text:
Review: The Histrionic
The Malthouse/Sydney Theatre Company production of Thomas Bernhard's 1984 play The Histrionic is, apparently, the first professional production of Bernhard's work anywhere in Australia. The transparency of Daniel Schlusser's triumphant production makes you wonder what the problem was: why did we have to wait so long? The Histrionic is so manifestly a brilliantly written play, gripping from its
beginning to its extraordinary final moments. It's outrageous, sadistic,
hilarious, brutally bathetic, playfully and powerfully theatrical. In the most
expansive sense of the word, it's an entertainment, exploiting every
trick in the theatrical book: but here Bernhard employs entertainment as a depth charge, to destroy the submarine walls of our self-regard.
Bille Brown as Bruscon in The Histrionic. Photo: Jeff Busby |
The Histrionic premiered nearly three decades ago. I'm well used to the fact that most significant playwrights, especially those outside the Anglosphere, are largely invisible in our mainstage culture - where are our professional productions of major contemporary dramatists such as (to stick with the Europeans) Jon Fosse, Elfriede Jelinek, Biljana Srbljanovic, Falk Richter? - but for some reason this delay struck me. If anything demonstrates the narrowness of our mainstream culture, it's this kind of catching up after the fact. It's not as if myopia is limited to overseas writers: we had to wait longer than three decades to have Patrick White's The Ham Funeral professionally produced in Melbourne, and his plays are still thought of, even by people who ought to know better, as lesser achievements than his novels. The luminously unconventional, the intransigently theatrical, the poetic, the rawly intelligent, even the beautiful, have more often than not been marginalised in Australian culture.
Nowhere do our colonial petticoats show more than in Australia's anxious love for authority. In our culture, genuine artistic originality, with its unsettling combination of disrespect for authority and serious respect for its own antecedents, can only figure as an embarrassment. It has no visible means of support, no legitimisation beyond its own artistry. In a colonial culture, the fear of being thought "wrong" overwhelms all other possibilities of reception. It even muffles outrage: the response to too many of our most interesting artists has been the white noise of silence. Bernhard is the model of another possibility, and this production of The Histrionic is one of several events that suggests that doors long sealed shut may now, very slowly, be creaking open.
Thomas Bernhard was no stranger to outrage: no writer was more embarrassing to his own culture. Shortly before Bernhard's death, President Kurt Waldheim - at the time
enmeshed in controversy over his wartime service in the Wehrmacht in
Eastern Europe - called his play Heldenplatz
(Heroes' Square) a "crude insult to the
Austrian people". It was also a crude insult to Waldheim, whom Bernhard
denounced in the play as a liar. Bernhard made himself a scandal: as one of Austria's most important postwar writers, he's impossible to ignore, and yet his life's work was an attack on his homeland. His insults continued after his death: one of the provisos in his will was a ban, until copyright expires, on any Austrian production of his plays. I'm not sure we could sustain such a figure here; the only writer who remotely approaches this kind of ambiguous cultural position is Patrick White, and the comparison is an uneasy one.
Bernard was obsessed with the moral catastrophe of Austria, and in particular its denial of its Nazi past. The scar of Nazism runs through all his work, as it runs through European history: it's the giant faultline on which Europe's pretensions to civilisation crumbled into barbarism. Bernhard's response was to become histrionic, (a theatermacher, a "scene maker"). In all his work, from newspaper articles to plays to novels, he excoriated Austria as a gallery of grotesques: hypocrites and fools, liars and murderers, "a nation of six and a half million idiots living in a country that is rotting away". Yet Bernhard's role was curiously ambiguous. As his biographer, Gitta Honneger, acutely points out: "As energetically as he dramatised himself as the unwanted outsider, he constructed himself as the penultimate insider. … The renegade son laid claim to a cultural nobility Austria had forfeited." And, she added, pointing to Bernhard's qualities as a literary actor: "Such a feat required a brilliant performer…"
Given this, it's impossible not to see Bruscon, the central figure in The Histrionic, as a kind of grotesque self-portrait. Like Bernhard, Bruscon is both writer and actor: he is the fleshly embodiment of ambiguity and contradiction, the one who contemplates and the one who enacts. And he is high culture personified: he is, as he tells us, "the greatest nationally recognised performing
artist / In this nation's history". He even has "the piece of paper, the
medal" to prove it. The play is basically a monologue: Bruscon is surrounded by a cast of unfortunate witnesses and enablers who act as the brunt of his abuse and sadism. For Bruscon they are the admiring, uncomprehending masses, the anti-talented slaves to his talent, the necessary ears for his long lament.
L-R: Katherine Tonkin, Bille Brown and Kelly Butler. Photo: Jeff Busby |
The conceit is this. Our hero (Bille Brown) has arrived at the Black Hart inn in the tiny pig-farming hamlet of Utzbach (280 people). He is on tour with his family theatre company, his son Ferruccio (Josh Price), his daughter Sarah (Edwina Wren) and his consumptive wife Agatha (Jennifer Vuletic). But here in Utzbach, Bruscon is casting pearls before swine: the performance of his masterpiece The Wheel of History - an allegorical absurdity featuring the great figures of history, from Napoleon to Stalin - is threatened by the local fire chief, by the incompetence of his actors, even by the fact that in the Black Hart the staff is busy with Blood Sausage Day. Bruscon bullies the landlord (Barry Otto), the landlady (Kelly Butler) and the landlord's glaucomic daughter Erna (Katherine Tonkin). Almost all of the supporting cast suffers from injury, illness or deformity: Otto's landlord has so many tics and twitches he is almost a blur; Ferruccio's hand is broken after a third floor fall sustained on the way to the toilet; Madame Bruscon is suffering from a malady of the lungs which makes her particularly allergic to the stench of pigs. Bruscon himself is, of course, a monster.
Every line in the play is shot through with a corrosive irony and ambiguity. Bruscon is ridiculous, patently pathetic; his play, as we see it through his descriptions and rehearsals, is a nonsensical, ahistorical fiction in which every fact is comically wrong. He insists that every picture is taken out of the hall, aside from a cobwebbed portrait of Hitler. "Everyone here is Hitler," he tells his son. "So leave the picture here / As a reminder." He is the model of misogynist, patriarchal tyranny: in a disturbing scene with his daughter, he tortures her until she informs him that he is the greatest actor that ever lived. And yet his criticisms are deadly serious, and hit home: "There was once a forest / Now there's a quarry / There were once wetlands / Now cement works / There was once a human being / Now there's a Nazi..."
The declension in each case is from organic complexity to brutal simplicity, the reduction of things and people to objects of use. And this is where Bruscon's contempt attains the "cultural nobility" that Gitta Honneger says Bernhard claimed for himself: it is the sour lees of the never-realised ideals of the Enlightenment, the remains of the respect for complex human possibility, now destroyed beyond the hope of its even being perceived. That's a lament by no means confined to 1980s Austria: this reduction to use is the machinery which is most powerfully at work in our contemporary world. Just as the Nazis burned people in their ovens, our reductive vision is reducing our living planet, forest by forest, to ash. It's no accident the landlord's daughter is half blind.
And yet, just as he embodies the desolate remnants of high culture, so Bruscon gives us its culpability and complicity. Like everyone else, he is Hitler. The central moral question of Western culture after World War 2, as rehearsed through thinker after thinker, from Steiner to Adorno, from Handke to Jelinek to Fassbinder, was how one of the most evolved cultures in world history spawned the genocidal atrocity that was Nazism. It's a question that Bernhard presents, without giving us an answer: and it's a question that, rather than retreating into the shadows of the 20th century, strikes hard now.
The Histrionic is a satire on many things, but perhaps first of all it's a satire on history itself. At its centre is the play that we never see performed. The Wheel of History is, as Bruscon informs us, a comedy that comprehends all of human history, but all we get to see of his masterpiece is Bruscon himself. To complicate his ambiguity, Bruscon becomes, to borrow a distinction from Walter Benjamin, at once symbol and allegory. He combines the particular aspects of symbol and the general aspects of allegory: he is an individual with a specific historical biography, and an abstract embodiment of the vicious futility of a tragic history.
Writing about German tragic drama, or Trauerspiele, Benjamin said: "Everything about history that, from its very beginning, has been untimely, sorrowful, unsuccessful, is expressed in a face - or rather is a death's head. And although such a thing lacks all 'symbolic' freedom of expression, all classical proportion, all humanity - nevertheless, this is the form in which man's subjection to nature is most obvious and it significantly gives rise not only to the enigmatic question of the nature of human existence as such, but also of the biographical historicity of the individual. This is the heart of the allegorical way of seeing, of the baroque, secular explanation of history as the Passion of the world; its importance resides solely in the stations of its decline. The greater the significance, the greater to subjection to death, because death digs most deeply the jagged line of demarcation between physical nature and significance."
Bruscon is Bernhard's death's head, marking the stations of History's decline. We are here to witness his crucifixion.
"Allegories," as Benjamin said in the same essay, "are, in the realm of thoughts, what
ruins are in the realm of things." In Bernhard's world, the disaster has
already happened: we stand in the ruins of culture, surrounded by the
rubble that is all that remains of its vainglory. When we walk into the
Merlyn, we encounter Marg Horwell's set, which is an apparently
structureless space littered with absurd kitsch: gigantic plaster
statues of eagles or neo-classical hands, overblown paintings casually
leaning against the wall, bare rostra strewn with sawdust or crumbs that
an automatic vacuum cleaner, buzzing to and fro, is vainly attempting
to clear. The landlord's family is lounging about doing nothing in
particular; Madame Bruscon stalks on, wearing an inhaler and dragging a
suitcase. Nothing happens, aside from the casual markings of
insignificant activities, until Bruscon arrives to prickle the cast into
guilty activity as he surveys the scene with contempt. "My God...
complete cultural wasteland..."
Tom Wright's translation is robust and
theatrical, with a hint of Australian colloquialism that serves this
production well; terms such as "proletarian" have been transposed to
"suburban" or "battlers", subtly habituating the text to local conditions
without any crass parallelism. Schlusser's production strings this text across the stage with an apparent artlessness, and makes it resonate.
There's been a lot of discussion recently about auteur theatre, not much
of it to the point, which makes Schlusser's arrival on the main stage of
particular interest. For years he has been creating some of Melbourne's
most essential theatre. So far his most interesting work has been
investigations of classic plays - Peer Gynt, A Doll's House, Life is a Dream - which have been meticulously undone and represented in a kind of radical uber-naturalism. In The Histrionic, Bernhard has written a text in which everything is already dislocated: Schlusser's job is to enable the process of decline, as it occurs before our eyes. What is perhaps most striking about this production is how, while it is unmistakeably a Schlusser production, it exposes the essential modesty of his practice.
The nature of the play is, in fact, particularly suited to Schlusser's performance-centred approach. Almost all of the text belongs to Bille Brown, who gives what must be the performance of his life. He is all the colours of the histrionic, with the deeper black of sorrow rising up within his acting like silt, until he is trapped in a final, tragically absurd stillness. The rest of the cast, all six of them, are dim foils to Bruscon's brilliance. Yet even when they aren't directly involved in scenes, we are aware of their constant, uneasy presence about the stage: they labour awkwardly to clear the dance hall of its rubble, picking up gigantic props and putting them down pointlessly elsewhere, involving themselves in inscrutable tasks that engage all their attention.
This is choreographed with a precise sense of rhythm that works contrapuntally to Brown's central drama. The result is a performative richness that emerges, paradoxically, from the deliberate visual poverties of the stage. It means that when the production shifts to full-blown theatricality, as it does towards the end, this movement has a sense of evolution, rather than its appearing out of nowhere: in the background, the theatricality has already been sketched for us.
The usual criticism of auteur theatre is that one only sees the director's ego at work. This production is saturated with the director's vision, but in performance his hand becomes almost invisible. What we witness is the enabling of performance, which itself reveals the living tissue of the text. It's exhilarating to see a play of this intransigent quality given such an intelligent, unapologetic production. Unmissable.
The Histrionic (Der Theatermacher) by Thomas Bernhard, translated by Tom Wright, directed by Daniel Schlusser. Sets and costumes by Marg Horwell, lighting design by Paul Jackson, sound design and composition by Darrin Verhagen, With Bille Brown, Kelly Butler, Barry Otto, Josh Price, Katherine Tonkin, Jennifer Vuletic and Edwina Wren. Malthouse Theatre and Sydney Theatre Company. Merlyn Theatre, Malthouse, until May 5; Wharf 1 Theatre, STC, June 20 to July 28.


text:
When you are looking for a creative processing, what plugin's do you use?
Do you often find yourself using Reaktor, Max, PD or any other modular languages? How often do you find yourself programming in them?
When you are looking for a creative processing, what plugin's do you use?
Do you often find yourself using Reaktor, Max, PD or any other modular languages? How often do you find yourself programming in them?
I often use Max/MSP. I know the quality isn't as good and getting the right sound can be very time consuming, but I really enjoy the process. I find it fun and rewarding, it's like a puzzle. I also feel that you're not limited to the developer's UI, you can just add a little something (even randomly), which can really change your sound for the best.
i <3 Max
I use lots of tools and plugins, just keep experimenting and collecting plugins. A great collection is Michael Norris' SoundMagic Spectral. It may seem over the top for some but its really great for creating some creative sounds.
I use AudioMulch for my sound design because I can bring in a variety of sources from Pd, SuperCollider, Soundfiles, Live Input, and mix them all in any fashion. The linear processing in DAWs are too rigid for my purposes, especially if live input is involved. I'll then setup a file recorder in AudioMulch or send it out to another recorder or software.
My next choice would be getting Reaktor and trying out ensembles and building some of my own. But the trouble with building your own is when you need to create a sound, its usually too late to start building one already. You need to know what interesting ensembles you can build in your free time.
I've learnt programming in Super Collider and Pd and it isn't the easiest thing. More often than not, I'm referring to books like Curtis Roads' Computer Music Tutorial to get break downs of synthesis and processing. I'll then build my patches based on a combination of techniques.
as of late, I grew to be a (so to speak) hardcore Ableton Live user - it sped up my workflow tremendously as compared to Cubase or Logic, but that's just my $0.02...
however, speaking of Live, one has to have a look at Max for Live, which I think is one of the really huge innovations in sound and music production, at least as far as the recent past is concerned.
even more than Live, I'm a homegrown Max/MSP programmer and actually I can see no large sound quality problems here if you do it the right way... the only problem maybe is to find a way to the optimal sound which can take a while.
but even more than creating sound effects I use Max for interfacing every kind of input to any kind of output... in the context of Ableton Live this can make even more sense because most of the time-consuming, nasty work to fiddle with the timeline is done by Live... so most of the time I find myself programming little MIDI effects that combine e.g. video input with my creative workflow, or arpeggiate on a given melody, etc. etc.
that said, I also use it (to a somewhat smaller degree) to prototype my own sound effects. i hardly ever use it, though, to build my own instruments, because IMHO Live comes with all the tools you need to do that.
when i need really creative sounds - i use Reaktor. Simply love it and moreover i use it more often than when its really needed. Because its easier than Max and other languages in "hot start" understanding, a complex and fast to build your own devices or any chain and many many pros reaktor have. Instead of poor Max quality as many of us mentioned above, Reaktor offer a really competetive and transparent sound quality. I know and use Max too but its 1 time in a year. Reaktor community is also more opened and full of things.
I've tried to use both Reaktor and PD, and I plan on learning... it's actually next on my list of things to do. I don't know what it is, but it's so weird for me to wrap my programming brain around my music and sound brain.
SuperCollider is my weapon of choice for creating new sounds. I actually like it cause it's non visual programming, which makes it harder to learn but in the long run can be more flexable. I've also used PD but have an issue with the sound quality, I find it very clicky and harsh. This was a few years ago though so maybe it has got better.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Executive Editor of the Rockford Register Star, Mark Baldwin, just got back from a trip to Turkey with the Niagara Foundation. He's blogging for the Register Star about the trip and agreed to allow us to repost his travelogues. Thanks, Mark, and we're so glad you enjoyed the trip!
Turkish delight calls to mind a confection of pistachios, dates, hazelnuts and other tasty ingredients, flavored with orange or lemon or maybe rosewater, all held together by a sweet gel. It's delicious.
In fact, Turkey is full of delights that have nothing to do with food. Every mosque is a work of art. The coastline is glorious. Bazaar culture is vibrant and colorful.
I was in Turkey the first week of July with four other Rockford-area residents: the Rev. Jane Eesley, pastor of Christ United Methodist Church; Kris Kieper, who heads the YWCA; Kristina Reuber, executive director of the Golden Apple Foundation; and Celal Evliyaoglu, who runs the Turkish American Society of Rockford. We were joined by Buzz Hunter, the affable principal of Prosser Career Academy in Chicago. The trip was sponsored by the Niagara Foundation, based in Chicago, which promotes civic dialogue across national and religious boundaries.
For all of the cultural and culinary treats we consumed during the trip, the greatest source of delight was the Turkish people, who were warm, knowledgeable and intensely curious about the world beyond their borders.
Most of the Turks we met were members of a movement called Hizmet — the word means service — which over several decades has coalesced around the teachings of a Turkish theologian and writer named Fethullah Gulen, 73.
Gulen promotes a modern, tolerant version of Islam that stresses altruism and education and respect for believers of all religious persuasions. Diversity is celebrated and individual conscience respected. Interfaith dialogue is encouraged.
Hizmet "sees humans as one big family with differences that are to be respected," says Fatih Ceran, a spokesman for Turkey's Journalists and Writers Foundation, co-founded by Gulen in 1994. (Gulen's life and the movement he inspired are the subject of a documentary, "Love Is a Verb," that premiered in the spring in Chicago. You can find out more about the film at loveisaverbmovie.com.)
The movement has founded hundreds of schools around the world, including the well-regarded Science Academy of Chicago, in Mount Prospect. A Hizmet-inspired nonprofit organization, Kimse Yok Mu — the name means "Is Anybody There?" — provides humanitarian aid across large swaths of the globe.
Yet today, the Hizmet movement, which has broad support among intellectuals and the business class, finds itself at odds with the government of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose political base consists of rural, less-educated and less-progressive religious Turks.
That's one reason Gulen has lived for 15 years in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania. His admirers fear he would face arrest if he returned to Turkey.
On the Wednesday before last, our day concluded at an Iftar — the meal at which Muslims break each day's fast during Ramadan. The event was at the home of a Hizmet-allied family in the city of Bursa.
Our travel party approached this Iftar a bit reluctantly. It had been a long day, and we'd had a series of late nights after attending previous Iftars. We were spent.
After sundown, we dined around a long table in the family's front yard, on a night so clear we spotted an orbiting satellite passing silently overhead.
Three generations of the host family lived in the house, and the children spoke a little English. Most of the conversation among the adults was translated by Hakan Berberoglu, the Niagara vice president who was our shepherd during the trip.
So we talked about the things grown-ups talk about. About Turkish and American politics. About travel. About an upcoming wedding. About all the topics that arise as relationships build during a long evening together.
We concluded after 11 p.m. in a fashion that I learned was characteristically Turkish — with warm handshakes and embraces and kisses, and promises by our hosts that they will visit Rockford.
By then, naturally, we were all fully alert — and fully cognizant of how sweet the evening had been.
This post originally appeared on rrstar.com.


text:
The Tanach, Jewish Publication Society tr. [1917], at sacred-texts.com
1 And it came to pass, when Solomon had finished the building of the house of the LORD, and the king's house, and all Solomon's delight which he was pleased to do, 2 that the LORD appeared to Solomon the second time, as He had appeared unto him at Gibeon. 3 And the LORD said unto him: `I have heard thy prayer and thy supplication, that thou
hast made before Me: I have hallowed this house, which thou hast built, to put My name there for ever; and Mine eyes and My heart shall be there perpetually. 4 And as for thee, if thou wilt walk before Me, as David thy father walked, in integrity of heart, and in uprightness, to do according to all that I have commanded thee, and wilt keep My statutes and Mine ordinances; 5 then I will establish the throne of thy kingdom over Israel for ever; according as I promised to David thy father, saying: There shall not fail thee a man upon the throne of Israel. 6 But if ye shall turn away from following Me, ye or your children, and not keep My commandments and My statutes which I have set before you, but shall go and serve other gods, and worship them; 7 then will I cut off Israel out of the land which I have given them; and this house, which I have hallowed for My name, will I cast out of My sight; and Israel shall be a proverb and a byword among all peoples; 8 and this house which is so high [shall become desolate], and every one that passeth by it shall be astonished, and shall hiss; and when they shall say: Why hath the LORD done thus unto this land, and to this house? 9 they shall be answered: Because they forsook the LORD their God, who brought forth their fathers out of the land of Egypt, and laid hold on other gods, and worshipped them, and served them; therefore bath the LORD brought all this evil upon them.'
10 And it came to pass at the end of twenty years, wherein Solomon had built the two houses, the house of the LORD and the king's house—11 now Hiram the king of Tyre had furnished Solomon with cedar-trees and cypress-trees, and with gold, according to all his desire—that then king Solomon gave Hiram twenty cities in the land of Galilee. 12 And Hiram came out from Tyre to see the cities which Solomon had given him; and they pleased him not. 13 And he said: `What cities are these which thou hast given me, my brother?' And they were called the land of Cabul, unto this day. 14 And Hiram sent to the king sixscore talents of gold.
15 And this is the account of the levy which king Solomon raised; to build the house of the LORD, and his own house, and Millo, and the wall of Jerusalem, and Hazor, and Megiddo, and Gezer. 16 Pharaoh king of Egypt had gone up, and taken Gezer, and burnt it with fire, and slain the Canaanites that dwelt in the city, and given it for a portion unto his daughter, Solomon's wife. 17 And Solomon built Gezer, and Beth-boron the nether, 18 and Baalath, and Tadmor in the wilderness, in the land, 19 and all the store-cities that Solomon had, and the cities for his chariots, and the cities for his horsemen, and that which Solomon desired to build for his pleasure in Jerusalem, and in Lebanon, and in all the land of his dominion. 20 All the people that were left of the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, who were not of the children of Israel; 21 even their children that were left after them in the land, whom the children of Israel were not able utterly to destroy, of them did Solomon raise a levy of bondservants, unto this day. 22 But of the children of Israel did Solomon make no bondservants; but they were the men of war, and his servants, and his princes, and his captains, and rulers of his chariots and of his horsemen.
23 These were the chief officers that were over Solomon's work, five hundred and fifty, who bore rule over the people that wrought in the work.
24 But Pharaoh's daughter came up out of the city of David unto her house which [Solomon] had built for her; then did he build Millo.
25 And three times in a year did Solomon offer burnt-offerings and peace-offerings upon the altar which he built unto the LORD, offering thereby, upon the altar that was before the LORD. So he finished the house.
26 And king Solomon made a navy of ships in Ezion-geber, which is beside Eloth, on the shore of the Red Sea, in the land of Edom. 27 And Hiram sent in the navy his servants, shipmen that had knowledge of the sea, with the servants of Solomon. 28 And they came to Ophir, and fetched from thence gold, four hundred and twenty talents, and brought it to king Solomon.


text:
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text:
Mourning Becomes Fractalus
Act III
…with still more apologies to Eugene O'Neill.
Made with an early version of Comic Book Creator. Fractal images used are my own. Text is a mashup of my own writing collaged with comments made on this blog.
Technorati Tags: fractal, fractal art, fractal contest, fractal comics, digital art, Benoit Mandelbrot Fractal Art Contest, orbit trap, vodafone, fractalus


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The Charter School Contract Extended until 2014
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Topic: The Charter School Contract Extended until 2014 (Read 40265 times)
Hero Member
Posts: 969
The Charter School Contract Extended until 2014
March 10, 2011, 09:34:30 AM »
The School board voted ( 5 to 2 ) to approve extending the Charter School Contract until 2014, last night. In addition the Charter will add more students ( up to 510 out of district children ) to help generate revenue for CSD. More cuts will be coming for our district even with these additional students coming in. You can contribute financially, if you are willing or able, here:
double trouble
Posts: 4
Re: The Charter School Contract Extended until 2014
Reply #1 on:
March 10, 2011, 02:20:13 PM »
Do you know when the increase in charter students will take effect?
Hero Member
Posts: 969
Starting when...
Reply #2 on:
March 10, 2011, 02:49:15 PM »
I would assume for the upcoming year. ( 2011/2012 )
You would need to check that out as I don't know for sure.
Sr. Member
Posts: 86
Re: The Charter School Contract Extended until 2014
Reply #3 on:
March 11, 2011, 02:29:46 PM »
I missed the meeting last night, I was flattened by a bug that refused to let me get out of bed. But Gary went, and he spoke regarding the failure to use the open books "peer" schools as comparables and the teachers, who were apparently there in force, ended up shouting him down, or according to one of the ladies who was there, tried too. She said he was doing well but eventually lost his temper. I guess he told Trani his numbers were B.S., and if thats the worst he did, I think that's pretty good.
So.... they passed the agreement by 5-2. Jeff Aho and Todd Mickelson voted no. Apparently the contract was put out on Tuesday, with a vote on Wednesday. That isn't enough time for any rational decision, (again, my opinion! )
There is also talk of taking out another loan to cover the budget gap and if that happens, I think the District should consider itself insolvent at that point. That is my opinion, but its based on the fact that we already have outstanding current debt of what I see to be around $670,000, and if we are taking out loans to keep covering the holes, then how does the Board intend for us to pay it back? Do we wait until we hit a million in the hole and then declare insolvency? Do we take out these loans instead of cutting the big piece of the pie and reducing salaries and benefits and then go to the Public and say, we need a bond to pass to cover our shortfall? Do we hear again from Board members that if we don't pass an operating bond we give the District to Reynolds? And if we are doing an operating bond, then we aren't paying down our debt.
I had someone tell me the other day that when the school burned down the insurance was on the hook for a brand new building. State of the art, up to current standards, etc. Instead, we settled for around 1/5 of the amount and put that money into the CAL seats, which we have sold off over the years until they are now gone. Anyone up to date on that? To me, that was not acting in a fiscally responsible manner, and it should be addressed. But I need some assistance getting the information.
I believe we are headed towards an all Charter school district. If this happens, we need to clean house and start all over with new administration. I'm not saying that unpopular votes have to be made, but I'd like an accurate representation of what is being said to be put out there. I don't know who all was "begging" that cuts not be made, but I know we turned in a petition with over 100 signatures on it saying to not take out loans and not expand the Charter and that apparently was not taken into account. (At least not as far as I can see.) One community member said they stood up last night and said make the cuts, and she was speaking for at least 50 people she knew, so there you go.
If you see Jeff or Todd, please give them Kudos for listening, asking questions and standing up for those of us who would like to see things slow down. Jeff apparently stood up and was told by Ms. Childs to "Be Careful" about anything he was going to say. I understand he mentioned that he feels we need to address the damage/ cost done to the community by the current Director of the Charter and think about this before adding more students. I also understand that once five votes were reached Ms. Childs announced they had five votes to pass. Todd asked that the opposing votes also be called for, then he and Jeff voted no.
Regarding the audit cost. What I have been told is the audit was more this year because we added the Charter to the District. This bumped us into a higher audit bracket. Also, because the charter was in its first year, we have a higher risk bracket added to the district. This cost us the additional money.
I have the taxes for the Charter for the 2009 filing. It shows the Charter ran more liabilities than assets in that year. If anyone would like me to forward it on to you, let me know. I am attaching information on the non-grading, multi-age classrooms. According to the information I have, the researcher said if you hear that the students are getting an individual learning plan you need to seriously think before putting your child in that school. The emphasis seems to be on increasing a childs self esteem, and the perception of parental approval. As one of the researchers states, the education system recycles every twenty years and while this style of learning has been around, it has been put to rest in return to the more traditional style of learning.
We can't all take our kids and leave the District, we need to start making enough noise to be heard.
Subject: New Charter Contract
Tonight, Wednesday March 9, 2011 at 7:30 p.m. there will be a school board meeting. On the agenda is an action item to approve a new contract with the charter school. This new contract would increase the charter school from 350 up to 510 students (there are currently around 320 charter students enrolled). Classroom rentals would go from the current 13 classrooms up to 17 classrooms. The rent would remain at $30,000 per class room but would be put on a sliding scale based on the percentage drop or gain of the ADMw. The new agreement would give $700,000 to our district per year. This year the district has received $538,000 from the charter school. The district contract with the Charter school would be extended until August 2014.
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Re: The Charter School Contract Extended until 2014
Reply #4 on:
March 11, 2011, 04:09:33 PM »
From Victoria: "...and the teachers, who were apparently there in force, ended up shouting him down, or according to one of the ladies who was there, tried too. She said he was doing well but eventually lost his temper."
I told myself I wouldn't comment, because I don't know it'll do any good; but I'm afraid someone out there will be aghast at the reported behavior of the Corbett teachers whom I have always respected for their professionalism. I was at the meeting, I am a teacher and I was sitting with a group of teachers. While this person was yelling, "The problem is those overpaid teachers with their inflated salaries!" and shaking his fingers at us, we all sat absolutely silent with our mouths open but no words coming out. A community member who is not a teacher stood up for us and quite forcefully told him to stop disrespecting us.
After the meeting was over and people were leaving, I asked the people around me, "Who is that man? I never knew anyone hated me so much." That's how it came across, as hatred for the teachers. Pretty demoralizing.
Kathryn Green
Posts: 4
Re: The Charter School Contract Extended until 2014
Reply #5 on:
March 12, 2011, 12:20:02 AM »
from KW- "who is that man? I never knew anyone hated me so much."
Get over yourself! This is not about you. Petty moralizing.
No one in the Corbett community hates you, least of all Gary Purvine. The Corbett community values teachers, as we value firefighters, police officers, loggers, farmers, garbage collectors, nurses, business owners, neighbors and friends. We think our school is an important part of the equation, but not the sum total of our existence.
crown point
Jr. Member
Posts: 8
But really....
Reply #6 on:
March 12, 2011, 07:24:26 AM »
Quote from: Victoria on March 11, 2011, 02:29:46 PM
... Gary went, and he spoke regarding the failure to use the open books "peer" schools as comparables and the teachers,
It wasn't about hating our teachers. Come on. And both people were out of line! The guy that stood up for the teachers and yelled at Gary was really scary, he seemed like he just lost it. The reason Gary was so upset was because they (Randy Trani and the School Board) tried to say we pay our teachers the same as other districts but they didn't use peer schools. We do pay our teachers higher than other schools of the same size. Gary was right and was angry because they would not admit it. That is how we saw it. Our school board and administrators always cherry pick their facts and figures and this makes people mad who know better. I am from a family of educators so I am not getting into whether all those teachers deserve their salaries or not. They are paid more though than our peer schools. Our district is in this huge huge financial mess and it is not clear why. That is why the levy failed last fall and even after they sold the first increase of kids and this Charter as what would help us stay away from this kind of thing. We are in the worse shape ever now than before the Charter. This is more than budget cuts from the state. It is bad. In more ways than financial. Honestly my family does not trust the schools because this whole charter school move basically gave away our little Corbett school and now our roads, parking lot and energy in the morning is horrible in a place we used to adore taking our kids to. Now we dread taking the kids into school when we have to because there are so many cars and people are driving like crazies to get their kids out to Corbett to school and then back to Gresham/Portland to work etc. They never asked the community if we wanted to expand our schools by 500 kids or maybe more next year. It isn't equitable either. Some kids had to be "held back in music" this year because they messed up but not the Charter kids, no. They got to go on. Kindergarten next year costs money to our district parents but not the Charter? Is that true? The charter kids have smaller class sizes too. We are the ones paying the bonds and taxes for our school. They seem to tell us to accept and welcome these new kids and families and then don't understand why these things matter to us and our kids. The school board and the administrators at CSD have split our community. Most people that think its great don't live here or are transplants that don't really belong to the community or care about it yet. It's a sham. We should get new board members and take our school system back.
Full Member
Posts: 17
Move to Corbett and then go to Corbett schools
Reply #7 on:
March 12, 2011, 07:50:24 AM »
Charter schools can be fine. This one is not. The director and his wife are making oooodles of cash off Corbett - he planned it all and is reaping all the benefits
while our school is cutting 10 days and our class sizes balloon and our teachers suffer
. Dunton and his wife are also on their own Charter Board so they decide what they make and are making over $250-$300 thousand off our community school. But we're fifth in the nation!!!
We actually pay over fifty thousand a year for. Look at this link if you don't understand why the Newsweek award thing is not right.
Our kids have a pass rate under 25% too. Many kids don't want to take these tests. But it is mandatory. Why is it mandatory? Because that is how we get such high ranking. The number of tests divided by the number of graduating kids.
Don't underestimate the people in Corbett. You will only get away with a scam so long before people find a way to boot your butt to the curb. We don't like thiefs and we don't like swindlers. That goes for cronies on the school board too.
One parent on this forum said she left her other Charter because Corbett has a playground and other programs her last charter didn't. The playground at Corbett smells though and do you know why? Because our septic tank is leaching and has been for a long long time. They often spread lye out over it next to the kids playground. Come on. How can this not matter in the overall "how are we doing" discussion.
Especially when we are talking about bringing out so many more kids? What is up with our schools that they can't prioritize leaking septic tanks over paying for national ranking. People buy the hype. Come out and then they are like...ewwwww its stinky here.
Sr. Member
Posts: 86
Re: The Charter School Contract Extended until 2014
Reply #8 on:
March 12, 2011, 12:22:24 PM »
I too come from an educational family. My mother was a school teacher in Lincoln County for over thirty years and is currently being used by their District to help the kids who didn't make their benchmarks this year, using the Federal dollars that are available and have been turned down by the Corbett School district since 2006-2007. (This year the federal dollars available that were turned down, $73,000.) My brother-in-law, Dr. Richard MacLennan, is the President of Garrett College in Maryland and my father teaches chemistry classes for Georiga Pacific. We are a family heavily invested in the educational system.
The First Amendment guarantees your right to free speech. It does not make it hate speech, it does not imply that you are hated when someone says you are being overpaid based on the actual comparables of similar districts. It is a fact. The Corbett school district pays its teachers at a higher rate than "peer" districts. I have been told that Corbett teachers can't afford to live in Corbett. Its too expensive. But I have taken the salary information and a primary teacher in Corbett with a BA + 105 step 15 is paid $68,666. A high school teacher with a MA +45, step 15 also is paid $68,666. In Corbett we also allow teachers to sell back their planning period at 16.67% of their base salary and some teachers do this, and on these examples the additional pay to the teacher is around $11,445. We also have teachers who do extra duty, such as coaching, class advisors, activities coordinators, extra contract days, student management and assistant principals. We have teachers with paychecks in the high $80,000 to mid $90,000. How can it be said that the teachers aren't making enough to live in Corbett, when the bus drivers, custodians and kitchen assistants live here, and they bring in between $12.58/hr to $19.72/hr.
(Dr. Trani said that 50% of the staff lives in Corbett, this is not 50% of the teachers. The word staff and teachers is sometimes interchanged, you have to watch the wording.)
In todays economy we can't afford the current salaries/benefits/increases. It isn't going to matter if you have a contract, if you don't have a school.
Mindy Schmidt
Full Member
Posts: 32
Interesting Discussion on Facebook
Reply #9 on:
March 12, 2011, 12:43:04 PM »
Here is a quote from the Charter discussion on the Corbett Oregon Facebook page, it speaks really well to how many of us feel about the current Charter School and CSD's future:
.... Our board is a public body elected to oversee the most prudent use of public resources. Our main resource is our district capital facilities and teaching infrastructure. If we cannot fill the facility with in-district kids, the board has a fiduciary responsibility to raise more revenues, procure tenants with high public credibility and accountability or take on additional debt. It appears that we have not negotiated strongly or wisely enough to leverage the resources we bring to the table. In a torturous economy, when the board has asked the community to cough up more funds from dry pockets via operating levy, they make grave mistakes with sweetheart deals designed to provide immediate security for all kids and some apparently overpaid charter staff. I dont much care how uber-committed and visionary those teachers may be, lots of folks are worth more than they earn. The arrangement has been made out of desperation and its just bad form. Was there any attempt to consider other tenants? Dunno it all happened in exec session and really fast. I liked the idea of trying to use the surplus facility for voc-ed, community college satellite courses, and other kinds of training that benefit and uplift our whole community but those relationships would take a while to cultivate. The charter is coming to our rescue by engulfing our resources right now and this is a trend we need to reverse rather than perpetuate, if we want to save public education. Vilifying the individuals involved and scrutinizing their actions may provide short term comfort and perhaps greater transparency in the future. But its all peripheral to the underlying beast: a state that underfunds public education, public health care & pension cost burdens that are no longer sustainable, and a facility that is too big for our small town population. These are the problems we need to address in order to get back on sustainable ground.
To see this and other comments on this topic you can visit here:
And look for the topic on the School Board's recent decision to extend/expand the Charter.
Jr. Member
Posts: 6
Re: The Charter School Contract Extended until 2014
Reply #10 on:
March 13, 2011, 11:21:36 AM »
According to public records:
Mollala River School District: Elementary $51,380, Middle school $51,230, High School $51,610 (average salaries)
Lincoln County School District (Where Waldport is located):
Elementary $56,680, Middle School $56,060, High school $56,790 (average salaries)
Corbett School District: Elementary $52,232, Middle school $53157, High School $54,047 (average salaries)
These are just some facts about our peer schools that we were asked to compare ourselves with. I am not sure where other people are getting their facts, but I am very open to looking at them. At Corbett, a first year teacher with a bachelor's degree would begin at $36,381. Most actually begin at $40,319 with master's degree due to the fact that the state of Oregon now requires a master's for a teaching license.
A teacher with 15 years experience in a classroom
a master's degree,
an additional 45 credits (over their master's degree) earns $68,666 (that is the top). Yes, high and middle school teachers can "sell" their prep time for around 17%. One might argue that this actually saves the district money. The district doesn't have to hire additional teachers to teach more classes. My husband works for International Paper. They do kind of the same thing - it is called overtime. They simply do not hire more people - it is called a jobless recovery.
I am worried about my kids - the ones I see everyday - my students. I am scrambling right now trying to figure out how I can make sure that my students are least impacted by this. I have 29 kids and I often tell the kids that I need to clone myself to be able to help everyone as it is. The reality is that I have a lot of kids that I am trying to educate and now I have less time to do it!
So instead of worry about the charter school or how much money compared to other peer schools the certified staff at Corbett makes or doesn't make, we need to shift our focus on what is truly important - THE KIDS!!
I have three parents that regularly volunteer one hour of their time weekly in my classroom. I appreciate every minute that they give to help these kids out. I have some parents that can't help out due to their own jobs and are willing to send extra money for classroom supplies when needed. That is also greatly appreciated.
The point is, we all could do better - parents, teachers, administration, board members and community members. So, instead of arguing or complaining - come spend one hour listening to a kid read or helping them with their math. I would gladly welcome you in my classroom and I know a few other teachers that would as well!
Last night I saw our community at its best. The Red and Black Dinner had both Corbett in-district and charter parents. This was family and friends coming together to support all of our kids! The charter kids and parents are wonderful families that want to help support the Corbett Schools. Kristie Stafford and many other people gave of their time and money to support the kids. Yes, they know there is a problem. How nice that they are trying to be part of the solution.
Michelle Dawkins
Corbett Elementary Teacher and Corbett Resident
Mindy Schmidt
Full Member
Posts: 32
The Board Topic...
Reply #11 on:
May 08, 2011, 06:40:52 PM »
Here is a recap, for those not necessarily following along closely over the past few years .....
Though both the current superintendent of Corbett School District (CSD), Randy Trani, and
past superintendent, Bob Dunton, have said they were discussing the idea for a Charter
School for over five years, the way in which the Corbett Charter Association (CCA) came to
be was a surprise to many in Corbett. CSDs school board approved the CCA agreement in
2009 and as Mr. Dunton has written, it was done in record time.
The CCA board that negotiated the original agreement with CSD in 2009 included: Randy
Trani (current CSD Superintendent), Charlie ONeil (current CSD school board member),
Bob Dunton (then superintendent of CSD) and the balance of the CCA Board were also
employees of CSD. Bob Dunton served as both Director of the CCA and Superintendent of
CSD last year, leading into this years budget crisis. Bob Dunton is currently the Director of
CCA while Randy Trani was appointed by the CSDs board to the position of Superintendent.
Bob Dunton explained the Charter School in part as:
not your neighborhood school. In a
traditional public school, the board is directly responsible to the voters. Charter Schools are
different. Its important to note the the Corbett Charter Association is a corporation. It
conducts business. It is not a democracy. Its not even a representative democracy. It does
its business in whatever way seems best according to its own lights.
Due in large part to an accounting error, CSD went from showing a budget surplus at the
end of last school year, to having to hold an emergency quorum of the school board to place
a three million dollar levy on the 2010 fall ballot. Without a clear understanding of what had
happened, even by CSD board members, the levy failed.
While the size of the budget shortfall indicated a problem larger than a decrease in state
funding, CSD continues to explain the shortage this way to the community. The CSD school
board should have been more concerned that annual audits of the CSD listed a lack of
internal controls and oversight in regards to how CSDs budget has been handled over the
years. At the least, more conversation was needed to explain how a surplus became a 1.5
million dollar deficit, in less than six months.
Sometimes a crisis lets you do everything you have always wanted to do.
-Bob Dunton, 2009.
CSDs school board met in executive session in March 2011 and without public review voted
5 to 2 to approve an expansion of the CCA for up to 510 out of district students next year.
This number will account for over 50% of CSDs total student body. Non-sustainable
decisions and spending practices have ultimately contributed to our inability to survive on
our own as a school district and if it were not for the CCA today, CSD would be financially
insolvent tomorrow.
The possibility of losing our public school and going to a Charter school model seems more
likely than rumor today. Randy Trani admits there would be benefits to such a move. The
description of CCA above mirrors very closely the attitudes of most of our current CSD
school board members already.
Please visit
to find out more about your candidates for CSDs school board and become a more informed voter.
The Corbett School District has an amazing and dedicated staff, some outstanding teachers, involved parents and community members doing extraordinary things every day for our kids. We all want what is best for them and for Corbett. I for one do not want to lose our public school for a CCA way of doing things.
Posts: 3
Re: The Charter School Contract Extended until 2014
Reply #12 on:
January 21, 2012, 10:11:58 AM »
I am so sad to hear they want to add even more Charter kids to Corbett. The school is bursting with way too many children already. When my kids went there last year, my oldest had to put his lunch tray on the stage and stand to eat his lunch,there was no place to sit and eat.He had to share a locker with two other kids. Some kids didn't get a locker at all. The traffic is horrible. Charter parents speeding through our small town to get their kids to school. Traffic jams every morning and afternoon. Too many children in one classroom and not enough adults to teach them so lets have the older kids teach the younger ones. The solution is add more kids to a school that can't handle the ones they have now?
Too many problems with Corbett. I pulled all three of mine from Corbett. They weren't learning how to read,unable to do any work. The system is broke all the way around. You walk into the school and it sounds like a playground and not a place to learn.
When you have an old broken car sometimes it's better to get rid of it and start with something new!
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text:
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text:
Common Lisp the Language, 2nd Edition
A frequent use of streams is to communicate with a file system to which groups of data (files) can be written and from which files can be retrieved.
Common Lisp defines a standard interface for dealing with such a file system. This interface is designed to be simple and general enough to accommodate the facilities provided by ``typical'' operating system environments within which Common Lisp is likely to be implemented. The goal is to make Common Lisp programs that perform only simple operations on files reasonably portable.
To this end, Common Lisp assumes that files are named, that given a name one can construct a stream connected to a file of that name, and that the names can be fit into a certain canonical, implementation-independent form called a pathname.
Facilities are provided for manipulating pathnames, for creating streams connected to files, and for manipulating the file system through pathnames and streams.


text:
Last month, Republicans in several swing states-Virginia, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania-floated a change that would give the GOP a decisive advantage in presidential elections. As it stands, most states, sans Nebraska and Maine, distribute their electoral votes in a winner-take-all system-if you win the state, you win the electoral votes. What Republicans have proposed is a system where electoral votes are distributed by congressional district-if you win the district, then you win the votes.
The problem, as I explained last month, is that Democrats tend to cluster in urban areas, packing their voters into a handful of districts. By contrast, Republicans control more land. This scheme would privilege the GOP for having an advantage with land, and disadvantage Democrats for representing population dense areas.
Outrage from this proposal exploded as soon as people realized its implications, and one by one, Republicans have backed away from it. Yesterday, the Wisconsin State Journal reported that Wisconsin Representative (and former vice presidential nominee) Paul Ryan-the de facto leader of the Republican Party-has also signaled his opposition to the change:
Republican Govs. Scott Walker and Rick Snyder of Michigan have both been quoted as expressing concerns over changing Electoral College votes. The Virginia Legislature killed a similar proposal in committee this week. Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, said he doesn't dismiss the idea but it's not high on his agenda.
Ryan, R-Janesville, said he would prefer that Wisconsin stay a winner-take-all state.
"I've always kind of liked the idea of being targeted as a state," Ryan told the Wisconsin State Journal editorial board on Tuesday. "I'd hate to be a flyover state. I'd like to be in the hunt for being a targeted state. I think it's good for us."
If it wasn't already a dead idea, this is a sure sign the national GOP has no (public) interest in pursuing it. There's just too much political danger in trying to-or appearing to-slant the playing field in your favor by changing the rules. Of course, that won't necessarily stop state-level Republicans from following through on proposals.


text:
Not having any combat can be really helpful to horror games and crucial in delivering the desired experience. This article presents the top 6 reasons for this and also explains how it ties into narrative games in general.
Outlast 2 has recently been released and has spurred a lot of discussions around not giving the protagonist any means to fight back. I haven't played enough of the game to be able to give an overall impression of it (I'm just 30 minutes or so in), but I think I've seen enough to weigh in on the discussion. We at Frictional have been knee deep in this problem since 2006, and I've been up against the problem myself ever since I made my first hobby horror game in early 2000. This is something I've been thinking about for almost 20 years, and hence something I have a strong opinion about.
The discussions around weaponless protagonists is often focused on horror games. It's really a question that concerns narrative games in general, though, and isn't just about what sort of horror you want. It's really about what sort of approach you want to take to storytelling. It also has a lot to do with my recent post on mental models, which makes this a good time to go into it.
Let's start with the main reasons why you would want a game with a defenseless protagonist. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it brings up the most important reasons.
1. It makes the player assume the appropriate story role
To someone with only a hammer, every problem will look like a nail. The same is true for the tools that we give to a player. The actions that we let the player use informs them about the role they are supposed to play within the game. It's really hard to make the player feel like a detective if they never get to do any actual detecting.
Why is this the case? Because the way we interact with the world around us is via a mental model. This mental model is built from a network of connected attributes, all having do with the various aspects of our world. When taken together this gives us a sense of how the world behaves and what we are dealing with. So when we see a character looking for clues in a crime scene, interviewing witnesses and trying to piece together evidence, it'll point towards the idea that this person is trying to solve a crime. This creates a strong belief that the character is indeed a detective. If we are simply told a character is a detective but only see him chopping wood it is really hard to take the first statement seriously. You will never model this character as a detective. No matter how many times you tell me that a pile of sharp glass is a chair, I will not perceive it as one. It simply lacks any of the attributes that I associate with things that are chairs.
In the same way, in order for the player to feel like they are inside a horror story they need to have access to the actions of the protagonist of a horror story. In horror the protagonist is supposed to be vulnerable, uncertain, and out of their depth, and to get this across to the player you need to restrict their available actions to support this. A really simple way to do this is to simply skip any means of fighting back. Sure, you can always make weapons less effective in the game, but the moment you give them any sort of weapon it's likely to awaken deeply rooted mental models in the player. We humans are really good at generalizing and unconsciously judge many situations on the first pieces of evidence we can get our hands on. So when you introduce a weapon in a horror game, the player will view the game as one where the primary action is combat and then by assumption add a variety of other attributes to the experience. This is something we experienced firsthand when making Penumbra: Overture where player would even treat an old broom as a potential weapon.
2. It make monsters feel like threats
Just as the actions at your disposal informs your role, so do your interactions inform what sort of world you are in. If the player's main action is to shoot down monsters, the monsters become target practice. Again this is mental modeling. Just like we determine something to be a chair by determining its shape, how well it can be used for sitting, and so forth, we also evaluate any dangers by what attributes we can assign to them. When "thing that I shoot to generate fun gameplay" becomes a strong attribute for a monster, a lot of the horror is lost.
If, instead, monsters are things that the player interacts with only by running away and hiding from them, the mental model becomes quite different. You start to draw connections to other things that you would run away from, and this jacks much better into your primal fear response. The monster is no longer a game object connected to a core combat loop. Instead it becomes an unknown entity that you have no means to fight. This makes a huge difference to how the player perceives the threat.
3. It leaves more to the imagination
Another problem with being able to fight any creature is that this requires many close up encounters. You need to aim at the creatures, see feedback of them being hit and so forth. Most importantly, in order for this gameplay to work you need to have lots of actual confrontations. This goes against one of the most important rules in horror: leave the monsters as vague as possible.
When your gameplay doesn't rely on combat, it's much easier to keep the monster out of sight. When you are running and hiding, the monster doesn't really need to be visible at all. You can just rely on the player seeing quick glimpses, hearing sounds, watching a motion tracker and so on in order to sustain the gameplay. This gives a lot more room for the player's imagination, and allows them to conjure up far scarier monsters than what could be rendered using polygons.
4. It makes the player paranoid
Checking how much ammo you have left, thinking about what gun to have available, planning for ammo usage, looking for items and so on - all of these are activities that the player constantly has on their mind when playing a shooter. And all of these take up mental resources that could have been used for other things instead. It's very important to know that the player has a limited amount of focus and whenever you tell the player to give something their attention, something else will have less attention. Remember this as a designer: whenever you say yes to something, you say no to something else.
What this means is that when you remove any form of combat, the player has a lot of mental focus to spare. In fact, many players will have too much. This almost leaves the player is a state of sensory deprivation. The outcome of that is that they start to pay a lot of attention to small details. It makes players more paranoid, more prone to invent reasons for small sounds and so on. This is an extremely good state in which to play horror. It's also something you lose if you give the player too much else to think about. We noticed this ourselves in Amnesia: The Dark Descent, where many levels where made better by giving the player less to do. This encouraged them to fantasize more and gave the unintuitive result of increasing their engagement,
5. It makes it harder to optimize away emotions
A combat system is something that the player often has played hundreds of hours of before. Sometimes much, much more. There are lots of well-known tactics for dealing with encounters, and players often come with a huge instinctual toolset on how to bypass various dangers. What this means is that there is ample opportunity for the player to figure out ways to beat the monsters. In turn, this means that the monsters lose their core attribute, to be horrible threats, and instead just become standard gameplay objects.
It's much harder to do this in a game without combat. When you don't have a set loop that the player uses to interact with the game's world, it becomes much harder to figure out underlying systems and to optimize. This means that the player has to rely more on their imagination to make a mental model of the world and its inhabitants. If the systems that drive the monsters are obscure, you have to think of them as living, breathing creatures and this greatly heightens any emotions that you associate with them.
Of course, if you use non-combat oriented gameplay in the wrong way, you will fall into the same trap. This is something I'll go over in a bit.
6. It is a great design constraint
As I noted before, games are often too much fun for their own good. This is most certainly true for combat. In fact, combat is probably the most common core mechanic in games. It's really easy to come up with engaging ways for you to do it. So the moment that you decide that you will have combat, it makes it so much simpler to come up with engaging scenarios for a game. This means that you are very likely to overuse combat and to drop focus on the narrative you are trying to convey.
When plot dictates that the player has to go through a sewer, how should we make this section engaging? With combat this answer is easy: just add some monsters and have the player fight them. Problem solved! You see this over and over in games that use combat, especially horror games. Even though it is clear that the focus ought to be on delivering a certain end experience, there are tons of areas that, by being satisfied with just having simple combat, counteract this goal.
If you don't have combat, you don't have this option. If your basic gameplay is just running and hiding, it's actually quite the opposite: your core mechanics are not much fun. This means that you need to think of ways to vary them, you need to be careful when to use them and there need to be other activities involved. This forces you to avoid any easy solutions. Simply relying on "add some monsters for the player to encounter" will not work in the long run. It will soon become very tiresome to play the game, because you are relying gameplay that is, at its core, not engaging enough to be the driving force of the experience.
This claim is highly dependant on what sort of experience you are trying to create. Sure, if you are doing a videogame version of Aliens or Deep Rising, it's a great fit. But as I have outlined in this ancient blog post, there are many different ways in which combat is featured in horror movies. If you want to do a videogame version of The Exorcist then combat will play a much smaller role - probably none. Most of the time, weapons are there as a last line of defense for the protagonist(s). From that angle it makes sense that you should have at least have some form of defense. But you also have to consider all of the negative aspects, many of which I listed earlier, that come along with having combat. If a horror story should "realistically" let the protagonist use a weapons in two or three places, then it might make more sense to try and make these places go away somehow.


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Archive-name: xanadu/faq.html Last-modified: 2002/04/12 Version: 1.56 Copyright: (c) 1994-2002 Xanadu Australia URL: http://www.xanadu.com.au/general/faq.html
This document contains information about the Xanadu Project which may be of interest to the general public and readers of the xanews mailing list. It is currently maintained by email@example.com (Andrew Pam) of Xanadu Australia and posted approximately monthly.
This document is copyright (c) 1994-2002 Xanadu Australia and may be freely distributed in any media providing it is not modified in any way and no fee is charged either for this document or for any composite work in which it is included.
This FAQ and other Xanadu information are also available at http://www.xanadu.com.au/.
Questions in this document are numbered, and answers are labelled with letters of the alphabet. Thus 1 is the first question, and 1a is the first answer to the first question. Suggestions for additions, corrections and expansion of the material in this document are welcomed.
All data (for instance, paragraphs of a text document) may be connected sideways and out of sequence to other data (for instance, paragraphs of another text document). This requires new forms of storage, and invites new forms of presentation to show these connections.
On a small scale, the paradigm means a model of word processing where comments, outlines and other notes may be stored conceptually adjacent to a document, linked to it sideways. On a large scale, the paradigm means a model of publishing where anyone may quote from and publish links to any already-published document, and any reader may follow these links to and from the document.
We need a way for people to store information not as individual "files" but as a connected literature. It must be possible to create, access and manipulate this literature of richly formatted and connected information cheaply, reliably and securely from anywhere in the world. Documents must remain accessible indefinitely, safe from any kind of loss, damage, modification, censorship or removal except by the owner. It must be impossible to falsify ownership or track individual readers of any document.
This system of literature (the "Xanadu Docuverse") must allow people to create virtual copies ("transclusions") of any existing collection of information in the system regardless of ownership. In order to make this possible, the system must guarantee that the owner of any information will be paid their chosen royalties on any portions of their documents, no matter how small, whenever and wherever they are used.
Ted Nelson thought up the whole thing in 1960, and has been speaking and publishing about the idea since 1965. In that year he also coined the terms "hypertext" and "hypermedia" for non-sequential writings and branching presentations of all types. (The term "interactive multimedia" seems to have become popular recently.)
Since that time there have been a long series of changing designs embodying these ideas:
The Project Xanadu team completed the design of a universal networking server for Xanadu, described in various editions of Ted Nelson's book "Literary Machines" (see answers 6a and 6b below).
The 1981 design (now called Xanadu 88.1) was topped off but Miller began a redesign. Xanadu 88.1 was not subjected to quality control or released as a product.
Dean Tribble and Ravi Pandya became co-designers and work on the redesign continued.
Mindful Press
Eastgate Systems
The ONE BBSCON Resource Link
In Xamdu did Cublai Can build a stately Palace, encompassing sixteene miles of plaine ground with a wall, wherein are fertile Meddowes, pleasant springs, delightfull Streames, and all sorts of beasts of chase and game, and in the middest thereof a sumptuous house of pleasure, which may be removed from place to place...
Lowes' book traces an amazing hypertext -- the reading of Samuel Taylor Coleridge -- by starting from Purchas' book and any others which Coleridge mentions in his journals, letters, etc., and moving on from there to any books mentioned in the text or footnotes of these books, and so onwards through yet other books that Coleridge may well have consulted -- because we know he consulted others which recommended or mentioned them...
Along the way, Lowes discovered many instances of the workings of what Coleridge himself termed "the *hooks-and-eyes* of the memory" -- hyperlinks again: for this is Coleridge's own term for them.
It appears that Coleridge read very widely in the travel literature of his day, and did indeed tend to obtain many of the books referenced in books he was reading... and that as he went, his memory was saturated with the more striking phrases from these many books, and then *linked* them associatively...
And Lowes' book itself is a gigantic hypertext, linking sources in Coleridge's reading not only for "The Ancient Mariner" but also for "Kubla Khan" -- and along the way touching on an extraordinary variety of topics. Lowes' book is, when all is said and done, one of the greatest detective and scholarly hypertexts of all time.
This FAQ was written by firstname.lastname@example.com (Andrew Pam). Much of the material in the answers to questions 1, 4 and 6 was graciously provided by email@example.com (Ted Nelson). Thanks to firstname.lastname@example.com (Charles Cameron) for answers 7b and 7d.


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Allendale, NJ (December 6, 2011) – Leica Camera, Inc. announces the latest firmware update, 1.176, for the Leica M9 and M9-P, the world's smallest, full-frame digital system cameras. Users wishing to benefit from the new offerings can download the firmware update from the Leica Camera website.
Firmware update 1.176 eliminates a rare fault occurring during the formatting of SanDisk cards, ensuring compatibility with the Leica M9 and M9-P in accordance with the cameras' respective standards. All card types available from SanDisk have been fully tested by Leica's expert technical team and firmware version 1.176 guarantees their proper function, resulting in the previous constrictions on the cards being revoked.
Leica Camera is dedicated to providing products that exhibit mastery in optics and mechanics, high-quality design and outstanding craftsmanship, resulting in an uncompromised customer experience. The company thanks all affected customers for their patience and support in searching for the cause of the compatibility issues as well as SanDisk for their intensive technical assistance.
For installation instructions and to download firmware update 1.176, please visit: http://en.leica-camera.com/service/downloads/rangefinder_cameras/m9_m9-p/index.html.
About the Leica M9 and M9-P:
As the world's first digital rangefinder camera with a 24 x 36 sensor, the Leica M9 carries the proud heritage of the Leica M system into the digital age. A truly professional camera for authentic Leica M photography in the familiar, classic and timeless M design, the M9 is the perfect contemporary tool for those who set the highest standard in image quality and are committed to creating images of enduring value. The Leica M9-P provides an alternative, even more discreet and resilient design that further reinforces the classic nature of the M9 and specifically meets the needs of professional photographers. The M9 and M9-P are compatible with nearly every Leica M lens in existence.


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- Receive email from Flickr about Pro subscription due for renewal.
- Try to pay for it repeatedly over several days but always get some error message about a "bad panda" and they are aware of the problem and are fixing it soon. The problem persists over several days.
- Renewal deadline passes, check reminder email, it's sent from a donotreply@ account.
- Find a support wizard, the problem isn't listed after answering questions about it so I get an option to contact support.
- Fill in form saying what I'm trying to do, but notice there's no field for an email address. They know my address though right? That's where they sent the Flickr sub reminder?
- When I submit the form get a message "your response will be sent to firstname.lastname@example.com", an address I've never signed up for or used.
- Attempt to find Yahoo support system to add a note to the ticket or update my email, can't find it.
- Attempt to send new support ticket to Yahoo. The new support wizard I find seems to have different categories to the first one, none are relevant, there is no "other" category and there is no option to contact support.
- Decide not to pay for Flickr Pro
At the beginning of this process I figuratively had my hand extended with money for them to take. I've subscribed to Flickr Pro for years, I was just going to pay.
At every step of the way they made it hard. They made it a fight to hand over that money. If they had fixed the payment form after the first error message (like it promised) they'd have my money. If I'd been able to reply to the subscription reminder email and get through to support they'd get my money. If their support process had worked they'd likely have got my money soon.
I think the idea to just not bother came to me when I was forced into their badly designed error prone advert encrusted shoddy attempt at a webmail "portal" that not only do I not need or want, I actually resent, everything else just added weight to it.


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Morocco: Islamic Feminism in Morocco
The position of women is grim in all Muslim and Arab countries, Lamrabet says; a greater appreciation of women within Islam is needed. This means re-reading the texts and identifying previous interpretations for what they are: macho and patriarchal.
Such provocative statements, which can be read in more detail in her three books, have won Asma Lamrabet increasing numbers of followers: women and also men. Whether engineers, school inspectors, lawyers or students, they all share the same interest. They are dissatisfied with the dominant Islamic discourse increasingly spread by the pan-Arab media.
The main problem with the dominant Islamic discourse is that women are always reduced to some function or another, Asma Lamrabet claims; a woman is either a mother, a wife, a sister or a daughter. She is never presented as an individual, as a free, autonomous being. But the Qur'an portrays women as human beings, she says, and seeing women as human beings also means recognising their right to freedom and autonomy.
In the working group for women's issues and intercultural dialogue, interested women and men test the Qur'an for its egalitarian potential. Asma Lamrabet believes the Islamic teachings are more sympathetic to women than generally recognised. Islam does not have a creation myth portraying women simply as appendages of men. The Islamic Adam, according to Lamrabet is simply a human being; in the Qur'an, Adam has no gender.
The group also includes lawyer Rachida Ait Himmich. She is a member of a secular left-wing party: both secular and Muslim, which for Ait Himmich is not a contradiction. She says she can live out the various sides of her identity in the group. She can be a Muslim woman and at the same time feel free; she can embrace universal ethical values as well as the human values handed down by Islam, seeing it as a case of re-reading the Qur'an.
In their group studies, Asma Lamrabet and her fellow campaigners acknowledge the traditional Islamic interpretations as well as the particular historical contexts. For her, although the Qur'an is indeed the word of God, the teachings are only ever in practice experienced within a specific social and political context. Many conservative scholars of Islamic law see such an approach as blasphemy.
Between growing religious fanaticism in the Arabic and Islamic worlds, and increasing Islamophobia in the West, Asma Lamrabet and her feminist-Muslim working group are arguing the case for a so-called "third way": a modern approach combining universal, humanistic ethics with the humanitarian ideals of Islam.
To date, this so-called "third way" has had no majority appeal in Arab and Muslim societies. The criticism comes from various directions. Conservative Muslims accuse Lamrabet and her group of lacking the necessary theological competence to interpret the sacred texts correctly.
More secularly-orientated critics claim her approach to the Qur'an is not historical and that she does not speak out strongly enough against polygamy and violence towards women.
Asma Lamrabet points to the constitution of the working group for women's issues and intercultural dialogue, which has just become accepted as a registered association. The document is vague however, like much of what Asma Lamrabet says and writes. Her books are eloquent and passionate, but conceptually and in terms of methodology, the treatises have many weak points.
At times, they border on the kind of Islamic fundamentalist propaganda familiar from the Moroccan Islamic political activist, Nadia Yassine. Lamrabet's treatment of her central subject, cultural identity, is based on a notion of identity now seen as antiquated in the relevant sociological debates. By clinging to a notional unambiguous Islamic identity, Asma Lamrabet is positioning herself closer to political Islam propagandists. The catchy concept of the "third way" cannot alter this.
However, the verve with which Asma Lamrabet and her fellow campaigners are fighting for a new, more humanitarian Islam is remarkable. The positive resonance amongst young Muslim women shows once more that Islamic feminism is no longer a marginal issue and this development may form the impetus for an open discourse on Islam and society.
By: Martina Sabra
Source: Qantara.de, reprinted by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.qantara.de and www.commongroundnews.org
4 January 2008