text:
Undesigning the Emergency: Against Prophylactic Urban Membranes
Benjamin H. Bratton, Associate Professor of Visual Arts, U. C. San Diego. www.bratton.info
ETech, San Jose, CA. March 11, 2009
RAW lecture notes for citation and reference. Please contact me at firstname.lastname@example.com for further comment, revision, permissions, etc. I will post a proper online version of the talk shortly.
First, let me thank Brady and Tim for the invitation, not only to speak but to speak about the architecture and terrorism, hardly the usual fare for eTech. But their insight that it is in fact strongly connected to the agenda and ambition of open network social politics is correct. I teach political philosophy to architects, designers, urbanists, artists, and also direct the design policy program at CALIT2, the UC's primary IT core research institute at UCSD, itself essentially an open sourcing of primary research, a direct innovation and technology transfer platform. But I wont' be showing you technology, we'll end the day more philosophically, so fair warning.
They asked me to speak about another project, based on an upcoming book, published by semiotexte/MIT early next year on the design logics of terrorism and counter-terrorism and what it teaches us about the character of public space, exceptional violence and open and closed networks. What's revealed by that is not only the constitutional violence of how all architecture works, but how the design technique of the partition works to generate violence as much as prevent it, and how what we know about open systems in software and in urbanism must learn from each other.
As I see it, for the broader O'Reilly project, software is cast as a tangible substance of human initiative (and non-human, for that matter), more than a mechanism for the automation of command systems. It's a universal Spinozean animating force of the material world. It is constructive, potentially organic, more like a music that can assume the force of law, than a consumable channel or content. More wet than dry.
The city, any city, is likewise more than a warehouse of architectural achievements and accidents. It is also an emerging technology, and in fact always has been, emerging still and always.
So together, the city as hardware and software as well software, is bound as a generative platform less as machine than as habitat. Such a platform/habitat directs our attention not just to a new set of technologies to be coded and installed (that is the deferred future someday of pervasive computing.) In fact it changes how my other colleagues, architects, urbanists, define what a city is at all, now and already. This bound platform is a metaprogram for what the metamedium of the city is and can be, how we diagnose what is and is not an open, scalable condition or policy. It is, however, not new. It in fact predates digital computation.
The image of the network city goes back at least to the Romans in and drove the city's Modernity: we see in Louis Kahn's traffic plan, Archizoom's no stop city, Superstudio's megastructures, Dennis Crompton's computer city, are a few examples.
Which is to say simply that the relative openness and closedness of urban interfaces is the condition into which urban software is installed, and the one which it effects and innovates most directly, but it does not in itself make the city into a landscapes of interfaces. It is always that. Software is not something to be spread like butter onto a city so as to modulate it, but something that may appreciated in its immiediacy and its complexity as a metamedium for integration and activation of the social, because the city is something that is, like software, under threat of being shut down.
What is new, and very important. Is that software, as a system by itself, knows things about open infrastructure that architects and planners need to internalize, that our cities need to absorb and embody, and vice versa.
Among these, I'll discuss more below, is not only that open networks are better than closed networks, but that urban fabric, like a code-base, is something to be constantly recreated and given the means to recreate itself. Seen from the perspective of its eventual form, it hasn't even happened yet. The world itself, that is, hasn't happened yet, either.
Constraint, Hummer Architecture
"Once an act of terrorism occurs, it is already for the second time." --Paul Virilio
Constraint is not only a set of conditions in which design must struggle, to constrain is itself a design strategy. Cambrian lurches forward in design ecologies tend to occur in response to an emergency, often a war. Today design is asked to choose between two meta-emergencies: ecological deterioration or securitization/ the war on terror. (a space open and filled well or badly by new experts) Lines are drawn. Use cases are modelled. Budgets are allocated. My talk is about the need to undesign the second of these emergencies. I hold in grave suspicion the design of constraint within architecture and urbanism, particularly in response to perceived threats of terrorist violence and external invasion, and so should you.
What is that design?
The complexity of global society is qualified not just by risk, but by incomprehensible risk. The interconnectedness of political, natural, technological, economic variables effects any expert system, but also makes it impossible to master the totality. Precariousness, precarity, is, to the core, the order of the day. In the wake of 9/11,we saw the execution of a generalized "aggressive defensiveness": preemptive strikes, enhanced interrogation, to safe cities and security membranes along our national orifices.
Today, blanketed in the residue of the collapsed bubble, lifeboat ethics is held at bay by an unprecedented reanimation of the agency of the Federal apparatus, under control today by well-meaning intellgent progressives but in four years by who knows.
Auto-Immune Cities
Our cities are our most important technologies, but they suffer today from a kind of auto-immunity disorder by which we ourselves disfigure them, attack them with defensive measures in the inverted image of a potential threat of future criminal or terrorist violence.
It is a design by designing for the emergency, on behalf of it, by repeating the possibility of the catastrophic violence in advance of its actual occurance which may or may not come.( and now does not need to come, becuase it's result it put there in advance in the guise of defensive measure) It may also be integral, but even if so, no less bizarre.
By way of precedent consider that for the entirety of the Cold War, the USA and the Soviet Union did not explode a single nuclear device on the other's territory. Instead, in the guise of the test, the USA bombed the USA (over 1000 bomb tests, >300 atmospheric, Nevada, Alaska, Colorado, Mississipi, New Mexico and Marshall Islands, 174 megatons) and the Soviet Union bombed the Soviet Union (700-900 bombs, Kazahkztan, Artic achaepelagos, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, other areas of Russia proper, including the Tsar Bomba in 1961, 50 megatons all by itself, or 10 times the total munitions of ww2, 285 megatons) 15 and 20 kilotons, hiroshima and nagasaki.
The defensive measure it to attack one's own body, to demonstrate the very capacity to attack, and to ward off the possibility of the event being tested from occuring at some time in the future.
As for security programming, the body politic, and the body of the city, goes wrong, and repeats by way closure and prevention a distorting violence upon itself in the inverse image of a projected violence, what psychoanalytic theory would call a defense mechanism.
But my interest is not only in protecting the politically open space from a reactionary closure, it's to extend and radically expand a politicized openness much further than it is or ever was. Not because it would be nice, but because it is necessary.
Societies are composed of interfaces, hard ones and soft ones, slow ones and fast ones, immobile and mobile, concrete and electronic. The generalized open network, source, software, channel politics will not succeed unless it further develops itself as a theory of technology and not just software, which is to say, of the city.
Let's consider some examples of this inversion and what is to be learned from them, both positively and negatively.
Historical Examples:
The new United States embassy in Berlin has been met with howling disapproval by Berliners and architecture critics alike for its menacing fortress, and its official presentation of the United States abroad through a posture of aggressive defensiveness and unwelcome menace. Not only is the design more reminisent of the cheap funcationalism of a military hotel, its hosts are offended by its real measures including triple reinforced walls, bomb-proof, and most of all the surrounding by a security fence that separates it from the main road and the rest of the city. It has been dubbed "Hummer architecture" after the grotesquely militarized consumer SUV's that became so popular in the psychological wake of 9/11. The official ceremonial body of the USA in Germany is a helmet. ...Germany is complaining about America's obsessiveness. Wow.
The Politics of National Interfaces: Protecting our precious bodily fluids.
Borders represent an interface between a "national body" and the rest of the world. Recently the militarization of these interfaces has overwhelmed reasoned policy. While the the Dubai Ports World scandal will go down as among the most bizarre episodes of institutional Islamophobia, of much more real concern is the on-going militarization of the Southern and Baja California international border. In the name of better policing of extralegal demographic flows, and even preventing "terrorism" from entering the homeland from abroad, it has become national policy to transform this critical point of regional connection into permanent state of emergency: a very thin, very wide "camp." It is tragic that in a world of global flows, legal and extralegal, the most unproductive forms of ethnic filtering have replaced imaginative and engaged urban planning.
What does the border do then? Like a very wide but very thin interface, it works to govern conditions of cultural, economic and demographic exchange between these two political territories. It doesn't just work on behalf of a government, it is governance. To me that is a very interesting design opportunity and challenge, and also why the the prophylactic strategy of the wall must be undone. A border can be many things and do many things. To filtrate and sanitize (peeking) population flows is not the only assignment. We are choosing, to our own detriment, an "Israeli Model"
Security barriers and Green Zones: What is Civilian Space?
Another trend is the confusion of military and civilian spaces, and thereby military and civilian life. It works both ways. Airports and train stations are patrolled by armed men in uniform, and everyday phone calls are suspected as being technologies in a open-ended war against an undefinable enemy.
While in the Green Zone, military personnel are/were coocooned in a safety zone that attempts to replicate normal civilian life as much as possible, a live-work mall complex in the middle of the battlefield. Does the idea of a permanent war mean that there are no civilians and no truly civilian, public space?
CalTrans Bunker, Los Angeles
Morphosis' CalTrans builiding in downtown Los Angeles, designed by Pritziker Prize winner, Thom Mayne, is truly the most striking and beautiful additions to the skyline. In real design originality it far outpaces Gehry's whimsical Disney Hall. It is also designed primarily in terms of the use-case of an Oklahoma City-style truck bomb. The building is surrounded by a huge concrete moat, sheilding it from all intercourse with human and automobile scale traffic. The only opening entrance is populated with giant metal finger emerging up from the ground and pointing out at any incoming truck missile. The cleverness of Mayne, who served on the AIA "Building for Security" committee for many years, is to accomodate the demands of a totally militarized public architecture with those of formal and material design innovation. The sheer weirdness of all the security measures add up to a building figure so unusual that it is usually regarded as completely expressionistic, even artistic, even if that artistry is arrived at to assuage a program of panic.
Isamu Noguchi's Designs for Japanese-American Internment Camps: How Temporary is Temporary?
Among ISAMU Noguchi's most heartfelt projects, but least known, are a series of schools, playgrounds and meeting halls designed for the internment camp at Poston. Noguchi feared the camps would be permanent. As such they would require careful architectural and urban design to make them as livable as possible. Remember at the time no one knew that the camps were "temporary," and its procisely this making permanent of the temporary that is worrisome.
Giorgio Agamben argues that the political "state of emergency," going back to the Roman justinium, is paired with a particular architecture, that of the "camp." The camp is the zone that exists both inside and outside the law at once, where authority is absolute but derived less from normal law than the infinite exception granted by the state of emergency, ostensibly to protect the framework of law that it itself transgresses.
Critically, for our interest here today, is that such states of emergency begin as a "temporary measure" (precaution, pilot program, protective custody, probation) but over time, through both political shift and in the normalization that appears through design's accomodation of the emergency, the exception becomes the rule, and the rule the rule of law.
Designing like you Give a Damn: Resistance or Normalization of Emergency?
Many well-meaning projects enroll design in working, like Noguchi, to provide better comfort to those caught within such emergencies: refugees, displaced persons, disaster victims.
(i.e. "Architecture for Humanity") Without discounting the real help that design can provide to alleviate misery, we must be honest in realizing that accomdating the emergency with design is how a perhaps illegitimate state of exception is stablilzed, normalized and, over time, made normal. To design for the emergency is to aid both its victims and its perpetrators.
More everyday securitization from homeless proofing of public sitting areas,
the securitization of the inside of shoes at aiports, the overarming of private security guards, the militarization of building surfaces and personal urban transporation, ... to the grotesque, migrant labor in UK housed in floating prison ships, barely inside the realm of legal protection separating them from slavery. Everyday forms of low-level chronic, slow motion spatial violence. These are actually more dangerous because they literally and symbolically supress the civility of the civil society at the individual level.
Now...As the Berlin Wall made clear, the camp and bunker are the same typology inverted. One makes partition to keep the contaminant world outside the safety membrane. (bunker) the other to contain it within (camp)....
For example, Remember the prisoner camps in Bosnia where Serbian paramilitaries temporarily housed captured Bosnian muslims? A famous black and white photograph of detainees standing behind barbed wire looking out at the camera, horrified the world and did more to mobilize opinion against the war than anything to date. The Serbs claimed, however, that it was the photographer who was "inside" the camp, looking "out" at the curious Bosnians who had gathered around the perimeter fence. This claim, proven false by a British court, shows how the "camp" and the "bunker" can invert themselves so easily.
Which projection here, which I? inside or outside? camp or bunker? reversability.....does the suppression of civil society responses to exceptional violence serve to support the civil society ostensibly protected from attack, or does it double in advance the attack, rendering the surface of the city in the image of its own projective violence/, ceding to it the habitat well in advance...
The reversability makes openness necessary because the virtual city to be governed can't possibly know in advance whether and how the closing of a channel will work to stabilize or destabilize an intended civil equilibrium.....if the content of the terrorist form is that there is no civilian space, then the content of counter-terrorism is identical if inverted.
I turn then to what is in fact the most important example for us to consider, the event that signaled all the problems and opportunities we've touched on and which requires the most serious analysis because it represents a credible model --both positively and negatively-- of what we can expect from the future. I am speaking of the Mumbai terrorist attacks.
In a recent interview, Paul Virilio, notes that today's qualities of technology --instantaneity, ubiquity, immediacy -- are those associated with the divine. One very important lesson of Mumbai is that the killer app of digital urbansim is not advertising to the hipster flaneur, it is religion, and it's impact on political theology will be turbulent, existential and fertile. Read/write urbansim, urban computing, is post-secular.
Like a kind of sick version of a locative media game played on the surface of the digital city, area/code. Cerveny and Slavin just described, a group of at least 10 (no one can know for sure) killed 173 people, wounding over 300 more. 10 coordinated attacks. One caught alive.
Before the episode was even fully over, we'd learned about the array of powerful, but off-the-shelf, navigation and communications software and hardware used by the attackers to coordinate their movements throughout multiple locations at once: satellite phones, handheld GPS, anonymized email, Google Earth, voice-to-text software, etc. This news also cast new attention on report published October 16, 2008 by the U.S. Army considering scenarios in which terrorists would coordinate urban mobilization using Twitter. However in Mumbai, Twitter was used by hostages and others trapped in the mayhem to report and share information on on the events in realtime. The #Mumbai hash tag generated hundreds of pages of texts. See http://twitter.com/Mumbai
Bruce Schneier was, as you can imagine asked for his response to this horrible event, this nightmarish paroxysm of cyberterrorism. His response was pathetic, a variant of the criminals use forks and spoons too, so social/spatial technology isn't really the story here. Of course social/spatial technology it is the story, but not just by how it was used to outflank a hopelessly unwired Indian official response.
Again, the US Govt however, almost got it just right. Their issued report the month before warning the terrorists might use Twitter to coordinate an attack, was spot on but backwards. Twitter became a way to mobilize a response to terrorist violence --reconaissance, C3, logistics-- to the attacks not on civil society but by civil society!
It is well known now. In response, official channels were misdirected. They didn' know what was happening, where, when, why, by whom? And yet you had a strange situation where someone in CA reading the #mumbai feed (even though it was striated by rumor) had an apparently equal or perhaps even better raw intellgience feed that the official Indian respsone unit, sluggish, hierarchical cadres of men with guns, critical to fight it out, but where, how, when?. I'm sure some of you in this room tracked the event this way yourselves.
"Hospital update. Shots still being fired. Also Metro cinema next door,"
""Blood needed at JJ hospital,"
Vinu, post-attack pictures to Flickr, etc. hundreds and hundreds of tweets.
Thinking no doubt of Black September, 72 Israeli Olympic team watching themselves on TV, able to thwart the West German response... the Indian gov't response was an initial attempt to "shut down the Twitter stream." This was hoped to choke them off. They didn't and couldn't and had they succeeded, many more people may have died.
The lesson for Open Society, Software and Urbanism is crystal clear: what can be used for swarm can be used for counter-swarm and vice versa. What can be used to mobilize a violent distortion of the urban network can be used to mobilize the suppression or dispertion of that distortion.
Swarm and Counter-Swarm
This is not the only lesson, but it is a critical one. Another, voiced by Saskia Sassen Stephen Graham is that the attacks of Mumbai represent a new phase in global conflict: a civilianization and an urbanization of warfare.
I think this is quite probable, but I say that lesson of Mumbai is also that the response to this new phase can't be to redesign cities as battlefields, latent or explicit, and to accelerate the decivilianizaiton of its partitions, pathways and interfaces. In fact we want the opposite: the further civilianization of the city's miliatary inheritance.
Since November I have heard Mumbai used as a reason why open technological systems cannot survive the coming violence of globalization. Preventing access the basic tools of digital urbanism is cast the new border patrol. I don't meant frivolous things like the Indian lawyer who sued Google demanding that they remove "potentially sensitive" sites from GE and Maps, I mean serious policy people. The maturation of locative media may be stunted and with it a new world.
I trust that this audience is unsympathetic to the tired trope that open software systems will cause harmful and undesirable mischief, and that their closure and governance is both possible and preferred. We know the opposite is true and history is on the side of networks doing what networks always do, and that the coming waves of social and economic innovation will rely on the openness of the software systems that will bind civilian space into civil society.
Which is precisely why the parallel response to Mumbai, that the open system of the physical city must be closed down and securitized should be equally suspect to your sensibilies and sense of professional responsibility.
Why? Because as software becomes a medium through which the city is accessed and made social, the paired need for both open software and hardware is clear.
The design of the open public space is dependent on the design of the open software which is, increasingly, dependent on the design of open cities.
Mumbai is read for its contradictory lessons. It reveals the capaity of urban software to outpace and overwhelm the stupidity of prophylactic partition, and the inadequacy of traditional political institutions and their capacity to govern cities by official representation is fatally slow....
So then....Even mumbai is a positive example of sub-political multitude, that emerging, majority of people who own phones and for whom first experience of net and computation will be as an extension of their own embodiment. their's is the agora of the future, and their right to truly civilian space and the potential of new forms of civil society, for and of the "other" 4 billion people is very much at stake.
I don't mean that because we have twitter we don't need an army, but one thing is very clear. In this very real state of emergency, wide open channels, in this case twitter, saved lives. An open city, civil society, swarmed to remap the city in response. That is very good news. Let's scale that. Let's respond to the decivilianization and urbanization of war with that. In the convergence of open cities and open software, swarm is both the problem and the solution to the condition of the political multitude.
Zombie Jurisdiction & Post-Crime
To be clear, yes, I am speaking about the global emergence of new modes and scales of political and collective subjectivity, neither exaclty inside or outside of government and representative democracy and not exactly inside or outside of markets, either. Not exactly microscale or macroscale: mesopolitical. In 2009, in this "transitional" phase, post-bubble and pre-whatever-comes-next: " To enable the emergence of what comes next the pipes have to be open and the channels clear. Even if, and especially if, what comes next is technicallly illegal, or extralegal, by today's or yesterday's statutes. Worse than the criminalization of culture, is the criminalization of infrastructure, but such crimes (post-crimes) are simply the inevitable execution of programs provided by new networks in soveregin disregard of zombie jurisdictions.
When there is a mismatch between an emergent convergent social-technical form (a new social network condition arising from a new technical network condition) on the one hand, and an extant, residual legal-political forms (an old legal statute attempting to govern and contain what it can neither describe or circumscribe), then the structrual momentum of the former may --amorally and asubjectively-- proliferate a multitude of "criminal" connections and transferences. A critical mass of historically emergent flow will --good or bad-- overwhelm the legacy code of inherited legal lines in the sand. This is different than the transgression of an active code. It is less illegal than extralegal, outside or transversal to an incomensurate legal supervision.
Open Interfaces
The securitization of urban interfaces may or may not be zombie jurisdicitons but they have the same effect of closing off the future emergence of new multitudes, and thereby not in the interest of the society they purport to protect. .........The accumulation of interfaces generate networks, and the accumulation of networks generate territories, themselves governed by interfaces,
There is a metadesign agenda, a need, to undesign the excesesses of securitization to retire the emergency in whose name they were committed; a need to specify a post-war urban landscape of open productive interfaces, hard and soft, here and abroad, in the form of the social space we wish to positively inscribe and concretely enforce, to extend openness further than its previous state, not sept 10, better. Buttons The pairing of urban software and urban hardware becomes an blended medium through which the city is accessed and made social. For this, the city's hardware, its partitions and pathways, its smart and dumb platforms, must be further opened to public access, initiative and innovation. Not just not closed off, but further opened up, more open than ever before.
Again....For the emergent pairing of urban software and hardware, the redesign of the polis is dependent as the redesign o the city & the redesign o the city is dependent on the redesign of the software, in fact they may likely turn out to be all the same thing.
Open Source City
This is a critical problem for the broader socio-technical movement interested in the productive capacities of open systems. It is no longer possible for a certain Libertarianism to hold. It's not possible to decry and undermine the closure of public space, technique and infrastructure closely guarded by Microsofts and Yahoos and Sonys, in an online world, while at the same time philosophically and politically defending the closure of public space, technique and infrastructure by a mall owner, a hotel chain, a gated community, or a developer. We know that the public good is better served by open software systems, networks, codes, API's, channels, and we should know that the same is true of open urban systems and their networks, codes, API's, channels, etc.
It is axiomatic that open code and programming channels have political ramifications not only for software but as a model for complex organizational social infrastructure in general. Building on this we need to design, not just the tech but direclty the emergent modes of citizenship models of democracy, technology, privacy, publicity, economy, market, statute, enforcement, etc. poli sci as a laboratory or studio based discipline.
As it stands today, we have no idea what terms and limits of a cloud based citizenship of the Google Caliphate will entail and curtail. Some amalgam of post-secular cosmopolitanism, agonistic radical democracy, and post-rational actor microecomics, largely driven by intersecting petabyte at-hand datasets and mutant strains of Abrahamaic monotheism. But specifically, what is governance (let alone government) within this?
At this moment, like many people, I am interested in the power of States, even re-reading my Althusserians, but I am certain that government as it was inherited from Hamilton, Voltaire and Roosevelt can't possibly do the trick. On the one hand we need to redesign, from scratch, our political institutions, and on the other, we see emergent computational networks doing it for us. Some on the Right are pleased to see central states carved out, but when it gets to actually change, actual real emergent deformation, distortion and the radically new they balk and shut down.
Open Source City Standards
Rem Koolhaas' name for the pervasive planetary sprawl of entertainment lifestyle driven libertarian urbanism is junkspace, the global atrium coded by speculative finance where anything resembling the political is kindly discouraged or prevented so as to not disturb the read-only branded thematics.
So after junkspace, what is the open city? For some the open city conjures image of Faluja or Lagos or Juearez, a cannibal holocaust of overrun institutions, but the Right has been warning of that since Robespierre. When confronted with the possiblity of the "open source city" they think of phone lines torn down and manhold covers pilfered to sell the black market.
I don't however and neither should you. It's about public object and public access. Is it in the collective interest for a commercial mall owner to determine finally what software you were able to bring into his space, a space that has replaced public sidewalks, so as to prevent you from coutner-programming it to your purposes.error message "I'm sorry, under agreement with our sponsors, we've disabled that iPhone app." Just as energy replaces information as our core economic substance, New York city managed to defeat the no sensor law, which would have made it illegal to place and use any sensor systems in public areas, effectively killing exactly the kinds of granular environmental monitoring capacities the city most needs.
Adam Greenfield, now at Nokia, has a nice riff on public objects, on all public objects and structures having open programmable API's. "most public objects - and certainly all municipal objects - should offer APIs. (A concrete example: BART's provisions.) Furthermore, specifically with regard to public infrastructures like transit systems, I believe that this should be a matter of explicit government policy. What's a public object? A sidewalk. A building facade. A parking meter. Any discrete object in the common spatial domain, intended for the use and enjoyment of the general public. Any artifact located in or bounding upon public rights-of-way. Any discrete object which is de facto shared by and accessible to the public, regardless of its ownership or original intention. " Yes, and Yes, It's a nice synthesis of ideas in the air, including Osman Haque's Extended Environmental Markup Language.....but the whole city is a public metaobject, and its openness isn't just software, openness and publicity has to be a hardware issue as well, architecture, streets, zoning, the whole thing. An open API for a closed city is nothing.
Maude: [gesturing to a sick tree growing through a sidewalk] Harold, we have *got* to do something about this life.
Harold: What?
Conclusions : : :
1. The Invention of any new technology is the invention of a new accident, train, plane, city, phone, arduino.....personal data....this should be understood as a productive condition.
These are attendant accidents that were built into the system the day it went online....
I am simply insisting that we set up for ourselves the greater appreciation of desirable accidents... accidental civilianization, accidents of openness...
open systems in hardware and software development have been an accumulation of
useful accidents, things that were misused, misappropriated, deployed against themsevles, and yet became the world. same for cities.
twitter, ask them, produced an accident. an accidental potential of counterswarm by civil society... that was at same time, never intended as a 'functional specificaiton' of the software, but also built into it, as an accident, on day one.
2. The politics of open interfaces can't be well governed or even described by inherited political media; it entails is an emergent mode of the political --call it the multitude if you like-- and this modality may be the real content of the form.
public, private distinctions from a pre-electricity era can't drive us. But that said....you can't be a radical libertarian in cyberspace and an ancien regime reactionary in the meat world. or you can, as the atlas shrugged wing of the Open source movement attempts, but it is not a vialble political theory or infrastructural policy. it's fantasy.
role of strong governmance, not necessarily the state, is to protect the necessary conditions of churn in both places. to ensure, to enforce, with the weight of force, by state violence perhaps, the condition whereby constitutional violence which resides within the irreducilble sovereginty of the entire planetary multitude is able freely build and re-build, that is to continuously innovate territorial claims, uses, functions, programs, economies, supplies, demands, profits, etc....
This is the definition of the Open. not only that there is ostensibly equal capacity to be coded into a given arrangement, but the the arrangement itself is always, by force, left ajar to the possiblity of reterritorializaiton by unforeseeable purposes.
3. counter-terrorist design and zealous security design validates the state of emergency, and asks designers to accommodate it and to normalize it through their adaptive ingenuity, from new security measures to new memorials to the fallen. Governance-through-counter-terrorism enrolls the labor of well-meaning designers to rush in and tidy the chaos of emergency and its exceptional states of things. They counteract it, rebalance it into a new equilibrium, decorating the intolerable provisional condition into something normal, livable. Design freezes the dubious fantasy of control into the material substance of everyday life, finishing what the emergency design started, and re-securing societal interfaces in its image.
But his too shall pass. This phase in the uncomfortable shift toward a more intensely integrated networked geopolitics will eventually plateau. This is temporary. The crash will end and the accident will produce a new technology, The war on terror will end, not like Nazism ended, but more like how Disco ended. And when it does, we will be glad that we did not re-dress our cities in its embarrassing fashion
4. Post-What, Pre-What? 2008 finance as the meta-accident, .....
After the bubble, after the financial meltdown, we are in the midst of a transitional moment
which is itself, pre-something we don't know and can barely visualize. In mapping the emergent
in advance of itself, it's a matter of real concern what is and isn't 'post'? ost-American, post-globalization, post-secular, post-social, post-urban???? What stays and what goes? What is already gone? What is only an after image? What appears to be gone but is really permanent?
Is there a name for this accident? simply "the crash," the global recession. With 9/11 it was just named by the date because we didn't know what it was, were waiting for the other shoe to drop. now we are waiting for the event, the bottom, or waiting so that long enough will have passed that the event is safely over, or waiting for what happens now.
we don't know what we know and what we don't know, and we know it!
2009 we dont know what we are post, and what we are pre, but simply that we are, an historical interstitial, a gap, is the gap the empty space into which something falls, a void, a newly cleared space?
"Recovery," to recover a past state condition, is not an option. Strike the word from your vocabulary. absolutely the wrong word. networks like strawberries are parthenogenetic species, they can replicate fixed dna or mix dna to ensure variation, depending on whether conditinos are good or bad. we NEED more variant material. New stuff: to secure interfaces from violence is to secure their life-giving capacities into a frozen simulation, to freeze the kinetic energy of transacation and transference, of improvisation, reducing public activity to a regulated ritual.
If you can't open it, you don't own it, applies as much to real public space, as
consumer electronics


text:
Sexualities: Bisexual or Gay?
See more » Love and Lust
Bisexual kid, gay man
I guess I was a bisexual little boy. Or a very confused one. My first attempts at sex were with other guys. (Admittedly there weren't any girls I knew to try anything with.) My later fantasies were of women, possibly social force moving me toward the norm. Confusingly there is the recollection of this one skinny, harlotish girl whose perfume and hosiery lives strongly in recollection.
Victor and John kissed and my heart fixed on boys. Women vanished. Adolescent desires were forgotten. I'll flatter myself with my self-knowledge. There were no covert glances at women. Best thing about girls was there was no sexual tension. Many gay men have enjoyed that; many straight women have probably wished they hadn't.
I'll never weary of reliving that first conscious discovery of beautiful boys. Who knew so much beauty walked the streets? Well-formed pale slender blondes were everywhere. Not to forget the dark black-haired boys.
Life was roses, sunsets and good prose. Getting out of Savannah I could smell, look and fuck. OK, almost betraying the gay sexual ethic I actually did get tired of the latter within a few years.
I've been grateful for my earlier sexual blindness. In 1972 when I found out I came out. I told my, ahem, friends, old school teachers. If I'd discovered my gayness at fourteen I fear my illusion of invulnerability would've led me to do the same. My father would've found out and shock treatments or whatever homophobic tortures were popular then would've been my fate.
In reading it always sounds like young gay guys are repressed. I can't claim that. I was either happy enough with heterosexual fantasies or sexually neutral, neuter, blank.
Whatever I thought I knew back then there was lots more to learn.

subset: commoncrawl


text: Daily Break Answers Thread.. Jul 25, 2013 16:06:12 GMT Select PostDeselect PostLink to PostMemberGive GiftBack to Top Post by jjsanta on Jul 25, 2013 16:06:12 GMT Advisory: The Daily Break icon is now on the To-Doodles page of MyGSN.com. You can now find the Daily Break button on there as a reminder to make sure to complete the Daily Break for the 75 oodles. It is noted the check mark to indicate complete of the Daily Break game is not showing up on my screen.


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Business News
f/w look by French Connection
19 Sep. 2012
French Connection Financial Report and Initiatives for ImprovementFrench Connection today announced its interim results for the six month period up until July 31st 2012 and outlines the initiatives implemented in order to improve the performance of the retail business.
French Connection have identified that the difficult UK/Europe retail business has consequently impacted the Group results for this period. The company have suffered a 7% revenue decrease, from ₤102.8 million in 2011 to ₤96 million this year. However, the company are looking forward and the operational focus of the initiatives focuses on improving their store operations, developing their product range and improving merchandise management. In addition, they have strengthened their senior management team and will continue to target the disposal of loss making stores.
Stephen Marks, Chairman and Chief Executive of French Connection expressed his recognition that the route to sustained recovery is likely to take some time, but the company is committed and confident that their actions will produce a growing positive impact for their trading performance over the next two financial years.
Wholesale revenue in the UK/Europe division was 11% lower in this period and this performance reflects the difficult market conditions and challenges to the retail business. However, the period was ended with a strong balance sheet of ₤21.2 million net cash, no bank debt and a significant growth in French Connection's e-commerce business. Furthermore, North America achieved a 28% increase in revenue and saw strong performances in new stores across the rest of the world.
French Connection is not expecting any immediate improvement in the UK retail trading and the route to sustained recovery is likely to take time. Nevertheless, Stephan Marks said, 'We are committed to building on French Connection's core strengths; our highly recognised and well-regarded brand, our long history of producing desirable, fashion forward products, our proven sourcing ability and, of course, the commitment and passion of our staff, whom I thank for their continuing hard work.'
Alice McCullagh
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Reviews for SimCity (EU)
Believe me, it's actually a very good one!martinni | March 17, 2014 | See all martinni's reviews »
I was really looking forward for the release of this brand new SimCity; it looked amazing back then. But i'm always cautious, I rarely buy a game before launch; and seeing all the trouble EA had with it, I did the right thing. And I actually think it was good for them as well! I purchased it recently and i've had a lot of fun with it. I played like 10 hours in the first 2 days... I was supposed to wait... Was "just trying it". And ended up playing a lot; and I'm really into it. And I haven't had any kind of issues with servers or anything - they look 100% fixed, - and i've got a really (REALLY!!!) bad connection at home. I've played a Private Game... So it's been only a Single Player experience so far. I didn't want to screw up someone else's game, but yeah... I've had lots and lots of fun nevertheless, and i'm pretty sure it ain't gonna end soon!
An awesome gameIversman | Feb. 3, 2014 | See all Iversman's reviews »
Not many people enjoyed this game but, as rubbish as I am at the game, I've enjoyed every second of playing it. The always online DRM stuff is nothing horrible; it seems to work fine now after they've worked out most of the issues with it. I would highly recommend this game to anybody who asks. Only thing that really disappointed me was the map size; it would be great to be able to build a fully blown city.
Getting over the hump.Argentum | Nov. 26, 2013 | See all Argentum's reviews »
This game came out in a cloud of awful. And I mean awful. Refunds round the world and people not being able to play at all. I luckily avoided all of this by getting it a month late and was able to go into the game without the cloud of despair. The negative, is that its a small map. Like really small, I struggled to have everything I needed in one, and when I did fit it in that meant I had people crying about pollution or crying because of the monster that invaded, or crying because I burnt their house down - grow up yeah. Its supposed to encourage you to work together with friends and other cities but frankly I hate all other humans and so tend to go it alone. The positive is that even tabbing between cities can get you everything you need, and the trading system actually works, I usually end up with 2 or 3 cities one that generates all the power and digs up all the coal and the second where everyone lives and shops. The only problem I usually end up with is casinos that lose money hand over fist. Apparently in my Utopia not a soul likes to gamble accept one guy who wins 250000$ on a whim... Visually the game is perfect, they have a good art style that just works spot on, and since I missed most of the issues the performance is also brilliant. Overall thanks to avoiding all of the launch issues I got to play the best SimCities taint free.
Good, but could be better.Scamalot | Nov. 24, 2013 | See all Scamalot's reviews »
The launch of this game was a total fail, but all the issued since then have been solved. Servers are fine and they are even working on offline mode. Continous development is a plus. The game is relaxing but can get challenging if you so desire. Sandbox mode is if you just want to build your city with ease, or to test stuff out before making a huge mistake on your non-sandbox mode city. The game looks amazing even on low-end machines and even better on high-end PCs. There is still lots to improve, the traffic system is pretty bad, for example sometimes ambulances can get stuck in a loop. Area for the city is way too small for more than 200,000 people. Then there are the minor bugs that occur once in a while like not being able to draw road from place A to B becouse "Can't place road through placed buildings, even if there is nothing there. Overall the game is good, but not excellent. If you don't mind the little bugs and like the genre, this game is for you.
Improving with every update, still has potential to be greatVidiz | Aug. 26, 2013 | See all Vidiz's reviews »
Building your city is a very visual experience. From the little details of seeing garbage pile up when you have a trash problem, buildings abandoned or burned to the ground because of fires or their owners unable to find work. To the big details of watching apartment blocks rise from the ground as more sims move in and eventually huge skyscrapers rise up as your city starts to boom. You can have a very rewarding and satisfying time with SimCity if you explore the deeper mechanics such as building an empire from selling oils, metals and electronics, making your city a gambling hotspot or making a beautiful city full of tourist attractions. However the city size does become an issue after a while. Building your city is in my opinion the greatest part of the game, but that comes to a grinding halt once you use up all the space. It's for this reason why it becomes difficult to really get into the game as once you use up that space all there is left to do is min/max your city or start a new one. It's for this reason why SimCity falls short. It is very nearly a great game, and if the map sizes were to be increased with an update down the line it would certainly be a great game. For now, it is still a fun and satisfying experience but one that you will struggle to sink hundreds of hours into.
Great game with some shortcomingsblofeld | Aug. 19, 2013 | See all blofeld's reviews »
Simcity is a beautiful game, it is very pleasing to look at and the graphics are stunning. The gameplay is also very good, I have spent countless hours plannig and the executing my plan when building new cities. The bad however is there and this tarnish an otherwise great game. DIsregarding the debacle launch of the game (since the things broken at release has been fixed) the always-online DRM is just stupid and has no merit at all. Still, almost everybody has a broadband connection today, so this is a minor issue. The bigger issue though is all the sims and the vehicles pathfinding troubles. You can see throngs of sims walking around even though there are buses and trams running around empty. THe sims try to find jobs that are available in plenty, All fire engines going to the same fire, same with police cars. This has been tweaked some, but it is still far from logical. The size of the cities is also an issue. Sure, a small size lets you concentrate on perfecting our sity, but when the space is up, you wish there had been just a little more room for that new residential area. The game is patched regularly which is a good thing. It feels like the devs really care about the game. If you think of bying the game I say wait until it drops in price a bit.
Ignore the fussablake7 | Aug. 9, 2013 | See all ablake7's reviews »
Ignore all the fuss about this game, the initial launch problems have all but disappeared which leaves us, the player, with an enjoyable city building simulation. I especially enjoy the detail presented throughout the game, each person/car/garbage truck has its own thoughtful place in the world.
Good!Prejudgedkiller | Aug. 2, 2013 | See all Prejudgedkiller's reviews »
While this may indeed be my first Simcity game, I do feel that it has its weak points. The servers started off badly, however now the game runs perfectly fine . The management side of the game I would say is slightly weak compared to other games similar to this, however this does not mean it reduces its enjoyment. If you are looking for a game which passes the time and doesn't require much brain power I would say this is for you, however if you are looking for a game full of complicated management skills then you should look elsewhere. Overall the game can be enjoyable but it does get slightly tedious after long periods of playtime.
Not as good as I expectedDaggerstorm | July 27, 2013 | See all Daggerstorm's reviews »
I bought the game shortly after the launch, even though I knew it was buggy and didn't really work as intended. But I was a Simcity lover, and took the risk. The game was fun, but the fun lasted for few days, and that was it. The AI did not work, it took the shortest route to destination and thus caused traffic. Citizen drivers did not let emergency vehicles pass (Police, paramedic, etc.) and because of that, houses burnt down and people died. Casinos weren't working, they just made a big loss in your income. I think it's fixed now. With a dedication from developers, this game could easily be turned into a working good game, like earlier Simcities were.
Great Gamechristopherftw | July 26, 2013 | See all christopherftw's reviews »
Apart of the issues they had at launch its a awesome and fun game.
You'll sure have some fun (before the cracks begin to show)johjo605 | July 10, 2013 | See all johjo605's reviews »
I want to love SimCity. I played the crap out of the original back in '89 and had some good times with SimCity 2000 and so I had high hopes for this one. The long and short of it: If you like SimCity type games, then you'll definitely have a good time for a good number of hours. But... I can't help being disappointed by the smallness of the cities you're able to build. I get that they are going for something different with this installment, but it's not me somehow. I don't mind playing with several other players in a region. It's a lot of fun actually. But I would have liked the option to just say no thank you and just build a giant super-city all on my own as well, without having to rely on surrounding cities in the region. Also, much of the "AI" or whatever you want to call it, doesn't seem to work all that well. It might have gotten patched since I last played, but fire fighting and policing is a mess, as are transports and trade depots and ambulances and... well, it's just a mess of AI cars not really doing their job very well. I'd recommend this game if you like the genre, and if you're generally satisfied with having 10-20 hours of fun with a game before discarding it. But if you're looking for that SimCity game that you'll stick with for years and years, then this isn't it.
Not bad but not quite there.connorisgreat93 | June 17, 2013 | See all connorisgreat93's reviews »
I agree with other reviews stating that it's not what it could have been. While they quote the problem that the always on DRM is required for complicated calculations but under closer scrutiny the game seems a lot more simplistic than it is pretending to be. While this is a fun game to play especially with friends, it gets boring and repetitive after a while and it seems the game has been dumbed down and over simplified.
Flawed but fun (for a while)buckleboff94 | June 10, 2013 | See all buckleboff94's reviews »
As said in the many other reviews, this game is far better than most people will let you believe- whilst still not the game many people expected, it is now completely playable, and up until a point, quite fun. Ill start with the positives- the graphics (on my AMD radeon HD7870) look stunning, especially with some of the filters- the UI is very user friendly, and the specialisations are relatively interesting up until the 50+ hour mark. Further, the always online factor is no longer an issue for me- this now depends on your own internet connection, not the state of EA's servers- the regional play does add a new element to the gameplay too. Negatives include- the creatively restraining plot sizes,resulting in many cities looking the same, the traffic issues still dont seem any better, the glitches can still be annoying- tourism cities especially require far more effort than is worthy of the rewards, and there seems to be quite a few features missing- terraforming, overpasses, subways etc. In summary, well worth about £25 for 50+ hours of relatively entertaining, engaging gametime.
To be fair...cy25 | May 25, 2013 | See all cy25's reviews »
Alright, so I played the demo...so some may find my review 'null'. But I am going to try and be fair here. People are giving the game horrible reviews mainly because they haven't been able to play the game yet due to these horrible connection issues. I will admit that this horrible service and launch does deserve to bring the game down a few points. This 'always online' stuff is horrible for the single player. BUT I think someone needs to step up and actually talk about the actual gameplay. From playing the demo and watching videos gameplay, the game has been simplified a lot in terms of UI. This is a good thing! It is easy to construct roads and zone areas. You can add landmarks and even add additions to things such as hospitals and fire stations. When you can actually play the game, it is fun and addicting. The multiplayer component is pretty neat as well in terms of sharing resources and creating a whole region with specialized cities. Each city can be specialized in many ways - you can make a gambling city, educational city, industrial city..etc.
Great Gamedroox23 | May 24, 2013 | See all droox23's reviews »
Simcity is a beautiful and good game. I loved every bit of the game. BUY IT NOW
Fun yet sometimes forcedrunnerx | May 7, 2013 | See all runnerx's reviews »
After playing for a few good months(after the dust from the launch settled) i can describe the game in detail. The way they design the buildings and roads in this game is made to maximize the layout of the city while resources on the map such as water, coal, oil or ore means that you have to be very careful how you design the city from the start, and the city specialization tab adds a lot of challenges to every city you build. Now for the cons.. Well everyone one who heard about this game has heard already about the evil online DRM it was shipped of with and the problems that it caused for everyone since day one. For good reason yet most has been resolved now so that's not why i'm bringing DRM. The choice for DRM meant that certain game mechanics were changed in order to justify it's existence. For instance cities are very small. While you can maximize as much as possible buildings and roads you finish the layout of the city pretty fast and than your stuck waiting for cash to generate so you can upgrade your city. The city size was deliberately small to force the notion of the region on players. This way you can create multiple cities that can work together with different specialization and supply resources to one another. However! The region sometimes works sometimes doesn't because the nature of saving your cities onto servers means that it takes some time for it to be processed. You cant jump in one city put down a power station for example and expect the other city to be able to buy the extra power right after. So in other words despite the fact that the region idea was good for multiplayer, the way it works means that you still have to create mostly self-sufficient cities. There you have it, the full description of the game.Might worth the purchase now because like i said most of the issues have been solved but don't expect a masterpiece either.
I expected moreKnetus | May 2, 2013 | See all Knetus's reviews »
This Simcity is not what it could have been. It has been dumbed down and simplified with a promise of co-op where the co-op doesn't work due to syncing issues. The always-online-DRM was said to be needed due to large calculations but leaked inside information from programmers has said there are No calculations done on the servers. If I could get my money back I would.
Fun game, but better for new players rather than oldmindstorm555 | May 1, 2013 | See all mindstorm555's reviews »
Simcity better then most people make it out to be. Many people still cling to the initial server issues and DRM as excuses to hate the game. However the servers are no longer a problem as there is now 27 stable servers cross the globe. You very rarely have to wait to join a server now. DRM is not really an issue however it does mean you can't play on the go. However should your internet go out the game does give you 20 minutes to reconnect. The game is fun for and there is many different play styles to experiment with. This game really shines when playing with friends as you can play across one region and support one another. However the main criticism of this game is the plot sizes. They can effect a lot of your later gameplay as once your plot is filled you find yourself waiting for mission goals and requirements to complete. Its not the easiest either to change your city once built and you tend to move onto the next city as your last one whines out of control at something you can't change. However this game it still getting patched but really was released before its time and now players are paying the price. Be aware of the DLC that will come in the future but overall a good game with a large potential play time.
Fun for a short timeGeMeZz | April 28, 2013 | See all GeMeZz's reviews »
You probably heard a lot about simcity on the internet. There is an always online DRM and its quite buggy, also a lot of features you would expect were not there from the beginning (such as region filters). I played like 10 cities by now. The first thing I want to say, the city size is way to small! Second, the game is still very buggy, of my 10 cities, online 3 of them arent bugged and still playable, the other 7 ones are "still processing". Though this does not mean I had no fun playing it. The game has a lot of potential. Maxis did not try to make a good game here, they just tried to make a lot of money. The game it self is not bad, but will become boring quite fast. Please consider this when you want to buy the game.
goodinfernos13 | April 27, 2013 | See all infernos13's reviews »
A game full of possibilities and excellent ideas. Unfortunately - there are many disappointments: absurd limitations is terms of the area that can be used for a new city kills creativity, and Glassbox technology has some issues that interfere with an idyllic metropolitan life. The developers have concentrated too much on cooperation and social elements and have forgotten basic gameplay elements. You play and have a very strong feeling that the game isn't polished enough. And when you consider monstrous problems with servers and DRM, you get a game that's simply not very good.
Great fun for everyone!16thhour | April 26, 2013 | See all 16thhour's reviews »
This game is very fun for every age and genre, this game unfortunatly isnt like the old Simcity were you had a larger landscape or more types of transportation and extras built-in but still SimCity 2013/SimCity 5 is very sturdy game with its flaws such as Always-On DRM and sometimes your city won't save onto their servers so you might loses hours of work in building your perfect city.
Good, but buggy.AlexFarr123 | April 20, 2013 | See all AlexFarr123's reviews »
SimCity, also known by some as SimCity 5, or SimCity 2013, had a rather rocky start. Its use of always online DRM discouraged some potential customers, and flat-out stopped some people who had just bought the game from playing. Thankfully, these issues have been addressed (mostly) and the game is now stable and playable. The game itself consists of, as you might imagine, creating a city from scratch. It's a very satisfying feeling to see your city grow, and there are a lot of ways you can make your city unique. The region play, which is the main reason (or excuse) that the game has always-on DRM, allows you to interact with other cities. You can send them money or police cars, buy power from them or even send waves of criminals to their cities if you have some of the DLC (a feature I dislike thoroughly.) You can work together to build great works, which range from solar farms to produce power, to space centers to draw in tourists and increase tech level. However, SimCity falls short in a few areas. First, the cities are incredibly small. It's an almost herculean task to attain more than 200,000 people in a city, and it will suffer because of it. Most of the buildings will be unattainable for you because you simply don't have room. This forces you to claim more and more cities to make a trading infrastructure, which harms the amount of people you can have in the region. The game lags, even on top-end rigs (Though it is only noticeable towards the peak of a cities size) and if you play windowed so you can go AFK, the game stabilises at around 20fps, which causes horrible stuttering. This may not apply to all users however, so don't take my word on that. Other various bugs such as cities being inaccessible for long "processing" times and infinite load screens drag down the score of the game. Despite this however, it manages to be fiercely enjoyable and a large time vacuum. If you buy this, I suggest you play on sandbox first so that you have a safety net, and there won't be any sudden Godzilla attacks and earthquakes.


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[SMH | Text-only index]
Date: February 03 2013
IT IS ironic the young Frenchman decided to target the soldier on the Cenotaph for his 3am antics.
The statue is based on Private William Darby of the 15th Infantry Battalion, who served both at Gallipoli and on the Western Front repelling the German advance into France and Belgium.
The story of the losses on the bloody battlefields of the Somme, Ypres, Arras, Loos and Amiens would be essential history reading for most French students.
Darby's physique was considered right for the model for the statue. Another qualification was his service abroad in keeping with the highest traditions of the Anzacs.
A native of Monasterevin, County Kildare, Ireland, he died in Brisbane on November 15, 1935, with no known surviving relatives here.
For Australia, as for many countries, World War I remains the most costly conflict in terms of deaths and casualties.
From a population of fewer than 5 million, 416,809 men enlisted, of which more than 61,512 were killed and 156,000 wounded, gassed, or taken prisoner.
This material is subject to copyright and any unauthorised use, copying or mirroring is prohibited.
[ SMH | Text-only index]


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Eating pizza? Keep portions in mind
So here's a funny story. This dietitian has an extensive history with pizza. Not only has it been recorded as my favorite food since age two, but I worked at numerous pizza joints as a pizza delivery girl for a number of years before becoming a dietitian. There were a couple years of my life where pizza was the majority of my daily meals. And I never got sick of it.
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24 Pc WINROSE Collection CZECH China CREAMER Cup SAUCER
- Sold for: Start Free Trial or Sign In to see what it's worth.
- Item Category: -
- Source: eBay
- Sold Date: Feb 27, 2011
- Channel: Auction House
WELCOME to our WINROSE CZECH CHINA auction. Studio Antiques has been supplying Southern California traders, retailers & consumers, with great pride since 1985. We are direct importers of European furniture and collectibles. We have thousands of interesting and unusual items at great prices! Our El Segundo Show Room is open daily 9:00 am to 5:30pm. See the link below for a map to our retail store.Dimensions Height Width Depth Diam Weight 9 lbs 24 Pc WINROSE Collection CZECH China CREAMER Cup SAUCER Plate
We have here another wonderful find in this lovely group of Winrose Collection Czech China pieces.This group consists of 24 individual items as follows: 7 - 7 3/4 inch Salads 7 - 5 1/2 inch Saucers 9 - Cups - 2 1/2 inch at top rim 1- Creamer - 3 3/4 inch tall to top of spout The Undersides are clearly marked with Maker Information which reads: Made in Czech Republic Flaas & Czizek Winrose Collections Handmade Fine Porcelain since 1792 29 This more modern china boasts a most interesting and distinctive theme. The Salad Plates contain a lovely floral bouquet within the center rimmed with a Golden Lace design over a Cranberry Rose Edge. Each of the cups and their matching saucers as well as the creamer contain some of the various blossoms found in the larger center bouquet of the Salad Plate. Some of the lovely golden handle cups and saucers contain some of the blossoms while others feature other selections from within the larger bouquet on the salad plate. The numerous photographs which we have provided for your inspection clearly shows this. They are in very lovely Condition. We have not detected any chips, cracks or repairs. This is a Fantastic Investment in a wonderfully designed and Exquisitely crafted group of Winrose Collections Czech China selections which is sure to maintain its beauty and value for many years into the future and shall certainly become a most treasured heirloom for your future generations!
To see our other COLLECTIBLE CHINA auctions in our eBay store, just !MR IMPORTANT- PLEASE READ BELOW BEFORE BIDDING! Most of our items are shipped via Fed Ex Ground to Home addresses in the lower 48 States and shipping quotes on this page are for these states ONLY . We ship once a week, mid-week, unless you request otherwise. We do not have Fed Ex require a signature. If you would like this service, shipping will be an additional $2 per package (FE's fee). FedEx will not deliver to FPO/AP or P.O.Boxes . Please keep this in mind when you send us your shipping info.
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International buyers please contact us before the auction ends for shipping costs. International Buyers Please Note: Import duties, taxes and charges are not included in the item price or shipping charges. These charges are the buyer's responsibility. Please check with your country's customs office to determine what these additional costs will be prior to bidding/buying. These charges are normally collected by the delivering freight (shipping) company or when you pick the item up. Do not confuse them for additional shipping charges. Thanks!
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Poll: Politicians exploiting haredi draft
Kobi Nahshoni
That implies secular families having more children to assure the Jewish majority in Israel.
2. a real dialogue? How that should work?
The haredim consider israel as somekind of an evil state, constribute nothing really but get thier bills paid though the hard working israeli people. They denie any attempt to integrate them, all they do is demanding to get into control of the rest of israel. So tell me, how to get a REAL dialouge started with them? In the end only some use of force will get them ready to cooperate! Just pampering them will not make it better a lil bit!
Ze'ev ,
Nbg, germany
3. # 1
Dont confuse quantity with quality.
Condom ,
Haifa, Israel
4. Equal Share Ridiculous
As ORA pointed out. If 95% what equal share of burden then let the Haredim impose something on seculars. Have seculars go learn in yeshivos and seminaries and have seculars start going to shul and doing mitzvas. Why do non-observant Jews get to force their views and outlook on others? Ridiculous, narrow minded intolerance. Not everyone shares the same beliefs as the State.
Ben ,
5. Better get with it and soon
when you look at what is happening in the Middle East neighborhood, you will need those soldiers a lot sooner than you think.
R Narz ,
6. To # 4 Who pays for 70,000 Charedim who don't
work ???? We do, the Israelis who work and pay taxes. That Ben is what I call Imposing on us!
Stan ,
7. And Israeli Arabs?
If 62% of Haredim believe they should be exempt, that should mean 38% of Haredim believe they should do some form of national service. That's quite a good start and should be encouraged. How many Israeli Arabs believe they should also do some form of national service? We're told the Arab MK's don't speak for the Arab public. Have we surveyed the Israeli Arab public?
Joseph ,
London England
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Sunset Cove AmphitheaterRead MoreFor the theatrically inclined, Sunset Cove Amphitheater offers engaging plays for your enjoyment in Boca Raton. If you've worked up an appetite, no worries! This club also has a fabulous restaurant. At this club, kids of all ages are welcome. Come order a flavorful feast at Sunset Cove Amphitheater, and sit outside if it's nice! At Sunset Cove Amphitheater, you might get dinner and a show as live music is often featured as well as a DJ. Guests are encouraged to step to the beat of a live DJ. Parking is plentiful, so patrons can feel free to bring their vehicles.12551 Glades RoadBoca Raton, FL US
Sakred NightclubRead MoreA kaleidoscope of light paints Sakred Nightclub's 14,000 square feet, mirroring the music that keeps partiers swarming the dance floor. An exclusive, elevated area lets VIPs survey the scene from above, while tables and hidden corners offer plenty of space for guests to take break from dancing. With three bars, a distinctive-yet-flexible design scheme, and a sophisticated menu of cocktails and cuisine, Sakred Nightclub also hosts events as unique as its crowd.7000 West Palmetto Park RoadBoca Raton, FL US
Artist's International ManagementRead MoreThe production calendar for Boca Raton's Artist's International Management offers an outrageous mix of comedy and drama for the theatrically inclined. Parking is plentiful, so visitors can feel free to bring their vehicles.9850 Sandalfoot BoulevardBoca Raton, FL US
Dan Leslie's EntertainersRead MoreAre you ready for unforgettable moments of theater? If so, then Dan Leslie's Entertainers in Boca Raton has all the shows for you. Parking is plentiful, so guests can feel free to bring their vehicles.2550 Northwest 47th StreetBoca Raton, FL US
Chit-Chat'sRead MoreAt Chit-Chat's, you can snack away on tasty pub grub. With this restaurant's wide selection of refreshments available, you can tap into the drink menu early in the evening. Round up your coworkers and head to Chit-Chat's for happy hour. Patio tables and chairs are ready for Chit-Chat's diners who prefer their meals al fresco. Gather up your group of friends and head to Chit-Chat's, a local restaurant that has room for large groups. Dine with fellow dancing machines — the restaurant is stocked with a lively, open floor. The dress code is strictly casual at Chit-Chat's, so come as you are (and as you are comfortable). The parking lot near Chit-Chat's will have you in and out in a jiffy. Cyclists are in luck. Chit-Chat's provides bike parking. Are you ready for a bite of pure heaven with Chit-Chat's' delicious pub food?651 North Federal HighwayPompano Beach, FL US
Goo Goo Dolls at Pompano Beach AmphitheatreRead MoreCheck out the amazing schedule at Pompano Beach Amphitheatre for a list of the best shows Pompano Beach offers. Check out this theater's restaurant, where you can stay for lunch or grab your meal to go. Save money on a sitter — kids are welcome to join in the fun at this theater. At Pompano Beach Amphitheatre, the prime seating is on the patio. Come check out what all the buzz is about. Don't be shy — step out on the theater dance floor and soak up the sound of live music. Parking is plentiful, so visitors can feel free to bring their vehicles.1801 NE 6th St.Pompano Beach, FL US


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What an annoying laugh.
remember me my 1st time lol
turkish movie
remember me of my room in college, what a fun with boys


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Iceland makes nine – passes marriage law
Timothy Kincaid
June 11th, 2010
From Reuters:
The Althingi parliament voted 49 to zero to change the wording of marriage legislation to include matrimony between "man and man, woman and woman," in addition to unions between men and women.
Unanimous. Very cool.
Iceland's protestant church has yet to decide whether to allow same-sex marriages in church, although the law says "ministers will always be free to perform (gay) marriage ceremonies, but never obliged to."
Our heartfelt congratulations.


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Ph.D., Computer Science,
Columbia University,
New York City, NY, 2001.
Dr. Wei Fan received his PhD in Computer Science from Columbia University in 2001 and has been working in IBM T.J.Watson Research since 2000. He published more than 60 papers in top data mining, machine learning and database conferences, such as KDD, SDM, ICDM, ECML/PKDD, SIGMOD, VLDB, ICDE, AAAI, ICML etc. Dr. Fan has served as Area Chair, Senior PC of SIGKDD'06, SDM'08 and ICDM'08/09, sponsorship co-chair of SDM'09, award commitee member of ICDM'09, as well as PC of several prestigious conferences in the area including KDD'09/8/07/05, ICDM'07/06/05/04/03, SDM'09/07/06/05/04, CIKM'09/08/07/06, ECML/PKDD'07'06, ICDE'04, AAAI'07, PAKDD'09/08/07, EDBT'04, WWW'09/08/07, etc. He is on the advisory board of KD2U. Dr. Fan was invited to speak at ICMLA'06. He served as US NSF panelist in 2007/08. His main research interests and experiences are in various areas of data mining and database systems, such as, risk analysis, high performance computing, extremely skewed distribution, cost-sensitive learning, data streams, ensemble methods, easy-to-use nonparametric methods, graph mining, predictive feature discovery, feature selection, sample selection bias, transfer learning, novel applications and commercial data mining systems. He is particularly interested in simple, unconventional, but effective methods to solve difficult problems. His thesis work on intrusion detection has been licensed by a start-up company since 2001. His co-teamed submission that uses Random Decision Tree (RDT) has won the ICDM'08 Contest Crown Awards. His co-authored paper in ICDM'06 that uses "Randomized Decision Tree" to predict skewed ozone days won the best application paper award. The open source code of Random Decision Tree (RDT) in JAVA is available from The DICE Library. His co-authored paper in KDD'97 on distributed learning system "JAM" won the runner-up best application paper award.


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The 2014 Associated Press Washington all-state basketball teams have been announced.
On the girls side in Class 3A junior Linsey Honeycutt of Ferndale received honorable mention. In the 2A classification Lynden senior Stephanie Somers was named to the first team and in Class 1A Blaine junior Taylor V'Dovec and Lynden Christian sophomore Kara Bajema were named first team, and L.C. senior Courtney Hollander received honorable mention.
On the boys side in Class 2A Lynden junior Scott Hastings was named to the first team while Lions sophomore Sterling Somers got honorable mention.


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DateFormat date = DateFormat.getDateInstance
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String result = date.format(new Date());
Post your Comment
double amount = 459.6329;
DecimalFormat formatter = new
Date Formatter in JSP
Date Formatter in JSP
This section illustrates you how to use date formatter.
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Help in making a text formatter I have a question on how to make a text formatter using Java. I attempted in doing so, but got a really low score on it, and so I'm having to rely on someone kind enough to help me.
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Creating a Custom Formatter for a Logger Handler in Java
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Loading Vacation deals...
Holiday Inn Sioux Falls City Center
Traveler Comments
All the staff was very nice but they seeemed understaffed. We had to wait for a shuttle and our driver ended up checking us in.
it was fine, didn't spend much time there, but it was clean and comfortable
quiet,luxury, comfortable
Very enjoyable experience
The bathroom was very cute and had an old-time charm about it. I liked the cupboard/shelf space in there. The breakfast buffet in the hotel was delicious -- great waffles!
This an especially good hotel for state employees as the price fort the value is incomperable.
I was quite happy with my stay at the Sioux Falls Holiday Inn. Our room was clean and spacious, the pool was nice, and the parking was adequate. There was an error with my bill at check-out, but the desk clerk fixed it right away. Drawbacks: The 'free' wireless internet was only for 24 hours (it's a common hotel scam, but I never get less annoyed by it).


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Just curious as to what types of brakes most people out there are using; and for what type of riding; and where?
I currently use a set of Shimano XT Vee Brakes front and rear and mostly ride singletrack. I ride some pretty technical trails in Central Florida, with frequent road trips to North Georgia and North Carolina.
I am debating about selling my current ride and upgrading to disc brakes. Is anyone besides magazine editors really using them? If so, what kind and are there any idiosyncracies involved with their operation?
Just curious and thanks.
Big Vic


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This innovative concept of a 'baby cinema' was created for breastfeeding mothers who thought they'd never go to the movies again. Lock your pram outside the...Biografen Sture
In a beautiful setting at the northern end of historic Hagaparken, the fantastic Butterfly House - all 850sq m (3,050sq ft) of it - is the closest you'll...Haga Trädgård
Perched on the edge of Djurgården with fantastic views across the water, Gröna Lund is Sweden's oldest amusement park. Built in 1883 and owned by the same...Allmänna Gränd
A favourite haunt of local kids and a top tourist attraction, Junibacken is a mini indoor theme park devoted to Pippi Longstocking and other characters...Galärvarvsvägen
For an utterly spectacular aerial view of Stockholm and its surroundings, visit this 155m-tall (510ft) tower - one of Scandinavia's tallest buildings. On a...Mörka Kroken 28-30
The Nordiska Museet, Sweden's national museum of cultural history, was the brainchild of Artur Hazelius, who also created Skansen. Everything about the...Djurgårdsvägen 6-16
The 'Room for Kids' on the fourth floor of Kulturhuset, the city's main cultural centre, is dedicated to activities for children aged up to 12. The...4th floor, Kulturhuset, Sergels Torg
Founded in 1891 by Artur Hazelius, also responsible for the Nordiska Museet, Skansen is a one-stop cultural tour of Sweden. The 150-plus traditional...Djurgårdsslätten 49-51
Some of the smallest monkeys you've ever seen are on show in this zoo and aquarium inside Skansen. Bright orange tamarins and pygmy marmosets hang from...Djurgårdsslätten 49-51
Sprawling across three floors, the Museum of Science and Technology is sure to keep inquisitive minds busy for hours. Although highly pedagogical, it's more...Museivägen 7
Inquisitive kids and adults alike can roam for hours at the Museum of Science and Technology, which has exhibits and activities intended to entertain and...Museivägen 7
This outdoor adventure pool has got water slides, tube slides, a toddlers' pool, and free street dance lessons for kids at weekends. Adults can have a...Sveavägen 142


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My cubicle-mate reminded me of this shrine the other day. So while I was at Colt Park today, I stopped by to check out the spot where in 1999 believers said the image of the Virgin Mary appeared on a locust tree
Eleven years later, the shrine that caused a stir -- and more than a few protests when the city threatened to shut it down -- still stands. It's a bit smaller than the original one, but remains -- miraculously, perhaps, untouched.
Continue reading 11 year later, shrine to Virgin Mary still stands.


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Wikipedia word salad
One of my spies has forwarded this citation from the Wikipedia entry on Algiers. Two days later, the passage remains in tact on the site, despite the presumably assiduous attention of volunteer editors:
El Harrach, according to the name of the river which crosses this district. The mouth of this river played a very important part in the catch of Algiers and the Dogvane, this rock opposite Algiers occupied by the Spaniards. Indeed, at the beginning of the 16th century, with the call of the one of the dignitaries of Algiers autochthones who saw the progressive loss of the authority of the city in front of the occupation of the Dogvane by the Spaniards, one of the Barberousse brothers hid his fleet there before taking Algiers by surprised by the south-eastern side. This district of Algiers will be named Square-House by the French, who will make of it the industrial park of the city. Thus, during colonization, as well El-Harrach as Hussein-Dey will be satellite towns of Algiers where Algerian autochthones more or less will cohabit with French, but in clearly separate zones. This city will be a residential district for an easy layer of French, but a true ghetto for the Algerians, especially those pushed by the rural migration. El-Harrach was also a city which wrote a large page of sporting history with boxes and it football. After independence, El-Harrach will become gradually a district of Algiers, and later on chief town of Daira with a new cutting in districts, like Mohammadia, Belfort, Bellevue, the Park, Wadi-Smar, Five-Houses, the dunes, the Maritime ones, Beaulieu, etc.


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Forum page
Revision as of 18:47, November 7, 2011 by Nephora-Hungle (Talk | contribs)
13,130pages on
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Forums: Index > The Wizengamot > Uniform
I have a question I'm hoping someone can help me with. I am wondering about the first years' uniforms for Hogwarts. They purchase and wear their uniform before they know what house they're going to be in, so how is it that later we see them wearing uniforms clearly customized for each house or at least indicia, such as a colored hood that shows what house they are in? And also in the first film I noticed their uniforms were plain at the sorting, yet somehow later developed each house's corresponding colors? I'm hoping someone can help me with this minor technicality.
Kotsu the EM Wave Hero 02:15, December 22, 2010 (UTC)
- Well, it is possible that they receive their colored ties and patches following their sorting, or as this is a school of magic, once they are sorted the appropriate colors simply appear. Also, this is not a general question forum, this forum is used for questions regarding the running of the wiki. Thank you, --JKoch(Owl Me!) 06:14, December 22, 2010 (UTC)
- Nephora Hungle: 12:43 PM November 7 2011.
- The students Do buy the uniform set (Sweaters,pants robes,scaves ties ect.)
- You notise that in the movies the tie is black, the rims of their robs are black and the patch is the school crest, when sorted, the robes, ties,patch change into their house my guess is the fabric has a spell that changes the fabric and patch to the house when sorted.


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Maria McErlane
Maria McErlane was born on December 9, 1957 in Buckinghamshire, England. She is an actress, known for Children of Men (2006), Brendan's Love Cruise (2013) and 50 Most Shocking Comedy Moments (2006). See full bio »
Born:in Buckinghamshire, England, UK
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