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THE TOUGH CUSTOMER- Barking dogs: There ought to be a law
The incessant barking of a neighbor's dog presents an unenviable choice. On the one hand, you can complain, but– besides risking an ongoing disagreement– one risks appearing mean to innocent puppies.
Several outraged comments posted to a recent Hook "Gimme Shelter" column ["Barking dog blues: Talk before taking legal action," December 6] on this topic, written by Albemarle County's animal control unit supervisor Sgt. Peter Mainzer, demonstrate the intensity of feeling surrounding the issue. There's even a nascent web site devoted to the subject, barkactiongroup.org.
A situation involving Dr. John Hong (yes, that Dr. John Hong, our own "Dr. Hook") who lives in Albemarle County, recently came to our attention. According to an early January letter Hong wrote to Officer Kim Maddox of the Albemarle Police Department's animal control unit, Hong's neighbor "leaves his dogs unattended when he travels. On October 5-7 when my parents came to visit, his dogs howled and barked all day and night so none of us could sleep."
Hong spoke to his neighbor, who promised not to leave the three dogs outside again. Hong claims, however, that his neighbor "didn't keep his word and 12/22 – 12/25 his dogs howled and barked from 9pm to 7am every night."
Another of Hong's neighbors, Jason Hall, confirms the dogs had been left outside and barked all night "maybe five times" recently.
It's unclear whether the dogs pose any threat beyond disturbs sleep and the peaceful enjoyment of home. Hong claims they're dangerous, but Maddox wrote Hong that there is no court order confirming that. However, according to Hall, the dogs killed a cat several years ago and recently "chewed up"– but didn't kill– a small dog in the neighborhood. Although Hall acknowledges that the small dog was off leash and partially responsible for that scrape, he describes the barking dogs as "super aggressive."
But the issue here is the dogs' barking and its intrusion on the peace that Hong ought to enjoy in his own home. Hong's biggest hurdle, however, is that, according to Officer Maddox, no county law restricts barking dogs.
After receiving Hong's complaint, Maddox did call the neighbor, whom she describes as "very nice," and told Hong the neighbor would contact Hong directly to discuss the matter. Hong says that never happened.
So he took the next step, which was to ask the Animal Control Unit to set up mediation with the neighbor to address the issue, for which Hong was willing to pay. This is Hong's second biggest hurdle. The neighbor refused to participate, and no party can be forced into mediation, according to Maddox.
For his part, Hong's neighbor says he understands Hong's feelings, claims he has taken steps to prevent the barking from recurring, including disconnecting the doggie door at his house to keep the dogs inside and kenneling the dogs when he leaves town.
The neighbor also believes the question of his willingness to participate in mediation, which he calls a good idea, has been misinterpreted. "I don't know how [Officer Maddox] could have misconstrued me," he says.
Be that as it may, believing that other efforts have failed, Hong eventually turned to his attorney. And although Hong has not yet filed suit, Hong's neighbor said he has heard from Hong's lawyer.
Unlike Albemarle, the City of Charlottesville has a specific law against barking and howling dogs, according to Lisa Miller in the City Attorney's office. A conviction can result in a fine of up to $250, and three convictions in one year can result in a court order to remove the dog.
Officials concede this is a frequent problem, but designing an effective law in Albemarle County, parts of which are densely populated and parts of which are rural, could pose complications. Ideally, Hong and his neighbor will solve their problem amicably, but the lack of a legal framework seems to suggest trouble in the future.
Got a consumer situation? Call the Hook newsroom at 295-8700x405 or email the Tough Customer directly.
28 comments
Bark Action Group is the result of perpetuating dog barking issues, Those that enforce the laws say that they have to be balanced and be fair to the dog owner. The sad fact is that the balance is tipped so far in favour of the dog owner, that people are forgetting the suffering of the poor barking victim. I ask quite realisticly, how long is a victim of dog barking expected to have the peace in their own home returned to them. Sleep deprivation and disturbances to normal home activities continues whilst whilst dog owners and animal control officers try and get their act together.
Far too often, the poor victim has to resort to repeating their report of a dog barking issue to the animal control authority. This can result in years and years of insane and unlawful dog barking hell for victims. The victim often gets labelled as malicious, vexatious and vindictive. Assumptions of other neighbourhood dispute issues are bandied about by animal control. This is the point where animal control has lost control.
Mediation is a hopeless and useless avenue of approach to the situation. It is neither compulsory, not are the outcomes binding by law. Whee the laws clearly state that barking dogs must be controlled, mediation is not required. You have in every barking case, an offender and a victim. You have a law and a person clearly intent on breaking that law. It is time animal control took these views on board. Stop harboring law breakers and enforce the law!
I declare, that if a dog barking situation continues for more than two weeks, it has continued on for too long. I declare that dog barking can be controlled in two days. I declare that our communities are built primarily for the habitation of the human species and dogs and other pets are of secondary concern. Being the primary species in our communities, it is essential that all tax paying, rate paying, hard working and voting citizen has a right to peace in their own homes, and dog barking is far from a healthy thing to be subjected to, not is it an absolute need in our communities.
Put the balance of law enforcement right and stop delaying on the enforcement of laws on dog barking issues.
Matthew Ridgeway
Bark Action Group
PO Box 194
Hampton Park
Victoria 3976
Bark Action Group will continue to exist as a web site, but, it has been found that the barking and dog attack issues are far to common and both need adressing. Victims OF Domestic Animal Attacks and Noise has been created to cover the wider areas of the negative impact animals have in our communities. (VODAAN) You can visit the VODAAAN web site at www.geocities.com/vodaan/
Quiet Tasmania is an Australian website set up to help those adversely affected by Noise, particularly barking.
You can enter this comprehensive website here at
and you can access proposed new dog laws here at
Peter Bright
There is verifiable science to show that the functional driving capability of humans who are awake for a 17-hour period - and need to drive - are doing so with the equivalent deficits of 0.05 blood alcohol content. Take this further. Rise at 5.30 am, retire at 10.30. Neighbour's dog interrupts your sleep with a few unwanted, intrusive woofs every hour or so. By the time you need to drive next day, you have achieved the scientific road capability of a motorist with a blood alcohol content of double the above! So any police officer who ignores a request for the quietening - ongoing - of a barking dog - is directly contributing to crash statistics. Adequate is not only a human right, it is a functional necessity.
Further to my contribution above, the last sentence should read: "Adequate sleep...". In addition, interruptions from invasive noise at certain times of the circadian rhythm completely destroy the value of human sleep. Those who permit their dogs to deliver barking sound into the premises of their neighbours, will one day find themselves culpable for resultant occupational health and road accidents. Then there is the human right for children to sleep, study, play and communicate with their parents - free of the distracting sound generated by barking dogs (or any other unwanted community noises). Neighbours will say "dogs bark, that is their nature." Well - a civil society decrees certain standards on humans' natural behaviours. Toileting is a natural process for humans, but we do not offend the senses of others by imposing it on others. There are some behaviours that our society must control. Barking dogs is gathering momentum as high on that list. If dog owners do not get the growing message, they will bring about their own demise as new research brings about long-awaited change - just as second-hand cigarette smoke is no longer accepted, so will be the case with second-hand, force-fed noise from barking dogs.
Bark Action Group is at the point of the spear in the battle to get lout dog owners to act responsibly. Dogs owned by non responsible people kill scores and put hundreds of thousands of people in the hospital via savage dog attacks. They torment millions of quiet decent people with toxic levels of dog noise pollution damaging their health and in some cases- driving them out of their homes.. Animal control is not effective. In to many cases they are an enabling agency for bad dog ownership.
We need real laws that require dog owners to accept responsibility for the actions of their charges. Tolerance for toxic levels of dog noise pollution is directly linked to the epidemic of dog attacks in the western world.
If you doubt this- I suggest you google news search "dog attacks" and take a good look at the carnage created by lout dog owners.
I am sorry that Dr Hong has been subjected to this. I do not know what type of doctor he is. But I would not want my medical provider to be tormented by crass dog owners and toxic dog noise pollution sleep deprivation on the days that he was treating me. Would you?
I get woken up more often by loud car exhausts and subwoofers than four legged woofers.
People sleep through trains, planes and automobiles and once you "know" the tone of the dog thats barking your mind will cut it out the same way... if you let it... If you have a moral issue about it then your mind will instead "focus" on the sound. Sort of like people who sleep through firetrucks and thunderstorms but would awaken in an instant if they heard the tumblers turn super quietly in the house locks at three am.
Just food for thought.
Dogs bark for a reason just as babies cry for a reason. Figure it out and you might be able to stop it. But when you live in the country where dogs are allowed to run free and can bark at your door whenever they like you get a white-noise machine. My 2 year old can nap through any barking with that on in his room. Just something to think about.
To Living with Nature: Yes, babies certainly cry for a reason, and oftentimes the reason is that they are under duress from unnecessarily stressful neighbourhood noise. I feel sure that most people would not want, for example, the sound of someone else's baby crying inside their bedroom. Similarly, many people do not want someone else's dog barking inside their bedroom, especially when sleep is desperately needed. Sometimes it is more than one dog at a time, or a chain of barking as one dog stirs up an entire neighbourhood. There is no known device ("white noise machine") that replaces the right to quiet inside one's own home and a recipient of unwanted barking should never be put to the expense of remedying someone else's noise. The boundary line of my property is where my neighbour's lifestyle ends, and mine begins, and vice versa. It is not "normal" for dogs to bark. Veterinarians will confirm that in earlier times, dogs did not bark at all. They learned the habit of barking through modern confinement against their pack-roaming nature. If you are subjecting your 2-year old to barking noise, and protecting the owner of the offending animal by temporarily remedying unlawful behaviour with something as questionably efficient as a "white noise machine", then what would you do if your neighbours began to deliver into your home amplified music, interfering with your adult sleep, enjoyment of reading, television, radio or family communications? A white noise machine won't stop that racket. Would you justify delivery of that kind of discomfort into your home by responding that "people play very loud music"?
To: Chuck Wagon. I see your reasoning, but that reasoning is usually proffered by persons who either defend the rights of dog-owners to keep untrained animals, and ignores the rights of home-dwellers to enjoy their personal space. We all have an area of personal space that we do not want violated without invitation. This is the case with barking dogs. If you doubt the dangers being discussed here, take a good look at the World Health Organisation's research and their warnings. If you are dying of a brain tumour, or caring for someone in the last stages of their life, when relaxation and sleep are necessary as nature dictates, then a white noise machine would be as useful as an ashtray on a motor bike. There are laws against this for important health reasons.
Barking Dog Supporters:
If a barking dog supporter can answer one question, perhaps I can better understand why dog owners should be allowed to create noise pollution.
The question is, if you introduce a disturbance to an area and allow it to bark in the early morning hours and leave this noise unchecked, why do you feel it is your right to impose your noise pollution on others and intrude within their house and disturb their sleep?
Hopefully there will be some intelligent response so I can better understand the mindset. Thanks!
Living with Nature:
You obviously are naive to think a 2 year olds brain is developed enough to know a bark from a fart. Unless your 2 year old goes to work, has daily life stresses, has a busy schedule or is a light sleeper I'd say your point is mute. When your 2 year old has exams and stresses of a real life, report back to us how it's sleep is going and your white-noise.
Chucky: What if there are multiple dogs with different barks? Does your brain need to say that is Spot or that is Rex? You have no clue do you? Something tells me at 3:00 AM a dog is not barking for 2 hours at your house.
The real solution is for the owner to investigate why their alarm (dog barking) is sounding just like you would do if your car alarm goes off.
This is not about being anti-dog, just anti-noise pollution.
Again, I must stress, our communities are built primarily for HUMAN habitation. The rights to peace in our own homes over dog barking should be the priority. As a previously in my family, we had three dogs, and if barking began, we would get off our backsides, investigate and control. This should be a knee jerk reaction for every dog owner. Controlling your dog is a dog owners responsibility and is a requirement by law generally.
Failure to control dog barking is a sign of animal neglect. I would be concerned as to the mental and physical health of any dog that barks to the point it creates a disturbance in any neighbourhood. It is cruel to expect your neighbours to tolerate your dogs barking. It is also rude and far from polite community living.
There is no excuse for dog barking to be excessive to the point it creates a disturbance in the neighbourhood. Barking dog owners need to evaluate their values and expectations, as your lifestyle choices should NEVER cause disruptions in your own community. To increase the liveability in your area, for goodness sake, dog owner whose dogs bark, please get active and learn to respond to the barking and control it immediately. I did, my brothers and sister did as well as my parents. How hard can it be to control your dogs barking? Not very hard, I know, I have been there!
Albermarle Officials and elected representatives need to review their stand on dog barking. Clearly it is a negligent and irresponsible dog owner that creates dog barking disturbances in your communities. It is time that these disturbances were tidied up in a responsible timely fashion. If the barking issue persists for more than two weeks, it has persisted for too long and must be addressed. I believe that barking issues can be tidied up by the dog owner in two days. It probably is not a hard task anyway, so dog owners give it a go OK. Yes, dogs bark, that is what they do, and knowing this, dog owners should be responsive and controlling. Using the excuse of natural behaviour is lame. A dog will naturally obey a responsible dog owner on dog barking events.
Matthew Ridgeway
PO Box 194
Hampton Park
Victoria 3976
If you are a dog lover and your dog is bothering other peole who need to sleep to work- you need a reality check. WTH makes you think you have the right to torment others with your idiotic dogs racket?.
Why do you think you have the right to inflict your noisy dog loving life style on quiet decent people who want to be able to rest and relax in their own homes?
You have every right to have a dog you DO NOT have a right to torture quiet people with dog noise, subject them to physical risk with your dog or subject them to envirionmental pollution with your dog.
Have a dog if you are capable of training it and stopping it from bothering others.
If not- best you get a gold fish instead of a untrained dog as a pet.
Many dog owners are using their dogs as weapons to destroy communities with noise pollution and even to cause physical harm. In light of this fact dog ownership needs to be controlled and regulated. No one should have the right to own a dog. Indeed most people should not own a dog since dogs require so much time and attention to properly care for. Dog owners who use their dogs as weapons or simply can not or will not control their animals should be subject to fines, confiscation of their dog(s), and a permanent injunction from ever owning any animal again. These people should not be allowed to continue to abuse and destroy the community and the dogs. Those who wish to continue the status quo hate both people and dogs.
After the horrrific dog murder of innocent grandmother Lilian Stiles the great state of Texas put laws in place that give realistic punishment to those who kill and maim with their dogs.
The cause of this was the fact that the unresponsible owner of the pack of dogs that pulled Ms Stiles down and killed her on her own property was not punished at all.
Right now in Texas there are dog owners who are headed to jail because their savage uncontrolled animals have attacked and put children in the hospital- after disfiguring them for life.
This is the first time that realistic laws have been put in place that make dog owners accept responsibility for the misery that they create by not controlling their dogs.
If you can't stop your dogs from spewing noise that creates a problem for the unlucky people who live next to you you probably can't control them at all and should not be allowed to own them.
The whole nation should put the same realistic Texan realistic and fair dog laws on the books and stop dogs from being used as weapons.
Sounds tempting and perhaps if the BOS see a few cases where people are driven to act they will understand the need for a nuisance dog barking ordinance.
Wasn't there a case of dogs being poisoned a few years ago? Hmmmm...I wonder if those dogs would be alive today IF the BOS would have done the right thing and updated the noise ordinance.
BTW-are you for hire? :)
Clearly, there is a problem, and those that like the sound of dogs barking, find out if you can buy a dog barking CD. Then you can put your headphones on and enjoy. The fact is, dog barking is an unpleasent sound, and I do not wish to hear it in my own home thank you very much. My home is for me. My home is not a theatre for dog noise. Regardless of the volume, frequency and tone, I am not interested in dog barking.
So dog owners, if it is your choice to listen to dog barking, do it in a way that does not affect me, or anyone else for that matter. I feel this is a fair and reasonable view on this topic.
If I had a noisy elephant or and intermittent Harley Davidson I am sure you dog owners would complaint to tthe hilt about it.
Stop the one sided views on this BOS and get with reality.
Stop dog barking now.
Matthew Ridgeway
PO Box 194
Hampton Park
Victoria 3976
Stop the trains, the planes the automobiles, the trash trucks, thunderstorms and school buses.
I need my sleep.
Great new dog control website above- just found it
Hard hitting realistic infomation- they have a b-board for news sharing news about bad dog non responsible owner issues as well.
Check it out and send it to others who are being bothered by noisy dog jerks!
Great stuff!
Matt Ridgeway,
If you happen to live next door to an airport, you're pretty screwed. I'll give you that. As for the cars, trains, and trucks, none of them linger directly outside of my bedroom window. They simply pass by. Oh yeah, and they tend to be during the day while I'm at work. For those who work nights and/or strange shifts? Been there and done that and it is a slight disadvantage.
You still can't escape the fact that the owners who won't do anything about THEIR dogs are huge jerk faces in addition to noise pollutants and assailants against EVERYONE ELSE'S peace, and the authorities do NOTHING about it!
Nuisance, a common law tort, can be used to bring a lawsuit here in Texas. There are other tort laws available with which to attack back. If you wait for the bureaucracy to help, you'll die of old age, listening to dogs bark all night, every night.
I have a dog next door that barks a lot.
I have only seen the dog once. The owners had him/her in a muzzle putting him/her into their vehicle.
My dog only barks when someone comes to the door. She is in the house unless we are outside with her. She watches every move we make and makes us laugh constantly. She is part of our family. She wouldn't let anyone into our household she didn't trust.
The dog next door is left outside 24/7.
It is so simple. Don't use a beautiful animal for security if you don't want to have them also as a famiy member.
To my neighbor upstairs:
My dog barks at night for two reasons. Someone at my door, invited or otherwise, and when your son and his friends tromp all over the floor and up and down the stairs at 3 or 4 in the morning.
You woke him up first. I approve of his reaction. I'd do it too, but my bark sucks.
To the other neighbors, if my dog woke you up where the upstairs neighbor didn't, then I'm sorry, but we do have the right to complain same as you do for being woke up. Point is, noise disturbance is a community problem, and you can't fairly blame the immediate source without seeking out the root disturbance.
To Matthew:
I do respect your right to quiet, yet I defend my dog's job of alerting me to things.
You owe it to responsible dog owners to evaluate fairly each incident. Sometimes a noisy dog is doing the right thing, and I'm sure if a dog alerted you to a prowler going from yard to yard, and let you prevent him from coming into -your- house simply by turning on the lights, you'd develop a hint of appreciation for them.
Let me try to explain why "canis lupus familiaris" is deserving of at least a little slack, and your ire is more properly directed at irresponsible owners only.
The clearest fossil evidence shows dogs in the company of humans as far as 15K years ago. Think of what we were then: little more than smooth skinned upright apes, wearing animal skin loincloths to protect our balls from being bitten off by pack predators. Our tools would have been rocks lashed to sticks with more animal skin, and either banging rocks together or rubbing sticks to start fires.
Enter the ice age. Food gets scarce, and predators get bolder and smarter if they want to survive. Increased threat of becoming prey plus outright competition for limited resources creates a powerful pressure to adapt.
Animals had been eating scraps from us and other animals alike for millions of years, but now the pressure is turned up. Very simply, the animal that shows up first and stays the longest is the best fed.
It turned out that the grey wolf was the one that learned to approach us in peace, while we were still there, to get the best scraps. Our food was enticing already, being cooked, and humans were cooperating to take down prey larger than ourselves.
Those early dogs that actually chose to make their dens in ours got the most benefit of human abilities, and those humans most willing to welcome the dogs got the most benefit of a legitimate apex predator protecting them at night.
Bottom line, homo sapiens may well have failed to achieve dominance without our canine allies. They have been central parts of our families, not at all secondary, for at least fifteen thousand years.
Anti social behaviour
Are you often kept awake by noisy neighbours, alarms or dogs barking? Is your neighbourhood regularly vandalised?
Find out who to report anti social behaviour to
Noise nuisance
Councils have powers to act upon complaints regarding noise. A noise nuisance can be anything from loud music or barking dogs, to construction noise, people shouting, alarms and much more.
What is anti- social behaviour?
Anti-social behaviour (ASB) covers a wide range of behaviour that affects people in a negative way.
Built environment
Information on street lighting, CCTV, roadside car sales and fly posting.
Graffiti is seen as criminal damage in the eyes of the law, and carries a maximum custodial sentence of 10 years for people over 18 years old. This page includes information on how to report graffiti in your area.
Environmental crime
Criminal damage can take many forms, but put in simple terms, is the unlawful destruction or defacement of property. This section includes Information on fly tipping, rubbish and litter and dog fouling.
Nuisance Neighbours and Anti Social Behaviour
What's it all about?
Anti-Social Behaviour can be anything from low level persistent nuisance to serious violence and other criminal behaviour. It includes all behaviour which impacts negatively on people's quality of life in and around their community.
As a tenant, you are responsible for the behaviour of all visitors and other members of the household. Anti-Social Behaviour can be caused by a noisy party, groups of people shouting or graffiti. Even pets and animals can cause a nuisance by continually barking or running around into neighbour's gardens.
If you are experiencing Anti Social or would like advice and assistance, please contact your Neighbourhood Champion. For more details on what is acceptable, please refer to your Tenancy Agreement.
Within this section, you can find information on:
Domestic Violence and Hate Crime
Noisy Neighbours
How do I stop myself becoming a nuisance neighbour?
Out of hours service for Anti Social Behaviour
Other types of Anti Social Behaviour such as drugs and graffiti, harrassment and abuse and fly tipping.
And there more where that came from.Juts shows how many are really suffering,
Nuisance Neighbours and Anti Social Behaviour
What's it all about?
Anti-Social Behaviour can be anything from low level persistent nuisance to serious violence and other criminal behaviour. It includes all behaviour which impacts negatively on people's quality of life in and around their community.
As a tenant, you are responsible for the behaviour of all visitors and other members of the household. Anti-Social Behaviour can be caused by a noisy party, groups of people shouting or graffiti. Even pets and animals can cause a nuisance by continually barking or running around into neighbour's gardens.
If you are experiencing Anti Social or would like advice and assistance, please contact your Neighbourhood Champion. For more details on what is acceptable, please refer to your Tenancy Agreement.
Within this section, you can find information on:
Domestic Violence and Hate Crime
Noisy Neighbours
How do I stop myself becoming a nuisance neighbour?
Out of hours service for Anti Social Behaviour
Other types of Anti Social Behaviour such as drugs and graffiti, harrassment and abuse and fly tipping.
And there more where that came from.Juts shows how many are really suffering,
I note this is rather an old posting. However, perhaps someone will look at it.
Matthew Ridgeway's Barkactiongroup.org website is closed as far as I know.
For a comprehensive analysis of the entire dog problem go to www.barkingdog.net It is based in the United States but most of it is relevant to everywhere.
The Pet industry wants more and more dogs in society - bigger profits. They are aided and abetted by all Councils and the Police.
Irresponsible owners of barking dogs are almost always belligerant sociopaths, They get entertainment and pleasure from stressing out their innocent victims, and they don't care a fig for their dogs. They are seldom called to accout, even for attacking dogs.
"Speaking to the dog owner" no matter how politely is fraught with danger. Mediation is ridiculous and goes nowhere. Here you have a perpetrator illegally bullying a victim. The Court system is expensive and judges/magistrates almost always favour the belligerent, lying dog owner. Dog welfare groups are only interested in empire building and never get to the crux of the matter.
Switzerland now has in its law a 10-week mandatory management course for potential dog owners, which they must pay for and then pass a test. The U.K. Government (DEFRA)was thinking of introducing "competence testing" for dog owners last year. I don't know if it was introduced.
This is the way to go - proper screening of potential dog (pet) owners.
Signed: Audrey
Gee, this is an old posting. And thanks for the history lesson, but I really don't care about it. What I care about is civility in our communities. Yeah, since this post, I was forced out of my home at great expence. Thanks to uncaring animal owners. I wonder though, now much barking is needed before the dog owner attends to their dogs barking?
In my new home, I still am surrounded by dogs. Two to my right, three at the back and a couple across the road. They do bark - OCCASIONALY! But I can not understand the level of barking I was forced to endure from ONE DOG in my olg neighbourhood! It took over two years to have this sorted, as well ad neing accused of a criminal activity maliciously by the dogs owner! We had about a years peace until new neighbours moved in at another home and hammered us with loud bird noises. That was it for us, we moved.
No, many dog owners are irresponsible, even in my new neighbourhood, but how come I can live in this neighbourhood in peace and not the last? Clearly because some bullying animal owner that breaks the law gets favoritism from the very authority that is supposed to control the noise issues.
This is the true issue. So if a dog is barking out of control, Animal control is supposed to be there to educate the owner, and ultimately have the noise stopped.
I never quip at trivial things, like I daid, dogs bark around my home now. But ifd it is intolerable, it must stoip!


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Should ExxonMobil be broken up?
This book review was originally published in the American Prospect, and is republished here with permission.
Even granting that testifying to congressional committees is not on the list of an oil CEO's favorite things to do, when ExxonMobil CEO Lee Raymond, known to his employees as "Iron Ass," arrived at the Dirksen Senate Office building one morning in November 2005, he was in an especially reticent mood. Among other things, the Senate Energy Committee wanted to know about the corporation's role in formulating policy with Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force. Raymond – who was chummy with Cheney and seven weeks away from his retirement, after 12 spectacularly profitable years at the helm first of Exxon and then Exxon-Mobil – did not think the committee needed to know. Thus when New Jersey Senator Frank Lautenberg asked Raymond whether he or any ExxonMobil executives participated in a 2001 meeting with Cheney, Raymond responded with a single syllable: "No."
The truth of that statement was something only a lawyer or a comedian could love, but it was consistent with how the company prefers to be seen: independent, apolitical, above the muck of any particular political fight. Yet as Steve Coll documents in his groundbreaking investigation, Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power, sometimes even the aloof need a little assistance. Just days before the hearing, the company had found itself frustrated with the government of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which seemed to be stalling on giving ExxonMobil its slice of a hugely valuable 50-billion-barrel oil field. The State Department did not seem to be pressing ExxonMobil's case as hard as Raymond wanted, so he called Cheney and asked, according to Coll's paraphrase, "What in the hell is with this country?" Cheney called the UAE government himself, and ExxonMobil got what it wanted.
Coll gained a unique perspective on the history of ExxonMobil's power from his two-plus decades covering business and the Securities and Exchange Commission, Middle East politics, and national security – early on for The Washington Post, in recent years for The New Yorker, and most notably in Ghost Wars, his book on Afghanistan and the CIA. He approaches the company almost as if reporting on the State Department, finding a sprawling global network led by insular executives often unaware of what is being carried out in their name. At the heart lies a contradiction best illustrated by Raymond's duplicity. The corporation long ago decided it was best to flex its immense muscle as discreetly as possible, because almost all publicity – whether it's news of gas prices, climate change, or congressional fights over industry subsidies – is bad.
Indeed, ExxonMobil may have reached the point of being more powerful and entangled than any government. The company's leaders look at an untapped oil or gas field as a relationship that might last a half-century or more; during that time, politicians and policies will come and go even in settled democracies. Its perspective is so geological, so Olympian, that it has been willing to anger sitting American governments – as in 1997, when Raymond, a Republican, challenged the Democratic administration's policy with a speech in Beijing urging China's communist rulers not to sign the Kyoto Protocol climate agreement. At the same time, because so much oil and natural gas is locked up in places with unstable regimes or unsavory leaders – from Equatorial Guinea to Indonesia to Russia – ExxonMobil often finds itself with more power to affect the local society than the best-intentioned State Department functionaries. In a nail-biting chapter on a showdown between the World Bank and the besieged government of Chad, Coll writes that "Exxon-Mobil had made its own choice clear: It was more interested in the survival of Chad's oil production than it was in the World Bank's experiment in nation building."
Private Empire jumps around the globe to illustrate such conflicts, drawing on an impressive array of lawsuits, State Department cables, Freedom of Information Act documents, and interviews with 400 or so subjects, from former executives to tribal leaders who have sued the company. The image that emerges is of some kind of metabolically challenged creature unable to eat enough to sustain its weight. Because its production is so vast, the company is constantly depleting its existing energy supply. It is therefore under intense pressure to appear to book new reserves, to a degree that has encouraged some fudging on the math: For many years, the company would report actual figures to the Securities and Exchange Commission, then issue a press release announcing a bigger amount – a gambit that was technically illegal, though the company doesn't seem to have ever paid a price (nor is it clear if anyone who matters was fooled).
The company's culture is almost as strange as the places its engineers now have to go to find oil and gas. Exxon was so shaken by the fallout from the Valdez spill that it adopted safety procedures that sound like the handbook of a paranoid cult. Employees had to back their cars into garage parking spaces, minimizing difficulty if they needed to leave in a hurry. Executives were prohibited from pursuing dangerous behavior even outside the workplace and urged to confess publicly "near misses" they had, from shaky ladders to stones flying out of lawnmowers. Yet all these rituals didn't keep 24,000 gallons of gas from leaking into the ground in Maryland in 2006, in an area where residents relied on well water, or any of the other countless mishaps that have occurred as part of ExxonMobil's sprawling operations.
Masterful as a corporate portrait, Private Empire gushes with narrative. Yet it's hard to resist the conclusion that Coll, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, could have pumped more out of this material. Discussing then-candidate Barack Obama's frequent insistence in the spring and summer of 2008 that "we must end the age of oil in our time," Coll hints that a pivotal historic moment might recently have been (and perhaps still is) at hand. He notes in passing that a century ago, after all, "trustbusters had broken up Standard Oil on moral as much as economic grounds." Well, then: What exactly is the moral case against ExxonMobil today, and does it justify antitrust or other government intervention into how the company behaves?
The marketplace has changed over a century, and ExxonMobil's corporate-citizenship sins don't take the monopolistic form that doomed the old Standard Oil. That's hardly the same as saying ExxonMobil's sins aren't worth remedying. Private Empire brilliantly chronicles what the company is, and perhaps the mere fact of bringing to light the stories is a form of advocacy. But the book spends no time addressing whether ExxonMobil should be as it is, and the overall effect of the meticulous documentation of company logic, strategy, and lobbying is to make you think there is little alternative to the status quo.
One can easily predict ExxonMobil's argument that for all the environmental degradation, dancing with dictators, almost comical perversion of scientific research on climate change, and cynical manipulation of the American legislative process, the company is still the best option in the 21st century, as long as our energy increasingly depends on state-owned or -supported firms in places like Russia, China, Angola, or Venezuela. But could ExxonMobil be compelled to be a better global actor? It's not much harder to imagine a broken-up ExxonMobil – or a slightly less profitable ExxonMobil run partly by and for the American people – than it is to imagine the CEO actually having to tell the truth to Congress or the public. If that sounds utopian, remember that the status quo is unsustainable. The era of "easy oil" is gone, replaced by the less reliable and far more expensive era of tar-sand extraction and natural-gas fracking. A combination of higher prices, continued environmental damage, political pressure, and alternative energies makes it seem entirely possible that ExxonMobil and its cohort will be pressed into a different future – one that will take another book to describe.
PHOTO: Gasoline (regular grade) prices hover at one-tenth of a cent under the $5 mark at an Exxon station in Washington, March 2, 2012. REUTERS/Gary Cameron
We welcome comments that advance the story through relevant opinion, anecdotes, links and data. If you see a comment that you believe is irrelevant or inappropriate, you can flag it to our editors by using the report abuse links. Views expressed in the comments do not represent those of Reuters. For more information on our comment policy, see http://blogs.reuters.com/fulldisclosure/2010/09/27/toward-a-more-thoughtful-conversation-on-stories/

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The fine folks at Jinx have rolled out a fresh batch of Valve products, featuring some amazing Portal 2 shirts and a pair of underwear that you'll need to incinerate to earn your freedom.
I showed the Companion Cube underwears to a female friend of mine this morning, who responded with "OMG everyone needs those." I'm inclined to agree, though since they do not make them in a size that would fit me, I grabbed a pair for someone with lady parts to obscure from view.
I have purchased one of each of the items you see above, one for me and two for the special lady in my life, who doesn't read Kotaku enough for this post to spoil the surprise. The Chell art nouveau tee is going on my body. The other two are going on hers. And to make it a little sweeter and a lot less pervy, I also grabbed a pair of companion cube creepers for the boys. It's a family thing now! Eventually we'll wind up on the cover of a JC Penny catalog with our tattoos and piercings airbrushed away.
Other fine Valve items appearing at Jinx include this love "Meet the Pyro" lithograph...
...which I also purchased, some Portal 2 posters, a coffee mug — you know what, just go see for yourself.


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Page View
Almada, André Alvares d', fl. 1594, et al. / Brief treatise on the rivers of Guinea
Part I (1984)
Chapter 15. How they create a king in the land of the Sapes, and the ceremonies involved, and how they invest solateguis, who are the noblemen. [translated text], pp. 14-22 and 23
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This material may by protected by copyright law (e.g., Title 17, US Code).| For information on re-use see: http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/Copyright


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No announcement yet.
FSF Wastes Away Another "High Priority" Project
new posts
Originally posted by smitty3268 View PostI don't mind the FSF insisting on the v3 license, but shouldn't a library like this be using the LGPL?
Note that they admit that most of the GNU Libraries are LGPL, but now they decided (for reasons not stated there) that it is better to move away from that.
I think this is probably not a great decision from the FSF, in many ways (including ignoring the author of the GPL software trying to use the library). But I think there are a couple things that bother me a bit about Michael's article:
* This is clearly an opinion from him, so he should probably have an Editorial section. Since this reads like "News", but it's basically a long rant reiterating a main point, over and over.
* This same reasoning about "the FSF being restrictive" or "too strict" is a historical recipe for Falacies, or at least circular endless discussions. Because one camp says "BSD is more free, it lets you do anything". The other says "BSD allows people who screw your freedom abuse the system".
Me? I tend to agree with the latter opinion, but I think there are components like basic libraries that are better off LGPL or BSD, because by nature they need to be accessed by lots of free software with different licenses, and, at the end of the day, you want to help them all.
Except in this case, it's *not* supporting free software - it's punishing them for sticking with the mostly widely used version of the FSF's own license.
Except in this case, it's *not* supporting free software - it's punishing them for sticking with the mostly widely used version of the FSF's own license.
Maybe they should have used public domain license, if they did not desire protection against stripping of four freedoms.
Also, "freedom for slaver" means "restriction for slave". "Restriction for slaver" means "freedom for slave".
"Freedom to close source down anytime" means "restriction to open the software".
"Freedom to open the software" means "restriction to close it down".
Not many licenses are free as in Freedom, but GPL definately IS the one.
So, if you step on Freedom in GPL, you trigger license violation. I don't think its hard to understand.
Originally posted by mendieta View PostYes, for a long time, I even thought that LGPL stands for LibraryGPL (as opposed to Lesser).
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/lgpl-2.0.html (library)
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/lgpl-2.1.html (lesser)
Originally posted by pholklore View PostThe mostly widely used version has the "or later" bit. Nobody's being punished. It was those (not the FSF) that chose to use GPLv2-without-or-later that explicitly chose to not make use of v3+ licensed code. It was a concious decision at the time, now they get to live with it. This is _not_ the FSF's fault, in any way possibly imaginable.
Originally posted by brosis View PostNot many licenses are free as in Freedom, but GPL definately IS the one.
So, if you step on Freedom in GPL, you trigger license violation. I don't think its hard to understand.
*Which* GPL, though? This isn't an argument about the merits of GPL vs something else - it's about a GPL project being unable to use a GPL library because the two GPL versions aren't compatible.
There's nothing 'wrong' with them doing this, everyone has the right to licence 'their' code as per 'their' wishes, however the problems generated by this choice as discussed in the article does not fall on FSF, as it is Ribbonsoft who chose to make their code GPLv2 ONLY and thus incompatible with later GPL versions.


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Art in Sixteenth-Century Venice: Context, Practices, Developments. Proceedings of a Conference in Honour of Peter Humfrey (University of St Andrews, 3rd–6th May 2012) – PART ONE
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Art in Sixteenth-Century Venice: Context, Practices, Developments. Proceedings of a Conference in Honour of Peter Humfrey (University of St Andrews, 3rd–6th May 2012) – PART ONE
In the years around 1480 Giovanni Bellini created a group of works in which landscape acquires a new prominence. The group is comprised of the Transfiguration in the Museo di Capodimonte, Naples, the Resurrection in Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, and the Saint Jerome in the Uffizi, Florence, all of which are altarpieces, and the Saint Francis in the Wilderness in the Frick Collection, New York. The Frick picture is crucial to our understanding of the transformation in Bellini's art, for it was a private commission intended for a domestic setting (in 1525 it hung in the portega of the Contarini palace). In the altarpieces Bellini, in effect, introduced the dynamic he had perfected in his paintings for private devotion, in which the viewer is engaged in a new way – one that emphasized the subjectivity of an individual's experience of a work of art.
The most important contribution to our understanding of this new dynamic has been made by Augusto Gentili. Gentili believed that the landscapes are 'semiotic': each detail carries a meaning or allusion to the primary theme. This seems, indeed, to be the case with some of Bellini's paintings, but not all. There are cases in which the background establishes the contemporary relevance of the religious subject that is presented for meditation. But the process of meditation is an associative one, and it was his recognition of the subjective aspect of meditational practice that stands behind the rich allusiveness of Bellini's landscapes. The fact that the painting in the Frick was commissioned by someone who belonged to the same confraternity as Bellini – the Scuola Grande di San Marco – suggests that one of the ways in which we can attempt to recreate the range of responses his paintings were intended to evoke is by recalling the various laude that were sung. These, too, are part of the devotional world of the fifteenth century. They also remind us that in addition to patristic literature, there was a popular, vernacular culture that was equally – perhaps even more – important in shaping Bellini's ideas about devotional painting and the responses of his clients and viewers. This more open-ended poetics of landscape marks a new chapter in the history of devotional painting and sets the stage for the great poesie of Giorgione and Titian.
Mantegna's Vienna Saint Sebastian and Giovanni Bellini's Blood of the Redeemer are small devotional panels in which the pagan past is used as a reminder of the Christian present. Saint Sebastian is likely to have been painted for Jacopo Antonio Marcello, a prominent Venetian humanist, while Bellini's panel must have been commissioned by someone with close ties to the secular cannons of San Giorgio in Alga, who believed that mediation was fundamental for the renewal of Christian life and symbolized this by establishing new chapters in abandoned monastic buildings. Although the classical remains in Mantegna's picture are all'antica inventions, they seem archeologically 'correct'. Bellini, on the other hand, inflated the micro-sculpture of coins and gems into monumental presences. Both artists used classical ruins as signposts in the progression of time, pointing the way towards the ascendance of Christianity. Christ (or his surrogate Saint Sebastian) stands mid-way between the barrier of pagan fragments and the sun-drenched landscape of eternal salvation. In order to leave one temporal sphere and pass into the other, the viewer must contemplate the true mystery of the Eucharist.
Giovanni Bellini in the Twentieth-Century History of Art
The bibliography about Giovanni Bellini from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century is essentially in the writings of Marcantonio Michiel, Paolo Pino, Giorgio Vasari, Francesco Sansovino, Carlo Ridolfi, Marco Boschini, Anton Maria Zanetti, Joseph Archer Crowe, Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle, Giovanni Morelli, Gustavo Frizzoni, Pompeo Molmenti, Bernard Berenson and Roger Fry. The author of the present paper decided to turn to the writings published about the artist in the twentieth century, and the article critically examines the art-historical literature on the painter in the above period.
This essay examines the four pinnacles of the Man of Sorrows produced by the Vivarini workshop for polyptychs painted between 1440 and 1450, the Parenzo, Madonna, Praglia and Certosa Altarpieces. These panels of the Imago pietatis heralded by at least ten years or more Giovanni Bellini's famed series of innovative interpretations of the same figure of c. 1455–1470. Unlike Bellini's versions, those executed by Antonio Vivarini, his brother-in-law and younger brother (Giovanni d'Alemagna and Bartolomeo Vivarini) negotiated between a time-honored iconic serenity and the practical requirements of specific devotional cults. While complying with historic traditions, the Vivarini atelier nonetheless adapted to innovative pictorial solutions and aptly met the needs of individual altar dedications and exacting groups of patrons, among them Benedictine nuns in Venice, Benedictine brothers in Praglia and Carthusian monks in Bologna. By exploring the sponsorship and site of each commission, we can attempt to re-assess the art of Antonio and his collaborators. Most important, we avoid the pitfall of evaluating the early production of the workshop by wrongly examining it through the lens of later repetitions of the same subject produced by Bartolomeo and Alvise (Antonio's son) during the 1460s, '70s and '80s.
In this paper it is argued that the manuscript of Francesco Petrarca's Libro degli uomini famosi now in the Morgan Library and Museum, New York (MS Glazier 36) was lavishly illuminated for a patron who determined or accepted an unusual iconographic program. The historiated initials, painted around 1406 by the well-known Venetian miniaturist Cristoforo Cortese, stress only a few of Petrarch's thirty-six Roman heroes, instead of representing each hero in the sequence as had been the case in earlier illustrated manuscripts of the text. The Trial of Scipio Africanus, the Assassination of Julius Caesar, Pompey sailing to the site of his murder, and the Funeral of Cleopatra are somber choices. Four miniatures appear to have been added slightly later; although three mitigate the melancholy mood by representing more glorious moments in the lives of Scipio and Caesar, a fourth includes further suicides, those of Augustus' enemies.
The conflict between Venice and Padua in the years 1404–1405 and the murder of Francesco II da Carrara and his sons are invoked as contemporary political events perhaps affecting the iconographic choices.
This essay attempts to connect the two sides of the American arts administrator Michael Straight's activities. At Cambridge University in the 1930s Straight had been recruited as a Soviet spy. Later a deep interest in the arts led him to form a collection of paintings and drawings from which he donated the portrait of Giovanni Borgherini and his Tutor to the National Gallery of Art, Washington. At the time his espionage was exposed in the 1960s, Straight had the painting, dubiously attributed to Giorgione, X-rayed. Beneath the painted surface appeared a radically different conception for the boy's head, which can, in fact, be associated with Giorgione. The contemporaneous unveiling of Straight and of Borgherini raises questions about the identity of the sitter and the collector that may help to explain Straight's fascination with the picture.
Catena's large horizontal canvas in the National Gallery, London, is believed to have been painted during the last decade of the artist's life (1521–1531) for the portego of a private Venetian palazzo. The precise subject and the circumstances of the commission remain elusive. Although the warrior wears western European armor, and is accompanied by a page dressed and coiffed in western European style, his accessories, as long recognized, include objects of apparent Islamic workmanship. The picture has been thought to commemorate an episode of conversion or diplomacy. It may alternatively constitute a sociopolitical allegory pertaining to the uneasy position of Venice with respect to her western European neighbors and the Ottoman Empire during the period to which the picture is assigned.
Seldom mentioned is the massive, pivotally placed, standing figure of St Joseph. Catena's picture is contemporary with a distinct, long overlooked surge in activity in Venice and elsewhere in Italy, in the establishment of Joseph's liturgical cult and the civic embrace of his patronage as heavenly mediator in troubled times. Understanding of the intensity of St Joseph's contemporary cult in the Veneto, his evangelizing role in theology and devotion, the typology of the saint as Spouse and Protector of the Church and hence champion of the Church Militant, and his invocation in Friuli – and likely elsewhere – as protector against the Turk provides an additional avenue for our eventual deciphering of Catena's work. Specific attention is paid to the civic embrace of St Joseph's cult in Udine in 1500, following the Ottoman incursion of 1499; in Venice in 1512, during the Cambrai War; and its continuing importance in Venice in 1530. Two unusual aspects of Catena's composition are addressed: Joseph's gesture and Mary's expression. Briefly noted are potential ecclesial symbols and other meaningful representations of St Joseph by Catena.
High on the wall of the right-hand aisle of the Frari above the door leading to the cloister is a simple wooden casket in front of a painting that depicts a canopy with curtains held back by two winged putti. Among the notable features of the painting, now difficult to see because of its height and the ravages of time, are five coats of arms and a narrative grisaille decorating the canopy and a bloody skull above the casket. It will be shown that this overlooked monument is the visual residuum of a vendetta involving three noble families from the Patria del Friuli. Indeed, the painting, attributed here to Andrea Schiavone, offers a precious window into a past in which Republican values clashed with the deeply rooted feudal traditions of the mainland.
The signatures of Venetian painters have been the subject of considerable interest in recent years, but relatively little attention has been paid to the epigraphic – carved – signatures of Venetian Renaissance sculptors. Under examination here is a group of signatures from the Lombardo workshop, the most important sculptural workshop in Venice in the years before Sansovino, covering the period from approximately 1470 into the early 1520s. The focus is on the signatures of Pietro Lombardo and his son Tullio. Issues under consideration include the models provided by the calligraphers of Venice's bourgeoning book culture and the importance of contact with antique Roman inscriptions, either at first hand or through inscription albums.
The Vanity of a Cardinal: Alvise Pisani and His Inventory (1570)
The discovery of the inventory of belongings of Alvise Pisani (Venice, 1522–1570), preserved at the time of his death in the palace of Santa Maria Zobenigo, provides an opportunity to re-examine the ecclesiastic career of a member of one of the most distinguished and wealthiest Venetian families belonging to the 'papalist' group.
A protégé of his mighty uncle, cardinal Francesco Pisani, Alvise became a bishop elected for five years and then a cardinal, dividing his short life between his Venetian residence and Palazzo Venezia in Rome, and occasionally sojourning also in the bishopric of Padua.
With the aid of a book by his tutor, Nicolò Liburnio, published in 1546 and dedicated to Pisani, an attempt has been made to reconstruct his cultural formation, and through an analysis of the works of art inventoried, as well as the commissions made for his uncle, particularly for the bishops' villa at Luvigliano, his artistic tastes. His rich and rather secular wardrobe reflects the life in which the boundaries between religious power and secular world were blurred, as confirmed by his last will and testament hardly suitable for a religious person, to such a degree that it induced the pope to declare his conduct as 'unworthiness to the degree of cardinal'.
This article looks at the cultural world of the élite public servants in the Ducal Chancery of Renaissance Venice, with a particular focus on the rôle of the Grand Chancellor. Positions in the Chancery were reserved for members of the cittadino class, a rank almost as exclusive as that of the hereditary ruling nobility. The essay briefly considers Alvise Dardani (Grand Chancellor, 1510–1511) and Gian Pietro Stella (Grand Chancellor, 1517–1523), before looking more closely at the dramatic career of Nicolò Aurelio (Grand Chancellor, 1523–1524), the supposed patron of Titian's Sacred and Profane Love. The function of the picture is reviewed in the light of his controversial marriage to Laura Bagaroto, daughter of a Paduan traitor, and the subsequent rise and fall of his political fortunes.
Portraits by Titian of the Emperor Charles V, dating from the period of his coronation in Bologna in 1530, show him brandishing a drawn sword as symbol of power, an attribute unique in the history of Italian portraiture. The significance of the unsheathed sword as symbol of the Cardinal Virtue Justice is outlined, and a connection to the doctrine of theory governing the relationship of Church and State, known as the allegory of the two swords, is proposed. It is concluded that contemporaries would have read the 'naked sword' as a reference not only to the two swords body of doctrine but also to Charles' emergence in 1530 as temporarily triumphant in the centuries-long struggle between emperor and pope for power within Christendom.
This paper examines the problematic rôle of Titian as the synecdoche of Venetian tradition, or as its perfected telos. The older Titian seems to have understood himself in this way, as is evident from the steady flow of idealising self-portraits and other depictions of him from the mature and later periods of his career. This paper proposes that these images constructed Titian as a model of unassailable artistic authority, noting that this position was established through implied association with the elite social identity of his aristocratic and courtly patrons. It goes on to explore the more negative aspects of Titian's predominance on younger artists in Venice, both within his workshop and across the city. Those following in Titian's wake sought to associate themselves with him in this period, picturing him as the 'father of art' alongside images of themselves as chosen heir or successor. But the idea of tradition-as-personification apparent from their anxious identification may also reflect the disintegration of the traditional collective values that had long sustained the visual culture of Venice.
This article publishes an early male portrait by Titian, previously known only from an old copy at Petworth, which came to light recently and rapidly acquired the nickname the Commander. The author seeks to place the Commander in relation to other male portraits painted by Titian during the second decade of the sixteenth century, considering in particular its colouristic and textural relations with the Man with the Blue Sleeve. Given that the sitter looks firmly out of frame, he suggests that a pendant may have been planned, and speculates that this might have been the Knight of Malta in the Uffizi, as two 'comradeship portraits'. Noting the sitter's resemblance to the central figure in a triple portrait from the circle of Titian in Washington, the author identifies him as Girolamo Cornaro and based on this, and on an X-ray image that shows changes to the subject's dress, hypothesises that Titian started the portrait soon after Girolamo's marriage in 1510, showing him in a relaxed dress, but modified the costume and added a sword to register Cornaro's call to military duties during the Wars of the League of Cambrai. He concludes that a more likely intended pendant would have been Cornaro's wife, whether or not a portrait of her was ever executed. An appendix discusses the status and date of the Petworth copy.
Titian (c. 1488–1576) cherished his association with Apelles when he created portraits of rulers and their administrative courtiers or paintings on mythological subjects. At the same time, as he was painting saints and sacred events, he had before him the exemplum virtutis in Giovanni Bellini (c. 1436–1516). Furthermore, while he regarded Apelles (c. 375 – c. 300 BC) as his antique exemplar and Bellini as his modern exemplar, Titian saw Michelangelo (1475–1564) as an antagonist, or anti-exemplar. Titian learned from these three great artists how to deepen the mastery of his art.
Titian's adoption of the mantle of Apelles for the public outside Venice owed its inception to his observation of how Bellini worked throughout his creative life, and his rejection of Michelangelo's disegno was grounded in his adherence to the principles governing in his master's studio at the turn of the sixteenth century.
Rivalry between artists was quite common in the Italian Renaissance, sometimes transcending the professional realm and becoming personal animosities. No artists, however, projected personal and professional conflicts onto their work, at least not explicitly. This absence makes Jacopo Bassano's virulent critique of Titian in his Purification of the Temple (National Gallery, London, NG 228) not only exceptional but also difficult to understand, since no contemporary source alludes to any rivalry between the two Venetian painters. In this essay I will try to provide a satisfactory explanation of it.
In the last fifteen years a number of important studies concerning the late period of Titian's activity have arisen. It was particularly the rôle of Titian's collaborators and assistants working in his studio that was the focus of many insightful studies, books, and exhibitions which tried to elucidate the problem of how Titian's bottega worked, how it was organized and what part his collaborators, whose names we know very well, played within it. Yet, the indication of the scope of their contribution in specific late works of the Cadorino was avoided, as almost impossible to be established.
The studies by Lionello Puppi, Augusto Gentili, Bernard Aikema, David Rosand, and also by the younger generation of perceptive scholars, to mention only few of them – Giorgio Tagliaferro, Andrew John Martin and Matteo Mancini – enabled us a better insight into the practices of the studio of the master from Pieve di Cadore.
However, even though the results of that research cast new light on how the studio under the leadership of Titian operated, there is scarce evidence concerning the contribution of his collaborators. A very fair manner of Palma il Giovane, who confirmed his own intervention into the Pietà in the Gallerie dell'Accademia with an explicative inscription, is an exception.
We can assume that the works produced in the house of Biri Grande in the last fifteen years of Titian's activity were created with the help of assistants from the group of the master's closest collaborators: his son Orazio Vecellio (1522/1525? – 1576), Emanuel Amberger, Christoph Schwarz, Valerio Zuccato, Damiano Mazza, Marco (1545–1611) and Cesare Vecellio (1521 – c. 1601), Girolamo Dente (1510 – c. 1565/70) and Giovanni Maria Verdizzotti (1537/40–1604/07).
The stylistic and qualitative analysis of the late works issued from Titian's studio enable us to distinguish different hands in many works. The difficult stylistic and attributional analysis supported by scarce archival sources (including Titian's correspondence with the imperial court, the letters of the ambassadors of Philipp II in Venice, and the correspondence with the Spanish governor in Milan) gives us nonetheless some insight into the division of the work in the studio.
The present study focuses only on a few selected, late paintings belonging to two groups. Some of them, namely the Portrait of Jacopo Strada, 1566 (Vienna), Tarquinius and Lucretia, c. 1570–1571 (Cambridge), the allegory of Religion Succored by Spain, 1570–1575 (Madrid), and Philip II Offering Don Fernando to Victory, 1575 (Madrid), left Titian's studio as finished works, sometimes even signed 'Titianus', and were delivered to the patrons who ordered them. Other works taken here into consideration, namely the Flaying of Marsyas, c. 1575 (Kroměříž), Ecce Homo, c. 1570–1576 (St. Louis) and the Pietà (Venice), belong to a group of paintings completed in undetermined time and in unknown circumstances, which were left unfinished and found in the artist's studio after his death in the August of 1576.
In both groups of works considered here the contribution of assistants is visible and obvious. An attempt has been made to distinguish and determine the extent of the contribution of particular collaborators, and to reveal the rôle of Titian's elder son, Pomponio, in finishing and commercializing them, years after Titian's death. In some cases also the hand of the artist's younger son Orazio and that of Emanuel Amberger have been tentatively indicated.


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Welcome to the Alpha Xi Chapter of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia!
Founded in 1898 with the purpose of promoting sociability and the best and truest fraternal spirit, Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia is the oldest and largest secret fraternal society in music in the world. Banded together by our common goal of building men of the highest type, Sinfonians across the country seek to win the world to Harmony through its noble object:
The Object of this Fraternity shall be for the development of the best and truest fraternal spirit; the mutual welfare and brotherhood of musical students; the advancement of music in America and a loyalty to the Alma Mater.


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I get a lot of questions about resumes, and there is a lot of confusion about resume styles and what's appropriate. I often am asked about the wisdom of including graphics in a resume to help it get noticed. So, let's look at this option.
It would seem the more creative you can be in presenting your background, the more attention you can capture, but it pays to be aware of biases that exist.
Using graphics or visual cues on your resume can be a good strategy particularly if you are in a creative field, however I would suggest using the "less is more" approach
when deciding to use graphics.
In a creative field, your resume will serve as an example of your artistic talents. A conservative resume could give the perception you lack imagination or style, but you can overuse graphics. Here's an example: A job seeker used icons to represent spreadsheets when showing an increase in company profits under his watch. He didn't stop with the spreadsheet graphics. He used a different icon for every employer, too.
Since this job seeker had a background in banking — a more traditional field — using graphics didn't generate positive reactions from hiring decision-makers. In fact, the resume was so unusual for the industry, decision-makers felt it lacked credibility.
The goal of a resume is to attract attention with good taste, so you don't want a resume that stands out too much. Take the candidate who sent in a resume in the form of a shoe. Did they accomplish their goal? Yes, they got noticed, but the interviewer didn't value the humor or the innovative approach.
Most employers agree that you should keep your resume content straightforward yet distinctive, and you have no control over the bias an interviewer will have when they see your resume.
Standing out too boldly with graphics or visual cues is a risk that may pay off, depending on the corporate culture and the industry.
It's also important to consider how your resume will be submitted. If you decide to use graphics on your resume, you may want to two versions. The graphic-style resume will be a good choice for mail or hand delivery. For use with online applications, consider eliminating graphics because they probably will be incompatible with the ATS (applicant tracking systems) companies use. If this is the case, your resume could very well be overlooked.
If you decide that graphics are a good fit for your industry, keep them in good taste and have the right reasons for using them.


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Posted by Editoress on 03/1/11
An updated version of the Canadian Anti-Doping Program (CADP) came into effect today. These rules govern how anti-doping is conducted in Canada and are administered by the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport (CCES) on behalf of the Canadian sport community.
Sport organizations and athletes should take note of the following changes:
• Rules that set the context for jurisdiction for anti-doping in Canada were incorporated into the CADP General Principles (Rules 1.0-1.3). These rules were formerly part of the federal government's Canadian Policy Against Doping in Sport.
• Roles and responsibilities of athletes or other persons, including athlete support personnel, were further defined (Rules 1.0-1.3, 1.7-1.8).
You can download the updated CADP Here.
Sport organizations are not required to re-adopt the CADP. The program's revision rules (1.28-1.30) allow changes to be made providing there is stakeholder consultation and substantial agreement. Previous advisory notes were released encouraging public feedback on the revisions to the CADP during the period of June 30 to September 7, 2010. The CCES thanks the sport community for its contributions.
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