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Sunday, May 10, 2009
Is Your Day Job Good for Your Writing?
The blogger's second point—that it "gives you the urgency to write when you do have time"— may be true if you're a receptionist in a chiropractor's office who spends most of the day reading magazines. But if your day job is, say, editorial project coordinator for an educational publisher, and you spend your day writing copy, editing galleys, generating ideas, tracking documents, planning and attending meetings, etc., then it's very likely your brain power will be spent by the end of the day and no matter how much you want to work on your novel after dinner, it probably won't happen. Or you'll try and get very little done. On the other hand, a job that leaves you physically exhausted but requires no real brain energy (pulling green chain) might allow you to be more creatively productive in your free time. Having done both jobs, I speak from experience. (The chiropractor receptionist job I just made up. )
Another supporting point was that it "provides material for your writing." Again, it depends on the job. The green chain job offers little in the way of stimulus for characters or scenarios, but it will give you that "urgency" to write. That sense of "I must finish this novel and get it published so I can quit this hellish job before I go insane." Then of course, some writers get whole novels out of their day jobs (The Devil Wears Prada). Most jobs fall some where in the middle of the continuum as far being a source.
My own situation is that I work three days a week for a newspaper, which provides a steady paycheck. But on those days, after writing copy all day, I don't write novels when I get home. I also do freelance editing and manuscript evaluations. But I do those projects on nights and weekends after I work on my novel. So most days, my personal writing gets the biggest surge of my creative juices. And this is why I've been able to write two novels in the last fourteen months. Not because I have more free time, but because I have more focus.
What do you think? Is your day job good for your writing career? Would you give it up if money wasn't an issue?
19 comments:
- Jennifer Roland said...
In. A. Heartbeat.
I write newsletter articles and press releases as my day job, so I'm pretty zonked after work. I would love to be able to focus on my writing during the day and spend more of my evening time with my husband. But evenings are when I write, so the only time we spend together without a computer glued to my lap is when we watch Supernatural and sometimes Chuck.
I don't mean to complain. In this economy, I'm lucky to have a job, and I am thankful for it. But, I would give it up if money were of no concern.
- May 10, 2009 at 9:54 PM
- Eric Mott said...
I have a day job in a completely different field (computer programmer). So when I get home my writing feels new and fun to me, something different. It also helps that my wife and I run the writing business together. So I know while I am at my day job she is making progress with the writing at home—the best possible situation! I would like to be a full-time writer like she is someday, but we have a long way to go before we can give up my excellent salary. Right now my job gives us the financial freedom to take chances and have fun building our business.
- May 11, 2009 at 6:26 AM
- Alan Scott said...
I know the lure of writing full-time is tempting and I would dump my day job if I could still pay bills, but is it a pipe dream? I write in the evening, but many times when I make it home, I'm too tired to think and my creativity hits bottom. On a good day, I may write a few hundred words, but that's not the norm.
I'm starting on a non-fiction work and it'd be great to spend time in the library researching the topic, which I can't do while at work.
- May 11, 2009 at 6:43 AM
- Bill Cameron said...
Yeah, sign me up for in a heartbeat too.
Many years ago I made the decision to quit doing commercial writing. I used to pull in a pretty good living writing ad copy, packaging copy, corporate newsletters, that sort of thing. All perfectly fine in themselves and a good way to make ends meet. But I found I had a certain number of words in me each week, and if I used them up writing for other people, there were none left for me.
My current day job is graphic design and web development. On the one hand, it's a pretty nice way to make a living. But I've been doing it for most of my adult life, and I've reached the point where I'm starting to think homelessness would be better than another day wrestling code or assuaging the ego of some mar-com manager.
- May 11, 2009 at 6:52 AM
- loreleimathias said...
I write novels by night and copy by day... i actually prefer doing both, and find one skill really feeds off the other... have blogged in detail about this before if you're interested:
Lorelei Mathias
- May 11, 2009 at 7:05 AM
- loreleimathias said...
sorry don't know why that didn't work! the link is:
- May 11, 2009 at 7:07 AM
- Nocturnal Intellect said...
I become most creative at night, but with my daily schedule and work that is totally unrelated to writing, I am just too tired and need to attend to my little ones needs. From time to time I get some peace and quiet at work where I could do some writing and perhaps finish at least one project, but the something else calls my attention and Im distracted, or it's time to go home.
- May 11, 2009 at 9:07 AM
- ©DGreer said...
You know the old saying about giving a busy person the job because they'll get it done. One can definitely have too much time, and that's a huge creativity suck, too. It takes a lot of self-discipline and focus to write every single day when that's your only day job.
Don't I have to clean the bathroom?
- May 11, 2009 at 11:58 AM
- Lisa Logan said...
I have to disagree with most of this, too (except the income part). The "urgency" to write comes from my muse when an idea hits, and I will write it anytime, anywhere--though most often when the household is asleep to limit interruptions.
As for material, I rarely write things having to do with being a hospital unit secretary. I draw ideas and inspiration from far more aspects of life than my "bill paying" job. But hey, to each his own--for those who can find these silver linings in the cloud of needing a job outside writing novels, hats off to you!
- May 11, 2009 at 12:12 PM
- JD Rhoades said...
I'm a lawyer, and while the job doe provide a lot of material, it can be draining mentally and emotionally. Some evenings it's nearly impossible to drag myself to the keyboard. But I am writing a lot faster these days.
- May 11, 2009 at 12:55 PM
- Jane Kennedy Sutton said...
I find writing and promoting a full time job - I guess that's why I waited until retirement to take it seriously.
Jane Kennedy Sutton
- May 11, 2009 at 3:50 PM
- NL Gassert said...
Given the choice, I'd like to work part-time. To make money and get out of the house.
I agree with Dani about free time requiring a lot of self-discipline. I had the luxury of staying home last year and didn't write nearly half as much I should have been able to do. I was busy doing nothing much of anything.
Now I have a job that leaves me exhausted and drained by the time I come home. My creativity has taken a nose dive. My writing has suffered. I can't even plot (or write in my head) while I'm at work, because I have to be focused on students. And my natural nocturnal schedule is completely counter to the fact that I have to get up early and be alert. Sigh.
Ideally, I'd like to have a part-time job that requires neither heavy lifting nor heavy thinking so I'm free to write the rest of the time.
- May 11, 2009 at 3:59 PM
- L.J. Sellers said...
NL: I sympathize. It's so hard to find a good balance, but I hope you do some day!
- May 11, 2009 at 4:24 PM
- Susan Kelley said...
This post was perfect timing for me. I teach high school, and I love my students. Other than the money and the need to eat, they are what keeps me on the job. But I work with so many incompetent adults, some days I can't stand it. I would give it up in a minute to write full time if I didn't need the money. I can't think of anything about my job that helps my writing though many days it does help my soul.
- May 11, 2009 at 4:33 PM
- Alaska Author said...
I'm a state writer-editor in my day job. It feels like there is never enough time to do my first love-writing fiction and escaping. Always too tired after the full 9-10 hour day at work, and roles of wife and mom, and it seems to always be someone else's project I've committed to when I'm not doing these other things. Sometimes I fear by the time I can write full-time, I'll have forgotten all the stories!
- May 11, 2009 at 9:41 PM
- Omi said...
At the moment, writing is my day job. That's more the result of moving around often and not having a car, in addition to the sorry state of the current economy than personal choice, but if I had the option to do nothing but write (or read) all day and be paid for it - I would drop everything and run for it.
Most of the jobs I've held in the past have been food service, and dealing with idiots all day doesn't really lend itself to taking the time to idly daydream every fifteen minutes or so.
- May 20, 2009 at 4:24 PM
- Ashley Ladd said...
When my day job had less stress, I would come home and write all night. But as the years went on and I've progressed to manager of a hopping customer service department, I often get home late, stressed, and drained. I'm lucky if I can keep my eyes open. Thus, now most of my writing gets done on weekends and occasionally a bit at night. It's not that I like that, but I only have so much energy. Or maybe I'm just getting old and can't burn the candle at both ends anymore. I used to stay up till midnight and after writing. Now I fall asleep by 10 or 11 pm.
- May 24, 2009 at 4:50 PM
- The Happy Whisk said...
I really love my day job and feel lucky that it works so well with my writing.
- December 19, 2010 at 2:38 PM
- Gabriele said...
I wouldn't give up my day job if it was a regular job to spend all my time for writing professionally.
I wouldn't do it, unless I was coining it by self employment which was buying me good medical peace of mind . Why? Money is a very vast term. Its value is less and less predictable. Meantime, there are more reliable assets we may invest in, such as a medical insurance.
Therefor, I wouldn't leave my every day work place if I had medical insurance which I didn't want to give up. The latter may be worth more than money, once we reach retirement age with little or bigger health problems. I have yet to see the country, where good free medical treatment would be given to some passionate writer who never managed to save up for the day when he needed doctors, dentists or surgery. Unless somebody invented a new Mother Theresa who would look after desolate writers who once left their day time jobs. A Mother Theresa who would raise funds and have merci on them.
- January 29, 2011 at 3:47 PM


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University of Houston researchers have been awarded $1.74 million in grants from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board to pursue over the next two years a range of research projects, from the development of a system to detect damage to wind turbine blades to finding ways to improve coronary stents.
UH received 13 awards from the coordinating board's Norman Hackerman Advanced Research Program (NHARP), a peer-reviewed grants program designed to encourage and support basic research by faculty members and students in targeted areas. Established by the Texas Legislature in 1987, the awards program provides grant money to selected faculty members and students in Texas institutions of higher education, both public and independent.
The competition for the 2009 NHARP was intense and UH was second in the state in terms of total awards and funding. Of 660 proposals submitted to the coordinating board for consideration from various Texas institutions, 112 grants were awarded for a total of $15.6 million _ a proposal success rate of 16.9 percent. UH submitted 43 proposals and received 13 awards, a success rate of 30.2 percent. The University of Texas at Austin was first with 26 awards totaling $3.8 million, a success rate of 27.3 percent.
The grant money allows UH faculty members to pursue important research, but it also marks an important measure of progress toward gaining Tier One status. Increasing the amount of money spent annually on research, particularly in targeted areas, is one of the requirements UH must meet in obtaining Tier One status.
UH and the other institutions with winning grants will receive instructions later this month about getting started on their projects. The grants were awarded for the 2010-2011 biennium.
Last year, the Texas Legislature expanded participation in NHARP to include independent higher education institutions and implemented a requirement that a portion of all grants be used to support undergraduate students. The coordinating board officially changed the name of the program in 2007 to honor its former chair, Norman Hackerman, who also was a former president of UT and Rice University.
NHARP's targeted areas for research grants this year included biological sciences, molecular biology and genetics, chemistry, computer sciences, earth sciences, engineering, materials science and nanoscience, mathematics and physics and astronomy. Following is the complete list of the 2009 NHARP awards projects, with the principal investigators and grant amounts.
- Rigoberto Advincula, chemistry, $68,761. Hybrid Nanocomposite High-k Dielectric Flexible Films for Semiconductor Applications.
- Suncica Canic, mathematics, $150,000. Moving Boundary Problems in Blood Flow: Analysis, Numerics and Applications.
- Olafs Daugulis, chemistry, $188,917. Oxidative Carbon-Carbon and Carbon-Heteroatom Bond Formation Via C-H Activation Chemistry.
- Qianmei Feng, engineering, $98,610. Stent Reliability and Maintenance: Integrating Probabilistic and Physics-of-Failure Models.
- Kresimir Josic, mathematics, $83,800. Coherent Behavior and Information Coding in Neuronal Networks.
- Han Le, engineering, $100,000. A New Imaging Tool: Multi-spectral Laser Diffuse Scatter Microscopy.
- Emmanouil Papadakis, mathematics, $149,860. Morphological Feature Extraction for Fluorescent Confocal 3D-Images of Neurons.
- Robert Schwartz, biology and biochemistry, $200,000, Novel Rho Kinase Inhibitor Therapy for Cardiovascular Disease.
- Gangbing Song, mechanical engineering, $197,220. Innovative Multi-functional Structural Health Monitoring System for Wind Turbine Blade.
- Peter Vekilov, engineering, $197,220. Does Free Heme Enhance the Polymerization of Sickle Cell Hemoglobin?
- Diane Wiernasz, biology and biochemistry, $147,053, Genetics of Reproductive Conflict.
- Richard Willson, chemical and biomolecular engineering, $85,000. Ultra-sensitive and Specific Detection of Biomarkers Using Magnetic Immuno-particle Amplification.
- Rebecca Zufall, biology and biochemistry, $74,520, Sex Ratio Evolution in the Model Ciliate Tetrahymena thermophila.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
The question-and-answer format makes it easy to find answers to a multitude of common
parenting dilemmas and unschooling questions. A few of the questions covered are:
The book concludes with the author's two daughters' insightful replies to questions, a
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While this is an exceptional book for unschooling parents or those considering this
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text:
The first few weeks after your book is released, you won't be sleeping much.
Part of that will be worry. But most if it will be hustle.
If you (or your publicist, or both of you) laid the groundwork prior to your release, you'll have several weeks of traveling, speaking, and interviews. Your editor and agent will be sending you reviews. Your emails will triple. You'll be running around frantically trying to stay on top of everything.
Your publisher wants you to push as hard as you can, because they believe the first few weeks in a book's life are the most important. They want to get you on the bestseller list. They want the coop placement they bought to earn out.
While that's understandable, I also believe it is short-sighted. Here are the reasons why:
1. Slow and steady wins the race. Sure, selling a lot of books the first few weeks looks good. And that's what the marketing dollars are used for. But building a readership is a marathon, and you can't sprint the first mile and hope to keep up that pace. Word of mouth takes time to build.
When your new book comes out, you're trying to remind your previous fans to buy it, and you're trying to find new fans. How many new fans do you think you will find you during the three weeks your book is being pushed, vs. the forty-nine weeks that your book has no coop?
I'm voting that you have the potential to find more fans in those forty-nine weeks, with your backlist, your appearances, and your internet presence. You also have the potential to sell more books in those forty-nine weeks than in the first three.
I can understand why your publisher only pushes for three weeks--it's a monetary decision. But they shouldn't stop caring the rest of the year, or be disappointed if your book has a slow start. A sale is a sale, no matter when it comes. Wanting your sales to be top-loaded for the first few weeks causes a lot of undue stress and unrealistic expectations.
2. You can't make a difference anyway. Let's say your publisher is hoping for a shot at the NYT List. So they send you to a new city every day for 21 days. The tour is hectic and expensive, and what's the most they could hope for?
Even if you're a bestseller already, moving 200 hardcovers per event is a huge amount. Chances are you'll sell under 50. But even if you sell 200, in a week's worth of tremendous effort you only managed to sell 2100 books.
Yes, 1400 is a lot, but I doubt it will be the tipping point to get you on the Times list. First of all, that assumes everyone who buys a book at a signing is a brand new fan who wouldn't have bought it otherwise (if they would have bought it anyway, why waste the time and money?) Second, that extra 1400 probably won't be the difference between making the list and missing the list. The numbers needed to make the NYT List are very high, and an extra thousand books probably won't be enough. Patterson sells 60,000 of his new hardcover a week.
3. It's not this year that counts. Actually, how well your new book does has less to do with your current promotion and more to do with your prior promotion. If you spent the previous forty-nine weeks accruing and prepping a readership, then you can announce a new book during your three week sprint and sell X number of copies, because you have a group that already knows you. Running around for three weeks trying to find new readers is much harder to do, and not very effective unless you have a huge media buzz.
4. The numbers game. Publishers care about numbers. But it seems that everyone is looking at the first numbers, and if they don't meet expectations they give up hope.
Why is it that important things like a second printing, or consistent sales, or earning out an advance, aren't even mentioned to the author? We hear it immediately if we get a review or make a bestseller list, but isn't your paperback going back to press for the third time also a cause for celebration? When your book finally begins to earn royalties, isn't that even more important than being on some bestseller list? But no one tells you this when it happens.
It seems that the numbers have to be front-loaded to be impressive.
This is the Hollywood blockbuster mentality, where you spend 150 million and hope to make 200 million. Doesn't it make more sense to spend 50 thousand and make 100 thousand? Do books have to sell millions of copies in order to be successful? Isn't the publisher making a profit more important than them making a killing? Especially since so many of these blockbusters lose money?
I recognize the importance of the first three weeks. But I don't believe that's where all the emphasis should be. Winning teams usually aren't created overnight. It takes years of training, fine-tuning, coaching, and adjusting to get a winning ball team. Sports owners know this. I wonder why publishers don't seem to.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
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TF1 FRANCE 2 FRANCE 3 CANAL+ FRANCE 5 M6 ARTE C8 W9 TMC NT1 NRJ12 LCP FRANCE 4 BFM TV iTELE CSTAR GULLI FRANCE Ô HD1 L'EQUIPE 21 6TER NUMERO 23 RMC DECOUVERTE CHERIE 25 LCI
|Comparison : 6TER
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Vidéo Quality : Computed by multiplying the vertical and horizontal resolution of the video with the average and maximum bitrate.
A x4 (2x for average bitrate and 2x for max bitrate) multipler is added on a MPEG4 channel, as MPEG needs 2 times less bitrate than Mpeg2 for the same quality..
A channel with high video resolution, and good bitrate will have a good quality notation.
Audio Quality : Is the average of all audio channel bitrate of the TV. Number between bracket is the number of Audio channels.
Other providers : We need to uncrypt channels to be able to give broadcast quality notation.
Digitalbitrate (a free website) cannot have access to all pay TV... If a provider wood like to be displayed here, please contact me to find a way to resolve the issue : firstname.lastname@example.com


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VANCOUVER - In some small way, Portland Winterhawks defenceman and elite NHL draft prospect Seth Jones owes a debt of gratitude to Joe Sakic, first for turning him on to the sport of hockey and then for the advice Burnaby Joe gave his dad.
Young Seth was five and living in Denver when poppa Popeye Jones was a power forward with the NBA Nuggets. Popeye would take Seth and his brothers to the occasional Avalanche game – the Avs were in their glory days circa 1999-2001 – and Seth became intoxicated with the speed and power of NHL hockey.
"It was just the intensity," he said Wednesday from Portland as the Winterhawks prepared for their Friday date in Vancouver against the Giants. "We lived in Colorado for eight years so I went to a bunch of Avalanche games and I was there in 2001 when they beat New Jersey to win the Stanley Cup. We had rinkside seats and I saw them hoist the Cup and that game made me want to pursue my dream of hoisting a Stanley Cup one day. That's kind of where my motivation started."
Sakic, of course, was captain of those remarkabke Avalanche teams that also featured the likes of Peter Forsberg, Ray Bourque and Patrick Roy. When young Seth told his parents he wanted to try hockey, Popeye tracked down Burnaby Joe and asked him where they should start. Sakic said start with skating lessons.
"I wasn't there when that happened and my dad told me about it later," said Seth. "I don't remember ever meeting Joe Sakic myself, or any of those Avalanche players. I was pretty young back then. Anyway, my mom and dad put me into skating lessons after that. I started hockey a year later, when I was six."
Now Seth Jones is 18 and a consensus high first-round pick for the 2013 NHL entry draft. Scouts are already suggesting he could go No. 1 or No. 2 overall, his main competition coming from Halifax Mooseheads forward Nathan MacKinnon. Seth Jones is listed at 6-4 and 206. (Dad Popeye, now an assistant coach with the Brooklyn Nets, is 6-8 and played at 250.)
"Obviously I'm very excited for the draft and what that might bring for me next June," said Seth, who shoots right. "Right now, I'm trying to put away all the media attention and this horse race between me and Nate. We might meet in the world juniors and that would be pretty cool. Anytime you can get a chance to play against the best players in the world, it's an awesome experience. I wish the best for Nate and I hope he makes the Canadian team. I hope I make the team here, too."
Jones is certainly no mystery to USA Hockey. He spent two years in their national development program and captained their under-18 world championship squad last season. He's off to a pretty good start with the soaring Winterhawks this season, his first in the WHL, and has 12 points and a plus-10 rating in 16 games.
Portland has won nine straight while outscoring its opponents by a whopping 49-13 margin. Overall, the Winterhawks have scored 71 goals and conceded 34. Their 13-3-1-0 record is second best in the Western Conference behind only the Kamloops Blazers.
Portland general manager-coach Mike Johnston, the former Vancouver Canuck assistant, indicated that Jones has played a large part in the team's early success.
"I think the key part of what we've done both defensively and offensively is coming from our back end and Seth has been a part of that along with Troy Rutkowski, Derrick Pouliot and Tyler Wotherspoon," Johnston said. "Seth has a very mature attitude. He's calm and poised in games and doesn't get rattled. You can tell he's grown up in a professional environment.
"He's big and rangy and is a bit like Tyler Myers," added Johnston. "Seth is maybe a little more evasive in his own end than Myers but, like Myers, he moves the puck quickly and can jump up ice and into the play. You don't often see big guys who are really that mobile. And he's a smart player, too."
Seth Jones might not be unique either. His younger brother Caleb, also a defenceman, was a 2012 second-round bantam pick by the Winterhawks. Caleb is 6-0 but only 15 and still growing.
"He's looks a lot like Seth did at that age, kind of gangly a little bit," Johnston said. "He's a very smart player but, like all those guys born in 1997, he's kind of raw and just developing."
The puck drops at 7:30 Friday when the Winterhawks and Giants meet at Pacific Coliseum.


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BBQ Pheasant Pizza
Since we've never made pizza before, we referred to the Pioneer Woman's cookbook on how to make basic pizza dough. Her recipe was easy to make and it tasted pretty good. Our pheasant pizza is baked with lots of gooey fresh mozzarella cheese, sauteed red onion, smoky bbq sauce, scallion for a touch of color and fragrant cilantro. We hope you will like this recipe as much as we did. It was delightful! My brother Ngoc and best friend Briana came over to cook with us last night. For kicks and giggles, we decided to have dinner by candlelight, which was a lot more fun than we expected. You will see in our pictures. :-)
Servings: 4
Prep Time: 1-2 hours
Cooking Time: 12-15 minutes
Pioneer Woman's Pizza Dough
- 1 scant tsp. active dry yeast
- 3/4 cup warm water
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 3/4 tsp. kosher salt
- 3 tbs. olive oil
- breasts of 1 pheasant
- quarter of a red onion, thinly sliced
- 1/2 cup bbq sauce, divided
- 10 ounces of fresh mozzarella cheese
- 1/4 cup pasta/pizza sauce
- 4-5 green onions, white and light green parts chopped
- 1/4 cup of fresh cilantro, chopped
- red pepper flakes, to taste
I. Pizza Dough
1. In a small bowl, combine 1 tsp. of yeast and 3/4 cup of warm water. Allow it to sit for 10 minutes.
2. In a large bowl, combine 2 cups of flour, 3/4 tsp. of kosher salt and the yeast/water mixture.
*The Pioneer Woman used an electric stand mixer, but we don't own one. In the age of technology, we found that our "spirit fingers" still work just fine.
3. Mix the dough while slowly pouring in 3 tablespoons of olive oil. If doing by hand, it helps to have an extra set to help.
*If you have an electric mixer, use the paddle attachment on low.
4. Stop mixing when everything comes together. Lightly grease the same bowl with olive oil, replace the dough, cover with plastic wrap and allow it to rest for at least 1 hour. You can do this several days in advance.
II. Toppings
1. While dough rests, prepare the toppings.
Here is a beautiful breast from one pheasant. Looks a lot like chicken, but much smaller. Run under cold water and pat dry with a paper towel.
For those who don't hunt, this is what a pheasant looks like. They are pretty birds. (This picture does not belong to us.)
I just used a very sharp filet knife to remove the breasts from the bone. I started from the side of the bird and slowly worked my way through, trying hard to leave as little meat on the bone as possible. Waste not, want not.
Here is the carcass. I think i did a pretty good job.
What you end up with is 2 main breasts and 2 tenders that run behind. It's very similar to de-boning a chicken breast.
2. Place pheasant breasts into a small container. Lightly sprinkle salt on all sides. Then squirt some bbq sauce to coat all over.
Prepare the grill.
3. To make the pizza sauce, combine 1/4 cup of bbq sauce and 1/4 cup of pizza/pasta sauce.
4. Slice fresh mozzarella thinly. Set aside.
5. Chop white and light green parts of green onion.
6. Heat 1 tbs. of olive oil in a pan. Saute sliced red onion for about 5-7 minutes, or until soft and translucent.
Stir often. Or if you're a pro like my brother, you can flip it. But remember, what you lose you must clean.
7. Once grill is ready, cook pheasant breasts for about 5 minutes on each side, or until just cooked through. DO NOT OVERCOOK!
Baste with the rest of the bbq sauce.
Isn't this beautiful, or what?!
Slice/chop breasts into small pieces.
8. Preheat oven to 500 degrees F.
After an hour or two, the dough would've doubled in size.
9. Flatten dough out on a cookie sheet. I found it easiest to use my hands.
Lightly sprinkle some salt over flattened dough. Then spread bbq/pizza sauce mixture over it. We didn't use all of it, but it's up to you.
Then top pizza with sliced mozzarella cheese. You can add as much cheese as you want. We went back in afterwards to fill in the spaces.
The pheasant comes next.
And also the sauteed red onion and chopped green onion. Drizzle leftover bbq/pizza sauce mixture over the top of pizza.
10. Then bake in a 500 degree F oven on the lowest rack for about 12-15 minutes, or until cheese is melted and crust turns golden brown.
11. Garnish with chopped cilantro and red pepper flakes.
And enjoy with good company!
* * *
Rick and I have been saving wine bottles to use them for candle holders.
My brother loves playing with fire.
Eating by candlelight makes for a warm, rustic atmosphere.
We ate our pizzas...
And played with the wax that melted off our candles.
Some got to being pretty gnarly.
We also had fresh corn on the cob! We can't wait to buy cheap sweet corn. It's just one of those things that reminds us of summer.
That's my brother Ngoc.
Rick: Chomp chomp chomp!
My best friend Briana, who I've known for years.
Also going chomp, chomp chomp!
Rick seemed to be very happy with his meal. I like that. :-)
Then we ran inside to get some cobbler that we made earlier that day, and some ice cream!
And watched the embers die out.
Thanks for being so awesome! We both appreciate your visits to our blog.
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Don't forget. July 2nd is Game Feast 4 Freedom. Click on flyer to enlarge. Hope to see some of you there!


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or La·ok·o·on
or La·oc·o·on, La·ok·o·ön, La·ok·o·on
Examples from the Web for laokoon
The relation of this to Lessing, both in the "Laokoon" and in the "Dramaturgie" is at once apparent.Tieck's Essay on the Boydell Shakspere Gallery|George Henry Danton
Trojan priest of Apollo, from Latin Laocoon, from Greek Laukoun, from laos "people" (see lay (adj.)) + koeo "I mark, perceive."
Laocoön, n. A famous piece of antique sculpture representing a priest of that time and his two sons in the folds of two enormous serpents. The skill and diligence with which the old man and lads support the serpents and keep them up in their work have been justly regarded as one of the noblest artistic illustrations of the mastery of human intelligence over brute inertia. [Ambrose Bierce, "Devil's Dictionary," 1911]
In classical mythology, Laocoon was a priest in Troy during the Trojan War (see also Trojan War). When the Trojans discovered the Trojan horse outside their gates, Laocoon warned against bringing it into the city, remarking, "I am wary of Greeks even when they are bringing gifts." (See "Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.") The god Poseidon, who favored the Greeks, then sent two enormous snakes after Laocoon. The creatures coiled themselves around the priest and his two sons, crushing them to death. Some sources say Athena sent the snakes.


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The Heartbreaks released their debut album Funtimes back last May. This EP, Hand on Heart is sort of its follow-up, except it's got two of the same songs, but all with more strings.
A jangle-pop Morecambe-hailing foursome, the band's sound mirrors their hometown: all sparkle and faded romance from a distance, but really rather mournful when you look closely. The EP's opener 'Hand On Heart' appeared on Funtimes, and is a big, gushing belter for vocalist Matthew Whitehouse. His voice is undeniably impressive; strong, versatile and nimble, it sits on top of the dense instrumentation with confident ease. The verses trot out with extreme musical accuracy, the chorus is catchy and the whole song packs an enthusiastic and energetic punch from the off.
'Why Do You Always Make Me Cry?' is a sorrowful number with limited musical diversity, which makes listening to the lyrics feel like an effort. It lacks direction, and never feels like it properly starts or believes in itself. The repetition of lyrics grates a little after a while and risks blurring the line between forgotten glamour melancholy and 'band does sad song'. 'Jealous, Don't You Know' feels quite naked after the big strings sounds of other tracks, and Whitehouse's vocal swoops and soars as it confesses to deep-seated feelings of insecurity and inadequacy. The cello motif which occasionally rises from the deep is beautifully placed.
'Close the Curtains, Oh' sees the EP ending on a more upbeat note, telling the tale of the first pains of new love, the desire to be left together in the dark. The vocals are pained and drawn-out, with the titular order repeated until the end, lifted by the angelic female vocal line wafting above Whitehouse's. The Smiths comparisons are constantly drawn. You can see why, what with the Spector-esque production, Ryan Wallace's guitar and lyrical references to social anxiety or teenage frustration. But Marr's music is unpredictable but still catchy, and Morrissey's lyrics sombre but often hilarious. There's a complexity to The Smiths which is lacking in The Heartbreaks.
The Heartbreaks make upbeat, fairly generic rock pop, with impressive precision and polished orchestration. It's not music that particularly got me thinking or feeling. The lyrics didn't involve me, and the music didn't force me to listen to it. I was tapping my foot, but I wasn't fully engaged in the experience.
6Anna Byrne's Score


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Hell, in many religious traditions, the abode, usually beneath the earth, of the unredeemed dead or the spirits of the damned. In its archaic sense, the term hell refers to the underworld, a deep pit or distant land of shadows where the dead are gathered. From the underworld come dreams, ghosts, and demons, and in its most terrible precincts sinners pay—some say eternally—the penalty for their crimes. The underworld is often imagined as a place of punishment rather than merely of darkness and decomposition because of the widespread belief that a moral universe requires judgment and retribution—crime must not pay. More broadly, hell figures in religious cosmologies as the opposite of heaven, the nadir of the cosmos, and the land where God is not. In world literature the journey to hell is a perennial motif of hero legends and quest stories, and hell itself is the preeminent symbol of evil, alienation, and despair.
The Old English hel belongs to a family of Germanic words meaning "to cover" or "to conceal." Hel is also the name, in Old Norse, of the Scandinavian queen of the underworld. Many English translations of the Bible use hell as an English equivalent of the Hebrew terms Sheʾōl (or Sheol) and Gehinnom, or Gehenna (Hebrew: gê-hinnōm). The term Hell is also used for the Greek Hades and Tartarus, which have markedly different connotations. As this confusion of terms suggests, the idea of hell has a complex history, reflecting changing attitudes toward death and judgment, sin and salvation, and crime and punishment.
Mesopotamian civilizations from the 3rd to the 1st millennium bce produced a rich literature dealing with death and hell, much of it designed to impress upon the hearer the vast gulf separating the living from the dead and the fragility of the cosmic order on which vitality and fertility depend. In Mesopotamian traditions, hell is described as a distant land of no return, a house of dust where the dead dwell without distinction of rank or merit, and a sealed fortress, typically of seven gates, barred against invasion or escape.
In a cycle of Sumerian and Akkadian poems, the god-king Gilgamesh, despairing over the death of his companion Enkidu, travels to the world's end, crosses the ocean of death, and endures great trials only to learn that mortality is an incurable condition. Hell, according to the Gilgamesh epic, is a house of darkness where the dead "drink dirt and eat stone." More details of this grim realm emerge in the poems about the Sumerian shepherd and fertility god Tammuz (Akkadian: Dumuzi) and his consort Inanna (Akkadian: Ishtar), who in her various aspects is the mistress of date clusters and granaries, the patroness of prostitutes and alehouses, a goddess associated with the planet Venus and spring thunderstorms, and a deity of fertility, sexual love, and war. Inanna is also the sister of Ereshkigal, queen of the dead. An impulsive goddess, Inanna, according to some versions of the myth, is said to have threatened, in a fit of pique, to crush the gates of hell and let the dead overrun the earth. In the poem Descent of Inanna, she sets forth to visit Ereshkigal's kingdom in splendid dress, only to be compelled, at each of the seven gates, to shed a piece of her regalia. Finally, Inanna falls naked and powerless before Ereshkigal, who hangs her up like so much meat upon a drying hook. Drought descends upon the earth as a result, but the gods help revive Inanna, who escapes by offering her husband as a replacement. This ransom secures the fecundity of the earth and the integrity of the grain stores by reinforcing the boundary between hell and earth. It is the better part of wisdom, the tradition suggests, for mortals to make the most of earthly life before they are carried off into death's long exile.
The tombs, pyramids, and necropolises of ancient Egypt attest to an extraordinary concern for the state of the dead, who, in sharp contrast to Mesopotamian belief, are described as living on in a multiplicity of forms and locations suitable to their rank and worth—in or near the grave, in the desert regions of the west, in the fertile fields of Earu, in the heavens with the midday sun and circumpolar stars, or under the earth, where the sun travels by night. As the mortuary cult of Osiris developed and the prerogative of surviving death extended from royalty to common people, greater attention focused on the underworld. Texts such as the Book of the Dead, the Book of Amduat, and the Book of Gates exhaustively describe the perilous journey through the 12 zones of the underworld (corresponding to the 12 hours of night) and the harrowing judgment over which Osiris presides.
The deceased needed both magical and moral power to be acquitted of offenses when appearing before Osiris. Elaborate ritual provisions were made, therefore, to translate the deceased from a mortal to an immortal condition; they included mummifying the body, adorning the tomb with prayers and offerings, and equipping the deceased with spells, amulets, and formulaic affidavits of innocence to win safe passage and ensure success at the divine tribunal. Those who succeeded won immortality by identification with Osiris or with the sun. Those who failed were devoured by a crocodile-headed monster, tormented by demons, or worse; yet rarely is there the suggestion of eternal condemnation. The tomb remained a place where the dead could be comforted or appeased by the living, and the mortuary texts were a constant reminder of the need to prepare for the final passage.
Greece and Rome
In Archaic Greece (c. 650–480 bce), Hades is an underworld god, a chthonic personification of death whose realm, divided from the land of the living by a terrible river, resembles the Mesopotamian land of the dead. The house of Hades is a labyrinth of dark, cold, and joyless halls, surrounded by locked gates and guarded by the hellhound Cerberus. Hell's queen, Persephone, resides there a prisoner. This somber picture is confirmed in Homer's Odyssey. When Odysseus visits Hades to consult the seer Tiresias in Book 11, he finds its inhabitants sunk into a witless oblivion, incapable of communicating with him until they drink from his libation of ram's blood. The untimely dead and the improperly buried suffer more than do common shades, and notorious sinners such as Tantalus and Sisyphus are tormented for their crimes; nonetheless, the Homeric Hades is, generally speaking, indifferently unpleasant for all.
In the late Archaic period, however, Greek traditions began to envision a greater divergence of paths in the afterlife. The mysteries of Demeter at Eleusis, among other esoteric cults, claimed that adherents would enjoy a heavenly immortality, while those outside the cult would sink into the gloom of Hades. The cult of Dionysus represented Hades as a place of torment from which only initiates could escape; there, according to some ancient traditions, Persephone punished humankind for the death of her son, Dionysus. The Orphic movement (so called for its association with the hero Orpheus, who ventured into Hades and returned to earth) spun vivid accounts of judgment, retribution, and metempsychosis. Adherents were taught that life on the "sorrowful, weary wheel" of recurring birth and death itself was a kind of hell. Gold tablets found buried in graves throughout Greece and southern Italy, dating back to the 4th century bce, offer an Orphic account of the geography of the otherworld, warning the deceased to shun the waters of forgetfulness and to recite the passwords that admit one to the company of the blessed. Philosophers and moralists such as Plato and Cicero found in these myths and mysteries rich material for reflection on the nature of justice and the value of disciplined detachment from the material world.
Throughout the Classical (c. 500–323 bce) and Hellenistic (323–30 bce) periods and during the long span of the Roman Empire, Mediterranean societies played host to a profusion of eschatological teachings in which the underworld was increasingly "infernalized," its hellish dimensions explored, and its moral implications exploited. While Odysseus travels no farther than the entrance to the underworld, Virgil, the Roman author of the Aeneid, sends Aeneas through Sibyl's cave by the shores of the foul-smelling Lake of Averno, across the River Styx on Charon's ferry, past the three-headed dog Cerberus, and from there down the labyrinthine path as it forks right to the torture fields of Tartarus and left to the Elysian fields of the blessed. Virgil's hell includes special compartments for infants and suicides and specific punishments for specific crimes, but the ordinary dead, who merit neither a hero's reward nor a scoundrel's punishment, remain unaccounted for. Further attention to the structure of hell came during the first centuries of the Common Era, as a rising tide of eschatological thinking, fed by currents of thought from western Asia, swept through the Roman world.
Iranian and Zoroastrian eschatology
Among the Aryan peoples who migrated to the Iranian plateau in the middle of the 2nd millennium bce, a priestly sacrificial religion arose which held that the world is the field of incessant struggle between the ahuras (gods of light, purity, and order) and the daevas (demons of darkness, pollution, and disorder). This dualist cosmology provided the foundation for Zoroastrianism, the prophetic religion of Zoroaster (before the 6th century bce), which proclaimed the coming triumph of Ahura Mazdā ("Wise Lord") and his angelic retinue over Ahriman ("Destructive Spirit"), prince of the powers of evil. Zoroastrian end-time accounts describe the coming of one or more cosmic saviours, the resurrection of the dead, a final passage through purgatorial rivers of molten metal, and a resounding defeat of all the demonic powers. The Zoroastrian hell is presided over by Yima, the first victim of death, and is home to all that is evil, dark, corrupt, cold, and hostile to life. The demons who dwell there take delight in torturing sinners; but since evil is destined to be utterly vanquished, hell itself will be destroyed with the restoration of Ahura Mazdā's good creation.
During the interval between death and resurrection, there is a preliminary judgment in which the dead have their deeds weighed in a balance. At the time of judgment, the dead confront their conscience in personified form on a symbolic bridge, from which they fall into hell to be tortured, pass to heaven for blissful reward, or enter the limbolike realm of the "mixed," which is reserved for those of neutral merit. In the influential 9th-century apocalypse, Ardā Wirāz Nāmag, an Iranian priest takes a visionary tour of these otherworldly realms and returns with a harrowing report; the torments of hell, even if not eternal, are dreadful enough to have a powerful deterrent effect.
In the Hebrew Bible, Sheol (Sheʾōl) is a place of darkness, silence, and dust to which the spirit, or vital principle, descends at death. It is likened to a vast house whose entrance is guarded, like family burial sites, by gates and iron bolts; to a prison in which the dead are held captive by strong cords; to an insatiable beast with spreading jaws; and also to a watery abyss. Once in Sheol, the dead are cut off from their living kin and from cultic relationship to God. Yet God retains his sovereignty over Sheol, searching out the evildoers who hide in its depths, preserving or delivering the just from Sheol's grasp, and, ultimately, as later apocalyptic and rabbinic texts make explicit, restoring the dead to life.
At least in the postexilic portions of the Hebrew Bible (those written after the Babylonian captivity), death does not hold the same fate for all. The unjust, the improperly buried, and the untimely dead endure the misery of Sheol, but, for those who die in God's favour, the natural bitterness of death is mitigated by reunion with their ancestors. Late prophetic books, concerned with the vindication of God's justice, warn of a coming "Day of the Lord" in which the wicked will be burned up like stubble (Malachi 4:1), the corpses of God's enemies will suffer endless corruption (Isaiah 66:24), and evildoers who have died will be resurrected to "shame and everlasting contempt" (Daniel 12:2) while the just enjoy the fulfillment of God's promises. In some postbiblical Jewish writings, Gehenna, the incineration ground where children had once been sacrificed to the god Moloch, emerges as a realm of postmortem punishment more like hell than Sheol. In Gehenna the unjust dead would suffer a fiery torment of duration and severity proportionate to their crimes.
During the period from the Maccabee wars (168–164 bce) to the compilation of the Mishnah (early 3rd century ce), writers increasingly speculated about the afterlife, producing apocalypses that featured dramatic visionary journeys through heaven and hell. The First Book of Enoch, an important collection of pseudepigraphic revelations, describes in vivid detail both the eternal abyss of fire where fallen angels will be imprisoned after the final battle and the "plague and pain" to be visited upon wretched souls. At the same time, Jewish philosophers and mystics emphasized the spiritual character of the future life, interpreting Gehenna as a redemptive fire which burns away the soul's impurities in order to restore its original perfection. A spiritualized conception of the soul's journey after death flourished alongside the rabbinic doctrine of resurrection and judgment at the end of time, and the two models were often combined. The focus of traditional Jewish eschatology, now as in the past, is on the messianic age, when the world will be remade into a dwelling place fit for the Divine Presence. To forfeit one's share in the world to come is the greatest of all calamities, to which hellfire, whether physical or spiritual, pales in comparison.
The early Christians proclaimed that Christ had conquered death, opening the door to resurrection and heavenly immortality. The defeat of death does not necessarily mean the immediate abolition of hell, however. Gehenna appears in the New Testament 12 times, where its terrors for the wicked, as a place "where the worm never dies, and their fire is never quenched" (Mark 9:48, quoting Isaiah 66:24), are stressed. In the great eschatological discourse of Matthew 25, Jesus announces that the Son of Man will come in glory to judge the nations, to separate the sheep from the goats, and to consign sinners to everlasting fire. This separation is stark, with no explicit provision made for fine gradations of merit or guilt. While the poor man Lazarus enjoys a blissful repose in the bosom of Abraham, the rich man who failed to help him in life is tormented in eternal fire without hope of respite, the two realms being separated by a great chasm (Luke 16:26). The standard of judgment is right relationship to Christ, as expressed by deeds of mercy. Jesus himself set this standard when he declares:
You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me. (Matthew 25:41–43)
Ambiguities in the New Testament passages on hell, however, have led to significant disagreement among Christians. Are sinners and fallen angels tortured forever or only for a fixed term? Are the pains of hell reserved for the Last Judgment, or do they supervene immediately upon dying? To what extent has Satan been left in charge of his kingdom and free to work his woe? Theological reflection on hell is intimately connected to conceptions of the nature and moral psychology of human beings, in particular their status as free beings created in the image and likeness of God, the extent of their corruption by the Fall (the fall of humanity from innocence to sinfulness as a result of the sin of Adam and Eve), the particular weight attached to specific sins and evil dispositions, and the efficacy of the various means of reconciliation to God.
The physical location of hell is similarly ambiguous. Some ancient and medieval Christian texts describe places of postmortem torment and demonic mischief in the upper atmosphere, while others locate hell in the centre of the earth, finding entrances in caves, moors, bogs, and volcanic fissures. Such entrances to hell appear frequently in folk traditions, along with lore about the fairy underworlds in which the unwary may be trapped. Virgil's Lake of Averno and the infernal rivers Styx, Acheron, Cocytus, Lethe, and Phlegethon, among other Classical features, recur in Christian literary treatments. Drawing on diverse biblical, Classical, and folkloric sources, a great variety of cautionary tracts and tales, often cast in the form of firsthand visions, further developed the imagery of hell, mapping its flaming lakes, perilous bridges, demon-infested pits, and stinking cesspools and enlarging its catalogue of torments while at the same time providing milder sufferings for penitents. In the 2nd-century Apocalypse of Peter, for example, blasphemers hang by their tongues over a lake of flaming mire, murderers are tortured in the sight of their victims, and slanderers have their eyes burned out by hot irons. Hope remains, however, that some sinners can be saved through the prayers of the righteous. Anticipating the doctrine of purgatory, the postbiblical apocalypses suggest that penitents may be purified by the same fires of hell in which the reprobate sink to their doom.
In his Dialogues, Pope Gregory I (590–604), writing in a time of pestilence and invasions, included return-from-the-dead accounts from a hermit, a merchant, and a soldier who witnessed the terrors of hell and the joys of the blessed before being sent back to warn the living of what lies in store. Tales of this kind proliferated throughout the Middle Ages, receiving consummate literary expression in Dante's The Divine Comedy and providing matter for allegories such as Guillaume de Deguileville's The Pilgrimage of the Soul (1358) and John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress (1678). Dante's hell, with its nine levels leading to Satan frozen in a lake of ice, is a parodistic inversion of the sublime order of heaven; even here, justice prevails in the precise conformity of punishment to crime.
The older biblical conception of Hades-Sheol as the gathering place of the dead retained its importance for the Christian tradition, however, as Christians reflected on the redemptive significance of Holy Saturday, the day between Christ's Crucifixion and his Resurrection. According to the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus and patristic writings from as early as the 2nd century, Christ invaded Hades during the interval in which he lay dead in the tomb and "made a proclamation to the spirits in prison" (1 Peter 3:19), freeing the just who sat in exile awaiting their Redeemer. Hell, in this sense, is a waiting place for the righteous before the coming of Christ, and Christ's descent into hell is understood to be a rescue mission. In support of this teaching, Eastern Christian icons of the Resurrection depict Christ breaking the jaws of hell, entering in triumph, and drawing Adam upwards by the wrist.
An article of the Apostles' Creed, the statement of faith used by most Christian churches and a favourite subject of medieval mystery plays, the theme of Christ's descent into hell has persisted in theological discussion as a focal point for debates on the scope of universal salvation. Among Christian theologians, Origen of Alexandria (c. 185–c. 254)is the preeminent advocate of a doctrine of universal salvation (apocatastasis). Origen believed that after passing through hell, as through a refining fire, all souls—including the fallen angels—would be restored. Although Origen's influence on Christian biblical and spiritual theology remained profound, he was condemned for this teaching on universal salvation by the Council of Constantinople in 553. The major branches of Christianity have traditionally affirmed that the moral order of the universe and the justice of God require a certain symmetry between eternal reward for the blessed and eternal punishment for the damned, with the degree and kinds of suffering in hell being proportionate to the sins. Hell is the dwelling place of those who reject God irrevocably, whose alienation from God is a permanent expression of their own ill-used freedom, and whose suffering is at once physical (burning by fire) and spiritual (deprivation of God). While modern religious writers tend to interpret the pains of hell metaphorically, a great many artistic masterpieces derive their compelling power from their graphic and dramatic depictions of these torments.
According to Islamic thought, the existence of hell (Jahannam) bears witness to God's sovereignty, justice, and mercy and also stands as a warning to individuals and nations of the definitive choice to be made between fidelity and infidelity, righteousness and iniquity, and life and death. The major Islamic schools agree that it is essential to one's identity as a Muslim to believe in and look forward to the day—or, more pointedly, the hour—when God will bring his creation to an end, raise the dead, reunite them with their souls, judge them one by one, and commit each individual, as he deserves, to the joys of the garden (paradise) or the terrors of the fire (hell). Symbols reminiscent of Egyptian, Zoroastrian, Jewish, and Christian judgment scenes recur in Islamic accounts, in particular the record of deeds, the weighing of the soul, and the test-bridge, which widens for the righteous but narrows to a knife-edge for sinners, who lose their footing and plunge into the flames below. According to Islamic teaching, God exercises complete authority over the course of events. He has predetermined human destiny yet justly holds individuals accountable for their choices in life. Immune to special pleading, God, in his mercy, reserves the power to save those whom he wills and to look favourably upon those for whom the Prophet Muhammad intercedes. He created hell, with its seven ordered gates, for a deep purpose but has fixed a limit to the suffering of believers who have sinned. For unbelievers, who refuse to acknowledge their Creator, there is no hope of final redemption from the fire.
The Qurʾān has little to say about the interval (barzakh) between death and resurrection, but later Islamic literature makes the deathbed and the grave the setting of a preliminary judgment. The soul of the pious Muslim, it is held, will experience an easy death and a pleasant sojourn in the grave. The infidel's soul, violently torn from the body and failing interrogation by the angels Munkar and Nakīr, will suffer torment in the grave until the day when it will take up its place in hell, there to dine on bitter fruit and pus and to be roasted and boiled with all the usual infernal devices for as long as God sees fit. Like the joys of heaven, the pains of hell are profoundly physical and spiritual. The worst of all torments is the estrangement from God.
In the middle of the 2nd millennium bce, Indo-European peoples migrated into northwestern India, bringing with them a religion influenced by that of ancient Iran. According to the great texts of this tradition, the Vedas (c. 1500–1200 bce), the proper performance of sacrifices establishes right relations with the cosmos, enabling one to prosper in life and to join one's ancestors in the sky in death. The ritually unprepared, and in later accounts the ignorant and morally unworthy, face the grim prospect of near-extinction or descent into a dark, cold underworld.
In the esoteric teachings recorded in the foundational philosophical texts of classical Hinduism, the Brahmanas and Upanishads, hope for a joyful immortality depends upon finding within oneself, and harnessing through spiritual discipline, the mysterious power brahman, which pervades the universe and dwells hidden in the sounds and gestures of ritual sacrifice. Those who die unprepared must be reborn (samsara) to live out the consequences of their past deeds (karma). Grave sins incur a miserable rebirth in hell or an interval in hell en route to rebirth on a low plane of existence. The goal of Hindu practice is to be freed from all forms of birth and to be restored to a state of perfect consciousness and imperishable bliss in communion with the divine.
As Hindu mythology evolved, Yama, at first a celestial god and judge of the dead, became associated with death in its most fearsome aspect, and the underworld hells became as numerous and varied as the heavens. The Puranas, encyclopaedic collections of Hindu myths and legends, supplied vivid details on the modalities of dismemberment, piercing, burning, and putrefaction assigned to each hell and specific to each crime. In the devotional forms of Hinduism that began to flower in the 12th and 13th centuries and continue to predominate today, the wish to avoid rebirth in hell is a powerful incentive to offer worship and perform selfless acts. Hindu philosophers and mystics, however, have continued to concentrate on the ultimate goal of transcending rebirth completely through spiritual discipline.
A philosophical salvation movement arising in the same ascetic milieu that produced the Upanishads, Buddhism stresses the impermanence of all states of samsara and offers a variety of spiritual practices for attaining liberation. So long as one is driven by ignorance and desire and is encumbered by the residue of past deeds, death brings no cessation to repeated rebirth. One may be reborn as a god (deva), demigod (asura), human being, animal, hungry ghost, or hell being. Early Buddhist texts speak of multiple hot hells beneath the earth, but Mahayana traditions locate hells throughout the millions of universes in which sentient beings suffer and compassionate buddhas teach. Although all these realms are deemed ultimately illusory, the suffering of hell beings and hungry ghosts (who are tortured by unceasing hunger and thirst) is excruciating, and its vivid depiction in Buddhist literature and art heightens the sense of urgency to perform good deeds, to transfer the merit thus gained to those in need, and to take refuge in the protection of buddhas and bodhisattvas (those who vow to become a buddha and dedicate themselves to helping others achieve enlightenment). Mahayana Buddhism extols the compassion of great bodhisattvas who use their magical power to descend to the lowest hells in order to preach the saving dharma (the universal truth taught by the Buddha) and to share their merit with the wretched. The compassionate presence in hell of the bodhisattvas Avalokiteshvara (often portrayed as a beautiful young female and known as Guanyin in China and as Kannon in Japan), Kshitigarbha (known as Dizang in China and as Jizō in Japan), and the heroic monk Mulian (who interceded with the Buddha and won his mother's release from torment in hell) are, therefore, important examples of this Mahayana teaching.
In China the confluence of Buddhist, Daoist, and folk traditions produced an elaborate ceremonial system for relieving the suffering of hungry ghosts and hell beings and exorcising their negative influence on the living. Hell, with its 10 fearsome courts, is a bureaucracy where judges are amenable to bribes and souls undergo trials and endure judicial tortures. The deceased are supported by their living kin, who remember them with honour, performing good deeds, sponsoring rituals in their name, and burning or decorating the grave with paper effigies of money, food, clothing, cars, and other essentials. Esoteric rites for opening the gates of hell and feeding the hungry ghosts and hell beings extend this filial compassion from the family to the whole population of suffering beings. Purgatorial in nature, Chinese hells are not beyond the reach of human intervention, and the shared obligation to succour the beings who suffer there has been a powerful force for social cohesion.
Modern attitudes
In the modern world, especially in the West, cultural shifts caused by the Enlightenment, 19th-century liberalism, and the psychotherapeutic culture of the late 20th century have contributed to a decline in the belief in an everlasting hell. Defenders of the belief regard this as a lamentable loss of nerve, of faith, and of moral seriousness. Hell may not be wished away, in their view, but must be conquered—by the merciful saviour who liberates the spirits from bondage, by the overpowering force of divine forgiveness, or by a final battle, the ultimate outcome of which, some hope, will be hell emptied, hell despoiled.
Learn More in these related Britannica articles:
theatre: Staging conventions…were those representing heaven and hell, set at opposite ends of the playing area. The earthly scenes were set in the middle, and the two opposing mansions were supposed to represent man's dual nature and the choices that faced him. In the 15th and 16th centuries, heaven was usually raised…
mystery religion: Orphic…ways and perhaps sent to hell. Following a period of reward or punishment, the soul would be incarnated in a new body. Only a soul that had lived a pious life three times could be liberated from the cycle.…
MadhvaMadhva, Hindu philosopher, exponent of Dvaita ("Dualism"; belief in a basic difference in kind between God and individual souls). His followers are called Madhvas. Madhva was born into a Brahman family. As a youth, he was discovered by his parents, after a four-day search, discoursing learnedly…
ShiwangShiwang, (Chinese: "Ten Kings") in Chinese mythology, the 10 kings of hell, who preside over fixed regions where the dead are punished by physical tortures appropriate to their crimes. The Chinese hell (diyu; "earth prison") is principally a Buddhist concept that has been modified by Daoism and…
HadesHades, in the Greek Old Testament, translation of the Hebrew Sheol, the dwelling place of the dead. See…
More About Hell12 references found in Britannica articles
Assorted References
- representation in theatrical productions
- views of Origen
concept of
- immortality
- In immortality
- Last Judgment
- Buddhism
- Chinese mythology
- Christianity and the Apostle's Creed
- Islam
- Jainism


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Sol 206 Update On Curiosity From USGS Scientist Ken Herkenhoff: Sun Blasting Mars6 March 2013
Rather than continue with recovery efforts, MSL will be shut down due to intense solar activity. A big "coronal mass ejection" is predicted to hit Mars on Sol 207, so the rover will be commanded to go to sleep to avoid problems like the Sol 200 anomaly. Space weather can by nasty!


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Clips of My Autumn-- Marbled Pound Cake too...
Flowers my mom gifted me; fish cakes A. made, studying with gigantic chocolate chip cookies that I made....
The last photo will, I hope, explain the lack of posting this fall!
I finished my first practicum (4 weeks) about a week ago at Riverdale CI in downtown Toronto's east end--it was a lot of work teaching English for the first time. I managed to teach the grade nines "The Chrysalids," the grade tens "Lord of the Flies" and the grade elevens "Brave New World"--I also created a media literacy unit for the grade elevens in which I crammed way too many concepts in way too few lessons! I guess when you make mistakes you actually learn more....at least that's what everyone tells me!
I have come to question the way English is taught at the Secondary school level as well, and am starting to do my own investigations into alternative conceptions of the literacy classroom--something called the reading and writing workshop where the central material is the stuff of the students' lives. "Covering" or "teaching" pieces of literature, where the teacher is the ultimate authority on the truth, changes instead into using texts and poems and memoirs as jumping off points for the students' own thinking and writing, and students work consistently toward a meaningful project of their choice, working in "writers' notebooks" and exploring different writing types and styles.
Hmmm--this career is going to take a lot of work/patience/revolution/dedication..... It's funny though because I finally feel as if I'm working toward something that is meaningful to me. I think when it comes to a career, I needed something that requires a constant pushing, thinking, improving. The contact with the students is at times the hardest part of the job--but it is also the most satisfying.
In the kitchen: I recently made a basic "pound cake" loaf and marbled it with chocolate--it was perfect because, if you reduce the sugar just enough, you are left with a buttery, chocolaty, creamy flavour. It worked really well--unfortunately I don't have a photo but will include the simple recipe anyway--ideal for a snack when studying! Adapted from the "Moosewood Restaurant Book of Desserts":
-9 X 5 loaf pan
-1 cup butter at room temp
-3/4 - 1 cup sugar
-4 eggs
-2 tsp vanilla extract
-1/2 tsp baking powder
-1/4 tsp salt
-1 3/4 cups unbleached flour
-1/3 cup milk
-4 squares of semi-sweet chocolate
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and butter and flour the pan
2. Over a pot of gently boiling water, melt the chocolate in a heat proof bowl, stirring occasionally
3. Cream the butter until light, adding the sugar then the eggs one at a time until incorporated
4. Add the vanilla, salt, and baking powder, mixing well
5. At low speed, mix in the flour until just incorporated, then add the milk and blend for another minute
6. Remove half of the batter, placing it in a small bowl
7. Add the melted, somewhat cooled chocolate to the remaining batter and mix until incorporated
8. Layer the chocolate and vanilla batter in the baking pan. Run the tines of a fork or the tip of a knife through it to marble.
9. Bake for about 1 1/4 hours, until a tester inserted into the middle comes out clean, and cool in the pan on a rack before serving.


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This is a pretty neat package - much more flexible and powerful than Class::Accessor.
The documentation should offer more examples and the name of the "inherited" group is a bit misleading, but hey nobody is perfect.
However, the current documentation is a bit in the way for unleashing the power of this distribution. The interface documentation actually hides the power of this module (e.g. defining new accessor groups).
Reading a bit of code and toying around with it unveils that this distribution offers a really cool approach for creating clean, simple and extensible code for perl classes.


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Welcome to the Kee Wah Los Angeles website! All our prices are specifically for Kee Wah Los Angeles and all products ordered on the website will be shipped from the Los Angeles area. Kee Wah was originally founded in Hong Kong in 1938 by Mr. Wong Yip Wing (1911 - 1999). The Company is well known in Hong Kong and overseas for its signature products - Chinese Bridal Cakes and Mooncakes - though a wide range of Chinese and Western delicacies is equally popular. In 1985, due to an increase in the number of immigrants and the request of our patronized Chinese communities in the United States, the Company decided to take a step further in marketing and opened up its first subsidiary in Southern California located in Monterey Park, Los Angeles known as Kee Wah Corporation aka Kee Wah Bakery . As supports continually provided by our loyal customers, in 1989 and 1996, San Gabriel and Rowland Heights branches were opened respectively to further serve the Los Angeles Metro Area communities.


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Did you know that Falmouth — with all it's open space, forests, beaches, marshland and cranberry bogs — is known as one of the best places for Atlantic coastline birding?
Yes, you will find the Merlin, the Sanderling, the Cooper's Hawk and the Warbler all hiding in the rushes here in Falmouth in various seasons. And if you love spotting the dramatic Osprey, the huge hawk that likely gave "Buzzards Bay" its' name, you will find them nesting in summer here, and delight in watching their enormous wing span, wild twig-ridden nests, and incredible fishing prowess. Osprey migrate from here to the Amazon in winter, but return to this area for nesting and hatching their young.
Craig Gibson is a Falmouth resident and passionate bird photographer. Up at dawn with his long lenses and a sea kayak, Craig hunts the bird life deep in the marshes, and on the small barrier islands and sand dunes where they nest and breed. His collection of photos "A Year of Falmouth Birds" will take your breath away. Copies are available for sale in local book shops, and benefit the 300 Committee Land Trust, our local conservation group. You can also see his great action shots weekly in our local newspaper, the Falmouth Enterprise.
Of course birders will be familiar with the Great Blue Heron, or the Snowy Egret, but for first time visitors to our area, these extraordinary birds will impress and awe you. Come to Woods Hole to learn more!


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Coda Circling The Drain With More Layoffs, Slashed Prices
It always sucks to see an innovative company with great ideas go under, and the green energy movement has had its fair share of casualties. But in all honesty, we don't think anybody is surprised to see electric car maker Coda struggling to make any headway with their Chinese-built EV. With news of more layoffs and dealers slashing prices by 40%, it seems as though the writing is on the wall for Coda.Read more


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Soybean sendoff
Available in limited quantities, two new soybean varieties from Great Lakes Hybrids complement its Roundup Ready lines. XP 8324 STS, a mid-Group II, offers high yield with a great disease package and average tolerance to white mold. XP 8332 STS, a mid-Group III, has shown a good shatter score in trials. Contact Great Lakes Hybrids, Dept. FIN, Box 637, Ovid, MI 48866, 800/257-7333.
More resistance
Dairyland has seven new soybean varieties for '99. For a variety featuring cyst nematode resistance, pick DS-338/STS. This Group III variety carries good Phytophthora root rot field tolerance. Contact Dairyland Seed Co., Dept. FIN, Box 958, West Bend, WI 53095, 800/236-0163.
Take your pick
Gutwein offers six varieties of soybeans, four resistant to Roundup, that range from a Late Group II to Late Group III. Contact Fred Gutwein & Sons Inc., Dept. FIN, RR1, Box 40, Francesville, IN 47946, 800/457-2700.
Make a choice
Asgrow has 15 new soybeans on the market. AG0901, a late Group 0 maturity, may be a good bet for northern no-till growers. A3469, an early to mid-Group III variety, is resistant to PRR and shows strong standability for easier harvest. Contact Asgrow Seed Co., Dept. FIN, 4140 114th St., Des Moines, IA 50322, 515/331-7100.
Easy soil sampling
Get many samples of your soil without getting off your ATV with Concord's new 2001 auger soil sampler.
Working off its own hydraulics, the 2001 works the ground in a semicircle. You operate the auger with a joystick to extend the unit's arm out and down to obtain a soil sample, then back and up to drop the sample in a provided bowl - all while sitting on the ATV. The sampler mounts with four bolts directly onto the ATV's rack (or the back of a pickup truck) and operates off its own 61/2-hp engine. The arm features a 1-in.-dia., carbide-tipped auger for soil collection. According to the company, it operates with speed in frozen, wet or sticky soil conditions. List price: $4,900. Contact Concord Environmental Equipment, Dept. FIN, RR 1, Box 78, Hawley, MN 56549, 218/937-5100.
Ninety bushels per acre
In Ohio State University testing, Dairyland Seed's DSR-293/RR Roundup Ready soybean yielded 90.10 bu./acre, making the yield of the Huron County test plot 11.51 bu. higher than the plot average yield.
According to the company, it is the first to record 90 bu./acre with a Roundup Ready soybean variety. Contact Dairyland Seed Co., Dept. FIN, Box 958, West Bend, WI 53095, 800/236-0163.
Big offering for'99
Mycogen has 56 new hybrids and varieties for the 1999 growing season.
The lineup includes 24 conventional corn hybrids, 16 soybean varieties, three corn silage hybrids, six sunflower hybrids, five sorghum hybrids and two alfalfa varieties.
Eight of the new corn hybrids are tolerant to imidazolinone herbicides; some carry enhanced protection against first-generation European corn borer.
Nine of the new soybean varieties are Roundup Ready; two are resistant to soybean cyst nematode. The other conventional varieties provide varying degrees of field tolerance to Phytophthora, brown stem rot and other diseases. Contact Mycogen Seeds, Dept. FIN, Box 21428, St. Paul, MN 55121, 800/380-7282.
Seed needs
Cargill's ten new corn hybrids range in maturity from 90 to 119 days. According to the company, 6350LL is a LibertyLink powerhouse and has excellent emergence and vigor for no-till or minimum-till. Contact Cargill Hybrid Seeds, Dept. FIN, Box 5645, Minneapolis, MN 55440, 612/742-6212.
New corn hybrids
Gutwein Seeds offers nine new hybrids to its lineup for '99 planting. All are well suited for the central Corn Belt.
Included are five hybrids that are protected by YieldGuard Bt and one Roundup Ready hybrid. Maturity ranges from variety 2236, which has natural tolerance to European corn borer and matures in 100 to 101 days, to number 2633Bt, which is YieldGuard-protected and matures in 114 to 115 days. Contact Fred Gutwein & Sons Inc., Dept. FIN, RR 1, Box 40, Francesville, IN 47946, 800/457-2700.
Winter hardy alfalfa
Cargill is introducing two new alfalfa varieties. FQ314 boasts high yields and winter hardiness. It shows high multiple pest resistance, including high resistance to bacterial and Fusarium wilts and Phytoph- thora. The company's FQ302HR is a complete agronomic package. Contact Cargill Hybrid Seeds, Dept. FIN, Box 5645, Minneapolis, MN 55440, 612/742-6212.
Alfalfa advances
According to Dairyland Seeds, its newest alfalfa variety, Magnum V, provides increased yields and persistence. Magnum V is rated for winter hardiness, insect resistance and disease resistance.
The company backs these claims with a guarantee of yield and persistence. Dairyland encourages growers to request a qualification form to plant Magnum V side by side with any non-Dairyland Seed alfalfa and see the results. Contact Dairyland Seed Co., Dept. FIN, Box 958, West Bend, WI 53095, 800/236-0163.


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Harvest Moon Another Wonderful Life Requests[ GCN ]
mar 30, 2010Harvest Moon Another Wonderful Life [ GCN ] Unsubmitted
There is a tree buy the inner inn, and by the garden by the Bar. When u go by the tree, on the guide it will say SHOP. You click on Shop and then u set up your own shop and people can buy stuff.
• Moshi Monsters cheats, Android • Plants vs. Zombies cheats, NDS, XBOX 360, PS3, IPHONE, Android • Pokemon Heart Gold Version cheats • Pokemon Soul Silver cheats • The Lord of the Rings: War in the North cheats, XBOX 360, PS3 • Shogun 2: Total War cheats • BioShock Infinite cheats, XBOX 360, PS3 • Darksiders 2 cheats, XBOX 360, PS3 • Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 cheats, PC, NDS, WII, PS3 • Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim cheats, XBOX 360, PS3 • Torchlight II cheats • Borderlands 2 cheats, XBOX 360, PS3 • Temple Run cheats • Jagged Alliance: Back in Action cheats • XCom: Enemy Unknown cheats, XBOX 360, PS3


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Car Deals
Truck Deals: July 2012
Shoppers interested in a buying a new pickup truck this month can take advantage of several great deals as automakers begin clearing out their inventory of remaining 2012 models. We've rounded up some of the best incentives and special offers to help buyers find a great new truck at a reasonable price throughout July.
Chevrolet Avalanche
Chevrolet is advertising its brawny four-door Avalanche pickup with several strong offers throughout July. According to the automaker, shoppers interested in financing a 2012 model can get zero percent interest for up to 60 months, while buyers purchasing outright can take up to $5,000 off in cash-back deals. The incentives are even better for left-over 2011 models. Chevrolet is offering buyers up to $6,000 cash back or, for qualified shoppers interested in financing, zero percent interest for up to 72 months. Truck buyers who would prefer more luxury will also find a great deal on Cadillac's Avalanche-based Escalade EXT. The luxury truck is available with zero percent interest for up to 60 months in July.
Chevrolet Silverado
Chevrolet's full-size Silverado can be had with several major incentives throughout July, whether truck shoppers are looking to finance the full-size pickup or pay cash. For buyers interested in paying cash, the automaker is offering up to $3,500 back on extended cab pickups, $2,500 on regular cab models or up to $3,000 back on heavy-duty Silverado 2500HD or 3500HD trim levels. Shoppers interested in financing will also get a great deal, with Chevrolet offering $500 cash back and zero percent interest for up to 60 months on most models-a term that increases to 72 months for remaining 2011 inventory.
Ford F-150
The highly popular Ford F-150 is offered with several major incentives in July, although the automaker's best deals apply to customers looking to lease or buy with cash. For cash buyers, Ford is offering the 2012 F-150 with up to $3,000 back for SuperCrew models or $2,500 back for regular cab or SuperCab variants. Shoppers interested in leasing their next truck will find monthly payments of just $329 for an F-150 XLT SuperCab after $3,139 due at signing-a rare lease deal among full-size trucks. Unfortunately for buyers looking to finance the pickup, Ford's July deals are limited to left-over 2011 models, on which the automaker is offering zero percent interest for up to 60 months.
Ram 1500
The full-size Ram pickup is available with low interest rates or generous cash-back offers throughout July. According to Chrysler, qualified buyers interested in financing a Ram can get zero percent interest for up to 60 months, a deal that even applies to the latest 2012 models. Shoppers paying with cash can also take advantage of a factory-backed incentive in July, with Chrysler offering up to $3,500 cash back on many variants of the large pickup through the end of the month. Like nearly all Chrysler models, the Ram is also available with a military appreciation discount that provides $500 cash back to members of the armed forces on active or reserve duty.
Toyota Tundra
The full-size Toyota Tundra can be had with a myriad of incentives and special offers throughout July. According to Toyota, four-door Tundra Crew Max models are available with up to $2,500 cash back, while other body styles offer up to $2,250 in savings for shoppers purchasing the pickup with cash. For buyers who would prefer to finance a new Tundra, Toyota is offering zero percent interest for up to 60 months on all body styles, plus up to $1,000 cash back. Like all Toyota models, the Tundra also includes the brand's complimentary two-year/25,000-mile maintenance plan, which includes 24-hour roadside assistance.
What it means to you: With the 2013 model year just around the corner, several of the most popular pickups are available at great prices throughout July.


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Byron York passes on what he is hearing from Senate Republicans on the fiscal negotiations in DC. What he is hearing isn't good:
The word among some Senate Republicans is that a fiscal cliff deal is likely to be struck by Sunday, or Monday at the latest. …
Those Senate Republicans hope the final deal will make permanent current tax levels — Bush tax cut levels — for everyone who makes below $500,000.
The $500,000 figure is not set in stone. It could be $400,000, as President Obama is reportedly willing to agree to, or it could be higher, as some Senate Democrats have suggested in the past. … In addition, big spending cuts, the sequestration cuts scheduled to go into effect in the new year, would not be affected and would go forward as planned.
Some Republicans would be open to the change, but would only want to give up their position in return for serious spending concessions from the administration. And some Republicans would be open to giving in on top-earner tax rates in order to get a deal done now, and worry about spending later.
It appears that it is the last group, working with Democrats and the White House, that will prevail. Under the most likely scenario, Republicans will get nothing — nothing — in return for giving in on tax rates for the highest-income Americans. No spending cuts, at least no serious spending cuts beyond what are already included in sequestration, would be part of the deal done on Sunday or Monday, if that is indeed what happens. …
As for spending cuts, particularly in entitlements, some Senate Republicans say they will press for those in January or February, during the coming battle over raising the nation's debt ceiling.
This is baffling. Why would Republicans agree to tax increases without getting spending cuts in return? Sure, on this scenario the sequestration cuts remain; but they are tilted heavily toward defense, as a result of the last lousy deal the Republicans negotiated. If Republicans want to restore a reasonable defense capability in a later negotiation, they will have to give something up–either more taxes or restoration of the non-defense sequestration, presumably.
Regardless of how this plays out–and I agree with Byron that the result is likely to be unhappy–it will vindicate what we have been saying for weeks, if not months: stop making secret, last-minute, back room deals! Stop moving from one manufactured crisis to the next with lousy fiscal policies that are jointly endorsed by the parties, and with respect to which there is no accountability! Stake out a conservative position–less spending, lower taxes–by passing legislation in the House, and challenge the Democrats to make their preferences clear to voters through legislation, not secret negotiations.
This approach only works, of course, as long as Republicans control at least one house of Congress. It remains to be seen how long that will continue to be the case.
UPDATE: Ramesh Ponnuru thinks my dismay is unreasonable:
John Hinderaker comments on York's article:
This is baffling. Why would Republicans agree to tax increases without getting spending cuts in return? . . . Regardless of how this plays out–and I agree with Byron that the result is likely to be unhappy–it will vindicate what we have been saying for weeks, if not months: stop making secret, last-minute, back room deals!
Hinderaker's post doesn't even acknowledge the fact that taxes are scheduled to go up–the unbaffling reason any agreement will be an unhappy one for conservatives. The reason we're not going to get spending cuts beyond those already scheduled in return for tax increases smaller than those already scheduled is that current law doesn't force larger spending cuts and does force larger tax increases.
Ramesh is correct, of course, that the Republicans' current poor bargaining position is the result of the deal they made in the summer of 2011, together with the scheduled expiration of the "temporary" Bush tax rates and other tax provisions. But the question remains whether the GOP could have negotiated something better than the agreement York suggests they are likely to get. As I have argued many times, I think they could have done better if, instead of pursuing back room negotiations, they had, months ago, passed appropriate tax and spending legislation in the House and put pressure on Harry Reid to do likewise in the Senate. That would have led (I think) to a more traditional conference committee negotiation which would have taken place in the light of day, with the parties accountable for their respective policy preferences, and with the legislation passed by the two chambers as the starting point, rather than the 2011 debt ceiling deal and other aspects of existing law. Would that approach have worked? We will never know for sure, but I think it would have produced a considerably better result than we are likely to see in the next few days.
Even in the context in which the parties have been bargaining, I think it is reasonable to believe that the GOP should do better than what Byron describes as the most likely result: tax increases for those earning more than (say) $500,000, combined with the scheduled spending cuts (sequestration). Why? Because with that deal, the Republicans will be giving Obama something better, for him, than current law, including what the Democrats negotiated for in 2011. As has been widely argued, Obama would probably be quite willing to accept tax increases on everybody. But his first choice is to increase taxes on upper income taxpayers only, making our tax code even more ridiculously progressive–something he could never achieve without Republican consent. That is what the GOP appears poised to give him. It will be, in Obama's eyes and those of the public, a victory for the Democrats. Republicans should have been able to get something for not making Obama and the Democrats take at least partial responsibility for raising taxes on all taxpayers, eliminating the payroll tax holiday, increasing the death tax, and so on. That "something" could have taken the form of deeper spending cuts or a reallocation of the scheduled cuts toward domestic rather than defense spending.
After all of the drama of the "fiscal cliff," its resolution, on whatever terms, will be trumpeted as a significant step toward solving the federal government's fiscal problems. In fact, the projected tax increase on upper-income taxpayers will do almost nothing to close the deficit, and the sequestration savings will amount to only around one-tenth of the $1 trillion-plus annual federal deficit. A great deal of energy and political capital will have been expended to accomplish very little. So, yes, I think the Republicans could have done better.
FURTHER UPDATE: I discussed this post with a Washington insider who is familiar with the thinking of Congressional Republican leaders. He noted two factors that are driving the Republicans:
1) As a matter of policy, the fewer taxes that are raised, the better. Republican leaders don't think they can save all taxpayers from higher rates, but a deal along the lines being rumored would save the vast majority.
My comment: Understood. But the political reality is that the Republicans aren't going to get credit for "saving" anyone. The perception will be that Obama and the Democrats kept most people's taxes the same, but socked it to the rich. That will be broadly popular.
2) Moreover, Republican leaders are concerned that their position will be worse in January than it is now, for a number of reasons. Once the "cliff" is past, Obama and the Democrats can put together whatever tax package they choose, and pose as tax cutters. It would be politically difficult if not impossible for Republicans to oppose a proposal which cuts most people's taxes, especially once a few months of higher tax rates have gone by and voters are clamoring for relief. So even though the GOP's bargaining position is currently weak, it is likely to get weaker, not stronger, if nothing happens between now and Monday.
My comment: This could well be true. But is that scenario really so attractive to the Democrats? Sure, the Democrats and their minions in the press would blame Republicans for the fact that everyone's taxes have gone up. But a president doesn't get off that easily. I think President Obama would take a significant hit if January 2 sees a raft of major tax increases. And the post-January scenario gives the Republicans a mulligan on their failure to make their case effectively to the public. They, too, would have a free hand to craft legislation. They could belatedly remind voters that they are the ones who want lower taxes for everyone, and less spending. Washington Republicans think everyone already knows that, but I don't believe that is the case. It has been quite a few years since the differences between the parties were starkly drawn, in voters' minds, on taxes and spending–strange as that may seem to Washington insiders who fight these battles every day. I continue to think, as I have said many times, that Republicans are better off fighting legislative battles in the light of day than crafting secret, ostensibly bipartisan deals.
All of that said, John Boehner, Mitch McConnell and their colleagues are better able than pretty much anyone else to judge the complex tactics and politics of the current moment. I just hope they are giving adequate consideration to 1) the desirability of returning to an open, transparent budgeting process; and 2) the Republicans' need to re-establish themselves in the public mind as the party of smaller government and lower taxes.


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Jump to navigation
The Hagley Digital Archives provides online access to selected items from the Hagley Library's collection of images, documents, and publications related to the history of business, technology, and society.
Stone and brick workers' housing on Kentmere Road (Wilmington, Del.)
Written on verso: '(torn down - Brown Bld)'
Joseph Bancroft & Sons Co.
Textile workers--housingHouses
photographic prints
still image
1 photographic print : b&w ; 8 x 10 in.
reformatted digital
Audiovisual Collections and Digital Initiatives Department, Hagley Museum and Library
Joseph Bancroft & Sons Co. photographs (Accession 1969.025)
Series I., Box 2, Folder 5
[Description and dates], Hagley ID, Box/folder number, Joseph Bancroft & Sons Co. photographs (Accession 1969.025), Audiovisual Collections and Digital Initiatives Department, Hagley Museum and Library, Wilmington, DE 19807
Access to this item is provided for educational and research purposes only. The user assumes responsibility for obtaining permission from the copyright holder to publish or distribute this image. If you would like more information, please contact firstname.lastname@example.com


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Thanks to Blue Rose, we've a fasicnating account of some details surrounding the HBO pilot. Chief among them are the leaks concerning actors cast in roles, which appear to largely have been against HBO's wishes, as well as some thoughts on the prospects of the series, the effect HBO's going forward might have on book sales, and the difficulty of casting so many series regulars for a pilot episode for a series where characters might go a whole season unused.
That HBO is no vehement about the leaks is certainly very interesting. Some have noticed of late that actor announcements seem to be part of press releases, given the timing of their release. However, it now seems possible that the information is leaking out and so HBO hurries with a press release to at least put their official stamp on the news. The leakers seem to be playing a dangerous game, according to what Parris recounts. On the other hand, Blue Rose's speculation that this shows the seriousness of HBO's support for the production is heartening, and the impact a successful first season could have on A Song of Ice and Fire is potentially enormous.
This, and other reports from Worldcon, will soon be added to the So Spake Martin collection of correspondence, convention reports, interviews, and so on.


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St. Bonaventure University hosted its annual high school Communications Day competition last month in the Dresser Auditorium of the John J. Murphy Professional Building.
This year's theme for the "CommPetition" was "Tell the world why bullying isn't cool." Schools were asked to present this theme through any medium in their own original way.
Nine different area high schools attended CommDay, bringing nearly 150 students to St Bonaventure's campus. Six of the nine schools participated in the CommPetition.
Judges Dr. Emily Sinsabaugh, vice president for university relations; Chris Michel, '10, reporter for the Olean Times Herald; Erin Haskell, '07, senior media planner for Crowley Webb; and Lauren Adams, '11, producer/reporter for WICU12/WSEE in Erie, Pa., selected winners at the end of the CommPetition.
Best Presentation went to Salamanca High School; Best News Stories, McDowell High School; Best Video, North Collins; Best Presenters, Dansville High School.
Dunkirk High School won Best in Show for Video with their "Bully Get Back!" spoof on Sir Mix-A-Lot's popular song. Best in Show for Print went to Gowanda High School's Hunter Samuelson, who used Prezi to present her news story for the CommPetition.
Both Best in Show winners received the Bert Freed Award from The Buffalo News, an award given annually to the best scholastic publication in memory of Bert Freed, former Olean bureau chief for The News.
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