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"Welcome to my house. Come freely. Go safely. And leave some of the happiness you bring."
Dracula was performed in 41 Monkgate Theatre, York w/c 30th October. Hopefully it will be revived (geddit) once again…
"Welcome to my house. Come freely. Go safely. And leave some of the happiness you bring."
Dracula was performed in 41 Monkgate Theatre, York w/c 30th October. Hopefully it will be revived (geddit) once again…
Here's a review I wrote of Northern Broadside's When We Are Married, on tour until 10th December (Dates here)
This review was for Arts York.
The well-to-do Mr and Mrs Helliwell, Mr and Mrs Parker and Mr and Mrs Soppitt have been married 25 years today – or so they think. As it transpires, they were never officially married at all, and so begins J B Priestley's When We Are Married at York Theatre Royal.
First staged in 1938 and set in 1908, much of Priestley's play still charms today but many of its contrivances pre-date our modern sensibilities, leaving some of the plot neither shocking nor shockingly funny.
This is not to say that it is not good fun, just that the cast have to work hard to keep the audience on side. Fortunately, they do. Much of the humour here is thanks to impeccable casting and well-pitched comic timing rather than any plot device. Kat Rose-Martin stands out as Ruby Birtle, the Helliwell's no-nonsense maid, with an accent that makes you proud to be Yorkshire and a presence that commands the stage whenever she enters. Steve Huison also catches the eye as the much-maligned Herbert Soppitt. Huison masters, rather than overplays, a physical humour that also serves to make Soppitt one of the most endearing, interesting, and human characters in the play, along with Annie Parker (Sue Devaney), with whom he shares a tender and funny scene.
Aside from the humour, the germination of the piercing social commentary found in Priestley's most famous work An Inspector Calls can also be seen here, with Counsellor Parker surely being a pre-curser to Mr Birling. The blurring of the lines between the upper and lower classes is keenly felt when the sitting room becomes a free-for-all for any Tom, Dick, Harry or Henry. Mrs Northrop, the cook and housekeeper, even takes it upon herself to remind Mrs Soppitt of her past as a greengrocer's daughter. There are also plenty of characters with not much to smile about by the end but comedies get 'happy endings', of course, and this one occurs rather abruptly and jarringly with a sing-along and a knees up. It is unclear if this decision was an intentional extension of Priestley's irony. If so, then thumbs up.
The functional set and sumptuous costumes root us effectively in this past world, enabling our suspension of disbelief. Though not quite a barrel full, there are still plenty of laughs and Northern Broadsides have once again provided an enjoyable and high-quality evening of entertainment, with a consistently strong cast. Next time, let's have some more grit.
"It's not fair they teach us desperation so young, or if they do, they should never mention hope."
"I wanted my life to be so huge and heroic and pure."
"I'm not drunk, I'm trapped!"
Just doing a bit of spring cleaning and collating some of the reviews I have had published (which are still live) in the past into one place.
May 2014 – Blithe Spirit, York Theatre Royal (The Good Review)
May 2014 – A Number, York Theatre Royal (The Good Review)
November 2011 – Kafka's Dick, OUDS (The Oxford Student)
October 2011 – 40 Years On, York Theatre Royal (A Younger Theatre)
July 2011 – Two Planks and a Passion, York Theatre Royal (A Younger Theatre)
March 2011 – To Kill A Mockingbird, York Theatre Royal (A Younger Theatre)
November 2008 – The Winter's Tale, OUDS (The Oxford Student)
Timon of Athens, National Theatre (I saw it with NT Live)
Nicholas Hytner's revival of Timon of Athens couldn't have come at a better time. It is a rather unloved Shakespeare play, rarely performed and probably rarely read. Thought to be a collaboration with Thomas Middleton, Timon has none of the familial or romantic relationships which endear us to other Shakespeare texts and it almost invariably has to be cut, rejigged and added to in order to make it more streamlined and coherent. Yet its themes of money, greed, credit and corruption, among others, make it fit, almost seamlessly, into a 21st Century context.
It is this idea that the National Theatre production has great fun with. Despite the references in the script to Athens, Tim Hatley's design is a recognisable London, complete with sky scrapers, swanky bars and art galleries, gift bags labelled with 'Fashion Week' and even logos on visitor passes for 'The Senate of Athens' which seem to be taken straight out of the House of Commons. It is the small details, such as this, which highlight the care that has been taken to achieve the vision. Sometimes, updating Shakespeare to a modern setting can look cheesy and gimmicky, but this production, for the most part, avoids that. There were a few decisions that jarred with me. Timon finding blocks of gold was left in, rather than him finding wads of notes that he chooses not to spend but to give away to those who come grovelling. In a production that had taken great care in printing lookalike £50 notes for the earlier scenes, I found it strange that the rioters would scramble on the floor for gold discs that they couldn't go out and immediately spend. Equally, though I appreciated the relevance of making the rebellious mob akin to the London rioters, the cutting of Alcibiades' part in Act One meant that when he finally appeared in Act Two, it felt as if the 'sub plot' had been shoehorned in, something which the production tried to get around by occasionally making the rioters march around the stage during scene changes which got rather tiresome and a bit obvious. However, the Alcibiades plot is also rather awkward in the text itself and Hytner did what he could with it.
The majority of the acting was good, but I almost got the impression that you were meant to leave the theatre/cinema with an appreciation for the play and the staging than for the acting. Simon Russell Beale as Timon was impressive at showing the protagonist at the two ends of the spectrum of wealth. His Act Two Timon, shuffling around in his beanie hat and cast-off clothing, sifting through the rubbish bags for a cold takeaway to eat, was affecting. I also enjoyed Hilton McRae's Apermantus, who captured his character's misanthropy and droll wit effectively. However, some performances were more irritating and distracting. Deborah Findlay, as Flavia, for example, and Tom Robertson as Ventidius. Though I liked his Sid Vicious style characterisation at first, it increasingly looked as if he were overdoing the accent and playing for laughs.
Overall, though, an enjoyable and stylish revival of a relevant play. I found it hard to believe it was written in the 17th Century.
John Godber's Bouncers, which has been frequently produced since its first performance in 1977, has been given a shake-up in this new version for Watershed Productions directed by the esteemed playwright himself. The play is set in and around a nightclub where Judd (William Ilkley), Les (Don Gilet), Lucky Eric (Ian Reddington) and Ralph (Ace Bhatti) work as doormen. The four actors also play a group of girls celebrating their friend's 21st birthday and a group of rowdy lads out on the pull.
The cast effortlessly switch between their very different roles and seem equally at home in each of them. I particularly enjoyed Bhatti as sexy Susie and he and Reddington have a couple of very funny scenes together highlighting that physical comedy can be just as successful as wordplay. Set and props are minimal but excellent use is made of lighting and sound to create an effective club feel and Lucky Eric's speeches are most effective when he is placed in a spotlight. These four speeches act as a kind of social commentary breaking up the comedy and reminding the audience that the sort of behaviour these bouncers see every night is very often not funny and can actually be disturbing and demeaning.
Bouncers has been 'remixed' before, and Godber has clearly tried his best to make this version as up to date as possible. This was a bit hit and miss. I enjoyed the music choice, for example – the actors first appeared to Rihanna's Where Have You Been and the group of girls tried and failed to sing along to a Wanted song- but references to 'records' and having the girls and guys getting ready for their nights out at a hairdressers and barbers respectively just didn't sit right. This is a minor complaint, however, of an evening which kept the packed theatre constantly in hysterics.
Bouncers was at York Theatre Royal 5-8 September and is touring until 17th November. For details see www.bouncersonstage.com
Last week I reviewed a preview of Alan Bennett's 'Kafka's Dick' which is on at the Burton Taylor Studio, Oxford 29th Nov- 3rd Dec.
You can read my review here:
From what I saw I'd probably give it 3*s. It was promising but needed a lot of polishing.
Alan Bennett's first stage play, '40 Years On' is bravely tackled in the continuing ensemble season of the York Theatre Royal. It is an entertaining yet demanding and overly long play which is rarely performed. The company succeed in bringing out the sparks of brilliance but are sometimes let down by a clumpy and awkward structure.
The play is set in 1968 in an all boys school. The headmaster (Rob Pickavance) is due to retire and it's also the last school play and assembly of some of the boys. What Damien Cruden's production does excellently is creating the world of Albion House School. The set is spot on but even before entering the auditorium, the Belt Up and community cast of school boys wandered round the foyer handing out handmade programmes and the show got off to a flying start when the audience were invited to join in with a roof raising rendition of 'Jerusalem'. The audience were also there to play a role, that of the parents and governors, and the interval refreshment trolley which some of us got to partake in was a nice and unexpected touch.
It was a shame that the script dictated that the school boys couldn't be used more. For long periods they were stuck on the peripheries as the staff (Martin Barrass, Jonathan Race, Andrina Carroll and Sarah Quintrell) put on the end of term play. It was at these moments when the play often seemed to drag as we moved back and forth in history and more characters (invented and well known figures) were paraded around than you've had school dinners. Barrass in particular often descended into unnecessary slapstick but showed good range in his variety of personas (perhaps too much considering the 'teachers' are not supposed to be accomplished professional actors!).
'40 Years On', then, came alive when the fifteen school boys took centre stage with songs, dances (all well choreographed by Jean Harvey) and general humorous antics. Nik Fenwick as Lord had great presence and a singing voice to match and Dominic Allen of Belt Up Theatre had some lovely touches as a rather geeky lectern reader, but the whole group was terrific.
Yet it was the aforementioned Rob Pickavance who was clearly the standout star. His character of the headmaster is an absolute gem and carried with it the bulk of the play's wit, honesty, nostalgia and energy, not to mention lines!
If anything, then, the play and not the production was at fault at times and Bennett himself has admitted its complicated and often confusing structure. Yet it's still worth a watch, even if it is no 'History Boys'. (York Theatre Royal until 15th October)
This review can also be found here: http://www.ayoungertheatre.com/review-40-years-on-york-theatre-royal/
York Theatre Royal's and Riding Lights' Two Planks and a Passion – the third of the former's main house ensemble plays – is a credit to York and to regional theatre. A charming and entertaining script by Anthony Minghella, a large and talented community cast and atmospheric music by Christopher Madin give this production (on until 16th July) a big heart.
Set in York and based around King Richard II's visit to the city and to the mystery plays in the late 14th Century, the play focuses just as much on the royals (played by professionals) as on the 'normal' citizens of York and on the competition between two of the guilds putting on two of the plays. Ambitiously, there are two community casts, totalling over 50, which are alternating the run and the cast I saw (the Taylors) had been impeccably cast; there wasn't a weak link. Most impressively, voice projection, even discounting the fact that it was a largely amateur cast in the round, was spot on – here we have, quite clearly, professional amateurs. Rory Mulvihill and Rebecca Beattie, in particular, have great vocal presence.
The cast have clearly thought hard about their characters as there were some great nuances and subtleties to certain performances. It almost goes without saying that Jonathan Race (as King Richard), Michael Lambourne (as Oxford) and Emily Pithon (as Queen Anne) were on form but it was to the community cast's credit that they did not seem to 'stand out' so significantly as to be distracting. Gemma Shelton, playing a wife of one of the players, gave a very truthful performance and Paul Stonehouse, as the non-too-holy Father Melton, was pitch perfect.
The promised spectacle of the 2012 Mystery Plays in York will need to build on the success of Two Planks and a Passion but it is without a doubt a great introduction to the project and an entertaining, if slightly over-long, stand alone production.
This review is also posted here: http://www.ayoungertheatre.com/review-two-planks-and-a-passion-york-theatre-royal/
Just a quick review of The Stephen Joseph Theatre Company's 'Communicating Doors', written and directed by Alan Ayckbourn (at The Oxford Playhouse until 25th June, then Richmond Theatre 27th June- 2nd July). (edit- when I said quick I forgot that I tend to ramble.)
Having read 'Absurd Person Singular' and 'Absent Friends', I thought I had cottoned on to Ayckbourn's style. Unfortunately I think I picked the wrong play of his to be my first viewing of his work on stage. 'Communicating Doors' was received well by the audience at Oxford Playhouse, however at times I felt as if I must have been on a different hymn sheet. I did enjoy the play, by the end, but I have to admit that for the first twenty minutes or so I was wondering what I was doing there.
My initial feeling of detachment and disengagement was based on the feeling that I had walked into an amateur dramatics performance (please don't take offence as I am partial to a bit myself). Laura Doddington as Poopay started off, perhaps conversely, a bit too slow and a bit too over the top. Her punch-lines, if you like, were delivered more to get a laugh pantomime style than from a result of being fully engaged with their immediate meaning within the context of the dialogue and Ben Jones, as Julian, was very two-dimensional. Luckily, unlike Jones, Doddington came into her own as soon as the meaty part of the story got underway. I'm not sure the clunky start did her any favours. Poopay is a dominatrix who thinks she has been hired by Reece (Ben Porter) for her "sexual consultancy". He, however, only wants her to sign as a witness to a confession he has written, as a dying man, explaining that his business partner and friend, Julian, is guilty of killing Reece's first and second wives, Jessica and Ruella. The audience is given a lot of information at once, the reasons for which unravel later, but it just seems that Reece's character is simply there as a catalyst for the plot and there is not much excitement for the audience in the opening.
The play seems to be trying to do too many things at once and, in my opinion, it only manages this to a certain extent. It is a fantasy, comedy and thriller all rolled into one, where the characters time travel through the use of communicating doors in a London hotel between the years 1990, 2010 and 2030. These years have a significance for the characters of Jessica, Ruella and Poopay and their fates and planned deaths by the hands of Julian. The basic aim of the three female characters is to use the time travel to try and save themselves from certain death.
Personally, I enjoyed the second half of the play so much more. Liza Goddard, as Ruella, and Jamie Kenna, as the hotel's porter and investigator Harold (a relatively unimportant but definitely the funniest role), as well as the increasingly sympathetic and funny character of Poopay played bigger roles and filled the production with a light and shade which lifted it into the witty yet moving production I expected. Goddard, as the put upon second wife of Reece, manages to convey vulnerability, humour, strength of will and a caring side simultaneously and when Reece delivers some news to Poopay at the end of the play I realised that I had been empathising with her character and that I had been drawn in to her story and to her developing friendship with Poopay. Another saving grace of the production was that by the end, it was clear that Ayckbourn had obviously very concientiously and cleverly made sure that the comedy and the thriller aspects balanced very well and there were laughs and gasps from the audience (yes, including me) in equal measure.
All in all, the initial cynic in me who I could feel developing at the start of the first half was just about quashed by a rather amusing and touching play. I'd give it three stars.
(Apologies for any strange sentence structures or spelling mistakes. It's quite late..)


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Too many gardens aren't properly prepared for autumn. Spring is great for getting everything started while summer is the big payoff for gardeners but come autumn many gardens are often left behind without a second thought.
It's understandable, with the weather getting poorer and the days getting shorter, not everyone wants to spend their free time outside in the garden! But an autumn garden is very much a place to enjoy, while taking the time to prepare it for the season will only have long-term benefits over the next year.
Survey the garden before autumn arrives
One of the easiest ways to prepare the garden is to simply walk around and see what you might need to work on for the upcoming season. Look out for signs of wear and tear that you may want to address, such as patchy lawns, overgrown areas, and what plants may require to go indoors to survive the winter.
Some plants may need divided up due to the warmer summer, so keep an eye on anything that could benefit from being separated out. Also, try establishing what will die in the winter (such as herbs) and whether you want to save them or just regrow next year.
Clear shed for storage space
Your shed has probably become quite unorganised over the spring and summer, with constant additions and removals typically messing up even the tidiest of garden sheds. So, as you need to be storing a lot of equipment over winter, it's a good idea to prepare some space in the shed to store your things.
Tools should always be stored in the shed as cold and wet conditions can seriously damage even the newest garden tools. While storing your tools, check to see if any tools require some oil or need their blades sharpening.
Furthermore, you may want to store garden furniture inside the shed if you have space. Winter and autumn can wreak havoc on outdoor furniture (especially wooden furniture), so consider storing indoors to avoid rotting/rusting.
Treat soil
Treating soil with a slow releasing fertilizer is always a good idea during the autumn. Because fertilizer helps to restore nutrition to the soil, which has likely been depleted by plants constantly growing over the spring and summer months.
Be sure to invest in some organic fertilizer as these are great for soil enrichment, with compost, mulch, and manure all being good options for this.
Doing this for autumn means that come spring, there is less work needed to prepare the soil for growing, while the winter cold often hampers nutrient efficiency so it's always worth doing this in time for autumn!
Also, adding mulch to plants for autumn helps keep them safe and healthy during the winter so is well worth doing!
Feed and weed the lawn
You will find that most lawn treatment products recommend applying twice yearly, during the spring and towards the end of summer/start of autumn. If you want your lawn looking great for next year, be sure to add these before or during autumn.
Weed killers are useful for removing all the seeds and weeds landing throughout summer ensuring fewer weeds develop during the growing season in spring.
Lawn feed ensures the lawn remains in good condition during the cold and freezing months of winter, helping to encourage healthy growth come spring.
Check for a lawn feed that is specifically for autumn, as you want more protective ingredients (such as phosphates) rather than those that encourage growth (such as nitrogen). It is important to ensure the lawn is free of debris. Shred large branches to make them easier to transport and rake the surface to help get rid of anything that remains on the grass.
Gather seeds from plants
Autumn is a good time to collect seeds from your plants, saving you the hassle of buying new seeds for spring.
For fruit or vegetables, simply leave a few unpicked and let them dry out or ripen. Ripened fruits and veg leave seeds that can easily gathered by leaving them in water before removing pulp. Seeds that sink are the best for growing so be sure to collect them.
Similarly, flowers that are left to die and dry out should leave seeds behind. Regardless of the seed type you want to keep them in sealed container in a cool, dry location – cupboards are ideal for this.
Inspect perennials
While perennial plants will naturally survive the winter there is no guarantee that they are safe. Disease is one of the biggest risks for perennials so take a look around your garden and see if any have signs of disease – look for spots, mould, or damaged leaves/stems.
If you find leaves or stems that look diseased or damaged, simply remove these, but you often need to apply treatments should the disease be established in the plant. Also, some plants are beyond saving – remove them to avoid disease spreading to your healthy plants!
Check trees for damage
Source: https://www.pexels.com/photo/bark-blur-close-up-daylight-518502/
Once autumn arrives, take the time to check your trees for signs of damage, as fallen leaves often reveal otherwise hidden damage. Branches may be damaged or broken, in which case you should look to prune them to avoid any accidents.
Clean gutters
Gutters should always be completely cleared for autumn as they will likely see lots of leaves gather during the season. So, it's good to get any debris removed before the autumn arrives, otherwise you increase the chances of blockages due to the amount of leaves that accumulate.
Clean and check garden tools
Clean and check all your garden tools to keep them in good condition for their next use. Lawn mowers should be given a good check over. Remove the blade, give it a good clean and sharpen it to ensure it provides a clean cut. Any other bladed tools like shears, pruners and trimmers should also be cleaned, oiled and sharpened. This maintenance is essential as when it comes time for you to reach into the garden shed to get one of your tools they will be fit for use.

subset: commoncrawl


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Cleared Wright
Business Name: Cleared Wright
Business Genre: House Clearance Companies
Long Business Description:
Cleared Wright offer property services, house clearance and rubbish removal services throughout South East England.
From meter reading, tenant inventory and property inspections all the way through to clearing void properties and minor maintenance issues.
All our quotes are free, and no obligation. We can be called for advice and offer one off or regular waste and rubbish collections and removals.


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It's called the GreenPix Zero Energy Media Wall, and with 2,292 individual color LEDs, comparable to a 24,000 sq. ft. monitor screen, it's said to be the largest color LED display in the world. The wall is solar-powered too — photovoltaics are integrated into the wall's glass curtain, and it harvests power during the day, to illuminate the display at …
13W LED Bulb Can Replace 100W Incandescent
This 13 watt bulb, the Evolux by EarthLED, is said to be first LED light to be able to replace a 100 watt incandescent. The lifetime of this bulb is rated at over 50,000 hours — which is five times longer than a compact fluorescent bulb. Other advantages of LED bulbs is their ability to brighten instantly, and be switched …
The Best LED Desk Lamps
Update: We've posted a new review of the best LED Desk Lamps for 2009. LEDs really shine as reading lights and desk lamps. LEDs have a directed beam, so they do not disturb others when used as reading lights (in bed for example). LEDs also do not get hot to the touch, so there's no risk of burns, or excess …
Glass LED Lamp: Rechargeable and Cordless
This "Rotondo" rechargeable lamp uses LEDs for illumination — it will run for about eight hours before it needs a recharge. The lamp is also water resistant and is made with mouth-blown parnaterraglas with a frosted finish. It will cycle through a spectrum of colors, and can be stopped when the hue you desire is reached. It's available from Lightology …
First U.S City To Be Lit With 100% LEDs: Ann Arbor
Ann Arbor is on its way to being the first U.S. city to light up its downtown with 100% LED-based streetlights. The city expects to install more than 1,000 LED streetlights beginning next month. The city anticipates a 3.8-year payback on its initial investment.
Solar Trees May Light Up Europe
This is a great innovation — the streets of Europe could soon be lit by "solar trees". These self-contained streetlights could save cities energy and money too. Unlike regular streetlights, they do not require costly underground wiring to install, and they are immune to blackouts. Designed by Ross Lovegrove, the lights have 10 solar panels arrayed at the top of …
Wind-Up and Solar-Powered Lanterns
Here are some lanterns that can be charged via the sun or via human power. Freeplay's Indigo is a well-designed, rugged lantern. It's one of those products that, when you hold it, feels extremely solid. This lantern shines with a cluster of seven bright LED bulbs. It won't brighten a room, but at full power, it provides good illumination. It …
LED Lights: Efficient Indoor Growing
LED grow lights are a good choice if you are interested in growing indoors without a lot of hassle. Traditional grow lights generate a lot of heat and use large amounts of electricity, which raises your monthly electric bill by noticeable amounts. These LED grow lights stay cool, and use only a minuscule amount of energy.
Chameleon Lamps from Philips
Hold something in front of these lamps, and the lamp shade will change to the color of the object. There's a standard light bulb inside, surrounded by a ring of LEDs which project the color onto the shade. These lamps will be released sometime next year by Philips. We also featured Philips' interactive bulbs in a previous post.
Philips' New "Simplicity" LED Bulbs
The new LED light bulbs from Philips will change color and brightness with one touch, squeeze, or turn. They are also energy efficient and last 10-20 years. Good work. Expect to see these in coming months or years. These LED bulb designs are part of the Philips Sense & Simplicty design project, which the company has been working on for …
Red LEDs to Grow Lettuce
Apparently red LEDs are 60% more efficient than fluorescent light when growing vegetables hydroponically. According to IEEE Spectrum Online: Of all the colors of the rainbow, red is lettuce's favorite. Chlorophyll, the electrochemical engine of photosynthesis, runs on red photons. So if you are growing the vegetable indoors in a factory, why waste energy on colors you don't need?
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text: Our 1967 Squareback is a lowered beauty. It has a gorgeous patina and sports is original Sea Sand paint. We left the paint as we found because we feel it adds to the personality of the car. It sits on custom cosmic rims. We have restored the interior of the car to the stock factory conditions, and the car has had a complete mechanical restoration.


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Open Mic Night
We will be offering open mic nights for anyone who is interested in performing music, comedy or poetry. These will be held every Thursday from 6:30-10pm. Bring your talents to The 'Mill or watch the talents perform. Either way, enjoy your favorite pint of brew with great company.


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When he was doing his duty as a worker in the municipality of the people in the village of Umm Hosh in al-Shahba, a mine exploded at the citizen Omar Abdo Atoon from the village of Sariyya, in the area of Mobata and now living in the village of Umm Hosh.
Our correspondent pointed out that the citizen was transferred to Afrin Hospital in the area of Fafin, and that his health is good now.
It is noteworthy that the people of Afrin, who are forced to leave their homes as a result of the Turkish aggression, suffer remnants of the mercenaries left in the region.


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The multiplication of classifications about the "World Most, Best, Worst" in tourism is turning into an annoying way to celebrate, confirm or destroy tourism destinations andtourism-related places. And finally are these classifications done by international institutions relevant and totally unbiased? Do they really contribute to raise interest and bring more awareness of travellers to a specific location? How influential is advertising spent with the company organising those ranking?
In the last couple of weeks, three such nominations were officially announced: "World's Most Popular Landmark" by TripAdvisor; "World's Most Colourful Places" by CNN Travel; "World Best Airport" by airhelp.com.
"World's Most Popular Landmark" by TripAdvisor named Angkor Wat the top most popular landmark in the world. Fair enough for Cambodia, which can add the award to an already impressive list of distinctions received in the past. However, ow was the choice done?
"These iconic sights are cultural and historical touchstones for visitors across the globe," said in an official release Barbara Messing, chief marketing officer for TripAdvisor. This is a subjective way although the travel website explains -the largest in the world- takes into consideration the reviews and comments of its web community. if we only look at numbers, then the result is more questionable.
"Most Popular Landmark" could be measured by the total number of visitors. With some 2.3 million of visitors per year, Angkor Wat is effectively a top sight for visiting in Southeast Asia. But Borobudur Temple in Central Java receives for example over 3.7 million visitors per year and could be close to four million in 2017. And what about the Eiffel Tower which received in 2016 close to 7 million visitors (of which six million are foreigners)?
Then, there is this strange new award from CNN to acknowledge the most colourful places in the world, places that the US TV network justifies with the following explanation: "In a world where phones offer a filter, sticker or effect for every photo, images can become more dramatic than the real thing. But there are still places that even Photoshop can't improve on, where nature's palette concocts colors that seem unreal, or where designers have turned ordinary neighborhoods into wonderlands".
Surprisingly then, within ASEAN, CNN "World Most Colourful Place" is…the i-City in Selangor! Never heard of it? CNN describes it as "a peculiar blend of a hi-tech development center and an amusement park that includes an ice palace called the Snowalk, where the indoors is kept at freezing temperatures to preserve chambers of ice lit with colored lights. In the evenings, outdoors in the tropical heat, millions of twinkle lights illuminate the trees in every artificial color imaginable. It is a Christmas yard display amped up to the nth degree." What about Lake Kelimutu with its changing colours in Indonesia, the Phi Taa Khon Festival in Loei, Thailand or the MassKara Festival in Bacolod, Philippines? Or what about the colourful painted walls of Melaka along its river or the range of Peranakan houses in Singapore Katong District?
Then comes airhelp.com classification about the world's best airport. And to much chagrin of Thai authorities, Bangkok Suvarnabhumi Airport is among the top worst, being ranked 68 over 76. According to the company's website, Airhelp Score compares each airport using three different criteria to give a "full" picture of how they perform. The company aggregates the quality of service based on Skytrax own information, on-time performance from Flightstats, and the passenger experience of a given airport, thanks to analysis conducted on Twitter over the comments.
Bangkok then fared badly and is worst than Los Angeles, Lisbon or Buenos Aires. Those airports offer good but anything exceptional in terms of facilities. Although Bangkok is far of being an exceptional airport in the region -especially when compared to Singapore or Kuala Lumpur-, the airport is not that bad… Travellers just have to think of Manila, Chiang Mai or Yoyakarta to understand what is a bad airport in ASEAN.
AOT authorities -which manage Suvarnabhumi- were quicked to point out that the Airport Council International, the largest association of airports in the world and the authority for all airports- ranked Suvarnabhumi the 10th best for airports with over 40 million passengers a year. From overrating to underrating, what should be chosen? And finally, would it really changed the perception of passengers queuing at immigration or security lanes at Suvarnabhumi airport?
Finally, bad and/or good words should only come from travellers themselves, the only legitimate judges…


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MIRA Discovery Thermostatic BIV Bath/Shower Mixer Kit, Chrome ONLY, 1.1691.001
£441.60 Inc VAT
£368.00 Exc VAT
Delivery Available in approximately N/A days
*** PLEASE NOTE: This product is now discontinued and no longer available for order ***
The MIRA Discovery Concealed Shower 1.1691.001 is Mira Discovery dual control built-in mixing valve, complete with wall-mounted trim set with integrated 2-way diverter for bath/shower or shower with more than one outlet; designed for concealed installations in high/low pressure systems; Chrome finish.
The Mira Discovery thermostatic BIV Mixer with Diverter - one great shower, two ways to enjoy it. Stylishly understated, the diverter valve gives you the flexibility to combine it with any two water outlets, the choice is yours.
The Mira Discovery Thermostatic BIV Mixer Kit features and benefits:
- Control type: Thermostatic.
- Thermostatic temperature stability keeps showering safe for all the family.
- Simple to use separate on/off/divert and temperature control handles.
- 2-way diverter valve for ultimate versatility: Diverted flow between bath/shower or shower with 2 outlets (e.g. overhead shower/handset), choose a combination of any two water outlets from Mira's selection of overhead showers, hand showers and bath fills (need to be purchased separately).
- An adjustable maximum temperature stop is provided: Limits the temperature to a safe level.
- Inlet filters are fitted to protect the thermostatic cartridge.
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text:
Let's take a look at basic sketch structure. One typical sketch structure will have five stages in the story:
1. The Set Up
2. Introducing the Conflict
3. Exploring the Conflict
4. Introducing the Solution
5. The Resolution
So let's take a look at this in the context of an example, from "That Mitchell and Webb Look" (watch before continuing):
Let's talk about the elements of basic structure, using the sketch as an example:
1. The Set Up
This is where the story begins. Introduce the sketch. Establish the CROW (Character, Relationship, Objective, Where) for the audience, and then establish a familiar, normal situation for the characters.
In the Example – Quickly, you can figure out the set up: In ancient (biblical) times, a teacher (Jesus, played by Robert Webb) is telling the story of the Good Samaritan to a group. CROW is quickly established by the set, costumes, positioning of the characters, and, at last (10 seconds in), the use of the term "Master" by a member of the (Jesus's) audience.
2. Introducing the Conflict
This is the point where a problem arises, the whole reason for the sketch. During the set up, you told the audience what was going on, and this is the point where the sketch will get unusual. Answer the question "What makes this day different from every other day?".
In the Example – About 10 seconds in, they introduce the conflict, when one of the students (David Mitchell), wants to interrupt the story, and continues to try to interject until finally, at about 34 seconds, he stops Jesus to explain the conflict: the story is offensive because it implies Samaritans aren't generally good.
3. Exploring the Conflict
Now that we have a conflict, this is where it is explored. Support the issue on all sides of the conflict, and see where the interaction takes the conflict. Heighten the conflict. Raise the emotional stakes.
In the Example – At about 46 seconds in, other students chime in supporting the problem the lead student has about the stereotypical view of Samaritans. There is a little back and forth between the complaining student and Jesus, heightening the conflict. At the end of the complaint, the main student accuses Jesus of racism.
4. Introducing a Solution
This is where we work to end the sketch, right after the emotional climax. Start working towards the resolution of the conflict by introducing a solution. Introduce some minor conflicts because of the resolution, but remember that you are working towards ending the sketch.
In the Example – 1:24 Jesus attempts to defuse the situation, first clumsily (with objections from his audience) in a very familiar defusing-pc-objection way, and finally by backtracking to explain that the spirit of the story is what is important, despite the problems of the parable he tried to tell to illustrate the concept of goodness.
5. The Resolution
This is where we end the sketch. At the end of the sketch, the conflict is "resolved". This doesn't mean it is solved, it just means that a solution was attempted. The situation has changed, or it is pointed out that the solution has not changed (and that the characters will be continuing with the conflict).
In the Example – 2:02 Jesus has defused the situation with his speech but, in the end, nothing is really changed by the solution. Jesus is revealed to be a bigot (when it comes to Samaritans), which the students had suspected (but Jesus had deflected). Nice that they stuck in a little joke on which the sketch could end.
This is one of my favorite Mitchell & Webb sketches. It takes a very well-known story (and better-known concept of a "Good Samaritan"), and revisits it with a modern sensibility (political correctness). I generally like sketches which do this. One of my favorite Kazoo! sketches sort of does this with the King Solomon baby story. That sketch takes the familiar story of King Solomon figuring out who the mother of a disputed baby is by threatening to split the baby, and injects a modern realistic reaction (the women freak out and think Solomon is crazy for wanting to kill the baby).
I don't want to say too much about other sketch elements of this sketch, because I want to focus on the basic element of sketch structure. Maybe I'll revisit this later to use as an example for other sketch comedy concepts.


text:
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text:
Home page, far right, near the top, under the Geek Wear call out. You will see a pass link to join.
Glad to see Kent let you in, if you have any questions just ask anyone on this pass or post it here. Other than the moderator the rest of us are here to help!
A woman took a package to the post office to mail and was told it would cost $2.40 for fast delivery or $1.30 for slower service."There is no hurry," she told the clerk, "just so the package is delivered in my lifetime."The postmaster glanced at her and said, "That will be $2.40, please."
Extra sticks for the moderator are not listed in the puts and takes, there should be a separate bag marked for any donation to the moderator. (BTW Kent likes White Owls and Acids).Extra puts are just Geek math. Many people will add an extra into the pass just to help it grow
Sounds kinky
Edward Scissorhands!
Well done for your first pass
Nice haul!
Kent thanks for running this and thanks again for allowing me to participate!


text:
Michael Douglas, Zoe Saldana and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley sat front row.
Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen and Selma Blair sat front row at the designer's spring show.
Rooney Mara, David Byrne and Elle and Dakota Fanning all turned out to toast the spring collection.
Try as she did to keep a low profile at Wednesday's show, Whoopi Goldberg attracted a bevy of well-wishers.
Court of Appeal ruled that Hermès can group family-owned shares into a nonlisted holding company by year-end.
The decision will affect 93 directly managed retail stores in North America.
Design team to present collection during Paris Fashion Week.
A surprising 1.1 percent jump in August is serving as the harbinger of even higher inflation to come through the crucial holiday season.
The brand is inviting fans of the fragrances to experience the life of a rock star on its new Web site, be-a-rockstar.com.
Procter & Gamble Co. executives say that new product yields immediate results in increasing hair diameter.
The London-based jeans company has bought back the rights to its name and trademarks and seeks a regional ceo.
Alexander McQueen, Azzedine Alaïa and Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel are among some of the labels on display at the exhibit.
Guests found a few different ways to pay homage to Elizabeth Taylor at V magazine's Wednesday night party.
The magician celebrated both his birthday and Fantastic Man spread at his Park Avenue penthouse on Wednesday night.
The brand is taking their retail a step forward, fitting in with the strategies mapped out by new owner, Paris-based investment firm Eurazeo.
China Machado, Penelope Tree, Diane von Furstenberg, Calvin Klein and Mark Lee co-hosted the celebratory cocktail party.
Milan wants to shake up the show calendar — and New York and London are digging in their heels.
Designer is playing to his core audience with his newest fragrance masterbrand, Eau de Prep.
InStyle held a small viewing of Taylor's personal wardrobe, which will soon to go on the block at Christie's.
Olivia Wilde sought balance at the runway show on Thursday morning.
Uma Thurman, Chloë Moretz, Ashley Greene and Lara Stone took in the spring show.
The completely autonomous French brands are designed by two sisters who are said to be friendly competitors.
Swept-back hair — buns, French twists, braids and tails — let designers' collections take center stage for spring.
Rimmel is celebrating its 10-year anniversary with the model by launching the Kate Moss Lasting Finish Lipstick collection.
Los Angeles-based contemporary label Romeo & Juliet Couture has partnered with Warner Bros. to produce a collection that will premiere at Coterie on Sunday.
One of the key messages delivered by the trade body at its annual meeting is that brands need to start thinking multichannel.
Waris Ahluwalia, Johan Lindeberg and Bambou and Lulu Gainsbourg were among guests a celebratory dinner on Wednesday evening.
The airdate for Bravo's new reality vehicle, "It's a Brad, Brad World," has yet to be revealed, but look for the trailer in November.
This is the first season in more than 10 years that Booth Moore won't be attending the shows in London, Paris and Milan.
Market rumors are circulating that the designer is in the final stages of negotiations for a possible fragrance licensing deal with TPR Holdings LLC.
The designer's brand will present a white rendition of its ever-famous Rocco bag at the city's White trade show.
The designer had a surprise up her sleeve on Thursday with an exclusive sampling of boyfriend Mick Jagger's newest work.
Moves are just the start of what is expected to be a series of shake-ups in the coming days at the publisher.
MDC Partners, a Toronto-based holding company, is said to be making a significant investment in the fashion ad agency owned by Trey Laird.


text:
Currently, Superstar Rajinikanth is busy in the shooting of his forthcoming film 'Kabali' movie. Superstar Rajinikanth celebrated his 65th birthday December 12th. He asked his fans to help the Chennai flood victims instead of celebrating his birthday. Rajini thanked his wellwishers who helped Chennai flood victims.
Rajinikanth tweeted "To friends, colleagues, well wishers and my DEAREST FANS who are closest to my heart … thank you for all the wishes". He further tweeted "To all my dear fans who stood & lived up to the hour of need for our Chennai ..heartfelt thanks ..Nothing could make me happier and proud".


text:
EATON — On a night when Eaton's softball program honored its two seniors prior to its the final regular-season home game, the Eagles made sure they sent Grace Miller and Kathryn Madewell out on a high note once the game started.
Not only did Eaton knock off Cross County Conference champion National Trail, 5-2, on Monday, May 1, it was the seniors who gave the team a lift.
"I was real proud of our seniors, it was the best they both have played all year and I'm so glad that it came on their senior night, " Eaton coach Maggie Neanen said after her team improved to 16-10 overall.
The game was scoreless heading into the home half of the third inning when Miller started it off with a base hit. Sophomore Quinlyn Sittloh followed with a double and Madewell followed with a sacrifice bunt to score Miller.
Junior Bailee Worley then drove in Sittloh to give Eaton a 2-0 lead.
Eaton tacked on three more runs in the game coming from sophomore Becca Mowen going 1-for-3 with a double and an RBI.
Miller went 2-for-3 with 2 RBI and Sittloh went 2-for-2 with a double.
Sophomore Annika Gels pitched a complete game, allowing three hits and striking out five.
"With the season coming to an end we ended regular season at 16-10, something I didn't think would be possible at the beginning of the season when you look at our schedule," Neanen said. "I am so proud of our young team for stepping up and getting 16 wins. We played five doubleheaders this season and winning every single one. We went 10-0 on Saturdays. I often make the comment I wish we could play every game on a Saturday because we play so well."
The Eagles head into sectional tournament play as the No. 4 seed and the path is set for them to make a deep run into the postseason.
"Heading into the tournament we got the No. 4 seed which I believe is fantastic because the top three seeds are very good programs so getting the No. 4 seed again this year is another great accomplishment for our young team.," Neanen said. "I believe fully that we can make it to districts this year with our side of the bracket, it's the best set up we have had in my three years with the program and I am confident that our girls will get there."
Eaton was scheduled to host No. 13 seed Dayton Belmont on Tuesday, May 9. If the Eagles win they will host No. 11 seed Dayton Carroll on Thursday, May 11. The sectional final is scheduled for Tuesday, May 16 at Dixie High School.
Reach Eddie Mowen Jr. at 937-683-4056 or on Twitter @emowen_RH


text:
After Djibouti, China to build second overseas military base in Pakistan
Near the civilian port of Gwadar in Pakistan, China plans to build a naval base to supply and maintain ships operating in the Indian Ocean.
The South China Morning Post reports that Beijing is planning "to build its second offshore naval base near a strategically important Pakistani port following the opening of its first facility in Djibouti on the Horn of Africa last year."
- The base will be located near the civilian port at Gwadar on the Arabian Sea, and will be used "to dock and maintain naval vessels, as well as provide other logistical support services."
- The Gwadar port is already a key part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), one of China's projects that has been shoehorned into the Belt and Road Initiative.
- An analyst quoted in the article says that the new port's function is necessary to supply and maintain the Chinese "naval flotilla patrolling in the Gulf of Aden and other warships escorting Chinese oil tankers in the Indian Ocean."
Meanwhile, on New Year's Day, U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted:
The United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years, and they have given us nothing but lies & deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools. They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 1, 2018
- The U.S. suspended security assistance on January 4, citing a failure by the Pakistani government to sufficiently crack down on terror groups within its borders, according to CNN.
- The Times of India says "Trump's pressure on Pakistan may push it closer to China."
Fake Chinese documents in D.C.
Ryan Manuel, a seasoned observer of Chinese politics and intrigue, published an article about a recent media story alleging a secret Chinese program to supply North Korea. Read the following excerpt in an Australian accent dripping with sarcasm to understand it properly:
Bill Gertz, senior editor of the Washington Free Beacon, specialises in scoops. But even by his high standards, his 2 January story that states a '(s)ecret Chinese Communist Party document reveals covert support to North Korea, including missiles, increased aid' was a major coup.
If true, Gertz had succeeded where nearly all before him had failed: he had managed not only to access a top secret Chinese internal document but also to prove that China had a secret North Korea strategy contrary to its public declarations.
Gertz uploaded the "internal document" he obtained. Manuel explains why the document is almost certainly a fake. This, he says, "leaves us with other, perhaps more troubling questions," such as: Who would fake a document of this kind?
In a televised address to the people, President and Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping spoke of the Chinese people's "great creative forces," promised poverty alleviation, affirmed international commitments, and admitted room for domestic improvement.
Concerns over control of the private data of American citizens have scuttled a $1.2 billion deal. This is a blow to the Alibaba empire's global expansion plans, as U.S. regulators increase scrutiny of Chinese acquisitions, while American companies remain shut out of lucrative parts of the Chinese economy.
Xi Jinping addressed around 7,000 soldiers at a military base in Hebei Province, near Beijing, and ordered the military to be ready for war, a show of strength in anxious times.


text:
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text:
Israel's halt of the entry of cement into Gaza has stopped reconstruction work, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) revealed on Friday, according to Quds Press.
In a report, OCHA said: "The rebuilding of the houses destroyed during the latest Israeli offensive on Gaza stopped due to the Israeli authorities' ban on cement entry for about two months."
In April, the Israeli authorities stopped cement entry to Gaza claiming it was being used by Hamas to build military defences.
According to the OCHA report, aid groups in Gaza were also obliged to "suspend" their contributions to repairing the houses of over 1,370 families due to the shortage of cement or "high price hike".
It also said that payments scheduled for 1,550 families to help them start the reconstruction of their homes stopped due to the severe shortage of cement.
The report said that 75,000 Palestinians in Gaza are still homeless after their houses were destroyed during the last Israeli offensive.
The summer Israeli offensive on Gaza completely destroyed 12,000 homes and partially destroyed160,000 others.
The severe shortage of cement due to Israeli restrictions has also caused around 40,000 workers in the construction sector to lose their jobs.


text:
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text:
John Mark's article about "Why Open Source Failed" is so extremely misguided. It lambastes the open source community for driving inequality in the world by making their work freely available. He doesn't entirely let the "Big 4" technology corporations off the hook for being evil, but, because of that conspicuous difference between open source and corporate development, he certainly blames open source for helping them get where they are today. To conceive this canard, you have to be willing to take on board some pretty big assumptions about the power dynamics between technology corporations and open source. I am not, primarily because bending over backwards to conclude that sharing non-rival resources leads to inequality is a distraction from very real drivers of inequality originating from corporations. It is not the fault of the open source experiments that those corporations have been spinning out of control for decades. The corporations' leaders chose that path for themselves. The engine of inequality Mark is trying and failing to address is corporate abuse of open source, and corporate abandonment of good business sense in pursuit of pure profit without consideration for the larger tech ecosystem of which they and open source project are parts.
Copyright and open source
The first thing we need to realize is that offering free alternatives is not new. It has been a thing for far longer than the open source's two decade vogue—consider the public domain, works not covered or no longer restricted by the copyright system. It is the destiny of all copyrightable works to enter the public domain, even if that inevitability seems imperceptibly distant today. After that, they are free as the air to be used by anybody, and software (for better and worse) is copyrightable, so it shares that destiny. Maybe the software will be outdated in 95+ years, when copyright may expire today, but that is an immaterial accident caused by grafting the strictest version of our literary system onto bits. One could easily imagine creating a different species of copyright for software, as the (poorly named) design patent serves the fashion industry. The main innovation of open source within this system is the abdication of copyright restriction and allowing that destiny to come early, within the lifetime of its original creator. (Which, really, was not much of an innovation because most things were never copyrighted before formalities were abolished. "I would like to continue the status quo after you've changed the rules, please.")
When talking about copyright policy, we too often neglect tech's role in delivering this sorry state of affairs, but it is illustrative to take a look at the most common copyright trolling boogeyman: Disney. A famous user of free works like Beauty and the Beast or Hunchback of Notre Dame, does Disney's use of public domain literary works drive inequality in film? No. Hard no. Those works are free, and Disney made use of them to make projects that people have enjoyed and the use of those free works has spurred much economic prosperity within and without the mouse company precisely because they are available to all of us. Open source software voluntarily places itself at this important crux to our system of economic development and, again, because software is copyrighted, public domain non-licensing is the fate of every shred of it anyway, however far off that day may seem.
In short, we don't and should not shame Disney for using the public domain. We shame Disney for denying the public domain to everyone else in their attempt to keep their work out of the public's hands, which is a much stronger driver of inequality than releasing some work and not charging rent. The analogy to software companies is direct: don't shame them for using open source. Shame them for attacking the copyright system and lobbying to restrict our rightful access to works held within that system. The corporations made the establishment of open source as a counterculture a necessity in the first place. Don't turn around and shake your ignorant finger at open source after that, with the obvious villain at your back.
Regardless, lobbying for worse copyright laws and spawning our free-culture alone was not necessarily bad business. Some people legitimately think that longer copyright terms are beneficial to society, although I do not. Straight-up bad business sense enters the picture when you start thinking about the second order effects of open source development and corporations' active decisions to poison their relationship with it. This is detrimental to everyone, including themselves. I'll start with funding, since it is the most obvious way that corporations have abandoned their community responsibilities.
Failure to fund open source infrastructure
One of the ways that the analogy between public domain literature works and open source software breaks down is when you consider the fact that old literature is just as useful as it ever was. Old software is almost immediately outdated upon release. To continue working, most software needs to be updated, and so it needs maintainers. This is not too concerning with small projects, but large projects like Python are full-time operations backed by foundations. You don't have to look too hard to find such large projects, critical to the infrastructure of our entire world, are strapped for funding or only have a handful of maintainers who often work on the project in addition to whatever corporate job they have.
I hear you asking "Well, if the arrangement is voluntary, can't the maintainers just walk away if they don't like that?" Then the project dies. Then the projects that run on it die. Then the corporations that make the projects that run on it lose key infrastructure. If such a thing happened under a corporation's own umbrella, it would excoriate management for such bad business practice. It is still bad business when dealing with an open source party. The fact that these people are releasing their contributions for free use is not the driver of inequality, because their contributions are deserving and, in fact, demand support from users as part of the transaction. Corporations refusing to assist the groups on whose labors they build drives inequality—tithing some funds is but the most trivial of ways to rectify that situation. Additionally, calling for corporations to support open source with tithes or even paid worker labor is not a plea for altruism or trickle down economics. It is merely stating plainly what open source's place in the ecosystem actually is. We must address that real, critical role directly because corporations often ignore it, to their own detriment, while causing a lot of inequitable division of labor and wealth. And who do we blame for this? Seemingly never the corporation literally acting against its own best interests.
And as for Mark's idea that individual developers holding software patents and restricting the tools' use would address inequality, who willingly uses S-PLUS over R? MATLAB over GNU Octave? Don't deny the reality that free, generally available tools provided by open source communities are powering modern software development. Question whether or not we are properly adapting to that reality.
Outsourced training and discrimination
Nonetheless, the other side of that is open source projects voluntarily submitting to free riding. It's true that they do so, it is their right, and it is not necessarily insidious for a small company to use Python and to not tithe to it even if they have the resources. Failing to support their open source dependencies is not the only way corporations are abusing the open source paradigm, though. Tell me, how long ago did you last hear someone spread the advice that a new developer should work on open source to prove to businesses that they are capable of doing their job? Trick question: it's every damn day, including this one. Much like allowing defendants to testify at their own trials destroyed the presumption of innocence in our criminal courts, employers taking open source contributions into account has destroyed the presumption of competence and the pathway into this industry. People who would not get out of bed to work for less than $100,000 are demanding that people prove themselves "productive" and "passionate" by working for free outside (thus, in addition to) a 9-to-5, which is a betrayal of the industry in three key ways.
Firstly, this is inherently discriminatory against those of us who don't find satisfaction in open source programming on our own time: I am not less "passionate" or, more principally, a less skilled developer simply because I don't like to do it at home. Secondly, corporations have no right to devalue junior developers by not hiring them and outsourcing their training to open source maintainers without compensation. This prevents people from entering the industry even if they choose to go the traditional university route and get a degree. It, in turn, prevents people from gaining industry credentials, which prevents people from being able to satisfy demand for experienced programmers driving the vacuous perception that there is a shortage of software "talent" out there. Finally, it's also barely-veiled as discriminatory in favor of software development's white male majority because open source is even more white and male than the general software developer workforce. You can talk about the whys of that and how to fix that until you are blue in the face, but the bare bones reality is that if your hiring practice is to filter for open source contributors today, you are filtering out women and people of color and share some direct responsibility for their underrepresentation in the field.
None of this means open source is bad, or is even a reflection upon open source. Contrary to Mark's article, sharing free software is a public good. Corporations systemically requiring people to contribute to open source without adequately supporting that part of the ecosystem with funds, manpower, or a managed understanding of what its dependence on open source means for the industry at large is sickening. Corporate abuse of the open source paradigm is one among so many other ways that corporations are engines of inequality in the world. We should condemn that abuse and seek accountability and reform. Blaming the exploited in this part of the scenario—the open source maintainers and contributors, and even non-contributors via discrimination—and declaring that they have "failed" when they have so clearly succeeded will not get us anywhere in the pursuit of a more equitable world.
Posted on by:
Mike Overby
Mike Overby is a software developer looking for work, host of a law review podcast called Amicus Lectio, and a moderator of Programming Discussions (invite.progdisc.club). Follow me on Twitter!
As is always the case here, reminder to keep this discussion civil. This is a subject that can fire people up.
You people keep talking about the majority of developers being white males as if that was a bad thing. But it's not being caused by discrimination, (there is none because open source is as close to a pure meritocracy as has ever existed in human experience) so who cares what color or gender they are?
"You people" means Democrats.
The Open Source community is a meritocracy - the most pure one which has ever existed. No one cares what color you are and most would prefer not to even know.
I never said Silicon Valley was a meritocracy. It is filled witb "diversity" and nepotism.
Err… let's see: imagine Bob has 1h a day to spend on open source because he's got a full time job, and Alice spends 10h a day working on the same project because she really enjoys it and doesn't need to work; she inherited a large fortune from her grandmother. Alice quickly rises as the tech lead of the project because of the work she was able to pour in it. How is any of that meritocratic? (And I won't get into the origins of the term meritocracy.)
How much time you have to dedicate to any given endeavor is part of the merit of your qualifications for the endeavor.
The only difference in qualification between Bob and Alice in my example is that Alice has inherited money while Bob hasn't. Are you suggesting Alice has more merit because she inherited money? That doesn't fit a definition of meritocracy that I'm wiling to consider in a conversation.
I'm not a Democrat.
A study of gender bias in open source found that women who contributed openly got their pull requests merged less often than when they hid their gender. It's as drastic as 58% accepted when open and 78.7% accepted when hidden.
A "pure" meritocracy wouldn't consider a factor completely unconnected to the work in determining merit.
Also, if fewer women's open source PRs are accepted, then fewer women become open source contributors, then a filter for open source developers in the hiring process would accept fewer women.
Meritocracy doesn't care about why you have merit, only that you have merit or don't.
So women, whose contributions are demonstrably accepted less frequently because they are women, therefore demonstrably have less merit because they are women?
I'm not a Democrat.
Oh, must be that you're not from the U.S.
This guy on reddit seems to have a valid criticism of the methodology of that study: reddit.com/r/programming/comments/...
For the purposes of getting something on your resume to get an entry level programming job, you don't have to get PRs accepted by prominent open source projects to get some open source development experience. You can just code something, anything. Fork somebody. Even make a game. It doesn't have to be big or important. The point is just to prove that you can code: that's all. It helps get you over the "no experience" gap at the beginning of your career. Some people don't even have to go that route because they built something worth showing off for their coursework in college. But employers want to see that you've done something, so at least you know the basics. Putting something up on Github can help bridge that gap a little.
When I said "Meritocracy doesn't care..." I was responding to this:
"The only difference in qualification between Bob and Alice in my example is that Alice has inherited money while Bob hasn't. Are you suggesting Alice has more merit because she inherited money? That doesn't fit a definition of meritocracy that I'm wiling to consider in a conversation."
My response to that was, "Meritocracy doesn't care about why you have merit, only that you have merit or don't."
But the more I think about this, the more I find this argument really absurd. Imagine if we were talking about being a concert pianist, and we have Alice who inherited enough money to dedicate her life to constant practice and instruction with the best teachers in the world, and Bob who doesn't have enough time to practice because he has to work. Well guess what, Alice is extremely likely to have more merit as a concert pianist than Bob, no matter what caused Alice to get there.
Look, I'm not going to respond to this any more than to point out that your insistence that I am either a Democrat or not from America (I am) is as blatant a demonstration as I could imagine that you are the one being partisan. Take a step back for the day, come back to it later, and maybe you'll see how the consequences of your argument (women and working-class people have less merit than non-women and people who inherit money) are ridiculous.
maybe you'll see how the consequences of your argument (women and working-class people have less merit than non-women and people who inherit money) are ridiculous.
Merit isn't the same thing as personal worth. Merit is about how well you can do the job. If your wealth buys you the best education and the time to pursue excellence, then OF COURSE you are more likely to have more merit for the task you've educated and trained yourself for than someone who didn't have that advantage. But this is not inherent to having wealth. Economic determinism is false. Rich idiots don't have more merit. But rich experts do.
"Meritocracy (merit, from Latin mereō, and -cracy, from Ancient Greek κράτος kratos "strength, power") is a political philosophy which holds that certain things, such as economic goods or power, should be vested in individuals on the basis of talent, effort, and achievement, rather than factors such as sexuality, race, gender, or wealth." —en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritocracy
Yes, I didn't understand that article.
OSS failed? I had the impression it had won.
Many other big corps have adopted OSS as part of their portfolio. I mean, even Microsoft did?!
Mark's point is that people creating/maintaining the OSS are not getting compensation from all the tech giants that use it. So big business now doesn't have to pay for the creation of that software. They save money and don't spread the wealth. Simple concept. And from what I gathered as to this article's point, is the author here doesn't actually disagree, just seems flared up about nuances in how or why. And also throws in some white male privilege of course? (not saying that isn't a thing, just seems a bit unrelated to the OSS issue...)
Mark said that open source drives inequality in the world, and I say it does not. It's more than a nuance because we're directing blame for these problems in opposite directions. We could be said to agree that open source licensing technically allows even the largest corporations to free ride and corporations have done bad things, but very little, if anything else on this issue.
The white male privilege portion came in because one of the ways corporations abuse open source is to treat it as a filter during the hiring process. If you treat something as a filter, and the people with that something are overwhelmingly of a certain background, then you are filtering for that background. That makes entering the industry more difficult for those being filtered out, and I criticized corporations for doing that. I didn't get into the OSS side of that issue because this article was about the corporate side.
Well, thanks for clarifying that Mike. I re-read the article with your points in mind. Can you show or give me some info to certain statements you claim?
- You - "Mark said that open source drives inequality in the world, and I say it does not."
Mark says -
"the gross failure of open source as a mechanism to unlock a more equitable society and why we all need to be better. We may not be entirely responsible for either the problem or the solution, but we're certainly complicit and, thus, responsible for helping to resolve the issues"
(emphasis mine)
"One could claim, without any exaggeration, that our current world runs on open source software or that our modern world would not exist in its current form without open source software... So when I write that "open source has failed" I'm obviously not writing from a technology perspective... In the context of this essay, "failure" refers not to any technical achievements but rather to the lack of social ones"
"what... does this have to do with redistributing wealth upwards? In each case, they have created businesses that make vast sums of money, there are tightly constrained groups of employees who benefit, and they tend not to pay others for software. The money comes in, but it never leaves... This means that the highly paid professionals of these companies, and their management, receive the lions' share of money, forming a part of the 10% of earners leaving everyone beyond....the most successful way to amass ridiculous sums of money and keep it to yourself is to build your business on open source software... A very few large companies have been able to establish concentrated bubbles of wealth and power that continue to grow at an astounding rate. These companies have learned how to use intellectual property laws to remove competitive threats and establish choke holds over their particular industry segments."
(emphasis mine)
- You - "We could be said to agree that open source licensing technically allows even the largest corporations to free ride and corporations have done bad things, but very little, if anything else on this issue."
He never said open source "drives inequality". It seems he's saying there are problems and the complacency of the "open source community" is an issue. Every single example of a problem he gives involves "corporate abuse". (And he has cool charts and graphs, +1 lol...). But he actually makes very few points in the entirety of his article. So you agree with his main point but you say that you agree with "very little, if anything else on this issue". But Mark doesn't really make a single other point other than it would be good to make intellectual property reforms (once again geared to reducing the stranglehold of monopolies). That is literally the only other point he makes.
His article can be summed up in 3 points.
- Open source as it currently is can be abused by big companies.
- Something should be done to change this.
- It is "our" fault for being complacent.
Please note. I don't actually agree with any of this. (Him or you). I just truly can't see what you "don't agree" with him on. Is it the intellectual property reform? Or his blaming the problem on developer/societal "complacency". Because those are literally the only two other topics besides the corporate abuse/mis-distribution wealth. Which is 80% of the article...
I think this is a more appropriate quotation to sum up his point in his own words:
The crux of this essay is thus: not only did open source not stem or stall the redistribution of wealth and power upwards, but rather it aided and abetted the redistribution of wealth and power upwards. To be an open source proponent at this time without acknowledging this very real and most unfortunate consequence is to be a cog in a much larger machine; a stooge; a very useful idiot.
The first sentence is what latched into my mind and, upon finishing, lead me to write my piece. Saying that it is mere complicity elsewhere might be a better hedge of the point, but that point is still blaming open source technologies for wealth inequality and, as I summarize the article overall, driving said inequality by allowing the corporations to rake in huge profits without compelling them to pay license fees. Most of my article was about the second order effects of this arrangement, not the lack of direct fees.
The second sentence shows how we differ when we say open source is being abused. In his view, free licensing is equatable to free labor in service of these large companies. He demonizes open source as "the building blocks of modern capitalist behemoths" and says that corporations somehow hacked the intellectual monopoly system by starting new projects with its tools. This is not a hack, allowing them to use the software is not "complacency," and open source developers are not idiots. Open source software is intended to be used as material to build on by everyone. Letting the blame for wealth inequality spread from the corporations to the open source tools is just wrong. No, corporations are abusing open source in two big classes of ways: 1) by not supporting the projects materially, whether by tithe or workhours, 2) by altering their expectations of open source developers in ways that harm the software industry at large. The first makes large projects less sustainable even as they become more important to the industry. They need not support the projects out of altruism, but they have every practical reason to do so because, without that support, the project may die. The second hurts basically every developer, especially ones with less professional experience, by making the industry more insular. That snowballs into a shortage of experienced developers later.
And Mark's remedies for this situation amount to making open source software more closed or appealing to some sense of fairness in the idea that a developer should be entitled to patent restrictions of work they made for hire. To be too brief, making software more closed isn't an actual remedy when the market is essentially demanding free software, so patents and restrictions don't address this.
Also, he makes a lot of other direct statements in the latter half of the piece that I disagree with like "Using or developing more open source software is not going to improve anyone's lives." It certainly has. "Developing open source software is not a public good." It is, but the larger projects need support. In my view, the easiest way to allocate resources to these projects is based on who's using them and how much, which is something that can be regulated via norms although those norms have not exactly materialized. How exactly to get us there is an open question, but one way we can start is by not doing the things described in my article.
Mike -
"In short, we don't and should not shame Disney for using the public domain. We shame Disney for denying the public domain to everyone else in their attempt to keep their work out of the public's hands, which is a much stronger driver of inequality than releasing some work and not charging rent. The analogy to software companies is direct: don't shame them for using open source. Shame them for attacking the copyright system and lobbying to restrict our rightful access to works held within that system"
Mark -
"A very few large companies have been able to establish concentrated bubbles of wealth and power that continue to grow at an astounding rate. These companies have learned how to use intellectual property laws to remove competitive threats and establish choke holds over their particular industry segments."
Mike -
"corporations are abusing open source in two big classes of ways: 1) by not supporting the projects materially, whether by tithe or workhours, 2) by altering their expectations of open source developers in ways that harm the software industry at large"
Mark -
"they have created businesses that make vast sums of money, there are tightly constrained groups of employees who benefit, and they tend not to pay others for software. The money comes in, but it never leaves"
Mike -
"We must address that real, critical role directly because corporations often ignore it, to their own detriment, while causing a lot of inequitable division of labor and wealth"
Mark -
"We may not be entirely responsible for either the problem or the solution, but we're certainly complicit and, thus, responsible for helping to resolve the issues"
Not trying to be a jerk. The opposite actually. But it really seems like this guy is on the same side as you. Most examples you give of "disagreement" are actually small statements taken out of context. He is NOT anti-open source and he in no way "let's the corporations off the hook" (he does the opposite actually, his point is THEY won't stop unless you make them).
Once again. I do not agree with either of you. BUT... This guy should be your ally because you are both on the same anti-big bad corporations team. But because you can't let go of a few small statements or have different ideas to handle it you went and wrote an entire post against it. WTH? You agree with 80% of what he says!
And IMO most of what you state as not agreeing with are not actually where he is, but rather your perception of where he is because of how you interpret certain statements. (If that makes sense). Just food for thought. I'm done now. Feel free to respond but I probably won't (not in a disrespectful way, I just feel I've thoroughly made my point and there is nothing left to say, feel free to have the last word, I'll just listen and not speak)
Aren't many big OSS projects created AND maintained by corps?
VSCode, React, Gatsby, Expo, Apollo, Amplify, GraphQL, etc pp.
Yup. I don't have much of an opinion on the subject myself. I think open source is great. I also think that many times big business can make bad or even harmful choices. It seems both authors have some interesting points. I just thought it strange how flared up this article's author was when it seems to be mostly in agreement with what it is roasting. Mark point seemed to be that open source "failed" because it didn't protect itself from abuse. This article's author seemed hung up on the "Open source failed" click-bait title and missed the forest for the trees... (Just my opinion of course). But in all seriousness, after reading both articles it really doesn't seem that Mike and Mark disagree...
Mark's article picked on Microsoft specifically because of its big swing in favor of open source in the last few years, saying that open source allowing free riding enables their bad behavior. Basically, open source "failed" because it didn't prevent corporations from being bad actors.
Now, I certainly have qualms with how Microsoft has gone about joining the open source movement, such as immediately buying its way onto the Linux Foundation board in light of its previous "Linux is evil" stance or "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish." The Linux Foundation's questionable history with conflicts of interest doesn't help, either. But the general idea of acknowledging that open source software is foundational to modern software is just being realistic about where we're at.
I think part of the issue with the discourse is that open source is so complicated, so politicized from the beginning, so incredibly varied across projects.
Open source is pretty abstract, and therefore, arguments can often devolve to two sides making straw man points. It's easy to argue against the most extreme ideas on each side of certain debates.
As I ventured to become more familiar with open source I found that there was so much nuance that people attempted to label as the definitive answer. It seemed like people had claimed to have "solved" certain open source dilemmas which, to me, seem more like ongoing economic tradeoffs which can never be solved.
In your post, and in my reply, it's all very philosophical and I wouldn't want to think that anyone in this conversation "nailed it" with their argument. We're all just holding court and chatting.
It's definitely one of those subjects about which discussion tenaciously runs away to abstractions. :) That's good, in the sense that open source ideas are versatile and can be a lens on many things, but it also allows people to argue past concrete details and criticisms by appealing to higher principles. I tried to balance that by including both the more heady origins for it in corporation-driven changes to the copyright law and also the concrete ways in which corporations risk their operations and make the industry less healthy by failing to support these groups they depend on.
However, the result does also feel like two articles merged into one to me, and thereby more of an abstraction, haha.
I wonder how much Open Source has contributed to the massive decline in global poverty.
I suspect it's role is not at all trivial. The ethic of "let solve problems because they are worth solving" and "let's give powerful tools to the masses" Changed the game in exponential ways.
How many business decisions are made in the world today without the use of Linux, apache, mysql, php, or another free variant of such? Nearly none. We have cheap smartphones in the pockets of the poor and developing world powered by linux or a variant.
When I was a kid, It cost dollars to call a state away. I watched my kids play Magic the Gathering with over video chat with their friends in Australia for several hours.
There is a Libertarian socialism that has emerged without the need for government revolution or force. It is handing the means of production to the masses. Those tools being distributed allow communities much better ability to solve problems locally and to communicate and coordinate with others to obtain resources that are needed.
You get the benefits of socialism without the oppression. Still a ways to go, but the impact of technology seems to pay compound interest.
One of the main reasons we open source is to help fix bugs by crowdsourcing our development. No matter how big the organization is it cannot have enough resources to tackle all issues with closed/ private repos and deliver value in time.
For many popular projects its a win-win situation as contributors see their name in there and organizations improve their solutions almost for free.
Everything else is politics.
Nice, thorough argument Mike. I can see both sides, and it's definitely a mutli-faceted discussion and analysis.
We discuss these kinds of issues on The Changelog pretty frequently. You'd probably enjoy (but probably disagree with) Zed Shaw's take on the subject.
Zed Shaw has flipped his bozo bit with me for life.
An hour and a half of him is a big ask, so I read the PDF transcript of his Twitter comments that got him on the show. Because those comments were primarily motivated by his persecution complex (They blacklisted me just for a different opinion! (No. No, they didn't.)) when they weren't outright and laughably wrong (Patreon is money laundering), I find them irrelevant. He's most directly addressed in my article where I talk about maintenance needs differentiating open source software from literature. It's just not true that companies can continue to use the software indefinitely if that software has no ongoing maintenance, and that maintenance requires external support from at least somebody when that software project gets sufficiently large.
I'll definitely try to check out a different episode of your show, though. Always out to find new fellow podcasters! ^^
Open Source as such did not fail. We are having more sourcecode in the open than ever. What failed are the expectations people had about Open Source.
Back in the day, having proprietary source code was meant to be a competitive advantage. What was right: having knowledge others have not is a competitive advantage. Source code was thought to be part of that knowledge.
That last assumption is now mostly rebutted - of course e.g. Google does not share the source of its Borg-platform but we get Kubernetes (yay!).
It is not the openess or closedness of software which determines economic success. It is the sheer amount of knowledge you have. And this includes (of course) the ability to (physically) store and leverage this knowledge for economic success.
In contrast to what was once thought a competitive disadvantage - opening up your source code - it was a business model of success. You open your software but you keep the knowledge silos closed or at least build access gateways. As an aside: Facebook itself recognized that a bit too late, giving external access to its family jewels. But after realizing that, they closed the access down again.
That said, it is quite obvious, why this belief - more open software equals a more open and more free society - must have faild: It was never about software, it was about knowledge and its concentration. Or to use a more hip term: it is about platform capitalism.
And Open Source played in as far a key role in that, that it allowed to collaborate on the software which makes it easier for everyone to built platforms, which in turn helped the platforms itself to improve their software to build a platform. Microsoft wants people to have a Linux version of VSCode? Let's do that whith the help of the community. A smart move, indeed. Everybody wins in some respect.
The problem is: what to make of it as a society? The question of how to deal with platform capitalism is a question, which can not be answered with software. It can only be answered in a free and public discourse.
As an afterthought:
From a technical point of view, it has never been easier to disrupt the industry with a new business model, since building the software itself is less of an obstacle to tackle; think of Alibaba, Wish, etc.
In this respect Open Source has helped shuffling the cards.
I think it's misleading to conclude that we must either fight for it with legal methods like viral copyright licenses or just accept that corporations will make a lot of money without paying. There are obvious reasons for corporations to tithe money to open source projects. And, from a risk management standpoint, it is increasingly beneficial for them to do so as a security measure to make sure that their important dependencies continue being developed.
On the other hand, the necessary increases in open source donations do not seem to have happened perfectly in a vacuum. I would first suggest social stigma as one factor to the solution, but corporations only seem to respond to that when the advocacy comes from within (see Google walking back its technical support of China's censorship). Failing that, legal remedies might work, but I'm eternally skeptical about the efficacy of enforcement and I'm sure new, completely free alternatives would turn up to replace any of our current open source dependencies that adopted a mandatory payment model. If the way the market moves is toward completely free, then the market must adapt to keep itself sustainable, even if that means the market needs to read an economics text more complicated than "Supply and Demand" or "Obey the invisible hand."
I'm going to reserve my opinion, I agree with some, disagree with others, and view some of it as misaligned analogy (ex: criminal v civil as criminal).
What I will say is the use of videos as supporting evidence doesn't help in justification of the argument due to the lack of bibliography. Lecture without the typically provided references and citations is supposition and conjecture. It also just generally takes longer to consume the information, reading is both faster and cross-referencable. An effective argument delivers the point as concisely as possible and respects the time of the reader.
I'm not immune to this either btw; I know categorically no one on my team has ever read all 70 pages of the code standards I wrote.
It's not an academic paper. I linked to things that I've been consuming recently. I probably should have linked to Jamie Boyle's work because it is foundational to my thinking about copyright and excellent, but I didn't anticipate this getting such a reaction.
Also, the analogy was the presumption of innocence to the presumption of competence. People in other industries don't have to start from 0 and "prove" that they are competent by working for free, but because corporations have started using open source as an informal bullpen, it is a strike against the candidate that they are not "passionate" enough to program outside of work. Is that a bias that can be fully conquered? Probably not, because it goes along with a kinda selfless and geeky "I work on this because I love this" narrative that people like, but we should discourage it.
On the presumption of innocence side, we changed the rules to allow people to testify for themselves and now that is expected behavior of the innocent, even though it is demonstrably not true that all innocent people will or even can testify. Some can't simply because they have criminal records that can be entered into evidence if they take the stand and then be used to impugn their character with the jury, aka the people making the decision whether they should be punished. Is that a bias that can be fully conquered? Probably not, because it goes along with a kinda idealistic "I would speak up for myself if I were innocent of charges like these" narrative that people like, but we should discourage it.
I'm not concerned with your race. I also did not say people were being racist. I said that a system that uses open source contributions as a filter for employment biases the hiring process in favor of hiring open source developers, the vast majority of whom are white and male. Any data scientist--or, hell, just an opinion pollster--would challenge the implicit bias of any similar filter in any other context. Unfortunately, reactionary defenses against imagined charges of racism like your comment throw out these considerations because "it's fine for me." What if it's not fine for someone else?
Also, ask your manager how important it is for them to prove that they can manage in an interview. Ask a mechanical engineer how important it is that they prove their engineering capabilities when they're not getting paid for it. Most other fields have much more generous assumptions of competence in recruiting than software development does. They do just fine without locking people out over this.
I think we often forget that money is just an abstraction over scarcity. It doesn't really matter what the balance is on some balance sheets -- unless they are trying to buy the same things that we need to buy, and those items are scarce, there is still plenty to go around.
If you paid every hamburger flipper 100 bucks an hour. They would still be competing to buy the same scarce real estate, and those prices would inflate accordingly. Money doesn't mean what we think it means.
There is a ton of turnover at the top. Wealth flows to companies that generate value, and it flows away pretty quickly as well. So many household names have disappeared as their markets have been supplanted.
It seems to me that raising the poor is WAY more important than holding down the rich.