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Search Results
Czech Apple-Filled Yeast Cake (Ceske' Buchty)
This cake combines Czech culture with Jewish tradition, placing the symbolic holiday apple inside the traditional Czech dough and making it into a ring to symbolize a year of never-ending good.
Algerian Vegetable Melange in Pastry Shells
This simple, but elegant holiday dish is served at the Aferiat home. Yolande Aferiat, from Oran, taught her daughter-in-law Kathy how to make it, and Kathy, who now lives in Dallas, described it to me.
Persian Nan o Paneer (Bread with Cheese)
A Persian cheese plate is a perfect starter for a hot summer meal. Persian Lighvan cheese made from sheep's milk is traditionally used in this dish, but as it's hard to find, feta cheese — especially Bulgarian feta — is a good substitute.
Fiori de Zucca Ripieni [Stuffed Zucchini Flowers]
Recipes that combine mozzarella and anchovies are most strongly associated with the cooking of the Roman Jewish ghetto of the 17th century.
Pesce en Saor [Fish in a Sweet and Sour Sauce]
This recipe was originally prepared for sailors at sea because the sauce preserved the fish over long journeys.
Baked Chicken with Barley
This classic Bulgarian Shabbat dish is delicious, comforting, and very easy to make.
Eggplant Salad with Pine Nuts (Kioupia)
About four miles into the island of Rhodes, I found a converted farmhouse nestled in the mountains, where I was served this eggplant dish.
Wine Jelly & Frosted Grapes
What better way is there to relax on a hot summer's night than with a cheese board, wine jelly (a wonderfully sweet counterfoil to strong and earthy blue-veined or chevre cheeses), and a good bottle of wine (preferably from the wine country in northern Israel)?


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Evening, the word evening- I was struggling to write this word a few years ago. Today, four years later, I am sitting and writing my weekly column, an entire barrage of words.
I remember clearly, it was a bright, sunny afternoon, a week or so before Diwali in 2016 and I was working on my then to-do list and writing some notes. I struggled to spell the word 'evening.' I don't have any memory of the context but I remember my baffled state of mind which wasn't sure if it should be a 'v' or a 'w' in the 'eve' of evening. I had struggled and had given up on the fight of getting the word right. I had other battles to choose that week. This incident is of the time when I was running my entrepreneurial firm, RedPolka and I was in the thick of the workload of a fledgling startup trying to manage funds and to make Diwali better for everyone associated with the business. That temporary mind-fog had left a scar then.
Today, I wouldn't have remembered the word had it not been in an email I wrote to my children during that time. My children were small, so sometimes to capture a happy day memory or a funny story I would jot down a mail and send it to their email id I had opened in their name – mydearxxx and mydearyyy. Yesterday, we were reading some of those mails when I came across the above mentioned one. It read – "It was a last minute decision for me to stay back and not come with you for our Diwali break while my toothbrush went with you in your bags. I came back home from the airport holding my boarding pass." That year, I had spent four days alone at home for the first time in my life during a Diwali break, away from family, away from work, away from any social life. Decision taken on a spur, it was a big step for me and my family. I had written in the email, "One day, I forgot how to spell the word 'evening' and realised I was saying things that I would regret later.. I was extremely fatigued. I had lost bandwidth to make the smallest decision like setting the dinner menu…" and the story goes on. The email was written to explain to them the importance of giving priority to oneself and the importance of being joyful, even if it required gestures like locking away from the world.
Months later, I felt happy when I read about Bill Gates's Think Weeks. Bill Gates spends a week in a cabin in a forest where he spends time with his books, thinking, reading, writing. Gates' Think Weeks started in the 1980s; the first ones were quiet visits to his grandmother's house. As they evolved, no visitors were allowed to the cabin during Gates' Think Week other than someone who dropped off two meals a day at the cabin. Cal Newport in his book, Deep Work, calls these as Grand Gestures. And, ever since I took mine, even before knowing about Bill Gates Think week or Grand Gestures, I learnt the value of such acts and its impact on one's thinking. And, Grand Gesture entered as one of the habits in the 15 Habits for forward thinking, SHIFT.
So in this week's article on Habits for Thinking, I am writing to you about not being alone but about creating opportunities of Grand Gestures to spark up the mundane routine. Grand Gestures that will bring magic in your life.
With the beginning of festival season, hope is rising in the air even though it is burdened with pandemic reality. The blurriness of worries creates a layer of mind-fog. To be hopeful and happy in a situation where distance with friends and family is forced and the basic need of staying safe and healthy is uncertain, is a tough ask. Yet the only option is to stay hopeful. There is no second option. And to stay hopeful, one has to design hope.
How do we design hope? By designing joy in our lives.
How do we design joy? Sometimes by taking small steps and sometimes by making grand gestures.
We have discussed working harder in the days of darkness in this article, but today we go on the other side, where we grow selfish and plan and design joy in our lives. Not because all work and no play makes you a dull boy, but, because all work and play but no joy makes you a poor-hope boy. Here, we are not going to talk about what we do with our mind to attain joy, but actually about how to make our physical ambience become the trigger of our joys. We are not talking about think-weeks or solitude, but quite the opposite, gestures to be joyful and full of heart in the days of physical distancing.
Designing Joy
Ingrid Fetell Lee in her book,Joyful, describes the surprising power of ordinary things to create extraordinary happiness. She talks about aesthetics – the properties that define the way an object looks and feels. If you have been to your workstation after a long gap this year, you would have noticed elements like a photograph or a note or an artefact that holds some memories and a whisker of joy.
Ingrid, a design thinking expert, identified ten aesthetics of joy, each of which reveals a connection between the feeling of joy and the tangible qualities of the world around us. Like confetti which is related to aesthetics of abundance, similarly there are elements that evoke surprise, energy, magic, renewal, abundance, freedom, celebrations etc.
One story that stands out as a grand piece is about a house in Tokyo which is designed by architects, Arakawa and Gins to reverse ageing. It is called the Reverse Destiny site. Colorful, floor with sculpted bumps, layouts that are unusual, numerous fixtures from ceiling, the house is unique and brings you alive. She writes: "This definitely took some getting used to, and as I moved around the apartment, I was constantly adjusting my balance. In so many ways, big and small, the apartment disrupted my equilibrium, and challenged my ideas of what a home should feel like. By stimulating and destabilizing our senses, their hope was to wake us up to our bodies. In a way, their goal was to use architecture to promote a kind of mindfulness, and also a bodyfulness too, a word that if it doesn't exist, probably should."
Image courtesy: Reverse Destiny, from Aesthetics of Joy
As our life seems more static than growing, designing joy purposefully will bring in energy. Designing joy in small things is nice but grand activities will stimulate mind and body in a similar way as the Reverse Destiny home does. What can be grand for me, may not be grand for you. The idea is to plan in a manner that requires effort and destabilizes our senses. Remember, planning itself gives us a sense of growth.
For instance, you may like to use an abundance of color to make it grand. Or, you may plan a vacation from home to Paris by planning two days of French living and take a culinary adventure/ buy a memoir/ solve a giant puzzle to go with the experience. You may go on a nature trail or bring a lot of nature home. Or, you may simply abstain from Netflix and screens for a week as your grand gesture.
You will know what is grand for you. You will know what will destabilize your senses.
Some tips to make it successful:
1.Keep a start date and end date- block it off the calendar.
2.Set the plan – a travel themed vacation from home, a house camp, a nature trail.
3.Invite co-thinkers or co-planners – like friends you take a holiday with or/and services that you can outsource. There are people who can send you a complete table setting and planned menus.
This season, as you manage physical distancing and stay safe, become selfish and make room for a Grand Gesture for yourself. It creates superpower for you.

subset: commoncrawl


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Adrienne Anderson
- Title:
- CEO of Global Consortium, LLC
- Email:
- [email protected]
- Website:
Areas of Expertise
- Executive Coaching
- Leadership Development Systems
- Organizational Research
Dr. Adrienne Anderson is Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Global Consortium, LLC a management consulting firm based in Washington, DC. with 32 associates. She has a background in developing executive coaching models, leadership development systems and conducting organizational research.
She is experienced in managing projects for a plethora of organizations including but not limited to: The United States Capitol Police, The United States Secret Service, The United States Marines, American Express, Argonne National Laboratories, and Deloitte Touché.
She is an adjunct lecturer for the George Washington University in both the Cybersecurity Strategy & Information Management and the Homeland Security master's degree programs.
She has previously worked as an adjunct faculty member at Argosy University in San Diego, CA. She has also taught in their MBA program, Doctoral Business Program and Educational Leadership Program.
She has chaired dissertations in the Business and Educational Leadership Programs from proposal development through the Institutional Review Board process, and final dissertation defense.
Adrienne has published articles and made presentations globally with over 30 years' experience working on change management, diversity and leadership.
- Ph.D., The Fielding Graduate University, Santa Barbara, California;
- M.A., Counseling Psychology, Argosy University, American School of Psychology, San Diego, CA;
- M.A., Organizational Development from The Fielding Graduate University in Santa Barbara, California;
- B.A., English with Honors, Wells College, Aurora, New York.


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LAST WEEK I was on a train. In the same carriage was a collection of object studies for parental hope and anxiety. There were the private-school girls in their blazers, box pleats and boaters, their silky ponytails unravelling. There were the labourers falling asleep, heads against the windows. There were the clerks and office workers, and a man in a suit speaking into his earpiece. "That's the meeting that worries me," he said, crossing his pinstriped legs. "Clear my diary for that one. It won't settle. We'll be going to court." He must have had good marks at school, I thought. He got into law. And there were the junkies – three of them, clothes draped and belted over their bones. They were teenagers. They stank. One sat next to me. These are the hazards of public transport. Or public anything. You cannot choose your fellow travellers.
I think at heart I am scared, which is in keeping with the times. I am afraid of the future, afraid of difference and afraid for my children. The greatest fear of all. Our children make us hostages to fortune. Naturally we do what we can to bulwark them against risk. But I am considering doing something that most of my peers seem to regard as an unacceptable risk – I am thinking of sending my children to the local high school.
My suburb was built during the Marvellous Melbourne goldrush era – a time even more preoccupied than our own with material wealth and how to get ahead. The main thoroughfare, Mount Alexander Road, was once the route to the goldfields. People threw in their jobs and gave up all manner of small securities to trek with their possessions to the quagmire of the diggings. Or that's how I imagine it to have been.
It must have seemed, back then, that risk, sweat and a fair measure of luck might just be enough to lift oneself above the drudgery and insecurity of life. It is different now. The statistics show that there is a more certain way to security and comfort. It is education. Post-school qualifications are the most reliable predictor of income, and also of social attitudes. In 2001, university-educated people earned a median of $1,036 a week, compared to just $727 for workers without higher education. The difference between comfort and counting every dollar.
The modern age favours the skilled. Those without post-school qualifications are more likely to be unemployed or under-employed. The evidence suggests low-paid jobs no longer serve as the first step on the ladder to higher-paid ones. Usually, they lead nowhere.
Those without post-school qualifications are more likely to be single and childless. Recent research by Monash University's Centre of Population and Urban Research shows that almost a third of unqualified men in their thirties are not married or partnered, and therefore usually do not have children. The most likely reason is that they cannot afford them.
For the unskilled, life is lonely and hard. There is no goldrush. There is only education. Education, the sociologists say, is the new proxy for class. So surely any good parent should invest.
MOUNT ALEXANDER ROAD has changed since the goldrush. Today it runs through gentrified suburbs, but also past public-housing high-rises. Just down from what real estate agents refer to as the "cosmopolitan cafe and restaurant strip", two schools face each other. One is Flemington Primary School, where my children are in the middle years. The other is the local high school, Debney Park Secondary College.
The Department of Education and Training puts out graphs that plot schools on axes of advantage and disadvantage – parental income on the left and numbers of parents from non-English-speaking backgrounds along the bottom. Flemington Primary School is in the warm and dense area at the top left – high wealth and low numbers of migrants. Debney Park, on the other hand, is flung out on the right-hand side. Only a few schools in Victoria are more disadvantaged. You can see one school playground from the other but the graph tells us they are, in fact, far apart.
In today's Australia, social position and wealth are usually correlated with postcode. Disadvantage and advantage are geographic. But in Flemington, so far as schooling is concerned, the divide is the old route to the goldfields. It is Mount Alexander Road.
Among the parents at Flemington Primary I have yet to meet any who are seriously considering sending their children to Debney Park Secondary College.
"Well, I think they have their schools and we have ours," one parent said to me, as we wrapped presents for the Father's Day stall last year. I had asked why so few of the public-housing tenants, many of them African refugees, attended Flemington Primary. I wrapped a pair of black cotton business socks in giftwrap and choked down my initial, furious reaction. After all what she said was a simple statement of fact. And it was dressed up with the usual caveats of those parents planning to send their children to private secondary schools. They are sure, of course, that teachers in the public system do a very good job. But it won't be for their children.
It is also true, of course, that "our" school has a catchment area covering the well-to-do renovated houses in the leafy streets. The public-housing area falls just outside our catchment area and is served by its own primary school.
It is not that there are no poorer students, no dark faces, in our school. There is a smattering of recent African refugees, their mothers in head-scarves, but they are in the minority and rarely seen at school functions. The leadership of the school and the atmosphere are unmistakably white and middle class. Our school has a nickname in the suburb: "Flemington Grammar". One of the teachers told me with pride that my children were fortunate – I was getting "a private education without having to pay for it".
At Flemington Primary there are a thousand things that we do without thinking twice that confirm our comfortable financial situation. We have school concerts in the local theatre with an admission fee of $15 a head. We have a Christmas dinner in a restaurant at the casino that charges $45 each. Hardly a week goes by without the need to shell out money for something or other at school. Recently, a letter came home requesting a $100 donation per family – fundraising towards a new school hall. Our social functions include alcohol and the sausage sizzles are rarely halal, despite all the black Muslim faces across the street.
In another conversation, I was talking to a parent about the eastern suburbs of Melbourne. "Ah yes," he said. "Balwyn. If you live out there, you can educate your children in the public system and they'll be ok." The implication, not conscious or examined, was that one could not do that where we lived.
Instead, the parents discuss the private school options or which government schools – some of them many kilometres away – present an acceptable risk. Nobody even considers the high school across the street.
But I am, or I want to. And hence my fear.
SOMETIMES IT SEEMS that nobody really wants to fight for public schooling anymore. The main message from the Labor Party in recent times has been that we should get over fussing about the distinction between public and private and concentrate rather on minimum standards. It is a predictable stance for a party that needs to win back the battlers who are turning to the private system.
Education unions are accused of being stuck in time, of fighting the battles of the 1960s and 1970s. Mostly this is because they resist giving parents information they clearly want on how schools are performing. They argue that publication of "league tables" would be misleading and would only entrench disadvantage. They are arguing against a "market" in education, and against market choices. We live at a time of great faith in markets. To work well, markets must be properly informed. So the education unions look very old-fashioned indeed. Refusing parents information, former Labor adviser Andrew Leigh argues in Getting Smart, does nothing but protect poorly performing teachers and schools.
In his 1993 book Education and Public Policy in Australia (Cambridge University Press), the educationalist Professor Simon Marginson predicted much of what has happened since in education: "While it is not socially acceptable to say so, many parents see private schools as offering relative advantage in the struggle for university places. At the least, private schooling is seen as the safer bet ... a growing proportion of parents see good parenting as private-school parenting. They feel guilty if they leave their student children in the public system."
People talk about a drift to private schooling but drift is the wrong word, implying an unthinking, unwilled movement, when there is surely no other social trend so conscious, so deliberate, so agonised over in dinner-table and pillow talk. Drift also implies a slow movement but there is nothing slow about this.
In the mid-1970s, 80 per cent of parents sent their children to government schools. Now the figure is just 66 per cent. The absolute numbers of children at government schools have declined from 2.33 million to 2.25 despite population growth and greatly increased numbers of children staying on to Year 12. Between 1997 and 2004, enrolments at independent schools grew by 27 per cent and at government schools by just 1 per cent. What is more, a survey by the Australian Council of Educational Research shows that more than a third of parents with children at government schools would shift them to the private system if they could afford to.
For many people still in the public system, sticking with it is a matter of political commitment. Just over half of these parents say they would stay with the public system even if they could afford to send their children to independent schools. These parents, almost always Labor voters, think government schools provide a better "melting pot", and that private schools are "stuck up". Liberal voters overwhelmingly favour sending their children to independent schools, while Labor voters favour the state system two to one.
One of the reasons for the growth in private education in recent years is that federal government policy has seen the relative costs of private education decline. The federal government's funding formulae for private schools, based on socioeconomic analysis of intake, means that some poorer private schools get almost 70 per cent of their costs covered by government, and can charge annual fees as low as $2,000 a child. The Federal Minister for Education, Brendan Nelson, noted in a speech last year that all the growth in the non-government schools sector is now at this lower-fee end.
The executive director of the National Council of Independent Schools' Associations, Bill Daniels, recently made a blunt assessment of what lay behind the federal government's funding policy. He said the Howard Government was "buying and regulating" its way into areas that had traditionally been the concern of state governments. It was a "new federalism", and in education the aim was to use independent schools to "leverage general improvement in all school sectors". It was, Daniels said, "market ideology applied to schools".
A more cynical analysis might be that, since it is middle-income Liberal voters – "Howard's battlers" – who are moving to the private system, it makes sense to support them. Daniels claims that willingness to pay is now more important than the ability to pay in whether or not families choose private schooling. Brendan Nelson asked in a speech recently: "Why are these parents struggling on modest incomes of $30,000, $40,000 or $50,000 a year bypassing what are often very good government schools to spend an average of $2,800 a year on the education of their children? What are they looking for?"
THE ANSWER ISN'T really that hard to find. John Howard is right. It is all about values. In 1998, the National Council of Independent Schools' Associations commissioned the social researchers Irving Saulwick and Denis Muller to find out what parents wanted from private education. After exhaustive focus-group interviews, Saulwick and Muller concluded that what parents most wanted – more than academic performance – were schools that reinforced the values and culture of the home. "Many were worried by what they saw as a society adrift from core values and discipline. They looked to the future, but many lamented the loss of some of the anchorages of the past," Saulwick and Muller reported.
Parents wanted schools to instil discipline and respect for others, and they wanted their children to be nurtured with care. They were frightened that the public system wouldn't do this and they were also concerned that in a fast-changing world, schools had to "teach children how to learn".
Reading between the lines of the focus groups' comments, it is easy to see two chief fears – that the future was an unpredictable thing and that school could be a brutalising experience. These parents wanted an environment in which their children, "particularly the timid and gentle", would be safe and protected. The wanted them to be "taught how to learn" because "the jobs of the future haven't been invented yet. We don't know what's coming."
More recent studies have tended to confirm these findings. An Australian Council of Educational Research survey last year found parents nominated better discipline and values as key reasons for choosing private schools. Often, educationalists suggest, parents judge schools through the visible things, rather than a detailed analysis of information which, in the case of government schools, is in any case not always available.
Information that is made available, such as the numbers of students gaining university entrance ranking scores above 90, is, educationalists agree, next to meaningless. It tells you nothing about how many students at the school are performing badly, and nothing about the intake of the school. There is no particular achievement in a school that takes in bright middle-class kids and puts out bright middle-class kids at the other end.
But parents, who want values upheld and children protected against risk, tend to make their choices based on such information. They pay attention to these scores. They want compulsory, smart uniforms. They want children who know how to behave well on public transport. And they listen to playground gossip.
Marginson predicted that the public system might soon become seen as residual, inhabited only by those unable or unwilling to pay for private schooling. "No one wants to stay in a residual system and there is a further flight of enrolments to private education. The public system is further residualised: its role becomes more custodial than academic and it has diminished power over social selection. It is weakened by the loss of active, education-conscious parents."
My conversations with fellow Flemington Primary School parents have convinced me that most believe this point has now been reached – that public education is not an option or, at the very least, one has to be extraordinarily careful in one's choice of public schools.
When the tide runs so strongly, one has to ask oneself whether it is stupid to cling to old beliefs. My parents were an earlier version of those who stick with the public system on political principle. I was raised in Adelaide, a city where one of the first questions people ask is where you went to school. Mine is not one of the correct answers. I went to Campbelltown High, then one of the biggest and roughest schools in the state. I had some appalling teaching, as well as some I will always be grateful for. There were drugs and teenage pregnancies, and one teacher who seduced a student and was never punished for it. My parents didn't know about all of this. What parents do know the full story of a teenager's experience? My parents thought it would do me no harm, and may do some good, and I have always thought that they were right.
Education, my parents taught me, was one of the most important things – not because, or not only because, it led to better employment and more options in life, but because it was about what it is to be human. It was about broadening one's outlook. It was not a means to an end, but an end in itself. And they believed that it was wrong for this precious thing to be allocated on the basis of ability to pay.
But are things different now? When I was young, it was much easier to get into university. Now it is hard. Quietly, without fanfare, the number of government-subsidised university places for Australian students has been capped, meaning competition is fiercer.
These days, it seems that everyone who thinks about it wants to abandon the suggestion that there is something wrong with buying educational advantage. In these circumstances, and perhaps most of all when one may be about to sacrifice one's own tender children on the altar of principle, it behoves one to reassess.
And so I stand in the playground at Flemington Primary and look across Mount Alexander Road to the other playground and wonder: "Do I still believe what my parents believed?" And: "Do I dare?"
THE POWER OF education is surely one of the central narratives of the postindustrial age. It is almost an archetypal myth that if one studies hard, then one will be both a better and a wealthier person. Education as a means to social mobility is the premise for a thousand books and movies, from How Green Was My Valley through to To Sir With Love, Educating Rita and even the Harry Potter novels. In the postwar welfare state that formed my parents, it seemed as though these high ideals were being achieved or were about to be achieved.
But today in Australia, there are some simple facts about education. The first is that education, generally speaking, does not overcome disadvantage. Educational achievement – and the life options, incomes and jobs that go with it – is strongly correlated to social advantage. Children from well-off backgrounds with educated parents do better.
Worse, the evidence suggests that, increasingly, the education system perpetuates and reinforces both advantage and disadvantage.
This is so accepted, so much part of the "ground rules" of the education system, that it forms part of the assumptions by which education departments judge the effectiveness of schools. Each school is grouped with other "like schools" on the basis of the socioeconomic status of the intake. Schools with middle-class intakes are expected to produce good academic results. The real measure of achievement is how much better – or worse – a school does than one might expect, given the nature of its intake. On this measure, there are high-performing and low-performing schools in both private and public sectors, and you would not be able to tell any of this from publicly released results. The schools know because they get comparisons of their performance against "like schools". But the public never finds out. In NSW, it is against the law for such information on government schools to be released.
The comment, "they have their schools and we have ours", is simply a statement of truth. An Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development study has found that Australia's education system is highly segregated. Compared with other countries, we have large differences between schools in terms of student achievement. The differences are both geographic and class-related because in our cities the two tend to go together.
A report to the Victorian Government on school effectiveness found that, in 2000, the average tertiary entrance score for Year 12 students in the lowest socioeconomic group was, on a 100-point scale, 22 points below the mean score achieved by students in the highest groups. And while the independent schools might claim that private education is no longer the preserve of the privileged, it is still the case. One Victorian study shows, that independent schools enrol more than 40 per cent of all Year 12 students from the highest socioeconomic groups, even though they account for only 19 per cent of Year 12 enrolments overall. They also have more than 35 per cent of all students from the highest general achievement band – those in the top 20 per cent of General Achievement Test performance.
There could be comfort in this for a parent like me. I could say: "The choice of school doesn't matter. What matters is what you do in the home." I could look around at our book-lined rooms and our bookish ways and be reassured that this is all that matters. My children will be ok.
But I would be wrong. Various studies show that the school does make a difference, accounting for as much as 25 per cent of the variation in student outcomes.
So what makes a good school? Disadvantage breeds disadvantage. The opposite is also true. The evidence suggests that the students themselves become a resource in a school. Even after controlling for socioeconomic group and prior academic achievement, students from poor backgrounds who attend middle-class schools do better than one would expect based on their backgrounds alone. The converse is also true. Students from rich backgrounds who attend poor schools do worse than you would expect, given their backgrounds alone. "Segregation in the school system tends to reinforce rather than weaken existing patterns of social inequity," the Victorian report said.
The researcher Jennifer Buckingham put it more bluntly in a recent report for the Institute of Public Affairs. She said that the relationship between social advantage and student achievement largely disappears when teacher effects are controlled. Multi-level modelling of various influences on student achievement suggests that social advantage on its own accounts for only about 9 to 15 per cent of student achievement, compared with teacher quality, which accounts for about 30 to 60 per cent.
Why, then, are academic results so strongly correlated with social advantage? Buckingham concludes: "It seems that the lower achievement of low SES [socioeconomic status] students is largely attributable to their teachers. One is led to the conclusion that, for a variety of reasons, low SES students are likely to have poorer-quality teaching."
Since the Victorian report was done, another on Victorian schools by the Centre for Population and Urban Research at Monash University has confirmed that access to university has become an unequal battle. 77 per cent of independent school students are offered university places, compared with 55 per cent for Catholic school students and just 46 per cent for government school students. "The government school sector is no longer serving as a ladder of education opportunity for aspiring students from low socioeconomic groups."
Again, geography was crucial. The proportion of Year 12 applicants from government schools in Melbourne's outer south-east who received university offers fell from 46 per cent in 2000 to 29 per cent in 2003. But in the wealthy inner suburbs of Kew, Hawthorn and Camberwell, the figure was 64 per cent. I was reminded, reading these figures, of my fellow parent's comment. If you live in the wealthy east, you can educate your children in the public system and not feel you are risking disadvantaging them.
AND YET, AND yet. What does all this mean? How does it relate to that myth, that post-industrial archetype, of the true value of education? The fact is that the whole debate has more than a suggestion of unreality about it. Several studies overseas and locally – most recently one by researchers at Monash University – have confirmed that once they have left school, students from government schools outperform those from independent schools with similar university entrance scores.
What private schools are doing, the research suggests, is not necessarily educating their students better, or (in the words of the Saulwick-Muller focus groups) teaching them "how to learn", but rather coaching them to pass exams and gain high university entrance scores.
The educationalist Professor Richard Teese has written: "Private establishments – legally free to choose their clients ... lower the dependence of individuals on their own talents and present a common front to the hazards of selection by examinations." The private schools and the selective government schools, he writes, export failure to the rest of the public system. Among educationalists and parents I have spoken to, it is well known that the high-performing government schools regularly "counsel" the less academically inclined to consider other high schools. Often this is done simply by not offering vocational subject streams.
According to Teese, the private and selective schools then excel at teaching the "business" of the classroom and the exam, reducing education to "a series of staged and rehearsed routines". The syllabus is stripped to include only the academic subjects. Students are given intensive chalk and talk, lots of worked examples, lots of past papers to practise on. The whole system is geared to one end: getting the children into university. This is the unwritten contract between parent and school.
Meanwhile the rest of the schools, which cannot choose their students, must cater for those who are left behind. The Monash University researchers who found that government-school students outperform private-school students after they leave school suggested their results should send tremors through higher education policy-makers. Perhaps adjustments should be made, and university enrolment procedures should allow for the fact that talented government-school students were being disadvantaged – or private-school ones unfairly advantaged.
Nobody is likely to take their suggestion seriously. The political cost would be too high. To suggest that the advantage many parents assume they are buying will be screened out at tertiary level is hardly going to be a vote winner. Anyone from the left who suggested it would be dismissed as a class warrior or accused of practising the worst kind of political correctness – dumbing down for ideological reasons.
The Howard Government, committed to educational renovation through market forces, has no reason to consider it. And meanwhile, parents like me have to consider our children, their future and the road to the goldfields.
I CROSSED THE road. I went to visit Debney Park Secondary College and found an encouraging thing – a counter to all those gloomy statistics. This school – the one that no one I know will even consider – is achieving something radical. Debney Park doesn't show up on any league tables of achievement. Its university entrance scores are creditable, but considered in isolation, unremarkable. Yet it is that most radical thing – a school that actually overcomes disadvantage.
The principal, Michael O'Brien – tall, with a creased face and a crisp shirt, was expecting me. As he ushered me into his office, a girl in black headscarf and ankle-length dress rushed up. "Sir, there's a fight outside. The girls are fighting." He blinked.
"Now, sir," she said.
He apologised and left me sitting in his office, from where I saw him go out into the street, talk to some students and yell at others to stop gawping and get inside. Then he was back in his office and calling the police. He told them that a gang from outside the school had come to threaten one of his girls. "The situation is on a knife edge," he said.
Then he was off again, driving his car round the suburb to look for one of "his" girls who had gone off with the gang. Through his office window, I saw the police arrive. They cruised around the school in their squad car.
Then O'Brien came back and sat down, apparently unruffled, for our interview. "I feel for you," I said. "That must be the last thing any principal would want a visiting journalist to see." He looked surprised. "Oh, that's just high schools," he said. "That's just teenagers. You go to any school and they'll have occasional blow-ups like that." The background to the dispute, he said, was some factional problems between the girls. Nobody had been able to get to the bottom of it. It might have been some remark made months ago, or someone pinching somebody else's boyfriend.
Previously, the former principal of the school, Brett New, had told me that some of the Somali girls had been responsible for bringing up whole families in refugee camps. The assertiveness and aggression they had learned were not necessarily useful in Western environments. Was this an example? Surely O'Brien was kidding when he said any school would have such problems? I was already shrinking from the thought of my children in this mix.
But later that day, a friend reminded me of some of the things that happen at the "best schools", such as Wesley College – one of the most prestigious and expensive schools in Melbourne. Last year the former tennis coach Gavin Hopper was jailed for having an affair with a fourteen year-old student in the mid-1980s. More recently, two teachers at Wesley were suspended for allegedly helping their Year 5 students cheat at the statewide Achievement Improvement Monitor English tests, on which schools' effectiveness is measured. And then there was Trinity Grammar in Sydney, where a student had been sexually assaulted only a few years previously. "It could happen in any school," my friend said. "But why pay so much for it?"
But now O'Brien was telling me about his students. The Somali language has only existed in written form for about the past 30 years, he said, which presented a challenge given that about 40 per cent of the school's 340 students came from recently arrived Somali and Sudanese families. In their home countries, most had been semi-nomadic peasants. In all, there were 43 different nationalities among the school's 340 students. With these children, nothing could be taken for granted. Some arrived without ever having held a pen or handled a book. More than half lived in public housing. Some of the children arrived suffering from post-traumatic shock.
And yet – almost beyond belief – the school consistently had about a quarter of its Victorian Certificate of Education students achieving university entrance scores above 80, and there was always a handful of scores in the high 90s. O'Brien looked at my face. "I know," he said. "People don't believe it. But it's true."
The Victorian Department of Education and Training's On Track Survey, which looks at what students are doing in the year following secondary study, found that 97 per cent of Debney Park College's children went on to tertiary education or training. The other 3 per cent got jobs or were in apprenticeships. None was unemployed. Forty-five per cent of Debney's graduates had been offered university places – in line with the average for government schools in Victoria.
The comparable figures for University High, the state school parents from my neighbourhood do all sorts of contortions to get their children into – moving house, renting apartments in the catchment area and so forth – were as follows: 79 per cent of those who left school in 2004 were involved in education and training and another 10 per cent had deferred their studies. Compared with Debney Park, University High had a higher level of university offers – 80 per cent – but lower figures for tertiary education and training as a whole.
Now, Debney Park Secondary College is trying to persuade ordinary middle-class local parents to consider it on its merits. With consultants from the Boston Consulting Group, it is holding focus groups in local primary schools to present the school's excellent results. The aim, O'Brien said, is to try to persuade just a small group – perhaps as few as three or four sets of parents – to enrol their kids. This is being done because all other attempts have failed. It is an enormous task. O'Brien doesn't under-estimate it. The school held an open day earlier in the year. Nobody came. "Clearly we need to try something different," he said.
THERE HAVE BEEN a number of studies that have tried to get to the bottom of what makes an effective school, one of the most comprehensive conducted over the past few years in NSW. More than 50 schools identified as "outstanding" were studied by teams of four researchers for four days at a time. They did interviews with the teachers, sat in on the classes and observed the playground.
The schools identified as "outstanding" were not necessarily those achieving the top scores. Rather, they were identified through a combination of standardised test results and factors such as school retention rates.
Team member Professor Stephen Dinham, then at the University of New England, explained "The number of students scoring in the top few per cent in exams is meaningless. A more important consideration is the 'spread' of success. Lifting the 'bottom' and 'middle' bands of students can represent a greater achievement in many cases than improving the performance of the 'top'. Further, what might be considered poor performance in one school could be considered outstanding achievement in other schools."
Among themselves, the researchers spoke of trying to identify the "buzz factor" – that hard-to-define quality in classrooms where education succeeds and where children truly learn.
This study's conclusions mirrored those of similar work done overseas. The single most important component of the "buzz factor" was leadership, usually from the principal of the school but sometimes from the senior staff. Intermeshed with this was the quality of the teaching. Again and again, studies have concluded that the appointment of a single teacher – or his or her loss – could turn an entire school around.
What mattered, the NSW researchers concluded, was not just the traditional and administrative aspects of leadership, but "the 'human', 'symbolic', 'educational', 'cultural', 'adaptive', 'transformational' and 'moral' dimensions of the role". Outstanding leaders tended to be positive about change. They reached out to the communities in which their schools were located and they supported their staff. They had "a bias towards innovation and action ... they were seen to be relentless in their quest for enhanced student achievement, allowing nothing to get in the way ... They constantly remind students, staff and the community of the core purpose of the school ... Their focus on students, their welfare and learning acts as a filter, touchstone or lens for all that happens in the school."
AT DEBNEY PARK Secondary College, there have been two principals in recent years. Michael O'Brien, after teaching at the school for fifteen years, recently took over from Brett New, who has been promoted to assistant regional director. I interviewed them both. They talked about many things – how almost every student at the school had an individual learning program, how wonderful the African families were to work with, the excellence of the teachers, the establishment of a culture of learning and, most of all, how they loved their jobs. "It is simply the best environment to work in," said O'Brien, "the most wonderful job you could ever have."
O'Brien sent me out into the school. In the yard, groups of African boys stared at me curiously as I walked by. They looked scruffy. Debney Park has no school uniform. Many of these students are on provisional visas that mean they could be moved at any time. No school can ask poor parents to buy a uniform under such circumstances and, in any case, any uniform would have to allow for all the varieties of ethnic and religious dress. The yard was full of black and brown faces, boys in baggy pants and T-shirts and girls in headscarves and hijabs.
The week after my visit, federal member Bronwyn Bishop called for a ban on headscarves in Australian government schools. She said school uniforms were "a leveller – a great sign of a society that is working with different cultures". The headscarf, she said, was "being used by the sort of people who want to overturn our values". It was "an iconic emblem of defiance".
Bishop, presumably, would have seen a schoolyard full of defiance at Debney Park Secondary College that day. And she might have agreed that the reason parents choose private schools is values.
Or perhaps her views would not have survived the collision with reality. The headscarves were worn a dozen different ways. Some girls were matching the hijabs with full-length, figure-concealing dresses. Three girls were wearing them with tight jeans and off-the-shoulder tops. These girls sat on the steps to the classroom, giggling and flirting like any teenagers. On the wall above them, there was graffiti not yet washed off. "Mr O'Brien go fuck yourself," it read. Another said: "Police suck."
The school bell sounded. The girls in the tight jeans joined the rest of a Year 8 class for a lesson in map-reading – preparation for an orienteering excursion in the Otways in a few weeks' time. The teacher was young, good-looking and scruffier than any of the children in the class. He wore frayed shorts, a T-shirt with a motto and well-worn sneakers. Yet he had total control over the class. The students calculated the distance between points on a map using a scale. They worked out where the mountains were by reading the contour lines. Quiet, settled. A teacher's aide circulated. She was here, she whispered to me, because quite a few of the students had problems.
Upstairs, Year 10 students were learning about the Australian political system. They knew who the prime minister was. They were less clear on the leader of the opposition. "Is it Mark Latham," one asked, "the man who wrote the book?" They knew about Steve Bracks, the Premier of Victoria, because of his Lebanese heritage. One student carried on about this so much that the teacher joked with him that he must want to be Lebanese.
"No, miss," he replied. "I want to be white."
This class was less settled. The kids talked all the time. The last part of the lesson was spent in groups, planning ways to raise money to fund a scheduled excursion. There was no assumption here that the parents would be able to pay. The only white student in the class was also the most disruptive "I want to sell ice-cream," he said, and again at regular intervals, "icecream". The Muslim girls didn't want him in their group. They wanted to get on with the job. "I don't want to be with them, either," he said. "They aren't interested in ice-cream."
The Year 11 English class included three students who were fasting for Ramadan. The teacher was attempting to go a little easier on them. The class was studying – by their own choice – the movie 10 Things I Hate About You, a modern take on Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew. The old plot has been rendered into a modern high-school film about the perils of dating. It is set in a very white, very middle-class American high school where all the students are beautiful, smart and rich. One of the boys who was fasting slumped over his desk. The rest of the class was riveted. In the final love scene, one girl cried.
Afterwards, their teacher asked them to discuss what the main messages of the movie might be, what values – that word again – it was trying to convey.
The sheet she handed out suggested that the central message might be that we should not judge people by appearances or that parents don't give their children enough independence. But several of the students responded that the main message was that parents have a difficult job raising their children.
The day was over. What values had Debney Park Secondary College displayed? There was the motto over the gate, "Towards Equity & Excellence – Every Child Matters". But for the most part, it looked like any high school – and quite like the one I attended nearly 30 years ago. Nothing immediately visible, other than the ethnicity of the students, marked it out. Only its results, properly understood, told me it was exceptional.
Debney Park Secondary College might be a corrective to the view that a market economy – giving parents power and choice – can by itself lift educational standards. The figures show, and the Victorian Department of Education & Training knows, that on a "value-added" measure, Debney Park Secondary College is one of the most outstanding schools in the state. And yet middle-class parents like me drive our kids all over town to schools that are filling up while Debney Park Secondary College has places to spare.
Those who put their faith in markets tend to assume that the market will always be well informed – that consumers will know everything they need to know to make rational choices. This raises the question of what sort of information should be published about schools. Education unions and teachers have strongly, and mainly successfully, resisted "league tables", arguing correctly that these will be misleading if they are based only on university entrance scores without taking context into account.
Recently, Jennifer Buckingham has argued that this is a reason for more information to be released – not less. She suggests that a range of information should be published, much of it based on sophisticated statistical modelling to allow for variation between students.
The data everyone wants is a measure of "value adding" – what the school actually adds to the students who walk through the gates. This is difficult to get, says Buckingham. Isolating the effectiveness of the school involves complicated statistical modelling and, because schools are small samples, the figures are only reliable at the extremes of good and poor performance. Buckingham argues that, even though it may be that there will be little difference between two-thirds of schools, "it is important for the public to be aware of which schools have been confidently identified as very good and very poor performers".
To add to this, Buckingham proposes the publication of a huge amount of other information, including the socioeconomic mix of each school's intake, the number of students from non-English-speaking backgrounds, the total amount of money available to the school, whether from fees or government funding, the qualifications of the teachers, the teacher turnover, the class sizes, the ways in which parents can participate in the life of the school, the numbers of suspensions and expulsions and violent incidents at the school, the retention to Year 12 and the attendance rates, as well as raw scores in external examinations and information on where students go after school. There should also be surveys of parental and student satisfaction, she says, and the results of these should be published.
On the basis of what I know about Debney Park Secondary College, it would brush up well on nearly all of these indicators. If Buckingham's suggestions were implemented, and free market ideology truly is an effective method of governing education, then Debney Park Secondary College should soon be full and the children from Flemington Primary should begin to cross the road at the end of Year 6.
PERHAPS THIS IS so. Perhaps it would happen. But somehow I suspect that the non-market-oriented word in this debate – "values" – is in fact code for something else. Probably it means different things to different people, but I suspect that in some cases at least, it is a word that stands for "not bucking the system". It stands for "people like us", for the status quo, for things as they are or as we would like them to be or as we imagine them once to have been.
Debney Park might fail this test, precisely because it is a school that overturns presumptions. What values had Debney Park Secondary College displayed? In truth, the main thing I carried away with me was the very first unscripted impression. Faced with a journalist in his office and a school crisis on his hands, O'Brien had not tried to hide the problem or run from it. Nor had he panicked about the possibility of negative publicity or even put it first in his list of priorities. He had left me to my own devices while he went out to look after his students and he was secure enough in what he was doing to let me see it all.
I had tried to gain access to some of the private schools in my area. None would let me in to observe.
At Debney Park, it seemed to me that all the messiness and contradictions of youth and ethnicity and poverty were on display. There was no escaping the graffiti, the problems, the rattiness and the rebelliousness. There was no escaping from risk. Debney Park Secondary College felt unsanitised. It felt real.
I met one of the fathers from Flemington Primary School at the traffic lights as I prepared to cross the road. He had seen me come out of Debney Park's gates. Did I teach there? he asked. It told him I was doing research. I said that I had found out that Debney Park Secondary College was an excellent school.
His eyebrows disappeared into his fair hair. "Really?" he said. He had seen the students misbehave – throwing computers over the fence, he said. They looked a very rough lot. "I just assumed that we couldn't even consider it for our kids."
He looked at me hard. "Would you consider sending your children there?" he asked. A trifle too truculently, perhaps, I said that I would.
I think I mean it, but my children say they don't want to go. Their reason is simple. None of their friends will be there.


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OK, so, let me get this straight. I can purchase special candies or win them from the Candy Crush Booster Wheel, like Jelly Fish in jelly clearing boards that clear three pieces from the board at random, or the Coconut Wheel on ingredient-dropping boards that changes three candies in a row into striped candies, or Lucky Candy in recipe boards that, well, kind of magically make me scream…
GAAAHHHHH!!!! I have no need for this game nor any of this convoluted, time-sucking candy game knowledge!
If you're like me, you'll be pleased as fruit punch to hear that Mark Zuckerberg announced on Wednesday that Facebook is crushing outdated tools that send its users notifications on games they've never played and couldn't give a sugar-coated hoot about.
The top-voted question on a thread advertising Zuckerberg's first-ever town hall Q&A session in India was this:
I don't want any more invitations to Candy Crush. How can I stop it?
The question had been asked by someone on Zuckerberg's Facebook post advertising the event. When it was read aloud at the event, the audience cheered.
Facebook's CEO responded by assuring his audience that Facebook is on it – in fact, it's a priority, given how irritated users are.
The BBC transcribed his response:
This is where these Town Hall Q&As are really useful because I actually saw this question, that it was the top voted question on my thread.
So I sent a message to the person who runs the team in charge of our developer platform and I said by the time I do this Town Hall Q&A, I think it would be good if we had a solution to this problem.
Zuckerberg was told that there there are "some tools that are kind of outdated" that allow users to send invitations to people who've already received the requests in the past and those who "don't play games on Facebook".
Zuckerberg added that it wasn't a priority before, but given the annoyance factor displayed by the upvoting of the kill-Candy-Crush-invitations question, well, it's sure shot to the top now:
We hadn't prioritized shutting that down because we just had other priorities. But if this is the top thing that people care about, then we'll prioritize that and we'll do it.
So we're doing it.
So far, Facebook hasn't released any details about how and when Candy Crush invitations will be crushed.
Image of Candy Crush Facebook game courtesy of dolphfyn / Shutterstock.com


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Cover – 411 North Casey Key Road – Lavish Gulf Front Seclusion
411 North Casey Key Road
Lavish Gulf-Front Seclusion
By Ed Bertha
Situated on Sarasota's narrow plot of sand known as Casey Key, 411 North Casey Key Road sets a standard for luxury on the Gulf Coast, and is in tune with Atlantic Coast resorts like Palm Beach, Jupiter Island and Miami when it comes to luxe real estate.
Spanning over 300 feet of pristine Gulf of Mexico shoreline, this very private estate includes two separate custom residences and occupies nearly one and half lushly landscaped gulf-front acres on Casey Key's highly-coveted north end.
The main residence in this remarkable, walled-in compound offers dazzling, unobstructed views of the Gulf of Mexico. Stepping outside one finds a seaside sculpture garden and a sumptuous pool with cascading rock waterfall and fountain. The newly resurfaced tennis court, lighted for nighttime play, is situated between the two gulf-front homes.
Inside, the main residence is embellished with a host of fine appointments, lustrous finishes and elegant features. It boasts three or four bedrooms, four full baths, and a sleek contemporary kitchen with a gulf-front breakfast area. Custom touches abound, from the unique carved front entryway to the three-tiered crown moulding through the home.
Black granite floors seemingly float throughout the home, accentuating its spacious, cool and contemporary feel. The luxurious, second-floor master suite commands a sweeping view of the Gulf of Mexico, and includes a sitting area, fireplace and spacious walk-in closets. The master bath features a stand-alone tub with separate shower and elegant dual vanities.
A stylish formal dining room and fabulous media room complete this singularly fashionable residence. Several dining and sun decks with views of the Gulf and the estate's private strand of beach make this setting an absolute jewel for entertaining or simply watching Southwest Florida's legendary sunsets.
The equally-stunning guest residence, nestled on the south end of the compound, completes this expansive, one-of-a-kind residence. Designed with a spacious open floor plan, highlighted by Mexican tile and wood floors throughout, this home boasts its own gourmet kitchen with top-of-the-line appliances, a fireplace in the living room and a graceful dining room with built-in cabinetry. It includes five gulf-front bedrooms each with en suite bathrooms and private sunning balconies. Topping it off one finds a fitness room complete with a steam bath.
Beach entry is provided via a private boardwalk, and each home within the compound has an attached two-car garage. Walled and gated, this luxurious estate comingles the elegant feel of an expansive Mediterranean villa with a dramatic setting worthy of Hollywood, yet is subtly reminiscent of Miami's vintage Art Deco style.
Settle into this secluded estate and invite your guests. There's plenty of room and they won't be disappointed.
Gulf Side
411 N Casey Key Rd
$11,900,000 €8,611,000 £7,084,000
8BR 10BA 9,100 sq ft
Bay Side Adjoining Property Available
410 N Casey Key Rd
$2,500,000 €1,809,000 £1,488,000
3BR 3BA 2,400 sq ft
Represented by:
Daniel Matusiak
Action Realty of Sarasota
1504 Stickney Point Rd
Sarasota, FL 34231
(941) 504.7618
Copyright © 2014 REAL Exclusive Magazine
Links to this article are encouraged


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My moon on a silver string. Steven Sondheim's Sweeney Todd. "Oh look Johanna, a star, A shooting start!" 10 years ago today I was involved in the greatest theatrical experience of my life to date. Steven Sondheim's gothic masterpiece of musical theatre 'Sweeney Todd – the Daemon Barber of Fleet Street at the Concordia Theatre, […]
Tag Archives: Sweeney Todd
"The moon on a string."
posted by Zach


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Jerusalem elections: Arabs have too many noses to cut, faces to spite
Saudi Gazette Newspaper, Sunday, October 27, 2013
By RAY HANANIA
There is a war over Jerusalem. Well, there has always been a war over Jerusalem, but this time it involves Israelis and Palestinians.
Jerusalem has always been an occupied city and it remains occupied under Israel as long as equality is denied to all of its residents. But the Palestinians, who are today the targets of the latest occupation, are contributing to their troubles by buying into the failed policies of the "anti-normalization" campaign pushed by pro-BDS and anti-Israel hate groups.
For generations, the failed Arab leadership has told Palestinians not to engage Israelis or Jews in Israel socially because doing so would "legitimize" Israel's occupation and its historic war crimes since its military founding in 1948.
Anti-normalization has only one benefactor and it is not Arab interests. It isn't designed to harm Israel, because it doesn't. The real purpose is to distract the easily distracted Arabs from the failure of the Arab world and Palestinian activists. Nowhere is that failure more evident than in Jerusalem, the western half of which has been occupied by Israel since 1948 and the eastern (Old City) occupied by Israel since 1967.
Despite the weight of international law being on the side of Palestinians in the city, Israel has managed to successfully undermine all legal venues and reinforce its stranglehold on the city with open policies of ethnic cleansing, (if you define ethnic cleansing in terms of ridding "non-Jews" from the city's perimeters).
The most recent example of this Arab failure took place this week in Jerusalem, where Israel has ramped up a campaign to evict non-Jews from property, homes and lands, and to settle Jews in their place. Can you imagine that all of these problems might go away if Jerusalem were to elect an Arab as mayor of the city? It's hard to imagine because Israel's societal discrimination against non-Jews is deeply rooted in "policy, practice and reality" as my late friend Nazareth Mayor Tawfiq Zayyad once described to me.
Zayyad ran successfully in the Israeli system to represent the Arab portion of Nazareth, which is divided into two sections, one Arab and one exclusively for Jews called, not so ironically, Nazareth Illit (Upper Nazareth). But despite Zayyad's powerful influence using that position to fight for the rights of Nazareth's Jewish citizenship, the Arabs have buried their failed faces deeper into the sand over recent years as oppression has reinforced their failure in the face of Israel's arrogant and open acts of discrimination.
One third of the residents of Jerusalem are non-Jewish Arabs. The city, where my family has its roots, also has a large population of moderate Jews, secular Jews who support peace but fear the bipolar nature of Arab activism which wraps hatred around its just causes and complaints about Israeli policies. That's a significant population to counter the extremist Jews who include the ultra-extremist Hassidic Jewish community that not only hates Arabs, but also hates secular Jews, probably even more.
Last Tuesday, Jerusalem voters went to the polls to elect their mayor. The two leading candidates were the incumbent, Nir Barkat and his primary challenger Moshe Leon. It was but one of 200 municipal elections held in Israeli cities. Barkat represents the conservative but secular Jerusalem Jewish majority while Leon was backed by the extremist Shas religious party and the ultraracist former Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman. Barkat is a conservative who supports settlements and is not considered actively pro-two States.
Barkat won with 51 percent of the vote, what in Western political terms if called a comfortable margin over a challenger in a race that includes several other candidates. Leon received only 45 percent of the vote, a declaration that the fanatics do not control the city as they struggle so hard to assert.
The remaining 4 percent of the votes went to other candidates, including one, a Palestinian Israeli named Fuad Sliman (Suleiman) of Israel's moderate political Meretz and Labor parties. In the last Jerusalem elections, only 2 percent of the city's Arab voters cast ballots, basically abandoning the city to Israeli control. They were "ordered" to boycott the elections by every Arab group and leader. There are 800,000 total voters, Jews and Arabs, in the combined West and East Jerusalem. Barkat won by about 14,000 votes.
Granted, Israeli racism makes it difficult for non-Jews to vote. There are 809 polling places in West Jerusalem and only 121 polling places in East Jerusalem where the majority of the Arabs live. Israel removes Arabs from the roster of citizens and residents, reducing the Arab voting population by about 1,500 to 3,000 each year.
About 460,000 people live in East Jerusalem, which is 60 percent of the Israeli combined cities of East and West. The majority is Arab, despite Israel's anti-Arab policies. Had the majority of Arabs voted for Sliman, they could have stolen the election away from Israel. And that victory was possible especially since Barkat and Leon divided the Jewish vote.
Can you imagine how an Arab mayor of Jerusalem could have changed the dynamics of the conflict and the future of Palestinian rights? Sadly, most Palestinians can't imagine success, and live in the nightmare of failure, hatred and ineffective boycotts that render them powerless.
– Ray Hanania is an award winning columnist. He can be reached at http://www.TheMediaOasis.com or follow him on Twitter @RayHanania
Related articles
- Double standards exist even on hate in Israel (rayhanania.com)
- The idiocy of the cultural boycott of Israel (rayhanania.com)
- ADL releases list of Top 10 Anti-Israel groups, who use it to raise funds (rayhanania.com)
- Jerusalem mayor fights to hold seat in local vote (thestate.com)
- Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat reelected after tough battle (haaretz.com)
Categories: Middle East Topics


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A negative self image can be detrimental to many facets of your life. Indianapolis area dentist Dr. Brad Houston understands the positive life-changing power that a healthy and beautiful smile can bring to you. Here at Comfort Dental Care, we don't want you to be embarrassed any longer. Why not take your smile - and even your life - to a new level of self-confidence and beauty?
For comfortable tooth cleaning in the Indianapolis, Indiana area, Dr. Brad Houston is known for having a gentle touch. The friendly team at Comfort Dental Care provides dental hygiene treatments for a whiter smile.
Maintaining good dental hygiene is the foundation for healthy teeth and gums. We're committed to helping you have a lifetime of oral health.
Don't let untreated dental problems get you down. Rebuild your confidence with a beautiful new smile. From simple treatments that make a big difference, to more extensive work, unveiling the smile you were meant to have can have profound life-changing effects. Serving the Indianapolis, IN area and offering general dentistry, Dr. Houston can help you develop an affordable treatment plan you'll feel good about.
For comfortable dental hygiene treatment in the Indianapolis, Indiana area, Dr. Brad Houston is known for having a gentle touch. The friendly team at Comfort Dental Care provides teeth cleaning for a whiter smile.
Maintaining good dental hygiene is the foundation for healthy teeth and gums. We're committed to helping you have a lifetime of oral health.
Safe, anxiety-free dentistry with Indianapolis area dentist Dr. Brad Houston means you can have dental treatments done quickly while you're lightly sedated, with little or no discomfort.
You no longer have to tolerate feeling uncomfortable, hiding your smile, or putting off dental work because of a busy schedule. You'll feel relaxed during your dental appointment, and relieved that your oral health is in good hands.
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Comfort Dental Care is located next to GFS (Gordon Food Service) on Rockville Road.
This office is closed on the following holidays: New Year's Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day.
Brad Houston, D.D.S. and his genial staff pride themselves in offering friendly and affordable dentistry to their Indianapolis patients. Our staff is highly trained in a wide range of dental treatment options, from regular checkups and teeth cleaning to more complex dental problems. You can relax, knowing that you are getting the most effective and convenient dental care available.
Our goal is to establish a long-term personal relationship with you and we're always pleased to offer affordable care and appointment that fit your busy schedule. At Comfort Dental Care we believe that proper care of your teeth and gums is an investment that lasts a lifetime.
If you're interested in quality dentistry at an affordable price, call our office today at (317) 271-2000. Or fill out our online form for easy scheduling. At Comfort Dental Care, we have several payment options and we're available when it's convenient for you.
Comfort Dental Care is located in Indianapolis and conveniently serves the following areas:


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Meddie Hooks President Zuma's 'Daughter'
Info reaching us is that Meddie Ssentongo is worryingly close to a South African babe only identified as Christine.
The gorgeous light skinned babe is rumoured to be a close family member of South African president Jacob Zuma.
Sources reveal that Meddie and Christine met last year in Monaco when the former was in the French city on a business trip.
The pair's closeness has been a secret until recently when our eagle eyed snoops snapped them together in South Africa enjoying each other's company.
This was at singer David Lutalo's concert in Johannesburg where Meddie is said to have been the chief guest.
"While at the event, Meddie and Christine were inseparable as their chemistry for each other seemed irresistible. They could not take their hands off each other all evening long" intimates an eyewitness.
It should be noted that Meddie was a few weeks back in South Africa for business but looks like it's not all that took him there as he spent most of his time there with Christine.
Close pals to Meddie, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Electrolax General Merchandise and Construction Company reveal that Christine has also been snaking to Kampala to check on him.
We have since established that she owns a booking agency that brings big name international artistes to South Africa and also deals in real estate especially renovating houses before getting them buyers.


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B.J. Penn is once again at the center of controversy after crashing his truck into an embankment in his hometown of Hilo, Hawaii.
TMZ initially reported that Penn was speeding to such a degree that his truck flipped before coming to a rest in front of a mall. And while Penn was released from the hospital without any serious injuries, an investigation was being opened into potential drunk driving.
Penn representative Gary Levitt quickly came out to dispute the allegations of speeding, a roll-over, and drunk driving. Now he's provided photos (via MMA Fighting) of BJ's truck to the media which tell a much less nefarious story.
The pictures show no sign of the truck flipping. Instead, the damage seems limited to a damaged tire and some damage to the side of the car, which make the incident seem more like a simple tire blow-out rather than another potential instance of Penn running amok.
Penn's time in the headlines over the past few years has mainly focused on some pretty negative stories. He was involved in a bar brawl that saw him knocked out on the pavement. Later, footage from that fight surfaced, resulting in UFC president Dana White cancelling his upcoming fight and terminating his contract. There have also been disturbing allegations of physical and sexual violence made by the mother of his child as the two go through an ugly custody battle (which Penn has denied).


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South Dakota Bride
South Dakota Wedding Vendors
Click On the City for Local Vendors
This South Dakota Wedding Vendor Map above is great resource to find local area vendors. Click on the cities above for lists of local vendors that service the Aberdeen, Brookings, Chamberlain, Huron, Mitchell, Pierre, Rapid City, Sioux Falls, Watertown and Yankton areas. Vendors are listed by the cities they service in South Dakota.


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By UDITA JAHAGIRDAR M.D., F.A.C.O.G.
The launch of a spaceship over at the coast of Central Florida is a site to behold. The anticipatory throng of humanity, the pulse quickening countdown growing into a chant, then the lift off – a flash of fire on a bed of white cloud of smoke, a rumble turning into a roar as the spacecraft hurtles skyward riding a plume of fire as the scaffolding tears away, a thunderous applause with every eye straining to get a last glimpse of the fiery speck in the sky, and finally crowds dispersing with a universal murmur of obeisance to the marvels of science and human endeavor on their lips. As if this is not enough, one has the dazzling spectacle of a night launch and recent mind-boggling precision return to target landings of the reusable SpaceX booster rockets.
Commercial space travel or space tourism is now a certainty. NASA has now allowed private astronauts to go on the International Space Station with the use of Elon Musk's Crew spacecraft and Boeing's Starliner, priced at $ 35,000 per day. A Japanese businessman Yusaku Maezawa has paid a substantial deposit for a Moon loop flight on Space X. Virgin Galactic founder Sir Richard Branson has booked more than 600 tourists at $250,000 apiece on a 6 passenger SpaceShipTwo for a 3-4 hour sub orbital flight. There is a huge thrust to monetize space programs. Knowing AAPI members penchant for exotic travel we may well see our very own physicians in orbit soon.
With this growing realism, one may wonder about the effects of space on human body. Obviously, the impact depends on whether it is a brief space jaunt or a Mars mission. The risks are grouped into FIVE categories: Gravity Fields, Isolation/Confinement, Hostile/Closed Environment, Space Radiation and Distance from Earth. Space Medicine is a developing medical practice to discover how long people can survive extreme conditions in space and how fast they can readapt to the earth's environment and the preventive and palliative measures to be undertaken.
The long term effects on the body were best studied by NASA's trail blazing Twin study which compared retired astronaut Scott Kelly while he was in the International Space Station for 340 days to his identical twin brother Mark Kelly, also an astronaut, who remained back on earth. There were changes in his telomere length, gene expression, gut microbiome, body mass and vitamin levels, increased carotid artery thickening, ocular changes and cognitive functions. Overall, there was a return to preflight levels upon return to earth demonstrating the robustness and resilience of the human body.
As of now, there are no rules requiring space companies to set or meet any health criteria for accepting passengers- they just need to sign a statement that they understand the risks of such a flight and are able to pay the hefty amounts charged. Initial short duration flights will probably be a gentle low G- ride up, a few minutes of weightlessness at 100 km, an incredible view of earth, followed by a thrilling reentry and landing – perhaps only with some associated nausea and vomiting – far different from a long Mars mission.
A brief evaluation of the challenges and hazards of space travel is as follows:
Ascent and Reentry: force or gravitational acceleration force – an untrained person can withstand 3G but may blackout at 4 to 6G because blood flows away from brain and eyes, especially with a vertical ascent and can cause loss of vision then loss of consciousness. This is mitigated by G- force training and a G- suit which constricts the body to keep more blood in the head. Most spacecrafts keep G- forces within comfortable limits.
Weightlessness has deleterious effects on muscle mass and bone density. Short term exposure causes Space Adaptation Syndrome, a self-limiting condition caused by derangement of the vestibular system and otoliths, resulting in motion sickness, lethargy, malaise, vertigo, and can reduce aerobic capacity and slow down the cardiovascular system. Without the pull of gravity, fluids distribute into upper half of body causing the round-faced puffiness, seen in astronauts, balance disorders, decreased performance, increased intracranial pressure on optic nerves, distorted vision and loss of taste and smell. There is accelerated bone loss from normal 3% cortical bone loss every decade to 1% every month, an increased osteoclastic activity in the pelvic region with increased serum calcium levels and a potential to form kidney stones. In a weightless environment muscles atrophy rapidly and without regular exercise astronauts can lose 20% of muscle mass in 5 to 11 days The International Space Station has treadmills, stationary bikes and weight training equipment.
Isolation and Confinement cause behavioral, cognitive and psychiatric conditions with decline in mood, morale and interpersonal interaction. Loss of circadian rhythm causes sleep disorder, depression and may impact performance of a mission. Lack of fresh food may further contribute to nutritional deficiencies – morale and motivation may decrease three quarters of a way into a mission. NASA is developing LED technology to help align circadian rhythms and methods to assess performance fatigue.
Hostile/Closed environments: Microbes can change characteristics in space and microorganisms can be easily transferred from person to person. Illnesses like Epstein Barr may be reactivated as stress hormones are elevated and immune system is altered
Space Radiation: On the space station which sits just within earth's magnetic field astronauts still receive over 10 times the radiation occurring on earth where we are protected by earth's magnetic fields and atmosphere. There is lowered immunity from damage to lymphocytes experienced by astronauts and a higher incidence of cataracts. Cosmic rays may accelerate the onset of Alzheimer's while solar flares may give a lethal dose of radiation in minutes. A vehicle travelling to Mars would need significant yet undetermined shielding.
Distance from earth: The moon is 0.239 million miles away, while Mars is 140 million miles away. Imagine the challenges of communication, equipment failure and skills needed to endure.
As humans, we are poised to take this giant leap into the unknown. How far are we going to succeed? – only time will tell.


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Rodney Ascher and the Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Dream
Documentary filmmaker Rodney Ascher brings the nocturnal phenomenon of sleep paralysis to life in The Nightmare.
Rodney Ascher looks tired. He clutches a paper cup of coffee, slight bags under his eyes, and he's running late in his morning lineup of press interviews. Knowing the subject of his latest documentary The Nightmare, one might worry there are sinister reasons behind his exhaustion. Luckily, the culprit seems to be just a celebratory late night after the opening screening of his film at Hot Docs.
The Nightmare is a first-hand investigation into sleep paralysis, the disorder in which sufferers are caught in a state that's between sleep and wakefulness where they can't move, can't speak, and see evil spirits in their room. Featuring testimonials from eight people from the United States and England, Ascher eschews scientific experts and medical diagnoses, instead looking at the personal toll these experiences have on sufferers. Meanwhile, Ascher recreates their visions for the audience, leaving us to wonder, as we so often do after a good documentary, how these people sleep at night.
Best known for his previous film Room 237, which explores various fan-driven conspiracy theories around Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, Ascher is now one of the most buzzed directors in both documentary and horror circuits. Torontoist spoke with him about his genre influences, from Asian horror to bad sequels, to Monsters Inc., and more.
Torontoist: Can you tell us about your own experience with sleep paralysis, which started all of this?
Rodney Ascher: This was years and years ago, when I was first getting out of college. I woke up in the middle of the night and I couldn't move, and I couldn't sleep, and my heart was racing. And somehow I sensed that there was something in the woods behind my house looking at me and coming towards my window. I started to panic, and I wanted to call out to my roommates but I couldn't talk. And at a certain point it was in my room, and it was a three-dimensional walking shadow. I saw it as clearly as I'm looking at you.
And before that point, the idea of evil was fictional. The same way that when you're a kid and you're watching a romantic comedy the idea of falling in love is only fictional, you're not sure what the feeling should really be. In this case, the sense of evil was just overwhelming. It was hovering just a few inches away from me, and getting out of it felt like a roach trap, like glue paper. I was certain this was a supernatural experience at the time and that I needed to take stock of my life and try to be a better person. I wouldn't have looked at it as a sleep disorder. I thought it was the power of this presence that was keeping me from moving; the only place I would have looked for help was somebody writing about ghosts or spirits. So when I finally came across the notion of sleep paralysis, I was like "Oh, thank god that's what happened to me." And I went on with my life. And for whatever reason a couple years ago I was reminded about it, and I looked it up and was astonished to find not only a lot of scientific information about it, but just hundreds and hundreds of people on YouTube and Reddit and in comment threads all sharing their stories. And for them, that scientific explanation wasn't enough. They're dead certain there's more to it than that.
Your reaction to "take stock" is interesting, since there's one character in the film that's even moved to change her religion after her experience with sleep paralysis. Is that something you've encountered a lot?
It's a transformative experience. Based on my experience, that was a totally logical thing for someone to do. But also as a filmmaker, the definition of a cinematic story is one in which somebody's life or character is transformed after a dramatic experience. So, in most of these people's cases, and in hers it's the clearest to see, this is a transformational experience.
A lot of the reaction to The Nightmare is about how scary it is, and it really does feel like a horror/documentary hybrid. Were there any horror movies that influences your style for this movie, besides the obvious ones you actually discuss in the movie, like Nightmare on Elm Street and Insidious?
Those movies didn't really inspire the style of this movie, those movies inspired thoughts about the relationship between horror and dreams and paralysis in particular. But a movie that influenced the style of this is Demons 2, especially the TV screens. In fact, there's a lot of Demons in 237. Because Demons is about cinema and film, and Demons 2 is all about TV. And [The Nightmare] is more about TV than [Room 237].
That's right, at one point TVs are used to prevent the dreams from coming.
There's a weird consumer electronics connection: there's the guy's cell phone [which plays a big part in one man's vision], people using TVs as cures, and the guy's first experience with the TV talking to him, which was a huge surprise to me. And that also comes up a lot in horror, especially Asian horror movies. And in Asia, there's a lot more popular culture about sleep paralysis. It's much more talked about than it is here.
Like The Ring or Ringu, it's all about horror in the TV and coming out of the TV. But there was another moment in The Nightmare that really screamed The Ring to me—when one interview subject is talking about how when he told his friend about his sleep paralysis, they started to experience it too, and it's accompanied with this visual of something like a pyramid scheme of sleep paralysis spreading throughout the population. You feel like once you've seen this movie, it's going to come to you next. Have you heard of anything like this from viewers?
That's why we make everyone sign a waiver on their way out! No, not a lot. There was a person or two who tweeted about it. But that's a fascinating idea and it's true to that guy's experience and it's eerie, so it's totally something we felt we had to include in the film. And it gives us kind of a William Castle, "Emergo" feel where the horror comes out of the screen. And it ties into one of my favourites which is Halloween 3 where stuff can come out of the screen.
A lot of your work, from The S From Hell through Room 237, The Nightmare, and even your next project Director's Commentary: Terror of Frankenstein, has this great retro, low-fi aesthetic. I actually think it really elevates the creepiness of your subjects. Where does that come from?
It might just be my age and the movies that sunk in when my brain was really a sponge. But my style is really very strongly influenced by stuff from the 60's, 70's, and 80's. I made an inspiration reel to sit down with the crew and watch before, there was something from Firewalk With Me and Elm Street, but more of it was coming from that era. There's also something that Paul Schrader does in Patty Hearst where the camera pulls out of this very realistic room to reveal it floating in this black void. And my movie has a dream component to it and we're not hiding the fact there's artifice to it.
Having those dream re-enactments be overtly staged, showing the set and PA's and actors playing the ghosts, was that to deliberately show the difference between the true interviews and the fake scenes?
That's something we wanted to acknowledge. I'm pretty flattered that we're playing at Hot Docs, I'm not sure if they show a lot of monster movies here. But with the subjectivity of these people's stories and us shooting re-enactments of things happening in this twilight state, my obligation to telling the truth in a documentary is being clear about the artifice.
But it was also something deeply unnerving and dreamlike about it. It's coming from two places which might not even really dovetail all that well together, but on one hand it's acknowledging we're not trying to fool anyone into thinking this is a fly-on-the-wall piece of observational documentary journalism when the ghosts come, but the other is, and it sounds kind of pretentious, but using the idea of the sound stage as a metaphor for the way your subconscious puts things together. And if people from different parts of the world are seeing similar spirits, almost like Monsters Inc., that space means something different to them than it does to us. And our consciousness is something they can access from some central space.
Would you ever do a scripted horror movie?
I would. I've had more success to this point writing by editing and finding connections between things that different people say, rather than sitting in front of a blank page. I like to think one day I'll have a cathartic break and be able to let it all out. But yeah, I love shooting live action stuff and I've shot some live action shorts in the past.
And The Nightmare is heading to the Stanley Film Festival next?
It is, and I take real pride in playing both Hot Docs and the Stanley Horror Film Festival back to back. Because [it takes place in] the hotel that inspired The Shining. And I was there with 237 and it was kind of astonishing. I was riding in a van with Mick Garris, who directed the TV version of The Shining and is very close with Stephen King, and also in the van was Leon Vitali, who worked very close with Kubrick on The Shining. And having thought so much about The Shining over the past couple years it felt like I was crossing through the screen into the other side. And because we got along so well that day, Vitali ended up agreeing to play a version of himself in [Director's Cut: Terror of] Frankenstein. So yeah, that wall seems more and more porous every day.
That's a great segue back to The Nightmare's discussion of reality and unreality.
That's the question, what is it? Is it unreality? The film doesn't answer any of that stuff very definitively. And the ending of the movie is somebody hovering in the tightrope between one side and the other. He's not quite sure whether to take that pill in The Matrix, or in Total Recall, am I really a secret agent on Mars, or am I in a machine that I paid someone to make me think I'm a secret agent on Mars?