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Advanced Search
Microsoft developed technology for people to pay by the hour to use
a computer in their own homes.
The technology, called FlexGo, will be used as part of efforts to sell computers
to lower-income consumers in developing countries, where Microsoft is eager
to find new money-making opportunities but is battling software piracy and other
Microsoft, working with computer maker Lenovo Group Ltd. and
others, plans to launch a second trial of the FlexGo plan in Brazil beginning
Monday. In the next 90 days, it will launch in Mexico, China, Russia and India.
The program will generally work like this: a user will pay for about half the
cost of the computer upfront, and then will purchase pre-paid cards to get hourly
access to the computer at home. If the pre-paid card runs out and the user doesn't
buy more hours, the computer stops working until the user buys another card.
The pre-paid hours will go toward paying off the computer, said Will Poole,
a senior vice president in charge of Microsoft's market expansion group. The
financing models and interest rates will vary depending on the market, so he
couldn't say how much more than the retail price the user will end up paying.
The users will need at least occasional dial-up Internet access to participate
in the program. It will initially feature mid-range PCs running the consumer
version of Windows. But Poole said it also may
eventually include other models, such as those using Microsoft's scaled-back
Windows XP Starter Edition or higher-end ones running a media-centric version
of Windows.
Microsoft also will work with telecommunication companies in several countries
to offer computers via subscription.
Microsoft will make the same amount of money off these models as it does with
traditional sales, Poole said.
FlexGo is one of several ways Microsoft has tried in recent years to make more
money in emerging markets, where it sees potential to increase revenue as more
developed markets for Windows grow saturated.
Users of Microsoft 365 services, especially the Outlook on the Web App, experienced a service disruption on Monday, June 5.
Microsoft Teams will be receiving new and updated features, including support for its AI-powered Designer tool.
Windows 11 users are getting new features, which are expected to arrive at latest in July, per a Microsoft announcement this week.
The Microsoft Edge browser is getting lots of enhancements, as announced this week at Microsoft Build.
More Partner Guides
More Webcasts
More White Papers


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Don't Forget Green Food Wraps
August 28, 2008 by Kate Heyhoe · Comments Off on Don't Forget Green Food Wraps
(and affordable organics and pet food, too)
Brown bag lunches, wrapping up turkey leftovers, fall potlucks and festive tailgatings ramp up our use of plastic wrap, storage bags, trash bags, and paper products—all of which have greener options these days. But some can be pricey. Natural Value makes a full line of planet-friendly products at affordable prices, including plastic wrap and storage bags with no plasticizers or PVCs, unbleached recycled lunch bags, unbleached waxed paper bags, recycled paper products, home-compostable plates, and a full line of detergents, scrubbers, baby wipes, and trash bags with eco-positive aspects. They even make unbleached parchment paper (gourmet cooks listen up!). The Natural Value brand sells organic foods ranging from coconut milk from pasta to popcorn; some are also kosher. Got cats? Their cat food contains no preservatives, byproducts or coloring. Check out these products:
Buy Natural Value Plastic Wrap
Buy Natural Value Walnut Scrubber Sponge

subset: commoncrawl


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Home Buying Process
Buying a home is a big step! Whether you're buying your first home, your dream home, or your tenth investment property, yours will be a big investment. I know how important this is to you. And I have an army of experts to make sure we find the perfect property for your unique circumstances.
Finding the perfect property is just one way I can help you with your real estate purchase. As real estate broker, I have ongoing access to experts in every related field from lending to relocation. I won't rest until I have taken you through every step of the buying process. It's my gift and my guarantee to you.
Because this is our neighbourhood also, I can provide you with detailed information about our communities and cities. I have a clear understanding of the local market, and an excellent inventory of homes. I also have full access to our Multiple Listing Service (MLS) so you can shop online from the comfort of your own home. Make a list of the homes you want to see and we'll tour them together.
The home buying process may seem complex, but I'll make it easy for you. I will help you:
- identify your priorities
- understand the market
- research different communities
- apply for financing
- understand the seller's responsibilities
- search for properties
- complete and present the Agreement of Purchase and Sale
- counteroffer until the deal is just right
- conduct a home inspection As our client, you will have all the benefits offered by professional realtors.


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Note: This legal notice (Impressum) is a requirement of the German Act for Telemedia Services (Telemediengesetz).
The provider of the Europa-Institut, International Law School, is Saarland University as a public corporation. The university is represented by its president, Manfred Schmitt.
Regulatory authority: Saarland State Chancellery
Saarland University
Saarbrücken Campus
66123 Saarbrücken
Phone: +49 681 302-0
Fax: +49 681 302-2500
E-mail: postzentrale(at)univw.uni-saarland.de
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Insofar as this server contains journalistic or edited content in which textual or pictorial material from periodical printed matter is reproduced either entirely or in part, or in which texts are disseminated periodically, responsibility for such content, within the meaning of Paragraph 55(2) of the German Interstate Broadcasting Agreement (RStV), lies with the president of Saarland University, Campus, 66123 Saarbrücken, Germany.


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You are currently browsing the tag archive for the 'Stephen King' tag.
I've been crying since I was eight years old. Blame Lurlene McDaniel. I do.
In the summer of 1987, I found death on a shelf at the Lee County Library in Sanford, North Carolina. I had been looking for those pre-teen romance novels, the ones where boys didn't have naughty intentions and girls said no to drugs even in the midst of the popular kids. I had devoured these sorts of books all summer and had finally exhausted the library's moderate selection. So, as any other little girl would do, I began perusing books for the coolest, hippest teenage girls on the cover, the girls I wanted to be.
It was time to go and I was desperate to find something to read. By chance (or was it?), I saw a really pretty blond girl, whose hair was crimped and massive, sitting with her mother. I hastily picked up the book and ran to the check out.
Later, I examined the book more closely. The book was called Mother, Please Don't Die. Which, of course, meant Mother was, in fact, going to die (but I wasn't a savvy reader back then so I held out hope things would end well). The book followed a girl's journey through her mother's dying and her own grief as well as the difficult transition from being a little girl to being a teenager. Megan made sense of her mom's worsening symptoms as best she could as a young girl; she told me about the terrible pressure and the anger bubbled to the surface at baseball practice, resulting in her consequent suspension. After her sister's wedding, Megan sat with her mother and they had the first truly frank conversation about death that I had ever read; Mother was not going to be there for Megan's wedding. She was dying.
And when she did die, my heart was shattered and I sobbed out loud. I've been reading and sobbing ever since. I developed a voracious appetite for the dying genre. Through my middle and high school years, I learned about living with diabetes, juvenile arthritis, kidney failure, and AIDs. I felt enlightened with each page. I groped for all the empathetic artifacts in the words that were written. I began to live with all of these hardships. I felt I knew what it was like.
The year before, 1986, had been a bad year. In January, my grandfather died of lung cancer. It was the first death I'd experienced. It was scary flying from North Carolina to Arkansas, only to see a dead body, dressed in blue and not breathing in a wooden bed. Two weeks later, I sat forward with the rest of my class, eyes glued to the television as the Challenger exploded and everyone on board was killed. They sent school counselors around to speak to us about dying and grief. I felt terrible for the teacher on the Challenger, but I cried terrible, painful tears for my grandfather.
Weeks later, I randomly asked my mother if she had had any other children before my brother and me one night before our bath. She hesitated and told us she had given birth to a little girl when she had been previously married, but the girl had died when she was a toddler from cancer. I nodded and soon forgot about it, as children will. It wasn't long before my subconscious mind kicked in and I began to wonder if I had cancer, too, and asked my mother if I was going to die. Months I asked her and for months I must have drove a stake in her heart.
Little girls don't understand these sorts of things. I didn't. By the time I held a copy of Mother, Please Don't Die in my hands, I needed to read about grief. The only problem is I never stopped grieving. The reading and the grieving is a question of insignificance; no matter if the chicken came before the egg, the chicken and the egg exist.
When I was eighteen, a very receptive former teacher gave me Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt as a graduation gift. Since then, it's the real stories of laughter and pain that have touched me the most. Into Thin Air. Devil's Knot. Young Men and Fire. Books about the Holocaust, 9/11, surviving freak accidents, OCD, alcoholism, depression. The stories are compelling but they are most important to me as conduits for processing my own life (and grief).
In a nutshell, I read books that are too sad for other people. A book is deemed good if I cry. It is deemed brilliant if I can still sob thinking about it a year later. There are many brilliant writers out there.
Right now, The Dark Tower: the Gunslinger is impatiently waiting on my bedside stand for me to finish it. The sojourn will be short and I will soon return to form. Stacked in the corner are my standard fair, books about the Taliban, mental illness, murder, the Mormon lifestyle…all await me. I can only think greedily of the sobs I am soon to cry.
I can't help but think I've made Lurlene proud.
Tiny snowflake tears make me want to vomit joy.
That's close to a pleasant thought I had the other day.
Dear readers, I have missed you. I'm not feeling profound or witty or particularly inspired, but Bryan says the show must go on.
I will give you tidbits of information because I know you enjoy bulleted lists as much as I do:
• I have a partner in instability and to that person I say, stability is soooo passé.
• I'm back to reading Stephen King because he's very comforting to me. The Dark Tower: the Gunslinger.
• I wear a black toboggan with a snowflake puff on the top both indoors and outdoors these days. Keeps my crazy contained. It's also cold as fuck.
• I met a guy who was PERFECT for me. Until I said Howdy-do. But then he came back around. I didn't answer one phone call and he blocked me from texting him. So I'm back to keeping myself occupied with men who are not perfect for me in any way.
• 31 seems like a good age to be. 30 was not. 2009 was not a good year.


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By William Hudson and Elizabeth Cohen
(CNN) — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a new prescription diet drug called Qsymia on Tuesday. The medication produced dramatic weight loss in clinical trials, but some are concerned over potential side effects, including increased heart rate, birth defects and other issues.
Qsymia (pronounced kyoo-SIM-ee-uh) is the second diet drug approved this year. The FDA approved a weight-loss pill called Belviq on June 27.
Qsymia had been known as Qnexa until its approval. The FDA asked the company to change the name to avoid confusion with another drug on the market, according to the company.
Patients in clinical trials experienced more dramatic weight loss with Qsymia than with Belviq. On Qsymia, patients went from an average 227 pounds to 204 pounds; on Belviq, the average weight dropped from 220 to 207.
Some consumer advocates worry that the weight loss comes with a price. Some patients in the clinical trial suffered an increased heart rate and a condition called metabolic acidosis, which can lead to hyperventilation, fatigue and anorexia.
Concerns have also been raised about birth defects. One of the ingredients in Qsymia is topiramate, an anti-convulsant that has been linked to birth defects such as cleft lip and cleft palate in babies born to women who have taken it for migraines or seizures. Qsymia's other ingredient is phentermine, an appetite suppressant.
"Our belief is that women will be invited to compelling advertising and marketing messages to experiment on themselves with a drug that has some effectiveness with healthy weight loss but possible serious risks," said Cindy Pearson, executive director of the National Women's Health Network.
Qsymia's manufacturer, Vivus Inc., says that the drug helped lower blood pressure and cholesterol levels in obese people and that people taking it were less likely to get Type 2 diabetes.
"Obesity is not being adequately addressed by diet and lifestyle changes or currently available therapies," the company said. "The need for new options is urgent, particularly nonsurgical options."
The FDA approved Qsymia only for obese people or for overweight people with a body mass index greater than 27 who also suffer from weight-related conditions like hypertension and diabetes.
Doctors are free to prescribe the drug to anyone, however, and there are concerns that physicians will open "pill mills" and prescribe Qsymia to people who just want to lose a few pounds. That's what happened in the 1990s with fen-phen, another diet drug combination that includes phentermine.
An FDA advisory committee voted against Qsymia's approval in 2010. The panel recommended the drug's approval with a 20-2 vote in February, after Vivus proposed a risk management program to limit Qsymia's distribution and published additional results from one of its three clinical trials.
Vivus will at first offer the pill only through mail order, so doctors can't sell it directly, said Dr. Barbara Troupin, Vivus' vice president of scientific communications and risk management.
"There will not be dispensing from doctors' offices," she said. "Seeing that issue and what has happened in fad and diet drugs in the past, that is not a path that we're going to be taking."
The 4,430 overweight and obese patients in the Qsymia studies experienced various levels of weight loss. About half of patients on the recommended dose lost 10% of their weight, while four-fifths lost 5%. That amounts to about 12 pounds for a 227-pound person.
Meg Evans, one of the patients, started out at 230 pounds and lost 48 pounds her first year on the drug and another two pounds the second year.
"I loved it," she said. "I wasn't hungry. I almost had to remind myself to eat."
At 5 feet 9 inches tall, Evans, now 63, describes herself as having been "Twiggy-like" in college, weighing 120 pounds. Then she gained weight after having four children. An avid cook and eater, she said the drug made it easier to resist tempting foods.
"If I saw a chocolate chip cookie, it was easy enough for me to say, 'I'm not really hungry. I can pass on it,' " Evans said.
She said the weight came off gradually, about four pounds a month, and her blood pressure went down almost immediately.
Despite the pill's apparent ability to help people lose weight, some critics expressed concerns because of the possible side effects.
"I believe that if the public were to 'buy' (Qsymia) after FDA approval, it would run the risk of severe, even fatal, consequences from another diet lemon," Dr. Michael Lauer writes in Annals of Internal Medicine, also noting that the drug led to a slight increase in heart rates.
In February, Lauer was one of two FDA advisory committee members who voted against Qsymia's approval.
The FDA and Vivus both acknowledge that the three clinical trials meant to measure Qsymia's safety and effectiveness were not designed to properly assess cardiovascular risk.
Vivus said a study on the drug's cardiovascular effects will be done after the drug's approval.
Despite the label's warning that women of childbearing age should use birth control while on Qsymia, there are concerns that women will still get pregnant while on the drug.
In the drug-maker's two-year clinical trial, 34 women on Qsymia became pregnant, even though they were told repeatedly to use contraception. No birth defects happened in those pregnancies, according to the company.
Previous clinical trials of topiramate, one of the ingredients in Qsymia, have shown a risk of about five birth defects for every 1,000 pregnancies.
Comparing the anti-obesity drug to treatments for other chronic diseases, Troupin said patients will probably need to continue taking Qsymia long-term, though the new drug is not expected to be widely covered by health insurance plans.
Evans, the patient who lost 50 pounds on the drug, said she has gained back about 20 pounds since the clinical trial ended two years ago and looks forward to going on Qsymia once it's approved, even though it can have side effects.
"There are side effects to everything," she said.
She added that the drug wasn't the only reason she lost weight. Weekly counseling on nutrition and exercise were a big factor, too. The counselor helped her change her diet — choosing a salad for lunch instead of a burger, forgoing pasta and potatoes at dinner — and encouraged her to walk a few times a week in addition to her regular exercise as goalie in a women's soccer league.
"Before the medicine, I had been telling the girls they'd have to find a new goalie, because I couldn't dive for the ball like I did before," she said. "Then I lost the weight, and I was diving and bouncing back up and having a great old time again."


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If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. – (Romans 12:18, NIV)
Do the best you can to live in peace with everyone. – (Romans 12:18, ERV)
Don't quarrel with anyone. Be at peace with everyone, just as much as possible. – (Romans 12:18, TLB)
Peace is a most pleasant space to dwell. As we release the right to retaliate in our own moments of hurt or frustration and give it to God, peace enters in. God calls us to react in the opposite spirit of those who come against us, as so often a simple extension of kindness in a person's moment of ugly, can diffuse the heat that is driving the acting out, and bring change. The evidence of transformation is the peace that becomes present in the process. If we love as we are called to love, peace is one of the clear indicators that His Spirit is producing fruit in and through our lives. Peace, patience, gentleness, faithfulness, kindness, goodness, and self-control, all are grown and shown as we seek to love according to God's call. May we do our best to live at peace with everyone, depending on Christ to equip us to love as He loves.
Mom is doing well. When we spoke last evening, much of our conversation was reminiscing about my boys, as they are now six days away from their eighteenth birthday. It was sweet to remember the series of events leading up to their arrival, and the weeks that followed. What amazed me, was that Mom wasn't really word searching at all. She just spoke with joy and pride, as she remembered her grandsons. Mom is one of the people in my life who has modeled how to be at peace with everyone, in as much as it is possible. Wherever she goes, she is kind and people want to be near her. God's goodness and grace shine from the inside out, and His light in her draws people in.
Let the peace of Christ,
Come and fill our hearts;
So we may go forth,
And know where to start.
As we come know peace,
We too can learn share;
A love that gives grace,
For He hears our prayers.
Wherever we can,
May we offer peace;
God's love extended,
Gives unrest release.
Dear Heavenly Father, thank You that You call us to live at peace with everyone. Thank You that You do not stop there, but rather You give us specific directives to bless and rejoice, give and to love, and to not repay evil nor take revenge. Forgive us for the times that we have worried more about being right that doing right. Teach us to listen to Your leading in all things and at all times. Show us how to live at peace with everyone around us through living out a life of loving like You. May many come into a lasting relationship with You, Lord. Be glorified O God, as we trust You to show us how to live at peace with those around us. Amen.
© Shannon Elizabeth Grabrick and Revelations in Writing, May 2011 – present
The Lord gives strength to His people; the Lord blesses His people with peace. – Psalm 29:11


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Search Constraints
Filtering by: Contributor Vaughan, Patrick, active 2010, Donor Remove constraint Contributor: Vaughan, Patrick, active 2010, Donor Creator Longworth-Dames, Francis, 1789-1863, Author Remove constraint Creator: Longworth-Dames, Francis, 1789-1863, Author Resource type text Remove constraint Resource type: text Subject Geneva (Switzerland) Remove constraint Subject: Geneva (Switzerland) Subject Ireland--Description and travel Remove constraint Subject: Ireland--Description and travel Title Commonplace book. Volume 3: 1824-1827: folio 121 to 145v Remove constraint Title: Commonplace book. Volume 3: 1824-1827: folio 121 to 145v


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New Jersey Association of Licensed Professional Home Inspectors
The New Jersey Association of Licensed Professional Home Inspectors, Inc. (NJ-ALPHI) is dedicated to promoting the professional practice of home inspection in New Jersey, and providing an open forum for all involved in the home inspection profession. Our goal is to provide the New Jersey home inspector community with a united voice in New Jersey.
NJ-ALPHI Mission
NJ-ALPHI welcomes all who are involved in the home inspection industry to participate in our association.
NJ-ALPHI was formed to create an inclusive, broad based association of all stakeholders in the home inspection profession including licensed home inspectors, students, trainees, non inspector staff of home inspection companies, and companies affiliated with the home inspection profession.
NJ-ALPHI is not competing with any existing local and national home inspector associations. We welcome all members of other organizations to join in this common forum for the home inspection profession of New Jersey. Many of our members are also members of other associations.
NJ-ALPHI will use the strength of a broad base of home inspectors to develop opportunities and benefits for home inspectors, and present a united voice for the home inspectors in New Jersey.


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Last weekend, this weekend and next weekend Steel Magnolias is playing at the Kaleidoscope Theatre in Lynn Haven and we have two free tickets that will go to one lucky winner. We've been sitting on these tickets all week, but this is the first chance I've had to get them up here. So, we'll do the drawing on Wednesday of next week, you can pick up the tickets after that for next weekend's performance.
So, like other contests, all you have to do to be considered an entrant is post a comment in the comment section below. That's it! There is no entry form or anything fancy. . . just post a comment and you'll be considered an entrant to this contest.
These tickets are general admission tickets to the Steel Magnolias production being put on by the Kaleidoscope Theatre, which is located in Lynn Haven. The production is running this weekend (22nd, 23rd, and the 24th) and next weekend (29th, 30th, and the 31st). The show times are 2 pm and 7:30 pm. For more information or to make a reservation, call 850-265-3226 or visit their website.
- Each entrant can enter once and only once (we can verify this by ip AND cookies) and must use a valid first name and email address.
- Contest begins when this post is published and ends on Wednesday October 27th, 2010 at 12 noon CST. We'll choose the winners later that day.
- There will be 1 winner total.
- By entering you are opting in to receive future newsletters and emails from PCBDaily and CYber SYtes and you are opening yourself up to the greatest resource for news and information Panama City Beach has to offer.
- If you are selected and you do not respond to our email notifying you of winning within 23 hours of the close of the contest, then we reserve the right to award the prize to another entrant.
- This giveaway is open to anyone in the continental United States. If you win, you will be solely responsible for making arrangements with CYber SYtes to redeem your prize. Or depending on the prize, we may be willing to mail your prize to you, so long as you say please, nicely.
- Read full rules here.


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Baseball and Football is the only George Carlin humor that I love. "I hope I'll be safe at home. Safe at home!"
Who's on First never grows old and is the inspiration for our family answer to any confusing question, "Third base!"
What videos make you laugh? Please share in the comments. Thank you!
Safe at home ~~~~~~~~ Angie Mc


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allowance, attack, bankrupt, benefit, bishop, catholic, claimant count, Coalition, Conservative, Customs, David Cameron, death, debt, deficit, Department, destitute, destitution, dole, DWP, employment, ESA, evidence, expense, fraud, government, health, HM Revenue, hmrc, holiday, hope, hunger, Iain Duncan Smith, IB, IDS, Incapacity Benefit, Job Centre Plus, jobseeker, long term economic plan, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, mission, moral, mortality, national Statistics, office, ONS, opportunity, overpaid, overpayment, pension, Pensions, people, politics, punitive, purpose, Reform, responsibility, returned to unit, right, RTU, safety net, sanction, self employ, social security, support, Tories, Tory, travel, Universal Credit, Vincent Nichols, Vox Political, welfare, Westminster, work, Workfare, Working Tax Credit
When David Cameron stands up in all his hypocrisy and tells you that tearing apart the basic safety net that guaranteed people would not be left in hunger or destitution is part of his "moral mission", even die-hard Tories should agree that the country has taken a turn for the worse.
When he defends an administration that has become so punitive that applicants who don't get it right have to wait without food for months at a time, by claiming he is doing "what is right", even die-hard Tories should agree that the man who claims he is Prime Minister has diverged from reality.
That is precisely what he has done, and you can bet that the Tory diehards will quietly go along with it because they think it is far better for other people to lose their lives than it is for their government to lose face.
Cameron has been responding after the Catholic Bishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols, delivered a vehement attack on the social security "reforms" being forced on the country's most vulnerable people by Iain Duncan Smith.
In the Daily Telegraph, Cameron smarmed: "Our long-term economic plan for Britain is not just about doing what we can afford, it is also about doing what is right… Nowhere is that more true than in welfare. For me the moral case for welfare reform is every bit as important as making the numbers add up.
"We are in the middle of a long and difficult journey turning our country around," Cameron said. "That means difficult decisions to get our deficit down, making sure that the debts of this generation are not our children's to inherit.
"But our welfare reforms go beyond that alone – they are about giving new purpose, new opportunity, new hope – and yes, new responsibility to people who had previously been written off with no chance.
"Seeing these reforms through is at the heart of our long-term economic plan – and it is at the heart too of our social and moral mission in politics today."
Drivel. Any evidence-based analysis will find the exact opposite. Where are the opportunities in Workfare schemes that pay only benefits, meaning travel expenses alone put claimants out of pocket, and then send jobseekers back to the dole queue so rich companies can profit further by taking on more claimants on the same terms?
How can anyone derive hope from taking responsibility for their job search, when DWP staff at Jobcentre Plus are ordered to ignore their own responsibilities in favour of harsh sanctions for invented infringements of the Jobseeker's Agreement?
And how is encouraging people to say they are self-employed, even though they have little chance of earning enough to support them and none of enjoying a holiday or a pension, different from writing them off with no chance?
Look at the new employment figures from the Office for National Statistics – the Coalition government has been making a song and dance about them ever since they came out. On the face of it, they seem reliable: In December 2013, 30.15 million people were in work of some kind, up by 396,000 from the same time the previous year; there were 2.34 million unemployed, down 161,000 from December 2012; and the Claimant Count (those on Jobseekers' Allowance) was 1.22 million in January, down 327,000 from a year earlier.
However, the number of people marked as self-employed has rocketed to a record level, totalling one in seven of the workforce. That's 4,370,000 – up 150,000 on the previous year. This is extremely suspicious, as the increase in the previous year totalled 25,000 – just one-sixth of this week's figure.
Some of these people might be genuinely self-employed and making their new business work – but all of them? In an economy where productivity hasn't increased since the Coalition took office? You'd have to be stupid to believe that.
Assuming the amount of real self-employment has increased in line with economic growth (at 1.9 per cent), that's an extra 25,475 in 2013, leaving 124,525 in limbo. Are these really self-employed? Or were they told by Jobcentre advisors to say so and claim working tax credits (as we've seen in the past), leading to a huge debt when HMRC tells them they have been claiming fraudulently and have been overpaid?
How many of the unemployed have been wiped off the books due to sanctions? We don't know, because we don't have figures up to December 2013. We do know that 897,690 sanctions were enforced in the year to September 2013. We don't know how many were for one month, how many for three months or how many for three years, but we do know that the rate was six per cent of jobseekers per month in the three months to the end of September 2013. Assuming that rate stayed solid, it suggests that 73,200 were off-benefit due to sanctions in December and should be added to the Claimant Count to give a more accurate figure.
How many of the unemployed have been wiped off the books due to Workfare? We don't know. How many are unemployed but on Universal Credit, which isn't included in the Claimant Count? We don't know – 3,610 were on it at the end of November last year, but the DWP has not divided them into those in work and those without.
David Cameron has access to all of this information, and he doesn't care. He also has access to the mortality figures for claimants of Incapacity Benefit/Employment and Support Allowance, that the DWP has been withholding from the rest of us, probably for fear of sparking an international outcry. He doesn't care about that either.
His comments are therefore doubly outrageous – not only is he claiming that his Coalition's changes are having a beneficial effect when the figures demonstrate the opposite, but he is also claiming the moral high ground when his actions are more appropriate to the populace of the Pit.
In terms of his morality, there can be only one description for him and his cronies:
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text:
Story by
Jon Russell
Jon Russell was Asia Editor for The Next Web from 2011 to 2014. Originally from the UK, he lives in Bangkok, Thailand. You can find him on T Jon Russell was Asia Editor for The Next Web from 2011 to 2014. Originally from the UK, he lives in Bangkok, Thailand. You can find him on Twitter, Angel List, LinkedIn.
Forget the film Six Degrees of Separation, a new study from Facebook and the University of Milan has shown that people in the world are better connected that ever before, with users of the social network now connected by less than five contacts.
The study, which used data taken from Facebook's 721 million active shows, shows that any two people on the site are on average separated by just 4.74 intermediate connections, as Facebook's Data team explains on its blog:
Using state-of-the-art algorithms developed at the Laboratory for Web Algorithmics of the Università degli Studi di Milano, we were able to approximate the number of hops between all pairs of individuals on Facebook.
We found that six degrees actually overstates the number of links between typical pairs of users: While 99.6% of all pairs of users are connected by paths with 5 degrees (6 hops), 92% are connected by only four degrees (5 hops).
And as Facebook has grown over the years, representing an ever larger fraction of the global population, it has become steadily more connected. The average distance in 2008 was 5.28 hops, while now it is 4.74.
Equally as interesting, the study concluded that — when looking at people living in a specific country — the average separation is as low as 3 degrees. With 84 percent of the average Facebook user's friends living in the same country as them, the social network has really brought local community closer together through its platform.
The below graph, which charts comparative analysis of the average degree of separation between Facebook users over the last three years, clearly shows that the number of connections between Facebook users increased, in line with the social network's own growth.
While it is fascinating to see how Facebook has grown into a platform that brings together local communities and networks, whilst also supporting international relationships and friends, the test conditions behind Facebook's research has its differences compared to initial study that established the 6 degrees theory, the methodology of which is explained below:
The idea was first put to the test by Stanley Milgram in the 1960's. Milgram selected 296 volunteers and asked them to dispatch a message to a specific individual, a stockholder living in the Boston suburb of Sharon, Massachusetts. The volunteers were told that they couldn't send the message directly to the target person (unless the sender knew them personally), but that they should route the message to a personal acquaintance that was more likely than the sender to know the target person.
The Internet has allowed us to connect with people in ways that were unimaginable back in the 1960s, and with that it has brought a distinction between people we know in real live, and people we know online. Though many people manage their network of friends on Facebook very carefully, it remains to be seen if we can all say that all of our Facebook friends are 'personal acquaintances'.
So while a direct comparison is a little unequal, Facebook's far larger sample size makes its research more accurate, particularly given the differences of modern relationships which be maintained from opposite sides of the world. Indeed, the fact that Facebook users are linked by an average of less than five connections is impressive, and it shows how the Internet and social media is bringing people closer together.
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Ciao, amici! This is my last book share for the year, so I'm going to do something a little different than usual. I'm choosing five books. That's right, not one, but five. Why? Two reasons:
- This might help you choose a holiday gift for friends and/or family (or even yourself).
- I want to show my SE family some love.
The Story Empire authors were quite tolerant of me this year. They filled in without a single complaint when I couldn't be here, and they put up with more rants than I care to admit to having. They also gave me sage advice. Scratch that. They give me sage advice. All the time.
These authors are all talented in their craft and have much industry wisdom to share.
To that end, I want to give back. I'm going to share (in last name alphabetical order) one book of theirs that I highly recommend. Frankly, I recommend all their books, but I'm only going to pick one for each. (I encourage you to check out all of their titles, though.)
C.S. Boyack
The title of Craig's I choose to recommend is Voyage of the Lanternfish. This is a classic pirate adventure set in a fictional land. (You can read my five-star review here.)
There are several reasons I selected this book. The characters are engaging, the plot is epic, the settings are fascinating.
But perhaps the biggest reason I chose this book is because of the root monsters. I am proud to say I'm their number one fan. They are whimsical and funny and the cleverest creature creations I've ever read. If you like the penguins from Madagascar or the minions from Despicable Me, you'll love the root monsters. I'm delighted to announce this book is the first in a series, and I'm eagerly awaiting the next installment.
Mae Clair
The book I chose to recommend of Mae's is End of Day, book two of the Hode's Hill series. While I highly recommend the entire series, I don't think you need to read them in order. Each book can serve as a stand-alone entry into the world, although reading them in order might answer minor character questions. (If you'd like to read my five-star review, you can find it here.)
End of Day is a paranormal mystery that takes place in dual timelines. Like I said, I enjoyed all three of the stories in this series, but Gabriel Vane (the protagonist of the historical timeline in this book) captured my heart.
Also, the lore involved was a fresh take on a "grim" and was positively captivating.
If you enjoy a good paranormal mystery, this is the book for you. Mae has brilliantly combined the lyrical beauty of literary fiction with the appeal of a contemporary genre that will entertain a broad spectrum of readers.
Joan Hall
The book I chose of Joan's is Unseen Motives, book one of her Driscoll Lake series. (You can read my five-star review of this book here.)
Unseen Motives, like the rest of the series, is best categorized as romantic suspense, but if romance isn't your thing, don't skip this book. To me, the romance was a bonus, but it's much more about character development than it is about the relationship. (And there are no explicit scenes.)
This was Joan's debut novel, but it doesn't read like it. The characters are well-rounded. The setting is beautifully crafted. And the plot is an intricate surprise with perfect pacing.
The bonus for me was Matt. I do love a man in uniform, and this cop captured my heart.
Fans of mystery/suspense novels won't want to miss this one.
Harmony Kent
I was really torn when I had to select Harmony's book. She has many titles across multiple genres, and I've enjoyed everything of hers I've read. But I've got to slip out of fiction genres and recommend one of her nonfiction titles, Jewel in the Mud. (You can read my five-star review of it here.)
This title is marketed under the Buddhism and New Age categories. If you aren't a Buddhist, don't let that deter you. I'm Catholic, and I found this book refreshing, inspiring, and enlightening.
This book is broken down into daily readings, so you can absorb the material in small, easy-to-digest increments. I, however, poured through it, anxious to get to the next nugget of wisdom. And believe me, there is plenty of sage advice in this book.
Once you're done, you won't want to delete it from your Kindle or bury it on your shelf. You'll find yourself going back to it again and again for a daily refresher or a much-needed pep-talk.
This is self-help at its finest, and a title you'll be glad to read (and reread, and read again).
P.H. Solomon
The title I chose from P.H.'s catalogue is The Bow of Destiny, book one of his Bow of Hart saga. (If you'd like to read my five-star review, you can find it here.)
I chose the first book in his series because these really aren't stand-alones and reading in order is the best way to truly immerse yourself in this world.
And make no mistake, you are entering a new world here.
P.H. has written a sprawling epic fantasy with fascinating characters, multi-layered plots, and vivid settings. My favorite character (if I had to pick one) is Ralda. I can't say enough about his vulnerability and relatability, but truly, all the characters were really well developed.
If you like the fantasy genre, you'll love this story.
So, that's my last book share of the year, and I've given you a bonus—five instead of one. Plenty of genres to choose from here, so there's something for everyone and anyone. And with all this talent, you can't go wrong with any (or all) of them.
Have you already read any of these? Or are you looking forward to one in particular? Let's talk about it.


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First, a Sincere Declaration of Thanks
I've spent most of my life running in circles looking for something authentic, then waiting for permission to explore it, and harshly criticizing myself when I didn't get that permission. Maybe other people have different experiences, but this has been mine, my personal through-line from childhood to the present. So I try to be as sincere as possible when I write about my frustrations and failures. Because what else can I do? While it's true that sincerity doesn't make you friends, at least it makes you the right sort of enemies. I imagine this blog post will do more of that.
Still, I try to avoid self-pity and, because of this, I usually take a long time to form opinions about what I've done or failed to do and how others have reacted. I ruminate. I turn things over, trying to see past faulty assumptions, convenient rationalizations, and other self-serving anodynes. Most people probably do this to some extent, but I think I do it more. Sometimes, it works. Other times, what I took for a true perception, for reality, eventually dissolves into just another subjective field, just another corridor of the maze that I have come to think of as my life. In a maze, you never know what the next twist will bring. Usually, it brings another twist.
With this in mind, I should begin by saying that in 2010 I came very close to ending my life. This essay is about that time, but it's not just about depression and not really about suicide. It's not a success narrative where I write about how I overcame great difficulties and am now nearing perfectibility. It's not about taking revenge on others through a misguided petty hit piece. And it's certainly not about castigating myself for the many imaginary errors I've regretted and then dismissed over the last eight years in order to keep getting up in the morning. It's a slice of life—a big, fat, ugly slice that tries to embrace the broadest range of experience in order to get closer to the truth. In this, it's a lot like an advanced non-fiction exercise.
"Advanced" because it is not easy and not something you would assign to a 17-year-old English major in an introductory writing workshop. "Non-fiction" because it's a mode of creative expression that pretends a certain degree of inviolable objectivity, even though we know that's impossible. Every memoir, no matter how fabulous, must begin implicitly or explicitly with an assertion of truth or at least with a sincere declaration of authorial good faith: "I did this. I saw this. This happened. At least, I think it happened." Rousseau's Confessions does it with style:
Whenever the last trumpet shall sound, I will present myself before the sovereign judge with this book in my hand, and loudly proclaim, thus have I acted; these were my thoughts; such was I. With equal freedom and veracity have I related what was laudable or wicked, I have concealed no crimes, added no virtues; and if I have sometimes introduced superfluous ornament, it was merely to occupy a void occasioned by defect of memory: I may have supposed that certain, which I only knew to be probable, but have never asserted as truth, a conscious falsehood.
This is my favorite passage from the first part of the book because literary historians have proven that the Confessions contains many misstatements if not deliberate falsehoods. Such graceful bald-faced prevarication is a rare and beautiful thing. But I am not so talented. And I have no plans to weigh my heart against a feather on the last day.
Instead, I will put it this way: I suspect I am not a horrible person. I have faith that I'm not even tactless. I believe my greatest defect is that I lack the imagination necessary to see several moves ahead. I lack interpersonal foresight, which has made me a poor manager of nervous egomaniacs and a terrible chess player. But I love chess. And that is a serious problem, even if I hate the high-strung pampered egomania of academic writing programs, because everything toward the end of my PhD program was just a version of that game.
Robert Greene, in the acknowledgements of The 48 Laws of Power—a book loved equally by goateed 25-year-olds with a Libertarian Bitcoin fetish and the morose IT professionals you see combing the self-help section for books on how to become an alpha male—has a similar protestation of sincerity:
I must also thank my dear friend Michiel Schwarz who was responsible for involving me in the art school Fabrika in Italy and introducing me there to Joost Elffers, my partner and producer of The 48 Laws of Power. It was in the scheming world of Fabrika that Joost and I saw the timelessness of Machiavelli and from our discussions in Venice, Italy, this book was born. . . . Finally, to those people in my life who have so skillfully used the game of power to manipulate, torture, and cause me pain over the years, I bear you no grudges and I thank you for supplying me with inspiration for The 48 Laws of Power.
If we read this carefully, we have to smile. Greene is doing what we might call an "inverted Rousseau," making the same assertion in a backwards way: this is a book about real things; therefore, I thank all those who have manipulated and tortured me for providing good material and, in the process, I declare my sincerity.
Greene puts us on notice that his book is based on subjective material that emanates from his and Elffers' lived experience, creating a Rousseau-esque escape hatch. As The 48 Laws of Power is all highly subjective (essentially a kind of implicit portrait of Greene stitched together in historical anecdotes), the value of whatever he writes defaults to his apparent sincerity ("I may have supposed that certain, which I only knew to be probable, but have never asserted as truth, a conscious falsehood"). It's not about an objective truth process. It's about rhetorical ethos.
That is wonderful because ethos might be the only sincere rhetorical mode. After logos topples from an unstable foundation of assumption, appeal to authority, and generalization; after pathos is unmasked as merely a screen of emotion recollected in tranquility; the persuasive credibility of the speaker is all that remains. In a world where absolute truth does not exist, everything is ethos. And so I construct my own ethical escape hatch.
2010 was the worst year of my life, the year after my mother died of lung cancer; the year after my first book was published; the year I got my PhD in English; the year I attended my last AWP Conference; the year I traveled to the deep South for an excruciating week-long job interview and realized the English department clichés also obtain south of the Mason-Dixon Line; the year I got very ill; the year I was admonished by my mentor for questioning the value of my degree and told to be grateful for indefinite unemployment; the year my father began another surly adolescence; the year I began to think that there was no place for me in this world. There are many years I'd relive if I could. 2010 is not one of them. But I have been told to be thankful for these experiences because they have supplied me with a lot of inspiration. As such, this writing is my sincere declaration of thanks.
You never know what the next twist in the maze will bring but, in 2009, I think I was doing as well as could be expected when I stood in front of the department graduate adviser's desk and said I needed a leave of absence to visit my mother in hospice. For some reason, that moment stands out as a prelude for the upcoming year.
The adviser, the department's resident medievalist, seemed to exist in an acid vapor of contempt for all creative writing students and their keepers. She disliked me in particular because I'd dropped her Old English seminar the previous semester and she'd taken it personally. Since I was doing a PhD with a creative dissertation (the final product would become Gravity, my first story collection), I didn't need to be in her class. But she needed me there. Or, at least, she needed to feel loved by as many students as possible.
This was the woman who would thereafter try to prevent me from graduating so that my funding would run out. This was the woman—whether due to old workplace feuds or out of resentment that there were more creative writing events on campus than dramatizations of Piers Plowman and undergraduate maypole dances—perpetually tried to block funding to the creative writing program and force out the graduate students depending on tuition waivers. Her style of chess was to kill the pawns first. Attack the supply lines, starve the more dangerous units in their fortifications, and wait for winter. Classic medieval siege tactics.
However, standing before her desk, I was barely aware of the billowing acid cloud. I was half-blind with grief. All I thought about was my mom and how I had to get back to California to see her. Looking back, I'm surprised I even had the wherewithal to stand up straight, much less ask for a leave of absence. But I was very responsible. I took everything seriously. I thought a lot about my future in academia, especially in creative writing instruction. And I felt my future depended on me contentiously following up on every detail. I was, essentially, as sincere as I have ever been in my life. I shouldn't have been that sincere.
Given my emotional state, what the adviser said to me didn't register until I'd left the building. The conversation went something like this:
"I need a leave of absence to go to California because my mother is dying of cancer."
She rolled her eyes, looked out the window as if she were considering it, sighed, then shook her head. "No can do. You only have so much funding. Your funding will not cover you for another semester."
"My mother is dying. She doesn't have long. I've completed my course work. My dissertation only needs to be approved. I don't even need any more credits."
Another sigh. More contemplating the clouds. "Well, that's really too bad. You have to be in residence or your funding will run out while you're gone. Good luck."
I stood there, trying unsuccessfully to process this. Then she rolled her eyes and asked me if there was anything else.
The grief robot turned and left her office, got on the elevator, rode it down to the bottom floor, walked out to the fountain in the center of the courtyard, and stared at the water for a long time. Only then, did he think of the graduate adviser rolling her eyes. Over the ensuing 9 years, the moment of her eye roll would be impressed in his memory as a perfect metaphor, a perfect image foreshadowing all the inspiration and gratitude to come.
The Tragedy of Not Dying
A hospice is a horrible place. It's like being given a lollipop for a bullet wound. You're bleeding out and everyone tells you to enjoy your lolly. It's cherry. It's got a smiley face. Why aren't you happy? Visiting my mother with my father there added another layer to the experience. In spite of the pain and horror of the place, in spite of watching my mother waste away in her bed, hallucinating and suffering and being afraid, I came to understand that my father's grief was different from mine. I was feeling bad for my mother. He was feeling bad for himself.
This was still 2009. My only course, aside from empty dissertation credits, was a German reading and literature seminar. The professor, a kind old man about to retire in his late 60s, loved his students the way he loved his trees—which is to say, far more than he loved the university. I asked him for advice because he was the only person I could ask. And he made it possible for me to exist in two places at once. I gave my own writing students two weeks of work and held online course meetings via Skype and I emailed my German professor my work, which made it seem like I was present. This is what allowed me to fly to California and see my mom for the last time.
In those first awful trips to the hospice, I'd naïvely hoped that my father and I could come together in our grief and support each other. Of course, this was pure fantasy since he'd always enjoyed being a father but had rarely done any fatherly things. I could count the number of times we'd gone to movies, the one thing we could do together because it involved no conversation. And there were a few other misadventures over the years where my mother badgered him into going to some school play (he stood by the door to be the first person out) or taking me fishing (we did a U-turn at the access road to the lake and went home) or camping (it rained and so we packed up in the middle of the night and left). He never beat me and he brought home a paycheck. To the best of my knowledge, he never stepped out on my mother. But he was never involved more than that; though, he lived with us in the same house—somewhat more than a housemate, somewhat less than a relative.
So my hope that he would be able, somehow, if in a manly way, to share this painful experience with me, was not based on reality. After a certain amount of talk about how sad he was, it became noticeable that he never talked about my mom. He sat by her bed, lost in his own self-pity, as the cancer ate its way through her brain and wasted her body. As she died by inches, he proceeded as usual, focusing on his own needs above all else.
I witnessed this. My wife witnessed this. But I was so aggrieved I could barely speak. Sometimes, my wife had to help me walk from the car to my mother's room. Have you ever been so upset that you can barely walk? Until you have, you won't know the feeling. When you have, you'll never forget it. It transcends description.
I focused completely on my mom. I waited for her moments of clarity. I told her I loved her. I told her the good things about my PhD program. I made jokes and she tried to laugh. One day, my great aunt—a stately old Italian woman who sounded like my late grandmother and seemed covered in the old-world charm that vanished with her generation—showed up with a peach and a kitchen knife. She cut slices and fed them to my mom with a smile on her face. Even now, as I write this, I cry a little because it was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. That kind of goodness doesn't exist much in this world.
It was a very difficult time. Two weeks later, I returned to finish my program. In one of her last moments of clarity, my mom had ordered me to go back. She didn't want me to see her die and me being in the PhD program meant a lot to her. I think she felt ashamed that she wasn't going to be around to take care of my father and me the way she always had. And knowing that I was going to get a doctorate was a relief, as if it would be the next best thing. She also had a lot of pride in her appearance and the cancer had been unkind. So when I offered to stay, she insisted that I not. About two weeks after that, my father called and said to say good-bye to her. I told her I loved her. And I think she died shortly thereafter.
I miss her every day. But this isn't about that, either. It's about the aftermath, how everything changed as a result of her death. Some people are the linchpins of their families. When they go, everything goes. That was what happened. I flew back again for her funeral. She was buried holding a photo of my father and me. It was a closed casket and I don't remember much else, just bits and pieces. I was out of my mind.
As we moved toward the Fall semester of 2010, I felt melted down and recast as a different person. I'd lost my happy thoughts. I didn't go out or talk to many people other than my wife and my program mentor. I stopped writing fiction. Most of what I did was perfunctory. But I knew I had to get my degree. Even if I collapsed afterward, I would complete the PhD.
The Reading Series
The year before, I'd allowed myself to be persuaded that working as the assistant coordinator for the university literary reading series would "look good on my resume." And I did my best as the monthly, sometimes bi-monthly, flier maker, venue securer, introducer-to-the-introducer, complaint taker, fielder-of-calls from mentally unstable bookstore proprietors, irradiated scapegoat, and general handler of said low-rung celebrity infants terribles.
Sometime before I left town for good, one of the faculty members admitted to me that the assistant coordinator position was really only supposed to entail flier making and that the professor who was getting paid to be to be doing the other things had dumped the rest on me. But by then I was so depressed that I couldn't summon the necessary outrage.
One writer wanted a per diem that wasn't in his agreement. Another wanted intel on, in his exact words, "the most fuckable students who might be around." The butch lesbian poet would only communicate with me through an intermediary because I was straight and male. The playwright was supernaturally high throughout his entire visit and had to be physically guided to the stage. The "local writer," penciled in because there was a vacancy in the schedule that month, struggled to contain her spiritual darkness through the entire event such that when I handed her the honorarium (significantly less than what the other, slightly more famous writers had received), she snatched it out of my hand, hissed a "Go fuck yourself," and then smiled broadly at an approaching faculty member. These were some of the more endearing ones.
Needless to say, it was not the greatest collection of individuals. They generally came across as worn out, mediocre, vain, full of fear, full of resentment, and perpetually on the hustle for any crumb of recognition. Calling them fools wouldn't be accurate because they were all reasonably intelligent. They simply knew the score too well, knew they should have received more for their dedication and efforts. You could see that loathsome awareness stamped on their faces. Now they were privileged to read their work to the smirking tenured faculty who hadn't hired them, a menagerie of twitchy English students, and whichever townies may have wandered in looking for free wine. It wouldn't get much better than that.
I disliked the visiting readers even though I saw myself and my fellow grad students reflected in them. Most of the people featured in the series that year hadn't been picked for life's cheer squad. They were the leftovers, the understudies, the adjuncts with slim books from presses you've never heard of. Many, it seemed, faced depression so considerable that they were pharmaceutically enhanced 100% of the time. I wondered more than once how they could continue to produce writing. The greatest irony was that most of them had already gone further in their careers than anyone currently in my PhD program stood to go.
There were a few exceptions, a few graceful and brilliant souls who'd agreed to come as personal favors to various faculty members. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention them as well as the moments of hilarity you find in every English department. 2010 wasn't all doom and gloom, just most of it.
The second time I was told to go fuck myself was around 3 AM on a Sunday morning toward the end of Fall semester. My insomnia had become pretty dependable at that point and I was already awake when the phone rang. I got out of bed, told my wife I had no idea who it was, and shuffled into our tiny living room, where I sat on the couch and listened to the breather on the line. He was panting hard. I thought it was quaint that in this day and age people still gave breather-masturbator calls. The caller ID came up with nothing.
When he realized I'd said hello and was listening, he rumbled out a "Go fuck yourself" and hung up. I sat in the dark for a while, thinking about the human condition. Then he called back. It was F, one of the few grad students who'd been asked to read in the series. He mumbled some things and then shouted that he thought I had a problem and should get help. He was drunk off his ass.
I asked him why he felt that way and he broke it down for me. F had read with his wife, you see, and I'd made the mistake of introducing him before her. Neither of them were ever going to get over it. Plus, she was a Navajo princess and I'd introduced them as husband and wife. You don't do that to a Navajo princess. Didn't I fucking know that? What was wrong with my head?
"Princess? Really? I thought you guys were from Pittsburgh."
He hung up again and didn't speak to me until I ran into him at the AWP Conference a few months later—where he was keyed up and sweaty, slapping me on the back, telling me how he'd been featured in a very cool spontaneous reading held on one of the convention center's escalators that drew an enormous crowd. Now he had a pocket of phone numbers to network. Amazing. He didn't remember a thing about calling me in the dark and telling me what I could go do with myself.
Or maybe he'd repressed that memory along with his courtship of the Navajo princess, that hard winter living as tribe's writer, the majestic swish of his khakis as he hunted buffalo, armed only with an unpublished manuscript. I haven't seen him or heard a thing about him since the conference, but I suspect he's either got tenure by now or he's back in Pennsylvania selling pre-loved automobiles like it's a poetry slam.
The End, My Friend
Depression is a very idiosyncratic and personalized illness. But those who have it tend to have a few things in common, one of which is that depression can be cumulative in its gravity and magnitude. Today, you're not feeling good. Tomorrow, you can't get out of bed. The day after that, you're standing on a chair with a vacuum cleaner cord around your neck and you think you're the only one in the history of the world who's endured such a linear degeneration. Feeling alone is a big part of it.
I felt alone until I discovered Darkness Visible by William Styron and recognized a lot of what I'd been going through. I don't know how I found the book, whether it was in the fiction section of the library where I sometimes studied or whether I encountered it in a used bookstore or somewhere else. While it wouldn't be true to claim that the book "saved" me, I can say it helped enough to get me down off the chair, multiple chairs, actually.
Reading it was an emergency measure, but it was something I could depend on. I didn't talk about my feelings. I've never been very good at that, not even with my loved ones. But I could read someone else talking about his. And since I loved Styron's fiction, I felt like I could trust him. If he said it, I could accept it enough to be able to think about it. And that was usually all it took for me to keep going.
By Spring break, I was prepared to submit my dissertation. I missed my mom horribly and my wife and I returned to California to take care of the empty house where all my mother's things sat gathering dust. My father wouldn't go near the place. When he wasn't drunk, he was hard at work rediscovering his hormones in erratic, awkward, and desperate ways. Our relationship, never substantial to begin with, began to splinter irreparably when, out of guilt, he started to regularly criticize my mom.
He was a self-righteous Catholic for most of my life, who often amused himself by telling me to get my ass to church and that since I'd been baptized I could never not be a Catholic. But after a year of drinking, trash talking, and a pissed-drunk rape attempt on my cousin in front of me, he was ready to start up a relationship with an equally neurotic married woman who'd run after him at an event.
He confessed this to me one afternoon because I guess he couldn't confess it to his priest. Then he added that it was like a DH Lawrence love story. Then he said she was going to get a divorce from her despicable husband and they'd marry each other. Lovely. I didn't want to hear about it. I especially didn't want to hear him ask me to be his best man. I could hardly speak. It shows how detached and self-involved he was that he thought it was something he could ask me.
"What about all that Catholicism?" I remember asking. I don't remember if he answered.
Around that time, because he wouldn't help me clean out my mother's things, I'd been over at the house, crying, putting her clothes in Goodwill boxes, packing up old photo albums, doing all the things we could have done as a family. Instead, my wife helped and we did the best we could in a few days. Much was overlooked, things from my childhood, things in the garage that I really do wish I could have kept. But we only had so much time. Now I imagine my father and his new wife paid at some point to have it all carted to the dump. But I have no way of knowing, since I haven't been back in years.
I do recall taking to the gardener, who revealed that he'd had my mother making food for him right up to the point where she went into the hospital for the last time. She couldn't lie down straight in bed. So she was sleeping sitting up in a chair in order to breathe, then walking around on crutches, cooking and cleaning. According to the gardener, he screamed at her frequently. She was fucking dying and this is how he treated her. That's abuse. It's horrible fucking abuse. And my mother, who was just about a saint in every way, did her best.
My mother was a talented painter and sculptor, but he'd left her art in a shed that had a broken roof. It rained a lot that year and most of her work was ruined. I'd been standing in the backyard, looking at the shed, unable to get in because he neglected to give me the key to the deadbolt (probably because he didn't want me to see what had happened) when he called with a task for me. It was something small, something to do with getting a TV boxed up for him and cancelling the TV service that my mom had in her hospice room. I'd already taken care of it, but he spoke to me with contempt, as if I were very lazy. He said, "After all I've done for you, couldn't you take care of this one thing?"
I thought of my mother on crutches, making him breakfast. I thought of her art destroyed through neglect. I thought of my father drinking a case of my cousin's high-end champagne and then trying to fuck her in front of me. I thought of all the nasty things he said about my mother when she was gone, after he'd cried his eyes out for himself, after he blamed me for not being there when she died, after the sizeable amount of heirloom gold from old Italy that my mom wanted to come to me but that disappeared right around the time my father and his new cadaverous lady friend got a second condo in San Antonio. I thought about all these things and saw that no matter what his paycheck had been worth, no matter how much I may have cost as a child, no matter what my mom and he may have given me as a teen or a confused 20-year-old, I owed him nothing.
I felt something snap and a certain coldness overtook me. My depression had come to be replaced with something more useful: calm, thoughtful anger. We had it out. He told my wife and I we had to be out of the house. Within 48 hours, we were. I've never looked back.
Gone for Good
I got my PhD without fanfare. My wife and I went out to dinner and it was nice, just the two of us. I knew I'd miss my mentor in the program and her brilliant husband. I'd miss certain things about the university town and my own writing students, several of whom had become more like friends. But I was glad to be done—done with the degree, done with my father, done with trying to hump the dream of being an academic creative writer.
In the eight years since the day we drove south, blasting M. Ward's "Helicopter" with the windows rolled down, I've thought about 2010 quite a lot. I still get depressed. But I can cope. I've learned that it is possible and, for me, even preferable to have a life outside academia. And I've come to accept that family isn't really who raises you when you don't have a say in the matter. It's who you choose when you do.
I miss my mom every day and I write fiction every day. As of this writing, I'm working on my third collection of stories with a novel draft mostly written. I've published over 30 items in magazines, worked as a freelance writer and journalist, and lived in 9 countries. I'm healthy. I really don't have anything to complain about right now. And sometimes I even give myself permission to think I'm happy. Somewhere, there's a Navajo princess riding through the clouds over Pittsburgh, but I doubt our paths will cross again.


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Diman students shine at state skills competition
FALL RIVER — Diman students returned from the Massachusetts SkillsUSA competition held last week in Marlboro with plenty of hardware.
In fact, they gathered 49 medals, 27 of them gold medals. In all, about 3,000 students in vocational programs across the state competed.
Diman Regional Vocational Technical High School sent 95 students, who took part in competitions that showcased their skills in subjects such as dentistry, graphics communications, robotics, machinery and leadership.
"It's really treated like a sport," Karl Cabucio, who serves as an advisor for Diman's SkillsUSA team, said of the annual competition. He added that school administrators and School Committee members are very supportive of the program. "We've always had great success."
Diman's first-place finishers will have the opportunity to represent Massachusetts in the national SkillsUSA competition, to be held next month, June 23 to 27, in Kansas City, Missouri.
"We also do very well with leadership training," Cabucio said. "I think people think of a vocational contest as being just hammers and nails. But it's not. It was a pretty intense group.
"Their hard work, preparation, professionalism and maturity were excellent representations of the entire Diman community."
Similarly to how other schools display their sports medals, Diman keeps some of its national SkillsUSA gold medals on display in a case in the building, Cabucio said.
He said students are introduced to the competition early on in their academic careers at Diman, starting in their freshmen and sophomore years. Training for the competition begins about 10 months prior to the event.
In all, 147 students and staff members traveled to Marlboro for this year's event. Twenty-five of those students participated as voting delegates.
Cabucio noted that Diman has garnered the attention of the national SkillsUSA organization, with the president visiting the school in March.
"He came in with industry people and toured the school," Cabucio said, adding that he was impressed.
Cabucio said Diman's track record of success in the competition couldn't be realized without the support of the school's community and leadership.
"None of it could be done unless the School Committee, superintendent and principal are behind it," he said. " A lot of schools only have one advisor. Here many adults are volunteering hours and hours."


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Rural California schoolkids learn from fire-damaged forest
Sidney Deschenes is still haunted by the Moonlight Fire of 2007: The clouds of choking smoke that blew down from flaming mountains onto the valley that's been her home since kindergarten. The rain of embers that ignited spot fires near homes at the edge of the forest and forced her family to evacuate three times.
The trees were still smoldering, the air still acrid when Deschenes, a slim high school senior with a light-brown ponytail and a shy smile, first visited the 65,000-acre burn in California's northern Sierra Nevada. Shaken by the sight of mountainside after bleak black mountainside, she and a busload of classmates resolved to act. "What we really wanted was to fill up a truck with pinecones to sprout and replant," says Deschenes.
Instead, the students transformed that charred expanse into an outdoor laboratory, where young researchers could help scientists and land managers understand how forests recover from wildfires. It's part of a unique natural resources program designed to connect students to the land while imparting on-the-ground skills that could lead to careers in forest and watershed stewardship.
Greenville High, Deschenes' school, located about 160 miles northeast of Sacramento, is home to 125 seventh- through 12th-grade students. Teachers were already developing an experimental program the year before logging equipment sparked the Moonlight Fire. They wanted to create a curriculum that would help students relate their own rural landscape to the larger concepts of physics, math and literature. When the fire forced the school to close for four days, its value as a study area became obvious, explains science teacher Travis Rubke. Rubke, who graduated from Greenville in 1974, has helped shepherd some 40 students to the burn twice a year for the last three years: "Here was something that impacted all of the students' lives."
On a bone-chilling November morning, Deschenes and sophomore Tucker Willits scramble up a steep ash-strewn slope carrying a digital camera and a small square of whiteboard. Willits writes the time, date, elevation and geographic coordinates on the board while Deschenes focuses her lens on the bare slopes that stretch from the toes of her boots all the way to the horizon. She frames the board into a corner of the picture, then clicks. "One more shot for science," she mutters with a grin. It's the fourth time in three years Deschenes has photographed this exact vista -- one of five photo points selected to document landscape variations in the months and years after the fire.
Across the hillside, John Hindorff and Arantxa Olaizola tromp over loose lava rocks on a quarter-acre plot where 38 blackened trees loom like ghosts in a cemetery. Hindorff, a burly young linebacker, calls out observations to his diminutive partner, who jots them down on a clipboard: "Number 27 -- still standing. Top's gone. No bird nests. No wildlife. Fifty percent bark remaining." They move on to the next tree, eventually cataloging every one in the plot. Another group monitors vegetation in a 10th-acre-sized plot, recording standing trees by species, height and crown volume, along with every oak shoot, manzanita shrub and clump of grass. Other students document woody debris.
This data will go to Plumas National Forest, which manages most of the land affected by the Moonlight Fire. Forest Service officials helped Rubke develop the program; now, his students' findings will help establish a baseline for this part of the Sierra Nevada, says Mike Donald, a local district ranger. The data -- which range from how long dead trees remain standing to how soon wildlife returns --will continue to be collected by future students and will also be valuable elsewhere, he says. Scientists have long argued over whether and how much to log burned trees, but few have tackled the process of post-fire ecosystem recovery through decades, says Jerry Franklin, a professor of forest resources at University of Washington. The work the Greenville High students are doing on the Moonlight Fire will help land managers understand how fire affects ecosystems over the long term, says Norm Christensen, an ecology professor at Duke University who studies fire and other forest disturbances.
Back in Rubke's science classroom, the students review what they saw on the burn, recording their observations in journals and transferring their data to computer and hard-copy files. In their technology class, they use computer spreadsheets, tables and GIS mapping software to analyze their field data. They are looking at relationships within and between their snag and vegetation plots and trying to answer fundamental questions: Why are some trees still standing and others are not? Which plants are the first to resprout? How long does it take cavity-nesting birds to return, and which species are the earliest? The students also write press releases to share their research with the local newspaper. In natural resources applications, the third of the program's core classes, they learn the fundamentals of botany by growing vegetables and fruit trees in planters constructed in the school shop. They sell the produce, using the proceeds to fund the program, which will eventually include native tree species to be planted on the Plumas Forest.
The natural resources program, now in its fourth year, includes other general curricula. English students, for example, read Pearl Buck's The Good Earth and Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac. Math students learn geometry by calculating tree height, diameter and circumference. The overall goal is to use this particular forest and this particular fire to introduce general concepts of restoration, sustainability, natural balance and working landscapes -- the big-picture issues that will affect these students throughout their lives, says Laurie Wann, a business and finance teacher who coordinates the natural resources program. "This is an opportunity to explore their natural world -- to not just take it for granted but ask the tough questions."
The Greenville program offers a model for other rural public schools seeking to connect students to the working landscapes that support them, and perhaps encourage them to return to the community as adults, says Jonathan Kusel, who represents the area on the Plumas Unified School District board. The program has attracted school superintendents from neighboring areas and from out of state who are interested in developing programs that link education to forest and land stewardship, Kusel says.
Despite its success, Greenville's unique curriculum faces challenges, including the threat of school closure. Like other rural schools around the country, Greenville suffers from declining enrollment and funding. Greenville is the smallest and most vulnerable of the four high schools in its district. The state program that paid for planning, equipment and field trips during the first four years has been discontinued. Recently, school district officials shuffled $61,000 of what remains into a district-wide reserve fund instead of allocating it to Greenville's natural resources program. That has infuriated teachers as well as students. "Here you have a school that's already challenged by issues beyond its control ... Why would you cut the artery?" says Dan Brown, who teaches math and the natural resources applications class.
Still, Brown and his colleagues remain optimistic and are already expanding the program beyond the three core classes. Working mostly within the school's general budget, they are planning advanced placement classes in natural resource science and technology. They're inspired by the excitement they've witnessed in classrooms and field trips. Students are engaged, comparing traditional Maidu Indian practices to contemporary federal forest management, challenging the value of fire suppression, and questioning the effects of public pressure on Forest Service management practices. And they're responding to what's out there. "To see a boy come running up to tell you he's just seen a flicker. ... It's not just a dumb bird anymore," says Wann.
During the three years since the fire, Deschenes has also seen the changes in her classmates, even the formerly uninspired ones, she says. "Get them out in their backyard. Give them something hands-on and they have more of a feeling for it. They retain more information. Why not use what they've grown up with to get a better education?"
POSTSCRIPT: Deschenes graduated last June. She is now enrolled at Arizona's Prescott College, a liberal arts institution committed to social justice and the environment.


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We always tend to go to Photoshop for working with still images, but today I'd like to bring up a few thoughts about why working in After Effects might be a better solution for your next project.
Non-Destructive Workflow
Non-destructive workflow is a must, especially when working within a team. Since After Effects is designed for animation nothing is destructive. That means that every effect value can be stacked as desired and modified later. The only way to get that kind of non-destructiveness in Photoshop is often to create multiple layers to achieve the same result and will sometimes be impossible. Let's see the same effect applied in both After Effects and Photoshop.
Here's the original picture.
The differents effects applied in After Effects.
And now in Photoshop.
The goal was to have the smallest amount of layers and to keep everything non-destructive. Everything went well in After Effects, one layer, logically stacked effects, everything is at its place. But in Photoshop, things were a bit more complicated. First, effects can be non-destructive and linked to the image as long as the image is converted to a dynamic object, but adjustments and stamps will need their own layer which rapidly increases the amount of layers. Secondly, sad fact, liquify cannot be applied to a smart object. It then becomes impossible to keep everything non-destructive since we will have to apply our blur and our lens correction on a regular (non smart object) layer.
DRY Workflow
DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) is a way that programmers usually tend to work and so should designers.
After Effects has a lot of features that allow a DRY workflow. Since everything can be linked with the pick whip or expressions, duplication of work is not necessary. This becomes really useful when designing websites or applications.
Edit This Look At That
After Effects now allows ETLAT (Edit This Look At That) workflow when splitting the viewer (View > New Viewer) and working in different compositions which isn't yet permitted by Photoshop's smart objects.
File Management
After Effects files does not embed its medias, it links to it. This means lighter .aep files, easy exportation of external files, easy update of external files, but mainly, the possibility to use proxies. Really big compositions can become really hard to handle with Photoshop on an average performance computer. That's where proxies become handy. Saving and previewing times will stay low and your render will still be as sharp as your original files were.
Here's a helpful tutorial about setting up a proxy in After Effects :
Tools Closer To Reality
When aiming for a photo-realistic composition or design, After Effects's tools will often feel more genuine. Lights, particles, 3D perspective (or 2.5D as some would suggest) and also, last but not least, lots of plug-ins. Trapcode suite, Optical Flares, Plexus, etc.
Again, although working on still images in After Effects isn't the "typical" workflow you might want to seriously consider After Effects as your tool of choice on your next non-animated project.
What do you think?