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[Home][2020 Index]
Dan, Work that Antonio DeQueroz has done showed that the "effective" coupling of a magnifier is about the same as that of a classic Tesla coil. Therefore the quenching demands are no higher than that of a classic Tesla coil. This was all discussed on this list quite a few years ago. The math shows that there is a way to use a very fast quench to possibly get better performance from a magnifier by quickly trapping all the energy in the extra coil, but a normal static gap or even a series rotary gap cannot quench fast enough to achieve this. It might be possible with some sort of solid state "gap" or hydrogen thyratron however, and I'm surprised no one has tried it yet as far as I know. Some folks are using extra high voltages from their power transformer in their magnifiers, and this is what permits the series rotary gaps to work OK. John -----Original Message----- From: Daniel Kunkel <dankunkel@xxxxxxxxx> To: Futuret <futuret@xxxxxxx>; Tesla Coil Mailing List <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Wed, Jan 29, 2020 7:34 pm Subject: Re: [TCML] "Modern" Spark Gap Designs? John,I agree with you, but this being a magnifier with a lot of coupling demands more attention to quenching that a two coil system.~DanKansas city area On Wed, Jan 29, 2020 at 6:30 PM Futuret via Tesla <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: I agree that 3.5 HP seems like overkill. I also agree that the rotary gap alone should be sufficient for excellent quenching. I don't think that the concept of over-quenching exists. I think that what is often referred to as over-quenching is simply that the voltage is having trouble firing across so many series and rotary gap electrodes, causing the firing to become sporadic and unsteady. I define quenching as something that occurs after the gap actually fires. Quenching depends more on the energy being drawn out of the system by being burned up in the output spark streamers. Basically quenching takes care of itself as long as the electrodes don't overheat. I agree that an excess number of series gaps just wastes energy, even if the coil manages to run smoothly. John -----Original Message----- From: David Rieben <drieben@xxxxxxx> To: Tesla Coil Mailing List <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Wed, Jan 29, 2020 6:32 pm Subject: Re: [TCML] "Modern" Spark Gap Designs? 3.5 hp DC motor? Unless you already have this motor in your possession, that seems rather large for turning the rotary gap assembly of a <10 kVA SG coil. I believe my DC treadmill duty motor is rated up to 2.5 hp and it is PLENTY of motor for turning my 12" x 1/2" G-10 rotor with its (8) 3/8" dia. X 2" long tungsten flying electrodes. Each of the tungsten flying electrodes also have a 3/8" aluminum shaft collar on each side of the disc, so there is a total of 16 of those shaft collars that are being flung around, too. They help to secure the flying electrodes in place on the disc as well as assist in their cooling. I control the motor's speed via a small panel mounted variac and a FWB rectifier to give infinite speed control of the ASYNCHRONOUS spark gap assembly. My stationary electrodes are (2) ea. 1/2" dia. X 3" long solid tungsten rods that are each simply mounted in 1 1/4" brass square stock that is about 2" long, and is also mounted against a 1/8" thick x 4" diameter brass disc, to help dissipate the heat, and is mounted against a lexan frame housing. I have found that this provides all of the quenching that I need and I run my coil at power levels that often exceed 15 kVA and can approach 20 kVA! From my experience, it seems that you can get to a point where you may actually over quench the gap when you start stacking multiple series spark gaps. I think someone has pointed out that each spark gap typically drops several hundred volts, so if you have a whole bunch of seriesed gaps, you're gonna be losing some significant power in your gaps, too. Finally, Gary is correct about the PVC deteriorating in the presence of the strong UV that is given off by the spark gap. It will turn a dingy yellowish-brown and loose it's mechanical integrity and also become somewhat conductive. I ended up having to wrap the 2" PVC support pillars of my primary circuit assembly with aluminum duct tape to reflect away and protect their surfaces from the intense UV of the spark gap. Hope this helps, David Sent from my iPhone > On Jan 29, 2020, at 12:03 PM, Daniel Kunkel <dankunkel@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > Hello Tesla List! > I am starting to work on my next spark gap for a 6-10 KVA magnifier. It > seems the definitive spark gap design is that from Richard Hull/TCBOR using > a rotary gap (to control timing only) combined with a multiple break series > gap (to control quench only). Is there a better approach for gap design and > construction? > > Currently my plan is to use a 3.5 HP DC motor to spin a G10 disk with > tungsten electrodes and combine it with the PVC + copper tubes + fan series > gap. > > Thanks, > ~Dan > Kansas City area > _______________________________________________ > Tesla mailing list > Tesla@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > https://www.pupman.com/mailman/listinfo/tesla _______________________________________________ Tesla mailing list Tesla@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://www.pupman.com/mailman/listinfo/tesla _______________________________________________ Tesla mailing list Tesla@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://www.pupman.com/mailman/listinfo/tesla _______________________________________________ Tesla mailing list Tesla@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://www.pupman.com/mailman/listinfo/tesla


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Every encounter between reader and text is a kind of exchange. A book lies inert until it you pick it up and begin to read, extracting meaning out of the jumble of markings on the page. Once you've begun reading, your understanding and expectations structure your encounter with each new passage; that text, in turn, affects your subsequent response to the next passage. The exchange continues, back and forth, so that a good book can seem to "suck you in" until you lose track of where you end and the book begins.
This magical connection between reader and book, however, is tenuous, and difficult to maintain. A moment's distraction, and the words are once again just markings on a page. In a way, the exchange is always one-sided; no matter what you do on your end, the text remains the same.
What makes interaction with computers so powerfully absorbing - for better and worse - is the way computers can transform the exchange between reader and text into a feedback loop. Every response you make provokes a reaction from the computer, which leads to a new response, and so on, as the loop from the screen to your eyes to your fingers on the keyboard to the computer to the screen becomes a single cybernetic circuit.
Of course, there's many different kinds of software, and different levels of engagement with computers. Using a word processor is a fairly disengaged activity. You see the words appear on the screen as you type, but the rest is up to you. Surfing the web offers a moderate degree of engagement, as the term "browsing" implies. The feedback is incremental rather than fluid - each new page offers a series of discrete options; each surfing choice brings up a new page of hyperlinks. For a sense of full immersion, there's nothing like a computer game, in which the computer responds almost instantaneously to every action of the player, which in turn provokes a new reaction from the player, and so on.
If the feedback loop between user and computer is what is most distinctive about human-computer interaction, then computer games are in many ways the quintessential software products. Looking more closely at the dynamics of computer games, then, may help us understand the new interactive possibilities opened up by computer software.
A Brief History of Computer Games
Playing games on computers was first made possible by the introduction of minicomputers in the late 1950s. Freed from the IBM punch card bureaucracy, programmers for the first time were able to explore the possibilities opened up by hands-on interaction with computers. Games were among the first programs attempted by the original "hackers," undergraduate members of MIT's Tech Model Railroad Club. The result, in 1962, was the collaborative development of the first computer game: Spacewar, a basic version of what would become the Asteroids arcade game, played on a $120,000 DEC PDP-1. (Levy, 1984; Wilson, 1992; Laurel, 1993) Computer designer Brenda Laurel points out this early recognition of the centrality of computer games as models of human-computer interaction:
Why was Spacewar the "natural" thing to build with this new technology? Why not a pie chart or an automated kaleidoscope or a desktop? Its designers identified action as the key ingredient and conceived Spacewar as a game that could provide a good balance between thinking and doing for its players. They regarded the computer as a machine naturally suited for representing things that you could see, control, and play with. Its interesting potential lay not in its ability to perform calculations but in its capacity to represent action in which humans could participate (Laurel, 1993, p. 1).
As computers became more accessible to university researchers through the 1960s, several genres of computer games emerged. Programmers developed chess programs sophisticated enough to defeat humans. The first computer role-playing game, Adventure, was written at Stanford in the 1960s: by typing short phrases, you could control the adventures of a character trekking through a magical landscape while solving puzzles. And in 1970 Scientific American columnist Martin Gardner introduced Americans to LIFE, a simulation of cellular growth patterns written by British mathematician John Conway. LIFE was the first "software toy," an addictively open-ended model of systemic development designed to be endlessly tinkered with and enjoyed (Levy, 1984; Wilson, 1992).
The 1970s, of course, saw the birth of the video arcade, the home video game system, and the personal computer. By the early 1980s, computer game software production had become an industry (Wilson, 1992). And in the past fifteen years, as personal computers' capacities have continued to exponentially expand, computer games have continued to develop, offering increasingly detailed graphics and sounds, growing opportunities for multiple-player interaction via modems and on-line services, and ever-more sophisticated simulation algorithms.
The world of computer games today ranges from arcade-style games emphasizing hand-eye coordination, to role-playing games adding sound and video to the Adventure formula, to simulation games in which players oversee the growth and development of systems ranging from cities to galaxies to alternate life-forms. Computer game publications divide the contemporary field into seven genres: action/arcade, adventure, role-playing adventure, simulation, sports, strategy, and war. Within these categories, of course, there remains much overlap. An empire-building game like Civilization, for example, rests somewhere between a wargame and a simulation, while many adventure games contain arcade-style interludes.1
"Interactive Cinema"
How can we make sense of the new interactive possibilities computer games offer? One popular perspective is to think of computer games a like movies, only more so. Computer game development companies, the argument goes, are "The New Hollywood."2 This analogy has its roots in the changing economics of entertainment production. Over the last few years, Hollywood studios have flocked to Silicon Valley to gain access to the latest computer-generated special-effects techniques, and to position themselves to be able to produce the kind of interactive entertainment to come in the 500-channel future. The "New Hollywood" analogy serves as a helpful model for understanding the process of computer game design. Although in the industry's infancy it was possible for one programmer to write and market a game single-handedly, today computer game production is a complex collaborative process among many specialists. The introduction screens for contemporary games read like movie credits, listing producers, programmers, artists, musicians, and actors. At the top of the credits are the designers, the equivalent to movie directors. In the computer gaming world, designers like Ultima's Lord British, King's Quest's Roberta Williams, and SimCity's Will Wright are respected as auteurs with unique personal visions.
The difference between the New Hollywood and the Old, according to the analogy, is that computer games are "interactive cinema," in which the game player takes on the role of the protagonist. This model particularly fits adventure games such as Sierra On-Line's Gabriel Knight and Phantasmagoria series, which employ digitized video of actors in an attempt to create a movie-like experience. But while production values may have vastly improved since the days of text-based "interactive fiction," the problem designers of contemporary "interactive cinema" face remains the same: how to define "interactive"? How can one give the player a sense of "control" over the game, while still propelling the player through a compelling narrative? The solution, dating back to Adventure and Zork, has always been to set up the game as a series of puzzles. You muddle through the universe of the game - exploring the settings, talking to the characters, acquiring and using objects - until you've accomplished everything necessary to trigger the next stage of the plot. In the process, you're expected to regularly make mistakes, die, and restart the game in a previously saved position.3 Out of the flaws in this system, a whole cottage industry of hint books, 900-numbers, and bulletin boards has developed, to help players stuck halfway through their adventures.
The idea of computer "role-playing" emphasizes the opportunity to identify with the character on the screen - the fantasy is that rather than just watching the hero, you can actually be the hero, or at least make all the hero's decisions yourself. But while classical Hollywood cinema is structured in every way to facilitate "losing yourself" in the fantasy onscreen, the stop-and-go nature of the puzzle-solving paradigm makes it very hard to establish the same level of identification. While adventure games can be a lot of fun, even the best of them can't often deliver what they promise. It's not surprising that the most successful computer game of all time, Myst, is an anomaly, "interactive cinema" without the cinema. Rather than populating the game with the standard digitized B-movie actors, Myst designers Robyn and Rand Miller leave their settings eerily empty, giving the game a stately, haunted feel. Imitators, however, have been unable to match the Millers' command of mood.
A second option in designing "interactive cinema" is to make the game less linear, more hypertextual: rather than railroading the player through a predetermined story line, the game could simply present a series of choices, each branching out into new possibilities, like the children's book series Choose Your Own Adventure. But designers have been reluctant to waste time, money, and disc space on scenes players may never get around to seeing. And in any case, a hypertext model of "interactive cinema" still does little to give the player a sense of real autonomy. The choices remain a limited set of pre-defined options. This certainly increases the complexity of the game: the linear narrative becomes a web, giving the gamer the opportunity to explore the ramifications of various options and map out the game's network of forking paths. But whether a single plot or a network of choices, the world of the game remains as predetermined as that of any film or novel.
All of this is not to say that computer gaming is inherently a more distanced, alienating form of interaction than watching a movie; far from it, as we shall see. But, ironically, those games modeled upon cinema are likely to be the least involving. Hamstrung by the demands of traditional narrative, these games operate under a limited model of computer interaction as a series of distinct decisions. As a result, they don't begin to take advantage of the opportunities for constant interaction and feedback between player and computer the way other forms of computer games can.
SimCity is a very different kind of computer game from Gabriel Knight or Myst. A "simulation game," SimCity gives you the opportunity to orchestrate the building and development of a city. The tremendous success of SimCity demonstrates the surprisingly compelling power of a particular kind of human-computer interaction miles away from "interactive cinema."
SimCity actually didn't start off as a simulation game. As the game's
creator, Will Wright, explains,
Here's a description of the original game from a Maxis catalog:
Of course, however much "freedom" computer game designers grant players, any simulation will be rooted in a set of baseline assumptions. SimCity has been criticized from both the left and right for its economic model. It assumes that low taxes will encourage growth while high taxes will hasten recessions. It discourages nuclear power, while rewarding investment in mass transit. And most fundamentally, it rests on the empiricist, technophilic fantasy that the complex dynamics of city development can be abstracted, quantified, simulated, and micromanaged.4
These are not flaws in the game - they are its founding principles. They can be engaged and debated, and other computer games can be written following different principles. But there could never be an "objective" simulation free from "bias." Computer programs, like all texts, will always be ideological constructions.
The fear of some computer game critics, though, is that technology may
mask the constructedness of any simulation. Science fiction writer and
Byte magazine columnist Jerry Pournelle argues:
Unlike a book or film which one is likely to encounter only once, a
computer game is usually played over and over. The moment it is no longer
interesting is the moment when all its secrets have been discovered, its
limitations exposed. Game designer and author Chris Crawford describes
the hermeneutics of computer games as fundamentally a process of deconstruction
rather than simple interpretation. David Myers observes,
Playing SimCity is a very different experience from playing an adventure game like King's Quest. The interaction between player and computer is constant and intense. Gameplaying is a continuous flow - it can be very hard to stop, because you're always in the middle of dozens of different projects: nurturing a new residential zone in one corner of the map, building an airport in another, saving up money to buy a new power plant, monitoring the crime rate in a particularly troubled neighborhood, and so on. Meanwhile, the city is continually changing, as the simulation inexorably chugs forward from one month to the next (unless you put the game on pause to handle a crisis). By the time you've made a complete pass through the city, a whole new batch of problems and opportunities have developed. If the pace of the city's development is moving too fast to keep up with, the simulation can be slowed down (i.e., it'll wait longer in real-time to move from one month to the next); if you're waiting around for things to happen, the simulation can be speeded up.
As a result, it's easy slide into a routine with absolutely no down-time, no interruptions from complete communion with the computer. The game can grow so absorbing, in fact, your subjective sense of time is distorted (See Myers, 1992). Myers writes, "from personal experience and interviews with other players, I can say it is very common to play these games for eight or more hours without pause, usually through the entire first night of purchase" (Myers, 1991, p. 343). You look up, and all of a sudden it's morning.
It's very hard to describe what it feels like when you're "lost" inside a computer game, precisely because at that moment your sense of self has been fundamentally transformed. Flowing through a continuous series of decisions made almost automatically, hardly aware of the passage of time, you form a symbiotic circuit with the computer, a version of the cyborgian consciousness described by Donna Haraway in her influential "Manifesto for Cyborgs" (1985). The computer comes to feel like an organic extension of your consciousness, and you may feel like an extension of the computer itself.5
This isn't exactly the way the SimCity user's manual puts it. The manual describes your role as a "combination Mayor and City Planner." In Civilization, you're referred to as "Chief," "Warlord," "Prince," "King," or "Emperor" (depending on the skill level), and you can adopt the names of various historical leaders - Abraham Lincoln when playing the Americans, Genghis Khan when leading the Mongols, and so on. But while these titles suggest that you imagine yourself playing a specific "role" along the lines of the "interactive cinema" model, the structures of identification in simulation games are much more complex. Closer to the truth is the setup in Populous, where you're simply God - omnipotent (within the rules of the game), omniscient, and omnipresent. While in some simulations explicitly about politics, like Hidden Agenda and Crisis in the Kremlin, your power and perspective is limited to that of a chief of state, in games like SimCity you're personally responsible for far more than any one leader - or even an entire government - could ever manage. You directly controls the city's budget, economic and residential growth, transportation, police and fire services, zoning, and even entertainment (the "Sims" eventually get mad if you don't build them a stadium). While each function is putatively within the province of government control, the game structure makes you identify as much with the roles of industrialist, merchant, real estate agent, and citizen, as with those of Mayor or City Planner.
For example, in SimCity, the way a new area of town is developed is to "zone" it. You decides whether each parcel of land should be marked for residential, industrial, or commercial use. You can't make the zones develop into thriving homes or businesses; that's determined by the simulation, on the basis of a range of interconnected factors including crime rate, pollution, economic conditions, power supply, and the accessibility of other zones. If you've set up conditions right, an empty residential zone will quickly blossom into a high-rise apartment complex, raising land values, adding tax money to the city's coffers, and increasing the population of the city. If the zone isn't well-integrated into the city, it may stay undeveloped, or degenerate into a crime-ridden slum.
But while you can't control the behavior putatively assigned to the residents of the city - "the Sims" - the identification process at the moment the player zones the city goes beyond simply seeing yourself as "the Mayor," or even as the collective zoning commission. The cost of zoning eats up a substantial portion of a city's budget - much more than it would cost a real city. This is structurally necessary to limit your ability to develop the city, so that building the city is a gradual, challenging process (something close to a narrative, in fact). The effect on gameplay is to see the process less as "zoning" than as buying the land. Not to say that you think of every SimCity building as being owned by the government. But at the moment of zoning, you're not playing the role of mayor, but of someone else - homeowner, landlord, or real estate developer, perhaps, in the case of a residential zone.
We could see playing SimCity, then, as a constant shifting of identifications, depending on whether you're buying land, organizing the police force, paving the roads, or whatever. This, I think, is part of what's going on. But this model suggests a level of disjunction - jumping back and forth from one role to the next - belied by the smooth, almost trance-like state of gameplay. Overarching these functional shifts, I think, is a more general state of identification: with the city as a whole, as a single system.
What does it mean to identify with an entire city? Perhaps attempting to map "roles" onto the player's on-screen identification misses the point. When a player "zones" a land area, she or he is less identifying less with a role than with a process. And the reason that the decision, and the continuous series of decisions the gamer makes, can be made so quickly and intuitively, is that you have internalized the logic of the program, so that you're always able to anticipate the results of your actions. "Losing yourself" in a computer game means, in a sense, identifying with the simulation itself.
Simulation as Cognitive Mapping
In The Condition of Postmodernity, geographer David Harvey argues for
the primacy of spatialization in constructing cognitive frameworks: We
learn our ways of thinking and conceptualizing from active grappling with
the spatializations of the written word, the study and production of maps,
graphs, diagrams, photographs, models, paintings, mathematical symbols,
and the like (Harvey, 1989, p. 206).Harvey then points out the dilemma
of making sense of space under late capitalism:
Simulations may be our best opportunity to create what Fredric Jameson calls "an aesthetic of cognitive mapping: a pedagogical political culture which seeks to endow the individual subject with some new heightened sense of its place in the global system" (Jameson, 1991, p. 54) Playing a simulation means becoming engrossed in a systemic logic which connects a myriad array of causes and effects. The simulation acts as a kind of map-in-time, visually and viscerally (as the player internalizes the game's logic) demonstrating the repercussions and interrelatedness of many different social decisions. Escaping the prison-house of language which seems so inadequate for holding together the disparate strands that construct postmodern subjectivity, computer simulations provide a radically new quasi-narrative form through which to communicate structures of interconnection.
Sergei Eisenstein hoped that the technology of montage could make it possible to film Marx's Capital. But the narrative techniques of Hollywood cinema developed in a way which directs the viewer to respond to individuals rather than abstract concepts. A computer game based on Capital, on the other hand, is easy to imagine. As Chris Crawford notes, (paraphrased by David Myers), "game personalities are not as important as game processes - 'You can interact with a process . . . Ultimately, you can learn about it'" (Myers, 1990, p. 27. Quote from Crawford, 1986, p. 15).
The Future: From Interactive Textuality to Computer-Mediated Communication
One criticism often made of simulation games like SimCity is that they're solipsistic "power trips," gratifying the gamer's desire to play God. This is to some degree unfair - simulations are often played in groups, particularly in educational settings. (SimCity is used as a pedagogical tool in many Urban Studies classes.) But it is true that the absorbing interaction between human and computer in simulation gaming can tend to discourage collaborative play.
Adventure games, by comparison, have always been more conducive to collaborative playing, because of the stop-and-go nature of the gameplay. When you can't get any further in a game until you solve a puzzle, the more minds the better. Players on the Internet have gone even further, developing "MUDs" ("Multi-User Dungeons") that transcend the boundaries of gaming, allow hundreds of players to collaborate in creating an open-ended world of fantasy. The basic commands invented for text-based adventures - "move," "look," "talk," "ask," "get," and so on - provide participants with a range of interactive opportunities. And the computer game traditions of thick textual description, playful role-playing, and persistent exploration remain powerful imaginative tools. Today, MUDs are virtual spaces in which users, unconstrained by physical presence, can freely experiment with identity.
Noticing the popularity of these cyberspace communities, more conventional computer games have also begun going online. Gamers can now log on and play adventure games like Diablo and Ultima against thousands of human opponents. Other games operate over local area networks: staff-wide Doom battles are a popular office pastime, and even SimCity has been released in a networkable version. More and more, computer gaming is becoming a social rather than solitary activity.
It's hard not to find this development salutary. And yet, I think there will always be a place for the individual cybernetic connection between player and machine. Like reading a book, playing a computer game is often an intensely personal experience, and a transformative one.6
1. See Myers, 1989, for a more extensive discussion of computer game genres.
2. This widely-quoted phrase was coined by Electronic Arts executive Trip Hawkins in the early 1980s (Wilson, 1992).
3. I'm certain the film Groundhog Day was made by computer game players - it perfectly captures the "oh no, not again" exasperation of playing the same sequence over and over, again and again, until you get everything right.
4. Complaining about the pro-government "bias" of SimHealth, a game that simulates the economics of health care reform, one critic speculates, "maybe what we really need is an economic simulator called SimAdam Smith: You turn it on and just leave it alone" (Moss, 1993). As we shall see, however, it's not a simple step to equate the player with the hand of government, even if you're putatively designated "SimMayor."
5. For more on computer gaming as a cybernetic link between player and computer, see Friedman 1998.
6. I would like to thank Robert Allen, Adam Frank, Joseba Gabilondo, Kevin Jon Heller, Maude Hines, Norman Holland, Fredric Jameson, Henry Jenkins, Kate Lewis, Ann Maderer, Janet Murray, Janice Radway and Tyler Stevens for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.
Big fun in a small town. Newsweek, p. 64.
Card, O.S. (1991, March). Gameplay: games with no limits. Compute, p. 58.
Crawford, C. (1986). Balance of Power. Redmond, CA: Microsoft Press.
Friedman, T. (1998). Civilization and Its Discontents: Simulation, Subjectivity, and Space. Discovering Discs: Transforming Space and Place on CD-ROM. Ed. Greg Smith. New York: NYU Press, 1998.
Haraway, Donna. (1985). Manifesto for cyborgs: science, technology, and socialist feminism in the 1980s. Socialist Review 80, 65-108.
Harvey, D. (1989). The Condition of Postmodernity. Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell.
Jameson, F. (1991). Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press.
Laurel, B. (1993). Computers as Theater. New York: Addison-Wesley.
Levy, S. (1984). Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. New York: Dell Publishing.
Lynch, K. (1960). The Image of the City. Cambridge, Mass.: The M.I.T. Press.
Maxis Software Toys Catalog (1992). Orinda, CA: Maxis.
Myers, D. (1990a). Chris Crawford and Computer Game Aesthetics. Journal of Popular Culture, 24(2), 17-28.
Myers, D. (1990b). Computer Game Genres. Play and Culture, 3, 286-301.
Myers, D. (1991). Computer Game Semiotics. Play and Culture, 1991, 4, 334-346.
Myers, D. (1992). Time, Symbol Transformations, and Computer Games. Play and Culture, 5, 441-457.
News notes: Sierra and Dynamix sweep SPA nominations. (1993, Spring). Interaction, p. 16.
Pournelle, J. (1990, February). Untitled column. Byte.
Reeder, S. (1992, December). Designing visions. Kids & Computers, pp. 24-7, 66-7.
Rheingold, H. (1993). The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier. New York: Addison-Wesley.
Wilson, J. (1992, July). A brief history of gaming, part 1.Computer Gaming World.
Ted Friedman (email@example.com) is a doctoral student at Duke University's Program in Literature and Literary Theory. He is currently completing his disseration, "Cybertopian Visions: A Cultural History of Personal Computers." He has written about pop culture for Details, Spin, Vibe, The Source, Stim, Blender, Bad Subjects, Radio On, and alt.culture. His home page is http://www.duke.edu/~tlove

subset: commoncrawl


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Showing results for tags 'law'.
Found 5 results
bathroom laws Let's talk about it. Here.
william.scherk posted a blog entry in Friends and FoesBrant, some areas of biology are more complicated than flip one-liners ... I think you do well understand that there is variation in genitals. I have explained this before at length here. Please review the 'spectrum' of real-world and recurring cases of babies born with indeterminate external genitalia. It is relevant and not all that complicated in principle: the X and the Y have jobs to do as chromosomes. In a normally developing fetus, their job is done to the norm. It is the not norm I think we are concerned with. You cannot norm an XXY 'girl' pre-puberty. The chromosomal 'sex' type does not always predict the Dick. You should know this, Brant; it is relevant, and it makes your pithy saying unhelpful -- the saying is just an arbitrary assertion if it cannot be supported, and it can be contradicted by reality. That works for me and you. But the function of a restroom is not gender-division, it is to take away wastes and allow cosmetics to be applied while checking out the dog-face beside you. And washing hands after touching yourself down there. The function of a child's bathroom can be divved up by gender and it is the world over, but the bathroom has almost nothing to do with sex in the schools we are 'worried' about. Sex, meaning sexual behaviour, sexual activity, sex. Sex school. We run the risk of distorting reality if we aren't familiar with the ins and outs of actual 'intersex' or otherwise physically/mentally incongruent people, and if we gloss over disconfirming details. Brant, I might ask you to consider a Lesbian in a Ladies Room. Or a Gay Man in a Men's room. Or a couple copulating in an airline restroom. Or a sex crime committed in a locker room or ancilliary single-gender environs. The harms are where? The harms are in the crime. The crimes are in the cover-ups, and abuse of human beings as sexual ends. Thus Jerry Sandusky and the procession of disgusting Catholic abusers and coverups. Thus the concern about hidden abuse of children in the privacy of their homes, but their caregivers. Thus the horrors of badly-run foster and 'care' systems. Thus sexual abuse of minors ... sexual abuse of children, sexual abuse of adolescents and pre-pubescents. That rings dark and true. What doesn't sound as darkly is the harm in Jazz taking her shit with where she wants to? She isn't some hairy Peter Taylor in drag wanting to periscope up widdle gurls skirts or manhandle them. That is on the Hairy Peter. That is his imaginary crime. Brant, if you have ever been the target of Faggot Attack, or been intimate with someone gay or bi who has been beat up, or if you know some 'Trannnnnnnneeee' who has been beaten, beaten to death, contrast that with the Bathroom Crime bullshit being ushered into law in Trailer Park states. The law has penalties. I would like you to go read the text of the laws promulgated to Prevent GayScaryHairyTransRape ... and then give me a one-liner or two. If we are united in anything beyond our interest in reason, it is in our rejection of ignorance. I can always be less ignorant, I can be ready to take on more information. And so can you. When was the first time you Looked At Another Boy's Penis with lust in your loins, Brant? I mean, in a bathroom. When do you use a bathroom to stalk victims? Oh. Tell me that the law should be that Jazz must go squat in the Boy's Room. FFS.
The libraries at the University of Texas at Austin shelve 83 volumes by Ayn Rand. Of them, 30 have been stolen. Of those, eight are marked in the catalog as "Missing." In other words, they left the shelves without being checked out. The others were just not returned by the last borrowers who effectively got away with their crimes. I identify these facts as evidence of a deeper political problem, first posited 2500 years ago by Sophocles in his drama, Antigone. More recent, and known well to admirers of the works of Ayn Rand, are the trial scenes from The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Not so famous, but cutting more deeply into the fabric of law is Ayn Rand's courtroom drama, Night of January 16th. The question is whether or not you have a duty to obey the law. It is important to understand, first, that Ayn Rand was opposed to duty. Obviously, for some admirers of the works of Ayn Rand, the prospect of a free copy of one of her books was stronger than any irrational duty to the public order. However, it is also true that Rand's dictum above must be placed in its proper context because she was far more eloquent in her condemnation of "looters" and substantially incisive in her praise for their antithesis, the producers. Moreover, the moral and political aspects of her philosophy of Objectivism were primarily about the positive virtues of production, creation, and active reason, against which are revealed the negative, destructive, and empty actions of the irrational and non-productive. The primary concern is not whether the owner of the bookstore sends her children to a government-subsidized daycare center, but where you got the money with which you bought the book. If you did not buy the book at all, if there was no earned money exchanged, then the failure was yours long antecedent to the gross action of mere acquisition of the book. he essential question here is: "What justifies stealing from the public library?" It leads to a far wider set of questions and actions. I assert that if it is acceptable to steal Atlas Shrugged from the library, then it is acceptable to take a tree from a public park, or a computer from city hall, or the President's limousine from the White House. And, ultimately, it would be acceptable to take anything from anyone who accepted any public benefit, whether a social security check, "land bank" payments for not growing crops, sending their children to public schools, or (of course) borrowing books from the public library (and returning them). Some libertarians claim that it is moral to steal from the library, or any other government entity, because their assets all come from taxation, and taxation is theft. When you steal a library book, you only take back what was yours in the first place. This also applies by extension to stealing back what was yours from any business that benefits from government subsidies, whether General Motors or Tesla, Inc., a local hospital, or the florist whom you spot coming from the library. Moving right along, for a philosophical Objectivist (or simply an "admirer" of the works of Ayn Rand) such justifications, extend to their irrational mystical altruist collectivist neighbors. Their theory is that anyone who goes to church or votes for Democrats is fair game, especially when the risks are very low. Your neighbors who are tax looters or welfare moochers stole from you first; you are just taking back what was yours. If you can get away with it, why not? Among the many accurate and precise tools of logic that Ayn Rand employed in her expositions was identifying the error of context dropping. In terms of the social consequences of personal morality, it is the error of moral equivalency. It also a powerful tool in Objectivism that moral success begins in metaphysics and epistemology. So the moral failing of the looter of the library begins with errors in metaphysics and epistemology. Ayn Rand called it "reifying the zero" i.e., attempting to make a "something" out of nothing. (See "Axiomatic Concepts" in Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology.) Stealing a copy of Atlas Shrugged from the library is not the moral equivalent of buying one from a bookstore. In Sophocles' Antigone, the heroine was so outraged by the desecration of her brothers' bodies, whatever their crimes against the city, that she disobeyed the commands of the tyrant Creon, in full acceptance of the consequences. In The Fountainhead, Howard Roark is prepared to go to prison if his appeal to the creative spirit fails. In Atlas Shrugged, Hank Rearden refuses to hand over his metal and tells the government that he cannot stop their trucks and guns if they come to take it. And he is willing to go to prison rather than to acquiesce in the theft of his property. In Night of January 16th Karen André has committed or conspired in so many crimes that the play does not even come close to a bill of indictment. She makes no appeal to a higher law or a greater good or a better morality. She does not explain herself at all: no outsider's opinion is consequential to her. On the other hand, the hooligan who steals a copy of Atlas Shrugged from the public library makes no public statements, issues no manifesto, and stands not in defiance of authority but slinks away with loot. It might be informative for a bold privateer to wheel several shelving carts out the door while distributing leaflets condemning the philosophical and economic fallacies of "public goods." (And when the campus police arrive, he should have a clever cloaking device unless he intends to go to jail for his beliefs.) But that is not the case. Instead, other people whose taxes have paid for goods and services are deprived of the benefit of their bargain by a third party. We call that theft. "Rand fans" are not the only people given to "crimes of conscience." The Roman republican martyr Cato the Younger (Marcus Porcius Cato,Uticensis) became a symbol for Christians and ultimately republicans of the Enlightenment. But, again, Cato the Younger took his own life rather than submit to Gaius Julius Caesar. It remains that the jihadi who kill themselves while they kill others in suicide attacks claim obedience to a higher law, also. The actions are not morally equivalent because the consequences are not morally equivalent. Do you have a duty to obey the law? In the explicit sense identified by Ayn Rand, that a duty is an obligation that supersedes self-interest, you do not. But that begs the question: What is self-interest? Rand devoted herself to answering that question. If you do not understand why productively earning the money with which to buy a book is in your self-interest while the easy pickings of the public library are not, you need to do some reading. It is a common error in our common education that we want even our "story problems" to be short, when in fact, the most important aspects of living well require more than a slogan to explain. (This article originally appeared on my blog, NecessaryFacts.)
Men talk about Abortion
william.scherk posted a blog entry in Friends and Foes[http://wsscherk.hostingmyself.com/trumpAbortionTalk.htm] QUESTION: Hello. I am (inaudible) and have a question on, what is your stance on women's rights and their rights to choose in their own reproductive health? DRUMPF: OK, well look, I mean, as you know, I'm pro-life. Right, I think you know that, and I -- with exceptions, with the three exceptions. But pretty much, that's my stance. Is that OK? You understand? MATTHEWS: What should the law be on abortion? DRUMPF: Well, I have been pro-life. MATTHEWS: I know, what should the law -- I know your principle, that's a good value. But what should be the law? DRUMPF: Well, you know, they've set the law and frankly the judges -- I mean, you're going to have a very big election coming up for that reason, because you have judges where it's a real tipping point. MATTHEWS: I know. DRUMPF: And with the loss the Scalia, who was a very strong conservative... MATTHEWS: I understand. DRUMPF: ... this presidential election is going to be very important, because when you say, "what's the law, nobody knows what's the law going to be. It depends on who gets elected, because somebody is going to appoint conservative judges and somebody is going to appoint liberal judges, depending on who wins. MATTHEWS: I know. I never understood the pro-life position. DRUMPF: Well, a lot of people do understand. MATTHEWS: I never understood it. Because I understand the principle, it's human life as people see it. DRUMPF: Which it is. MATTHEWS: But what crime is it? DRUMPF: Well, it's human life. MATTHEWS: No, should the woman be punished for having an abortion? DRUMPF: Look... MATTHEWS: This is not something you can dodge. DRUMPF: It's a -- no, no... MATTHEWS: If you say abortion is a crime or abortion is murder, you have to deal with it under law. Should abortion be punished? DRUMPF: Well, people in certain parts of the Republican Party and Conservative Republicans would say, "yes, they should be punished." MATTHEWS: How about you? DRUMPF: I would say that it's a very serious problem. And it's a problem that we have to decide on. It's very hard. MATTHEWS: But you're for banning it? DRUMPF: I'm going to say -- well, wait. Are you going to say, put them in jail? Are you -- is that the (inaudible) you're talking about? MATTHEWS: Well, no, I'm asking you because you say you want to ban it. What does that mean? DRUMPF: I would -- I am against -- I am pro-life, yes. MATTHEWS: What is ban -- how do you ban abortion? How do you actually do it? DRUMPF: Well, you know, you will go back to a position like they had where people will perhaps go to illegal places. MATTHEWS: Yes? DRUMPF: But you have to ban it. MATTHEWS: You banning, they go to somebody who flunked out of medical school. DRUMPF: Are you Catholic? MATTHEWS: Yes, I think... DRUMPF: And how do you feel about the Catholic Church's position? MATTHEWS: Well, I accept the teaching authority of my Church on moral issues. DRUMPF: I know, but do you know their position on abortion? MATTHEWS: Yes, I do. DRUMPF: And do you concur with the position? MATTHEWS: I concur with their moral position but legally, I get to the question -- here's my problem with it... (LAUGHTER) DRUMPF: No, no, but let me ask you, but what do you say about your Church? MATTHEWS: It's not funny. DRUMPF: Yes, it's really not funny. What do you say about your church? They're very, very strong. MATTHEWS: They're allowed to -- but the churches make their moral judgments, but you running for president of the United States will be chief executive of the United States. Do you believe... DRUMPF: No, but... MATTHEWS: Do you believe in punishment for abortion, yes or no as a principle? DRUMPF: The answer is that there has to be some form of punishment. MATTHEWS: For the woman? DRUMPF: Yes, there has to be some form. MATTHEWS: Ten cents? Ten years? What? DRUMPF: Let me just tell you -- I don't know. That I don't know. That I don't know. MATTHEWS: Why not? DRUMPF: I don't know. MATTHEWS: You take positions on everything else. DRUMPF: Because I don't want to -- I frankly, I do take positions on everything else. It's a very complicated position. MATTHEWS: But you say, one, that you're pro-life meaning that you want to ban it. DRUMPF: But wait a minute, wait a minute. But the Catholic Church is pro-life. MATTHEWS: I'm not talking about my religion. DRUMPF: No, no, I am talking about your religion. Your religion -- I mean, you say that you're a very good Catholic. Your religion is your life. Let me ask you this... MATTHEWS: I didn't say very good. I said I'm Catholic. (LAUGHTER) And secondly, I'm asking -- you're running for President. DRUMPF: No, no... MATTHEWS: I'm not. DRUMPF: Chris -- Chris. MATTHEWS: I'm asking you, what should a woman face if she chooses to have an abortion? DRUMPF: I'm not going to do that. MATTHEWS: Why not? DRUMPF: I'm not going to play that game. MATTHEWS: Game? DRUMPF: You have... MATTHEWS: You said you're pro-life. DRUMPF: I am pro-life. MATTHEWS: That means banning abortion. DRUMPF: And so is the Catholic Church pro-life. MATTHEWS: But they don't control the -- this isn't Spain, the Church doesn't control the government. DRUMPF: What is the punishment under the Catholic Church? What is the... MATTHEWS: Let me give something from the New Testament, "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." Don't ask me about my religion. DRUMPF: No, no... MATTHEWS: I'm asking you. You want to be president of the United States. DRUMPF: You told me that... MATTHEWS: You tell me what the law should be. DRUMPF: I have -- I have not determined... MATTHEWS: Just tell me what the law should be. You say you're pro-life. DRUMPF: I am pro-life. MATTHEWS: What does that mean? DRUMPF: With exceptions. I am pro-life. I have not determined what the punishment would be. MATTHEWS: Why not? DRUMPF: Because I haven't determined it. MATTHEWS: When you decide to be pro-life, you should have thought of it. Because... DRUMPF: No, you could ask anybody who is pro-life... MATTHEWS: OK, here's the problem -- here's my problem with this, if you don't have a punishment for abortion -- I don't believe in it, of course -- people are going to find a way to have an abortion. DRUMPF: You don't believe in what? MATTHEWS: I don't believe in punishing anybody for having an abortion. DRUMPF: OK, fine. OK, (inaudible). MATTHEWS: Of course not. I think it's a woman's choice. DRUMPF: So you're against the teachings of your Church? MATTHEWS: I have a view -- a moral view -- but I believe we live in a free country, and I don't want to live in a country so fascistic that it could stop a person from making that decision. DRUMPF: But then you are... MATTHEWS: That would be so invasive. DRUMPF: I know but I've heard you speaking... MATTHEWS: So determined of a society that I wouldn't able -- one we are familiar with. And Donald Drumpf, you wouldn't be familiar with. DRUMPF: But I've heard you speaking so highly about your religion and your Church. MATTHEWS: Yes. DRUMPF: Your Church is very, very strongly as you know, pro-life. MATTHEWS: I know. DRUMPF: What do you say to your Church? MATTHEWS: I say, I accept your moral authority. In the United States, the people make the decision, the courts rule on what's in the Constitution, and we live by that. That's why I say. DRUMPF: Yes, but you don't live by it because you don't accept it. You can't accept it. You can't accept it. You can't accept it. MATTHEWS: Can we go back to matters of the law and running for president because matters of law, what I'm talking about, and this is the difficult situation you've placed yourself in. By saying you're pro-life, you mean you want to ban abortion. How do you ban abortion without some kind of sanction? Then you get in that very tricky question of a sanction, a fine on human life which you call murder? DRUMPF: It will have to be determined. MATTHEWS: A fine, imprisonment for a young woman who finds herself pregnant? DRUMPF: It will have to be determined. MATTHEWS: What about the guy that gets her pregnant? Is he responsible under the law for these abortions? Or is he not responsible for an abortion? DRUMPF: Well, it hasn't -- it hasn't -- different feelings, different people. I would say no. MATTHEWS: Well, they're usually involved. Anyway, much more from the audience here at the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay. We'll be right back.
Just what the world needed, another book
Wolf DeVoon posted a topic in Objectivist Living RoomGood morning. Exceptional circumstances brought me back to OL. The simple fact is we're getting older, all of us. With sadness, I noted the passing of Barbara Branden and was glad to see her charm and resilience recorded in a pretty wonderful Atlas Society video. Speaking personally, I'm on the same mortal coil with far less credit to my account and far fewer friends, of course. Be that as it may, a sense of approaching decline prompted me to gather up some material into an orderly presentation of my life's work. Two separate motives for doing so: I am an extremely stubborn person -- and I continue to believe that there was and still is a gap in the Objectivist canon pertaining to constitutional law. Libertarians are worse in this regard because they wrongly maintain that a categorical imperative of ethics (non-aggression) is a full solution, provided that you sign a contract of some sort. How this explains parenthood or law enforcement or national defense baffles me. I will try to come to the point as quickly as possible, but first an important disclaimer: The goal of my work has been to define and articulate a laissez faire system of government and public justice, with due regard for received wisdom. Unfortunately, in the haystack of U.S. political history and legal thinking there was damned little wisdom and a great deal of tripe. I'm sorry to say that my attitude toward certain characters became contemptuous. In the restatement and clarification of my work, you'll find that nothing much has changed in that regard. I'm still me. Here follows a canned press release about the new book. ---------- "I don't mind writing for posterity, but it's going to be mighty damn difficult for posterity to find what I wrote." HOUSTON, May 21, 2014 -- Iconoclastic author Wolf DeVoon announced today that his latest book on laissez faire law, entitled The Constitution of Government in Gult's Gulch, will be available at Amazon and other online stores next week. The 168-page book compares utopian fiction presented in Atlas Shrugged with the actual experience of living in a private community beyond the reach of government. It covers theory and practical real-world aspects of liberty, property, and constitutional law in a fully free society. The Constitution of Government in Galt's Gulch also presents a surprising proposal to fund national security by private enterprise that does not rely upon taxation. In a long section on property, DeVoon concludes that wealth is a moral office of responsibility to advance the general welfare by offering employment. The book is addressed to libertarians and Objectivists, and it offers a new theory of value and moral virtue based on individual character, personal ambition, and risk of change. Discussion of constitutional law includes loyalties beyond the law, fundamental rights, due process, and persistent presumption of innocence. Author "Wolf DeVoon" is the pen name of a reclusive novelist, inventor, businessman and controversial advocate of capitalism. He was a high profile insider and officer of Laissez Faire City in Costa Rica, who served as general counsel and proxy for its embattled CEO and wrote The Freeman's Constitution in an attempt to save Laissez Faire City from destroying itself. DeVoon says that his new book completes a 30-year personal quest to identify and articulate a coherent theory of constitutional law in a free society, based on an idea set forth in The Freeman's Constitution, that justice is the armed defense of innocent liberty. "Liberty is an unpopular idea," DeVoon said. "There isn't a square centimeter of Colorado to hide behind a heated layer of air in Galt's Gulch, without EPA Region 8 and DHS poking their noses and missile-firing drones into it. The best hope for a free society today is in expatriate communities in loosely governed, corrupt host nations like Costa Rica, Panama, or perhaps Argentina," he said. "The goal of my work is to define the rule of law for folks who are living effectively outside the control of regular governments." Apparently his new book is the last one that DeVoon intends to publish. A 2007 title, Laissez Faire Law, was almost entirely ignored by libertarian and anarcho-capitalist scholars. "I don't blame anyone for pushing the established canon of live and let live," Devoon explained. "The rule of law with compulsory production of evidence, summons to appear and jury duty is an absolute pain in the butt for traditional anarchists and libertarians. I don't mind writing for posterity, but it's going to be mighty damn difficult for posterity to find what I wrote." The Constitution of Government in Galt's Gulch, ISBN 978-1499550450, $8.99 http://www.amazon.com/The-Constitution-Government-Galts-Gulch/dp/1499550456/ ---------- I'm not asserting copyright. One cannot own a constitution, nor an argument in favor of its ratification. If you'd like a pdf of the text, please send me a PM with your email address. Alternatively, perhaps MSK will arrange a method of storing the material and making it available. I'll log in from time to time if you have any questions. In 1974, I set out to fix a problem. Feels good to have finally fixed it. =========================== EDIT FROM MSK: You can get a free PDF version of Wolf's The Constitution of Government in Galt's Gulch here. It is in a zip file.
The Moral Foundation of Economic Behavior
Robert Baratheon posted a topic in 3 - EthicsIf you aren't familiar with the phenomenal podcast series available at www.econtalk.org, I highly recommend selecting an episode or two from the archive and listening during your daily commute or exercise. One could select virtually any of the podcasts as a rich starting point for discussion, but one episode in particular had a profound impact on my intellectual framework, and I would like to share it here: www.econtalk.org/archives/2012/01/david_rose_on_t.html In this episode, economist/author David Rose discusses some of the central themes of his book, The Moral Foundation of Economic Behavior, with host of the program Russ Roberts. It's best to listen to the hour-long podcast for yourself if you have the time, but here is the main idea of his argument: "This book explains why moral beliefs can and likely do play an important role in the development and operation of market economies. It provides new arguments for why it is important that people genuinely trust others-even those whom they know don't particularly care about them-because in key circumstances institutions are incapable of combating opportunism. It then identifies specific characteristics that moral beliefs must have for the people who possess them to be regarded as trustworthy. When such moral beliefs are held with sufficient conviction by a sufficiently high proportion of the population, a high trust society emerges that supports maximum cooperation and creativity while permitting honest competition at the same time." (Source: Amazon.com) Before adopting Rose's framework of evaluating economic behavior, I was much more influenced by utilitarian principles such as those espoused by legal theorist/economist Richard Posner. To take an example, Posner's "efficient breach of contracts" theory – arguably the dominant view in modern jurisprudence - holds that one party should be legally (and morally) free to breach a contract and pay damages to the other party if the overall outcome is more efficient. In the amoral view of contracts, the ends justify the means of the breaching party. Simply evaluate the likely outcome of breach, and if the benefits outweigh the costs, then the actions were justified. Everyone wins in such situations, right? Rose argues that there is no such thing as this free lunch. The costs of Posner 's utilitarianism are less easily quantified than the benefits, but nevertheless the costs are very real in the form of eroded social trust. A society in which people act according to a principled moral foundation, Rose explains, is more efficient because individuals will engage in a wide variety of economic behaviors they otherwise could not have in a utilitarian culture because of fear of being sacrificed to a "greater good" or prohibitively high transaction costs. This is one reason why I reject utilitarian tolerance of skyrocketing social security disability fraud as the easiest way of "buying off" individuals who otherwise wouldn't be able to find employment. I believe - and I think Rose would agree - that tolerating this deceitful behavior fosters a culture in which individuals will breach trust and cheat each other as long as they can identify some benefit outweighing those costs. It's also why I reject utilitarian platform elements integral to the Progressive movement, such as affirmative action. If individuals fear they are in danger of being sacrificed to a greater good by the elite, they will no longer place trust in the system and they will instead engage in defensive, protectionist behavior with high social and economic costs for everyone. In a world where promises are categorically kept, there is a much lower need for government protectionism. This is why I feel Rose's position is more in line with libertarian and objectivist principles than Posner's, and why we should reject progressive utilitarianism and its view that individual eggs are expendable in creating a more perfect social omelet.


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Late in the Manchester City-Lyon game last night, with things finely poised, the French club made a substitution and introduced Moussa Dembele to the fray. What happened in the next fifteen minutes reminded me of Larsson coming on for Barcelona in their Champions League Final comeback against Arsenal; one man, turning a game on its head.
One man, with a connection to Celtic Park, performing on the biggest stage of all.
Dembele scored his third and fourth goals against City during the Guardiola era.
I remember the first two well; I was sitting in a beach bar in Ibiza when he got the first two, as a Celtic player, on a memorable night at Celtic Park.
It was the night I knew that this special, special footballer was not going to be at our club for the long haul.
Most Celtic fans probably realised the same thing.
But the knowledge was tempered with the realisation that we were going to net a small fortune for the player.
Whenever we pointed that out, the response was scorn.
Scorn from Ibrox. Scorn from certain corners of the media.
And yet we did net that small fortune.
The same was true when we sold Van Dijk. He's only gone on to be a Champions League winner at Liverpool, the club he took to its first league title in decades. We were told that we wouldn't get a bumper fee for him, and not only did we get that but we got a major chunk of change in the re-sale as well.
We'll get another when Dembele moves in this window.
Kieran Tierney was the latest footballer to depart Celtic for a mammoth sum which we were told we were lucky to get. He's already won his first honour with Arsenal, an FA Cup winners medal. It will not be his last, as Arsenal will not be his final club.
If we've got a resale clause there – which we should have – there will be even more riches in our future.
A certain other club watches this and thinks that it's easy. That all that's required is to name a price and then wait for someone to meet it. But our players have proved that they were worth the money that was spent on them. They've proved that Celtic is a machine that makes footballers better, that time at our club moulds them into winners and enhances their capabilities. Celtic is trusted, and respected, as a sharpener of talent.
This is why clubs will take a chance on Ajer at £20 million.
It's why we could sell McGregor for tomorrow for roughly that.
Why Christie will command eight figures.
It's why the fee we finally get for Odsonne Edouard will obliterate the one we brought in for Tierney.
Someone said to me on Twitter last night that the best Sevco has managed since they tried aping our strategy, with vast inferior players, was the £2 million they got for Josh Windass.
I don't know if that's true or not, but I suspect it is, as I cannot remember a big fee at Ibrox since the days when Rangers got a hyper inflated £8 million for Boumsong, a transfer deal which partially trigged the Stevens Inquiry into bungs in football and led to the SFO finding evidence of the Rangers tax scam which they turned over to HMRC.
That turned out to be the most consequential move in the history of the club, but for all the wrong reasons.
Sevco has been trying to sell Morelos for two years now, desperately promoting nonsensical stories in the hopes of drumming up interest. Only Lille were prepared to bite with an actual offer and they were appalled at what Ibrox asked for, and walked away to pursue other targets.
You'll have noticed the increased chatter about Barasic, the rehabilitation of Brandon Barker, the recent rumours of interest in Kamara … none of it is real.
Nothing is real except their need. I'll be writing about that later.
In the meantime, Celtic's former players continue to be great ambassadors for the club by showing they were worth the money we got for them.
I knew that night watching from an Ibiza bar that Moussa was capable of producing on the biggest stage of all … and last night, as he sunk Manchester City with another two goal burst, I allowed myself as satisfied smile.
So did Celtic's manager and our CEO.
It bodes well for our future business.
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text: BackSHARE Population Living in Europe | Access to the culture of the host country/language courses | Luxembourg With a population of 602,005 Luxembourg, of which more than 47% are foreigners, is one of the world's most culturally diverse societies. Whenever you are out and about in Luxembourg, chances are you will come across several of the 170 nationalities who live here. LUXEMBOURG'S TOTAL POPULATION 602,005 Luxembourgers 313,771 Foreigners 288,234 Portuguese 96,544 people French 45,822 people Italian 21,962 people Belgian 20,212 people German 13,146 people British 5,941 people Netherlands 4,294 people Others 80,850 people Source : Statec, website: Population par nationalités détaillées 2011 - 2017, May 2017.


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In troubled times we may begin to think that God doesn't care or has forsaken us, but that's not true. If we've trusted Christ as our Savior, He promises never to desert or abandon us (Heb. 13:5). No matter how we may feel, God is always with us.
As great as this promise is, we have yet another foundational truth on which to rely. We can fully trust whatever our Savior says because "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today, and forever" (Heb. 13:8). He doesn't save us one day and then abandon us later. Jesus said, "Everything the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out" (John 6:37). He affirmed this same truth, saying that no one can snatch us out of His or the Father's hands (John 10:28-29).
If we think that the Lord has suddenly abandoned us, we are walking by sight and not by faith. The reality is that we are the ones wavering, but Jesus and His promises have not changed. He is present, providing for our needs, and working for our good in every situation.
Bible in One Year: Judges 13-15


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"Dear sir,
The most peaceful, calmest, kindest, charitable, benevolent and most merciful Landlord, I have seen the quit notice stuffed in-between the gutters at my threshold, and I can only imagine how dark and tight it is there to your claustrophobic writing; I acknowledge this house as your property and I am but only a jobless tenant and a recipient of your patience. I write you this letter for an extension on my rent till I find a job as I am currently working on not condemning anymore of your alphabets to such creepy and tight spaces…"
Seriously! Rent extension? Sounds like asking for a salary raise. Trust me, you don't want to finish reading that letter.
Among property and business owners are the landlords who find the letter of employment very necessary and useful. The letter of employment serves as a security measure to these landlords to protect their investments.
What is a letter of Employment?
A letter of employment is a third-party verification on current employment, used as certitude and standing surety to effect an agreement of a prospective contract.
Who authorizes a letter of employment?
It is signed and authorized by an employer upon request from the employee, and it contains basic or required details based on the terms of agreement for that purpose which it is to be used. Details as Job title, tenure of employment and contract are usually found on a letter of employment.
Who can demand a letter of employment?
A letter of employment is a common request among landlords, but it can also be demanded from individuals and in agreements where long-term guarantee of payment is needed at given points in time.
Letter of employment under a microscope
The idea of a letter of employment is not Forbes mining for the next Jeff Bezos, nor is it a measuring scale to compare you directly with Bill Gates by a suspicious few. The letter of employment is rather a security measure against fraud and lying scums who are out to take advantage of your patience and capacity to trade.
Landlords deal with this all the time. They are the most victims of embellished flattery and over compensation from promised interests- thanks to greed sometimes. A letter of employment seeks to balance trust from both parties.
How to request a letter of employment from your employer
Structured firms usually make room for such requests and they are processed faster, however, small bosses have not completely settled into the idea of assigning that duty to a particular department – the HR department rightfully.
But in any case where a letter of employment is needed, the following steps should guide you to getting that document processed:
- Write to your employer through the Human Resource (HR) department or office manager, depending what department is present.
(Navigate through our articles to find out how to write a convincing letter) Include in your letter the reason for such request; and try not to be emotional but professional when stating your reasons.
- Depending on the firm you work for, you can provide a sample of a letter of employment or even a template, where they have no records for issuing such letters. You can include this as a suggestion in your letter of request just in case boss is too proud in admitting he has no knowledge of such topic. Such suggestion will help save time and you could beat the deadline if there was any.
- Attach a cover letter to your now drafted letter of employment before submission. This shows responsibility on your part and assures whoever you are submitting it to, that you will honor that contract as the needle of a compass is true to the North pole.
- Agree on delivery method. This can be emailed to the recipient which may require a physical submission which is usually preferred either by you or your employer.
- Confirm recipients satisfaction. It is necessary to confirm if the required information is present in that document or additional information is required. Recipients Satisfaction is important.
- And lastly, don't sweat it!
Sample format of a letter of employment
[Employer name]
[Employer address]
RE: Verification of employment for [employee name]
To whom it may concern:
Please accept this letter as confirmation that [employee name] has been employed with [employee name] since [employee start date]. Currently, [employee name]:
- Holds the title of [employee title]
- Earns a salary of [salary amount], payable [annually/monthly/weekly/daily/hourly], [and a bonus of (bonus amount)]
- Works on a [full-time/part-time] basis of [number of hours] per week
If you have any questions or require further information, please don't hesitate to contact me at [employer phone number].
Sincerely yours,
[Employer representative name]
[Employer title]
Samples of EMPLOYMENT EXAMPLE as provided by https://templatelab.com/
Dear Madam / Sir:
Employee Name: Susan Smith
Social Security Number: 000-00-0000
Date of Birth: 08-19-75
Employee Susan Smith is (was) an employee of the XYZ Company.
Employment Dates: January 22, 2008 until current.
Job Title: Public Relations Specialist
Current (Final) Salary: $42,000.00 per year plus potential quarterly performance bonus.
Please feel free to contact us if you need additional information.
Signature of Authorized Employee
Disclaimer – Please Note:
Susan Heathfield makes every effort to offer accurate, common-sense, ethical Human Resources management, employer, and workplace advice both on this website, and linked to from this website, but she is not an attorney, and the content on the site, while authoritative, is not guaranteed for accuracy and legality, and is not to be construed as legal advice.
The site has a world-wide audience and employment laws and regulations vary from state to state and country to country, so the site cannot be definitive on all of them for your workplace. When in doubt, always seek legal counsel or assistance from State, Federal, or International governmental resources, to make certain your legal interpretation and decisions are correct. The information on this site is for guidance, ideas, and assistance only.


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Palm rejected NaNplayer from their App Catalog. That's the first time that's happened for their new webOS platform, but it's something those who follow the iTunes App Store have seen happen with much more frequency.
Now, to be fair, the iTunes App Store currently sports 75,000 apps, and according to Apple's response to the FCC, handles 8,500 submissions a week. We're not sure the App Catalog has cracked 100 yet, so the comparison is apples to orchards at this point. We'd expect Apple to have flagged 1000x the apps Palm had. What makes for a clean break in the two case models, however, is how Palm handled the situation.
Chuq Von Rospach, developer community manager at Palm, jumped on the PreCentral.net forums and… communicated. Quickly, cleanly, and with an admirable degree of transparency.
Now, on the iPhone side we've seen Senior Marketing VP Phil Schiller fire off an email or two to high-profile blogs addressing their concerns about the App Store, and the aforementioned FCC response, but an actual, engaged individual whose sole focus is to work with the developer community, provide support, assuage concerns, and be a pseudo-public symbol of this intent to do better? And who says Palm is okay — nay, happy — for the app to continue life as homebrew (their version of jailbreak)
Can we have one?
Chuq, like Palm CEO Jon Rubinstien (slated to be the first guest on the new Engadget Show) and many Palm engineers and PR folks, used to work for Apple. Perhaps Palm is giving them a break from Apple's culture of secrecy and they're taking a liking too it. Perhaps Apple can give some current employees a break from that secrecy as well.
Right now disenchanted iPhone users are trying out Palm, Android, and even Nokia devices and not finding them up to Apple's usability and polish snuff, but that won't last long. Apple needs to get their App Store community perception problems fixed as fast or faster even. Better still, get developer satisfaction levels up to customer satisfaction levels.
Sure these aren't on the general consumer radar at all. Indeed, the amount of people given Apple's 50 million install base is almost statistically irrelevant. But as we've said before, these are the people who tend to influence others, and while the actual App Store problems are likely still going to take a while to crack, the perception problem is one far more easily — if uncomfortably for Apple — handled.
And it likely doesn't even need an open letter from Steve Jobs to do it.
This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.
Dear Apple: Can the iPhone App Store Have a Community Developer Manager Too?
Source : http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/GQ...


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Today in Trumpworld -- June 28
10:30 a.m.: President Donald Trump will receive his daily intelligence briefing in the Oval Office.
11:30 a.m.: Trump will lead a tribal, state and local energy roundtable in the Roosevelt Room.
2 p.m.: Trump will participate in a meet and greet with the Chicago Cubs in the Roosevelt Room.
3 p.m.: Trump will meet with immigration crime victims in the Cabinet Room to urge passage of House legislation to save American lives.
6:50 p.m.: Trump will depart the White House en route to Trump International Hotel.
8 p.m.: Trump will give remarks at the Republican National Committee dinner.
8:30 p.m.: Trump will return to the White House.
OTHER HAPPENINGS: Vice President Mike Pence will travel to Cleveland, where he will participate in a health care listening session with small-business owners and deliver remarks after touring Tendon Manufacturing Inc.
TRUMP'S TWITTER THIS MORNING: 6:49 a.m.: "The failing @nytimes writes false story after false story about me. They don't even call to verify the facts of a story. A Fake News Joke!" ... 6:58 a.m.: "Some of the Fake News Media likes to say that I am not totally engaged in healthcare. Wrong, I know the subject well & want victory for U.S."
TRUMP TALKS HEALTH CARE: From POLITICO's Madeline Conway: "The Senate Republican bill to repeal Obamacare 'will be great, if we get it done,' President Donald Trump told GOP lawmakers shortly after party leaders delayed a vote on the legislation Tuesday. 'This will be great, if we get it done,' Trump told senators gathered in the White House for a meeting about the stalled health care effort. 'And if we don't get it done, it's just going to be something that we're not going to like, and that's OK and I understand that very well.' 'But I think we have a chance to do something very, very important for the public, very, very important for the people of our country that we love,' he added, before asking reporters to leave the meeting."
INSIDE THE STALLED SENATE VOTE: From POLITICO's Burgess Everett, Jennifer Haberkorn and Josh Dawsey: "Senate Republicans had no inkling of what they were walking into on Tuesday afternoon as they filed into the Mike Mansfield room on the Capitol's second floor. Mitch McConnell's 51 colleagues, from his most junior members to his closest lieutenants, fully expected the Senate to vote this week on the Senate GOP's wounded Obamacare repeal bill. They knew the whip count was far worse than advertised but were ready for McConnell to either admit defeat or start a furious round of deal-making to try to win their support. They took McConnell at his word that a vote would occur, regardless of the result. Then the Kentucky Republican shocked them all as he dispassionately informed them at the top of the meeting that the vote would be delayed, and that he would continue the painful exercise of trying to get 50 of the caucus' 52 votes for Obamacare repeal."
TRUMP TOWER MOSCOW?: From POLITICO's Edward-Isaac Dovere, Madeline Conway and Tyler Fisher: "Three weeks before Donald Trump officially accepted the Republican nomination last year, the Trump Organization renewed licenses on hundreds of new domain names for business ventures at home and around the world—including CelebrityApprenticePoker.com, TrumpForeclosureInvesting.com and TrumpTowerMoscow.com. The re-registration of domain names continued after Trump's inauguration, with hundreds of sites kept for potential new businesses in Ireland, the United Arab Emirates, China, India and Indonesia once he was already in the Oval Office. Three weeks before Trump hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping at his Mar-a-Lago club in South Florida, the Trump Organization renewed its licenses for MarALagoClubAsia.com and theMarALagoClub.Asia. … Publicly available internet directory records analyzed by POLITICO from the domain registration database website WhoIs.com show thousands of sites registered by the Trump Organization's general counsel, with many for existing Trump businesses, including some that have since been shuttered, but many that instead direct to holding pages."
TRUMP'S FAKE NEWS: From The Washington Post's David A. Fahrenthold: "The framed copy of Time magazine was hung up in at least five of President Trump's clubs, from South Florida to Scotland. Filling the entire cover was a photo of Donald Trump. 'Donald Trump: The "Apprentice" is a television smash!' the big headline said. Above the Time nameplate, there was another headline in all caps: 'TRUMP IS HITTING ON ALL FRONTS . . . EVEN TV!' … The Time cover is a fake."


text: The Entry Word 1.11 3 July 28, 2018July 16, 2018 Written by Barnaby Taylor Agatho Wagner is a proud-strutting myriapod full of mathematical magnificence expressed physically as troubling angles and lines. Resplendent. Repugnatorial. Agatho takes the utmost pleasure in obnoxion and fully appreciates the disgust by which he is defined across the varied planes. Agatho does not ever speak but writes instead long missives in a tiny hand with a fine-feathered quill and leaves them on the floor for you to try and avoid reading. Don't ever read them on pain of death. Rate this:Share this:TweetEmailShare on TumblrLike this:Like Loading... Related


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Have you ever had a recurring dream? Experiences like this are potent messages that deserve attention. Dreams offer a vast depository of innate intelligence, spiritual wisdom, and emotional insight. They provide deep insight from a well that is supplied only by the waters of our own emotional landscape.
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