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As streaming services grow to be the norm and more and more people turn to YouTube, Spotify, Bandcamp and SoundCloud for their music listening experiences, it might seem overwhelming to bands trying to maintain an online presence. Do you have to use them all? Should you focus more attention on one over another? Which one is even best for your particular brand?
We here at Rocks Off don't particularly have a preference; we'll seek out music wherever we can find it. However, we've been thinking lately that for some bands, SoundCloud might be the best service of any for a variety of reasons.
It's not that we're in SoundCloud's pocket for any reason, but that site offers a few key advantages that might make it more ideal for your band, depending on what you do and what you're looking for.
5. Embedding Lots of services offer easy embedding into blogs, but Bandcamp's embedded player leaves a lot to be desired. SoundCloud really has this market cornered, and if you look for a stream of an album on almost any website, you'll find a SoundCloud player embedded. It shows you how many plays each song has, features a user-friendly layout, and works nicely on any blog.
4. Easy Downloading Not to pick on Bandcamp again, but oftentimes it can make downloading an album harder than it needs to be. The whole system of going to your e-mail to retrieve a link to the download makes it a lot more of a drag than the ease of simply clicking the download link on SoundCloud and having your download start automatically.
3. Comments One of SoundCloud's great features is that it offers you the ability to comment on songs, including leaving comments at specific times. You'll see any number of popular tracks littered with comments like "here's where the awesome starts" or something like that.
It might seem like this wouldn't be a huge feature, but in this day and age, everyone wants to be heard and everyone loves to interact. This also allows instantaneous feedback on your releases, which can really help smaller artists putting up early demos of their tracks.
Story continues on the next page.
2. Playlists Another great feature of SoundCloud is that it allows users to create their own playlists composed of tracks uploaded by their favorite artists. As a band, this allows users to share your music with their friends through their playlists. It also allows your fans simple, quick access to their favorite tracks, so they don't have to look up your page every time to hear your songs.
1. It's Perfect for Demos and Mixtapes The informal nature of a SoundCloud release allows bands to drop any kind of tracks they want. This means demos, studio experiments and mixtapes. You can do this on other services, but SoundCloud features the ideal setup for this since it's not a service designed to sell your music.
You can embed links to buy your music on SoundCloud, but the service itself is more about free sharing and expression than it is sales. That means an anything goes mentality that can allow you much more freedom with your output and constructive criticism as you work through the process of creation.
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trade balance
Use trade balance in a sentence
" The trade balance was something we all needed to think about because it was important to our overall safety as a business. "
" Singapore has a relatively low trade balance, as their country is small enough that it lacks much in the way of natural resources to export. "
" The trade balance provided useful information in understanding the relationships between the two countries mentioned during the weekly team meeting. "

subset: commoncrawl


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This year, for winter solstice, I wish for my own kitchen, so that I can make some dumplings. The sad thing is, even after writing the Making-it-home series on this blog for more than a year now, we haven't even gotten our keys. :(
Cooking for the family is something I really want to do. I hope I'll be a good cook and although our home is not ready yet, it hasn't stopped me from looking at cooking ware.
When I have my own kitchen, I will be cooking more and it is highly likely that I will be writing about my attempts here so, for the last giveaway, I'm giving away cooking stuffs and a souvenir I got for this giveaway from Legoland Malaysia.
The first item is a 6 piece kitchen tool set with rotating stand which I received from attending a Philips event. It looks good hence, I kept it for this giveaway.
The next one is a Fontignac Cast Iron Pot ( Round, 24cm, 3.6l). $79.90 with 16 points from the now ended promotion at Fairprice LOLOL. A friend of mine swears that veges stewed in it tastes sweeter, and there are so many raves about the French oven that I thought it's a good gift for this giveaway. No Le Creuset though, because I cannot afford to giveaway one given my finite resources haha.
The last one is something I put together from our trip to Legoland Malaysia. Basically I spent more than an hour in the brick shop there putting together Lego men and lego women and one of them is for this giveaway.
Only 1 for giveaway and you can use it like this, if you like!
All of these are going to one winner. To win, please follow steps in this rafflecopter and take note of the terms and conditions!
Terms and conditions
(1) Giveaway ends 30 December 2014, Monday 2359 hours (Singapore time).
(2) Limited to one winner per household.
(3) Winners will be randomly selected via the widget on 31 December 2014.
(4) Incomplete or invalid entries will be automatically disqualified without notice.
(5) Inactive social media accounts or accounts set up solely for participating in contests/giveaways will be automatically disqualified. We reserve the right to determine the qualifying entries as such.
(6) This giveaway is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Facebook.
(7) Winners must be able to self-collect the prizes.
(8) We reserve the right to amend the terms and conditions without prior notice.
Ongoing giveaways you can still participate in are as follows:
Giveaway 8 : I'm giving away some of my favorite beauty items and a Grohe Spa Set worth $538.
Giveaway open until 23 December 2014 | Giveaway link
Giveaway 9: Mabel from AmazingStill.com is giving away 2 x $100 shopping vouchers from PONEY Singapore. Giveaway open until 23 December 2014 | Giveaway link
Giveaway 10: Irene of SingaporeMomBlogs.com is giving away a $100 Gift Card from Sephora. Giveaway open until 28 December 2014 | Giveaway link
Giveaway 11: Cherie of CherieLadie.com is giving away a 20cm WMF Stainless Steel Pot. Giveaway open until 25 December 2014 | Giveaway link


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Earthquake Insurance in Lafayette, LA
Did you know that almost the entire United States is prone to earthquakes? The West Coast of the U.S. has nearly a 70 percent chance of a 6.7 earthquake or larger. The East, a 40-60 percent chance and the Midwest has a 40 percent+ chance!
Earthquake insurance is insurance for your property that pays you in the event of an earthquake that causes damage to the property. The typical homeowner's insurance policy does not cover earthquake loss.
Most earthquake insurance policies feature a high deductible, such as 10{cf835bb3f61477cdc92b5deac71fba1e4d6a18301d4e87958a809fc61eac324c}+ of the value of the total insured value of the home, which makes this type of insurance useful if the entire home is destroyed, but not useful if the home is merely damaged. Rates for earthquake insurance vary greatly based off of earthquake maps. Rates can also vary greatly depending what your home is constructed from. Wood homes withstand earthquakes better than brick homes.
To learn more about what earthquake insurance covers and what isn't covered, please call our offices today at 337-981-6979 for a free, no obligation quote.


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Discussion for Stunt Rally that doesn't fit in the other categories
Moderator: SR Moderators
Julius {l Wrote}:However even when turning it to "low" the FPS on my actually quite beefy gaming laptop (runs Crysis with little problems) rarely go much above 25fps
So it seems there is plenty optimization possible.
CryHam {l Wrote}:Laptop is laptop, you can't have performance from 50W laptop like from a 500W computer. And we don't support/target laptops.
Optimisation is always possbile, just needs programmers/testers, that know it and would spend time for it.
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 0 guests


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More than 20 FE and skills-related figures were among the 1,163 people to have received an award in this year's Queen's Birthday Honours List.
City and Islington College principal and chair of the Commission on Adult Vocational Teaching and Learning (Cavtl) Frank McLoughlin was chief among these with a knighthood.
The remaining awards were made up of five CBEs, 11 OBEs, seven MBEs and a BEM (British Empire Medal). Six of these (including Sir Frank) went to college principals or chief executives, one went to a governor, another to a head of student life, another to a bricklaying tutor and one to a former college higher education manager.
There was also recognition for skills provision outside the college environment with Cumbria-based independent learning provider Gen2 Training chief executive Mike Smith picking up an OBE.
Further skills honours for the business world came for Rotherham engineering firm Newburgh Engineering chair and managing director Vincent Middleton with an OBE, while South East Midlands Local Enterprise Partnership (SEMLEP) chair, Helena Kennedy Foundation chair and founder, and former principal of Milton Keynes and Cambridge Regional colleges Ann Limb received a CBE.
Click on image below to enlarge and click here for even more feweek.co.uk coverage of the honours.
Stewart Segal, chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, said: "It's good to see that a wide range of people across the sector have received awards.
"In the independent sector, Mike Smith's championing of skills training in the North West has been fantastic and his OBE is richly deserved. We hope to see more independent providers recognised in future honours lists.
"We have worked closely with Ann Limb in the development of skills and employment within the sector so we are equally pleased about her CBE. And we were pleased to be part of the Cavtl initiative and therefore we are delighted about the knighthood for Frank McLoughlin."
Martin Doel, Association of Colleges chief executive, said: "Congratulations to all our FE sector colleagues, but most particularly to those in our member colleges whose tireless work has been recognised.
"Every year principals, governors and other staff are rewarded for their dedication to FE and we are pleased to see such a number again this year."
Dr Lynne Sedgmore CBE, executive director of the 157 Group, said: "We offer our congratulations to all those who have been honoured for the important work they do in FE and skills, which has enormous value for individual learners, employers, the economy and society."


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This Bangle is slightly adjustable. Careful and gentle adjustment is required to protect the housing of the amber piece and structure of the silver band.
Crafted with .925 Sterling Silver, this Bangle is hallmarked by the Birmingham Assay Office. Baltic Beauty is also proud to have been registered by the International Amber Association (IAA) as an official Recommended Seller of Amber Jewellery. Explore our Authentic Amber Jewellery Certificates available in multiple languages.
Discover more of our One of A Kind Amber Jewellery.
All orders are wrapped in our beautiful branded Jewellery Boxes and shipped via Royal Mail.
Explore our Delivery Policies for more information.
In an effort to reduce our paper usage, no invoices or order notices will be included in your parcel. If you would like to include a gift message, please add our Luxury Gift Wrap option at the checkout.
We guarantee quick and easy returns. All items are returnable within 14 days of receipt, excluding orders with customisations. Extended Returns up to 28 days available for gift giving, please contact us first to request an extended returns policy.See Returns for more information.
Add this comprehensive gift wrap option to perfect your Baltic Beauty gift and treat your loved one to something truly special.
Select our Gift Wrap Add-On for £4 per item in your Shopping Cart.
Includes: Signature Wrapping Paper, Satin Ribbon, Sterling Silver Anti-Tarnish Cleaning Cloth & Note Card
For no extra cost, we can create a printed typographic message on the notecard to send with your Baltic Beauty gift. Just leave a note at the checkout with your message to the lucky recipient.
As official Recommended Sellers of Amber Jewellery by the International Amber Association (IAA) we commit to meeting all criteria as laid out by the IAA - offering a guarantee of the authenticity of your amber jewellery. We also comply with all Hallmarking regulations, and Baltic Beauty is registered with the Birmingham Assay Office.


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Education Attainment Division
Nashville Chamber Releases 21st Annual Education Report Card
Today, the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce's Education Report Card Committee released the 2013 Education Report Card for Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools (MNPS). The Chamber has convened a diverse group of business and community leaders to evaluate the progress of Nashville's public school system for 21 years. Each year, the committee chooses a further area of study that is critical for student success. This year's focus is Common Core State Standards, the state's new academic standards that align with college and career-readiness benchmarks.
Mixed Results
This year Tennessee was named the fastest-improving state in the country on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). While, the committee's report found declines and plateaus in areas such as English language arts scores and middle school achievement, they applauded the district on many initiatives including its Academic Performance Framework and the ambitious goals of the 2018 strategic plan. Marc Hill, Chief Policy Officer for the Nashville Chamber provides an overview of the committee's presentation and recommendations here: http://bit.ly/J1SYGX
Beginning its work in August, the 24-member committee conducted more than 30 interviews, collected data and visited schools, before issuing five recommendations in the areas of school system performance and Common Core State Standards.
This year's committee recommendations are:
•Metro Schools should take decisive action toward discontinuing their persistently lowest-performing, under-enrolled school programs under the new district Academic Performance Framework.
•Metro Schools should implement an aggressive strategy to recruit and retain high-performing bilingual teachers.
•Metro Government should allow enrolled K-12 students to ride Metropolitan Transit Authority buses at no cost to the student, making school choice a real possibility for Nashville's students and families.
•The Tennessee General Assembly should stay the course in implementing Common Core State Standards and the corresponding PARCC assessment.
•Metro Schools should implement a strategy to communicate with parents, teachers, students and the broader public about the increased rigor and higher expectations that correspond with Common Core Standards.
To view this year's complete report, visit: http://bit.ly/educationreportcard.


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Usborne has acquired a funny three-book series about a "bridesmaid detective" by debut author Serena Patel.
Geraldine McCaughrean won the CILIP Carnegie Medal 2018 for Where the World Ends, exactly 30 years after she first won this prestigious children's literature prize. In her winning speech she calls for children to be challenged by words as well as issues in the books they read.


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Golden Beach is a residential community just north of Sunny Isles Beach. This neighborhood has a vast array of available property from three-bedroom inland homes to seven bedroom oceanfront or intracoastal homes. Golden Beach is a small town, but has within it an incredibly diverse group of homes to choose from. Golden Beach is one of the few South Florida communities with miles and miles of beachfront property that is occupied by homes instead of condos. This makes the beaches themselves incredibly private and allows for a tranquil and idyllic beachfront experience. The other side of Golden Beach is considered "intracoastal property". These intracoastal homes resemble bayfront homes in that the width of the waterway is much larger than most providing more privacy and spacious waterfront views. Intracoastal waterways are known to be havens for avid boaters and those who enjoy water-based activities.
Golden Beach's exclusivity for single family homes keeps the population of the town down, thus creating a more quiet environment and many relate the atmosphere to those in Southern California. Most Golden Beach homes either have pools in their backyards or at least have lots large enough to support a pool. Golden Beach property is very beautiful and the majority of available property is waterfront so Golden Beach living is the ideal place for those seeking the optimum beachfront single-family home living experience.
Officially Golden Beach is a town in the northeast corner of Miami-Dade County. The population is small and hovers around 1,000 people in all. Golden Beach is located on a slender piece of land on a barrier island shared by cities like Sunny Isles Beach and Miami Beach. This geographic shape allows residents to never be too far away from the waterfront whether it be the Atlantic Ocean or the intracoastal waterway, which very much resembles bayfront homes. Though Golden Beach is only several miles long its pleasant neighborhoods and beautiful homes make it a sought-after place to live and it's centrally located between exciting places like Miami Beach, Hollywood Beach and Downtown Miami.


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PracticeFlow allows you to scale your accountancy practice to hundreds of clients, ensuring that you keep on top of all deadlines, big or small.
Missed deadlines cost you twice: once for the fee and again for the loss of client confidence
See at-a-glance everything about any of your clients:
Every staff member receives a daily summary of all deadlines that still require attention each week.
Now whether staff are in the office or on the move, they can easily stay up to date.
All plans include a 60-day trial and no-quibble money back guarantee.
I found PracticeFlow after searching the internet for a way to manage client deadlines and it's fantastic.
Our clients expect to be reminded when returns are due, when payments need to me made and how much they need to pay. That gets more difficult as your client base grows.
With PracticeFlow we can schedule key dates and tasks to make sure we don't miss any deadlines.
It also acts as a central point to hold key data such as UTR's.
We love it!
Practice Flow has transformed the way we work in a time pressured environment, the daily reminders ensure we never miss a submission deadline and hence no late filing penalties.
PracticeFlow is an excellent practice management software that provides us with exactly what we need without the high price tag for providing all the extras that are not required. Why pay extra for email integration and ability to text via the software and so forth.
We wanted a cloud based software that would hold all key data in one place and could be accessed anywhere at any time. A software that would allow us to manage tasks and deadlines. Well PracticeFlow has satisfied these requirements + more including the ease at which the data can be downloaded as a CSV file for backup and daily email reminders of upcoming tasks.
PracticeFlow is now a vital part of our business growth strategy.
We were finding that an increasing amount of our time was spent checking client's submission deadlines – time that could be better used helping clients or developing new leads.
We estimate that for each corporate client we have, there are over 20 deadlines that we need to manage such as Accounts, Corporation Tax, VAT, PAYE and self assessment tax returns filings. We envisage that this will only increase as time goes by.
Practiceflow offers us a practical, efficient and cost-effective way to manage those deadlines.
We recognise that a missed deadline can result in a lost client and so the peace of mind that Practiceflow provides is invaluable.
As is often the case with game-changing technology, I now wonder how we coped before we started using Practice flow.
A large proportion of our clients are "tech-aware" themselves and we strive to provide a service that meets their demands and way of working. Practiceflow helps us achieve this.
One added benefit of using PracticeFlow is that it has actually aided our team briefings, as the whole team is now more aware of everyone else's workload and helps avoid people working in isolation.
As all accountants are essentially suffering from the same issues – shortage of time, risk of missing clients' deadlines, sharing knowledge amongst team members – I have no hesitation in recommending PracticeFlow to other accountancy firms.
Client work and Staff case load management need a CRM System as PracticeFlow provides, so, a valuable and yet cost efficient tool for Partners and Directors of Accountancy and Book-keeping related firms may oversee the various stage and processes, either, individual or all tasks may be at depending on the preferred criteria selection.
Whether a single or multi user requirement, at a touch of button and from almost any location in the world, this cloud base platform allows the owner, or owners, control over the complete service package and whose clients engage the accountancy or bookwork, payroll and stocks auditing team to perform to strict performance deadlines. This includes presenting to the client, on site, a visual, historical trail that explains from notes held on the programme by each staff, the action/s behind work in progress and immediately the PracticeFlow resource as a tool impresses upon the end user a confidence in the provision of overall service.
Limited companies automated update links of filings lodged, or, deadline due dates approaching, held at Companies House, with a complimentary record card where other data may store / hold UTR, PAYE, VAT and Authentication Code information is but a few of the useful features this software retains details of within a central database to have hands on access to all sorts of references needed, without so much as vacating the work station, after saving it.
The after sales support is reactionary and constructive to the extent the feedback is helpful toward making certain aspects of the programme bespoke and where certain amendments cannot be applied immediately suggestions are taken on board which has the end user feeling this is not only a marvellous resource but supported by a business who seeks to build on the client / supplier relationship, making this good product even better.


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Quotes by Margaret Clarkson
The sovereignty of God is the one impregnable rock to which the suffering human heart must cling. The circumstances surrounding our lives are no accident; they may be the work of evil, but that evil is held firmly within the mighty hand of our sovereign God… All evil is subject to Him, and evil cannot touch His children unless He permits it. God is the Lord of human history and of the personal history of every member of His redeemed family.
We may not demand of a sovereign Creator that He explain Himself to His creatures… God had good and sufficient reasons for His actions; we trust His sovereign wisdom and love.
Through no fault or choice of my own, I am unable to express my sexuality in the beauty and intimacy of Christian marriage, as God intended when He created me a sexual being in His own image. To seek to do this outside of marriage is, by the clear teaching of Scripture, to sin against God and against my own nature. As a committed Christian, then, I have no alternative but to live a life of voluntary celibacy. I must be chaste not only in body, but in mind and spirit as well. Since I am now in my 60's I think that my experience of what this means is valid. I want to go on record as having proved that for those who are committed to do God's will, His commands are his enablings… My whole being cries out continually for something I may not have. My whole life must be lived in the context of this never-ceasing tension. My professional life, my social life, my personal life, my Christian life – all are subject to its constant and powerful pull. As a Christian I have no choice but to obey God, cost what it may. I must trust Him to make it possible for me to honor Him in my singleness. That this is possible, a mighty cloud of witnesses will join me to attest. Multitudes of single Christians in every age and circumstance have proved God's sufficiency in this matter. He has promised to meet our needs and He honors His word. If we seek fulfillment in Him, we shall find it. It may not be easy, but whoever said that Christian life was easy? The badge of Christ's discipleship was a cross. Why must I live my life alone? I do not know. But Jesus Christ is Lord of my life. I believe in the sovereignty of God, and I accept my singleness from his hand. He could have ordered my life otherwise, but He has not chosen to do so. As his child, I must trust His love and wisdom.


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It has been a busy but great weekend! Yesterday we haven't been at home the whole day. Visiting my parents and friends for dinner made us come back home late in the evening. For Samuele it has been a bit too much I guess because unfortunately he didn't sleep that well last night. I was so tired this morning after waking up several times last night. Today we planned to see the carnival in a city close by, but in the end I decided it was too much for our little boy. His schedule was a bit messed up today so I wasn't even sure when to feed him. With this cold outside and crowded bars the only option would have been in the car. I didn't think the carnival was worth it 😉 So we had a long walk in the sunny woodland close by home with a friend. Lovely weekend!
But now it's time for food and this time a vegetarian meal! Not that I'm a vegetarian. Even though I'm not a big meat lover I do eat meat…. and fish! So no, no vegetarian at all. But at least once a week I do eat vegetarian. I made these burgers last week for the first time. Just to try something new, but I liked them that much that I wanted to share it here with you. I think it's the perfect substitute for a normal hamburger if you don't want to eat meat. It's soft but firm and full of taste! And extremely healthy. So just give it a go I'd say!!
Chickpea Burger
makes 6 burgers
400 g // 2 cups chickpeas
100 g // 2/3 cup peas
175 g // 1 cup corn
2 handfuls grated parmesan cheese
100 g // 1 1/8 cup breadcrumbs
1 egg
handful parsley, finely chopped
1 tsp mustard
salt, pepper
olive oil extra vergine
If you use fresh chickpeas make sure you soak them for 8 hours or overnight. Put chickpeas, peas and maid in a blender and blend until smooth. Put it all in a large bowl and add an egg, parmesan cheese, breadcrumbs, mustard, parsley, a pinch of salt and a bit of pepper and mix well by hand.
Heat a bit of olive oil in a large frying pan over a medium heat. Once hot, add the patties and cook for 10 minutes or until golden and cooked through, turning halfway.
I used wholemeal sesame buns and added a slice of tomato and a few slices of grilled eggplant on each bun. Of course you can add anything you like!


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In the current culture of moral relativism, what is good and right is often determined by popularity, the excuse being that anything is good if it is widely accepted. This is a distortion of the philosophy of Pragmatism, which actually does not say that everything is morally equal, because situations in which actions occur differ. The exhortation not to be "judgmental" is often shouted at anyone who criticizes something popular as bad or unacceptable. The mistaken notion that one can suspend judgment is ludicrous on its face and its application at law, that one is innocent until proven guilty, is cited as proof positive of its wisdom. Anyone paying attention can see the difference between judging someone's innocence in general and making a final verdict in a court case. The first requires experience; the second requires careful examination of specific evidence.
There is certainly great value in not judging people without knowing them, but that is not suspending the faculty of reasoning observation. It is merely putting off one's actions about whether to associate with a person until one knows enough about them. The same thing is true when buying something. The old saying goes, "Never buy a pig in a poke" which warns one not to buy something sight unseen. Aldous Huxley famously said, "Experience is not what happens to a man. It is what a man does with what happens to him." Wise counsel indeed. "Once burned, twice shy," is another.
Wisdom is knowledge born of experience. Experience gives one perspective in judging situations and even people. If one's experience (hence, knowledge) tells one that an empty street with dark alleys is a place where muggers might loom, no one in his right mind would suspend judgment of the situation. Experience is life practice and human experience has demonstrated that intelligent practice usually makes perfect.
Today a similar cognitive dissonance occurs in the evaluation of certain cultural elements passing for art. "Piss Christ" was not just a different kind of art. It was garbage. No skill was required to devise or create it. The image was objectionable on grounds much wider than religious degradation. It was artistically objectionable. It demonstrated nothing of the "artist's" vision or soul—or perhaps, sadly, it did. Its message was childish anger and the artist's ineptitude to express anything beyond an insult were at an unskilled, low aesthetic standard. The same can be said of the "elephant dung Madonna."
Trending: A Message for Obama – "Woe to those who call evil good and good evil."
Art is not just expression. It must be developed in a way that proves its value. For a painter, that requires the serious study, thought and practice of art from tradition. If, once the artist masters that part, he wants to move on to exploring possibilities beyond the established norms, he is free to do so, but to remain an artist he must do so by respecting the great achievements of artists who came before.
For me, this is especially true with music. I grew up in a household in which my French father and my American born Italian mother constantly showed respect for artistic achievement. My father was a painter and musician. My mother was a milliner and jewelry maker. Fine music was constantly played as background to our family life, like the sound track of a movie.
Not that my family were snobbish. My brother, sisters, aunts and uncles, all older than I by at least a decade, enjoyed the popular music of their day, which filtered into my time, as well. I listened to Frank Sinatra, Margaret Whiting, Tommy Dorsey and Jo Stafford, as well as Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky and the other great composers. The popular music I listened to was considered an anachronism, as I grew up in the era of Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis.
My father took me almost every weekend to art museums and concerts. In fact, we went regularly to the art museum in Worcester, Massachusetts, twenty or so miles from our home, where there were concerts on Sunday. Before and after the music, my father led me past rows of fine paintings, pointing out the intricacies of Corot, Turner, Constable, the Flemish and the French.
On Sunday mornings, on our way home from church, we stopped at the little newspaper agency nearby and bought several Sunday editions. I read the "funny papers" every Sunday, paying particular attention to "Terry and the Pirates," "Steve Canyon" and "Prince Valiant" whose creator, Hal Foster, I particularly admired. Later, when I was given opportunities to study art and music formally, it was natural that I should gravitate toward them.
But there was greater reinforcement for these high standards in the culture at large. Violinist Jascha Heifetz and pianist Arthur Rubenstein, were icons whose names and faces were known in ordinary households to people who were not versed in classical music. They were known as great achievers, great practitioners of their art. Who among the uninitiated even knows their names today?
I suppose my upbringing gave me an unfair advantage over many children today who don't have the same atmosphere in which a high level taste for the arts exists. I admit to being stodgy and old-fashioned. But it supports my contention that experience helps one to know, to judge and to develop the skills of judgment necessary to appreciation of art and music on a high level.
That experience simply does not exist at large in today's culture, in which Rap seems to dominate popular music stations and one is exhorted not to deny that a double decker stack of vacuum cleaners by Jeff Koons or orange drapery in Central Park by Christo are artistic achievements. Much less than being art, they aren't even achievements.
I admit I'm confused sometimes by this kind of thing. I once went with a friend some years ago to an exhibit at MOMA in New York City. We entered a room with a tall window at the back. Over it was draped a gauzy shade. Next to the window was a brass plaque. Being momentarily reminded of the recent "draping" of Central Park with orange gauze, I declared, "That's it. That window is just a window. It's not art!" My friend, a smart, beautiful and sophisticated woman, smiled and touched me on the arm. "No, dear," she said. "That IS just a window. The plaque is for that Claes Oldenburg sculpture." She pointed to a gigantic slice of pie in painted canvas. Well, thought I, at least that required some effort. And Oldenburg is a trained artist.
But rappers on the radio are obviously not musicians. Their output is mostly semi-literate and the imagery (do I dare call it "message?") is dismally primitive. It says nothing of importance about anything human and its sounds are often offensive. Their lyrics are dully conceived (written?) and performed at a level that requires absolutely no artistry or talent. At best, they are semiliterate. At worst, they are abjectly illiterate.
Please note that I am not even getting to the substance of their lyrics (lyrics?) with their constant references to gutter dynamics. I can't even get to that point. I'm still stuck on how bad the stuff is aesthetically. I asked one of my stepdaughters why she liked rap. She replied simply, "I only like good rap." Her answer reminds me of what someone said once when I said I liked Brahms, not rap. He was insulted and said, "Rap is as good as Brahms." I could think of only one response. "That answer supposes that you know something about Brahms." He didn't. He'd never listened to, or even heard of, Brahms.
At stop lights I often feel assaulted by the thunderous thud of bass emitting from the car next to me. I usually just roll up the window. But one day, I stopped at a light and, absorbed in listening to a particularly vigorous rendition of a Beethoven Symphony, forgot to raised my window. The person pulling up next to me gave me a sour look and closed his window. Presumably my music was as offensive to him as his was to me. I seldom express my true feelings about Rap to my children, but once, when I said, "Would you please turn that down. I really hate that stuff," one of my daughters flashed her anger. I could see it in her eyes, as she replied, "Well, I really hate classical." Although her mother regularly plays classical music around our home, and our daughters actually do listen to it, even if rarely, they don't think it's cool.
This is what I mean by aesthetic relativism. If one's sphere of experience is constrained, one's tastes will be constrained, as well. I once watched a TV program on which Wynton Marsalis spoke to a bunch of children about jazz. He said that one could not truly appreciate jazz without recognizing its roots in classical music, Mozart, for example. Marsalis is an educated, very competent musician. He knows what he's talking about.
I have no desire to dictate to anyone what they should like or not like. But I do bemoan the loss of a culture in which the vital line of tradition, which shows clearly the evolution of culture and recognizes that the very nature of civilization hangs on its tenuous cord. Once broken, that cord will be difficult to reconnect. It may take generations if we have that long.
The views expressed in this opinion article are solely those of their author and are not necessarily either shared or endorsed by EagleRising.com


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"Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional." I'm uncertain from whom that saying was derived . . . a Japanese author, a zen master, a koan copywriter, who knows? The phrase contains so much truth. It really resonates for business operators, particularly in these times.
For the past five years, our company has experienced severe downturns in revenue, although it's beginning to go hockey stick on us, TG. I would hope and imagine yours has too. Additionally, we've faced frightening transformations in our industry, literally turning what we do upside down. Best Buy can relate, I'm sure. Our choice was to hunker down but not hide. We needed to reinvent our business, which required the patience of ownership, high-risk decision-making, shedding legacy mindsets, shifts in staff and skillsets, seriously reducing expenses, and on and on. JC Penney can relate too, I'm sure, though their recent parting of ways with President Michael Francis belies an incredibly unreasonable set of expectations that frankly baffles me. There's a story there.
Regardless, our staff, particularly our sales group, had to endure years of revenue starvation, not only watching their commissions cut in half but knowing nearly every time they picked up that damn phone the answer would be "no." I gained a lot of respect for a lot of coworkers throughout these dark days.
However, there are a few who stick out as people who couldn't help but get hung up on the "suffering" while all that "pain" was going on. Understanding we all behave based on how we're built, I can see why some folks might find despondence in challenge, negativity in rejection, and self-pity in overwork. Who among us doesn't feel some sense of being underappreciated, our considerable contributions underestimated? What demarcates the crowd of the chronically disenchanted is driven by how large the little neurosis becomes.
There are those who just simply persist in wearing a crown of thorns. They wear them in every meeting; their energy permeates every conversation. They tend to use humor or compliments to "soften" what might be perceived as a veiled complaint or criticism. Others whine in silence, channeling their inner unrest with body language and often revealing it in their gaze. If you've known someone long enough, you can take their temperature almost every time through their eyes.
As we exit these hard times and the pain subsides, the sufferers stick out like a sore thumb, and their vibe persists. It's true: Lots of water has gone under the bridge, and it was not a pleasant experience oftentimes. But damn, get over it!
Me? I got no time for it. There's lots to do and opportunity everywhere. Not to get all biblical on you, but I'll leave you with a relevant quote from Paul: "Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely . . . if there be any virtue, if there be any praise, think on these things."
And leave the self-indulgent, eternal sufferer dude at home.


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Nurturing your creativity, courage and collaboration to fully express the unique talent you were born with may be the greatest contribution you can make to your world.
Just before Christmas, Ministers signed The Paris Agreement to limit the increase in global temperatures to less than 2°C and in September they signed the 17 UN Global Goals to end extreme poverty, fight inequality and combat climate change.
However, all of us who have worked with UN Agencies know that we will need different skills to achieve these plans.
From a cultural perspective, Frédéric Laloux's ground-breaking thesis, Reinventing Organizations, outlines a vision. He describes how self-managing organizations respond organically to big challenges.
Some organizations such as Patagonia and AES are already doing this, but multinational companies and UN Agencies are three evolutionary steps behind.
The problem is there may not be enough time for the leaders of these organizations to make the leaps in consciousness required.
What if your leadership isn't ready?
Laloux isn't particularly encouraging: 'I tell people not to waste their energy trying.'
Changing the culture and operating model is only part of the answer though.
Let's consider some of the biggest breakthroughs in the last 150 years: Albert Einstein developed the Special Theory of Relativity while working as a technical expert 3rd class at the Patent Office in Berne; Vincent Van Gogh painted the Sunflowers in the Blue House, just next to a smoky railway station and in front of a busy square; while Steve Jobs founded Apple in a garage.
None of these places was exactly the perfect enabling environment. And that's because high performers nurture skills such as creativity, courage and collaboration irrespective of culture.
Tackling the world's biggest challenges requires breakthrough creativity.
Fortunately, everyone is born with creativity and a unique talent – what I call your life purpose. Creativity is how you express your life purpose.
Having the courage to do this may be the greatest contribution you can make to your world.
Andy Warhol got a D in his trigonometry and an AAAA in his art at school. Imagine if he had chosen to focus on improving his weakness rather than his strength?
The problem, as Sir Ken Robinson explained in the world's most watched TED Talk is Schools Kill Creativity. And it's not just schools: businesses and society do too.
In addition, most of us have forgotten our life purpose.
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting.
William Wordsworth
Somewhere along the way, in school or business, we learnt to suppress our talent and develop our weaknesses.
Great leaders do the opposite.
Have you ever tried to create something extraordinary in a challenging environment? If so, you may have noticed the more challenging it is, the more creative you are.
It's why I now paint in extreme locations all over the world. This is my experiment to see what is required to be creative everywhere.
Doing this, I realised expressing our life purpose is where we start solving the world's challenges.
We may not be able to change the world. But we can change our world. And if we all did that, the world would change.
If you don't know your life purpose, I encourage you to find out. And if you do, but not how to express it, start doing something creative every day. We offer courses to help people do both.
Creativity takes courage.
Henri Matisse
Expressing our life purpose takes enormous courage. How often do you know exactly what you ought to do, but rather than expose your true beliefs, you stay within your comfort zone? Unfortunately, staying in our comfort zone means staying in a world of poverty, war, child illnesses, and global warming.
Breaking through requires us to live outside of our comfort zone every day.
Do you have the courage to do that?
If not, consider Brené Brown's insight that what feels like vulnerability to you, looks like courage to others. And remember, the verge of a breakdown is the springboard to a breakthrough.
Trying to make it alone simply isn't an option anymore.
To create a breakthrough in physics similar in size to the one Einstein had 90 years ago requires over 3,000 people to work together at the LHC at CERN.
The problem is that collaboration isn't something we learnt at school, we were assessed as individuals.
Organisations do the same. Rather than measure the output of cross-functional teams, they measure the productivity of a silo: how is HR engaging employees? How is sales selling? How is marketing engaging customers?
Changing the metrics helps, but only if we know how to collaborate in the first place.
Unfortunately, when something goes wrong, we point our finger at the 'other', forgetting that when we do so, three fingers are pointing back at us.Gandhi,didn't say talk about the change, or think about it. He said
Gandhi,didn't say talk about the change, or think about it. He said be the change. So, rather than seeing another person or another department as the problem, consider what you can learn from them.
Ask insightful questions, like Richard Branson, instead of trying to provide all the answers. Explore how others can express their life purpose.
Getting to the Global Goals
You see the answer to our problems isn't out there. It doesn't depend on the culture, the operating model or someone else. It starts inside us.
Take Nelson Mandela. He was imprisoned for 27 years, much of it spent in solitary confinement. Yet, when he came out, he didn't blame those who put him inside. And he didn't try to change the people outside. He just shared his love for all people, no matter their religion or colour.
And he learnt every skill he needed through facing adversity within himself.
So, if you are serious about the Global Goals and the Paris Agreement, be courageous, face that adversity and nurture the skills to fully express your life purpose.
This article first appeared on The Royal Society for the Encouragement of the Arts, Manufacturing and Commerce website . Alex Inchbald FRSA is an extreme artist and co-founder of Creative Leadership Partners. His life purpose is to Unleash the World's Creativity for Good. Alex paints in extreme locations all over the world to explore what it takes to be creative everywhere. And he has worked on every single one of the 17 Global Goals with organizations such as The Red Cross, The World Health Organization, and Unilever.


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Music fans in Northern California and across the globe are in mourning today after the sad death of Deftones bassist, Chi Cheng, early Saturday morning. Chi had been in a partially-conscious state after a car crash in 2008, but bandmates, friends and fans never gave up hope that the Sacramento musician and poet would recover and return full-time to the band he had helped found. Cheng was 42.
Cheng's mother, "Mom J", announced the news on the One Love For Chi website: "Your love and heart and devotion to Chi was unconditional and amazing... He was taken to the emergency room and at 3 a.m. today his heart just suddenly stopped. He left this world with me singing songs he liked in his ear."
Chi Cheng's loss is particularly disappointing after hopes surfaced early in 2012 that he was on the road to recovery, after waking up from a three-year coma. Chi fought hard and long to survive, so to lose him now is devastating for the many thousands of people who loved both his music and his spirit.
Twitter lit up with tributes immediately. Slipknot's Corey Taylor wrote: "My friend Chi passed away. My heart goes out to his family, and to my friends in @deftones. This is indeed a sad day..." Tributes were also Tweeted by the likes of Fall Out Boy frontman Patrick Stump, My Chemical Romance singer Gerard Way, Papa Roach, Hatebreed, P.O.D. and even Slash. Deftones frontman, Chino Moreno, hit Facebook to simply state: "Rest in peace, Chi Cheng."
Far frontman and San Francisco resident Jonah Matranga, wrote on his blog: "I'm on tour, waking up and finding out he's finally, really gone. Along with the beyond-measure grief thinking of his family and loved
ones, I'm feeling really deep gratitude for the people I met through
this tragedy."
Matranga wrote Far's "At Night We Live" in 2009, about a particularly vivid dream he'd had after visiting his friend in the hospital, in which he and Cheng were hanging out and talking again. "In the daytime we're dead," Matranga sings, "but at night we live."
-- @Raemondjjjj


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Anne Carson was uncomfortable with the idea of a traditional profile: a journalist following her around for a few days, like a private detective, noting her outfits and mannerisms, shadowing her on errands, making lists of furniture and wall decorations and pets, quizzing her students, standing behind her holding his breath while she tried to write in her journal. Carson is a private person. She prefers to be alone. (When her husband is traveling, Carson will call and tell him, "I miss you, but I'm having a great time.") Her book jackets have no author photo. Her back-flap biography — "Anne Carson was born in Canada and teaches ancient Greek for a living" — is so minimalist that it sounds like a parody of a back-flap biography. Carson told me that, years ago, she had a bad experience with the private-detective model of journalism and would prefer never to do it again. It took her publisher a couple of weeks to wear her down to the point that she would agree, even in a limited way, to participate in a profile. Carson later described those weeks as akin to water torture.
In the end, she agreed to exchange some e-mails. This felt like a significant victory.
Carson is usually referred to as a poet, but just about no one finds that label satisfying: her fans (for whom she does something more than poetry), her critics (for whom she does something less than poetry) or herself. She often labels her work in conspicuously nonpoetic terms. Her book "The Beauty of the Husband" is subtitled "A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos." Her book "Decreation" is subtitled "Poetry, Essays, Opera." Carson gives the impression — on the page, at readings — of someone from another world, either extraterrestrial or ancient, for whom our modern earthly categories are too artificial and simplistic to contain anything like the real truth she is determined to communicate. For two decades her work has moved — phrase by phrase, line by line, project by improbable project — in directions that a human brain would never naturally move. The approach has won her awards (MacArthur, Guggenheim, Lannan) and accolades and an electric reputation in the literary world.
In her day job, Carson, who is 62, is a professor of erratic subjects (ancient Greek, attention, artistic collaboration) at various universities around North America, where she appears for a semester at a time as — as she often puts it — "a visiting [whatever]." (Even when she says this out loud, she makes the bracket sign with her hands.) This, I think, is the best catchall description of Carson. Wherever she goes, whatever she does, she is always a "visiting [whatever]."
As an e-mail correspondent, Carson was prompt and friendly but slightly unorthodox. She wrote almost entirely in lowercase letters. Her punctuation was irregular. Some questions she answered with several hundred words, others with only one or two ("no pets"). Others she ignored altogether. Her subject lines contained only punctuation marks: an angle bracket, a comma, parentheses. She always referred to me as "SA" and signed herself "ac." As with her published writing, some of her e-mails were so strange and interesting that reading them made me shake my head in excitement and confusion and wonder.
Here, just to give the flavor, are some excerpts from the e-mails of Anne Carson.
On writing: "we're talking about the struggle to drag a thought over from the mush of the unconscious into some kind of grammar, syntax, human sense; every attempt means starting over with language. starting over with accuracy. i mean, every thought starts over, so every expression of a thought has to do the same. every accuracy has to be invented. . . . i feel i am blundering in concepts too fine for me."
On ice bats: "I made up ice bats, there is no such thing."
On teaching: "when i began to be published, people got the idea that i should 'teach writing,' which i have no idea how to do and don't really believe in. so now and then i find myself engaged by a 'writing program' (as at nyu, stanford) and have to bend my wits to deflect the official purpose."
On contradiction: "i realize all this sounds both chaotic and dishonest and probably that is the case. contradiction is the test of reality, as Simone Weil says."
On insects: "i admire the parsimony of ladybugs." (Admittedly, I baited her into this one with a description of my daughter's plastic ladybug biodome, in which the whole colony survives for weeks at a time on two water-soaked raisins. But still, that was Carson's response.)
I was e-mailing with Carson on the occasion of the publication of her new book, "Red Doc >" (that angle-bracket is, yes, a part of the title: "Red Doc >" was the default name Carson's word-processing program gave to the file, and she stuck with it). "Red Doc >," too, is arguably not poetry. Most of the text runs like a racing stripe down the center of the page, with a couple of inches of empty space on either side. This form was also a result of an accident with the computer. Carson hit a wrong button, and it made the margins go crazy. She found this instantly liberating. The sentences, with one click, went from prosaic to strange, and finally Carson understood — after years of frustration — how her book was actually supposed to work.
"Red Doc >" is the sequel — sort of — to Carson's most popular book, "Autobiography of Red," which was published in 1998. In the intervening 15 years, "Red" has become known as one of the crossover classics of contemporary poetry: poetry that can seduce even people who don't like poetry. It boasts one of the more impressive roster of blurbs you are ever likely to see: full-on gushing from Alice Munro, Michael Ondaatje, Susan Sontag. The book is subtitled "A Novel in Verse," but — as usual with Carson — neither "novel" nor "verse" quite seems to apply. It begins as if it were a critical study of the ancient Greek poet Stesichoros, with special emphasis on a few surviving fragments he wrote about a minor character from Greek mythology, Geryon, a winged red monster who lives on a red island herding red cattle. Geryon is most famous as a footnote in the life of Herakles, whose 10th labor was to sail to that island and steal those cattle — in the process of which, almost as an afterthought, he killed Geryon by shooting him in the head with an arrow.
"Autobiography of Red" purports to be Geryon's autobiography. Carson transposes Geryon's story, however, into the modern world, so that he is suddenly not just a monster but a moody, artsy, gay teenage boy navigating the difficulties of sex and love and identity. His chief tormentor is Herakles, a charismatic ne'er-do-well who ends up breaking Geryon's heart. The book is strange and sweet and funny, and the remoteness of the ancient myth crossed with the familiarity of the modern setting (hockey practice, buses, baby sitters) creates a particularly Carsonian effect: the paradox of distant closeness.
"Red Doc >" is both close to and distant from its predecessor. The cast of characters has changed almost entirely. Geryon is referred to only as G. (The book is obsessed with initials and acronyms, which G at one point calls "name rations.") Geryon has returned to his pre-Herakles state as a herdsman, lovingly tending a group of musk oxen. This idyllic life is interrupted, however, when he meets a woman named Ida, who introduces herself by knocking him unconscious with a two-by-four. The two of them, along with a traumatized war veteran called SBG (Sad But Great), embark on a picaresque road trip. There is a dreamlike journey into the heart of a glacier, where Geryon meets a flock of ice bats: "They are blueblack. They are absolutely silent. They are the size of toasters." There is a sweet lyrical passage in which Carson takes us inside the mind of Geryon's favorite musk ox, Io, as she wakes up one morning. There is a combination auto-repair shop/psychiatric hospital. There is an erupting volcano. Throughout the book we hear from a kind of Greek chorus — called, mysteriously, Wife of Brain — which pops in to comment elliptically on the action.
"Red Doc >" is more difficult than "Autobiography of Red"; its style is fragmentary, its pace herky-jerky, its rhythms of information trickier to pick up. When I asked Carson if she felt any pressure to follow up her most popular book with a similar book, she answered firmly: "no. Red Doc> seems a different book and i'm a different person and everyone who read the A of Red has moved on by now."
The new book was also, for Carson, much more difficult to write. She wrote "Autobiography of Red" in less than a year, happily. "it made sense to me all the way through as a work, as an offering," she wrote in an e-mail. "Red Doc >," by contrast, was "a mess, obstacle course, uphill grapple in the dark, almost totally disoriented and discontented experiment every minute of the thousand or so years it took to work out."
It actually took somewhere between 9 and 11 years, off and on. In the beginning, "Red Doc >" was set in a hut just off Manhattan's West Side Highway. For a while it was a play. Carson says it was terrible for years: boring, conventional, sentimental. She gave it to her husband a couple of times, and he strongly disliked it. Finally she decided to start from scratch and write the book, in pencil, in a red notebook someone gave her. When the notebook was full, the book was done. She did some revision, gave it to Knopf, then changed her mind and took it back, then worked on it some more, then gave it back to Knopf.
The dedication page of "Red Doc >" reads simply: "To the randomizer." The term suggests, in light of Carson's work, all kinds of tantalizing possibilities: an ancient deity or a private muse or some kind of supercomputer deep in an undersea cave, powered by whale song and squid tears and sea-filtered traces of honey-wheat Grecian sunlight.
But the randomizer, it turns out, is just a regular man. "Oh," Carson told me when I asked her about it. "That's him." She pointed to her husband, Robert Currie, who was sitting in the chair next to her, wearing jeans and tennis shoes, with his long gray hair pulled back off his face.
Our e-mail correspondence had gone reasonably well, so Carson agreed to meet me in person on a brief trip to New York. We met at a gallery in Chelsea, where we watched a video of a naked Icelandic man playing his guitar in a bathtub. Then we headed to a nearby restaurant for coffee and tea. This is where I brought up the randomizer.
"Are you wearing your shirt?" Carson asked Currie. (She always refers to him as "Currie.") Currie stood up and unbuttoned his long-sleeved flannel to expose a black T-shirt. Its front, sure enough, said "Randomizer." On the back was a reproduction of one of Carson's volcano paintings. (Carson is obsessed with volcanoes.)
"That's one of my better volcanoes, I think," she said.
I asked them where the randomizer nickname came from.
"It's more than a nickname," Carson said. "I would say it's a functional epithet." (Carson, as a classical scholar, likes to be precise about such things.)
Currie is the randomizer, it transpires, because he does many things for many people. He loves to collaborate with everyone, everywhere, on everything. Once a year, he and Carson teach a course together at N.Y.U. called Egocircus, which is about the art of collaboration. Currie has helped Carson design her last two books: "Nox," an accordion-style book in a box, and "Antigonick," an unorthodox translation, with handwritten text, of Sophocles's "Antigone." Sometimes he and Carson even use a random integer generator to reorder her work. "It saves you a lot of worry," Carson says about randomness. "You know, all that thinking."
In the 15 years since the publication of "Autobiography of Red," Currie has been perhaps the biggest change in Carson's life and work. If she was already leaning hard toward a rejection of official categories and genres (which she was), Currie gave her a sturdy shove into the interdisciplinary abyss. "I was bored with my work, pretty generally," Carson told me. "And he said, 'Well, let's put dancers in it.' So we did." Together, they turned a sonnet cycle into a grand spectacle featuring modern dancers, live and projected on a screen, arranged around Carson reading. They're now planning to blow up that spectacle into something even larger: a choral work featuring dueling choirs, with somewhere between 200 and 10,000 voices. (Carson says that their collaborator, a former member of the Icelandic band Sigur Ros, wants to use 10,000 Estonian singers — "which," she said, "is the whole population of Estonia.") As Currie became increasingly visible in Carson's career, people at readings and performances eventually started asking what exactly he did. There was no good answer, so the two of them invented a term: he was the randomizer. That's when Carson had the shirt made.
In person, Carson and Currie seem amusingly, but fascinatingly, mismatched, a bit like the disparate elements in Carson's work. Currie is short and bouncy and relentlessly social; he always seems to be talking and laughing. He likes to use the word "swell." Carson is tall, still, shy, cautious, measured. In person, she can be surprisingly casual; she laughs easily and seems willing to chat about anything. In public, she tends to watch, eyebrows raised, from a distance. When a room of several hundred people laughs, she will smile very slightly. Currie says he draws energy from other people, whereas being around other people tends to drain the energy out of Carson. This, he said, is because everybody wants something from her, whereas no one has any idea who he is.
Currie walks slowly; Carson walks fast. Currie eats tiny amounts. Carson (according to Currie) eats multiple heaping plates. Currie sits courtside at every Detroit Pistons game he can get to. Carson has been only once or twice and found it much too loud. ("We sat right next to where the girls with blue underwear are," she recalled. "We could see all the action.")
They don't even agree on how they met. In Currie's version, he was working the book table at one of Carson's readings in Ann Arbor when, during the reception — while everyone else was enjoying the feast (it featured a shrimp volcano) — Carson brought him a plate of food.
"I have no memory of this," Carson said.
In her version, Currie was suddenly just hanging around. "There you were, and then you were there more."
Now he is there all the time. Every time I saw Carson in New York, they were together, chatting, challenging each other's claims, nudging each other affectionately.
The day after our meeting, Carson led a performance of "Antigonick" in a small theater at N.Y.U. More than 700 people R.S.V.P.'d for 300 available seats. The crowd overflowed not only the theater but also the lobby, where the performance would be broadcast on screens via Skype. The security guard was alarmed. People kept using the phrase "rock concert."
For the performance, Carson was wearing what she called her "Oscar Wilde suit": slim plaid pants, a long dark coat with white stitching on the lapels and a bright red necktie featuring a picture of Geryon. N.Y.U. originally asked Carson to conduct a "public conversation" about "Antigonick" with Judith Butler, the superstar academic gender theorist. Carson said there was nothing in the world she would enjoy less. (This was not so much a reflection on Butler as on conversing in public.) Carson suggested this performance instead, with Butler cast in the part of Kreon the tyrant.
It was, by all accounts, a grand success. Butler, as Kreon, was hilarious: small in stature, gigantic in influence. As the voice of the chorus, Carson was characteristically otherworldly. She stood very still and upright, eyebrows perpetually slightly raised. She did not, by contrast, seem to enjoy the mandatory postperformance Q. and A. The stage was full of academics. There were roughly 34,000 questions about Hegel, most of which Butler fielded. Carson, in the brief moments she couldn't avoid speaking, kept bouncing questions back to the audience. Her most memorable contribution was the delivery, out of nowhere, of a terrible joke. "Where do otters come from?" she asked, and then without pause or inflection delivered the punch line: "otter space." The crowd roared with laughter. Carson smiled slightly.
Where does Anne Carson come from? There are several ways to answer this. The first is Canada. She was born and grew up there, the daughter of a banker. Because of the nature of the Canadian financial system, in which bankers are circulated like coins, the family was forced to move more or less constantly. Carson's steadiest companions were her books.
The second answer to the question is Michigan, where Carson lives now. She moved to Ann Arbor, years ago, to teach at the university. Although she no longer teaches there, she has remained, because she's in love with her house: a 1957 Frank Lloyd Wright-ish building with, she says, windows that make her feel as if she's simultaneously inside and outside. Currie, who grew up in Michigan, doesn't love living there — he wants to be in New York — but Carson can't bring herself to leave.
The third answer to the question of Anne Carson's origin is ancient Greece. She discovered the Greek language in high school and took to it immediately. Since then she has spent a large percentage of her mental life inhabiting that distant world: learning to think in its rhythms, tracing its influences on English. Over the last 30 years, she has taught scores of college courses in Greek, an experience she describes — with rare positivity — as "a total joy."
When I asked Carson what appealed to her so much as a teenager about Greek, she answered, "It just seemed to me the best language." I asked her to elaborate. "It's just intrinsic," she said. "Just a different experience." I asked her to describe the nature of that experience. "It's just like what it is," she said. "If it were like something else, you could do the other thing. It's just like itself. I really can't analogize." This launched us into a five-minute circular conversation that felt like an allegory of the futility of all human language. "That's as far as we can go with that," she said.
Carson did admit, in the end, that part of her desire to learn Greek came from her childhood desire to be Oscar Wilde — classically educated, elegantly dressed, publicly witty.
I asked her when she stopped wanting this.
"I didn't," she said. "Who could stop? It's unachieved, as yet."
The most animated moments in my discussions with Carson came when she spoke about boredom, which she can't stand. ("I will do anything to avoid boredom," she once wrote. "It is the task of a lifetime.") When she writes, she has a constant drive to feel as if she's doing something new with every sentence. When she lectures, regardless of the subject, she wants to uproot people.
"I'm really trying to make people's minds move, you know, which is not something they're naturally inclined to do," she told me. "We have a kind of inertia, sitting and listening. But it's really important to get somehow into the mind and make it move somewhere it has never moved before. That happens partly because the material is mysterious or unknown but mostly because of the way you push the material around from word to word in a sentence. And it's that that I'm more interested in doing, generally, than mystifying by having unexpected content or bizarre forms. It's more like: Given whatever material we're going to talk about, and we all know what it is, how can we move within it in a way we've never moved before, mentally? That seems like the most exciting thing to do with your head. I think it's a weakness to fall back into merely mystifying the audience, which anybody can do. You know, throw in a bit of Hegel. Who knows what that means? But to actually take a piece of Hegel and move it around in a way that shows you something about Hegel is a satisfying challenge."
There is hardly a pause before she added, in her usual deadpan, "So maybe I didn't make any clear point there, but I was impassioned."
"You were," Currie said, laughing. "I've never seen you so heated."
Toward the end of "Red Doc >," the story leaps into tragic territory: the death of Geryon's mother. They are some of the saddest pages I've ever read. "And the reason he cannot bear her dying is not the loss of her (which is the future) but that dying puts the two of them (now) into this nakedness together that is unforgivable. They do not forgive it. He turns away. This roaring air in his arms. She is released." When I told Carson how devastating this was, she seemed surprised. She said she couldn't quite tell.
"I somehow wrote that book without having any relation to it," she said.
In the days that followed, I thought about this statement and realized I had no idea what it meant. Carson was back in Michigan by then, so I sent her one last e-mail, asking her to explain. This, in its entirety, was her response:
1 a particle is a thing in itself. a wave is a disturbance in something else. waves themselves are probably not disturbed.
2 there are some big particles inside Red Doc> — of information (ice), of grief (mother), of caprice (musk ox mind) — but by the time i wrote them down i had moved out to the condition of wave.
3 maybe i'm just saying that i'm a tough old bugger.
4 remember Monica Vitti saying, I can't watch the sea for a long time or what's happening on land doesn't interest me anymore


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Have you ever wondered exactly why a bride carries flowers down the aisle, or why a […]
Please don't delay to get in touch to book a private viewing to see what Birtsmorton Court has to offer. Viewings can be organised from Monday to Saturday, between 9.00am and 4.00pm.
We'd love to tell you more. For prices, menus, photos and a whole lot of additional information about Birtsmorton Court as a venue for your wedding please click the button below to request a brochure.
"Wow, what an incredible weekend! Thank you so much for everything in the run up to the day and on the day itself. It seemed to run so smoothly but we know this is down to the Birtsmorton team in the background. It really was an amazing day and we couldn't have asked for more! We have had so many comments from our guests about the venue, it really was amazing." Heather & Chris, June 2017
Birtsmorton Court is an exclusive-use wedding venue nestled at the foot of the rolling Malvern Hills in the Worcestershire countryside. The Court is still fully moated and boasts a unique architecture dating back to 1241. There are many spots to enjoy around the grounds, including The Terrace, a veranda overlooking the waters of the moat, and The White Garden surrounded by topiary and filled with white roses, foxgloves and wisteria. It's not all about the gardens, this place is full of history too. There's even a mention of Birtsmorton Court in the Doomsday Book.
With the borders of Gloucestershire, Herefordshire and Worcestershire all close by, Birtsmorton Court is within easy reach of Ledbury, Malvern, Tewkesbury and The Cotswolds, as well as Cheltenham, Gloucester, Hereford, Worcester, Oxford, Birmingham and Bristol. As one of the easiest to reach wedding venues in the heart of the West Midlands, we're only a couple of hours from London too, so if you are looking to head out of The City for a wedding in the countryside, you'll find we are the perfect location.


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The soft yolk in the poached eggs mixes with the juicy fried tomatoes and provides a quick sauce for this delicious breakfast.
Servings: person
- Place a medium saucepan onto a medium/high heat and bring to the boil, add the vinegar.
- Cut the tomatoes in half and add the butter to a medium frying pan, place the tomatoes into the frying pan cut side down, fry for 2-3 minutes until you have a nice colour, then turn over and cook for a further 2-3 minutes.
- Crack 1 egg into a small ramekin, lower the heat of the water to just simmering, Slowly pour the egg into the water, crack the second egg into the ramekin and pour that into the water on the other side of the saucepan, allow them to cook for 3-4 minutes for soft yolk eggs, cook longer if you prefer a hard yolk.
- Slice the avocado and run a knife through the avocado flesh, then scoop out ready to place on the cooked tomatoes.
- Remove the eggs to some kitchen paper to drain off the excess water, when the tomatoes are cooked, place them onto a plate, add the avocado and top with the poached eggs.
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The SRC was mandated by the university statute under part XIII subsection 67 to write its constitution that shall be aligned with the university statutes which shall be approved by council. The BIUST SRC constitutions preamble which states "We, the students of Botswana International University of Science and Technology(BIUST), are an important part of the University community, and are therefore entitled to an active role in deciding its policies and priorities.
Our Committees
The BIUST SRC has put in place committees in order to deliver on its mandate.
Eight portfolios of the thirteen (13) have committees which report to their respective ministers. The remaining five portfolios which are the Presidency, Vice-presidency, Secretary General, Treasurer and Administrative Secretary are domiciled in the Office of the President.
Former SRC Presidents and others chosen by the incumbent President constitute the Office of the President. This crop of student leadership is mandated with addressing student needs and ensuring continuity of the work of previous SRCs. The Office of the President reports to the SRC.
The BIUST SRC also has a campus committee that reports to ministers.
Each class has a class representative who reports to the level representative. The latter reports to a faculty representative who reports to the SRC.
The BIUST SRC has 13 portfolios;
- Presidency
- Vice-Presidency
- Secretary General
- Treasurer
- Administrative Secretary
- Publicity and Communications
- Student Welfare and Advocacy
- Sports and Recreation
- Health and Safety
- International Affairs
- Entertainment and Culture
- Community Outreach
- Academic Affairs


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XVENT Crop
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XVENT Crop
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The XVENT Crop provides essential support, comfort and coverage, keeping you focused on the run.
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Great moisture management is ensured through the use of high-filament nylon yarn, while PWX fabric technology reduces bounce. Wide straps deliver a secure fit, while the racer back design ensures a low-profile feel and cohesive look under a racer back singlet.
- PWX fabric technology for support, comfort and coverage
- Polygiene® for lifetime antibacterial and odour protection


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Browsing Recipes similiar to Sautéed Eggplant, the "Cèpes of the Poor".
Cèpes Sautéed in Oil in the Style of Bordeaux
garlic, parsley, black pepper, +vegetable oil, +lemon juice
Sautéed Peppers in the Style of Béarn
duck fat, black pepper, +peppers, +sherry vinegar
Corn & Little Tomato Saut&..
Shrimp and Sugar Snap Saut&eac..
salt, black pepper, garlic, parsley, +texas toast, +butter, +shrimp, +sugar snap pea, +grape tomatoes, +lemon zest, +lemon
Pan‐Sautéed Moulard Duck Breasts (Master Recipe) with Shallot Vinaigrette
Chicken and Asparagus Saut&eac..
salt, black pepper, garlic, +flour, +chicken, +vegetable oil, +chicken broth, +asparagus, +grape tomatoes, +green onion, +dill weed
Sauté of Chicken with Peppers, Ham, and Tomatoes
black pepper, duck fat, garlic, sugar, parsley, +chicken, +flour, +pancetta, +onions, +red pepper, +prosciutto, +ham, +tomato sauce
Greek Chicken Saut&eacute
black pepper, +flour, +olive oil, +peppers, +onions, +water, +grape tomatoes, +lemon zest, +feta cheese, +dill weed
Sautéed Zucchini & Chickpeas
A simple recipe which I found in the June 2002 issue of the 'Australian Good Taste' magazine, in a bring-a-dish for eight menu plan. Obviously, the recipe...
black pepper, salt, +butter, +chickpeas, +olive oil, +zucchini
www.recipezaar.com - Similiar recipes
Sauté of Tomatoes, Red Peppers, and Zuc chini
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When the single-wheeled dominated the market for scooter, Moben Global Inc. rolled out FOSJOAS two-wheeled intelligent scooter V9. FOSJOAS V9 came as a surprise to the scooter-lovers and the whole sector. The original two-wheeled structure caused a big sensation in the market and has to go down in the history of electric scooter. But then, FOSJOAS V9 has become a predecessor, Moben Global Inc. added FOSJOAS U3, a brand new model, to the family of FOSJOAS two-wheeled scooter.
FOSJOAS intelligent self-balancing scooter U3 inherits the same frame and a part of design notion from its predecessor. The control shaft, the standing board and the two wheeled make up the whole frame of U3 like V9. That is to say, U3 is a refinement of V9.
Apart from inheriting, there are some innovations in U3. U3 adopts the larger wheels than V9, which enables U3 overcome any tough terrains. It is a piece of cake for U3 to pass through the stony path or muddy path. Therefore, FOSJOAS U3 is hailed as the personal SUV.
In respect of performance, a more powerful battery is quipped in FOSJOAS electric self-balancing scooter U3. The SONY battery core offers a longer range than V9. The top range of FOSJOAS U3 reach as much as 50 km. It saves the user the frequent charge and also lower the odds of blackout halfway.
Another considerate design is worth valuing. The fender is mounted on FOSJOAS U3. This fender shield FOSJOAS U3 from muddy water. As a personal SUV, U3 naturally needs to pass some muddy paths. The muddy paths are unavoidable. If the muddy water is plashed over FOSJOAS U3, it is bad for the maintenance of U3. Therefore, a fender is imperative to be installed on FOSJOAS U3. This goes to prove FOSJOAS's attentiveness to the details.
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When it comes to search engine optimization & other digital marketing services, every SEO Agency promises to take your company to the top. Does that mean, everyone can be on the top? Certainly not! SEO is much more than just getting high Google Rankings, it is beyond just a few keywords. After all, the entire point of getting your webpage optimised for search engines is that you get a more customers who will buy your product or engage your service. In other words, it is about converting visitors to customers. It is about getting organic traffic to your website, so that conversions can happen for your business.
We are a Digital marketing company in Bangalore that combines the experience of tried and tested methods with novel ideas to tactfully work our way through Google's complex algorithms and deliver consistent results that will accelerate your growth. Trysocio is a team of SEO experts who do what they love, so work turns to ardour and that delivers perfection. For us search engine optimization is not just about a start to finish strategy, we think of SEO Strategy as a cycle and invent online marketing ideas that will keep you going time and again. Let the fireworks begin.
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Ideas are dime a dozen. Ever think what makes the ones that hit it off, tick? We are the kind of digital marketing company that does the thinking for you and we think deep. Well, if you delve deep into the crevices and shine the torchlight, you can see that it's all about bringing the right ingredients together and then working them into a masterpiece. We are an SEO company that generate ideas that can blow your expectations, renders you with expert brand development combining digital craftsmanship and out of the box thinking.
We begin with taking the time to understand your business, and then conduct extensive market research to understand the competition in your niche and the buying patterns of your targeted customers and design a customised SEO and digital marketing strategy that will tap the market for you getting your brand a better awareness and digital growth in the form of online sales. We follow an all-round approach, leaving no stone unturned and deliver record-breaking results at the most competitive pricing.
Your idea is your baby, and we are the perfect baby formula, adapting ourselves to its specific needs and driving the idea in the right direction. With the best professionals coming with several combined years of digital marketing experience and an in-depth understanding of the intricate workings of the best SEO & Social media strategies, we nourish your idea with all the right elements and when it's all grown up, flourishing and vibrant; we keep up with the progress just to make sure that everything is on the right track. As an SEO Company, every action we take is centered on the specific objectives of our clientele.
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Carbs Per Serving: 20 Grams Carbs Total Recipe
Effort: Easy
8 ounces spinach
4 eggs
400 grams salmon
4 tablespoons mayonnaise
1 small onion
How to Prepare:
Spinach – fresh or frozen, cook and squeeze out moisture then finely chop. Beat in 4 egg yolks. Whisk the egg whites and fold into the mixture. Place in a swiss roll tin (flat baking tray) lined with non stick baking paper.
Bake at 200c 400f for approx 12 minutes. Turn out and allow to cool.
Mix 400 gms of salmon, cooked fresh or tinned, with 4 tablespoons of mayonnaise and 1 small onion chopped finely. Spread along the
roulade and roll up like a swiss roll. Place back in oven for 15 to 20 minutes.
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Why Are People More Interested in Norman Mailer's Penis or Martin Amis's Teeth Than in Their Books?
French, Sean, New Statesman (1996)
Clive James wrote that he gave up writing his Observer TV column when he started seeing the same ideas coming around and being acclaimed as original. Now it's not just a matter of ideas. Is it me, or are there more anniversaries than there used to be?
At the moment there are celebrations accompanying the 30th anniversary of the first: episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus. There is a documentary, a book, repeats. A nation rejoices. But didn't we go through all this for the 25th anniversary? I remember a documentary presented by the comedy producer John Lloyd that featured all the same stories that are being told this time around.
We are paying a terrible price for living in an age when the people running BBC television are of the generation who spent much of the early seventies in playgrounds across Britain doing funny walks, pretending to be gumbies (the one impersonation that everybody could manage) and doing impromptu performances of the four Yorkshiremen sketch.
I was a schoolboy in the early seventies so I used to love it as well, but I now seem to have a much clearer memory of the story behind the show than I have of the show itself. I know about the different titles that were considered, such as Owl Stretching (I've never seen anybody mention that the Monty Python title itself was, in its surreal, Edwardian militariness, a variation on Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, which had come eu! two years earlier-perhaps it's too obvious). I've heard about the resistance of the stuck-up BBC. I'm familiar with the combinations in which they wrote.
Haven't the Pythons got better things to do than talk about themselves again? In the case of Eric Idle and Terry Jones the answer is decidedly not. Outside of Python, has Idle created a single thing that's funny, apart from the strange semi-Californian accent in which he now speaks? (Imagine if back in 1970 you had been told that the two most successful Pythons in the nineties would be Terry Gilliam and Michael Palin.)
Are we more compelled by the story behind the thing rather than the thing itself? The biography of a writer, rather than the books the writer wrote? I've just edited a book called The Faber Book of Writers on Writers, which is in some ways the fragmentary history of how people started being drawn not just to the books but to the person who wrote them. It consists of pieces written by writers about meeting other famous writers and moves from Shakespeare's time, in which there seems to have been no interest at all in the details of a writer's life, up to the present day, in which people are more interested in Norman Mailer's penis or Martin Amis's teeth than in their books. …


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Boozy Sparkling Cider Float
Last year while at Minnesota Renaissance Festival, Porter and I tried sparkling apple cider floats for the first time. It was nice... refreshing while still being "seasonal". The bright flavour from the sparkling cider constrasted the rich creaminess of the ice cream well.
So of course we went home and made our own. A little less G-rated, our home version was made with our Homemade Hard Apple Cider. SO good!
This year we did it again, but played with the ingredients a little. Instead of using hard apple cider, we used a complimentary liqueur. Very tasty, and a really fun take on a childhood tradition of rootbeer floats... as my husband pointed out:
"Like growing up on hamburgers, and then having an Apple Chicken Burger with Basil and Gouda... really similar base, and has that nostalgia ... but wow this is cool and different. I'm trying not to say 'it tastes like fall in a glass', because I think I could easily overuse that phrase, and it kind of makes me want to punch myself in the face."
Boozy Sparkling Cider Float
- 2 oz Apple or Maple Flavoured Crown Royal *
- Sparkling Apple Cider or Apple Juice
- 1 Large Scoop Vanilla Ice Cream **
- Pour Crown Royal into a tall mug. Add sparkling juice/cider, filling the glass a little more than ⅔ full. Stir gently.
- Add ice cream scoop, serve immediately
Interested in boozy culinary experiments? You'll LOVE my first cookbook, The Spirited Baker!
Combining liqueurs with more traditional baking ingredients can yield spectacular results.Try Mango Mojito Upside Down Cake, Candy Apple Flan, Jalapeno Beer Peanut Brittle, Lynchburg Lemonade Cupcakes, Pina Colada Rum Cake, Strawberry Daiquiri Chiffon Pie, and so much more.
To further add to your creative possibilities, the first chapter teaches how to infuse spirits to make both basic and cream liqueurs, as well as home made flavor extracts! This book contains over 160 easy to make recipes, with variation suggestions to help create hundreds more! Order your hard copy here, or digital edition here.


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The Kano State government's anti-corruption agency yesterday announced its suspension of a probe into the financial dealings of the Emirate Council.
The Kano State Public Complaints and Anti-corruption Commission was investigating alleged misuse of N6 billion by the palace.
The State's House of Assembly launched a separate investigation of the Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi II, following allegations of funds misappropriation, "defamation of character, breach of oath of office/oath of allegiance, abuse of office privileges and protocol, and political and religious interference".
The chairman of the anti-corruption body, Muhyi Gado, said the commission was suspending its probe "indefinitely".
He said the commission could not continue as the House was also conducting an investigation.
Gado declined further comments.


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There are many items to take into consideration as one is planning a Pennsylvania wedding. Some of the more commonly thought of items include where the ceremony will take place, what type of reception will be held and who will be in the wedding party. Another important part of the planning process involves the discussion of and planning for the couple's assets and finances in case of death or divorce.
The average couple typically does not want to think about what could happen later on to bring an end to their marital bliss. However, there is always a possibility that something will happen, someone will get sick or the couple will simple grow apart. A prenuptial agreement is a tool that lets the couple go ahead and address these issues prior to the wedding ceremony.
For many, the prenuptial agreement is used as a discussion tool. In today's society, the average bride and groom are older and are bringing more assets into the marriage. The prenuptial agreement opens the door to an honest discussion regarding which assets should be considered marital property, the exact assets and liabilities that an individual is bringing into the marriage, and how each item should be treated in case one of them dies or they decide to divorce.
The prenuptial agreement is not the most romantic part of wedding planning in Pennsylvania. Yet, it is often one of the most beneficial parts in that it creates a platform for open communication and future planning. As a part of the process, each individual will want to have an experienced attorney prepare or review the document.
Source: brides.com, "The Prenuptial Agreement, Post-nuptial Agreement, and Everything In-Between", Jaimie Mackey, May 24, 2017


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Whenever the Church has abandoned the notion of beauty, it has lost precisely the power that it hoped to cultivate - its ability to reach souls in the modern world. - Dana Gioia, DSPT Fellow
The Sacred Arts concentration is designed for students who wish to explore theoretical and practical applications of the fine arts, architecture and music to Catholic worship and liturgy.
Whether you choose the MA Theology degree or the Certificate of Theological Studies, the Sacred Arts concentration brings together three intrinsically connected elements: art, liturgy, and "sacred performance," which includes sacred music, sacred art, and liturgical preaching.
This 48-unit degree program is designed for those interested in obtaining a broad theological foundation (including Church history, Biblical Studies, moral theology, and non-Christian religious studes) for more focused learning in the sacred arts. Graduates from this program typically pursue areas such as doctoral studies, teaching, or lay ecclesial ministry.
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This 12-unit program option is recommended for those who already have a working knowledge of a specific art medium or Catholic worship and wish to augment their expertise with a specialized focus in the relationship of the fine arts to Catholic worship and culture. To complete the CTS program with a specialization in Sacred Arts, the student must complete the four courses indicated below, typically over two or more semesters.
For program details, see the DSPT Student Handbook.
Always consult the Student Handbook for program details.
Christopher Renz, OP
Anselm Ramelow, OP
Augustine Thompson, OP
David Clayton
Kathryn Barush, Art History and Religion
Harry Cronin, CSC, Theological Aesthetics, Theater
Ron Nakason Buddhist, Art and Culture
Rossitza Schroeder, Art History, Medieval Studies
Devin Zuber, American Studies, Literature