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(This article also appears at CiFWatch)
Meet Abu Jindal and Abu Nizar. Up until fairly recent times they might have been fixing cars for Israelis. Nizar's father even "had good things to say about the Israelis he knew".
But those days are long gone and now Nizar, the son, has little problem with the rockets he fires into Israel causing civilian casualties "such as the three who died…from rockets fired from Gaza in recent round of fighting." For Nizar "there is no such thing as a civilian on the other side."
So what makes it so easy for Nizar and Jindal to murder innocent Israeli men, women and children?
Judging from Chris McGreal's piece, Gaza's cycle of aggression shapes new generations more militant than the last published in last Friday's Guardian, it's all Israel's fault with Nizar and Jindal having little, if any, responsibility for their terrorist activities.
McGreal describes their, apparently, violent childhoods that led to Nizar and Jindal firing rockets from Gaza and, possibly, murdering the three above-mentioned "civilians" Ahron Smadga, Yitzchak Amselam and 25 year-old Mira Scharf in Kiryat Malachi. Scharf was pregnant.
Sickeningly, McGreal allows Nizar and Jindal the space in his piece to excuse themselves as mere victims, the implication being that the real criminals were Smadga, Amselam, Scharf and Scharf's unborn child who weren't "civilians".
Incidentally, Scharf had recently returned to Israel to give birth and to attend the memorial service of her friends the Holtzbergs who were murdered in the 2008 Mumbai massacre. They all died on the same day of the Hebrew calendar four years apart.
Jindal and Nizar belong to the designated terrorist group Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades and McGreal's piece attempts to evoke much sympathy for them. Jindal says:
"The Israelis have always killed children in Gaza. They came here to kill children during this [latest] war. Our children see it."
Nizar claims his schoolfriends "were killed by an Apache helicopter".
Even McGreal, not content with describing Israeli "machine gun fire that shredded (Palestinian) homes", describes how Palestinian children:
"worshipped 'martyrs', whether they were suicide bombers who killed Israelis on buses in Jerusalem, armed men fighting Israeli soldiers, or the children shot at their school desks in Gaza by Israeli gunfire." (my emphasis)
Neither Nizar's school friends shot from the sky, nor McGreal's school children shot at their school desks are named. Conveniently, no evidence is offered. The unsubstantiated accusations are just thrown in.
In case the reader doesn't quite understand that these are attempted justifications for Jindal and Nizar slaughtering innocent Israelis McGreal decides to import two old Guardian pieces of his. These pieces give the views of two child psychologists in an attempt to help solidify the images of Jindal and Nizar as helpless victims.
In the piece from 2004 Usama Freona claimed "The levels of violence children are exposed to is horrific…Most of them were crying and shaking when they were speaking about their experiences". In the 2009 piece Dr Abdel Aziz Mousa Thabet claimed that due to the traumatising effect of violence on children "they become fighters".
That these two vile terrorists might be committed to the destruction of Israel and murder of its Jewish inhabitants on purely ideological grounds isn't considered.
Incredibly, McGreal's piece on Dr Thabet still describes 12 year-old Mohammed al-Dura as being shot dead by Israeli gunfire despite it having since been proved that al-Dura was more likely to have died from Palestinian gunfire. McGreal is obviously keen in prolonging this blood libel.
McGreal admits that Palestinian children are sometimes taught in their schools and mosques to despise Jews but he sees that, mainly, as an excuse used by Israelis to absolve themselves of blame for why each generation of Palestinians seems more militant and violent.
Abu Nizar concludes "The end of Israel is getting closer".
Next week The Guardian will be running a full-page piece on McGreal's interview with two Al Qaida "fighters". The "fighters" explain why they are at ease with their fellow Islamists slaughtering 52 British citizens in the London bus and tube bombings of 2005 and why, for them, there is no such thing as a British civilian.
Or, maybe, The Guardian won't run it. Maybe for The Guardian only the slaughter of innocent Israeli men, women and children (and unborn babies) can be explained with such apparent ease: No Israeli is a civilian and, so, murders of them can be justified.


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Tickling Our Fancy 069: Minyeshu, Dr. Chan, Brace! Brace!, Grand Blue Heron, Don Fiorino and Andy Haas…
October 9, 2018
Dominic Valvona's new music reviews roundup
Another fine assortment of eclectic album reviews from me this month, with new releases from Papernut Cambridge, Sad Man, Grand Blue Heron, Don Fiorino and Andy Haas, Junkboy, Dr. Chan, Minyeshu, Earthling Society and Brace! Brace!
In brief there's the saga of belonging epic new LP from the Ethiopian songstress Minyeshu, Daa Dee, a second volume of Mellotron-inspired library music from Papernut Cambridge, the latest Benelux skulking Gothic rock album from Grand Blue Heron, another maverick electronic album of challenging experimentation from Andrew Spackman, under his most recent incarnation as the Sad Man, a primal avant-garde jazz cry from the heart of Trump's America from Don Fiorino and Andy Haas, the rage and maelstrom transduced through their latest improvised project together, American Nocturne; and a bucolic taster, and Music Mind compilation fundraiser track, from the upcoming new LP from the beachcomber psychedelic folk duo Junkboy.
I've also lined up the final album from the Krautrock, psychedelic space rocking Earthling Society, who sign off with an imaginary soundtrack to the cult Shaw Brothers Studio schlockier The Boxer's Omen, plus two most brilliant albums from the French music scene, the first a shambling skater slacker punk meets garage petulant teenage angst treat from Dr. Chan, The Squier, and the second, the debut fuzzy colourful indie-pop album from the Parisian outfit Brace! Brace!
Minyeshu 'Daa Dee' (ARC Music) 26th October 2018
From the tentative first steps of childhood to the sagacious reflections of middle age, the sublime Ethiopian songstress Minyeshu Kifle Tedla soothingly, yearningly and diaphanously articulates the intergenerational longings and needs of belonging on her latest epic LP, Daa Dee. The sound of reassurance that Ethiopian parents coo to accompany their child's baby steps, the title of Minyeshu's album reflects her own, more uncertain, childhood. The celebrated singer was herself adopted; though far from held back or treated with prejudice, moving to the central hub of Addis Ababa at the age of seventeen, Minyeshu found fame and recognition after joining the distinguished National Theatre.
In a country that has borne the scars of both famine and war, Ethiopia has remained a fractious state. No wonder many of its people have joined a modern era diaspora. Though glimmers of hope remain, and in spite of these geopolitical problems and the fighting, the music and art scenes have continued to blossom. Minyeshu left in 1996, but not before discovering such acolytes as the doyen of the country's famous Ethio-Jazz scene, Mulatu Astatke, the choreographer Tadesse Worku and singers Mahmoud Ahmed, Tilahun Gessesse and Bizunesh Bekele; all of whom she learnt from. First moving to Belgium and then later to the Netherlands, the burgeoning star of the Ethiopian People To People music and dance production has after decades of coming to terms with her departure finally found a home: a self-realization that home wasn't a geographical location after all but wherever she felt most comfortable and belonged: "Home is me!"
The beautifully stirring 'Yetal (Where Is It?)' for example is both a winding saga, with the lifted gravitas of swelling and sharply accented strings, and acceptance of settling into that new European home.
Evoking that sense of belonging and the theme of roots, but also paying a tribute and lament to the sisterhood, Minyeshu conveys with a sauntering but sorrowful jazzy blues vibe the overladen daily trudge of collecting wood on 'Enchet Lekema'; a hardship borne by the women of many outlier Ethiopian communities. Though it can be read as a much wider metaphor. The blues, in this case, the Ethiopian version of it (perhaps one of its original sources) that you find on 'Tizita' (which translates as 'longing' or 'nostalgia'), has never sounded so lilting and divine; Minyeshu's cantabile, charismatic soul harmonies, trills and near contralto accenting the lamentable themes.
There is celebration and joy too; new found views on life and a revived tribute to her birthplace feature on the opulently French-Arabian romance 'Hailo Gaja (Let's Dance)', and musically meditating, the panoramic dreamy 'Yachi Elet (That Moment)' is a blissed and blessed encapsulation of memories and place – the album's most traversing communion, with its sweet harmonies, bird-like flighty flutes and waning saxophone.
Not only merging geography but musical styles too, the Daa Dee LP effortlessly weaves jazz (both Western and Ethiopian) R&B, pop, dub, the theatrical, and on the cantering to lolloping skippy 'Anteneh (It Is You?)', reggae. Piano, strings and brass mix with the Ethiopian wooden washint flute and masenqo bowed lute to create an exotic but familiar pan-global sound. Minyeshu produces a heartwarming, sometimes giddy swirling, testament that is exciting, diverse and above all else, dynamic. Her voice is flawless, channeling our various journeys and travails but always placing a special connection to those Ethiopian roots.
Don Fiorino and Andy Haas 'American Nocturne' (Resonantmusic) 16th September 2018
Amorphous unsettling augers and outright nightmares permeate the evocations of the American Nocturne visionaries Don Fiorino and Andy Haas on their latest album together. Alluded, as the title suggests, by the nocturne definition 'a musical composition inspired by the night', the darkest hour(s) in this case can't help but build a plaintive warning about the political divisive administration of Trump's America: Nicola Plana's sepia adumbrated depiction of Liberty on the album's cover pretty much reinforces the grimness and casting shadows of fear.
Musically strung-out, feeding off each other's worries, protestations and confusion, Fiorino and Haas construct a lamentable cry and tumult of anger from their improvised synthesis of multi-layered abstractions.
Providence wise, Haas, who actually sent me this album after seeing my review of a U.S. Girls gig from earlier in the year (he was kind enough to note my brief mention of his Plastic Ono Band meets exile-in-America period Bowie saxophone playing on the tour; Haas being a member of Meg Remy's touring band after playing on her recent LP, In A Poem Unlimited), once more stirs up a suitably pining, troubled saxophone led atmosphere; cast somewhere between Jon Hassell and Eno's Possible Musics traverses, serialism jazz and the avant-garde. The Toronto native, originally during the 70s and early 80s a band member of the successful Canadian New wave export Martha And The Muffins, is an experimental journeyman. Having moved to New York for a period in the mid 80s to collaborate with a string of diverse underground artists (John Zorn, Marc Ribot, Thurston Moore and God Is My Co-Pilot) he's made excursions back across the border; in recent times joining up with the Toronto supergroup, which features a lion's share of the city's most interesting artists and of course much of the backing group that now supports Meg Remy's U.S. Girls, the Cosmic Range (who's debut LP New Latitudes made our albums of the year feature in 2016). He's also been working with that collective's founder, Matt 'Doc' Dunn, on a new duo project named KIM (the fruits of which will be released later this year). But not only a collaborator, Haas has also recorded a stack of albums for the Resonantmusic imprint over the years (15 in total), the first of which, from 2005, included his American Nocturne foil, Fiorino. An artist with a penchant for stringed instruments (guitar, glissenter, lap steel, banjo, lotar, mandolin), Fiorino is equally as experimental; the painter musician imbued by blues, rock, psychedelic, country, jazz, Indian and Middle Eastern music has also played in and with a myriad of suitably eclectic musicians and projects (Radio I Ching, Hanuman Sextet, Adventures In Bluesland and Ronnie Wheeler's Blues).
Recorded live with no overdubs, the adroit duo is brought together in a union of discordant opprobrious and visceral suffrage. Haas' signature pained hoots, snozzled snuffles and more suffused saxophone lines drift at their most lamentable and blow hard at their most venerable and despondent over and around the spindly bended, quivery warbled and weird guitar phrases of Fiorino. Setting both esoteric and mysterious atmospheres, Haas is also in charge of the manic, often reversed or inverted, and usually erratic drum machine and bit-crushing warped electronic effects. Any hint of rhythm or a lull in proceedings, and it's snuffed out by an often primal and distressed breakdown of some kind.
Skulking through some interesting soundscapes and fusions, tracks such as the opening 'Waning Empire Blues' conjures up a Southern American States gloom (where the Mason-Dixon line meets the dark ambient interior of New York) via a submerged vision of India. It also sounds, in part, like an imaginary partnership between Hassell and Ry Cooder. 'Days Of The Jackals' has a sort of Spanish Texas merges with Byzantium illusion and 'New Orphans' transduces the Aphex Twin into a shapeless, spiraling cacophony of pain.
With hints of the industrial, tubular metallic, blues, country, electro and Far East to be found, American Nocturne is essentially a deconstructive jazz album. Further out than most, even for a genre used to such heavy abstract experimentation, this cry from the bleeding heart of Trumpism opposition is as musically traumatic as it is complex and creatively descriptive. Fiorino and Haas envision a harrowing soundtrack fit for the looming miasma of our times.
Papernut Cambridge 'Mellotron Phase: Volume 2' (Ravenwood Music/Gare du Nord) 5th October 2018
A one-man cottage industry (a impressively prolific one at that) Ian Button's Eurostar connection inspired label seems to pop up in every other roundup of mine. The unofficial houseband/supergroup and Button pet project Papernut Cambridge, the ranks of which often swell or contract to accommodate an ever-growing label roster of artists, is once again widening its nostalgic pop and psychedelic tastes.
Following on from Button's debut leap into halcyon cult and kitsch library music, Mellotron Phase: Volume 1 is another suite of similar soft melodic compositions, built around the hazy and dreamy polyphonic loops of the iconic keyboard: An instrument used to radiant, often woozy, affect on countless psych and progressive records. That first volume was a blissful, float-y visage of quasi-David Axelrod psychedelic litany, pop-sike, quaint 60s romances and a mellotron moods version of Claude Denjean cult lounge Moog covers.
This time around the basis for each instrumental vision is the rhythm accompaniments from Mattel's disc-based Ontigan home-entertainment instrument. These early examples of instrumental loops and musical breaks were set out across the instrument's keys so that chord sequences and variations can be used to construct an arrangement. Mellowed and toned-down in comparison to the first volume, though still featuring drum breaks, percussion, bass and on the Bacharach-composes-a-screwball-tribute-to-French-Western-pulp-fiction (Paris, Texas to Paris, France) 'A Cowboy In Montmartre', an accordion. If the French Wild West grabs you then there's plenty of other weird and wonderful mélanges to be found on this whimsically romantic, sometimes comically vaudeville, and often-yearning fondly nostalgic album. The swirling cascade of soft focus tremolo vibrations of the stuttered 'Cha-Cha-Charlie' sounds like Blue Gene Tyranny catching a flight on George Harrison's Magical Mystery Tour. The Sputnik space harp pastiche of 'Cygnus Probe' is equally as Gerry Anderson as it is Philippe Guerre, and 'Boss Club' reimagines Trojan Records transduced through lounge music. Kooky Bavarian Oompah Bands at an acid-tripping Technicolor circus add to the mirage-like mellotron kaleidoscope on 'Sergeant Major Mushrooms', Len Deighton's quintessentially English clandestine spy everyman, as scored by John Barry, cameos on the clavinet spindly and The Kramford Look-esque 'Parker's Last Case', and Amen Corner wear their soft soul shufflers on the Tamala backbeat 'Soul Brogues'.
A curious love letter to the forgotten (though a host of champions, from individuals to labels, have revalued and showcased their work) composers and mavericks behind some of the best and most odd library music, Mellotron Phase will in time become a cult album itself. As quirky as it is serenading, alternative recalled obscure soundtracks that vaguely recall Jean-Pierre Decerf, Jimmy Harris, Stereolab, Jean-Claude Vannier and even Roy Budd are given a fond awakening by Button and his dusted-off mellotron muse.
Sad Man 'ROM-COM' October 2018
Haphazardly prolific, Andrew Spackman, under his most recent of alter egos, the Sad Man, has released an album/collection of giddy, erratic, in a state of conceptual agitation electronica every few months since the beginning of 2017. Many of which have featured in one form or another in this column.
The latest and possibly most restive of all his (if you can call it that) albums is the spasmodic computer love transmogrification ROM-COM. An almost seamless record, each track bleeding into, or mind melding with the next, the constantly changing if less ennui jumpy compositions are smoother and mindful this time around. This doesn't mean it's any less kooky, leaping from one effect to the next, or, suddenly scrabbling off in different directions following various nodes and interplays, leaving the original source and prompts behind. But I detect a more even, and daresay, sophisticated method to the usual skittish hyperactivity.
Showing that penchant for exploration tracks such as the tribal cosmic synwave 'Play In The Sky' fluctuate between the Twilight Zone and tetchy, tentacle slithery techno; whilst the shifting bit-crush cybernetic 'Hat' sounds like a transplanted to late 80s Detroit Art Of Noise one minute, the next, like a isotope chilled thriller soundtrack. Reverberating piano rays, staggered against abrasive drumbeats await the listener on the sadly melodic 'King Of '. That is until a drilling drum break barrels in and gets jammed, turning the track into a jarring cylindrical headbanger. 'Coat' whip-cracks to a primitive homemade drum machine snare as it, lo fi style, dances along to a three-way of Harmonia, The Normal and Populare Mechanik, and the brilliantly entitled 'Wasp Meat' places Kraftwerk in Iain Banks Factory.
Almost uniquely in his own little orbit of maverick bastardize electronic experimentation, Spackman, who builds many of his own bizarre contraptions and instruments, strangulates, pushes and deconstructs techno, the Kosmische, Trip-Hop and various other branches of the genre to build back up a conceptually strange and bewildering new sonic shake-up of the electronic music landscape.
Grand Blue Heron 'Come Again' (Jezus Factory) October 19th 2018
Grand Blue Heron, or GBH as it were, do some serious grievous harm to the post-punk and alt-rock genres on their latest abrasive heavy-hitter, Come Again. Partial to the Gothic, the Benelux quartet prowl in the miasma; skulking under a repressed gauze and creeping fog of doom as they trudge across a esoteric landscape of STDs, metaphorical crimes of the heart and rejection.
Born out of the embers of the band Hitch, band mates Paul Lamont (who also served time with the experimental Belgium group and Jezus Factory label mates, A Clean Kitchen Is A Happy Kitchen) and Oliver Wyckhuyse formed GBH in 2015 as a vehicle for songs written by Lamont. Straight out of the blocks on their thrashing debut Hatch, they've hewn a signature sound that has proven difficult to pin down.
Both boldly loud with smashing drums and gritty distorted guitars, yet melodic and nuanced, they sound like The Black Angels and Bauhaus working over noir rock on the vortex that is 'Wwyds', a grunge-y Belgium version of John Lyndon backed by The Pixies on the controlled maelstrom title-track, and Metallica on the country-twanging, pendulous skull-banger 'Head'. They also sail close to The Killing Joke, Sisters Of Mercy (especially on the decadent wastrel Gothic 'The Cult'), Archers Of Loaf and, even, The Foo Fighters. They rollick in fits of rage and despondency, beating into shape all these various inspirations, yet they come out on top with their own sound in the end.
Playing live alongside some pretty decent bands of late (White Denim, Elefant, The Cult Of Dom Keller) the GBH continue to grow with confidence; producing a solid heavy rock and punk album that reinforces the justified, low-level as it might be, hype of the Belgium, and by extension, Flanders scene.
Dr. Chan 'Squier' (Stolen Body Records) October 12th 2018
Keeping up the petulant garage-punk-skate-slacker discourse of their obstinate debut, the French group with just a little more control and panache once more hang loose and play fast with their spikey influences on the second LP Squier.
Hanging out with a disgruntled shrug in a 1980s visage of L.A. central back lots, skating autumn time drained pools in a nocturnal motel setting, Dr. Chan crow about the transition from adolescence to infantile adulthood. Hardly more than teenagers themselves, the band seem obsessed with their own informative years of slackerdom; despondently ripping into the status of outsiders the lead singer sulkingly declares himself as "Just a young messy loser" on the opening boom bap garage turn space punk spiraling 'Wicked & Wasted', and a "Teenage motherfucker" on the funhouse skater-punk meets Thee Headcoats 'Empty Pockets'.
The pains but also thrills of that time are channeled through a rolling backbeat of Black Lips, Detroit Cobras, Brian Jonestown Massacre, The Hunches, Nirvana and new wave influences. The most surprising being glimmers of The Strokes, albeit a distressed version, on the thrashed but polished, even melodic, 'Girls!' And, perhaps one of the album's best tracks (certainly most tuneful), the bedeviled ride on the 666 Metro line 'The Sinner', could be an erratic early Arctic Monkeys missive meets Blink 182 outtake.
The Squier is an unpretentious strop, fueled as much by jacking-up besides over spilling dumpsters, zombified states of emptiness and despair as it is by carefree cathartic releases of bird-finger rebellious fun. Reminiscing for an adolescence that isn't even theirs, Dr. Chan's directed noise is every bit informed by the pin-ups of golden era 80s Thrasher magazine as by Nuggets, grunge and Jon Savage's Black Hole: Californian Punk compilation. The fact they're not even of the generation X fraternity that lived it, or even from L.A. for that matter, means there is an interesting disconnection that offers a rousing, new energetic take. In short: Ain't a damn thing changed; the growing pains of teenage angst still firing most of the best and most dynamic shambling music.
Brace! Brace! 'S/T' (Howlin Banana) 12th October 2018
Looking for your next favourite French indie-pop group? Well look no further, the colourful Parisian outfit Brace! Brace! are here. Producing gorgeous hues of softened psychedelia, new wave, Britpop and slacker indie rock, this young but sophisticated band effortlessly melt the woozy and dreamy with more punchier dynamic urgency on their brilliant debut album.
Squirreled away in self-imposed seclusion, recording in the Jura Mountains, the isolation and concentration has proved more than fruitful. Offering a Sebastian Teller fronts Simian like twist on a cornucopia of North American and British influences, Brace! Brace! glorious debut features pastel shades of Blur, Gene, Dinosaur Jnr., Siouxsie And The Banshees (check the "I wrecked your childhood" refrain post-punk throb and phaser effect symmetry guitar of 'Club Dorothée' for proof) and the C86 generation. More contemporary wafts of Metronomy, Mew, Jacco Gardner, the Unknown Mortal Orchestra and Deerhunter (especially) permeate the band's hazy filtered melodies and thoughtful prose too.
At the heart of it all lies the subtly crafted melodies and choruses. Never overworked, the lead-up and bridges gently meet their rendezvous with sweet élan and pace. Vocals are shared and range from the lilted to the wistful and more resigned; the themes of chaste and compromised love lushly and wantonly represented.
This is an album of two halves, the first erring towards quirky new wave, shoegaze-y hearty French pop – arguably featuring some of the band's best melodies -, the second, a more drowsy echo-y affair. Together it makes for a near-perfect debut album, an introduction to one of the most exciting new fuzzy indie-pop bands of the moment.
Junkboy 'Old Camera, New Film' – Taken from Fretsore Record's upcoming Music Minds fundraiser compilation; released on the 12th October 2018
Quiet of late, or so we thought, the unassuming South Coast brothers Hanscomb have been signing love letters, hazy sonnets and languorous troubadour requests from the allegorical driftwood strewn yesteryear for a number of years now. The Brighton & Hove located siblings have garnered a fair amount of favorable press for their beautifully etched Baroque-pastoral idyllic psychedelic folk and delicately softly spoken harmonies.
To celebrate the release of their previous album, Sovereign Sky, the Monolith Cocktail invited the duo to compile a congruous Youtube playlist. Proper Blue Sky Thinking didn't disappoint; the brothers' Laurel Canyon, Freshman harmony scions and softened psychedelic inspirations acting like signposts and reference points for their signature nostalgic sound: The Beach Boys, Thorinshield, Mark Eric, The Lettermen, The Left Bank all more an appearance.
A precursor to, we hope, Junkboy's next highly agreeable melodious LP, Trains, Trees, Topophilia (no release date has been set yet), the tenderly ruminating new instrumental (and a perfect encapsulation of their gauzy feel) 'Old Camera, New Film' offers a small preview of what's to come. It's also just one of the generous number of tracks donated to the worthy Music Minds ('supporting healthy minds') cause by a highly diverse and intergenerational cast of artists. Featuring such luminaries as Tom Robinson, Glen Tilbrook and Graham Goldman across three discs, the Fretsore Records release coincides with World Mental Health Day on the 12th October.
Sitting comfortably on the second disc with (two past Monolith Cocktail recommendations) My Autumn Empire, Field Harmonics and Yellow Six, Junkboy's mindful delicate swelling strings with a hazy brassy, more harshly twanged guitar leitmotif beachcomber meditations prove a most perfect fit.
Earthling Society 'MO – The Demon' (Riot Season) 28th September 2018
Bowing out after fifteen years the Earthling Society's swansong, MO – The Demon, transduces all the group's various influences into a madcap Kool-aid bathed imaginary soundtrack. Inspired by the deranged Shaw Brothers film studio's bad-taste-running-rampart straight-to-video martial arts horror schlock The Boxer's Omen, the band scores the most appropriate of accompaniments.
The movie's synopsis (though I'm not sure anyone ever actually wrote this story out; making it up in their head as they went along more likely) involves a revenge plot turn titanic spiritual struggle between the dark arts, as the mobster brother of a Hong Kong kickboxer, paralyzed by a cheating Thai rival, sets out on a path of vengeance only to find himself sidetracked by the enlightened allure of a Buddhist monastery and the quest to save the soul of a deceased monk (who by incarnated fate happens to be our protagonist's brother from a previous life) killed by black magic. A convoluted plot within a story of vengeance, The Boxer's Omen is a late night guilty pleasure; mixing as it does, truly terrible special effects with demon-bashing Kung Fu and Kickboxing.
Recorded at Leeds College of Music between November 2017 and February of 2018, MO – The Demon is an esoteric Jodorowsky cosmology of Muay Thai psychedelics, space rock, shoegaze, Krautrock and Far East fantasy. Accenting the mystical and introducing us to the soundtrack's leitmotif, the opening theme song shimmers and cascades to faint glimmers of Embryo and Gila; and the craning, waning guitar that permeates throughout often resembles Manuel Göttsching later lines for Ash Ra Tempel. By the time we reach the bell-tolled spiritual vortex of the 'Inauguration Of The Buddha Temple' we're in Acid Mothers territory, and the album's most venerable sky-bound ascendant 'Spring Snow' has more than a touch of the Popol Vuh about it: The first section of this two-part vision features Korean vocalist Bomi Seo (courtesy of Tirikiliatops) casting incantation spells over a heavenly ambient paean, as the miasma and ominous haze dissipates to reveal a path to nirvana, before escalating into a laser whizzing Amon Duul II talks to Yogi style jam. The grand finale, 'Jetavana Grove', even reimagines George Harrison in a meeting of minds with Spiritualized and the Stone Roses; once more setting out on the Buddhist path of enlightenment.
Sucked into warped battle scenes on the spiritual planes, Hawkwind (circa Warriors On The Edge Of Time) panorama jams and various maelstroms, the Earthling Society capture the hallucinogenic, tripping indulgences of their source material well whilst offering the action and prompts for another set of heavy psych and Krautrock imbued performances. The Boxer's Omen probably gets a much better soundtrack than it deserves, as the band sign off on a high.

subset: commoncrawl


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Tragedy of the Commons: Twitter vs Online Forums
October 5, 2009 5 Comments
Riding on board a Virgin America flight, I have CNN on my seat media screen. I'm watching CNN much more than I'm usually able to.
I notice those tweets flashing along the bottom of the screen. Some are good. Many aren't. They are examples of the tendency for online discussions to devolve into name calling, stereotypes and ad hominem attacks.
They remind of the worst sort of comments found on online message boards. The problem with inline message boards is that there is little control by the individual for what they see. It's not just political discussions. Marketers pollute LinkedIn message boards with their spammy webinar solicitations.
It's the tragedy of the commons. A common resource – message boards – is overrun by those not providing quality contributions.
With Twitter's one-way subscribe model, this particular attack on the commons is limited. Why? It's easy to unfollow those who post irrelevant or non-productive things.
Want to be a participant beyond the amen chorus and fellow polemicists, or get people to actually care about your webinar? Figure out how to engage in an intelligent discussion.
A benefit of Twitter: managing the tragedy of the commons. It should be noted, however, that enabling discussions among multiple people is quite important. Letting multiple people on a thread while preventing the spammers is the next step in protecting and improving the value of the commons.


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Now on to the question of the week...What is your most embarrassing moment??? Seriously??? Ok, that's tough, because I do my best to forget my embarrassing moments, but most recently, my boyfriend embarrassed the heck out of me in front of his 17 year old son...
I should preface this story, by letting you know that Rick is 15 years older than me. I am 32 and he is 47. Also, he works for a cardboard manufacturer with a bunch of guys, and I can imaging the testosterone level in the plant is enough to run the machines without electricity.
One night, I was in the kitchen washing up the dishes from dinner, and Rick and his son "C" were chatting in the dining room. Somehow our age difference came up, and he proceeds to tell "C" how the guys at work all give him the nod when he tells them my age. He gets the "Way to go" and "Hey old man you've still got it." As if that's not embarrassing enough, he then tells his son, "Yeah, except that I'm usually too tired to partake in the, uh, extra-curicular activities!" (wink, wink, nudge, nudge). I could have smacked him! I'm not sure who turned redder, me of "C"!
I sure hope you enjoyed my embarrassing moment. Thanks again for visiting, and I hope you'll come back soon! Don't forget to link up at The Girl Creative.


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Top Items:
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Google Jumps Head First Into Web Services With Google App Engine — Our live coverage of the Google App Engine launch event is here. — Google isn't just talking about hosting applications in the cloud any more. Tonight at 9pm PT they're launching Google App Engine (Update: The site is live) …
Discussion: Between the Lines, Google Blogoscoped, InfoWorld, RIApedia, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, Scobleizer, MediaBytes with Shelly Palmer, Googling Google, p2pnet, Jarrett House North, bytes|genes, mathewingram.com/work, Network World, Technosailor, GigaOM, Googlified, Mashable!, Gaffney3.com, Download Squad, AppScout, SmoothSpan Blog, FaceReviews, Silicon Alley Insider, eWeek, Stay N' Alive, SlipperyBrick, John Cook's Venture Blog, ProgrammableWeb, Platform Wars, Laurel Papworth and The Register
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines: If Google's App Engine ever met an app appliance...
Philipp Lenssen / Google Blogoscoped: Google App Engine Preview Release
Mikepotter / RIApedia: Google Launches Web App Hosting Service
Andy Beal / Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim: Sitting Around a Campfire Google Announces Kool-Aid App Engine
Robert Scoble / Scobleizer: Google jumps on Big Table of Web Services
Shelly Palmer / MediaBytes with Shelly Palmer: 2008 04-08 MediaBytes: Yahoo - Microsoft - Chrysler - ATAS - Imeem - Snocap - Google
Garett Rogers / Googling Google: Google announces App Engine: Should Amazon worry?
Jon / p2pnet: Google App Engine launch
Mitchell Ashley / Network World: Google One Ups Microsoft Again-Google App Engine
Aaron Brazell / Technosailor: Google File System: Much To Do About Nothing
Stacey Higginbotham / GigaOM: Google Cloud Now on Tap for Web Developers
Haochi / Googlified: Google App Engine
Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins / Mashable!: Google App Engine: An Early Look
Christina Warren / Download Squad: Google launches App Engine
Kyle Monson / AppScout: Act Fast: Google App Engine Open to First 10K Users
Rodney Rumford / FaceReviews: Fire Up Your Google App Engine
Vasanth Sridharan / Silicon Alley Insider: Google Taking On Amazon With App Engine (GOOG, AMZN)
Clint Boulton / eWeek: Google to Challenge Amazon by Hosting Web Apps
Jesse Stay / Stay N' Alive: Google Announces "Google Apps Engine"
Darrin Olson / SlipperyBrick: Google launches App Engine web application host
John Cook / John Cook's Venture Blog: Google takes aim at Amazon
John Musser / ProgrammableWeb: Google App Engine: Your Apps in the Cloud
Laurel Papworth / Social Networks: Google App Engine: Australian Python Developers?
Paul McDonald / Google App Engine Blog:
Introducing Google App Engine + our new blog — At tonight's Campfire One we launched a preview release of Google App Engine — a developer tool that enables you to run your web applications on Google's infrastructure. The goal is to make it easy to get started with a new web app …
Ionut Alex Chitu / Google Operating System: Google App Engine: Write Your Own Google Apps
Luigi Lugmayr / I4U News: Google App Engine Preview released
David A. Utter / WebProNews: Google Revs Up App Engine
Don MacAskill / SmugBlog: Seattle/Redmond dinner update
Andrew Tetlaw / SitePoint Blogs: Google Reveals App Engine
Glyn Moody / open: Wrestling with Google's Python in the Cloud
Zonk / Slashdot: Google Previews App Engine
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch: Major Google Announcement Monday Evening: Is It BigTable?
Richard MacManus / ReadWriteWeb:
Google: Cloud Control to Major Tom — Google has just launched Google App Engine, "a developer tool that enables you to run your web applications on Google's infrastructure." This will allow startups to use Google's web servers, APIs, and other developer tools to build a web app on top of.
Brady Forrest / O'Reilly Radar:
App Engine: Host Your Apps with Google — Tonight at their second CampFireOne Google Code is announcing App Engine, a hosted platform for web developers. The actual service will launch later tonight in a closed Beta. 10,000 developers will be granted access on a first come, first serve basis.
Discussion: Rough Type and Techdirt
Michael Masnick / Techdirt: Google Finally Realizes It Needs To Be The Web Platform
Stephen Shankland / CNET News.com:
Google hopes to house Web software on App Engine — Google plans to launch a service called App Engine Monday evening that the company hopes will attract programmers and eventually companies needing an expandable foundation for online applications. — App Engine, free to the first 10,000 people …
Discussion: Outside the Lines, Valleywag, TechCrunch, Smalltalk Tidbits … and WebGuild
Jackson West / Valleywag: Why should you care about App Engine?
Mark Hendrickson / TechCrunch: Live From Google Campfire One
James A. Robertson / Smalltalk Tidbits, Industry Rants: Python just got more popular
Daya Baran / WebGuild: Google Rolls Out Cloud Computing Platform
Phil Wainewright / Software as Services:
Let the PaaS wars begin — A month ago, I wrote about the plethora of PaaS options available from the cloud, setting out a five-layer model to categorize them. With last night's announcement of Google App Engine, it's all stepped up a notch. People are already talking about when Microsoft …
Discussion: deal architect and Dana Gardner's BriefingsDirect
Dana Gardner / Dana Gardner's BriefingsDirect: 'Platform as a Service' …
Fred / A VC:
Can The Y Combinator Idea Turn Into A Movement? — Most readers of this blog know what Y Combinator is. Hell, last month two of the top five referrers were affiliated with Y Combinator. But for those who don't know, Y Combinator was started by Paul Graham and now runs two programs a year …
Matt Cutts / Gadgets, Google, and SEO:
Google App Engine: Launching a startup gets even easier
Google App Engine: Launching a startup gets even easier
Discussion: STARTUP CHATTER
Donna Bogatin / STARTUP CHATTER: How Google App Engine Kills Startups, Tricks Consumers
Official Google Blog:
Developers, start your engines
Developers, start your engines
Discussion: Alec Saunders .LOG
MG Siegler / VentureBeat:
Google App Engine readies for brawl with Amazon
Google App Engine readies for brawl with Amazon
Discussion: Profy.Com, The Last Podcast, Ajaxian, PSFK, 901am, Tech Watch, CNET News.com, CenterNetworks and Valleywag
Cyndy Aleo-Carreira / Profy.Com: Is Google App Engine a Sign that Google's Jumped the Shark?
Frederic / The Last Podcast: Monday Night Thoughts: Google Apps, Why We Blog, A-Lists, and a Hardware Upgrade
Dion Almaer / Ajaxian: What does Google App Engine mean for Ajax developers?
Piers Fawkes / PSFK: Google App Engine
Dennis Bouchand / 901am: Google launches App Engine
Jason Snyder / Tech Watch: Google launches app-hosting service
Martin LaMonica / CNET News.com: Amazon computing Web service suffers glitch
Jackson West / Valleywag: Why should you care about Google's App Engine?
Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft:
Google App Engine: When will Microsoft field a competitor?
Google App Engine: When will Microsoft field a competitor?
Discussion: Silicon Alley Insider and Web Scout
Henry Blodget / Silicon Alley Insider: Google, Amazon Lead Disruptive Cloud Computing Wave, Microsoft Again Behind Curve
David Sarno / Web Scout: Google App Engine means Google will carry your load
James Kendrick / jkOnTheRun:
jkOnTheRun review- hands on with the HP Mini-Note UMPC — The Asus EEE PC woke people up to the benefits that a sub-notebook device brings to consumers, especially if it's priced attractively. HP is releasing their hotly awaited sub-notebook and the Mini is a solid first effort in this small notebook category.
Discussion: TeleRead, Guardian Unlimited, NotebookReview.com, Eee Site, GottaBeMobile, Geek.com and The Mobile Gadgeteer
David Rothman / TeleRead: HP Mini: Promising laptop for e-book fans, if we extrapolate from jkOnTheRun review
JerryJ / NotebookReview.com: HP 2133 Mini-Note Review
Brad Linder / Eee Site: And one more HP Mini review worth noting
Warner Crocker / GottaBeMobile: GBM Inkshow: The HP 2133 Mini-Note
Sal Cangeloso / Geek.com: HP officially unveils the 2133 Mini-Note
Matthew Miller / The Mobile Gadgeteer: HP announces the HP 2133 Mini-Note PC
Joanna Stern / LAPTOP Magazine:
The Leader of the Pack? Hands-On Video of the HP 2133 Mini-Note
The Leader of the Pack? Hands-On Video of the HP 2133 Mini-Note
Discussion: LaptopMag.com, Technology Live and Eee Site
John R. Delaney / LaptopMag.com: HP 2133 Mini-Note — This mini notebook is pricier and heavier …
Michelle Kessler / Technology Live: Forget $100: HP launches $499 laptop for kids
Xavier / notebooks.com:
HP 2133 Mini-Note: Videos, Specs, Photo Gallery
HP 2133 Mini-Note: Videos, Specs, Photo Gallery
Discussion: DailyTech, jkOnTheRun, TechSpot and Gizmodo
James Kendrick / jkOnTheRun: jkOnTheRun video- first look at the HP Mini-Note UMPC
Jose Vilches / TechSpot: HP unveils Mini-Note PC
Erica Ogg / CNET News.com:
HP strikes chord with Mini-Note PC
HP strikes chord with Mini-Note PC
Discussion: Tech Sanity Check, Engadget and Electronista
I'm Not Actually a Geek:
When Your Blog Is LouisGrayCrunched... Start-ups can go through the Slashdot Effect, the Digg Effect or be TechCrunched. Well, five blogs were LouisGrayCrunched on yesterday. — Louis Gray is a top blogger in the tech world. He covers a lot of good tech topics, perhaps best known for his early and bullish coverage of FriendFeed.
Discussion: sarahintampa and louisgray.com
Brian Caulfield / Forbes:
Ballmer's Secret Weapon — Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer may have a secret weapon in his fight with Yahoo! Chief Executive Jerry Yang for control of the beleaguered Web portal: Yahoo! shareholders who also hold gobs of Microsoft stock. — Because of the software giant's size …
Discussion: New York Times, BoomTown and Tech Check with Jim Goldman
Miguel Helft / New York Times: Yahoo Answers Microsoft With Yet Another No
Kara Swisher / BoomTown: MicroHoo: Another Day, Another Letter
Jim Goldman / Tech Check with Jim Goldman: Yahoo's Rock and a Hard Place
Associated Press:
Virginia 1st state to require Internet safety lessons — RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Virginia is the first state to mandate that public schools offer Internet safety classes for all grade levels — and it's one of many measures being taken nationally to protect young Web users.
Discussion: IT News Digest, The Blog Herald, Liquidmatrix Security Digest and Slashdot
Matt Craven / The Blog Herald: Parents or the State? …
ScuttleMonkey / Slashdot: Virginia Becomes First State to Mandate Internet Safety Lessons
Elizabeth Olson / New York Times:
Bar Code Sales Tool Is Failing Campus Test — IN parts of Asia and Europe, marketers have been using bar code technology to help sell things to people on their cellphones. A consumer can point a phone at something intriguing that bears a signature black-and-white square …
Discussion: The Pondering Primate and mocoNews.net
Scott P. Shaffer / The Pondering Primate: MobileDiscovery And ScanBuy Get Failing Grade For Case Western's …
Dianne See Morrison / mocoNews.net: Mobile Barcodes Flops With Students
Eliot Van Buskirk / Listening Post:
Wal-Mart Abandons Windows DRM, Sony/BMG and Warner — As Wal-Mart switches to the MP3 music format and redesigns its music store, it leaves behind Microsoft's digital rights management technology, which prevented the songs it sold from being played on iPods.
Discussion: last100, Insanely Great Mac and Gizmodo
Matt Buchanan / Gizmodo: Wal-Mart MP3 Store Drops All DRM, But Only Half-Ass Opens
Anne Broache / CNET News.com:
Courts chip away at Web sites' decade-old legal shield — For more than a decade, Web site operators have enjoyed a broad legal shield against lawsuits filed over material posted by their users, which has let user-driven sites like YouTube and MySpace.com flourish.


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This evening at 10:00pm (Eastern Time), The Kosher Scene's Internet Radio Show on BlogTalkRadio.com will host Paula Shoyer. Paula has been our guest before (here) and has always been an audience favorite.
Ms. Shoyer is the author of The Kosher Baker and is coming out with a new pastry book, on holiday baking, due out in August this year. Tonight we will talk about baking on Pessach.
Meanwhile, in case you missed it, why not listen to last week's broadcast with Leah Schapira – who's been our guest before – and Victoria Dweck discuss their new book: Passover Made Easy: Favorite Tripple-Tested Recipes.
Please, listen in tonight at 10:00pm when we will be speaking with Paula Shoyer. We'll be waiting for you!


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Mantoloking NJ Prom Limos
We have your Mantoloking NJ Prom Limos prepared and ready for your rental service. Call or view our fleet of NJ Prom Limos, Contact us today for a free limo quote! Your Prom night is one of the most anticipated celebrations on the graduation calendar. From preparing a fancy dress, your hair and makeup to ordering expensive flowers. Every young lady would like to make this a very special night. Renting a special limousine for the occasion can do just that and transforming Prom night into memorable evening.
Keep in mind not all Mantoloking NJ Prom Limos are the same. This also applies to our other services such as, Mantoloking NJ Wedding Limo Services. View or call about our fleet for NJ Prom Limos. Renting a limo from a poor quality company can ruin the entire night, which is why the experts at Carefree Limo of NJ has several tips on renting a professional and reliable chauffeured limousine:
1. Talk to your all friends early in the year. The demand for Mantoloking NJ Prom Limos during the spring season can be overwhelming when so many others are renting a limousine for Prom, graduation, and weddings! Talk to your friends early and decide who will be in your limousines group, so that you can book your reservations and get the limo you desire.
2. Show up to your Promenade in style. A unique chauffeured Mantoloking NJ Prom Limo will definitely set you apart from the rest. There are many styles available such as stretch limos with various interiors, sedans and SUV Stretch Limos. Depending on the number of people you will have in the car with you, you may want a certain limousine. Choose something that suits your mood and needs.
3. Allow time to take pictures. We offer several examples of Mantoloking NJ Prom Limos. You are definitely going want some memories, so plan for everyone to meet up for Prom at one location (make sure the limo company and the chauffeur have the correct address and directions). This will eliminate wasting time that can be used for taking pictures and hanging with friends. You can even ask the limo driver to position the limousine to be a part of the snapshot.
4. Ask about our special offers. We provide beverages, and tunes for the ride over to the promenade. Ask in advance about the amenities that are available, such as sparkling cider to toast the night away. Also ask about the type of music that is available for all the NJ Prom Limos.
5. Extend your night. Don't forget that there is always a post-prom party. Remember to book your Mantoloking NJ Prom Limos ride for a few extra hours to ensure you have time to have a great time! Most importantly, sit back, relax and enjoy the ride.
Mantoloking NJ Prom Limos Offers Several Prom Limo Tips for Parents
Prom night is one of the most anticipated nights on the teen calendar. From the moment your child finds their date, to the moment he or she shows up at the door, every moment needs to count towards making the night both safe and special.
Though you may worry about your child staying out late on Prom night, hiring a chauffeured limo for the most important social event of the year can transform prom night into an extraordinarily memorable, safe and enchanting evening for your teenager and offer the parent the peace of mind to make it through!
We at Carefree Limousine suggests the following five tips when you hire a limousine service for your teenager's big Prom night:
1. Ask the limousine company for the Prom Limo Promise. This is a document that teens sign in agreement of not drinking or taking drugs on Prom night. We offer our limousine and chauffeured transportation contract as a way to give parents an outlet to discuss the importance of safety on Prom with their teens.
2. Give us curfew. That's right! Our chauffeur will abide by any rules you set forth, and will make sure to pick up and drop off your kids at a designated hour. This is a great way ensure your kids make it home on time, no excuses.
3. Check the industry associations to make sure our company is reputable. We at Carefree Limousine in Mantoloking NJ Prom Limos Rental Service must abide by special NJ Prom Limo insurance regulations and service rules. Do your due diligence as a parent to ensure your child and friends are safe and secure.
4. Set some ground rules. As the parent, you have the right to tell us what will and will not be tolerated in the Mantoloking NJ Prom Limos vehicle. To give you an example, you can ask that the chauffeur keep the privacy screen down for the entire ride, so that he has a full grasp of what your kids are up to. If any of your rules are broken, the chauffeur can turn the car around and bring your kids home.
5. Remember to sit back and relax in your Mantoloking NJ Prom Limos. Our reputable limousine company hires drivers with proper training and licensing. Our chauffeurs are used to carting around excited passengers all day long, so they know how to keep things under control. We also offer Mantoloking NJ Wedding Limo Rentals.
About our Limo Service Staff
All our drivers are courteous, friendly and attentive to every detail of your occasion. All of our limousine drivers are dressed properly based on your occasion or your request. At Carefree Limousine our goal is to provide you with the best limousine service experience by providing you with a reliable fleet of limousines and accommodating chauffeurs within our terms of limousine service policies. You can find all our Limousine services Mantoloking NJ Limo Rental Service here.


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Jeff Berwick
Activist Post
We have been reporting on how the US government is using very nefarious and egregious methods on tracking its own citizens' financial information, fining them and even instituting the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) as a form of subterfuge capital controls which is closing off international banking to Americans (as we reported yesterday in Mexico).
FinCen, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, has, in essence, been making nearly any international transfers of money viewed as a criminal activity. FATCA has been making it harder and harder for Americans to open international bank accounts. And FBAR, the Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts, has made it a highly punishable offense for any American with a foreign account worth over $10,000 if they do not file an FBAR each year.
The problem with FBAR is that countless Americans with foreign accounts and US expats are completely unaware of its existence. And, despite the fact that there are literally tens of thousands of rules in the US tax code for things like this, ignorance of its requirement is not excusable.
We have stated in the past that FinCen, FATCA and FBAR are all intermingled to essentially put in capital controls on the US populace and, as well, steal most of the money from those with funds abroad. In the past many said that we were being too alarmist and surely the US government would not do something like this.
Well, think again, it just happened. And it was even worse than we thought.
In a court decision just released a man who ignorantly did not file an FBAR had not only all of his funds seized by the US government but, unbelievably, even more than he had in his account.
Carl Zwerner, an 87-year old Florida man, must pay the US government a 150% penalty on the value of his Swiss bank account, amounting to the biggest penalty by percentage on record, according to his lawyer. Carl Zwerner will pay more than $2 million "for willfully failing to file a US Treasury form called a Report on Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts, or FBAR. Prosecutors and the Internal Revenue Service use FBAR penalties, which sometimes are worse than criminal fines, in order stamp out "offshore tax evasion."
As we've discussed in The Dollar Vigilante Blog, individuals have flocked to the IRS amnesty program which purports to allow holders of undeclared offshore accounts avoid prosecution. Over 43,000 Americans have joined the program since 2009, shelling out $6 billion to the US.
In Zwerner's case, the IRS sought to seize 50% of the value of his account compounded over each of four years where he was deemed in non-compliance. With Zwerner's case a new precedent has been set. "As this jury verdict shows, the cost of not coming forward and fully disclosing a secret offshore bank account to the IRS can be quite high," Kathryn Keneally, the head of the tax division, said in the statement.
"They can get 50 percent for the non-filing of one piece of paper, and 200 percent for the non-filing of four pieces of paper," Zwerner's lawyer Martin Press said in a phone interview. "The question is whether such a massive penalty is appropriate for simply a disclosure form which carries no tax."
Zwerner's Swiss account at ABN Amro Group NV, the Netherlands' third-biggest bank, was valued at $1.48 million in 2004, when his FBAR penalty was $723,762; the value in 2005 was $1.49 million, when the penalty was $745,209; and the value in 2006 was $1.55 million, and a $772,838 penalty. The total penalties were $2.24 million.
Many naysayers said that the US government would not come after the total value of an account deemed in non-compliance. In a sense they were right … the US government came for nearly double the amount held in the account!
But Zwerner's isn't the biggest FBAR penalty in terms of size on record. H. Ty Warner, the billionaire founder of Beanie Babies, pleaded guilty last year on evading taxes on secret Swiss accounts that held as much as $107 million. He paid an FBAR penalty of $53.6 million. Although, compared to Zwerner, he got off easy with only 50% of his funds stolen.
Mary Estelle Curran, a 79-year-old widow from Palm Beach, Florida, pleaded guilty last year for not disclosing $43 million at UBS AG. (UBSN) She paid a $21.6 million FBAR penalty. Ms. Curran fell for the IRS's "limited-amnesty program" in 2009, where they said they would not fine her if she came forward. But the agency simply rejected her and fined her anyway. In her case it is even worse as she was indicted in late 2011 and faced up to 37 months in prison.
Zwerner testified, telling jurors that he tried to enter the IRS voluntary disclosure program, and that he didn't know until 2008 that he must file FBARs. "Zwerner's original tax returns for 2004 to 2007 didn't report any income from the Swiss bank account," reads a US complaint filed in June 2013. "The first time he reported such income was when he amended those returns."
He failed to declare interest on his foreign account. The account was opened in the 1960s, and was held in the name of two foundations, according tot he Justice Department. "Zwerner was able to use the proceeds of the account whenever he wanted and used it for personal expenses, including European vacations," the department said.
It can seem like there are no options for hardworking Americans, that the nation has reached that point which Ayn Rand predicted where the most productive would stop working simply because it paid more to do nothing. Even if you do work your whole life, you might be thinking, the government will ultimately come one day and take it all away.
This does not have to be the case. There are still many options available, but the landscape is quickly changing and in order to get the right advice you'll need a highly informed and nimble team such as the one at TDV Wealth Management (TDVWM) where we advise the countless Americans who have been caught up in this extortion dragnet. And you can stay informed with The Dollar Vigilante (TDV) Newsletter. TDV has been ahead of the curve advising people to internationalize their precious metals (Getting Your Gold Out Of Dodge), been early into the importance of bitcoin in protecting your assets and advising Americans to get a second passport.
On the bright side, although the news and information can be depressing, there are countless things to be excited about and a plethora of opportunities to not only survive the coming collapse of the West but to prosper. The End Of the Monetary System As We Know It (TEOTMSAWKI) will be a time of Great Transformation. If you remain open-minded, relaxed, well informed and focused you could actually do better than you even thought possible … but it is going to mean taking personal responsibility in how to navigate the coming collapse.
Your government registered financial advisor will likely not know and/or tell you about what is going on. Take responsibility for your own personal and financial future.
Through taking control and paying attention to what is going on you will be positioned for a period of great change and opportunity. If not you may get FBAR'ed like Carl Zwerner.
It's really that simple.
FATCA, the IRS & Freedom… Join the discussion at The Dollar Vigilante Today!
Anarcho-Capitalist. Libertarian. Freedom fighter against mankind's two biggest enemies, the State and the Central Banks. Jeff Berwick is the founder of The Dollar Vigilante, CEO of TDV Media & Services and host of the popular video podcast, Anarchast. Jeff is a prominent speaker at many of the world's freedom, investment and gold conferences as well as regularly in the media including CNBC, CNN and Fox Business.


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A religion with 648 million followers, Hinduism developed from indigenous religions of India in combination with Aryan religions brought to India around 1500 BC. It was codified in the Veda and the Upanishads-the sacred scriptures of Hinduism. Hinduism is a broad term used to describe a vast array of sects to which most Indians belong. Although many Hindus reject the caste system-a belief that people are born into a particular subgroup that determines their religious, social, and work-related duties-it is widely accepted. This system classifies society at large into four groups: Brahmins or priests; rulers and warriors; farmers and merchants; and peasants and laborers. The goals of Hinduism are the release from repeated reincarnation through the practice of yoga, adherence to Vedic scriptures, and devotion to a personal guru. Various deities are worshipped at shrines; the Divine Trinity-representing the cyclical nature of the universe-are: Brahma the creator, Vishnu the preserver, and Shiva the destroyer.
Atheism (Sanskrit: nir-īśvara-vāda, lit. "statement of no God", "doctrine of godlessness") or disbelief in God or gods has been a historically propounded viewpoint in many of the Hindu philosophies
There are six schools of thought within Hinduism addressed as the Shat (Astik) Darshana (darshana meaning "viewpoint.") Within the Astika schools of Hindu philosophy, the Samkhya and the early Mimamsa school did not accept a God in their respective systems.
The atheistic viewpoint as present in the Samkhya and Mimamsa schools of Hindu philosophy takes the form of rejecting a creator-God. The Samkhya school believed in a dual existence of Prakriti ("nature") and Purusha ("spirit") and had no place for an Ishvara ("God") in its system. The early Mimamsakas believed in a adrishta ("unseen") that was the result of performing karmas ("works") and saw no need for an Ishvara in their system. Mimamsa, as a philosophy, deals exclusively with karma and thus is sometimes called Karma-Mimamsa. The karmas dealt with in Mimamsa concern the performance of Yajnas ("sacrifices to gods") enjoined in the Vedas.
The Vedanta philosophy had its practitioners advocating a Nirguna Brahman of which the most prominent example is Adi Shankara.
Nastika Atheism
In Indian philosophy, three schools of thought are commonly referred to as Nastikas: Jainism, Buddhism and Cārvāka for rejecting the doctrine of Vedas. Nastika refers to the non-belief of Vedas rather than non-belief of God. However, all these schools also rejected a notion of creationist god and so the word Nastik became strongly associated with them. Cārvāka, an atheistic school of Indian philosophy, traces its origins to 600 BCE. It was a hedonistic school of thought, advocating that there is no afterlife. Cārvāka philosophy appears to have died out some time after 1400 CE. Buddhism and Jainism also have their origins before 300 BCE but are not hedonistic. It is debated whether the ancient followers of the Jain and Buddha paths were Hindu or non-Hindu because they, like Hinduism, discussed the Arya Sangh, karma, brahman and Moksha.
Hindu atheists in recent times
The Indian Nobel Prize-winner Amartya Sen, in an interview with Pranab Bardhan for the California Magazine published in the July-August 2006 edition by the University of California, Berkeley states:
"In some ways people had got used to the idea that India was spiritual and religion-oriented. That gave a leg up to the religious interpretation of India, despite the fact that Sanskrit had a larger atheistic literature than exists in any other classical language. Even within the Hindu tradition, there are many people who were atheist. Madhava Acharya, the remarkable 14th century philosopher, wrote this rather great book called Sarvadarshansamgraha, which discussed all the religious schools of thought within the Hindu structure. The first chapter is "Atheism" - a very strong presentation of the argument in favor of atheism and materialism.
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Bernard Cornwell-1356
From New York Times bestselling author Bernard Cornwell, now available in paperbacka thrilling tale of danger and conquest at the Battle of Poitiers, 1356 is a book in which Cornwells gifts as scholar and storyteller come together spectacularly. (Washington Post)
Bernard Cornwell, the "master of martial fiction" (Booklist), brings Thomas of Hookton from the popular Grail Quest series into a new adventure in 1356, a thrilling stand-alone novel. On September 19, 1356, a heavily outnumbered English army faced off against the French in the historic Battle of Poitiers. In 1356, Cornwell resurrects this dramatic and bloody struggleone that would turn out to be the most decisive and improbable victory of the Hundred Years War, a clash where the underdog English not only the captured the strategic site of Poitiers, but the French King John II as well. In the vein of Cornwells bestselling Agincourt, 1356 is an action-packed story of danger and conquest, rich with military strategy and remarkable charactersboth villainous and heroictransporting readers to the front lines of war while painting a vivid picture of courage, treachery, and combat.


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Guest—and first time—blogger Robyn Bushong travels to Hong Kong, and Ports Are Calling is happy to feature her posts as she sets sail.
We arrived in Hong Kong as first-time visitors only to be greeted with torrential rains and dense fog. Welcome to Hong Kong! But the pouring rain didn't dampen our enthusiasm for the adventure that lay ahead. My dear friend Cynthia and I had just completed 21+ hours of travel from Galveston, Texas to begin our Asian adventure aboard Crystal Cruises' Crystal Symphony "Pearls of China," itinerary that was to begin in Hong Kong, April 9th, with calls in Xiamen, Shanghai (two overnights), Dalian and then concluding with a three-day land package in Beijing on April 21st.
We were met by our private guide (who we had arranged through the Hong Kong Tourism Board) and taken to our hotel –The InterContinental. Highly recommended as the property is located directly on Victoria Harbor and the unobstructed view from our room: Simply Spectacular! First order of business upon arrival at the hotel was lunch and to review our priorities for sightseeing in this intriguing and enticing city. Since the hotel's specialty restaurant, Yan Toh Heen, featured dim sum, we eagerly chose this venue and learned it was a recipient of a "1-Michelin Star." Our guide ordered for us and the quality and presentation was outstanding. As we concluded our fine lunch, we told our guide we wanted to walk since the rain was subsiding, as we were ready to see, do and experience everything possible in the time we had to enjoy this exciting, world-class city.
We headed to the Star Ferry for the 10-minute ride between Kowloon (where our hotel was) and Hong Kong. A friend who handles tours in Hong Kong had set our priorities for sights: First and foremost, take the tram to the top of Victoria Peak. Next, see the Financial District, Hollywood Road, Man Mo Temple and browse the fine shopping district; enjoy dim sum (check!) and experience the Stanley Street Market.
With all the trees, dramatic and colorful flowers, and gorgeous landscaping, Hong Kong's "green space" was amazing. What was also amazing were the hundreds and hundreds of tourists out and about on this rainy Tuesday afternoon. What we learned was that the previous Saturday (April 5th) was a national holiday: Tomb Sweeping Day. In Chinese it's Ching Ming – which literally means "Clear and Bright" and is a tradition where families travel to their family tomb to sweep, clean and place flowers or other memorials on the gravesite. Because the national holiday fell on a Saturday, the banks/financial institutions were closed on Monday and apparently many people added an extra day to their holiday weekend.
We walked through the Financial District and the IFC (International Financial Center), and passed such fine stores as Prada, Salvatore Ferragamo, Piaget, Rolex, etc. As we headed towards the Peak tram station, we passed St Andrew's, an elegant Anglican Church (Episcopalian) and the historic St. John's Cathedral completed in 1849. Then we boarded the tram for the ride to the top of the Peak. The trams, which have been operating for over 125 years, hold 120 people each and run about every 8 minutes. Following the brief—albeit very steep—ride to the top, we arrived at an incredible sight. Our friend was right: Standing on the top of Victoria Peak and looking down over the entire city…WOW! While we were walking around, a volunteer greeted us with a complimentary headset device that provides a detailed overview of the area. We had wanted to do the 90-minute walk around the perimeter of the peak, but it started raining again so we departed.
After we took the tram back down, the rain had stopped again and we walked to Man Mo Temple. Built in 1847, the temple is one of the oldest traditional-styled temples in Hong Kong and is dedicated to the gods of literature (Man) and the god of war (Mo). From there, we stayed on Hollywood Road to view some of the city's most beautiful antique shops and fine jewelry stores. To ensure we got a bit more immersed in the local culture, our guide suggested we take the subway to the Temple Street Market area. Living in Texas we'd never experienced anything like this before. Crowds on the New York City subways couldn't hold a candle to the throngs and throngs and throngs of people traveling in all different directions in Hong Kong's subways. Everyone had an electronic device in their hands. And how these commuters could maneuver from one escalator and subway car to another—while seemingly never taking their eyes off their cell phone—was simply incredible. From there, we worked our way along the busy streets of food vendors, pastry and coffee shops, neighborhood grocery stores, drug stores, camera shops, and other small, neighborhood businesses. Food vendors sold fresh crabs, fish, lobster, and "internal organs" of other creatures cooked to order, and served on a skewer with hot and spicy sauces. As we observed the frenzied pace at which everyone was moving, our guide told us that since most locals work from 9am till about 7pm, we were right in the middle of the prime rush hour pedestrian traffic.
We kept moving along the bustling streets, heading towards Temple Street Market. Once there, we were amazed at the stalls—everything from cheap watches, imitation leather goods, jewelry, silk scarves, t-shirts, shoes, camera and electronic equipment, toys and souvenirs. Our guide told us that the market is only open nights from about 6pm-midnight. Each of these hundreds of vendors packs up their wares at night, only to set-up again the next evening. What a hard way to earn a living. We didn't buy anything, but were glad we saw the market. From there, we took a taxi back to the hotel, bid our guide farewell, and at 8pm on our first night in Hong Kong… we were DONE!
The next morning we awoke early to gorgeous sunshine and an indescribably beautiful skyline. As we ate breakfast, we watched the buildings come to life as neon signs lit the skyline starting around 7am. We were to board Crystal Symphony early that afternoon, so we had time to do a little shopping and sightseeing on our own. We set off on a leisurely walk through the streets near our hotel to shop and later enjoyed lunch at the world-renowned hotel, The Peninsula. We didn't realize at first just how close we were to the Ocean Cruise Terminal as it was only a short walk from our hotel. We also learned that Hong Kong had recently completed a new terminal, but that it was miles from the city centre. Ocean Terminal, where Crystal Symphony was docked, showcased multi levels of retail shops offering everything from Gucci to Nike and all literally just footsteps from where we were to board our ship. What a great way to start a cruise.
I also just learned that Crystal Symphony will return to Hong Kong during the holidays for a 15-day "China Sea Holiday Spectacular" (December 21- January 5, 2015), and will be docked at Ocean Terminal during the New Year's Eve celebration. Can you imagine what an experience that would be to see one of the world's most spectacular fireworks displays light the skies over Victoria Harbor—and all to be enjoyed from the prime vantage point of a balcony or deck aboard the ship!
Well, we'll be boarding soon and our Asian adventure aboard the Crystal Symphony…it's just about to begin!


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Docs urged to test BMI
By LAURAN NEERGAARD
AP Medical Writer
WASHINGTON — Chances are you know your blood pressure. What about your BMI?
Body mass index signals if you're overweight, obese or just right considering your height. Some doctors have begun calling it a vital sign, as crucial to monitor as blood pressure.
But apparently not enough doctors check: A government panel this week renewed its call for every adult to be screened for obesity during checkups, suggesting more physicians should be routinely calculating their patients' BMIs.
And when someone crosses the line into obesity, the doctor needs to do more than mention a diet. It's time to refer those patients for intensive nutrition-and-fitness help, say the guidelines issued by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.
Don't assume your weight's OK if the doctor doesn't bring it up.
Patients "should be asking what their BMI is, and tracking that over time," says task force member Dr. David Grossman, medical director for preventive care at the Group Health Cooperative in Seattle.
By the numbers: A normal BMI is less than 25. Obesity begins at 30. In between is considered overweight. To calculate yours: http://www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi/.
The advice sounds like a no-brainer, considering the national anxiety about our growing waistlines. Two-thirds of adults are either overweight or obese. Some 17 percent of children and teens are obese, on the road to diabetes, heart disease and other ailments before they're even grown.
The task force has recommended adult obesity screening previously, and similar guidelines urge tracking whether youngsters are putting on too many pounds.
Yet BMI remains a mystery for many people. A 2010 survey of members of the American Academy of Family Physicians found up to 40 percent of those primary care doctors were computing their patients' BMIs. Surveys show only about a third of obese patients recall their doctor counseling them about weight loss, even though people whose doctors discuss the problem are more likely to do something about it.
Doctors can struggle with the pounds, too, and Johns Hopkins University researchers recently reported that overweight physicians were less likely than skinnier ones to advise their patients about weight loss.
Why the reluctance? One reason: Few doctors are trained to treat obesity, they're discouraged by yo-yo dieting but they don't know what to advise, says Dr. Glen Stream, president of the physicians' group. His Spokane, Wash., practice uses electronic medical records that automatically calculate BMI when a patient's height and weight is entered.
"Our American culture is always looking for an easy fix, a pill for every problem," Stream says. "The updated recommendation is important because it makes clear exactly what doctors should do to help."
In Monday's Annals of Internal Medicine, the task force concluded high-intensity behavioral interventions are the best non-surgical advice for the obese, citing insufficient evidence about lasting effects from weight-loss medications.
The task force's Grossman says a good program:
•Includes 12 to 26 face-to-face meetings over a year, most in the first few months.
•Makes patients set realistic weight-loss goals. Losing just 5 percent of your initial weight — 10 pounds for a 200-pound person — can significantly improve health.
•Analyzes what blocks each patient from reaching those goals. Do they eat high-calorie comfort foods to deal with depression? Spend too much time at a desk job?
•Tailors ways to help people integrate physical activity into their daily routine.
•Requires self-monitoring, such as a food diary or a pedometer to track activity.
Last year, Medicare started paying primary care doctors for obesity screening and weight-loss counseling for seniors for a year, including weekly meetings for the first month.
But many insurance companies don't pay for all the suggested interventions, and comprehensive programs aren't available everywhere, says Dr. Scott Kahan of George Washington University and the STOP Obesity Alliance. He runs a clinic that provides a medical, psychological and nutritional evaluation before tailoring a plan. In other programs, primary care doctors may offer some counseling and send patients to nutritionists or other specialists for extra help.
Another problem: "Doctors tend to shoo away people who have obesity. They say, 'Don't come back to me and tell me your back hurts or you have acid reflux or high cholesterol until you will do something about it,"' laments Kahan, who is teaching medical school students to motivate patients.
What about the overweight? The task force said more study is needed on how best to help them.
BMI calculator: http://www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi


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George Dohrmann's investigation into the fallow years of Ben Howland's UCLA tenure dropped in Sports Illustrated today, and it desperately wants to be a cautionary tale. It wants you to make the connection—even if it can never quite do so itself—that the undisciplined and troublesome recruiting classes brought in after the Bruins' 2008 Final Four run were the catalyst for a program's fall from the elite. Instead it's an interesting but typical picture of a team with some issues, and if this weren't Westwood, and wasn't constantly being measured against the ghost of a program that hasn't existed for nearly 40 years, it wouldn't raise an eyebrow.
It's emphasized that the successful Bruin teams were built around unheralded prospects (only Jordan Farmar was in Rivals.com's top 25), but the 2008 recruiting class was one of the best ever assembled. The implication being that Howland somehow foreswore the "UCLA way," that clean-cut players who work hard are superior to highly-prized prep schoolers. If you buy into this line of thinking, the rest of the story will go down a lot easier.
"Some of the newcomers clearly didn't appreciate the commitment needed to succeed at the top level of the college game," Dohrmann writes (editorializes?), singling out Jerime Anderson, Drew Gordon, and J'mison Morgan. "They were famous before they ever played a game...[they] chafed at being treated as anything but the stars they were coming out of high school."
Despite the acknowledgment that the earlier, more "mature" teams had enjoyed VIP table service at clubs with NBA players and models, these Baby Bruins are condemned for their partying ways,
On the final day of 2008, Howland met with the team and told players not to go out on New Year's Eve. The Bruins had an early-morning practice scheduled for New Year's Day and were departing for Oregon in the afternoon. Howland stressed that it was time to get serious.
Three members of the team, not all of them freshmen, ignored Howland's orders and attended a giant rave at the Los Angeles Sports Arena. "We did what you do at a rave: We took Ecstasy," says one of the players. The trio did not get back to Westwood until between 4 and 5 a.m. and barely slept before arriving at Pauley Pavilion for an 8 a.m. practice. The players bragged about their night to teammates and commented on how they were still feeling the effects of the Ecstasy.
A few days later an assistant coach phoned the players who attended the rave and asked if they had gone out on New Year's Eve. They denied it, but soon afterward each was ordered to submit to a drug test. "I took something that was supposed to get [the drugs] out of my system," says one player. "I never heard anything about the results [of the test], so it must have worked."
Ignoring the ethical and legal questions of forcing players to take a drug test, team unity was apparently in disarray. The freshman blew off a bowling trip before the postseason, and lost in the second round of the NCAA tournament—a long fall from the previous year. Was it because Kevin Love, Russell Westbrook and Luc Mbah a Moute had left for the NBA, or because of the bowling trip? The SI story seems to support the latter.
The following year, Reeves Nelson came aboard. Nelson is tipped as a troublemaker, and the biggest sign of a program lacking direction. A few of Nelson's transgressions:
Nelson often reacted to hard fouls or calls against him in practice by committing violent acts against teammates. He did not deny to SI that he would stalk his targets, even running across the court, away from a play, to hit someone.
Once, Nelson got tangled up with forward James Keefe while going for a rebound. Keefe was playing with a surgically repaired left shoulder, and Nelson pulled down suddenly on Keefe's left arm. That reinjured Keefe's shoulder, and he missed several weeks. Later in the season Nelson hacked walk-on Alex Schrempf, the son of former NBA player Detlef Schrempf, from behind on a breakaway, knocking Schrempf to the ground. The back injury Schrempf suffered sidelined him for months. In another workout Nelson threw an elbow at Lane after the whistle, injuring Lane's ribs.
Walk-on Tyler Trapani was another Nelson victim. After Trapani took a charge that negated a Nelson dunk, Nelson went out of his way to step on Trapani's chest as he lay on the ground. Trapani is John Wooden's great-grandson.
[Matt] Carlino suffered a concussion during the preseason that caused him to miss the first three games. Nelson ridiculed Carlino for letting the injury sideline him. He told Carlino he didn't belong at UCLA and wasn't any good. He would yell at Carlino to leave the locker room, calling him "concussion boy." When Carlino returned to workouts, Nelson would go out of his way to set a screen on Carlino so he could hit him. Eventually, players say, Carlino dreaded practice. It was of little surprise when he left UCLA midway through the season and transferred to BYU.
Several underclassmen had arranged for a party bus to shuttle them around town, but at the last minute Howland instituted a bed check. An assistant coach would visit the players' apartments and dorm rooms and make certain no one had gone out.
When informing the players of the bed check, Howland remarked, "So there will be no party bus," which led some underclassmen to conclude that they had an informant in their midst. Nelson thought that Honeycutt, one of his roommates, was the rat, and he got his revenge. A short time later, Nelson returned home from a night of partying, piled Honeycutt's clothes on Honeycutt's bed, and then urinated on the clothes and flipped the bed over.
But it's Howland who comes in for the harshest criticism. He's painted as an enabler, not punishing Nelson for any of these transgressions, and as a bully in his own right.
In a game during the 2007-08 season, several players on the bench noted Howland's frustration with the shot selection of Westbrook, whose freelancing had resulted in several baskets. But rather than substituting for him, Howland informed one of the officials that Westbrook was wearing socks bearing an NBA logo, which violated NCAA uniform guidelines. Howland told the official he had an obligation to remove Westbrook from the game because of his socks. The official claimed to be unaware of the rule and let play continue.
On April 15, less than a month after the [2009] season ended, Howland summoned to his office one of the student managers, a sophomore who was known to party with the players. The manager had mentioned to an assistant coach that some players drank and smoked marijuana too often during the season and that they needed to get more serious for UCLA to improve.
Howland told the manager that he needed to know who those players were and exactly what they were doing. The manager refused to name names, so Howland told the manager that if he didn't tell him, he would be terminated.
"I tried to be vague at first, told him some of the freshmen had problems, but he kept on me," says the manager. "I was just a college student, and Coach Howland is telling me I have to tell him everything."
The manager eventually told Howland what he knew, but the coach still terminated him. According to the manager, Howland said, "You are just as guilty as the players."
After each of the incidents [with Reeves Nelson], Howland looked the other way. One team member says he asked Howland after a practice why he wasn't punishing Nelson, to which he said Howland responded, "He's producing."
What do we have here, if not a star player receiving special treatment because of his abilities, and a coach unwilling or unable to handle the realities of college basketball? (Players told Dohrmann that Howland was "reluctant to discipline the freshmen out of trepidation that the best of them would transfer or leave early for the NBA.") Again, if this isn't UCLA, maybe this doesn't get 6,000 words.
There's no talk of on-court factors in what's supposed to be an exploration of the Bruins' mediocrity, a basketball story that features very little basketball. Instead we get the soap opera. Players drink, players use drugs, players don't listen to their coach, star player's a dick, coach is a bigger dick. That's UCLA, and that's a lot of teams, teams that win and teams that lose. Dohrmann desperately wants correlation to equal causation, but I'm not even sure there's correlation here.
Special Report: Not the UCLA Way [Sports Illustrated]


text:
I saw a meme today. It said:
"Just do what you can today, okay? It will be enough."
Instantly my brain said, "No, it won't."
My brain, uncooperative at all but the very best times, has a habit of telling me bad things when I'm in a depressive episode: "You're useless." "You're pathetic." "Everything you do fails."
For some reason, positive thinking memes and slogans bring out the worst in my brain. If a pass-along or a bumper sticker tells me that tomorrow will be brighter, my brain says, "No, it won't." If a meme says, " I hope the situation you worry about favors you in the end," it says, "Yeah, like that's gonna happen."
Is my brain simply cranky and uncooperative? Well, yes. But these intrusive thoughts reinforce and deepen my depression, chip away at what self-esteem I still have, deny my progress in healing, and make me resent the whole happy, smiley world that apparently everyone but me can see.
Is there anything I can do to make my brain shut up, or at least pipe down with all the negativity?
I'll tell you what doesn't work for me: daily affirmations. My brain tells me these are lies and that I shouldn't believe them. I can't look into a mirror and repeat five times, "I am a good, worthwhile person" or "I deserve happiness" or "I will overcome my problems." It's like the problem of seeing cheery, encouraging memes on the internet, only having to inflict them on myself. If anything, they make me feel worse.
If these sorts of things work for you, fine. I've no objection. I won't make fun of you. I'm truly glad you've found something that helps you.
They just don't work for me.
So what can I do?
I have gleaned two helpful hints from my psychotherapist. Both are visualizations, and both are metaphors. And both involve animals. (They are variations on a technique called "thought stopping," which is simpler and more direct. But I find visualizations easier to remember and do. I love metaphors.)
The first comes from a mindfulness meditation that Dr. B. asked me to try. I'm not much good at meditation, because of both my intrusive thoughts and my anxiety. Sitting still for that long is difficult, and so is emptying my mind of thoughts to concentrate on my breathing, for example.
The narration that guided the meditation had a solution for this. When your mind wanders and your thoughts drift off to somewhere else, think of them as puppies that wander away when you're trying to teach them something. Gently corral them and nudge them back in the right direction. You don't have to panic and shout, "There they go!" and run off after them. You just give them a little push toward where you want them to go. If they wander again, do the same thing. "What about the mortgage payment? Come back, little puppy. Over here."
The other technique is for the kind of bad thoughts that I often get: anti-affirmations or negatives that deny any suggestion of peace or happiness or accomplishment. For these, Dr. B passed along an idea that another client had given her. Imagine that your bad thoughts are naughty cats, who jump on the kitchen table or try to go fishing in your aquarium. Then imagine spraying the bad thought (cat) with a bottle of water to make it stop what it's doing and scram. "I never do anything right. Psssst! Psssst!"
When I'm profoundly depressed, I doubt even these clever dodges will work, though I'm certainly going to try them. But when I'm just starting on the slide down, I predict they'll be just the thing to trick my brain into submission.
Take that, brain! Psssst! Psssst!


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Yesterday I was discussing refactoring priorities with a colleague who's a brilliant engineer, and I happened to mention my strong desire for smaller files in our codebase. I told him that I thought .h and .cpp (or .py or .java or .whatever) files with thousands of lines were a problem.
He asked me why.
He told me that he wasn't opposed to the idea, but he always felt like it was more of a stylistic choice than a true imperative for good code. And he was curious to see if I could convince him differently.
After I pondered his question for a while, I realized that some of my opinion really is traceable to prejudice. I usually use IDEs instead of vim/emacs, and I think that promotes click-back-and-forth-and-hyperlink-in-many-little-files instead of open-a-big-file-and-scroll. My compatriots that are more console-centric are just as smart and effective–maybe more. So I'll write that part off.
However, I also found some arguments for the small-file principle that feel more substantive. Small files are your friends.
Named scopes and cognitive complexity
The case for small functions is more discussed than the case for small files, and it has been made by almost every luminary in computer science. My colleague immediately conceded it, and I won't repeat it here–but I will claim that many of the same arguments apply to files as well, because files as well as functions are an important named scope in software development. This in turn suggests some constraints on files with respect to cognitive complexity.
Studies of memory and human attention consistently demonstrate that we think best about small sets. This fact is reflected by the amount of detail visible within any given named scope, both in programming and in other thought tasks. How many top-level menus in the average application? Colors in most cultures' divisions of the rainbow? Parameters in an easy-to-understand function? Sections in the average book store? Steps in easy-to-follow driving directions? (There's a whole field called cognitive ergonomics that explores why these questions always have similar answers.)
How many functions should we put in a reasonable file?
For me, 2 or 5 or 10 feels tractable. 50 feels excessive.
If a "good function" also respects the cognitive complexity constraints of the human brain–not being too big to read in a screen or two, for example–then you end up with a reasonable upper boundary on file sizes of, maybe, 500 or 1000 lines. (See Steve Yegge's insightful rant about code size being an engineer's worst enemy. He focuses on codebase size, but much of what he says applies just as well at the next level down.)
I suppose that this argument is weakened by the features of some IDEs, which collapse tangential code blocks, display treeviews of functions, and support lots of hypertext-style navigation. But not all programmers use the same IDEs, and not all interactions with code are IDE-driven; file size remains relevant. There's a reason why C# created partial classes to improve on java's lump-it-all-in-a-single-file constraint…
When humans try to remember more than their brains can fit, stuff falls out. Big files mean that coders have to mentally model relationships between stuff that's separated by way too much screen real estate. This is a recipe for bugs. It is also a serious impediment to learnability.
Loose coupling and encapsulation
Files are a natural unit of coupling. In most programming languages, you can declare a construct (a variable, an internal function, or class) within a file, and have that construct be invisible to the outside world. This means there is a built-in temptation for functions and classes to bind more tightly when they're in the same file, because they have access to common but private knowledge. By breaking large files apart, you remove the temptation, break unnecessary dependencies, and promote looser coupling.
Another way to say this is that file boundaries are an encapsulation barrier. Use them to hide data. (See my recent post about encapsulation as a simplicity strategy.)
Code reuse and testability
A consequence of files hiding data is that when you have a function that might be useful in a dozen different modules, but the function is buried in a large file with lots of dependencies extraneous to that function, reuse and testability are both frustrated. If the function is in a file of its own, it's more discoverable, and it's reusable and testable without extra baggage.
Link optimization
A C/C++ corollary to the file boundary issue has to do with linkers and binary sizes. In many cases, linkers remove unused functions at compilation unit level, rather than at the individual function level. A .c or .cpp file is either in or out, as a unit. This means that if you have a .cpp file with 50 functions in it, and you call only 1 of them, all 50 get linked into the final binary. The result is bloated binaries. So: smaller .cpp files ==> smaller binaries. (Before you flame me about linker optimizations, I will admit that some linkers get more granular, depending on which switches you use. But it's surprising how hard it is to do better than what I've described. Experiment and comment with your results.)
Counter Argument
I suppose you could argue that by making lots of small files, you're creating more complexity in directories, in makefiles or projects, and so forth. Is 250 files in a folder worse than 15? Doesn't that violate the "cognitive complexity" guideline above?
My comeback is: use packages or subdirectories or libraries (another level of management). You can't subdivide forever, but you don't need to.
The bottom line for me is experiential, not theoretical. I nearly always have cruddy experiences in code bases where large files are common. Small files don't guarantee pleasant and productive work, but big ones seem to go hand-in-hand with other problems. I find it telling that codebases with big files are also codebases where people lament the lack of comments the most, for example. Over the years, I've become convinced that a simple rule of thumb about keeping files small will pay off more handsomely than almost any other coding best practice.
Action Item
Leave a comment to tell me what you think. Am I making a mountain out of a molehill? Or do you feel strongly about small file sizes as well? Have I omitted any important pros and cons from the discussion?
Related articles
- Lecture Two: Interactive Design (sinemasite.wordpress.com)
- We know when we're being lazy thinkers: Human thinkers are conscious cognitive misers (sciencedaily.com)


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Enjoy this powerful, clear and concise talk by John Hagelin at TEDxWomen 2012 in The Paley Center for Media, Washington, DC. The theme of the 2-day conference was The Space Between. Dr. Hagelin's PowerPoint presentation highlighted meditation as a powerful tool for health, education and post-traumatic stress. He concluded his presentation with a short video of how people's stressed lives were transformed by the Transcendental Meditation technique. These at-risk groups were able to learn TM through scholarships from the David Lynch Foundation. Dr. Hagelin's concluding remarks beautifully summed up the saliant point of his talk delivered in Session Two, Saturday morning, Dec 1, 2012, published Dec 4, 2012 by TEDxTalks: "The Space Between" –TED Conference Explores the Value of Meditation.
"Medically, scientifically, the most powerful antidote to stress, and the key to optimal brain functioning, is to transcend." — John Hagelin.
John Hagelin, Ph.D., is a world-renowned quantum physicist, science and public policy expert, educator, author, and leading proponent of peace.
Dr. Hagelin has conducted pioneering research at CERN (the European Center for Particle Physics) and SLAC (the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center). He is responsible for the development of a highly successful Grand Unified Field Theory based on the superstring—a theory that was featured in a cover story of Discover magazine.
In addition, Dr. Hagelin is one of the world's preeminent researchers on the effects of meditation on brain development, and the use of meditation to address critical problems in the field of education, rehabilitation, and post-traumatic stress.
Dr. Hagelin is a recipient of the prestigious Kilby Award, which recognizes scientists who have made "major contributions to society through their applied research in the fields of science and technology." The award recognized Dr. Hagelin as "a scientist in the tradition of Einstein, Jeans, Bohr and Eddington."
Dr. Hagelin has appeared often on ABC's Nightline and Politically Incorrect, NBC's Meet the Press, CNN's Larry King Live!, and other programs. He has been regularly featured in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and other major metropolitan newspapers.
TEDxWomen was curated and produced by The Paley Center for Media. In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)
Also see The Power of The Collective, by John Hagelin | John Hagelin — "Only Higher Consciousness Can Transform Our World" — Beyond Awakening Blog | Conscious TV: John Hagelin – The Core of Nature | John Hagelin, Ph.D., Speaks on the Nature of Consciousness and the Universe
Tags: biological age, brain develoopment, David Lynch Foundation, education, health, heart attack, increased brain coherence, John Hagelin, meditation, meditation improves health, Post-Traumatic Stress, PTS, samadhi, stress, stroke, TEDx, TEDxWomen2012, Transcendental Meditation, transcending, Unified Field, unity and diversity