text:
Now Hiring: Part-Time Research Assistant
Seeking: Part-Time Research Assistant
Roger Berkowitz, the Academic Director of the Hannah Arendt Center is looking to hire a Part Time Research Assistant to assist with a book project. The research will focus on exploring questions with respect to privacy, surveillance, and federalism. Additional emphasis will be placed on racial, sexual, and religious diversity, including on college and university campuses. Ideally, the research assistant should have some familiarity with Hannah Arendt's work. Strong research, organizational, and writing skills is a must.
This is a good part-time opportunity for a recent college graduate. While residency near Bard College's Annandale-on-Hudson campus would certainly help for regular in-person meetings and for research at Bard's Stevenson Library, this job can be done from anywhere with a internet connection and access to a good library. Hours are flexible, but the candidate must be willing to make a six month commitment (at a minimum).
Interested applicants: Please prepare a resume/CV and a letter of under one page in length explaining your interest in the position and your qualifications. All application materials should be emailed to Roger Berkowitz directly at email@example.com.
Featured image sourced from UsabilityGeek.
The Humanities and Common Sense
**This post was originally published August 10th, 2012**
In this post, academics and university faculty will be criticized. Railing against college professors has become a common pastime, one practiced almost exclusively by those who have been taught and mentored by those whom are now being criticized. It is thus only fair to say upfront that the college education in the United States is, in spite of its myriad flaws, still of incredible value and meaning to tens if not hundreds of thousands of students every year.
That said, too much of what our faculties teach is neither interesting nor wanted by our students.
One Against All
This Quote of the Week was originally published on September 3, 2012.
It can be dangerous to tell the truth: "There will always be One against All, one person against all others. [This is so] not because One is terribly wise and All are terribly foolish, but because the process of thinking and researching, which finally yields truth, can only be accomplished by an individual person. In its singularity or duality, one human being seeks and finds – not the truth (Lessing) –, but some truth."
-Hannah Arendt, Denktagebuch, Book XXIV, No. 21
Hannah Arendt wrote these lines when she was confronted with the severe and often unfair, even slanderous, public criticism launched against her and her book Eichmann in Jerusalemafter its publication in 1963. The quote points to her understanding of the thinking I (as opposed to the acting We) on which she bases her moral and, partly, her political philosophy.
It is the thinking I, defined with Kant as selbstdenkend (self-thinking ["singularity"]) and an-der-Stelle-jedes-andern-denkend (i.e., in Arendt's terms, thinking representatively or practicing the two-in-one ["duality"]). Her words also hint at an essay she published in 1967 titled "Truth and Politics," wherein she takes up the idea that it is dangerous to tell the truth, factual truth in particular, and considers the teller of factual truth to be powerless. Logically, the All are the powerful, because they may determine what at a specific place and time is considered to be factual truth; their lies, in the guise of truth, constitute reality. Thus, it is extremely hard to fight them.
In answer to questions posed in 1963 by the journalist Samuel Grafton regarding her report on Eichmann and published only recently, Arendt states: "Once I wrote, I was bound to tell the truth as I see it." The statement reveals that she was quite well aware of the fact that her story, i.e., the result of her own thinking and researching, was only one among others. She also realized the lack of understanding and, in many cases, of thinking and researching, on the part of her critics.
Thus, she lost any hope of being able to publicly debate her position in a "real controversy," as she wrote to Rabbi Hertzberg (April 8, 1966). By the same token, she determined that she would not entertain her critics, as Socrates did the Athenians: "Don't be offended at my telling you the truth." Reminded of this quote from Plato's Apology (31e) in a supportive letter from her friend Helen Wolff, she acknowledged the reference, but acted differently. After having made up her mind, she wrote to Mary McCarthy: "I am convinced that I should not answer individual critics. I probably shall finally make, not an answer, but a kind of evaluation of this whole strange business." In other words, she did not defend herself in following the motto "One against All," which she had perceived and noted in her Denktagebuch. Rather, as announced to McCarthy, she provided an "evaluation" in the 1964 preface to the German edition of Eichmann in Jerusalem and later when revising that preface for the postscript of the second English edition.
Arendt also refused to act in accordance with the old saying: Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus(let there be justice, though the world perish). She writes – in the note of the Denktagebuchfrom which today's quote is taken – that such acting would reveal the courage of the teller of truth "or, perhaps, his stubbornness, but neither the truth of what he had to say nor even his own truthfulness." Thus, she rejected an attitude known in German cultural tradition under the name of Michael Kohlhaas. A horse trader living in the 16th century, Kohlhaas became known for endlessly and in vain fighting injustice done to him (two of his horses were stolen on the order of a nobleman) and finally taking the law into his own hands by setting fire to houses in Wittenberg.
Even so, Arendt has been praised as a woman of "intellectual courage" with regard to her book on Eichmann (see Richard Bernstein's contribution to Thinking in Dark Times).
Intellectual courage based on thinking and researching was rare in Arendt's time and has become even rarer since then. But should Arendt therefore only matter nostalgicly? Certainly not. Her emphasis on the benefits of thinking as a solitary business still remains current. Consider, for example, the following reference to Sherry Turkle, a sociologist at MIT and author of the recent book Alone Together. In an interview with Peter Haffner (published on July 27, 2012, in SZ Magazin), she argues that individuals who become absorbed in digital communication lose crucial components of their faculty of thinking. Turkle says (my translation): Students who spend all their time and energy on communication via SMS, Facebook, etc. "can hardly concentrate on a particular subject. They have difficulty thinking a complex idea through to its end." No doubt, this sounds familiar to all of us who know about Hannah Arendt's effort to promote thinking (and judging) in order to make our world more human.
To return to today's quote: It can be dangerous to tell the truth, but thinking is dangerous too. Once in a while, not only the teller of truth but the thinking 'I' as well may find himself or herself in the position of One against All.
-Ursula Ludz
Amor Mundi 9/15/13
Hannah Arendt considered calling her magnum opus Amor Mundi: Love of the World. Instead, she settled upon The Human Condition. What is most difficult, Arendt writes, is to love the world as it is, with all the evil and suffering in it. And yet she came to do just that. Loving the world means neither uncritical acceptance nor contemptuous rejection. Above all it means the unwavering facing up to and comprehension of that which is.
Every Sunday, The Hannah Arendt Center Amor Mundi Weekly Newsletter will offer our favorite essays and blog posts from around the web. These essays will help you comprehend the world. And learn to love it.
In the Weekend Read on Friday, Roger Berkowitz shows how Arendt's essay "The Crisis in Education" can help make sense of the debate about MOOCs. While MOOCs can be valuable, we need to distinguish the practice of education from the business of knowledge dissemination. "At the same time, however, there is a second aspect of education that seeks to afford the child "special protection and care so that nothing destructive may happen to him from the world." The teacher must nurture the independence and newness of each child, what "we generally call the free development of characteristic qualities and talents… the uniqueness that distinguishes every human being from every other." The teacher must not simply love the world, but as part of the world in which we live, the teacher must also love the fact—and it is a fact—that the world will change and be transformed by new ideas and new people. Education must love this transformative nature of children, and we must "love our children enough" so that we do not "strike from their hands their chance of undertaking something new, something unforeseen by us, but to prepare them in advance for the task of renewing a common world." Alongside its conservationist role, education also must be revolutionary in the sense that it prepares students to strike out and create something altogether new."
The Public Need Strong Private Lives
Emma Green considers a recent study that suggests that widows and widowers are less likely to vote than others in their respective demographics. In so doing, she provokes us to reflect on Hannah Arendt's insistence that an engaged public sphere depends upon a vibrant private realm. Green concludes: If "public life seems less important when private life collapses, then it's also worth looking at the inverse: Do strong relationships and stable private lives make people better citizens? It's well established that people who are married vote more than those who are not, said the authors, and this study provides evidence that this isn't a coincidence of age or stage of life -- influence from a spouse is part of the reason people vote." Green shows that the crisis of the educated citizen—which is the topic of the Hannah Arendt Center's Oct. 3-4 Conference at Bard College—flows at least in part from a related diminishment of private life.
"Over the Abyss in Rye." That is the traditional title of The Catcher in the Rye in Russian. Reed Johnson writes that the Communist "Party authorized the novel's translation believing that it exposed the rotting core of American capitalism." In the New Yorker, Johnson explores the outrage caused by Max Nemtsov's new translation of The Catcher in the Rye into Russian. Nemstov's title, "Catcher on a Grain Field" begins with this first paragraph: "If you're truly up for listening, for starters you'll probably want me to dish up where I was born and what sort of crap went down in my childhood, what the 'rents did and some such stuff before they had me, and other David Copperfield bullshit, except blabbing about all that doesn't get me stoked, to tell you the truth." According to Johnson, "Nemtsov employs a mélange of English-language calques, Russian provincial speech, neologisms, slang originating in Soviet prison camps, and contemporary hipsterish lingo. The mixture of unconventional speech is deliberate: advocates of foreignizing like to claim that such "marginalized" language, through a bizarre sort of syllogism, best represents the absolute difference of the foreign original. In other words, the Soviet prison slang in Nemtsov's translation is actually meant to stand in for the original's foreignness—its Americanness—for the Russian reader."
The rise of the MOOC has forced college Professors to defend themselves against the charge that computers can do their jobs better than they can. Now, on the other side, a study at Northwestern concludes that lowly-paid adjuncts are more effective teachers than their highly-paid senior colleagues with tenure. "There are many aspects relating to changes in the tenure status of faculty – from the impact on research productivity to the protection of academic freedom," the study says. "But certainly learning outcomes are an important consideration in evaluating whether the observed trend away from tenure track/tenured towards non-tenure line faculty is good or bad. Our results provide evidence that the rise of full-time designated teachers at U.S. colleges and universities may be less of a cause for alarm than some people think, and indeed, may actually be educationally beneficial. Perhaps the growing practice of hiring a combination of research-intensive tenure track faculty members and teaching-intensive lecturers may be an efficient and educationally positive solution to a research university's multi-tasking problem," says the paper." The trend to "full-time designated teachers," in the turgid prose of this study, furthers the overarching trend of turning college education into high school education, with standardized tests, learning goals, and unending assessments. Anyone who cares about the life of the mind should be worried; but the culprit is the professoriate themselves, who continues to defend the status quo of jargon-filled research and overly-specialized teaching. If we don't return universities to sites of intellectual fervent, the bureaucratic reformers will turn them into glorified high schools.
Annalia 1933
A Three Day Festival at FDR Library & Bard College
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The sixth annual fall conference, "Failing Fast:The Educated Citizen in Crisis"
Olin Hall, Bard College
Learn more here.
Hannah Arendt: A Film Screening, Lecture, and Discussion with Roger Berkowitz
One Day University
Learn more here.
John LeJeune gives us the Arendt quote of the week and considers the place of language education in the education of the citizen. Roger Berkowitz shows how Arendt's essay "The Crisis in Education" can help make sense of the debate about MOOCs.
MOOCs: The Debate Continues
After months in which university after university signed on to the bandwagon for Massive Open Online Courses called MOOCs, the battle over the future of education has finally begun. This week Duke University pulled out of EdX, the Harvard/MIT led consortium of Massive Open Online Courses called MOOC's.
The reason: Its faculty rebelled. According to The New York Times,
While [Duke provost Peter] Lange saw the consortium as expanding the courses available to Duke students, some faculty members worried that the long-term effect might be for the university to offer fewer courses — and hire fewer professors. Others said there had been inadequate consultation with the faculty.
The Times also reports that faculty at Amherst College, my alma mater and former employer, voted against joining EdX. Again, the faculty saw danger. My former colleagues worried that the introduction of online courses would detrimentally impact the quality and spirit of education and the small liberal arts college. They also, as our friends over at ViaMeadia report, worried that MOOCs would "take student tuition dollars away from so-called middle-tier and lower-tier" schools, pushing their colleagues at these institutions out of their jobs.
And that brings us to ground zero of the battle between the faculty and the MOOCs: San Jose State University. San Jose State has jumped out as a leader in the use of blended online and offline courses. Mohammad H. Qayoumi, the university's president, has defended his embrace of online curricula on both educational and financial grounds. He points to one course, "Circuits & Electronics," offered by EdX. In a pilot program, students in that course did better than students in similar real-world courses taught by San Jose State professors. Where nearly 40% of San Jose students taking their traditional course received a C or lower, only 9% of students taking the EdX course did. For Qayoumi and others, such studies offer compelling grounds for integrating MOOCs into the curriculum. The buzzword is "blended courses," in which the MOOCs are used in conjunction with faculty tutors. In this "flipped classroom," the old model in which students listen to lectures in lecture halls and then do assignments at home, is replaced by online lectures supplemented by discussions and exercises done in class with professors. As I have written, such a model can be pedagogically powerful, if done right.
But as attractive as MOOCs may be, they carry with them real dangers. And these dangers emerge front and center in the hard-hitting Open Letter that the philosophy department at San Jose State University has published addressed to Michael Sandel. Sandel is the Harvard Professor famous for his popular and excellent course "Justice," that has been wowing and provoking Harvard undergraduates for decades. Sandel not only teaches his course, he has branded it. He sells videos of the course; he published a book called Justice based on the course, and, most recently, created an online video version of the course for EdX. San Jose State recently became one of the first public universities in the country to sign a contract paying for the use of EdX courses. This is what led to the letter from the philosophers.
The letter begins by laying out the clear issue. The San Jose Philosophy department has professors who can teach courses in justice and ethics of the kind Sandel teaches. From their point of view, "There is no pedagogical problem in our department that JusticeX solves, nor do we have a shortage of faculty capable of teaching our equivalent course." In short, while some students may prefer a course with a famous Harvard professor, the faculty at San Jose State believe that they are qualified to teach about Justice.
Given their qualifications, the philosophy professors conclude that the real reason for the contract with EdX is not increased educational value, but simply cost. As they write: "We believe that long-term financial considerations motivate the call for massively open online courses (MOOCs) at public universities such as ours.
In short, the faculty sees the writing on the wall. Whatever boilerplate rhetoric about blended courses and educational benefit may be fashionable and necessary, the real issue is simple. Public universities (and many private ones as well) will not keep paying the salaries of professors when those professors are not needed.
While for now professors are kept on to teach courses in a blended classroom, there will soon be need for many fewer professors. As students take Professor Sandel's class at universities around the country, they will eventually work with teaching assistants—just as students do at Harvard, where Professor Sandel has pitifully little interaction with his hundreds of students in every class. These teaching assistants make little money, significantly less than a tenured or even a non-tenured professor. It is only a matter of time before many university classes are taught virtually by superstar professors assisted by armies of low-paid onsite assistants. State universities will then be able to educate significantly more students at a fraction of the current cost. For many students this will be a great boon—a certified and possibly quality education at a cheap price. For most California voters, this is a good deal. But it is precisely what the faculty at San Jose State fear. As they write:
We believe the purchasing of online and blended courses is not driven by concerns about pedagogy, but by an effort to restructure the U.S. university system in general, and our own California State University system in particular. If the concern were pedagogically motivated, we would expect faculty to be consulted and to monitor quality control. On the other hand, when change is financially driven and involves a compromise of quality it is done quickly, without consulting faculty or curriculum committees, and behind closed doors. This is essentially what happened with SJSU's contract with edX. At a press conference (April 10, 2013 at SJSU) announcing the signing of the contract with edX, California Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom acknowledged as much: "The old education financing model, frankly, is no longer sustainable." This is the crux of the problem. It is time to stop masking the real issue of MOOCs and blended courses behind empty rhetoric about a new generation and a new world. The purchasing of MOOCs and blended courses from outside vendors is the first step toward restructuring the CSU.
The San Jose State philosophy professors are undoubtedly correct. We are facing a systematic transformation in higher education in this country and also in secondary education as well. Just as the Internet has revolutionized journalism and just as it is now shaking the foundations of medicine and law, the Internet will not leave education alone. Change seems nigh. Part of this change is being driven by cost. Some of it is also being driven by the failures and perceived failures of our current system. The question for those of us in the world of higher education is whether we can respond intelligently to save the good and change out the bad. It is time that faculties around the country focus on this question and for that we should all be thankful to the philosophy professors at San Jose State.
The Open Letter offers three main points to argue that it is bad pedagogy to replace them with the blended course model of MOOCs and teaching assistants.
First, they argue that good teaching requires professors engaged in research. When professors are engaged in active research programs, they are interested in and motivated by their fields. Students can perceive if a professor is bored with a class and students will always learn more and be driven to study and excel by professors who feel that their work matters. Some may wonder what the use of research is that is read by only a few colleagues around the world, but one answer is that such research is necessary to keep professors fresh and sharp. We all know the sad fate of professors who have disengaged from research.
Second, the philosophy professors accept the argument of many including myself that large lectures are not the best way to teach. They teach by the Socratic method, interacting with students. Such classes, they write, are much better than having students watch Professor Sandel engage Socratically with faculty at Harvard. Of course, the MOOC model would still allow for Socratic and personal engagement, just by much lower paid purveyors of the craft. The unanswered question is whether low-paid assistants can be trained to teach well. The answer may well be yes.
Third, the philosophy faculty worry about the exact same moral justice course being taught across the country. We can already see the disciplinary barricades being drawn. It may be one thing to teach Math to the whole country from one or two MOOCs, but philosophy needs multiple perspectives. But how many? The philosophy professors suggest that their highly diverse and often lower-middle-class students have different experiences and references than do Professor Sandel's Harvard students. They can, in the classroom, better connect with these students than Professor Sandel via online lectures.
The points the San Jose State philosophy professors raise are important. In many ways, however, their letter misses the point. Our educational system is now structured on a few questionable premises. First, that everyone who attends college wants a liberal arts education. That is simply not true. Many students simply want a credential to get a job. If these students can be taught well and more cheaply, we should help them. There is a question of whether we need to offer everyone the same kind of highly personalized and expensive education. While such arguments will be lambasted as elitist, it is nevertheless true that not everyone wants or needs to read Kant closely. We should seek to protect the ability of those who do—no matter their economic class—and also allow those who don't a more efficient path through school.
A second questionable premise is that specialization is necessary to be a good teacher. This also is false. Too much specialization removes one from the world of common sense. As I have argued before, we need professors who are educated more generally. It is important to learn about Shakespeare and Aristotle, but you don't need to be a specialist in Shakespeare or Aristotle to teach them well and thoughtfully to undergraduates. This is not an argument against the Ph.D. It is important to study and learn an intellectual tradition if you are going to teach. But it is an argument against the professionalization of the Ph.D. and of graduate education in general. It is also an argument against the dominance of undergraduate curriculum by professionalized scholars.
Third, and perhaps most importantly, is the premise that everyone needs to go to college. If we put a fraction of the resources we currently spend on remedial education for college students back into public high schools in this country, we could begin the process of transforming high school into a serious and meaningful activity. For one thing, we could begin employing Ph.D.s as high school teachers as are many of the emerging early colleges opening around the country.
I am sympathetic to the philosophy professors at San Jose State. I too teach a course on Justice called "The Foundation of Law: The Quest for Justice." It is a course quite similar and yet meaningfully different from Michael Sandel's course on Justice. I believe it is better, no offense meant. And I would be upset if I were told next year that instead of teaching my course I would be in effect a glorified TA for Professor Sandel. I hope it doesn't come to that, but I know it might.
The only response for those whose jobs are being replaced by computers or the Internet is to go out and figure out how to do it better. That is what happened to journalists who were fired in droves. Many quit voluntarily and began developing new models of journalism, including blogs that have enriched our public discourse and largely rejuvenated public journalism in this country. Blogs, of course, are not perfect, and there is the question of how to make a living writing one. But enterprising bloggers like Andrew Sullivan and Walter Russell Mead are figuring that out. So too are professors like Michael Sandel and Andrew Ng.
We need educators to become experimental these days, to create small schools and intensive curricula within larger institutions that make the most of the personal interaction that is the core of true pedagogy. If that happens, and if teachers offer meaningful education for which students or our taxpayers will pay, then our jobs will be safe. And our students will be better for it. For this reason, we should welcome the technology as a push to make ourselves better teachers.
The Open Letter to Michael Sandel deserves a response. I hope Professor Sandel offers one. Until then, I recommend that this beautiful Spring weekend you read the letter from the San Jose State Philosophy Department. It is your weekend read.
MLK and the Purpose of Education
You know elite universities are in trouble when their professors say things like Edward Rock. Rock, Distinguished Professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and coordinator of Penn's online education program, has this to say about the impending revolution in online education:
We're in the business of creating and disseminating knowledge. And in 2012, the internet is an incredibly important place to be present if you're in the knowledge dissemination business.
If elite colleges are in the knowledge dissemination business, then they will overtime be increasingly devalued and made less relevant. What colleges and universities need to offer is not simply knowledge, but education.
In 1947, at the age of 18, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote a short essay in the The Maroon Tiger, the Morehouse College campus newspaper. The article was titled, "The Purpose of Education." In short, it argued that we must not confuse education with knowledge.
King began with the personal. Too often, he wrote, "most college men have a misconception of the purpose of education. Most of the "brethren" think that education should equip them with the proper instruments of exploitation so that they can forever trample over the masses. Still others think that education should furnish them with noble ends rather than means to an end." In other words, too many think that college is designed to teach either means or ends, offering the secrets that unlock the mysteries of our futures.
King takes aim at both these purposes. Beyond the need for education to make us more efficient, education also has a cultural function. In this sense, King writes, Education must inculcate the habit of thinking for oneself, what Hannah Arendt called Selbstdenken, or self-thinking.
"Education," King writes, "must also train one for quick, resolute and effective thinking." Quick and resolute thinking requires that one "think incisively" and "think for one's self." This "is very difficult." The difficulty comes from the seduction of conformity and the power of prejudice. "We are prone to let our mental life become invaded by legions of half truths, prejudices, and propaganda." We are all educated into prejudgments. They are human and it is inhuman to live free from prejudicial opinions and thoughts. On the one hand, education is the way we are led into and brought into a world as it exists, with its prejudices and values. And yet, education must also produce self-thinking persons, people who, once they are educated and enter the world as adults, are capable of judging the world into which they been born.
For King, one of the "chief aims of education" is to "save man from the morass of of propaganda." "Education must enable one to sift and weigh evidence, to discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from the fiction."
To think for oneself is not the same as critical thinking. Against the common assumption that college should teach "critical reasoning," King argues that critical thinking alone is insufficient and even dangerous: "Education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals." The example King offers is that of Eugene Talmadge, who had been governor of Georgia. Talmadge "possessed one of the better minds of Georgia, or even America." He was Phi Beta Kappa. He excelled at critical thinking. And yet, Talmadge believed that King and all black people were inferior beings. For King, we cannot call such men well educated.
The lesson the young Martin Luther King Jr. draws is that intelligence and critical reasoning are not enough to make us educated. What is needed, also, is an educational development of character:
We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character—that is the goal of true education. The complete education gives one not only power of concentration, but worthy objectives upon which to concentrate. The broad education will, therefore, transmit to one not only the accumulated knowledge of the race but also the accumulated experience of social living.
Present debates about higher education focus on two concerns. The first is cost. The second is assessment. While the cost is high for many people, it is also the case the most students and their families understand that what colleges offer is priceless. But that is only true insofar as colleges understand their purpose, which is not simply to disseminate knowledge or teach critical thinking, but is, rather, to nurture character. How are we to assess such education? The demand for assessment, as well meaning as it is, drives education to focus on measurable skills and thus moves us away from the purposes of education as King rightly understands them.
The emerging debate about civic education is many things. Too often it is a tired argument over the "core" or the "canon." And increasingly it is derailed by arguments about service learning or internships. What really is at issue, however, is a long-overdue response to the misguided dominance of the research-university model of education.
Colleges in the United States were, up through the middle of the 20th century, not research-driven institutions. They were above all religiously affiliated institutions and they offered general education in the classics and the liberal arts. Professors taught the classics outside of their specific disciplines. And students wrestled with timeless questions. This has largely changed today where professors are taught to specialize and think within their disciplinary prejudices. Even distribution requirements fail to make a difference insofar as students forced to take a course outside their discipline learn simply another disciplinary approach. They learn useful knowledge and critical thinking. But what is missing is the kind of general education in the "accumulated experience of social living" that King championed.
I am not suggesting that all specialization is bad or that we should return to religious-affiliated schools. Not in the least. But many of us know that we are failing in our responsibilities to think about what is important and to teach students a curriculum designed to nurture self-thinking and citizenship. We avoid this conversation because it is hard, because people disagree today on whether we should read Plato or Confucius or study Einstein or immunology. Everyone has their discipline to defend and few faculty are willing or able to think about an education that is designed for students and citizens.
Let's stop bad mouthing all colleges. Much good happens there. Yet let's also recall King's parting words in his essay:
If we are not careful, our colleges will produce a group of close-minded, unscientific, illogical propagandists, consumed with immoral acts. Be careful, "brethren!" Be careful, teachers!
King's The Purpose of Education is your weekend read.
My girlfriend and I walked by a clothing storefront and noticed the print on some of the t-shirts at the lower right corner of the window and went in. She had mentioned this Imaginary Foundation (IF) before. They make print t-shirts.
I went to school at an expensive liberal arts college in the Hudson Valley—everyone there makes print t-shirts. It is like a business you start as a college sophomore as a way to convince yourself that you are a 'creative entrepreneur' before you enter the corporate world (or, alternatively, as a penance for inherited culture and comfort) the not-for-profit world.
Often, I cannot stand them —the print t-shirts. There is something out of shape about them, as if the juxtaposition of body/shirt/image, sets askew some intrinsic agreement in the marriage of fashion and identity. And yet, the IF designs spoke to me. There is something dreamy and yet sincere about these prints. If le petit prince was looking for a print t-shirt, he would buy one of these.
It just so happened that the owner of the company was visiting this Seattle distributor and was in the store. He was awkward, skittish and European. I liked him, and before we left I told him that I blog for a thinking and humanities institute out east and may want to write about his brand. That's how I got into the Imaginary Foundation.
The shirts are not exactly 'pretty,' or 'fashionable,' rather, their attraction is a gesture beyond themselves -- a rare feat in a culture that positions branding as the apex of success. I'll describe one shirt and if interested you can invest your own time in the Imaginary Foundation.
The "Being There" shirt has three anonymous human heads (one of the cloud suit, one of the water suit, and one of the fire suit). The heads are in peripheral view and are aligned, with a slight skew (allowing us the view of all three faces), as they break through a wall, the veil of the universe.
Other shirts handle concepts of psychosis and love "Love Science," science and discovery in a reach towards heaven "Reach," and other such concepts widely considered esoteric or cliché within the lens of our popular culture. But, we no longer understand what a 'cliché' is. I have long held the view that a cliché is a truth, or a point of interest and perspective insight, that has simply been worn out by overexposure. But who has worn it out? How have we taken the liberty and quiet pleasure of the private sphere (the realms of reflection, contemplation, meditation as it is thought of in the Greek terms), out of our living cycle, our consciousness, our daily existence? Why is the call for private contemplation no longer a necessity of existence? It seems we should have more time then ever for such practices. So many of our daily chores, our basic needs, are met through the economic matrix. I no longer have to chop wood for warmth, hunt a boar for food, trek down to the river for a water simply, etc... Why shouldn't I spend more time in private contemplation, or even public conversation on these more subtle topics of the human necessity? Why shouldn't I be making something in an effort to communicate those private necessities? The actualization of the humanist requires space for such a practice. And yet, anything that requires a slowing down of, a calling for the work of the mind and private reasoning, is now, quite often immediately, labeled a cliché.
In The Human Condition Arendt writes "The emancipation of labor and the concomitant emancipation of the laboring classes from oppression and exploitation certainly means progress in the direction of non-violence. It is much less certain that it was also progress in the direction of freedom." She is not saying that laboring classes should not have been emancipated. Rather, that the humanist goal has been blurred by some glitch. Instead of moving towards freedom from wasteful labor (a waste of human power -- physical, mental, spiritual) we instead have emancipated labor. Most of us have become imprisoned in a non-sustainable cycle that for the continuation of its forward motion requires an ever-increasing consumption and waste. This waste can be seen in terms of power. The core power of the human psyche originates in the liberty of free private thoughts—a psychological space for contemplation. A mapping of one's stillness that is only possible in the acquisition of free time. Free time is a result of freedom from labors necessity. What Arendt's thoughts gesture towards is that the set of basic necessities that we have been freed from, have been replaced by another, far more complicated and disguised set—the necessity to perpetuate a system that is moving much faster then us; a necessity to consume and continue consuming. To be 'a part of' is, today, to be a consumer—to take ones place in the labor of waste.
Oh right, I wanted to tell you about a product...
"IF" is a creative project. It gains the viewers attention and borrows the imagination. This is a beginning. It does not steal, it borrows. It suggests the prospect of resonance rather than ownership.
I checked out the company website. The "about" page describes the development of the Imaginary Foundation: "a think tank from Switzerland that does experimental research on new ways of thinking and the power of the imagination. They hold dear a belief in human potential and seek progress in all directions." The page is dotted with black and white images from the sixties, shaggy haired men and turtle-neck clad women engaged in contemplative, laissez-faire, light spirited dialogue. The imaginary director of the foundation is described as a "70-something uber-intellectual whose father founded the Dadaist movement." The foundation is imaginary. It is a base, a canvas, for the products (the t-shirts) and the ideas behind them.
The blog section of the site imagines a list of contributors: Isadore Muggll, Kamilla Rousseau, etc. These architects, as is the back story, are too imaginary. "IF" is a fictional foundation for the product. But the product is real and engaging.
What is captured here goes beyond the tangible properties of the product (t-shirts). It is about what the product delivers—the wonder of creativity and science, the archetypes of the IF. Imagination IS the foundation of this product.
The blog itself is a venue for artists who marry technology and art, as well as other thought provoking materials. The image I use at the head of this article is taken from the blog. Cloud, idea, light, community, play—IF: all these are represented in the Cloud installation. This art installation is a discovery I am brought to by the Imaginary Foundation.
I once taught a course on the development of contemporary advertising, heavily focused on Edward Bernays and the peripheral route of persuasion. Bernays was Sigmund Freud's nephew, Woodrow Wilson's image advisor, the father of the term "Public Relations," and the architect of the torches of freedom (Lucky Strikes) campaign, among many others. His theory, though terribly simplified here, was that the modern consumer does not purchase with his mind; rather, he defers to his emotions in most choices. The rational-actor is a fiction. If consumerism became god, branding became its religion.
Ad campaigns have become remarkably creative, and even, at times, beautiful. Have you ever felt the urge to cry during a Jeep commercial? Many have. I think I have. The central conceptual premise of the AMC show Mad Men, depends upon this tension: between art and consumption; the rendering from black and white, to color; the effective marketing and selling off of the human experience. In question is the art aspect of advertising. It is at the core of Don Draper's motivations, and the one that despite his many character failings keeps endearing him to us. Ultimately we are asking, will he reconcile his artistic urge (his private motivation) with his office at the homunculus of the consumerism model (his role in the corporate arena). Exposed is a manipulation, an incongruence, an infidelity in the marriage of advertising and art. Where as art points towards something beyond itself, beyond even the image and the medium, the ad campaign points only to one purpose—back into itself. No idea behind it. Nothing living. It consumes.
Advertising is like the Ouroboros, the dragon that swallows its own tail; having entirely swallowed itself, the modern advertising campaign defies the laws of balance, it is only the un-relentless, hungry serpent head of consumption -- devoid of the body of life. The only urge driving it is to possess.
It is the difference between the work of Egon Schiele and Penthouse, the writings of Georges Bataille and a godaddy.com super bowl campaign.
Seduce ->consume. This is the current mandate of the ad campaign. But this relationship is only sustainable through incompletion. It requires continual doses. Seduce -> consume -> feel a lack even in the possession of product (contract unfulfilled) -> be seduced again -> consume. Ad infinitum. A terrible loop.
How can consumerism and individual consciousness (the most private sector) be made sustainable? Is it possible for a product to speak beyond itself? To fulfill the promise of its persuasion? And if it could, what would that mean for us?
Here I position the word sustainability to face two directions. In part it refers to what Arendt terms as "worldly," the creation produced through work and not labor, something that has the potential to last beyond the productions of time, something that maneuvers into the arena of the eternal. I also want to posit the word in terms of its evolving contemporary potential. The one sector of the public, and political sphere that allows for the platform of this conversation is the environmental movement. It is where we have begun to contemplate the world beyond the shortsighted view of individual lifetimes. We speak of the sustainability of our planet; we are considering new ways to move our habits from wasteful and consumptive, towards lasting and sustainable power. It is a fairly new conversation and the word "sustainability" is evolving with each new perspective we bring to it.
Sustainability goes beyond consumer awareness. It is about the awareness of the product, how a brand gains consciousness. I need to explore here a definition of "consciousness."
I have come to understand definitions as ever evolving in accordance with society and the pressures put upon it by the conditions of the time, the fractals of our world (more simply put, the culture stew).
Consciousness is the expanding of space into which one can resonate. To learn of the world around us, to acknowledge it, to consider its multiple dimensions, is to become more conscious -- to create space into which we can move by the will of our imagination and invention.
The Imaginary Foundation is an example of this bridge. It acknowledges itself and its fiction. It allows for play. It is a small company that uses the fabrication of its narrative to bring the consumers attention to the mimetic principles behind its product. Revealing the architects conceit brings me (the consumer) into co-authorship of the story. It endears itself to me. We do not only consume the product. We consume the narrative of the product. Even if I do not purchase, if I am thinking about it, I am talking about it, I have bought in. If it generates new ideas and deeper order thoughts, then I have begun to take ownership of the product. I consume the myth, I begin to co-author it -- I don it in the neural network of culture. And thus the product has gained consciousness, has begun to be carried beyond the object -- it resonates.
My study of this product is limited. I am not encouraging anyone here to purchase a shirt. I have not purchased a shirt. What I think this opens up is a table for negotiations between the current consumerism model, and individual consciousness—an opportunity to examine sustainable consumerism in all implications.
-Nikita Nelin
What is a Fact?
What is a fact? Few more thorny questions exist. Consider this, from Hannah Arendt's essay, "Truth and Politics:"
But do facts, independent of opinion and interpretation, exist at all? Have not generations of historians and philosophers of history demonstrated the impossibility of ascertaining facts without interpretation, since they must first be picked out of a chaos of sheer happenings (and the principles of choice are surely not factual data) and then be fitted into a story that can be told only in certain perspective, which has nothing to do with the original occurrence?
Facts are constructed. They are not objective. And there is no clear test for what is a fact. Thus, when Albert Einstein was asked, how science can separate fact from fiction, brilliant hypotheses from nutty quackery, he answered: 'There is no objective test." Unlike rational truths that are true outside of experience and absolute, all factual truths are contingent. They might have been otherwise. That is one reason it is so hard to pin them down.
Steve Shapin reminds us of these puzzles in an excellent essay in this weeks London Review of Books. Shapin is reviewing a new book on Immanuel Velikovsky by Michael Gordin. Velikovsky, for those born since the 1960s, caused an uproar in the 1960s and 70s with his scientific claims that Venus was the result of a dislodged piece of Jupiter, that comets led to the parting of the Red Sea, that it dislodged the orbit of Mars threatening Earth, and caused the relocation of the North Pole, not to mention the showering of plagues of vermin onto the earth that nourished the Israelites in the desert.
Gordin's book is about how American scientists went ballistic over Velikovsky. They sought to censor his work and schemed to prevent the publication of his book, Worlds in Collision, at the prestigious Macmillan press. At the center of the controversy was Harvard, where establishment scientists worked assiduously to discredit Velikovsky and stop the circulation of his ideas. [I am sensitive to such issues because I was also the target of such a suppression campaign. When my book The Gift of Science was about to be published by Harvard University Press, I received a call from the editor. It turns out an established scholar had demanded that HUP not publish my book, threatening to no longer review books for the press let alone publish with them. Thankfully, HUP resisted that pressure, for which I will always be grateful.]
For these Harvard scientists, Velikovsky was a charlatan peddling a dangerous pseudo science. The danger in Velikovsky's claims was more than simple misinformation. It led, above all, to an attack on the very essence of scientific authority. What Velikovsky claimed as science flew in the face of what the scientific community knew to be true. He set himself up as an outsider, a dissident. Which he was. In the wake of totalitarianism, he argued that democratic society must allow for alternative and heretical views. The establishment, Velikovsky insisted, had no monopoly on truth. Let all views out, and let the best one win.
Shapin beautifully sums up the real seduction and danger lurking in Velikovsky's work.
The Velikovsky affair made clear that there were radically differing conceptions of the political and intellectual constitution of a legitimate scientific community, of what it was to make and evaluate scientific knowledge. One appealing notion was that science is and ought to be a democracy, willing to consider all factual and theoretical claims, regardless of who makes them and of how they stand with respect to canons of existing belief. Challenges to orthodoxy ought to be welcomed: after all, hadn't science been born historically through such challenges and hadn't it progressed by means of the continual creative destruction of dogma? This, of course, was Velikovsky's view, and it was not an easy matter for scientists in the liberal West to deny the legitimacy of that picture of scientific life. (Wasn't this the lesson that ought to be learned from the experience of science in Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia?) Yet living according to such ideals was impossible – nothing could be accomplished if every apparently crazy idea were to be given careful consideration – and in 1962 Thomas Kuhn's immensely influential Structure of Scientific Revolutions commended a general picture of science in which 'dogma' (daringly given that name) had an essential role in science and in which 'normal science' rightly proceeded not through its permeability to all sorts of ideas but through a socially enforced 'narrowing of perception'. Scientists judged new ideas to be beyond the pale not because they didn't conform to abstract ideas about scientific values or formal notions of scientific method, but because such claims, given what scientists securely knew about the world, were implausible. Planets just didn't behave the way Velikovsky said they did; his celestial mechanics required electromagnetic forces which just didn't exist; the tails of comets were just not the sorts of body that could dump oil and manna on Middle Eastern deserts. A Harvard astronomer blandly noted that 'if Dr Velikovsky is right, the rest of us are crazy.'
It is hard not to read this account and not think about contemporary debates over global warming, Darwinism, and the fall of the World Trade Center. In all three cases, outsiders and even some dissident scientists have made arguments that have been loudly disavowed by mainstream scientists.
No one has done more to explore the claims of modern pseudo science than Naomi Oreskes. In her book Merchants of Doubt written with Erik Conway, Oreskes shows how "a small handful of men" could, for purely ideological reasons, sow doubt about the 'facts' regarding global warming and the health effects of cigarettes. In a similar vein, Jonathan Kay has chronicled the efforts of pseudo scientists to argue that there was no possible way that the World Trade Towers could have been brought down by jet fuel fires, thus suggesting and seeking to "prove" that the U.S. government was behind the destruction of 9/11.
Oreskes wants to show, at once, that it is too easy for politically motivated scientists to sow doubt about scientific fact, and also that there is a workable and effective way for the scientific community to patrol the border between science and pseudo science. What governs that boundary is, in Oreskes words, "the scientific consensus." The argument that global warming is a fact rests on claims about the scientific method: value free studies, evaluated by a system of peer review, moving towards consensus. Peer review is, for Oreskes, "is a crucial part of science." And yet, for those who engage in it know full well, peer review is also deeply political, subject to petty and also not so petty disputes, jealousies, and vendettas. For this and other reasons, consensus is, as Oreskes herself admits, not always accurate: "The scientific consensus might, of course, be wrong. If the history of science teaches anything, it is humility, and no one can be faulted for failing to act on what is not known."
Just as Einstein said 50 years ago, in the matters of establishing scientific fact, there is no objective test. This is frustrating. Indeed, it can be dangerous, not only when pseudo scientists sow doubt about global warming thus preventing meaningful and necessary action. But also, the pervasive and persuasive claims of pseudo science sow cynicism that undermines the factual and truthful foundations of human life.
Arendt reminds us, with a clarity rarely equaled, that factual truth is always contingent. "Facts are beyond agreement and consent, and all talk about them—all exchanges of opinion based on correct information—will contribute nothing to their establishment." Against the pseudo scientific claims of many, science is always a contingent and hypothetical endeavor, one that deals in hypotheses, agreement, and factual proof. Scientific truth is always empirical truth and the truths of science are, in the end, grounded in consensus.
The trouble here is that scientific truths must—as scientific—claim to be true and not simply an opinion. Science makes a claim to authority that is predicated not upon proof but on the value and meaningfulness of impartial inquiry. It is a value that is increasingly in question.
What the challenge of pseudo science shows is how tenuous scientific authority and the value placed on disinterested research really is. Such inquiry has not always been valued and there is no reason to expect it to be valued about partial inquiry in the future. Arendt suggests that the origin of the value in disinterested inquiry was Homer's decision to praise the Trojans equally as he lauded the Achaeans. Never before, she writes, had one people been able to look "with equal eyes upon friend and foe." It was this revolutionary Greek objectivity that became the source for modern science. For those who do value science and understand the incredible advantages it has bestowed upon modern civilization, it is important to recall that the Homeric disinterestedness is neither natural nor necessary. In the effort to fight pseudo science, we must be willing and able to defend just such a position and thus what Nietzsche calls the "pathos of distance" must be central to any defense of the modern scientific world.
When science loses its authority, pseudo science thrives. That is the situation we are increasingly in today. There are no objective tests and no clear lines demarcating good and bad science. And that leaves us with the challenge of the modern age: to pursue truth and establish facts without secure or stable foundations. For that, we need reliable guides whom we can trust. And for that reason, you should read Steven Shapin's latest essay. It is your weekend read.
One Against All
It can be dangerous to tell the truth: "There will always be One against All, one person against all others. [This is so] not because One is terribly wise and All are terribly foolish, but because the process of thinking and researching, which finally yields truth, can only be accomplished by an individual person. In its singularity or duality, one human being seeks and finds – not the truth (Lessing) –, but some truth."
-Hannah Arendt, Denktagebuch, Book XXIV, No. 21
Hannah Arendt wrote these lines when she was confronted with the severe and often unfair, even slanderous, public criticism launched against her and her book Eichmann in Jerusalem after its publication in 1963. The quote points to her understanding of the thinking I (as opposed to the acting We) on which she bases her moral and, partly, her political philosophy.
It is the thinking I, defined with Kant as selbstdenkend (self-thinking ["singularity"]) and an-der-Stelle-jedes-andern-denkend (i.e., in Arendt's terms, thinking representatively or practicing the two-in-one ["duality"]). Her words also hint at an essay she published in 1967 titled "Truth and Politics," wherein she takes up the idea that it is dangerous to tell the truth, factual truth in particular, and considers the teller of factual truth to be powerless. Logically, the All are the powerful, because they may determine what at a specific place and time is considered to be factual truth; their lies, in the guise of truth, constitute reality. Thus, it is extremely hard to fight them.
In answer to questions posed in 1963 by the journalist Samuel Grafton regarding her report on Eichmann and published only recently, Arendt states: "Once I wrote, I was bound to tell the truth as I see it." The statement reveals that she was quite well aware of the fact that her story, i.e., the result of her own thinking and researching, was only one among others. She also realized the lack of understanding and, in many cases, of thinking and researching, on the part of her critics.
Thus, she lost any hope of being able to publicly debate her position in a "real controversy," as she wrote to Rabbi Hertzberg (April 8, 1966). By the same token, she determined that she would not entertain her critics, as Socrates did the Athenians: "Don't be offended at my telling you the truth." Reminded of this quote from Plato's Apology (31e) in a supportive letter from her friend Helen Wolff, she acknowledged the reference, but acted differently. After having made up her mind, she wrote to Mary McCarthy: "I am convinced that I should not answer individual critics. I probably shall finally make, not an answer, but a kind of evaluation of this whole strange business." In other words, she did not defend herself in following the motto "One against All," which she had perceived and noted in her Denktagebuch. Rather, as announced to McCarthy, she provided an "evaluation" in the 1964 preface to the German edition of Eichmann in Jerusalem and later when revising that preface for the postscript of the second English edition.
Arendt also refused to act in accordance with the old saying: Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus (let there be justice, though the world perish). She writes – in the note of the Denktagebuch from which today's quote is taken – that such acting would reveal the courage of the teller of truth "or, perhaps, his stubbornness, but neither the truth of what he had to say nor even his own truthfulness." Thus, she rejected an attitude known in German cultural tradition under the name of Michael Kohlhaas. A horse trader living in the 16th century, Kohlhaas became known for endlessly and in vain fighting injustice done to him (two of his horses were stolen on the order of a nobleman) and finally taking the law into his own hands by setting fire to houses in Wittenberg.
Even so, Arendt has been praised as a woman of "intellectual courage" with regard to her book on Eichmann (see Richard Bernstein's contribution to Thinking in Dark Times).
Intellectual courage based on thinking and researching was rare in Arendt's time and has become even rarer since then. But should Arendt therefore only matter nostalgicly? Certainly not. Her emphasis on the benefits of thinking as a solitary business still remains current. Consider, for example, the following reference to Sherry Turkle, a sociologist at MIT and author of the recent book Alone Together. In an interview with Peter Haffner (published on July 27, 2012, in SZ Magazin), she argues that individuals who become absorbed in digital communication lose crucial components of their faculty of thinking. Turkle says (my translation): Students who spend all their time and energy on communication via SMS, Facebook, etc. "can hardly concentrate on a particular subject. They have difficulty thinking a complex idea through to its end." No doubt, this sounds familiar to all of us who know about Hannah Arendt's effort to promote thinking (and judging) in order to make our world more human.
To return to today's quote: It can be dangerous to tell the truth, but thinking is dangerous too. Once in a while, not only the teller of truth but the thinking 'I' as well may find himself or herself in the position of One against All.
-Ursula Ludz


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A two-member Anti Corruption Commission (ACC) team on Sunday applied for visas to visit Canada to complete its ongoing investigation into the much-talked-about Padma Bridge graft case.
"Today, we applied for visas to the Canadian High Commission in Dhaka. We'll fly for Canada once the visas are in our hands. We may fly in a day or two," investigation officer of the Padma graft case and team member Mirza Zahidul Alam told reporters at the ACC head office.
On April 4, the Commission issued a government order (GO) allowing the team to go to Canada to probe the graft allegation in the Padma Bridge project.
The team members are ACC legal adviser advocate Anisul Haque and Zahidul Alam. The team will stay in Canada for 12 days from April 8 to collect documents related to the Padma graft case.
As two Canadian nationals, reportedly involved in Padma graft conspiracy, are currently facing trial in a Canadian court and the Royal Canadian Mountain Police (RCMP) seized some documents in this regard, the Commission has decided to send its team to Canada to probe the case.
The ACC has almost completed the investigation into the Padma graft case in Bangladesh part and it is waiting to complete the remaining investigation on the Canadian side.
On December 17 last year, the ACC filed a case against seven people for their alleged involvement in the Padma Bridge project dropping the names of key suspects former Communications Minister Syed Abul Hossain and former State Minister for Foreign Affairs Abul Hasan Chowdhury.
Two top officials of SNC Lavalin (a Canadian consultancy firm, which participated in bidding process in getting work in the Padma Bridge project) -- Mohammad Ismail, former director of SNC Lavalin, and Ramesh Shah, former vice president of firm, -- were also sued in the graft case.
Earlier, the Royal Canadian Mountain Police seized Ramesh's diary where he had mentioned Syed Abul Hossain as the recipient of 4 percent out of 10 percent (Tk 38 crore) bribe from the supervision work money and the ACC is trying to collect the copy of the diary.

subset: commoncrawl


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I've been commissioned with cleaning up memory leaks in our code as well as placing checks to prevent further leaks. I've noticed un-detached handlers seem to be the main cause. Most are straight forward, but there are a couple things in code that have made me scratch my head.
myObject.someEvent -= null;
Am I correct in assuming that does absolutely nothing? (I know that if an event is local you can set it to null since it's essentially a multicast delegate).
Second, for anonymous handlers:
myObject.someEvent += ()=> { x + y; };
myObject.someEvent -= ()=> { x + y; };
Am I correct in saying the second instruction is worthless as well since the anonymous methods will be compiled as two separate delegates and therefore the subtraction doesn't actually point to the correct handler that would need to be removed? (For anyone looking for a proper solution to solve this, look here).
I don't want to settle for "yeah, that's right", I want to know why these things don't work (assuming my assertions are correct).


text:
(VAN NUYS, CA) -- True pioneer to the genre, Digital Playground continues to satisfy the soaring HD consumer demand with the release of 15 of its hottest-selling titles in High Definition DVD format this holiday season. Holding true to the DP code each title promises an unsurpassed Hd experience as can only be achieved with superior Hd equipment and technology.
New Hd titles slated for release include: "Jesse Jane in Pink," "Jesse's Juice," "Contract Star," "Teagan: Sexual Freak 2," "Teagan's Juice," "Intoxicated," "Lascivious Liaisons," "Mrs. Behavin'," "Jack's Pov (#1)," "Jack's Big Ass Show (#1)," "Jack's Teen America: Mission #4" and "Jack's Teen America: Mission #5." Among the impressive selection of the studio's most popular titles, are several receiving 2008 AVN Awards nominations. Celebrated titles include, "CockAsian," with two nods for Best Ethnic-Themed release: Asian and Best Solo sex Scene; "Deeper (#1)," contributing to Best Vignette Series; and "Jack's Playground: Volume 27," contributing to Best Gonzo Series.
When asked about the recent growth and popularity of HD in today's consumer driven market, Digital Playground Ceo Samantha Lewis commented, "Today's home entertainment consumers are sophisticated, evolved and simply expect more. Digital Playground forecasted this development early on when Hd was just an emerging consumer trend. Today, HD-DVD and Blu-ray mentions are everywhere and HD is fast becoming a household term. Knowing this would contribute to tremendous HD sales this holiday we have structured the timing of our HD releases in a way that will allow retailers to keep up with consumer demand now and in the New Year."
Digital Playground Co-Founder and award-winning director Joone comments, "We know what our audience wants to see because we're a part of this same audience. As a collective we're known for our high standards, discriminating tastes and refined home theater experiences. HD is an essential part of this quotient as it brings with it so many rewards. To capture these benefits it's essential to shoot with the larger studio Hd camera and not a standard handheld device, as too many people do today. There is a huge difference in quality which is why we have been shooting with these studio quality HD cameras for more than four years now and will continue to do so."
High-Definition DVD players are the hottest gift this holiday season and retailers are encouraged to stock up on Hd product. HD DVD is the new High- Definition video disc standard that delivers up to six times the image quality of standard DVD movies. HD DVD promises a major advancement over video discs in the same way that HDTVs deliver superior image detail over standard TV.
News Rack: 2015 ED Expo
ED Expo Returns to NO
Katrina Jade GOTM
Marica Hase Official Site
CatalystCon Sessions, Speakers
World Bukkake Tour
Cum Swallowing Auditions
Venus Anniversary 20
BBWcon Takes Over Vegas
Freedom Acres Party
Porn Star by Herschel Savage
TexXxas Fan Event
Shawna Lenee Dogfart GOTM
Paradise Marketing New Website
GFE at Sheri's Ranch
Samantha Hayes Interview
Dead But Dreaming ~ Reviewer Rated
Dava Foxx Self-Booking
Gina Valentina's 1st IR
Submission of Emma Marx: Exposed ~ Reviewer Rated
BBWcon 2016
New Webcam Opportunity
NaughtyAllie Facelift
Nina Elle MiniView
Kahlista Stonem Available
Sanders, Trump Joint News Conference
Naughty Massage
Redefining the Status Quo
Jenevieve Hexxx at Trixie's
Ocean News from Lexi Love
Hard Squeezes
APAC and Sex Worker Rights
New From Rodney Moore
RNSU Radio Thurs March 24
New Girls
What We Signed Up For
The Directors
What is Consent?
Bee, Evans at Sexpo
New Gay News Site
Alana Evans on MTV
Sexpo Cosplay
Cruz Receives Porn Offer
Poking Around AVN 2016
Deadly Famous
Planet Venus
The Hedge Against Exploitation
Performers File Unpaid Wage Claims
Amateur Allure 4 AVN Noms
Public Sex Adventures 2
Women Seeking Women Visited
Charles Manson to be Released!
Romantic Moments Revealed
Adult Film Festival
A French Documentary Like No Other
Night at the Erotic Museum
Lex's Tattooed Vixens 2
Lesbian Training Day 4
Ashley Sinclair Sex Tape
Poll: Caitlyn Jenner Do Porn
Raven Bay's Big Tits
Casey Calvert's IR Gangbang
5X Raven Bay
Shade X from Smash
Amateur Allure New Lines
Karmen Karma Top Shelf
The Interview XXX
XXX Casting Call
Deep Vision ThunderRama
Hackin Jack vs Chainsaw Chick
AINews: Skow Among Best
More Phoenix Mainstream
Red Cardinal Wraps Betrothed
Summer Lovers
Yoga for Lovers
Layla Price Stars
Maddy O'Reilly is Slutwoman
Powersville Re-Energized
XRCO Awards Nominations
Summer Brielle Elegant Angel
Damsels in Distress Released
Damsels in Distress Live
Madison Christmas Spectaculars
TSA Explosives Test on Ryder
Bailey Blue is The Animal
LFC/WalMart Deal
Free Vegas Weddings
Wedding Night Porn
Sunny Lane in Feature Movie
Capri Cavanni Releases
Ryder Completes Grease XXX
Love Boat XXX Song
Capri Cavanni in Love Boat XXX
Love Boat XXX Trailer
Britney Amber NightMoves Nom
Dana Vespoli NightMoves Noms
Film News Section Index


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text:
Hi folks,
I'm playing around with the Swift theme. It seems to have what I'm looking for, especially the magazine or grid-style posts.
One thing I'm rather stuck on: I want to change the default tabbed sidebar's content of Posts, Comments and Tags to something like Recent Posts and Popular Posts. I don't see any option within the theme to change those, so I guess changing the coding is in order?
If I'm to do that, what do I look for? And how will I achieve the desired effect above?
Any help is appreciated. Thanks.


text:
I just changed the DNS settings on my website, which I use mainly for local testing. Unfortunately, I had the TTL of the old settings at a day or, so and I don't want to wait for it to update. Is there any way to fetch the latest dns settings even though my DNS provider (Google DNS) has it cached?
Try using a different DNS provider, like OpenDNS. If the website is popular enough other providers may also have the DNS cached so keep trying others.
Also if you are using Windows clear your local cache in a command prompt type
The best way is to query your domain's authoritative server directly -
If you don't know which name server is authoritative for your domain, find it -
It will list addresses of all namservers which your domain uses, and then to query it directly, you pass any of them as second parameter to your


text:
EAA AVIATION CENTER, OSHKOSH, Wisconsin — College-age aviation enthusiasts have a pathway to Oshkosh this year with a new Collegiate Volunteer Program for EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2015. The 63rd annual fly-in convention for the Experimental Aircraft Association takes place July 20-26 at Wittman Regional Airport in Oshkosh. [Read more…]
Burt Rutan returns to AirVenture for VariEze's 40th anniversary
OSHKOSH, Wisconsin — Burt Rutan, the visionary aircraft designer, will be back at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh in 2015 to commemorate the 40th anniversary of his iconic VariEze aircraft. [Read more…]
Jeppesen CEO joins EAA board of directors
EAA AVIATION CENTER, OSHKOSH, Wisconsin — Mark Van Tine, Chief Executive Officer of Jeppesen and Vice President of digital aviation for The Boeing Company, has joined the top leadership of the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) as the newest member of the EAA Board of Directors.
Making sure homebuilts are not forgotten in ADS-B mandate
Officials at the Experimental Aircraft Association report they are in ongoing discussions with the FAA to ensure that experimental amateur-built owners are not forgotten as the FAA looks toward the Jan. 1, 2020 mandate for equipping aircraft with ADS-B avionics.
Apollo 13 anniversary to be commemorated at AirVenture
EAA AVIATION CENTER, OSHKOSH, Wis. — Members of the Apollo 13 crew and team will participate in activities at AirVenture 2015 marking the 45th anniversary of what was called the "successful failure" of the aborted moon mission.
GA challenges benefits of ADS-B
WASHINGTON, D.C. — An FAA-sponsored "call to action" summit to encourage the aviation industry to equip to meet the Jan. 1, 2020, deadline for the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) brought general aviation advocates out in force, with one message: The costs outweigh the benefits for GA pilots.
High-flying gift ideas from EAA
EAA AVIATION CENTER, OSHKOSH, Wisconsin — The new Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) "Share your aviation spirit" catalog features ideas for the aviators on your holiday gift lists.
Additional pilot now allowed on homebuilt first flights
The FAA recently released AC 90-116, the Additional Pilot Program (APP) for Phase I flight testing, of homebuilt aircraft, which allows homebuilders to have a qualified additional pilot on board during Phase I flights.
Before this program, builders were only permitted to have "required crew" aboard for initial flights, which usually meant that every Phase I experimental-amateur built (E-AB) aircraft was legally required to be flown solo, according to officials with the Experimental Aircraft Association.
Just Aircraft's Troy Woodland receives EAA's August Raspet Award
OSHKOSH — Troy Woodland, a partner in Just Aircraft Company, was selected by the Experimental Aircraft Association for the August Raspet Award in 2014. The award is given each year to an individual who has made a significant contribution to the field of light aircraft design.
Eagle Flights Mentor Handbook released
OSHKOSH — The Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) has created a new Mentor Handbook in support of its two-year-old Eagle Flights program, which is designed to encourage adults who want to discover flying by providing initial flight experiences and continuing support.


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The Huntsville-Madison County Botanical Garden Society is a private non-profit organization. Incorporated as a 501(c)(3) in 1981, Huntsville Botanical Garden opened to the public on May 21, 1988. As per the By-Laws, the governance of the Society, the direction and management of its work and the control of its property is vested in a Board of Directors. Additionally, an Advisory Board consisting of both elected directors and permanent members provides periodic advice and counsel to the Board of Directors. The Garden staff consists of approximately 35 full and part time staff, supplemented by seasonal and on call positions. Absolutely critical to its operation, the Garden's active volunteer base currently numbers over 1900 individuals who give thousands of hours annually, contributing more than $1 million of workforce value.
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- Miss Florida 2017 stripped of crown days after win - US Weekly
- Lindsay Lohan steps out amid relationship drama - TMZ
- Was Taylor Swift snubbed by the VMAs? - Gossip Cop
- Rachel Platten sings "Fight Song" with lots of stars - Just Jared Jr
- Farrah Abraham sizzles in a revealing bikini - Radar
- New pics from the Clooneys' Italian summer - Lainey Gossip
- Fox News snubs major DNC moment - The Hollywood Reporter
25 November 2012 at 12:43 AM
Joshua Jackson: Shirtless Poolside with Diane Kruger!
About this photo set: Joshua Jackson goes shirtless while spending time at the pool with his bikini-clad girlfriend Diane Kruger on Saturday (November 24) in Los Cabos, Mexico. The… Read More Here
Photo #: 2763496
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Dance the Night Away (Van Halen song)
|"Dance the Night Away"
|Single by Van Halen
|from the album Van Halen II
|"Dance the Night Away"
|"Outta Love Again"
|7" vinyl
|December 1978 – January 1979
|Hard rock
|Warner Bros.
|Eddie Van Halen, Alex Van Halen, Michael Anthony, David Lee Roth
|Ted Templeman
|Van Halen singles chronology
"Dance the Night Away" was Van Halen's first top 20 U.S. hit, peaking at #15, and the second song from their 1979 album Van Halen II. While the rest of the songs from this album had existed in various forms since their days doing demos and playing clubs, this song was possibly the only song written during the recording sessions for the album. The band members conceived the song during the recording sessions while they were standing in a circle humming to each other. It was inspired by Fleetwood Mac's "Go Your Own Way". Eddie Van Halen purposely left a guitar solo out of the final version of the song, replacing it instead with a riff of tap harmonics. David Lee Roth originally wanted to call the song "Dance Lolita Dance", but Eddie Van Halen convinced him that "Dance the Night Away" was more suitable and the chorus was changed to reflect that.[1]
Roth claimed, during a 2006 performance in San Diego, California, that he wrote this song in tribute to an intoxicated woman who was having sex in the back of a truck and ran with her pants on backwards while escaping police officers into the bar where the fledgling band was playing. This was also mentioned at a 2006 performance in Detroit, Michigan.
The song appears in the films Private Parts, Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues, the science fiction film Mission to Mars, the Academy Award-winning 2012 film Argo,[2] and in the closing credits of That's My Boy. It was covered in 2010 by Pat Monahan on Santana's album Guitar Heaven: The Greatest Guitar Classics of All Time. In 2015, the song was covered and performed by Vocal Adrenaline, on the premiere episode, "Loser Like Me", of the sixth season of Glee.
The song was not performed live during the Sammy Hagar era, but did get played during the Van Halen III Tour in 1998. It has been played live on every tour since the 2007 reunion with Roth, and a live version is included on the album Tokyo Dome Live in Concert.
External links[edit]
Covered by[edit]
|This 1970s rock song-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
- 1979 singles
- Van Halen songs
- Music videos directed by Bruce Gowers
- Song recordings produced by Ted Templeman
- 1979 songs
- Songs written by Eddie Van Halen
- Songs written by Alex Van Halen
- Songs written by Michael Anthony (musician)
- Songs written by David Lee Roth
- Warner Bros. Records singles
- 1970s rock song stubs


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Disney to Reboot "The Rocketeer" With Black Female Lead
Conventions | The producers of Salt Lake Comic Con are expanding westward, and taking their FanXperience spinoff event to Asia. Organizers have announced a partnership with Pop Life Entertainment, the parent company of Funko, to hold FanX events this year in the Philippines (June 10-12), China (Sept. 14-17) and Thailand (Dec. 11). Salt Lake co-founder Bryan Brandenburg said Pop Life has an agreement with a Hollywood talent agency to bring "A level" guests to the Asian shows as well as to Salt Lake Comic Con. [The Salt Lake Tribune]
Music | Daniel Auerbach, half of the blues/rock duo The Black Keys, is creating a soundtrack album to go with the new comic book miniseries Murder Ballads, which publisher Z2 Comics describes as a "rock 'n' roll noir story about the music industry and redemption." The comic, by Gabe Soria and Paul Reinwand, will debut later this year. [Vulture]
Manga | Kodansha Comics is teasing the "Biggest 'Attack on Titan' Manga Announcement Ever" for its Oct. 8 panel at New York Comic Con. Considering the worldwide popularity, and sales, of Hajime Isayama's post-apocalyptic fantasy, that's certainly a bold claim. The series has more than 50 million copies in circulation around the world; 2.5 million of those are in the United States. Kodansha also publishes the manga spinoffs Attack on Titan: Before the Fall and Attack on Titan: Junior High. [Anime News Network, Deb Aoki]
Manga | Attack on Titan has changed the manga market, Kodansha Comics' top brass tell Deb Aoki, showing that manga can still sell in the millions even after the market slumped, and give publishers a new multimedia model, with spinoff manga and light novels, to build on its success. Hiroaki Morita, editor-in-chief of Shonen Magazine when Attack on Titan debuted, also talks about his early impressions and how he knew the manga would be a hit. Alvin Lu of Kodansha Advance Media also discusses plans for the company's new digital division, which is publishing digital editions of Kodansha Comics' current manga but will expand to do digital-first books as well. [Anime News Network]
If, for some reason, that Joker mask inspired by Batman: Death of the Family isn't harrowing enough, there's now a Clown Prince of Crime lawn ornament virtually guaranteed to send trick-or-treaters screaming from your home.
Advertised by ThinkGeek as the innocous-sounding "DC The Joker Ground Breaker," it's actually a night full of terror packed into an oversize garden gnome. Based on artist Greg Capullo's design, this grinning, knife-wielding Joker looks as if he's clawing his way out of the ground, ready to grab unsuspecting passersby (and their candy).
Graphic novels | Sonny Liew's graphic novel The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye has sold through its second printing in Singapore and is heading into a third, just weeks after the country's National Arts Council abruptly withdrew funding. The graphic novel traces the career of pioneering Singaporean cartoonist Charlie Chan Hock Chye through 60 years of the country's history and includes satirical portrayals of Lee Kuan Yew, the first prime minister of Singapore, and his rival Lim Chin Siong. An NAC official said it "potentially undermines the authority or legitimacy of the Government and its public institutions." The graphic novel has already sold 2,500 copies, making it "the top-selling local fiction title so far this year."
Sure, Stefanos Anagnostopoulos could've bought a Joker mask based on Greg Capullo's Batman design. But why do that when he can simply make his own? Although not from his own skin, of course …
The designer, whom you may remember from that incredible 3D-printed Ant-Man helmet, decided to turn his attention to DC Comics, which led him to Capullo and Scott Snyder's "Death of the Family" storyline and that gruesome Joker mask.
Fans of the weekly format — like yours truly — had an interesting new comic book day. That's because all three of DC's weekly series concluded on Wednesday, and the publisher kicked off its next weekly series with a zero issue.
When it comes to weekly comics, the first and last issues are the most important. Weeklies have a distinct advantage over monthlies, in that readers tend to be more forgiving from issue to issue. Perhaps the art is rough, but we excuse it, because we understand the brutal deadline pressure. Perhaps the story drags and stalls, but because a new issue arrives each week, we don't have a lot of time to dwell on the flaws — and there's always the hope it will get better with the next installment, which, of course, is just seven days away. But when we reach the final issue, that hope is gone, and readers discover whether their investment in the story— time and money — was worthwhile.
I'm a big fan of weekly comics in general, and DC's experiments with the format over the past decade in particular. Some of those weeklies have been among the best DC comics I've ever read (Wednesday Comics, 52), some have been so bad I checked out after after the first few issues (Countdown, Earth 2: World's End), and some have fallen in between (I enjoyed Trinity, and have never hated The New 52: Futures End enough to drop it).
Batman Eternal, which published its 50th issue Wednesday, has been a great example of what's so enjoyable about weekly comics (there's something for you at the shop every Wednesday, they offer space for a large cast and sprawling story), in addition to providing a good blueprint for future weeklies (co-plotters, a small group of rotating scripters who also serve as consulting writers, and a focus on a single franchise), even while representing the main weakness of the format (without massive amounts of lead time, super-speedy artists or a carefully assembled roster of artists with compatible styles, the books will necessarily feature sub-par, often disjointed artwork that will only read worse in trade).
I've actually gotten more and more excited about Batman Eternal the longer it's run, as there's been a mystery to the storyline regarding the identity of the villain. On more than one occasion a villain appears who seems to fit the bill, only to be dismissed later, revealing that he's either working for someone else, or was invited to take part in a conspiracy to destroy Batman and Gotham City by a person unknown to him.
Crime | Police have surrounded an industrial park in the town of Dammartin-en-Goele, France, 25 miles north of Paris, where the two suspects in Wednesday's massacre at the offices of satire magazine Charlie Hebdo are believed to be hiding. Police say brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi have taken over a print shop and are holding a hostage, and have reportedly told negotiators they wish to die as martyrs. The Associated Press reports that a second, apparently linked siege at a kosher supermarket in eastern Paris is believed to involve Amedy Coulibaly, suspected of killing a police officer on Thursday. Police say he's holding at least six hostages. [The Guardian]
Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo's Batman is big in New York City. Well, huge may be more like it.
At 13th Dimension, Dan Greenfield has a gallery of photos taken over the holiday weekend at Times Square, where Google's block-long, 8-stories-tall digital billboard — the largest in North America — ran an ad for Batman, Vol. 1: The Court of Owls (available on Google Play, naturally).
Readers and, especially, retailers may have plenty of reasons to be annoyed by Superman Unchained, the now-complete series available this week in a fancy-schmancy 350-page, slightly oversized hardcover "Deluxe Edition."
DC Comics announced the awkwardly titled series — please note, there are no literal or metaphorical chains either going on or coming off in the story — as an ongoing, promoted with seemingly countless variant covers (more on these later). In theory, it sounded like a can't-miss comic, featuring as it did the work of Scott Snyder, one of (if not the) most popular writers in the direct market and Jim Lee, one of (if not the) most popular artists in the direct market, working on DC's flagship (and second-most popular) character.
In reality, the book turned out to just an nine-issue miniseries, rather important information a retailer would have taken into consideration when ordering. Whether or not it was always intended to be a miniseries, I don't know; it reads as a complete story with a beginning, middle and end, and it fits into the New 52 continuity, but loosely enough that one need not have any idea what's going on in any other book to follow it easily (Snyder really pulled off some great line-straddling here, as this reads equally well as part of the New 52 and as a standalone book for a new or lapsed Superman fan). The plan might have originally been for it to be ongoing, until the reality of a Lee drawing a monthly series set in.
Even at just nine issues, Superman Unchained was plagued with delays that made reading it serially something of a chump's game. It took 15 months to publish those nine issues. That averages out to a bimonthly-ish schedule, but the delays were random and erratic: Issues 4 and 5 shipped in consecutive months, for example, and then there was a two-month delay before Issue 6, and a three-month delay before Issue 7. If there's a more perfect argument for waiting for the trade than Superman Unchained, I've yet to hear it (you even get all 58 covers in this collection, some process stuff and no ads, and at $29.99 it's cheaper than the buying all nine single issues at $3.99).
So, yes, if you're in the business of trying to sell comics to people, you may have some ill will toward this book. And if you tried reading it "monthly," you may also not feel great about it. I can't defend DC's production or marketing of the book, but I would argue in favor of forgiving Superman Unchained. Because the thing is, it's actually a pretty great Superman story.
Continue Reading »
Archie: The Married Life Book Six (Archie Comics): This is a phone book-sized collection of the final seven issues of Life With Archie, the series set in a possible future where Archie is married to Betty … and Veronica, in two alternate timelines. The narrative jumps between those parallel realities in a way that can be downright confusing when read in such a huge chunk as the collections offer.
While the stories feature the same fairly sprawling cast — and the character designs and are style are, as usual, in perfect harmony no matter whose names are in the credits — there's more differences between the two timelines than just which girl Archie settled down with. In one timeline, Jughead is dating Ethel; in the other he's having a baby with Midge. Likewise, Reggie is either a newspaper reporter or a mechanic with a reality show, and Moose is either Riverdale's mayor or Riverdale High School's janitor. And so on.
There are a few things both universes share, however, like Kevin Keller having been elected to the U.S. Senate, campaigning on gun control, an issue driven home by a mass shooting in the nearby Southport Mall. And, of course, in the final two issues, the "Death of Archie" and the epilogue that follows, the story is carefully, delicately crafted so that every line and every panel can be read so they're the conclusions of both storylines, despite all the differences between the two.
Legal | The Malaysian cartoonist Zunar is being investigated once more under the country's Sedition Act, his lawyer revealed Tuesday. Three of Zunar's assistants were arrested last week for selling two of his books, neither of which has been officially banned, and his webmaster has been summoned to talk to police on Thursday. Zunar has also been called in for questioning at a future date. What's more, the Malaysian Home Ministry has appealed the Court of Appeals' decision to remove the ban on two of Zunar's other books. [Malaysia Chronicle]
Publishing | Red Giant Entertainment has announced that retailers ordered about 900,000 copies each of its four anthology comics, which are ad-supported and will be given away for free. The company, which also releases digital comics and paid print comics, kicked off this program with a package of four zero issues on Free Comic Book Day. [ICv2]
Passings | Dr. George Slusser, co-founder of the University of California, Riversides' renowned Eaton Collection of Science Fiction & Fantasy, passed away Tuesday at age 75. Curator emeritus and professor emeritus of comparative literature, Slusser expanded the Eaton holdings from 7,500 items to more than 300,000, making it the largest publicly accessible collection of science fiction and fantasy literature in the world. It encompasses novels, journals, manuscripts, comics and manga, fanzines and anime, and includes first editions of Bram Stoker's Dracula, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Action Comics #1 and The Fantastic Four #1. "Over three decades, George Slusser built the Eaton Collection up from a small core of titles into the world-class archive that it is today," Rob Latham, co-director of UC Riverside's Science Fiction and Technoculture Studies program, said in a statement. "The field of science fiction scholarship owes him an incalculable debt." [UC Riverside]
All-New Doop (Marvel): It's perfectly appropriate for any series starring peripheral X-Men character Doop to be a weird one, however, the miniseries collected in this trade paperback is weird in a weird way.
Doop was created by writer Peter Milligan and artist Mike Allred for their iconoclastic (and somewhat -controversial) 2001 X-Force run, which was then relaunched under the name The X-Statix. The premise involved a group of celebrity-wannabe mutants who used their powers for fame and fortune by starring in a reality show; holding the camera was a mysterious, gross, floating, potato-shaped green creature that spoke its own, indecipherable language and answered to the name Doop.
Milligan imagined a dramatic behind-the-scenes life for the character in a two-part, 2003 Wolverine/Doop miniseries, and writer Jason Aaron ran with the joke, including Doop as a member of the faculty at the Jean Grey School during his Wolverine and The X-Men run. For the most part, Doop functioned as a background joke, one more signifier of the zany environment of the new school for young mutants, though Aaron did pair with Doop's co-creator Allred for a one-issue story that focused on the character as a behind-the-scenes, floating potato-thing-of-all-trades.
Milligan returns to the character for this miniseries, in which Allred only provides the covers, while David LaFuente draws the majority of the art. Milligan takes Doop's behind-the-scenes portfolio to an extreme, marking him as a character capable of traveling through "The Marginalia," entering and exiting the comic-book tales in order to influence their outcome.
The story Doop influences here is "Battle of the Atom," the Brian Michael Bendis-helmed X-Men crossover that involved Cyclops' X-Men team, Wolverine's X-Men team and an X-Men team from the future engaged in a fight over what to do with the teenage original X-Men plucked out of the Silver Age and currently hanging around the present.


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