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Lena Dunham took to Instagram on Wednesday to share some shots from a recent photo shoot that she starred in for Emily Ratajkowski's swimwear line, Inamorata Swim. And while we're used to seeing Ratajkowski as the one posing for the camera in a bathing suit, this time she got behind the lens and played art director. Clearly, she knew what she was doing.
"That time @emrata made me a full [oiled-up] swimsuit issue chick for @inamorataswim," Dunham captioned a carousel of pictures on her Instagram feed. "I've loved Emily forever because she's wise, kind, gets how complex feminism and femininity are, and gives the perfect amount of fucks. Honored to get behind her [camera]."
In the photos, Dunham is seen wearing an oversize hat, a strapless leopard one-piece, and a pair of mod-inspired circular earrings. The brand referred to Dunham as "one of our muses" in an Instagram post, and given the serious face and attitude she's serving up throughout the shoot, it's easy to see why.
The stunning series of pictures wasn't the only thing to come out of the Dunham-Ratajkowski photo shoot. In her Instagram Story, the Girls star also revealed that Ratajkowski taught her the meaning of the phrase "thighbrow" (the crease where your thigh meets your hip) during their time together, and points out that her own is on full display.
The two actresses have both been outspoken advocates for feminism and body love. In 2016, Ratajkowski wrote a powerful essay for Dunham's Lenny Letter broaching both topics. "To me, 'sexy' is a kind of beauty, a kind of self-expression, one that is to be celebrated, one that is wonderfully female," she wrote, echoing the sentiments in Dunham's Instagram post. "...Even if being sexualized by society's gaze is demeaning, there must be a space where women can still be sexual when they choose to be."
Related: Emily Ratajkowski, Michelle Rodriguez, and Jordan Barrett Are Living Their Best Summer Lives in Italy


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Parts of an argumentative essay
The argumentative essay is a type of essay in which a theme is raised from the argument, usually seeks to defend or refute an idea on the chosen topic and for this is argued based on the ideas of other authors.
The mission of the argumentative essay is to convince the reader that our approach to the topic is the right one and therefore it is the kind of vision that should be adopted.
Introduction: the chosen topic is proposed, for this the subject is located in a specific context, be it cultural, political, sociological, artistic or even medical. In this way the reader is placed in the situation to be treated and a preamble of the essay content is offered.
Development: in this point all the ideas of the writer on the subject are presented, the reasons for which a theory is defended or refuted are presented and arguments are presented based on the vision of other authors whose approach must also appear in the text in the form of appointments.
For an argumentative essay to gain authority and be considered a serious work, it must contain at least 5 solid text citations on the subject we are addressing, that is, five authors who have addressed the subject, either for or against it.
From this approach we will have the basis to support our ideas and even to refute those that seem wrong to us from other authors.
An important point is also to present the whole approach in an organized way, for which subtitles can be used that allow us to treat each point of the topic with order and coherence.
The language in the argumentative essay must be formal, always taking care of the coherence between the ideas. The reader must be constantly challenged so that he is fully involved with the text.
Conclusion: at this point the final argument is presented, which closes the topic and is constructed so that the reader is immersed in the argument, inviting him to reflect on it or take a position and act accordingly to what is read .

subset: commoncrawl


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PARKING in Huddersfield is reaching breaking point.
That was the view expressed by the chairman of Kirklees Council's Overview and Scrutiny Panel for Transport Clr Donald Firth.
He has warned that sooner rather than later Huddersfield and its surrounding villages will be gridlocked.
Now the big parking debate is to take place.
And Clr Firth wants Kirklees Council to consider getting a park and ride system before it is too late for Huddersfield's choked-up streets.
He said: "Soon there will be nowhere to park cars in the town centre and in other places like Holmfirth.
"We must act now to sort this problem out or it will be too late.
"It might not be that bad on weekdays at the moment, but at weekends and during busy periods like Christmas and university graduation week it is a nightmare to take a car into the town centre.
"I think park and ride would work perfectly. It has worked in other towns so why not here?
"About 15 years ago we visited York to see how they managed their park and ride scheme. Back then I was convinced it was the way forward, but it fell on deaf ears.
"Today the situation is much worse."
Clr Firth also said something needed to be done to ease congestion in areas around schools.
He hit out at parents who clogged up streets while dropping off and picking up their children.
He said: "We have had cases where half an hour before the children finish school the roads are already blocked by people picking them up.
"This causes a lot of problems for people who live nearby, because drives get blocked.
"It is also very dangerous to have cars lining the streets, because children will be trying to cross the roads."
Kirklees Council Cabinet member for the environment and highways Clr Ann Denham agreed parking in the town centre could be improved, but said spaces are available.
"I think we are quite car friendly in Huddersfield," she said.
"There is not a lot of congestion in the town centre and I do not think we need a park and ride system.
"However that is not to say we cannot improve things.
"I think we need to work towards making the town centre car free.
"If there are less cars in the town centre more things can go on and it will be much more attractive to shoppers.
"That might mean losing some street parking but it is a balancing act and the positives are undeniable.
"We also need to support good bus and rail links. These are the types of things that will get people out of their cars and this will ease any possible problems with parking. More car parks is not really the answer."
* The debate on parking issues takes place at 2pm on Monday at Huddersfield Town Hall.
* Kirklees has 95 car parks, catering for thousands of vehicles.
* There are also 1,300 on-street car spaces in town centres.
* Many residential areas have resident parking permit schemes.
* Special badges are available to enable disabled people to park easily.
* Most car parks charge and are bound by time limits.


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Why it pays to plan your equipment replacement
By Jonathan Wickens, Commercial Director at Lifecycle Management Group
With a huge equipment deficit, there is never enough capital to meet the demand to refresh equipment. Departments are forced to sweat their assets beyond their planned life and make do and mend is the order of the day. Against this backdrop, and the unlikely event that the equipment you aspire to will be delivered, some in the NHS may question the wisdom of spending time and effort on developing and maintaining an equipment replacement plan.
There is no doubt that sticking to a fixed medium or long-term plan, however well thought through, is nigh on impossible in the NHS, there is simply too much ongoing change. But adopting an effective and dynamic plan is the vital first step towards bridging the equipment deficit, squeezing more from your budgets and even getting to the front of the queue for capital to refresh your equipment. Trying to maximise resources without a plan is like setting out for a remote destination without the help of a map.
Joined-up decisions
For NHS Trusts, effective replacement planning allows joined-up decisions which can have a really significant impact on costs:
Value. It's a simple fact that planned decisions deliver better value. Without formal planning, you're just responding to events. Imagine a piece of equipment fails on Monday and you need it replaced before the clinic on Friday. Having visibility of all the costs that you control enables you to make a quicker, better-informed decision as to how to fund the replacement taking account of all your competing priorities which can then be adjusted accordingly.
Standardisation. Standardisation of medical devices across hospital sites is on the agenda for many Trusts. It can reduce costs, provide flexibility and maximise equipment capacity. It will also improve the likelihood that users are competent on a specific model and reduces the cost of training as well as consumables and parts. It's little wonder EBME managers are so enthusiastic about the approach. However, any attempt at standardisation requires a robust approach to replacement planning, not just at a department level, but right across the organisation.
Scale. Just as replacement planning facilitates standardisation, it also facilitates scale. Knowing what you need and when you need it allows you to order at scale, even if assets are delivered over a period of time. And scale is what the vendors want; if negotiated effectively this can lead to significantly discounted equipment and even running costs.
More persuasive business cases
If equipment managers had one wish, it might be that their business cases were more effective in securing capital. An effective business plan can make the difference. A clear quantification of the benefits and risks alongside the whole-life costs of each option makes it easier for decision-makers to make the right decisions. And a dynamic plan enables departments to provide a detailed early warning of their need for capital funds and, if done properly, this should include up-to-date market data which can then support the rationale for investment. The result is that your business case is better informed, more persuasive and stands a greater chance of approval.
Real visibility of whole-life costs
It's easy to focus on the day one cost, particularly if you're pitching for capital from a limited pot. But the best investment decisions take account, not only of day one costs, but of the whole-life costs, including maintenance, finance and consumables. Not only will effective replacement planning give you visibility of whole-life costs, it can change the decisions you make. The best deal today is not necessarily going to be the best deal tomorrow.
Oversight of equipment-related spend.
Not all departments are able to report on the whole-life cost of their equipment, perhaps because costs may be distributed among different budgets or because they are simply not collated in a meaningful way. Developing a robust and dynamic replacement plan creates invaluable oversight and insight of current whole-life costs. This enables departments (and entire Trusts) to compare current total spending with forecast spend on refreshed equipment. This is invaluable in making an effective business case, particularly if updating equipment can deliver whole-life economies.
Allocating funds in the most effective way
Capital, it seems, is destined always to be a scarce resource in the NHS, leading to inevitable gaps between the equipment you need and the funds available. Limited capital means Trusts are faced with investment choices – do we invest in this equipment or that? Proper replacement planning enables Trusts to make smart decisions to ensure the best return on those investments. Given that certain types of equipment are better suited to different types of financing, effective planning enables Trusts to match appropriate financing to each type of equipment – and lower whole-life costs.
So, while replacement planning may not appear to be worthy of great attention in the NHS, nothing could be further from the truth. Effective replacement planning is vital in making better informed decisions, delivering more persuasive business cases and ultimately, achieving more with less.
Lifecycle offers a range of replacement planning options for individual departments and entire Trusts, each supported by a dynamic online planning system. Our Replacement Planning service is available from £500 per annum. We'll work with you to identify current costs, understand your challenges and aspirations and provide on-line access to all this populated with up-to-date market data and forecasts.
James Drury is an Associate Director at Lifecycle Management Group. Contact him on firstname.lastname@example.com or call him on 01865 340 800.
Jonathan Elsmore-Wickens is our Commercial Director at Lifecycle Management Group. Contact him on email@example.com or call him on 01865 340 800.


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Search the Community
Showing results for tags '$cmdline'.
Found 4 results
Hi Problem is this myscript -p <zumerkelen> -x something else myscript is my AutoIt compiled CUI. -p <> is first param - fails, see below -x [text] second param, works. When I run this with the param enclosed in <> I get the response The syntax of the command is incorrect. Experimentation indicates that the <> tags are the problem. _ArrayDisplay($CmdLine, "1 Array") MsgBox(16, "1 Raw", $CmdLineRaw) The problem is with the reading of the command line. It fails BEFORE it gets into the variables... I am not dealing with AutoIt, or even my own command line, this is legacy software. It seems that AutoIt "interprets" the <> before loading the command line... I need to be able to read that as text without it being interpreted. The only part I can control is my script, the myscript, which I can change at will. The standard command line functions appear all to interpret params on read. I want those params read raw. If I could just get that as a string it would be fine. Where to look? Skysnake
Hello all! I'm trying to make a little script that sends a message over TCP. An example payload would be: MY_PAYLOAD#<ATTRS><ATTR><NAME>MAILSERVER</NAME><OPERATION>set_value(ServiceStatus)</OPERATION><VALUE><![CDATA["Not Running"]]></VALUE><TIMESTAMP>1349297031</TIMESTAMP></ATTR></ATTRS>Note how the payload contains special characters, and how the CDATA contains a SPACE (i.e. "Not Running") My compiled AU3 script expects exactly two command line arguments: 1) destination server/port expressed as 127.0.0.1:80 2) the payload I want to send to my server application (which may have multiple ATTRs, this example only has one ATTR) MyApp.exe 127.0.0.1:80 "MY_PAYLOAD#<ATTRS><ATTR><NAME>MAILSERVER</NAME><OPERATION>set_value(ServiceStatus)</OPERATION><VALUE><![CDATA["Not Running"]]></VALUE><TIMESTAMP>1349297031</TIMESTAMP></ATTR></ATTRS>" My problems (plural) are with parsing of the second argument: 1) If I don't wrap second argument in double-quotes, then Windows bails out before even launching EXE with "< was unexpected at this time" 2) If I DO wrap second argument in double-quotes, then two problems can arise when my EXE parses the arguments: aa) The double-quotes are stripped from the CDATA value. ["Running"] is stored in the array as [Running] bb) If CDATA value DOES have a space, such as ["Not Running"], then I get an extra unwanted $CmdLine[3] because the SPACE between Not and Running is treated as a separator. My second argument is thus split into two separate arguments, [2] and [3] instead of being treated as one arg stored in [2] cc) Additionally, my script exits because it has an "IF $CmdLine[0] <>2 THEN Exit (1)" to validate the command line args. I've tried launching the EXE with the second argument wrapped and escaped in a multitude of ways. Double double-quotes, triple double-quotes, single-quotes on the outside with double-quotes inside (i.e. '"ETC"'), starting the second arg with a caret (i.e. ^"ETC") and one of three things happens: 1) "< was unexpected at this time" 2) my CDATA value is stripped of its double-quotes 3) my payload argument gets split at the space in the CDATA value and the script bails out due to the unexpected 3rd argument. Any ideas? How can I preserve the second argument literally, including all special characters, quotes and spaces? I tried adding some string manipulation code to grab the 2nd argument from $CmdLineRaw and it works (preserves the "Not Running" with quotes), but my number of arguments is still 3 instead of 2 if there is a space in the CDATA value. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated!
Is this possible?
Understanding $CmdLine
jazzyjeff posted a topic in AutoIt General Help and SupportHello, I am trying to understand the $CmdLine array. My goal is to run scriptA.exe have it create a variable $varA and then run scriptB.exe and have scriptB.exe output $varA to a Msgbox. It isn't working though, so I am not getting how this works. This is what I am trying: ScriptA - $varA = 'Test' Run('d:\(x86)\AutoIt3\AutoIt3.exe "D:\AutoIT Script\CMDLINE\scriptB.au3"') ScriptB - If $CmdLine[0] = 0 Then MsgBox(64, "Result", "No variable was found.") Else MsgBox(64, "Variable", $CmdLine[1] & $varA) EndIf If someone can help me understand why this isn't working, I'd appreciate it.


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Events for January 27, 2020
Events Search and Views Navigation
6:30 pm
6:30 p.m. Evening Prayer Online
Lay readers from Seattle-area congregations including the cathedral lead a spoken service of daily prayer following the form of the Book of Common Prayer 1979, every weekday evening at 6:30 p.m. This service is now being offered every weekday over the Zoom teleconferencing platform. Contact firstname.lastname@example.com to join. Contact Name: … Read MoreFind out more »
7:15 pm
7:15 p.m. Centering Prayer
Opening our mind and heart—our whole being—to God, the Ultimate Mystery, beyond thoughts, words, and emotions. Silence, spiritual walk, and readings. Contact Name: Stephanie Metting Contact Number: (206) 323-0300 Contact Email: email@example.com location: Thomsen ChapelFind out more »


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"He neither particularly listened to what was said to him nor particularly considered what he said in response. He demanded you pay him attention, then decided you were weak for groveling. In a sense, he was like an instinctive, pampered, and hugely successful actor. Everybody was either a lackey who did his bidding or a high-ranking film functionary trying to coax out his performance — without making him angry or petulant."
"The conundrum was that conservative media saw Trump as its creature, while Trump saw himself as a star, a vaunted and valued product of all media, one climbing ever higher. It was a cult of personality and he was the personality. He was the most famous man in the world. Everybody loved him – or ought to.... He was looking for media love everywhere. In this, Trump quite profoundly seemed unable to distinguish between his political advantage and his personal needs – he thought emotionally, not strategically....The great value of being president, in his view, was that you're the most famous man in the world, and fame is always venerated and adored by the media. Isn't it? But, confusingly, Trump was president in large part because of his particular talent, conscious or reflexive, to alienate the media, which then turned him into a figure reviled by the media. This was not a dialectical space that was comfortable for an insecure man."
- from that book
"The White House chief of staff, John Kelly, told a White House pool reporter the president tweeted [about Fire and Fury] to get around the filter of the media. Trump had "not at all" seemed angry on Friday night or Saturday, Kelly said, adding that the president had watched the Hugh Jackman movie The Greatest Showman – about the hoaxer and politician PT Barnum – with lawmakers and others."
from Guardian piece on Trump versus Wolff (and Bannon).


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Where to begin...
Let's start with having way to much stuff to paint! I think I have finally caught the disease of buying way too much stuff than I will ever paint. And for this I blame Battlefront and Evan.
So I am still putting finishing touches on my 2 ID / Winter Infantry Company. I still have a bunch of vehicles that need decals. And then what happens...
I go out and buy (now in my defense, these were fire sales!!!):
2 Strelk Platoons
1 Strelk Company
Brit Rifle Company
US SP AA - enough to field the 4 vehicles
US 155mm Arty
US M4A3 Lates from BF
Brit Shermans
3 Brit Commando Platoons
Brit Para Recon Jeeps
US Winter Bazookas
US Winter HMGs
Brit Universal Carriers
Brit Ram / Roos
Brit LVTs
Brit Land Mattresses
Ok, you get the idea...
And this is on top of the stuff that I am still trying to paint. I am an idiot...
Here is a quick picture or two of my progress:
These are three of my Rams. I will admit to having 9 more...
One of my LVTs. I will admit to having 5 more...
Which brings me to my thoughts on the MG books.
First, I am much more familiar with the Allied lists because, well I play Allied lists. The German lists a varied, some are a bit quirky - like 12 88s!!! - and others are simply good lists - KG Spindler. But there is literally something for everyone in the BbB book for the Germans.
The MG book for the Allies is very good. Yes, everyone is aware that the 17pdrs now get APDS, so the AT stat has been bumped up to 15. At the 6pdr AT gun has been bumped up to AT 11. The PDFs have been incorporated into the book and the Commandos have been added - along with some really good Canadian lists.
Let me say that again... really good Canadian lists... Remember when I posted last year about TFA?? While not TFA quality "good", the Canadians are worth a peek. Plus you get the cool Rams / Roos to have your infantry tool around in!! Oh, the Commandos are pretty good too. I mean, where else can you get 16 Sherman tanks rated CV for 800 points?? Ok, they are Crab Tanks (Flails) and they can't assault and they don't have a hull MG, but they are still AT 10 tanks... So Commandos can get 16 tanks and the LVTs. And if you want more fun, grab some Naval Guns!!
Now are they 2 ID strong, maybe. But probably not. But check them out.
As you see in the pictures above, I did try to get some painting done last weekend. All told, 32 vehicles have now been base coated and panel faded. Unfortunately, my airbrush is now "dead". But the good news is the TWO replacement airbrushes are now in the mail!!
So that is about it for now. I don't have any tournaments on the docket as I am skipping EW Nats at Adepticon this year. But I am planning on attending Historicon again and entering the LW Nats!


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Spanish, Italian political concerns hit markets
Spanish and Italian stocks led markets lower Monday as investors started fretting about the political situation in both countries, with some indexes suffering one of their worst days in months.
Since last summer, concerns over Europe's debt crisis have been eased thanks, in part, to the efforts of the Spanish and Italian governments in getting a handle on their debts.
But an Italian general election at the end of this month looks like it may not be as clear cut as many people thought.
Meanwhile, the Spanish government is embroiled in a corruption scandal over secret cash payments that's raising questions over the future of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy.
With the political situation uncertain in the two countries, investors have decided to book some profits all across Europe.
"Political uncertainty is causing a stir in European markets," said Jennifer Lee, an analyst at BMO Capital Markets.
The main indexes in Spain and Italy took the brunt of the selling with Madrid's IBEX down 3.77 percent - its biggest one-day fall since the end of September - and Milan's 4.5 percent lower - the most it has dropped in one day since last August. Meanwhile, the interest rate charged on Spain's 10-year bonds was up 0.22 percentage points to 5.42 percent, while Italy's 10-year bond rate was up 0.139 percentage points to 4.42 percent.
Elsewhere, the FTSE 100 index of leading British shares was down 1.58 percent at 6,246 while Germany's DAX fell 2.49 percent to 7,638. The CAC-40 in France was 3.01 percent lower at 3,659.
U.S. stocks suffered in the slipstream of Europe with the Dow Jones industrial average down 0.94 percent at 13,878 soon after the open, while the broader S&P 500 index 0.98 percent lower at 1,498.
The scale of Monday's retreat stands in stark contrast to the performance of stocks so far this year, which saw the Dow close above 14,000 on Friday for the first time in over five years. It's now not far off its all-time high.
There was a sense through the day that markets would struggle Monday. With a dearth of scheduled economic news, there was always the opportunity for investors may use the opportunity to book some gains.
"In recent weeks the mantra seems to have been very much one of buying regardless, but now that the major indices have retested those levels not seen since 2007, now may well be the time to take something of a reality check," said Fawad Razaqzada, market strategist at GFT Markets.
The euro was suffering, like stocks, amid the renewed European concerns and some profit-taking
Europe's single currency was trading 0.7 percent lower at $1.353.
Earlier in Asia, Japanese stocks continued to gain ground alongside the falling yen, which is expected to help the country's big exporters. The Nikkei 225 closed 0.6 percent higher at 11,260.35.
The yen has been falling over the past few weeks as the new government focuses on getting a moribund economy going again. As part of that drive it has asked the Bank of Japan to do more and that's probably going to mean an expansion of the money supply.
The yen had recovered somewhat during European trading hours and the dollar was 0.1 percent lower at 92.69 yen.
Oil prices drifted lower with the benchmark New York rate down $1.40 at $96.37 a barrel.


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All under 7's to U10's KYPC teams as a minimum play in the Pin Point either on a Saturday, with all games taking place at KYPC or on a Sunday at a central venues or home and away.
Junior Football
The U11's and above age groups, all play in the Pin Point league with games also played on a Saturday or Sunday with league experience playing home and away.
Contact details for each team can be found by clicking on the 'Teams' menu and selecting the appropriate team from drop down menu.


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The Monster Guitar
Monstery Musical Fun for Ages 3+
Music is universal. Every culture has its own music, its own sound, and its own favourite instruments. One of the most ubiquitous instruments in the world is the simple, but beautiful guitar. Though it can produce quite a complex sound, it's actually an easy instrument to learn. This makes it a great first instrument for young kids. And now, with Scratch Europe's Monster Guitar, you can share your love of music with your children and help them begin their musical career.
If you're looking for creative or musical gifts for boys, look no further than the wonderfully-built Monster Guitar. This adorably painted acoustic guitar is sized to fit young children, making it a great beginner instrument. It's recommended for kids aged 3+ years.
For small children, we recommend giving the Monster Guitar as a Christmas or birthday surprise! Just imagine the look on their face when they begin strumming. Soon enough, they'll be playing songs and mastering their instrument. To find other great gifts for boys, browse Gifts Australia today.
Notify me when back in stock
The Top 4 Best Gifts For Boys:
Buying gifts for boys is generally pretty easy. However, buying innovative new gifts for boys which they will appreciate and which they will use a lot is not quite so easy. Boys are generally easily amused, but quick to get bored with something. This means that the biggest challenge when looking for gifts for boys is finding something which they will be able to enjoy for a long time, something which they will not use for a couple of hours and get bored of.
With this in mind we have developed a list of our top five best gifts for boys. We have thought about the entertainment factor that each gift offers, the amount of time that the person you give it to is likely to use it for, and the versatility of the gift (and its ability to be used by a wide range of different people). Our top four best gifts for boys include:
1. A new guitar:
Music is one of the few things which unites cultures and religions across the world. Learning to play a musical instrument is something which can prove invaluable later in life, and something which, unfortunately, many modern children don't get the chance to do.
Get your child learning how to play the guitar by buying them a kids sized instrument. One of our favourites is the Monster Guitar - a miniature guitar which is designed for young children. It should help them get started on the road to musical stardom. Who knows, it may even help the world's next pop star discover himself!
2. A new video game:
Although this may seem a little bit boring or pointless to all you old adults (or perhaps not!), young boys in the modern world generally love gaming. A new video game should be extremely will received, especially if you manage to get your hands on something which they have wanted for a long time. Video games are undoubtedly among the best gifts for boys.
3. A new push-bike:
Get your boy active with a new push-bike which they can use to get around. It doesn't matter what age they are: it is never too late to begin cycling! Make sure that you get something which is the right size for them, which won't break when they are rough with it (as boys undoubtedly will be), and which they can ride. If they haven't ridden a bike before then consider including training wheels.
4. A bit of sporting gear:
Although video games and electronic devices have become extremely popular over the past few decades, many boys still enjoy getting outside and playing sport. For this reason, a new piece of sporting equipment can make a great gift. Make sure that you buy something which is related to a sport which they enjoy playing and which they will actually use. A new soccer ball, a footy, or even a basketball are usually pretty safe options.
Although these are all great choices when it comes to buying the best gifts for boys, it is extremely important to think about who you are buying for and to personalise your gift. Good luck and have fun shopping!


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Cataloguing Rare Books – Sh*t Explosion
By Greg Gibson
Still too gimpy to drive across the state, so I was skipping the Albany Book Fair that weekend. But Dan Gaeta, who was doing the show, called to tell me about an interesting item he'd found. It's nice to have friends! (Dan operates John Bale Book Co., a café and book shop in Waterbury, CT. Talk about a simple but effective website, check out John Bale Books). Anyway, since I've been home all week, grumpily compiling my next catalog, and since I don't have a book fair to report on, I thought I'd talk a little about my catalogs.
Back in the 1980s when computers were new and fun, I stumbled across a Macintosh database program called Filemaker, and realized I could use it to organize my business. I studied the manual for weeks and somehow managed to cobble together a system that kept track of, and linked, customers, books, and invoices. Filemaker turned out to be a good choice. It is a powerful and versatile program, and is the core of several popular software products for the used book trade. My custom program is clunky by comparison, but it suits me fine. I only write a few hundred invoices every year. For a while, after I switched over to PCs, I kept upgrading the Filemaker software. But I stopped buying the new iterations when I realized they were WAY more powerful than my little mouse-on-a-treadmill operation required.
So, first I buy the book – I've talked plenty about that – then I collate it, also recording purchase price, date, and source. Then I research it, using Google, of course, but also my lovely reference library, of which I am only slightly less proud and fond than I am of my children.
Then I put the book on the shelf until it is surrounded by enough other books to make a catalog.
I like to keep my catalogs short because I believe my customers have limited time and attention for whatever I have to say to them. Fifty to seventy-five items are plenty. Also, I can issue short catalogs more frequently, smoothing troublesome cash flow bumps.
Then I begin entering each book into my "Books" database. This is where the bibliographic information and sales pitch for each title reside; also the description of physical condition of this particular copy.
As the years roll on, my "Books" file has become a labor saving device. At the moment I have 36.907 records in that file. Even discounting the many duplicate entries, the chances grow slimmer each year that I'll find a book that is NOT listed in my database. Thus, most of the work of cataloging a book is done for me already. All I have to do is find the record that matches my title, update the condition description of the new copy, and maybe edit the sales pitch, and the book is cataloged.
Then I alphabetize and add numbers – automated functions – then I export the cataloged books to a Microsoft Word file and proofread it in that format, making simultaneous corrections in my "Books" file. Then I paste the corrected Word file into my page layout program (I use something called "Art Explosion Publisher Pro." When things go bad I refer to it as "Sh*t Explosion").
Then I take pictures or scans of the cataloged books. These are crude, quick snaps, taken with my little pocket camera, or with books sprawled upon the scanner bed.
Then I open them in Photoshop and size them, and adjust color and contrast. Photoshop is an amazing application. It does thousands of things – of which I know how to do exactly three – size images, and adjust their color and contrast.
The images I work with are the sort of images Dan Gregory, guru of book photography, scorns. But they seem to work for my customers. They convey a basic sense of the condition of the binding or the contents of each book.
Then I drop the images into the page layout program (this is where the sh*t explosion often occurs).
Then I make a PDF of the finished product and send it off to my printer. For more complicated layouts, I get my photographer son to do the job, and he sends the PDF off to the printer. I used to use a local print shop, but that got too expensive. So I switched to The Covington Group out in Kansas City. They turn the job over in a week or ten days, for about 2/3 the price my local guy was charging.
Then I make an html file of the catalog from my corrected "Books" file and get my son or long time helper Amanda to put the html file on my website and add the image of each book. Maybe they'll put it on the website in PDF form as well, to give the customer an option for how they want to read the catalog.
Then I mail my hardcopy catalogs, priority mail, to my "premium" customers (It's not hard to become a "premium" customer. All you have to do is buy something from me). Then, after two days – the average length of time it takes priority mail to land anywhere in the US – I send out an e-blast telling all my customers that a new catalog has been posted on my website.
The process has evolved over a period of twenty-five years or so. The "database file" for Maritime List #1 was a box of index cards. It was printed by me on a used AB Dick mimeo machine – talk about a sh*t explosion! Still, Maritime List 219 has a lot in common with Maritime List #1. Both are cheap, efficient, relatively low tech, easy for an old fool to make, and easy for a customer to read.
There's only one problem that I can foresee. Some day I'm going to need a new computer. When that day comes, my Filemaker Pro 4.0 program, circa 1997, will probably be useless, unsupported by whatever advanced brain drives my new computer. Ditto my Art Explosion application, my old scanner and software, as well as my Adobe Photoshop 2.0.
Then I'll be able to write a blog about learning how to do everything all over again at the age of 70.
(Printed on Bookman's Log, presented here by permission of the author.)


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VERA FILES FACT CHECK: Kontra sa death penalty, Sen. Gordon ginamit ang pinawalang bisang batas sa pagbibigay ng babala sa 'ninja cops'
Binalaan ni Sen. Richard Gordon ang "ninja cops" — mga opisyal ng pulisya na sinasabing sangkot sa…
Reports, Fact-Check
Sen. Richard Gordon warned "ninja cops" -- police officers allegedly involved in the illegal drug trade -- of facing capital punishment, which has already been abolished in the country.
In an Oct. 21 media interview, Gordon, who chairs the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee that investigated "ninja cops," said:
"That's why I tell them ("ninja cops"), 'Get a good lawyer because that's capital punishment.' When you plant evidence, when you sell the evidence -- drugs -- that's capital punishment."
Source: ANC 24/7, PH Senator: Justice Department, Ombudsman should file charges vs. Albayalde, 'Ninja cops', Oct. 21, 2019, watch from 14:22 to 14:34
He reiterated this in his official Twitter account:
Source: Richard Gordon official Twitter account, Planting evidence…, Oct. 21, 2019
Republic Act (RA) 7659 or the Death Penalty Law was already repealed in 2006.
Enacted in 1993 to address the "alarming upsurge of [heinous] crimes," the death penalty was eventually prohibited by RA 9346 and had been downgraded to either reclusion perpetua -- 20 years and one day to 40 years of imprisonment -- or life imprisonment. (See How we kill: Notes on the death penalty in the Philippines)
Under the repealed death penalty law, selling prohibited drugs and "planting" evidence or of any "dangerous drugs" by government officials, including police, may warrant capital punishment.
Heeding President Rodrigo Duterte's call to restore death penalty in the country, several lawmakers in both houses of Congress have filed death penalty bills. At least seven bills in the Senate and 10 in the House of Representatives explicitly cover drug-related offenses.
Gordon, who will conduct the hearings for the said measures as Senate Justice and Human Rights Committee chair, has opposed the reimposition of the death penalty, saying he does not "believe in [its] efficacy" to deter crime and drug use in the country. (See VERA FILES FACT CHECK: Then and now: How these lawmakers stand on the death penalty)
A high profile "ninja cops" incident happened in Mexico, Pampanga in 2013 involving 13 rogue police officers who allegedly recycled 160 kilograms of methamphetamine hydrochloride or shabu. The incident also implicated resigned police chief Oscar Albayalde who was provincial director of Pampanga at the time.
ANC 24/7, PH Senator: Justice Department, Ombudsman should file charges vs. Albayalde, 'Ninja cops', Oct. 21, 2019
Richard Gordon official Twitter account, Planting evidence..., Oct. 21, 2019
Official Gazette, Republic Act 7659, Dec. 13, 1993
Official Gazette, Republic Act 9346, June 24, 2006
Presidential Communications Operations Office, State of the Nation Address (SONA) 2019 (Speech), July 22, 2019
Senate.gov.ph, Bills - 18th Congress
Congress.gov.ph, House Bills and Resolutions - 18th Congress
GMA News Online, Gordon not keen on sponsoring refiled death penalty bills in the Senate, July 7, 2019
Manila Bulletin, Gordon argues against efficacy of death penalty in combatting illegal drug trade, July 7, 2019
Abante TNT, Death penalty bill ayaw dipensahan ni Gordon, n.d.
ABS-CBN News, Albayalde tagged in Pampanga 'ninja cops' complaint, Oct. 21, 2019
CNN Philippines, Albayalde now included in PNP's criminal complaint on 'ninja cops', Oct. 21, 2019Rappler.com, Senate panels recommend criminal charges vs Albayalde, 'ninja cops' over 2013 drug raid, Oct. 18, 2019
(Guided by the code of principles of the International Fact-Checking Network at Poynter, VERA Files tracks the false claims, flip-flops, misleading statements of public officials and figures, and debunks them with factual evidence. Find out more about this initiative and our methodology.)
Copyright © 2020 Vera Files. All Rights Reserved.


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South Korean President Park Geun-Hye, after making trips to the U.S. and China earlier this year, recently made her third overseas visit to Vietnam. The two countries are in the process of negotiating a new Free Trade Agreement (FTA) that my come into effect as early as 2014.
According to local media sources, the FTA negotiations touched on the usual issues of labor exchange and economic cooperation. What was of particular interest, however, was South Korea's bid to export their nuclear reactor technology to Vietnam. Vietnam is looking to build 10 reactors by 2030, and South Korea is hoping to build, at least, two of the 10. We wonder whether the recent issues with Korean nuclear reactors will harm the chance of Korea in winning a bid in Vietnam.
South Korea, in the midst of a push to increase exports of its nuclear technology, was also recently awarded a USD 20 billion contract to build four nuclear reactors for the UAE. The first of those reactors is already under construction. South Korea's Ministry of Knowledge Economy (MKE) has declared that it aims to become the world's third-largest supplier of nuclear reactors by 2030, behind the USA, France and Russia.
South Korea currently fields four nuclear reactors, with six more planned (and five currently under construction). .
What do you think?
[email protected]
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As usual, I missed the entirety of the All-Star Game, undoubtedly because I have not found a way to relate its meaningless spectacle to the numerous meaningful events that happen during a season. I did, however, check in on a few of the highlights. It's good to see that Papelbon continues to do his best to make his work look easy on paper - one inning, no runs, no hits, no walks, one strikeout, all in 10 pitches - while inducing heart attacks in real time. It's also good to see that Carl Crawford can still make great catches look easy, and that despite his years of calling basebal, Tim McCarver still isn't sure when someone gets robbed of a home run by a great catch. I know it's tough, Tim, but trust me: that ball was on its way out of the bounds of the playing field.
Also, while the National League continues to lose these games, whether they "count" or not, is it really fair to say there's a lack of parity between the two leagues anymore? To choose an arbitary starting point: since the Fenway-hosted game ten years ago, the AL has only beaten the NL by more than three runs once: the 9 to 4 blowout in Houston, when a post-Yankees Clemens and a pre-Yankees Pavano gave up the lion's share of the earned runs for the NL and bad fielding gave up the rest. The remaining nine games include five one-run victories and the one infamous tie; hardly a situation of dominance.
G11: Rays 5, Red Sox 1
1 day ago


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I used to work across the street from a Jewish deli. As one of the newer, more hip-looking establishments in a quickly changing working-class neighbourhood, I held some reservations about the place. It was a bit pricier to eat at and a little aesthetically out of place, filling in the storefront between two of my favourite lunch spots: a 24-hour convenience store/donair shop and a cramped Filipino restaurant with sticky floors, kitschy bamboo walls, and often playing loud musical reality shows on the TV.
The first time I walked in, I ordered a half-size pastrami on rye. The shop was empty and the butcher was eager to welcome me inside. "We're new," he explained, as he went on to carefully describe how he brined, smoked, and hand cut the meat himself. Jars of pickled goods and loaves of fresh rye lined the shelves behind him – I wondered if he had canned those himself too. Keeping with a minimalistic look, the white walls were simply decorated with a chalkboard sign to display daily specials at the door and opposite to that, a framed photograph of a young boy sporting a newsboy cap. I sat upon one of the low wooden benches, adjacent to the floor-to-ceiling windows, and waited.
The young assistant at the counter, the only other person in the deli, was excited to point out my red Asahi baseball t-shirt. It was the shirt I'd recently earned from the tribute game at Oppenheimer Park, an annual community baseball game to honour the legacy of the historical Japanese Canadian Vancouver-based team and the role they played in bringing segregated communities together across difference.
As I waited for my food, she continued to chat with me about the baseball team, asking where I'd gotten my t-shirt from and if I had gone to the tribute game this past year. (She'd been to a tribute game in Kamloops before.) She'd learned about the Asahi baseball team in a university course on the history of concentration camps. The professor had covered camps both in Europe and in North America during World War II and the history of the team really interested her, "y'know because the Japanese Canadian internment camps split up the team," she said before pausing.
"Ah - oops, maybe this is a sensitive topic to bring up in a Jewish deli." Her voice trailed off as she noticed the shifting body movement of the butcher working behind her. Lips pursed, he grimaced and kept his head down, focussed, as he swiftly brought a knife down to sever my sandwich in two.
"Your food is ready," he announced, quickly putting an end to our conversation. He looked up and handed me a brown box with a pastrami sandwich on rye and a homemade pickle on the side. "Thanks for giving us a try," he said with a nod, pointing his stoic and earnest face in my direction.
"Of course," I replied and lingered for a moment or two, "thank you." In that second, my heart twinged and throat gaped as I stood stiff and stilted in place.
A part of me wanted to tell him I knew how hard it was to talk about the past - how even if I didn't know his story, I had stories of my own. I wanted him to know my family carried deep and hushed pains from the war, too. But the moment had passed and it felt awkward, forced, to speak of such wounds again.
Not knowing how to acknowledge our overlapping clashings of memory and grief, I walked out the door, wearing my Asahi baseball t-shirt and with my Jewish pastrami on rye in hand. I thought about our people, on different sides of the ocean, across differing imposed borders and different margins of history. Such different silences and yet, unknowingly, a deeply intertwined sadness.
*Mensch is a Yiddish word for a person with integrity and honour.
* * *
Author's note:
While there are clear differences between the histories of the holocaust of Nazi Germany and Japanese Canadian incarceration in Canada, there are also many similarities in the impacts and legacies of our fractured communities and families, intergenerational trauma, and assimilation and survival amidst anti-Semitism and anti-Asian racism. Both of these experiences are a result of systemic racism as enabled by white supremacy and compliance of bystanders.
These discriminatory issues that once so predominantly impacted our families and communities still exist. In the wake of 9/11, the Trump election, and rise of the alt-right, we are witnessing the explicit rise of discriminatory policies and violence targeted at brown and black communities, particularly racialized migrants and Muslim people.
As communities who have survived such harsh impacts of these histories, I believe we have a responsibility to stand together, support other marginalized communities, and speak out to say we will not allow this to happen to anyone else. More than ever, I believe we need to be critical and vigilant of the media we consume and the leaders we entrust with power and influence in our society and communities. Through inaction and silence, we remain compliant with what wrongfully happened to our people in the past. We have the chance to stand on the right side of history every single day and say, "never again."
* This story first appeared in Nikkei Images, vol. 22, issue 1.


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Abstract : ChainDD interviewed Pang Lipeng, a lawyer at Blockchain Law, about the regulatory issues that Facebook's Libra faces. Pang Lipeng told ChainDD that this was an attempt to denationalize money. However, currency issuance involves sovereign interests. Without the recognition of sovereign countries, no matter how well Libra is designed, its status may not exceed the current BTC and ETH.
On June 18, the Libra White Paper on Facebook's Encrypted Money Project was officially released. The white paper mentions that Libra, its encrypted currency project, is defined as a stable currency and its mission is to build a simple, borderless currency and a financial infrastructure for billions of people. Libra is supported by Libra Blockchain, the Association's local smart contract block chain platform, which is dedicated to solving two problems of encrypted currency, providing banking services for global non-bank accounts and promoting low-cost fund transfers.
Libra mentioned in her project white paper that some projects attempt to undermine existing systems and bypass regulation rather than innovate in regulation and regulation to improve the effectiveness of anti-money laundering initiatives. We also believe that the only way to ensure a sustainable, safe and credible support framework for the new system is to work together with the financial sector, including regulators and experts from all sectors.
According to the chain method team analysis, its specific manifestations are as follows:
1、Libra will collaborate and innovate with the financial sector, including regulators and experts from all sectors.
2、The regulatory entity of Libar block chain and Libra reserve is the Libra Association, which is composed of multiple independent members. The Libra Association is governed by the Council of Associations, which initially consisted of global enterprises, non-profit organizations, multilateral organizations and academic institutions as founders.
3、Establish a reserve supervision team (comparable to USDT) consisting of "custodians of regulated global institutions" distributed in different places. The Association will strive to minimize its role as Libra Reserve Manager through fully automated reserve management.
4、Improve the effectiveness of anti-money laundering initiatives.
5、The Executive Team of Libra Association will include the Policy Director (Advocacy and Communication Team), the Compliance and Financial Intelligence Director, and the General Legal Adviser (Legal Team).
ChainDD interviewed Pang Lipeng, a lawyer at Blockchain Law, about the regulatory issues that Facebook's Libra faces. Pang Lipeng told ChainDD that this was an attempt to denationalize money. However, currency issuance involves sovereign interests. Without the recognition of sovereign countries, no matter how well Libra is designed, its status may not exceed the current BTC and ETH.
ChainDD: Libra is officially defined as a stable currency, with a basket of bank deposits and short-term government bonds of relative value in its reserves. Some people have said that Facebook is using a model to grasp the Seigniorage in the digital economy era. How do we view Facebook's behavior from the perspective of regulation?
Pang Lipeng: According to the description in the white paper, Libra's goal is to become a stable digital encrypted currency, using all real asset reserves (called "Libra reserves") as guarantees, and supported by a network of trading platforms that buy and sell Libra and have a competitive relationship. Anchoring a basket of currencies is similar to the Special Drawing Rights (SDR) of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). SDR, also known as paper gold, is a unit of account created by the International Monetary Fund and allocated according to the share pledged by Member States, which can be used to repay the IMF debt and to compensate for the balance of payments deficit among Member States.
We believe that in some ways, Facebook's Libra issuance is not a complete coinage right, because its issuance is limited by reserve assets, not by sovereign credit printing. As a means of payment, it also requires other credit assets (sovereign currency, creditor's rights) as a medium. For example, when we use Bitcoin to pay, we essentially first use the value of the commodity's French currency. Converted to Bitcoin, and then paid, if we can not get rid of the process of converting into French currency, virtual currency can hardly be called real currency. Just as critics argue that SDR is a castrated currency that cannot be used for payments outside the IMF system, it is not a real currency in essence, but a unit of account. It must be used in other currencies before it can be directly used for trade or non-trade payments. If Libra takes the same approach, the above criticisms are equally valid.
On the other hand, we don't think the act of issuing coins is a monopoly. On the contrary, it proves that private organizations can issue their own "currency" when they have reserve assets. If Facebook can issue them, why can't BAT issue them? Therefore, we prefer to believe that this is an attempt to denationalize money. As Hayek put it in "The Denationalization of Money": "If the public understands that they pay the price of cyclical inflation and currency instability for the convenience of using only one currency in daily transactions, and have to occasionally consider the benefits of using currencies other than those they are familiar with, they will probably find that. The system is too much. We believe that from a regulatory point of view, currency issuance involves sovereign interests. Without the recognition of sovereign countries, no matter how well Libra is designed, its status may not exceed the current BTC and ETH.
ChainDD: Since encrypted currencies are not strictly regulated like legal currencies, will Facebook's encrypted currencies run the risk of regulatory problems, especially in anti-money laundering and KYC?
Pang Lipeng: For encrypted currency, preventing money laundering and terrorist financing, anti-tax avoidance and tax evasion are the problems we must face at present. Previous EU reports mentioned that the anonymity, cross-border ease and decentralization of virtual currencies posed great challenges to regulation. Anonymity makes it difficult to identify both sides of the transaction and the flow of funds; transboundary nature makes it easy for exchanges and transactions to transfer to countries and regions with weak supervision; and decentralization means that there is no clear issuer, so it is difficult to determine the regulated party in the formulation of regulatory system. From the current information, Libra still faces the above problems.
KYC is a basic anti-money laundering measure. It mainly deals with investor eligibility and identity verification. Its purpose is to help regulators determine where the money ultimately flows. Strictly speaking, the block chain system is not an anonymous system, but an alias system. The user's address is equivalent to Wechat or QQ nickname. Although the nickname can't tell who is behind it, it does not mean that the regulator can't do anything about it. First of all, the big data formed by frequent trading habits can help regulators to find and identify regulatory risks. Secondly, under certain circumstances, anonymous front-end and background real names are also acceptable regulatory options. The key is how to balance the relationship between personal privacy and public interests. Finally, Facebook has a huge database of 2 billion people. This huge database of user social data naturally provides great convenience for KYC. If we can get through the Calibra, the energy will naturally exceed our imagination.
ChainDD: Digital currencies may pose risks such as asset outflows, including previous rumors that India is considering incarceration measures for encryption-related actions. How do you view the conflict between Facebook's global implementation and national policies?
Pang Lipeng: As mentioned before, currency issuance involves sovereign interests. It is a huge interest for a sovereign country to issue currency without any real gold and silver reserves. It is impossible for a sovereign country to give up this right. Therefore, as long as there is a conflict of interest, there will be regulatory contradictions.
ChainDD: From Morgan Coin to Facebook's Libra, mainstream American institutions are fast entering the digital money industry. At the same time, the regulation of SEC in the United States is becoming more and more compliant, including the recent formal prosecution of Kik ICO for breach of securities law. What is the trend of the regulation of digital currency in the United States? Will it conflict with Facebook's development?
Pang Lipeng: As far as we know, the attitude of SEC to the supervision of virtual currency has been clear. In general, virtual currency is regarded as securities. After the issuer fulfills the strict obligation of information disclosure, the government gives the investors the right of choice, and the investors choose and take their own risks. From this point of view, the U.S. securities regulatory policy does not limit Facebook's development. In fact, the basic principles of SEC's regulation of digital assets should never be changed - "We hope to protect investors and the healthy development of the market, but also promote innovation in the field of digital assets. "
We know that, in the final analysis, the focus of regulation is to protect market investors. Normally, regulation follows the following logic: the intensity of regulation is proportional to the possibility of investors'interests being damaged, and inversely proportional to the professional level and risk tolerance of investors themselves.
The SEC's close attention to digital assets is true, but it can also see its friendly attitude. As a new thing, although SEC is constantly trying to regulate the development of digital assets with the existing regulatory framework, they also realize that for such a new thing, they should have an inclusive and open mind. So they also set up FinHub to understand this new thing in a more open manner and give it proper protection. We also have reason to believe that the SEC's current constraints on digital assets will make it fly higher.
ChainDD: The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) will issue encrypted currency guidance on June 21 to clarify how participating countries should monitor virtual assets, and what impact will that have on companies like Facebook?
Pang Lipeng: Generally speaking, having rules is more conducive to the healthy development of the industry than having no rules.
On the one hand, since the birth of Bitcoin in 2009, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank and other international or regional organizations have been paying attention to the regulation of virtual currency, and have made qualitative analysis of virtual currency from different angles. For example, in 2015, the European Central Bank defined Bitcoin as "a digital value carrier that is not issued by the Central Bank, credit institutions or electronic monetary institutions. In some cases, it can be used as a payment tool and a regional centralized virtual currency." The World Bank defined Bitcoin as a digital value carrier based on its own unit of measurement, which is different from electronics. Currency is a digital payment method based on legal tender. At the same time, the World Bank believes that Bitcoin is an electronic virtual currency which uses encryption algorithm to achieve consensus. According to the above definition, it is not difficult to find that the legal attributes of Bitcoin are recognized by the authorities. One is that Bitcoin is a carrier of value; the other is that Bitcoin can be used as a means of payment in some cases.
On the other hand, because the block chain is borderless, but the regulation has borders. Because there is no authoritative organization with universal influence and powerful functions and powers in the world and the interests of sovereign countries conflict, the traditional way of making treaties or establishing international customs is likely to be ineffective in formulating regulatory schemes for virtual currencies. In this case, through FATF or OECD and other international organizations to develop regulatory standards on virtual currency, and then by the sovereign countries to transform the standard into domestic law is a more efficient way, anti-money laundering, anti-tax evasion and tax avoidance of the global governance system is also established in this way.
Therefore, FATF's attention to digital money may indicate that the era of global regulation of digital money is approaching. In the long run, this is good news for all practitioners, including Facebook, because regulation represents recognition. On the other hand, in the era of global regulation, practitioners of block chains may face the challenge of compliance. With the red line of regulation established, compliance will become competitive and viable.


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As we celebrate the 244th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, let us look back at how Westerly celebrated the American Centennial on July 4, 1876.
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Leading up to the big day, it was apparent to all that there should be a momentous celebration. In the weeks prior to July 4, the Westerly Town Council voted and approved several measures, including granting permission to Everett Barnes and others to "ring handbells on the streets of this village on the morning of July 4, 1876 from 4-5 p.m or longer."[1]
Additionally, the council granted permission to all persons who wished to light fireworks on the property of the heirs of Rowse Babcock, east of Grove Avenue (today in Wilcox Park), and the land of Edward F. Vose on High Street.[2] In the event that the festivities got out of hand, the Town Council also appointed a special police unit to "preserve order at the Westerly Driving Park." This police unit was to serve without pay.[3]
The Centennial celebration began early in Westerly, as one review noted: "At 4 o'clock in the morning, all the bells of the village commenced ringing, which was kept up for half an hour. Then a company of boys drove through the principal streets of the village, ringing bells and blowing horns."[4] Later, at 8 o'clock, a parade of "Antiques and Horribles," a form of parade which developed in New England in the 1850's and was meant to satirize politicians and public figures, began.[5]
The Westerly parade, however, was more comical and self-deprecating. The procession was led by a man imitating President Ulysses S. Grant. This was followed by a replica of the famous Antietam statue with a moveable head and lower jaw which was drawn by eight oxen, as well as a display called "Going to the Centennial" which depicted a husband and wife from the country in a shabby carriage.
The Parade began at Armory Hall (on the land where McQuade's Marketplace now stands), proceeded through Westerly and Pawcatuck, and concluded at Dixon House Square on Broad Street.[6]
At the parade's conclusion, the Declaration of Independence was read and followed by an oration delivered by Gideon X. Squills LL.D.[7] The entertainment for the afternoon was then held at the Westerly Driving Park. At noon, a baseball game was played between "a picked nine" and "Our Boys" the latter of which won the contest 12-7.[8]
Following the game, there were horse races which were "characterized by accidents" including two disabled carriages and one runaway horse. The horse owned by W.H. Chapman apparently became frightened at one point and ran into the crowd. Thankfully, there were not any injuries from the incident.[9] The races were attended by upwards of eight hundred people.
Although a sack race was planned for the afternoon, this was changed to a foot race, with a five dollar prize. Closing out the afternoon's revelries was a tightrope walk by a professor Dernier, who walked over Deep Hollow.[10] The Westerly Brass Band furnished the music throughout the events. As the day turned into night, fireworks, furnished by the Antiques and Horribles Committee and launched from Grove Avenue, concluded the day-long observance.[11]
One intentional absence from the fourth of July celebration in Westerly was alcohol. An article which appeared in the Wood River Advertiser several weeks after the fourth: "there was an almost total absence of any appearance of intoxication during the day, the beer shops were voluntarily closed by their keepers. Only one arrest was made during the day for disorderly conduct."[12]
There was also a significant, albeit quieter, celebration of the Centennial held in White Rock. The day began with an invocation by Reverend J.G. Noble and was followed by a reading of Declaration of Independence by Reverend John Evans. This then led up to an oration by Reverend C.T. Douglas and a prayer read by J.W. Willetts.[13] After these readings, there was a dinner, a sack race, gymnastics, and a tub race on Pawcatuck Lake, as well as music by the White Rock Band throughout the day.[14]
While the Centennial celebrations in Westerly were certainly exciting for their time, and properly commemorated an important date in our nation's history, the fourth of July celebrations just twenty-four years later in 1900 showcase just how much progress was made in the late Nineteenth Century. On July 4, 1900 the steamer Martha was run between Westerly and Watch Hill five times throughout the day, and it was said that the electric cars in Watch Hill were constantly full and were run double their usual schedule.[15]
Local merchants were also flooded with customers all day. According to one account "Tribly, the popcorn man, was in his element. All day long his melodious voice told of the food." The soda fountains in town were also said to have done big business as a result of the intense heat.[16] The heat also led to large crowds at the bathing beaches. Other events of the day included a picnic held by St. Michael's Church, a celebration for the opening of a new house at the Misquamicut Golf Club, and two baseball games played by the White Rock team at Riverside Park against teams from Wakefield and Jewett City.[17]
While the way in which the Fourth of July is celebrated may have changed since 1876, the sentiments remain the same. On this day, let us celebrate the history of our great nation and of our town which we hold so dear.


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"I'm just a bloody normal bloke. A normal bloke who likes a bit of torture".
Chopper is a visceral retelling of a nation's famous criminal, told from the perspective of the criminal himself and therefore comparisons to Bronson are not only natural, but obvious. Too obvious in fact to spend any more time on; suffice to say it isn't as good as Refn's 2008 masterpiece, but an impressive debut from Dominik nonetheless.
Though his narrative is adapted from the prisoner's best-selling autobiographies, Dominik doesn't present the life of Mark "Chopper" Read, but the exaggerated, darkly comical person the author presents to the world within his novels. The film's hyper violent sequences and the lead character's seemingly superhuman strength highlight the emphasised persona Read created, as he himself repeats throughout the film, to build his reputation within the prison and across Australia.
Above everything else the true highlight of this film is the frighteningly disturbing performance from a bulky Eric Bana. The volatile, explosive and intimidating character he presents in his career-defining performance is the result of fastidious attention to detail; it is well documented that he read the autobiographies and spent time with the real Mark Read to learn more about his role.
On the surface, Chopper could easily be misread as glorification of the central character and his violence, however due to the fantastic characterisation, impressive direction and the ferocious spontaneity of the violence the audience are constantly reminded that this is an utterly despicable character.


text:
As part of my ISTE certification course, I am studying instructional technology use and it's resultant shifts in education. Part of the coursework involves evaluation of technology tools and justification of my findings. As you know, I have been a fan of the Microsoft Sway tool ever since I first discovered it. So I thought I could take the time now to explain why I think Sway is like a digital "Swiss army knife" in my instructional toolkit.
How Can I Help?
Sometimes something that I read or see just resonates for me. I am sure that happens to you as well. I was reading a post – The Seven Most Powerful Words in Education – and a few thoughts converged. Usually I just mention the ideas to a few folks in my immediate circle, but a good friend has encouraged me to start writing, so I'm going to try blogging again.
E2 Day 1
Today was a very exciting and motivating day. But then the first day of the Microsoft Global Education Exchange (E2) should be. I have two things to reflect on: this morning's keynote session and networking opportunities.


text:
I've done this once before when I needed extra cash; sold my dead mother's jewelry. I harbor no sentimental attachment to any of it or to any that was given to me when I was a child. Horses are what I value— endearing chestnuts, somber browns, and a couple of scrappy gray ponies. They own my soul.
My hand slightly shakes as I pull open the white washed steel bar door to the Gold and Silver Exchange on highway 550. A nervous tingle seizes me as I notice the numerous security cameras that are strategically placed in the four corners of the ceiling of the small brightly lit room.
The buzz of my morning coffee kicks in jolting me to stand quietly with my arms crossed in front of me. A Hispanic woman with a baby on her hip is before me, selling a gold watch, and some silver earrings. My cell phone rings. I quickly turn it off.
I'm an addict of sorts, as I slide my plastic bag of goods though the bullet proof window pane, and watch as Mike, the owner makes small neat piles of my inherited gold—lining up the chains in one pile, the rings and charms in another.
"You gotta a lot of 14 carats here," Mike says showing off his straight white teeth, "You might wipe me out today." I notice no gold fillings in his mouth.
He grins again and steps back to take one of my rings and test it with some acid to see if it's real gold and not plated. He then takes out his eye glass to examine it more closely. It is a gold ring with a small diamond in the center. It's smacked up a bit from getting my hand slammed into a door jamb when I was twelve. The ring saved my right index finger from being broken. Mike places it in the 12 carat pile. He then picks up one of my heart shaped lockets.
"I think I am past the stage of wearing hearts around my neck." I say trying to sound removed, as if it is no big deal that I am selling off my gold. As if I hadn't contemplated this day for over a year, passing the small unpronounced store front everyday on my way to work and calculating how much my dead mother's gold earrings will fetch me in terms of buying a load of hay.
Gold and silver criss-cross in front of me. Mike grins again and places the heart shape locket onto the 14 carat pile. The locket is worth more than a dollar, yet it is only a piece of tarnished memory to me. Horseflesh goes for $30 a pound, I have no clue how much gold is going for these days.
This morning when I gathered up my loot and stuffed it in a zip lock baggy, I told myself that I'd be happy with getting enough money to put gas in my truck, but now by the looks of things, I might make out with a couple hundred dollars. I nervously glance around again. The security cameras loom over head and I have a sudden urge to jump up and dance around the room. It is a crazy overwhelming feeling. I shake my head to dislodge the irrational thought and stand quietly, waiting.
I'm now the only customer in the place. I smile again to Mike, and to relieve my self consciousness, I tell him that I ride horses for a living. He cocks his head under the magnifying light, as he examines another one of my charms, and tells me how he has two cats. Loves them like his own children. But still I stammer a confession, of sorts, about how people are dumping their unwanted horses in the mountains. How I am getting several desperate calls a day from individuals, who need to find homes for their horses. I don't tell him about my anger. I keep it well hidden, masked by a store-front smile that shows off my perfectly symmetrical white teeth from years of wearing metal in my mouth.
I watch Mike continue to sort though my trinkets—trinkets that will put gas in my truck, and pay my bill at the local feed store. And to think when I was twelve, I never thought I'd be in such a predicament.


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Every time Sunny Leone is interviewed by anybody at all for anything at all she is asked about her past. The line of questioning that's loaded with an overbearing moral undertone ranges from feverishly curious to offensively personal. In a recent interview Sunny Leone was asked by interviewer Bhupendra Chaubey what her biggest regret was. She answered that she couldn't be beside her mother when she passed away. Chaubey dismissed her response only to pose the question repeatedly in different ways. If I were to turn the clock back, would you still do what you did? Will I become morally corrupted because I am interviewing you? Despite her being entirely unapologetic, it seems that interviewers often seek to elicit responses of shame, guilt, repentance and admittance to "dishonourable" professional choices.
An honourable man protects, provides, defends the honour of his women, but a woman's honour is entirely based on her sexual reputation...
Culturally, only a conjugal couple, a heterosexual one at that, are the true custodians of sex. All other kinds of sexual desires are entirely deviant. Within this normative, unilateral narrative that exists today, only a morally upright person can be an honourable person. Merriam Webster defines the word moral as "concerning or relating to what is right and wrong in human behaviour," yet somewhere along the way the concept has become irretrievably entwined with sexual conduct, but not in a gender-just manner.
While honour is the conjoined twin of morality, the notions of honour for men and women are defined differently. Over the years feminist scholarship has argued that for the man honour is often constructed as a catalogue of many, usually heroic, deeds. An honourable man protects, provides, defends the honour of his women, but a woman's honour is entirely based on her sexual reputation and an imposed sexual conduct that restricts her mobility and polices her every move. A man must defend his honour, a woman must preserve hers. It is quite simply that. Mediatised representations portray honourable men as people who keep their word, command respect, deliver promises against all odds. According to our movies petty thieves and seasoned criminals can still be honourable people owing to their gallant efforts for some larger cause, a greater good, but a dancing girl wearing a sequinned bodice is almost always dishonourable.
Social anthropologist Julian Pitt-Rivers defines honour, apart from other things as, "one's estimation of one's own worth, one's claim to pride and one's right to pride." It is this "right to pride" that always comes under attack whenever Sunny Leone is interviewed According to the grand narrative, adult stars cannot be honourable people because they must not feel proud, they have no right to feel pride.
According to the grand narrative, adult stars cannot be honourable people because they must not feel proud, they have no right to feel pride.
The honour of a man remains untarnished despite his sexual reputation. From Salman Khan to John Mayer to Jack Nicholson, all of them have waxed eloquent about their sexual exploits in mainstream media. Jack Nicholson, for example, has claimed to have slept with more than 2000 women, boasting, "Their mothers... some of them with their mothers." Can a woman today, anywhere in the world, get away with the advertisement of her sexual life in such high-decibel terms? A man's sexual exploits are not detrimental in the construction of his masculine honour. For a woman, on the other hand, honour is singularly, specifically and entirely about chastity and sexual reputation. On account of its historical construction, the social code of female honour is overwhelmingly seen in sexual terms.
When Sunny Leone entered the Bigg Boss house in 2011 her identity as an adult star, a successful one at that, was concealed. While it may be incorrect to make a sweeping generalisation, one can say with some certainty that both male and female porn stars often resort to concealing their identities at some point of time or the other. However, the consequences faced by women when their identity is revealed maybe much greater than when a man's identity is revealed. Since sex in most societies is a taboo topic, identity concealment is seen as necessary to live an "ordinary" life devoid of excess scrutiny. Everybody is presumed to be honourable until seemingly dishonourable choices or conduct are revealed.
Pornography vs. prostitution
"Porn star doesn't automatically mean prostitute," Sunny famously said in an interview to the Times of India soon after her stint on reality TV show Bigg Boss ended.
For conservatives around the world both occupations are viewed through a moral lens and therefore no great distinction is made between the two. Both professions are seen as diabolical and a source of moral corruption of society.
[W]hat needs scrutiny is this: what does it actually and possibly mean for a porn star to assert that she is not a prostitute?
Conservative government and policymakers around the world view pornography as a threat to family and tradition and approve of the argument that pornography is a cause of sexual violence. Some even consider prostitution to be the lesser of the two evils given that there is no record of the activity and that it happens in a very private sphere that people might remain oblivious to. With the rise of technology, pornography has the dubious distinction of being "a Google search away."
In the 70s and 80s, when the sex wars intensified in the United States, there were attempts made by many sections of the conservative population with support from the Republicans to ban pornography and shut down the industry by persecuting those involved in the production of adult films and charging them under anti-prostitution laws.
The issue came to the forefront when criminal prosecution was initiated against Harold Freeman, a producer of adult films in California on the basis that he was procuring people "for the purpose of prostitution;" he was also charged with pimping.
Freeman was initially convicted and even lost on appeal. However, the Supreme Court of California, the last court of resort for courts within California, overturned the conviction by making a distinction that he did not hire the actors to gratify him. The verdict is considered a landmark verdict because it distinguished between someone who accepts money to perform sexual services (prostitution) and someone who is "merely portraying a sexual relationship on-screen as part of their acting performance." The court further noted that although male and female actors were hired to perform sexually explicit content the criminal charges were brought about solely based on the conduct of female actors and therefore were biased in nature. This judgement probably also grounds the discussions around why pornography is legal in a lot more countries than prostitution, which is routinely criminalised.
[I]t is perhaps her steady marriage that brings about [Leone's] overall acceptance... patriarchal Indian society often looks to male members of the family for permission and approval of feminine behaviour.
Legality apart, however, what needs scrutiny is this: what does it actually and possibly mean for a porn star to assert that she is not a prostitute? What does it mean for India's most searched celebrity (in 2016), ahead of even Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who stokes Indian imagination like none other in recent times, to make this distinction in public? Is there a sense of conceit?
This clear demarcation between private sexual behaviour and professional sexual activity is peculiar to pornographic stars because of the divide provided by the on-camera-off-camera nature of their work. This divide enables pornographic stars to access institutions like marriage that is perhaps not as easily available to prostitutes.
Sunny Leone's marriage to Daniel Weber has been a topic of much deliberation and has generated a lot of curiosity. It may well be worth wondering if it is perhaps her steady marriage that brings about her overall acceptance despite the many backlashes she faces for her past and the many brickbats she faces for her choice of films in Bollywood films. This is backed by the argument that patriarchal Indian society often looks to male members of the family for permission and approval of feminine behaviour. This approval then becomes a sort of finality and a "should be enough for everybody" because it privileges male authorisation of female conduct and performance in public. The terms of conversation is based on the following lines: As long as her husband has allowed her to do what she wants, what is anybody else's problem? Sunny and her husband attend all events together and the media often reports about the success story of their togetherness. Coupled with the fact that since her entry into Bollywood there has been no whiff of a romantic linkup with any of her co-stars, she cruises along from one film to another, albeit typecast in sexually explicit roles.
Can there be another, broader definition of feminine honour that looks beyond a woman's sexuality?
As a feminist project, if one were to divorce feminine honour from sexual reputation, destroy the moral lens and look at a former pornographic performer like Sunny Leone through her own eyes, where she sees herself as simply an adult entertainment professional, then why can't adult stars be honourable people? Only a feminist project might be able to bring about this divorce and in most other contests, the marriage between feminine honour and sexual reputation will continue
Can there be another, broader definition of feminine honour that looks beyond a woman's sexuality? The answer to that might bring us to another roadblock: essentialist, traditional gender roles that construct, through a patriarchal lens, the values of a "good" woman who by extension becomes honourable only if she serves her husband and family with devotion, because it is her moral duty. However, if one were to add sexual agency to this, the "good" woman might be constructed as a devious and unchaste Adarsh Liberal despite dutiful behaviour in the household.


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Congratulations to the varsity dance team who won the Division 4 State Champion title during the Missouri Dance Team Association (MDTA) State Championships held at the Family Arena on February 24! They achieved this recognition after earning First Place in both the Division 4 Pom and Mix performances.
Ursuline competed against 16 teams in Division 4 with each team selecting two classifications to perform. UA's poms routine earned 281.5 points out 300 possible—5.5 points ahead of the second-place team. Poms is a style with strong visible use of pom pons throughout at least 80% of the routine and a strong emphasis on precision and transitions.
Their mix routine earned 277.5 points out 300 possible—3 points ahead of the second-place team. A mix routine incorporates a minimum of three styles of dance, two of which must be kick and pom. The third element may include one or more selected from precision jazz, lyrical jazz or hip hop. Poms must be used during the pom portion and a minimum of 12 team kicks (waist-high and above) must be executed. Ursuline elected to precision jazz as their third component and also included a return to poms at the close of the routine.
The scores from the individual classifications are combined to determine the overall score. Ursuline's point total was 7 points more than the two teams who tied for second place.
Varsity dance team members are Kaylee Bauman '20, Frannie Benoist '21, Sarah Gravette '18, Katie Horack '19, Katherine Kuchem '18, Sophie Laposha '19, Ashley Liberto '19, Anna Powell '19, Brooke Schwartz '18, Ashley Stephan '18, Allison Walsh '19, Brooke Westcott '20, Cara Westcott '18 and Jessica Woodward '18.
The MDTA Solo Competition was held the evening of February 23 with Cara Westcott '18 and Katherine Kuchem '18 performing. Cara earned 6th Place Senior Solo with Katherine earning 15th Place Senior Solo.
Several dancers also earned Academic All State recognition for maintaining a grade point average of 3.5 or greater. These students are Katie Horack '19, Sophie Laposha '19, Ashley Liberto '19, Anna Powell '19, Brooke Schwartz '18, Ashley Stephan '18, Allison Walsh '19, Brooke Westcott '20 and Cara Westcott '18.


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Originally released in April 2017 and recently updated with a few improvements and 2 new levels, Mutant Penguin is a free release from Amcog Games. It was developed using the AMCOG Games Development Kit which we took a look at recently.
The game itself
Mutant Penguin is a retro maze game with 14 levels inhabited by multicolored slug-like pods – your main objective is to evade each level through squashing the pods with ice blocks. The game comes with 3 original music tracks that add a good level of atmosphere to the game.
The game itself is reasonably simple, there's not much game logic other than the lives counter and high score system. Not that it's a bad thing for a game like this – anything more than what's already in place isn't really required.
Performance & Compatibility
The game's gameplay is smooth and stable, it plays as you'd expect for a retro puzzler like this. Longevity-wise, the game's novelty doesn't run out as quickly as you might expect, the puzzle element of the game makes it quite addictive, especially in the later levels.
As the game is written in BBC BASIC, it should play fine on a vast majority of RISC OS machines, be it legacy 26-bit computers or 32-bit machines. The game runs well on a Raspberry Pi 2 running RISC OS 5.24 and I'd imagine it should be fine with pretty much any other modern RISC OS compatible board you throw at it – Titanium, Beagleboard etc.
As you might expect from an Amcog Games title by now, Mutant Penguin is a solid and well-authored game. It successfully delivers that retro feel Anthony at Amcog has worked to achieve.
Mutant Penguin is free to download from the Pling Store. A copy with full source code is also bundled with the AMCOG Games Development Kit.
RISC OS Games Month 2018
August is Games Month on the RISC OS Blog, where we focus exclusively on gaming, be it reviewing new games or taking a trip down memory lane with a look at a classic title. Stay tuned for more games articles throughout August!


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Metro in the snow
Sunday, February 3, 2019
Transit service in Seattle and King County could be affected by snow, ice or wind Monday morning and during the next few days.
Forecasts and predictions about the possibility of snow are constantly being updated. It is not possible to predict the exact timing or locations, if any, of potential transit service impacts due to the weather.
While Metro utilizes all available resources to operate service as normally as possible during unexpected or adverse weather or other conditions, the safety of everyone is the highest priority.
Buses may be delayed or rerouted, and Metro staff cannot predict affected areas or tell riders exactly when a specific bus might get to a stop.
Snow or ice operation
If Metro service is significantly affected by snow or other weather-related events, the Metro website will be updated and Transit Alerts will be sent to affected subscribers.


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Romances Reviews Today message boards are for the use of our readers to discuss books, reviews or the weather.
Join the Risky Regencies at www.riskyregencies.blogspot.com on Sunday, November 9th, as we talk to Julias Justiss, Annie Burrows and Terri Brisbin about their stories in ONE CANDLELIT CHRISTMAS.
Leave a comment for the chance to win a free copy!
CHRISTMAS WEDDING WISH by Julia Justiss
Disenchanted with empty-headed society debutantes, dashing gentleman Allen Mansfell decides that, if he must marry, he will choose a lady whose mind and heart he'll have to win over—a lady like Miss Meredyth Wellingford. But for Merry, finding true love will take a miracle….
THE RAKE'S SECRET SON by Annie Burrows
Before Carleton Tillotson left Nell, the rebellious rake broke her heart. Now he is back, just in time for Christmas, and Nell can't hide her secret any longer—Carleton's the father of her son!
BLAME IT ON THE MISTLETOE by Terri Brisbin
Julia Fairchild has loved Iain MacLerie forever—but the boy she once knew is now a hardened and aloof man. Amid the festivities and warm cheer of yuletide, can Julia melt Iain's guard and ignite the spark that continues to burn between them…?


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In recognition of advocacy for social justice, youth services, and environmental protection.
In recognition of advocacy for social justice, youth services, and environmental protection.
Congressman McGovern is a civic leader who serves with honor and conviction and like a Scout, works to help other people at all times.
Since his election in 1996, Congressman Jim McGovern has been widely recognized as a tenacious advocate for his district, a tireless crusader for change, and an unrivaled supporter for social justice and fundamental human rights. Currently serving his ninth term in Congress, Jim serves as the second ranking Democrat on the powerful House Rules Committee, which sets the terms for debate and amendments on most legislation; and a member of the House Agriculture Committee. In those roles, he has secured millions of dollars in federal grants and assistance for Massachusetts. Jim is also co-chair of both the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission and the House Hunger Caucus. He also serves as Co-Chair of the Northeast Midwest Congressional Coalition.
Over the past 16 years, Jim has consistently delivered millions of dollars for jobs, vital local and regional projects, small businesses, public safety, regional and mass transportation projects, and affordable housing around Massachusetts.
He has authored important legislation to increase Pell Grant funding to allow more students access to higher education; to provide funds to preserve open space in urban and suburban communities; and to give tax credits to employers who pay the salaries of their employees who are called up to active duty in the Guard and Reserves.
Jim has also taken a leadership role in the fight against hunger at home and abroad, successfully expanding the McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program, which helps alleviate child hunger and poverty by providing nutritious meals to children in schools in the world's poorest countries.
Jim McGovern was born on November 20, 1959, in Worcester, the son of two successful small business owners. He earned his Bachelor of Arts and Masters of Public Administration degrees from The American University, working his way through college by serving as an aide in the office of U.S. Senator George McGovern (D-SD).
Jim is married to Lisa Murray McGovern. The McGoverns have a son, Patrick and a daughter, Molly.


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Business of Curling
The Business of Curling Symposium is a World Curling Federation program sponsored in conjunction with USA Curling and the host club. Facilitators guide participants in an interactive series of discussions on topics such as attracting, growing, and retaining membership; marketing and sponsorships; and building a dedicated curling facility.
A Business of Curling Symposium will be held June 29-30 in Oakland, Calif. To learn more, click here.


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Broken Arrow
Azaria M.J. Durant
(Darkened Destiny Saga #1)
Publication date: July 29th 2018
Genres: Fantasy, Young Adult
An ancient power long kept dormant stirs in the shadows once more as one boy embarks on a quest to earn his freedom and the freedom of his world!
Magic has turned to myth, the Vaelhyreans of old to legend, and the power wielded by the ancients has long been forgotten. However, with Ealdred, a mere half-breed slave boy, myth becomes real, the forgotten remembered, and the power of legend is reborn within him.
Ealdred is merged into a world of mystery, brimming with deceit, where the remaining Vaelhyreans are in a desperate fight for their very survival. When Ealdred is kidnapped by the power-mongering dark lord Zeldek himself, he must make a choice; to commit his newfound magic to Zeldek's service or die. But when he meets Bellator, clever yet treacherous servant of Zeldek, an alternative is presented to him: to escape from Zeldek's stronghold and embark on a quest to find a cursed arrow and free the Vaelhyreans from the spell that keeps their powers at bay.
Yet how can he survive in a world where magic is illegal, half-breeds are hated, and the four countries are on the brink of war?
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EXCERPT:"That time is already upon us," the Master stated, rising to his feet. "Many nights now, my gaze has been turned to the stars. The constellations Heroi and Retsu are aligning for the first time in two and a half millennia. Prophecies connote these coming years as the last of mankind. This is the opportunity I have been waiting for. I must not fail!"
His eyes glowed with the passion his words expressed, and murmurs of agreement echoed through the room.
"Our toils have been rewarding and our preparation has been long," the Master went on. "Yet we must not deceive ourselves into thinking that our position is secure."
The murmurs fell to silence. The Master had never spoken so freely of such things before. The most this council had ever discussed were the brief updates concerning the progress of each respective country and its assets. There was the occasional new order from The Master, but such a thing was rare, and was always followed by a long, tedious discussion concerning the politics of the task, and thus was never interesting.
"It has been predicted that there is one who has the potential to stand in my way; one who may have the power to end my supreme rule before it has begun."
"My lord, who could possess the power to rival you?" Valamette asked, bewildered.
The Master lifted his gaze to glare at Valamette from beneath the shadow of his hood. "You of all people should know."
Understanding dawned on Valamette. He nodded slowly. Bellator glimpsed the other figures, looking to find a shred of understanding among them. But they too turned to look at Valamette, hoping to glean what they could from his bearing.
"The boy, my lord?" he asked.
"Yes," the Master replied. "The boy."
Bellator was intrigued. When had a boy ever entered their conversation?
"But my lord, how could he be a problem? Didn't we do away with him as an infant? How is it possible that he still draws breath?"
"Does it matter how?" the Master snapped. "What matters is that he lives and that he will pose a threat if we aren't careful to hone his abilities to our favour."
"I can do it." Valamette took a breath. "I can kill him, if you wish it. I will not fail you."
"No!" The Master's fist slammed on the altar. "If I wanted him dead, I would have let him die! I wouldn't have kept him safe all this time."
Author Bio:
Azaria M. J. Durant is a young, passionate writer of fantasy with plans to branch out into sci-fi and dystopian. She enjoys writing stories with action, adventure, unexpected plot twists, and fleshed out characters that challenge gender roles and expectations.
Azaria lives in Atlantic Canada with her family, cats, and dogs, and her big dreams to travel the world. In the moments when she isn't writing, she is sketching concept art for her stories, participating in community theatre, or curled up with a good book and a bag of mint chocolates.
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