text:
a commonplace book of this & that in american political life
GWorks Interviews: Jeffrey Rosen (Complete)
Constitution 3.0: Freedom & Technological Change
Part One
Presenting the Future
In Part One, Professor Rosen describes Constitution 3.0 and explains his contribution to it, including a discussion of "Open Planet"—24/7, world-wide video surveillance that may come to a computer near you sooner than you think.
Professor Jeffrey Rosen (JR)—We asked, in the book, a group of thought-leaders to imagine what the world would look like in the year 2035 and how it might be changed by technology and how law might evolve to preserve the same values that the Framers of the Constitution took for granted.
So, we have a range of fascinating essays trying to imagine the future of free speech; of privacy; of genetic engineering; designer babies; patenting human life; issues involving Internet governance and neuro-law. And, in each of these areas, people cast their minds forward a few decades, tried to imagine a concrete scenario in which current Constitutional values might be challenged and then proposed a range of solutions for dealing with that.
How did you decide what issues to include in Constitution 3.0?
To some degree, the subjects were determined by the interests of the participants. But, we had a broad sense, as we invited people, about what some of the areas we wanted to explore were.
Neuro-law was another. The ability to look inside people's brains and ask them questions that lie detector tests in the past couldn't begin to fathom and perhaps hold them accountable for their thoughts rather than their actions.
Questions involving free speech. In an age where Google now has more power over who can speak and who can be heard than any King or President or Supreme Court Justice.
Questions involving the future of criminal responsibility and so forth.
So, essentially, [co-editor Benjamin] Wittes and I just sat down and tried to imagine, between the two of us, what some of the interesting challenges might be and then choose people and invited them to let their imaginations run free.
Who writes in Constitution 3.0?
We choose a great group of people. It includes, writing about privacy, Christopher Slobogin who teaches at Vanderbilt [Law School]; Orin Kerr, my colleague here at [George Washington Law School]; and it also includes, for free speech, Tim Wu, from Columbia [Law School]. For neuro-law, [O.] Carter Snead, who's at [University of Notre Dame Law School], and Stephen Morse at the University of Pennsylvania. We have Jamie Boyle [Duke University School of Law] imagining the future of copyright and efforts to patent human life. In terms of designer babies and genetic selection, we have John Robertson from the University of Texas [at Austin School of Law] and Robert George and Eric Cohen from Princeton. And our final essay comes from Lawrence Lessig [Harvard Law School], who is an Internet guru and tries to cast the whole book in a broader perspective and extract common themes among it.
What did you ask the authors to do?
We asked them to begin with a concrete scenario that the country might plausibly confront in the year 2035 and talk about how that scenario challenged current Constitutional values or doctrine and then try to imagine a solution to the challenge. And what was so striking is that the range of solutions people proposed. Some preferred judicial solutions and thought the Supreme Court should step in to protect Constitutional values. Others preferred legislative or administrative solutions. Still others emphasized the importance of political activism and the need for citizens to defend their own rights.
So, it was an ideologically diverse group. There was no consensus about the right way to go. And it was just striking how complex the solutions were and how many moving parts, how much interaction among various policymakers were often required to produce a good result.
Are the issues of the future already here?
It was striking how many of the respondents imagined a future that might plausibly take place not in the year 2025 but five years from now or even at the moment.
So, my scenario is an illustration of this.
I imagine that, in the year 2025, Facebook might be asked to put online all the public and private surveillance cameras that are now distributed throughout the world. And this is indeed is already happening. Facebook has an "app" where you can watch live beach cameras from Mexico, which are popular with teenage boys, for reasons you can imagine.
So, imagine that the beach cameras from Mexico are linked with the subway cameras from New York with the hospital cameras in London. These images are archived and stored. You can sign on to Facebook. Click on a picture of me, for example. Back-click on me to see where I coming from. Forward click on [me] to see where I'm going. And, basically have 24/7, ubiquitous surveillance of anyone in the system at any time.
The reason this isn't Science Fiction is because I was at a conference at Google in 2007 and the public...the head of Public Policy at Google, who was then Andrew McLaughlin, said he imagined that within five years Google would be asked to do precisely this. So, that brings us to 2012. Presumably, there are already requests from the private and public sector to link and store cameras on-line. And, it really is just a matter of time before this scenario, which I called "Open Planet," will actually confront us.
What are the legal issues with "Open Planet"?
That is the question. What is the problem? And is there a problem?
Remarkably, this is the very problem or question that the Supreme Court confronted recently in the Jones case—[United States v. Antoine Jones, 564 U.S. __ (2011)]—involving GPS [Global Positioning System] tracking. And that was a case involving a police officer who put a Global Positioning System device on the bottom of a suspect's car without a valid Warrant and tracked his movements 24/7 for a month. And, he then sued and said, because there hadn't been a valid Warrant, the search was unconstitutional and the evidence should be excluded.
Several lower courts and the Obama Administration took the position that we have no "expectation of privacy" in public and because it is theoretically possible for our neighbors to track us down the street or the cops to follow us for a hundred miles, therefore the police should be able to use technologies, like GPS devices, to achieve the same surveillance virtually rather than actually.
But, in a visionary decision, a remarkable decision, the Supreme Court unanimously disagreed. It repudiated the position that we have no expectation of privacy in public, although the Justices disagreed in important ways on the relevant reasoning. A majority of the Court joined Justice [Antonin] Scalia's opinion essentially saying there was a physical trespass involved when the GPS device was placed on the bottom of the car that interfered with the suspects possessory interests and therefore a search did take place, although the Court didn't say whether a Warrant was required in all cases.
But, four Justices were willing to go further. They said, repudiating the idea we have no expectation of privacy in public, they said there's a huge difference between surveillance for a day and a month. And, although it's theoretically possible for the cops to hire one thousand officers who could tail you from door to door, in practice that doesn't happen because of limited resources and citizens don't actually expect that they are going to be tailed door-to-door for a month because it doesn't happen. And therefore, said Justice [Samuel A.] Alito, joined by three other Justices, a Warrant should be presumptively required for long-term surveillance—perhaps not for short-term surveillance, although the Justices refused to specify the precise point at which a Warrant might be required. They said, if you're not sure, you should get a Warrant.
So, this obviously has direct and huge implications for Open Planet.
We now have four members of the Court—and really probably five because Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a Concurrence where she signaled a willingness to go further in some respects—have suggested that for long-term, ubiquitous surveillance of people, even in public places, a Warrant is presumptively required. And therefore, according to this reasoning, if Google and Facebook did link up the cameras and create an Open Planet system, the police could not track a particular individual over an extended period of time without a Warrant.
That appears to be the holding of Jones. And that seems to me a sensible result.
It's intuitively clear that there's a huge difference between what the police can learn about you when they follow you for a few minutes and what they can learn about you over the course of a month. The month-long surveillance reveals the newspapers we read, the people we associate with, the bars we visit, the private associations and feelings we have and to refuse to require a Warrant for that intrusive a search would give citizens less privacy in the Twenty-first century than they took for granted in the Eighteenth.
And that's really the challenge I tried to confront in the chapter: How can we avoid allowing technology to erode privacy. And that's why I'm so encouraged that the Supreme Court accepted this invitation.
—End of Part One—
Part Two
Public Private Law
In Part Two, Professor Rosen discusses Constitutional law, the growing role private corporations play in affecting speech and privacy and how we might best protect our rights in a changing world.
With government surveillance, the Fourth Amendment governs. What Constitutional provision or other law affects private surveillance like "Open Planet"?
It is a crucial question: Is there a difference between surveillance by the police using government cameras and surveillance by fellow citizens on Google using the Google and Facebook platforms?
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
After all, the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution binds the government; it doesn't bind Google. And if Mark Zuckerberg or the good people at Google decided to use their own servers to link up surveillance cameras, it might be argued that that's not a Constitutional issue at all. Citizens are free to spy on each other using private technology without implicating the Constitution.
Now, it becomes more complicated when the government tries to use the system to conduct its own searches. And more complicated still when there's a mix of public and private cameras. And, the Court would have to decide whether or not there is "state action" and so forth.
But, the difficulty of answering the question points to a theme that united many of the chapters of the book, which is the difficulty of thinking through Constitutional rights and liberties in an age when the great Internet Service Providers have more power over speech and privacy than the government does and yet they are not formally restricted by the U.S. Constitution.
Because they are.
No one can deny the fact that if you want to who determines who can speak and who can be heard today, it's not the U.S. Supreme Court—Justice Scalia or Justice Alito. It's the lawyers at Google. In particular, Google for a long time has had a particular lawyer—until not too long ago her name was Nicole Wong—and her colleagues actually called her "The Decider" because she was the one who was empowered to decide what stays up and what comes down, not only on Google.com but on each of the more than 140 search engines that Google does business with around the world—Google France and Google Germany—and also on YouTube, which Google owns.
So, Nicole Wong is the person who is woken up in the middle of the night when the Turkish government is complaining because Greek football fans are posting YouTube videos accusing Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, of being gay, which Greek football fans love to do to get a rise out of their opponents.
It's illegal in Turkey to insult Ataturk. And, Nicole Wong, who has pledged to take down material that is clearly illegal under local laws, has to make a spot judgment at four in the morning: Is the material clearly illegal? It is protected political speech? Is it on the edge, in which case maybe she'll leave it up? She doesn't speak Turkish. This is only one of one hundred controversies bubbling up around the world.
The sheer scope of the responsibility helps to dramatize just how much power the Internet Service Providers have.
Has technology enhanced the role of private corporations in Free Speech and Privacy?
There is no question that corporations have had an important role in who can speak and who can be heard throughout American history. And, in fact, Tim Wu begins his chapter by imagining a situation in which Google decides to favor one Presidential candidate over another in a close race and uses its power over the Internet to insure his victory. And then, Tim Wu notes, this isn't just a fantasy. In fact, in the Nineteenth Century, in the contested election of 1876, the Hayes-Tilden election, AT&T did allegedly use its power over the telegraphs to favor one candidate over another. So, no question that the risk that corporations can pose to Speech and Liberty, so memorably recognized by my hero, Justice Louis Brandeis, in his denunciation of the risks that bankers take with other people's money and the "curse of bigness" that allowed concentrated corporate power to suppress liberty, this has existed throughout American history.
However, it's also the case that today, now that so much more of our public life takes place on-line—obviously than it did before but now with most, much of our public life takes place on-line—we're in a different situation than we were during World War One, when the quintessential example of speech suppression was the street corner speaker standing up in Hyde Park or on the Boston Common and denouncing World War One and then the government, under the Espionage Act, threatening the speaker, as it did Eugene V. Debs, the Socialist candidate for Vice President, who was imprisoned for his speech in a public meeting. Now, the Eugene V. Debs who's making anti-war criticism is going to do it on-line, in blogs or on Facebook and that means...or on Twitter, certainly. And therefore, the question whether or not to let him speak in the first place or to try to censor him after he's spoken will be made in the first instance by the Internet Service Providers not by the government and that technological shift has vastly increased their power over Speech and Privacy.
What is the difference between your appeal to the courts and Tim Wu's appeal to government regulation to address private corporations affecting a Constitutional value?
I don't think that Tim Wu and I disagree fundamentally that in some situations judicial resolution is appropriate and in some cases regulation is appropriate and in still others political activism is necessary. We just focused on different challenges.
So, I think that the courts are important as a back-stop. And, had they not stepped in in the Jones case to say that there's some expectation of privacy against ubiquitous, long-term surveillance, then we would have had far less privacy today than the Framers took for granted. But, I don't at all believe the Supreme Court is going to have the last word in these great Privacy debates, precisely because Google and Facebook have more power than the government about who can speak.
I agree with Tim Wu, that administrative regulations are going to be just as important as Constitutional doctrine, in particular anti-trust law. Are Google and Facebook having uncompetitive advantages by the scope of their control over Speech?
Or, to take a European example from just this week, should there be a legislative 'Right to Be Forgotten' on the Internet? That's what the European data privacy commissioner, Viviane Reding, proposed just this week.
It's extremely unclear what the scope of this right is. In it's narrowest form, it seems to allow citizens to require people who hold data about them to delete that data when its no longer necessary. But, it becomes more controversial when it appears to give people the right to request the removal of pictures and items about themselves that have been widely shared. At that point, there's an obvious clash with Free Speech.
So, to take one example, there was an Argentinian Pop star, Virginia da Cunha, who'd posed for racy pictures of herself. And then she grew up and she thought the better of it. And she asked Google and Yahoo to take the pictures down, even though they had been widely distributed.
They refused. They said they're not, they don't make content-based decisions and the pictures were out there too widely.
She persisted. She sued. An Argentinian court ruled with her, holding that her Dignitary Rights, embodied in a kind of Right to Be Forgotten, had been violated, ordered Google and Yahoo to take down the pictures. And, after being fined a lot of money, Yahoo said, 'It's too hard for us just to remove the dirty pictures, the racy pictures; we're going to remove all references to this woman from the Yahoo search engine.'
So, this just shows how dramatically this Right to Be Forgotten allows you to delete your past selectively on the Internet.
American law would not strike that balance between Privacy and Free Speech. We generally hold that people cannot be restricted from sharing or publicizing truthful but embarrassing information about people. That's what the Court has held repeatedly. So, I think we're about to have a dramatic clash between Europe and America when it comes to the appropriate scope of regulation.
But that just shows that this is not a debate that comes from the Supreme Court or the European Constitutional courts. It comes from the European Union. Congress may reach a different balance. It is a legislative debate.
And then, finally, there's a question of whether political activism is more important than legislation or judicial decisions in some areas. And here, I like very much the example of the triumph over the body scanners. It's such an optimistic, happy story for Privacy advocates.
But this is the story of the Naked Machine versus the Blob Machine. Originally—2004—the Bush Administration was offered a choice between two designs of body scanners. One design revealed contraband and plastics under clothing but also showed graphic images of the naked body; another also revealed the place the contraband was located but scrambled the naked body into a modest and non-descript blob and basically just told the screeners where to look under clothing in secondary screening.
From a security point of view, this is a 'no-brainer,' as they say. The same amount of security: One grossly invades privacy; the other protects it.
However, the Bush Administration, the Homeland Security Department chose the Naked Machine over the Blob Machine. Their privacy officers didn't require the less intrusive technology; they ignored evidence that neither machine was all that effective in detecting low-density chemical ETN powder, such as used by the Christmas Trouser Bomber. But, they reached a different conclusion than European airport authorities, most of whom rejected both machines but the handful of whom, the handful of European airports that chose these technologies insisted on the Blob over the Naked Machine.
So, why is this a happy story?
Because there was a political protest. It began with the clarion cry of the hero of naked body scanner movement, the guy who memorably exclaimed, "Don't touch my junk!" That led other citizens to refuse to go through the machines, or to be patted down. And finally embarrassed by this citizen uprising, the Obama Administration instructed the Homeland Security Department to go back to the drawing board. And they were 'Shocked. Shocked!' to discover that in fact they could choose the very Blob Machine technology that they had refused to choose years earlier.
So, that reminds me—or, that illustrates for me the idea that we can't rely on courts alone to protect Privacy nor on legislators. In the end, especially in some circumstances, citizens have to rise up and demand their own Privacy. And it is only by galvanized political activism can a good balance can be struck.
Might private corporations be more interested than government to protect our Privacy?
I am reluctant to generalize too much about the virtues of corporations versus the government. Each has its own interests that threaten and can protect Liberty in different ways.
So, there are certainly some areas where some corporations have an incentive to support transparency and open network rules. Network Neutrality is a good example of that. It's certainly in the interests of Google and Facebook and the great ISPs to insure that particular applications can't discriminate against their competitors and degrade or block any item or data. So, that's why Google supported Net Neutrality.
But, it's not—Net Neutrality is not in everyone's interest. Comcast, the phone company, wanted to be able to block BitTorrent, which had a potential to compete with its own file-sharing service, and also to charge more money to particular applications that consume more bandwidth.
So, similarly in the debate over Internet piracy. I was struck by some of the techno-meliorism, the kind of powerful-versus-the-people rhetoric that seemed to pit the greedy old media companies in Hollywood who were trying to argue for enhanced copyright protection against the tribunes of the people at Google and Facebook who felt that information should be free.
It's not that simple a story. In fact, although SOPA [Stop Online Piracy Act] itself was a very bad idea, and the structure of the Internet should not be changed in order to go after what's ultimately a handful of really serious copyright-violating sites located abroad, who are better dealt with through a law enforcement approach such as we used against child pornography, nevertheless that's not to say that Google wins and journalism and perhaps independent artists and filmmakers and musicians may lose when the business model that allow media companies to fund and to promote quality work evaporates.
So, yet again, you'll find that some companies have more of an incentive for transparency and free information but that may not serve the public interest in all circumstances. Certainly, companies don't have the same incentives that government does to keep information secret in the interests of National Security. Their interests are financial and proprietary. They want to protect their trade secrets.
But, we should never forget for a moment that Google and Facebook, as wonderful as they are and as much as we depend on them, are in the advertising business. Their business is to learn as much about us as possible so that they can sell, bombard us with ads that will track and follow us as precisely as possible across the entire range of platforms in which we interact. And the values of an advertising company are not the values of James Madison. They have different financial incentives. They need to be constrained in different ways. So, I'm not someone who believes that Liberty will flourish and secrecy will wither on the vine now that we have to be more concerned about the power of Google than the power of government.
—End of Part Two—
Part Three
Reasonable Tech-spectations
In Part Three, Professor Rosen discusses the effect technology is having on established legal understanding of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution's prohibition of "unreasonable searches and seizures," crime and punishment and whether established Constitutional assumptions may not be in the Constitution after all.
Is technology upsetting a legal standard—'reasonable expectation of privacy'—we rely on to define a Constitutional protection—the Fourth Amendment's prohibition of unreasonable search?
People have long criticized the 'expectation of privacy' doctrine for being circular. But, technology is making it even less satisfying.
So, the circularity is obvious in the fact that our expectations of privacy depend on the amount of surveillance and incursion that we actually experience. And, as technology makes those incursions more ubiquitous, our expectations diminish and there's a corresponding diminution in Constitutional protections.
But, so that's just to say that, in an age when, if the government were to set flying miniature robots in the air and take out ads on the Internet telling people that they might be spied on at all times by Open Planet, our expectations would diminish. And then the question is, should we have any residual protections?
That was a question that the Court in [U.S. v.] Jones [565 U.S. __ (2012)] didn't answer clearly. Justice [Samuel A.] Alito did seem to say that the relevant test was what citizens actually and realistically expected. But, that seemed to set the stage for something like Open Planet to proliferate as long as it was done quickly and there were lots of warnings taken out about it.
Technology's also changed our expectations because, unlike in real space, although we may know in a theoretical sense that we might be viewed out of context, it's not our actual experience.
So, on Facebook, people expose stuff, imagining that it's going to be basically viewed by their friends. And, although they may be warned and told that the friends might share, or Facebook may have boilerplate disclosures warning that Facebook has access to the data, we don't actually imagine that it's happening. And, we're shocked and surprised and discomfited when Facebook ends up tracking us on the basis of conduct we didn't imagine was going to be used for selling us ads as opposed to sharing with our friends.
I think these are all additional reasons why we need to re-think the 'expectation of privacy' doctrine. At some point, Congress or the courts or the mobilized citizens of the world are going to have to say, 'regardless of how much Mark Zuckerberg warns us that he is collecting and tracking our data, there is a point beyond which that becomes unreasonable and an indignity. And, defining that point is tough, which is why the Supreme Court was understandably reluctant [in Jones] to specify the difference between surveillance 24/7 for a month and surveillance for a day. But, unless that line is defined, judicially or legislatively, then we're at the mercy of the technology.
Would you discuss how Constitution 3.0's exploration of the emerging power of neuroscience fit into this discussion of technology and law?
There are two really rich and provocative contributions about the future of neuro-law. And both of them begin with the idea that neuroscience is changing our traditional conceptions of criminal responsibility.
So, traditionally in Anglo-American law, you're held responsible for your freely chosen actions. Unless you literally act under duress—someone points a gun to your head, you know, 'steal or else'—or a defect in understanding that meets the legal definitions of insanity, you're held responsible for your actions.
Neuroscience is now presuming to say that some people, because of their brain structure, are less able to control their impulses than others. If you have an overly-active Amygdala, which is the emotion control of the brain, and an under-active Pre-frontal Cortex, which is supposed to be the conscience which restrains the Amygdala, then, according to this defense, 'my brain made me do it: I couldn't conform my actions to law.'
And some criminals, convicted criminals in death penalty cases, are, as a matter of course, introducing this 'brain-made-me-do-it' defense in order to argue if not that their conduct should be excused at least their punishment should be mitigated. So far, these defenses have not been all that successful. It's allowed in under the relaxed evidentiary rules that happen at sentencing. But, juries are not buying it much.
Nevertheless, according to some philosophers, this, the more we learn about the brain, the more we need to abandon our whole notion of retribution being an appropriate goal of criminal punishment. If it's true that we're really all slaves of our brain, and that my decision to have a salad rather than soup for lunch was predetermined by my brain structure as well as by my, you know, the way my Mommy and Daddy treated me, which was delightful, and, you know, other things that I can't control, then punishing me for my criminal actions seems no more fair than punishing a robot for acting according to a program that it can't control. Instead, it might be appropriate to emphasize deterrence, to lock me up forever because we're afraid my brain is going to make me choose the bad action again. But, blameworthiness is no longer appropriate.
One of our contributors, [University of Notre Dame Law School Professor] [O.] Carter Snead, made the very interesting point that this may not be great for liberal values or even for accused criminals. After all, if it's not appropriate to punish people based on their blameworthiness, it's also not appropriate to mitigate their punishment based on their acceptance of responsibility. And, if you're really only concerned about restraining or deterring automatons from bad actions, you might have more capital punishment not less. So, it is not at all clear that the side of liberalism will be served by these 'brain-made-me-do-it' defenses.
But, in addition to all that, brain science is calling into question not only our notions of responsibility but also ideas about lie detection and also deterring people for future bad acts.
So, for lie detection, already, apparently, there are some fMRI scans that purport, when you show someone a picture of a place they've been, like a training camp in Afghanistan, to detect the brain lighting up in a particular way and, if they haven't been to the training camp, then it won't light up. And, this is supposed to be more accurate than current lie detectors, although not accurate enough to be admitted into court under the Supreme Court's evidentiary standards. Once this gets ready for Prime Time, which it will soon, then you could well imagine picking someone off the street; giving them a brain scan, if their brain lights up to the training camp, off they go to indefinite detention.
Now all of a sudden, we're getting some very troubling questions about holding people accountable not for the acts that they've committed in the past but for the bad acts they might commit in the future. And as the brain scans become more sophisticated and purport to show pictures of broken brains, people with more grey matter in their Pre-frontal Cortex who are supposed to be more predisposed to violence, might it not be possible to actually emphasize who is most likely to commit a bad act in the future; scan their brains; create a profile of the potential terrorist; and indefinitely detain people based on their future bad actions. This would gravely challenge the idea in Anglo-American jurisprudence that you should be held responsible for what you do not for what you think—for your actions rather than your predispositions. But, our two interlocutors, Snead and Morse, struggled very interestingly with the degree to which this technology will challenge those traditional liberal values.
What is it about technology in general—neuroscience in particular—that worries legal scholars that we might start punishing thoughts not deeds? Doesn't the Constitution forbid this?
It's so striking, isn't it, that although the idea that we should punish people for their actions rather than their predispositions seems to be a Constitutional value, it's hard to point to a particular provision of the Constitution that guarantees it.
The Court has said that sex offenders, for example, may be indefinitely detained in the future based on their future dangerousness because the connection between the past impulses and the future bad action are supposed to be so direct. This isn't viewed as a punishment but a civil confinement necessary to protect society.
Now, it's true that sex offenders have to be duly convicted of an offense before they can be indefinitely detained. But I think all of us can imagine that, if the technology got good enough at predicting accurately whether people who hadn't yet committed bad acts in the future might, because of their brain structure, we could well imagine efforts to detain them as well.
Of course, the justification would be: 'This is for their own good; this is civil detention; it's for the protection of society; we're not punishing them, we're just preventing them from acting according to the irresistible impulses of their brains.'
So, if that were the case, what Constitutional provision would forbid this sort of detention?
U.S. Constitution
Article I, Section 9, paragraph 3
No bill of attainder or
ex post facto Law
shall be passed.
The nearest analogy almost seems to be the Bill of Attainder clause, the Constitutional provision that prohibits Congress from passing bills of Attainder, which, of course, were the efforts to criminalize people based on their status not their conduct. So, if say I, Jeff, committed treason against the King in the old days, not only would I be a taint and my, and I would be grotesquely disemboweled in a very ceremonial way, but, and executed, but not only I but my children would be strangers to the law and they would have no ability to have offices of honor or profit and they would be banished and they wouldn't have the protection of the laws. And essentially they would be people without legal status. That would be visiting the sins of the father on the children. And the Bill of Attainder clause is designed to prohibit that.
U.S. Constitution
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation. [Emphasis added.]
See also, Fourteenth Amendment, Section 1.
And, you know, we could certainly construct Constitutional arguments about, that would call into question indefinite detention based on predispositions. You could say that this was a form of deprivation of liberty without due process of law, that Due Process requires that you're duly tried and convicted by a court before you're detained. But, of course, the Supreme Court has signaled that when it comes to terrorism and the category of enemy combatants, a trial might not be necessary, if you're found on the battlefield. So, maybe the analogy here would be it's, the violent brain is like being found on the battlefield.
The point is not to resolve these issues but just to suggest how dramatically an issue you'd think would be clear under American law—namely, you can't detain people for their predispositions—isn't clear, how the existing Constitutional doctrine is challenged so dramatically by this technology.
—End of Part Three—
Part Four
Controlling Authority
In Part Four, Professor Rosen discusses news ways to think about the government's ability to collect and use data and what the recent Jones case may tell us about Supreme Court thinking.
Would you discuss Professor Orin Kerr's suggestion of "use restrictions"?
[George Washington University Law School Professor] Orin Kerr has a very helpful and illuminating suggestion when he emphasizes use restrictions.
His basic point is that the collection of data is very hard to regulate. The cat is out of the bag. We're leaving so much data trails everywhere already that an attempt to prohibit it from being collected and even integrated may be foolish. But, he emphasizes use restrictions could make a big difference.
There's a model here. The Germans, who have an obvious and daunting history of totalitarianism, allow their intelligence services to have broad access to data without a Warrant. But, they can only pass that data on to law enforcement, if they find evidence of terrorism or other serious crimes. If the intelligence services were to find evidence of low-level wrong-doing, like adultery, for example, they would not be able to share that information with law enforcement.
That's a quintessential example of a use restriction. You can share the information when it relates to a serious crime but not when it relates to a low-level crime.
And Professor Kerr argues, and I agree with him, that similar use restrictions in the US would go a long way toward alleviating a lot of the concerns about unlimited government access to data. We'd be less concerned about surveillance on an Open Planet-like system, if the police were only allowed to use the information they learned to prevent murder and terrorism and not to go after people for lying on their tax returns.
Unfortunately, and Professor Kerr doesn't examine the practical likelihood of this, but I think he would argue, and I'd agree, that it's not likely to pass in practice. It's hard to stand up in Congress and say, 'We have to allow the police to go after the murderers but not the adulterers.' Imagine standing up and saying that.
Or, as I found when I interviewed Larry Ellison of Oracle years ago, who runs the largest database company in the world, and he had just proposed—it was right after 9/11—to offer the US government free software for databases. Coincidentally, they were going to be Oracle databases and also coincidentally the maintenance and upgrades weren't going to be free. But, he wanted to centralize all the data the government holds in an Oracle database and check people before they go on airplanes to see if they had anything bad in their past.
And I objected. "But wouldn't this mean that if you were late on your child support payments, then you could never get on a plane or get into a government building? It's one thing to keep a terrorist off but another to keep off an adulterer."
And he got very indignant and said, 'Well, what's so great about protecting people who are late on their child support payments? You know, if you do something wrong, you've got to take the consequences. Nothing to hide; nothing to fear.'
And, that's a very popular position in the country as a whole. John Ashcroft, the Attorney General, said a similar thing when I suggested use restrictions in an interview with him.
So, in a democracy, it's tough to argue for use restrictions. That's why I think that the Europeans are more likely to impose these use restrictions through non-democratic, or rather non-plebiscitary bodies—not through their legislatures but administrative bodies. They put more faith in the power of experts to restrict information. They give their data privacy commissioners have more power. So, you almost need an administrative regulation to implement use restrictions. We can't rely on politicians to do it.
Are administrative agencies a better way to regulate the use of information?
[Harvard Law School Professor] Jack Goldsmith does have a wonderful essay about how much more of this surveillance is already going on than we imagine. And he talks about the Einstein 3 program, which the government has acknowledged in the vaguest, most general terms. And under Einstein 3, in an effort to avert cyber-attacks, the government is asserting the power to scan all Internet traffic coming from abroad and when it detects any suspicious patterns to intervene in real time to destroy the information.
This is a version of the warrantless wiretapping that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and other laws seem to forbid. But, says Goldsmith, could it be justified in the name of exigency?
He thinks that you'd need a legislative fix. Congress would had to explicitly pass a law authorizing Einstein 3 to put it on really solid legal footing. But, he also notes that in order to be consistent with Fourth Amendment values, although not necessarily with the Fourth Amendment itself, you would need a series of use restriction-like devices. He talks about minimization requirements that would require the data to be destroyed after a particular period of time, if it didn't contain anything suspicious; independent oversight by judges; and sunset provisions that would insure that the authority would expire after a certain period of time unless Congress wanted to renew it.
So, for him, I think he imagines that these restrictions should be embraced by Congress, although he's not all that optimistic that they will be. He notes that similar restrictions were recommended by things like the Berger decision [Berger v. New York, 388 US 41 (1967)], the Supreme Court's decision regulating wiretapping. There, Congress did respond by passing the kind of restrictions that the Court recommended.
I think we'll see whether the Congress responds to the Jones decision by accepting Justice Alito's suggestion that we need a Global Positioning System legislation and that it's not up to courts alone but that some sort of legislative regulation of access to geo-location data is necessary. But, this is such an important problem because it's a solution without a natural constituency. And, it's just not obvious, I think, to any of our authors exactly whether the good results that they suggest will in practice be adopted.
As the Supreme Court works these issues out in Jones, is it interesting to you which Justices write and what they say?
Yes. The Jones case is interesting and encouraging on a lot of levels.
It is interesting and encouraging that all the Justices, liberal and conservative, rejected the position that there's no privacy in public.
It's encouraging that each of them contributed something promising for the future. So, it's a good thing that Justice [Antonin] Scalia and his colleagues said that trespass law may not be the ceiling for Fourth Amendment protections but it's at least a floor. It's a good thing that [Justice Samuel A.] Alito was so willing, in a very creative way, to entertain and recognize the difference between short and long-term surveillance. And, it's great that Justice [Sonia] Sotomayor called for re-examining the Third-party Doctrine, which says that data I share with a third part like Google is data in which I abandon expectation of privacy and which Google can then share without limitations with the government.
It's also encouraging that the Justices seem to be as tech-savvy as any normal citizen in this world. You know, there was a lot of ridiculing of them on the blogs for their supposed tech-ludditism. In the oral argument about the privacy of a beeper, the Quon case [City of Ontario, California v. Quon, 560 US __ (2009)], [Chief] Justice [John G.] Roberts[, Jr.] was criticized for asking a question that seemed not to understand what a, what text messaging technology was. And others noted that Justice [Elena] Kagan, the youngest Justice, grew up with video technology that went no further than Pong. And then, of course, in the Communications Decency Act case back in the 90s [Reno v. ACLU, 521 US 844 (1997), there were apparently, according to press reports, porn tutorials in the Supreme Court library where [Harvard Law School Professor] Larry Lessig, who was then a Clerk for Justice Scalia and is also an Internet guru, had to set up computers and show the Justices how to sign on and access Internet pornography, no doubt sternly cautioning them not to engage in this hideous vice in their spare time.
But, in this [the Jones] case, we learn that the Justices are citizens of the new digital highway along with the rest of us. They get EZ Pass. They use Kindles...they use e-mail. They have smart phones. And therefore, they are not going to allow the fact that they are old and, in that sense, less tech-savvy than younger people, they won't allow that to prevent them from engaging in this crucial question of how to translate the Constitution in light of new technologies.
Is present concern for technology's effect on Constitutional values a generational issue?
Yes. The Jones case is interesting and encouraging on a lot of levels.
It is interesting and encouraging that all the Justices, liberal and conservative, rejected the position that there's no privacy in public.
—End of Part Four—
Part Five
"What's so inspiring about our beautiful Constitution is that it provides a framework for discussion that challenges us to preserve values in the face of change as they always have changed. Technology has always challenged our Constitutional values. We've responded in more and less effective ways. But at least there's a framework for the conversation that we can root in the text and history of this wonderful document."
Part Five (b, Professor Rosen discusses whether younger generations of technology users will answer questions of Constitutional value differently and how these questions have been resolved over time.
Is present concern for technology's effect on Constitutional values generational?
I am very skeptical of generational claims when it comes to the Privacy debate.
It's true: Younger people have different norms of exposure than older people in some regards. They're more willing to go through naked body scanners at airports—because they look much better than the rest of us. They are more willing to share details of their personal lives on Facebook.
But, these same young people are quite savvy about editing their Facebook profiles the moment they graduate from college or law school and are applying for jobs. And, are so savvy that they may remove a lot of the embarrassing drunken Facebook pictures but leave up one or two because they've learned that if their profiles look too clean employers will think that they're trying to hide something.
So, as all of us grow up in this digital world, we all adjust to its exigencies. And it's not the case, I think, that this great new 'kumbaya' universe, everything is going to be shared and we'll just get over our hangups about seeing each other's secrets and light and sweetness will prevail. It's just not descriptively right and it's also would be an undesirable world to live in.
Nevertheless. Will norms change in light of new patterns of behavior? Of course. Of course.
People are not going to draw the line in the same place. Certain forms of exposure that used to be frowned on will be embraced. Much of that is to the good. People have complained about the paternalistic aspects of privacy: efforts to keep women in their place by enforcing norms of modesty. There's no point in being a Luddite or a moralist in acknowledging the degree to which technology is changing norms of privacy.
The one thing I want to resist is the claim that there will not always be some line that is important to draw and defend. And there will always be some invasions that will be unreasonable. If we're to be 'secure in our persons, papers, houses and effects,' as the Framers insisted, then there are certain forms of observation and surveillance that will have to be considered unacceptable. And that's why it's so important that courts, legislatures and citizens negotiate those lines and insist on them and not lazily insist, 'Oh! No one will care. You should just get over it.' And so forth.
Reasonableness requires judgments and those are the kinds of lines we have to draw.
Is this to say that the Constitution establishes lasting values and means to resolve competing values but doesn't etch any answer in stone?
Yes. That's a very good way of putting it.
The Constitution asks questions rather than providing answers. And, it identifies Constitutional values that change over time and may not always rise to the level of Constitutional rights. It was so striking throughout the book that in many cases there was some value that was being threatened even though there was no obvious right that was being threatened. The problem of forgetting on the Internet was one of them. It's very difficult not to be able to escape your past, to lose a job because of the ill-advised, drunken Facebook picture that you posted. That doesn't mean you have a right to have it removed and it doesn't mean that if a right is created, as Europe is trying to do, that that won't be bad consequences on other Constitutional values like Free Speech. So, that's why it's such a complex and fascinating area.
But, what's so inspiring about our beautiful Constitution is that it provides a framework for discussion that challenges us to preserve values in the face of change as they always have changed. Technology has always challenged our Constitutional values. We've responded in more and less effective ways. But at least there's a framework for the conversation that we can root in the text and history of this wonderful document.
Is technology posing categorically new questions? Or do these questions fit in an existing Constitutional framework?
It's a hard and important question: Is technology transforming our Constitutional debates in degree or in kind? Are these entirely new challenges? Or are they just different versions of the old questions?
You can argue it either way. I remember once making the argument that the challenges were new and Kathleen Sullivan, then the Dean of Stanford Law School, said, 'No. This is just the 'Winnebago Problem.''
And what she meant by that is that everyone who takes Criminal Procedure in Law School knows all of those line-drawing cases trying to figure out when a passenger compartment becomes a trunk. And the challenge is the Winnebago, which looks like a combination of a trunk and a passenger compartment. And for Kathleen Sullivan, there were always technological challenges to privacy; Brandeis worried about the Kodak Camera and the tabloid press. And now we have Facebook so many more people are affected than the aristocrats in Brandeis's day who worried about their social privacy being invaded. Now it's 800 Million Facebook users rather than three Boston aristocrats. But, it's just a difference in degree rather than kind.
I respect that position. But my instinct is something has changed in kind and that is the fact that the private corporations have so much more power over these values like Privacy and Free Speech than they did 100 years ago. It's true that there was the Kodak Company. But it had so much less ability to affect our entire national debate than Facebook did that it strikes me that the challenge of translating Constitutional values into a world where they may not even apply to private actors is a distinctly new problem that has become more acute.
But, there's no point in fussing too much about this. I'm perfectly willing to acknowledge that maybe it is a difference in degree. But, if that's the case, it's a really, really big difference in degree.
You often cite Justice Louis Brandeis as a visionary & influential thinker about the relation of law & technology.
How do large questions of Constitutional value & understanding get resolved?
I'm so glad you asked about my hero, Justice Brandeis. And, I can't resist this opportunity to plug him by—here, I've got him sitting right here on my window sill, so I'm going to bring him over and have him gaze soulfully into the camera. You see his Lincoln-like profile, which was so admired. And, I'm going to have him looking soulfully out the window. Because he was so—Mr Justice, I'm being very respectful in holding you near me here.
But, I believe that Brandeis's example showed that we cannot rely on judges alone.
Why was it, that in 1890, there was no national constituency for trust busting but, by 1913, the election in which Brandeis was advising Woodrow Wilson, two of the major Presidential candidates—Wilson and [Theodore] Roosevelt—were both declared in opposition to 'The Money Trust,' to the 'Curse of Bigness,' and determined to pass anti-trust legislation to reign in the banks? It was because of political activism. It was because the Progressives started as an elite movement and insisted on the importance of expert opinions but also mobilized citizens to lobby state legislatures who passed laws like the minimum wage laws and prototypes of anti-trust laws and created a bi-partisan national constituency around trust-busting.
I look at the political debate today and I am encouraged, frankly, by the similarities, the—not the dissonance but the consonance between the Tea Party and the Occupy movements, not in all respects, obviously, but in their opposition to the banks and their fear of concentrated corporate power, they suggest that there might be a mobilized constituency for curbing unlimited corporate power. Whether they will end up convincing the major political parties to pass regulations that rival that of Roosevelt and Wilson, or whether they fade away, as so many other fringe movements have, depends on whether they can persuade the mainstream Presidential candidates—[Mitt] Romney and [Barack] Obama—that they really have the numbers to make a difference. But I think, using them as a model, that Brandeis would have insisted that these issues involving technology and the Constitution are not ones that should be limited to judges or administrators or experts or certainly not, God help us, law professors. They're issues that all citizens have a stake in and a duty to engage. The ability to defend Constitutional values is our most precious heritage as Americans and we have to seize it. And that's why I always love inspiring myself with Brandeis's wonderful words. He said, "If we would guide by the light of reason, we must let our minds be bold."
—End of GWorks Interviews: Jeffrey Rosen—
to Part One: Presenting the Future
GWorks Interviews: Jeffrey Rosen was filmed Wednesday 2 February 2012 in Professor Rosen's office at George Washington University Law School, Disctict of Columbia. GWorks would like to thank Professor Rosen for his generous participation and support of GOVERNINGWorks; and The Brookings Institution, in particular Natalie Fullenkamp
Book Cover: Constitution 3.0: Freedom & Technological Change. Courtesy The Brookings Institution.
Photo: Jeffrey Rosen. Courtesy Jeffrey Rosen.
Photo: Louis D. Brandeis (1856–1941), nominated by President Woodrow Wilson, was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1916 to 1939. Photo ca. 1916 Source: Library of Congress.
Please note: The Brookings Institution, publisher of Constitution 3.0, provided GOVERNINGWorks with a Reviewer Copy of Constitution 3.0.
—Tuesday 28 February 2012—
Constitution 3.0
Freedom & Technological Change
How do Constitutional values like liberty, privacy and due process of law and ideas of constitutionalism handle the challenges of modern technological advancement? GOVERNINGWorks talks to Jeffrey Rosen, George Washington University Law School Professor and, with The Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Benjamin Wittes, co-editor of the newly released Constitution 3.0: Freedom & Technological Change.
The following is the video interview and transcript in their entirety.
Recent GWorks Posts
President Obama's annual address to Congress
revisiting Citizens United two years later
an historic speech at the March on Washington to mark the Civil Rights leader's birth
on the (il)logic of campaign rhetoric
the Brookings Institution, technology and the future of law
why we can live without cameras in the Supreme Court
what to do with the failure of the Congressional "Super-Committee"
GWorks Reviews: The Myth of Choice
a review of Kent Greenfield's study of the limits of choice and a comment on the perils of determinism
GWorks Interviews: Kent Greenfield
Boston College Law School professor and author of The Myth of Choice: Personal Responsibility in a World of Limits (October 2011), discusses understanding choice, its limits and effects
GWorks Interviews: Adam Winkler
The UCLA Constitutional Law professor talks about his new book, Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America (W.W. Norton, September 2011)
Viewing GOVERNINGWorks
The GOVERNINGWorks Web site is best viewed on the Internet using Chrome, Firefox or Safari. These browsers are available on the Internet FREE for Mac OS and Windows. Readers may download any of these browsers by following the links in this paragraph.
About GWorks Interviews: Jeffrey Rosen
How do Constitutional values like liberty and due process of law and ideas of constitutionalism handle the challenges of modern technological advancement? On Wednesday 2 February 2012, GOVERNINGWorks talked to Jeffrey Rosen, George Washington University Law School Professor and, with The Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Benjamin Wittes, co-editor of the newly released "Constitution 3.0: Freedom & Technological Change."
Part One: Presenting the Future
Professor Rosen describes Constitution 3.0 and explains his contribution to it, including a discussion of "Open Planet"—24/7, world-wide video surveillance that may come to a computer near you sooner than you think
Professor Rosen discusses Constitutional law, the growing role private corporations play in affecting speech and privacy and how we might best protect our rights in a changing world
Part Three: Reasonable Tech-spectations
Professor Rosen discusses the effect technology is having on established legal understanding of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution's prohibition of "unreasonable searches and seizures," crime and punishment and whether established Constitutional assumptions may not be in the Constitution after all
Part Four: Controlling Authority
Professor Rosen discusses news ways to think about the government's ability to collect and use data and what the recent Jones case may say about Supreme Court thinking
Professor Rosen discusses whether younger generations of technology users will answer questions of Constitutional value differently and how these questions have been resolved over time
| Terms of Service | Copyright (c) 2011 GOVERNINGWorksTM | All Rights Reserved. |


text:
Further Down the Writer's Path
John Vorhaus on Jun 27 2013 | Filed under: CRAFT, Inspirations
Writers often find themselves confronted by the question, "What is emotional truth?" and the further question, "How do I put it on the page?" As someone who has taught and trained writers all over the world – and of course struggled with these questions myself – I find that writers go through predictable stages in their quest to convey authentic emotional meaning in their work.
At first, many writers have no idea that such a thing as emotional truth even exists. They are focused solely on making the plot work, making the jokes funny, or advancing the action from event to event. At this stage, there is little or no thought to a work's deeper meaning or deeper human truth. call this the "run and jump" phase of our writing careers, when all we can really see, and all we can adequately convey, are the mechanical aspects of the work; the mysteries of the human heart yet elude us.
As we mature as writers, we become aware that there's such a thing as emotional truth, but we have no effective means of transmitting this information from brain to page. Our first efforts in this direction often seem awkward, stilted, and self-conscious. We might try to write, "I love you," only to recoil in horror at the awful, stilted, clichéd obviousness of that thought. We hate or castigate ourselves for writing so artlessly about subjects so important. We haven't yet made, at least to our satisfaction, the connection between simple human truths and meaningful, effective, evocative presentation on the page.
But we get better. We do. We grow and develop, deepen our awareness of the emotional truths we wish to convey, and also acquire strategies and tactics for doing so in a satisfying way. We discover tools like text and subtext, and bring our writing to the point where one character may say to another, "Would you like a cup of coffee?" and have it understood to mean, "I yearn for you to the bottom of my soul." We become writers with sufficient insight to detect emotional truth and sufficient toolcraft to capture and preserve it in words. So we're home and dry, right?
Maybe not. Maybe we're still afraid.
In conveying emotional truth on the page, writers must make certain leaps of faith. Sooner or later we have to recognize that writing about emotional things will necessarily expose us to the very feelings we're trying to express – feelings we might not be entirely comfortable with. To write successfully at this stage, we have to become okay with just feeling what we're feeling. We also have to be ready to accept judgment from others – family and friends, other writers, the audience at large. We have to be ready to take a stand and say, "This! This is what I believe! This is how I think the human condition works!" That's a big step. Some writers can't make it – their story absolutely ends here. For fear of confronting their feelings and for fear of others' opprobrium, they just never find their way to being honest on the page.
Those who do overcome their fear enter a state of maturity in relation to emotional truth: They know it's out there; they desire to express it; they have the means to do so; and they are not afraid. This, as far as I'm concerned, is the ultimate goal of a writer's life: To know the truth; to speak the truth; and to be not afraid.
So then we can think of a writer's journey to emotional truth as a road toward deeper understanding, better toolcraft, and freedom from fear. It's useful to stop and ponder from time to time where we are on this road. I myself am currently exactly here: I have a pretty good hand on interpersonal truth – how people are with one another – and now I'm trying to tackle philosophical truth and spiritual truth. I'm trying to convey my deepest beliefs without sounding like a dork or a preacher or both. It's not easy, and I'm not entirely unafraid, for who wants to look like a preachy dork? But I'm soldiering on, because it's my understanding that this is what living the writer's life is really all about: going deeper; and having gone deeper, going deeper still.
If you want to see where you exactly are on this road, just ask yourself this question: "What deep, dark secret about myself, my beliefs, my understanding, or my experience would I not want anyone to know?" If you find that you can already write about this secret, then you're already writing within the realm of emotional truth. If you find that you can't yet write about the whatever-it-is, don't worry, for the path that's laid out before you is a well-illuminated and time-tested one: If you keep moving toward emotional truth, trust me, you'll get there.
Or don't even trust me; trust yourself. Look back over your shoulder and see the things you used to be scared to write about, but aren't anymore. There are many. There will be many more. That's the writer's life. That's the journey you're on.
As an exercise, if you're game, write a thousand words about that deep, dark whatever-it-is. I think that once you put it on the page, it'll scare you a lot less than you thought – and help you a lot more than you think.
Me, I'll be right over here trying not to sound like a preachy dork. How is that going so far?
About John Vorhaus
John Vorhaus has written seven novels, including Lucy in the Sky, The California Roll, The Albuquerque Turkey and The Texas Twist, plus the Killer Poker series and (with Annie Duke) Decide to Play Great Poker. His books on writing include The Comic Toolbox, How to Write Good and Creativity Rules!
26 Responses to "Further Down the Writer's Path"
Love this. I find I have the best success in being emotionally truthful when I'm trying to translate something from real life (ie, my life) into fiction. The plot seems to flow naturally based on the emotions I'm wanting to explore. I have a much tougher time getting to real emotions when I start with a purely fictional plot or character situation. The emotion often comes across as fairly flat, and I really have to ask myself, *why* does this character care about the situation they're in?
I don't think I've been very successful at it yet. It's definitely one area where writing is making me dig deeper into empathy.
John, you do not sound like a preachy dork. You sound like a thoughtful one :)
Good article! I've been writing for years, and only a few days ago did I brainstorm an idea for a story involving my deepest darkest secret... And I actually felt comfortable putting it to paper! Couldn't have done that a year ago. Progress! -
Wow. Wow. How I needed to read and ponder this today. So timely. So truthful. So real. Thank you, John.
John- you're kidding, right. A Preachy Dork, you haven't even come close to being a pontificator. Dude you're awesome.
Fortunately for me this aspect of writing is fairly easy. I've lived a life of embarrassing exposure, because of one thing or another. Sometimes I forget about that when I hear that other people have a hard time transcribing certain emotions.
I'll definitely practice this exercise John.
I guess we can't create tension without feeling any.
Feeling what we create is a good thing. -
An excellent post, John, brimming with wisdom. Even the lightest fiction has truth to offer, if the author has done their job. I will be using your insights as I try to write with more emotional truth in my own work.
I love this - "This! This is what I believe! This is how I think the human condition works!" Taking this leap of faith - putting your thoughts and feelings on the page - is scary, but so worth it. It will make your writing real and relatable.
"Would you like a cup of coffee?" and have it understood to mean, "I yearn for you to the bottom of my soul.">
Thank you, Eddie Izzard. Although, honestly, the yearning Eddie was talking about didn't have much to do with the soul...:)
D'oh! Snark doesn't work well if you don't close your html tags properly.
I loved, absolutely loved the flow of the writing. This is what good writing is.
The thoughts flow from paragraph to paragraph till we reach the conclusion: This above all: to thine own self be true. Because in writing emotional truths into your stories you come face-to-face with your own truths, and the more you acknowledge them the stronger your writing will be.
Soldier on regardless of your fears and demons, you say, for "this is what living the writer's life is really all about: going deeper; and having gone deeper, going deeper still."
Thank you.
Anjali -
The last couple of days I've been thinking about writing into the deep dark secret, the place no one knows. I shrugged it off. Told myself there's no way I could write THAT.
Turns out I was a hair's breadth from laying it all out on the page. Turns out I just needed a little encouragement from a preachy dork:)
I'm off to write my words, let the secret fly and see what happens. Thanks Jon!
I know people around me are wondering what in the world is taking me so long to get my novel written. But this is exactly it. It has taken me a good while to discover my truth, and then write it down without caring what other people think. But, oh, what a journey.
Great topic. Great post.
"What deep, dark secret about myself, my beliefs, my understanding, or my experience would I not want anyone to know?"
This is the close to the first exercise in my Writing 21st Century Fiction workshops. For a reason. To write fiction with power one must write personally. One must draw from oneself.
But there's a problem and you identified it, John: fear. Fear of exposure and rejection are great inhibitors.
I believe that is why emotions portrayed on the page often do not move us as readers. Writers choose emotions that are obvious, safe and expected...and thus do not pierce through to readers' hearts. Writers hold themselves--their true selves--back.
There is, however, a way to reach authentic emotional truth every day and in every scene.
If you subscribe to the (free!) Writer Unboxed Newsletter, go back to the November 2012 issue. My "21st Century Tip" is about working with secondary emotions.
In a nutshell: find any story moment, identify the POV character's dominant emotion--and then detail two emotional layers underneath that. One of those is in almost all cases a more powerful emotion to portray on the page. It's also generally something closer to what the author truly feels.
To put it differently, a "secondary" emotion is often the one an author is hiding from.
I maintain that fear is, in fact, a tool. It's an arrow pointing to what really needs to be expressed. If you're afraid to go there, go there. It's where you need to be if you want to write with high impact.
Nice one, John. Keep 'em coming.
Excellent post. I've found in my writing process that often the emotional depth of the characters does not reveal itself until the second or third draft. The first draft is one of self-discovery and identifying what the story is really about. Subsequent drafts allow the writer to plumb the depths of their characters' emotions. It's very hard to get deep into the emotions in the first draft. This is such an important topic. Thanks for a thoughtful discussion of it. -
Ah, but what if the exposure you fear is not exposure of yourself but exposure of others? And is it good enough to write the deep dark secret in private, or must you put it out there publicly? Not disputing, just wondering.
I think it's important to protect others while you write your own truth. Best to enlighten, not scourge.
Carmel, I couldn't agree with you more. As a personal choice, I seek for my writing to enlighten and not to scourge. When I teach this point, I take pains to point out two very "selfish" reasons for doing so. First, since we writers are all our first and most faithful readers, we will certainly feel better if our writing speaks to us in a positive way. Second, by writing "to the positive side of the human equation," we naturally make common cause with like-minded people, and those people are both better for us and more fun to be around. Hollywood formalizes this relationship with the nostrum, "In Hollywood, mensches work with mensches and a-holes work with a-holes."
When I'm guiding a sitcom staff of new writers, I remind them that when their egos are exposed, they're like dogs in submission position, bellies bared, fearing to get kicked, hoping to get scratched. In my writing rooms it's a standard rule, "Don't kick, scratch."
Thanks to you, Carmel, and to everyone who has chimed in on this. Sprightly insights, and well thought out. -jv
Bravo John. I love this post.
"Going deeper; and having gone deeper, going deeper still." This is what I learned to do as a stage actress.
I thought my understanding of vulnerability would naturally appear on the page when I wrote. I was wrong. On the stage I can reveal all the vulnerable goo because I am not myself. I inhabit another person's skin and words, and by doing so I free My Self from "criticism."
On the page, even though I am still dealing with a character different than me, they are more me than a stage character because My words define them rather than the playwright's. This is where the resistance or fear rises.
Fortunately, awareness is the first step towards change, and the "desire to change" follows and prods. It's all process and an amazing adventure—no matter how long it takes.
Thanks for sharing, John.
What I love most about this post is that the writer who usually goes for the funny, or for blunt statements about being a pro, wrote about emotional truth and writerly fears of exposure. Which makes me listen more. And ensures that you don't come off as a preachy dork. So was it your deep dark secret (at least as far as writerly advice goes) that you want to go for deep truth?
Yes, my best writing does come from deep within, but it is hard to be so exposed. And yet, this is why I read -- to see into the soul of another -- so why shouldn't I expect anything less of myself?
"And yet, this is why I read — to see into the soul of another — so why shouldn't I expect anything less of myself?"
And, also, that our characters can be our mirrors...to see into the souls of our characters is to see, with depth, the myriad facets of our own.
[...] And we leave you with author John Vorhaus as he takes you further down the writer's path. [...]
Maybe it sounds a bit overblown, but I think writing only becomes art when the author is fully honest in what he writes. That also concerns acting, sculpting, and whatnot. After all, art is an exquisite form of emotional expression, and it's a shame when the artists wastes an opportunity to tell the truth about him/herself.
I felt badly that I missed this post yesterday. I saw the title as I was boarding a plane and knew I would love it. Yet I knew I wouldn't have time or opportunity to respond.
Still, it was great to read it this morning and to see all the thoughtful responses that followed.
I still have a path to travel on this, a thought shared by many other apparently ;). But I did make a leap of understanding while drafting my first novel. It helps me, and might help others, so I wanted to share it.
One morning I was drafting a scene that reveals a buried fault line in a character. In the scene my lovely character, a mother and wife, becomes aware of the silence in her house, brought on by her ill husband upstairs and her teen boys having vanished on their own activities for the day.
She kind of snaps for a moment, a reaction to a deep fear, the fear we all carry - that we'll be alone someday, utterly alone.
What I - as the author - realized while writing the scene is that I was describing a scene that plays out everyday, in ways large and small, all around the glove. That moment when a person realizes a loved one isn't going to make it, or finds they're already gone. And for the first time as a writer, I recognized a responsibility that if I were going do justice to that scene - that universal emotion - I needed to imagine it from her perspective but also to feel it inside myself, to be there in the room with her and let myself feel the same pain. It was the only way to get close to the reality of how the scene might play out, how she'd react. Otherwise, anything I wrote would be a caricature of the experience, rather than the truth I wanted so desperately to capture.
Maybe others have long known that, and I admittedly have miles to go on my own craft. But that realization changed the way I wrote, both on that scene and any scene of great emotion afterward. It was a big step for me in recognizing my responsibility to good writing, and why it's important.
Thanks for giving me an opportunity to share my experience. I hope it might help someone else find their way of getting to the heart of the matter, the truth in their writings.
"Otherwise, anything I wrote would be a caricature of the experience, rather than the truth I wanted so desperately to capture."
I have always described this feeling as THE BOTTOM ACHE, a pain so real and palpable that I, as the writer, try to convey. I feel like if I get just a tenth of a tenth of a tenth of the real feeling, just a sliver of the bottom ache, then I'm doing my job as a writer.
It is, by far, the hardest part. -jv
This is simply the best thing I've read all week. Thank you! It's going in my Evernote file plus Twitter and LinkedIn. Thanks for such a thoughtful and true article.
[...] To lift your own work up to the highest level of storytelling quality, simply go deeper, ever deeper, into your characters' inner conflict. The greater their war within, the richer and more emotionally satisfying your story will be. This, of course, requires that you have both an understanding of, and commitment to, emotional truth. For more on that subject, I invite you to revisit my post on that subject from last month, Further Down the Writer's Path. [...]

subset: commoncrawl


text:
I just bought a CG5 advanced about 3 years old.
It does not have a Polar Scope...I will be guiding and imaging but I've heard that it's possible to do a Polar Alignment with a routine in the Handset..Once upon a time I had a LXD-75 and I used one star itterative...Is it the same thing and where could I find docs that explian the procedure?
Best Place to buy a Polar scope for this mount?
Also does the worm shaft have end bearings or bushings...
My loads will be no greater than 15 lbs..small refractors and a very light guiding setup...
The LXD had an illuminated poalr scope A small light that threaded into the scope...Are those red led switched lights available anywhere..thinking of taping and threading the area where the polarscope cover is Just behind it
Just bought a Cg5 Advanced Some ??'s
Started by
, Jul 27 2009 12:28 PM
7 replies to this topic
Posted 27 July 2009 - 12:28 PM
Posted 27 July 2009 - 01:13 PM
If your handset is version 4.xx you can upgrade to the version 4.16 that has the All Star alignment procedure and no polar scope is required. If it is prior to v4 you'll need to upgrade the handset. With the older non-upgradeable, you can still use a polar scope and get good alignments, OPT has great deals and service.
Posted 27 July 2009 - 01:28 PM
For general info on firmware and such www.nexstarsite.com. Also download the Advanced Series manual (CG-5) and the Version 4.xx addendum (links are on Mike's site).
Like Gary said ... with the latest firmware there's no need for the polar scope ... yes really.
Like Gary said ... with the latest firmware there's no need for the polar scope ... yes really.
Posted 27 July 2009 - 03:15 PM
The polar scope that fits the older CG5 is no longer in production. You'll have to find one on the used market. I bought the polar scope twice based vendors' advertised descriptions. Neither time did it fit my CG5. I use the new Polar Alignment program and it works great, especially since I don't have to scrunch down to do the alignment. But I don't do AP.
Posted 27 July 2009 - 03:54 PM
Looks like I have a 4.10 Version of the Handset
I don't think I have a RS-232 Port though on either laptops
I don't think I have a RS-232 Port though on either laptops
Posted 27 July 2009 - 03:56 PM
Serial port to USB adapter is the answer. Wal Mart, Staples... very common item.
Posted 27 July 2009 - 04:02 PM
Looks like I have a 4.10 Version of the Handset
I don't think I have a RS-232 Port though on either laptops
Great. You have an upgradable handset!
Here's all you need for your non-serial ported laptops: Link. There are other cheaper USB-Serial adapters, but don't buy anything but this one! Highly recommended by those in the know (from whom I listened and learned). You'll love the Celestron "All-Star" polar alignment routine that requires the 4.16 hand control firmware.
Posted 27 July 2009 - 04:15 PM
Guess I got luck with my Staples special...


text:
DHC • Rich Moisture • Moisturizers
(27 reviews)
Average Rating. | 3.3 |
Would buy this product again. | 55% |
Ingredients |
Leeah on 3/12/2013 4:01:00 PM more reviews by Leeah
Age: 25-29 Skin: Combination, Fair Hair: Brown, Straight, Fine Eyes: Hazel
This is my second bottle of this lotion, soon going on my third. About two years ago I was going nuts looking for a good lotion. My skin is combo and sensitive. My mom actually had a bottle of this she purchased and didn't end up really using; I tried it and really liked it!
It's not greasy, heavy feeling and yet not light enough to make you feel that you need more and more. In the winter I will say my skin does crave a little more moisture in some spots but it is just fine in summer. Absolutely no problems when I also apply SPF and makeup.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No
huongle on 3/21/2012 5:11:00 AM more reviews by huongle
Age: 19-24 Skin: Acne-prone, Olive, Warm Hair: Black Eyes: Brown
Very impressed. I've tried tons of moisturizers over the past year (Clinique, Estee Lauder, Chanel hydra max, Garnier, Clarins hydraquench, organic oils... etc) and this is now holding the HG status together with the Sukin facial moisturizer (whcih is also God-sent).
Got this as a small sample sachet from DHC. I love the liquidy texture, very easy to spread and it absorbs almost instantly. My skin this past winter has become particularly dry so i now need 2 layers of this moisturizer and it would feel thoroughly moisturized and smooth. Will definitely purchase the full size.
Was this review helpful to you? Yes No
*TOP REVIEWER* karinc713 on 10/6/2011 11:27:00 PM more reviews by karinc713
Age: 30-35 Skin: Dry Hair: Brown Eyes: Brown
Pros: lightweight, unscented and comes in a pump bottle.
Cons: not impressed with this one. very basic hydrating lotion. doesn't offer any other benefits... there are better moisturizers out there so I would not repurchase.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No
minjing319 on 7/15/2011 12:50:00 PM more reviews by minjing319
Age: 30-35 Skin: Acne-prone, Fair-Medium Hair: Black Eyes: Brown
I used this product 10 years ago when I was in college. I have combination skin and was sometimes oily. The moisturizer was a little too greasy for me so I used it mostly at night. Now 10 years later, my combination skin has become drier especially on the forehead and under the eyes. This moisturizer is more suitable for my skin now. My advice: If you are young (under 25) and have combination or oily skin, this product may not the be best for you, but if you are older and have drier skin, then this work great as a basic moisturizer.
Was this review helpful to you? Yes No
gudruncaffrey on 6/26/2010 9:36:00 AM more reviews by gudruncaffrey
Age: 30-35 Skin: Normal, Fair-Medium Hair: Brunette, Wavy, Medium Eyes: Brown
I buy DHC products once in a blue moon, then buy some higher end drugstore products, or expensive natural food store brands, or Aveda - thinking DHC is grossly over priced - then go back to the catalog because the quality of their products is fantastic.
I try to stick to the more affordable products from DHC. This moisturizer is $29 for 3 oz. Other moisturizers come in 1 oz or smaller jars.
I love this stuff. Just started to moisturize nightly as I am officially entering "middle-escence". Use less than one tsp on face - light coverage - skin soft and somewhat plumped ;) in the AM.
Found nighttime moisture from DHC complete overkill - like cold cream. And their olive oil, yeah, just kind of a waste of $$$.
But in general - love the quality of their products - and the samples with each order.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No
*TOP REVIEWER* astrid101359 on 11/26/2009 6:07:00 AM more reviews by astrid101359
Age: 44-55 Skin: Other, Fair Hair: Red Eyes: Hazel
Lovely lightweight yet hydrating moisturizer that leaves my skin feeling soft and restored after washing. I use this as my nighttime moisturizer as it has no spf. However, I have also used this during the day and it does make an excellent base for foundation and powder. This is a very gentle product on my sensitive skin. Will repurchase. PPP/Cool-toned, NW15
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No
deborahmh on 1/12/2009 6:05:00 PM more reviews by deborahmh
Age: 44-55 Skin: Normal, Fair Hair: Red Eyes: Green
I've been using this cream for years now and it's one of my staples.I always keep coming back to it. I never, ever break out with it and the makeup I use looks great on top of it ( I use Everyday Minerals, another staple.) To answer the previous rater about it being greasy I would say that she is using too much of it. Sometimes that happens to me. What I do is wet the tip of my fingers and rub on my face like I'm putting on the lotion. What this does is it cuts the lotion down if you used to much of it and it gives you a nice moist glow afterwards. I do this all the time. Also I have used the Aquaphor and while it works it feels way to heavy on my skin. I prefer the feel of this cream over the Aquaphor.
Was this review helpful to you? Yes No
vwterry on 12/19/2008 4:24:00 PM more reviews by vwterry
Age: 44-55 Skin: Acne-prone, Fair-Medium, Warm Hair: Brown Eyes: Hazel
I had some irritation and dryness around my eyes from the foundation I was using (Revlon Age Defying for dry skin--I think the SPF was the irritant), and reached for this sample packet out of desperation. (I had tried a few DHC products in the past and had a stash of their samples.) It's a good nighttime moisturizer for that area, but too heavy/greasy for daytime.
Will not purchase because Aquaphor does the same thing for much less money.
Was this review helpful to you? Yes No
prettybird98 on 4/12/2008 4:11:00 PM more reviews by prettybird98
Age: 30-35 Skin: Normal, Fair-Medium Hair: Brunette Eyes: Blue
I had so much trouble balancing my skin - oily in T-zone, dry everywhere else, until I found this product. It is my HG. It feels light, and can be used under makeup, quickly absorbed. I can't believe the results, the texture of my skin has dramatically improved, and I never get breakouts.
I live in Delaware (extremely hot/humid in summer, cold in winter), so I have to switch my skincare regemine accordingly. I use Rich Moisture as night-time moisturizer in the summer, and daytime in the winter. I need to find a lighter daytime moisturizer for summer - but will be getting it from DHC. This is a great skincare company!
Was this review helpful to you? Yes No
hesperia on 12/25/2007 11:01:00 PM more reviews by hesperia
Age: 44-55 Skin: Combination, Neutral Hair: Brown, Wavy, Fine Eyes: Brown
Funny how the same product can have such different results on different people. I have combo skin and this moisturizer is one of the very few that really sinks into my skin. I love it. Whereas Extra Nighttime Moisture is too rich for my skin, this one works very well. I like to use it in winter, when my skin gets a bit drier.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No
Top Rated Moisturizers
Lumene Energy Cocktail pampering drops
50 reviewsWeleda Wild Rose Face Oil Capsules
49 reviewsNo Brand (DIY or homemade) Avocado Oil
124 reviews


text:
Festivals Drug Free As Nation's Youth Take Labour MP's Advice
Or not. Shadow Home Office minister Diana Johnson is in full mum mode this morning, warning young revellers:
"Enjoy the music, but don't play roulette with your health. My message is simple: if you're going to a music festival enjoy the music and hope for some sun, but don't risk your life with a pill."
Clearly Diana doesn't want anyone to experience anything more exciting than Tom Watson's "fragmentary moments of pure music joy in a field in Glastonbury falling in love with a bloke barely in his twenties playing the guitar like a mid-west cyclone". Wonder what she thinks about votes for 16-year-olds…


text:
Alfalfa sprouts are the shoots of the alfalfa plant, harvested before they become the full-grown plant. Because they are so small, the sprouts contain a concentrated amount of certain vitamins and minerals such as calcium, vitamin K and vitamin C. Alfalfa sprouts contain just 8 calories and 0 grams of fat per cup.
One cup of alfalfa sprouts supplies 2.7 milligrams of the 75 to 90 milligrams of vitamin C you need each day for a strong immune system and healthy skin. A serving of alfalfa sprouts supplies small amounts of bone-building calcium and potassium for healthy muscles and a normal heart beat. You also get tiny doses of magnesium, iron, folate and vitamin A from a serving of alfalfa sprouts.
Brand | Sproutman |
Benefits | Alfalfa sprouts are one of the most significant dietary sources of phytoestrogens, which are beneficial compounds in plant foods that can help reduce your risk of heart disease, cancer and osteoporosis, according to Michael T. Murray, author of "The Condensed Encyclopedia of Healing Foods." The phytoestrogens in alfalfa sprouts might reduce symptoms of menopause as well. Murray also notes that alfalfa sprouts contain compounds called saponins, which can help lower your LDL, or bad, cholesterol while also increasing your HDL, or "good" cholesterol. Saponins might also help boost your immunity. |
Suggested Use | Add them to fresh salads or sandwhiches or just eat them straight from the sprouting jar! Great for kids! |
Ingredients | 100% Organic Alfalfa sprouting seeds. |
Specifications | USDA Organic |
Storage | For maximum shelf life, store seeds in a tightly sealed glass jar and set in a cool, dry place. |


text:
As we enter the 2016 election cycle, I remind the membership that we keep the politics out of the main forums. We are not a political forum, we are a bicycling forum, so we do not get involved in political arguments, except in our Politics and Religion Forum. This is an invitation only forum and generally requires at least 30 days membership and a minimum of fifty posts to be granted access.
I will make exception to those rules if we move your thread to P&R and you're close to the minimums. To get access, you can email me or any of the Administrators for access to P&R. My email is tom(at)bikeforums(dot)net. My SIC is Siu Blue Wind, and she can also grant access, as can CbadRider. Siu can be reached by PM or her username at bikeforums dot ne and CbadRider by PM only.
Thank you in advance for your cooperation in this, and keep on riding!
Tom Stormcrowe
Senior Site Administrator


text:
Latitude 2009
The Good, The Bad & The Queen
Damon Albarn, being something of a native as he hails from nearby Colchester, closes tonight's set by The Good, The Bad & The Queen by displaying his intimate knowledge of the A12. It's perhaps not the most rock 'n' roll way to end a festival, but then The Good, The Bad & The Queen aren't necessarily going to play by the rules.
The more I hear GBQ, the more I like them. My favourite Blur songs have always been the more melancholic, downtempo ones -- "Oily Water", "Miss America", "Tender", Damon's slightly cracked, woozy voice working at its best here.
So, the GBQ project suits him perfectly -- casting that delivery against scuzzy, 3am dub soundcapes, shaped by Paul Simonon's meaty bass lines.
I'm not sure, though, quite whether they're the band to bring to a rousing close the second night of a festival.
There's something incredibly polite about the whole set. Sure, Simonon is the coolest man in rock -- I can happily watch him stalk a stage, fag hanging nonchalantly from his lips all day. And Tony Allen's Afrobeat rhythms add a tricksy element to the percussion.
But you want songs you can all sing along to -- that great communal moment when strangers turn to one another and sing at the top of their voices, a shared moment of union. And, as enticing a prospect as GBQ are, they don't really quite deliver that.
Still, they play the album all the way through, and it sounds good -- a real connection between Albarn, Simonon, Allen and guitarist Simon Tong. The string quartet adds an extra dimension, fleshing out the sparseness of the music.
And Damon, bless, with his top hat, looking like a benign Bill Sykes from Oliver Twist.
GBQ are a great escape, a good adventure for the man following the success of Gorillaz. But I can't wait until he, Graham, Alex and Dave get back into that studio in October...
Anyway, off to dance to Rob Da Bank in the Sunrise Arena. Back tomorrow, where we'll be bringing you everything you need to know about The National, Jarvis Cocker and Arcade Fire.
Blog party!


text:
Citizens urge GA to "close the coverage gap"
4/3/2014, 11:47 a.m.
Democrats are working overtime to convince Republicans that expanding Medicaid coverage in Virginia is the right thing to do.
The Senate Finance committee had a special hearing this week to listen to the input from citizens and groups around the commonwealth on the budget that was put forward by Gov. Terry McAuliffe. Listed below is a compilation of quotes from a few of the individuals and groups that will recap the impact that closing the coverage gap will have across the state.
"I know that with an issue like healthcare or Medicaid, it's easy to get lost in the politics of the issue and lose sight of what this is really about. This isn't about politics AND it isn't a partisan issue. This is about the real lives of real people who live in our community and who are struggling to deal with hardship and adversity that most people would be hard pressed to even imagine, let alone deal with in their own lives." – Lori Piper | former business executive
"The faith community is deeply connected to people in need of health care. They are involved in faith based hospital systems, clinics and other charitable health services. People of faith help low income families when they are struggling with unforeseen illness or when illness has devastated their already limited financial resources. People of faith believe that life is precious and sacred and that individuals are called to care for one another. Healthcare access is a moral imperative. To deny access to those least among is to ignore our moral obligation. Please work toward closing the coverage gap without delay." – Robin Gahan | Director of Programs for the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy
"Medicaid expansion is the right thing to do. It will improve our population's health, support our state's economy, and reduce the impact on our healthcare system of caring for the uninsured. Too many have suffered for too long without access to health insurance. Now is the time to remedy this." – Mark Ryan, MD and Kate Tulenko, MD | National Physicians Alliance Board of Directors Members
"To oppose the expansion of Medicaid, regardless of the facts, is to deny hard-working Virginians like me the opportunity to have health care to have a better life. Without access to quality, affordable care, I am at risk of a life of disability and dependency, when I could be living a life of independence and productivity." - Roslyn Gadley | home care provider from Alexandria, VA
"Medicaid Expansion would literally be a life-saver for me and for tens of thousands of other home care workers. We work hard caring for seniors and people with disabilities, and we love what we do. But we can't afford health insurance for ourselves and our families... As a cancer survivor, I call on the General Assembly to work with the Governor to expand Medicaid so that every Virginian can lead a long, healthy, and successful life." - Thomasine Wilson | home care provider from Richmond, VA


text:
About Astron Engineering Works
Our manufacturing facility is strategically located in the industrial area of Rajkot city, India. We have ultra modern in-house manufacturing facilities consisting of Automatic Shell Moulding Machines, Furnaces, Shot Blasting Machine, CNC turning centers, Plateau Honing Machines, Hard Chrome Electroplating Plants, etc. This has enabled us to manufacture a qualitative range of products, in adherence with the international standards of quality. Further, these machines and equipment are operated by our team of qualified and skilled professionals, who help us in performing our business operations in a streamlined and dexterous manner. All our offered products are manufactured using optimum-grade raw materials and other basic components that are procured from authentic vendors of the market. Under the strict surveillance of our quality controlling professionals, we are engaged in fulfilling the diverse demands of our clients. Our products are stringently quality tested under various parameters before the final delivery at our customer's end, to ensure flawlessness of the range. In addition to this, we also have a ultra modern warehousing facility at our premises in order to store our products qualitatively so as to protect them from all kinds of flaws and defects. By meeting the distinct requirements of various customer bases across India, we have been able to gain a strong foothold in the Liner – Piston industry.
Under the able guidance and support of our mentor "Mr. Devshibhai Sardhara", we have been able to carve the niche for our organization. Our mentors possess long years of industrial experience, guided by which we have become capable to reach the zenith of the success. We sincerely welcome customers from all around the world to visit us, consider us for the business operations, and establish the long term business relationship.
Our Team
Our efficient and competent team is the driving force, which leads us in the path towards success. With their aid, we have been able to manufacture a qualitative gamut of Liner - Piston Set, Cylinder Liner, Air Cooled Liner, Piston and Piston Ring. Our professionals ensure a hassle free range of products without any compromises with the quality. Moreover, our team members work in close synchronization among one another as well as tandem with our clients, in order to fulfill their demands and requirements.
Few categories of our expert team are enlisted below:
- Foundry men
- Shell Moulding Staff
- Machine Operators
- Electroplating Plant Technicians
- Quality Engineers
- Assembly & Packing Staff
- Supervisors & Managers
- Office Staff - Marketing & Accounting
To,Astron Engineering Works


text:
Feb 23, 2011 6:57 PM by Bethany Tucker, KSBY News
Police in Christchurch, New Zealand say rescue efforts have turned to recovery efforts. At least 75 people were killed in a magnitude 6.3 earthquake that struck earlier this week. Another 300 people remain missing.
The images coming out of New Zealand are especially hard for Shell Beach resident Pam Roberts to see. She and her family lived in New Zealand for six years. They had just moved back to the Central Coast a year ago.
"To know that there's people that you love and care about, and to see it on TV is devastating," Robert tells us.
Roberts and her family have just gotten word that some of their friends in New Zealand are safe. One of those friends is an EMT in Christchurch, who is working to rescue the missing.
Be sure to tune into KSBY News at 6:30p.m. for this full report. We'll also have more tonight on KSBY.com.
Offensive or inappropriate comments are subject to removal. To report a comment, please e-mail us at firstname.lastname@example.com, and include the name of the story and information on the comment.
Thank you! KSBY.com
2 hours ago


text:
Items Tagged with 'touchless'
November 2012 Feature 5
It Pays To Pay Attention To Dispensers
Investing in functional and attractive dispensers will help modernize your restroom while improving health and safety.
Read More
November 2012 Feature 3 Quiz
What Do You Know About Low-flow Technology?
Test your knowledge and complete a quick, eight-question quiz.
Read More