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Book of the week, etc.
April 11, 2016
At the Existentialist Cafe is BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week starting Monday 13 April. Catch up with it online here – a 5-part serialisation, edited by Polly Coles and read by Sasha Behar.
There's a quick interview on NPR's The Takeaway, with John Hockenberry, here.
Meanwhile, my US tour is coming to a finale at the Town Hall, Seattle, tonight: see here. For a flavour of my American conversations, especially when fuelled by a cocktail or two, here's Martin Pengelly's piece in the US Guardian on what happened when we met in Manhattan for a Manhattan in the Bemelmans Bar.
Next is a rather brief visit to Canada, where I'm at the Gladstone Hotel in Toronto on Wednesday 13 April – an event organised by Flying Books. Read more here. I also selected five favorite books of the moment for Flying Books – here they are.
More UK appearances coming up with dizzying soonness: join me at "Sunday Morning with Sartre", organised by the School of Life at London's Mary Ward Centre: 11.20 am on Sunday 17 April. See here!
Looking ahead to May: on the evening of 9 May I'll be at Shakespeare & Co in Paris. See their website here for further details when they emerge. In the UK, I'm at Charleston on 27 May (here), with Steve Jones, and at Hay on 30 May. More details to follow.
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Tags: Book of the Week, Flying Books, Martin Pengelly, NPR, Radio 4, School of Life, Seattle, The Takeaway, Toronto
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Imagine if there was a bill before the state legislature that, if passed, would increase competition among government vendors and would thereby lower costs for government. By its nature, the new law would also give the little guy a better shot at obtaining government business. Assuming all other circumstances are favorable the law seems too good to turn down. It is the sort good government legislation that opinion makers, such as newspaper editorial writers, have usually endorsed.
Well such a bill is before the legislature but don't expect the Newhouses to be too enthusiastic about it. As reported by former Times-Picayune journalist Tyler Bridges in The Lens, an online news service, the proposal would change the requirements for awarding the rights to publish lucrative legal notices for Jefferson and Orleans Parishes.
Put simply, The New Orleans Advocate wants the five-year qualification period to be reduced so that it can go after the business. In the past when the law has been amended it has been in The T-P's favor such as when the requirement that the paper had to publish daily was conveniently changed to three times a week. The Newhouses might not like this latest change so much. Yet it makes sense. The rationale for the time restriction was so that no hasty start-up operation could muscle in on an established business, but The Advocate descends from a Louisiana-based newspaper business that is almost as old as The T-P, besides it is locally owned.
Bridges' article explains how various parts of the "legals" business are controlled by different political entities, such as sheriffs who must make official announcements of property sales.
Legals have long been a major source of advertising for newspapers. While they are important to big city publications they have historically been a lifeline for rural papers for which the government is the main advertiser. Arguments are made that the requirement to publish legal notices may one day be totally replaced by the Internet where all records can be posted by the appropriate government agency. Not everyone has access to the Internet, but the main users of legal notices — lawyers and real estate people — do. Given the historic traditions of print on paper being the medium for recording legal documents doing otherwise would take years of debate. Changing the law would be a page one story — any day of the week.
— 30 —

subset: commoncrawl


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BOSTON (AP) – A winter storm that dropped nearly 2 feet of snow just north of Boston, temporarily shut down major highways in New York and Pennsylvania and forced airlines to cancel thousands of flights nationwide menaced the Northeast on Friday with howling winds and dangerously cold temperatures. The storm was blamed for at least nine deaths in the eastern half of the country.
The nor'easter – which brought plummeting temperatures that reached 8 degrees below zero in Burlington, Vt., early Friday with a wind chill of 29 below zero – dumped 23 inches of snow in Boxford, Mass., by early Friday and 18 inches in parts of western New York near Rochester. Thirteen inches of snow fell in Boston, while Lakewood, N.J., got 10 inches and New York's Central Park got 6.
On a mostly empty Main Street in Concord, N.H., Kathy Woodfin hustled to work, a tall iced coffee turning to caramel-colored slush in her left hand. It was 7 degrees at 9 a.m. and the wind zipping through alleyways blew a fine, stinging snow in her face.
'I just run from heated car to heated building,' the New Hampshire native said. 'It's just like down South, where they run from air conditioned car to air conditioned building.'
The snowfall, frigid temps and stiff winds extended the holiday break for some students in the Northeast for a second day while posing the first test for New York City's new mayor and perhaps the last challenge for Boston's outgoing one.
U.S. airlines canceled more than 2,300 flights Thursday because of the snowfall and low visibility. By Friday morning, about 1,600 flights were canceled nationwide, according to the aviation tracking website FlightAware.com.
Workers at a convenience store in Mount Laurel, N.J., said they were busy all night as they fueled plow drivers with coffee and other necessities.
Among those stopping in as the snow continued to fall before dawn was David Neff, a newspaper deliveryman. 'It sucks out here,' Neff said. 'They're just starting to plow stuff. We definitely got what they said and maybe a little more.'
Forecasters had said much of New Jersey would get 4 to 8 inches.
Snow began falling overnight Wednesday in parts of New England and New York state, but the brunt of the storm began late Thursday. Forecasters warned that gusts of up to 30 miles per hour could bring wind chills to minus 25 degrees, cold enough to cause frostbite in about 30 minutes or less. The weather service said people should dress warmly to avoid hypothermia and cover all exposed skin.
Governors in New York and New Jersey declared states of emergency Thursday, urging residents to stay home. State and county government offices in Delaware were closed Friday. Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick said state offices that closed early Thursday would remain closed Friday. He said Friday morning he was concerned about coastal flooding at the mid-day high tide and 'extreme' low temperatures expected to continue into Friday night.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo ordered three major highways closed overnight. The Thruway between Albany and the Bronx, the Long Island Expressway and Interstate 84 between the Pennsylvania and Connecticut borders all reopened Friday morning. Southbound Interstate 95 closed in Philadelphia for several hours because of a jackknifed tractor-trailer.
The heavy weather began rolling in just a day after New York Mayor Bill de Blasio was sworn in to lead the nation's largest city and a few days before Boston Mayor Thomas Menino ends 20 years in office on Monday.
De Blasio, who as public advocate in 2010 criticized his predecessor Mayor Michael Bloomberg for his handling of a large snowstorm, dispatched hundreds of plows and salt spreaders on the streets as soon as the snow started falling Thursday night. The New York metropolitan area got between 6 to 11 inches of snow.
On Friday morning, de Blasio was shoveling the sidewalk outside his Brooklyn home. Wearing a black jacket and gloves, he joked with reporters and demonstrated proper shoveling techniques. He later brought out salt to spread on the walk.
Across the region, state and local police were busy responding to accidents and reports of stranded vehicles.
Amtrak was running trains on all of its Northeast lines on Friday but operating on a modified schedule, spokeswoman Christina Leeds said. Commuter trains Metro-North Railroad, which runs trains between New York City and suburban Connecticut, Long Island and New York's Hudson Valley, the Long Island Rail Road and New Jersey Transit were operating on weekend schedules. Chains were placed on New York City buses so they would not get stuck in drifts.
Slick roads were blamed for traffic deaths in Michigan, Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois. Authorities said a 71-year-old woman suffering from Alzheimer's disease froze to death after she wandered away from her rural western New York home.
As the storm approached, a worker at a suburban Philadelphia salt storage facility was killed when a 100-foot-tall pile of road salt fell and crushed him. Falls Township police said the man was trapped while operating a backhoe. There was no word on what may have caused the accident.
The snowstorm worked its way east from the Midwest, where it dropped up to a foot of snow on Michigan and more than a foot in parts of Illinois, prompting the cancellation Thursday of hundreds of flights at both Chicago airports. It merged with low pressure moving northeast off the mid-Atlantic coast, forming a nor'easter.
Nearly 17 inches of snow fell in some of Chicago's northern suburbs, and more than 12 inches of snow was recorded at Midway International Airport. About 10 Southwest Airlines planes were stuck on the tarmac at Midway for up to four hours amid flight backlogs.
In Wisconsin, a record low temperature was set Friday morning in Green Bay, where the mercury dipped to minus 18. The National Weather Service said that topped the 17-below-zero mark last recorded in 1979.
___ Associated Press writers Geoff Mulvihill in Mount Laurel, N.J.; Rik Stevens in Concord, N.H., John Christoffersen in New Haven, Conn., Wilson Ring in Montpelier, Vt., Jim Fitzgerald and Jonathan Lemire in New York City, David Sharp in Portland, Maine, and Jackie Quinn in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.


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text: HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. — When the Fountain of Youth Stakes at Gulfstream Park and the Risen Star Stakes at the Fair Grounds are run on Saturday, people who follow thoroughbred racing will watch intently, even if they don't have a financial stake in the outcome. The prep races that lead to the Kentucky Derby annually engage the attention of fans trying to spot the future winner of America's most famous race.\r\nBut there is a new twist on the road to the Derby this year. Churchill Downs has changed the system to determine who gets into the Derby field and who doesn't. The new rules will put added pressure on owners and trainers and ought to make the pre-Derby campaign even more competitive.\r\nChurchill limits the Derby to 20 starters and for decades has given preference to horses on the basis of their earnings in graded stakes. The system wasn't completely rational; horses got credit for earnings in 2-year-old races, sprints and grass races that had little or no relevance to the Derby. Moreover, purse money has ceased to reflect the importance of a prep race. The Delta Jackpot for 2-year-olds, run at little Delta Downs in Louisiana, offers a $1 million purse bolstered by slot-machine revenue, and thus counted for more than the $750,000 Santa Anita Derby, which has produced 16 winners of the Run for the Roses.\r\nIt is important to have fair rules governing eligibility because the Derby in recent years has regularly attracted more than 20 prospective runners. So Churchill Downs eliminated the money standard and replaced it with a system awarding points to the top four finishers in designated stakes races. The 20 horses with the highest point totals get into the starting gate. Every stakes run prior to Feb. 23 bestowed 10 points to the winner. The events that Churchill has anointed the "Championship Series" begin Saturday with the Fountain of Youth and the Risen Star. These and six others are worth 50 points to the winner, followed by seven (including the biggies, such as the Santa Anita Derby, Wood Memorial and Florida Derby) that are worth 100.\r\nThe new rules have generated plenty of controversy. The Risen Star Stakes and the Louisiana Derby — traditionally regarded as second-tier prep races — were accorded 50- and 100-point status, respectively. (Churchill Downs, Inc. owns the Fair Grounds, where they are run.) The Illinois Derby at Hawthorne, which has grown in importance and produced the 2002 Kentucky Derby winner, was excluded from the list entirely. (Hawthorne was involved in a dispute over racing dates with the other Chicago track, Arlington Park, owned by Churchill Downs, Inc.) Many critics lambasted the fact that the winner of the Breeders' Cup Juvenile earns only 10 points, creating the possibility that the champion of a thoroughbred generation wouldn't qualify to run in the Derby.\r\nOn balance, though, I believe the new system will make the prep-race season better than ever. Trainers habitually try to get to the Derby by taking the path of least resistance and ducking the toughest competition. Important showdowns in the prep races have been increasingly rare. Even though most top 3-year-olds are stabled in Florida, the 2012 Fountain of Youth drew only seven starters and the Florida Derby a field of eight.\r\nUnder the new system, it's almost impossible for trainers to duck meaningful competition. The Fountain of Youth Stakes, headed by Todd Pletcher's undefeated Violence, drew 11 entrants and the Risen Star will have at least 12 starters, with half of the field coming from tracks outside the state.\r\nThe new framework for the prep races comes in a season that has the potential to produce some bona-fide 3-year-old stars. Of course, it is premature to make such any definite judgments; most of the Derby prospects are lightly raced and largely untested. But speed figures suggest that this may be an above-average crop. When I'll Have Another won last year's Derby, he earned a Beyer Speed Figure of 101. Already this winter four colts have recorded a figure of 101 or higher.\r\nSome of the colts regarded as top Derby contenders have done so little that it is hard to take them seriously yet. Violence is No. 3 in the Daily Racing Form's rankings after winning a stakes on a synthetic surface with an easy trip and a low speed figure. Flashback is No. 2 after dominating a four-horse field in California. But there are a few colts who already look like credible Derby contenders. My top four:\r\n1. Normandy Invasion\r\n2. Itsmyluckyday\r\n3. Super Ninety Nine\r\n4. Verrazano\r\nThe last horse on this short list has generated the most buzz. The Pletcher-trained Verrazano has won his two starts at Gulfstream this winter by a combined total of 24 lengths. He appears to have limitless potential, but until a youngster faces stakes competition and encounters some adversity, it's prudent to withhold judgment.\r\nSuper Ninety Nine won a fast allowance race at Santa Anita, followed by an 11-length romp in the Southwest Stakes at Oaklawn Park on Monday. He not only has talent, he has Bob Baffert as his trainer, and nobody in the profession is better at getting horses revved up for the first Saturday in May.\r\nItsmyluckyday is no prodigy like Verrazano; he had raced seven times before anybody thought of him as a Derby horse. But he delivered two authoritative victories in stakes at Gulfstream, including a decisive win over Eclipse Award winner Shanghai Bobby. He looks like a solid distance runner, and he'll have more seasoning than any major Derby contender.\r\nNormandy Invasion delivered what may have been the most eye-catching performance by any member of his generation when he lost the Remsen Stakes at Aqueduct in November. Coming from the rear of the field, he made a powerhouse move on the final turn before losing a head-bobbing photo finish with Overanalyze. It was the kind of move that frequently carries a horse to glory on the first Saturday in May. Normandy Invasion makes his 3-year-old debut in the Risen Star, and fans trying to spot the 2013 Kentucky Derby winner should be watching him closely.\r\n(c) 2013, The Washington Post\r\nCorrection: A previous version of this article misstated the track where Super Ninety Nine won a fast allowance race. That event took place at Santa Anita, not Hollywood Park.\r\n


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TG Grip Elasticated Tubular Support BandageStarting at:
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VIENNA, Austria, 1 October 2012
Aspirin, the everyday drug taken by countless people around the world to ward off pain and reduce their risk of developing heart disease, may have a new trick up its sleeve – preventing cancer.
A growing body of evidence suggests that taking aspirin may reduce an individual's chances of developing colorectal cancer and perhaps other malignancies, but whether that evidence is strong enough to outweigh the risks of prescribing it to millions of healthy people is the subject of debate.
At the ESMO 2012 Congress in Vienna, both sides of that debate are being aired in front of an audience of experts in one of the meeting's popular Controversy sessions.
Arguing in favour of the question – "Is aspirin (NSAID) ready for chemoprevention of colorectal adenoma/cancer?" – is Prof Robert Benamouzig from the Department of Gastroenterology, Avicenne Hospital, Bobigny, France.
"The efficacy of aspirin in preventing colorectal cancer has been made obvious by more than twenty years of research," said Prof Benamouzig.
"In 2010, researchers published the 20-year follow-up of five pooled randomized trials that assessed the effect of aspirin on colorectal cancer incidence and mortality. The study of more than 14,000 patients found that daily aspirin at any dose reduced risk of colorectal cancer by 24% and associated deaths by 35% after a delay of about 8 to 10 years."
"In these trials, the reduction of colorectal cancer rates was in essence a side-effect of treatment. None of them had such a reduction as their primary outcome. Nevertheless, the evidence that aspirin is effective for preventing these colorectal cancers is very strong," Prof Benamouzig said.
Arguing that the answer to the question should be "No" is Prof Nadir Arber, Director of the Integrated Cancer Prevention at the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Centre in Israel.
"NSAIDs and in particular aspirin are very promising in secondary prevention of colorectal neoplasia, however their role in primary prevention is still not proven," Prof Arber said. "This means that the majority of the population does not need, and is not going to benefit from aspirin use. Having said that, specific high-risk populations definitely can benefit from aspirin intake, including people with hereditary non-polyposis colorectal cancer, familial adenomatous polyposis, existing colorectal cancer or adenoma. In the future based on genomic profile, we would be able to identify people who are at high risk of developing colorectal cancers and who might benefit from aspirin therapy."
During the discussion, Prof Arber will present preliminary data showing how the efficacy and toxicity of aspirin in preventing cancer can be predicted based on some single nucleotide polymorphisms.
Before aspirin can be used for preventing these cancers, we need to develop means of identifying people who are going to benefit from the drug without developing side-effects, Prof Arber said. Risks of taking aspirin include gastrointestinal bleeding and intracranial hemorrhage. "We need a study that will measure overall morbidity and mortality and not efficacy and toxicity in a single organ or disease such as cardio-vascular disease," he said.
The debate on aspirin is just one of 6 popular controversy sessions that will take place at the ESMO 2012 Congress on Monday, 1 October:
• How soon will colorectal patient management be driven by molecular factors?
• Deep DNA sequencing of tumour: ready for prime-time or not?
• Are EGFR inhibitors the best choice for the first line treatment of EGFR mutated lung adenocarcinoma patients?
• Can neo-adjuvant breast cancer data be used to accelerate drug approval?
• Is thromboprophylaxis mandatory in the management of patients with advanced cancer?


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On July 1, NC Medicaid moved the way it pays doctors and hospitals to care for Medicaid patients to a new system. Over the last three weeks, many health care practices have experienced major problems with not getting paid. I have heard of medical practices who haven't been paid for a month of claims, who have had to take out $400,000 short term loans to keep operating and who, at this point, are literally about to go out of business. Clearly Governor Pat McCrory and his Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Aldona Wos are failing the first test of their plans to make big changes in our Medicaid system.
North Carolina's Medicaid program – health and elder care coverage for low income people – has been tops on Governor McCrory's list for changing what he has repeatedly called a "broken system" ever since he came into office. This is the same Medicaid system that US Sen. Richard Burr presented a national award to earlier this year for NC's outstanding Medicaid "quality and efficiency" while posting the lowest cost growth in the nation.
Nevertheless McCrory used the "broken system" excuse to turn down billions of dollars in federal money available to expand Medicaid to adults in low-income working families under the Affordable Care Act. McCrory and other leaders also trumpeted again and again the fact that the General Assembly and outgoing Democratic Governor Perdue last year had not projected the Medicaid budget accurately enough and so had to make up the difference with additional money. Blaming the previous administration for perceived current problems became an article of faith. However, after a few months in office, that narrative began to lose steam for Governor McCrory. A closer look at NC Medicaid over the last few years shows low cost growth and budget increases that, given the recession and NC's growing population, should have been entirely predictable. And once you've been in office a while its hard to blame the previous occupants for everything.
Despite all the rhetoric about a "broken system" and the supposed failure of the Perdue administration, an area where McCrory and DHHS Secretary Aldona Wos were apparently not going to take a chance was NC Medicaid's transition to a new computer system for paying health claims to doctors and hospitals across the state. The change to the new system was started before McCrory's election, but not to take place until this July – six months after he was in office.
Significantly, this change is the first big one in Medicaid where the Governor can't conveniently blame his Democratic predecessor, Governor Perdue, for any actual or perceived failures. McCrory has had six months to get the computer system right, change it, or put the changeover on hold until he can fix it. He created a new "Chief Information Officer" position to oversee the change for the Department of Health and Human Services and promptly hired Joseph Cooper, a private sector technology executive from the Charlotte and Raleigh banking world, at $175,000 a year starting salary. McCrory and Wos then commissioned what they said was an "independent" IT consultant, Susan Young, who issued a February report on the progress in the system. The resulting press release from the McCrory administration trumpeted "Replacement Medicaid Computer System on Track, Outside Consultant Tells DHHS." Not mentioned was that Susan Young had already been working with Medicaid for a while and been identified the month before in other media reports as the Medicaid project's "risk management adviser." Nevertheless, Chief Information Officer Cooper was soon quoted in the media saying, "We are prepared" for the transition and DHHS was reported as saying that outside consultants and reviewers have given the system a green light for several months. Finally, Cooper and Wos wrote op-eds for papers boasting that, "When it goes live, our NCTracks [Medicaid payment system] will be a national leader."
The result, according to the informal reports and discussions I have been privy to with providers is a real mess. While no one expected a major transition of this size to go completely smoothly, the idea that medical practices are having to take out nearly half million dollar loans just to keep operating is ridiculous. I am hearing more and more stories every day of major problems affecting the ability of practices to stay in business. The News and Observer story over the weekend on this should have more people talking, if only for the email uncovered by reporter Lynn Bonner: 56 to 60 percent of calls for help to DHHS from providers are abandoned, where providers get sick of waiting for so long they simply hang up. That's perhaps the best indicator of a system in disarray when the agency can't even talk to the providers having the problems.
Even if the McCrory administration takes responsibility for this disaster, their actions don't bode well for their stated larger goal: Take NC's award winning Medicaid program completely private with changes to the system that will dwarf the transition in how medical claims are paid. Our lowest-income and most vulnerable North Carolinians deserve better.


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Helena (Stephanie Leonidas) is a young girl whose parents own and operate a circus. Normally, it is a kid's dream to run away and join the circus but the fun and novelty of it wears off if you've grown up with it your entire life. Her father (Rob Brydon) keeps it running on "charm and peanuts," but she doesn't share his dream. In fact, it is the fantasy world she wants to escape for a more real one. Helena is a typically petulant teenager rebelling against her parents. Her mother (Gina McKee) is in need of a potentially life-threatening operation and has been hospitalized just as the circus begins to collapse in on itself financially. Helena is an aspiring artist with all kinds of illustrations wallpapering her bedroom (it's like McKean's portfolio exploded in there) and she has the most bizarre, surreal dreams.
It is during one of these dreams that she enters a strange world resembling an oil painting where eyeballs sprout spider legs and books can be opened and used to float through this dream world. It's a place where everyone wears a mask and Helena's circus skills become quite useful. She learns that a dark shadow is falling over the land, threatening to engulf it. The City of Light is in danger of being eclipsed by the Land of Shadows and the White Queen (McKee again) is asleep, unable to wake. Helena must find the Mirrormask if she hopes to defeat the Black Queen (also McKee) and wake the White one. This fantastical dream world and the conflict it is embroiled in is obviously Helena's way of dealing with her real life trials and tribulations. Solving the problems in one world mirror the problems faced in the other.
The young Stephanie Leonidas does an excellent job as the audience surrogate in this strange cinematic world. She has to gain our trust and empathy in the real one so that we're willing to follow her into the elaborately designed dream world. She is the cinematic equivalent of Little Nemo and we are invited to tag along for the ride through her Slumberland. There is also a lovely short-hand between Helena and her folks that is believable and endears us to these characters.
Mirrormask reminds me of when I saw a travelling circus as a child with its acrobats, illusionists, jugglers, clowns, and various performers. It's a dying art form that runs the risk of becoming extinct what with so many other forms of entertainment vying for our attention these days. The early scenes in the film have a handmade feel to them and this is contrasted by the CGI landscapes of the fantasy world later on. Helena lives in a drab, colorless concrete apartment building, which is juxtaposed with the rich colors of the circus and fantasy world. There are all kinds of gorgeous shots, like a long one of the outside of the circus big top bathed in red light with nearby vehicles and trailers illuminated in gold all reflected on the water, which makes the film so fascinating to watch. McKean also shows a keen eye for composition of frame, like the shot of Helena and her father talking on the balcony of their apartment with the ocean visible to the right.
Jim Henson Company was studying the figures of their DVD sales for the library of their films. They noticed that their fantasy films The Dark Crystal (1982) and Labyrinth (1986) sold very well with little to no promotion. They figured that there was a decent-sized audience for these kinds of films and looked into making a prequel to The Dark Crystal or a sequel to Labyrinth but in the end decided to create something else in the spirit of these films. Executive producer Michael Polis pitched this project to Sony Pictures and out of that came The Curse of the Goblin Kingdom, which originated from conversations with artist Brian Froud, the conceptual designer of both The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth.
Lisa Henson, CEO of the Jim Henson Company, was trying to get another Dark Crystal film going and Polis approached her with his project. She agreed to work with him on it. She was friends with writer Neil Gaiman and they were planning a film version of his television series Neverwhere when she contacted him in 2001 with the idea of making a fantasy film in the vein of The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth. She asked him if artist and regular collaborator Dave McKean was interested in directing and if so would Gaiman be willing to write the story. He sent Henson a copy of a short film that McKean had made and she was impressed with the visuals and that he had made it so cheaply.
Polis considered teaming McKean up with Froud but soon realized that for the sake of coherence there could only be one particular style for the film and sided with McKean because he was going to direct. Henson and Polis then pitched Mirrormask to Sony who greenlit the film with a $4 million budget in 2003. Although, Gaiman and McKean worked for almost no salary, they were given complete creative freedom. The two men lived in different countries on different continents and ended up meeting at Henson's house in London, England where they spent ten days creating a general story outline. It was felt that this environment was more conducive to creativity then a sterile hotel room. Gaiman wrote the script based on McKean's specifications in 2002. For example, Gaiman came up with the idea of a girl who was part of a traveling theater and her mother got sick while McKean changed the theater to a circus (more interesting visually) and came up with the masks and the two mothers. Filming of the live-action footage took place in Brighton, England in June and July of 2003.
McKean wanted Mirrormask to have "a painterly, illustrative feel to it." To this end, he had a very "loose working" relationship with 15 computer animators, many fresh from college, allowing for improvisation. There was never a worry that the film wouldn't fit together because it was all based on his imagery. For example, when he designed the film's creatures, he made them quite simple in order to give the animators a lot of room to work with. However, this approach extended the post-production phase, which was originally budgeted for approximately eight months, to 17 months.
Mirrormask was originally set for a direct-to-DVD release but it was accepted in the 2005 Sundance Film Festival and this convinced Sony to give it a limited theatrical release in the United States. The film received mostly mixed to negative reviews from mainstream critics. Roger Ebert gave the film two out of four stars and wrote, "I suspected the filmmakers began with a lot of ideas about how the movie should look, but without a clue about pacing, plotting or destination." In his review for The New York Times, Stephen Holden called it, "an example of too much lavished on too little. Because there is often more on the screen than the eye can take in, the originality of its visual imagination is compromised." The Washington Post's Desson Thomson felt it was "so single-minded in its reach for fantasy, it becomes the genre's evil opposite: banality." The Village Voice's Michael Atkinson wrote, "The measure of conviction needed to make and read comic books is all that's brought to bear, and the result might make good dope software, if you can sit still and stay awake." However, Entertainment Weekly gave the film an "A-" rating and Lisa Schwarzbaum called it a "dazzling reverie of a kids-and-adults movie, an unusual collaboration between lord-of-the-cult multimedia artist Dave McKean and king-of-the-comics Neil Gaiman (The Sandman), has something to astonish everyone." In his review for the San Francisco Chronicle, Walter Addiego called it, "richly inventive."


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This new blogging setup, with the new domain, new feeds, and ideally new workflow, suggest the analysis of what was problematic with the old one.
Back when I was a PhD student, doing everything I could to avoid work on my thesis, I stumbled upon a culture of Lisp and Free Software developers – which may only come across as half ridiculous now but in 2001 seemed doubly counter-cultural. And so I joined a blogging platform for Free Software types that also happened to double as a testbed for trust metric research. And at the time, this offered neat features not easily available elsewhere: the word "blog" itself was only about two years old, and pertelote maintained a blog by hand for years, so having somewhere which would host my writing, and which moreover had some of the Social Network about it (the advogato userbase was responsible for certification of individuals' contribution to Free Software, and several of my then collaborators were on advogato before me) was ideal.
The principal downside for me, then as now, is the use of web browsers
as the interface for text entry; a
<textarea> just isn't rich enough
in functionality. The situation is better now than it was – (mostly)
gone are the days when an incautious
C-q would instantly close all
browser windows, including the one in which your meticulously-crafted
draft was waiting for final polish before being submitted as a diary
entry – but it's still a long way from using my text editor,
moderately customized to my way of working, with all the comfort that
that brings.
Meanwhile, for work, I've successfully used ikiwiki to document the processes and data around some of my academic administrative responsibilities over the years: postgraduate tutor, employability coordinator, director of postgraduate studies (the reality is even less glamorous than these titles); it's been really nice to be able to update documents while not at my desk, or while commuting, and even if I have never grown to love mercurial (ikiwiki's at-one-time default DVCS backend) it is at least worth knowing.
So when contemplating how to set up systems less likely to impede my productivity, it's perhaps natural that I should return to a recent success, and set up an ikiwiki instance. This time, though, I'm (obviously) explicitly using ikiwiki's support for blogging as well as its natural wiki nature; the idea is that the weblog is for timely, pertinent comments, while the wiki is for incrementally-refined notes on all subjects – probably replacing my org-mode note-taking habit, which while lovely relies too much on having a single emacs instance available at all times for when inspiration strikes. I fully expect to keep the org-mode setup I have for Getting (Some) Things Done, but will likely migrate the non-actionable notes I have to this wiki as and when.
Speaking of new feeds, the advogato tag will be punned
into denoting content that should be syndicated to
my diary on advogato.
It's perhaps inevitable that something will go wrong, and including
html tags in the text of the first syndicated entry is an excellent
way to ensure that that happens, so if there's an editable textarea,
escaped less-than and greater-than signs, or a sentence that seems to
be missing something, then the Unix-Haters among the readers can
reminisce about seeing
>From in their e-mails oh wait
that still happens...


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COMING ATTRACTIONS For thirty years El Pasoan Willie Varela has been best known for his avant-garde super 8 films. This month, however, the 52-year-old debuts his other artistic undertakings. On October 31 the El Paso Museum of Art and the UT-El Paso Fox Fine Arts Center open a two-part exhibit, "Crossing Over: Photographs and New Video Installations by Willie Varela." The former venue will display thirty- by forty-inch photos dating from 1981 to 2001 (top, San Francisco, CA, 1994 and bottom, El Paso, TX, 1996), and the latter will show multimedia works. And mark your calendars: John G. Hanhardt, the senior curator of film and media arts at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, who oversaw Varela's retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1994, will give a talk about the artist at the Fox Fine Arts Center November 13. For the movie-starved, the Capital City lights up its theaters for the Texas premiere of Jonathan Demme's The Truth About Charlie (a remake of the Stanley Donen classic, Charade) October 9 and the Austin Film Festival, which will provide audiences with more than eighty movie screenings from October 10 through 17. (See Austin: Other Events; and El Paso: Museums/Galleries.)
From the October 2002 Issue Subscribe


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Fan control scripts
This page provides several scripts for controlling the ThinkPad's system fan according the its thermal sensors (overriding the embedded controller), in order to reduce fan noise and decrease power consumption.
These scripts rely on undocumented hardware features and override nominal hardware behavior. They may thus cause arbitrary damage to your laptop or data. Watch your temperatures!
Closed-loop fan control requires a thermal sensor sweep, which is an expensive operation. The firmware doesn't update the sensors more than once every 2s, so care should be taken not to waste resources by reading them too often.
Variable speed control scripts
The following scripts sets the fan speed according to the system's thermal sensors. In addition, they include a hack for preventing the annoying fan pulsing that occurs on some systems. Note that the fan levels, thresholds and anti-pulsing hacks are system-specific, so you may need to adjust them.
Comprehensive bash script with fine control over fan speed
This script works with any recent Linux kernel (2.6.14 and higher). It requires the ibm-acpi module to be loaded with the experimental=1 module parameter (e.g.,
# modprobe ibm_acpi experimental=1).
In Linux 2.6.22 and higher you need to additionally pass fan_control=1 to the module thinkpad_acpi (e.g.,
# modprobe thinkpad-acpi experimental=1 fan_control=1)
On Ubuntu > 10.04 or from kernel 2.6.32 onwards: To make the kernel module settings permanent and to make them be executed at boot run below command and reboot afterwards:
# sudo echo "options thinkpad_acpi experimental=1 fan_control=1" >/etc/modprobe.d/thinkpad_acpi.conf
The code lets you define a temperature range for each thermal sensor. The script computes the fan level needed by each sensor based on the configured range, and then sets the the actual fan level to the slowest that will satisfy all sensors (plus some hysteresis to avoid fluctiations). It also includes a workaround for the pulsing noise problem. The script provides an (optional) daemon mode and logging to syslog. The method of controlling fan speed is documented here.
The system hard disk temperature is monitored as well, using the hard disk's internal sensor. This works only on certain Hitachi disks and requires kernel >= 2.6.19-rc1 or the ide driver, since it uses a non-standard method for reading the temperature without causing a head unload or spinup.
The code:
Current options:
Usage: ./tp-fancontrol [OPTION]... Available options: -s N Shift up the min temperature thresholds by N degrees (positive for quieter, negative for cooler). Max temperature thresholds are not affected. -S N Shift up the max temperature thresholds by N degrees (positive for quieter, negative for cooler). DANGEROUS. -t Test mode -q Quiet mode -d Daemon mode, go into background (implies -q) -l Log to syslog -k Kill already-running daemon -u Tell already-running daemon that the system is being suspended -p Pid file location for daemon mode
init script for the comprehensive script
This is optional. It assumes that the above tp-fancontrol script is saved at /usr/bin/tp-fancontrol.
- Init script: tp-fancontrol.init (download) (save as /etc/init.d/tp-fancontrol)
- Init script (Debian): tp-fancontrol.init.debian (download) (save as /etc/init.d/tp-fancontrol)
- Configuration file for init script: tp-fancontrol.conf (download) (save as /etc/tp-fancontrol.conf)
Simple bash script with fine control over fan speed (requires kernel patch)
The following is a simpler patch (without extra features like daemon mode and logging). It requires the patch for controlling fan speed or a recent kernel (>=2.6.19).
tp-fancontrol-basic (download)
tp-fan: Automatic daemon with GTK+ GUI
Provides easy setup and monitoring through graphical GTK+ interface. Temperature thresholds can be set separately for each sensor since version 0.90.
At the moment packages are available for Ubuntu 8.04, 8.10, and 9.04. However, porting to other distributions or manual setup should be easy.
thinkfan: A minimalist fan control program
Written in C to use as little CPU power as possible. Configuration is done via a simple text file, by providing (FAN_LEVEL, LOWER_LIMIT, UPPER_LIMIT) tuples. Inspired by i8kfan. Requires thinkpad_acpi with fan_control=1. Just released version 0.7, which now allows a more fine-grained control over temperature limits.
- Download here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/thinkfan/
Fan enable/disable scripts
The following scripts were written before it was known how to control the fan speed, so they only toggle between fan disabled and default (noisy) fan behavior. In some models, they also do not monitor all available thermal sensors.
sh script example
sh script with more features
fan-enable-extended (download)
sh script with extra safety functionality
ibm_acpi usually works well. But to rely on it completely, this script provides some extra safety functionality:
- It catches various signals and turns the fan on before it quits.
- It turns off the fan under very strict conditions, leaving it on when unexpected errors occur.
Init scripts
Init script example
Init script example for gentoo
Assume one of the above control scripts is /usr/sbin/ibm-fancontrold, for gentoo use the following init script in /etc/init.d/ibm-fancontrol. Copy the script to /etc/init.d/ibm-fancontrol, then do
# rc-update add ibm-fancontrol default
This will add the init script to the default runlevel.
ibm-fancontrol.init (download)
Init script example for rh/fedora
Assume one of the above control scripts is /sbin/tp-fancontrold, copy the script to /etc/init.d/tp-fancontrol, then do
# chkconfig --add tp-fancontrol
This will add the init script to the default runlevel.
tp-fancontrol-fc.init (download)
You'd have to install also "kernel-module-ibm-acpi" package.
This little piece of python code is only there to speed up your fan in a T400 with an ATI card cause the fglrx driver does not control the fan speed which leads to overheating while gaming or do other graphic stuff with the ati chip. This script relies on the normal bios control of the fan. If the laptop gets to hot it will speed up the fan to max speed (somehow the bios does not do this ??!!) and re-enables the bios control on a certain temperature. This was only tested on a T400 with ATI chip. You can just run in in the background as root. It is very chatty and writes in a logfile in /tmp. It should work with any Thinkpad who has /proc/acpi/ibm/fan interface. tpfand
Tested on: T400 with Radeon HD 3400 Please test on other models with ATI chip.
fanctrld is a daemon (written in C) that controls the Thinkpad's fan. The basic approach is to monitor both temperature and fan speed. The fan is enabled when a certain temperature is exceeded, and disabled when the BIOS slows down the fan below a certain speed.
ThinkPad Fan Control GTK GUI tool
A GTK GUI program (packaged for Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon 7.10) may also help.
For those using Ubuntu 8.10 and recent Thinkpad models (eg: X200), this is the fan control packages to use: sudo apt-get install tpfand tpfan-admin tpfand-profiles (The packages are part of the main ubuntu repository). It solves the problem of a constantly-on fan. I don't think there are yet profiles for those newer thinkpad models, but it's fairly easy to manually configure the right thresholds. For reference, this is the /etc/tpfand.conf I use for my X200:
enabled = True
override_profile = True
0. Sensor 0 = 0:0 50:3 58:5 67:8
1. Sensor 1 = 0:0 55:3 62:5 69:8
2. Sensor 2 = 0:255
3. Sensor 3 = 0:0 48:3 61:5 69:8
4. Sensor 4 = 0:0 43:3 50:8
5. Sensor 5 = 0:255
6. Sensor 6 = 0:0 40:8
7. Sensor 7 = 0:255
Ideas for improvement
- Use the HDAPS sensor to automatically lower the temperature thresholds when the laptop is moving. Prolonged movement usually happens when the laptop is on the user's lap (see Problem with hot surfaces for implications), or when in a moving vehicle where fan noise is typically overshadowed by vehicle noise.
- Use a PID controller feedback loop instead of simple thresholds.
- Monitor the UltraBay disk temperature too.
See also
- How to control fan speed
- Shimodax's ThinkPad fan control tool for a Windows offers functionality similar to these scripts; see the forum discussion at thinkpads.com.
- Yury Polyanskiy has a kernel patch for automatic fan control in kernelspace (only enable/disable based on maximum temperature).


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Haiti Gardens Mini-Market
September 11, 20118:00 AMInvalid DateInvalid Date
Additional Information
The HAITI GARDENS Mini-Market is Sunday, September 11 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on the Corner of Hwy 55 and Cty 8, Maple Lake. The Haiti Gardens Mini- Market will help support gardeners in Haiti during the upcoming garden year. Specials this year include a Silent Auction of Haitian Artifacts, along with the sale of horseradish, sauerkraut, lots of produce from local gardens, and canned and baked goods. Also Greg Emerick of Vermagreen Worm Castings will be present from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. to share this wonderful organic natural garden fertilizer. Enjoy a delicious b-b-q pork sandwiches, along with relishes, cookies and juice and accordion music! For more info: 320-963-3690 or cell 612-325-2861.