text:
The first part of my response to Gladwell's article in The New Yorker explained why principles, strategies and tactics of civil resistance are important for the future of digital activism. In this second part, I address Gladwell's arguments on high vs. low risk activism, weak vs. strong ties and hierarchies vs networks.
According to Stanford sociologist Doug McAdam, the civil rights movement represented "high-risk activism" which requires "strong-ties". By strong-ties, McAdam refers to the bonds of friendship, family, relationships, etc. These social ties appear to be a necessary condition for recruiting and catalyzing a movement engaged in high-risk activism. "What mattered more was an applicant's degree of personal connection to the civil-rights movement." Indeed, you're more likely to join a rally if your close friends are going. "One study of the Red Brigades, the Italian terrorist group of the nineteen-seventies, found that seventy per cent of recruits had at least one good friend already in the organization."
In contrast, Gladwell argues that "the platforms of social media are built around weak ties." The problem with evangelists of social media, according to him, is that they "believe a Facebook friend is the same as a real friend." In addition, while "social networks are effective at increasing participation," they only do so by "lessening the level of motivation that participation requires."
Gladwell then adds the "networks versus hierarchies argument" to further his point. Strategic nonviolent action requires organization, planning and authority structures. Social media, on the other hand, "are not about this kind of hierarchical organization." This is a "crucial distinction between traditional activism and its online variant," says Gladwell.
Facebook and the like are tools for building networks, which are the opposite, in structure and character, of hierarchies. Unlike hierarchies, with their rules and procedures, networks aren't controlled by a single central authority. Decisions are made through consensus, and the ties that bind people to the group are loose. This structure makes networks enormously resilient and adaptable in low-risk situations.
But it is simply a form of organizing which favors the weak-tie connections that give us access to information over the strong-tie connections that help us persevere in the face of danger. It shifts our energies from organizations that promote strategic and disciplined activity and toward those which promote resilience and adaptability. It makes it easier for activists to express themselves, and harder for that expression to have any impact.
I tried to summarize Gladwell's arguments in the diagram below and would be interested in feedback. The red arrow represents high-risk activism and the green low-risk. As per his argument, high-risk activism requires both strong ties and high levels of organization.
Gladwell makes a compelling case and one that I largely agree with, but not completely. Would the four colleague students who instigated the first wave of protests in North Carolina during the Winter of 1960 have turned down the opportunity to use email, SMS, Facebook or Twitter? Would their use of social media tools have caused their movement to fail? Would the strong-ties these students shared be diluted as a result of also being friends on Facebook? I personally doubt it, they would still have shown up at Woolworth.
Gladwell is right to distinguish between high-risk and low-risk activism but this is a false dichotomy. Not everyone in society faces the same kinds of risks, nor do they face the same levels of risk all the time. Total war in the Clausewitzian sense only holds true for thought-experiments. Indeed, a recent study study found that, "The average percentage of area covered by civil war […] is approximately 48%, but the average amount of territory with repeated fighting is considerably smaller at 15%."
So if communities face a range of risks that span from low to high, then one would want to leverage both strong-ties and weak-ties along with appropriate organizational forms, offline tactics and social media tools. This means that both networks and hierarchies are needed; and that neither organizational form need remain static over time since risks are not static. Indeed, an effective social movement needs organizations that promote strategic and disciplined activity and networks that promote resilience and adaptability. Both are absolutely key to the practice of strategic nonviolent action.
There's no doubt that the civil rights movement represented high-risk activism. Does this mean that the same methods used in the 1960s would work for high-risk activism in a country like Egypt, North Korea or even in Cambodia during the genocide that killed an estimated 1.2 to 1.7 million people? Can the US media of the 1960s really be compared to North Korean media? As my colleague David Faris noted in a recent email exchange on Gladwell's article,
The initial sit-ins may have been launched by a small group of people impervious to the danger, but they grew to 70,000 not only because close friends were doing it, but also because people saw acquaintances protesting, and decided that the level of risk required to participate had fallen. This is important because in the U.S. in 1960 the media were willing to report on these events. This is not the case across the authoritarian world, where news relayed by text and Twitter may be the only reliable source of information apart from your immediate circle of friends. By relaying information about the preferences of your weak ties, social media provide individuals with more accurate pictures of the preference-sets of other members of their community.
New social media tools don't dictate the organizational form of the movement, they simply create more options. So a hierarchical organization can very well use new media platforms to conduct their own highly centralized movement. It's just like the Ushahidi platform, it is a tool, not a methodology. If a group of protesters don't put any serious time into planning their campaigns, identifying key strategies and tactics, training, drafting contingency measures, fund raising, etc., then the presence of social media tools will not explain why their protests are ineffective. It would be too easy of an excuse.
Here's a graphic designed by my colleague Chris Blow that shows why technology is at most 10% of the solution (the context is Ushahidi but the principle applies more broadly). If a movement doesn't take on "all the other stuff", then it doesn't matter whether members are part of a network, a centralized organization, have weak-ties or strong-ties, or whether they are in a high-risk or low-risk environment. They are unlikely to succeed.


text:
We are frequently asked the sorts of questions you see below. Many of these are subject to myth and we've given you the actual facts. Myth: Safety cameras are just an easy way of making money for the police.Fact: Safety cameras are there to save lives and make the roads safer not to make money.
Neither the police nor any other partners within GoSafe make any profit from speed and red light fines. All fine revenue is passed to the Treasury. GoSafe is funded by a grant from the Welsh Government (WG) with the remainder of our operating costs being provided by means of a grant provided at the discretion of the Police and Crime Commissioners for Wales, based on receipts derived from motorists who attend diversionary courses, for example Speed Awareness Courses
Myth: Your operators are impersonating Police officers
Fact: GoSafe Casualty Reduction Officers are Police staff in Police vehicles.
They are directed in their duties by Police Sergeants/Inspectors. They record offences of speed, non-wearing of seatbelts and mobile phone use. Those offences are then processed via offices in North Wales and South Wales Police.
Myth: Safety cameras are hidden to catch motorists out and are placed where they will record the most speeding offences.
Fact: GoSafe place speed and red light cameras where people have been killed or injured, where excessive speeds have been recorded or at a Community Concern site.
Cameras are not hidden to catch drivers out or placed where they will record the most speeding offences. Cameras are there to encourage motorists to drive within the speed limit so the most successful cameras are those which record the LEAST number of offences not the most.
We publish the locations of all our fixed cameras and and also our core and community concern mobile cameras on our website. However, we ask motorists to drive within the speed limit at all times not just at camera locations.
Myth: Cameras are not used on the most dangerous roads.Fact: The Wales Road Casualty Reduction Partnership place speed and red light cameras where people have been killed or injured or where excessive speeds have been recorded. We can operate at road works, schools and areas of community concern throughout Wales.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
The Ronan Thompson Foundation, Max's Ring of Fire, and Grand Canyon University are teaming up! We are so excited to announce that on October 26th, we will be bringing a run to San Diego with the help of Grand Canyon University! Registration is already open at www.runtofightcancer.com and for all you Phoenix runners, GCU will have a "get on the bus package" that will include transportation from Phx to San Diego, hotel accommodation, and entry into the run. Details coming soon, be on the lookout.
Just for being loyal FB fans we would like to give a 10% discount to anyone who registers using code word "fightcancer". Make sure and share this to all your friends and family, particularly the ones in California :). We can't wait to see you all in San Diego!


text:
Almost nothing survives of the Old People. The radioactive rubble, of course, will endure for tens of thousands of years. And they left twisted metal and crumbling concrete. But of the people themselves, nothing. Save this one fragment of a letter, written in Anglish by a young man to his lover in Birmingham. He plans to visit her.
It is from this letter that we learn they had mastered matter transference. Perhaps they are not gone. Maybe they beamed to new homes in the stars. We only know this unnamed writer was coming to her in his "beamer".
Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fields to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here. For readers whose first language isn't English, it may (or may not) help you to know that beamer is slang for BMW, or more generically a cool car.
Fancy sharpening your skill with writing exercises? The Scrivener's Forge offers a new exercise every month to hone one aspect of your craft. Take a look at this month's exercise on character and action.


text:
From Andy Naselli's blog:
John Frame's 30 Suggestions for Theological Students and Young Theologians.
1. Consider that you might not really be called to theological work. James 3:1 tells us that not many of us should become teachers and that teachers will be judged more strictly. To whom much (biblical knowledge) is given, of them shall much be required.
2. Value your relationship with Christ, your family, and the church above your career ambitions. You will influence more people by your life than by your theology. And deficiencies in your life will negate the influence of your ideas, even if those ideas are true.
3. Remember that the fundamental work of theology is to understand the Bible, God's Word, and apply it to the needs of people. Everything else—historical and linguistic expertise, exegetical acuteness and subtlety, knowledge of contemporary culture, and philosophical sophistication—must be subordinated to that fundamental goal. If it is not, you may be acclaimed as a historian, linguist, philosopher, or critic of culture, but you will not be a theologian.
4. In doing the work of theology (the fundamental work, #3), you have an obligation to make a case for what you advocate. That should be obvious, but most theologians today haven't a clue as to how to do it. Theology is an argumentative discipline, and you need to know enough about logic and persuasion to construct arguments that are valid, sound, and persuasive. In theology, it's not enough to display knowledge of history, culture, or some other knowledge. Nor is it enough to quote people you agree with and reprobate people you don't agree with. You actually have to make a theological case for what you say.
5. Learn to write and speak clearly and cogently. The best theologians are able to take profound ideas and present them in simple language. Don't try to persuade people of your expertise by writing in opaque prose.
6. Cultivate an intense devotional life and ignore people who criticize this as pietistic. Pray without ceasing. Read the Bible, not just as an academic text. Treasure opportunities to worship in chapel services and prayer meetings, as well as on Sunday. Give attention to your "spiritual formation," however you understand that.
7. A theologian is essentially a preacher, though he typically deals with more arcane subjects than preachers do. But be a good preacher. Find some way to make your theology speak to the hearts of people. Find a way to present your teaching so that people hear God's voice in it.
8. Be generous with your resources. Spend time talking to students, prospective students, and inquirers. Give away books and articles. Don't be tightfisted when it comes to copyrighted materials; grant copy permission to anybody who asks for it. Ministry first, money second.
9. In criticizing other theologians, traditions, or movements, follow biblical ethics. Don't say that somebody is a heretic unless you have a very good case. Don't throw around terms like "another gospel." (People who teach another gospel are under God's curse.) Don't destroy people's reputations by misquoting them, quoting them out of context, or taking their words in the worst possible sense. Be gentle and gracious unless you have irrefutable reasons for being harsh.
10. When there is a controversy, don't get on one side right away. Do some analytical work first, on both positions. Consider these possibilities: (a) that the two parties may be looking at the same issue from different perspectives, so they don't really contradict; (b) that both parties are overlooking something that could have brought them together; (c) that they are talking past one another because they use terms in different ways; (d) that there is a third alternative that is better than either of the opposing views and that might bring them together; (e) that their differences, though genuine, ought both to be tolerated in the church, like the differences between vegetarians and meat-eaters in Romans 14.
11. If you get a bright idea, don't expect everybody to get it right away. Don't immediately start a faction to promote it. Don't revile those who haven't come to appreciate your thinking. Reason gently with them, recognizing that you could be wrong and arrogant to boot.
12. Don't be reflexively critical of everything that comes out of a different tradition. Be humble enough to consider that other traditions may have something to teach you. Be teachable before you start teaching them. Take the beam out of your own eye.
13. Be willing to reexamine your own tradition with a critical eye. It is unreasonable to think that any single tradition has all the truth or is always right. And unless theologians develop critical perspectives on their own denominations and traditions, the reunion of the body of Christ will never take place. Don't be one of those theologians who are known mainly for trying to make Arminians become Calvinists (or vice versa).
14. See confessional documents in proper perspective. It is the work of theology, among other things, to rethink the doctrines of the confessions and to reform them, when necessary, by the Word of God. Do not assume that everything in the confession is forever settled.
15. Don't let your polemics be governed by jealousy, as when a theologian feels bound to be entirely negative toward the success of a megachurch.
16. Don't become known as a theologian who constantly takes potshots at other theologians or other Christians. The enemy is Satan, the world, and the flesh.
17. Guard your sexual instincts. Stay away from Internet pornography and illicit relationships. Theologians are not immune from the sins that plague others in the church.
18. Be active in a good church. Theologians need the means of grace as much as other believers. This is especially important when you are studying at a secular university or liberal seminary. You need the support of other believers to maintain proper theological perspective.
19. Get your basic training at a seminary that teaches the Bible as the Word of God. Become well-grounded in the theology of Scripture before you go off (as you may, of course) to get firsthand exposure to nonbiblical thought.
20. Come to appreciate the wisdom, even theological wisdom, of relatively uneducated Christians. Don't be one of those theologians who always has something negative to say when a simple believer describes his walk with the Lord. Don't look down at people from what Helmut Thielicke called "the high horse of enlightenment." Often, simple believers know God better than you do, and you need to learn from them, as did Abraham Kuyper, for instance.
21. Don't be one of those theologians who get excited about every new trend in politics, culture, hermeneutics, and even theology and who think we have to reconstruct our theology to go along with each trend. Don't think you have to be a feminist, e.g., just because everybody else is. Most of the theologies that try to be culturally savvy are unbiblical.
22. Be suspicious of all trendiness in theology. When everybody jumps on some theological bandwagon, whether narrative, feminism, redemptive history, natural law, liturgy, liberation, postmodernism, or whatever, that's the time to awaken your critical faculties. Don't jump on the bandwagon unless you have done your own study. When a theological trend comes along, ask reflexively, "What's wrong with that?" There is always something wrong. It simply is not the case that the newest is the truest. Indeed, many new movements turn out to be false steps entirely.
23. Our system of doctoral-level education requires "original thought," but that can be hard to do, given that the church has been studying Scripture for thousands of years. You'll be tempted to come up with something that sounds new (possibly by writing a thesis that isn't properly theological at all in the sense of #3 above). Well, do it; get it out of the way, and then come back to do some real theology.
24. At the same time, don't reject innovation simply because it is innovative. Even more, don't reject an idea merely because it doesn't sound like what you're used to. Learn to distinguish the sound-look-feel of an idea from what it actually means.
25. Be critical of arguments that turn on metaphors or extrabiblical technical terms. Don't assume that each one has a perfectly clear meaning. Usually they do not.
26. Learn to be skeptical of the skeptics. Unbelieving and liberal scholars are as prone to error as anybody—in fact, more so.
27. Respect your elders. Nothing is so ill-becoming as a young theologian who despises those who have been working in the field for decades. Disagreement is fine, as long as you acknowledge the maturity and the contributions of those you disagree with. Take 1 Timothy 5:1 to heart.
28. Young theologians often imagine themselves as the next Luther, just as little boys imagine themselves as the next Peyton Manning or Kevin Garnett. When they're too old to play cowboys and Indians, they want to play Luther and the Pope. When the real Pope won't play with them, they pick on somebody else and say, "You're it." Look: most likely God has not chosen you to be the leader of a new Reformation. If he has, don't take the exalted title "Reformer" upon yourself. Let others decide if that is really what you are.
29. Decide early in your career (after some experimenting) what to focus on and what not to. When considering opportunities, it's just as important (perhaps more so) to know when to say no as to know when to say yes.
30. Don't lose your sense of humor. We should take God seriously, not ourselves, and certainly not theology. To lose your sense of humor is to lose your sense of proportion. And nothing is more important in theology than a sense of proportion.


text:
2 airlines get gadget green light
Passengers on Delta Air Lines and JetBlue will be the first in the country to use their Kindles, iPads and other electronic gadgets from gate to gate.
On Friday, FAA officials approved paperwork submitted by the two airlines a day earlier, when the agency announced it was relaxing long-standing restrictions on in-flight use of electronic devices.
Delta said its customers could immediately begin using devices in airplane mode throughout flights on its 550 mainline planes. "It's official!," the airline tweeted. "The FAA just approved @delta plans for PED customer use — effective immediately. #Below10KFeet"
JetBlue didn't push out a news release Friday out of respect for the shooting victims at Los Angeles International Airport, a spokeswoman said. But when asked for a comment, the airline said it was the first U.S. carrier to allow customers on its entire fleet to use personal devices.
"I'd like to thank the FAA and especially Administrator Michael Huerta for their adoption of the committee's recommendations and for moving very quickly to allow us to make this enhancement available to all JetBlue customers starting today," JetBlue president and CEO Dave Barger said in a statement.
American Airlines parent AMR Corp. submitted its paperwork Friday and was still awaiting approval, said spokeswoman Andrea Huguely.
The FAA's policy changes came after an advisory panel comprised of aviation and technology industry experts found that such gadgets pose no safety risks to commercial aircraft. At a news conference Thursday at Reagan National Airport, Huerta said he hoped his agency would move quickly to sign off on airlines' electronic-device plans.
In the cutthroat industry, airlines have been racing to show they are being responsive to customers who have long demanded more access to their personal gadgets while flying.
Delta bragged that it was the first carrier to submit plans to the FAA to allow gate-to-gate use of electronic gadgets. The carrier said all of its 570 mainline aircraft have completed testing to ensure portable electronics do not cause interference. And Delta Connection's 550-plus regional aircraft should be ready to allow electronics by the end of the year.
But the jockeying by JetBlue and Delta was rubbing some in the industry the wrong way. Some privately griped that the reason JetBlue and Delta were able to file their paperwork with the FAA so quickly — then blast out press releases — was because they had seats on the advisory panel that issued recommendations to the FAA. American also had a seat on the 28-member panel but wasn't as vocal about its actions.
JetBlue spokeswoman Tamara Young rejected that criticism, saying the carrier "followed protocol to a T." Delta's spokesman declined to comment, instead pointing to an airline fact sheet highlighting that current FAA policies already allow carriers to expand the use of electronic devices during all phases of flight so long as they conduct proper testing and analysis.
"All Delta aircraft have completed carrier-defined PED tolerance testing to ensure the safe operation of passenger portable electronic devices during all phases of flight," the Delta fact sheet says.


text:
UK inflation rate falls more than expected
LONDON (AP) — Britain's inflation rate fell more than expected in July, to 1.6 percent from 1.9 percent in June, easing pressure on the Bank of England as it weighs when to raise interest rates.
The Office of National Statistics said Tuesday that a fall in clothing prices provided the biggest contribution to the drop in consumer price inflation. A drop in the cost of alcohol, financial services and food also contributed.
The Bank of England, which targets a 2 percent inflation rate, is assessing when to start increasing rates as the economy improves.
Samuel Tombs, senior U.K. economist at Capital Economics, says "a general environment of benign inflationary pressure will give the (Bank of England) scope to raise them at an even more gradual pace than currently anticipated by the markets."


text:
The topology of a closed surface can be constructed by identifying edges of a fundamental polygon of an even number $2n$ of edges. Labeling the edges and using $\pm 1$ exponents to indicate direction, the construction can be specified by a string of $2n$ symbols: $a b a^{-1} b^{-1}$ for the torus, $a a b b$ for the Klein bottle, etc.
My question is: Does it make sense to have an infinite number of boundary identifications, i.e., does it define some topological object?
More specifically:
- Does an infinite string of symbols representing pairwise identifications correspond to some surface? For example, the generalization of a non-orientable genus-$n$ surface as $n \rightarrow \infty$: $$a_1 a_1 a_2 a_2 a_3 a_3 \cdots a_i a_i \cdots \;.$$
- Does it make sense to have an uncountable number of pairwise point identification around a circle? For example, parametrize the circle circumference from 0 to 1 and identify points with complementary binary representations: $$.011100100011\ldots \leftrightarrow .100011011100\ldots \;.$$
These extensions may be nonsensical, in which case I apologize for the distraction! But if something along these lines has been studied, I'd appreciate a reference. Thanks!
Edit. What was nonsensical was my bit-complement example, as pointed out by both Victor and Sergei. I'll leave it so their remarks make sense. I intended a more patternless pairing.


text:
Hosted by:
Shire of Turm an dem See
Start Date:
Thru End Date:
Tig & Aoife's Farm
W4948 County Road SS
Random Lake
Come and join us again for an A&S centered event focusing on the the fiber arts.
Hosted by the Shire of Turm an dem See and the Barony of Windhaven.
Sheep shearing demonstration.
Fiber arts classes and sheep related classes.
A&S Competitions & Displays
Potluck Feast... Bring a dish to share. A grill and fire pit is available.
Period clothing optional if interacting with the sheep.
After the feast there will be a bonfire...expect many songs and stories and much merriment
And there's no site fee! Just bring a non-perishable food item for us to donate to the local food pantry.


text:
Bout It, Bout It 2
Master P
[Master P]
uggggghhhhhh, its time for the national anthem
y'all niggas bout it (I started this bout it, bout it)
if you bout it (get em up), I mean you bout it, bout it
(that mean you bout it, bout it) well say you bout it, bout it
I represent, its 1990-skrilla
It's Master P and they labeled me a drug dealer
Cause I'm bout it, I mean I'm rowdy
I hang with these killas that everyone talk about
we doin' this, we doin' that (we doin' what)
we in the studio rippin' up dope tracks
Cause we real, you betta guard your grill
Cause if we bout it, bout it
if you ain't bout it, bout it you might get killed
I represent (T-R-U) where them killas at
3rd Ward, uptown, Calliope on the map
Back up off me, ain't no softy
betta guard your grill mothafuckas, we comin' hard G
I got killas in the projects sellin' water
I got niggas from New Orleans to Florida
bout it bout it (bout it, bout it)
I mean they rowdy, rowdy (mean they rowdy, rowdy)
you betta watch your shit cause niggas is bout it bout it
I mean they snatch you out your car on a kidnap
lay you on the floor and tell you
bitch you betta break off some snaps or dead
put the pistol to your head
ain't no love where I'm from, but you niggas in the grave
I mean they dyin', I mean they fryin'
gone off that juice (fermalgahide) and leave their motherscryin'
cause their little boy is dead
cause that color blue or red
and wanta do waht them other ballas said
to make some snaps, I mean to make some money
to break it up on the street, but this game ain't funny
you want that beat in, ain't no way out
but death or that mothafuckin' jailhouse
if you bout it, say you bout it
I roll with some niggas that are bout it bout it
I mean we rowdy, rowdy, them niggas bout it, bout it
bounce, bounce, bounce fool, if you bout it, bout it
C-Murder is bout it, bout it (show them gold ones, show them goldones)
Big Ed you know he's bout it, bout it (bhudda
nigga ????, that nigga bout it, bout it (get up off hin)
Big Man and the Caleo is bout it, bout it (bounce, bounce,bounce)
Mercy Caller you know he's bout it bout it
and Cali-G in California is bout it, bout it
Mo B. Dick (if you bout it) you know he's bout it bout it
Nick Pokey you know he's bout it bout it
KLC of the Parkway is bout it, bout it
and Mr. Serv-On is bout it bout it
and Rasheen and the Mack know yas bout it bout it
Sonya-C you know she bout it bout it
Silkk the Shocker you know he's bout it bout it
and Mia X is bout to kick some flava (she's rowdy, rowdy)
[Mia X]
Niggas know that I'm bout it already, I can prove it
so when they hear my voice, they all know I come to do shit
Mia X representin', puttin' it down for the south
Keep a shank in my sock and bullet in my mouth
so don't doubt the angel like voice, come across
get your cucumber sliced and you messy hoe tossed, boss bitch
I keep em sick from the way I kick my shit
and KLC got em scared cause he's back whisperin' it, anotha hit
No Limit niggas in the house, plus on niggette
with that pimpstress clout, now what they talkin' bout
Beaucoup hustlas, and thugstas, murderers, and dope fiends
fel a taste from drame scenes
infared beams aimin' at your forehead
ain't no fuckin' country boys
soldiers bringin' noise, leave you lyin' in red
puddles froma fuckin' ????
now who will be the next to get they fuckin' shoes took off
I really can't call it, cause once the gumbo be grieven
a nigga start ballin'
strike up the second line band
and put your black gear on cause we gonna stay bout it,understood
[Master P]
Bitch I been bout it, I mean we bout it, bout it
from Kansas City to St. Louis they bout it, bout it (theyrowdy)
down in Memphis you know they bout it bout it
from L.A. to Alabama they bout it bout it
Washington to Carolina to Georgia (they bout it)
Cincinnati, Port Arthur, to Florida
Chattanooga, Ohio, Detroit (do that gangsta walk)
Lexington Kentucky to Louisville (you bout it) you know they boutit bout it
I mean they rowdy (break it up)
from Richmond California to San Francisco, to Oakland they boutit bout it
down in Houston they bout it bout it
the Northside, the Southside, you know they bout it bout it
from Dallas to Waco to Austin (they been bout it)
to Jackson to Mississippi them niggas flossin' (means they boutit)
B and M's on triple-gold and they bout it
that's how these gangstas roll
from Lafayette to Lake Charles to Chicago to Florida
to Batton Rouge to Shreveport to New Orleans (they bout it)
they bout it, (they rowdy) I mean they rowdy
in Little Rock, Arkansas they bangin' I mean they bout it
my homie Tre-8, they bout it
loony Skull Dugrey you know that fool is bout it
Ken Frank, Raw Wayne, Jeff B, Mean Green, DJ Roe, Greg Streep
Levi, may he rest in peace
and all the other motha-niggas that are dead
like my little brother Kevin Miller that was bout it bout it
BOUT IT (bout it bout it)


text:
NEWARK, Del.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Quantum Leap Innovations®, developers of advanced Pattern Based Analytics™ (PBA) products, today announced the release of Quantum Leap Buzz (BETA), its desktop version of Pattern Based Discovery™ analytics for social media. It is the first-ever PBA to distil, not just filter, trending social movements from Twitter and deliver immediate intelligence which identifies and quantifies social insights. On Leap Day, February 29, 2012, the BETA version expires and users may purchase an annual subscription to Quantum Leap Buzz, Consumer Edition for $10 per year.
Quantum Leap Innovations' products run on users' desktops rather than living in the cloud, thus maintaining total user privacy and security. No cloud provider is able to either mine or monetize work done by Buzz users and since the product runs on the desktop, it avoids bandwidth limits.
"We developed the Pattern Based Analytics technology through government contracts that examined geo-political, world health and military trends," said Joseph Budner Elad, founder and CEO of Quantum Leap Innovations. "We've taken that technology and designed a tool that can immediately identify and quantify trends on Twitter, allowing any individual using the product access to sophisticated analysis on issues and trends they are interested in. Quantum Leap Buzz mines patterns within tweets and shows the relationships, identifying the evolution and trending of an idea, rather than just a listing of tweets by topic. Quantum Leap Buzz is designed to be the personal dashboard for every 'connected' individual in the world."
To capture data on a subject, users enter a word or phrase; tweets are then organized into topics on the subject matter and then further categorized into themes. The results give an immediate sense of the popularity of each theme within a topic as well as a view of how closely those tweets match the initial search criteria. Users can also set up dashboards with scheduled searches that gauge public sentiment on any subject in the Twitterverse at any time.
Quantum Leap Innovations is offering the BETA version of Quantum Leap Buzz as a free download at quantumleapbuzz.com now until Leap Day, February, 29, 2012. At that time, users will be able to upgrade to Quantum Leap Buzz, Consumer Edition for $10 per year which will offer additional functionality and enhanced user experience. A full-scale Quantum Leap Buzz, Business Edition will be released early in the second quarter, at a subscription price of $495 per year and will feature Geo-Location, Tweet Topology, Sentiment Analysis and more. It will contain graphics that map tweets by geographic areas and track the pathway of a tweet as it spreads from its origin making it possible to instantly identify influencers and trend drivers.
Quantum Leap Buzz's unique capabilities include but are not limited to:
1. Getting emerging news stories before they are reported in the media
2. Getting actionable intelligence before the competition
3. Setting notifications on your dashboard for trending-developments with updates texted directly to your cell phone
4. Issue analysis. The ability to see patterns of sentiment around issues important to you, personally.
Pattern Based Analytics™ is a powerful new approach to data analysis providing unique insights into the full complexity of real world data without requiring either deep mathematical skills or heroic simplifying assumptions about the important variables at work. The Quantum Leap PBA suite of products enables transparent, flexible discovery, visualization and analysis of informative patterns in large, complex data environments. These characteristics empower the non-statistical subject matter expert to rapidly obtain insight to their data for discovery, forecasting and decision making.
Corporate users who want to apply Pattern Based Analytics to their proprietary corporate data without fear of exposing that valuable information outside their firewall are invited to contact Quantum Leap Innovations for a full discussion of Pattern Based Analytics capabilities.
About Quantum Leap Innovations
Begun in 1999, Quantum Leap Innovations, Inc. has established itself as a trailblazer in Pattern Based Analytics, creating the Quantum Leap® Pattern Based Analytics suite of products that includes Pattern Based Discovery, Pattern Based Prediction, and Pattern Based Reasoning – all based on transparent, flexible discovery, visualization and analysis of informative patterns in large, complex data environments for strategic forecasting and decision making.
Quantum Leap Innovations has worked extensively in the public and private sectors, including contracts with the U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Intelligence Community, CSC, DuPont, Exelon, Ford, IBM, SAIC, Texas Instruments, and Verizon. Quantum Leap Innovations' sophisticated Pattern Based Analytics products were essential in the U.S. government's decision to keep the U.S./Mexico border open during the H1N1 pandemic.
Quantum Leap is headquartered in the Delaware Technology Park which is affiliated with the University of Delaware and is located in Newark, Delaware.


text:
Wow its a looking really great, I love your post of chicken role. I will sure try this recipes, I had eat so many chicken recipes and and all have a different test but your given chicken role recipes is looking so delicious so thanks for sharing .
It's a common recipe guys, so if someone has shared it before here, please pardon me for repeating it.
1 boiled Chicken boneless and cut in small cubes.
or 1 kg boiled boneless beef or mutton and cut in small cubes.
For Filling:
Cabbage (band gobi) 1 medium size
Capsicum (Shimla Mirch) 1 Large size
Carrots 2 Medium size
Worcestershire sauce 2/3 cup
Vinegar 2 Table sp
Chilli Sauce 2 Table sp
Soy sauce 2 Table sp
Black pepper 5 tea sp
Red pepper 2 tea sp
Salt to taste
Oil 1/3 cup
For Wraps:
All purpose flour (maida) 1 1/2 cup
Flour 1 cup(which will be used later on)
Corn flour 1/2 cup
Eggs 2
Milk 1/2 cup
Salt tsp
Oil for frying
Rolls' Filling:
Cut Cabbage, Capsicums, Carrots in thin strips like (julian Cutting) and then
cut that long strips to small.
Put all these veggies in a pot and add all the ingredients for filling except salt and Oil.
Cover and cook on medium heat for 5 minutes.
Try not over cook it. If you see water comes out from veggies turn the heat up a little bit and dries off all the water.
Now add salt and remove it from heat.
The filling is now ready and now you can add meat of your choice like chicken/beef or mutton to it.
Make sure the veggies are completely dry, there should be no water in it at all.
Preparation of Rolls Wraps:
In a large bowl take All purpose flour, corn flour, salt, well beaten eggs.
Pour some milk and mix well.
Don't kneed like dough, it should be thinner than dough, mix some water but don't add too much water other wise the flour will turn into lumps and it will be difficult to make it even.
Use hands to mix it for best results.
When all ingredients mixed with each other and when a consistency is formed than mix more water to make it thin (it should not be like paste and should not be like dough but in between).
Now take a non stick frying pan (should be 5 to 6 inch diameter).
(*take some fluid in a separate small bowl for further use in sticking sides of
rolls in future.)
Put frying pan on burner to make it a little hot and then take cotton cloth and
apply some oil on the frying pan now take a ladle or a large cooking spoon
and put the batter (or fluid) in the ladle or spoon and pour it over frying pan
to form a thin wrap.
Turn the heat down to medium so that when this wrap is cooked it will itself leave the surface of frying pan and will not stick to it.
Now sprinkle some dry flour in a plate and move this wrap on it.
Making Rolls:
Mix meat with veg stuff to make filling for rolls.
Now take the wraps and put stuffing on each one and make rolls of it.
This will make approximately 6 to 8 rolls' wraps.
Fry them on medium heat until golden brown.
Serve hot with ketchup.
Wow its a looking really great, I love your post of chicken role. I will sure try this recipes, I had eat so many chicken recipes and and all have a different test but your given chicken role recipes is looking so delicious so thanks for sharing .
Thanks for liking =)
Wow really nice recipe. Ya it's very common but thank you for great sharing.
Nice post keep it up
Thank you friends
Great Recipe
Thank you! =)


text:
If you're reading this then you're on my new blog homepage at http://bryantlikes.com. I've wanted to move off of http://blogs.sqlxml.org for some time but every time I start to work on it I get overwhelmed by the amount of work involved. I would usually get stuck on (1) how to migrate all my content and (2) where to host it since there is a lot of content and most hosting providers give you very little SQL storage.
I looked at a lot of options and even setup Oxite on Azure by following this guide, but since I didn't know what the monthly costs will be I decided not to take that route. Since I was recently awarded the MVP award I decided to look at some of the benefits and I found that Orcs Web offers a free hosting account to MVPs. I know Orcs has a great service so I was excited to give that a try, but I didn't think their SQL storage would be enough for my blog. That is when I got the idea to give dasBlog a try. DasBlog stores all your data in xml files instead of using a SQL database. At first that sounds like a bad idea, but if it can support Hanselman's blog, then surely my blog would have no problems at all. Plus it solves the SQL storage issue.
Now the harder question, how do you migrate all the content. At first I tried using the BlogML stuff to pull all my content out of Community Server, but I have a lot of content so I ended up getting lots of exceptions. I tried to hand code some solutions, but finally gave up. Then I got the idea to just take the simple route and write a custom program to read the data from my CS database and generate the XML files that dasBlog uses. So I used some Linq to SQL classes and wrote the XML using Linq to XML. It was fairly easy to do and it worked great.
The next step was to setup the redirects on the old site to point to the new site. I have all the articles redirecting and I think they all work (for the most part). I had to setup some custom redirects for some of the articles with non-standard characters in the titles, but other than that it was pretty easy. I also followed Scott's post on canonicalize my URLs and using IIS7's rewrite module. Orcs provides access to your IIS7's manager remotely which works great.
I still need to migrate my articles, but I'll get those done later today. Other than that it is a done deal. I'm very happy to be off the sqlxml.org domain which I still host at home and to be off of Community Server.
Lately, I wanted to thank Alexander Groß for the great theme which he created. I think this new blog is much easier to read and so far I've enjoyed the dasBlog software. I've even write a custom macro to put the RSS feeds on the category pages. I'm sure I'll do some more customization down the road and post about as I go.
Hope you like the new blog!
Page rendered at Monday, March 20, 2023 1:17:34 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)
Powered by
newtelligence dasBlog 2.3.9074.18820
© Copyright 2023, Bryant Likes


text:
For Moms blessed with princesses! We see ourselves in their eyes...and sometimes, that's a scary thing! :-)
Members: 127
Latest Activity: Feb 20, 2013
Started by Jennifer Mercurio Mar 26, 2010. 0 Replies 0 Likes
Hello! New to MBC. What a fun sounding group! I have one little princess; she has four brothers, including her twin. They'll be 2 years old in September, and I'm antsy to get to the fun girly stuff! She's on my blog as much as I think is reasonable. LOL Thanks for having me!
Are you ready for a fun and friendly Hop? Well stop by and link up your Facebook, Twitter Google+ and your Blog, over at the Weekend Blog Hop.
Two awesome Giveaways ending VERY soon! Extremely LOW entries!
DreamWorks' The Help movie Prize Pack!
$25 Walmart Gift Card Giveaway


text:
Captain America has fought the Red Skull, Hydra, and MODOK... but have you seen his showdown against Christopher Lee? In the exciting conclusion to the TV movie Captain America 2: Death Too Soon, Cap faces off against the evil General Miguel (Lee) who's developed a serum that results in rapid aging... and he has the only antidote. Watch their confrontation, combat, and super-serum standoff! [Thanks to Mikko, who created those fake corporate websites a while back]
Deadly Mississippi Tornado Kills More Than 2 Dozen | Extreme Earth


text:
Effective weight-loss program combines exercise and diet (copy)
Dear Dr. K: Please settle a long-running argument between me and my sister. What's more effective for weight loss, diet or exercise?
Dear Reader: Losing weight can be a challenge. The best approach is to eat less and exercise more. But that's not what you asked me.
Let's say one person cuts back on calories without exercising and another person increases exercise without cutting back on calories. The first person would probably find it easier to lose weight. That's because it's easier to cut 500 calories a day from your diet than to burn 500 extra calories through exercise.
But there's more to it. If you cut back only on calories, you're more likely to regain the weight you lose. Why? The body reacts to weight loss as if it were starving. In response, the body slows its metabolism. When your metabolism slows, you burn fewer calories — even at rest. Even if you continue eating fewer calories, you will either stop losing weight as quickly as you have been, or you'll stop losing weight altogether.
The solution is to increase your physical activity. Doing so will counter the metabolic slowdown caused by reducing calories. You'll burn more calories just by sitting and daydreaming if you have been exercising regularly.
With regular exercise, you don't just burn calories when you're active; you increase the number of calories you burn at rest. This is called resting energy expenditure. Any increase in resting energy expenditure is extremely important for weight loss, because most of us are at rest the greater part of the 24-hour day. In addition, physical activity temporarily curbs appetite in the time immediately following exercise.
Your resting energy expenditure remains elevated as long as you exercise at least three days a week on a regular basis. Vigorous activities that can stimulate your metabolism include walking briskly for two miles or riding a bike uphill.
Moderate-intensity activities, such as taking a short walk or raking leaves, won't raise your resting energy expenditure as much as high-intensity activities will. But they have other advantages. For one thing, they help reduce body fat and build muscle — and muscle tissue burns more calories than fat does. (I've put a table listing several moderate- and vigorous-intensity activities on my website: AskDoctorK.com.)
One last thing about exercise: Many people believe that regular exercise is healthy for you only because it helps you lose weight. Surely, having a healthy weight reduces your risk of many diseases, and regular exercise can help you get down to a healthy weight.
But what many people don't know is that regular exercise powerfully protects you against major diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, stroke and many types of cancer — even if you don't lose weight. Regular exercise changes the chemistry of your body in ways that improve your health.
So, try to eat healthy and exercise regularly. These are the two most powerful, and natural, things you can do to protect your health.
Dr. Anthony L. Komaroff is a practicing physician who is on the faculty at Harvard Medical School, senior physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston and editor-in-chief of Harvard Health Publications. Send questions to www.AskDoctorK.com or mail to Universal Uclick, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106.


text:
10 minute review: Thinkpad USB keyboard
The problem
I have spent an absurdly large amount of my time searching for the perfect keyboard.
Once I decided the numberpad was useless (not being an old-school accountant, I found it faster to type numbers using the keys above the alphabetic keys, and would much rather have the mousing space available instead), it was a matter of narrowing it down to something that was of excellent build quality, comfortable to type on, didn't rely on silly Fn keys for critical functionality, and had functional media-related keys on it.
Unfortunately, this strict set of criteria appeared to narrow my choices down to… nothing. My ideal input device simply didn't exist.
I followed lots of potential ideas to their ends. Custom keyboards are fairly expensive in limited runs, and generally limited to niche commercial or industrial applications, or for disabled users. Actually designing and making a new keyboard utterly from scratch is cost-prohibitive for mere hobbyists, and after a few questioning forays into that idea, my contacts in the industry got bored and stopped responding to me.
There's all manner of "compact" keyboards out there – most of them compromise usability for the sake of shaving mere centimetres off their dimensions, lots of them hide frequently-used keys behind laptop-like Fn-key combos that slow you down, and nearly all of them are flimsy rubbish.
Then there are the almost-rans. The Deck Ice keyboard is pretty cool, but difficult to find now, and has an odd layout anyway. The Happy Hacking Keyboard is far too minimal. IBM's original Space Saver keyboards are all but vaporware now. The Microsoft Sidewinder X6 came pretty close, but I didn't like the feel of it when I found one I could try in the shop.
In the end, I gave up the search and bought a full-size Razer Lycosa, because it was pretty and blue and had funky touch buttons. It lasted a year and a half on my desk at home before I became utterly fed up with the unwieldiness of it and frustrated by its weird touch controls.
Fast forward to a couple of months ago – I've moved to Sydney, got a sweet job in a place that uses Thinkpads, and fallen more or less in love with my T400. My personal laptop at the time was a Dell Latitude E4300, and over time I'd come to realise how well the pointing stick worked. If the Latitude's trackpoint was pretty good, the Thinkpad's was excellent; my work laptop's touchpad serves mainly as a platform for collecting dust.
This is the thing – before actually using a trackpoint for the length of time it took me to learn to appreciate them, it wouldn't have occurred to me to try a keyboard with one of them integrated into it. While I had replaced the mouse that came with my work setup, I quite liked my laptop's keyboard, and so my ideal home keyboard soon presented itself. I give you…
The solution
This is the Thinkpad USB keyboard with Trackpoint, Lenovo part number 55Y9003.
It's got everything I need – a perfectly standard typing layout, a near-complete lack of numberpad (although the right half of the keyboard will become one, by holding Fn or toggling it with Fn+Scroll Lock to activate Numlock), proper arrow keys, a proper Home/End text-editing pad, quite reasonable volume controls, and a pretty agreeable price tag for such a specialised bit of kit (I spent nearly $90 to get mine, before discovering Lenovo themselves sell it for $75 delivered).
The volume buttons, while small, are perfectly usable, and I've grown quite accustomed to them in the time I've spent using this keyboard. The speaker mute key glows orange, as would the microphone mute button if I had a microphone that needed muting.
The keyboard also ships with a CD that contains PDF user manuals in many languages, and the driver provides an extra set of Control Panel mouse settings to deal with the integrated trackpoint. The three mouse buttons don't seem to be configurable separately, but that doesn't bother me in the slightest – left, middle and right-click are all pretty standard. Middle click works fine to open new tabs in browsers, and having that relative-scrolling action and occasional mousing device available without having to move my hands off the keyboard is quite nice.
Function keys
Some of the function key shortcuts work, too, with varying degrees of usefulness. Fn+F2 does the same thing as Windows+L, F3 (battery information) and F5 (wireless settings) are quite irrelevant for a desktop PC, Fn+F4 is similarly irrelevant to me but does actually put my computer to sleep, F6 does nothing, F7 brings up multi-monitor display settings, F8 brings up the Mouse Properties window above, and F12 would probably hibernate the computer but I think I've turned that off elsewhere.
Fn plus the arrow keys perform various Windows Media Player functions (back, next, play, pause and stop). Fn plus Home or End would adjust screen brightness on a Thinkpad, but of course has no effect on a desktop computer.
There's also a handy ThinkVantage button. It does… a thing… when I press it.
One other function worth noting – as mentioned above, the right side of the keyboard will act as a pseudo numberpad when Numlock is turned on, but unlike the Capslock button, there's no indicator light to tell you this is happening. This is worth being aware of, because if your computer's BIOS has Numlock turned on at boot, you might end up at the Windows login screen with no idea why your password doesn't work anymore, until you figure it out.
Not that I did that or anything. I certainly didn't panic and use a live CD to reset my Windows password because of this. Shut up.
Other uses
One other huge advantage of this keyboard – which will matter much more to some users, and not at all to others – is that it is a perfectly good keyboard and mouse wrapped into one portable package, and attached to a computer using a single USB port. This makes it ideal as a spare input device for computers that don't generally have a full keyboard and mouse plugged into them – TV/media PCs, headless Linux boxes, and car computers, to name three glaring examples.
$75 honestly isn't much to spend, when it comes to good quality keyboards. You can pick up a perfectly usable Logitech or Microsoft keyboard from anywhere for $20-30, and that'll probably do for anybody who doesn't type all day. It pays to fork out a bit more if you're, say, a programmer, or do data entry from home, or send a lot of emails – a brand new, high quality "clicky" keyboard will still set you back about AU$200 at the moment, if such things interest you.
They don't interest me, however. All I want is a good typing board without a numberpad, a weird layout, or other crippling problems. I found my perfect keyboard in the current Thinkpad USB; some serious thought has gone into this thing, and as far as I'm concerned they got everything right.
If you've worked for any length with a Thinkpad laptop, you probably already use a trackpoint at least some of the time – you can probably appreciate the idea of having that feature handy. If so, I can heartily recommend this keyboard to you.
If you're of the persuasion that trackpoints are the spawn of the devil, and that the humble touchpad is the One True Way, you're dearly missing out, but I'm not going to convince you otherwise. Go buy an X6 instead, you probably won't be disappointed.


text:
McLaren squashes closure rumor
McLaren Northern Michigan wants to put to rest any fears of the Cheboygan campus closing.
"A foreclosure notice referencing the former Cheboygan hospital and a local Cheboygan bank was recently published in the Cheboygan Daily Tribune. It has caused some confusion in the community, particularly in light of recent cost reduction initiatives at McLaren Northern Michigan," a hospital press release stated. "Please be assured that the two issues are unrelated."
Susan Eno, president and CEO of Citizens National Bank, agreed the two issues are unrelated.
"We had to start the foreclosure process on the Lincoln Street Plaza to eliminate liens on the property," she said. Another building also has been foreclosed upon ― the former Bay Street Orthopedic building.
McLaren officials said nothing has changed for the Cheboygan campus.
"There will be no disruption in service at the McLaren Northern Michigan-Cheboygan Campus, and it is certainly not closing. The bankruptcy notice is the result of a financial matter between the former Cheboygan hospital and a local Cheboygan bank, and refers to properties that did not become part of McLaren Northern Michigan," the release stated. "McLaren Northern Michigan is committed to the Cheboygan community, and continues to invest in both the physical infrastructure and the delivery of quality service at the Cheboygan Campus. The bankruptcy report, however, is unrelated and will have no effect on current operations."
Doug Damm, senior vice president at Citizens National Bank, said the bank is trying to protect its interest.
"McLaren purchased the assets of Community Memorial Hospital which included the campus, medical office building and the Indian River Clinic," he said. "They did not purchase the Bay Street Orthopedic building or the Lincoln Street Plaza."
Damm said the bank is taking the action because the USDA has a second lien on both pieces of property.
"CMH still is in bankruptcy," Damm said. "The bank has asked the bankruptcy court to allow us to foreclose on these two buildings."
McLaren officials said they are committed to Cheboygan.
"Leadership at McLaren Northern Michigan has been very open, both internally and externally, regarding the need to continually evaluate operations and processes in order to ensure that finances are being directed toward the most appropriate services for the communities we serve," the release added. "While we may be reducing expenses in some areas, other areas will see reinvestment and growth. Services offered at McLaren Northern Michigan-Cheboygan Campus remain strong, and plans are underway to add more services in the near future including physical, occupational, and speech therapies. The financial performance of the Cheboygan Campus has been strong, which can be attributed to the overwhelming support shown by the community."


text:
Now 15 years old and counting, Salesforce.com's CRM application gained maturity long ago, but as the upcoming Summer '14 release shows, the company is still adding hundreds of enhancements and tweaks to it multiple times per year.
Increased flexibility is one theme of Summer '14, judging from details in release notes posted at Salesforce.com's website.
[ InfoWorld dishes on must-have iPad office apps, essential Android productivity apps, and road warrior standbys. Start downloading! | Get the latest insight on the tech news that matters from InfoWorld's Tech Watch blog. ]
For example, customers can now receive emails of up to 25MB in size, compared to 10MB previously. Salesforce.com has also expanded the maximum size of attachments to system objects, such as a case or order, from 5MB to 25MB.
Summer '14 also gives Enterprise Edition customers a way to develop more custom applications without upgrading to Performance Edition, which is priced at $300 per user per month, compared to $125 per user per month for Enterprise Edition.
The Unlimited Apps Pack for Enterprise Edition allows for up to 9,999 custom applications and also significantly raises storage and API (application programming interface) call limits. Pricing wasn't immediately available.
A new feature called Files Sync is also generally available in Summer '14. Files Sync uses a desktop client that can sync files between the desktop, mobile devices and Salesforce.com's Chatter collaboration and messaging application.
Another key focus of Summer '14 is the Salesforce1 mobile application, which was first launched at the Dreamforce conference in November. Last month, Salesforce.com previewed more than 30 updates it is making to the mobile app as part of Summer '14, but the release notes provide additional details, including on how the mobile app experience differs from the full Salesforce.com site.
Summer '14 allows access from the mobile app to any custom object that has a tab in the full Salesforce.com site, according to the notes.
Additional mobile app improvements include the ability to share files from the full site; submit records for approval; and a faster way to create new contacts.
The release notes defy easy summarization, running to over 300 pages, and also include a wealth of details on improvements to Salesforce.com's underlying Force.com development platform.
Summer '14 is set to be rolled out to customers starting later this month.
Chris Kanaracus covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Chris' email address is firstname.lastname@example.com


text:
With less than 26 hours before Autumn I give you the Mini-Mouths Summer 2012 Issue! In addition to the glorious cover illustration seen above this issue features a nine page Cochan the Barbarian comic by Nate McDonough. Other features are an interview I did with Nate, a comic about this year's TCAF and tons of mini-comic reviews. It's $3 postpaid to anywhere in the United States so paypal me at: email@example.com or send your check, money order (or well concealed cash) to the address at the bottom of this page.
Posts Tagged 'Mini-Mouths'
Mini-Mouths Summer 2012 IssueThursday, September 20th, 2012
Mini-Mouths Debut!Wednesday, June 13th, 2012
Buyer Beware Comics is proud to announce the debut issue of Mini-Mouths! It's a quarterly zine about all things mini-comics including reviews, scene reports, interviews and comics by small press cartoonists.
This one features an interview with Toronto cartoonist Jason Bradshaw (who did the cover artwork you see here) as well as some unpublished comics by yours truly. There are also tons of mini-comics reviews, an account of this year's S.P.A.C.E. in Columbus and an activity page for the kids!
You can buy a copy from me for $3 postpaid at the address at the bottom of this page (my paypal address is email@example.com) or at a few comics shops across the country (like Mavericks Cards and Comics in Kettering, Ohio).
If you have a love of mini-comics this little fella is for you!


text:
Why use this website?
Webmasters can use this tool to prevent their site from appearing in the server logs of referred pages as referrer. The operators of the referred pages cannot see where their visitors come from any more.
HideRef.org uses the double-forward strategy to make the anonymous forwarding possible. The advantages of different types of forwarding are put together here. The user is forwarded twice. At the first, the transferred information on the referring page will be deleted (referer header will be empty). Some browser still continue to send this information. Therefore, in the second step we will check whether the deletion has worked. If it is not the case, we will further use the Iframe redirection. Otherwise, users will be simply forwarded to the target page with a quick header redirection.
Test how it works
You can use our Referer output to test our or any other link anonymizer service.


text:
Is Your Sump Pump Ready For The Thaw?
With the recent snow melt and heavy thunderstorms in Indianapolis/Central Indiana, the ground has become saturated and many of you may have noticed that your sump pumps are running non-stop. Here are a couple of tips to help you make sure that your pump is operating properly.
Check your float switch. The float should rise and fall freely as your sump pit fills and empties. Make sure that it does not get hung up on along the pit wall or discharge pipe. Another thing to check is that the sump pit is free from debris. Since most sump pits are open and they are on the floor, it is not uncommon for debris to fall or be accidentally kicked into the pit. If you have two sump pumps controlled by an alternator, confirm that both pumps are operating.
Another thing to consider, if you haven't already, is installing a battery back up sump pump. You will have the piece of mind knowing that if your power goes out during a heavy rain storm, the ground water will still be carried away.
If you have any questions or would like more information, please give us a call at (317)243-3581 or if you would like, you can submit your questions online by clicking on the following link: https://bplusw.com/ContactUs.html


text:
The White House tonight made it official, again: Gary L. Blankinship, the former president of the Houston Police Officers' Union, has been nominated by President Obama to be United States Marshal for the Southern District of Texas.
Blankinship, who retired from the Houston Police Department last year as a senior police officer, was one of four U.S. marshals formally nominated by President Obama this evening.
His nomination was first announced by the White House on May 17, 2012, but he was not confirmed before the congressional session ended.
The other nominees announced this evening were federal prosecutor Robert L. Hobbs of Beaumont in the Eastern District of Texas, Amos Rojas Jr., in the Southern District of Florida and Peter C. Tobin in the Southern District of Ohio.
"These nominees have spent their careers risking their own safety to protect their fellow Americans," Obama said in a statement. "Their courage and selfless dedication to the public good are unparalleled, and I am honored to nominate them today to continue their work as U.S. Marshals."
Blankinship boasts a 35-year law enforcement career that has included a stint as Vice President for the National Association of Police Organizations. He founded the the Assist the Officer Foundation following the 1993 death of his partner to provide short-term, immediate financial assistance for officers critically injured or disabled in the line of duty.
Hobbs is the Deputy Chief of the Criminal Division of the U.S. Attorney's office for the Eastern District of Texas and is the attorney in charge of the office's Beaumont and Lufkin divisions. Before becoming a federal prosecutor, Hobbs was a Jefferson County prosecutor from 1996 to 1999.
More biographical info from the White House:
Mr. Hobbs graduated from the South Texas College of Law in 1996 and received his B.S. from Lamar University in 1987. Between graduating from college and law school, he served as the Commander and Project Director of the Jefferson County Narcotics Task Force from 1992 to 1996; as a Senior Criminal Investigator in the Jefferson County District Attorney's Office from 1984 to 1992; and as a police officer in Corpus Christi and Jefferson County from 1977 to 1984.


text:
Vintage painting: Traffic Triangle Gold
Hand painted by Ronald Hunter. Acrylic paint, with light texture.
In this abstract vintage painting , the different color layers are still partly visible, which gives the painting wonderful depth.
It provides peace of mind in the room and also easily fits into your interior style.
This is an original painting, designed and painted by Ronald Hunter, an abstract Dutch artist from Rotterdam, known for his fresh layering of colors.
All his paintings are signed on the front and the back. You will also receive an official Ronald Hunter certificate of authenticity, attached to the back of the painting.
You will receive this painting ready to hang, the cotton is stretched on a wooden frame with a hook on the back.
Save this painting
Do you want to keep this painting for later viewing?
With the buttons below you can print it directly, download it as a PDF or email it to someone else.


text:
The Sky Industries is located in the Kolhapur Industrial Area with a present working area of 20000sq.ft. Each of the units is managed and controlled by experienced technocrats independently. Each of them follows the corporate philosophy, to achieve the desired goal and also satisfy customers. The prima facie principle of sky industries is to serve the customer's need and secondly retaining our customers through creating goodwill among all our customers by prompt and efficient services.
Erection, design, Fabrication, Testing and commissioning of IBR and NON- IBR piping for plant,. including IBR approval, Thermal Insulation, Stress relieving, Radiography etc.
Fabricators of Structures, Ducts, Chimneys, Piping's for Power Plants, Crane Services and Hydroulic HiringCrane.
Erection of pumps which come under the Plant Equipment for power plants.
Erection testing and commissioning of Boilers/HRSGs and its auxiliaries including Chimney erection, Indian Boiler Regulation Approval and Fabrication of chimney, structures & alloy ducts etc.


text:
We are moving!
CNN's National Security team in Washington is committed to breaking news, providing in-depth analysis and unique feature stories about the U.S. military, diplomatic affairs, the intelligence community and all things related to U.S. national security.
But going forward, you'll find our stories in a new place - HERE - and all across cnn.com.
We are archiving the Security Clearance blog.
Thank you for reading! We've loved hearing from you and hope to see your comments and feedback at our new home.
You can continue to follow us on Twitter @NatSecCNN.
cbd pain relief cbd sleep aid cbd oil for anxiety american shaman cbd https://cbdoilstoretv.biz/ – cbd oil for sale
cbc oils for pain https://buycbdoilonlinerru.biz/ – cannabinoid ceremony cbd oil cbd oil side effects cbd cream for pain
download free casino games https://casinorealmoneyai.com/ slots free spins no registration play casino games for cash free casino games for fun
boost credit score annual credit report free free annual credit report free
cbd for pain cbd oil for sale joy organics cbd store near me tommy chong's cbd oil
checking credit score https://checkcreditscorewhj.com/ – transunion free credit report online free business credit report transunion credit score
https://cbdhempamp.biz/ buy hemp oil https://purecbdoilgww.biz/ – rachael ray cbd oil buy cannabis oil
hempworx cbd oil https://cbdhempamp.biz/ – cannabidiol cbd oil side effects cbd
free penny slots with bonus spins free games for casino slots hollywood vegas casino free slot games big fish casino free online
equifax credit report free annual https://creditreportbms.com/ – free yearly credit report my credit score free free credit score online get a credit report
cbd oil prices https://cbdoilhh.biz/ – ceremony cbd oil cbd hemp benefits of cbd oil hemp oil
slots online vegas free slots mgm online casino winstar world casino https://casinorealmoneyai.com/ – caesars free slots online
cbd online cbd pure buy cbd cbd drops https://cbdoilwalmartiss.biz/ – cbd oil for sale
https://getcreditreportstats.com/ what is my credit score https://creditreportuss.com/ – business credit report credit bureau
slots casino games https://casinorealmoneyai.com/ hollywood casino free slots online quick hit slots free slot games download full version
mediterra what is hemp used for buy cannabis oil best cbd oils https://cbdoilonlinerr.biz/ – cbd oil buy cbd oil
free credit score free credit reports free credit report transunion karma free credit score
best cbd oil https://cbdoilstoretv.biz/ – pure cbd oil cbd oil benefits best cbd cbd for sale
whats my credit score absolutely free credit report truly free credit scores
If you want to increase your know-how simply keep visiting this website and be updated with
the most recent gossip posted here.
https://purecbdok.biz/ cbd oil todohemp https://cbdproductswin.biz/ – cbd drops cbd oil online for sale
cbd products for pain cbd tincture benefits hemp oil side effects cannabis oil for sale online https://buycbdoilget.biz/
wizard of oz slots new no deposit casino usa free games online slots mohegan sun free online slots
I used to be recommended this website through my cousin. I'm
now not certain whether this post is written via him as no one else recognise such special about my
difficulty. You're wonderful! Thanks!
best cbd oil https://cbdforsalesh.biz/ – cbd for sale cbd oil benefits cbd oil at walmart best cbd oil
credit reporting agencies credit rating check credit scoring annual free credit report
https://casinorealmoneyai.com/ hollywood slots https://casinorealmoneyai.com/ – house of fun slots penny slots free
cbd for sleep https://cbdoilforpainrx.biz/ – cannabidiol oil nano cbd oil cbd for sleep problems
highest credit score https://creditscoresmy.com/ mint credit score perfect credit score get my credit score
bigfish casino online games vegas slots las vegas free slots vegas casino slots https://casinorealmoneyai.com/ – free vegas casino games
find credit score how to improve credit score absolutely free credit report highest credit score https://creditreportbms.com/ – good credit score range
https://creditscoreblk.com/ annual credit report official site https://creditreportuss.com/ – get free credit score one time free credit score
online casino bonus https://playcasinogamesgate.com/ – play online casino real casino slots free casino slot games
free casino slot games slots games free no deposit casino slots games free https://playcasinogamesgate.com/ – online casinos
https://getcreditscoreww.com/ free credit score check https://creditscoresmy.com/ – free credit score report get free credit score
free casino online slot games slots games https://playslotstime.com/
https://freecasinogamesms.com/ slots online https://slotsgamesdirect.com/ – play online casino play casino
https://casino-onlinelife.com/ slots for real money casino games casino games free casino slot games
usa payday loan payday loan business payday loan cash 1000 payday loan https://loanonlineiuw.com/ – speedy cash
https://playcasinoslotsmatic.com/ usa casinos no deposit free welcome bonus buffalo gold slots free casino slots with bonuses parx casino online
https://creditscoresrw.com/ credit report companies credit karma com free credit score credit karma credit score experian credit
https://playslotstime.com/ casino slots best online casino slots for real money casino online slots
free casino games world class casino slots casino real money online casino bonus
https://fastcheckcreditscores.com/ free credit score online https://creditreportadvanced.com/ – free credit score karma free annual credit report government official
https://creditreportsww.com/ national credit report get my credit score free online credit report credit score
my free credit report annual https://creditscorecheckresults.com/ highest credit score free credit check online credit report
slots of vegas casino https://playcasinoslotsmatic.com/ – free games for casino slots hollywood slot games free free online slots vegas world gsn casino games
payday loan near me payday loan lenders online payday loan review quick cash https://paydayloanssfs.com/ – defaulted payday loan
payday loan companies https://paydayloanssfs.com/ – usa payday loan direct loan payday advance
payday loan fast payday loan quick fast payday loan payday advance https://paydayloanssfs.com/
does forbearance affect credit score https://creditscoresmob.com/ – free credit report no credit card free credit report transunion does forbearance affect credit score annual credit report
https://creditscoresids.com/ annual credit report completely free government https://creditscorecheckn.com/ – view my credit report credit check free
free casino games online slots online slots free https://online-casinovice.com/
https://loanonlineiuw.com/ payday loan reviews https://loanonlineiuw.com/ – payday loans payday loan advances
free slots https://playonlinecasinogit.com/ – slots games free slots for real money real casino slots online slots
casino online https://playcasinoslotsmatic.com/ – free slot play no download slots free online play free slot machines with bonus spins
slots for real money https://casinogamesvol.com/ casino games online casinos no deposit casino
myfreecreditreport https://creditreportcheckstats.com/ – credit score ratings get a free credit report experian credit report free annual free credit score
https://casinorealmoneybigbet.com/ world class casino slots https://onlinecasinogameslots21.com/ – casino blackjack slots games free
https://creditscoreblk.com/ free credit score free credit reports https://checkcreditscorewhj.com/ – check my credit report credit karma credit report
https://fastcheckcreditscore.com/ online credit score https://getcreditreportstats.com/ – good credit score range fico credit score
play online casino https://casinogamesmgc.com/ – free casino games online play casino free casino slot games https://playcasinostyle.com/
play slots online big fish casino play slots online
hearts of vegas free slots slotomania slot machines hollywood casino online slots free
experian business credit report https://creditscorecheckww.com/ free online credit score how to get free credit report free equifax credit report request
slots for real money casino bonus codes online casino online casino games https://online-casinovice.com/ – best online casinos
https://creditscoresmob.com/ consumer credit report https://creditreportuss.com/ – credit score chart absolutely credit free score
highest credit score https://freecreditscoreses.com/ – experian credit report free check your credit rating boost credit score
vegas casino free slot games free vegas casino games free online slots no download no registration caesars casino online
max credit score https://creditscorecheckn.com/ – chase credit score karma free credit score free credit report no credit card free annual credit report official site
https://casinorealmoneybigbet.com/ casino game https://online-casinovice.com/ – casino blackjack casino bonus codes
annual credit report unfreeze credit report what is a credit score free credit report experian https://getcreditscorefast.com/ – credit karma credit report
play slots online free casino games free casino slot games slot games
vegas casino slots https://online-casinovice.com/ – cashman casino slots online casino slots slots free vegas slots online
slots online https://casinoslotsonlinems.com/ real casino slots online casino real money casino online slots
payday loan places best payday loan payday loan 1000
best free credit report https://creditscorechecknw.com/ – my credit scoring intuit credit score credit bureaus annualcreditreport
https://onlinecasinogameslots21.com/ casino blackjack https://slotsgamesdirect.com/ – casino real money free slots games
online casino free online slots online casinos best online casino
all free casino slot games caesars casino online play casino slots
credit score ranges annual credit report completely free government credit report free my free credit score https://creditscoresmob.com/ – free annual credit report government
check credit scores https://getcreditreportstats.com/ – free online credit report karma credit report free equifax credit report free credit report equifax
https://paydayloanssfs.com/ instant payday loan https://loanonlineiuw.com/ – payday loan cash savings account payday loan
hour payday loan instant payday loan payday loan business
transunion credit report dispute https://creditscorecheckn.com/ – turbotax credit score what is my credit score get a credit report
installment payday loans ace payday loan faxless payday loan cash advance https://paydayloanssfs.com/ – california payday loan
equifax free credit report https://creditscorests.com/ – credit score chart free credit report no credit card credit report companies good credit score range
free vegas slot games https://playcasinoslotsmatic.com/ – online casino caesars free slots online list of online casinos for us players
free credit report info credit score chart check credit score free does forbearance affect credit score https://creditscoresmy.com/ – how to get credit report
casino blackjack https://playcasinostyle.com/ online casino slots casino online casino play
https://paydayloanssfs.com/ quick payday loan https://paydayloanssfs.com/ – payday loan reviews payday loans online same day
vegas casino slots https://playonlinecasinobit.com/ online casino gambling free casino games slots online
online slot games https://freecasinogameslab.com/ – vegas slots online vegas casino slots cashman casino slots
https://creditreportchk.com/ get free credit report https://creditscorecheckn.com/ – credit score companies credit karma credit score free
play casino slots 100 free casino no deposit online slots list of las vegas casinos https://playcasinoslotsmatic.com/ – vegas world casino games free
https://casinoslotsms.com/ casino online https://playcasinogamescast.com/ – casino games casino slots
experian plc intuit credit score transunion credit report free how to improve my credit score https://getcreditscorefast.com/ – how do i check my credit score
real casino slots https://playcasinostyle.com/ gold fish casino slots online slots free casino
https://getcreditscorefast.com/ free transunion credit report https://creditscoreusd.com/ – free credit score report my credit score free
casino online slots https://casinogamesmgc.com/ – online casino play slots casino bonus codes play online casino


text:
The flood of subprime mortgage defaults roiling the U.S. housing market is also feeding a worldwide credit crisis. Using complex computerized models, lenders have pooled credit instruments of all sorts — mortgages, credit-card debt, corporate and government bonds — for trading in lightly regulated financial markets. The banks, investment funds and other players that trade in these markets say that such "securitization" promotes economic liquidity by spreading and diversifying risk. Critics say the practice actually allows dubious loans to uncreditworthy customers to spread virus-like through worldwide financial markets. Investment banks in the United States and elsewhere are taking billion-dollar losses as they are forced to revalue their holdings. The U.S. Treasury Department has proposed a major overhaul of financial-markets regulation, but the sweeping plan offers little by way of immediate relief. In any event, any proposals for additional regulation will face stiff resistance from the financial community.
Your Email (required)
Subject (required)
Provide Feedback (required)
Suggest a topic here.
Take our survey to help us improve CQ Researcher!


text:
Manchin backs W.Va. abortion bill
West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin is "supportive" of a West Virginia bill banning abortions after 20 weeks and is considering backing a similar federal ban in the Senate.
"I am pro-life and supportive of the principles in the bill that was just passed in the West Virginia Legislature," Manchin said in a statement.
The Democratic-controlled West Virginia legislature has sent a bill to the desk of Democratic Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin that would ban abortions after 20 weeks of gestation, a notable moment for a movement led thus far by Republican-controlled states.
Passage of the bill in West Virginia prompted the anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony List to question Manchin's position on both the state legislation and a federal bill written by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) that has attracted only Republican support thus far.
( Also on POLITICO Magazine: The next battle in abortion wars)
There has been muchdebate in the Senate over which portion of the Constitution enumerates the power for Congress to pass a federal abortion bill. In the statement provided by his office, the moderate Senate Democrat indicated that legal questions are keeping him from signing onto the Graham legislation, for now.
"I am currently evaluating the constitutionality of the legislation and working with my colleagues to make sure we can pursue a bill that will pass the Senate. My main goal, and one that we can all agree on, is reducing the number of abortions in this country," Manchin said.
SBA List President Marjorie Dannenfelser said Monday that it's time for Manchin "to embrace his self-avowed pro-life position and become the first Democratic cosponsor of the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act." SBA List is also working on moderate Democrats like Sens. Joe Donnelly of Indiana and Mark Pryor of Arkansas to join on to the Graham legislation.


text:
NBC, reporter criticized for Bode Miller interview
SOCHI, Russia – American skier Bode Miller is responding to criticism of an NBC post-race interview by saying it was a "crazy emotional moment."
The interview, conducted after Miller won a bronze medal in the men's super-G ski race, turned to his emotions given the death of his younger brother, Chelone, who died last year. A visibly emotional Miller began crying during the interview, leaning against a railing.
The moment drew backlash toward interviewer Christin Cooper, who pressed Miller about his brother, and NBC, which aired the full tape-delayed interview in prime time in the United States several hours later.
"I appreciate everyone sticking up for me," Miller tweeted on Monday. "Please be gentle w christin cooper, it was crazy emotional and not all her fault. #heatofthemoment"
See the tweet here: http://twitter.com/MillerBode/status/435289844190031872
Miller was a trending topic on Twitter in the United States for much of the day after the tweet and critics said the interview was insensitive.
Richard Sandomir of The New York Times called it "overkill," Kami Mattioli of the Sporting News said Cooper "repeatedly badgered" Miller and the AP's David Bauder called it "a shameful spectacle."
NBC said in a statement that its intent was to convey the emotion Miller felt.
"We understand how some viewers thought the line of questioning went too far, but it was our judgment that his answers were a necessary part of the story," the statement said.
"My emotions were very raw, she asked the questions that every interviewer would have," Miller said in another tweet. "Pushing is part of it, she wasnt trying to cause pain."
See that tweet here: http://twitter.com/MillerBode/status/435290234331598848
— By Oskar Garcia — Twitter http://twitter.com/oskargarcia
Associated Press reporters are filing dispatches about happenings in and around Sochi during the 2014 Winter Games. Follow AP journalists covering the Olympics on Twitter: http://apne.ws/1c3WMiu


text:
Loxahatchee floodwater fix voted down by water managers
West Palm Beach was poised to take excess water
The memory of floodwater from Tropical Storm Isaac is still fresh for most folks who call the western communities of Palm Beach County home.
That's why a 3-2 vote by the Indian Trial Improvement District Board of Supervisors that stopped an agreement with the city of West Palm Beach for help with future floods is surprising to some homeowners.
"I don't understand that," said Loxahatchee homeowner Holly Livingston. "I don't know why they would do that."
West Palm Beach is authorized right now to take .25 inch of floodwater, or 10 million gallons a day from Loxahatchee. The agreement would have increased that to 1 inch a day, or 40 million gallons.
"Basically, the deal was that we would quadruple the amount of water that we would take from them, if they wanted to," said West Palm Beach spokesman Elliot Cohen. "I mean, it's totally up to them."
Cohen said the city was even poised to pay for the pumps at a cost of $300,000. He said it's a win for the city that in recent years battled back from a serious drought, because it would give it yet another source for water.
Gary Dunkley, a member of the Indian Trial Improvement District Board of Supervisors, said he voted against the project because it was presented too quickly and without any alternatives.
"It wasn't the cost," said Dunkley. "It was not having control of your own destiny in terms of water. The city of West Palm Beach is notorious when it comes to breaking their word."


text:
клипса 8 наживка - червь,червь навозный
Remember that catch points need to be given a break. If the biting is over, it should take a little time before the fish reappears in the empty place.
Also, do not forget about the phases when one fish replaces another for a certain period of time.
Being on the point, you can navigate by the chat that is being caught at the moment.
Required level: 12


text:
More Ohio motorists making pothole claims
Associated Press
DAYTON – The Ohio Court of Claims says 256 people have sued the state transportation department so far this year for damage caused by potholes on state highways.
That's way more than the 110 claims filed all of last year, and the 147 complaints registered in 2012 with the Court of Claims, which handles cases involving vehicle damage.
The Dayton Daily News reports that on average, about 50 percent of the claims result in a payout. The average award was just under $600 for the last five years.
The especially brutal winter led to more potholes than usual in many regions of Ohio this year.
Drivers have up to two years to file for reimbursement with the Ohio Court of Claims. Forms can be downloaded at ohiocourtofclaims.gov.


text:
Any time I criticize the representation (or lack thereof) of disability in fictional media, I inevitably get all three of the following responses either in the comments here or on Twitter.
This is fiction, it's not real, lighten up (often not worded so politely)
If you don't like it, don't read, watch or listen to it.
If you don't like it, write your own book, produce your own movie etc.
All three are silencing tactics and I've experienced them all repeatedly as I blog about disability on TV (here, here , here and here) in movies (here) and most recently in my essay criticizing the book ( and soon to be released movie) Me Before You. I think all of these responses are worth looking at in more depth.
This is fiction, it's not real, lighten up.
Whenever I get this response three questions always occur to me.
- Has this person ever taken an English class (or other language class focused on literature).
- Do these people also send these messages to university English Departments
- Do literary journals get this sort of feedback against other literary study and criticism?
Admittedly the last two are facetious but I do seriously wonder about the first. As I recall of English class after basic literacy and reading comprehension was obtained, we were asked to look at literature in the context of when it was written, what it might mean for today, what is its social impact, etc.
Fiction doesn't exist in a vacuum divorced from the social context from which it was created. It reflects that social context and the biases of the author.
This is why people who study the play The Importance of Being Earnest for homosexual subtext despite the fact that the play closes with three heterosexual couples becoming engaged and the fact that homosexuality was illegal at the time of the play's release. They do this because the playwright (Oscar Wilde) was himself gay and the very successful first run of the play was ended early when his trial for homosexuality began.
Wilde's private life is presumed to have affected his writing even when he was writing about people unlike himself.
Similarly, people find deep seated colonial views in the fictional writing of Rudyard Kipling whose most famous work is The Jungle Book but is also famous for his poem The White Man's Burden. A poem which clearly dehumanizes the people in colonized places. A poem which was written to expressly defend and promote imperialism.
The ideas he espoused in that poem are identifiable is his fiction including The Jungle Book, to the point that people are concerned that the book continues to be adapted into film (see here and here).
Fiction has also been used to make a point about society and culture, consider George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm or William Golding's Lord of the Flies.
Academics read Jane Austen to get a glimpse of social life in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. They do this because they feel her books lend real insight into the social orders of the time. Let me remind you, Jane Austen wrote fiction.
To fall back on a cliche "The Pen is Mightier Than the Sword" The written word has power, it has the ability to highlight reality or tear down a misconception. But just like a sword in the hands of someone who doesn't know how to use it, a pen in the hands of someone writing about a group of people to whom they do not belong–and did not particularly attempt to research– can do harm by reinforcing false and negative ideas about those people.
I'll focus on Me Before You as an example because it is the most current book/film to be criticized by disabled people.
To say that Me Before You stands separate from culture or that its status as a romance novel exempts it from having a social message (another common argument) is plain false. the ideas around disability in Me Before You are nothing new or unique. Consider
Stories that involve disabled people seeking assisted suicide
- Million Dollar Baby (2004)
- The Sea Inside (2004)
- The Bone Collector (1999)
Stories that position disability as an insurmountable tragedy (this list is assumed to contain the above mentioned stories)
- Jane Eyre (1847)
- Heidi (1881)
- The Secret Garden (1910)
- A Christmas Carol (1843)
- Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)
This kind of story line is far from new and my list far from comprehensive. So I ask at what point does fiction stop reflecting societal and cultural ideals? Because I don't think it does, particularly when these stories are the dominant ones and alternatives are few and hard to find.
Fiction also doesn't always stay that way, it has been used to justify horrible abuses against disabled people. In 1920 Canadian Eugenicist Helen MacMurchy published a book call The Almosts: A Study of the Feeble-Minded. The entire premise of the book is that literature rather than science is the best place to find real understanding of people who would have at the time been labeled feeble-minded. She opens the book by saying,
Sometimes the poet sees more than the scientist, even when the scientific man is playing at his own game. The novelist can give a few points to the sociologist, and the dramatist to the settlement worker. Had the voter and the legislator studied with a little more attention the works of William Shakespeare and Walter Scott we might have come sooner to some of the alleged discoveries of the twentieth century.
Take the case of the feeble-minded. They have been drawn from life more than once by the great masters already mentioned, as well as by Charles Dickens, Victor Hugo, Charles Reade, and many other writers, and yet so far at least we do not seem to have taken mentally defective persons in the world as seriously as the great writers who immortalized Wamba, Quasimodo, Barnaby Rudge, Young Sparkler, Mr. Toots, and others, by giving them the entry to that stage which the world may always watch from the windows of the Library.(pp. 1-2)
MacMurchy was no minor character in Canada's eugenics movement either, she was appointed as Ontario's Inspector of the feeble-minded in 1906. She is considered to be the individual who had the strongest impact on Canada's history of eugenics which saw the forcible sterilizations of thousands of people (primarily in Alberta and British Columbia).
So the idea that fiction stays on the page and never impacts how someone sees another group of people, is an argument I can't get my head around.
Also, if people are unaffected by these stories, why are we still telling them? I'm not seeing a lot of variety in story lines centuries later.
But moving on…
If you don't like it, don't read, watch or listen to it.
This argument is mostly answered by my response to the last argument. This is not a matter of simply not liking something, that's why I don't eat kidney beans. The thing is, the existence of kidney beans has no real effect on my life as long as I avoid them. However, as I have explained fiction doesn't work that way, it reflects and reinforces social views and those CAN hurt me and others if ignored.
So np, I won't be ignoring fiction or media of any kind that perpetuates negative and bigoted stereotypes around disability. NEXT!
If you don't like it, write your own book, produce your own movie etc.
There are a couple things wrong with this, first of all in most cases this is much easier said than done. Secondly if done it's generally not done at a level that can compete with the message it is trying to counter.
Let's tackle the actual doing first. In terms of making movies, people can't just go do that. You need equipment (which is expensive), training to use that equipment (training that is often also expensive and also offered in ways that are inaccessible to disabled people.
I actually had a guy on Twitter say to these concerns "Just apply for funding, there is so much funding for disabled people"
um… BAHAHAHAHAHA… *sobs* sir please cite your sources.
I personally know so many disabled creators that want to have their work translated to the screen. They lack access to funding, training and the support that is required to make that happen and I assure you it is not for lack of trying.
Writing a book is somewhat easier and appears easier in a time where the internet makes self-publication available to anyone who churns out a book. Which brings us to the next problem, it's available to anyone who churns out a book. This isn't just an issue of oversaturation but the fact that a lot and I mean a lot of self published books are terrible, poorly written and poorly edited (if they are edited at all). It's hard to get noticed in that kind of environment.
Succeeding as a self-published novelist is hard because it's difficult to get noticed in the deluge of other self-published books (even if yours isn't one of the ones that suck).
In the context of writing a novel to challenge the messages of more mainstream books, telling someone to just write there own book,only works of they can compete with books like Me Before You. A book that has sold over five million copies and is now a film. That's some stiff competition.
You can't just write a book and drop off the manuscript at Penguin Books or Harper Collins. And access to an actual publisher is necessary to be competitive because, they offer not only the editing needed to make a book the best it can be. They have marketing departments. A little book that is self-published does not. As Penny Pepper points out writing about disability in ways that deviate from stereotypes is hard.
I've been writing disabled characters into my work since my teens. Yet the more I wrote about disabled people who loved and fucked and birthed and died, and all the mess and joy in between, the less my work succeeded.
Fighting the status quo has never been as simple as showing up and offering an alternative. People have to want that alternative. Saying that fiction has no power is a way of making people comfortable maintaining their enjoyment of problematic stories without making them think about it. So yes, it may be fiction but it is never just fiction. Ask yourself "what stories aren't you seeing and why?" ask "whose stories aren't you seeing and why?" and "who is writing the stories" Because the answers to those questions are important and are very much worth asking.