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|27 posts found
Elite Member
Joined: 8/15/07
Well made mmo. Possibly best ever, Graphics, coding, lots of tough put in, and done right !
HOWEVER......As well made as GW2 is, the mind set of development is for auto grouping, and no community. This is ANet's formula, they did not screw up, they made it that way on purpose......It's just made too Auto-Dynamic for my liking !
Would I ever buy an expansion ?......Probabbly not, because it will be the same formula.
Advanced Member
Joined: 8/22/08
Originally posted by delete5230
PvP and more complicated dungeons is where group play comes in. I hope to see more maps like Orr but with more complicated questing, like siege style mechanics against mobs (setting up trebs at certain location, mounting assaults at certain times etc).
Apprentice Member
Joined: 5/20/11
You can group up with people if you want to. Have you tried?
The only thing you don't need to group up is in Open World. how often do you group up with people while leveling in WoW, Aion etc? only when you need the same boss kill perhaps.
Originally posted by delete5230
This isn't addressed to you as such, but to all the people who think as you do...
Why do so many players seem to assume that the formation of a "community" is the developer's responsibility? Are they all so used to sitting alone in attics, basements and bedrooms that they need some sort of in-game incentive before they will start socialising with other players? I see post after post, in a variety of threads, where people say things that amount to "nobody talks" and, ironically, they don't seem to see that THEY fit in that exact, same category.
Grouping is not the same as Community. Don't expect the "community" to come to you, fully-formed and with welcoming arms - make an effort. Stop sitting there passively and moaning that no-one talks/socialises and DO SOMETHING about it if it means so much to you.
Novice Member
Joined: 2/24/12
To me the way Anet did it is more community building than most other MMOs. You can't build a community when the rest of the players are rivals instead of allies. Building a community is more than just grouping up. It's helping others even if only for a short while.
Joined: 5/21/08
Originally posted by Dibdabs
He has already posted several times either in his own threads or other threads complaining about the lack of community. he just wanted to make a new thread yet again to complain some more that people dont want to be friends and sit around yapping for half the day. Best part is him and many others blame any lack of people talking on the wrong things. The main reson people arent talking constantly is because of the low amount of downtime, NOT because of this feature or that feature.
In GW2 youre running around killing stuff, exploring, PvPing etc the majority of the time. Mobs respawn quickly and your ekept active doing DEs. Theres not much time to just stand around and chat unless you intentionally stop playing for the purpose of chatting. In the older games that people put on a pedestal for their "community" people were sitting around talking constantly because of doing nothing. Just sitting around camping spawns, just waiting. You entertained yourself by chatting with others rather than actually being engaged with the game itself.
I just find it funny that people consider this such a bad thing. Did you buy a game or a chat room? Id rather be kept busy and entertained by the game itself than being so bored and having so many lulls in the gameplay that i spend the majority of my time using it as a chat room with a fancy GUI.
Originally posted by kaiser3282
Oh, he's one of THOSE, is he... he'd rather sit back and complain than do something positive about it :D That explains a lot.
You make a good point when you say this game has a minimal amount of downtime. I, too, am always doing something, to the point where I forget to look at the chat box for 10 to 15 minutes at a time. I would think I'm not the only one to do this, not by a long shot.
Novice Member
Joined: 6/04/07
Originally posted by InFlamestwo
Just because you can group up as you want- doesn't change the fact that ArenaNet have made the game so accesible that some of the normal social parts of MMO simply have a lot less reason to exsist. And as such the game simply lacks some of the social fields you normaly find.
This is a loss or a win depending on who you are, but there is no reason in denying it, just because you are not feeling the impact.
It is a big issue for alot of player. And an area that ArenaNets throughfull and very efficient internal testing didn't come up with a slolution to.
It is the games weakest point atm IMHO. And that oppinion is shared by alot of players(look at this sites review and score giving atm . and you see its lovest score there)
read how to create a succesfull mmo before posting about GW2. And read tao of ArenaNet before talking about innovation in GW2
Originally posted by jondifool
Ok, I'll bite... what "normal social parts of MMO" do you refer to? I'm genuinely interested.
Novice Member
Joined: 3/23/10
Originally posted by InFlamestwo
Great point and something to keep in mind. Its not like you group up a lot in other MMOs while leveling up. Raids, pvp/battlegrounds/warfronts, and raids? Definitely and that happens here in GW2.
Its not like there was lots of "LFG for lvl 5 quest mob" going on in other mmos.
Novice Member
Joined: 3/23/10
Originally posted by Dibdabs
Yeah I am curious too.
Are lots of players missing out on the chuck norris jokes?
Elite Member
Joined: 1/04/05
Originally posted by delete5230
Fair enough.
You may want to take a second look at the game, though. While I can see where your coming from in regards to dynamic events, the game is far from having 'no community'. There is a pretty big focus on cooperative group play, and this especially starts to come into play once you do explorable dungeons, sPvP (especially tournaments), or WvW.
Often times when I see people complaining about the lack of community in this game, it's because they expect the game to force players to interact with them. And that would actually be a bad thing. Instead, GW2 creates an environment where communication isn't forced, but it's highly beneficial.
Even today I still see people using global chats frequently. Calling out events for others to come help out with, trying to form dungeon groups, sharing information, orchestrating strategy in WvW. Couple that with all the fans that are creating content for the game & publishing videos, blogs, guides, etc. and I don't see how you can't call that a community. Furthermore I might even go as far as to question which ones you found were better? Not too long ago in the game, a player did a social experiment trading to 100 strangers via the mailing system ingame. He'd send them the money and see how many players sent the promised item back. Nearly every single person did. I can't think of any other MMO communities that I could say the same for.
Elite Member
Joined: 4/04/11
Here is a slightly different take on it, for people who play solo, auto grouping gives them an extra option while out in the world. In other games they would just solo, now they solo and can temporarilly group up. For those in guilds well you have grouping anyway, but people could auto group with you out there anyway. It's all good- auto grouping replaces nothing, it just adds an addittional flavour.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
Apprentice Member
Joined: 12/09/08
MMORPGs are no longer about the mass multi-user
Originally posted by InFlamestwo
Yes, I did try to group up in GW2, but without luck. Did only one dungeon (AC SM), had some WvW with my old guild in party (only 4 hours or so total), and the rest of my 150+ hours of GW2 felt like a single-player game. No thank you! Even GW(1) which was not sold as MMORPG feels more like one than GW2 does.
On the 2nd question. WoW is much the same like GW2. No parties unless you get into a dungeon *sadly*. Aion with it's 'forced party areas' has more chance for party play, even if you don't have the same quests to run. Playing TERA right now, and in the 20 hours I've played since last week when I started, I've had 2 hours of party already (lvl 23 now).
Demigoth's RPG adventures ~ My blog
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Elite Member
Joined: 2/17/05
First came pride, then envy.
MMOs used to have group content in the open world, but players complained that it was hard to find groups.
They've all been nerfed, because people complained that it took long to find groups, and that they couldn't solo and progress their characters. So the players are to blame.
Advanced Member
Joined: 9/14/10
Facts do not require fiction for balance.
Originally posted by Reizla
I'm going to have to admit I find this interesting. During the past two weeks I've almost exclusively been grouped up... but it's been content that you're intended (to a degree at least) group up for. WvWvW. We get into TS3 for the server, get into the appropriate channel for the map we're going into (instant vocal grouping with the whole server WvW populaton), get into a five pan party for smaller grouping and specific tasks, etc. It's been a blast. Also I've been grouped (obviously) for assorted dungeons (Arah story mode being the most recent). Not so much grouping during basic PvE, but then again as mentioned that's the norm in all MMOs really. However the group mechanics dynamically come into play then... it's becoming natural to see people and work with them rather than try to avoid them. Used to be a time in MMOs when other people were hinderances to your progression... kill tagging and stealing, racing to nodes, crap like that. You saw people and dreaded it or at least went a different direction because you were rewarded for levelling alone. Now in GW2 it's more rewarding to go where the people are to see what's happening and join them. IMO, this is a good thing.
Novice Member
Joined: 6/04/07
Originally posted by Rhianni32
normal parts like "making friends" because you actual ended up in a remote and dangerous area together and either worked together and teamed up or stole kills from each others. And without teleport travel you where actual stucked to be together for a while, making it shared experience. The ease ArenaNet have given us to travel with does mean that there simply is less need to talk.And shared experience is with strangers that zone out before the next thing happend!
read how to create a succesfull mmo before posting about GW2. And read tao of ArenaNet before talking about innovation in GW2
Novice Member
Joined: 3/26/06
Originally posted by jondifool
You mean like every other themepark?
The experiences you seem to be describing I remember fondly from SWG and sometimes EvE, but I'm not sure themeparks are that conducive to this type of socializing. At least not that I personally know of.
Elite Member
Joined: 8/15/07
Originally posted by delete5230
It's not that I hate the game, it's ok . In fact I play it now and then, an hour here or an hour there. Got my necro to level 50. Like I say it's well made.
I'm going out of town for almost a month. When I come back I'm already brain storming:
- Should I play GW2 and make an Engineer, that way I could transfer my cloth to my necro and my leather to my Engeneer so I can up my crafting ?
- Should I try a WoW private server and see if I could bring back some old times with Vanella ?
- Should I Give EVE a real shot this time ?
- Should I try TSW ?
BUT the bottom line is that GW2 is not the Great thing I was hoping for. Its nice but its already one of several !....ANets formula is not really my formula.....I really think that the formula they are using will not keep players playing for years. Most will play every class they like and off to the next.
Elite Member
Joined: 2/17/05
First came pride, then envy.
Person A walks into a bar. Person A sits next to Person B. Both start talking to each other, then exchange numbers (add to friends list). Everyone else is sharing environment in bar.
Person A goes to a stadium. Person A sits with friends. Everyone else is sharing the experience.
Real life is also Auto-Dynamic.


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March 3, 2010 1 Comment
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The daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, she was declared illegitimate just before the execution of her mother in 1536, but in 1544 Parliament reestablished her in the succession after her half brother, Edward (later Edward VI), and her half sister, Mary (later Mary I). Elizabeth was well educated by a series of tutors, most notably Roger Ascham.
In 1553 she supported the claims of Mary I over Lady Jane Grey. After Mary was crowned, Elizabeth was careful to avoid implication in the plot of the younger Sir Thomas Wyatt (1554). Nevertheless, since Elizabeth's potential succession to the throne inevitably furnished a rallying point for discontented Protestants, she was imprisoned. She later regained a measure of freedom through outward conformity to Roman Catholicism.
When Elizabeth succeeded her sister to the throne in 1558, religious strife, a huge government debt, and failures in the war with France had brought England's fortunes to a low ebb. Elizabeth came to the throne with the Tudor concept of strong rule and the realization that effective rule depended upon popular support. She was able to select and work well with the most competent of counselors. Sir William Cecil (Lord Burghley) was appointed immediately, and Sir Francis Walsingham in 1573.
At her death 45 years later, England had passed through one of the greatest periods of its history—a period that produced William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, Francis Bacon, Walter Raleigh, Martin Frobisher, Francis Drake, and other notable figures in literature and exploration; a period that saw England, united as a nation, become a major European power with a great navy; a period in which English commerce and industry prospered and English colonization was begun.
Although Elizabeth has been accused, with some justice, of being vain, fickle, vacillating, prejudiced, and miserly, she was nonetheless exceedingly successful as a queen. Endowed with immense personal courage and a keen awareness of her responsibility as a ruler, she commanded throughout her reign the unwavering respect and allegiance of her subjects.Domestic Developments
One of Elizabeth's first acts was to reestablish Protestantism (see England, Church of) through the acts of Supremacy and Uniformity (1559). The measures against Roman Catholics (see Penal Laws) grew harsher over the course of her reign, particularly after the rebellion of the Catholic earls of Northumberland and Westmorland (1569), Elizabeth's excommunication by the pope (1570), and the coming of the Jesuit missionaries (1580). But the persecution of the Catholics was due, at least in part, to a series of plots to murder Elizabeth and seat the Catholic Mary Queen of Scots on the throne. English Puritans, like the Catholics, objected to the Established Church, and a severe law against conventicles (unauthorized religious assemblies) in 1593 kept the separatist movement underground for the time.
At the beginning of her reign, Elizabeth's government enacted needed currency reforms and took steps to mend English credit abroad. Other legislation of the reign dealt with new social and economic developments—the Statute of Apprentices (1563) to stabilize labor conditions; the poor laws (1563-1601) to attempt some remedy of widespread poverty; and various acts to encourage agriculture, commerce, and manufacturing.Foreign Affairs and the Spanish War
Elizabeth had many suitors, including King Philip II of Spain; Francis, duke of Alençon and Anjou; and her own favorite, Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester. For a combination of personal and political reasons, she was reluctant to choose a husband and remained unmarried, although she often used the lure of marriage as a weapon of diplomacy. Elizabeth engaged in a long series of diplomatic maneuvers against England's old enemy, France, and the new enemy, Spain, but for 30 years she managed to keep the country at peace.
In 1559 she concluded a treaty ending her sister's unfortunate war with France and refused the marriage offer of Philip of Spain. The next year the Treaty of Edinburgh initiated a policy toward Scotland, successful in the long run, of supporting the Protestant lords against the Catholic party. By lending unofficial aid to French Huguenots she managed for some time to harass France and Spain without involving England in an actual war. As part of her marriage negotiations she later supported the duke of Alençon's participation in the Dutch war against Spain.
The major problem posed by Elizabeth's refusal to marry was that of the succession. The chief claimant was Mary Queen of Scots, but her Catholicism made her a threat to Elizabeth. In 1568 after Mary's forced abdication from the Scottish throne, Elizabeth gave her refuge but then kept her prisoner for nearly 19 years. Despite the numerous plots, both real and alleged, on Mary's behalf, Elizabeth resisted until 1587 her counselors' advice that Mary be executed.
By that time Spain had emerged as England's main enemy. English sailors had been unofficially encouraged to encroach on Spanish monopolies and raid Spanish shipping. In 1588, Philip launched the long-planned expedition of the Spanish Armada as a great Catholic crusade against Protestant England. The Armada was defeated by the skill of such leaders as John Hawkins and Francis Drake and by storms, rather than planning on Elizabeth's part, but the victory strengthened English national pride and lowered the prestige of Spain. An indecisive war with Spain dragged on until Elizabeth's death. From the beginning of the reign Ireland had been the scene of civil wars and severe rebellions, culminating with that of the earl of Tyrone, which was suppressed by the campaigns of Lord Mountjoy from 1600 to 1603.Declining Years
After the Armada, Elizabeth's popularity began to wane. Parliament became less tractable and began to object to the abuse of royally granted monopolies. The rash uprising of Elizabeth's favorite, Robert Devereux, 2d earl of Essex, darkened her last years. She refused until on her deathbed to name her successor—the son of Mary Queen of Scots, James VI of Scotland, who became James I of England.
See biographies by T. Maynard (1940), E. Jenkins (1958), P. Johnson (1974), and A. Somerset (1992); A. L. Rowse, The England of Elizabeth (1950) and The Expansion of Elizabethan England (1955); J. E. Neale, Elizabeth I and Her Parliaments (2 vol., 1953-57); J. Hurstfield, Elizabeth I and the Unity of England (1960); N. Williams, The Life and Times of Elizabeth I (1972); A. Plowden, The Catholics under Elizabeth I (1973).
Elizabeth I (7 September 1533 – 24 March 1603) was Queen of England and Queen of Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death. Sometimes called The Virgin Queen, Gloriana, or Good Queen Bess, Elizabeth was the fifth and last monarch of the Tudor dynasty. The daughter of Henry VIII, she was born a princess, but her mother, Anne Boleyn, was executed three years after her birth, and Elizabeth was declared illegitimate. Her brother, Edward VI, cut her out of the succession. His will, however, was set aside, and in 1558 Elizabeth succeeded her half-sister, the Catholic Mary, during whose reign she had been imprisoned for nearly a year on suspicion of supporting Protestant rebels.
Elizabeth set out to rule by good counsel, and she depended heavily on a group of trusted advisers led by William Cecil, Baron Burghley. One of her first moves as queen was to support the establishment of an English Protestant church, of which she became the Supreme Governor. This Elizabethan Religious Settlement held firm throughout her reign and later evolved into today's Church of England. It was expected that Elizabeth would marry, but despite several petitions from parliament, she never did. The reasons for this choice are unknown, and they have been much debated. As she grew older, Elizabeth became famous for her virginity, and a cult grew up around her which was celebrated in the portraits, pageants and literature of the day.
In government, Elizabeth was more moderate than her father and siblings. One of her mottoes was video et taceo: "I see, and say nothing". This strategy, viewed with impatience by her counsellors, often saved her from political and marital misalliances. Though Elizabeth was cautious in foreign affairs and only half-heartedly supported a number of ineffective, poorly resourced military campaigns in the Netherlands, France and Ireland, the defeat of the Spanish armada in 1588 associated her name forever with what is popularly viewed as one of the greatest victories in English history. Within 20 years of her death, she was being celebrated as the ruler of a golden age, an image that retains its hold on the English people. Elizabeth's reign is known as the Elizabethan era, famous above all for the flourishing of English drama, led by playwrights such as William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe, and for the seafaring prowess of English adventurers such as Francis Drake and John Hawkins.
Historians, however, tend to be more cautious in their assessment. They often depict Elizabeth as a short-tempered, sometimes indecisive ruler, who enjoyed more than her share of luck. Towards the end of her reign, a series of economic and military problems weakened her popularity to the point where many of her subjects were relieved at her death. Elizabeth is, however, acknowledged as a charismatic performer and a dogged survivor, in an age when government was ramshackle and limited and when monarchs in neighbouring countries faced internal problems that jeopardised their thrones. Such was the case with Elizabeth's rival, Mary, Queen of Scots, whom she imprisoned in 1568 and eventually had executed in 1587. After the short reigns of Elizabeth's brother and sister, her 44 years on the throne provided valuable stability for the kingdom and helped forge a sense of national identity.
Elizabeth was born in Greenwich Palace in the Chamber of Virgins on 7 September 1533 between three and four o'clock in the afternoon. and named after both her paternal and maternal grandmothers, Elizabeth of York and Elizabeth Howard. She was the second legitimate child of Henry VIII of England to survive infancy; her mother was Henry's second wife, Anne Boleyn. At birth, Elizabeth was the heiress presumptive to the throne of England. Her older half-sister, Mary, had lost her position as legitimate heir when Henry annulled his marriage to Mary's mother, Catherine of Aragon, in order to marry Anne. King Henry had desperately wanted a legitimate son, to ensure the Tudor succession. After Elizabeth's birth, Queen Anne failed to provide a male heir. She suffered at least two miscarriages, one in 1534 and another at the beginning of 1536. On 2 May 1536, she was arrested and imprisoned. Hastily convicted on trumped-up charges, she was beheaded on 19 May 1536.
Elizabeth, who was 2 years, 8 months, old at the time, was declared illegitimate and deprived of the title of princess. Eleven days after Anne Boleyn's death, Henry married Jane Seymour, who died 12 days after the birth of their son, Prince Edward. Elizabeth was placed in Edward's household and carried the chrisom, or baptismal cloth, at his christening.
Elizabeth's first governess, Lady Margaret Bryan, wrote that she was "as toward a child and as gentle of conditions as ever I knew any in my life". At the age of four, Elizabeth passed into the care of Catherine Champernowne, better known by her later, married name of Catherine "Kat" Ashley, who remained Elizabeth's friend for life. Champernowne clearly made a good job of Elizabeth's early education: by the time William Grindal became her tutor in 1544, Elizabeth could write English, Latin, and Italian. Under Grindal, a talented and skillful tutor, she also progressed in French and Greek. After Grindal died in 1548, Elizabeth received her education under Roger Ascham, a sympathetic teacher who believed that learning should be fun. By the time her formal education ended in 1550, she was the best educated woman of her generation.
Henry VIII died in 1547, when Elizabeth was 13 years old, and was succeeded by her half brother, Edward VI. Catherine Parr, Henry's last wife, soon married Thomas Seymour of Sudeley, Edward VI's uncle and the brother of the Lord Protector, Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset. The couple took Elizabeth into their household at Chelsea. There Elizabeth experienced an emotional crisis that historians believe affected her for the rest of her life. Seymour, approaching age 40 but having charm and "a powerful sex appeal", engaged in romps and horseplay with the 14-year-old Elizabeth. These included entering her bedroom in his nightgown, tickling her and slapping her on the buttocks. After Catherine Parr discovered the pair in an embrace, she ended this state of affairs. In May 1548, Elizabeth was sent away.
But Seymour continued scheming to control the royal family. When Catherine Parr died of puerperal fever after childbirth on 5 September 1548, he renewed his attentions towards Elizabeth, intent on wedding her. The details of his former behaviour towards Elizabeth emerged during an interrogation of Catherine Ashley and Thomas Parry, Elizabeth's cofferer. For his brother and the council, this was the last straw, and in January 1549, Seymour was arrested on suspicion of plotting to marry Elizabeth and overthrow his brother. Elizabeth, living at Hatfield House, would admit nothing. Her stubbornness exasperated her interrogator, Sir Robert Tyrwhitt, who reported, "I do see it in her face that she is guilty". Seymour was beheaded on 20 March 1549. Elizabeth was aged 15 and a half.
Edward VI died of tuberculosis on 6 July 1553, aged 15. His will swept aside the 1543 Act of Succession, excluded both Mary and Elizabeth from the succession, and instead declared as his heir Lady Jane Grey, granddaughter of Henry VIII's sister Mary, Duchess of Suffolk. Lady Jane was proclaimed queen, but her support quickly crumbled, and she was deposed less than two weeks later. Mary rode triumphantly into London, with Elizabeth at her side.
The show of solidarity between the sisters did not last long. Mary was determined to crush the Protestant faith in which Elizabeth had been educated, and she ordered that everyone attend Mass. This included Elizabeth, who had to outwardly conform. Mary's initial popularity ebbed away when it became known that she planned to marry Prince Philip of Spain, the son of Emperor Charles V. Discontent spread rapidly through the country, and many looked to Elizabeth as a focus for their opposition to Mary's religious policies. In January and February 1554, uprisings broke out (known as Wyatt's rebellion) in several parts of England and Wales, led by Thomas Wyatt.
Upon the collapse of the uprising, Elizabeth was brought to court and interrogated. On 18 March, she was imprisoned in the Tower of London, where Lady Jane Grey had been executed on 12 February to deter the rebels. The terrified Elizabeth fervently protested her innocence. Though it is unlikely that she had plotted with the rebels, some of them were known to have approached her. Mary's closest confidant, Charles V's ambassador Simon Renard, argued that her throne would never be safe while Elizabeth lived; and the Chancellor, Stephen Gardiner, worked to have Elizabeth put on trial. However, Elizabeth's supporters in the government, including Lord Paget, convinced Mary to spare her sister in the absence of hard evidence against her. Instead, on 22 May, Elizabeth was moved from the Tower to Woodstock, where she was to spend almost a year under house arrest in the charge of Sir Henry Bedingfield. Crowds cheered her all along the way.
On 17 April 1555, Elizabeth was recalled to court to be closely attended during the final stages of Mary's apparent pregnancy. If Mary and her child died, Elizabeth would become queen. If, on the other hand, Mary gave birth to a healthy child, Elizabeth's chances of becoming queen would recede sharply. When it became clear that Mary was not pregnant, no one believed any longer that she could have a child. Elizabeth's succession seemed assured. Even Philip, who became King of Spain in 1556, acknowledged the new political reality. From this time forward, he cultivated Elizabeth, preferring her to the likely alternative, Mary, Queen of Scots, who was betrothed to the Dauphin of France. When his wife fell ill in 1558, Philip sent the Count of Feria to consult with Elizabeth. By October, Elizabeth was making plans for her government. On 6 November, Mary recognised Elizabeth as her heir. Eleven days later, Elizabeth succeeded to the throne when Mary died at St. James's Palace on 17 November.
On 20 November 1558, Elizabeth declared her intentions to her Council and other peers who had come to Hatfield to swear allegiance. The speech contains the first record of her often-used metaphor of the "two bodies": the body natural and the body politic:
My lords, the law of nature moves me to sorrow for my sister; the burden that is fallen upon me makes me amazed, and yet, considering I am God's creature, ordained to obey His appointment, I will thereto yield, desiring from the bottom of my heart that I may have assistance of His grace to be the minister of His heavenly will in this office now committed to me. And as I am but one body naturally considered, though by His permission a body politic to govern, so shall I desire you all...to be assistant to me, that I with my ruling and you with your service may make a good account to Almighty God and leave some comfort to our posterity on earth. I mean to direct all my actions by good advice and counsel.
Unfortunately for historians, Elizabeth's personal religious convictions will never be definitely known. Her religious policy favoured pragmatism above all in dealing with three major concerns. The first concern was that of her legitimacy. Although she was technically illegitimate under both Protestant and Catholic law, her retroactively declared illegitimacy under the English church was not a serious bar compared to having never been legitimate as the Catholics claimed she was. Perhaps most importantly, the break with Rome made her legitimate in her own eyes. For this reason, it was never in serious doubt that the Elizabeth would embrace at least nominal Protestantism. Nevertheless, Elizabeth and her advisors perceived, rightly or wrongly, the threat of a Catholic crusade against heretical England. Elizabeth therefore sought a Protestant solution that would not offend Catholics too greatly while addressing the desires of the third concern, English Protestants. As a result, the parliament of 1559 started to legislate for a church based on the Protestant settlement of Edward VI, with the monarch as its head, but with many superficially Catholic elements, such as priestly vestments. The House of Commons backed the proposals strongly, but the bill of supremacy met opposition in the House of Lords, particularly from the bishops. Elizabeth was fortunate, however, that many bishoprics were vacant at the time, including the Archbishopric of Canterbury. This enabled supporters amongst peers to outvote the bishops and conservative peers. Nevertheless, Elizabeth was forced to accept the title of Supreme Governor of the Church of England rather than the more contentious title of Supreme Head, which many thought unacceptable for a woman to bear. The new Act of Supremacy became law on 8 May 1559. All public officials were to swear an oath of loyalty to the monarch as the supreme governor or risk disqualification from office; however, the heresy laws were repealed, to avoid a repeat of the persecution of dissenters practised by Mary. At the same time, a new Act of Uniformity was passed, which made attendance at church and the use of an adapted version of the 1552 Book of Common Prayer compulsory, though the penalties for recusancy, or failure to attend and conform, were not extreme.
From the start of Elizabeth's reign, the question arose whom she would marry. However, she never married, and the reasons for this are not clear. Historians have speculated that Thomas Seymour had put her off sexual relationships, or that she knew herself to be infertile. Until bearing a child became impossible, she considered several suitors. Her last courtship, ending in 1581 when she was aged 48, was with François, Duke of Anjou, 22 years her junior. Elizabeth had no need of a man's help to govern, and marrying risked a loss of control or of foreign interference in her affairs, as had happened to her sister Mary. On the other hand, marriage offered the chance of an heir.
Elizabeth often received offers of marriage, but she only seriously considered three or four suitors for any length of time. Of these, her childhood friend Robert Dudley probably came closest. During 1559, Elizabeth's friendship with the married Dudley seems to have turned to love. Rumour spread through the court that she was sleeping with him; William Cecil, Elizabeth's most trusted advisor, made clear his disapproval. When Dudley's wife, Amy Robsart, was found dead in 1560, under ambiguous circumstances, a great scandal arose. For a time, Elizabeth seriously considered marrying Dudley; but after several months, she put duty ahead of her feelings and decided against the marriage. Dudley, whom she made Earl of Leicester and appointed to the Privy Council, retained a special place in her heart, though her infatuation mellowed in time to a special and lasting friendship. After Elizabeth died, a note from Dudley, who had died in 1588, was found among her possessions, marked "his last letter".
After the Dudley affair, Elizabeth kept the marriage question open but often only as a diplomatic ploy. She appears to have considered marriage out of duty rather than personal preference. Parliament repeatedly petitioned her to marry, but she always answered evasively. In 1563, she told an imperial envoy: "If I follow the inclination of my nature, it is this: beggar-woman and single, far rather than queen and married". In the same year, following Elizabeth's illness with smallpox, the succession question became a heated issue. Parliament urged the queen to marry or nominate an heir, to prevent a civil war upon her death. She refused to do either. In April, she prorogued the Parliament, which did not reconvene until she needed its support to raise taxes in 1566. The House of Commons threatened to withhold funds until she agreed to provide for the succession. In 1566, Sir Robert Bell boldly pursued the issue despite Elizabeth's command to desist and became the target of her anger, saying, "Mr. Bell with his complices must needs prefer their speeches to the upper house to have you my lords, consent with them, whereby you were seduced, and of simplicity did assent unto it. In 1566, she confided to the Spanish ambassador that if she could find a way to settle the succession without marrying, she would do so. By 1570, senior figures in the government privately accepted that Elizabeth would never marry or name a successor. William Cecil was already seeking solutions to the succession problem. For this stance, as for her failure to marry, she was often accused of irresponsibility. However, Elizabeth's silence strengthened her own political security: she knew that if she named an heir, her throne would be vulnerable to a coup.
Elizabeth's unmarried status inspired a cult of virginity. In poetry and portraiture, she was depicted as a virgin or a goddess or both, not as a normal woman. At first, only Elizabeth made a virtue of her virginity: in 1559, she told the Commons, "And, in the end, this shall be for me sufficient, that a marble stone shall declare that a queen, having reigned such a time, lived and died a virgin". Later on, particularly after 1578, poets and writers took up the theme and turned it into an iconography that exalted Elizabeth. In an age of metaphors and conceits, she was portrayed as married to her kingdom and subjects, under divine protection. In 1599, Elizabeth spoke of "all my husbands, my good people".
Apart from the Dudley affair, Elizabeth treated the marriage issue as an aspect of foreign policy. Though she turned down Philip II's own offer in 1559, she negotiated for several years to marry his cousin Archduke Charles of Austria. However, relations with the Habsburgs deteriorated by 1568. Elizabeth then considered marriage to two French Valois princes in turn, first Henri, Duke of Anjou, and later, from 1572 to 1581, his brother François, Duke of Anjou. This last proposal was tied to a planned alliance against Spanish control of the Southern Netherlands. Elizabeth seems to have taken the courtship seriously for a time, and wore a frog-shaped earring that Anjou had sent her.
Elizabeth's foreign policy was largely defensive. The exception was the disastrous occupation of Le Havre from October 1562 to June 1563, when Elizabeth's Huguenot allies joined with the Catholics to retake the port. Elizabeth had intended to exchange Le Havre for Calais, retaken by France in January 1558. She sent troops into Scotland in 1560 to prevent the French using it as a base. In 1585, she signed the Treaty of Nonsuch with the Dutch to block the Spanish threat to England. Only through the activities of her fleets did Elizabeth pursue an aggressive policy. This paid off in the war against Spain, 80% of which was fought at sea. She knighted Francis Drake after his circumnavigation of the globe from 1577 to 1580, and he won fame for his raids on Spanish ports and fleets. Her reign also saw the first colonisation or "planting" of new land in North America; and the colony of Virginia was named for her. In truth, however, an element of piracy and self-enrichment drove Elizabethan seafarers, over which the queen had little control.
Elizabeth's first policy toward Scotland was to oppose the French presence there. She feared that the French planned to invade England and put Mary, Queen of Scots, who was in effect the heir to the English crown, on the throne. Elizabeth was persuaded to send a force into Scotland to aid the Protestant rebels, and though the campaign was inept, the resulting Treaty of Edinburgh of July 1560 removed the French threat in the north. When Mary returned to Scotland in 1561 to take up the reins of power, the country had an established Protestant church and was run by a council of Protestant nobles supported by Elizabeth. Mary refused to ratify the treaty.
Elizabeth offended Mary by proposing her own former suitor, Robert Dudley, as a husband. Instead, in 1565 Mary married Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, who carried his own claim to the English throne. The marriage, however, was the first of a series of errors of judgement by Mary that handed the victory to the Scottish Protestants and to Elizabeth. Darnley quickly became unpopular in Scotland and then infamous for presiding over the murder of Mary's Italian secretary David Rizzio. In February 1567, Darnley was murdered by conspirators almost certainly led by James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell. Shortly afterwards, on 15 May 1567, Mary married Bothwell, arousing suspicions that she had been party to the murder of her husband. Elizabeth wrote to her:
"How could a worse choice be made for your honour than in such haste to marry such a subject, who besides other and notorious lacks, public fame has charged with the murder of your late husband, besides the touching of yourself also in some part, though we trust in that behalf falsely.
These events led rapidly to Mary's defeat and imprisonment in Loch Leven Castle. The Scottish lords forced her to abdicate in favour of her son James, who had been born in June 1566. James was taken to Stirling Castle to be raised as a Protestant. Mary escaped from Loch Leven in 1568 but after another defeat fled across the border into England, where she had once been assured of support from Elizabeth. Elizabeth's first instinct was to restore her fellow monarch; but she and her council instead chose to play safe. Rather than risk returning Mary to Scotland with an English army or sending her to France and the Catholic enemies of England, they detained her in England. She was imprisoned there for the next nineteen years.
Mary was soon the focus for rebellion. In 1569, plotters in the Rising of the North talked of freeing her, and a scheme arose to marry her to Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk. Elizabeth reacted by sending Howard to the block. Mary may not have been told of every Catholic plot to put her on the English throne, but from the Ridolfi Plot of 1571 to the Babington Plot of 1586, Elizabeth's spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham and the royal council keenly assembled a case against her. At first, Elizabeth resisted calls for Mary's death. By late 1586, however, she had been persuaded to sanction her trial and execution on the evidence of letters written during the Babington Plot. Elizabeth's proclamation of the sentence announced that "the said Mary, pretending title to the same Crown, had compassed and imagined within the same realm divers things tending to the hurt, death and destruction of our royal person. On 8 February 1587, Mary was beheaded at Fotheringhay Castle, Northamptonshire.
After the disastrous occupation and loss of Le Havre in 1562–1563, Elizabeth avoided military expeditions on the continent until 1585, when she sent an English army to aid the Protestant Dutch rebels against Philip II. This followed the deaths in 1584 of the allies William the Silent, Prince of Orange, and François, Duke of Anjou, and the surrender of a series of Dutch towns to Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma, Philip's governor of the Spanish Netherlands. In December 1584, an alliance between Philip II and the French Catholic League at Joinville undermined the ability of Anjou's brother, Henry III of France, to counter Spanish domination of the Netherlands. It also extended Spanish influence along the channel coast of France, where the Catholic League was strong, and exposed England to invasion. The English and the Dutch reacted in August 1585 with the Treaty of Nonsuch, whereby Elizabeth, pressured by her advisors, promised military support to the Dutch. The treaty marked the beginning of the Anglo-Spanish War, which lasted until the Treaty of London in 1604.
Elizabeth did not trust this course of action from the start. The expedition, led by her former suitor, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, achieved nothing. Elizabeth's strategy, to use the English army as a defensive bargaining tool, was soon at odds with that of Dudley, who wanted to fight an active campaign but lacked the resources to do so. He enraged Elizabeth by accepting the post of Governor-General from the Dutch States-General. Elizabeth saw this as a Dutch ploy to embroil her further in their defense. She wrote to him:
We could never have imagined (had we not seen it fall out in experience) that a man raised up by ourself and extraordinarily favoured by us, above any other subject of this land, would have in so contemptible a sort broken our commandment in a cause that so greatly touches us in honour....And therefore our express pleasure and commandment is that, all delays and excuses laid apart, you do presently upon the duty of your allegiance obey and fulfill whatsoever the bearer hereof shall direct you to do in our name. Whereof fail you not, as you will answer the contrary at your utmost peril.
Elizabeth and her parliament's failure to send Dudley sufficient money and troops, combined with his own incompetence as a military leader, doomed the campaign to impotence. Dudley finally resigned his command in December 1587, his reputation in tatters. By that time, Philip II had decided to take the war to England.
On 12 July 1588, the Spanish Armada, a great fleet of ships, set sail for the channel, planning to ferry a Spanish invasion force under the Duke of Parma to the coast of southeast England from the Netherlands. The armada, however, was defeated by a combination of miscalculation, misfortune, and an attack of English fire ships on 29 July off Gravelines which dispersed the Spanish ships to the northeast. The armada straggled home to Spain in shattered remnants, after disastrous losses on the coast of Ireland (after some ships had tried to struggle back to Spain via the North Sea, and then back south past the west coast of Ireland). Unaware of the armada's fate, English forces mustered to defend the country. Elizabeth inspected her troops at Tilbury in Essex on 8 August. Wearing a silver breastplate over a white velvet dress, she addressed them in one of her most famous speeches:
My loving people, we have been persuaded by some that are careful of our safety, to take heed how we commit ourself to armed multitudes for fear of treachery; but I assure you, I do not desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving people....I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a King of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any Prince of Europe should dare to invade the borders of my realm.
When no invasion came, the nation rejoiced. Elizabeth's procession to a thanksgiving service at St Paul's Cathedral rivalled that of her coronation as a spectacle. The defeat of the armada was a potent propaganda victory, both for Elizabeth and for Protestant England. The English took their delivery as a symbol of God's favour and of the nation's inviolability under a virgin queen. However, the victory was not a turning point in the war, which continued and often favoured Spain. The Spanish still controlled the Netherlands, and the threat of invasion remained. Sir Walter Raleigh claimed after her death that Elizabeth's caution had impeded the war against Spain:
If the late queen would have believed her men of war as she did her scribes, we had in her time beaten that great empire in pieces and made their kings of figs and oranges as in old times. But her Majesty did all by halves, and by petty invasions taught the Spaniard how to defend himself, and to see his own weakness.
Though some historians have criticised Elizabeth on similar grounds, Raleigh's verdict has more often been judged unfair. Elizabeth had good reason not to place too much trust in her commanders, who once in action tended, as she put it herself, "to be transported with an haviour of vainglory".
Between 1594 and 1603, Elizabeth faced her most severe test in Ireland, with the revolt known as Tyrone's Rebellion, or the Nine Years War. Its leader, Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, was backed by Spain. In spring 1599, Elizabeth sent Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, to put the revolt down. To her frustration, he made little progress and returned to England without permission. He was replaced by Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy, who took three years to defeat the rebels. O'Neill finally surrendered in 1603, a few days after Elizabeth's death.
Elizabeth was happy to play the part, but it is possible that in the last decade of her life she began to believe her own performance. She became fond and indulgent of the charming but petulant young Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, who took liberties with her for which she forgave him. She repeatedly appointed him to military posts despite his growing record of irresponsibility. After Essex's desertion of his command in Ireland in 1599 (returning to England from Ireland against Elizabeth's express command), Elizabeth had him placed under house arrest and the following year deprived him of his monopolies. In February 1601, the earl tried to raise a rebellion in London. He intended to seize the queen but few rallied to his support, and he was beheaded on 25 February. Elizabeth knew that her own misjudgements were partly to blame for this turn of events. An observer reported in 1602 that "Her delight is to sit in the dark, and sometimes with shedding tears to bewail Essex".
The monopolies Elizabeth reclaimed from Essex were her typical reward to a courtier during the last years of her reign. She had come to rely on this cost-free system of patronage rather than ask Parliament for more subsidies in a time of war. The practice soon led to price-fixing, the enrichment of courtiers at the public's expense, and widespread resentment. This culminated in agitation in the House of Commons during the parliament of 1601. In her famous "Golden Speech" of 30 November 1601, Elizabeth professed ignorance of the abuses and won the members over with promises and her usual appeal to the emotions:
The period after the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 brought new difficulties for Elizabeth that lasted the fifteen years until the end of her reign. The conflicts with Spain and in Ireland dragged on, the tax burden grew heavier, and the economy was hit by poor harvests and the cost of war. Prices rose and the standard of living fell. During this time, repression of Catholics intensified, and Elizabeth authorised commissions in 1591 to interrogate and monitor Catholic householders. To maintain the illusion of peace and prosperity, she increasingly relied on internal spies and propaganda. In her last years, mounting criticism reflected a decline in the public's affection for her.
This same period of economic and political uncertainty, however, produced an unsurpassed literary flowering in England. The first signs of a new literary movement had appeared at the end of the second decade of Elizabeth's reign, with John Lyly's Euphues and Edmund Spenser's The Shepheardes Calender in 1578. During the 1590s, some of the great names of English literature entered their maturity, including William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe. During this period and into the Jacobean era that followed, the English theatre reached its highest peaks. The notion of a great Elizabethan age depends largely on the builders, dramatists, poets, and musicians who were active during Elizabeth's reign. They owed little directly to the queen, who was never a major patron of the arts.
The Queen's health remained fair until the autumn of 1602, when a series of deaths among her friends plunged her into a severe depression. In February 1603, the death of her cousin and close friend, Catherine Carey, Countess of Nottingham, came as a particular blow. In March, Elizabeth fell sick and remained in a "settled and unremovable melancholy". She died on 24 March 1603 at Richmond Palace, between two and three in the morning. A few hours later, Cecil and the council set their plans in motion and proclaimed James VI of Scotland as James I of England.
Elizabeth's coffin was carried downriver at night to Whitehall, on a barge lit with torches. At her funeral on 28 April, the coffin was taken to Westminster Abbey on a hearse drawn by four horses hung with black velvet. In the words of the chronicler John Stow:
Westminster was surcharged with multitudes of all sorts of people in their streets, houses, windows, leads and gutters, that came out to see the obsequy, and when they beheld her statue lying upon the coffin, there was such a general sighing, groaning and weeping as the like hath not been seen or known in the memory of man.
The picture of Elizabeth painted by her Protestant admirers of the early 17th century has proved lasting and influential. Her memory was also revived during the Napoleonic Wars, when the nation again found itself on the brink of invasion. In the Victorian era, the Elizabethan legend was adapted to the imperial ideology of the day, and in the mid-20th century, Elizabeth was a romantic symbol of the national resistance to foreign threat. Historians of that period, such as J. E. Neale (1934) and A. L. Rowse (1950), interpreted Elizabeth's reign as a golden age of progress.
Recent historians, however, have taken a more complicated view of Elizabeth. Her reign is famous for the defeat of the Armada, and for successful raids against the Spanish, such as those on Cádiz in 1587 and 1596, but some historians point to military failures on land and at sea, such as the "Islands voyage" to the Azores, of 1597 (where Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex defied the Queen's orders, and pursued the Spanish treasure fleet before ensuring that the Spanish navy was out of action). Elizabeth's problems in Ireland also stain her record. Rather than as a brave defender of the Protestant nations against Spain and the Habsburgs, she is more often regarded as cautious in her foreign policies. She offered minimal aid to foreign Protestants and failed to provide her commanders with the funds to make a difference abroad.
Elizabeth established an English church that helped shape a national identity and remains in place today. Those who praised her later as a Protestant heroine overlooked her refusal to drop all Catholic practices. Historians note that in her day, strict Protestants regarded the Acts of Settlement and Uniformity of 1559 as a compromise. In fact, Elizabeth believed that faith was personal and did not wish, as Francis Bacon put it, to "make windows into men's hearts and secret thoughts".
Despite Elizabeth's largely defensive foreign policy, her reign raised England's status abroad. "She is only a woman, only mistress of half an island," marvelled Pope Sixtus V, "and yet she makes herself feared by Spain, by France, by the Empire, by all". Under Elizabeth, the nation gained a new self-confidence and sense of sovereignty, as Christendom fragmented. Elizabeth was the first Tudor to recognise that a monarch ruled by popular consent. She therefore always worked with parliament and advisers she could trust to tell her the truth—a style of government that her Stuart successors failed to follow. Some historians have called her lucky; she believed that God was protecting her. Priding herself on being "mere English", Elizabeth trusted in God, honest advice, and the love of her subjects for the success of her rule. In a prayer, she offered thanks to God that:
[At a time] when wars and seditions with grievous persecutions have vexed almost all kings and countries round about me, my reign hath been peacable, and my realm a receptacle to thy afflicted Church. The love of my people hath appeared firm, and the devices of my enemies frustrate.


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Obama: 'We Don't Have Enough Engineers' 651 651
Posted by Soulskill
from the can-we-invade-world-of-warcraft dept.
from the can-we-invade-world-of-warcraft dept.
dcblogs writes "President Obama wants to boost engineering graduation rates by 10,000 a year. In 2009, the US produced 126,194 engineering graduates for bachelor's and master's degrees and for Ph.D.s. The US had just over 1.9 million engineers in 2010. The unemployment rate in 2010 for all engineers was 4.5%. 'We've made incredible progress on education, helping students to finance their college educations, but we still don't have enough engineers,' said Obama. He's counting on the private sector to help expand the number of graduates."


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When was the last time you saw a Corvette prototype in person? Other than the prototype 1983 Corvette that's in the National Corvette Museum's collection or Vettes like the last C4 used for research and development (which we brought you several months ago)? And when was the last time that one started life as a customer's retail-purchased car, and THEN became a prototype? How about the C6 that you see here? It's the prototype for the new 2009 limited-edition RPO CSC Competition Sport package that's now on the Corvette option list.
The stripe idea didn't stop there. Tracey said Kirk had one of his own relating to them.
Tracey Richardson owned seven Corvettes before acquiring this RPO Z51-equipped C6 in 2007, and she wanted this one to have some "personality," like its predecessors. "I wanted to do something a little bit different with the car," she says from her Lexington, Kentucky home. Fortunately, she had some connections with the Corvette Team, most notably designer Kirk Bennion. "I talked to Kirk, and said, 'Is there any way to design a stripe that we can paint on? I'm not a big fan of decals,'" she recalls. "He said, 'Sure-let me think about something.' This was back when I ordered the car, in May of 2007. I wanted to have it done the next day, after the Museum delivery. I didn't want to waste any time."
In short order, Kirk came up with a stripe design that had a "C6 Flair" while harkening back to some famous racing Vettes. "He did a prototype design which was patterned after the Briggs Cunningham racing Corvettes of the early '60s," says Tracey, who explains the stripe's original design. "On the front bumper, there's about an inch width between the flags on the emblem. That width of the front bumper emblem is the width of the two stripes, and it goes all the way back to meet up with the emblem on the back bumper." Thanks to Kirk's design eye, the stripes flow from the front emblem over the roof and rear deck to the rear emblem. "That's one of Kirk's talents--seeing aspects of the car and to be able to linearly match up, emblem to emblem," says Tracey.
"People who attend the High Performance Driving Events that the National Corvette Museum hosts, they like to have a little 'flair,' a little racing touch to their car." Kirk, who is also an instructor for the Museum's high-performance driving events, got in touch with his good friend, Corvette production manager Harlan Charles. "Kirk said, 'Everybody likes the stripe that we designed for Tracey, and there are a lot of people interested in these driving schools, so maybe we can put together a package that has a lot of aesthetics!'"
On her car, the stripes were painted on in Competition Grey, which is a little different than the stripes that go on with RPO CSC. ". The '09 version of the stripe is actually a decal, and it's the same color as the Cyber Grey that they offer," says Tracey. "So, it's a little bit darker. If you get them side-by-side, you can tell mine's a lighter shade of grey."
While her C6's stripes might be lighter than the production CSC's, her car's equipment list is no lighter than the production versions. Tracey's '08 was a Z51 car from the get-go, meaning that heavy-duty springs and shocks, big stabilizer bars at each end, big cross-drilled disc brake rotors, coolers for the engine oil, transmission fluid and steering fluid, and a six-speed manual transaxle went in on the Bowling Green Assembly line. And, being an '08, the LS-series engine got a 200 cc (12 cubic inch) displacement boost to 6.2L (376 ci), plus it got the big-valve/big-port heads from the Z06, boosting its output to 430 horsepower from an even 400, creating the LS3. Tracey's Corvette currently has 436hp with the NPP (Z06) exhaust.
Those engine changes were in the works long before Tracey and Kirk brainstormed on the striping. But, once her C6 was decked out in its new colors and graphics, it wasn't long before this good idea became the visible cue for a new option package. "Once we did it, he sent me the design to send to my painter," she says. "Then, we put it on the Corvette Forum about a week after I got it painted."
A one-time moderator on the Corvette Forum's C6 General section, Tracey knows how passionate lovers of the sixth generation of America's Only True Sports Car can be. "On the Forum, we don't think that there was anybody who had anything negative to say about the stripes, which was odd for that crew," she adds. "There's always some kind of controversy, or 'keyboard warriors' saying what they want to say-and we didn't have any negative comments. People were saying, 'That's the best stripe that I've ever seen!'"


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Smith's Centers of Excellence & Research span multiple disciplines and industries, giving you a front row seat to advancing the industry or cause you're most passionate about. You'll be immersed in complex and evolving marketplaces, where you can apply your critical thinking skills, creativity and entrepreneurial instincts, and make a difference.
Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship (Dingman)
Work face-to-face with entrepreneurs and investors to experience the realities of launching a venture, develop a deep understanding of venture capital and gain entrepreneurial management skills through programs such as: Pitch Dingman, Cupid's Cup Business Competition, Dingman Jumpstart, and the China Business Plan Competition.
Center for Social Value Creation (CSVC)
Change the world. Whether you want to start your own organization or create social and environmental change from within a company, this is the place to start. Here, you'll have access to the field experience, coursework, research, and career planning you need to put your ideas for a better world into motion.
Center for Financial Policy (CFP)
Interact with leading academics and practitioners in financial policy and corporate governance as they grapple with the world's most pressing private and public financial issues.
Center for Health, Information and Decision Systems (CHIDS)
Stand at the forefront of the health care industry with leading researchers as they work to improve care worldwide through the introduction and integration of information and decision technologies.
Center for Leadership, Innovation & Change (CLIC)
Find out how best to prepare for your future leadership roles with access to cutting-edge research and insight from industry leaders on leadership, innovation and change projects and activities.
Center for International Business Education and Research (CIBER)
Strengthen your international business knowledge with help from the Smith-CIBER. Study abroad, support quality research, build critical knowledge and global business skills and better understand international affairs.
Center for Digital Innovation, Technology and Strategy (DIGITS)
Analyze the impact of digital innovations on business functions, firm strategy and policy across a number of industry verticals. Understanding the factors associated with the success or failure of these new developments is the key to leveraging the power of digital technologies within organizations and markets.
Center for Excellence in Service (CES)
Stay ahead of trends in service marketing and management to improve service quality, foster service innovation, and enhance service productivity from the people who wrote the book – literally – on e-service. The two most important long-term trends in the business world are the shifting of the economy from goods to service, and the rapid expansion of the information economy and electronic networks.
Supply Chain Management Center (SCMC)
Learn leading-edge business practices and technologies of the real-time supply chain, up-close and personal. A big perk of being located in the Baltimore-Washington, D.C., metro area is that it's the optimal place for on-site visits to see the global supply chain in action.
Center for Complexity in Business (CCB)
Get way ahead of the pack by working in the world's first (and only) research center specializing in the application of complex systems methods to business problems.
Center for the Study of Business Ethics, Regulation, and Crime (C-BERC)
C-BERC is the first of its kind to formally link business with criminology in an effort to scientifically confront, assess, evaluate, and develop best practices in areas related to the center.


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March 16, 2015 - Last week, a group of 47 Republican senators signed an "open letter" to the Iranian government, warning them that any agreement they reached with President Obama might be of short duration.
February 6, 2015 - The Montpelier Foundation announces new members of the Board of Directors including Nancy N. Campbell, Dennis M. Campbell, Margaret H. Jordan, and Alan Taylor.
December 31, 2014 - Next week, Montpelier's Archaeology Department will head to Seattle, Washington to participate in the Society for Historical Archaeology Annual Meetings!
December 29, 2014 - Kat Imhoff, President & CEO of The Montpelier Foundation, sends thanks and best wishes to our supporters for the New Year.
November 26, 2014. Our most recent metal detector expedition conducted a survey at the area shown on the 1837 insurance map as being the location for the Madison-era stable. We had some fantastic results...read more to see what we found!
November 13, 2014 - Course will examine history of slavery in America and arc of American citizenship.
On July 7, 2014, I had the pleasure of leading a discussion on the evolving roles of women in sub-Saharan Africa with 25 participants in the Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI).*
The Garden Club of America awards Sandy Mudrinich the Zone VII Horticulture Commendation for her 30 years of stewardship of the gardens and grounds at Montpelier.
November 1, 2014 - Montpelier celebrates 80th running of the Montpelier Hunt Races with duPont tribute. New exhibit features equestrian legacy of Montpelier estate and steward.
September 17, 2014 - Today on National Constitution Day, we honor James Madison, Father of the Constitution and Architect of the Bills of Rights, for his leadership in the Constitution's creation.
Administered by The Montpelier Foundation © 2007–2015 The Montpelier Foundation


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Project True Sstreet
Sometimes you have to adapt to your surroundings in order to live in comfort and achieve happiness. The same holds true for your hot rod. An ultra-stiff suspension with low profile 20-inch rubber is not going to be ideal for drag racing. On the flip side, a pair of race slicks with four-inch-wide skinnies up front is most certainly not going to be ideal for carving corners.
For this particular installment of Project True SStreet, we'll leave the corner carving out of the equation and look to achieve some straight-line traction. Project True SStreet-our '87 Monte Carlo SS-is being constructed to endure limited street use and a ton of strip slaying. In order to achieve hook (traction), many conditions must be met, with the most important being weight transfer.
To kick off the transformation of Project True SStreet's front suspension, we began by jacking up the frontend and placing two jack stands under the frame for safety. After raising the frontend, we removed the front wheels. When working on an older vehicle it is good to spray WD40, PB Blaster or some sort of penetrating oil on all fasteners to be removed.
In a rear-wheel-drive vehicle, it's important to get weight transfer to the rear of the car on launch, assisting the rear tires in gaining traction. A few ways to accomplish this include lightening up the front of your car by changing to lighter wheels, lighter aftermarket A-arms, and lighter brake system components.
For a beginner, something as simple as removing the front sway bar will help traction and reduce short times by allowing more suspension travel up front (along with a weight savings). There's nothing in the world like a car dragging the bumper on takeoff, and while this might look cool, it could hamper the end result-which is, of course, the quarter-mile time.
Additional factors in gaining traction include utilizing a full-out drag slick, as opposed to a street radial; pulling timing out of an engine on launch; track preparation; spring selection; and shock adjustment.


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Puppy Mask
Play with your dog while wearing this puppy mask!
Play with your dog while wearing this puppy mask!
Create a pig mask!
An exciting way to count and play together!
A simple and fun way to play!
Give your grandparents a beautiful gift to brighten up their dining room with these Tissue Paper Napkin Rings!
Enjoy a nice cup of tea while using this Tea-riffic Teabags!
Make some beautiful wax paper pins to be displayed proudly!
Create a magical princess felt doll with your Sproutlet!
matching bracelets all around for your Sprout friends!
Grab an empty bottle and play this fun new kind of hide and seek!


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What is the McAfee Trust and Safety Initiative?
The McAfee Trust and Safety Initiative is a McAfee company-wide effort designed to continue to bring you the most effective protection while also leading the industry in quality standards. These standards are woven into our product development processes, support and services, technical innovations, and security information.
What are the components of the McAfee Trust and Safety Initiative?
Quality Assurance
Our goal is to continue to offer you the most robust, rapidly-delivered security while minimizing risk by instituting industry-leading quality practices and stringent processes. Among others, our efforts here include:
Technical Innovation
Our goal is to evolve McAfee products ahead of the threat landscape, while building in quality throughout. Some of our efforts here include:
Support and Services
Our goal is to offer support and services to give you increased confidence in your security. A key component in this area is:
Security Information
Our goal is to remain at the forefront of security information and education, and to tackle the security challenges you face head-on. Our efforts here include:


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Individuals who support the University of St. Thomas share one important reward: the personal satisfaction of investing in human potential.
As you consider your charitable giving for 2015, we want to encourage you to consider the University of St. Thomas.
Development Office
University of St. Thomas
P.O. Box 64947
St. Paul, MN 55164-0947
Your gift supports EVERY STUDENT, EVERY DAY when you give EVERY YEAR.


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Sketch of a Spanish Man
In these two works, Edward Penfield used controlled graphite outlines and watercolor washes to detail the tattered clothes and scruffy faces of working men he encountered during a 1906 trip through Spain. The frank realism of his approach gives his images a documentary authenticity; indeed, they were most likely studies for his illustrated travelogue Spanish Sketches (1911). While capitalizing on Americans' fascination with the picturesque appeal of Spain, Penfield also endowed his subjects with a dignity reflected in their proud bearing.
This text refers to these objects: ' 61.36.1; 61.36.2
- Artist: Edward Penfield, American, 1866-1925
- Medium: Watercolor and graphite on medium-weight, off-white, moderately textured, wove paper
- Dates: 1906
- Dimensions: sheet: 11 1/2 x 7 3/4 in. (29.2 x 19.7 cm) scrap book: 12 1/4 x 9 1/2 x 2 1/4 in. (31.1 x 24.1 x 5.7 cm) (show scale)
- Markings: Stamped in upper left corner of watercolor sheet, in black: "11952"
- Signature: Unsigned
- Inscriptions: Inscribed in black in on inside of front cover, lower right (border of page near binding): "Penfield Note Book"
- Collections:American Art
- Museum Location: This item is not on view
- Exhibitions:
- Accession Number: 61.36.1
- Credit Line: Gift of the Enoch Pratt Free Library
- Rights Statement: No known copyright restrictions
- Caption: Edward Penfield (American, 1866-1925). Sketch of a Spanish Man, 1906. Watercolor and graphite on medium-weight, off-white, moderately textured, wove paper, sheet: 11 1/2 x 7 3/4 in. (29.2 x 19.7 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the Enoch Pratt Free Library, 61.36.1
- Image:
- Catalogue Description: 61.36.1 (mounted on inside front cover): full-length figure of bearded man in profile, wearing red cap. For 61.36.MN (61.36.1 - .18 watercolor sketches mounted to pages of scrap book, beginning with inside front cover): scrap book with pages bound between cardboard covers decorated with marbleized paper and leather bindings. Label affixed on book cover reads: "SCRAP BOOK / Original drawing by / Edward Penfield for / 'Spanish Sketches' / --Scribner 1911--". Inside the album and following the watercolors are many blank / unused pages; interspersed in remaining pages of scrap book, 7 photographic reproductions mounted to pages, including: reproduction of painting (signed "S W[...?]y") of courtyard scene of young woman with donkey talking to 2 men, several images of men hunting and fishing, including 2 printed with publisher "Hudson & Kearns" (one page inscribed "Shooting + fishing"), photograph of Russian peasant cart with caption "A Peasant's Cart in South Russia / Courtesy of Philadelphia Commercial Mu[?]", and theatrical scene (loose/unmounted, leaved with Russian scene).
- Record Completeness: Best (81%)


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Black, Brown, and Blue
What Jamaal Vassell describes as one of the most challenging days of his life actually began at night, in 2010. An outgoing and popular presence at his neighborhood community center, Vassell, then 17, had traveled from his home in Canarsie, Brooklyn, to neighboring Brownsville to play basketball by himself at his favorite court. After making a few shots, a few younger boys, around 14 years old, joined in. They were all playing ball together until three New York City Police Department officers stopped them.
Vassell was used to it. He had already been stopped twice by NYPD officers—once after popping into a convenience store after school and another time as he walked home from a local recreation center one night. The walk from the rec center ended with the officers handing him a summons for what he calls "smoking and hanging out too late," two activities he vehemently denies doing. Nonetheless, he was ordered to show up in court. The summons seemed like being sent to detention, he says, so he ignored it. "I was busy, a lot of people wanted my time," says Vassell, who is now 20.
But the decision to ignore the summons came back to haunt him that night on the basketball court. When the officers asked if Vassell had any outstanding warrants, he told them about it. The police looked up his record and indeed found the summons. He and the other boys were handcuffed and driven to the local police station. They were separated and went from one precinct to another where they were held among other young people awaiting charges. In total, Vassell spent two days in jail before he went before a judge, matter-of-factly paid the fine for his summons, and was released. The other boys were held in custody longer for, as Vassell describes, "doing things they shouldn't have been doing"— smoking weed, a fairly commonplace activity for plenty of teens.
In most neighborhoods in America, it is not a crime to play basketball after dark. But in Brownsville, where a majority of the population is black, even the most innocuous activities can lead to run-ins with the cops. The neighborhood is at the center of the NYPD's stop-and-frisk program, a deeply controversial tactic of policing that has drawn the ire of many communities of color in New York City and beyond. Heralded by the Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration as necessary for curbing the spread of illegal guns and their use in violent crimes, stop-and-frisk allows—some have argued, mandates—officers to approach people they deem suspicious and search them. In 2010, when Vassell was stopped, The New York Times reported that between June and March of 2006 police made nearly 52,000 stops within an eight-block radius in the neighborhood.
Stop-and-frisk has become one of New York City's most hotly contested public policies, with proponents citing the program to explain the city's stark drop in violent crime over the past two decades. New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly recently sat on a gun-violence panel at the Reverend Al Sharpton's National Action Network conference and defended his department's use of the program. "African Americans, who represent 23 percent of the city's population, made up 64 percent of the murder victims and 71 percent of shooting victims in [New York City] last year," Kelly said. "We utilized the long-established right of the police to stop and question individuals about whom we have reasonable suspicion." He added that he believes stop-and-frisk is a life-saving tactic and constitutional as upheld by the Supreme Court in 1968 in Terry v. Ohio.
But many New Yorkers disagree, and the constitutionality of the practice is currently being debated in federal court. Floyd v. City of New York is a class-action lawsuit in which the plaintiffs contend that the NYPD's stop-and-frisk program violates both the Fourth Amendment prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures and the equal-protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
At a press briefing days before the trial began in March, David Ourlicht, one of the four named plaintiffs in the case, explained the program's visceral impact: "I don't [want to] have to walk outside and have that thought in the back of my mind: 'Is this the time will they shoot me or will I get beat up? Will I go to jail for something I didn't do?' I want to be able to move on and not have to feel that."
Khary Lazarre-White, an attorney and executive director at the Harlem-based nonprofit The Brotherhood/Sister Sol, knows the issue personally and politically. He's sat in high-level meetings to make his case against the tactic with city officials, including Commissioner Kelley. "It's happened to me twice, and I'm an attorney who dresses like you would expect an attorney to dress," he says about stop-and-frisk. "This is a very immediate presence and an emotional issue."
But for New York City's brass, the program boils down to numbers. According to their logic, the more stops you make, the more guns you take off the streets, and the safer the city becomes. But the data on the stops don't quite justify this support of the program. Between 2003 and 2011, the NYPD conducted 524,873 stops, but in each of those years, fewer than 0.5 percent of cases produced guns, according to a 2011 report from the New York Civil Liberties Union. Critics point out that 86 percent of those stopped were black and Latino and say that the program feeds racial profiling and violates the constitutional rights of New York's residents, an argument at the center of the class-action suit.
But few have openly explored how the program has changed the ways that black and Latino residents move about New York City. For Vassell, stop-and-frisk has turned into a lightning-rod in the 2013 New York City mayoral election and the case is based on a reality that's become absolutely normal: The police are everywhere, they're always watching, and they can stop you whenever and wherever they want. "I understand that it's going to happen," Vassell says of the stops. "I know how to say 'please' and 'thank you,' and I have nothing to hide."
Hearing Vassell talk about how he expects to be stopped and questioned by the police is reminiscent of the ways in which Jim Crow operated in the Deep South as a legally permissible form of social control. But, according to Rosa Squillacote, who works as a policy advocate at the Police Reform Organizing Project in New York City, what's been especially noteworthy in the trial so far is the testimony by officers who are opposed to the practice but are pressured into making a high number of stops.
"Police officers are testifying that this is not helping them do their jobs," Squillacote says. "It's hurting their relationship with community members."
During the first week of Floyd v. The City of New York, NYPD officer Adhyl Polanco, an eight-year veteran of the force who works in the Bronx, testified that he was told to make one arrest and write 20 tickets each month. "They said, 'You do it, or you are going to become a Pizza Hut deliveryman," Polanco said. "I started recording it because I could not believe what I was hearing."
Black and Latino communities have long been suspicious of police, but the danger of the NYPD's program is that it further engrains the idea that police officers are an occupying force instead of public servants who protect citizens. When I spoke with Phillip Atiba Goff, who heads the Racial Bias in Policing project at the Russell Sage Foundation, he told me how damaging it was for kids in these communities to find themselves on the opposite side of the law.
"We have preliminary evidence, the more contact you have with law enforcement, the more you end up fearing the world sees you as a criminal," Goff told me. That sort of unique stress doesn't just lead to anger, but to conditions like hypertension later on in life.
Equally as troubling is what this type of policing says about who does and doesn't get the full rights of citizenship in the country. David Brotherton, a political-science professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York, says that such mechanisms of social control go deeply against the purported values of our society. "When you have level upon level of surveillance of highly vulnerable populations, kids grow up with very strange notions of a free society and a Democratic process," he says. "There's a paranoia that's justified, and for many of them, it's the beginning of the American nightmare."
At least this part of the nightmare may be eased soon. Critics of stop-and-frisk who are observing Floyd have been optimistic that a judge will rule against the program.
"I am moderately, cautiously optimistic," says Lazarre-White, the attorney in Harlem. "What's unusual about this case is that because this policy was put into place simply by edict of the mayor and because there's a [mayoral] election coming, there could be a complete transformation in six months. Rarely does the organizing community see that type of win. It's changed the culture and community because people feel like enough is enough."
Thu, 2013-04-25 14:40
How does New York's brazenly unconstitutional stop-and-frisk policy further degrade the performance of poorly performing schools?
Put this ...
Political scientist Martin Sanchez-Jankowski spent nine years on the ground in five poverty stricken New York and Los Angeles neighborhoods (and ten years before that researching street gangs). He explains in his 2008 book Cracks in the Pavement that ghetto schools don't work mostly because students (and teachers!) don't expect jobs paying anything decent waiting for them in the labor market when they graduate and go to work -- so think school accomplishments not worth a heavy effort.
together with this ...
Noche Díaz -- describing the degradation minority youth suffer from unjustified stop-and-frisk: "... why is it that I have to look at these 15-year-olds in the playgrounds in the Bronx who tell me that if you're not a white person in this world you don't matter and you don't mean anything?"
Denis Drew
Chicago (formerly the Bronx)
Fri, 2013-04-26 14:55
This practice creates a hostile environment for young blacks and makes NYC less attractive to blacks. I believe that one impact of this persistent practice is to foster African-American exodus from NYC. Certainly, if I were part of an African-American family with a young son, I would seriously consider moving to keep him from getting repeatedly stopped. The risk that he says something that the cops misinterpret, or he loses his temper, and ends up in jail is just too strong, so if I had somewhere else to go (Atlanta?), I'd try to move. Certainly, NYC is no longer the center of black culture in the U.S.
Sat, 2013-04-27 03:19
Sat, 2013-04-27 10:33
I was a Times Square street peddler and then a Bronx gypsy cab driver in the 1970s and got out because of the crime -- truly like the DeNiro taxi film. But the crime dropped 4X before Bloomberg came in -- then he set up 7X as many stops and (half the time) frisks = 28X as many stops per reported crime.
Yesterday I had a truly shocking (eighth-grade math) thought (a lot of my thought process seems to be simple math): 700,000 stops per year equal 7,000,000 over 10 years. If minorities subject to stops make up 3 million of 7 million city residents (I don't know) -- 1.5 million are male -- .5 million must be be in the 14-35 likely stop age -- that makes 14 stops (and 7 frisks) every 10 years if all frisks were minority -- make that 12 (and 6) -- or 24 stops (and 12 frisks) for minority males over their 20 strongest years.
I have five Irish grandparents counting my mother's stepmother; I don't know anyone who's ever been stopped or frisked -- though since Bloomberg (I've been living in Chicago and SF since 1980) that may changed just a little.
These systematic intrusions are certainly depriving people of their free lives which the Fourth Amendment (and the whole Bill of Rights) is designed to insure. Everything in the Bill of Rights is found in our DNA -- evolved behavior came first then the Constitution. If people don't feel free to move about without being intruded upon by threatening authority figures it truly ruins their whole lives.
I wouldn't doubt it's all about ethnic cleansing.
Sat, 2013-04-27 21:44
The police are selfish and care only about their jobs. They have "gamed" the system under the guise of "being our protectors," to secure a very sweat deal for themselves at the expensive of everyone else. It is one of the few jobs where you never have to improve your productivity or do a better job. You only have to follow orders. Even the army now asks it's offices to think. Not the police.
Basically, the police incentives are all wrong. The police are measured on 19th century metrics that have no relation of 21st century crime prevention. The police also like the system because all the choices are black and white and you don't have to think to do your job. The bad news is that they end up antagonizing the people they should be helping. The police harass the community and "create" crime as a way of justifying their jobs.
A better model is to fix the staffing level and provide bonuses based on community measures such as crime rate, survey community rating, number of tips from local informants, membership in PAL, high school graduation rate and employment rate. Using an occupying army to suppress violence whether in Afghanistan, Iraq or Brownsville, is not a long term solutions.
Instead we should try a good dose of police led social work and social justice. We should also pay extra for crime prevention. Unfortunately, this definition is 180 degrees opposite from how city government and police management operate.
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