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Recent Reads is a monthly reading wrap-up, with mini-reviews of all the books I finished in the past month. I'll also share what I'm currently reading and any other books that are in the pipeline. Want to share your bookish happenings, too? Feel free to do so in the Comments section at the end!
Back from my blogging hiatus! 🙂 And WOW, Writer's Digest Conference was AWESOME! I don't even know where to begin with describing what an invaluable experience it was. So, all I'll say for now is that I'll be writing two articles' worth (possibly three) of conference coverage for DIY MFA. It sounds like a lot, but I've been so "in the zone" that each piece seemed to write itself in a fingersnap. Unfortunately, this means I won't have time for a Field Trip post here at the blog – but I'll do a special edition of Stacking The Shelves instead. Stay tuned for that on Saturday!
Now, Recent Reads. Last month's debut of the new format went amazingly well. I'm so glad that readers enjoyed the shorter reviews, and that you've been understanding of the change in format. Today I'd like to add one more feature that takes advantage of the shorter reviews: Read of the Month, which highlights my favorite book from the past month. That way, you won't have to search for the highest rating or most positive review. 😉
So, what did I choose as my Read of the Month? What other books did I devour, figuratively speaking? Find out below!
Read of the Month: Ironskin by Tina Connolly
Ironskin (Ironskin Trilogy, Book #1) / Tina Connolly
Steampunk Fantasy / 302 pages
Rating: 4 out of 5 (Amazon / Goodreads)
Fey curses leave lingering, supernatural scars on their human victims in Tina Connolly's Ironskin, a Victorian-era steampunk fantasy twist on Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. This doesn't follow the original classic verbatim. Rather, it takes the governess-employer love story and morphs into its own tale. Jane Eliot is a complex protagonist, fierce yet painfully insecure about the iron mask that hides her scarred cheek and keeps her curse-induced rage at bay. The girl in her charge may be fey cursed as well, but in a very different way. Their unique bond, along with Jane's feelings for the girl's father Edward Rochart, leads Jane on a series of discoveries about magic, beauty, and the price one is willing to pay to heal from the past.
It's hard to summarize what I enjoyed most about Ironskin, because the highlights kept adding up. The subtle nods to the original story, Jane as a fascinating heroine, Edward's tragic backstory and ghastly occupation (which helps to catalyze the plot), technology powered by fey magic… Where do I stop? Connolly's lyrical writing style and impressive world-building also enhance the haunting atmospheres and gothic overtones. I wasn't too crazy about the romance between Jane and Edward; I couldn't tell why they were attracted to one another. But the rapport between Jane and little Dorie tugged at my heart, and really made Ironskin a joy to read. This may be less industrial than most steampunks, but if you like intrigue, dark ambiance, and character-centric fantasies, this one comes highly recommended.
Other Books I Read in July
The Falconer (The Falconer, #1) / Elizabeth May
YA Steampunk Fantasy / 373 pages
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 (Amazon / Goodreads)
"An 18-year-old debutante in 19th century steampunk Scotland kills faeries to avenge her mother's death." How's that for a one-sentence blurb? And this action-packed rollercoaster ride lives up to its promise for the most part. Elizabeth May does a fantastic job of painting a landscape of aristocratic life in a dreary Scotland winter with airships, steam-powered carriages, tea dispensers, and other contraptions. The various faery species come from Scottish mythology (and with Scottish Gaelic names!), making the world even more authentic. Aileana is also quite a fascinating protagonist. A budding inventress with a formal upbringing and a knack for sarcasm, she stumbles against society's expectations as she maintains her single-minded focus to destroy the baobhan sith who killed her mother.
Even though The Falconer is marketed as YA, it has good crossover potential because its avoids many common YA tropes. The romance does border on "love triangle" territory, but never quite gets there. (Though I wasn't thrilled with who Aileana eventually "chose.") And apart from a desire to see some of the supporting characters fleshed out more, the only real problem I had with The Falconer was THAT ENDING. It's like said rollercoaster from the first paragraph races to its peak – and then the track disappears, leaving the reader in complete and utter mid-air suspension. It's abrupt, unfinished, and kind of infuriating. Yet it doesn't kill my desire to know what happens next. I've heard the sequel, The Vanishing Throne, has a UK release date, so I hope North America gets one soon!
The Wrath and the Dawn / Renee Ahdieh
YA Historical Fantasy / 388 pages
Rating: 3.75 out of 5 (Amazon / Goodreads)
A feast for the senses! Renee Ahdieh's debut novel The Wrath and the Dawn whisks readers away to a Middle Eastern-inspired desert realm where a young king chooses a new bride each day, only to execute her by the next sunrise. Sixteen-year-old Shahrzad is determined to break the cycle, and volunteers to wed Khalid with the plan to avenge the murder of her best friend and all the other girls before. It's loosely based on the epic Arabian Nights, with Shazi spinning two of its most famous tales early on. But it has a life of its own, one full of mystery, romance, and exquisite details that makes every aroma, flavor, and color rich and real.
The Wrath and the Dawn is more of a low fantasy love story than a true fantasy. Magic only comes in hints, and is never really explained. In hindsight, I would have preferred that over the emphasis on romance. But the sumptuous world-building just about compensates for it, and so does Shazi. What a spitfire! She's gutsy, feisty, and as calculating as lifelong royalty, but with a soul teeming with emotion. She disappointed me a bit in the end, though; I would have expected her to put up more of a fight. But this was still was a riveting read that left me breathless – and eager for what's to come in The Rose and the Dagger next year!
Stolen Songbird (Malediction Trilogy, Book #1) / Danielle L. Jensen
YA Fantasy / 469 pages
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 (Amazon / Goodreads)
I won Stolen Songbird from a giveaway at Books, Bones & Buffy earlier this year (thanks again, Tammy!), and I'm happy that I finally made time to read it. This first installment of the Malediction Trilogy follows burgeoning singer Cecile de Troyes as she's kidnapped and sold to trolls who are cursed to live under the nearby mountains. At first, Cecile's only focus is on her escape. But after she's forced to marry the troll prince Tristan and learns about his people's plight, the more she sympathizes with them – and the more she comes to understand her own powers as a witch.
I love fictional worlds that are captivating and unique, and Stolen Songbird delivers on that front with its French influences, illuminating magic system (literally!), and a focus on a supernatural race that's not often covered in YA fantasy. The story was more of a romance than I was expecting, but not in a bad way. Cecile and Tristan's disputes (sometimes a charade for political reasons, other times real) were often funny and offered a fresh dynamic to the plot. The pretentious yet deeply conflicted Prince Tristan also shocked me by becoming my favorite character. The writing was strong but felt rushed at times; and I wasn't too keen on the ending, since Cecile didn't get a chance to prove herself, IMO. But overall, Stolen Songbird is a solid, engaging story with plenty of surprises and potential to appeal to older readers as well as teens. Time to get my hands on Hidden Huntress now!
Tehran Moonlight / Azin Sametipour
Self-Published Contemporary Fiction / 268 pages
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 (Amazon / Goodreads)
I discovered Azin Sametipour's debut novel Tehran Moonlight at The Muse & The Marketplace back in May. Good thing I bought it based on its captivating blurb – because it won the conference's Authors In The House Contest for self-published authors!
Set in Iran's capital city, Tehran Moonlight follows 23-year-old violin teacher Mahtab as she falls for an Iranian-American man and struggles with her family's rigid traditionalism via an arranged marriage to another man. This is not a love triangle story by any means. Instead, it's about a young Muslim woman who wants to pursue her heart's desires in both life purpose and love and experiences cultural oppression while doing so (the most graphic examples being a couple instances of sexual and/or physical abuse).
Tehran Moonlight was incredibly eye-opening for me. I know little about Iran except for what I hear on the news, and Sametipour's portrayal is astonishing. It contrasts how some families remain strict about women's rights with how others are more tolerant and open-minded, all while their country embraces a modern, consumerism-based society. Mahtab is also a fascinating protagonist. She's outspoken, courageous, and persistent – traits that aren't always respected by other characters. She also maintains a strong sense of self-respect and encourages others to follow their dreams. Sometimes the dialogue comes across as puerile, and many of the supporting characters are one-dimensional. However, Sametipour still excels with telling a jaw-dropping, heart-wrenching story with Tehran Moonlight, and delivers it with unblinking frankness and sincerity.
What I'm Reading Next
I was able to get a copy of N.K. Jemisin's Inheritance Trilogy Omnibus at Writer's Digest Conference this past weekend (!!!!!!), so I already dove in to the first book, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. I'm about halfway through, and so far it's really good! My other priorities this month are Siren's Fury by Mary Weber, Faerie Wars by Herbie Brennan, and Dolor and Shadow by Angela B. Chrysler.
How about you? What books did you recently read? Have you read any of the titles mentioned above?


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Breakfast and lunch at StumbleUpon: chive biscuits, housemade sausage, poached egg, and herb-stuffed porchetta.
It's noon on a Tuesday, and like every other working stiff from California to Connecticut, Jake Poses is getting hungry. If he was at his old job, this is when he would be surfing for delivery pizza, standing in line at the nearest Chipotle, or unearthing soggy leftovers from the office fridge. But now Poses works for Thumbtack, an online startup based in San Francisco, so instead he's in the office kitchen, peering over the shoulder of Chef Thea Baumann as she puts the finishing touches on shrimp fried rice and a sesame snap pea salad.
We've all heard about the limitless free food at Google and Facebook. Now Thumbtack and a growing number of other startups are trying to one-up the tech giants by bringing in personal chefs who create full gourmet meals for their staffs — and the results are a lot more exciting than all-you-can-eat gluten-free cookies. Some of it looks downright delicious.
Chef Baumann shows up at Thumbtack's offices in the SoMa district four days a week to cook lunch and dinner for the twelve-person team. Today, it's shrimp fried rice. Tomorrow might be grilled chicken sandwiches with chipotle aioli, steak with panzanella salad, or Thai drunken noodles. "There's an amazing variety in terms of what Thea makes for us," Poses says. "Everything from Indian to Italian to California cuisine."
It might sound a little over-the-top for company food, but the way Thumbtack C.E.O. Marco Zappacosta sees it, the benefits of giving his employees something they actually want to eat outweigh the costs of hiring an in-house chef. "We were able to recruit two engineers from Google, and I don't think we would have been able to if we didn't have Thea," Zappacosta says. "You're talking about guys in their mid-twenties to early thirties, who spend a lot of time at work and would rather not be bothered by these sorts of things, but they don't want to eat trash. It's a huge quality-of-life thing."
Another knock-on effect? Getting the whole team together for part of the day. "Instead of everyone fluttering off at lunch, everyone sits around a big long table and shares a meal," Poses says. "It's a nice time to connect. Sometimes that means getting to know people on a personal level; sometimes it's talking about work. It's also a great way to draw people and ideas in from outside. You can invite a friend, a professional contact, or a mentor into the office for a nice meal."
Plenty of other tech startups are following suit. StumbleUpon's 80 employees get breakfast and lunch catered five days a week by Rebecca Jean, who owns a catering company. Jean creates meals like a Nicoise salad bar with chilled heirloom tomato and melon soup, or a Southern spread including buttermilk fried chicken, mac 'n' cheese, sautéed Swiss chard with caramelized onions, and homemade pop-tarts for dessert. Chances are the chicken's a little crispier than the office-cafeteria variety you might be familiar with.
Meanwhile, 23andMe, a personal genetics site based in Mountain View, provides breakfast and lunch to its 60 employees with more emphasis on health and wellness. The office kitchen is stocked with cereals, yogurt, healthy snacks, and local organic produce and juices. Three days out of the week, lunch comes courtesy of Oren's Kitchen, a local caterer that creates menus like grilled Bavette steak with chimichurri, grilled corn, and Ensalata Rasuara. Once a week, 23andMe sponsors team lunches at local restaurants, and the last weekday is reserved for "employee pick" lunches. Recently, the staff has gotten really into food trucks.
Chef Arnon Oren, who owns and operates Oren's Kitchen, says that over the past few years, he's seen more and more of this across the Bay Area: companies reaching out to deliver high-quality food, be it healthy, fresh, organic, or just really tasty. And so far, it seems to be working. "We've gotten great feedback about increased productivity," Oren says. "I think it transforms people when you put good energy in fuel. It comes through in the workplace and the work product." Feel free to pass that along to your HR department.

subset: commoncrawl


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Young Scot cardholders can receive £1 entry on general admission tickets during 2019 and 2020. Tickets can be bought online in advance or on arrival. Production of a valid Young Scot is required on arrival and applies to the cardholder only. For full terms and conditions, and to see where else Young Scot £1 entry applies, please visit the Young Scot website for more details.
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At first I thought I was suffering from some sort of hallucination, but, nope, just art. Korean artist Duck-Bong Kang craftily staggers PVC pipes to create an illusion of motion—or very poor eyesight.
According to My Modern Met, Kang's goals are pretty lofty!
The figures in Kang's sculptures are an exploration of human relationships and communication. According to Kang, holes ignite curiosity within people because, regardless of age or gender, one always wonders what is on the other side of them. He believes that we should be just as curious about what is on another person's mind. In his opinion, the rise of social networks has decreased the amount of concrete personal conversation.
I'm not entirely sure what a blurry guy on a bicycle reveals about our absorption by social networks and the terrors of modernity, but you can at least file this work under "looks cool." [MyModernMet]


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CISPA, a terrible bill that would let websites hand over your personal data to the government with little oversight, just passed the U.S. House of Representatives. That's not good.
Although the vote was scheduled for tomorrow, in something of a surprise, it took place today, and passed the House 248-168.
The bill is still unabashedly a violation of your privacy rights—nearly anything you say or do online can be handed over to the government without so much as a warrant—although version of the bill that passed this afternoon is both better and worse than it had been in its original form. As CNET points out, one amendment was withdrawn before the proceedings that would have given the Department of Homeland Security sweeping and, more importantly, superseding authority. When it was in, CISPA would have been a DHS trump card, essentially, overruling any local or state legislation that contradicted it. That's gone.
That doesn't, though, mean that you should stop worrying about CISPA. As the EFF makes all too clear, the truly concerning parts of the bill—the ones that give the government the right to conduct surveillance on your Internet everything without your knowledge or permission—are firmly in place.
Weighing even more heavily on the scary side of the ledger was an amendment from Rep. Ben Quayle (R - AZ) that broadened those activities that would fall under government jurisdiction and surveillance. As TechDirt observes:
Previously, CISPA allowed the government to use information for "cybersecurity" or "national security" purposes. Those purposes have not been limited or removed. Instead, three more valid uses have been added: investigation and prosecution of cybersecurity crime, protection of individuals, and protection of children. Cybersecurity crime is defined as any crime involving network disruption or hacking, plus any violation of the CFAA.
Quayle, who was also a co-sponsor of SOPA, effectively made it so that any suspicion of anything illegal on the Internet—not just the vague Chinese cyber warfare threats the bill had built its stature on—is enough for the government to go through your entire online life.
What's perhaps most surprising, and in some ways most damning, about today's vote was the timing. It had been planned for tomorrow, Friday, for some time, and was pushed up just this afternoon. And concluded, conveniently, after many voters had long since stopped paying attention to the news. By tomorrow morning, it will have been washed away by a fresh news cycle and three day weekends and general Friday apathy.
That doesn't mean that CISPA is a fact of life now, though. Far from it. The majority Democratic Senate has yet to vote, and even if it manages to pass both legislative bodies, President Obama has already promised a veto.
Here's who voted, if you want to see whether your Representative does or does not think it's okay for the government to read your emails and Facebook messages. Although fair warning, it's largely split down party lines:
Final Vote Results for Roll Call 192
And remember, too, that it's not as though these politicians are going rogue. Unlike SOPA, against which much of the tech community rallied, most internet heavyweights have expressed their support for CISPA. Some notables include:
CTIA - The Wireless Association
Cyber, Space & Intelligence Association
Independent Telephone & Telecommunications Alliance
Information Technology Industry Council
Internet Security Alliance
Lockheed Martin
National Cable & Telecommunications Association
US Telecom - The Broadband Association
And that's far from the complete list. They're also easy enough to contact, if you'd like to express your disappointment in the results of today's vote.
And when you do, it's best to be informed about what, specifically, you find offensive. Here are all the changes that were made to the bill today, including Quayle's odious amdenment:
And this is a previous version of the bill, with the full legal language, which isn't included in today's report. Plenty to find distasteful there, as well.
Comparisons between SOPA and CISPA have been cropping up, and they're inevitable because they're both an uncomfortable and disquieting intersection of government and Internet. But the two bills are also different in crucial ways. Where SOPA aimed to prosecute, CISPA will spy. Where citizens rallied against SOPA in final days before voting, CISPA has remained largely off the radar. Where tech giants stood up against SOPA, they've lined up to join the CISPA caravan.
Where does that leave us? One step closer to an online police state that borders on the dystopian. And that's not hyperbole; that just what happens when people who both fundamentally and willfully misunderstand the nature of the Interent try to regulate it. Your entire life is online. And unless the Senate takes a stand or Obama follow through on his veto promise, it'll soon be an open book to the federal government.


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EDIT: I updated the numbers in the post following the excellent comments by Vixsin and Lakh. I have very little background with this sort of thing, so the help is very appreciated! I hope no one read the post expecting revelations and great number gymnastics. I'm only a curious healer who tends to fixate on minor details and who doesn't turn away from a challenge. I have no answers myself, but there are some great comments in the comment section for those looking for information.
Ever since I stumbled across a parse where I randomly did 5 million healing from Diffusion, I've been fixated on figuring out how that spell works.
Sadly, after hours and hours of pulling my hair out, I still don't know.
In theory, Diffusion (available only on Heroic mode) is a debuff the Arcane Head puts on anyone who gets hit by its Arcany breath. The debuff redirects 10% of healing received to targets within 8 yards. It also stacks, which, if I understand right, would redirect 30% of healing received.
In practice, it is certainly a debuff put on Breath takers by the Arcane head that causes nearby players (and pets) to get healed, but how exactly it works is a still a mystery to me, even after I've gone nearly bald going through logs.
Anyone who, following this post, has further insight, is welcomed to share it. I'm happy to provide links to the actual logs if anyone wants to give it a go for themselves as well. Maybe I'll finally get some closure and be able to move on with my WoW life.
Everything under the cut. Also, if you're looking for guides on working World of Logs, I suggest you check out this post and this post, since I won't be going into details on the how-tos.


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My home state of Colorado has been devastated by wildfires. My vacation this summer was semi-cancelled with a fire closing a local Boy Scout camp. We found another campsite for a few boys for a couple days, but the weeklong camp wasn't available. There have been floods in the East as well that have killed power and ruined homes.
The Red Cross does a tremendous amount of good for people in these situations, but they depend on donations. Brandie Tarvin is trying to help the Red Cross with donations and started a small contest. If you donate to their relief fund, and send Brandie a screen shot, she'll enter you in a drawing to win some donated prizes.
Take a moment and think about how lucky you are in your life. If you haven't been through a disaster, think about what it would be like if you couldn't go home tonight.
If you think it's worth donating to help others, take a moment and donate to the Red Cross and then enter Brandie's contest. Whether you win or not, I'd like to think it was worth it.


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Address: 127 Columbia St, Brooklyn, NY
Phone: 718 923 9322
Zak Pelaccio certainly did not impress us with his so called Malaysian cooking at Fatty Crab, although Herold Dieterle fair a little better at his Thai restaurant, Kin Shop. But Andy Ricker's Pok Pok Ny from Portfolio Oregon is the one that really changed our minds on how a non-Thai chef can cook Thai food in the US really well, and in fact cooking it better than a lot of the typical Thai restaurants around town, that has modified their menu to adapt to the American tastebuds! First opened in 2005 in Portland before finally being exported to New York City in 2012, Pok Pok Ny (Pok Pok's name came from the sound that mortar and pestle makes and ny means "in the city" in Thai) is a true gem for any NY foodie who loves and appreciate good Thai food that are not modified in any form for the sake of just selling food.
Before having a brick and mortar restaurant, Pok Pok actually started out as a bbq shack set up outside of the chef's home in Portland, which later on expanded to an actual restaurant (and more) because the food was so good. The legendary Pok Pok madness finally arrived in our area in 2012 with Pok Pok Wings opening in Lower East Side (Pok Pok Wings is now closed and reopened as Phat Thai that serves only Pad Thai) and Pok Pok Ny opening in Brooklyn. Chef and owner Andy Ricker's journey to discovering real Thai cuisine (specifically Issan food, from the Northeastern region of Thailand) began when he traveled to Thailand and his friend brought him to a local restaurant to try a wild mushroom dish that was only available when wild mushrooms are in season. From there he realized that Thai food is much more than the typical Pad Thai and Green Curry that he is used to, and it can be seasonal too. He then became an avid student of the cuisine and went back to Thailand every year to learn how to cook. Local chefs there were willing to share their recipes and skills because according to the chef, since he's not Thai, he's no competition to them. Thanks to that and thanks to the chef's passion and relentless pursuit of perfection in the cuisine outside of Thailand (he's famous for only using fresh ingredients that he can import from Thailand or replicate exactly the same way here), we were finally able to get such good Issan food in NYC.
Pok Pok Ny is opened daily from 5.30pm-10.30pm, and there's usually a wait since the restaurant is tiny. Expect to wait more than 1 1/2 hour during the weekends, but once you've survived it, everything on the menu is a treat. Go early on a weekday and you can perhaps get seated in just a few minutes. True to the yaokui style, Gan and I ordered any dishes that stood out to us, which meant that we ended up with 5 entrees and a dessert for the two of us. We had the Khao Soi, a Northern Thai curry noodle soup similar to the Malaysian curry laksa, with chicken instead of prawns. That dish was by far our favorite and it's perfect. Pok Pok Ny prepared their Khao Soi using house-pressed fresh coconut milk and their own curry paste, which is how it's done back home, and they got it right. We also ordered their famous Ike's Pok Pok wings, which has the perfect blend of sweet and sourness, they were finger licking good. The Yam Makheua Yao dish, which is smokey grilled egg plant drenched in a spicy dressing made with fish sauce, palm sugar, chili and lime was a tease to our tastebud. Imagine babaganoush with papaya salad dressing. Delicious! Dessert was a nice plate of Mango and Sticky Rice soaked in luxurious house-pressed fresh coconut milk. Everything was so fresh and we were very satisfied. The only blemish of the night though was the Cha Ca "La Vong" dish, which is actually a Vietnamese (Hanoi specialty) dish and not Thai. We felt that the dish just didn't work for us as the turmeric marinate was too strong and there were too much dill on a small bowl. We can only hope the real dish in Hanoi is not like this one.
Cha Ca "La Vong" - Vietnamese Catfish marinated in turmeric and sour sticky rice, fried in turmeric oil with scallions and dill, served on rice vermicelli with peanuts, mint cilantro and mam nem.
Yam Makheua Yao - Smoky charcoal grilled long eggplant salad with spicy dressing of Thai chilies, lime, fish sauce, and palm sugar. topped with boiled egg, dry shrimp, shallots and crispy garlic
Sticky rice and mango dessert


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The history of marketing is filled with stories of good products — some win, some fail. "It was ahead of its time" or "it was a product looking for a market" are often the explanations for the failures. But what makes a winner?
TDC International has played key roles in positioning products for successful market entry and in repositioning products to extend their useful life. In one case we set up a research protocol to prove a declining product should be repositioned rather than terminated, resulting in a fivefold sales increase in four years. We offer analytical skills, product and market knowledge, and the strategic thinking needed to help you position products for success.
And we get to know the people who drive your markets. Market knowledge is much more than numbers; it requires a feel for the issues and trends that affect your fortunes. We work hard to help you win the people who influence decisions and those who buy.
The selling channels make or break a product, whether it is new, growing, mature, or even off-patent. The customer is always the consumer who starts the cash-flow, but many influencers of the buying decisions can create barriers to sales that must be addressed. From influencer mapping to sales barrier identification, we work closely with you and your sales force to develop effective, real-world strategies and tactics to overcome barriers and increase sales.
TDC International has the experience and expertise to help clients build performance from current channels or evaluate alternative distribution channels to cost-effectively reach the customers. Then we help clients monitor the outcome and movements in the marketplace that continually change.
We strive to become a marketing partner working to improve sales and the profitability of our clients businesses.
So far to go; so little time. New technology, market fragmentation, collapsing distribution, rapid shifts in business alliances and a host of other changes in today's business environment severely complicate the marketing decision-making process. Established products are threatened by competition that didn't exist just months earlier; new products die before they're hardly off the launch pad.
More than ever, you need an experienced, professional staff of experts that can help you sort through all the available information and provide you with timely, realistic and imaginative choices for success in this new business environment.
TDC International can provide that counsel from an unbiased, third-party viewpoint, then work side-by-side with you in executing the resulting decisions.
Sluggish product performance is often the result of slow acceptance by the people who represent your products to the customer. Sometimes they are your employees; sometimes they are someone else's. In either case, there are ways to prod them into action on your products' behalf and to breathe new life into your sales.
It may be a product training program that stimulates independent dealer sales people to recommend your product over its competitors. Perhaps it's a sales incentive program tied to a promotional program…or any of dozens of other approaches.
Whatever the technique, TDC International can help you build and maintain the interactive databases you need to reach the individuals who most affect your sales and we can help ensure that each individual is addressed appropriately.
Some say a good product will find its own way into the customer's hands; we believe a good product and an energized sales force will ensure it gets there.
Nothing is more daunting than taking your products into unexplored territory. There is a maxim that says that with great risk comes great reward. At TDC International, we believe this is true, but ONLY after analyzing the risks and implementing a solid marketing strategy to mitigate market failure.
TDC International offers incisive market research, local market intelligence, and instinctual market knowledge honed by years of experience. We can help your company develop a product concept, its position and marketing strategies that will most likely succeed. Then, we guide you through testing and the various phases of product introduction. Your investment in product development can pay dividends only if the product introduction is well conceived and effectively executed.
TDC International has an excellent record for taking products into new markets, whether the product is crossing into a different domestic venue, or crossing international borders. Whether the client is an established company entering a new market or a startup business on its first foray into any market, TDC can help with the entire marketing strategyfrom due diligence, feasibility studies, brand development, to product launch. Let us be your guide!


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I hit my goal at Weight Watchers. It took me 15 months to lose 25 pounds. At 140 pounds (5'4″) I am solid, not svelte. In Levi's speak, I'm down from a snug 36 inch waist in a "relaxed" fit to a comfortable 32 inch waist, even in a "slim straight" cut. I haven't worn 32's since the last millennium. I'm ready to celebrate.
I wrote here about the incongruity of joining Weight Watchers. How it is geared towards straight, conventional, suburban women. Soccer Moms and Grandmas. Other women talk about losing weight to feel more attractive, to look better for a wedding or family reunion, to fit into a particular dress. Every week I weigh in, attend the meeting, and feel like an outsider. Not because I'm not fat enough, but because I am gender trespassing.
Last week Mindi, my group leader, asked me to talk in the meeting about how I felt before I started Weight Watchers, and what I learned while doing it. This is a summary of what I said.
For years I ignored how I looked; I was in denial. I lived as a boy in my head and as a butch lesbian in my external life. I managed the contradiction by eating and drinking myself numb. My mother and grandmother would say "you'd be pretty if you lost weight." I did not want to be pretty. At one point I weighed 195 pounds.
I don't want to fit the stereotype of the dowdy, fat, middle-aged, butch lesbian. The kind you see on the street and think, ugh, those men's pants don't fit your hips, your stomach is hanging over your belt, your shirt is so tight the chest buttons are going to pop. I don't want to feel like a flabby round peg crammed into a hexagonal slot. Some people manage to carry their weight with dignity and flair. They are full figured and handsome. I carry mine with casual frump.
In order to lose weight I had to break being slim from being feminine. I had to disassociate being overweight from rebelling against being seen as a girl. I needed to make going to Weight Watchers feel as butch as going to the gym. I had to think of it as part of my imaginary training routine.
When I looked for my masculine self in the mirror, I saw a chubby Elmer Fudd. I did not see a cute and handsome Jamie. Losing weight changed the shape of my body. I no longer look round. I am streamlined except at the bust. Weight Watchers is not top surgery (that is another post). Now, when I look in the mirror, I see a cuter Elmer Fudd that also looks a lot like Jamie.
The hard part is running in place; eating and drinking at a level that allows me to stay at this weight. I don't want to slide back into sloth. I don't want to gain the weight back. One of the things I like about Weight Watchers is that what you eat while losing is exactly what you eat to maintain your weight. I know I can do this because I've been doing it. But I'm scared that I'll wake up fat again.
It would be great if I could separate eating, body size, and weight from gender. Meanwhile, I will think of Popeye eating his spinach, and imagine him adding more fruit to his diet, taking a smaller portion of whole wheat pasta, and only drinking a beer on Sunday while out with Olive Oyl.
Note: I just finished "Born Round" by Frank Bruni, the former restaurant critic of The New York Times. It is a great book about eating and overeating.


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This 460 page textbook/workbook weaves together all of the essential founding documents to give students a deeper and more accurate understanding of the principles that framed our Republic. It emphasizes primary source material and the classical learning techniques used by the founding fathers who were largely self-educated men. This book is both a learning guide and a teaching curriculum containing 76 sessions of coursework and assignments for a multi-semester course, a self-paced course, mini-courses or fireside lessons for home, school or church. The material is presented in a concise, logical, and easy to read manner. The book contains a series of lessons highlighting many examples from the lives of the great men who founded our country, detailing the sacrifices they made for the cause of freedom. The book is a valuable resource distilling many tidbits of information from many original source documents which could only otherwise be obtained by reading all these books one by one and gleaning out the important details. It also contains the complete text of Common Sense and an exhaustive study guide for The Federalist Papers and The Wealth of Nations. A must read for anyone who wants to learn and teach about our nation's founders, and gain a greater appreciation of the great fundamental doctrines upon which our country was founded. This book meets the Common Core State Standards for history. Recommended companion books: The Federalist Papersand The Wealth of Nations.
Learn about the greatest political success story in the world. As a citizens of the United States, you are part of that story. Click here to begin.


text: Vietnam condemned on Tuesday China's claims to disputed South China Sea islands as a serious violation of its sovereignty after saying it was setting up patrols to protect its fisheries and accusing Chinese boats of sabotage. The condemnation of China's claims to the sea and its numerous reefs and tiny islands was the strongest yet from Vietnam since tension flared this year and came after India declared itself ready to send navy ships to safeguard its interests in the disputed waters. Claims by an increasingly powerful China over most of the South China Sea have set it directly against US allies Vietnam and the Philippines, while Brunei, Taiwan and Malaysia also claim parts of the mineral-rich waters. Vietnam's condemnation came a day after its state oil and gas company, Petrovietnam, accused Chinese boats of sabotaging an exploration operation by cutting a seismic cable being towed behind a Vietnamese boat. Vietnam's Foreign Ministry spokesman condemned the cable cutting as well as some recent Chinese provincial regulations that identified the disputed Spratly and Paracel islands as Chinese, and a map that did the same thing. "The actions of the Chinese side have seriously violated Vietnam's sovereignty over the two archipelagos," the spokesman, Luong Thanh Nghi, said in a statement. Vietnamese Foreign Ministry officials met representatives of the Chinese embassy in Hanoi on Monday, Nghi said. The Vietnamese officials handed over a diplomatic note "resolutely opposing the above mentioned actions by the Chinese side, asking China to respect Vietnam's sovereignty, to immediately stop such wrongful acts and not to repeat similar actions." Earlier, Vietnam said civilian-led patrols, backed by marine police and a border force, would be deployed from Jan. 25 to stop foreign vessels violating fishing laws in Vietnam's waters. A decree on the Vietnamese patrols was signed on November 29, the day Chinese media announced new rules authorising police in the southern Chinese province of Hainan to board and seize foreign ships in the South China Sea. "It's going to lead to friction," Carl Thayer, a Southeast Asia security expert at the University of New South Wales in Australia, said of China's new rules that take effect from Jan. 1 on boarding ships which "illegally enter" waters it claims. "If it begins to assert these rights and isn't challenged, over time it becomes customary, it becomes practice." On Monday, Petrovietnam said the seismic vessel had been operating outside the Gulf of Tonkin when the cable was severed on Friday. It had earlier been surveying the Nam Con Son basin further south – an area where Indian state-run explorer Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) has a stake in a Vietnamese gas field. Petrovietnam posted on its website comments by the deputy head of exploration, Pham Viet Dung, in which he said the cable was repaired and the survey resumed the following day. "The blatant violation of Vietnamese waters by Chinese fishing vessels not only violates the sovereignty ... of Vietnam but also interferes in the normal operations of Vietnamese fishermen and affects the maritime activities of Petrovietnam," Dung was quoted as saying. Asked about the complaint, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei told a briefing in Beijing that China was checking the reports of the incident, which he said was understood to have taken place in an area of overlapping claims. "Chinese fishing boats were operating in normal fishing activities," Hong said. India has also declared itself ready to deploy naval vessels to the South China Sea to protect its oil-exploration interests there, a new source of tension in a disputed area where fears of conflict have been growing steadily. Indian navy chief, Admiral D.K Joshi, said on Monday that, while India was not a territorial claimant in the South China Sea, it was prepared to act, if necessary, to protect its maritime and economic interests in the region. "When the requirement is there, for example, in situations where our country's interests are involved, for example ONGC ... we will be required to go there and we are prepared for that," Joshi told a news conference. "Now, are we preparing for it? Are we having exercises of that nature? The short answer is yes," he said. An Indian government spokesman on Tuesday played down the comments: "This is an issue for the parties concerned to resolve." India is not the only non-claimant nation concerned about disruption to shipping or oil exploration in the South China Sea. The United States, a close ally to several of the Southeast Asian claimants, has also voiced concern at the prospect of China stopping international ships in contested waters. India has sparred diplomatically with China in the past over its gas and oil exploration block off the coast of Vietnam. Any display of naval assertiveness by India in the South China Sea would likely fuel concern that the navies of the two rapidly growing Asian giants could be on a collision course as they seek to protect trade routes and lock in the supply of coal, minerals and other raw material from foreign sources. Joshi described the modernisation of China's navy as "truly impressive" and a source of major concern for India. Asked what China would do if Indian navy entered the South China Sea to protect its oil interests, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hong, said China had "indisputable sovereignty" over the sea's islands and surrounding waters. "China opposes unilateral oil and gas development in disputed waters of the South China Sea. We hope that concerned countries respect China's position and rights, and respect efforts made through bilateral talks to resolve disputes." Singapore, home to the world's second-busiest container port, joined the Philippines on Monday in expressing concern at the prospect of Chinese police boarding ships. The Philippines on Saturday condemned the Chinese plan as illegal. Estimates for proven and undiscovered oil reserves in the South China Sea range as high as 213 billion barrels of oil, the US Energy Information Administration said in a 2008 report. That would surpass the proven oil reserves of every country except Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, according to the BP Statistical Review. On Monday, China's National Energy Administration said China aims to produce 15 billion cubic metres of natural gas a year from the South China Sea by 2015. It said the sea would "form the main part" of China's offshore gas exploration plans.


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This sedentary lifestyle contributes to overweight and in the longer term can contribute to poor health.
How do we bring activity back into our daily lives?
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What are the benefits of physical activity?
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Some homes are hard to explain.
Consider the home near the corner of Western and Chase avenues in Rogers Park. The house itself is easy enough to describe, but what's inside is knotty, melancholy and not cleanly understood. The house is a tan brick three-story walk-up, utterly without distinction if not for its whimsical faux-wood facade, painted white and bisected with make-believe brown beams. Moreover, attached at its hip, and sporting a matching quaint aesthetic, is a single-story, peak-roofed chalet of sorts.
For years whenever I drove past these buildings I imagined I was looking at the former world headquarters of Hickory Farms. In fact, the shorter building once served as a dance hall and social club for expatriate Brits. But in the late 1990s, both the three-story building and shorter structure were bought by a relatively unknown Chicago artist named Tristan Meinecke.
You don't know him.
If you're of a certain age and grew up in Chicago, you might remember his wife: Angel Casey, a familiar voice on 1940s radio and later a host of local children's TV in the 1950s. There are still black-and-white photos of her beaming Doris Day-like presence around the house. But, really, the place is a shrine to Meinecke, with seemingly every wall and hallway and corner and alcove and kitchen nook and bathroom graced with his art. He painted and sculpted more than 700 works; indeed, he created so much art, he and Casey moved here from their Lincoln Park home because it had tons of space, and the dance hall could serve as Meinecke's studio.
He painted there every day, but lived less than a decade more: In 2004 he died of heart failure. He was 88. Casey (who died in 2007) survived him; he also left two sons, Brad, who is now 58, and Scott, now 51.
But, remarkably, Meinecke left almost 275 works of art, so many of which were enormous, abstract, wall-size canvases that his sons, who later moved into their parents' Rogers Park home, did not know what to do with that much surrealism. Their father, despite having been the subject of a retrospective at the School of the Art Institute, despite having influential admirers and selling more than 500 works, had not left much of a reputation.
"On his deathbed, my father looked me square in the face and said two things: 'I never cheated on your mother. And please take care of my art,'" said Brad, who runs a small advertising-placement business.
But what do you do with a house full of art that has no clear market or audience? Particularly when it's art from a man who was so perpetually angry he alienated most of the art-world professionals who could have helped him when he was alive? And the art is often ominous, gritty and too unnerving for many living room walls? And the art was never properly appraised? And like your father, you'd prefer to work outside the art world anyway?
Soon after his father's death, Brad told the Chicago Reader that some of his father's pieces would be sold at auction and others would be placed in museums. But that never happened, and the handful of serious art dealers who did stop by the house to check out the gigantic cache never stayed long, the brothers recall.
And so, in the decade since Meinecke's death, this house in Rogers Park remained choked with art.
Then last year, Brad, who says he hates his bank and his bank hates him, learned that the house was in jeopardy: He had not paid the mortgage in a while, and now the bank had initiated foreclosure proceedings. And so, with the looming possibility of having to vacate (the situation is now in the hands of lawyers, with no court date set), he and Scott hatched a new plan: Rather their drag their father's artwork around or leave it to an indeterminate future in a storage unit, why not just open their doors to the public and ask anyone who cares:
What would you pay for a Tristan Meinecke?
For the next two weeks, from Friday until Feb. 21, on weekday nights and all day on weekends — by appointment only (tmeinecke.com) — they'll likely find out. If you're interested, the Meinecke brothers will show you their father's old studio, his basement and plenty of his art.
"What will it take in? Well, price is important," Brad said, "but if someone will take care of the work, if they'll love it, that speaks louder. This is family heritage." And, to be frank, they have no idea what it's all worth. But they have a good story. They know that's worth something.
A couple of weeks ago, Brad and Scott Meinecke greeted me at their front door. In the foyer were stacks of fliers for their two-week "Resurrection of Tristan Meinecke" open house, promising a glimpse of "the xcavated studio of Chicago's forgotten lunatic genius." Scott's face, wide and friendly, was caked in soot from preparing the basement. Brad, who has a considerable potbelly, thinning hair combed straight back and a boisterous, back-slapping, party-time vibe, struck me as the quintessence of the used-car salesman stereotype.
I told him this.
He chuckled and agreed, and asked if the smoke bothered me. Despite walls covered with original paintings that he was preparing to hopefully sell, the living room was thick with a cigarette haze as the Meineckes and members of the Underground Multiplex, a local arts group that specializes in promoting on-the-fringes artists, busily prepared for any prospective buyers. I couldn't hide my green face, so Brad told me to follow him, walked into his smoke-free office, sat behind his desk, then lit the unlit cigarette he had been carrying.
His office was his father's studio.
The floor was littered with Coke bottle caps and stacks of old vinyl records, papers and photo albums. There were Old Milwaukee empties on a ledge, and an old radio softly played classic rock. But also, art was everywhere, propped against the wall, propped against more art. Within several feet of the desk I noted: two walls full of painted nudes, some small, some as tall as a wall; an old tractor hood that Meinecke had cleverly hammered into a 5-foot-tall face resembling Jesus Christ's; tarps that Meinecke found in the trash, fused to a canvas and painted; a chorus line of mannequins, butchered into pieces, the stumps painted in blood reds.
After their father died, the Meinecke brothers found some of this work in the center of his studio and stored it in the basement, which would occasionally flood. And so they built a modest platform for it, an island for art.
Cringe if you'd like, but they would be the first to admit: They never claimed to be art preservationists. Behind his desk, Brad sat back the way you might in a movie. Before he showed me around, he wanted to explain a few things, set the stage: His father grew up in Ann Arbor, Mich., and studied art at the University of Michigan, where his grandfather, Bruno, was a leading scholar of Latin. His father moved to Chicago in the 1940s and met his mother at a restaurant. When he spotted her, he stood up and announced to the restaurant, "This is the only woman I will ever marry!"
He was a very loving, gentle father, Brad said. "But he was also a lunatic and had a bad habit of punching (curators and dealers who were) good for his career. We'd call him 'bipolar' now. My dad would obsess. He would work two or three weeks straight in his studio. He would just stay in his studio the whole time, constantly creating, which is when he was jovial. Then he'd bomb out for five days in a row."
Brad said his father, for a while, made a good living on his art: He sold fairly well, taught art out of their home in Lincoln Park, then, for a decade or so, put aside creating art and began practicing as an unlicensed architect, but eventually returned to art. Scott told me later: "Dad was a very frustrated guy who could not handle criticism too well."
When their father died, the Meinecke brothers said, they did everything wrong with their father's art. "Being a brash person, I thought I could conquer the art world with it," Brad said. "But the art world is crazed, and I made a lot of amateurish mistakes." For instance, they invited several gallery owners to the house and, though they lacked the precedent of significant auction sales or professional appraisal, slapped price tags on everything.
They asked $10,000, $20,000 for pieces.
One local art house the Meineckes hit up was Michigan Avenue's Richard Gray Gallery. Said administrative director Suzy Wegmann (who was not at Gray when the Meineckes started fishing and spoke generally): "We always get calls from people who, out of the blue, had a piece of artwork fall into their lap and have no idea what they have but suspect it's valuable. They think there's a Picasso in their attic. And they don't know where to begin, don't have a price precedent and don't have documentation. It rarely turns out the way they expect."
The Meineckes grew up around the creative side, not the business side. On a wall across from the desk was a long, eerily beautiful sculpture of sorts, one of the works that Tristan Meinecke called "split-levels," meaning: There's a painting on a canvas but also one or two layers of paintings in front of it, punched though to reveal the canvas. Swirls of colors on top of swirls of colors. Jagged, gaping holes throughout.
I asked how much. Brad said to give him a reasonable offer. I pulled a random number from the air: $5,000.
"It's yours."
The photographer beside me said: "How about $1,000?" And Brad said: "You're closer. Let's have coffee."
Walking around the home of Tristan Meinecke, the first thing you realize is that the artist never settled into a groove, never selected a distinct path. Ignore the giant wagon-wheel chandelier hanging in the main living room/gallery space. He didn't make that. Though he might have. Surrounding the room, and leading you down hallways and down stairwells and into back bedrooms, are what look like the works of a man who wanted to try every major 20th-century painting style. Hung on the home's wood-paneled walls are grids that recall the colorful checkerboards of Mondrian (only much cruder); paintings with thick black lines that suggest abstract work as seen from behind broken stained-glass windows. There are Jackson Pollock-ish splashes and dribbles of color. There are more serene light watercolors. There are sweet scenes of lopsided wooden neighborhoods and snowy pastoral fields that recall midcentury magazine illustration. There are Rothko-like geometric swatches (only much, much darker). And there are works that resemble circuit boards, Cubist figures, bits of realism, sketches, a still life or two, even a cute painting of a horse.
What there is not is a clear sense of when he painted what, the shape of a career or even a sense if Meinecke was great, skilled or merely prolific. Said Brad: "I think there are two reasons he never caught on. He fought with everyone. And he worked in so many idioms. I remember dealers at our house who would ask him to paint 'five more like this,' then he would tell them he already did that and moved on. He hated being pigeonholed."
Late in his life, Meinecke was championed by John Corbett, a well-regarded Chicago gallery owner and curator who organized Meinecke's 2003 retrospective at an SAIC gallery.
But even Corbett says now: "Some of the work was powerful and quite nasty. But what was uniquely his were the split-levels, which came about because he smashed a work with a hammer, then wondered what if he layered other paintings in the same space. He was very capable, with a natural facility, the kind of guy you could hate because he could walk in and do anything better than anyone else. But he was not ambitious and was a difficult guy who, I think, wanted acclaim but would not commit to the struggle it took to develop any certain technique."
As Brad and I walked through the home, we stopped again and again before work that suggested a kind of generalized frustration: a colorless split-level of a man carrying a suitcase that hinted at the archetypal desperate "Man in the Gray Flannel Suit"; an angry collage of 1940s images of an idealized domestic life; a series of colors, swirling out of control, titled "Windy City"; a painting made using several scoops of fresh tar that Meinecke had gathered into a bucket while Chicago road crews worked on the streets of Lincoln Park.
What does it mean?
We stopped before a split-level: Dark outer layers gradually revealed a clear, sunny sky. "I think dad was thinking about creation when he made this," Brad said. He meant "creation" as in the creation of all things, earth, sky, ocean, etc. But to me it looked like an avant-garde ad for Zoloft. Brad led me into the basement.
The stairwell was lined with rows of paintings of gaunt, haunted faces; at the bottom, a large, pale vampiric man grinned: "Maybe that's the face of my father's insanity," Brad said. He reached for a disc-shaped painting of a moon-faced man and added: "But this one: Curly Howard, I think." Nearby, leaning against a post was an almost 5-foot assemblage of mannequin parts that had the air of a nightmare — or perhaps that was the brutally hot basement, its furnace throwing out waves of stifling heat. Crystal Eidson, Brad's girlfriend, in what almost felt like an act of air-clearing, walked to a far wall and pulled away layers of paintings to reveal a long, horizontal abstraction of a city grid, broken by flashes of Loop-like architecture and cheerful blue sky.
But then, they're a hopeful couple: Eidson, who helped get the ball rolling on the open house, told me that she's already looked into the possibility of Tristan Meinecke postcards, coffee mugs, refrigerator magnets.
Upstairs, in the area behind the living room, Scott sat at the kitchen table. He lives back here; Brad lives upstairs. He choked up discussing his father, the future of his art and the house. Like Brad, he's convinced that their father's depression was part of his talent. And like Brad, he says he doesn't have a total sales estimate in mind. He just wants to see their father get his due: "My ideal scenario is some gallery dealer comes into his house, walks through these rooms and says that they'll buy it all. And display it, rotating through the pieces. But that's a perfect scenario. I don't expect that, and I couldn't get rid of everything."
He reaches for a gentle, nostalgic painting of a boy and his father fishing from a small boat, an actual Meinecke family memory. "I'm keeping this," he said. "Besides, what would I ask for it? I have no idea."
Twitter @borrelli


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Why Eat Seafood? Take the "Eat More Fish" Challenge
When scientists compare diets around the globe, the healthiest have one thing in common: lots of seafood. People in Iceland, for example, have the world's highest per capita consumption of seafood—a stunning 220 pounds per year. Icelanders also have one of the longest life expectancies of any nationality—nearly 81 years. Fish isn't the only reason, but it helps. What makes seafood healthy? First, it's a lean protein option, with very little saturated fat. Also, the fat it does contain is mostly good-for-you omega-3 fatty acids, polyunsaturated fats that have been shown to protect against heart disease and some forms of cancer; reduce blood pressure; and help control inflammation.
Here in the U.S., we barely eat 16 pounds of seafood, on average, each year (our average life expectancy is 78 years). That's one reason why the 2010 Dietary Guidelines made the important step of singling out seafood, recommending two servings per week in place of beef, pork, or poultry. As for omega-3s, the FDA hasn't yet set a Reference Daily Intake (RDI). But the USDA suggests the average person with a 2,000-calorie diet should get 1.75g of EPA and DHA—subsets of omega-3 that are most abundant in fish—each week. That equals about 250mg per day. (A 3.5-ounce serving of striped bass has almost four times that recommended amount.)
Your challenge this month is to eat fish at least twice a week. If you're already doing that, focus on trying new, sustainable species. What if you're vegetarian? Find other ways to get omega-3 fatty acids.


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Imagine being trapped inside a Disney movie and having to learn about life, language, and emotion mostly from animated characters dancing across a screen of color. A fantasy? A nightmare?
Actually, it's the real-life story of Owen Suskind, who is the son of the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Ron Suskind and his irrepressible wife, Cornelia.
Owen is also a boy with autism, which now affects an astonishing one in every one hundred children. While America's two million autistic people are just as diverse as the wider population, many possess a subtle weave of gifts and challenges that, year by year, are revealing underlying—and often unrecognized—capacities of the human mind. What the journey of this boy and his family powerfully reveals: how, in darkness, we literally need stories to survive.
Here's how this survival story begins. Just shy of his third birthday, a seemingly typical, chatty child became mute. He suddenly didn't sleep or eat, and cried inconsolably. His only solace: the Disney animated movies he loved before the autism struck. But they had changed, too—they'd become gibberish, because the boy's ability to understand speech had also vanished. So he memorized them, dozens of them, based on sound alone. What follows are a series of startling breakthroughs, as, for years, the family began to communicate with their lost son in movie dialogue. Recite one line, he'd look you in the eye and recite the next. But was he understanding?
His parents dove down "Alice in Wonderland's rabbit hole," as one autism specialist said, "to rescue a child." But it soon became unclear who rescued whom, as they and their older son, Walt, literally had to become animated characters, forced to contemplate the deepest meanings of iconic myths—the stories people have long told themselves to make their way in the world—just to keep up. Because a startling truth began to take shape across a frenetic, harrowing, raucous decade: in the land of imagination, a "left behind" boy, murmuring under his breath, was king. The creator of worlds.
In fact, their young son had invented a language to express love and loss, the bonds between brothers, the nature of beauty, and the true meaning of the words "happily ever after."
At its core, this brilliantly crafted narrative—written by the father, but shaped by his wife and children—isn't about autism or Disney, though you'll never view either one quite the same, again. It's the story of a family's resilience when their world is turned upside down. It's about perseverance and hope.
A child disappeared into confusion, frustration, and silence. But deep inside his dark cave of isolation, he and his family began to dig for diamonds, working year by year, trial by trial, on a most improbable project: to find a way each of us can learn to animate our lives.
And live our most fervent dreams, whatever unexpected shape they take.
Reviews of Life, Animated
"Displays virtuosity in capturing the intimate realities of life in a household dominated by autism… Mr. Suskind's honesty is striking and deeply admirable."– New York Times
"This is the book that readers who have no one in their lives affected by autism and who would otherwise never it pick up should definitely read. Eyes will tear. Hearts will cheer. In these pages, Owen is every reader's son."— USA Today
"This is a wonderful book, whether or not you know a person with autism."St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Buy Life, Animated at: Amazon, Barnes & Noble,


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The 55+ BC Games are coming to Abbotsford in 2022.
The announcement was confirmed on Tuesday afternoon by the BC Seniors Games Society. The Games will run from Aug. 23 to 27 at various sporting venues across the city.
It marks another high profile sporting event for Abbotsford, as the city has also hosted the BC Summer Games in 2004 and 2016, the BC Disability Games in 2002 and the 2006 BC Seniors Games (now known as the 55+ BC Games).
The 55+ BC Games is an annual, multi-sport competition celebrating active and healthy seniors. With five days of competition and cultural events, the 55+ BC Games attracts more than 3,000 athletes who participate in over 23 sports. Participants travel from across the province to experience the competition and camaraderie of the annual Games.
The sports showcased at the event include: archery, badminton, bocce, bridge, cribbage, cycling, darts, dragon boat racing, equestrian, five-pin bowling, floor curling, golf, hockey, ice curling, lawn bowling, mountain bike racing, pickleball, slo-pitch, soccer, swimming, tennis, track and field and whist.
"I wish to congratulate the City of Abbotsford on their successful bid to host the 2022 55+ BC Games," stated BC Seniors Games president Cindy Simpson. "Our society and membership are looking forward to attending the games in Abbotsford area once again."
In 2017, an Economic Impact study found that the 55+ BC Games provide an impact of over $3.3 million to the host community. In addition, Host communities benefit from the development of capacity to host large multi-sport events by training volunteers and improved infrastructure through the Games Legacy program.
For more on the event, visit 55plusbcgames.org.


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Irene: Maybe Not The Storm Of The Century, But Lots Of Damage
Hurricane Irene is gone, but she won't be forgotten anytime soon.
As NPR's Larry Abramson said today on Morning Edition, "Irene did not turn out to be the storm of the century" and many beach towns "were stunned by how lucky they were."
But Irene also led to more than 20 deaths, cut the power to more than 5 million homes and businesses (many are still without electricity), forced the cancellation of about 11,000 flights and caused an estimated $7 billion in damages, according to the consulting firm Kinetic Analysis Corp.
Among the places where it's going to be days, or longer, before things are back to normal: Vermont. Though well inland, Irene's heavy rains caused extensive flooding across the state. OnMorning Edition, Vermont Public Radio's Ross Sneyd said "when the storm came to Vermont and settled over the mountains, it just dropped buckets and buckets of rain" — 4 to 7 inches in just a few hours.
There's much more about what's happening in Vermont at VPR's website.
To the west in northern New York State and down the Hudson Valley, there's also been flooding and extensive power outages, as North Country Public Radio reports.
Other post-hurricane headlines this morning:
-- In North Carolina, "Irene Could Leave Many Without Power For Weeks." ( Raleigh's News & Observer)
-- "Hatteras Island Cut Off When N.C. 12 Is Washed Out."( The Virginian-Pilot)
-- In New Jersey, "Many ... Roads Remain Closed By Flooding."( The Star-Ledger)
-- "Storm Damage Largely Spares" New York City.( The New York Times)
-- Around Albany, N.Y., "Massive Flooding Left In Irene's Wake." ( Albany Times Union)
Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.


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Welcome to the iPhone Creativity blog! The purpose of this blog is to explore the exciting new world of iPhone Photography! Showing examples of images created and processed entirely using an iPhone (or iPad) and iPhone Apps! It is a … Continue reading
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Inside the iPhone 5s
Mission Accomplished
Amidst long midnight lineups and rumors of supply shortages, we here at have managed to get our hands on Apple's latest entry to the smartphone market: the iPhone 5s.
Phone in-hand, we did what any self-respecting technology company would do – destroy it (carefully). Follow us along today as we dive into what's new and exciting this time around, including the A7 64-bit ARM CPU and the mysterious M7 motion co-processor.
The Design Wins
Since our good friends at iFixit are located in Australia, they got their phones in before we did. On Thursday night we spent time with their team helping them identify some of the device wins we could seek out from the pictures they sent us.
At first glance we're seeing a lot of familiar components with the major standouts being the new A7 processor and two new MEMS devices. We are also seeing a new power management IC by Dialog Semiconductor and a new audio codec and class D amplifier by Cirrus Logic. Here are some of the components that were difficult to discern.
The M7 Co-Processor
The M7 is a new direction for Apple – in an effort to reduce power consumption, the M7 chip is dedicated to collecting and processing accelerometer, gyroscope and compass data. That being said, The M7 has been a difficult chip to locate on the board and rumors have been going around about the lack of a discrete M7 chip inside the iPhone 5s. All expectations up to now were pointing to a stand-out chip as seen below at the Apple Town Hall event.
Luckily, we've been able to locate the M7 in the form of the NXP LPC18A1. The LPC1800 series are high-performing Cortex-M3 based microcontrollers. This represents a big win for NXP. We had anticipated the M7 to be an NXP device based on input from industry analysts and our partners and we are happy to see this to be the case.
We did some poking around on the NXP website, looking at their LPC range of products; and we couldn't find any specific part that matched the look of the LPCA1, particularly the 30-ball WLCSP packaging. So we've come to the tentative conclusion that this is likely a customised LPC18xx chip built for Apple, similar to those we've seen from Dialog and Cirrus over the years (A1 stands for Apple-1?).
The M7 is dedicated to processing and translating the inputs provided to it by the discrete sensors; the gyroscope, accelerometer and electro magnetic compass mounted throughout the main printed circuit board. Traditional Apple techniques lead us to believe that these discrete sensors are STMicroelectronics for the accelerometer and the gyroscope while the electro magnetic compass would again be an Asahi Kasei Microdevices (AKM). We have since confirmed the compass to be AKM's AK8963 and the gyroscope to be STMicroelectronics. But to our surprise the accelerometer is actually a design win for Bosch Sensortech with their BMA220 3-axis accelerometer (the first Bosch we've ever seen in an Apple product). We dive deeper into the M7 and its children in the next section.
The M7′s children; a 3-Axis Accelerometer, a 3-Axis Gyroscope and a Compass IC
The previously unknown MEMS devices that had us so interested when we first cracked open the iPhone 5s one with markings B361LP and another B329.
The first is a 3-Axis Accelerometer. Based upon the die markings observed in the 2mm x 2mm device, the first unknown MEMS device has been ID'd as a Bosch Sensortech BMA220 3-axis accelerometer. This is the first time in our experience looking at Apple products that we see a Bosch MEMS device included. Previously this has been a socket dominated exclusively by STMicroelectronics. Great socket win Bosch!
The second is a 3-Axis Gyroscope. This device with package markings B329 has been identified as an STMicroelectronics 3-axis gyroscope, as expected.
Holding the compass socket for another round is AKM's AK8963 3-axis electronic compass IC. The AK8963 combines a magnetic sensors to detect X, Y, and Z axis, a sensor driving circuit, arithmetic circuit and signal amplifier chain.
The A7 Processor
The processor this time around is Apple's new A7, a 64-bit system-on-chip ARM. Our good friends at Anandtech have some excellent commentary on the ins and outs of this new device: A7 SoC Explained.
We have confirmed through early analysis that the device is fabricated at Samsung's Foundry and have confirmed the process type and node in the next section. External die, package photo, top metal die photo and package markings shown below. The last picture… drum roll… Transistor Level Die Photo.
The A7 does use Samsung's 28-nm process
Earlier in the day we established from the look of the die that the A7 was manufactured by Samsung. In the meantime our guys have been grafting away in the lab, and came to the "boring" conclusion that the chip looked exactly the same as the last one. The devil is in the details, however, and we have to do some measurements to see the difference.
Below is an electron microscope image of a cross-section of a group of transistors in the A6 (APL0598) chip, fabbed in the Samsung 32-nm high-k-metal gate (HKMG) process. For convenience we have measured ten, so the dimension of the "contacted gate pitch" (a standard industry measure) is 123 nm.
Now if we look at a similar image of the A7 (APL0698), and we see that the contacted gate pitch is 114 nm. So, even allowing for measurement error (we figure +/- 5nm), we're pretty sure that we see a shrink, and that the A7 is made on the same process as the new Samsung Exynos 5410, the 28-nm HKMG process. That doesn't sound much, a mere 4 nm, but again if you do the math and remember that we're talking area shrink, not linear dimensions, then 28^2 divided by 32^2 (784/1024) comes out at about 77% of the area for the equivalent functionality. Or, given that the A7 is 102 mm^2 compared with 97 mm^2 for the A6, more functions in a slightly bigger area.
Now we have a delayered sample as well so that we can see what that functionality is – see above!
The Cameras
Which is preferable, more pixels or a sensor with higher sensitivity? We all would like to have both, however at some point camera system and chip designers have to turn the knob towards one or the other. Apple has opted to stand on an 8 Mp resolution for the 5S iSight camera, but have increased the active pixel array area by 15%. With the help of a larger f/2.2 aperture, the system delivers a 33% increase in light sensitivity.
The iSight camera has DNL markings which are consistent with the markings on the camera modules housing the Sony IMX145 we saw in the iPhone 5 and 4s. The iPhone 5S 8 Mp iSight camera module is 8.6 mm x 7.8 mm x 5.6 mm thick. The new iSight camera module has been refreshed with a custom 1.5 µm pixel pitch stacked (Exmor-RS) Sony sensor.
The side-view X-ray image shows us what is now conventional packaging for Apple's iSight cameras: a ceramic chip carrier with a back-mounted, back-illuminated CMOS image sensor (CIS) chip. Bump bonding is used to connect the die signal pads to the chip carrier lands.
A decap and quick peek through our microscope shows the telltale signs of a Sony Exmor-RS sensor. We first saw Sony's stacked CMOS image sensor chips (using through-silicon vias -TSVs) in the 8 Mp ISX014 from a Fujitsu tablet, and then in the 13 Mp IMX135 from the Samsung Galaxy S4 primary camera (The CIS is stacked on the image signal processor – ISP).
We've confirmed that the FaceTime camera chip is fabricated by OmniVision.
New Power Management IC and a new audio codec and class D amplifier
As we mentioned earlier, we're seeing a lot of familiar components inside the iPhone 5s. The major standouts being the new A7 processor and two new MEMS devices. We are also seeing a new power management IC by Dialog Semiconductor and a new audio codec and class D amplifier by Cirrus Logic. The Power Management IC by Dialog Semiconductor has the part number 338S1216-A2. The new parts by Cirrus are numbered as 338S1202 for the Class D audio amplifier and 338S1201 for the Audio Codec. Note that the audio codec is ~30% smaller than the codec inside the iPhone 5.
The Wi-Fi SoC
Contained within this module is the BCM43342. This specific die, we have not seen before. The iPhone 5 and several other smartphones on the market employ the BCM4334. The Broadcom BCM4334/BCM43342 is a single chip device with integrated IEEE 802.11 a/b/g and single-stream IEEE 802.11n MAC/baseband/radio, Bluetooth 4.0, and FM radio receiver. It is designed to be used with external 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz front-end modules, which include power amplifiers, T/R switches and optional low noise amplifiers.
The 4g LTE Modem by Qualcomm
Here we have the Qualcomm MDM9615M 4G LTE modem. This device utilizes a two-chip solution in the form of a Samsung DRAM to retain carrier specific information and a Samsung-fabricated LTE baseband processor. This has been quite a a popular option recently as we've seen this device in over a dozen unique smartphones this year alone.
The RF and PA Design Wins
The chips that deliver the RF capabilities of a phone tend to be over shadowed by more consumer-friendly specifications like the number of GB of storage, or the clock speed of a processor. However, they are critical to the user experience of the device. Because of the nature of radio frequencies, they also require a complex number of different components to work together in harmony – or more accurately, without interfering with one another. Our friends at Barclays have done a thorough job at identifying the RF design wins inside the iPhone 5s:
- RF Micro RF3763 Power Amplifier-Duplexer (PAD) for B5 / 8 Dual PAD
- Skyworks SKY77572 Band 18/19/20 Power Amplifier Device
- Skyworks SKY77810 2G/EDGE Power Amplifier Module
- Avago A792503 Band 25/3 Power Amplifier Device
- Skyworks SKY77496 Band 13/17 Power Amplifier Device
- TriQuint TQF6414 Band 1/4 Dual Power Amplifier Device
Other Design Wins
As already stated in collaboration with iFixit, below is a list of some of the other design wins on the iPhone 5s' two-sided circuit board:
- The touchscreen controller is Broadcom BCM5976A0KUB2G
- The LTE Modem is Qualcomm MDM9615M
- The LTE/HSPA+/CDMA2K/TDSCDMA/EDGE/GPS transceiver is Qualcomm WTR1605L
- The RF power management IC is Qualcomm PM8018
- The NAND flash is SK Hynix H2JTDG8UD3MBR 128 Gb (16 GB)
- TriQuint TQM6M6224
- Apple 338S1216
- Texas Instruments 37C64G1
- Skyworks 77810
- Skyworks 77355
- Avago A790720
- Avago A7900
- Apple 338S120L


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Real World DC: Episode 14 Breakdown
This is it. The end.
The last Real World DC recap I'm ever going to write (at least til' Real World 30: Return to DC.)
So let's skip the pleasantries and just get it on- I'm sure you guys are sick enough of them, the show, or my recaps.
Maybe all of the above.
Drama In DC
Everybody Is Artsy Fartsy
After an entire episode that featured the cast doing nothing but good for the community- why not dedicate an episode where the cast does nothing but express their artistic side? It makes me wonder how would the show be received if instead of weekly drama- the cast would fit a pre-determined theme: one episode they are really artsy, in another they are social activists, in another they could be all fratty and party all over DC.
Then again that was pretty much the theme they chose for this entire season and pretty much the franchise.
Anyways this week the cast is getting their art on. Callie is organizing a gallery exhibition featuring her photography, Andrew's paintings, and Emily's poetry. Why not have Josh and Wicked Liquid perform in the space? Why not have Mike do some interpretive dance? That's pretty much how he looks when he fights flirts with other guys. If only Ty had an artistic side to him- but alas that's not the role for the angry black man on The Real World.
Callie is very concerned about Andrew's ability to finish his paintings in time for the gallery show- and she has good reason too. As we have already seen, he's not the most studious of artists.
Andrew complains that painting takes longer than photography- and he's right, of course the fact you are complaining about it while walking to Public Bar doesn't really strike me as a person who really has their priorities straight.
Andrew manages to finish the work in time but just barely- the paint is still wet on his work as he brings it over to the gallery.
The Art Show is a success and Callie manages to sell several of her photos, and provides the most unenthusiastic reaction while doing so.
The Panda Is Tamed But What Now?
Part of the reason Andrew's been procrastinating more than usual is because he's absolutely smitten with his new girlfriend Andrea. Hey if that was my girlfriend I would be absolutely there too. The summer is almost over however and the two face the same decision every summer camp hook-up has faced: what to do when everybody goes back home?
Andrew at first has cold feet about the idea of Andrea moving to Colorado with him but he eventually comes to his senses that this is one banging chick and the two make plans to live together after the show.
Happily Panda After.
Mike Gets More Political Than Ever
After arriving for his HRC job interview in shorts and a t-shirt, Mike finally puts on a nice suit like all the other Hill staffers in the city and heads to Capital Hill to pay Congressman Jim Moran a visit. He mentions how the Congressman from Virginia's 8th district (hey I live there!) has a 100% voting record with HRC; thus the visit is nothing but a cakewalk for the HRC delegation.
I noticed the MTV crew did a great job condensing Moran's quotes by cutting them up over a reaction shot of Mike. The edit job is worse than most campaign ads I've seen.
As the two part ways Mike reflects that he may have a future in politics. I think he does have a bright future- on THE RUINS 2!
In additional Hill lobbying, Mike has the big HRC National Dinner to attend. Good thing he made the smart choice of going out to Russia House the night before for heavy drinking and flirting with guys. Another good thing his idea is flirting is to fight with them- and ends up with a cut on his face along with a hangover the next day. Nothing a little cover-up can't fix however.
So Mike attends the dinner with his father, Mike Sr. (I didn't know there was a Mike Sr.), and they are amongst hundreds of others (including Lady Gaga, the cast of Glee, and my pal Suburban Sweetheart.)
Of course MTV does their best to make Mike appear to be more connected to the event by constantly cutting Mike's reactions against every moment of Obama's keynote speech.
The next day Mike, the Dad, and the rest of the cast march in the National Equality March. Fresh off the dinner and an inspiring Obama speech, Mike is all energized and ready to be proud of who he is. Along the trail he runs across an Anti-March protester and tells him off in a rather angry fashion.
While the moment itself could of been portrayed as a proud moment of Mike standing up for what he believes in, his father takes it a step higher and notes that Mike could of been more understanding and tolerant towards the opposition. Mike Sr. and son walk back to the protester to apologize and listen to his argument.
It was by far the classiest moment all season.
The Long Goodbye
Well now that the summer is over it is time to wrap things up at the house, which only means one thing: truth or dare night!
After watching The s#!t they should have shown special it was good to see more debauchery before saying goodbye to DC.
Why does MTV always draw out the goodbyes when it comes to their reality shows? When I was watching the Jersey Shore the cast left one-by-one, like they were on some sort of staggered time-table. God forbid we have one emotional group hug and they all go off in seven separate ways- we need the goodbye sequence to last half the final show!
Well one-by-one the cast leaves the house. My big joke was that Ty lived in B'more and really just had to take the Red Line north to Glenmont. Weird thing was Emily, who lives in the midwest, is the one seen walking to the Metro as the series closes.
And just like that it's all over.
Memorable Quotes
Where Mike demonstrates his commitment to Tanner: "I'm gonna be faithful, but I'm gonna flirt."
Emily's best guess on why Mike got a cut on his face: "You couldn't make out so you decided to punch him?"
Andrew's Puppy Love Ending: "I definitely want her to live with me- in my Star Wars, X-Men fortress."
Andrew explains why I will always play Truth of Dare the last night I stay in the Real World House: "Truth or Dare is a guilt free way for the girls to get with the guys in the house."
Final Verdict
Mike: Provided some of the best moments of the season and really didn't cause that much drama.
Callie: Besides being called fat, Callie remained level headed through-out the season, just as we expected. In this mess of characters you can't help but like her the best.
Andrew: He lived up to his expectations in the first episode and it makes perfect sense that MTV casts a crazy kid that's even more crazy about girls- only to find him fall in love in DC.
Josh: We didn't see him a whole lot except when he was rocking out or unleashing his beast- but we didn't disappoint in those few moments.
Emily: During some moments she was absolutely cool- during others she was as annoying as the rest of the cast.
Ty: He did a great job in his role as the token hot, angry, black dude. I should watch what I say however- he's also the one that's still an hour away from DC.
Ashley: I knew she was going to be trouble from the start and everywhere she went there was trouble.
Erika: While some things about her didn't surface in the show, she also didn't fail to bring on the drama.
Hey I Know That Place!
Rayburn Building: Home of Congressman Moran
Public Bar: Where to go when you should really be working on an art show.
Gallery Plan B: Where the Real World shows off their warez.
Russia House: Where flirting with guys is trying to punch them in the face.
Washington Convention Center: Site of the HRC National Dinner
Saki Asian Grille: Hey at least it's not Buca.
Final Word
Shout out to local DC band We Were Pirates, who's music was featured in tonight's and previous episodes. Their song "Don't Forget" was that tune you heard while . You can see a complete music breakdown here.
And with that I can finally have my Wednesday nights back. Oh you can now stop putting up with my breakdowns- because they are finished.
Back to ignoring MTV til Jersey Shore comes back on.


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If you are new to Linux, one of the first things that, probably, dizzied you was that the linux filesystem is nothing like the one you were used in Windows. The first thing a new Linux user should understand is that while in Windows each partition/device is it's own root (C: D: E:), in Linux every partition/device is mounted under the root directory ("/") and it is represented as a sub-directory. The second thing the new user should understand is the purpose of each directory contained under the / (root directory). In order to help you familiarize with it, in the next section I gave a description of each part (directory) of the root system. Don't worry, is not a complicated thing.
/ -root directory of your entire file system.
/bin/-executables needed during bootup, the shells, as well as most used commands (cp, mv, ls etc.) and other essential programs, shared by the system, the system administrator and the users.
/boot/-files used by the boot loader (the application that loads first when the computer is booted and if you have more than one OS on your computer, gives you the option to select one). Also stores the configuration files.
/dev/-device files. In Linux, hardware devices are represented as files with special properties (A file, as well as a hardware, can be read from and written to, isn't it so?)
/etc/-system configuration file (similar to the data in the Control Panel in Windows)
/home/-personal directories for common users. This directory also contains the user specific settings (for different programs) and the customization files.
/lib/-shared libraries required by system programs (similar -somehow- to Windows DLL files). This directory also contains the kernel modules
/media/-mount point for removable media (usb, sticks, cdrom). Any device/partition mounted in this directory will have a shortcut on the desktop.
/mnt/-mount points for temporarily mounted filesystem (hdd partitions, network shares).
/opt/-optional applications (extra and third party software, add-on packages)
/sbin/-system administration as well as maintenance and hardware configuration programs (not intended for use by general users)
/srv/-data files for particular service provided by this system
/tmp/-temporary files. This directory is cleared out at reboot.
/usr/-multi-user shared binaries and files (utilities, applications, libraries, documentation etc.). Similar, somehow, to Windows Program Files
/var/-variable files (log files, the mail queue, the print spooler area)
/root/-personal (home) directory of the system administrator (root user)
/proc/-virtual file system containing information about system resources (tracks the state of the operating system kernel and the processes running on your computer)
You can find extended information about the Linux File System on the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard webpage.


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The Regeneration Project is an interfaith ministry devoted to deepening the connection between ecology and faith. Our goal is to help people of faith recognize and fulfill their responsibility for the stewardship of creation. We do this through educational programs for clergy and congregations that achieve tangible environmental results and impact public policy.
The word "regeneration" has personal, biological and institutional significance. It is the process of spiritual, moral and ecological renewal. We seek to make a practical link between spiritual and ecological health. TRP envisions that people of faith will serve as the foundation for a national movement that addresses ecological issues from theological roots. Our purpose, therefore, is to expand and deepen this link between religious faith and action, particularly in regards to environmental protection.
The Regeneration Project is committed to a process of personal, institutional, and societal transformation starting at the grassroots level. We believe that addressing environmental concerns from a faith perspective merits our attention because the moral authority that religion carries is the necessary ingredient for wide social and political change. Without the engagement of the faith community the transformation of values will not happen. We see the need for more minds and hearts to change, but we recognize that there are many minds that will not be changed without practical proof. Congregations serving as examples can demonstrate the proof that something better is now possible. That practical proof of a better way – achieved through living our faith – is the heart of our grassroots organization.
TRP is inter-religious in scope, collegial in style, and concerned with rekindling our sources for ethical behavior in light of new ecological imperatives. We believe that (1) spiritually grounded people and religious institutions are a great resource in solving environmental problems, (2) spiritual rigor requires both spiritual roots and practical expression, and (3) people with vision, values, and commitment can make a difference.
Grounded in the above values and beliefs, we commit all of our current resources for the next few years to supporting the Interfaith Power & Light program. We believe that through grassroots outreach, interfaith collaboration, and responsible action based on shared values, people of faith can lead our society toward a new relationship with the earth…


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Reddit is a perfect breeding ground for Disney theories (a fact previously proven true with The Frozen Theory).
This time the proposal comes from reddit-user, OstrichMadeOfClay:
'In The Lion King, Mufasa is responsible for the drought.'
I thought this was worth exploring in more than 57 words, and the longer I looked, the more sense it made. So I present to you:
The Lion King Theory
Anybody who has been at least semi-concious since the mid-90s will know that the message at the heart of The Lion King is to respect the 'Circle of Life' and the life-cycles of nature.
During a classic early scene, Mufasa tells Simba that 'a king's time as ruler rises and falls like the Sun' and that one day 'the Sun will set on my time here, and will rise with you as the new king.'
He (of course) also says that when lions die they become food for the grass, which is eaten by the antelopes, so they 'are all connected in the great Circle of Life'.
This is one of two ways Mufasa hints at what he will become when he dies.
The another is after Simba's eventful trip to the elephant graveyard, when Mufasa show him the night sky and explains that 'the great kings of the past look down on us from those stars. So whenever you feel alone, just remember, those kings will always be there to guide you, and so will I.'
But when Mufasa dies he doesn't follow the traditional path.
Instead of going to join what Timon bluntly calls 'a bunch of royal dead guys watching us' he stays a bit closer to Earth to right the imbalance caused by Scar's treachery. And he does this in four ways.
Mufasa causes the drought
Mufasa's tragic death is followed by a crippling drought.
This has two results: first, it punishes Scar for his betrayal and makes it near-impossible for him to rule in place of Mufasa; second, it eventually causes Nala to widen her search for food, which is how she finds Simba.
Which brings us to two:
Mufasa manipulates the clouds
When Nala's tale of how bad things are at Pride Rock doesn't convince him to return, Mufasa pulls out the big guns.
First Mufasa appears to a certain loyal baboon, who offers to take Simba to his father.
Rafiki then shows Simba a reflective pool and teaches him a metaphorical lesson about Mufasa living within him. The irony is that Simba also sees the clouds above him, which is how Mufasa truly appears to Simba.
It's worth noting that Rafiki acknowledges that this is not how 'kings of the past' normally bow out, as he walks up to Simba and semi-flippantly declares: 'The weather! Very peculiar.'
But it has the desired effect, and Simba himself sees the thematic importance of weather as he says: 'The winds are changing.'
Indeed they are, because at three:
Mufasa brings the thunder (OK, lightning)
Simba's dramatic showdown with Scar is accompanied by violent bolts of lightning, which punctuate heated moments of tension in the scene.
It's almost as if Scar has angered someone, because every lie and threat that comes out of his mouth is answered by a vicious bolt from the sky; and when Scar attacks Simba, a fork of lightning flies incredibly close to them, but redirects towards the dry bushes below, starting a brush-fire. (Of course, lightning is usually attracted to a highest point, so there must be some interference for it to miss a big lightning-rod like Pride Rock.)
Of course, the fires caused by the lightning provide an appropriate backdrop to the film's climactic scenes; but once the fighting is over, they do requires a fourth act to set things right again:
Mufasa makes it rain
As soon as Scar is defeated, a heavy rain begins to fall; both quelling the fires that engulf Pride Rock, as well as providing nourishment to the now barren landscape.
Perhaps this is Mufasa attempting to compensate for Simba's task of rebuilding his dry and inhospitable kingdom. Still the rains don't fall forever, as Simba takes his place as the king of Pride Rock and roars at the heavens…
And balance is restored…
The End
Of course, there are such things as visual metaphors and pathetic fallacy, but I find it amazing that The Lion King is such a rich text that new readings can continue to be pulled from it.
Personally I think it's a smoother concept than Tarzan being Elsa's brother or even my own invention that the Disneyverse is one big computer, but what do you think? Was this an intended narrative or is this a through-line being drawn between unconnected dramatic elements?
Is it all just part of the Circle of Life?
(What, like I wasn't going to play the song?)


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|BC Ferries management - sailing away with your money.
There's no other way to describe BC Ferries' decision to pay new CEO Mike Corrigan $563,000 a year to run a monopoly service.
And to put the proverbial lipstick on a pig, BC Ferries thinks it's great news for long-suffering customers that they limited Corrigan's salary package to just 60% of what $1 million a year current CEO David Hahn has been making!
Even BC Transportation Minister Blair Lekstrom - who is ultimately responsible for this travesty - can't stomach that amount of money.
Not sure? Let me spell it out - this is completely unacceptable. And doing nothing about it - which so far is Lekstrom's plan - is more evidence the government is completely adrift.
Let's compare Corrigan's $563,000 to the salary of the top paid health care CEO in 2010 - Provincial Health Services Authority CEO Lynda Cranston - who made $390,110.
That's for a job with people's lives on the line - not passengers in a line for burgers and fries.
I think Cranston is also overpaid - but she still made $173,000 less than Corrigan.
The PHSA has a budget of over $1 billion annually and employs over 10,000 people, including doctors, specialists, medical technicians and other staff.
BC Ferries annual budget is about $757 million and has less than 5,000 employees.
I have nothing against Corrigan, who I've never met, nor do I blame him for making as much money as he can from BC Ferries.
But the owner of BC Ferries has a lot of nerve paying him this much - that would be the BC government, Premier Christy Clark - proprietor.