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End-To-End: Mapping a mobile app user's journey (Study + Infographic)
08.01.2016 von Martin Meyer-Gossner
Kategorie English Content, Featured Stories, Mobile
Mobile has become more and more important for sales in the last years. The 2015 Criteo eCommerce Industry Outlook states that mobile's share of global online sales went up from 23% in the first half of 2014 to 30% in the second half, and will get up to 40% by the end of 2015.
A recent report by Flurry shows that personalization apps (including Android lock-screens to Emoji keyboards) are becoming the fastest growing apps in the mobile industry (332% increase in 2015). News and magazine apps are also growing fast (135% growth) as of a general shift in media consumption from television and PCs to smartphones. Obviously, productivity apps are booming as many people are using their mobile devices as their "primary computing device and their sole device to access email and other productivity apps".
Now, if you think about a better app experience for your users, you may want to know how your mobile users come to your app, what they want to read and find there, and how they will convert. According to an Targeting Mantra infographic more than every second person (52%) find their apps via friends, family, and colleagues.
Although you might think your company website is one of the promotion places to drive awareness for your app, it becomes clear that just one in four (24%) will find your app there. Furthermore, also search engines are not the secret sauce. Only 27% of consumers will discover apps there.
However, end-to-end customer journey and conversion is still a challenge. While e-commerce apps achieve a 77% install-to-registration rate, the install-to-first-purchase rate is very low (2,1%). The main reason for uninstalling apps is "changes and hangs" (71%). Still, A/B testing can resolve the loss and make people come back once or twice even if the app was uninstalled (79%).
Although consumers tend to not be interested in your notifications via email too much, notifications are still the engagement drivers and also the main reason why people download your app.
Study: Executives more active on mobiles than ever before
12.11.2015 von Martin Meyer-Gossner
Kategorie English Content, Featured Stories, Mobile
With their annual study called "Mobile Elite" (2013 and 2014 versions here) CNBC has been focussing in the last two years on how executives use their mobiles for business, and when and how it helps them doing their business more effectively. A survey that is tracking senior business executive's use of mobile devices across Europe, Asia and the US.
Now, they have come up with their latest update "Mobile Elite 2015" that more or less global executives have become mobile in terms of reaching a mobile device saturation point. Already more than 9 out of 10 business executives access the mobile web to get the latest business content and news updates via their tablets or smartphones (of which they have in average 6 (!) devices at home). Compared to last year, the access to "news feeds" has shown the highest growth for smartphones (45% to 60%). Their main time of reading the news is in the morning of weekdays (87%), predominantly with interest in financial news and stock prices (71%). Six in ten business leaders say they access the news via mobiles in the morning.
However, when we think that the weekend is a "news off time" for business execs, we might prove wrong. More than over six in ten business decision makers check their news and business content over the weekend. It is their time to deep-dive into content as time allows them to. Like last year's results it becomes clear that as of the mobile options most of the top management does not differentiate between weekday and weekend any longer. Mobiles keeps them in the business all days. Furthermore, the second screen phenomenon can also be seen at business executives. TV might still be their main source of content delivery in the morning (51%), but three out of four (75%) watch TV at the same time as using their mobile device (6% more than in 2014), or maybe on their mobile devices.
"With mobile saturation at an all-time high, we're now seeing business executives shifting their attentions towards a more connected lifestyle. With a slowdown in hardware innovation in 2015, the survey suggests that global executives are unlocking the potential of their technology to be more connected, more of the time. We could be witnessing the start of the next mobile renaissance."
Mike Jeanes, Director of Research, EMEA, CNBC
Spot On!
Even more interesting to see is that the Internet-of-Things (IoT) has found their way into the business executives homes. Just about four in ten business leaders operate apps at home via their mobiles. This means that top decision makers become "early drivers" of technology by the use of mobile devices and wearables. More than every second respondent (54%) claimed to like the idea of hands free technology. This means they do not want to end their mobile journey with smart homes and smart security systems. Still, when it comes to cyber security business leaders are now "extremely concerned". More than three out of four (82%) value mobile data privacy and security a "concern", while admitting (41%) it is the most important technological influencer for 2016, followed by cloud technology (35%) and mobile e-commerce (34%).
The study shows that the C-Suite might be fully mobile but also understands and respects the responsibilities it needs to create a sustainable future.
Would you agree?
Big Data Opportunities (Infographic)
01.10.2013 von Martin Meyer-Gossner
Kategorie English Content, Featured Stories, Web Marketing
We discussed this topic in many panels at dmexco this year, and in the last couple of years I assume not many buzz words have made their way through so many blogs and articles: Big Data. Some see the value of it in measurement and analytics for marketing purposes. Others try to identify new potential and hire Corporate Data Scientists for their web strategy to leverage the potential of unstructured data. And some are still on their way to understand how their data can be embraced to exchange with the data of some partner or even their clients.
The topic Big Data will stay. Just look how much data is generated daily: 2,5 Exabyte. A number that doubles every year according to an infographic the guys from Elexio have put together. It illustrates the potential for companies and how Big Data might generate bigger opportunities in several sectors. Especially, in retail or e-commerce where Big Data let's brands analyze customer behavior and deliver more personalized messages in order to create an exciting user experience, more engagement, and sure i the end more sales. However, sometimes you wonder if they are doing it right.
As Big Data also let's us analyze offline data, some clever marketers might combine those with online data to get a clearer view of consumer activity. On the one hand, this might be good as it keeps them from delivering the wrong banner or engagement outdoor advertisement and content to the wrong customer. On the other hand, there might be people arguing that Big Data is still in its infancy as long as companies cannot extract critical and unstructured data from the valuable data that creates a new customer journey experience.
The main challenge will be how we bring Big Data and security together in the future. Consumers get stressed these days as they realize that promotion banners and branded content are following them across channels – with products and services which are often not wanted, or already bought. But how can companies deliver a seamless customer experience? How can they make use of Big Data that boosts their lead generation or sales numbers while still showing careful approach that consumers appreciate?
With all the social media sharing and curating of content via social networks and their buttons, does it really make sense talking about Big Data and security? Or, do we need organizations that audit how companies handle customer data? What rules do companies and brands need to obey to enable a social and secure shopping experience? Many questions that we will discuss on a panel at the ChapmanBlack "Future of Digital" event in Berlin next week. Sure, I will change those afterwards…
Please find the infographic of Elexio with latest insights into the new opportunities that Big Data can offer to brands and companies.
Study: B2B commerce moving from offline to online
26.09.2013 von Martin Meyer-Gossner
Kategorie English Content, Featured Stories, Web Strategy
Most of us know that B2B is massively moving away from offline to online. But where is the proof? A recent survey by Intershop -based on a survey of 280 European and 120 US senior IT and business decision makers from merchants with a B2B focus and annual online revenues of $1 million to over $100 million- shows that with 57% the majority of B2B vendors sees B2B commerce fundamentally shifting from offline to online.
The company manager that responded are aware of the shift (51%) and replied that they are changing their organizational structures and business models accordingly. Furthermore, 44% of those responsding managers find that B2B vendors adopt B2C best practices in order to improve their B2B purchasing processes.
The following numbers show what the main drivers of change seem to be. Most of the respondents (81%) found that changing consumer expectations are driving the changes in B2B commerce. And another 74% see new technology delivering new and unseen experience access.
Still, not all is shining bright in the world of B2B commmerce. When 96% replied to be facing challenges in adapting to new B2B commerce trends, it speaks a clear message. Thus, the challenge is for…
– 50% to provide intuitive and user-friendly interfaces for multiple touchpoints (B2B online stores and mobile apps)
– 48% to manage complex organizational structures
– 47% to convince offline customers to use e-commerce and self-service channels
Spot On!
It is a good sign that almost all companies (92%) market their products on the Web and the rest is planning to do so. Even better is the fact that of those companies marketing their products online, 95% plan to boost the online part of their revenue in the future. This may be a wish, this may be a dream, this may be hope. However, the main issue in our eyes from several cases we worked on is an internal cultural challenge: Understanding that a shift to online is a personal and a leadership topic. If companies face it and get some good advice, the change to a new B2B commerce is not causing red eyes.
Mobile & Responsive Design: Hype or Hope? (Infographic)
30.07.2013 von Martin Meyer-Gossner
Kategorie English Content, Featured Stories, Mobile
It is a dream for many people responsible in the developer field: Creating a mobile app once, without the need to amend it for any screen, any device or any audience. Responsive web design is said to be able to deliver just that – one size design fits all kind of a thing. But is it really true?
In days where more than 20% of all web traffic is generated via leading e-commerce websites coming from mobile devices, responsive web design is becoming an alternative many developers are thinking about. Not surprising, right?! The unique screen resolutions has been growing from 97 in 2010 to 232 in 2013. For those retailers that wanted to rise the number of online shoppers alongside with the growth of screens coming via not desktop resolutions, responsive design became a new and attractive option.
For the marketing and web optimization guys from Monetate, it seems there is only one real alternative if companies don't believe in their customers to download their mobile app: responsive web design. Still, mobile shopping is not a hype anymore, it has become the real revenue driver in e-commerce. There is an expected $38.8 billion spend on smartphones and tablets according to eMarketer in America in 2013 which is forecasted to grow up to $108.6 billion by 2017.
However, brands might argue that the development is not cheap at all. If you see another alternative or have the proof that responsive design is not the only alternative, let us know…
Survey: Most CMOs and eCommerce execs lack understanding of the mobile experience
20.06.2013 von Martin Meyer-Gossner
Kategorie English Content, Featured Stories, Mobile
The study "Reducing Customer Struggle 2013" conducted by Econsultancy shows that marketers now attribute 19% of their total website traffic to mobile devices. Delivering positive customer experience is for 40% of respondents a bigger challenge that on the Web. Herein, bad navigation, small screen sizes and difficulty completing forms were seen as the most serious mobile challenges.
Experiencing a poor custmer experience results for 89% of respondents in working with a competitor. But it seems marketers start understanding the omni-channel customer as they are turning to big data and digital analytics in order to better provide a better mobile experience. And some seem to be real experts in the mobile field: 7% of businesses indicate they have an "excellent" understanding of the overall online customer experience.
The integration of online and offline is still a struggle for most businesses. Most marketers know that information about offline locations, contact details and opening hours on their website is key. But when it comes to establishing a social presence for offline products or services and mobile or local search engine optimization, 93% of the repondents could not get the visibility into individual customer engagement via digital channels.
Spot On!
Seeing their lack in understanding the modern mobile culture, 73% of companies surveyed plan to increase investment in online channels this year. Not surprisingly as mobile is making its way to generate results even in mobile advertising. 6.9bn USD in mobile subscriptions globally seem to be an argument and make 72% invest more in mobile channels. 53% will increase their invest in social. Interesting though that the value of social listening is for most seen ineffective but still they agree social gives insight into what is working and what is not. The looser seems to be offline. More than two-thirds of marketers indicated they either plan to decrease or maintain the same level of investment in offline channels such as stores, shops and branches.
Web transactions? PayPal handles 60% – Google comes in 5th position
21.05.2012 von Martin Meyer-Gossner
Kategorie English Content, Featured Stories, Web Strategy
When it comes to web transactions, PayPal is leading the bunch with 60% according to a recent study by New Relic. Still, the study shows that Google offers the fastest payment gateway. The slowest transaction happened to some Australian payment gateway, called Eway.com.au. One of the payments took 92.44 seconds to complete. Datacash and USAepay.com were not far behind with 89 and 56 seconds.
The payment gateway is the web equivalent of a modern cash register. This system double-checks whether it is really the person that pays the transaction and that you are the trusted authority to pay for the purchase to be finished. The study of the web's most popular payment gateways monitored 38 billion transactions daily for big companies like Nike, Groupon, and Zynga. The study focused on transactions by 21,000 web applications.
The study finds PayPal the winner as it is the biggest payment processor on the web these days. Well, let's say according to this study sample. In this test period, PayPal processed over 66,000 payments – over three times as many as their closest competitor which was Authorize.net with usaebay.com and stripe.com following. Google Checkout only came in at position five with over 3400 payments.
Although Google does not win in numbers, they win in speed. Google Checkout's average payment processing time came in at fantastic .26 seconds. Just imagine that this system finds in less than a third of a second, data to "collect and transfer your payment information – name, address, card number, purchase details, etc. – to the financial institution," says John Essex, Marketing Director at New Relic. And we have to bear in mind that there is also some other stuff to be verified like your data via Mastercard or VISA to evaluate your credit risk, and play it back to the website's e-commerce platform, and so on.
In this speed category PayPal's performance was kind of "middle brilliant" as it performed with an average of under one and a half seconds. An Australian payment gateway, Eway.com.au, showed the poorest performance with one payment taking an incredible 92.44 seconds to complete. The average performance at these payment services ranged somewhere between 3-4 seconds.
Spot On!
In the e-commerce business, speed is business-critical for all web transactions. In these web transaction performance topics time is money. The online shopping experience needs to work as quickly, smoothly and trouble-free for the web consumer. We all know how cancel the transaction when we have to wait to long for the transaction to be completed. The lag in transaction time is the killer of the digital shopping experience. Probably, as we do not see a person handling the transaction, having problems with the cash register or cash machine.
Would you agree with the findings in their infographic?
Study shows that consumers are frustrated with online paying
01.05.2012 von Martin Meyer-Gossner
Kategorie Mobile Business
In a recent study by Mastercard Worldwide conducted by Harris Interactive we acknowledge how consumers are feelings about online commerce, as well as their habits on mobile shopping. According to the report, U.S. consumers replied that one of their biggest issues is "entering payment, billing and shipping information."
It is not surprising to anyone probably that the only other issue more annoying to online buyers is knowing still one that has not changed in 15 years: People would like to know how a product feels, fits or looks.
"Online and mobile shopping puts a host of new options at consumers' fingertips, but the current checkout process needs improvement to fully realize the potential of these important retail channels," Geoff Iddison, Group Executive E-Commerce and Mobile, MasterCard Worldwide
According to Iddison the study also shows that consumers want a simpler, faster way to enter account information and less time filling out forms.
The funny thing for me is that the world still wants something that does not exist (and which I have thought about inventing in the online advertising world, too): a trusted source that handles safely personal information in one place.
58% of online shoppers said they would like that easy access to information in order to simplify their online check-out experience across the Internet. Apart from that almost one out of four respondents replied they had abandoned a shopping cart before completing their online or mobile purchase.
On the MasterCard company blog, Brian Gendron -a company spokesman- said the poll shows consumers want a simpler online payment experience. He mentions…
"Consumers still find that a lengthy checkout experience can cause frustrations, which can sometimes mean lost business for merchants when consumers fail to click 'confirm purchase. Consumers want a simple and fast process to complete their online transactions so they can spend more time finding the exact products that they want."
So, how about you and your online purchasing experiences? Would you say the study is correct in their findings?
Why Social Commerce is not happening… yet
27.02.2012 von Martin Meyer-Gossner
Kategorie English Content, Featured Stories, Social Media
Many companies are asking when Facebook commerce is really taking off. Especially as some consulting companies like Strategy& see in Facebook an emerging market that might reach $30 billion within the next five years.
However people spend a lot of time on Facebook, social commerce is still low. And the reason is…? No other than those people fear in e-commerce: traditional security topics.
These are the findings of a survey that Harris Interactive did on behalf of Digitas last month in the US, polling 2,630 adults. 2,247 of them were identified as Social Media users.
The key findings of the study were…
– 75% indicate they would be more likely to purchase a product or service that a friend openly endorses via social media
– 55% don't feel comfortable giving credit card information via social media
– 45% are somewhat comfortable however especially men between 18 and 54 with an income of $35,000 or more
– 34% are more likely to share info about a purchase they made on a social media site with friends than one made on a traditional e-commerce site
– 50.7% access Social Media sites close to a full hour per day on average via a mobile device
Spot On!
Virtual currency like Bitcoin or Facebook Credits seems to be a "NoGo" as the new currency model. 74% of the respondents stated they wouldn't use virtual currency to pay for a purchase made on a Social Media site. Nevertheless, it seems that trust is a new link for brands to get money through Social Networks. 20% agree they would purchase products or services from their favorite brands on a Social Media site. So, another emerging trend could become that brands will use their merchandise shops and make it accessible through Social Media sites.
1 in 3 of 18-34s will do mobile shopping this christmas
21.10.2011 von Martin Meyer-Gossner
Kategorie English Content, Mobile
According to a UK survey by marketing community site UTalkMarketing and online survey platform Toluna. 32% of 18-34-year-olds will use their mobile to buy Christmas presents this year.
However, this might sound as if only the young generation is shopping via their mobiles, the study makes clear that also older age groups are purchasing mobile with an increasing amount: 14% of 35-54 year-olds and 9% of over 55s year-olds also plan to get their presents for Christmas by using their mobile.
"The fact that a third of young adults are planning to buy their Christmas gifts via their mobile device is proof that the year of mobile-commerce is finally upon us. The fact that most mobile shoppers will do so directly via a retailer's app is also strong proof that brands wishing to contend in the mobile-commerce arena must do more than simply provide a mobile optimised website," says Melanie McKinney, Publisher, UTalkMarketing.
The survey questioned 1,300 UK consumers and found that iPhone users are the most likely to make a Christmas purchase via their device. 42% said they will make a Christmas purchase via their iPhone devices. 31% of those that say they will make a Christmas purchase via their mobile will use a BlackBerry and 27% will do so via an Android phone.
However, the advent of HTML 5 is near, apps are the retail channels of choice for the survey's respondents. 88% of mobile shoppers will only make a purchase this Christmas if their retailer of choice has a transactional app. Only 12% of mobile shoppers will make a purchase directly from a retailer's mobile-optimised website.
"The results of this survey are a clear indication that retailers cannot ignore the mobile-commerce wave. They need to adapt to and embrace the changing ways consumers now shop," states McKinney.
Spot On!
Poor shops on the streets… The study is a good proof that mobile commerce is on it's way towards mainstream. Also, the tablet movement, especially with the increasing use of iPads these days, will change consumer habits to go shopping in the future. Another YouGov survey released earlier this week suggests that 84% of consumers will buy at least one gift online this year with a third saying they will buy all of their gifts online. However, marketers have to be clear about the fact that more than a quarter of consumers (26%) are concerned about privacy issues when it comes to shopping via mobile according to the uTalkMarketing survey.


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Home > Rhododendrons > Tall Hybrid Rhododendrons > Rhododendron Black Magic
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This is an amazing free flowering plant with the darkest red flowers and deep green upright foliage. In our opinion it is one of the best deep red Rhododendrons and one of our favourites. Height 140-160cm in 10 years.
It will take a fair amount of sun, but the flowers won't last so long. Dappled shade is best, but not recommended for deep shade.
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AS thatched roofing enjoys a revival in Somerset, Taunton Fire Service say more fires involving the materials are happening than ever before.
Taunton fire station was called out to two thatched roof fires in the space of eight days this January and say people need to be educated about how to prevent and deal with thatched roof fires.
County Gazette reporter Alice Simmons visited the station on Lisieux Way and met Paul Chamberlain, Taunton Fire Station Watch Manager, to find out more about thatch fires.
Paul said: "In the first month of this year we were called out to two thatched fires in the space of eight days which to be honest is alarming as they are usually quite rare.
"One of the fires in Combe Florey saw us battling the flames for hours on end before a resolution came about.
"There has definitely been an increase in the amount of thatch roof fires in the last year and we feel people need to be better educated about how to prevent these fires before they even start.
"We want to advise thatch property owners and the public to be vigilant to thatch fires and the devastating effects they can have.
"What a lot of people do not know about thatch fires is that they are initially quite difficult to see as often the fire is contained within the thatch and can quickly spread.
"Often this is because thatch is built with thick layers which is difficult for us as fire crews to locate and extinguish."
On January 11, Paul was just one of more than 100 firefighters tasked to extinguish a huge blaze at the Farmers Arms in Combe Florey.
When crews first arrived there was smoke issuing from the roof but finding the root of the fire was much more difficult.
As the fire spread, crews spent hours trying to extinguish the fire which left the roof and the upstairs of the pub severely damaged.
Tim Young, owner of the Farmers Arms, described the incident as 'numbing' and praised the fire service for their continued efforts to extinguish the fire.
Paul added: "The most recent fire we tackled was at the Farmers Arms in Combe Florey which was just a clear representation of how quickly things can change in thatched fires.
"We have a lot of different equipment we can use for thatched fires but because they are often hidden inside the thatch sometimes it takes a while to get to the source of the fire.
"One of thing we use often to combat fires in thatched properties is a compressed air foam which we squirt in using a smaller hose attachment.
"This is of great help to us because it allows us to squirt under the thatch and when the foam goes in it puts almost a barrier, a coating over the fire which prevents it from spreading and buys us more time to find the source of the fire.
"When we were fighting the Combe Florey fire it was extremely difficult for us as we didn't have any floor plan of the building and didn't know when we got there where all of the gas and power outlets were so it took us longer to shut off power.
"I would advise owners of thatched properties to keep a record of when their thatch was last changed and to maybe create a brief overview or plan of the building so if a fire does occur we can extinguish it as quickly as possible and minimise damage."
Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue Service has produced a booklet of safety tips for thatched property owners warning them of the dangers of thatched fires and advising them how they can best protect their homes.
A spokesman for Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue Service said: "Today on thatch properties only three materials are widely used, long straw, combed wheat reed and water reed, all of which will burn rapidly in a fire.
"Although thatch fires are not common, over 90 per cent of thatch roof fires start as a result of a faulty flue or chimney.
"The thatch is designed to repel water which makes extinguishing such fires difficult.
"It has been shown in tests that the thatch adjacent to the chimney can reach 85 per cent of the flue gas temperature after only one day of continuous use.
"One thing for thatched property owners to consider is forming a fireproof barrier between the roof timbers and the thatch layer when renovating or undertaking re-roofing.
"A thatch fire will be mainly restricted to the thatch and damage to the rest of the house will be limited.
"We would recommend that any owners of a thatch property produce a fire plan for their home.
"We advise for example that smoke alarms should be installed throughout a property and if space is available an interlinked smoke alarm should be installed.
"The installation of residential sprinkler systems, checking electrical systems and installing fire blankets are a great thing to install around a property as these safety tools can help slow or prevent fires before they become serious.
"We have lots of advice about how to deal with thatched fires and it is free to download."
For more information visit dsf.gov.uk


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PROVO — A judge ruled Monday that court proceedings against a 17-year-old girl charged with murder in the death of Utah County Sheriff's Sgt. Cory Wride will remain in Utah County.
"I find the defendant can have a fair and impartial trial in Utah County," 4th District Court Judge Darold J. McDade said.
The decision was not unexpected, said Meagan Grunwald's attorney, Dean Zabriskie. And with no appeal planned, it left the defense team looking ahead to possible plea agreements and strategy in the case.
"We're looking for the walk, but that's not going to happen unless we go to trial, so we will see how close we can get to that," Zabriskie said of plea negotiations.
"Right now with what's she's charged with she would live out her life in prison. We're talking about potential sentences that could go 15 to 16 years," he said. "What happens after 15 or 16 years? Part of her life would be behind her, she would be a convicted felon, a murderess. You can see what our goals are."
He said they are completely prepared to go to trial if a plea agreement can't be made.
Prosecutor Sam Pead said his office continues to discuss the case and possible resolutions with the defense.
"It's safe to say we're in negotiations," Pead said.
Grunwald, 17, has been charged as an adult with several felonies, including murder, for her part in a Jan. 30 chase and shootings that spanned three crime scenes, left Wride dead and injured Utah County sheriff's deputy Greg Sherwood. Investigators believe Grunwald's boyfriend, Jose Angel Garcia-Juaregui, 27, fired the weapon while Grunwald acted as the getaway driver.
Garcia-Juaregui was killed in a shootout with police.
Grunwald's attorneys filed a motion asking that the case be moved from Utah County, where Wride has been celebrated.
"This officer was both hero and victim in this community," Zabriskie argued. "The continued efforts to remember and even memorialize these young men in our community is one reason, one motivation to seek another venue."
He also pointed to the publicity surrounding the case and his concerns that deputies from the same office that employed Wride and Sherwood would maintain court security and aid the jury during a possible trial.
"While these men would never intentionally do anything to influence a jury, their very status may have some subliminal impact on the jury and that concerns us," Zabriskie said.
But Deputy Juab County Attorney AnnMarie Howard argued that the defense failed to show any evidence that Grunwald couldn't get a fair trial in Utah County.
"Conjecture and suppositions are not sufficient," she said.
She pointed to other high-profile cases where a change of venue was denied and a jury was found. She also cited the county's size and said that if a jury can be found for trials among the 10,000 people in Juab County, then certainly an impartial jury panel can be found in the second-largest county in the state.
"If you open the door wide enough and void dire (jury questioning) is conducted well enough, there are eight impartial jurors in this county," she assured the judge.
McDade opted to take a recess to consider the arguments before issuing his decision. He said he considered the status of the victims and defendant, the size of the county, the nature of the crime and the publicity surrounding the case.
Ultimately, he determined that a change of venue was not necessary, because the county is sufficiently large and neither the victim nor defendant were public figures.
"Even though the office of police officer is an honorable one, members of the community did not widely know the victims' names before the circumstances of this case occurred," McDade said.
Wride's parents, Blake and Kathy, said they were happy with the decision. For one thing, the crime occurred in Utah County, Blake Wride said.
"He served the community and he loved the community and chose to raise his family in the community," Kathy Wride said. "We're really excited that it's going to be here."
Grunwald is charged with aggravated murder, two counts of felony discharge of a firearm with serious bodily injury, two counts of attempted aggravated murder, and aggravated robbery, all first-degree felonies.
She is also charged with criminal mischief, a second-degree felony; felony discharge of a firearm, possession or use of a controlled substance, and failure to respond to an officer's signal to stop, all third-degree felonies; criminal mischief, a class A misdemeanor; and violation of operator duties for accident involving property damage, a class B misdemeanor.
Her attorneys have maintained that she was frightened and coerced into participating in the criminal activity.
Grunwald is set to return to court Aug. 18 for a scheduling conference.
Email: firstname.lastname@example.com, Twitter: DNewsCrimeTeam


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I am confident that Dr. Terino will deliver more than what is expected.
Outstanding Result! - Thousand Oaks, CA
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I just had my nose lift done by Dr. Terino. At first, I went through several doctors to check which one will really provide the first impression that I am looking for. Dr. Terino delivered just right. He took pictures of me and discussed on the options. He listened to my concerns and answered it without any delays. I am really impressed on how he deals with his patients, knowing that I was just there for consultation. His staffs are all friendly and caring. Dr. Terino said he needs to remove the dorsal hump on my nose and refine the tip. So after all the surgery and recovery, I can say I am very happy with the outcome. My nose looks better now. I can breathe normal. I don't look as if I have crossed-eyes on pictures too. I am so thankful I picked him to make me look wonderful.


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User Edited/Contributor Pages - ASP.NET?
I want to build a few pages to integrate into my site where a select few users (say 10) can login and update their own page/section. All i want them to be able to do is add some news and update a top 10 list, like a chart etc.
Is ASP.NET the way to go? (i have ASP support with my domain).
If so where's the best place to start? Anywhere i can get/find a template or basic tutorial?


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The feeling surrounding the Cleveland Cavaliers prior to the 2013-14 season was hopeful for the first time in four years. After three long seasons, fans believed this team could finally make the playoffs.
This hope quickly slipped out of grasps when the Cavs failed to reach their playoff goal for the fourth year in a row. Although the future looks bright for Cleveland with their young stars, this year fell short of expectations in many ways for the Cavs.
The most obvious way it fell short was not making the playoffs. I believe making the playoffs this season was essential for two reasons. The first was to make it an easier decision for All-Star point guard Kyrie Irving to sign a contract extension this season. Irving wants to win now and needs to know the Cavs organization is capable of putting the right pieces around him in order to compete before signing a long-term deal.
The second reason not making the playoffs hurt the Cavs is for attracting free agents. Since the Cavaliers have a long shot at getting a top pick in the lottery, they need to be able to attract free agents this summer. Attracting free agents to Cleveland is a difficult task and not making the playoffs will only make it harder.
The rehiring of head coach Mike Brown is another way the Cavs failed to meet expectations. The team needs to move in another, fresh direction instead of trying to relive the past. Brown, a defensive-minded coach, was unable to implement a successful offense all season. The Cavs are a young team, who need a proven offensive coach to help teach their budding stars how to play together.
The third shortcoming for the Cavs was their new players, whether it be Anthony Bennett, the number one overall pick in the 2013 NBA Draft, Andrew Bynum, who was signed in free agency, or Luol Deng, who was acquired from the Chicago Bulls midseason. Although Bennett did show sparks late in the season, he failed to make an impact on the court. Bynum was supposed to be a huge signing for the Cavs to solidify their playoff goals, but instead turned into a pain for the organization. When the Cavs traded Bynum to the Bulls, they gained a successful scorer, Deng, in return. As soon as Deng came to Cleveland his numbers dropped and seemed to be unhappy with his new team.
Another downfall to the 2013-14 season was the abundance of attention surrounding the dysfunction in the locker room and lack of spotlight on the Cavs in-game successes. The only times the Cavs were talked about in the media was for negative things. Multiple times throughout the season, there were reports of Irving and guard Dion Waiters disliking each other. There were rumors that it had become so bad between the two, they were engaging in fistfights in the locker room. Although both deny the reports and stress they are best of friends on and off the court, the bad media attention does nothing but hurt this young team in trying to attract free agents and resign players.
The Cavs failed in multiple ways this season, but not all was bad in Cleveland. They continue to strengthen their young core of players and are closer than ever to ending the city's woes.


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Liberal Languages:
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The term "liberalism" has always enjoyed a separate existence away from the constricting, formal, and austere world of political concepts and theories. To be liberal evokes generosity, tolerance, compassion, being fired up with the promise of open, unbounded spaces within which the free play of personality can be aired. Yet the clues to liberalism's political nature are not hard to detect. Generosity suggests the dispensing of bounties beyond the call of duty--to prioritise justice as the first liberal virtue is unnecessarily reductionist. Tolerance suggests a flexibility, a movement, a diversity--of ideas, of language, and of conceptual content--that sets liberalism aside from most of its ideological rivals, whose declared aspiration is to finalise their control over the political imagination. Compassion suggests an empathy, a sociability, an altruism, that pays homage to the human networks in which individualism is integrally and beneficially enmeshed, as well as an ardent desire to alleviate human suffering. And openness suggests that the permutations of human conduct and thought are unfathomable and wonderfully unpredictable. Lest we forget, those are liberalism's most remarkable qualities.
Just over a century ago, something significant happened to liberalism that brought those qualities into particular prominence. It underwent a series of transformations that changed the nature of Western politics, while altering the internal balance of liberal political thought itself. Many factors contributed to that change. Among those were the growing reach of democratised politics; the (re)discovery of social relations as partly constituting the individual; the popularisation of evolutionary theory grafted on to theories of progress; a new attentiveness to the psychology of human vitality; the identification of additional barriers to human action and development that required novel conceptions of liberty; and, not least, a reconceptualisation of politics as a responsible, responsive, and facilitating communal activity. That process occurred in a number of cultural locations: in France, in the Antipodes, in the United States, in Italy. But above all it took place in Britain, and Britain--then still a net exporter of political ideas--persevered in its nineteenth-century role as the leading producer and disseminator of cutting-edge liberal theory and of the practices that accompanied such thinking. The chapters in this first section are intended both to illustrate the potential that is always available in liberal ction theory and ideology, and to emphasise the actual importance and impact of a body of ideas that grew over time and across space.
That British movement of ideas, known as the "new liberalism," was no chimera or historical oddity, no flash in the pan, no geographical eccentricity. Rather, it teased out of liberalism implicit and underplayed features that created an ideological turn. This juncture lies at the basis of the welfare state--probably the most important domestic institutional achievement of Western political systems in the twentieth century. Two of the central figures of the new liberalism, Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse and John Atkinson Hobson--who figure prominently in the following pages--deserve that salience because they epitomise that ideological turn in their fecund writings and in their innovative methodology. We can, indeed, employ them to unlock much of the liberal potential that has become hidden, or has been overlooked, in many of the philosophical liberal discourses that dominated the period between the 1970s and the 1990s. As befits a broadly based intellectual tradition, the two British thinkers are equally important for who they were as for the trend they so brilliantly and efficiently symbolised, for their ability to optimise liberalism's humanist promise, and for the distinctive liberal language they developed. Nonetheless, the story of the new, progressive liberalism of the twentieth century is a far more extensive and subtle one, involving individuals, groups, and institutions that through their synergies moulded an intricate and pervasive modern Weltanschauung, employing a range of liberal languages. And it is a story that should on no account be displaced by the political remoteness, specialised interests, and hypothetical thought-experiments characteristic of recent academic liberal debates.
In addressing the issues raised by those liberal currents and rearticulations of liberal principles, we are inevitably drawn to a profound set of concerns. What is liberalism? How does one go about attempting to answer that most seductive and elusive question? In particular, which of the features that typify the liberal tradition should we take note of from the vantage point of the present? Can we use our knowledge of liberalism, as it has developed over the past century or so, to decode some of its more recent manifestations, as well as to appreciate the complexity of that ideological movement over time and space? And, simply but importantly, where should we look for liberal thinking?
In the broadest sense, three fundamental perspectives on liberalism exist side by side and it may help to set them out.
First, liberalism--as history--can be understood as a narrative about the emergence of a belief system, contextualised and temporalised. That narrative has focused primarily on the liberation of individuals and groups from oppression and discrimination. Second, liberalism--as ideology--can be understood as an actually identifiable configuration of specified political concepts, such as liberty, progress, and individuality, that adopts a distinct pattern, or a series of family resemblances, to which the name "liberal" is designated. Third, liberalism--as philosophy--can be understood as a modelling device in which universal ground rules are drawn up for a just and free society, rules that permit in particular a fair and equal pursuit of the chosen life plan of every person.
These are some of the questions and approaches that the essays in this book, especially in its first part, address. But if Hegel's owl of Minerva has any say in the matter, my own journey through liberalism has been accompanied by a permanent flapping of her wings. There is no end of day at which understanding descends. Comprehension is incremental and insight changes with accruing perspectives. When I first embarked on exploring aspects of the liberal tradition, my aim was specific: to understand what had happened to liberalism between the mature John Stuart Mill--at the time appropriated by liberal minimalists and "self-regarders"--and the Beveridge Report of almost a century later. Even given the impact of the more holistic and other-regarding philosophical idealism that emerged in the post-Millian late nineteenth century, what occurred inside the liberal "black box" to transform a tract such as T. H. Green's Liberal Legislation and Freedom of Contract of 1881 into a policy document such as the Beveridge Report of 1942--William Beveridge's Social Insurance and Allied Services--still remained something of a mystery. Aside from some general awareness of Hobhouse as a worthy but secondary figure in the modern liberal canon, there were few accounts, and fewer analyses, of the complex movement of liberalism from an assumedly individualistic, even atomistic, theory of human nature and social structure towards something at the heart of welfare-state thinking. What accounted for that leap? Was it a leap, or was it an oversight of both participants and scholars in failing to recognise a more sustained and steady process that had been happening under their eyes? And if so, why did that failure in recognition happen?
Failure to recognize is not tantamount to a failure to get it right. It means that cultural and ideological causes obscure certain interpretations, certain points of view; that they deliberately conceal or underestimate them, or, more accurately and frequently, that the conceptual apparatus for their formulation and recognition is simply unavailable; and that the methodology employed by students of political thought is designed to extract and illuminate certain kinds of information but not others. The study of liberalism suffered from all these characteristics, so that by the mid-twentieth-century research into the liberal tradition had become a highly constricted and stylised approximation of the evidence and perspectives that were potentially available to its students. But there has been another major impediment to the scholarly retrieval, mapping, and appraisal of liberalism. For the past forty years, its philosophical exploration has drifted apart from the thinking, the theorising, and the debates that have constituted liberalism as a broad political movement, both intellectual and political. Gone are the days when a John Stuart Mill could produce a text that would serve as reference point to political leaders as well as philosophers, a text that could be grasped by a reasonably educated individual. The specialized language of late-twentieth-century liberal philosophers, directed mainly at their colleagues rather than at the thinking public,1 has been accompanied by a partial reconstruction of the liberal enterprise, a reconstruction that runs counter to many--though far from all--of the assumptions, beliefs, and prescriptions that have typified Western liberalism.
The loss is a double one: to historians of ideas and students of ideology because they no longer are as keenly in touch with the critical and reflexive testing of liberal principles; and to political philosophers because they no longer are significantly in touch with the political and cultural constraints that ensure the viable flexibility liberalism requires, as it competes in the real-world arena of policymaking, of reform, of social inspiration, and of political mobilisation. These diverging fields of analysis have to develop a common language and to begin to reconnect, to intersect, and to overlap in their concerns, in order for the members of the liberal family to be recognised as possessing a common ideational pool, however different the actual drawing out of political languages from that pool may be. There are only three modes of going about this. First, one of the discourses can be eliminated--an unlikely as well as a most undesirable possibility. Second, the disparate discourses can be reconciled, if each is prepared to learn the language of the others and make some serious mutual methodological concessions. Third, new discourses may be constructed that offer alternative sites for developing the study of liberalism, or that re-evaluate the existing discourses so that common, hitherto nontransparent, organising motifs and conceptual patterns are unveiled. My own forays into liberal theory, increasingly propelled by frustration with the current nonconversation among the disciplines, have attempted to establish small beachheads, initially for the second mode and more recently for the third.
This book has a second theme, though. It concerns the application of recent theories of ideology, my own included, in order to obtain a clearer view of the components of liberalism and their internal flexibility and substantive indeterminacy. It also assists in comprehending the boundaries of liberalism, their permeability, and the structures that exist outside them. At what points in a discursive field do we begin to move out of the liberal domain? Which conceptual mutations have to occur for us to decide that the configuration of arguments before us is no longer liberal? Finally, it examines some features of ideological morphology I have explored since completing my Ideologies and Political Theory: A Conceptual Approach.2 That second theme is a minor one in some of the chapters of the first part, whereas the first theme, likewise, is a lesser thread present in most chapters of the second. I shall address the second theme more specifically in a chapter linking the two parts.
The historical study of liberalism has become increasingly and healthily diversified over the past quarter-century. Some of it still follows canonical convention in setting out the qualitative criteria of the liberal political thinking it is prepared to take seriously, even as it has moved to extend somewhat the range of theorists that form part of the classical liberal canon. An example of that approach is that of Stefan Collini, who channelled the 1960s-1970s Cambridge focus on high politics into the scrutiny of high-minded political thinking among a broader cross-section of the liberal intelligentsia, while insisting that less structured or less sophisticated forms of political thought could not be subject to the same standards of analysis.3 Other branches of historical research have illuminated the populist sources of issues that intellectuals later raised to the levels of properly articulated discourses. Thus, some liberal conceptions of communal identity and fraternity could be traced to working-class cultures that percolated into mainstream political thinking and that pressed on liberalism a need to develop greater social inclusiveness. An example of that is the work of Eugenio Biagini, who has also argued that continuities with earlier, "older" liberal strands should not be underestimated.4 Further recent developments have yet to figure prominently: the continental, German-led development of conceptual history, investigating competing and changing vocabularies, and linguistic and conceptual adaptability in crucial historical bridging periods, has so far had little resonance in the study of liberalism.5 Similar issues have arisen through the work of J. G. A. Pocock on political language and vocabulary--again insufficiently cashed out in existing research on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, on which the essays in this book focus.6 Ultimately, it has to be said, liberalism has a far broader multidisciplinary genealogy than that assumed by canon-led historians of political thought: politics, psychology, sociology, management, biology. It is not just a philosophy but a sophisticated cultural compound. And its sources are manifold: liberalism is a discourse that surfaces at countless levels of written and oral expression.
When I first started work on The New Liberalism,7 conceptual history was in its infancy, the focus on authorial intentions had just commenced, while discourse analysis and the linguistic turn had hardly begun to be applied to the study of political thought. I was convinced that the activity of creating socially significant and historically important political theory was a far broader one than what was represented through the traditional apostolic successions of the "great thinkers." My aim was to extend the range of subject matter that came under the legitimate scrutiny of political theory and to examine thinking that was located closer to the coal face of political activity. In so doing I tried to apply some of the analytical questions that concerned political theorists to the archival materials at the disposal of historians.
By the time Liberalism Divided had been completed,8 I was beginning to make the first inroads into the approach I believed was needed to understand and decipher the political thinking produced by broader groups of intellectuals and activists. The opening sections of that book adumbrate some general thoughts about the forms in which that thinking appears to us. Curiously, some historians urged me to drop those methodological musings, which a decade later had been transformed into my theory of ideological structure (which I later termed ideological morphology in order to distinguish between that theory and the various currents under the general heading of "structuralism").
Ideologies and Political Theory enabled me to revisit British new liberalism--while exploring other forms of liberalism as well as different ideological families--and re-examine the ideas I had already studied. This time, however, the emphasis was on their decontestations and their configurations, and on investigating how specific conceptual arrangements created determinate fields of meaning from the raw material available to the formulators of liberalism--indeed, of political thought in general. An interest in methodology no longer seemed to me--as it still does to quite a few scholars--merely to be the overindulgent preliminary to talking about what really matters. Rather, it was the key to deciphering the secrets contained in written texts and oral utterances. It offered solutions to the central question I now knew had to be asked: what has to hold for this sentence, that paragraph, this narrative, to make sense to its author, and what has to hold for it to make sense to its consumers, be they the intended audiences at the time, or the audiences of the future? How are the sense and the meaning that should interest students of politics produced, formed, and extracted from the thoughts and practices available to a society? Which options are opened and which foreclosed, both for political thought and for political practices, when a particular cultural map is superimposed on a virtual infinity of logical conceptual possibilities?
But whereas part 2 concentrates on alternative modes of analysing ideologies, part 1 is concerned with alternative reconstructions of the history of liberal thought. While historians of liberalism in the past generation have approached their chosen subject through the prisms of high or of low politics, and while questions of genesis and lines of influence still have a strong hold on their academic imaginations, most of the essays in part 1 follow a different trajectory. They reshuffle the priorities accorded to questions asked of the liberal tradition, and they legitimate and respect the thought-artefacts themselves--the debates, discourses, conflicting renderings, shifting grounds, everyday discussions and concrete grapplings with liberalism on a number of levels of articulation that I hold to be informative, even illuminating.
The first two essays nevertheless also reflect the need of most academics to keep abreast of intellectual fashions--in this case the explosion of liberal political philosophy that made most of the running in the agendas of political theorists during the last quarter of the twentieth century--and to react to dominant paradigms of analysis. To forestall potential wrath from the ranks of political philosophers, I cannot stress too strongly how important that discipline is, and how crucial its analytical insights, critical appraisals, and ethical sensitivities have been to the refinement of political thought. There is, indeed, overlap between the study of political thinking in its broader scope and the types of arguments and perspectives that political philosophers have developed. But political philosophy is nevertheless a different enterprise, and in recent decades it has become very distanced from those who wish--through the analysis of actual or possible patterns of political thought--to understand better the nature of the political itself and to return some of the concerns of political theory to the sphere of the social sciences. This is particularly true of enquiries into liberalism, for not only has the language of liberalism changed, but some of its defining features have as well. Here is an example.
For John Rawls, liberalism--through its conception of justice--"protects the familiar basic rights and assigns them a special priority; it also includes measures to insure that all citizens have sufficient material means to make effective use of those basic rights . . . a liberal view removes from the political agenda the most divisive issues, serious contention about which must undermine the bases of social cooperation." And again, "liberal principles meet the urgent political requirement to fix, once and for all, the content of certain political basic rights and liberties, and to assign them special priority. Doing this takes those guarantees off the political agenda and puts them beyond the calculus of social interests."9
Contrast this with Hobhouse, for whom
liberalism is the belief that society can safely be founded on [the] self-directing power of personality, that it is only on this foundation that a true community can be built . . . we have come to look for the effect of liberty in the firmer establishment of social solidarity . . . in the organic conception of society each of the leading ideas of historic Liberalism has its part to play. The ideal society is conceived as a whole which lives and flourishes by the harmonious growth of its parts, each of which in developing on its own lines and in accordance with its own nature tends on the whole to further the development of others.10
And on the role of the liberal state Hobhouse wrote,
the conscience of the community has its rights just as much as the conscience of the individual . . . Liberty and compulsion have complementary functions, and the self-governing State is at once the product and the condition of the self-governing individual. Thus there is no difficulty in understanding why the extension of state control goes along with determined resistance to encroachments on another. It is a question not of increasing or diminishing, but of reorganizing, restraints.11
The ahistoricity of arrested time versus historical development, depoliticisation versus the regulatory role of a democratic state representing the communal interest, justice through individual rights versus well-being and flourishing through the recognition of social solidarity--these are some of the varying, and even irreconcilable, differences that open up between those twentieth-century notions of liberalism.
In chapter 1, I seek to offer an account of liberalism not from the external and critical perspective of analytical political philosophers, nor from the usual focus of historians of political thought on mainstream liberalism that tends to operate within the conventional garbs of individuals versus collectivities, nor even from the themes of freedom versus welfare that have been at the heart of some of my own studies. Rather, it is a tentative attempt to look at a number of alternative and insufficiently valued features of liberalism that, in retrospect, shed light on its under-researched twentieth-century manifestations. Those are then related to the Rawlsian phenomenon--phenomenon being the operative word!--as itself a particular historical occurrence, one liberal conversation among many. On the microlevel, I argue that concepts such as civilisation, movement, and vitality turn out to be inextricably linked to liberal discourse and the liberal frame of mind. Liberals are partis pris about their beliefs; they spread them not in terms of rationally and morally irresistible ground rules for a fair society prior to its establishment, but rather as the apex of a long process of a civilising mission--of becoming, not being--during which societies mature and propagate constantly evolving and spatially proliferating views of the good life. For liberals, civil society immediately assumes the dual meanings of gracious urbanity and of voluntarism, but it is assisted by an enabling and visionary state. The recent fixation of philosophical liberalism with neutrality is alien to a liberal tradition that has held to its non-negotiable beliefs and ideas as strong preferences for certain values and activities over others, and that has even advocated a limited exercise of duress in order to protect liberal values when those come under serious threat.
One of my contentions has been that the study of liberalism is enriched when we enlist different forms of evidence. That involves a challenge to the distinctions that many political philosophers--and some historians, too--make between primary and secondary texts in investigating political thought. A chief merit of the hermeneutic approach has been to identify a constantly changing set of horizons from which the past and the present are viewed and interpreted. When applied to the study of liberalism, that approach decrees that any secondary text, any commentary on a "great work," may itself be a worthy object of study. It is therefore perfectly possible to move seamlessly between texts designated as "primary" or "secondary," when we appreciate that "primary" and "secondary," and even occasionally "first order" and "second order" are the products of a world of absolutes, a world of statics where "nothing flows" and time stands still, or the products of a scholarly paradigm in which original thoughts are merely revised and, occasionally, corrupted. This signals the absence of narrative and the absence of constructive change.
By contrast, liberal thought is not only a narrative, but should be savoured as a collective narrative that is formed by conversations, reactions, and ripple-effects within large groups, allows the introduction of impermanence within constraining family resemblances, and concurrently enables the idea of development, and of potential evolutionary improvement, to occupy centre stage. For that reason alone such methods of analysis are particularly adept at capturing the features of the liberal tradition, as both the notion of development and the notion of conceptual flexibility--often reconstructed ethically as a plea for tolerance--are situated at its core. In addition, to portray liberal thought as a configuration of conceptual decontestations that take on a specific, if fluid, profile allows us to conceive of it as a confluence between long-standing values and shifting cultural contexts. The outcome of all this is to reinforce the insight that, if we are to acknowledge that something significant did happen to liberalism, it can only become evident through new perspectives that embrace narrative as well as ideological morphology, and through engaging pluralism not only as a liberal value evoking tolerance, or the moral and value diversity of human life,12 but as a structural feature that invariably reveals many liberalisms.
At the same time, evidence must remain empirical. The existence of liberal views has to be validated, even though interpretation may direct us to specific sites and may select circumscribed information from a larger field. The studies in this collection are strongly informed by the contention that liberalism is a pliant tradition subscribed to by identifiable groups, and that the scholar ought to reascertain periodically what those generally held beliefs are. Only then should they be subjected to the kind of critical appraisal necessary to locate them in this, rather than that, segment of the liberal family (and occasionally outside it). Of course, ideologies usually endeavour to anchor themselves in scientific foundations. But that is a different matter involving legitimacy, not scholarlyplausibility. The scramble for the mantle of scientific authority is frequently a facile and flawed route to legitimacy pursued by the ideological producers themselves. The scholar of political thought, to the contrary, needs to abide by conventions of authentication and validation acceptable in the social sciences.
All too often, however, proponents of philosophical liberalism have moved in a secluded and artificial world of perfectionism and neutrality. When they model a universal ethics, they call it liberalism because it is reflexive, and because it entertains some idea of rational equality as well as one of equal liberty. Nevertheless, philosophical liberalism is partially insulated from the practices and complex discourses that have made up the family of liberalisms. This was already the case in the past,13 but it has now become more pronounced. Modelling frequently involves the substitution of name tags for complex theoretical positions, and the tendency of some Anglo-American philosophy is to simplify for reasons of brevity and for heuristic purposes. The return to dichotomies (e.g., perfectionist-neutral; individual-communitarian) and to ideal types (liberalism as grounded on single foundational ideas such as equality or autonomy) may serve as "extreme-case" or "pure-case" constructs through which to test the viability and coherence of arguments and explore their raw logical paths. Nonetheless, the contemporary mass-appeal nature of the political cannot be understood by reference only, or even predominantly, to philosophical texts--that would cause us to go seriously astray as political theorists and political scientists. The bulk of political thinking in a society does not take place in such texts. The ethical and epistemological motifs of liberal thought have always been carried also by authors and articulators who are not academically proficient, using less demanding forms of expression. This is true also of the strong American liberal tradition in the twentieth century, whose features--encompassing community, a common good, planning, and populism, as well as specific understandings of liberty--are rather different from those propounded by those who now speak in the name of liberal justice. Although not central to my own research,14 that tradition, too, is beginning to receive the kind of serious scholarly attention it deserves.15
Thinkers such as Hobhouse and Hobson are different kinds of political theorists, though not less important for that difference. For in order to understand liberalism as a living ideology, we have to look in new places. Many liberals are not public intellectuals as conventionally understood, in the sense of contributing to an authoritative ethic that is publicly available for others to dilute--though obviously they may be. They are typically ideologically active intellectuals who--whatever else they write and say--need to adopt an optimal ideological language, a language that has general appeal and is geared to maximising public support. Public intellectuals are therefore not only those concerned with public affairs but those that address mass publics. It is no accident that Hobhouse's more abstract works and his evening editorial writing for the famous liberal newspaper, the Manchester Guardian, sustained each other. Ideological, as distinct from philosophical or scholarly, quality relates to communication, to mobilisation, and, not least, to the deftness with which ideologies weave short-term issues and a changing political landscape into a loose and periphery-sensitive morphological framework. By "periphery-sensitive" we refer to the interface between ideological structures and the concrete and specific practices and events that serve either to translate them into political action or, conversely, to redefine the meanings attached to the ideological cores. Intellectuals as ideologists are nearer to Gramsci's understanding of their role, explored in the final chapter of this book. Hobson, in particular, has been regarded by some technicians of political philosophy as far too woolly to be taken seriously--a judgment that he was destined, ironically, to suffer from economists during his lifetime. That misses the point. Not even Rousseau, let alone Hobson, would pass the stringent deliberative and logical tests that current philosophy constructs. Without the shadow of a doubt, Hobson was a pivotal liberal political thinker. His input into liberal thought (quite apart from his impact on economics and on theories of imperialism) was outstanding, and if we--as scholars--decode him correctly, that input is revealed for the pervasive, multifaceted, and inventive contemplation that it was.
One curious effect of philosophical liberalism has been to present pluralism as problematic. It has demonstrated a dual tendency to extol diversity--as an expression both of individual autonomy and of multicultural identity--while insisting on the unity of the moral foundations of a well-ordered society. That latter constraint restricts the ontological possibilities contained in liberalism: ethical evolution or mutual dependence, for instance, are excluded as normal possibilities on that moral map. If this view of morality continues to prioritise autonomy and identity over other features of human existence and conduct, it will desensitise its proponents to the awareness of the ideological and semantic complexity embraced in political thinking. I refer to one manifestation of this issue in chapter 2: the role of community in liberal thought. The new liberals accessed the concept of community through their strong organicism, predicated on biological views of the interdependence of living entities and on Idealist and classical notions of harmony. Although the organic analogy has gone out of fashion (though see chapter 8, below), its philosophical anthropology and reliance on social theory represented a departure from the nineteenth-century liberal individualist iconography in which heroic entrepreneurs, such as inventors, were seen to propel society forwards. It also represented a holistic view of society quite in tune with more recent hermeneutic perspectives. That holism requires a nonliteral reading to extract from it the idea of an interrelated and intermeshed semantic field and an appreciation of the consequent knock-on effect that a change in a political practice will have on the equilibrium of that field.
There is, however, a further consideration. If we postulate the existence of communities as valuable social entities--something that even philosophical liberals enamoured of individual cultural identities do--that will have a bearing on the conception of rights a society employs. I have argued elsewhere that rights are devices for first identifying and then prioritising crucial attributes and requirements of the rights-bearing entity, and as a consequence they require action or inaction by others to protect those attributes and requirements.16 As such, rights are not substantively exclusive to liberalism. But they are procedurally highly salient in liberalism, for they postulate either or both of the following: the insulation of social spaces from external control because of the high premium put on self-determination or, to the contrary, the social obligation--that occasionally is a structural necessity--to enter such spaces in order to secure a range of additional liberal ends such as self-development, individuality, and rational action. It is only through appreciating the compound conceptual morphology of liberalism that we can account for the dual possibility of intervention and nonintervention in the liberal tradition as permanent and parallel features, depending on the liberal good/concept that needs to be protected. If we then ask, as so many do, how successful were the new liberals in reconciling individualism and collectivism, I believe that question to be somewhat off the mark. The question should rather be: Of the many forms of (imperfect reconciliation) of those two ideas that liberals adopted, how did each of them work, what did they resolve, and what did they leave unsettled? Such reconciliation can neither be a clear and final undertaking, nor one that requires a single blueprint.
To reiterate in a different way a point already made: One can never understand liberalism if one assumes that it is a monolith in its postulates, assumptions, and values. Liberalism is a cluster of concepts and goods, some of which can only be attained by social initiative, others by its absence and by reliance on individual judgment and virtue. A right is then not an attribute or a foundational feature of individuals; it is not something that people are born with, nor is it the basic building block of liberal theory. Rather, it is a symbolic conceptual act building on elements of the world that are coopted into a social construct. It identifies crucial features of human well-being (or those considered to be crucial) and offers them a fortified conceptual defence, quite irrespective of the normative arguments it enlists. Using the terminology of rights transforms a social and analytical interpretation concerning the components of valued humanity into compelling political language. And it can be attached to whichever social units are identified as the main incarnations of the human condition. When liberalism abandoned the theory of natural rights, it replaced them with a more flexible understanding of rights. That understanding avoided the built-in brittleness that causes natural, universal rights to snap under the pressure of a single contrary instance; instead, it contextualised them while retaining certain limits as to what they could signify. The right to liberty, for example, became the right to the release from dehumanising socioeconomic as well as physical or legal hindrances, hindrances that were not universal but the product of imperfect social orders such as untrammelled capitalism. The limits imposed on rights were simple: the protection of any core liberal value only as long as its pursuit did not begin to impinge fatally on other core liberal values. Thus, liberty had to be constrained at the point where it began to undermine individuality or progress. That approach permitted the continued renegotiation of liberal values in the light of changing cultural paradigms concerning what was important about human beings and how best that could be furthered.
Through an acquaintance with the peculiar features of liberalism, we can modify our conception of rights, proceeding beyond the list of rights usually provided by liberals and scholars of liberalism, and beyond the deontological theories of moral philosophers. Rather, to entertain a rights discourse is to articulate and reflect a particular liberal method, one of ordering human demands and values in a politically sustainable and legitimate manner. Rights are the liberal device of ensuring that vital social goods are accorded special protection and respect and that the possibility of arbitrary conduct by states, groups, and individuals is sharply reduced. Because liberalism is sensitive to expressing human voices, and sympathetic to periodic reassessments of the relative positioning of human values, rights--not just as a legal or constitutional procedure but as an anchor of conceptual arrangements--need to embody the suppleness of conceptual reconfigurations that is at the heart of liberal tolerance and openness.
In chapter 3 I offer an historical case study of the ideological climate in which progressive thinking about poverty was moulded. It is intended to demonstrate the broad spectrum of ideological producers within the liberal family, and the importance of sources such as parliamentary debates for reconstructing liberal political thought. It should also give pause for thought about current progressive debates. The question of poverty, of absolute and relative disadvantage in both material and nonmaterial goods, has recently been sidelined at the expense of another question: that of adequately representing the plethora of cultures within a society. The challenge of halting the marginalisation of individuals and of ethnicities by revaluing their self-identity has edged out the parallel challenge of diminishing the marginalisation of people's welfare by recognising indispensable physical, mental, and emotional needs that demand satisfaction. Even issues of citizenship are understood to refer to participation and formal access rather than to the substantive enjoyment of and sharing in the ample array of goods a society has to offer. In a largely North American-led debate, that is not too surprising; ethnic identity is a far more potent social issue there than the social provision of welfare to the genuinely needy. But the poor are still with us and, moreover, political theorists as well as policymakers need to appreciate that at critical moments in our lives every one of us will become genuinely needy and dependent on the good will of others.
Poverty was one area through which the state was repossessed by liberals to assist in discharging the responsibilities that a body of citizens owed to one another. Debates over the role of the regulatory state, itself regulated by a strong democratic accountability, were numerous. The challenge of what constituted a legitimate state underwent a thorough reexamination, as will be explored in chapter 4. New tests of a social and ethical, as well as a legal, nature were devised. The question of dissent was linked to the liberal investment in social experimentation and difference, as well as to traditional liberal individualism, but it was also limited by the awareness that civilised standards of conduct had to be imposed on those unwilling to abide by them. And once again, these conceptual transformations, and the novel practices associated with them, yield abundant evidence for charting the overt and covert metamorphoses of liberal ideology.
Part 1 ends with two detailed studies of Hobson, the epitome of the Gramscian, socially engaged intellectual. In that guise he articulated a rising social liberal culture, and tied abstract concepts such as liberty to a concrete set of activities and understandings. His impact on later liberal and social democratic traditions has been considerable on two fronts. The one has been the underconsumptionism elaborated on by Keynes, which bestowed theoretical validity on the redistribution of economic resources to the disadvantaged, thus increasing their consumption power to the benefit of all. The other has been the transmutation of Hobson's organicism into the wider, if less specific, notions of community, mutual responsibility, and interdependence that nourished much British political thinking after the Second World War, when the apparatus of the modern welfare state was extended in scope and in reach.
Particularly evident, also, was the flexibility, even generosity, with which Hobson approached human nature. His endorsement of experimentation meant the relaxation of the strict criteria that moralists had imposed on human conduct. It allowed for errors, for play and leisure activities--all from an organic, wholesome, view of the fullness of human existence. Experimentation, critically, played a dual and ambiguous role. It upheld the scientific method and the establishment of objective standards of welfare, thus producing temporary uniformities of understanding, but it also allowed the human will to discover the mutations and innovations that perpetuated differences and underwrote liberal pluralism. The ensuing tension revolves around the relationship between perceived social facts and the values that attach to them. The value of encouraging individual lifestyles, given the fact that each person is unique, confronts the belief in the power of collective and concerted decision making to improve the quality of life of the community, given the fact of social interdependence. Both are crucial liberal themes and the endeavour to establish a balance between the two was the main challenge of twentieth-century liberalism. In the struggle between liberal universalism and liberal pluralism in the early twentieth-century, the latter had the upper hand. The alleged human costs of, and philosophical reaction to, that ascendant intellectual paradigm have been heralded, however, since the totalitarian disasters of mid-century, often accompanied by misconstruals or reinventions of liberalism's modern trail. That thought returns us to some of the considerations raised in the first chapter of this book.
File created: 8/7/2007
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World War Z
World War Z
World War Z is a fictional novel written in the style of a journal detailing a post apocalyptic world after a wide spread virus that causes the recently deceased to re-animate and feed on the living (zombies).
The aim of this project was to redesign the front cover, create additional illustrations for each chapter and a limited edition booklet to be sold with the book World War Z. I did this by focusing on the atmosphere created by fear and chaos in an apocalyptic world and no so much on the zombie themselves. By doing this I hoped to stay away from the cliched gore aspect of the zombie apocalypse theme.
For more Images visit my website at...


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If there is one thing that cancer has not taught me it is patience, so here's the punch line: Had my first PET scan since the stem cell (bone marrow) transplant on Wednesday. Got the results today. The results: no indication of cancer at this time.
Now for more nuance than Twitter will allow. My oncologist sees no indications of lymphoma on the scan and is comfortable waiting 3 to 6 months for another scan. This is clearly good news. I don't (and probably never shall) use the word cure. The cancer can come back, that's why I'll be monitored for the next several years (remember that the stem cell transplant procedure has a 50% success rate).
So. Great news. A great reason to have a great summer. I still have a compromised immune system, so I watch what I eat, stay away from sick folks, and off of airplanes (and cruise ships).
One scan down – a bunch more to go!


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'Identity Thief 2′ Already Being Discussed?
'Identity Thief' has been in theaters for less than two weeks and it's already grossed $76 million at the box office, an enormous amount for a modestly budgeted comedy with a known but untested leading lady. Although critics haven't been as kind as audiences, $100 million is a sure thing at this point and we wouldn't rule out $150 million if March is kind to it. So of course Universal has already thought about an 'Identity Thief 2.' They probably thought about it two weeks ago.


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Beauty Over Blight: California's New Urban Agriculture Law Supports Small Farms in the City | KCET
Beauty Over Blight: California's New Urban Agriculture Law Supports Small Farms in the City
How many times have you walked past a vacant lot littered with trash and graffiti, or an abandoned community garden overgrown with weeds, and wondered what can be done with these neighborhood eyesores? Thanks to passage of a new law on September 28 — Assembly Bill 551, otherwise known as the Urban Agriculture Incentive Zones Act — landowners will soon have incentive to turn their stagnant plots into productive community gardens and small-scale farms.
AB 551, introduced by Assemblyman Philip Y. Ting (D-San Francisco), aims to cultivate urban agriculture by allowing municipalities to lower the property taxes on land of less than three acres, provided the owner dedicates the space to growing food for at least five years.
It was modeled after the Land Conservation (Williamson) Act of 1965, a landmark state law credited with preserving millions of acres of open space and agricultural land that otherwise would've been lost to development.
The bill was conceived by Stanford Law School students Nicholas Reed and Juan Carlos Cancino, San Francisco natives who were actively involved in the local food scene through a nonprofit they founded, The Greenhouse Project. Their vision was one of a vibrant, self-sufficient urban farming community, enabled and supported by local government. In their research, they found that property tax was a major stumbling block to urban agriculture; thus began the partnership with the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR), which eventually led to a meeting with Assemblyman Ting, a former San Francisco assessor and an ardent supporter of the local food movement.
Story continues below
"We started to see a movement in cities all over California that have really decided they want to be growing their food," said Ting. "They want to have access to agricultural space."
The legislation authorizes cities to create "urban agriculture incentive zones" that will not only support the development of urban farming (and supply fresh, local produce to areas deemed as food deserts), but also provide land security for urban farming projects (which usually rely on public land or community philanthropy). Private landowners have often been reluctant to allow farming on their properties as potential increases in tax assessment make the efforts — no matter how altruistic — financially infeasible. With AB 551, landowners will be able to enter into contracts with the city that base their parcel's property tax assessment on the agricultural value of the land, rather than the full market value.
Participation by cities and counties is voluntary and the law only applies to urban areas of 250,000 people or more. AB 551 takes effect in January 2014. So far, elected officials in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Sacramento have all expressed interest in creating urban agriculture incentive zones for their respective cities.
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A man has been accused in Anoka County District Court of swindling a St. Francis couple out of $52,000.
Robert Lee Thompson, 28, is due back in court Oct. 24 on five felony charges, three counts of theft by swindle (over $35,000, over $5,000 and over $1,000 but not more than $5,000, respectively) and one count each of financial exploitation of a vulnerable adult and financial transaction card fraud.
Thompson has posted the $30,000 in bail that was set at his arraignment on the charges Sept. 25. A no contact order has been issued by the court.
According to the complaint, the incidents occurred between Jan. 1 2009 and July 16 of this year.
In late June, St. Francis Police officers responded to a residence on a report of theft and unauthorized use of a credit card.
Officers met with a couple and Thompson, who had power of attorney over them, after the couple had allegedly discovered that someone had used their credit card to make purchases without their consent.
The wife alleged that Thompson never had permission to use their credit card, nor did he have access to their financial accounts, but he helps them with their business affairs along with taking care of her husband, who has medical issues.
The woman alleged she gave Thompson $12,000 to facilitate a silent partnership with the owner of a restaurant in St. Francis and he handled all the paperwork, telling them would receive residuals once the business made a profit.
When police spoke to Thompson, he alleged he was a partial owner of the restaurant, not the couple, and she had given him $2,000.
But police found there was no such silent partnership agreement with the restaurant owner for either the couple or Thompson, according to the complaint.
Thompson allegedly admitted he had used the couple's credit card without their permission and that he did deceive them when he made up the story about the business investment.
He allegedly told police that he had only swindled $1,000 from the couple, using it for himself, and he was also responsible for using the credit card without permission for a total amount of $1,000.
When police spoke to the couple's sons, they allegedly described Thompson as a con man, who had told their parents that he was an Iraq War veteran, the recipient of six Purple Hearts, that he was wounded in action and had got cancer from all the chemicals used in the war.
The sons told police that their parents had allowed Thompson to move into their home so they could help him.
The complaint alleges that Thompson was in the U.S. Army for seven weeks from Nov. 12, 2003 to Jan. 7, 2004 and was discharged for failing to meet medical fitness standards.
When he confronted his parents, one of the sons alleged that Thompson told him to mind his own business and his mother said she believed Thompson because of all his medals, his uniform and official documents that he was in the Army.
The other son contacted police again Aug. 8 very concerned about his parents' well-being and stating that his parents are vulnerable, according to the complaint.
He alleged that Thompson had persuaded his mother that she had to pay a $40,000 fine to the FBI for video piracy.
The complaint alleges that the couple's bank confirmed that the couple had just closed on a loan of $40,000 and documents showed that it was to pay a fine for copying movies.
A cashier's check was allegedly written to Thompson for $20,000 and the other check was placed in the couple's bank account, which the woman withdrew in cash in amounts of $5,000 until the money was gone.
According to the complaint, police contacted the FBI, who confirmed that the couple had never been investigated, nor does it send out letters demanding money.
In addition, a woman told police that Thompson had allegedly given her permission to drive and keep the couple's Cadillac.
The total amount taken from the couple totals $52,000 and the credit card was used to make purchases from the computer in the residence, the complaint alleges.
In a non-custodial interview, Thompson allegedly admitted he had power of attorney over the couple because the husband has a bad heart and had seizures, heart attacks, open heart surgeries and he is getting dementia.
Peter Bodley is at
[email protected]


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There are still obstacles to a Canada-European Union free trade deal, the prime ministers of Canada and France said on Thursday, but both said a deal could smooth the way for a similar EU deal with Washington.
The initial end-2011 timeline to complete the Canada-EU deal has slipped, and a decision from Europe and the United States to begin their own free trade negotiations has put extra pressure on Canada.
"Clearly, I think it's advantageous for us to have such an agreement before the United States does," Prime Minister Stephen Harper told reporters after a meeting with French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault.
"I also think it's important for the Europeans to have such success in North America before really launching a discussion, which will be in my opinion difficult, with the United States."
Canada's economic growth strategy depends partly on diversifying its trade away from the United States, which takes about three-quarters of all exports. But U.S. demand isn't growing fast enough to spur substantial export growth in Canada.
Both Harper and Ayrault noted that significant progress had been made toward a trade deal and said they hoped a pact would be ready as soon as possible.
Ayrault said disagreements persisted over agricultural exports, intellectual property and cultural diversity.
Canada wants more access to the European market for its beef and pork and the EU has concerns about European poultry.
Ayrault said the final text of a Canada-EU deal would, if concluded in time, likely be a precursor for a similar deal between Europe and the United States.
"It's true that if this agreement is concluded and is exemplary ... it will not be without influence on the contents of the negotiations between the European Union and the United States," he said in French. (Reporting by Randall Palmer and Louise Egan; Editing by Vicki Allen)


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text: So yesterday I got my first Android device ever. The Asus Transformer Infinity. So far I am very pleased, however, I noticed that the only payment method in the Google Play Store is a Credit Card or a Debit Card. I only have a Maestro card. I can charge my paypal account with it, buy stuff in iTunes through Click&Buy very easily. Only Google Play Store does not seem to work for me. I do want to use it though for music etc. So I came across stuff like Virtual/Cyber credit cards. My bank, as far as I know, does not allow this option. I did find something called a "Paypal Debit Card". So I wanted to know if anyone tried using this. Will it work? and btw, I live in the Netherlands and my bank is ING