spanish, Japanese, German, Korean and Italian now, with more international editions on the way.
CEO-Read – Amazon.com – www.smroi.net – Barnes & Noble – Que


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This article is more than 1 year old
Intel baffles with latest trademarks
Slogan's run...
Intel has added a pair of trademarks to its large roster of protected names: 'Intel Inside VIIV' and 'Intel VIIV'.
Not surprisingly, there's a considerable amount of head-scratching going on in web-based Intel-watching circles as to what the chip giant is thinking. The speculation isn't helped by Intel's refusal to comment, even though the trademark filings are a matter of public record.
The trademarks have also been filed in Germany.
Some say the 'VIIV' is a reference to a dual-core ('II') Pentium 5 ('V'). Others suggest the symbol indicates 64-bit: VI for six, IV for 4. However, LXIV would be a better indicator of 64-bit technology, perhaps, and certainly a more accurate way of showing the number in Roman numerals.
Either way - and neither idea has been confirmed, in any way - the meaning is not immediately obvious to potential punters; and it doesn't follow the company's usual approach to technology naming schemes.
'Vacuous Intel Initiative Verbiage', anyone? ®
Related stories
World chip inventory fell 38% in Q4
Intel gets it right for once
Intel to bring 64-bit to P4, Celerons in Q2
AMD's 2006 roadmap - details emerge

subset: commoncrawl


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Two years ago, I challenged myself to downsize by giving away one thing a day for 100 days. I did some big purges when I was getting rid of my clutter, but I also believe in the power of incremental change. Small steps can make a big difference over time.
If you'd like to tackle your clutter a bit at a time, here's a simple thing you can do this weekend:
- Pick one room or space in your house: kitchen, desk, junk drawer, bathroom, closet.
- Find seven things you don't need. (That's one thing for each day of the week. Not sure where to start? Here are some ideas.)
- What you choose to do with them — toss, recycle, sell, donate — is up to you. Just commit to doing it as quickly as you can.
- If you want to do more in one sitting, or start a donation box and wait until it's fuller before you drop it off, that's fine. Just focus on tackling one space at a time before you move on.
The comments section on this post will be a place to report your progress and ask other readers for advice on what to do with specific things. It's an open thread, so you can join in whenever, and participate for as long (or as little) as you like. Good luck! I'll be cheering you on from the sidelines.
Originally posted on Jan. 7.


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Taxpayers should be allowed to use Form 1040 to amend their returns and should be able to e-file amended returns, according to recommendations made by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) on Wednesday (TIGTA Rep't No. 2014-40-028).
Although individual tax returns in the Form 1040 series may all be filed electronically, the IRS can only accept Form 1040X, Amended U.S. Individual Income Tax Return, on paper. According to TIGTA, more than 4 million amended returns were filed in 2012. Because these amended returns are on paper, they must be processed manually, which, TIGTA claims, leads to "potentially erroneous refunds" being paid.
In the statistical sample of 259 amended returns TIGTA examined, it found 44 returns with refunds totaling $103,270 that TIGTA believed could have been incorrect. From that number, TIGTA concluded that the IRS could pay out a potential $2.1 billion in erroneous refunds claimed on amended returns over the next five years and that the IRS could protect against this revenue loss by using the same systemic processes used to verify claims on originally filed tax returns to verify amended tax return claims. However, the IRS disagreed with these figures, stating that the flagged returns had been processed correctly and the validity of the claims on them could only be determined by an examination.
The IRS did agree with TIGTA's suggestion that it accept e-filed amended returns, explaining that the ability to accept such returns has been a long-term goal. Nonetheless, the IRS pointed out that its ability to convert to e-filing amended returns depended on its receiving enough funding to implement the program, which is beyond the Service's control.
TIGTA also was critical of the format and appearance of Form 1040X and recommended that the IRS revise Form 1040 to allow taxpayers to amend their returns using it instead of Form 1040X. Although the IRS did not agree with the recommendation, it did agree to consider revising Form 1040X so that the form provided more information to the IRS to use to verify refund claims.
Sally P. Schreiber (
) is a JofA senior editor.


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|Matt Kuchar shot 68, 68, 69 and 70 to win The Player's Championship. (Keith Allison)
"WHY ARE THEY BOOING HIM?" my wife asked while we watched the closing holes of The Players Championship. She was speaking about Matt Kuchar. Exactly. Why would anyone boo a player with a face that always seems to radiate pure joy? What's not to like about the omni-pleasant 1997 U.S. Amateur champion?
"That's not booing," I answered. "They're saying 'Kooch, Kooch,' his nickname."
Kooch slipped by a twitchy, fading Kevin Na, the 54-hole leader, and outlasted the charges of Martin Laird, Zach Johnson, Ben Curtis and Rickie Fowler to win The Players Championship by two shots. It's the biggest win of Kuchar's 12-year pro career. His other three wins came at the Honda Classic, Turning Stone Resort Championship and The Barclays.
"I've very happy with what I've become as a golfer," Kooch said. "Like I said, to walk down that Tunnel of Champions and know I'm part of that, it's just an incredible feeling. I'd love to have that feeling every week."
If Kuchar looks tall on television, it's because he is. I noticed it at last year's U.S. Open at Congressional. I'm fairly tall myself—6 feet 4 inches—and I remember how tall Kuchar looked when I walked near him as I crossed a fairway. He is the same height. But, trim and genial, he is not physically imposing. He did, however, demonstrate a certain grind-it-out toughness with Sunday's huge victory.
There have been some long dry spells in a career that began with such great promise. That's history now. Kuchar is still only 33. Maybe things will take off from here.
After a T3 at this year's Masters and the win at TPC Sawgrass, you have to figure Kooch will contend at the majors. He tied for 14th at the 1998 U.S. Open at the Olympic Club—as an amateur. That was a long time ago. The Open returns there next month.


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It is a question of more than ordinary interest to those who regard the Chinese people as a worthy object of study, What are the speculations of the working and uneducated classes concerning such natural phenomena as it is quite impossible for them to ignore? Their theory of eclipses is well known, foreign ears being periodically stunned by the gonging of an excited crowd of natives, who are endeavouring with hideous noises to prevent some imaginary dog of colossal proportions from banqueting, as the case may be, upon the sun or moon. At such laughable exhibitions of native ignorance it will be observed that there is always a fair sprinkling of well-to-do, educated persons, who not only ought to know better themselves, but should be making some effort to enlighten their less fortunate countrymen instead of joining in the din. Such a hold, however, as superstition on the minds of the best informed in a Chinese community, that under the influence of any real or supposed danger, philosophy and Confucius are scattered to the four winds of Heaven, and the proudest disciple of the Master proves himself after all but a man.
Leaving the literati to take care of themselves, and confining our attention to the good-tempered, joyous, hospitable working-classes of China, we find many curious beliefs on subjects familiar among western nations to every national school-boy. The earth, for instance, is popularly believed to be square; and the heavens a kind of shell or covering, studded with stars and revolving round the earth. We remember once when out of sight of land calling the notice of our native valet to the masts of a vessel sinking below the horizon. We pointed out to him that were the earth a perfectly flat surface its disappearance would not be so comparatively sudden, nor would the ship appear to sink. But at the last moment, when we felt that conviction was entering into his soul and that another convert had been made to the great cause of scientific truth, he calmly replied that it was written--"Heaven is round, earth is square," and he didn't very well understand how books could be wrong!
The sun is generally supposed to pass at sunset into the earth, and to come out next morning at the other side. The moon is supposed to rise from and set in the ocean. Earthquakes are held to result from explosions of sulphur in the heart of the earth; rain is said to be poured down by the Dragon God who usually resides on the other side of the clouds, and the rainbow is believed to be formed by the breath of an enormous oyster which lives somewhere in the middle of the sea, far away from land. Comets and eclipses of the sun are looked upon as special warnings to the throne, and it is usual for some distinguished censor to memorialise the Emperor accordingly. The most curious perhaps of all these popular superstitions are those which refer to thunder, lightning, and hail, regarded in China as the visitation of an angry and offended god. In the first place it is supposed that people are struck by thunder and not by lightning--a belief which was probably once prevalent in England, as evidenced by the English word _thunderstruck_. Sir Philip Sydney writes:--"I remained as a man thunder-stricken." Secondly, death by thunder is regarded as a punishment for some secret crime committed against human or divine law, and consequently a man who is not conscious of anything of the kind faces the elements without fear. Away behind the clouds during a storm or typhoon sit the God of Thunder armed with his terrible bolts, and the Goddess of Lightning, holding in her hand a dazzling mirror. With this last she throws a flash of lightning over the guilty man that the God of Thunder may see to strike his victim; the pealing crash which follows is caused by the passage through the air of the invisible shaft--and the wrongs of Heaven are avenged. Similarly, hail is looked upon as an instrument of punishment in the hands of the Hail God, directed only against the crops and possessions of such mortals as have by their wicked actions exposed themselves to the slow but certain visitation of divine vengeance.
Each province, nay, each town, has its own particular set of superstitions on a variety of subjects; the above, however, dealing with the most important of all natural phenomena, will be found common to every village and household in the Chinese Empire. The childlike faith with which such quaint notions are accepted by the people at large is only equalled by the untiring care with which they are fostered by the ruling classes, who are well aware of their value in the government of an excitable people. The Emperor himself prays loud and long for rain, fine weather, or snow, according as either may be needed by the suffering crops, and never leaves off until the elements answer his prayers. But here we are ridiculing a phase of superstition from which nations with greater advantages than China are not yet wholly free.
Chinese Sketches >


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This MLB - Atlanta Braves World's Best Dad starter doormat will be a great addition to the house wanting to show their support for their favorite college. This starter mat is the perfect gift for the Dad who has everything. Made with nylon carpet fibers this doormat is perfect for use on the interior of your homes entry ways. The nylon carpet fibers are an industry standard which brings both exceptional functionality and robust sturdiness all while showing your family, friends, and neighbors your team loyalties and that you have the World's Best Dad.
The Braves World's Best Dad starter doormat also features:
Nylon mats never wear out in the conventional sense, but they will "ugly out" or look ratty if not properly maintained. Please visit our Cleaning & Care Page for how to care for your new Sports Mat.
This Atlanta Braves Braves World's Best Dad inspired Starter doormat comes in a 19" x 30" size.


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Shit like this blows my mind: The Washington Post reports that these fliers were found at a campus of the University of Maryland this week:
Washington Post images
Fliers linked to a white supremacist group were found this week on the campus of the University of Maryland in College Park, authorities said, part of what appears to be a new effort targeting colleges in several states.
The fliers featured the logo of American Vanguard, a group associated with white supremacy. One read "We have a right to exist" and another read "Defending your people is a social duty not an anti-social crime."
"We hear it every day: 'Whiteness' is evil, and must be destroyed," the group said in a statement on its website. "Our religion, our traditions, and our identity are dragged through the mud by the globalist establishment while millions of nonwhites flood our nation every year. If current trends continue, White Americans will be a minority by 2044. It's time to take a stand."
As first reported in the school's Diamondback newspaper, University of Maryland police responded to Marie Mount Hall at about 11:30 p.m. Sunday for a report of vandalism and discovered several fliers posted at the main entrance and the south entrance. Another set of fliers was discovered posted to pillars at Tydings Hall at around 10 a.m. Monday, a spokesman for the University of Maryland Police said, and the fliers at both locations were removed.
A spokesman for U-Md. Police said the fliers would be investigated as vandalism and might be considered a hate incident.
American Vanguard, based in California, has posted fliers on other U.S. campuses, according to the Anti-Defamation League. Its posters were found at Purdue University in Indiana, the University of Central Florida, Florida Gulf Coast University, the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith and Emerson College in Massachusetts in recent weeks, the ADL said.
Oren Segal, director of the ADL's center on extremism, said he has been seeing a proliferation of white supremacist, alt-right messaging at college campuses around the country in recent weeks. "It seems to be an extension of this effort by the alt-right and their supporters to try to reach younger audiences," he said.
Segal also said some white supremacists have perceived Donald Trump's victory in the presidential election as a victory for their cause, leading to hate incidents around the country. "I feel like the alt-right in general thinks this is the time to pounce," he said. …
Wow. It disappoints me that "American Vanguard" is based in my state.
Speaking of my state, according to at least one source, California was the 48th whitest state in 2004 (with only Mississippi, the District and Columbia and Hawaii having a smaller percentage of whites). That source puts California's white-alone population in 2004 at 63 percent of the state's total population.
The U.S. Census Bureau now puts California's white-alone population at only 38 percent, its Latino population at 38.8 percent, its Asian population at 14.7 percent, and its black population at 6.5 percent.
Yes, a little while ago Latinos surpassed whites here in California, so that now more Californians are Latino than of any other race. And Latinos in California and elsewhere throughout the United States will continue to outgrow whites.
Indeed, apparently the projection is that by 2044 or 2045, white Americans no longer will be the majority of Americans.
Do I feel like my "whiteness" is under threat? (I do have blue eyes, light skin and brown hair, and I did genetic testing some years ago that put my genetic ancestry most likely with the dominant genetic populations of Britain and/or Germany.)
No, I don't.
Not only are the racial demographics in the United States changing over time, giving us plenty of time to adjust to the changes, but it doesn't matter what race an American is. An American, to use the definition of a denizen of one of the 50 states, used to be a Native American; then to be an American meant that you probably are or were white; in the future, to be an American might mean that you probably are Latino or mixed.
Nothing is so precious about the white culture, if there is a monolithic white culture (there is not), that it would be an irretrievable loss to humankind should we see fewer and fewer blond-haired-and-blue-eyed human beings born upon the planet. White culture — hopefully only the best parts of it — will be absorbed into the overall culture anyway; it won't be lost altogether.
As far as changing demographics in my home state of California go, no one is forcing me to learn Spanish (although I've been brushing up on my Spanish on my own for a while now), no one is forcing me to change my name to Roberto, no one is even forcing his or her Catholicism down my throat. (I love Mexican food, so if someone wanted to force that down my throat, I'd probably be OK with that.)
I don't at all feel threatened that Latinos now outnumber the members of my own race in my state. For the very most part, Latinos and whites co-exist in California just fine.
I find white culture to be a bit stiff and boring, and so the injection of other cultures into white American culture is a benefit, not a threat. Other cultures show us still-dominant-in-the-U.S. whites (white-alones still are 61.6 percent of all Americans) other ways of seeing, of believing, of thinking, of living.
And we Americans get to pick and choose. I like the Spanish language. I like Mexican food. I like Cuban music. (I'd love to visit Cuba before I die.) I like the leftist politics that we've seen throughout Latin America throughout time. (Yes, I've been a fan of both the late Hugo Chavez and the late Fidel Castro — no, I'm not in agreement with everything that they did, but I like that they stood up to the evil empire in the north instead of selling their people out to the plutocratic plunderers of the north.)
But I remain free to hate any or all of those things if I choose. The only thing about the Latino culture that I'm not crazy about is its rampant Catholicism, but, again, no one is forcing me to become a Catholic. (It would take something like the Spanish Inquisition 2.0 for me to "convert" to that oppressive, patriarchal and misogynist, fairly racist [or at the very least Eurocentric], homophobic, backasswards, toxic institutionalized religion.)
In terms of religion, when I'm not feeling atheist-y, I gravitate toward the Eastern religions, especially Buddhism. I'm not a practicing Buddhist, but I'm fairly familiar with Buddhism, and while I wouldn't swallow, hook, line and sinker all of its teachings any more than I would any other religion's, Buddhism is the major world religion that makes more sense to me than does any of the others, especially Judaism, what passes for Christianity, and Islam.
I admire Asians, perhaps especially the Vietnamese, whose food I love. My best friend in junior high school and high school was half-Vietnamese; born in Vietnam, as a child he had come to the United States with his Vietnamese mother. He had a bit of a mischievous streak about him, but he was very bright and was a good friend.
Black culture is infused into the culture of the United States to the point that many if not most blacks often complain that elements of their culture have been stolen by whites. Hey, black Americans, we bland white Americans need that spice. Without it, you'd be blinded by our whiteness, too. (Melting pot, baby!)
One of my favorite books is an old one, La Raza Cósmica (The Cosmic Race), by the late prominent Mexican José Vasconcelos. Published in 1925, in his treatise Vasconcelos did assert some things that today we'd find racially stereotypical at best, but his overall theme — that the mixing of the races is beneficial, not harmful, to humankind — was forward-thinking for its time and holds true for today.
Wikipedia notes of La Raza Cósmica:
Published in 1925, La Raza Cósmica (The Cosmic Race) is an essay written by late Mexican philosopher, secretary of education, and 1929 presidential candidate, José Vasconcelos to express the ideology of a future "fifth race" in the Americas; an agglomeration of all the races in the world with no respect to color or number to erect a new civilization: Universópolis.
As he explains in his literary work, armies of people would then go forth around the world professing their knowledge. Vasconcelos continues to say that the people of the Iberian regions of the Americas (that is to say, the parts of the continent colonized by Portugal and Spain*) have the territorial, racial, and spiritual factors necessary to initiate the "universal era of humanity."
Claiming that the Darwinist ideologies are "scientific" theories only created to validate, explain, and justify ethnic superiority and to repress others, Vasconcelos attempts to refute these theories and goes on to recognize his words as being an ideological effort to improve the cultural morale of a "depressed race" by offering his optimistic theory of the future development of a cosmic race. …
Any biologist will tell you that a species that never gets any genetic variation introduced into its gene pool (usually because of isolation) is at risk for extinction because its genetic code never gets any updates, so to speak.
This is true not only for the human animal on the biological level — think of the common results of inbreeding — but it is true for the human animal on the cultural level.
Cultural isolation leads to cultural stagnation, and cultural stagnation often leads to cultural extinction.
White supremacists speak endlessly of strength, but ironically, the genetic and cultural isolationism that they espouse (whites must only reproduce with other whites and the white culture must be "defended" and all other cultures rejected) is a fucking recipe for literal and cultural extinction.
That which does not bend will break in the wind. White supremacists do their fellow whites no favor by advocating staunch rigidity when the changes that we have been experiencing on many levels call instead, loudly and clearly, for flexibility and adaptability.
To be clear, just as there are white supremacists, there are Latino supremacists, Asian supremacists, black supremacists, et. al., people who believe that their race is the best, or, at least, the only race that really matters.
Racial supremacism of any kind is an unfortunate, harmful disease, but in the United States of America of course white supremacism has been the most prevalent and most harmful racial supremacism, but even with that historical fact, no one is really saying that whites don't have the right to exist, as the flier pictured above alleges.
The supposed war on whites is as bogus as is the supposed war on Christmas (the "war on Christmas," of course, is just an aspect of the "war on whites"; often, if not even usually, in fact, it's just code for "war on whites").
No one, with the exception of a crazy, relative very few, has called for the extermination of white Americans. Very most often it's white Americans calling for the extermination of other races, or, if not their extermination, then at least their banishment, as is the case with how millions of white, Trump-loving Americans believe that brown-skinned and/or Spanish-speaking individuals all should be banished to the south of the Great White Wall that Der Fuhrer Trump has promised to erect. (After all, these brown-skinned hordes are threatening what it means to be an American — which is to be white!)
So it's always interesting to see white supremacists claim that whites actually are the victims. Fucking losers.
This is not to say that it's OK to shit and piss on a white person primarily or even solely because he or she is white. That's called racism. And you don't correct racial injustice by committing even more racial injustice yourself.
Nor do you get to punish the son for the sins of the father, so to speak. Because a person is white doesn't mean that he or she is the descendant of a white slaveholder any more than it means that a person who is a black is a descendant of black slaves. (Barack Obama, for instance, is not. And there are plenty of whites who immigrated to the U.S. after slavery was abolished. And most Southerners didn't hold slaves during the years of slavery; you had to be pretty rich to hold a lot of slaves.) But even if someone were proven to be the descendant of a slaveholder, do you really get to punish him or her for something that happened when he or she was not even alive?
Slavery was a colossal sin that never should have happened and that can't be undone. It never should be minimized, but it also shouldn't keep blacks and whites hating each other in perpetuity. It is the national wound that won't heal, and even then there are plenty of other wounds, such as the decimation of the Native Americans, who rarely are mentioned in discussions of race; the internment of the Japanese and other mistreatment of Asians throughout U.S. history; and the ongoing prejudice against Latinos, against whom we are told by our pussy-grabbing "president"-"elect" that we must built a huge wall — you know, in order to "make America great again."
In regards to the second white-supremacist flier shown above, I fully agree that "defending [my] people is [my] social duty." It's that I define "my people" very differently than do the white supremacists.
While I don't at all call myself a Christian, as I reject institutionalized Christianity and don't believe in bullshit like virgin births and resurrections, there is a quote of Jesus that I find interesting. Three of the four gospels give some version of it. Here it is in Matthew 12:46-50:
46 While Jesus was still talking to the crowd, his mother and brothers stood outside, wanting to speak to him. 47 Someone told him, "Your mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you."
48 He replied to him, "Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?"49 Pointing to his disciples, he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers. 50 For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother."
I always have interpreted this to mean that Jesus (at least the Jesus of the New Testament as he is written about in the New Testament, whether there actually was a historical Jesus or not) did not believe that mere genetic closeness was real closeness; real closeness comes only with a shared worldview, a shared philosophy, a shared love that is not racially or otherwise exclusive, but is universal, all-encompassing.
I extend the definition of genetic closeness beyond the genetic closeness that one sees in his or her nuclear and extended family to the genetic closeness within one's own race; having said that, again, I maintain that mere genetic closeness does not confer real closeness, and that perhaps is where the white supremacists err the most.
That another person is white doesn't mean that he or she and I automatically have this bond. We don't. I don't care what's in your genetic code; I care what's in your heart and mind.
All human beings have the right to exist. White supremacists and other racial supremacists, however, care only about the welfare of the members of their own race. Tragic.
Defending our people indeed is our social duty, but our definition of "our people" had better include all human beings.
*It's true that Vasconcelos is partial to the Iberian Peninsula, probably especially to Spain, but it's also true that the Spanish conquerors did something that the white, non-Hispanic European conquerors were loathe to do: they routinely interbred with the peoples they conquered.
Thus, today's populations of Mexicans, Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Filipinos, et. al., have Spanish blood in them, as the population of Brazil has Portuguese blood in it.
The willingness to mix racially is laudable, even necessary for the long-term survival of humankind, as I have established, but it's also important not to feel that one's own race is superior or supreme… And one could argue that Vasconcelos in his La Raza Cósmica at times at least verges on that.


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TLC has announced that their new reality series, Tattoo School, will launch on Thursday, May 24th, at 10pm.
The series follows prospective tattoo artists as they're put through a two-week intensive course on the art of tattooing. The're taught by Doctor Bill Pogue, an instructor with 38 years of experience.
It's unclear how many episodes have been commissioned at this point.
Here's the press release from TLC:
–Series premieres on Thursday, May 24 at 10:00 PM (ET/PT)-
(New York, NY) – From disabled veterans to high school dropouts, students from all walks of life will be featured in TLC's newest series TATTOO SCHOOL, premiering Thursday, May 24 at 10:00 PM ET/PT.
Based in Shreveport, LA, the renowned World's Only Tattoo School provides prospective tattoo artists with a once-in-a-lifetime, two-week intensive course on the art of tattooing. Instructed by Dr. Bill Pogue, who has over 38 years of teaching experience, the class includes an array of artists with different goals and expectations. Whether it is a career change, secret talent or desire to turn life around, Pogue's students will develop the necessary knowledge, skills and experience to break into the highly-competitive tattoo industry.
Over the two-week intensive course, students will be tested on three 'real world' challenges that mimic the situations they may find themselves in as a working tattoo artist. Each challenge will test a specific skill or technique that is required to become successful in the business. From sketching to inking human VIP clients, the students will be subjected to all aspects of tattoo artistry. Upon graduation, the student with the best final, original tattoo is gifted with a golden gun, which will last for their entire career.
TATTOO SCHOOL is produced for TLC by World of Wonder.
About TLC
TLC is a global brand that celebrates extraordinary people and relatable life moments through innovative nonfiction programming. A top 10 cable network in key female demos, TLC has built successful franchises around the Cake Boss and Say Yes to the Dress brands. In 2011, TLC had 28 series averaging 1.0 million P2+ viewers or more including Sister Wives, My Strange Addiction, Extreme Couponing, Toddlers & Tiaras, 19 Kids and Counting, What Not To Wear and Long Island Medium.
TLC is available in more than 99 million homes in the US and 228 million households in nearly 170 markets internationally. A destination online, TLC.com offers in-depth fan sites, exclusive video content, and original editorial covering style, home, food, and more. Fans can also interact with TLC via On Demand services, on mobile platforms, including an iPhone App, and through social media such as Facebook or @TLC on Twitter. TLC is part of Discovery Communications (NASDAQ: DISCA,DISCB, DISCK), the world's number one nonfiction media company reaching more than 1.5 billion cumulative subscribers in over 210 countries and territories.
What do you think? Are you looking forward to seeing this series?


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by Sholem Krishtalka
It's not merely that Julian Schnabel is a bad artist; he's the worst artist. In fact, if you were to ask me to create some kind of stereotype of bad artist, I couldn't do better than Julian Schnabel. He's the kind of awful you just can't fake – an inept painter whose every deficiency, every technical lack, every conceptual gap stands in inverse proportion to his own ego and self-satisfaction.
As if his paintings weren't evidence of his towering horridness, consider his unique contribution to the field of premature self-congratulation: an insufferable, ruminating autobiography written at the ripe old age of 35.
All this is on eminent display whenever and wherever a painting of his is exhibited, and it's some small wonder that the 5th floor of the Art Gallery of Ontario hasn't collapsed in on itself under the groaning strain of the pendulous load of Schnabel's output. It's difficult to describe the experience of walking through his new show there, simply because anything I can muster sounds too fun. The closest approximation I can venture is that it feels like being clobbered about the head by a pair of giant testicles. See? Too fun.
Perhaps another strand of metaphor is required. The overwhelming atmosphere of the show is bulimic: Walking through it, you are assaulted on all sides by vastness and enormity – almost all of the paintings clock in at the 20-foot mark; gargantuan things that ram their hyper-inflated claims to genius down your throat like someone force-feeding a duck for foie gras. I staggered towards the elevator desperate to somehow puke it all out of me, to wash myself clean of Schnabel's oily presence.
Let's be clear (because I was being coy up until now): Schnabel can't paint. The two most difficult scales for a painter to tackle are the extremely small and the extremely large. Both highlight the importance of touch and of gesture.
In an extremely small painting, there is literally no room for clumsiness – everything has to be graceful and efficient; a weak passage in that tight an environment is disastrous. In an extremely large painting, the painter has to fill the canvas with their gesture, the entire body becoming an extension of the paintbrush. On a 20-foot scale, everything is amplified, everything is immediately available for scrutiny. And Schnabel's gracelessness, his inability to do anything more than to stab and drag paint around in the most perfunctory way, is on full display. His marks merely and only fill space.
His conceptual capabilities are exactly on par with his technical abilities. This is a man who famously said of his plate paintings that the surfaces are meant to recall the destruction and trauma of Kristallnacht– which is why, I presume, they make an excellent support for portraits of pop stars and Beverly Hills socialites (one of his plate paintings is at the AGO: it's garishly busy to the point of cluttered illegibility; it looks like sharp, shiny vomit).
The same staggering thematic blindness shouts at you from almost every wall in the AGO. Of a canvas stretched in the shape of a sail with nothing but the name "Jane Birkin" painted across its bottom, the didactic panel would have us believe that Jane Birkin not only evokes but summarizes Egypt. I'm sure Egyptians think so, too.
His homages to Bertolucci involve blown-up photo-transfers of surfers with a great splooge of white paint leaking down one side. I'd say this bit of oleaginous ejaculate is a recurring motif with Schnabel, but motif is too coherent a word, as this puddle appears almost everywhere, and is made to mean anything. The same 10-foot dribble appears on a painting made in immediate and heartfelt homage to his friend Jean-Michel Basquiat upon learning of his death. How much can this puddle of paint be made to signify? In the space of two rooms, it is reiterated to the point of irrelevance, celebrating the glory of Italian manhood and mourning the drug-overdose of his closest friend.
It doesn't signify anything, of course, just as the plates don't really mean anything. They're bullshit nothings, lurching stabs at shorthand expressiveness from a man whose visual vocabulary is infantile at best.
Of his ego, this too is on eminent and laughable display. Painting after painting is choked with poorly disguised references to painters whom he imagines to be his peers: Goya, Bacon. Only Schnabel doesn't actually have the wit to quote either appropriately or properly, and so it all comes off as cack-handed mimicry.
The show was mounted in cross-marketing with the premiere of Schnabel's latest film at TIFF. And here's the curious thing: Schnabel makes good movies. This has been owned up to by people whose critical natures and opinions I respect (one of my most impossibly demanding friends said that his movies "redeemed [Schnabel]"). I own up to it myself: I've enjoyed every movie of his I've seen. How is this? How can he be such a horrible artist, but a good filmmaker?
I refer you to Gore Vidal's 1976 essay, "Who Makes the Movies?" in which Vidal, drawing upon his years of experience as a "hack writer" for the Hollywood Studio system, tries to debunk the application of auteur theory to Golden Age Hollywood movies. In those times, he argues, the producer was king and the director was referred to by all and sundry as "the brother-in-law" – at best, an appendix to the phalanx of talent and business that were responsible for the picture.
The core of his point applies to Schnabel's film career. Movie-making is not a solitary business. So here's the question: How much can we really say that Schnabel himself is responsible for the excellence of his films? On each film, he had a cinematographer to actually do the hard craft of constructing his images; writers to draft a cogent script (though, granted, Schnabel is given a tertiary writing credit on his first two films); actors to interpret the script; editors to translate the raw footage into a cohesive film.
Even though his films are independent, Schnabel still operates at a level whereby he has a vast staff of very talented people at his disposal to construct his movies (he had enough lucre to hire Janusz Kaminski, Spielberg's DP, to film 2007's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly).
My loathing of his paintings (and my bafflement at his rise to art-stardom, even in the hysterical art world of the '80s) makes it tempting to dismiss Schnabel the director as a mere brother-in-law, blustering and ineffectual, who, at the crucial moment, shoves everyone aside to don the mantle of singular genius, and bathe in the critical hosannas.
Still, let's give Schnabel the benefit of the doubt, and assume that, as a director, he is perpetually present, guiding everyone at all stages, keeping a dictatorial eye over the exercise of his vision; his movies are his own. Still and all, there is a very basic fact that underscores all of this: a movie is photographed; a painting is built.
A movie involves arranging various elements (actors, locations, etc.), letting them do their thing, and recording it. Not an easy task, by any stretch of the imagination. But a painting involves not only creating those elements out of nothing, but also creating the world in which they interact, and then translating all of that from thought to gesture to image.
Schnabel cannot build paintings, but he can make movies. It's the assaultive, egomaniacal failure of the former that compels these doubts about the latter. Still, these doubts are nothing more than conjecture (and mostly unproductive conjecture at that). So I'll leave the question of who makes Schnabel's movies open. But I know with certainty exactly who makes Schabel's paintings.


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It was meant as an insult. A pastrami pocketing New Yorker once told me that I like "salad between bread" not "sandwiches." I dissagree. I mean hello, I love bánh mì, grilled cheese, the 'Shroom Burger from Shake Shack and so on. Still, I do love a "salad between bread!"
Getting a wad of vegetables balanced between bread—in terms of flavor and stackability—is a challenge many restaurant refuse to acknowledge. The key is thin slices carefully arranged, plus the use to vegetable cradling alfalfa sprouts, to prevent a vegetable sandwich from collapsing into the proverbial salad. One of the best examples I've found is at Los Feliz's Mustard Seed Café. The Veggie Sandwich ($9.95) is served on toasted olive bread with tomato pesto, lettuce, tomatoes, sprouts, swiss cheese, red onions, and avocado. It's carefully constructed, guaranteeing every veggie in every bite. The tomato pesto—instead of humdrum mayo—adds a tangy undercurrent to the briny bread, plus makes it easy to turn this sandwich vegan (just order sans cheese)!
The lightly dressed Red Cabbage Slaw is my side of choice. Crisp cabbage tossed with a barely-there oil and vinegar blend finish off a perfect lunch. Light on the belly, easy on the wallet… very, very, sort of similar, but not at all, exactly like a salad!
Mustard Seed Café
1948 Hillhurst Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90027
(323) 660-0670


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Six People
Dr. James Emery White
- 2013 May 09
Barbara Streisand was recently asked "the question." You know it. It's been around for ages:
"If you could invite anyone, past or present, what six people would you invite for dinner?"
This was her list: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Albert Einstein, Edward Hopper (American realist painter), Gustav Klimt (Australian symbolist painter) and Fanny Brice (early 20 century singer/actress who Streisand portrayed in "Funny Girl").
Who would you pick?
Let's take the easy one, the incarnate Jesus, off the list. We would all want Him for dinner, to be sure. But then again, knowing how some of His dinner conversations went, maybe not. But we'll bracket Him off like we might the Bible for a list of best books. He's on a dinner list all His own.
Who else would we pick?
Let's make it a little bit easier by breaking it down into two dinner parties – one for those who lived in the past, and one for those now alive.
I'll go first.
Just so you know, these are not necessarily the ones I admire the most (though many of them I do), but the ones I would most like to talk with and see interact with others in conversation. If I understand the exercise, that's the point of the dinner list.
Also, I think I'll omit those that I have had the privilege of already spending time with personally. For me, that takes some off that I would have surely considered, such as the novelist P.D. James, the British evangelical leader John Stott, or the great evangelist Billy Graham.
So, for me…
From the past: Though my short list included Emily Bronte, G.K. Chesterton, the biblical Esther, Corrie ten Boom, Walt Disney, Mother Teresa, Harry Houdini, Steve Jobs, Thomas Jefferson and Ronald Reagan, my final selection for six historical dinner guests would be: C.S. Lewis, Winston Churchill, Leonardo da Vinci, Abraham Lincoln, the Apostle Paul and Adolf Hitler (a horrible person of evil, I know, but would be fascinating to question).
From the present: Again, my short list was filled with names such as Bono, Sean Connery, Tom Hanks, Michael Jordan, Jim Collins, Malcolm Gladwell, Hillary Clinton and Oprah, my final selection for six contemporary dinner guests would be: Stephen Colbert, Bruce Springsteen, Meryl Streep, Steven Spielberg, Paul McCartney and Tony Blair.
How about you?
So head over to the ChurchandCulture.org blog and "list" away, present and/or historical.
This ought to be fun.
(*We'll try to compile the uber-list from the comments, meaning the top six historical, and top six current guests that most would want to have over, and send out via the C&C blog subscription list.)
James Emery White
"The 6 People Streisand Wants At Her Dinner Party," April 21, 2013, The New York Times, read online.
Editor's Note
James Emery White is the founding and senior pastor of Mecklenburg Community Church in Charlotte, NC, and the ranked adjunctive professor of theology and culture at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, which he also served as their fourth president. His newly released book is The Church in an Age of Crisis: 25 New Realities Facing Christianity (Baker Press). To enjoy a free subscription to the Church and Culture blog, log-on to www.churchandculture.org, where you can post your comments on this blog, view past blogs in our archive and read the latest church and culture news from around the world. Follow Dr. White on twitter @JamesEmeryWhite.


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Boston bombing suspect was shot in face
The surviving Boston Marathon bombing suspect suffered multiple gunshot wounds including one to the face, a skull fracture, and various other injuries when he was captured hiding in a boat in a Watertown backyard, according to a doctor who treated him.
The injuries were described by Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center's Dr. Stephen Ray Odom in an April legal proceeding at the hospital three days after the arrest of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (joh-HAHR' tsahr-NEYE'-ehv).
Transcripts of the testimony were unsealed Monday.
The Boston Globe (http://b.globe.com/18Hd3tk ) reports that Odom described the most severe injury as a gunshot to the face that "appears to have entered through the left side inside of his mouth and exited the left face, lower face."
Tsarnaev has pleaded not guilty to the April 15 bombing.
Information from: The Boston Globe, http://www.bostonglobe.com


text: Rae is a self-represnting american artist. She was born in Kishinev (Moldova) during the Soviet era. Got her (MA) degree at the Kishinev Institute of Art. Worked as a freelance book illustrator. Rae moved to the United States in 1976 and settled in New York, where she spent close to thirty years. During this period, she had a successful corporate career, took place in several art exhibits and freelanced as illustrator for bi-weekly publication. In 2006, Rae rellocated to Pennsylvania and now resides with her family in Bucks Co., focusing on her art full-time. Today Rae's artwork resides in private collections nationwide and abroad, and images she's created are being used by numerous online magazines, blogs, websites, and various religious and cultural organizations worldwide. Rae is a member of the Society of Children Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI), a contributing artist to the Literacy.org. Several of her art images have won awards in juried online competions. Rae is a multi-fauceted artist. Her work encompasses different genres, media, styles and covers a wide range of subjects -- from deeply philosophical to humorous, from symbolic to simple decorative. Some of her artwork was created with children in mind, while other is more adult-oriented. Rae is equally comfortable with monochrome and color and fluent in sketching, illustration, painting and crafts. Her own imagination as a primary source and while one might find some eclectic influences in her art, it is truly unique.Here's what Rae says about her work: "Art has always been my passion, but only recently, I've decided to return to it professionally. I see beauty and magic in everything and from time to time have a need to wander into an uncharted territory and try something new. All my creations come from my imagination. I enjoy working with various subjects, media and styles: old and modern, eastern and western, deep and mundane, realistic and abstract, as they all blend naturally into expression of richness of life and human condition. I mostly work in acrylics, markers, pencils, watercolor and mixed media. Lately, I've been gravitating toward more decorative style with bright colors and bold images, as it radiates positive energy and brings me joy. As part of this process, I've developed my technique -- I call it "Stained Glass on Canvas" -- which combines acrylic brush-and-sponge painting on stretched canvas, with multiple layers of glazes and relief outlines, creating luminous, light-infused imagery and fusing the craft of vitrage with fine art of traditional painting..."More of Rae's artwork can be viewed and purchased on:http://rae-chichilnitsky.artistwebsites.com


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Armory Show
Armory Show, international exhibition of modern art held in 1913 at the 69th-regiment armory in New York City. It was a sensational introduction of modern art into the United States. The estimated 1,600 works included paintings representing avant-garde movements in Europe. Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase was singled out by the hostile critics as emblematic of the so-called insanity and degeneracy of the new art. One of the most important exhibitions of art ever held in the United States, the Armory Show aroused the curiosity of the public and helped to change the direction of American painting.
See M. Brown, The Story of the Armory Show (1963, repr. 1988); M. Satin Kushner and K. Orcutt, ed., The Armory Show at 100 (2013).
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2023, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
See more Encyclopedia articles on: American and Canadian Art


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Tangled in an endless web of distractions
Colleges worry about always-plugged-in students
CAMBRIDGE — It was supposed to be a quick diversion, Katie Inman told herself last week as she flipped open her laptop. She had two tests to study for, three problem sets due, a paper to revise. But within minutes, the MIT sophomore was drawn into the depths of the Internet, her work shunted aside.
"I had just closed Facebook, but then I reopened it. It's horrible,'' said Inman, a mechanical engineering major. "I would type a sentence for my paper, and then get back on Facebook.''
Desperate for productivity, Inman did something many of her classmates at one of the most wired campuses would find unfathomable: She installed a program that blocks certain websites for up to 24 hours. No social networking. No e-mail. No aimless surfing.
While Inman took matters into her own hands, some MIT professors are urging college leaders across the country to free students from their tether to technology. Over the past decade, schools raced to connect students to the Internet — in dorms, classrooms, even under the old oak tree. But now, what once would have been considered heresy is an active point of discussion: pulling the virtual plug to encourage students to pay more attention in class and become more adept at real-life social networking.
"I have been a bit skeptical about the value of making an entire campus wireless,'' said Lawrence Bacow, president of Tufts University and former chancellor of MIT, where he was a professor when it began wiring all classrooms in the mid-1990s. "It seems like everyone is always plugged in and always distracted.''
At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — home to the father of the World Wide Web and where the Internet is accessible even near the banks of the Charles River — students' eyes obsessively wander, midconversation, down to laptops and cellphones, checking for missed updates from friends.
In class, professors complain about students trading stocks online, shopping for Hermès scarves, showing one another video clips on YouTube — leading some faculty to call for the unwiring of all lecture halls.
"Students are totally shameless about how they use their computers in class,'' said David Jones, an MIT professor. "I fantasize about having a Wi-Fi jammer in my lecture halls to block access to distractions.''
While MIT has yet to unwire a single lecture hall, some law schools, including the University of Chicago's, have in recent years blocked wireless access in classrooms to keep students engaged in Socratic discussions instead of their classmates' Groupon and
Harvard Law School classrooms remain wired, but Jonathan Zittrain, a professor and Internet law specialist who cofounded the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, has banned laptops and all mobile devices from his first year torts class since 2004.
"If you sit in the back of the room and see what's going on, it's so demoralizing,'' Zittrain said. "It's not just poker or Minesweeper, they're shopping for shoes as we're talking about some fascinating Supreme Court case.''
But Zittrain said he would oppose a blanket university policy that blocks Web access from classrooms.
"If you break off the Internet, so what? They've got 3G on their phones and iPads,'' he said. "Instead, come up with a rule and express it. And the students violate that rule at their peril.''
Other colleges have maintained digital-free oases, despite competitive pressures forcing many schools to keep up in the technological arms race. At Tufts, spaces like the chapel remain Internet-free. And the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester organizes weeklong silent retreats to give students an opportunity to take a break from their iPhones and BlackBerrys. At Amherst College earlier this month, students were encouraged to disconnect from their technological devices for at least 15 minutes and meditate, sip afternoon tea, or take a hike.
This freedom from constant connection is what Sherry Turkle, a professor in MIT's program in science, technology, and society, is promoting — along with her new book, "Alone Together'' — as she travels the country encouraging colleges to pull back on Internet access.
"We're very seduced by the little red light on our BlackBerrys, by the ping that tells us we've got mail,'' Turkle said. "We're vulnerable to that feeling of being wanted and being connected, but we need some time to be alone. Universities can strategically do some 'unwiring' as people look to create a space for themselves.''
Two weeks ago, Jones was so fed up by his students' lack of engagement in class discussions that he banned laptops from a graduate seminar on the history and anthropology of medicine and biology. At any given time, he said, three of his eight students buried their heads in their laptops instead of listening to their peers.
Since the ban, students are making eye contact and listening to each other more, Jones said.
Caterina Scaramelli, a doctoral student in Jones's class, said she was guilty of multitasking during class because she has too much work to complete and not enough time. But she supports the idea of unwiring classrooms because "it's more important to have people really participating in class.''
"If we don't have our laptops to retreat to, we feel more encouraged to talk to each other,'' she said. "It's frustrating when you put a lot of work into a class presentation, and you know your classmates are looking at their e-mails.''
Jones said he is contemplating expanding the no-laptops policy to his lecture courses, a move opposed by many students. Students accuse the 40-year-old professor of being an "old fogey'' when Jones tells them that they cannot possibly surf the Web and simultaneously listen to his lecture.
"I always wonder, 'Why are they in class?', because it's clear they are not paying attention,'' Jones said. "These are smart students, but they're doing terribly in class because they think they can multitask but they can't.''
Indeed, a 2009 Stanford University study showed that students who were chronic media multitaskers were more easily distracted. Not only did it impede students' concentration and learning, the effects linger, said Clifford Nass, a communication professor who embarked on the study after noticing freshmen would write papers in their dorm while simultaneously chatting with multiple friends on Facebook while also talking to someone in their room and surfing the Web.
"I thought, 'Wow, that's pretty awesome. What do they know that I don't know, and how can I be like that?' '' Nass said. "It seemed amazingly efficient.''
But, it turned out, multitaskers are not good at switching tasks or ignoring irrelevant information. They also don't write as well and use simpler sentences, said Nass, author of "The Man Who Lied to His Laptop'' and who has examined the writing samples of Stanford freshmen. Such behaviors have very real consequences for the wiring of the young brain.
"The scarier part is that even when they stop multitasking, their brains still don't work properly,'' Nass said. "Basically, they just don't pay attention well. Limiting multitasking in the classroom is not sufficient. People have to limit it when they're alone, too.''
Even more worrisome than the negative effect on academics is the social consequence, said Nass, whose current research focuses on the emotional implications. Preliminary evidence shows that college students who multitask are less emotionally attuned to others, he said.
"There is not much emotional content on Facebook,'' Nass said. "You essentially have a generation that is becoming socially autistic because they lack the practicing skills to navigate social and emotional life.''
In the bustling student center at MIT, clusters of students sit on couches, peering at their computer screens instead of talking to each other. William Chin browsed photos of friends on Facebook from his computer while checking his phone for e-mails.
"I really should be working,'' said Chin, an urban studies and planning major who would welcome a space on campus without Internet access. Some friends, Chin said, have temporarily deactivated their Facebook accounts during finals weeks. Others have begged friends to change Facebook passwords for them, so they won't have access to their own accounts.
As for Inman, she has developed a new routine to keep from succumbing to the lure of the Internet. Around 9:30 each evening as she settles down to study, she sets the self-control application on her laptop for two hours. She is blocked from Facebook, Twitter, and other websites she does not want to be tempted by.
And there is nothing she can do to disable it once it is set.
"It drove me crazy the other day in class. I turned on the self-control app so I could focus, but I was getting really bored,'' Inman said. "So I fell asleep.''
Tracy Jan can be reached at email@example.com.


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For Systems Integrators & DevelopersAdd Office document version management to your server or application
The Version Manager API is a available for COM, Java and .NET applications. It allows you to add version management to your applications that handle Microsoft Office documents. The simple API allows you to add, delete, export and rollback versions for Excel, Powerpoint and Word documents. Add a version to a document when a user checks it out from your library and remove it when the document is returned.
See the Version Manager API documentation
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On October 2, 2012, the Ghanaian government detained an Argentinian "warship", the ARA Libertad, that had been docked at the Ghanaian port of Tema while on a cadet training mission.
As a matter of domestic law, the detention of the ARA Libertad was a routine court action, nothing more than an ex-parte injunction order, duly issued by a Ghanaian civil court, for the purpose of preserving an asset that might be used to pay off a potential judgment against the asset's owner. The plaintiff in that action, a Cayman Islands investment fund, was attempting to collect on a one billion dollar judgment against the Republic of Argentina — and had decided that one way of doing so would be to seize Argentinian ships had sailed into foreign jurisdictions.
As a matter of international law, however, the detention of the ARA Libertad was not quite so routine. NML Capital, the Cayman Islands investment fund responsible for the proceedings, might have thought it was being clever in targeting Argentina's ships to collect against the judgment, but using a foreign sovereign's judicial power to seize another nation's "warship" — even if that warship is just an unarmed training boat — is not something that is going to go down well, diplomatically speaking.
And after diplomatic measures failed to resolve the dispute, Argentina responded by notifying Ghana, on October 29, 2012, that it was submitting the dispute to arbitration pursuant to Annex VII of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. Although both states are parties to UNCLOS, Ghana has not, in accordance with Article 287 of UNCLOS, declared a preferred venue for the settlement of disputes, which means that the forum for dispute resolution between Ghana and Argentina defaulted to UNCLOS' arbitration procedures, at Annex VII.
As it turns out, this situation worked out very well for Argentina. As a result of its procedural handling of its claims concerning the ARA Libertad, in a mere six weeks of international litigation, Argentina was able to (1) secure the release of its vessel and (2) created a procedural posture which would likely result in the effective termination of any further related judicial proceedings, no matter the venue.
This result is due, in part, to the fact that the submission of a dispute to an Annex VII arbitral tribunal doesn't actually do anything, other than serve as notice. The institution of proceedings under Annex VII is accomplished by a simple written notification to the opposing party, and once that is accomplished, nothing further happens until the parties decide upon a list of five arbitrators to sit on the panel. When Argentina notified Ghana that it was submitting the dispute to arbitration, Ghana was "supposed" to respond by appointing its own freebie arbitrator within 30 days of receiving the notification. But if Argentina does not thereafter force the matter by submitting a request for the President of ITLOS to make the remaining appointments, then the "arbitral tribunal" would simply never get off the ground.
And that appears to be what happened here.
Two weeks after instituting the Annex VII arbitration, on November 14, 2012, Argentina instituted proceedings before the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea by requesting that the Tribunal issue a provisional ruling ordering Ghana to release the ARA Libertad. Argentina's request was made pursuant to Article 290(5) of UNCLOS, which provides that "[p]ending the constitution of an arbitral tribunal to which a dispute is being submitted under this section, any court or tribunal agreed upon by the parties or, failing such agreement within two weeks from the date of the request for provisional measures, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea… may prescribe, modify or revoke provisional measures." Because the request for provisional measures was made in its initiation of the arbitration panel, in the letter to Ghana, Argentina was able to request a provision ruling from ITLOS a mere 14 days after it notified Ghana that it wanted to convene an Annex VII arbitration panel.
Of note, this sort of speedy provisional ruling could not have been requested in a case that was actually before ITLOS on the merits — although 290(1) allows ITLOS to issue provisional measures where it feels they are necessary, it does not explicitly allow a party to request them. Only by initiating an Annex VII arbitral tribunal could Argentina proceed with the request for provisional measures.
Four weeks later, on December 15, 2012, the Tribunal issued an order awarding Argentina all of the relief it requested in its Application for Provisional Measures:
Ghana shall forthwith and unconditionally release the frigate ARA Libertad, shall ensure that the frigate ARA Libertad, its Commander and crew are able to leave the port of Tema and the maritime areas under the jurisdiction of Ghana, and shall ensure that the frigate ARA Libertad is resupplied to that end.
In its Application for Procedural Measures, at paragraph 70, Argentina stated that "[t]o date, Ghana has not appointed a member of the arbitral tribunal and has not reacted to the invitation of Argentina to enter into discussions with it for the purpose of appointing the other members of the Annex VII arbitral tribunal." This was somewhat premature at the time, as Ghana had until November 29, 2012 before it was required to appoint its own arbitrator, and Argentina had simply proceeded with filing its Request for Provision Measures at its earliest available opportunity.
But, as far as I can ascertain from the available records, Ghana never did get around to appointing an arbitrator. And, thereafter. Argentina never requested that the ITLOS President, pursuant to Article 3(e) of Annex VII, step in to make those appointments on the parties' behalf. Although, pursuant to Article 3(b) of Annex VII, Argentina did appoint a single arbitrator to be on the arbitral tribunal (it could hardly have avoided doing so), there is no indication that Argentina has taken any further actions with regard to the arbitration panel it instituted. Having received "interim" relief that gave it everything it wanted, the Annex VII arbitral tribunal is now forgotten.
In other words, Argentina "initiated" an arbitration proceeding it did not intend to follow through on. The result is that the Tribunal's Art. 290(5) provisional measure will, in effect, operate as a decision on the merits, and no further adjudication of this dispute will occur. The arbitral tribunal appears to have been stillborn, and the domestic suit also appears to have been abandoned. On December 19, 2012, the Ghanaian Supreme Court ordered that the ARA Libertad be released, in accordance with the Tribunal's ruling, and the case was thereafter abandoned. After all, with the ARA Libertad no longer available for attachment, NML Capital had no reason to continue its Ghanaian collection action.
In short, Argentina's use of procedural maneuvers enabled it to secure a fast-tracked award of its requested relief without any consideration as to the merits of its case. Heck, Argentina didn't even have to prove that an Annex VII arbitration panel would even have jurisdiction to hear its dispute — it just had to convince the Tribunal that it had met, in the words of Judge Paik, the "rather low threshold of prima facie jurisdiction."
Not a bad result at all.
At least for Argentina, anyway. The Tribunal's award of provisional relief in the ARA Libertad case raises serious concerns about the effectiveness of UNCLOS's dispute resolution procedures, however. Because, having received the provisional relief it requested from the Tribunal, Argentina seems to have the Annex VII arbitration that Argentina initiated seems to have been discarded.
The Tribunal's judges are not unaware of this problem. In fact, three of the four separate opinions that were issued along with the Tribunal's order in the ARA Libertad case make direct reference to the judges' concerns regarding the Order's lackadaisical approach to the issue of jurisdiction under Article 290(5). After noting their concerns, however, all three of those opinions then promptly fall over themselves in coming up with convoluted explanations for why, despite the significant jurisdictional problems in Argentina's case, they nevertheless were ultimately in agreement with the Tribunal's decision to award Argentina its requested relief.
Judge Wolfrum and Judge Cot, in their separate opinion, actually agree with Ghana that an Annex VII arbitral tribunal would not have jurisdiction to hear Argentina's claims. The Tribunal's decision to issue provisional relief to Argentina, they argue, would not be consistent with the purposes behind of Article 290, which is to ensure that a meaningful decision on the merits can be reached. As such, "[p]rovisional measures may only be requested and decided in the context of a case submitted on the merits. Provisional measures are meant to protect the object of the litigation in question and, thereby, the integrity of the decision as to the merits." Granting provisional relief in the ARA Libertad case is troubling, even if it was done to protect Argentina's own sovereignty, because "[i]t should always be borne in mind that the prescription of provisional measures constitutes an infringement of the sovereign rights of the responding State."
But despite this acknowledged jurisdictional problem, Wolfrum and Cot don't let that stand in the way of them concurring with the Tribunal's ultimate decision:
Although we disagree with the finding of the Tribunal that the arbitral tribunal under Annex VII has jurisdiction in accordance with article 288, paragraph 1, of the Convention, in our view, Ghana is estopped from opposing the proceedings at this phase. … The Tribunal cannot accept the submission of Ghana "to reject the provisional measures filed by Argentina on 14 November 2012". Ghana is estopped from presenting any objection on the matter, whatever the validity of the arguments presented to that effect.
In other words, according to Wolfrum and Cot, maybe the Tribunal doesn't have jurisdiction to adjudicate a dispute between two sovereigns — but that's okay, because, really, this is just a default judgment case, anyway, so there isn't any real sovereignty violation going on.
Judge Paik, too, thinks that the Tribunal's jurisdiction in the ARA Libertad case may be a little shake. Like Wolfrum and Cot, Judge Paik's separate declaration to the Tribunal's Order acknowledges that provisional rulings should not function as a decision on the merits:
As provisional measures are prescribed without there being any need to prove the conclusive existence of jurisdiction or the validity of claims, a request for measures that would result in virtually resolving the dispute should not be accepted. The Permanent Court of International Justice emphasized this point when it stated that any request 'designed to obtain an interim judgment in favour of a part of the claim formulated in the Application' should be dismissed.
Judge Paik ultimately decided that the Tribunal's cavalier approach to jurisdiction was justified due to the fact that the Art. 290(5) ruling didn't really give Argentina everything it wanted, it only mostly did:
In the present case, the relief sought by Argentina in the request, which is the unconditional release of the warship ARA Libertad, comes close, in substance, to the principal relief sought in the claims submitted in its Application. However, this fact alone should not preclude the Tribunal from considering the measures sought by Argentina. In addition, the various forms of relief sought by Argentina in its Application instituting the Annex VII arbitration are obviously broader than those sought in the request for provisional measures.
But Judge Paik's justification for the Tribunal's award is unsatisfactory. Because Argentina did receive, in substance, all of the relief that it had sought in its Application — as the "obviously broader" "various forms of relief" that Judge Paik makes reference to in his opinion were largely superfluous demands that the arbitral tribunal would not have even had jurisdiction to grant if it wanted to. In fact, I suspect that Argentina was fully aware that no tribunal would ever grant the overreaching demands it made in its original Statement of Claim. Rather, Argentina was fully aware that it would never succeed in having Ghana be ordered to give a "solemn salute" to Argentina's flag, but it deliberately through the bogus demand into its claims anyway — so that, when it made its play for provisional relief in front of the Tribunal, Argentina could argue that the "provisional" measures it was seeking were not identical to the relief it sought in its Application.
The third separate opinion, from Judge Lucky, echoed all the same concerns as did Wolfrum, Cot, and Paik. Like them, Judge Lucky noted that "[w]hen a party to a dispute seeks the prescription of provisional measures, the Tribunal has to consider whether by granting the Request, it prevents the parties from taking any action that would render the final decision on the merits otiose." But, in his explanation for why he nevertheless agreed with the Tribunal's result, Judge Lucky provided perhaps the most honest assessment of the basis of his decision:
I think that international law and the relevant articles in the Convention should be considered as a whole and in these circumstances article 32 can be deemed to include internal waters; not only because it does not explicitly exclude the immunity of warships in internal waters, but because it should be read in congruence with other rules of international law which guarantee such immunity. Therefore, where the law is silent a tribunal ought to take a pragmatic approach and, bearing in mind the circumstances of the case, interpret and construe the law accordingly.
In other words, the Tribunal's decision to award provisional relief to Argentina was justified for "pragmatic" reasons, and in accordance with well established norms of international law that exist outside of narrow scope of UNCLOS's subject matter jurisdiction. While the ARA Libertad case undoubtedly put the Tribunal in an uncomfortable position — and I can understand the Tribunal's reluctance to be complicit in one state's unprovoked seizure of another nation's military vessel — in order to avoid that result, the Tribunal arguably engaged in an overly expansive interpretation of its own jurisdiction.
If that is what happened here, then the Tribunal's order was a short-sighted one. Judges Wolfrum and Cot, in their separate opinion, give warning of the long-term consequences of such an approach:
Any attempt to broaden the jurisdictional power of the Tribunal and that of arbitral tribunals under Annex VII going beyond what is prescribed in article 288 of the Convention is not in keeping with the basic philosophy governing the dispute settlement system of the Convention. It undermines the understanding reached at the Third UN Conference on the Law of the Sea, namely that the dispute settlement system under the Convention will be mandatory but limited as far its scope is concerned.
In the end, however, the true loser in the ARA Libertad case isn't the Tribunal. It isn't even NML Capital, the thwarted judgment creditor that kicked off the dispute in the first place — they'll likely just find a new scheme for how they can get their billion dollars back from Argentina.
The real loser is Ghana.
Ghana didn't even have a stake in this fight, initially. It was Ghana's bad luck that NML Capital ultimately decided to use Ghana's domestic judicial system to try and collect against Argentina. By not finding some judicial excuse to deny NML's request for an injunction, Ghana's judiciary dragged the whole state into an international dispute that was never its to fight in the first place. It was Ghanaian tax payers that bore the brunt of the costs, too; the Ghanaian port authority lost a reported $7.6 million as a result of the ARA Libertard proceedings.
But maybe Ghana won't be totally out of luck — and perhaps the litigation over the ARA Libertad affair isn't entirely over. As of December 2012, anyway, the Ghanaian Port Authority was considering going after NML Capital to recover its losses.
Update, 2-26-13: Looks like Argentina was more serious about this arbitration than it initially appeared. Argentina had requested that the President of ITLOS appoint three arbitrators for the arbitration panel. Presumably, then, Ghana did nominate its own choice of arbitrator, but the parties were unable to decide upon the remaining three. It will be curious to see whether Argentina continues to prosecute this action.