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Friday, January 13, 2012
A Random Rant
I'm really, truly annoyed at this. We all know the way consumerism works, right? Supply and demand. In general, if people want something, they buy it. The store buys more of it, which continues to be bought by the public, because people want it. If people don't buy a product, the store doesn't order more of it, and it eventually disappears of the shelf. Right?
I'm so sick and tired of all the bitching (excuse my french) lately about oil companies. Be it the oil sands, or rigs anywhere in the world, it doesn't matter how sustainable or not they are trying to be. It just doesn't matter. People are constantly wanting the oil companies to be shut down, be regulated, only produce so much per year, and so on. It doesn't work that way.
Why? Well, because oil is a product. People can spout all they want about what they want or don't want the oil industry to do or be like, but in the end? We all drive our cars to the grocery store, where we buy food that has been trucked into the area from out of province/state or out of country. Most people have more than one vehicle. We all use products which are made with by-products of oil production.
The easiest way to make a product disappear from the shelves?
Stop buying it.
I'm not saying it's easy. I'm not saying I'm perfect - we live out of town, and I personally don't really want to carry 200$ worth of groceries home on a bike. We can each make choices that limit the power of the oil companies, and force societies big companies and engineers to look at other resources. We can decide that instead of buying a hummer, maybe we will buy a hybrid. Instead of buying another mid-size car, Sean and I want to buy an electric car when our current car dies. It's the choices we all make that dictate the world we live in; we the people have an incredible power at our fingertips - our money. We only have to chose where to spend it.
I guess one of the main things that annoys me about all of this is that because I'm from Alberta, certain online people feel like holding me personally responsible for the oil sands. o.O Do I wish our world ran on something other than oil? Yes, but in the mean time we are all responsible for our personal choices. Oil has made my province rich, and I will make no apologies for that - most of our oil is shipped to the U.S., among other countries, and while yes, I use oil (who doesn't?) it doesn't make it all my provinces fault for producing it - they are only following the consumerism structures of supply and demand.
Bleh. Okay, rant over. Agree or disagree as you like, haha.
Anyhow. Update on Sean? We think that his heart attack symptoms *may* have been caused by something called the Norovirus. We aren't sure yet, of course, and he still has his stress test at the end of the month, but from what we can tell it seems a likely cause. There has been quite the outbreak up here, and some of the symptoms - difficulty breathing and extremity numbness - can mimic heart attack symptoms. We shall see. He is still sick and still tired, but slowly getting better.
Thanks for listening to my rant, everyone! It seems like one of those...months...where everything is going to bug me, heh heh.
Goddess Bless,
3 comments:
- AnonymousJanuary 13, 2012 at 2:27 PM
Great post! People gotta start taking responsibility for their OWN actions before pointing the finger at other people! You want less oil drilling, then consume less oil! What annoys me is people who insist on buying organic fruit and veg, without realising it has been shipped in from CHINA causing a shit tonne of pollution on the way! Buy HOME GROWN. Better yet, grow it yourself! :)ReplyDelete
Very good point. Oil use is completely a result of consumerism. If there was no demand then there would be no production. The best thing is as you said, try to lower your own consumption and encourage the science behind making alternatives that are economically feasible. We're as a society always going to need something to create energy.ReplyDelete
A virus sounds a lot better then a heart condition. I hope the tests all come out good.
So true. People are so fast to blame others. it is out of their control but it is someone elses fault. Yes where big Oil company is concerned it is not to much of a concern for them if I cut my oil usage. If how ever my practices spread to my family and friends then it might start to matter. Great post.ReplyDelete


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The 5th anniversary of the day the Stuxnet worm came into public view is upon us. The worm triggered changes in industrial control systems products, networks, and methodologies. Looking back, what did we learn? Did we look for lessons where the light was brightest? Or did we look in the dark corners where our need was greatest?
The bright light shining was "best practice violations." What did the light show us?
In fact, many of us accelerated our IT/OT integration plans even more generally, moving responsibility for all ICS security functions into central, expert, IT security teams. Now we do ICS security "by the book," applying all IT security best practices.
Breaching a zero-vulnerabilities network
Is this progress? I was talking to an ICS security architect for an industrial firm at a conference a few months ago. They were doing everything "by the book." They had just passed an internal security audit by their IT security experts and, after years of work, their control system had come up squeaky clean. Zero vulnerabilities and compliant with all relevant cyber security standards and regulations.
So -- icing on the cake -- they brought in a penetration tester. They set her up on the corporate network. They told her:
"Pretend the receptionist's PC had been compromised in a standard targeted attack. Let's say the malware evaded anti-virus because there are less than one hundred copies circulating world-wide, so there are no anti-virus signatures. Let's say the malware escalated privilege by telling the receptionist he needed to install a video CODEC. Let's say the malware stegographically tunnels a command-line interface through one of the thousands of web application protocols that the next-gen corporate firewalls understand."
This is a classic, targeted attack. The pen-tester's mission is to use her control over this one machine to break into the zero-vulnerabilities ICS network. How far does she get? Five minutes later, she was in, controlling equipment on the ICS.
Five minutes.
Really? Five minutes? How is this possible? She simply continued with the standard targeted attack pattern. She downloads a password hash scraper and finds the domain administrator's password hash on the compromised machine. The domain administrator, after all, was on the machine the day before adding the machine into the domain for the test.
She uses the hash to log into the domain controller and creates an account for herself with administrative privileges. She logs into one of the plant systems she sees exposed through the firewall. (I was not told which system. Remote Desktop? A SQL Server? The file server deployed to reduce the use of USB sticks?) There are many targets to choose from on a typical, zero-vulnerabilities, best-practice, integrated IT/OT firewall.
After five minutes, she says "I'm in. Do you want me to stir this pot?"
"Step away from the keyboard," she is told. This system controls a large, complex, dangerous physical process. Any unqualified individual "stirring the pot," however briefly, is an unacceptable risk.
Darker lessons
Five minutes. Clearly, we did not take the right lessons from Stuxnet. What should we have learned?
Evolving best practices
The French ANSSI ICS security standards published just last year got all of this right. They outright forbid the use of firewalls to connect certain classes of control networks to untrustworthy corporate networks, and they specifically forbid remote control of critical networks from less-trusted networks. The American NERC CIP V5 standards are moving in this direction as well. Look at their definition of External Routable Connectivity.
Note that these new ICS security best practices are not advocating air gaps; the trend towards increased network connectivity is inexorable. These best practices say two things: use unidirectional security gateways, and use secure tunnels. Unidirectional gateways replicate industrial servers through one-way hardware modules to less-trusted networks, so that corporate users and servers can query the replicas without ever sending any message at all back into protected control networks. The unidirectional hardware is able to send information out of a trusted network into a less-trusted network, but is fundamentally, physically, incapable of sending any message, any bit, or any signal at all back into the trusted network from the less-trusted network.
Secure tunnels connect equally-trusted networks in different geographies. To manage critical networks remotely, the ANSSI standards allow the use of strong VPN tunnels to extend critical networks to the head office. Keep those critical networks separate from less-trusted corporate and other networks at the head office. Connect critical networks and less-trusted networks only via unidirectional gateways, and never through firewalls. Physically and otherwise secure the head-office network extensions of critical networks the same way that those networks are themselves secured at their respective plants. With secure extensions in place, our central experts simply need two computers on their desks: one physically connected to the extended, critical control network, and one to the Internet-exposed corporate network.
Ask the right question
The bright light of "best practice" advice and standards is finally starting to shine into the dark corners of our ICS security programs. Control systems control large, costly, complex physical processes. Any unauthorized operation of these systems, however briefly, risks irreversible damage. Since no site is ever "secure," it is vital that we understand what approaches are still open to our enemies to attack these sensitive systems, including modern remote-control attack techniques. Specifically, to defend the intrinsically "soft" interior of our critical networks, we must be deeply suspicious of every piece of information that enters our network – every USB stick, every laptop, every anti-virus update, and especially every network message.
Best practices are evolving to demand that we simply stop sending messages from probably-compromised corporate networks into our control networks. A decade ago, all we had were firewalls, but today we know better, and best-practice authorities are capturing that knowledge.
Today, we all need to start asking the question, which is becoming the central question for ICS security for the rest of this decade, namely: "which of our employees, our industrial equipment and our industrial plants are expendable enough to protect with only firewalls?"
Andrew Ginter is vice president of industrial security at Waterfall Security Solutions. He has managed the development of commercial products for computer networking, industrial control systems and industrial cyber security for vendors such as Develcon, Agilent Technologies ... View Full Bio

subset: commoncrawl


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Reports from Paris
1. "So"
Since drinking hurt her stitches, it was more out of habit than anything else she still went to the cafe every day at 2. It was the same with alcohol as coffee or tea but at least with that by the third round came the numbness of an internal winter.
The stitches did not effect her beauty as much as she thought but her self consciousness projected her unease outwards and so influenced how people saw her before they quickly looked away.
Anytime the tink-plink Basie notes of the bells hanging over the door announced someone coming in, she went to war with herself, not wanting anyone to join her but also hating that moment of rejection.
I sometimes liked a woman who looked sad or tired and to me, her injuries only enhanced her appeal.
2 o'clock. Children let out of school early for some reason and businessmen in town for a trade show monopolize most of the tables so that people must double down with strangers. I nod with my chin at the empty chair across from her, she shrugs her shoulders and paints the tips of her ears a bright red.
We talk, she likes hearing about how being an artist is nothing like how it is portrayed in the movies. It takes her mind off of her own problems and allows her to laugh softly to herself as she is sure it could not be that bad. The next day even though there are now open tables we sit together again. We dance around me doing her portrait, I am not shy to ask but to have motive misconstrued. We start meeting at my bar instead of the cafe. We set a day for me to do her portrait.
"Do you mind if I bring my boyfriend?"
I did not.
For some reason I always left first wherever we met , it was how she wanted it.
She turned on her stool towards me and squinted for a minute, then crinkled her nose and almost smiled. Her arms were over my shoulders as she went to kiss me goodbye. At the last moment she intentionally shifted so my lips brushed a stitch. I noticed it smelled faintly of ozone and the water in one of the meatier types of oysters as eaten on a warm day accompanied by a cool dry white.
2. "Master"
It was not what the notes that she left me under the statue said that meant anything to me but the long cut she received on her shin while jumping the fence to do so that held currency. she would get that look in her eye and regardless of where we were, roll up the leg of her pants or dress, point to the scab-scar and say:
"Your signature. "
3. Tete de poisson: The Corsage
Walking the fish market w/Louise as they set up. A man originally from Sicily takes a clever to a large tuna. With the first Cleve, blood spurts onto the apron in the shape of one perfect red flower, it is as it has always been. It shows that like his ancestors he knows what he is doing and also a portent of good luck, well, for somebody.
"Will you buy me a flower?"
"I need some coffee."
"Not there, my cousin owns that place."
In one day and a three hour train ride it would be as if I were in a different country.
- Wayne H.W Wolfson 2016


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Eternal Fascism and the Southern IdeologyJeremy Brunger I Society & Culture I Analysis I June 20th, 2015
Umberto Eco's 1995 essay "Ur-Fascism" informally outlines the most striking qualities of fascistic theory and practice. It remains one of the most popular tool-kits for intellectuals in discovering where the barbarity of fascism might once again materialize, for Eco was convinced fascism did not die at the end of the second World War. If there is an "eternal fascism" inherent to Western life, the critical observer must ask: in which groups is it most fostered? Is it limited to bald-headed neo-Nazis manufacturing methamphetamine by moonlight, the poor white lumpenproletariat of godforsaken boondocks, the aged reactionaries of the Mediterranean and the Rhine? To the chagrin of sanity, the evidence suggests otherwise: one can trace the fascist tone to one of the most politically active regions of the United States. The American South features in abundance all the tendencies of proto-fascism, from its enduring historical disadvantage following Reconstruction, reverence for the redemptive firearm and the punitive crucifix, hegemonic tendencies in matters of race and religion, and perhaps most importantly, the affinity for hero-worship. If fascism finds its formal renaissance anywhere in the twenty-first century, it will be in the Southern Ideology, which still mutters vaguely the threat that "the South will rise again," confuses faith in the God of Abraham for the will to power over man, and sees fit to solve its social ills with paranoid gun-toting, capitalist republicanism, and social excommunication rather than the humane critical understanding of the Other.
To begin this analysis of the Southern Ideology, it is necessary to point out that "ideology" is not identical with "culture." Culture is a metaphor quite aptly likened to the situation of a bacterium being cultured in a petri dish; the bacterium can sense nothing other than that substance in which it is being grown, and as such, does not recognize it as anything but a natural, eternal verity. To humanize the metaphor, consider ideology to be the words written on the walls of the petri dish. Then consider these words are inscribed in culture only by those who hold power. As such, all Southerners are not fascists-many, perhaps most, are well-distanced from this theory. The ideology is fostered by, and fosters, those already in power, those not citizens by default but rather citizens by assertion.
Eco's first tenet of "eternal fascism" has it that
The first feature of Ur-Fascism is the cult of tradition. Traditionalism is of course much older than fascism. Not only was it typical of counter-revolutionary Catholic thought after the French revolution, but it was born in the late Hellenistic era, as a reaction to classical Greek rationalism... This new culture had to be syncretistic. Syncretism is not only, as the dictionary says, 'the combination of different forms of belief or practice;' such a combination must tolerate contradictions. Each of the original messages contains a silver of wisdom, and whenever they seem to say different or incompatible things it is only because all are alluding, allegorically, to the same primeval truth. As a consequence, there can be no advancement of learning. Truth has been already spelled out once and for all, and we can only keep interpreting its obscure message.
Such a description no doubt boggles the mind of any native Southerner. Traditionalist conservatism is the dominant political form from Florida to the majority of Appalachia to Tex-Arkana. The reigning political agenda, stemming from the mid-century Republican platform onto the neoconservative administration of former President Bush, sees modernism as something to be defended against, as though the progressive agenda were intimately tied to some imaginary Red Plot. Since the 2000s, the Southern peculiarity has been nationalized. Any politician antagonizing traditional values will not be elected to office; nor will any non-Christian politician survive the culture of criticism pertaining to his religion. Tradition is seen as possessing more utility than mere historical value, while progressiveness and modernism are seen as dangerous attempts to re-instate state socialism. In the familial sphere, the traditional patriarch-submissive wife-obedient children triad still stands dominant, while non-traditional families, like homosexual or poly-amorous families, are seen as undesirable, confused, and confusing. Home ownership is viewed as a key to political participation, with proletarian and other non-propertied classes being relegated to the ideological back-burner. There is no vivid unionization movement, nor political support for the welfare state. In fact, attacking the foundations of the welfare state appears to be one of conservativism's chief weapons in his political arsenal-macroeconomics of the flunking polity is still seen as a microeconomic moral infirmity. All of these developments are seen-once again-as outgrowths of communist subversion dating from the mid-century, or as otherwise foreign intrusions into the classic Southern community. Of course, such forays into the 1950's Golden Age are based on mythological assumptions of communitarian solidarity rather than statistical analysis of real historical social relations, when broken families, impoverished districts, and moral panics defined social life as much in the past as they do in the present. Romantic histories-the gallant South, the mystical Pacific-conceal and apologize for peasant suffering.
The most obvious symptom of this ideological syncretism is the marriage of biblical Christianity and politico-economic conservatism. Especially within the Fundamentalist strain, biblical morality posits that poverty is less a moral problem than a problem in distributive justice; yet the conservative critique of poverty lays its blame on sinful individuals. That the poor ought to be supported by the wealthy does not pass muster in the conservative worldview, no matter how much it thinks itself biblically grounded. Both the communism of the early Christians and the socialism of nineteenth-century Christianity are cast aside in pursuing Christian capitalism (a distinctly twentieth-century phenomenon). These contradictions stand to Eco's reason-truths are not dialectical and do not come from debate, but rather are found in sola scriptura biblical exegesis of a characteristically conservative pattern. It does not matter that state welfare programs are categorically more effective than church services in alleviating local working-class poverty: it only matters, for the Southern conservative, that state intervention is destructive by definition. Compelling comparisons might be made of historical feudal social relations to the Third Estate and the modern status of poverty in the South, given that nobility and the clerical class-when not engaged in class warfare-saw themselves as sole paternal caregivers to the poor. Limited-government ideologies proliferate, insisting the government is not designed to care for the well-being of its people in the aggregate, but rather to bolster and maintain the property relations of its upper class and maintain their singular dominance in the most impoverished region of the country: the sprawling hills and mountains of the South.
Eco continues his critique, saying that
Traditionalism implies the rejection of modernism. Both Fascists and Nazis worshiped technology, while traditionalist thinkers usually reject it as a negation of traditional spiritual values. However, even though Nazism was proud of its industrial achievements, its praise of modernism was only the surface of an ideology based upon Blood and Earth (Blut und Boden). The rejection of the modern world was disguised as a rebuttal of the capitalistic way of life, but it mainly concerned the rejection of the Spirit of 1789 (and of 1776, of course). The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.
While there is not a proper anti-technology movement in the South per se, there is a pervasive climate of anti-intellectualism and anti-scientism, as foremost expressed in the popular disagreement with the neo-Darwinian synthesis. In fact, Tennessee is home to the most aggressive anti-evolution movement of the twentieth century, while Texas is home to the most vocal opponents of the theory of environmental decline as a result of industrial activity. Darwinian-derived evolution, environmental concern, and the more worrying insights of sociology are all seen as species of false consciousness-with some even going so far as to label environmentalism a Marxist invention. The Southern Ideology forgets that, once upon a time, the parsons and the preachers were the only men of letters to be found. Beyond this, the traditionalist identification of self with land is a strong cultural current throughout the rural areas of the region, along with its inevitable accompaniment of xenophobic racism. The homeland institution wars with the anonymous drifters of the city-culture. Given that historical fascism did not, in practice, limit the excesses of capitalism, but merely aimed its roaring engine to the benefit of the state, Eco's position that fascism was not co-incident with capitalism is faulty. Nevertheless, Southern republicanism allies itself wherever possible with high capital, even if it is to the detriment of its population. From its tourist towns to its metropolises, Southern governments support capitalism enthusiastically-usually in the form of importing business for the exploitation of its cheap, half-educated labor force. The irrational practices of racism, patriarchal social relations, and misinterpreted biblical religion all link the American South to Eco's understanding of eternal fascism: just consider the Rebel Flag, a militant relic of the Civil War and reified symbol of slave republicanism, and then consider the tilted swastika of the Germano-fascist regime. The only difference is one can still see the Rebel Flag touted through township and city, pasted on university dorm walls and tattooed on shoulder blades, flashing the ancient petulance in the public eye. The Southern proletarians who exhibit this rebellion live in cramped living quarters even while supporting their betters; in mistaking the cause of the misery in multicultural initiatives and liberal movements toward equality, the poorest in the region bolster the social positions of their real oppressors and universalize squalor among their young in a nationalist delusion.
In discussing fascistic disdain for the intellectual in society, Eco writes
Irrationalism also depends on the cult of action for action's sake. Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation. Therefore culture is suspect insofar as it is identified with critical attitudes. Distrust of the intellectual world has always been a symptom of Ur-Fascism, from Goering's alleged statement ('When I hear talk of culture I reach for my gun') to the frequent use of such expressions as 'degenerate intellectuals,' 'eggheads,' 'effete snobs,' 'universities are a nest of reds.' The official Fascist intellectuals were mainly engaged in attacking modern culture and the liberal intelligentsia for having betrayed traditional values.
There is, perhaps, no better characterization of Southern culture than Eco's description of fascism here. Southern culture is largely heteronormative, and given that it has only recently industrialized since the 1970's, it is still largely based on reproducing social relations based on athletics rather than intellect. In an economy of pure muscle, this survival might be understood as once having value; but in an Information Age economy that values thought-work over grunt-work, it has little practical utility beyond willing wage-slavery. Right-wing media is popular in the South, with its usual targets of the "liberal intelligentsia," the secular university, racial minorities, and the specter of communism issuing from all of the above. Masculinity is viewed as an end in itself, with all deviations therefrom being devalued or derided. Military culture, the chief characteristic of fascist social life, is prevalent-given that much of America's standing army comes from the South, due in part to there being little opportunity for lower-middle class youth to establish a future, this is not surprising. Post-WWI German fascism came to prominence after Germany began to feel itself existentially and economically threatened after the Treaty of Versailles ruined its national vitality. Given that the South remains an economic under-achiever in the domestic arena, and that culturally it is seen as subordinate to the general Northern zeitgeist (Southern English is not standard, but is rather a basilect which hopeful emigrants quickly learn to forget), it is not surprising that, in their discourses, Southern ideologues and fascist ideologues sound startlingly similar in their aims and rhetoric. Social science dare not enter.
Eco, discussing the value of critical theory, continues:
No syncretistic faith can withstand analytical criticism. The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge. For Ur-Fascism, disagreement is treason.
What better description of fundamentalist religion and socially-embedded opposition to scientific inquiry? In questioning the reigning dogmas of capitalist competition, anti-welfare government, and the nuclear family, the Southern activist is instantly marginalized or linked to the boogeyman of socialism. In the sphere of political theory, criticizing the marriage of conservatism and an essentially socialistic religion-a contradiction in terms-is sure to paint the critic as an uninformed, ahistorical dissenter. But analyzing the surface of Southern culture's conservatism by relating to its rather proletarian past reveals it to be what it is: a logical paradox unsupportable by thinking people. The philosophic tendency subordinates to the religious tendency, if not for intellectual value, then for mere social utility-Southern Christianity is a shibboleth, and as such, an entryway into power that defies the very foundations of the faith it cynically uses. The original Christians were outcasts from Roman hegemony, poor and diseased, marginal and pathetic. They were mytho-revolutionaries, not conservatives; at any rate, the early Church was awash in heresy and doctrinal battles, not unified in theoria. In the South, the only "liberation theology" extant is a variation on right-wing anarchism, while the general religion preaches the long-outdated theme of obedience. As roving bands of cash-poor Christians addicted to the fetishism of authority flock and flit from one city to the next hoping for a better turn of fate, they are categorically denied by Christians who pay their property taxes, sent to live in downtown wastelands and fret the police whose patience grows as dim as their hope for this life. Religion disintegrates when actually confronted with the moral dilemmas for which it was designed. Even the bigger cities have the small-town feel of isolation, the distinct impression their denizens have not yet left the outer bounds, and catercorner to every liquor store there are two churches which deliver much the same.
Besides, disagreement is a sign of diversity. Ur-Fascism grows up and seeks for consensus by exploiting and exacerbating the natural fear of difference. The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.
The Southern syncretism is globally renowned for its pathological racism. Nineteenth-century theories of racialism are still common currency in the South, as is the lay understanding of racial essentialism. Families still see fit to bar their young from interracial dating and marriage, and whiteness, as a social fact, is still viewed as a supreme value. The typical habit of denouncing foreign influences, especially with immigrant Mexican labor, melds comfortably with the denunciation of models of sexual difference. Homosexuality is mistaken for an incarnation of "Hollywood Values" rather than a natural human phenomenon and is beaten or prayed away. Diversity and the Rawlsian difference principle, in general, are decried as liberal intrusions into a primordial white capitalist paradise founded not in actual history but in the pseudo-historical imagination. Even as municipal services decline in breadth and quality, Southerners worry more of an incoming horde of Babel, a Brown Plague come to undo their immemorial caste system and expand their multicultural nightmare. Race-horror is more prevalent than the horror of war, which is why they support the second by decrying the first. In exclaiming the virtues of First World aristocratic philosophy, Southern thought closes in on itself, and ignores how much of the region resembles the underdeveloped world when exposed to realist scrutiny unsympathetic to the romance of white property.
The fascist impulse owes its prevalence to Eco's next observation:
Ur-Fascism derives from individual or social frustration. That is why one of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups. In our time, when the old "proletarians" are becoming petty bourgeois (and the lumpen are largely excluded from the political scene), the fascism of tomorrow will find its audience in this new majority.
In Germany and Italy, fascism was specifically a lower-middle class development. Fundamentalist Christianity and institutional racism do not find much expression in the Southern lower class, which tends to have more divergent religious views and more tolerant views on interracial marriage; rather, the Southern parallels to fascism find their most vocal expressions in its middle class. Especially since the financial crisis of 2007-08, the Southern middle class has returned to a thorough-going religious atmosphere centering on the family and private property, racial rhetoric is abundant even now as President Obama nears the end of his second term in office, and the decrying of socialistic policies (which are actually centrist policies according to the global political spectrum) rallies in the popular domain. Rather than recognizing that middle-class precarity depends on corporate malpractice and right-wing government, the Southern middle class understands only that it is endangered, and so sees fit to vent its worries on its classic targets: those who are different. Economic difficulties are due to the black president's corruption, not an essentially unstable national-economic way of life, just as threats to culture are due to outside influences rather than internal contradictions. To study these contradictions is to incite the charge of red-baited communism, even as accusers forget who first coined the term of their beloved capitalism. Dr. Martin Luther King was murdered in the same state that gave birth to the Klan for preaching that both the white man and the black man were exploited in common. Even in the university towns, ten-story tall crucifixes dot Alpine highways in robust mimesis of the theocratic pretension as symbols wholly antithetical to King's message: they signify authority, not inquiry.
In an era of social disruption and economic change-when "all that is solid melts into air"-the eternal fascism finds its home. Eco writes
To people who feel deprived of a clear social identity, Ur-Fascism says that their only privilege is the most common one, to be born in the same country. This is the origin of nationalism. Besides, the only ones who can provide an identity to the nation are its enemies. Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged. The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia. But the plot must also come from the inside: Jews are usually the best target because they have the advantage of being at the same time inside and outside. In the U.S., a prominent instance of the plot obsession is to be found in Pat Robertson's The New World Order, but, as we have recently seen, there are many others.
America is no longer a white, protestant, wealthy country; those who do fall into this category, having their social identity threatened by a changing cultural climate, seek more and more intensive ideologies with which to understand the world. The politics of the American South are, still, overwhelmingly white and protestant, but many of its subjects are not. The misattribution of this change to recent developments rather than diversifying historical currents-in the Melting Pot era, the whiteness of Irish immigrants was not yet an established social fact, but became one over time-reveals that historical ignorance is one of the many vices of dominant Southern culture. The vague idea that some obscure subculture is constantly threatening American virtues (ISIS, crypto-Marxist senators, "the Left Coasts") routinely crops up in Southern discourse, even as poverty and under-employment grows within the Southern states due to its inherent infrastructural and social deficits. Instead of Jews, Southern discourse focuses on the plots of racial, sexual, and religious minorities from nearby and abroad. In offloading responsibility to outlanders, the Southern status quo is maintained in all its contradictions.
The Southern Ideology expresses the contradiction between its opponents, its leaders, and the people who subscribe to it:
The followers must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies. When I was a boy I was taught to think of Englishmen as the five-meal people. They ate more frequently than the poor but sober Italians. Jews are rich and help each other through a secret web of mutual assistance. However, the followers must be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak. Fascist governments are condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the enemy.
Southern discourse is pro-capitalist, but its adherents are more often than not in poverty themselves. Rather than distrusting their better-off superiors, however, the Southern conservative poor prefer to distrust East Coast liberals as symbols of wealth-a perversion of what wealth is for, the establishment of a family, or for wealth stolen through socialistic redistribution. The rhetoric of "Wall Street versus Main Street" is a populist example of this (Tea Party on the right, Occupy on the left), but the emphasis tends to lie on the idea that Main Street represents a social minority, when in fact it does not. Most Americans either live or aspire to live middle-class lifestyles, and most government attention is paid to this group, with the rest looking out for the interests of high capital and the limited interests of the working poor. Imagining that they are persecuted lends their ideology credence, given the current zeitgeist of identity politics (replacing proletarians and women with white Christian patriarchs in a muddled, illogical algebra of oppression); but they are, in reality, no more persecuted than normal people ever have been. Actual minorities have vocal defense groups defending their interests against normative onslaughts, and sensing that their own group lacks this special defense, the white Southern middle class invents one for the sickly purpose of special pleading. The idea that there is a cultural war against their lifestyle is preposterous, but leading media outlets, like Fox News, continue to insist that the typical American way of life is under threat from non-white queer Bolsheviki. Of course, the only threat to this lifestyle is the capitalist economic model it itself supports, and the rudderless antinomies the Southern Ideology preserves.
In fact, Southern political culture is rather Hobbesian in the most alarming sense of the word:
For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle. Thus pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. It is bad because life is permanent warfare. This, however, brings about an Armageddon complex. Since enemies have to be defeated, there must be a final battle, after which the movement will have control of the world. But such a "final solution" implies a further era of peace, a Golden Age, which contradicts the principle of permanent war. No fascist leader has ever succeeded in solving this predicament.
In "right-to-work" states, employment is seen as a privilege rather than a right or a mere path to survival, and welfare assistance is seen as a deep taboo suggesting moral incompetence. The South overwhelmingly supported the Iraq War-elements of racism and Islamophobia aside-in the most jingoistic manner possible. Neoconservative policy has as its direct and stated aim that "democracy," an abstraction, ought to be violently spread throughout the whole world. This teleological end to history, once seen in the Jacobinite-Hegelian view of the French Revolution, finds its next expression in the economic policies of globalization, by which Washingtonian economic models are assumed to work in disparate economies the world over. In short, America assumes it holds the key to global problems, and sets itself up to manage them. The most vocal applause for these globalist efforts resound from the militaristic South which, despite its native diversity, cannot imagine a world that operates according to social laws different than its own. Southern thought-leaders preach that leftism is a conspiracy theory even as they scour the doctrines of the holy book of the West's very first conspiracy theory.
In any society with vast economic divides between rich and poor, Eco suggests the eternal fascism can erupt once again in elitist terms that deride elitism:
Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology, insofar as it is fundamentally aristocratic, and aristocratic and militaristic elitism cruelly implies contempt for the weak. Ur-Fascism can only advocate a popular elitism. Every citizen belongs to the best people of the world, the members of the party are the best among the citizens, every citizen can (or ought to) become a member of the party. But there cannot be patricians without plebeians. In fact, the Leader, knowing that his power was not delegated to him democratically but was conquered by force, also knows that his force is based upon the weakness of the masses; they are so weak as to need and deserve a ruler. Since the group is hierarchically organized (according to a military model), every subordinate leader despises his own underlings, and each of them despises his inferiors. This reinforces the sense of mass elitism.
The Southern elite are, of course, the white propertied class that views all others as inferior and subordinate-hardly worth the political time, in fact. Even where this fails, Southerners take up the mantle of nationalism: "America is the best country in the world." It isn't the best country in the world by any statistical analysis, but such mythologies are common to fascistic ideologies. When not serving in the military, they serve in intensive capitalist industries (which themselves feature militaristic labor hierarchies) that bolster their notions that everyone has a place in society. In this respect the tone turns to Calvinism, and the moral realism of poverty, for those who fail to succeed in the capitalist environment, comes to the ascendant. No scientific critique of economic failure is allowed. Only criticism of moral failure is sanctioned-and thus to be poor is to become un-American. The mid-level employee, glad to have a job, detests the entry-level employee, as though the mid-level were any less an existential penalty. Below them all exist the unemployed and under-employed who rarely even make blips on the political radar except to remind the wealthy there are barbarians concerned only with use-value circling the borders.
Eco presses on one of his most salient points about everyday heroism next:
In such a perspective everybody is educated to become a hero. In every mythology the hero is an exceptional being, but in Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death. It is not by chance that a motto of the Falangists was Viva la Muerte (in English it should be translated as "Long Live Death!"). In non-fascist societies, the lay public is told that death is unpleasant but must be faced with dignity; believers are told that it is the painful way to reach a supernatural happiness. By contrast, the Ur-Fascist hero craves heroic death, advertised as the best reward for a heroic life. The Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death.
American popular culture is unequivocally heroic. The most successful films in its canon feature violent farces in which the white male hero vanquishes the egghead evil genius, or the syndicalist Soviet forces, or the alien (cargo-cultish immigrant) machinations of foreign powers. The hero looks like the typical viewer of these films: white males who want to be heroes. Since the world is not a fantasy, however, these children later grow up to think of the world in embattled terms of nation and enemy, Manichean reckonings of good and evil, gun-violence and double-standard law and order. The educational system grades students according to a hierarchical ability to integrate into capitalism, graduating top-ten heroes directly into the workforce and the rest into the welfare offices. Beyond education lies the whole sports industry-football has a monolithic presence in the South, with its university teams commanding higher budgets than entire academic departments combined-in which a few gladiators, selected from among the hoi polloi, are paraded in shows of athletic feat to audiences struggling at home for the means of subsistence. The collective struggle for existence becomes the individual struggle for existence against others-who this is, it matters not, so long as there are heroes and enemies to be fought. Behind all this lies a well-spring of nihilism that disallows the everyman to merely exist and be comfortable. The American way ensures that one is always fighting, whether people or their causes, oneself or some outsider figure dreamed up in the paranoid imagination of an Old Testament demagogue. This is a general product of the American monoculture, but it finds more grizzly embodiment in the South: anti-muslim sentiment mingles with anti-secular sentiments as some twin conspiracy from beyond the national borders in a nation that was, according to the conservative myth, founded on Christo-propertarian values. Once the culture war dissipates, the military absorbs and recruits them all: long live death.
Next, Eco focuses on the culture of uber-masculinity:
Since both permanent war and heroism are difficult games to play, the Ur-Fascist transfers his will to power to sexual matters. This is the origin of machismo (which implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality). Since even sex is a difficult game to play, the Ur-Fascist hero tends to play with weapons - doing so becomes an ersatz phallic exercise.
Southern patriarchy is the norm, with non-patriarchal families being relegated to the cultural shadows, about which popular culture frightfully whispers. The overwhelming popular distaste for homosexuality in general, and especially the idea of gay-led families, speaks to the value the South places on masculinity taken to excess. A man is not his job, since most jobs there (retail, auto, maintenance, construction) are dismal: he is his sexual prowess, he is the distance between himself and the feminine. Gun culture is a massive feature of its everyday life, from its legal rulings (guns being allowed in high schools and grocery stores) to its tragedies (children shooting themselves with their parents' handguns). Gunslinging plays as large a role in Southern culture as the consumption of literature might play in other parts of the world-they are the regional past-time, taken as an extension of innocence from home protection to gift-giving. Of course, this is due in part to the crime endemic to the region's cities (caused, in turn, by poverty and political corruption) and in part to the practice of hunting in the rural hinterlands. It is not an uncommon rite of passage for a father to take his son to the shooting range, or indeed, even his daughter, for the paranoiac social climate co-extends in equal measures. The odd one out is the person who sues; the gunslinger mythos becomes universal as the South achieves an antic matrimony of the Nazarene with Sade.
Eco highlights a distinction between democratic practice and republican practice by examining the politico-theology of eternal fascism:
Ur-Fascism is based upon a selective populism, a qualitative populism, one might say. In a democracy, the citizens have individual rights, but the citizens in their entirety have a political impact only from a quantitative point of view - one follows the decisions of the majority. For Ur-Fascism, however, individuals as individuals have no rights, and the People is conceived as a quality, a monolithic entity expressing the Common Will. Since no large quantity of human beings can have a common will, the Leader pretends to be their interpreter. Having lost their power of delegation, citizens do not act; they are only called on to play the role of the People. Thus the People is only a theatrical fiction. To have a good instance of qualitative populism we no longer need the Piazza Venezia in Rome or the Nuremberg Stadium. There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.
The South is not a democratic region-it prefers to elect republican elements, which, by nature, do not much defer to their Rousseauvian demos. The "common will" is filtered through popular right-wing media and deflected against actual parliamentary practice. It is a noted eccentricity that, in the South, elections are decided in the churches. Its populism is one which ignores the secular history of American politics and instead focuses on its religious fringe. No matter that most people do not want a President who decides which war to wage according to his prayers, or the scattering of tea-leaves in his breakfast cup-it only matters if the religious majority thinks it right. Right-wing pulpits condemn minority lifestyles as being non-religious, and therefore non-political. They ask: what use does vox Dei have for the vox populi of the poor, or homosexuals, or immigrants? The fictive majority aligns itself with God and his exact prescriptions, leaving the deviants to the shadows of civilization. Horse-mouthed small business owners refer to their own neighbors as trash as their own children sink into hedonism; unread, uncouth mercenaries of capital pretend to culture even as they skirt Mosaic law and condemn the universities that wouldn't accept them. Patriarchal ontology has not yet been dismantled by the last stages of the Enlightenment: married man is below God, below him married woman, below him the offspring. The dreadful rest may do as they please provided they do not hog the political platform or scrounge from the public trough-that is for "people who deserve it," which is everyone, not the people who apply. The private narrative of one alone being deserving of civilization's benefits, and all others being thieving parasites, speaks to the Southern citizen's identification with a personal God: they bear the burden of civilization and suffer for it so that the sinners may frolic with their grotesque families in abiding narcosis. They pay no heed to the actual aggregate population; only certain of its members have a say in the community, while the rest are rabble, even when the rabble outnumber them. To the rest of the country, the highest Southern citizen casts a pale lot in a contest against their lowest citizen-a king of the hill complex-but when one lives ascendant in the New Feudalism, surrounded by stranded and illiterate people desperate even for day labor, such comparisons little matter.
Eco ends his list on an Orwellian note:
Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak. Newspeak was invented by Orwell, in 1984, as the official language of Ingsoc, English Socialism. But elements of Ur-Fascism are common to different forms of dictatorship. All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning. But we must be ready to identify other kinds of Newspeak, even if they take the apparently innocent form of a popular talk show.
It does not take the reader long to glance through school textbooks in the South to note glaring inconsistencies, or worse yet, the home-school textbooks purveyed by its religiously-inclined companies. The lack of educational attainment in the South is nothing short of depressing, from illiteracy rates being the highest in the country (excluding immigrants who do not speak English), statistics concerning how many books households with children have (few to none), to cultural disrespect for intellectual endeavor (book-smarts are devalued as effete, while street-smarts are encouraged as masculine even in a world that has passed these values by). In fact, the Southern educational sector is the worst performing sector in the country by any relevant means of analysis. The Southern economy does not need many thinkers: otherwise, its factories would idle into rust. As for Newspeak, only the eternal fascist could think "democracy" means "American hegemony" or that "the land of the free" means "the Christian dominion." Pertaining to Eco's final remark-"even if they take the apparently innocent form of a popular talk show"-who is not reminded of Fox News, the radio butcheries of Rush Limbaugh, or the slew of political candidates wielding God and corruption with the same hand, whose respective audiences enthusiastically outnumber the populations of entire states?
The greatest misfortune of the Southern Ideology is that Southerners themselves suffer for it. By misplacing the blame for systemic poverty on communist specters and liberal spooks, Southern politicos impoverish their own constituents-both those who consent and those who dissent. By insisting on racist practices, unavowed but extant, white Southerners learn to distrust their own black neighbors while praising the capitalists who rent and exploit them both. In the middle of this dramatic race-to-the-bottom are children who, with under-funded educations, can expect little in the way of an agreeable future beyond the workhouse or the charities of church. Fascism by another name is not just a topic for punditry. Real, living people think and speak in its terms without the slightest idea of their affinity with the twentieth-century's darkest movement. The will to fascism, masquerading as the Southern Ideology, stands to benefit only a very select milieu of the region's population. Beyond these elect, it has such abundant victims they either live their lives in isolation or become finally convinced they must flee the South rather than fix it: because, they think, there is no fixing it. To the detriment of all concerned, reactionaries and regressives provoke this exodus with all too human satisfaction, as the project of Enlightenment moves first to dusk and concludes in night, suspending the somber South in the medieval gloom it deserves.


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Attractive, lively and equally dramatic is the atmosphere of the last football match between Oristar Corporation and Thyssenkrupp Materials Vietnam took place on Friday, September 9th, 2016. Attending the match includes 02 teams and have a lot of fans as the employees of both units.
With the aim of tightening the relationship between two companies active in the same field of metal in Vietnam, while uplifting sports spirit, physical training and solidarity of the staffs, the players have devoted to audiences shiny, attractive scenes and chasing the score between two teams.
The success of this friendly game is obviously the enthusiastic cheers of the entire staffs of the two units and moreover is the organization, the interest of the leaders's two parties. Thereby, be found all staffs have had moments of entertainment, creating comfortable spirit after stressful working hours. Football match has created a healthy playground, rewarding, uplifting spirit for staffs.


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Mobility affects everyone and RCTC is the agency we turn to in Riverside County for transportation solutions that support our quality of life and our region's economy.
Getting to work and school or delivering goods and services may seem like simple daily activities but sometimes the routes we travel take decades of planning and hundreds of millions of dollars to implement. Since 1976, when RCTC was created by the state legislature, local voices have had an important and critical role in deciding our transportation future.
In 1988, RCTC proposed a half-cent sales tax for transportation, Measure A. When 78.9% of voters approved the 20-year plan, RCTC became the agency charged with making sure the mobility improvements voters wanted became a reality. In 2002, voters approved an extension of Measure A until 2039.
Today RCTC plans and implements transportation and transit improvements, assists local governments with money for local streets and roads, helps smooth the way for commuters and goods movement, and ensures that everyone has access to transportation.
RCTC is governed by a 34 member Commission that includes a mayor or council member from each of Riverside County's cities, all five members of the Board of Supervisors, and a non-voting appointee of the Governor.
Today, in addition to Measure A revenues, RCTC also allocates state and federal transportation funds in Riverside County and plans and implements region-wide projects funded under the Transportation Uniform Mitigation Fee (TUMF), a fee paid by new development to mitigate new transportation demands caused by growth.
As a public agency, RCTC's financial operations are fully disclosed, including financial practices and investment policies, which are reflected in its comprehensive financial documents including the fiscal year budget and annual financial report.


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Bee Gees star Robin Gibb has said he is making a "spectacular" recovery from cancer and that he is feeling "fantastic".
The 62-year-old has been having chemotherapy for the disease as well as trying to overcome a bowel condition.
His increasingly gaunt appearance had prompted press speculation that he was close to death.
But the singer told BBC Radio 2 on Friday that he was feeling better than he had for more than a decade.
"The prognosis is that it's almost gone and I feel fantastic and really from now on it's just what they could describe as a 'mopping-up' operation," he said.
"I am very active and my sense of well-being is good."
The singer also said reports about the nature of his cancer had been conjecture.
"I mean the fact is, I've never spoken to anybody about my condition or the condition that I was in and a lot of them go over the top to the point where they're telling me things that I didn't even know about myself."
In January his spokesman said the singer had been having chemotherapy, and Gibb confirmed on Friday that he had been diagnosed with a growth in his colon.
"Well, it's all simple. I was diagnosed with a growth in my colon. It was removed. And I've been treated for that by a brilliant doctor, and in their own words 'the results have been spectacular'."
Emergency surgery
In April last year, Gibb was forced to pull out of series of shows in Brazil after he was taken to a British hospital with abdominal pains.
In 2010 Gibb also had health problems, which also led him to cancel a series of scheduled public appearances and spend time in hospital.
He went on to have emergency surgery for a blocked intestine. He had been performing in Belgium when he began to have stomach pains. The surgery resulted in the singer having part of his intestine removed.
His twin brother Maurice died in 2003 due to complications from a twisted intestine.
Gibb told Radio 2 that his recovery since falling ill last year had amazed the medical staff who have been treating him.
"They said 'What are you doing that we don't know about?' and I said I'm not doing anything and in fact I haven't taken a single tablet.
"I feel better than I did 10 years ago. I'm active, my appetite's fantastic, the plumbing is all in perfect working order.
"If I had a choice about how I'd like to feel for the rest of my life, this would be it. If I wanted to tick all the right boxes about sense of well-being, it would be now. This is the way I'd like to feel. I don't know how I could feel any better."
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Gibb is soon to make his classical debut with the release of an album about the sinking of the Titanic.
He has collaborated with his son, RJ, on The Titanic Requiem to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the disaster.
He will lead a concert performance of the album on 10 April, exactly 100 years after the Titanic set sail.
Gibb's requiem is played by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and features the RSVP Voices Choir, in addition to vocals from tenor Mario Frangoulis and British choirgirl Isabel Suckling.
One of the pieces, Don't Cry Alone, also features Gibb's first studio performance since last year's charity single I've Gotta Get A Message To You.
The requiem is not the star's first collaboration with his son RJ (Robin-John).
The duo recorded a song for independent vampire film Blood Type - The Search in 2009, in which RJ also had an acting role.


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Learn about Buddhism and non-violence. Prompt discussion about religion and government.
Keywords: Emperor Ashoka, national symbols, Buddhism, edicts, Maurya, Mauryan Empire, Brahmi Script, dhamma, dharma, Jataka tales, world history, giant empires, religion, non-violence, religion and government, social justice, human rights
Emperor Ashoka (304-232 BCE) was the third king of the Maurya Dynasty. He ruled a truly massive kingdom that stretched from the Hindu Kush to the Bay of Bengal. It was India's first great empire. It is not just that Ashoka ably ruled this huge empire but the quality of social justice that he brought to his already strong administration.
Remorseful after his bloody campaign and conquest of Kalinga, Ashoka embraced Buddhism. Thereafter reverence for life, tolerance, compassion and peaceful co-existence were the cornerstones of his administration. Under him the earliest know bans on slavery and capital punishment as well as environmental regulations came into place.
Extract from the NCERT Text Book "Our Pasts – I", Chapter 8: Ashoka, The Emperor Who Gave Up War
The most famous Mauryan ruler was Ashoka. He was the first ruler who tried to take his message to the people through inscriptions. Most of Ashoka's inscriptions were in Prakrit and were written in the Brahmi script. They were carved on massive stone pillars and tablets.
The Brahmi script.
Most modern Indian scripts have developed from the Brahmi script over hundreds of years. Here you can see the letter 'a' written in different scripts.
Kalinga is the ancient name of coastal Orissa (see Map 5, page 76). Ashoka fought a war to conquer Kalinga. However, he was so horrified when he saw the violence and bloodshed that he decided not to fight any more wars. He is the only king in the history of the world who gave up conquest after winning a war.
Ashoka's inscription describing the Kalinga war
This is what Ashoka declared in one of his inscriptions:
"Eight years after becoming king I conquered Kalinga.
About a lakh and a half people were captured. And more than a lakh of people were killed.
This filled me with sorrow. Why?
Whenever an independent land is conquered, lakhs of people die, and many are taken prisoner. Brahmins and monks also die.
People who are kind to their relatives and friends, to their slaves and servants die, or lose their loved ones.
That is why I am sad, and have decided to observe dhamma, and to teach others about it as well.
I believe that winning people over through dhamma is much better than conquering them through force.
I am inscribing this message for the future, so that my son and grandson after me should not think about war.
Instead, they should try to think about how to spread dhamma."
('Dhamma' is the Prakrit word for the Sanskrit term 'Dharma').
What was Ashoka's dhamma?
Ashoka's dhamma did not involve worship of a god, or performance of a sacrifice. He felt that just as a father tries to teach his children, he had a duty to instruct his subjects.
He was inspired by the teachings of the Buddha
There were a number of problems that troubled him. People in the empire followed different religions, and this sometimes led to conflict. Animals were sacrificed. Slaves and servants were ill treated. Besides, there were quarrels in families and amongst neighbors. Ashoka felt it was his duty to solve these problems. So, he appointed officials, known as the dhamma mahamatta who went from place to place teaching people about dhamma. Besides, Ashoka got his messages inscribed on rocks and pillars, instructing his officials to read his message to those who could not read it themselves. Ashoka also sent messengers to spread ideas about dhamma to other lands, such as Syria, Egypt, Greece and Sri Lanka. He built roads, dug wells, and built rest houses. Besides, he arranged for medical treatment for both human beings and animals.
Complete texts of the 14 rock edicts that have been found:
http://whc.unesco.org/pg.cfm?cid=31&id_site=524 Buddhist Monuments at Sanchi – Video is especially nice! Interactive maps and immersive 360degree images.
Updated March 2011


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Maya 8 Character Modeling (Wordware Applications Library)
Publisher: Jones & Bartlett Publishers | ISBN: 1598220209 | edition 2006 | PDF | 505 pages | 12,7 mb
Publisher: Jones & Bartlett Publishers | ISBN: 1598220209 | edition 2006 | PDF | 505 pages | 12,7 mb
Maya 8 Character Modeling takes a unique approach to modeling as it breaks down character creation using an easy-to-follow formula that makes the learning process less daunting. The author presents an overview of modeling basics and then shows how to block out the body, shape body parts, add details, and create joints and controls using Maya 8. By the time you ve finished the book, you ll have created a figure that is textured, rigged, and ready to be animated. With this book: Understand the building blocks of modeling, including quads, edge loops, normals, UVs, and mapping. Discover how modeling by formula eases the character creation process. Find out how to create a UV layout that makes texturing easier. Learn how to place joints and controls and skin your character so it deforms properly when animated. Companion CD included with the images from the book, Maya files to help build the character, AVI movies that show the modeling process in real time, and Mel scripts for installing a character modeling tool menu that can improve the user s workflow!


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2016 marks the end of some of the most long-lasting names and devices in the technology world. We sadly mark the passing of:
- Motorola: The company has had problems in the past several years, was sold twice, and as of 2016, the name no longer exists. Motorola had a long run, having invented the car radio (Hence the name), in 1930, then quickly moving on to the first walkie-talkie in 1940, the car phone in 1946, and the first commercial cell phone in 1983. They also, incidentally, provided the radio gear that allowed NASA astronauts to communicate from the Moon.
- iPhone headphone jack: Probably in order to make their phones thinner, sleeker, lighter, and trendier, Apple has in their infinite wisdom eliminated the headphone jack from the latest iPhone, leaving users with no choice other than Bluetooth headphones, which cost a lot more and are not nearly as idiot-proof as wired headphones. Sigh.
- Samsung Galaxy Note 7: Marketing a product that spontaneously catches fire is not too good for business, but, again, it has a lot to do with making products that emphasize trendiness over usability. If only the Galaxy Note 7 had a removable battery (A feature I insist upon in a phone), the problem could have been taken care of much more easily. But removable batteries make the phone thicker, heavier, and not quite so "cool," so they're out.
- VCRs: It took 50 years, but they finally managed to kill the VCR. I pity all those folks with stuff on videotape that isn't, and never will be, available on DVD.
- Hoverboards: Cheap Chinese quality control and Lithium-Ion batteries don't mix well, especially at the bleeding edge of battery capacity, when they have to be made thinner and with tighter tolerances than ever before. See Samsung Galaxy Note 7.
- Google Picasa: My all-time favorite photo organizing program. The good news is, it still works, if you already have it; it just won't be updated or downloaded anymore.
Well, there you have it. We'll just have to struggle along somehow without these icons of the technology world.
Visit my Store for cool gifts and gadgets
For even more empowering technology info, read my new book, "Deciphering the 21st Century," Available now!
Click here to read all about it.
I'd love to hear your comments!


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- Residence: Winnipeg, MB
- Occupation: Recovering Quadriplegic, Certified Personal Trainer, Motivator
- Height: 6'4"
- Weight: Contest: 215 lbs.
Follow Shane on:
The 2016 MABBA Provincial Bodybuilding Championships was described as one of the toughest fields in years, and yet you'd never know that just a short time ago, one of these contestants couldn't even sit up straight without the help of three physiotherapists. And yet there he was, standing in front of the cheering crowd, hitting a front double biceps pose with a smile on his face that would make Arnold Schwarzenegger look depressed by comparison. No, he didn't win first. In fact, he finished dead last. But he accomplished something that in 2013, medical experts would have never given him a chance to do.
Rewind a bit to 2013. It's August – a beautiful summer day in Manitoba, Canada. Imagine being in the prime of your life. You're strong, healthy, happy – ready to take on anything. And then in a moment, imagine it's all gone, snatched away in the blink of an eye.
That's what happened to Shane Dyck. On August 27, 2013, a seemingly innocuous motorcycle ride changed the life of this Canadian bodybuilder forever, after he crashed headfirst into a cement planter.
"I had life-threatening injuries," says Shane. "I was in a semi-comatose state, opening my eyes briefly to see family and friends crying by my bedside and not understanding why they were there . . . or why I was even in a hospital bed. Once I was finally awake and trying to comprehend what happened, I realized my worst nightmare had come to reality. I was paralyzed from the neck down, broke numerous bones, punctured both of my lungs, lost 5 litres of blood, lost 70 pounds of bodyweight, had my whole spine fused with 4 rods and 22 bolts running down each side of my spine, and was given less than a 1% chance to walk again."
In fact, for a short time, the outlook was even more dire than just losing the ability to walk. The medical team was letting all of his family and friends in the emergency room because they thought that Shane could die at any moment.
It took a week for Shane to learn how to simply breathe again, forced to undergo the pain of having the breathing tube taken out just to see if he could take breaths on his own. Once he conquered that obstacle, he was forced to endure the agony of not being able to move – a once strong athlete forced to stare at the wall for hours at a time until a nurse could change his position so he could look at the other side of the same room.
"There were many nights of constant crying, deep depression and honestly wishing I didn't live through my accident," he says.
Progress was slow and painful. First, after weeks of lying horizontally, Shane worked his way up to 30 minutes of sitting upright. Then it was time to use a tilt wheelchair to get him out of the bed.
"I finally got the tubes removed from my body and had no attachments other than a triple-lined pick that was in my chest," says Shane. "I had 10-minute physiotherapy sessions in my room to start off. Trying to wiggle my toes and move my fingers. I gradually moved from in-bed sessions to the rehab gym, where I met my physiotherapist, Kevin. The first couple weeks we worked on my core because I couldn't sit straight up without the help of three people."
Next he worked on transfers, hand movements, mobility and, finally, trying to stand on a tilt table (where in true bodybuilder fashion, he did squats – if only an eighth of the way down). Soon Shane progressed to standing using a table stand and finally took his first steps only 60 days after the accident.
"It was such an indescribable feeling taking those steps. I knew I would walk again from the beginning, but those first steps gave me so much more hope," says Shane. "I would spend anywhere from two to seven hours a day doing physiotherapy, whether it be in my chair, in my bed, in the gym, in rehab – whatever it took, I would do it."
After countless hours of physio in the gym and pushing himself even when he was in his hospital bed, Shane was finally released six whole months after his accident. He left the hospital under his own power with the help of two canes. But the difficulties didn't end with merely getting out of the hospital. Being outside, Shane found he had more than just physical obstacles to overcome.
"For about a year, I rarely left my house because I was embarrassed and didn't want anyone to see me with a walker or cane. I became quite depressed since my accident, but constantly pushed myself to stay positive. It made me an introvert for quite a while, and I lost sociability with regard to how to interact with people," he says. "I still do not like going out, especially by myself, but I am slowly getting better, since it still affects me greatly. I have to deal with stability issues, neurological issues and spasticity".
Nonetheless, Shane had one goal: to get back on stage, something he accomplished at the MABBA Provincial Bodybuilding Championships.
"Being up against completely able-bodied people is exactly what I need to keep pushing myself," says Shane. "For now, I will still continue to go to the gym, but really focus on stretching, rolling, strengthening exercises for increased mobility and functionality. And in the future, that'll turn to less difficulty in the gym."
Shane has and will continue to do countless hours of physiotherapy and athletic therapy as an out-patient. He'll be having another surgery to reconstruct his right leg in hopes of gaining more function and have a better gait pattern, and it will be another long road to recovery. MuscleTech® will be supporting Shane every step of the way – and even though his journey will never be quite finished, he has a never-say-die attitude with the determination to strive to become better in every single way, every single day.
"Three years ago, I should've died on my brother's birthday", he says. "Instead, three years later, I'm walking, going golfing with my brother, dad, grandpa and my brother's friends. I'm going out and enjoying myself doing things I should've never been able to do. I have such an amazing support group, including all of you who constantly pick me up and give me words of encouragement throughout this journey of mine. I want to say thank you to everyone who has reached out to help me get to where I am today. So here's to three years and all the great things I'm lucky enough to experience in the future!"
|Meal 1
2 scoops NITRO-TECH®, 1/2 cup creamy rice cereal, 3 whole eggs, 1 banana
|Meal 2-5
Consists of either chicken, top sirloin steak, tilapia or ground turkey, with jasmine rice or baby potatoes and asparagus or broccoli
|Meal 3
7 oz. chicken, 1 cup white rice, 1 cup greens
| Meal 6
2 scoops NITRO-TECH, 1 tbsp. peanut butter or coconut oil
Physiotherapy to recover from a spinal cord injury
Arms and calves
Core and physiotherapy


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The Agricultural Research Center in co-operation with FARA will conduct a workshop on "National Consultations on Rolling-Out the Science Agenda for Agriculture in Africa (S3A)" in Egypt, one of the selected tier-one countries.
The workshop will be implemented from 9th-12th July, 2017 at Sofitel El Gizera Hotel, Cairo and attended by 40 participants representing different organizations; i.e. the Agricultural Research Center, the Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation, the Ministry of Scientific Research, the Agricultural Development Bank, representative of the private sector, NGOs with focus on agriculture, funding agencies, faculties of Agriculture of different Universities, and about 15 participants from different African countries.
With the view to sensitize participants on the status and strategy of the S3A, the workshop further aims to craft a Theory of Change and Results Framework emphasizing science priorities, needs, baselines and expected change resulting from mainstreaming of S3A at national levels and set up a controlled process for deepening Egypt engagements with S3A implementation.
It is expected that the workshop outputs;
Managed by FARA, the workshop is funded by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the European Commission and the Australian Center for International Agricultural Research.
For information relating to one of the earlier held Regional Consultation Workshops, click here
Event Hashtag: #ScienceAgenda
Media Contact Email: firstname.lastname@example.com and firstname.lastname@example.com
About FARA
FARA is the apex continental organization responsible for coordinating and advocating for agricultural research for development. FARA also serves as the technical arm of the Africa Union Commission on matters concerning agriculture science, technology and innovation.
For more information:
Website: www.faraafrica.org
Blog: http://faraafrica.wordpress.com
Facebook Page: Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa. https://www.facebook.com/FARAAfrica/
FARA Social Media Team (Facebook Page): https://www.facebook.com/groups/aasw6smt/
Twitter: @FARAinfo. https://twitter.com/FARAinfo
Youtube: FARA Africa. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEJQGxNwCCFuEHCTDOljeqg
Instagram: fara.africa. https://www.instagram.com/fara.africa/
Google Group: https://groups.google.com/a/cgxchange.org/forum/#!forum/fara-smt-group
Flickr: FARA Africa. https://www.flickr.com/photos/farafotos/albums
LinkedIn: Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa – FARA. https://www.linkedin.com/company-beta/476676/


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The Piedmont region in Italy (Piemont – pay-MAHN-tay – in Italian) is at the base of the Alps in the natural boundary between Italy, Switzerland and France. Red wines are the favorites here and grapes include Dolcetto and Barbera.
"Bridesmaid" Grapes?
Our recent Italian wine pairing dinner featued two red grapes that often elude the spotlight. Dolcetto is sometimes called the "bridesmaid" of wines because Nebbiolo and Sangiovese garner the lion's share of attention from Italian wine lovers. Barbera is a grape that is so widely planted that in some parts of the world the low quality has tarnished its image.
Green Dragon, our culinary expert, prepared a delicious Spinach and Ricotta Conchiglie entree to pair with our two wines. This is a stuffed pasta shell dish. We were featuring Azienda Agricola Brangero 2012, Dolcetto di Diano D'Alba "San Rabino Soprano" and Cantina Roagna Giuseppe di Marco 2014 Barbera d'Alba Roero.
Never Miss A Toledo Wines and Vines Post – Click To Subscribe
Purple People Pleasers
We started with the Barbera from the Alba region. Alba is a city of about 30,000 people nestled between the better known wine regions of Barola and Barberesco. The city is known not only for its red wine, but also its white truffles.
The Roagna winery owes its current focus to a tragedy. Until the early 1980s, all the wine produced was sold in bulk to other producers. The family's herd of livestock was wiped out by mad cow disease and the family decided to turn their wine production into a commercially viable venture.
The Roagna Barbera is a juicy wine, flowing with rich flavors. This was a sumptious pairing with our pasta. The wine is soft without heavy tannins. It offers a sour cherry flavor that beckons you to have more. It's a loveable wine.
Complex Yet Accessible
The 2012 Dolcetto is produced by the Brangero winery. Brangero is a small, family-run farm in the small commune of Diano d'Alba. Only Dolcetto is produced in Diano d'Alba.
We've been told that bringing a bottle of Dolcetto when invited to friend's house in Italy signals "we are equals" and I don't need to impress. We found the 2012 Brangero Dolcetto to be a welcome guest at our table.
The Dolcetto has more complexity than the Barbera. The tannins and structure are more evident. There is a dusty flavor of earth. It evolves nicely in the glass or better yet with some decanting. Concentrated flavors of black cherry are then the reward.
This was a dynamite pair of wines from Italy. In addition to being outstanding on their own merits, they pair beautifully with food. Both are sub-$20 wines and worth seeking on the shelves.
Full disclosure: These wines were received as marketing samples.


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Hi there my little space muffins! I'm Arthur Feel-Good. Boy do I feel-good today! I've just had a lemon & Dill sandwich and I feel like a top ranked salesman! Power lunches are the way forward! I did a seventy hour week last week and I dined 21 times in powered way.
Kathy & Sarah love a good power lunch. Kathy's just made an indecent joke about Ian the Stockbroker!
Power lunches a-side for the moment mutton chops, I thought I'd make a few tips on life for all you strugglers out there. Remember we all sometimes find ourselves stuck in neutral at times, but a steady climb through the gears will ensure our ship keeps on sailing in the right direction!
Get your engine running on a feast of positive vibes
Here's a little cranium scratcher! If a fish could talk, what would he say? 'I can't hear you' probably!
I thought I'd write down Arthur Feel-Goods top ten ways to enjoy our space on this li'l ol' world.
1. Always accept a game of chance, Never that of risk
2. Love all thy brothers unless he's actually a brother. If he is then love him a little bit more. Not in a gay way though. He's probably got aids. I jape
3. New Warning! Smoking makes you dance better, it really does
4. If you can catch your supper you can sing for your tea
5. Life is a series of peaks and troughs. It really is. Ride the peaks hard then the troughs are more of a rest. Not my words but then it's not their page.
6. Shoes make the man but Deggs make the soul
7. Try to feel the good in everyone!
8. Measles were actually a good thing, why do you think you only got them once?
9. Eat a hot beef dinner once in a while. Beef rocks ass! I eat beef and watch scooter live!
10. Stay away from everything they says good for you. It's not true.


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Navigate: Main Page ... India ... and sections of this page:
Overview: People and place • History • Geography • Culture • Economy • Politics • Sport and recreation • Trivia • User reviews • Photo gallery • See also • Everything else • External resources
Overview: People and place
Maharashtra (Marathi: महाराष्ट्र,) is India's third largest state in area.(Shown in red in the adjacent map).
It is the second largest in population after Uttar Pradesh. Mumbai, is the India's most populous city. The people are generally referred to as Marathis, Maharashtrians.
Mumbai is the capital of Maharashtra.
Maharashtra is located in western India and is bordered by the states of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Goa and the Union territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli. The Arabian Sea makes up the state's western coast.
Share and tell about your experience related to Maharashtra in our wiki-based forum or on the talk page here.
Sport and recreation
Maharashtra/Sport and recreation
User reviews
Photo gallery
See also
Everything else
If you want to add anything else, you are most welcome to add your views and comments here or on the talk page or at the Forums!
External links
If you want to add personal links, please do that on your user page (you can also write your profile there). If you have a link with great content that visitors need, you can add it at Maharashtra/Links
States of India: Andhra Pradesh - Arunachal Pradesh - Assam - Bihar - Chhattisgarh- Goa - Gujarat - Haryana - Himachal Pradesh - Jammu and Kashmir - Jharkhand - Karnataka - Kerala - Madhya Pradesh - Maharashtra - Manipur - Meghalaya - Mizoram - Nagaland - Odisha - Punjab - Rajasthan - Sikkim - Tamil Nadu - Telangana - Tripura - Uttar Pradesh - Uttarakhand - West Bengal
Union Territories of India: Andaman and Nicobar Islands - Chandigarh - Dadra and Nagar Haveli - Daman and Diu - Lakshadweep - - Puducherry


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BEN FREEMAN - Fiyero
Theatre includes: 'Warner' in Legally Blonde (Savoy); 'Norman' in Dreamboats and Petticoats (Savoy and Playhouse); Same Time Next Year (Jersey); The Chosen Ones (No.1 Tour); Love's A Luxury (No. 1 Tour); Big Bruvva The Musical (Edinburgh Festival) and 'Friedrich' in The Sound of Music (Woking and national tour).
Television includes: 'Scott Windsor' in Emmerdale (YTV); 'Chris Longworth' in Grange Hill (BBC).
Film includes: I Give It A Year (Starcrossed Films); Jewels (Delux Productions S.A.)
Presenting includes: Wake Up in The Wild Room and Smash Hits Roadshows for the Disney Channel..
Biographies taken direct from the official website


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What is Your Birthstone?
February: Amethyst (purple)
March: Aquamarine (pale blue)
April: Diamond (clear)
May: Emerald (deep green)
June: Alexandrite (imitations are lavender-blue). The genuine stone is a different color in sunlight than it is in fluorescent light. Pearls are often used instead of Alexandrite.
July: Ruby (bright red)
August: Peridot (pale green) pronounced 'Pair-ih-doe'
September: Sapphire (dark blue)
October: Rose Zircon (pink) or Opal (fiery, multicolored)
November: Topaz (natural color is brown; Treated blue topaz is more popular)
December: Turquoise - bright turquoise/blue


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Only goal so crucial as unlucky
Rathcline lose out in Leinster
On Sunday last Rathcline made the long three hour journey to Killurin in Wexford to take on Glynn-Barntown in the Leinster Club Intermediate Football Championship quarter-final and were unlucky to lose by a single point with the absence of Liam Connerton a major blow - the influential county player ruled out with a hand injury.
The crucial score of this tight contest came midway through the second half as Michael Doyle won primary possession in midfield from a kick out and set Robert Tierney off on a gallop up field and with the Rathcline defence cut open he delivered a pass into substitute Sean Carmody who fired the ball to the net.
The weather conditions were pitch perfect and Rathcline were facing a big task against the Wexford outfit who won their first round game against the Louth champions convincingly.
But it was the Longford Intermediate champions who set the pace early on and claimed the first point of the game after just thirty seconds. Wing-back James Carroll carried the ball out of defence and set up Kevin Chapman who coolly slotted over from thirty yards out.
Both teams exchanged scores with Wexford senior footballer Michael O'Regan equalising through a 45' after three minutes.
Rathcline were the livelier outfit during the early stages of the game and they led 0-5 to 0-3 after twenty minutes with the other scores coming from James Hanley (free); a nice, high looping shot from Ronan Clyne and a super strike from Shane Kenny.
It is worth noting that Kenny showed leadership beyond his years and he was a constant threat with his direct running and link-up play and ended up with the impressive total of six points (four frees) to his credit.
The Wexford champions upped the ante in the closing stages of the first half, hitting four unanswered points to leave it all square at the break, 0-6 to 0-6.
Rathcline were first to seize the advantage at the start of the second half when Shane Kenny hit a long ball into James Hanley who fisted over the bar from an acute angle to put the visitors back into the lead.
Glynn-Barntown began to take hold of the game midway through the second half but they were met with fierce resistance in the form of resolute defending from Michael Morrissey, James Carroll and County Minor Kevin Sorohan.
Sorohan won a well-earned free at the halfway line after a super interception from Morrissey in the full-back-line. Following on from this free, Shane Kenny saw his superb strike soar over the bar from 45 metres out.
The crucial only goal came in the 46th minute when Glynn-Barntown rattled the back of the Rathcline net after continuous pressure. This proved to be a serious dent in the Rathcline momentum and gave the hosts the lead they subsequently never surrendered.
The Lanesboro lads continued to battle hard and responded quickly with another point from Shane Kenny but they could not reach the levels of intensity with which they had played during the earlier stages of the game.
Having said that, Rathcline played with a steely determination and brought this game to the wire, closing the gap to a point, but they couldn't manufacture that so hard sought after equalising score.
GLYNN-BARNTOWN: Nigel Donohoe; Nigel Usher, Robert Tierney, Eoin Raftery; Alan Cowman, John Leacy, Cian Neville; Michael Doyle, Brendan Doyle; Matthew Joyce, Michael O'Regan, Barry Doyle; Ian Moran, Craig Doyle, Robert Dempsey.
Subs:- Sean Carmody for Barry Doyle; Aaron Kehoe for I Moran; Murtagh Joyce for Brendan Doyle.
RATHCLINE: David Mulvihill; Garth Reilly, Michael Morrissey, Blaine Fallon; James Carroll, Shane Donohoe, Kevin Sorohan; Derek Casserly, Shane Kenny; Kevin Chapman, David Rooney, Barry Clarke; James Hanley, Ronan Clyne, Michael Hanley.
Subs:- Shane Casserly for G Reilly (34 mins); Oisín O'Sullivan for M Hanley (60 mins); Iarla O'Sullivan for B Clarke (64 mins).
Referee: David Moore (Laois).


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As has been noted elsewhere, at some of its most dramatic moments, the professor's curious mix of tale-telling and game can involve combats, about which the professor is remarkably clear-eyed.
Such encounters, be they skirmishes or pitched battles, arise from the scenario and choices made in play: they are never forced for their own sake, and the players' characters often (but not always) have a chance to avoid them. Rarely, if ever, do two equally matched opponents stand forth for a gentlemanly bout.
Sometimes, whatever playing pieces are at hand, from chess-men to checkers, may be first arranged to show the rough situation, but this is far from necessary, and short encounters may well be resolved without them.
Whoever chooses to act and move first, whatever the consequences, does so. If the characters are ambushed, then they must respond to the ambush. If they charge or strike, then they have the initiative. From then on, each move and counter-move is resolved as most makes sense. Every player may take some sort of action before the turn is ended.
Given the risk, dice are rolled to resolve each combat. Each player rolls, and the professor adjudicates the outcome based on their skills, tactics, armaments, and position. Usually, a roll of six or more is required for the character to hold their ground and at least keep up their guard. Depending on the foe, a higher roll may be required to strike and prevail. For example, we see in the notes that a "man-at-arms" or "greater goblin" may be slain with a roll of seven or more, but a fearsome troll is wounded only on a roll of nine or more, and a dragon struck on a twelve only. More formidable foes may withstand several hits before they are felled. Even so, when allocating hits, the higher the roll, the better.
A roll of less than 6 means that some sort of setback, a blow, hurt, or wound, is suffered. The lower the roll, the more severe the consequence. The professor is unsparing of both sides, and so a player who rolls low may be wounded, dazed, or even felled and left-for-dead. Some enemies wield dreadful weapons, which may leave a festering wound or even sickness of spirit.
Players look always for sixes – the "crown" on the dice they roll, and two crowns are unstoppable. A single crown indicates a minor boon or advantage. Perhaps the blade bites deep, hampering the foe, or an opponent can be daunted or forced to retreat. Ones, the "evil eye" are feared. A single one may show a disadvantage or complication, but double-ones indicate an evil turn. When ones and sixes appear at the same time, the roll is an alarming close call, with gains and losses for both sides!
Fights do not necessarily end in death. Stern opposition may indeed cause the enemy to falter, but they may flee, or regroup, or attempt to surround the adventurers or even split them. Many goblins could retreat from a single warrior, only to turn and launch arrows at his shield to weight it down. By this token, wise warriors know when to flee, and when a threat is beyond their powers. Recklessness and blood-lust are not rewarded in the Green Dragon game.
Against the most dreadful monsters, only a cunning strategy, knowing the fatal flaw in a dragon's hide or the means to pierce the spell that protects an ancient horror, has any real chance of succeeding. There is always a place for heroism, though, and even a common soldier may hope to defeat the old and strong and cruel if he or she is stout-hearted and battle-wise.


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Beautiful City Theatre's Gala Chocolat Raffle
- Interested participants can enter the raffle by purchasing a $10 ticket (or 3 for $20) at the Gala or online at www.beautifulcitytheatre.com. All payments (including cheques) are to be made payable to Beautiful City Theatre.
- Raffle Prize: A gift basket of chocolate items. Valued at $95.
- Raffle tickets must be purchased before 9:00pm, Thursday, March 19, 2015.
- The prizewinner's name will be announced at 9:30pm, Thursday, March 19th, 2015 at the Beautiful City Theatre Annual Gala, at Café L'Artère, 7000 Av du Parc, Montréal.
- If the prizewinner is not present at the time of the announcement, the prizewinner will be contacted by phone or email on Friday, March 20th, 2015.
- Members of BCT Management may not enter this raffle.
- For further questions about raffle rules and regulations, please contact:
- Calli Armstrong at info(at)beautifulcitytheatre.com or (514) 932-3549.


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I sent a batch of these to school with Dev today...insuring his instant popularity with his fellow teachers!
They were simple to make (but not simpler than a real pecan pie). I guess the only reason to do these instead of the pie is you get more pieces. If you cut them in teeny weeny pieces, you get 36. I got 12. Nuff said. :)
Here's the recipe- as usual I will follow with my substitutions (cuz there are always substitutions):
Pecan Pie Surprise Bars
1 pkg. yellow cake mix
1/3 c. butter, softened
1 egg
½ c. firmly packed brown sugar
1 ½ c. dark corn syrup
1 t. vanilla
3 eggs
1 c. chopped pecans
Heat oven to 350. Grease 13x9 pan. Reserve 2/3 c. dry cake mix for filling. In large bowl, combine remaining dry cake mix, butter and 1 egg at low speed until well blended. Spread in prepared pan. Bake at 350 for 15 to 20 minutes or until light golden brown.
In large bowl, combine reserved cake mix, brown sugar, corn syrup, vanilla and 3 eggs at low speed until moistened. Beat at medium speed about 1 minute or until well blended. Pour filling over base; sprinkle with pecans. Return to oven and bake 30 to 35 minutes or until filling is set. Cool completely. Cut into bars. Store in refrigerator.
36 bars.
Alrighty- the only substitution I made this time around was the corn syrup. I didn't have dark, so I used light. I'm not sure if it affected the flavor- but these were pretty dirn good, so I don't care!
I sent a batch of these to school with Dev today...insuring his instant popularity with his fellow teachers!