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Developing professional equality: an analysis of a social movement in the Scottish dance industry
- DOI: 10.14439/sjop.2013.0101.05
- Publication date: 13 December 2013
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This article analyses the growth of professional equality in the Scottish dance industry. It defines the growth of professional equality as a social movement driven by a group of core and peripheral individuals and organisations bound together by a shared cause. Through defining professional equality as a social movement, the article analyses the challenges, strategies and contextual factors that enabled the emergence of Scotland as a ‘hotspot’ for disabled dancers. The data used in this article is an autoethnographic account of professional equality co-produced by the first author (as interrogator) and the second author (as autoethnographer). Using the autoethnographic method allows us to address the development of professional equality ‘from within’ the movement and to highlight three key factors that drive the movement forward: the genesis of the professional equality movement within the dance industry (rather than outside it); informal networks, which secure information sharing and collective advocacy across the sector; and the institutional characteristics of the industry, in particular the lack of a national disability arts organisation.
Keywords: dance industry, professional equality, social movements, autoethnography
In July 2013 the British Council conducted a ‘study visit’ to Scotland to learn more about how and why Scotland is leading the way in the development of equality in the performing arts. The visit was part of the British Council’s Unlimited Access programme that looks at how countries throughout Europe can be working with, and presenting more work created by, disabled and deaf artists. Twenty-five representatives from twelve countries were present in Edinburgh to engage in dialogue with representatives from funding bodies, training institutions, arts organisations and venues, as well as independent artists, based in Scotland. These representatives had one thing in common: they were in some way involved in the promotion of a ‘professional equality’ agenda across the dance profession. Their agenda has been boosted in the past five years as different groups and individuals from across the industry have united to lobby for equal educational and employment opportunities for dancers with disabilities. The British Council visit represents the most recent milestone of a series of connected efforts by a group of protagonists to achieve commitments to professional equality from organisations across the sector. A change of focus to an equalities agenda by Scotland’s main arts funding body (Creative Scotland), several determined leaders within well-respected arts organisations, and a few driven individuals has led to a change in Scotland’s artistic landscape in relation to the work of, by, and with disabled artists. The British Council visit may be seen to consecrate the status of the Scottish professional dance sector as a pioneer in ensuring equality for dancers of all (dis)abilities.
Well-developed bodies of literature exist in the areas of dance performance and disability, and dance education and disability. These literatures focus on issues which are central to the need for, and growth of, professional equality. As Albright (1997, p.56) argues, ‘as an expressive discourse comprised of physical movement, dance has traditionally privileged the able bodied’. Studies in these areas have dealt with issues such as how disability is performed (Kuppers, 2001; 2003), how viewers and screen media construct disability in dance (Whatley, 2007; 2010), how perceptions related to disability and dance emerge at early stages of dance education (Zitomer and Reid, 2011), and how change might be achieved (Elin and Boswell, 2004; Schwyzer, 2005). In contrast, our article adopts an organisational perspective on the issue of professional equality by considering it to be a social movement. In so doing we seek to advance understanding of which organisational characteristics of the professional equality movement have contributed to its success.
This article charts and analyses the professional equality movement, which seeks to achieve equality between disabled and able-bodied dancers in Scotland, through analysing an ‘insider's’ account of the movement. We firstly introduce the context of professional equality in the Scottish dance industry, before outlining our research methods and presenting our autoethnographic account of the growth of the movement, which forms the basis of our discussion concerning the key factors driving professional equality as a social movement. We expect this paper may be of interest to scholars concerned with social movements in the performing arts, as a reflective piece for those involved in the movement, and as an example to those looking to drive forward equality in other performing arts or geographical areas.
Context: equality and the dance industry
The Scottish dance industry is relatively small compared to dance industries in other European nations. Scotland has two full-time, permanently publicly funded, dance performance companies: Scottish Ballet and Scottish Dance Theatre, which produce work in the ballet and contemporary genres respectively. Scottish Ballet is based in Glasgow and is funded directly by the Scottish Government; Scottish Dance Theatre is based in Dundee and receives long-term funding from the national arts funding body, Creative Scotland. Aside from these permanent companies, there is a vibrant scene of independent companies and choreographers, particularly in Glasgow and, to a lesser extent, Edinburgh. These independent companies and choreographers are supported by a network of publicly funded dance centres (such as Dance Base, Citymoves and Dance House) which provide an education, production, rehearsal and performance infrastructure. There is also a wide range of organisations which use dance as both a performance medium and as a source of social engagement, recreation and education, such as Indepen-Dance. However, the growth of dance as an art form in Scotland is constrained because of the lack of dance in the secondary education curriculum (Creative Scotland Corporate Report, 2011). In response to this, YDance (the dance development agency for young people in Scotland) was given greater support to further develop youth dance education, participation and talent development. The opportunities for the education of professional dancers beyond school-level are limited by the existence of only one vocational performing arts institution in Scotland—the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, which offers courses in Modern Ballet and Musical Theatre—although several further education colleges across the country offer Higher National Diploma (HND), Higher National Certificate (HNC) and BA courses in dance.
There are no exclusively ‘disabled dance’ professional performance companies in Scotland. However some companies, such as plan B, engage with disabled performers across theatre and dance, and other professional companies, such as Scottish Dance Theatre, feature disabled dancers in their repertoires. As part of a review of disability dance in 2007, Jo Verrent (2007, p.3) wrote that ‘[w]ithin Scotland, disability dance clearly has significance’. In this report, Verrent highlights the diversity of participatory opportunities for disabled dancers, but also the lack of ‘stepping stones’ to enable these dancers to progress into vocational (professional) dance. Her report contains twelve recommendations for the development of disabled dance in Scotland, centring on the sharing of information and best practice, creating opportunities for critical debate, strategic use of funding to support opportunities for disabled dancers, and increased audience and performance research. Finally, the report recommends that the national arts funding body should take an active role in advocating for the involvement of disabled dancers in dance training. Many of these recommendations have been put into practice by those in the industry, as is illustrated in the autoethnographic data presented below.
Professional equality is, on the one hand, an ideological notion based on the belief that all dancers should have access to equal professional opportunities regardless of any disabilities. On the other hand, professional equality is a response to the practical consequences of professional inequality. While there are many practical consequences of inequality in the dance profession, two main issues can be identified. First, the inequality of access to professional opportunities faced by disabled dancers reinforces the tendency of those in the industry to consider ‘disabled’ and ‘mainstream’ dance as mutually exclusive genres. Second, such inequalities reinforce cultural notions of corporeal exclusivity in the audiences of dance productions.
Professional equality challenges the notions of ‘functional separateness’ which label ‘disabled dance’ a separate genre from the mainstream (Brueggemann, 2005). ‘Functional separateness’ refers to the ideas that disabled dance and mainstream dance are performances of different types, produced for different types of audiences. The tendency to segregate ‘disabled dance’ places the disability of the performer, rather than the artistic quality of the piece, as the central feature of any performance in disabled dance. This feature of professional inequality is endemic to many areas of the performing arts, as the quote below from Smith (2005, p.76) argues:
The history of the dominant Western theater [sic] dance tradition has reflected a particularly pervasive social coding of the body that enforces a corporeal hierarchy serving to invalidate differentiated, heterogenous, and physically impaired bodies.
Professional equality is important in addressing unacknowledged assumptions of appropriateness held by dance audiences. Smith argues that notions of ‘corporeal exclusivity’, the idea that there is a single correct form of the body and of movement, are common across Western performance art traditions. This is a powerful discourse, which defines notions of appropriateness across performance art, and excludes performers who do not conform to the prescribed form. Sandahl and Auslander (2005, p.69) argue that excluding non-normative bodies from the stage may reinforce the ideological commitments of artists and audiences related to ‘what a body should be, what kinds of bodies are appropriate to display in performance, what constitutes performance skill and “good” theatre and dance, and so on’.
Addressing these notions of corporeal exclusivity is important because these presuppositions do not emerge only in the performance environment but are carried into other areas of the social world. Shakespeare (2004) argues that portrayals of disability in cultural products (particularly, in his case, literature) inform and shape people’s perceptions of disabilities and disabled people in everyday life. He draws particular attention to not only the tendency to the ‘other’ in historical literature (defining the character by their disability, rather than by their attributes) but also the tendency for villains to possess some form of impairment; even the Bible extensively uses disability as a symbolic identifier. This position is supported by authors such as Barnes (1992), who argues that stereotypes of disability across popular culture contribute to broader discrimination. He argues that these stereotypes ‘form the bedrock on which the attitudes towards, assumptions about and expectations of disabled people are based’ (Barnes, 1992, p.39).
The importance of professional equality is therefore grounded in the basic ideology of equality, in the erosion of the distinction between ‘disabled’ and ‘mainstream’ dance, and also in the necessity of presenting positive (and representative) cultural representations of the public at large in dance. However, despite these factors, the protagonists of the movement struggle to have professional equality recognised as an institutional value. As Stephen Philip’s (2001) comment piece from The Guardian indicates, there was a historical perception that many arts institutions were reticent to adopt a substantive approach to dealing with issues of disability and equal opportunities:
[M]any arts institutions seem to place more resources into presenting a shiny smiley package of equal opportunity proposals and monitoring forms than they do in actually implementing radical new practices.
The struggle for professional equality is partly resource-based (as some venues cannot afford the upgrades necessary to make their performance spaces accessible), but it is also largely a fight to change normative assumptions. The ability of arts organisations to make a proactive approach to professional equality can be complicated by the role of critics, who exert considerable normative authority in the arts. Smith (2005) provides an account of critics’ reviews of performances by Candoco, one of the first dance organisations in the United Kingdom to actively push disabled performers into mainstream repertoires. These ‘conservative pronouncements from within the outmoded citadels of “high” art’ (Smith, 2005, p.75) embody, for Smith, the urge of the establishment to reinforce the segregation between ‘disabled’ and ‘mainstream’ dance. Even more concerning, reviews of these performances, as shown by the 1999 review of a performance by Candoco by Michael Scott of The Vancouver Sun, reproduced below (from Smith, 2005, p.80), can embrace and project an image of the non-normative body which is exceedingly counter to the aims of the movement.
There is a horrific, Satyricon quality to CandoCo that heaves up in the chest—nausea at the moral rudderlessness of a world where we would pay money to watch a man whose body terminates at his ribcage, moving about on the stage on his hands.
This research has been produced using the guidelines of ‘emancipatory’ research (Bowles and Klein, 1983) which aims to overcome patterns of bias in social science to generate ‘awareness of the contradictions hidden or distorted by everyday understandings’ and, in so doing, to direct ‘attention to the possibilities for social transformation inherent in the present configuration of social processes’ (Lather, 1989, p.259, quoted in Baker et al., 2004, p.179). This methodological choice relates both to our reasons for undertaking this research, and to the specific choices we have made in data gathering and analysis. Recognising that no piece of social-scientific research can be considered ‘value-free’, we embrace a political purpose in writing this article. By discussing the evolution of the equality agenda in the Scottish dance sector, we aim to both strengthen this movement and to provide guidance to those attempting to incite a similar movement in a different industrial or geographic context. Similarly, in our research design, we have sought to emancipate our research from any ‘othering’ of disability or ‘disabled people’. We utilise the terminology adopted by practitioners, ‘professional equality’, to stress not the differences between groups of people based on their physical abilities, but rather the basic equality of access to professional opportunities to which all are entitled. This is not to suggest that the material instances of discrimination which are faced by professional dancers are unimportant to this piece of research, but simply relates to the terminology we use to discuss the social movement.
The central source of data for this research is an autoethnographic account; produced by the second author of this article, a dance professional involved in the professional equality movement, and interrogated by the first author, an academic operating outside the movement. Autoethnography refers to a method which blends autobiography as a research technique with the practice of writing culture referred to as ethnography. In producing an autoethnography, a researcher already embedded in a particular culture adopts an ethnographic approach to interrogating their own experiences ‘in the field’. Autoethnography is considered to be a highly fruitful research method because it enables linkages between the ‘everyday, mundane aspects of organizational life with that of broader political and strategic organizational agendas and practice’ (Boyle and Parry, 2007, p.186). By basing our paper on an autoethnographic account of the professional equality movement, we seek to expose the features of this movement which would be less clearly understood by studying the movement from an external perspective.
The autoethnographic account formed the basis of a series of discussions between the two authors concerning the growth of professional equality in the dance industry. As these discussions developed to consider professional equality as a ‘social movement’ the data pool was expanded to consider industry reports (such as Verrent, 2007 and Creative Scotland’s Corporate Plan, 2011), and we began to critique our data in the light of the literature on social movements. As such, the data presented below is an autoethnographic account of the time during which professional equality was identified as a social movement (to the present day), rather than a complete account of our data.
Together, the emancipatory methodology and autoethnographic method mobilised in this study allow us to understand the development of the professional equality movement from ‘within’, rather than outside, the process (Shotter, 1996). The autoethnographic account produced in this article was refined during iterative periods of reflection and ‘writing culture’ (on the part of the second author) and interrogation based on emergent theory (by the first author). As such, the account presented below is not a raw presentation of ‘field notes’ but an account of the professional equality movement in Scotland co-produced through discussion (Kempster and Stewart, 2010).
What is so special about Scotland?
This section presents the autoethnographic account produced by the practitioner co-author, Caroline Bowditch, in which she voices her reflections on the development of the professional equality movement.
In 2004, Janet Smith, then Artistic Director of Scottish Dance Theatre (SDT), attended a seminar for arts organisations, led by Jo Verrent, that highlighted the introduction of Public Duty Legislation—legislation that requires services provided by public bodies to be accessible. Whilst many organisations saw this legislation as a huge inconvenience, Janet saw it as a major opportunity; she saw it as a chance to ask herself questions, go on new artistic adventures, and challenge the aesthetic that had been most familiar to her. In 2005 she invited Adam Benjamin, co-founder of Candoco Dance Company, and four disabled dancers to participate in a week-long research and development programme with SDT in Edinburgh. After putting out a call for disabled dancers, it soon became evident that there were none in Scotland with the level of performance experience or training that Janet was seeking, requiring her to cast her net wider. She then attracted Dan Daw from Australia, Cornelia Kip Lee from the USA, Michael King from Yorkshire, UK, and me, Caroline Bowditch, originally from Australia but then based in Newcastle, UK.
Following possibly the most challenging creative week I’d ever had, Janet asked me: ‘If we were able to secure the funding would you come and dance and tour with us for a season?’ This was something I’d only dreamt of. I started to question myself; ‘would I?’, or more like, ‘could I?’. I was thirty-two—wasn’t I a bit late to be starting my dance career? Most dancers are retiring by now aren’t they? Could my body—which has had only the sporadic dance opportunities available to most disabled dancers, and the absence of a technique that works for me—actually do this? Professional class everyday, up to six shows a week, touring… could I do it? Of course I said ‘yes’ and have never regretted it for a moment, but it did prompt lots of internal questions.
Late in 2006 I got the call from SDT inviting me to join the company for Spring 2007 when we worked with Adam Benjamin to make Angels of Incidence which toured throughout the UK and Ireland. As the tour was progressing, I began to realise the significance of what Janet had done. SDT were a mainstream dance company that, for a season, just happened to include disabled dancers. Audiences, who may not necessarily have come to a performance labelled as ‘inclusive’ dance, came to see the work. Janet was completely challenging the usual SDT aesthetic by including us in the mix and this felt significant.
The tour concluded and I returned to Newcastle unsure of what to do next. This had been a life-altering experience for me and I didn’t feel I could go back to just sporadic opportunities—I wanted more. I started to approach other mainstream companies that were auditioning only to discover they weren’t ready for either me or this conversation. I also felt SDT somehow needed to document its learning from this time: What happened? What did we learn? What would we do different next time? Somehow I wanted to gather up all the strands from this adventure in a way that they could be passed to other dance companies which might be brave enough to dip their toe in the water.
In Autumn 2007, I met with Janet and Amanda Chinn, SDT’s General Manager, to discuss the possibility of doing some sort of evaluation of the Angels project. They both acknowledged that there was something more significant that SDT could do, and the industry more broadly; the idea of the Dance Agent for Change role was born.
From 2008 to 2010, the Scottish Arts Council (SAC)—which has since been superseded as Scotland's national arts funding body by Creative Scotland—employed an Equalities Officer, Robert Softley Gale, who had a focus on arts and disability. His role allowed equality, particularly in relation to arts and disability, to become central to the organisation and the planning, development and delivery of programmes and funding streams at the Scottish Arts Council.
Between 2008 and 2010 several projects significant to the embedding of professional equality took place across the industry. Firstly, Claire Cunningham, a disabled performance artist and choreographer, was offered a significant bursary from SAC's Equalities budget to carry out professional development over several years. Claire was able to explore dance techniques that worked for her body and developed significant professional work that has toured extensively throughout the UK, Europe, Brazil and the Middle East, mostly as part of mainstream dance festivals. Secondly, Scottish Dance Theatre created, and appointed me to, the post of Dance Agent for Change (DAFC) which had five main aims:
- To increase the number of disabled people involved in dance in Scotland.
- To increase confidence of people delivering dance in Scotland to everyone, making dance more accessible.
- To explore the possibility of breaking new artistic ground in dance with integration at the forefront.
- To offer an integrated creative learning programme which educates, inspires, informs and expands horizons.
- To map out a path for the future of integrated dance in Scotland.
Throughout the four years as the DAFC, I had contact with over 25,000 people including audiences, workshop participants and those present at presentations or training sessions. Many of these interactions were with people who had never had any contact with integrated or inclusive dance before. The role also instigated the establishing of the Creative Thinking Network (CTN). The purpose of the CTN was, and still is, to bring together arts practitioners and organisations from all over Scotland four times a year to network, exchange information and potentially develop new collaborations. The CTN continues to be successful in this role, with over 60 members, and is the one element of my DAFC role that Creative Scotland continues to fund.
When Creative Scotland was launched in 2010 it made the following commitment:
We will adopt a mainstreaming approach by embedding equality throughout all our programmes, considering the potential impacts on equality of our policies and our relations with cultural organisations (Creative Scotland Corporate Report, 2011).
Commitment to equality in such a blanket way at such a high level is unique to Scotland. Scotland is also one of the few countries that doesn’t have a disability arts organisation and therefore equality is centralised rather than being palmed off to a ‘specialised’ organisation. So, equality is valued, central and seen as important. There is a long-term and on-going investment in, and commitment to, developing and retaining disabled artists in Scotland. There is also an expectation from funders like Creative Scotland that equality is on the agendas of arts organisations where it would usually be absent.
I believe this commitment has generally increased the awareness of work by disabled artists and organisations working with disabled people in Scotland. Work with disabled artists is now seen as a new development opportunity; professional disabled artists are now sought-after in Scotland as collaborators, makers and performers. Innovative creative projects have been generated and new artistic ground has been explored as a result. What remains an ongoing challenge is finding the next generation of disabled artists and locating disabled people with whom to engage in projects and develop their talent. Disabled people have been absent from the stage for so long that convincing them that they belong on a stage or in a dance studio is still difficult. The cultural change still needed is significant but progress has been made in the last few years. The embedding of equality throughout the Scottish arts scene makes it unique and attractive, and gives Scotland the reputation of being a ‘hotspot’ for disabled artists.
Discussion: professional equality as a social movement
A social movement can be defined as a ‘sustained series of challenges by groups of people against those who have power over them, using a wide range of conventional and unconventional actions and of formal and informal organisations’ (Baker et al., 2004, p.193). In analysing professional equality as a social movement, we might then ask the following questions: Who are those with and without power? What are the series of challenges that characterise the movement? And finally, what are the formal and informal organisations involved?
In the case of professional equality, those without power are not only the professional disabled dancers who have personally experienced discrimination, the core protagonists, but also a wider group of protagonists we term ‘passionate advocates’. These passionate advocates might be connected to the core protagonists through professional association (for instance, as colleagues) or through a connection to the broader cause of equality (such as the members of the Creative Thinking Network). The issue of which individuals or organisations possess power over the core protagonists is more complex. It is clear from the autoethnographic data above that inequality in the provision of education and employment opportunities is secured at both the organisational and institutional levels. At the organisational level, individual dance theatres may not provide opportunities to disabled dancers, whether consciously or not. Similarly, individual venues might discriminate against disabled dancers through not providing appropriate facilities.
However, the provision of opportunities by these individual organisations may be considered to be, to some extent, determined by the national arts funding body; that is, at the institutional level. As Meyer and Rowan (1977) argue, organisations are likely to conform to the structures, beliefs and approaches favoured by powerful organisations in their institutional environments. This process is termed ‘mimetic isomorphism’ and has been widely empirically identified by scholars of organisational studies (Boxenbaum and Jonsson, 2008) and specifically in creative industries such as dance (Alvarez et al., 2005). Not only is the ability of individual organisations to support professional equality determined by the funding made available (or not) to them by the national arts funding body, but processes of mimetic isomorphism are also likely to influence their activities. This is reflected in the autoethnographic account when Caroline reflects on the effects of Creative Scotland’s commitment to equality. If a national arts organisation, such as Creative Scotland, espouses professional equality as an organisational priority, then so will those organisations which rely upon its approval. Although Creative Scotland has less direct involvement with the core protagonists, they are arguably the most important organisation in realising the goal of professional equality.
The second key issue in describing professional equality as a social movement is: what are the series of challenges which characterise the movement? For the purposes of simplicity, we regard all pro-equality interventions by our core protagonists as ‘challenges’ and all pro-equality interventions by those ‘in power’ (such as the national arts funding body) as ‘achievements’. Because the actions of the national arts funding body are likely to have much more direct effect upon the practices of the sector than the actions of an individual protagonist (due to the effects of mimetic isomorphism), it would be confusing to label these as ‘challenges’.
The ‘achievements’ of the social movement tell us something about the efficacy of different types of ‘challenges’ to the embedding of professional equality in dance. Robert Softley Gale’s appointment as Equalities Officer at the Scottish Arts Council was an important achievement for the movement. However, a long string of grassroots activity, which was featured in Verrent’s (2007) Dance and Disability report, also facilitated this appointment. The growth in artistic activities using disabled dancers, for example the activities of SDT highlighted in the autoethnographic account, is key to understanding how the need for equality arose from practical interventions within the sector, rather than as an externally-imposed ideological imperative (that is, because equality is right). The success of Claire Cunningham’s interventions arises from her position as an established professional dancer, not primarily from her being funded by the Scottish Arts Council to expand her repertoire, and the success of Caroline’s advocacy in the sector is partly secured through her being a practising member of the professional dance community. These activities represent the challenges which promote professional equality in the sector and, importantly, from the sector. Although the intervention of the national arts funding body (through appointing Softley Gale) might be seen to be strategically-led, the strategic imperative of equality (which was later embraced by Creative Scotland) originates from within, not outwith, the dance sector.
The success of these challenges is also due to their being couched in artistic practice. The appointment of Caroline as the Dance Agent for Change shows how a challenge based on artistic practice (rather than on other activities, such as advocacy) is the genesis for a large achievement (having the DAFC post funded by the national arts funding body). According to Verrent’s report, in 2007 the senior management at Scottish Dance Theatre reported that their engagement with disabled dancers in producing Angels of Incidence (choreographed by Candoco’s Adam Benjamin) made them ‘wish to develop further work utilising disabled dancers in the future’ (Verrent, 2007, p.9). This artistic collaboration spawned a series of conversations which resulted in the company and Caroline collaboratively writing a funding application to the Scottish Arts Council, and creating the DAFC post. Furthermore, throughout her time as DAFC, Caroline engaged in a multiplicity of advocacy practices (from workshops to lectures to networking) but continued to develop her artistic practice and opportunities which enabled her to spread further fruitful artistic partnerships (such as that with SDT) whilst also growing her legitimacy as a performing artist. Through this artistic legitimacy, Caroline had the symbolic position to act as a more effective leader in the dance field. This highlights a further characteristic of the professional equality movement; the importance of informal networks in articulating the practical implications of professional inequality and co-ordinating challenges. The Creative Thinking Network, which initially served as a steering group for the DAFC role, developed into a productive forum for information sharing and collective advocacy. Many of the professionals involved in the professional equality movement are, or have been, members of the CTN.
This brings us to the final question regarding professional equality as a social movement; what are the formal and informal organisations involved? The CTN can be considered one of the most significant informal organisations in the professional equality movement in Scotland. In terms of formal organisations, Scottish Dance Theatre has clearly played a large role in advocating for professional equality through artistic channels. Being one of the only two professional full-time companies in Scotland, SDT's artistic endeavours with professional disabled dancers, and their DAFC role, can both be considered significant in setting an example and in providing material opportunities for disabled dancers. Finally, the role of the national arts funding body (Scottish Arts Council pre-2010, Creative Scotland post-2010) and the lack of a national disability arts organisation is highlighted as an important factor in driving forward professional equality. The lack of a disability arts organisation is highlighted as a key factor in ‘mainstreaming’ the issue of disability in the arts, and ensuring that it isn’t ‘palmed off’ to an organisation without significant influence not only on professional dance companies, but on the Scottish arts sector as a whole. The importance of mimetic isomorphism, as previously identified, is key to the ability of Creative Scotland (and previously the Scottish Arts Council) to ‘lead by example’ in not only espousing professional equality as an institutional value, but actively supporting the development of disabled artists (such as by funding Claire Cunningham).
Baker et al. (2004) argue that the key organisational task for any social movement must be to strengthen the network of groups and organizations with broadly egalitarian aims. We have considered in this article how a social movement emerged in the Scottish dance industry, and we have explored the reasons for the success of this movement in establishing professional equality as an institutional value. Our analysis, drawn from an autoethnographic account authored by a key figure in the movement, highlights three key success factors: first, the genesis of the professional equality movement within the dance industry (rather than outside it) and leadership through artistic practice emerged as a key success factor for the movement. Professional performances including disabled artists enable professionals across the industry to comprehend that professional equality has tangible artistic benefits. Furthermore, when disabled performers are given the role of professional artist (rather than advocate), the inclusion of disabled dancers becomes an artistic choice rather than an ideological one. Second, informal networks, in particular the Creative Thinking Network, have proved an enduring mechanism for securing information sharing and collective advocacy in a sector which is both geographically and artistically diverse. Third, the particular institutional characteristics of the industry are a key factor: the lack of a national disability arts organisation means that the issue of professional equality is embraced by the central arts funding agency. This agency holds significant symbolic power in determining the values of cultural organisations across Scotland. Therefore, having professional equality consecrated as a core value of Creative Scotland was an important achievement for the Scottish dance movement, and may prove to be important for the greater Scottish arts sector.
This research was funded as part of the ESRC Capacity Building Cluster, ‘Capitalising on Creativity’, grant #RES 187-24-0014.
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- Zitomer, M. and Reid, G., 2011. To be or not to be—able to dance: integrated dance and children’s perceptions of dance ability and disability. Research in Dance Education, 12(2), pp.137–156. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14647893.2011.575224.


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Since I didn't see anyone post this over the weekend... http://www.williamscommunications.com/newsroom/newsreleases/2002/2002-07-26.htmlI know this board is dead.. but thought I'd just throw that out there. AirBoss, when can I stop re-arranging the deck chairs?
So do you guys think the reduced debt load will help? They seem to be only saving ~$30 million a year on interest payments. That's like putting a band-aid on a decapitation. Look for them to be acquired or go down again.
Can someone explain what this means for the stock holders. Does this mean our stock will be worth 55% of its current value?Are stock holders considered "unsecured creditors"? Maybe this release really does not have a thing to do with the stock holders.Interpretation is much appreicated.Corey
You lost it all. The crooks keep thir jobs so they can do it all over again. It wouid be great to be Howard Jansen and be able to pull thisSCAM again.
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domain: economics


text:
“Thou shalt not covet thy neighbors wife…” This tenth commandment is an indicator of how great the desire of men to take what is forbidden to them.
A group of men in this story have taken this forbidden thrill to a whole new level. Each of them have been damaged by being cuckolded by their past wives, and now take no greater pleasure than in seducing a married woman who had no intention of ever being unfaithful.
A loving wife is pulled into a web of deception by a group of unscrupulous businessmen. What starts out as an innocent job as a model for auto shows, she is soon coerced into having sex with strangers. Will she remain faithful or will she succumb to her own lustful urges? Follow Susan’s plight as she struggles with her own sensuality and tries to avoid becoming a part time harlot to strange men.
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domain: literature


Are you one of those women who (like me) just throws your bras in the washing machine with the rest of your clothes? We’ve all been there – a lot of women don’t realize how delicate some of their intimate apparel is and most won’t take the extra steps to learn how to care for them properly. We’ve broken it down into a few simple steps based on the item of clothing you will wash.
- Hand-wash your Bras.
I know it sounds like more work, but five minutes will make all the bit of difference in extending the lifetime of your favorite bra. If you choose to take the hand-washing approach:
- First, dab any stains with easy care soap and water and gently rub.
- Soak for a few minutes in the sink and gently work the suds into the fabric. Rinse.
- Get rid of any excess water by gently folding your bra against a towel before laying it out to dry.
- If you choose to use a washing machine:
- Wash on gentle cold
- Hook your bra together to avoid it snagging on other items mid-cycle.
- Using a mesh lingerie bag can also decrease the harm caused by a washer.
NEVER put your bras in the dryer! The heat breaks down the elastic and spandex, making your bras fall apart very quickly.
Storing your bras lying flat in it’s original shape (not folded in half) is also crucial in preserving them. This way, the fabric has room to breathe and the cups will not lose its shape.
It may sound ridiculous at first, but the way you wash your underwear can also affect the fit and look of the fabric. They are called “delicates” for a reason. Some tips on how to keep your panties in mint condition:
- If you notice any stains, take off your underwear and immediately soak it in cold water – the longer you don’t, the harder the stain will be to remove. Once scrubbed out, it can be washed with other intimates later on.
- If you have the time, hand-washing your panties is as beneficial as hand-washing your bras.
- Lingerie bags are necessary for washing machine use. This keeps your intimates protected and gives them a gentler cleaning while preventing tearing, fading, and general damage.
- Use a gentle detergent but avoid fabric softener and bleach – it’s way too harsh and will damage the garment.
- Separate by fabric – while cotton is a more durable fabric, washing your silk or lace delicates with your white cotton panties will cause detrimental damage to both.
- Hang dry instead of putting them into the dryer – this will help keep its original shape and elasticity. With our Modal panties like So Smooth or Sublime, lay flat to dry to avoid losing it’s shape.
Washing your delicates probably isn’t something you think about daily, but when it goes wrong, it can go really wrong. By taking these extra precautionary measures, you can save yourself a lot of time, stress and money and always your intimates looking brand new.


The apex court on Friday refused to interfere with the Madras High Court order that stated that the Puducherry Lt Governor Kiran Bedi “cannot interfere with the activities of the elected government” in the state.
A bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi was hearing a plea filed by Puducherry Lt Governor Kiran Bedi seeking clearness on the administrative control of the Union Territory and claiming that High Court had overlooked the Union Territories Act’s provisions on separation of powers.
“The high court has equated the L-G of Puducherry to the L-G of NCT of Delhi, despite the fact that the former enjoys greater discretionary powers and has a special responsibility towards Puducherry,” the plea filed by Bedi in the apex court said.
Disposing of the plea, the apex court told Bedi to approach division bench of High Court.
Bedi and Puducherry Chief Minister V Narayanaswamy are fighting on administrative issues ever since Bedi assumed office in 2016. In the wake of the constant turf war over administrative control, Bedi moved Madras High Court seeking clearness on control of bureaucrats in Puducherry.
—India Legal Bureau


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The capital of East Azerbaijan province, in the Azerbaijan region of Iran. It is a modern industrialized Iranian city with signs of civilization dating back 2,500 years. Tabriz was named by the Organization of Islamic Conference as the « city of the Islamic world tourism » for 2018.
The Vank Church is one of the most beautiful and largest churches in the Jolfa vicinity of Esfahan. Its gilded ceiling, interior section of the dome and fine historical paintings are matchless. Internally, the walls are adorned with oil paintings that ...
Tomb of Sa'di, also spelled Saadi (Sadi-e-Shirazi), byname of Musharrif al-Din ibn Muslih al-Din, (born c. 1213, Shiraz, Iran - died Dec. 9, 1291, Shīrāz), Persian poet, one of the greatest figures in classical Persian literature.
One of the oldest historic monuments in the city of Tehran, and of world heritage status belongs to a group of royal buildings that were once enclosed within the mud-thatched walls of Tehran's arg (citadel). It consists of gardens, royal buildings, and collections of Iranian crafts and European presents from the 18th and 19th centuries.
The largest pedestrian overpass built in Tehran, The 270-metre (890 ft) bridge connects two public parks: Taleghani Park and Abo-Atash Park by spanning Modarres Expressway, one of the main highways in northern Tehran.
Tehran's Holy Defense Museum is a 21-hectare complex focused on the Iran-Iraq War of 1980 to 1988 -- the conflict known in Iran as the "Holy Defense." remembers the eight-year Iran–Iraq War through maps, photos, weapons, letters and intelligence documents from the war.
The Zayandeh Rood (Zayanderud or Payandehrud) is one of the most important rivers of the central plateau of Iran. This Rivere has come to be known by this name, due to the various gushing springs on its course, that is from its source to the mouth.
let the kindness and spirit of the people draw you in! Iranian are some of the most genuinely hospitable people youve ever met. They never want anything in return, they just want to show you a good time and hope that you'll spread the word back home that Iran is a safe place to visit. Read More

domain: history


text:
The 9th edition of the CLOUD DAYS was placed under the sign of the new chapter opening for 3DS OUTSCALE, a Dassault Systèmes’ cloud brand and the leading operator of trusted Business Experience as a Service.
In his opening speech, Jean-Noël Barrot, Minister for Digital Transition and Telecommunications, once again affirmed his commitment to the sovereignty that lies at the heart of our nation’s and Europe’s competitiveness and capacity for innovation.
Emphasizing the crucial importance of data ecosystems in today’s digital economy, which is increasingly focused on the user experience, Mr. Barrot underlined the central role of the Cloud, as the major driver for innovation, in the transformation of businesses, governments and society as a whole.
Indeed, Europe is a global hub for technological innovation rapidly emerging as a key player in the global technology market, driven by its growing capacities in Cloud innovation and AI, provided we create a framework that empowers French and European champions.
Jean-Noël Barrot’s speech also highlighted the emerging challenges and opportunities that Cloud offers to organizations (such as democratized access to innovation) encouraging participants to embrace change, without of course forgetting sovereignty imperatives. “The Cloud is also a matter of sovereignty,” he reminded. “In an increasingly virtualized society and economy, it’s crucial that we maintain the highest levels of trust and service. Data, the sovereign legacy of our organizations and our nations, must be valued and protected.”
With this in mind, the Minister commended 3DS OUTSCALE’s vision and commitment, and in particular the new partnership with BNP PARIBAS. “This partnership shows that the French Cloud team is gradually strengthening its position as a strategic partner for businesses, promoting the digital autonomy that the French President has made a priority.” Indeed, the Government is to invest over 3 billion euros in the development of disruptive digital technologies. 667 million euros will be allocated to support Cloud players through the France 2030 plan, reminds Mr. Barrot before concluding:
“I would like to emphasize that 3DS OUTSCALE, like many other players in our digital economy, admirably embodies the ambition to be at the forefront of innovation, while ensuring our strategic autonomy for the future. So, well done, and long live the French Cloud!”


text:
- What is evaporation give example?
- Is vaporization exothermic?
- Is Gas solid or liquid?
- Which gas is heavier than air?
- Which liquid evaporates the fastest?
- What are the three properties of liquid?
- What is vaporization short answer?
- What happens during condensation?
- What are the two types of vaporization and how are they different?
- What is called vaporization?
- What is the difference between vaporization and evaporation?
- What is a gas to a solid called?
- Is human vaporization possible?
- What are the types of evaporation?
- What are the 2 types of evaporation?
- What are 4 examples of deposition?
- What is evaporation for kids?
- What is evaporation rate?
What is evaporation give example?
Evaporation is defined as the process in which the state of water from liquid to gaseous or to vapour state takes place.
The melting of an ice cube is an example of evaporation.
Evaporation of acetone which is used for removing nail paint is another everyday example of evaporation..
Is vaporization exothermic?
Fusion, vaporization, and sublimation are endothermic processes, whereas freezing, condensation, and deposition are exothermic processes. Changes of state are examples of phase changes, or phase transitions. … The energy change required to vaporize 1 mol of a substance is the enthalpy of vaporization (ΔHvap).
Is Gas solid or liquid?
Some Characteristics of Gases, Liquids and Solids and the Microscopic Explanation for the Behaviorgasliquidassumes the shape and volume of its container particles can move past one anotherassumes the shape of the part of the container which it occupies particles can move/slide past one another2 more rows
Which gas is heavier than air?
LPG gas (vapour) is heavier than air. The following apply to LPG, as a gas: LPG – propane – weighs 0.1162 lbs/ft³….Is LPG (Propane & Butane) Lighter or Heavier than AirGasesPropaneButaneDensity (Air=1)1.552.006Sep 21, 2019
Which liquid evaporates the fastest?
Conclusion: It was concluded that different liquids do evaporate at different rates, according to the physical properties of the given substance. Nail polish remover vaporized the quickest, followed by water, salt water, vinegar, orange juice and oil.
What are the three properties of liquid?
All liquids show the following characteristics:Liquids are almost incompressible. In liquids molecules are pretty close to each other. … Liquids have fixed volume but no fixed shape. … Liquids flow from higher to lower level.Liquids have their boiling points above room temperature, under normal conditions.
What is vaporization short answer?
Vaporization can be defined as the process in which liquid state changes into the vapour state. As a result of an increase in temperature, the kinetic energy of the molecules increases. … This process involves the consumption of heat energy.
What happens during condensation?
Condensation is the process by which water vapor in the air is changed into liquid water. … As condensation occurs and liquid water forms from the vapor, the water molecules become more organized and heat is released into the atmosphere as a result.
What are the two types of vaporization and how are they different?
There exists two types of vaporization: evaporation and boiling. Evaporation is a surface phenomenon and only occurs on the phase boundary between the liquid and the gaseous phase. … Boiling occurs when the equilibrium vapor pressure of the substance is greater than or equal to the environmental pressure.
What is called vaporization?
Vaporization, conversion of a substance from the liquid or solid phase into the gaseous (vapour) phase. If conditions allow the formation of vapour bubbles within a liquid, the vaporization process is called boiling. Direct conversion from solid to vapour is called sublimation.
What is the difference between vaporization and evaporation?
Vaporization can change the state of matter from a solid or liquid to a gas. During evaporation, the liquid state of matter is turned directly into a gas. Vaporization is usually a fast process and requires less amount of energy. … During evaporation, the molecules vaporize only from the surface of the liquid.
What is a gas to a solid called?
Deposition is the phase transition in which gas transforms into solid without passing through the liquid phase. Deposition is a thermodynamic process. The reverse of deposition is sublimation and hence sometimes deposition is called desublimation.
Is human vaporization possible?
However, the possibility of human vaporization is not supported from a medical perspective. The ground surface temperature is thought to have ranged from 3,000 to 4,000 degrees Celsius just after the bombing. Exposing a body to this level of radiant heat would leave bones and carbonized organs behind.
What are the types of evaporation?
1. Single effect evaporation: The solution to be concentrated flows inside the tubes. The heating medium is steam condensing on metal tubes.
What are the 2 types of evaporation?
The two types of vaporization are evaporation and boiling. Evaporation, then, is a type of vaporization.
What are 4 examples of deposition?
Examples of Gas to Solid (Deposition)Water vapor to ice – Water vapor transforms directly into ice without becoming a liquid, a process that often occurs on windows during the winter months.Physical vapor to film – Thin layers of material known as “film” are deposited onto a surface using a vaporized form of the film.
What is evaporation for kids?
Evaporation is when a liquid becomes a gas without forming bubbles inside the liquid volume. … If bubbles are formed we are talking instead about “boiling”. For example, water left in a bowl will slowly disappear. The water evaporates into water vapor, the gas phase of water.
What is evaporation rate?
Safety Data Sheets: An evaporation rate is the rate at which a material will vaporize (evaporate, change from liquid to vapor) compared to the rate of vaporization of a specific known material. This quantity is a ratio, therefore it is unitless.

domain: chemistry


text:
Get our introductory offer at only
*$0.99/month for first 3 months
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FINLAND faces the loss of its top credit rating at Moody's Investors Service as the country struggles to escape an economic contraction that's lasted since 2012.
Prospects on the northern-most euro member's long-term Aaa were lowered to negative from stable, Moody's said


Orange County loses employees far less frequently than other cities and counties – but soon, a number of big changes are coming at the top.
This month’s retirement of Loretta Cunniff, the deputy development director, kicks off a four-year time frame during which 10 directors or managers are scheduled to retire, including County Administrator Ajit Lalchandani, Animal Services Manager Dil Luther, Public Works Director Mark Massaro, Solid Waste Manager Jim Becker and Utilities Director Raymond Hanson.
All are in the Deferred Retirement Option Program, or DROP, which allows government employees to stay on for five years after retirement age, which is either 62 year old or 30 years of service.
That five-year end date is final, and the clock started ticking on their required retirements after they all entered the DROP system beginning in 2013.
Filling those key slots will be an important job for the next mayor taking over in December 2018, after incumbent Mayor Teresa Jacobs leaves because of term limits. But Assistant Administrator Eric Gassman said the transition would provide “a natural break” for the new mayor to work with a new administrator to fill out their own team.
“Anytime you lose people who have been here a long time and have institutional knowledge, it poses a challenge,” Gassman said. “But you do have a whole new generation internally.”
The number of retirements overall has been mostly stable for the past four years, usually ranging between 177 and 230 each year, with 2017 on a similar pace. The exception was in 2015, when a change in pension laws to prevent people from retiring and returning led 521 people to retire before the rule took effect.
“For employees, it’s decision-making time,” said Tim Boldig, deputy director in charge of building safety, about people in his situation – 29 years of service and approaching the magic number of 30. “Do I up and retire, wait till I’m 65 and get Medicare, or go into DROP and work up to the next five years?”
Countering the “brain drain” when longtime staff members leave is difficult, but there is one other potential problem in the pipeline as well: millennials.
Those in the generation born after 1980 tend to switch jobs much more frequently than the previous generation, meaning 30-year-plus employees could become rarer and rarer.
The average length of employment for millennials nationwide is about 2.1 years, said human resources director Ricardo Daye.
“They may change careers much more frequently,” Daye said. “And they’re the next generation of employees.”
Overall, Orange County’s annual turnover rate, about 11 percent for all regular and temporary employees, is well below the 17 percent average for state and local governments, according to a recent presentation by the county Human Resources Department. Counting just regular employees, the rate dips below 10 percent.
Gassman and the HR staff said they try to foster a culture that encourages employees to stick around. They pointed to the Building Safety Division, which had to downsize from 153 to 89 employees after the recession a decade ago but didn’t lay anyone off – instead, they were relocated and reassigned.
One of the biggest turnover issues in Orange during the past few years was with firefighters, many of whom left to work for other departments because of lower pay compared with Orlando and Apopka.
Of the 35 firefighters who left Orange County for another agency in 2016 and 2017, 12 left to join one of those two cities’ fire departments. A new contract with the firefighters union raised starting pay to $39,000 to $42,000 – though that is still not as high as the Orlando Fire Department’s $46,000 to $48,500.
Boldig said he and other county workers view working in county government – and staying, even when the private sector beckons – as a public service.
“Government gets a bad rap sometimes,” he said. “But a lot of really good people work in the county. My philosophy has been, you can’t change the overall presumption overnight … but if you give [someone] a good experience, then you’re on the right track.”
firstname.lastname@example.org, 407-418-5920 or @stevelemongello


text:
The Globe and Mail (03/Apr/1983) - Alfred Hitchcock: kinkiness and art
- article: Alfred Hitchcock: kinkiness and art
- author(s): Norman Snider
- newspaper: The Globe and Mail (03/Apr/1983)
- keywords: Alfred Hitchcock, Alma Reville, Cary Grant, Donald Spoto, Famous Players-Lasky, G.K. Chesterton, Ingrid Bergman, Madeleine Carroll, Old Bailey, London, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927), Tippi Hedren, W.T. Henley's Telegraph Works Company Ltd
Alfred Hitchcock: kinkiness and art
THE DARK SIDE OF GENIUS THE LIFE OF ALFRED HITCHCOCK
Donald Spoto's book about Alfred Hitchcock aspires to be the same kind of revealing biography that Albert Goldman wrote about Elvis Presley. That is to say, Spoto seeks to demonstrate that underneath the respectable facade of reputation, there lurked an incomparable monster. Leaving aside Spoto's dreariness as a stylist, there is one major impediment to his ambition: Hitchcock's unauthorized biographer has a notion of human nature that combines the insight of the gossip columnist with the fatuity of the analysand. Thus equipped, he has little chance to comprehend in any measure a great artist formed by a brutal and peculiar line of work.
All the same, Spoto has a done a remarkable job of research. If the reader knows something of the film business and can form his own conclusions about the context in which Hitchcock's anguished personality was obliged to operate, the journey through the director's long life can often be full of fascination, since the man had a character with enough kinks and sublimated quirks to confound either Kraft-Ebbing or the Marquis de Sade.
Alfred Hitchcock's dilemma, fundamentally, was that he was a physically unappealing and a fatally inhibited man who had a genius for an art form largely based on sexual glamor. From his earliest years, Hitchcock was immersed in the conundrums of the frustrated fat boy, possessed by dark fears, a deep sense of dread, and a thorough disgust for his own body. Add to these unwholesome beginnings a Victorian Catholic upbringing, in which emotion was avoided as dirty, a strict Jesuit schooling with frequent strappings, and an East London Cockney family background suffused in class shame, and you have a personality perfectly formed for the movies.
The creator of Norman Bates was forced to confess the events of each day for the approval or disapproval of a dominant and exacting mother. Early on, Hitchcock turned to food for solace and developed a taste for sadistic pranks, evidently in unconscious preparation for his future career. At bottom, Hitchcock became the first genius of horror because he himself was the most frightened man in the world.
Leaving school in his teens, Hitchcock worked through a series of odd jobs, doted on Chesterton and Poe, made visits to the murder trials at the Old Bailey, and generally shared in the British fascination with gory details of crime and punishment. A film freak at 15, especially of the American product, Hitchcock developed a shrewd and precocious appreciation of the terror story as a safe antidote to the slow drag of bourgeois life. Eager, hardworking amd unflappable, the fat young man went from a job drawing ads at the Henley Telegraph and Cable Company to one drawing titles for the British branch of Famous Players-Lasky. From designer of titles for silent features he became a designer of sets, a writer of scenarios, and assistant director, and then, still in his 20s, the first wunderkind of the British cinema.
While Hitchcock's directorial rivals led the tempestuous private lives that the cinema is famous for, he himself remained a sexual innocent well into adulthood; his marriage to Alma Reville added to the smooth progress of his career. He learned much from the German expressionist films of the twenties, both in telling a story in purely visual terms and in communicating terror. Equally early, he had a finely developed sense of himself as the first celebrity director. In 1925, he said, "Actors come and go, but the name of the director should stay clearly in the mind of audiences." Acting on this insight, immediately after his first success with The Lodger, Hitchcock formed his own PR company to promote his reputation, which, on the advice of promptly-hired financial advisers, he himself invested in, as a tax shelter. Alfred Hitchcock was one artist unafraid to be a good businessman and he ended up leaving an estate upward of $20-million.
But, as Spoto delights in pointing out, underneath the Buddha-like deadpan and the carefully contrived respectability of his image, Hitchcock was not exactly a boy scout. He was ungenerous with his collaborators, resented his actors as rivals for star billing, bitterly envied men such as Cary Grant their ease with women and formed a series of unrequited attachments to his leading ladies, from Ingrid Bergman to Madeline Carroll. Thus thwarted, Hitchcock had himself filmed in drag, did a party trick known as "The Whistling Sailor" in which the 365-pound director obscenely manipulated his massive, naked paunch, and delighted in sadistic and cruel practical jokes.
Obsessed with sexual strangulation, bondage and shoe fetishism, and fixated on all the stinky-poo of scatology, Hitchcock missed out on few kinky aberrations and, thwarted from realizing them in life by both his bulk and his chilly temperament, put as much of them into his films as he could get by the censor.
However, Spoto's boring reaction to all of this is merely to wonder piously why this monster of pride never sought professional help. Jeez, who needs therapy when you're the king of the movies, and can create your own world? What's more, much of what Spoto regards as callousness on Hitchcock's part must be viewed in context; that is to say, what appears to him as sadism is merely the standard operating procedure of the film industry. Spoto makes a great deal of the fact that the aging Hitchcock actually made a pass at that marvel of the thespian art, Tippi Hedren, which sent the poor girl screaming out of her trailer all the way out of the business for good. I mean, one bungled come-on is not enough to make the poor guy into Bluebeard.
Eager as he is to prove Hitchcock's "dark side," Spoto stumbles badly when he comes to Hitchcock's genius, trotting out a series of stupefyingly dull accounts of successive productions. What gets left out is the most important part of Hitchcock: his art. And despite Spoto's mechanical and sometimes laughable attempts to match up the life and the films, the definitive critical biography of Alfred Hitchcock remains to be written.

domain: artistic


text:
Ravi S Singh
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, November 22
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday said more than 2.6 crore families, including in Uttar Pradesh, have been provided with piped drinking water in the country under the Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM).
Laying the foundation stone of rural drinking water supply projects in Mirzapur and Sonbhadra districts of the Vindhyachal region of Uttar Pradesh on Sunday via video conference, Modi said they would go a long way in the redressal of water problem of the areas, besides boosting the economy.
“Under the Jal Jeevan Mission, the life of our mothers and sisters is getting easier due to easy water access at the comfort of their homes,” Modi said, adding: “A major benefit off this has also been a reduction of many diseases like cholera, typhoid, encephalitis caused by dirty water of the poor families.”
The JJM was launched on August 15, 2019, with a target to provided tap drinking water to every rural household by 2024.
The projects, for which the foundation stones were laid by Modi today, will provide household tap water connections in all rural households of 2,995 villages and will benefit about 42 lakh population of these districts.
The Jal Shakti Ministry has constituted “Village Water and Sanitation Committees or Paani Samiti” in all these villages, who will shoulder the responsibility of operation and maintenance of the water assets created.
The total estimated cost of the projects is Rs 5,555.38 crore and are planned to be executed in 24 months.
In a veiled critique of preceding the non-BJP governments in the country’s biggest state, Modi noted that Vindhyachal or Bundelkhand became “regions of deficiencies” despite having resources in abundance.
In spite of having several rivers, these regions were known as the most-thirsty and drought-affected regions and forced many people to migrate from here, he added.
He remarked that when piped water would reach thousands of villages in Vindhyanchal, the health of children of this region would be improved and their physical and mental development would be better.
The Prime Minister complimented the Uttar Pradesh government for providing responsive governance during the time of pandemic and keeping the pace of reforms going.
Simranjeet Singh (17th, 34th minutes) scored a brace, while ...
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SGPC to award Rs 5 lakh to participants from Punjab, Rs 1 cr...
Top court wonders why no FIR was filed since 2019 even as it...

domain: news


text:
Creature - Rhino
Power / Toughness:
Trample (If this creature would deal enough damage to its blockers to destroy them, you may have it deal the rest of its damage to defending player or planeswalker.)
"Sometimes I wonder if our weapons and armor are a step backward."
—Soron, rhox pikemaster

domain: hobby


… if you can afford it. Here’s a list of how much it’ll cost to book your favorite artists. Man, did I get into the wrong business …
Doc & Andie got to spend some time w/ Brantley Gilbert at his home in Athens, Georgia … and Andie has a battle wound … Check out the video!
Doc and Andie were invited to join Brantley in his hometown of Jefferson, Georgia – and broadcasted from Jefferson Dragons High School.
Brantley joins Doc and Andie to talk about his new album – and his hometown!
Director William Eubank stopped by to talk with Doc & Andie to talk about his new movie “The Signal” In theaters June 13th!
Chris Young will be with us at our 30th Anniversary Show – we catch up with one of our favorite guys to see how he’s been!
At the age of nine, Exeter Township’s Avery Niedrowski took a ten-hour vow of silence to raise awareness and money for A.L.S. (also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease) and raised over $50,000. She is now already over 75% complete of her new goal of $75,000. Now 12, Avery has inspired a national campaign […]
Governor Corbett has asked that Flags be at Half Mast today to memorialize police officers who have lose their lives in the line of duty.


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Thermal insulation120g/sqm wadding on body, 100g/sqm on sleeves. fluffy fleece collar. Warm hood
Waterproofing10,000mm membrane. 100% taped seams, waterproof zips, removable snow skirt.
BreathabilityBreathable main component, ventilation zips, mesh lining.
Easy storage6 pockets: 2 hands, chest, inner, goggles and ski pass.
Lightweight1,030g in size 12
Freedom of movementAthletic cut, 100% stretch fabric and preshaped elbows.
Easy adjustmentAdjustable cuffs, hem adjustment cord, removable 3D-adjustment hood.
The garment is placed in a shower for several hours and subjected to simulated mist, rain shower, thunder shower and storm conditions. This test enables us to guarantee the waterproofing of NOVADRY® labelled garments. NOVADRY® determines the intensity of the weather conditions used in the tests depending on the garment's target use. If it passes the weather test for its intended use, the garment is NOVADRY® certified.
We measure a fabric's resistance to a water column, in mm (based on the ISO 811 standard). The higher the water pressure withstood, the more waterproof the fabric. Components scoring 2000 mm can resist the pressure from 2000 mm of water (roughly equivalent to a rain shower lasting 2 hours).
A membrane is a very thin (around 5 to 25 micrometres) polymer layer (polyurethane, polyester or PTFE) that is applied to the inner surface of a fabric to make it highly waterproof and breathable
A breathable coating involves coating one side with a paste or a liquid. Once applied to a fabric, it creates a protective layer often used as a waterproof barrier that wicks away water vapour.
COMPONENT WATER REPELLENT PROPERTIES
Water repellent fabric allows water to run off its surface without seeping in. This prevents fabric from swelling, and keeps it lightweight and warm. Fabric is made water repellent by applying a surface treatment. This treatment must be renewed throughout the garment's lifetime (every 2 or 3 washes). Water repellent treatment products are available in our stores. All Wed'ze waterproof jackets have received a water repellent treatment.
They are waterproof adhesive strips. These strips are fastened behind the seams, and play an essential role in a garment's waterproofing. Even if a garment is made from highly waterproof materials, if the seams are not perfectly sealed, water will get through! Novadry® tests the effectiveness of waterproofing strips on clothing after 5 washes, in order to guarantee that garments remain waterproof over time.
Prevents air and snow from getting in.
To determine whether a component is breathable, we test its evaporative resistance or RET (based on the ISO 11092 standard). The lower a fabric's resistance, the more water vapour generated by the body during sports can escape through the fabric, and the higher its breathability.
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November 5, 2023
Talley Recreation Center (MPL3)
Learn to Swing Dance
Sunday, November 5, 2023
Instructor: Amanda Comi
Fee: $75 per session, ($12.50 class drop-ins fee)
6 classes, Swing dancing is an energetic social dance style characterized by rhythmic footwork and playful interaction between partners. This 6-week course introduces a flexible Hollywood Style swing-out with basic variations and teaches how to combine these moves to survive an entire night on the social dance floor. Class is appropriate for dancers of any level. No partner required, dancers are encouraged to rotate for practice. Dancers are welcome to wear face masks, please be prepared to wear one at the request of your partner.


Need Appliance Repair Help? Ask a Technician for Answers ASAP
i need to turn off my frigidaire manuel timers. its an older stove with 2 manuel turning timer start and stop dials...please help...the oven works great but when i was cleaning the dials i must of turned them a little...the oven temp light really never goes off it just fades and kinda blinks when oven turned off. before the light completly turned off. if i put the knob between bake and pre heat the light will go off then???
Hi, try setting the start and stop times, then advance the clock to trip the timers.
Can you check the model #, the one you gave is not coming up.
im pretty sure i did thAT...ill turn the knobs around and they will pop out. the clock gives me an off option but that dont work either...the oven worked fine until i messed with the knobs...i can get it to pre heat fine but then it seems to turn off in the the middle of baking...the clock time or start and stop time dont match so its not that?
Can you check the model # XXXXX me?
the model # XXXXX XXXXX there is a serial # XXXXX 4673??
Ok. I am not able to bring this unit up. I will opt out so another tech may be able to help. If i find the info on this unit, i will opt back in.
hello...if you cant help..thats ok just let me know so im not sitting here all night!!


SyV 34.2 million euros awarded cleaning road and collected waste of Plasencia (Cáceres)
on February 14, 2011
It develops environmental services, a subsidiary of the sacyr vallehermosoGroup's environmental services, conduct the road cleaning and the collection of urban waste of Plasencia (Cáceres) for an amount of EUR 34.2 million.
The city of Plasencia has been awarded to the joint venture formed by Valoriza services environmental, Agroforex (agroforestry company of Extremadura) and Ecovias the contract for the road cleaning and collection of municipal solid waste of Piacenza for a period of 12 yearsplus three years of extension and an amount of 2.85 billion per year.
This award, which will serve more than 40,000 people, will increase the number of containers increased the collection by lateral load service, extending this to almost all of the extensive municipal term. Be also carried out a service removes and pon of containers in the area of intramuros, eliminating the visual impact that cause the containers to surface in the area of tourist interest of the municipality.
As for the cleaning service is designed a special plan for the interior of the walled enclosure of the same mode shall provide itself with the city of regular baldeos by high-pressure water and proceed to high mechanisation of the work of scanningusing machinery of latest technology, sustainable, of minimum fuel consumption, use of clean energy and low emissions, atmospheric and acoustic, avoiding inconvenience to the public.


Castings in the investment foundry are made by the lost wax process. Currently, the Company has the largest production capabilities in Poland and is fully prepared for comprehensive problem solving from casting design to the ready-for-use component. Castings made by this method are characterized by high dimensional accuracy comprised in CT5 tolerance range and by high surface quality.
It is possible to make castings with complex shapes and different wall thicknesses in the weight range from 0.001kg to 15kg. Investment castings are produced as single parts and in large series of tens of thousands of pieces, depending on the Customer’s needs. Tooling, i.e. dies for the production of wax patterns, is made within the Company’s own capacity using own machining centre. The foundry has two autoclaves to melt out the wax from moulds. Drying of ceramic moulds takes place in a computer-controlled dryer with the possibility of setting the drying parameters.
Four induction furnaces of 150 kg capacity are used for pouring of moulds baked in tunnel kilns.


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I went to college at Eastern Illinois University where I studied music education and was a trumpet section leader for the marching band. I also marched the Cavaliers Drum and Bugle Corps in 1993 as a soprano/marching French horn, and 1997/1999 in the color guard.
I have been teaching color guard, movement, marching, and music for middle school, high school, and college programs for the last 23 years, starting with both my high school and college alma maters. I started the winter guard program for Eastern Illinois University.
I have taught high schools in 9 different states. My latest adventures in Florida were with Thomas Jefferson High School and Northside Christian Middle/High Schools. I have been in the Tampa Bay area for the last 12 years, and bought my home in St Petersburg where I decided to settle down many years ago.
I am excited to work with the St Petersburg High School music program to make even more amazing opportunities for the school's students to participate in!


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A suspect fled the Hazelton, PA area after he found out he was wanted on several drug charges that were filed following a lengthy investigation.
Juan Thomas Vidal, 33, was charged with being a fugitive from justice after he was found in Holyoke Friday morning.
U.S. Marshals in Pennsylvania were pursuing leads in several states including Massachusetts. When authorities searched Vidal's daughter's residence at 551 South Bridge St., they discovered the 6'4", 250-pound fugitive hiding in her bedroom closet, according to Dave Milne of the U.S. Marshals Service. He was taken into custody without incident.
Vidal's charges in Pennsylvania included seven counts of possession with intent to manufacture or deliver heroin and cocaine and an arrest warrant was issued based on the narcotics charges.
Vidal was transported to the Holyoke Police Department and will wait there to be extradited to Pennsylvania.
"It was a great collaborative effort of federal, state and local law enforcement authorities in capturing this drug fugitive. We are committed to assisting our partners in the efforts of eradicating illegal drug distribution off of the streets of Western Massachusetts," U.S. Marshal John Gibbons said.
The U.S. Marshals Service Task Force is a team comprised of investigators and law enforcement officers from the Springfield U.S. Marshal's office, Springfield and West Springfield police departments and the Hampden County Sheriff's Department, Milne said. Those departments work closely with the State Police Violent Fugitive Team, he said.
Copyright 2014 WSHM (Meredith Corporation). All rights reserved
Sunday, August 31 2014 3:28 PM EDT2014-08-31 19:28:29 GMT
Disturbing pictures of an injured kindergartner from Pascagoula have made a mother's call for action go viral online.More >
Disturbing pictures of an injured kindergartner from Pascagoula have made a mother's call for action go viral online. Friends and family of a Pascagoula kindergarten student have created a Facebook page and GoFundMe.com account claiming the girl was attacked on the playground this week by another student.More >

domain: law


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This week’s 5 best bets for arts & culture in Las Vegas
UNLV hosts its fall jazz festival and Cirque du Soleil employees showcase their artwork in this week’s arts and leisure roundup.
The UNLV Music Department will present its fall jazz festival Monday through Wednesday in the Black Box Theatre. The Jazz Vocal Ensemble, Jazz Guitar Ensemble and Jazz Ensemble III open the annual event Monday, followed by the Contemporary Jazz Ensemble and Latin Jazz Ensemble on Tuesday. The jazz faculty will join Jazz Ensembles I and II for the closing performance Wednesday. The concerts start at 7:30 p.m., and tickets are $8 to $10 per show at unlv.edu/pac.
Works by Cirque du Soleil performers, technicians and staff will be showcased Wednesday through Jan. 4 at Core Contemporary. The 10th annual exhibition features wig sculptures, paintings, petroglyphs and other original artwork in a variety of mediums. The opening reception will be 5:30 to 8 p.m. Dec. 5. Viewings will be available from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesdays to Saturdays at 900 E. Karen Ave., Suite D222. For more information, visit corecontemporary.com.
The College of Southern Nevada’s Concert Band performs works by Mozart and Norman Dello Joio, Christmas music by Leroy Anderson and John Rutter, and selections from holiday movies at 7 p.m. Tuesday in the Nicholas J. Horn Theatre. Tickets are $5 to $8 at csn.edu/pac.
‘A Jazz Christmas’
Uli Geissendoerfer and friends will pay tribute to composer Vince Guaraldi’s music from “A Charlie Brown Christmas” at 7 p.m. Dec. 5 in The Smith Center’s Cabaret Jazz. The concert will also feature jazz holiday favorites, and performances by Toscha Comeaux, Gary Fowler, Charles McNeal, Julian Tanaka and others. Tickets are $25 to $45 at thesmithcenter.com.
Kids can design their own snowflake ornaments, lollipop wands, crowns and ballet slippers Friday at the Discovery Children’s Museum. The “Nutcracker Extravaganza” also includes an interactive reading of the classic tale and performances by Nevada Ballet Theatre from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. For details and tickets, visit discoverykidslv.org.


Ike's Devastation Underreported
"It's been lost in the shuffle with the turmoil of the financial markets, but Hurricane Ike has been a disaster of epic proportions in western Louisiana and Texas. This powerful Category 2 hurricane wracked...45,000 homes [and left]hundreds of thousands more Americans in the Midwest without power for days in a 200-mile-wide swath from the Gulf Coast to the Great Lakes.
Then there was Ike's environmental impact. According to an analysis of federal data by The Associated Press, at least a half million gallons of crude oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico and the marshes, bayous and bays of Louisiana and Texas.
It took days for the rest of the nation to learn that a million Houston residents had no running water for three days. Or that no local shelters had been opened during the storm. Or that only two of the region's 14 hospitals reopened within the first two weeks after the storm.
We're not talking about a Third World city seeing conditions like this. This is Houston, the fourth largest city in the United States. And conditions in Galveston, which took a direct hit from Ike, were even worse. "


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Chord Overstreet Takes Center Stage in New Issue of VMAN
Chord Overstreet is having an awesome month. The 'Glee' star kicked off February with VIP tickets to the Super Bowl, returned to the screen with new episodes of his hit Fox series and now the 21-year-old actor is featured in huge spread in the new issue of VMAN magazine.
Click here to check out Lucas Till's VMAN photos.
The Nashville native was asked to be a part of the first fashion shoot for the 'No Risk, No Reward' issue, looking oh-so-sleek in outfits by G-Star, John Galliano, Louis Vuitton and Marc Jacobs. The dapper looks sure are a far cry from his William McKinley football jersey.
In the eight-page feature, Chord talks about his new movie, 'A Warrior's Heart,' what it was like growing up on a farm and, of course, his recent rise to stardom. He also talks about what he looks for in a girlfriend.
What does he like? "A girl who's funny, sweet, likes to laugh, and is a good girl," he says. "She needs to have somewhat of a taste for country music. And she has to be from the South. She doesn't have to be, but there's nothing like Southern food."
The new issue of VMAN includes a cover story on Kanye West, as well as other risk-takers who are at the top of their game. Check out pics from Chord's VMAN spread below and pick up your copy of the mag on newsstands tomorrow, February 8.

domain: entertainment


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If you like it, save it!
Save and organize all of the stuff you love in one place.Got it!
If you like something…
Click the heart, it's called favoriting. Favorite the stuff you like.Got it!
Author Notes: my blend - thur trial and lots of errors.... lol
similar to Old Bay Seasoning, is great with all types of seafood..... —Jen Smallwood
Serves about 4 tablespoons
- 2 teaspoons Salt
- 1 teaspoon Cayenne Pepper
- 1 teaspoon Ground Celery Seed
- 1 teaspoon Sweet Hungarian Paprika
- 1 teaspoon Dry Mustard
- 1 teaspoon Ground Black Pepper
- 1 teaspoon Ground Bay Leaf
- 1/4 teaspoon Ground Allspice
- 1/4 tablespoon Ground Ginger
- 1/4 teaspoon Grated Nutmeg
- 1/4 teaspoon Ground Cardamon
- 1/4 teaspoon Ground Cinnamon
- In a small mixing bowl, stir together salt, cayenne, celery seed, paprika, mustard, black pepper, bay leaf, allspice, ginger, nutmeg, cardamom, and cinnamon until well-combined. Seasoning mix will keep indefinitely in a tightly covered container, stored at cool room temperature in a dark place.
- **Note** If you eat a lot of seafood, multiply this recipe as much as you want and keep it on hand in an airtight sealed container. I recommend making up a batch that will be used within 1 month so you have the freshest flavor.
More Great Recipes:

domain: food


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Tis’ the season to reflect on your Poinsettia strategy
In celebration of National Poinsettia Day, learn how to use BCA's to strengthen your future growth of this festive flower
Happy National Poinsettia Day! Yes, you did just read that correctly — the 12th of December is the day growers, gardeners and even customers pay tribute to the exotic flower which for many has become the festive flower that beautifully encapsulates the essence of Christmas. Seeing as the native Mexican flower has a whole day dedicated to it’s existence and the man who made it a global festive phenomenon, Joel Roberts Poinsettia, we thought we’d mark the celebration by reflecting on this year’s Poinsettia growing season.
How did your poinsettias bloom this year? Did you use BCAs to their full potential, or maybe you didn’t use them at all? We sat down with our Technical Lead & Commercial Manager at Bioline Inc in North America, Ronald Valentin, to discuss the best ways for growers to maximise their poinsettia growth in the New Year.
STEP ONE: STARTING ‘CLEAN’
“The meaning of ‘clean’ has two sides. Obviously, it’s expected that cuttings aren’t coming in from producers with unacceptable levels of pest problems—in this case, whitefly. However, trying to reach for ‘zero’ tolerance has probably also increased the development of resistance, as traditional pesticides are used exclusively and extensively.
The other side is that certain groups of pesticides can have very long residual effects on BCAs. For example, the A.I. acephate can have long residual effects on the wasps that are used for whitefly control (>8 weeks). So if this product has been used on the stock plants producing the cuttings, it wouldn’t work in favor of starting early with BCAs. If the whitefly on these same stock plants is resistant to this same A.I. (which ‘Q’ type Bemisia most likely would be), you end up with double the trouble — bad residues, but still having possibly unacceptable levels of whitefly on the cuttings.”
STEP TWO: COMMUNICATION
“Communication with producers and suppliers of cuttings is highly recommended to let them know your intentions of using BCAs. Many of the cutting producers have become much more active with producing BCA-ready cuttings, minimizing the use of “older style” chemistry and even using BCAs on the stock plant farms.”
STEP THREE: DIPPING
“A technique that has picked up in recent years to help with a cleaner start with any young plant material has been dipping of unrooted or rooted cuttings into solutions to limit the level of whitefly being introduced. This has been supported with research in Canada that dipping cuttings into either an oil-based product (for example Suffoil X) or a solution with BotanigardWP will lower numbers of potential hitch hikers.
Often BotanigardWP is done in combination with nematodes (Steinernema feltiea) and RootShield to also target fungus gnats and fungal disease problems such as Pythium. Keep in mind that these products only work on contact with their target organism. So a whitefly adult or larva not getting in contact with spores of BotanigardWP will most definitely not get affected. Same with the oil products.”
STEP FOUR: IDENTIFYING PESTS
“Nowadays, it’s very rare to see a poinsettia crop where the main whitefly species found isn’t Sweet PotatoWhitefly. This species can be in two bio types, named ‘B’ biotype and ‘Q’ biotype. The ‘B’ biotype is still relatively susceptible to traditional pesticides, whereas the ‘Q’ type is the one that has given some growers sleepless nights, especially when a population has been well established later in the crop.
Here’s the tricky part: you can’t tell the difference between the two biotypes unless you get them DNA tested. The other method for identifying which biotype you have isn’t recommended: the presence of ‘Q’ biotype is sometimes only discovered when certain traditional pesticides don’t seem to work as they “used to.” However, this typically means it’s too late and there’s a battle that’s already started.”
STEP FIVE: WHITEFLY CONTROL IN CROPS
“The BCA that’s used for whitefly control in many different crops, including poinsettia, is Eretmocerus eremicus. This tiny wasp is completely yellow and is released as pupa into the crop using either blister packs (loose pupa in a small container) or little cards (pupa glued on the card). These blisters or cards are clipped on the side of the pot with the blister or card facing the pot. Releases should start as early as possible, as soon as mist starts for the cuttings or, for the growers receiving rooted cuttings, as soon as possible after transplanting (don’t forget to dip the liner).
Once hatched, these little wasps can fly and start their search for whitefly larva. They have two modes of action. The first one is host feeding, which is primarily done on younger larva. One wasp can kill 20 to 30 first instar larva per day. The second mode of action is parasitism of the older larva by depositing an egg underneath the whitefly larva, which in the end results in producing another wasp. Here’s the good news: these wasps do not discriminate between ‘B’ or ‘Q’ type and they’ll also control Greenhouse Whitefly as well.”
STEP SIX: WHITEFLY CONTROL IN PLANTS
“In stock plant production, often Amblyseius swirskii is added as a third BCA, mostly in small-release sachets. This predatory mite feeds on whitefly eggs and is highly effective at high temperatures, consuming approximately 10 eggs per day, which is approximately 10% of what a whitefly female produces in her lifetime. On a higher-value crop, such as stock plants, it can be cost effective to use this predatory mite. Some growers also release these mites in the finishing crop, mostly as a broadcast application.
The timing of these applications is critical, at points where you have the highest leaf surface density, i.e. in plug trays JUST before transplanting and just before spacing in September. The reasoning is that these are predatory mites that don’t have the ability to fly, which makes it difficult for them to distribute throughout the crop. This is the advantage of the wasps—they can fly.”

domain: agronomy


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Last week, Glenn Beck had David Barton on his television program where he heaped praise upon Barton’s last book, “The Founder’s Bible.” Now Beck has begun personally promoting Barton’s book during advertising breaks on his show, as he did last night when he beseeched his audience to buy the book because is represents “the only answer” to our problems.
“This is, honest to God, we are out of all other options,” Beck said, holding up Barton’s book. “This is the only answer and he have to know it inside and out … We have to start reading this with our kids that the table at dinner every night.”
“I can’t urge you enough to get involved and get this,” he concluded before, later, interviewing Robert Muise of the American Freedom Law Center, who declared that America is God’s “chosen nation” because the Holy Spirit inspired the Founding Fathers to create this country and our Constitution.
That prompted Beck to proclaim that “it wasn’t a coincidence that the Democratic Party denied God three times,” referring to the vote that took place during the 2012 convention.
“Three times they called that and all the biblical meaning behind that,” Beck marveled. “God’s just going to say, he’s begging us, please don’t do this”:

domain: politics