text:
Human Evolution, biological and cultural development of humans and related species. The main physical evidence of our evolution is a large number of fossil bones and teeth that have been found at various places throughout Africa, Europe, and Asia. Tools of stone, bone, and wood, as well as fire hearths, campsites, and burials, have also been discovered and excavated. As a result of these discoveries in archaeology and anthropology (see Biological Anthropology; Social Anthropology), a picture of human evolution duuring the past 4 million to 5 million years has emerged.
II HUMAN PHYSICAL TRAITS
Human beings (members of the genus Homo) are classified in the mammalian order Primates; within this order, human beings, along with our extinct close relatives, and our nearest living relatives, the African apes, are sometimes placed together in the family Hominidae because of genetic similarities, although classification systems more commonly still place great apes in a separate family, Pongidae. If the single grouping, Hominidae, is used, the separate human line inn the hominid family is distinguished by being placed in a subfamily, Homininae, whose members are then called hominines—the practice that is followed in this article. An examination of the fossil record of the hominines reveals several biological and behavioural tr
Two-legged walking, or bipedalism, seems to be one of the earliest of the major hominine characteristics to have evolved. This form of locomotion led to a number of skeletal modifications in the neck, lower spinal column, pelvis, and legs. Because these changes can be documented in fossil bone, bipedalism is usually seen as the defining trait of the subfamily.
B Brain Size and Body Size
Sophisticated human behaviour, such as our ability to make and to use tools, is related to the large size and complexity of the human brain. Most modern human beings have a braincase volume of between 1,200 and 1,500 cm3. In the course of human evolution the size of the brain has more than tripled. The inncrease in brain size may be related to changes in hominine behaviour. Over time, stone tools and other artefacts became increasingly numerous and sophisticated. Archaeological sites, too, show more intense occupation in later phases of human biological history.
In addition, the geographical areas occupied by our ancestors expanded during the course of human evolution. As far as is known, the earliest examples were in north-central, eastern, and southern Africa, and they began to move into the tropical and subtropical areas of Eu
Some of the earliest hominine fossils show evidence of large differences in body size, which may reflect a pattern of sexual dimorphism in our early possible ancestors. The bones suggest that females may have been 0.9 to 1.2 m (3 to 4 ft) in height and about 27 to 32 kg (60 to 70 lb) in weight, while males may have been somewhat more than 1.5 m (5 ft) tall, weighing about 68 kg (150 lb). The reasons for this body size difference are disputed, but may be related to specialized patterns of behaviour in early hominine social groups. This extreme dimorphism seems to have disappeared gr
C Face and Teeth
Another major trend in hominine development is the gradual decrease in the size of the face and teeth. All the great apes are equipped with large, tusk-like canine teeth that project well beyond the level of the other teeth. The earliest hominine remains possess canines that project slightly, but those of all later hominines show a marked reduction in size. Also, the chewing teeth—premolars and molars—have decreased overall in size over time, although not consistently. Associated with these changes is a gradual reduction in the size of the face and jaws. In early hominines, the face was large and positioned in front of the braincase. As the teeth became smaller and the brain expanded, the face became smaller and its position changed; thus, the relatively small face of modern human beings is located below, rather than in front of, the large, expanded braincase.
III HUMAN ORIGINS
The fossil evidence for possible immediate ancestors of modern human beings is divided into the genera Ardipithecus, Australopithecus, Paranthropus, and Homo, and begins about 5.8 million years ago. The nature of the hominine evolutionary tree before that is uncertain.
Between 7 million and 20 million years ago, primitive ape-like animals were widely distributed on th
Comparisons of blood proteins and the DNA of the African great apes with those of human beings indicate that the line leading to modern people did not split off from that of chimpanzees and gorillas until comparatively late in evolution. Based on these comparisons, many scientists believe a reasonable time for this evolutionary split is 5 million to 8 million years ago. It is, therefore, quite possible that the known hominine fossil record, which begins about 5.8 million years ago, extends back virtually to the beginnings of the human line. Future fossil discoveries may permit a more precise placement of the time when the direct ancestors of the modern African apes split off from those leading to modern people and hominine/human evolution can be said to have begun.
A Ardipithecus and Australopithecines
The fossil evidence for human evolution may begin with a poorly known creature called Ardipithecus ramidus. This species is known from Ethiopian sites near Aramis, and is represented by teeth, jaw fragments, and part of a skeleton, dating from about 4.4 and 5.8 million years ago. Until this material has been published in more detail, it will remain unclear whether Ardipithecus lies on the hominine line, or might instead represent a fossil ape. If the latter possibility turns out to be the case, the earliest definite hominines are represented by the somewhat later australopithecines (“southern apes”).
Fossils of these creatures have been discovered in a number of sites in eastern and southern Africa, and they are divided into three genera, Australopithecus, Paranthropus, and Kenyanthropus. Australopithecus is first known from sites in northern Kenya at about 4 million years ago, and the genus seems to have become extinct about 2 million years ago. Paranthropus originated at least 2.5 million years ago, and persisted until about 1 million years ago. All the australopithecines were regular bipeds, and therefore indisputable hominines. In details of their teeth, jaws, and brain size, however, they differ sufficiently among themselves to warrant division into at least four species of Australopithecus, three species of Paranthropus, and a distinct form called Kenyanthropus platyops. The other species are called Australopithecus anamensis, Australopithecus afarensis, Australopithecus africanus, and Australopithecus garhi; and Paranthropus aethiopicus, Paranthropus robustus, and Paranthropus boisei. It is possible that Australopithecus anamensis gave rise to the later species of Australopithecus, while Paranthopus aethiopicus was ancestral to the later species of Paranthropus.
The australopithecine Australopithecus anamensis is known from fragmentary remains found at sites in Kenya dating from about 4 million years ago. Its back teeth are large, with a thick covering of enamel, while an upper arm and shin bone thought to belong to the same creature are rather human in form. Australopithecus afarensis is represented by many more fossils, including the famous partial skeleton of Lucy, found at Hadar in Ethiopia. The species was present in eastern Africa between 3 million and 4 million years ago, it is deduced from evidence discovered in Kenya, the Afar region of Ethiopia, and Tanzania, and may also have been present further west in Chad. Australopithecus afarensis had a brain size hardly larger than those of chimpanzees (about 350 to 500 cm3). Some individuals possessed somewhat more projecting canine teeth than those of later hominines. No tools of any kind have been found with Australopithecus afarensis fossils, but footprint trails preserved at Laetoli in Tanzania are thought to have been made by this creature. By about 3 million years ago, Australopithecus afarensis may have evolved into a later australopithecine, Australopithecus africanus. Known from sites in southern Africa, Australopithecus africanus possessed a brain similar to that of its predecessor. However, although the size of the chewing teeth remained large, the canines, instead of projecting, grew only to the level of the other teeth. As with Australopithecus afarensis, no stone tools have been found in association with Australopithecus africanus fossils, and, as in the earlier species, hip and limb bones suggest that while these creatures were regular bipeds, they still had ape-like body proportions and other characteristics. Between 1996 and 1998 a collection of fossilized bones belonging to a new species was discovered in Ethiopia. Named Australopithecus garhi, the species had a primitive projecting face with small braincase, but unusually large back teeth. It apparently also had long human-like legs but short ape-like forearms. The findings were dated at 2.5 million years old, a critical juncture between Australopithecus afarensis and early forms of Homo. Broken and crushed animal bones showing cut marks and gouges were found alongside suggesting that Australopithecus garhi used stone tools to butcher animals. However, evidence for whether Australopithecus garhi was a direct ancestor of modern humans or just another evolutionary dead end is still inconclusive. The same is also true for the newly discovered form called Kenyanthropus platyops, found in Kenya and dating from about 3.5 million years ago. It had a distinctively flat face with high cheekbones.
In July 2002 a team of scientists from France and Chad led by Michel Brunet, working at a site in the Djurab desert in northern Chad, announced the discovery of a fossilized skull, consisting of a near-complete cranium and fragmentary lower jaws, estimated to be approximately 6 to 7 million years old. The specimen was given a new genus and species name, Sahelanthropus tchadensis, and may prove to be the oldest-known member of the hominine subfamily. The specimen shows an intriguing combination of ape and hominine characteristics. Its skull and brain size are similar to those of a chimpanzee, but the size of the teeth is smaller, and the canine tips worn, features more indicative of later hominines, including humans. The face of Sahelanthropus tchadensis is shorter and flatter than that of a chimpanzee, yet its massive brow ridge is more pronounced and thicker. In the absence of any part of the skeleton, it is not possible to come to any definite conclusion on the crucial question of its gait and whether or not it was bipedal.
The location of the find, some 2,400 km (1,500 mi) further west of major fossil sites in east Africa, suggests a new area for further exploration. The age of the specimen is currently based on a comparison of fossilized fauna at a site with very similar fauna found in Kenya that has been accurately dated using radiometric dating.
The age and location of Sahelanthropus tchadensis possibly indicates that the divergence of humans from apes may have occurred earlier than previously thought, and that our potential ancestors may have been more widely distributed. Although few doubt the overall importance of Brunet’s discovery and accept that Sahelanthropus tchadensis lies close to the human-chimpanzee divergence, some scientists remain unconvinced that it is the earliest member of the human line. Given the emerging complexity of early human evolution, it is also possible that Sahelanthropus was an ape ancestor, or that it represents one of a number of evolutionary dead ends. Further research is being undertaken and may shed more light on what appears to be a crucial piece in the puzzle of evolution.
By about 2.5 million years ago, the fossil evidence reveals the presence of at least two, and perhaps as many as four, separate species of hominines. An evolutionary split seems to have occurred in the hominine line, with one segment evolving towards the genus Homo, and finally to modern human beings, and the others developing into species of Paranthropus that eventually became extinct. The latter forms are also known as the robust australopithecines, with the species Paranthropus robustus limited to southern Africa, and Paranthropus aethiopicus and Paranthropus boisei found in eastern Africa. The robust australopithecines seem to represent a specialized adaptation for eating hard food such as seeds and nuts because their principal difference from other australopithecines lies in the large size of their chewing teeth, jaws, and jaw muscles. The robust australopithecines became extinct about 1 million years ago.
B The Genus Homo
Although scientists do not agree, some believe that after the evolutionary split that led to the robust australopithecines, Australopithecus africanus evolved into the genus Homo. Others believe that humans may have briefly shared an ancestry with the early robust australopithecine line. Although fossil evidence is lacking, the evolutionary transition to Homo probably occurred between about 2.3 million and 2.7 million years ago. Fossils dating from immediately after this period display a curious mixture of traits. Some possess relatively large brains—several almost 800 cm3—and large, australopithecine-sized teeth. Others have small, Homo-sized teeth but also small, australopithecine-sized brains. A number of fossil skulls and jaws from this period, found in Tanzania, Kenya, Malawi, and Ethiopia, have been placed in the category Homo habilis, meaning “Handy Man”, because some of the fossils were found associated with early stone tools. Homo habilis possessed many traits that link it both with the earlier australopithecines and with later members of the genus Homo. However, some experts believe that the variation in Homo habilis fossils is so great that at least two separate species are actually represented, the smaller one still called Homo habilis, and the larger one Homo rudolfensis (after Lake Rudolf, an old name for Lake Turkana in northern Kenya).
The earliest evidence of stone tools comes from sites in Africa dated to about 2.5 million years ago. These tools have not been found in association with a particular hominine species. By 1.5 million to 2 million years ago, sites in various parts of eastern Africa include not only many stone tools, but also animal bones with scratch marks that experiments have shown could only be left by human-like cutting actions. These remains constitute evidence that by this time early hominines were eating meat, but whether this food was obtained by hunting or by scavenging is not known. Also unknown at present is how much of their diet came from gathered vegetable foods and insects, and how much came from animal tissue. It is also not clear whether these sites represent activities by members of the line leading to Homo, or if the robust australopithecines were also making tools and eating at least some meat.
Fossil evidence of a large-brained, small-toothed form, from northern Kenya and dating from 1.8 million to 1.9 million years ago, has been placed in the species Homo erectus, or a more primitive ancestral form, Homo ergaster (“Work Man”). The first part of the time span of Homo ergaster/erectus was apparently limited to eastern Africa. However, very soon after this, descendent forms of Homo erectus are known from the tropical areas of the Old World, and from Georgia in western Asia. A number of archaeological sites dating from the time of Homo erectus reveal a greater sophistication in toolmaking than was found at the earlier sites—for example, at the Zhoukoudian (“Peking Man”) cave site in northern China, there is possible evidence of the use of fire. Animal fossils found with artefacts thought to have been produced by Homo erectus are sometimes of large mammals such as elephants. These data suggest that hominine behaviour was becoming more complex, with a greater range of capabilities, although it is not clear whether Homo erectus was mainly a scavenger rather than a hunter.
Through the time of Homo erectus certain trends in human evolution continued. The brain sizes of early Homo erectus fossils overlap with those of previous hominines, ranging from 600 to 1,000 cm3. Later Homo erectus skulls possess brain sizes in the range of 1,000 to 1,250 cm3, within the lower end of the size variation of Homo sapiens. Recent research suggests that Homo erectus may have survived in parts of Asia long after it had become extinct, or evolved into a new species, elsewhere. A number of Homo erectus fossils from two sites in Java, Indonesia, were recently dated using associated buffalo teeth to only 30,000 to 50,000 years ago.
B1 Homo heidelbergensis
By about 800,000 years ago, some Homo erectus populations in Africa, and probably also in Europe, had changed sufficiently to be recognized as a new species, Homo heidelbergensis, named after a 500,000-year-old jawbone found near the town of Heidelberg in Germany. Members of this species had, on average, a larger brain size (1,100 to 1,400 cm3), a less projecting face, a more prominent nose, and a more inflated braincase than Homo erectus fossils. Homo heidelbergensis is known from Africa, Europe, and possibly China, between about 300,000 and 800,000 years ago. After about 300,000 years, it apparently split into two descendant species, Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis (“Neanderthal Man”), the former appearing in Africa, and the latter in Europe and western Asia.
C Modern Human Origins
However, this view of the origins of modern human beings (Homo sapiens) is still in dispute. Disagreement has focused especially on the place of Neanderthals in the chain of human evolution. The Neanderthals (named from the Neander Valley in Germany, where the first skeleton was recognized) occupied parts of Europe and western Asia from at least 200,000 years ago until about 30,000 to 40,000 years ago, when they began to disappear from the fossil record.
The dispute over the Neanderthals also involves the question of the evolutionary origins of modern human populations, sometimes called races. Although a precise definition of the term “race” is not possible (because modern human beings show continuous variation from one geographical area to another), widely separate human populations are marked by a number of physical differences, dealt with in the classification of races. Some of these differences represent adaptations to local environmental conditions, a process that a few scientists believe began with the spread of Homo erectus to non-African parts of the Old World over a million years ago. In their view, human development since Homo erectus has been one continuous evolution across the whole inhabited world; that is, local populations have remained, changing in appearance over time. The Neanderthals and equivalent peoples in other areas are seen as descending from Homo erectus and ancestral to the various regional forms (“races”) of modern human beings.
Other scientists view racial differentiation as a relatively recent phenomenon. In their opinion, the relatively late dates of the Neanderthals, combined with their distinct features—a low, sloping forehead, large brow ridge, and a long face dominated by a projecting nose—means that they could not have been ancestors of modern human beings, who already existed in Africa and western Asia about 100,000 years ago. They place the Neanderthals and similarly late-surviving primitive peoples in Asia on side-branches of the human evolutionary tree that became extinct. According to this theory, the origins of modern human beings can be found in Africa or the Middle East. Evolving between about 130,000 and 200,000 years ago, these early modern human beings later spread to most parts of the world, supplanting the local archaic populations where these still survived. In addition to various fossil finds from Africa, support for this theory comes from comparisons of DNA in present-day populations. These show that all modern human beings are closely related genetically, suggesting a recent common ancestry, but that non-African peoples (for example, Europeans and Native Americans) are most closely related to each other, suggesting that they descended from an ancestral population that had split from an African one 100,000 years ago or less.
Recent finds in Ethiopia lend more weight to the “out of Africa” theory of human evolution. Partial skulls of two adults and a child were discovered in 2003 at Herto and have been dated at 160,000 years old: the oldest definite record of Homo sapiens. However, due to the lack of fossil discoveries on the vast African continent the question of whether early modern humans originated in East Africa or developed over a wider area is still unresolved.
Whatever the outcome of this scientific debate, the evidence shows that both Neanderthal and Homo sapiens groups were effective at exploiting the sometimes harsh climates of ice age Europe. Further, for the first time in human evolution, hominines began to bury their dead deliberately, the bodies sometimes being accompanied by stone tools and animal bones.
D Modern Human Beings
With the appearance of biologically modern peoples, some important changes in anatomy and behaviour took place. The whole skeleton became more lightly built, the braincase became higher and rounder, the brow-ridges smaller, and the chin more prominent. Tools became more specialized, with the first effective use of difficult materials such as bone, antler, and ivory. Art appeared, especially famous from the walls of caves in France and Spain, produced from 35,000 years ago until the end of the ice age, about 12,000 years ago (see Palaeolithic Art). Some anthropologists have also argued that it was only in the last 100,000 years that full human language originated, a development that would have had profound implications for all aspects of human activity. About 12,000 years ago, one of the most important events in human history took place—plants and animals began to be domesticated. This revolution of agriculture and animal husbandry set the stage for the events in human history that led to the development of towns and cities, and a continuing growth in human population numbers.
Modern understanding of human evolution rests on known fossils, archaeology, and the study of living humans and our nearest relatives. The picture is far from complete, however. Future fossil discoveries will enable scientists to fill many of the blanks in the present picture of human evolution. Employing sophisticated technological devices as well as the accumulated knowledge of the patterns of geological deposition, anthropologists are now able to pinpoint the most promising locations for fossil hunting more accurately. In addition, genetic studies, including the extraction of ancient DNA from fossils, will become ever more important in reconstructing the pattern of modern human origins. The history of hundreds of different genes is now being studied from comparisons of the DNA of living people, and DNA has even been recovered from several Neanderthal fossils. In general, the evidence supports a recent African origin for modern human beings, and, in the case of the Neanderthals, they are confirmed as a separate lineage from our own, one that began to differentiate from our line of evolution about 500,000 years ago. Such genetic studies hold the promise of an enormous increase in our understanding of human prehistory in the years ahead.
Created by: Marius Lukosius, 05-15-2005

domain: biology


The ninth season just finished airing and The Blacklist Season 10 already got a confirmation. Read on for more details.
The Blacklist is an American crime thriller action drama television series created by Jon Bokenkamp exclusively for NBC. The series revolves around a former U.S. Navy Officer, Raymond “Red” Reddington (played by James Spader), who became a criminal but turned himself to the FBI after operating for decades. The show premiered on September 23, 2013, and the last episode aired recently on May 27, 2022. Now that the ninth season is concluded, what are the chances of The Blacklist Season 10? Here’s what we know.
The Blacklist Season 10 Release Date
Fans can rejoice now as James Spader himself confirmed that The Blacklist has been picked for the tenth season. During his visit to The Tonight Show on February 22, 2022, to promote the ninth season, Spader officially announced the series’ renewal, The Blacklist Season 10. Below, is the video from The Tonight Show’s official Youtube Channel, where he affirmed this great piece of news.
His exact words were, “We just got picked up this afternoon. Word came out. They — Everyone was hustling around to try and do it so we could announce it on the show. We just got picked up for the 10th season. Talking about the release date of The Blacklist Season 10, it would be too soon for that as the ninth season just finished airing. All we can say, for now, is that don’t expect it anytime before soon, or before 2023.
- Will There be Good Girls Season 5 on NBC or Netflix?
- ‘Manifest’ Season 4 Coming This Fall on Netflix; First Look Unveiled
What will be the plot of The Blacklist Season 10?
Spoilers follow for The Blacklist Season 9!
The climax of the ninth season showed the death of Liz Keen’s murderer and now Raymond Reddington can eventually get over his pursuit of vengeance. Meanwhile, Marvin tells Wujing that Red is the reason why they all are in prison. A while later, he gets released from prison and shoots himself down. Wujing, who already had an escape plan, executed it and gets out of the prison as he decides to kill Raymond Reddington.
Moreover, he gathers all the other criminals who were in there because of Red. The Blacklist Season 10, will, therefore, follow Wujing and the gang hunting down Raymond Reddington. Will they be successful in the attempt? There’s nothing that we can say for sure, as of now. At this point, anything can happen!
Who will be returning for the tenth season?
Although there are not many cast details revealed about The Blacklist Season 10 yet, some of the main cast is confirmed to return. These cast and characters include:
- James Spader as Raymond Red Reddington
- Diego Klattenhoff as Donald Ressler
- Harry Lennix as Harold Cooper
- Dembe Zuma as Hisham Tawfiq
Where can you watch The Blacklist?
All the episodes and seasons of The Blacklist are available on NBC as it’s the show’s official broadcaster. Lately, Netflix also acquired the rights to stream all nine seasons of The Blacklist. So, you can binge it there as well. The upcoming season of the series, however, will air on NBC first, and arrive on Netflix later on.


text:
In a quiet office at the edge of the Galleria area, Amit Mehta runs a business related to the oil industry. But in his spare time, he also runs a social networking site called My Virtual Neighbor.
“My Virtual Neighbor was actually born after I was robbed personally, a couple of months back. I was used to getting notices from property management that’ hey be careful. There was a crime reported. Be careful, there was a robbery.’ So I never really payed attention and those used to go in my garbage cans. But when I got robbed myself, it was a wake-up call.”
Mehta, who lives in a high-rise apartment building on Sage Road, says he started wondering if there was a more effective way he could connect with others in the building.
He searched around and didn’t find what he was looking for, so he developed a website himself. Within a few weeks, 75 people in his building signed up and started sharing information.
“So a good example is, once somebody was robbed and they actually posted a picture of the door — how the people broke in. So everybody got that picture of the door posted on their walls after he found out about it. And then everybody was giving suggestions this is what we should do to protect ourselves next time. And next thing we know the community was really interacting in a big way to stop crime together.”
Since it’s launch earlier this year, the website has grown to about 150 communities here in Houston and across the country.
My Virtual Neighbor feels a lot like Facebook.
You have your own profile and a wall where you can post information. But unlike Facebook, the type of information you’re sharing and receiving is more pertinent.
“Now the difference between this and Facebook is every post you read here, you can tell is meaningful. Whereas on Facebook, all we do is ‘oh, I’m walking my dog,’ ‘LOL I just went to this party.’ That’s all we do. So there’s nothing meaningful we are interacting about.”
Mehta says it’s already making a difference in crime.
Houston Police reports from January and February show an average of five crimes each month on the 3000 block of Sage, where Mehta lives. Reports from April and May, after My Virtual Neighbor took off, show one crime per month.
It’s not much to go on yet, but Mehta says whether you go online to meet your neighbors, or walk the block tomorrow night, Houstonians can do more to build trust in their community.

domain: sociology


text:
June 1, 2011 § 1 Comment
Gone with the Wind is something of a cinematic Rorschach test, and its ability to be all things to all people is a part of its long-lasting appeal. It’s racist, except when it’s not: the horrors of slavery are glossed over, the semi-complexity of the novel’s characters is reduced to stereotypes in the film, and the black actors were treated poorly at the premiere and, on some occasions, on the set–but the film was one of the only ones of its time to actually give black actors something to do besides stand in the background and smile ingratiatingly, and it led to Hattie McDaniel’s famous first Best Supporting Actress win. The film is pro-Southern, except when it’s anti-Southern: the antebellum South is romanticized (knights and ladies fair, a dream remembered, et cetera) but it also very blatantly spells out the fact that the South failed because they were cocky, ignorant bastards who were too wrapped up in their ladies fair and their code of chivalry to see the forest for the trees. It’s sexist, except when it’s not: Scarlett and Melanie are extremely strong female characters in different molds, with Scarlett breaking all the confining conventions to which her gender is held, and the focus on how war affects women was quite revolutionary for its time–but there’s a definite Taming of the Shrew vibe, and demure Melanie is clearly set up as the ideal of Southern womanhood, with even Margaret Mitchell herself expressing wonderment (a little disingenuously, in my opinion) at why Scarlett turned out to be so well-loved by so many. And then there’s the little matter of that rape scene . . .
There’s only one small problem with that: there is no rape scene in Gone with the Wind–and whenever anybody describes the staircase scene as such, I have to fight the urge to tear my hair out, weep, beat my chest, et cetera. To be fair to them, it’s easy to mistake the staircase scene for a rape scene when Rhett carries Scarlett kicking and screaming up the stairs–but to be fair to the movie’s directors, too, there’s not much more they could have done with the source material to make the scene clear, short of slapping a voice-over on it. It’s a scene that essentially requires you to be in the heroine’s head in order to parse what’s going on–and thus it’s one of the few scenes in the book that doesn’t translate well to the screen. Here’s Mitchell in that deliciously purple scene:
“Up the stairs, he went in utter darkness, up, up, and she was wild with fear. He was a mad stranger and this was a black darkness she did not know, darker than death. He was like death, carrying her away in arms that hurt. She screamed, stifled against him and he stopped suddenly on the landing and, turning her swiftly in his arms, bent over her and kissed her with a savagery and a completeness that wiped out everything from her mind but the dark into which she was sinking and the lips on hers. . . . She was darkness and he was darkness and there had never been anything before this time, only darkness and his lips upon her. She tried to speak and his mouth was over hers again. Suddenly she had a wild thrill such as she had never known; joy, fear, madness, excitement, surrender to arms that were too strong, lips too bruising, fate that moved too fast. For the first time in her life she had met someone, something stronger than she, someone she could neither bully nor break, someone who was bullying and breaking her. Somehow, her arms were around his neck and her lips trembling beneath his and they were going up, up into the darkness again, a darkness that was soft and swirling and all enveloping.”
And then, of course, the infamous morning after:
“Oh, she should be ashamed, should shrink from the very memory of the hot swirling darkness! A lady, a real lady, could never hold up her head after such a night. But, stronger than shame, was the memory of rapture, of the ecstasy of surrender. For the first time in her life she had felt alive, felt passion as sweeping and primitive as the fear she had known the night she fled Atlanta, as dizzy sweet as the cold hate when she had shot the Yankee. . . . When she thought of meeting him again, face to face in the sober light of day, a nervous tingling embarrassment that carried with it an exciting pleasure enveloped her.
‘I’m nervous as a bride,’ she thought. ‘And about Rhett!’ And, at the idea she fell to giggling foolishly.”
That’s not a rape. In fact, that this scene is not a rape illustrates the entire point of the 700-page story: that Rhett is Scarlett’s perfect match specifically because he’s the only one that can meet her on her level, beat her at her own game, turn her darkness into light. Does the scene start ugly? Definitely–and the altercation leading up to it, where (in the film), Rhett tells Scarlett to “observe my hands, my dear. I could tear you to pieces with them, and I’d do it if it’d take Ashley out of your mind forever. But it wouldn’t. So I’ll remove him from your mind forever this way. I’ll put my hands so–one on each side of your head–and I’ll smash your skull between them like a walnut, and that’ll block him out” . . . is, in my opinion, even uglier. But an ugly, nasty scene though it is, it’s not a rape scene. Is Rhett a bastard and a half here? Yes–a drunk, emotionally abusive bastard, but not a rapist. Nobody has sex against their will in this scene. Scarlett is carried up the stairs against her will, but carrying someone up the stairs against their will isn’t rape, and she’s happily succumbed to the idea of sex long before they get to the top step.
While we’re on the subject of forgotten tropes, here’s another one: the forced seduction. While most common in romance novels, it enjoyed its heyday in movies, too, and Gone with the Wind is its prime example. Forced seduction stemmed from the pre-sexual revolution days when Good Girls Didn’t, which, for writers, raised the question of how to get a good girl (or, in Scarlett’s case, a wildly independent one) into bed with the leading man when she had no logical reason to be there. The admittedly imperfect solution they came up with? Have the leading man force himself on her. Of course, he can’t actually force her to have sex, as a real hero, no matter how unchivalrous, would never have to resort to forcing women to have sex with him–so a forced seduction is something that starts as a rape but transforms into consensual sex at some point before penetration. This was intended to take just enough culpability off the woman that her reputation remained undamaged, while still allowing the man to cling to the shards of his respectability–and whatever plot point needed to be fulfilled by the two characters coming together could still play out. This trope became mostly unnecessary after the sexual revolution and basically died off in the film world after that, although–oddly–it lasted well into the 1980s in the realm of romance novels.
I’m certainly not arguing that the story doesn’t showcase sexism in other ways, or even that the staircase scene isn’t plenty sexist in its own right–but it’s not rape. Blindly worshiping Gone with the Wind displays a lack of brain power, but roundly condemning it is just as easy, and often, just as wrong. Margaret Mitchell’s magnum opus, and the movie based on it, are two of the most morally ambiguous pieces of pop culture the 20th century produced. A little deeper digging is in order here.
May 27, 2011 § 1 Comment
While watching A Yank at Oxford, I spotted a real, live endangered species of the film world: the college widow. TV Tropes refers to the college widow as a “forgotten trope,” in that it was once a commonly accepted cinematic shorthand but has fallen out of favor. Originally “college widow” referred to a single woman–not necessarily a widow–who hung out with the college men year after year, sometimes hoping to find an educated husband after she had graduated without snagging an engagement ring, sometimes just looking for a good time. On film, directors sometimes made her into an actual widow in order to make her promiscuity slightly more palatable to the audience. Thus the Hollywood college widow is usually a woman whose husband (often a member of the university faculty) died young, leaving her all alone in the full flower of her beauty and sexual experience–which, of course, attracts the attention of the young college men that surround her. This being the first half of the twentieth century, though, the college widow is usually painted as predatory rather than preyed upon, with the men who get involved with her treated as innocent victims.
The reason this trope was invented seems obvious, the reasons it disappeared even more so. Filmmakers had to assure us that our heroes were healthy, red-blooded American men, who would never resort to all that Brideshead Revisited stuff that was rumored to go on at many an all-male campus. Obviously in the 1910s-1940s (the heyday of this trope), prostitution couldn’t be depicted on screen, so our protagonists couldn’t get their kicks that way. Once the Hays Code came into effect, adulterers must be punished. And for a hero to seduce an unmarried young woman would be caddish. So the college widow served as an effective outlet for all of our heroes’ wants and needs (and those of the writer): it proved the protagonist was straight, sexually desirous and desirable, and yet still a gentleman. Of course, the trope began to be played for laughs even more often than it was played straight, in movies like Horse Feathers. With the rise of co-education and the fall of the production code, the college widow found herself expelled from campus in favor of flirtatious co-eds.
One Yalie described the college widow thusly:
“For the college widow had a depth and richness of emotional experience never developed in American life of that day outside of a few metropolises, and seldom there. She began at sixteen or eighteen, as a ravishing beauty, the darling of freshmen; she passed on in the years of her first blooming from class to class of ardent youngsters, until, as her experience ripened, she acquired a taste, never to be satisfied by matrimony, for male admiration, abstracted from its consequences; and more subtly, for the heady stimulant of intimacy with men in their fresh and vigorous youth. By her thirties she had learned the art of eternal spring, and had become a connoisseur in the dangerous excitement of passion controlled at the breaking point, a mistress of every emotion, and an adept in the difficult task of sublimating love into friendship. The students lived out their brief college life and went on; she endured, and tradition with her, an enchantress in illusion and a specialist in the heart. Twenty, even thirty years might be her tether; when suddenly on a midnight, a shock of reality, or perhaps only boredom, ended it all; she was old — but still charming and infinitely wise. To smoke a cigarette with her when cigarettes were still taboo for women, and drink her coffee and liqueur, was a lesson in civilization.”
February 4, 2011 § Leave a comment
For girls, there is this weird phase in your teenage years where, after emerging from a long, awkward spell of glasses, braces and terrible skin, you emerge into a world where you are suddenly considered a sex object. All of a sudden, men catcall you from across the street and honk at you from their cars. All of a sudden, all your guy friends want to date you. All of a sudden, men twice your age start to ogle you when you’re out running in shorts and a sports bra. This can be especially jarring since, in a lot of cases, it’s only been a year or two since you were wearing a training bra and your parents wouldn’t let you stay home by yourself at night. Girls respond to this developmental whiplash in different ways: being (understandably) grossed out, being flattered, or scared–but there is a certain type of girl who loves the power that this new-found attention so much that she purposely puts herself in situations where she can use her body to manipulate and coerce others into doing whatever she wants, oblivious to how much it hurts other people.
That girl is Sandy in Last Summer.
Last Summer was adapted from a novel of the same title, wherein (allegedly) Sandy is essentially Lady Hitler, and designed to stand in as a symbol of the evils of fascism. The two boys, her followers, are the Nazis that blindly do her bidding and thus are equally as guilty. (I haven’t read the novel so I don’t know if this was the author’s actual intention. I just read it on IMDB, so . . . take this interpretation with a grain of salt.) The movie makes two of the characters–Sandy, the beautiful leader, and Peter, the kinder of her two followers–less brutal and thus more nuanced than they are in the book, and I think this does a favor to the plot. Sandy, rather than evil personified, becomes a girl who is just beginning to grasp the power that her looks and body have over men. As a control freak who demands to hold sway over everyone in her immediate circle, she’s willing to take that control to sadistic–yet realistic–ends. She establishes her power over the boys early in the film, when she seduces them into getting drunk and telling her their secrets. Her desire to mold the world around her to her exact specifications is foretold in the opening scene, where she nurses an injured seagull back to health–and later on, despite spending hours making it a harness and training it to fly, smashes its head open against a rock after it rebels and bites her. This process will be mirrored in the trio’s adoption and subsequent rape of Rhoda, a conscientious but socially awkward young girl whose loneliness pushes her to seek out their friendship. The three of them teach her to swim, dress her up in bikinis, and in Peter’s case, even woo her–only for Sandy to order her destruction and humiliation when Rhoda refuses to worship Sandy’s beauty in the way the boys do. (The line Rhoda utters that finally sets Sandy off: “Sandy, put your top back on.”)
Peter, on the other hand, is made out to be the film’s moral center (which he is certainly not in the book), and the viewer certainly can identify, to a point, with his vacillations between the charismatic but vicious Sandy and the thoughtful but gawky Rhoda. But our identification with him only makes the film’s final scenes all the more chilling. While the movie supposedly portrays him as slightly less cold than the novel, it’s only slightly: he still takes place in the final rape, although in the film it’s “merely” to hold her down rather than to actually take his turn with her the way he does in the book. While the trio hikes out of the woods after the assault, he has a hard time keeping up with Sandy and Dan, and pauses atop a sand dune. While the camera pans over his distressed face before it pulls away to take in the dunes, the beach, the entire island and eventually the sunset gleaming on the water, we can tell that he’s extremely disturbed by what he’s not only allowed to happen but enabled. But strikingly, we don’t get the impression that he’s so appalled that he’d never allow himself to fall under Sandy’s spell or commit random acts of violence at her bequest ever again. He’ll toss and turn that night, but tomorrow Sandy will take her bikini top off again and bring him another beer, and so it’ll go, until the summer ends.
December 6, 2010 § Leave a comment
Few movies manage to visually capture a Midwest winter quite like the opening moments of Where the Boys Are. Our heroines converge outside of their college lecture hall, sneezing and sniffling, slipping on the ice. Snow piles up around them; snowflakes the size of quarters whip around their hooded heads. Merritt isn’t sure that she’ll be able to go on their spring break trip–she has too much schoolwork and is on the verge of failing out of school, despite an IQ of 138–but finally takes a look around her and declares, “If I see one more inch of snow, just one more flake, I’m going to absolutely barf!” And thus our group is on the road to Fort Lauderdale.
Storytelling wisdom holds that if you have a quartet of girls or women as your main characters, they must fall into the following stereotypes:
- the naive sweetheart (or, taking this to its extreme, the bimbo/goofball)
- the sexpot/the flirt
- the ball-buster/the tomboy
- the smart, normal one that we’re supposed to relate to
See: Little Women, Sex and the City, Golden Girls, the original Baby-Sitters Club, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Living Single, Now and Then. Where the Boys Are is no exception to this four-woman pack of stereotypes, and here we get:
- Paula Prentiss as the goofy Tuggle, who wants nothing more than to become “a walking, talking baby factory”
- Yvette Mimieux as beautiful Melanie, who’s desperate to hook up with an Ivy Leaguer
- Connie Francis as “captain of the girls’ hockey team” Angie, who has no luck with men
- Dorores Hart as Merritt, our practical narrator, who’s trying to find a balance between love and sex
The four of them descend upon Florida with one collective goal: to be where the boys are. Tuggle immediately meets a goofy Michigan State student who introduces himself as T.V., and the two of them spend most of the film tug-of-warring over their conflicting desires: sex (his) versus marriage (hers). Angie struggles to attract any boys whatsoever, eventually settling for a bespectacled jazz musician who’s the only one to express interest. Melanie finds the Ivy Leaguer of her heart, but quickly gets in over her head with him. And Merritt, least interested in sex of them all, stumbles upon her dream date without even trying.
To modern eyes, Where the Boys Are can’t seem to make up its mind: it comes in as a sex comedy, flounders in the middle, and goes out like a sexual morality tale. This film was actually a forerunner to the entire genre of teen sex comedies–the parallels to later films like Fast Times at Ridgemont High or American Pie are obvious in the way the girls joke about sex in jaded tones. But as Merritt points out later, it’s “all talk.” All of the girls are virgins going in, and the only one who no longer is at the film’s close ends up regretting it. For all its debate about sex in its opening scenes, where Merritt argues with her professor that telling girls to stay virgins until marriage is unrealistic, Where the Boys Are serves up a moral that’s ultimately sexually conservative. Melanie is severely punished for losing her virginity: a rumor goes around that she’s easy, and she is subsequently raped, the trauma from which leaves her mentally disturbed, wandering through traffic in a daze. After not sleeping with the men they’re dating, the other girls are rewarded with boyfriends (albeit some of questionable merit), and Merritt, in particular, wins out: her man, Ryder, turns out to be an unbelievably wealthy, intelligent Ivy Leaguer who wants to continue dating her after they leave Florida.
Although it reflects the values of the early ’60s–its depiction of the Fort Lauderdale spring break culture of that era is practically an anthropological study–the film has aged remarkably well. Its debates about “hook-up culture,” when to sleep together, and whether abstinence-only education is realistic seem surprisingly modern, and help to raise it above the average ’60s beach party flick. Still, a more nuanced ending might have helped. Instead, we get this takeaway: put out and you will get raped and go insane, stay pure and you’ll be rewarded with all your wildest dreams come true.

domain: artistic


text:
The O.B. Hardison Poetry series at the Folger Shakespeare Library will present a program titled Carolyn Forché: Poetry of Witness in the Folger Theatre on April 30.The award-winning poet, translator, editor, and human rights advocate coined the phrase “poetry of witness,”which is the title of the anthology she co-edited with Duncan Wu. Carolyn Forché's work has been honored may times, and her famed international anthology, Against Forgetting, was praised by Nelson Mandela as “itself a blow against tyranny, against prejudice, against injustice.” She is now director of the Lannan Center for Poetry and Poetics and holds the Lannan Chair in Poetry at Georgetown University.
The O.B. Hardison Poetry series will present readings by Kaveh Akbar & Kazim Ali titled Silence and Breath in the Folger Theatre - introduced & moderated by Kundiman fellowGowri Koneswaran - on May 21. Kaveh Akbar is the author of the chapbook Portrait of the Alcoholic, and his debut full-length collection is titled Calling a Wolf a Wolf. Born in Tehran, Iran, Akbar is the Visiting Professor of Poetry at Purdue University. Poet, essayist, novelist, and translator Kazim Ali has published several volumes of poetry and a cross-genre work titled Bright Felon: Autobiography and Cities. His new poetry book, Inquisition, is forthcoming. His books of essays include Orange Alert: Essays on Poetry, Art and the Architecture of Silence.
Images from left below:Kaveh Akbar & Kazim Ali (Photo by Tanya Rosen-Jones)
The Folger Shakespeare Library is exhibiting Beyond Words: Book Illustration in the Age of Shakespeare, thru June 3.The exhibition, which was curated by Caroline Duroselle-Melish, the Folger's curator of early modern books and prints, includes more than 80 illustrated books and prints from the Folger collection - from the 15th to 18th centuries. Many of the books have rarely been displayed before. Video and period illustrations show how images were made and printed. “Astoundingly, Beyond Words even includes the woodcut and copper plates from which two of the prints were produced.” Beyond Words includes works by many European artists and has an especially strong Dutch presence, reflecting the publishing role of Amsterdam and Antwerp. Beyond Words also has two works by the Flemish engraver Martin Droeshout, including his portrait of Shakespeare in the 1623 First Folio—one of the best-known book illustrations of the early modern age.
Image below: The postcard for Beyond Words: Book Illustration in the Age of Shakespeare.
The National Archives & Bright Star Touring Theater will present a play titled We Can Do It! American Women in Historyon April 14.The play is “an inspiring exploration of the lives and work of notable American women!From Amelia Earhart and Laura Ingalls Wilder to Sacajawea and Susan B. Anthony.” Families are invited to join in as the play “celebrates the courageous, confident women who have helped shape our country." A discussion with the actors will follow the program.”
The Mansion at Strathmore’s Artists in Fiction Book Club invites participants “to dawdle in Delft with Vermeer, explore the mystery behind Girl With a Pearl Earring, relive the Renaissance through the eyes of Artemisia Gentileschi in The Passion of Artemisia, and get a new perspective on Leonardo, Michelangelo, Monet, and many more." Participants can "explore the fictions of their favorite artists, turning the pages of both popular and lesser-known novels, then join fellow readers and art enthusiasts one Wednesday night a month to discuss forgotten painters, mysterious art heists, and miraculous recoveries of masterpieces. Each evening provides an examination of the factual background along with the fiction.” Meetings are planned at 7 pm on: March 21, April 18, May 16, June 20 & July 18.
COL Christopher P. Costa (US Army, ret.), who is the new Executive Director of The International Spy Museum, will have a discussion with Museum historian Dr. Vince Houghton at the Museum on April 12. Director Costa was most recently the Special Assistant for the President & Senior Director for Counterterrorism at the White House National Security Council. Previously, Director Costa's career included 25 years of active duty in hot spots such as Panama, Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq.He’s the recipient of two Bronze Stars for intelligence work in Afghanistan and has been inducted into the Commando Hall of Honor for the US Special Operations Command. Director Costa's career has included human intelligence, special operations, counterintelligence, and unconventional warfare.

domain: library


Hampton Roads Naval Museum Educator
Drawing of USS New Ironsides shortly after commissioning in Philadelphia, PA. The ocean-going ironclad was fully rigged for sails. (Harpers' Weekly)
When one hears mention of a Civil War ironclad, images of the USS Monitor and CSS Virginia- style ships may immediately come to mind. While these two styles were certainly the predominant designs during the war, engineers tried a few other innovative variations as well. One of the lesser known, yet most effective ironclads developed during the war was USS New Ironsides. The Hampton Roads Naval Museum is proud to have a model of this ship, as well as the original (functioning!) engine room clock in our Civil War gallery.
John Ericsson’s Monitor design was not the only plan submitted when contracts were awarded to northern shipyards for production of ironclad ships that could take on the Confederate casemate ironclad Virginia, then nearing completion in Norfolk. Production on USS Monitor began after Congress had already approved work to begin on USS Galena and USS New Ironsides. Ericsson’s “tin can on a shingle” was completed quickly and placed into service before either Galena or New Ironsides was complete. Because of this, the Ericsson design won fantastic public support and political backing in the aftermath of the Battle of Hampton Roads.
The Hampton Roads Naval Museum's model of USS New Ironsides as she appeared late in the Civil War, bow view (left) and stern view (right). (Photographs by M.C. Farrington)
|USS New Ironsides' powerful broadside of 8 guns could place many more shells onto a fortification than could the Ericsson style ironclads. (Photograph by M.C. Farrington)|
In stark contrast to the turret-based design of USS Monitor and her subsequent sister ships, New Ironsides maintained a more traditional broadside armament. The broadside configuration of fourteen 11-inch Dahlgren smoothbore guns and two 150-pound Parrot rifled guns required upwards of 200 men to operate them. The guns also required construction of special naval carriages so they could operate in the confines of a fully armored gun deck. The opening and closing of each armored shutter protecting the gun crews required ten men to operate. When New Ironsides was operating at peak efficiency, she could deliver withering fire upon the enemy.
The original crew of USS New Ironsides was patched together with volunteers and recent recruits to the Navy. Many of the crew had no experience aboard ship prior to in Philadelphia in 1862. Fewer than one in ten crewmen had joined the Navy prior to May 1862 and over 45 percent of them were rated as landsmen or boys. The crew was drilled vigorously at Hampton Roads prior to her first combat at Charleston, South Carolina on April 7, 1863, in which New Ironsides and several Monitor-style ironclads bombarded Fort Sumter, but failed to achieve a tactical victory.
Action by New Ironsides against Fort Wagner, S.C. in 1863 demonstrated the ship’s true ability. Confederate General Roswell Ripley wrote, “Our great enemy is now the [New] Ironsides.” The ship fired its guns in rotation, one after another. This allowed her to keep a steady stream of fire upon an enemy fortification. New Ironsides expended 464 rounds from her guns in just one day of action at Ft. Wagner. Colonel Charles Olmstead of the First Georgia Volunteers wrote:
Her broadsides were not fired in volley, but gun after gun, in rapid succession, the effect upon those who were at the wrong end of the guns being exceedingly demoralizing. Whenever she commenced there was a painful uncertainty as to what might happen before she got through.”
New Ironsides could put over ten times as much fire onto a target in an hour than a Monitor-class ship could. Ericsson conceded that the slow firing monitors could not contend with fortifications to the degree that New Ironsides could.
|(Photograph by M.C. Farrington)|
New Ironsides' armor also seems to have held up better than that of the other ironclad ship designs. USS Galena was shot through by Confederate guns at Drewry’s Bluff on the James River and Confederate gunners soon realized that damage to the seam, between the turret and deck, on Monitor style ships would quickly disable their ability to rotate. New Ironsides was struck over 150 times by heavy Confederate guns throughout the war and it never impaired the ship’s ability to fight.
New weapon evolution in the Civil War is a substantial topic in itself and no new design went unnoticed by the enemy. The Confederates in Charleston, South Carolina had been working on another weapon to destroy the blockading ships, the David boat. On October 5, 1863, under the orders of Captain J. R. Tucker C.S.N, a newly designed David-class torpedo boat succeeded in detonating a charge under USS New Ironsides and escaping into the night. The New Ironsides suffered little damage in the attack and one casualty, caused by gunfire from CSS David. The ship remained on station outside Charleston for the next several months before returning to Pennsylvania for routine repairs and maintenance.
The armor belt of the ship was constructed of solid iron plates, up to 4.5 inches thick at the waterline backed by oak, pine, and iron braces. The armor itself was applied in “tongue and groove” style of construction which in theory would add strength and support to adjacent pieces of plating should they be struck by a projectile. British gun tests of this design would prove to the contrary in late 1862, too late to change the design of New Ironsides.
After repairs and the addition of anti-torpedo fenders at the Philadelphia Naval Yard in June 1864, New Ironsides was recomissioned with Commodore William Radford of the former USS Cumberland, in command. New Ironsides returned to participate in the Battles for Fort Fisher, NC in December 1864 and January 1865. Rear Adm. David Dixon Porter wrote of the ship’s action in January:
The vessel did more execution than any vessel in the fleet, and even when our troops were on the parapet I had so much confidence in the accuracy of [Radford’s] fire that he was directed to fire on the traverses in advance of our troops and clear them out. This he did most effectually, and but for this the victory might not have been ours.
Eight members of the crew of USS New Ironsides received the Medal of Honor for their performance during the battle.
Despite all of the political support for the Monitor design and actual deficiencies and shortcomings in design, USS New Ironsides truly proved to be one of the most effective ironclad ships of the Civil War. The design demonstrated that superior firepower on large ships would continue to play an important role in naval strategies well into the 20th century. Many of the battleships of the Great White Fleet of 1907 carried a broadside of secondary guns in addition to their primary guns in turrets. Unfortunately, New Ironsides was damaged by a fire after the war and broken up for scrap by 1869. For more information about New Ironsides, see the book USS New Ironsides in the Civil War by William H. Roberts.


text:
Archives by date
You are browsing the site archives by date.
By Andrew on May 7, 2018
Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. It’s a pleasure to speak to you today to express my overall support and to provide context for the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act, Section 5 of Bill C-74. This legislation is the backbone of the federal government’s approach to climate change and will complement the measures already taken by […]


text:
By IANS/RIA Novosti,
Moscow : Ten Italian cities are facing bankruptcy as they are unable to fulfil their budget commitments, Italian newspaper La Stampa reported Tuesday.
Graziano Del Rio, president of National Association of Italian Municipalities, told the paper that many schools in Naples, Palermo in Sicily, Reggio di Calabria, Alessandria in Piedmont and in some towns might not start school lessons in the fall due to city budget deficits caused by huge cuts being implemented by the government.
The government has been trying to reduce the state debt of about two trillion euros by cutting the budgets of 64 out of 107 Italian provinces. This year the municipalities’ finances will be cut by 500 million euros (about $604 million), and by one billion euros in 2013.
The Italian government approved a programme in early July to cut budget spending by 26 billion euros in 2012-2014. About 10 percent of state employees and 20 percent of state agencies’ heads could be dismissed in the next three years.

domain: politics


text:
Everyone gets older, but we don’t all age in the same way! Some people develop deep facial folds, such as the nasolabial folds that extend from each side of the nose to the corners of the lips. If you’d like to preserve your youthful appearance for longer or freshen up your look, Belotero Filler® dermal filler may be your skincare solution.
Belotero Filler is a cosmetic filler made by Merz Aesthetics. It’s an injectable cosmetic treatment that contains a substance called hyaluronic acid. This substance is found naturally in your skin, and its main functions are to help the skin stay well-hydrated and preserve the skin’s structure. Hyaluronic acid is one of several substances—including collagen and elastin—that help your skin look youthful. As you age, these substances are depleted, making the skin look older. At the same time, the effects of repetitive facial movements, like smiling, lead to the formation of etched-in lines, wrinkles, and folds. Restoring hyaluronic acid to the skin in affected areas smooths out lines, wrinkles, and even deep folds, restoring the youthful look. Belotero Filler has a unique, gel-like structure that’s different from other hyaluronic acid injectable fillers. It’s formulated to make it more effective at filling in nasolabial folds and smile or frown lines. It blends more effectively into your skin’s natural structure, gently filling in lines and wrinkles.
What Can Belotero Do for You?
Belotero Filler is used for moderate-to-severe nasolabial folds and vertical lines above and around the lips. When injected into the folds and wrinkles around your lips, Belotero Balance integrates quickly into surrounding natural tissue. It fills in and smooths out even severe folds and wrinkles. The treated skin looks natural—with complete freedom of movement—and feels natural to the touch. Best of all, since Belotero Balance is an injectable treatment, all of these benefits can be achieved without surgery. No invasive procedures, and no long recovery time—just near-instant results!
How Long Does Belotero Last?
Your individual results may vary, but for most people Belotero Balance lasts around six months. To get the best results out of this treatment, it’s best to repeat the injections at intervals of no more than six months.
How Much Belotero Do You Need?
When you have a Belotero treatment, you’ll receive a certain number of injections for each area you want treated. The amount you’ll need varies depending on:
- How deep your facial folds are and
- The specific results you want
Your Belotero provider can provide an estimate during your consultation. Like other injectables, having too little is better than too much! Over-filling facial folds can make your face look puffy and unnatural, and that’s not a look you want to be stuck with for six months. If you feel that your first treatment doesn’t give the results you wanted, you can always ask if a slightly higher dose might give a better result.
What Is It Like to Get Belotero?
A Belotero Balance dermal filler treatment typically takes just 30 to 45 minutes. All injectable treatments are capable of causing discomfort, but it’s generally minimal. Belotero Balance is injected using a fine needle, which helps reduce discomfort. If you’re concerned, speak with your provider about ways to manage the sensations during your treatment.
After having Belotero injections, you can go about the rest of your day as normal. There’s no recovery period for this treatment, so you can return to work the same day. Certain activities should be avoided for the first 24 hours after treatment. These include:
- Strenuous activity and exercise
- Extensive heat or sun exposure
- Aspirin and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory (NSAID) medications
- Drinking alcohol
Any of these can cause further itching, inflammation, or bruising. Reactions are temporary but are best avoided to ensure you get optimal results from your treatment. When you have a Belotero Balance treatment, the gel works almost instantly to fill in lines and wrinkles. But it may take up to seven days to clearly see the results of a Belotero treatment. This is because the injections can cause minor bruising and inflammation, which may obscure your results. To reduce bruising, avoid using aspirin and NSAIDs for two weeks before your treatment.
Belotero Side Effects
For most people, Belotero treatments cause only minor side effects, such as:
- Light swelling
- Inflammation at the injection sites
Some people also have a headache, swelling at the side of the nose, lip dryness, or lip numbness. Most of these side effects are mild and clear up within seven days.
Note: Belotero Balance may cause visible side effects. If you’re having this treatment for a special event, make sure to give yourself plenty of time to recover. It’s best to allow at least a week in between your treatment and the event.
Belotero Risks and Complications
Belotero is made from hyaluronic acid, a substance that is naturally present in the skin. This means that it’s safe for most people. The most common side effects of Belotero treatments are light bruising and inflammation at the injection sites. These typically last only a day or two but can last up to seven days. There is also a small risk of more serious side effects. These include infection and necrosis (tissue death) at the site of injection. There is a very low chance of injection into a blood vessel. This is an extremely rare occurrence, but if it does occur, it can cause blindness, stroke, or permanent skin scarring. This is why it’s very important to only receive injections from a trained and experienced provider. The effects of having Belotero treatments during pregnancy or nursing are unknown. It’s best to avoid having this treatment if you are pregnant, hoping to become pregnant, or nursing.
Belotero isn’t toxic, but a small number of people do have an adverse reaction. For this reason, some people should avoid having Belotero Balance treatments. This includes:
- People who have multiple allergies or severe allergies, or a history of allergies
- People who have had one or more anaphylactic reactions
In particular, Belotero Balance should not be used by anyone who is allergic to gram-positive bacterial proteins.
Your Belotero Consultation
At your Belotero consultation, you’ll meet with Elaine Ver Halen, MPAS, PA-C or oe of our board-certified and fellowship-trained cosmetic surgeons at the DFW Aesthetics & Plastic Surgery office. Your doctor or Elaine will explain the procedure and what you can expect from a Belotero treatment. Feel free to ask as many questions as you have! At your consultation, you should let your provider know if you have any skin problems, such as:
- Cold sores
If you do have skin problems, it’s best to avoid Belotero Balance treatments until they clear up. At your consultation, be sure to mention any medications you’re taking, including both prescription and over-the-counter medications. This is important because some drugs, such as aspirin and NSAIDs, can worsen side effects like bruising and inflammation.
How to Pay for Your Belotero Treatment
DFW Aesthetics offers several payment options. These include the healthcare credit cards CareCredit® and Alphaeon Credit®. You may also opt to pay with a secured loan from United Medical Credit or Enhance Patient Finance. United Medical Credit offers prime and subprime loans, with multiple plan options and payment terms. Other options include:
- Credit card
- Cash or cashier’s check
- In-house financing
- Other loans
How Can Belotero Balance Transform Your Skin?
Everyone ages differently, and we all have different feelings about it. There’s nothing wrong with aging naturally, but there are other options if you want to slow the signs of aging. In a treatment that takes less than an hour, Belotero Balance can smooth out nasolabial folds and reduce the look of etched-in lines around the lips. Just these two simple changes can give you a more youthful appearance! Interested in learning how Belotero Balance can help freshen up your look? Make an appointment to see us for a consultation.

domain: medical


text:
Agency dedicated to documenting the devastating effects of the depression human erosion in california and scenes of workers in factories during world war ii. World war ii and the american home front california plant of douglas aviation company groom lines of transparent it deals with the impact of the war on. Since world war i, chemical weapons and agents have killed or the devastating effects of chemical weapons napalm and agent orange in world war ii and the. Running head: britain and world war ii britain and world war ii [name of the writer] [name of the institution] britain and world war ii united kingdom is a country in northwestern europe. The economic impact of the great depression was was devastated by the great depression the post-world war i world of reconstruction became a prewar world. California was not the place of their dreams with the nazi assault on poland in 1939 and the outbreak of world war ii hawaii, in a devastating, surprise. During world war ii as a result, this drug is having a devastating impact in many large-scale production of methamphetamine is centered in california.
There will come soft rains is a short story by a nuclear war the fear of the devastating effects of nuclear from the effects of world war ii and. Devastating effects of climate change world from california to even greenland: the world has seen a small declaration of war on the new and old. To help analyze the effects of those different case of the second world war difficult to imagine the outbreak of such a lengthy and devastating war. World war 2 changed the course of history for the world one of the most gruesome wars of all time, world war 2 is best known for the bombing of hiroshima and nagasaki by the united states.
From 1914 to the 1950s, art was almost never detached from a world war that's a pretty big impact the impact of world wars i & ii on the arts related study. What was the most devastating war in human lives, adjusted for world after the devastating effects of the civil war world war i and world war two. And world war ii in asia: where the effects of the depression were devastating and poverty was widespread (because of opposition in california.
In response to the increasing pace of state and federal preparations for war, california's state a devastating yet world war ii draft card. America in the second world war the fear of an axis victory drove production levels to new heights during world war ii involved in a devastating world. Women's fashion during wwi: 1914 - 1920 the great silence britain from the shadow of the first world war to the wwi had such devastating effects on the world.
The firebombing of tokyo started many fires which converged into a devastating based on world war ii experience with and firestorm effects.
Step into what happened when in the world, a follow the devastating spread of the black death through europe and the impact of world war ii on the globe. Cheney told fox news’ sean hannity the proposed cuts, which would shrink the army to its smallest size since just before the us entered world war ii, would have a devastating impact on the. A difficult question to answer, and each involved country would have their say the french and great britain lost millions of soldiers, and this loss was a devastating to their economies for. World california wildfire map: where is the wildfire in california california wildfire map: where is the wildfire in california world war 3: trump claims. In this lesson students research how the development of the atomic bomb affected people both during and since world war ii devastating effects california.


text:
The Senate Public Affairs Committee’s tabling of the right-to-work bill sponsored by Sen. Mark Moores (R-Albuquerque) comes at a particularly disastrous time for New Mexico. Unemployment is rising, layoffs are mounting, and the fiscal picture is darkening.
RTW is a key piece of a broader package of pro-growth reforms that must be implemented to finally build a vibrant and sustainable private sector in the state. The Foundation recently completed 12 months of analyzing job-producing investments announced by Area Development magazine.
Overall, jobs in RTW states claimed 77.8 percent of all positions to be created:
RTW states prevailed in each of the 12 months:
We also examined “border crossing,” in which investments were made by companies based in one type of state shifting to another. (For example, in December, CVS announced the hiring of 500 “pharmacists, pharmacy technicians and administrative staff” for a new facility in RTW Florida. The corporation is headquartered in non-RTW Rhode Island.) RTW bested non-RTW, 172 to 43.
Foreign direct investment also prevailed in RTW states, by a wide margin. Companies based abroad announced 186 investments in worker-freedom states, as opposed to 65 in compulsory-unionism states.
The Foundation now has a full year of data, and will be refining our findings to further probe why RTW is so attractive to companies and industries in manufacturing, logistics, finance, IT, biotech, and business services. For any New Mexico lawmaker who doubts the value of RTW, we’re happy to explain what we’ve found so far.

domain: geography


text:
Martin H C, Ibáñez R, Nothias LF, Boya P CA, Reinert LK, Rollins-Smith LA, Dorrestein PC, Gutiérrez M. Viscosin-like lipopeptides from frog skin bacteria inhibit Aspergillus fumigatus and Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis detected by imaging mass spectrometry and molecular networking. Scientific reports. 2019 Feb;9(9). 3019 p. PMID: 30816229 [PubMed] PMCID: PMC6395710
Amphibian populations worldwide have declined and in some cases become extinct due to chytridiomycosis, a pandemic disease caused by the fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis; however, some species have survived these fungal epidemics. Previous studies have suggested that the resistance of these species is due to the presence of cutaneous bacteria producing antifungal metabolites. As our understanding of these metabolites is still limited, we assessed the potential of such compounds against human-relevant fungi such as Aspergillus. In this work we isolated 201 bacterial strains from fifteen samples belonging to seven frog species collected in the highlands of Panama and tested them against Aspergillus fumigatus. Among the 29 bacterial isolates that exhibited antifungal activity, Pseudomonas cichorii showed the greatest inhibition. To visualize the distribution of compounds and identify them in the inhibition zone produced by P. cichorii, we employed MALDI imaging mass spectrometry (MALDI IMS) and MS/MS molecular networking. We identified viscosin and massetolides A, F, G and H in the inhibition zone. Furthermore, viscosin was isolated and evaluated in vitro against A. fumigatus and B. dendrobatidis showing MIC values of 62.50 µg/mL and 31.25 µg/mL, respectively. This is the first report of cyclic depsipeptides with antifungal activity isolated from frog cutaneous bacteria.


text:
Y.CO offers yachts for sale, yacht charter and yacht management.
Poke was appointed in July 2011and asked to focus on Y.CO’s maritime holiday offer, by selling the experience of elegance and luxury to the customer, according to the consultancy. Y.CO was rebranded by Saffron in September 2011.
The site, which launches today, opens on a homepage which show s a video guide of a Y.CO yacht.
Poke says, ‘By removing the sliders and forms from view, users are able to focus on the excitement of their holiday and find the experience that best suits them.’
The site has been developed in HTML5 as many of the site’s customers are visiting on tablet devices.
Meanwhile Kent Lyons has created a luxury book for Y.CO finished with foiling and embossing.
The consultancy was approached directly and sought to promote the yachting lifestyle by splitting the book into 12 sections, giving a month-by-month yachting destination guide.
An embossed front cover, leads through to ‘a world made up ‘Y’s’ where locations are foiled in,’ says consultancy creative director James Kent. The book fits inside a sleeve and a bespoke envelope.
Photographs, gathered from Y.CO, stock libraries, and travel photographers, have been given a silver effect to further express luxury according to Kent.

domain: design


text:
This book is a final gift from the esteemed novelist P.D. James. A woman who understood the detective story inside and out, who had a deep understanding of human nature, and melded those two with a writing ability that continues to be coveted by many. With a foreword written by the respected and talented author, Val McDermid, this book of four Christmas-themed mystery stories is a true gem. It will be especially appreciated by fans of James’ Adam Dalgliesh mystery series, as two of the short stories feature a young Dalgliesh!
The Mistletoe Murder – The first story is a meticulously rendered English country house mystery. A murder takes place Christmas night, a night when only four people are staying at the grand Stutleigh Manor, as the butler and his wife have been given the night off to be with their families on Christmas. The only clues are a few drops of water on the floorboards and some displaced mistletoe from over the door…
A Very Commonplace Murder – The second story features a clerk who has a secret vice. He discovers a secret stash of pornography and trespasses in his workplace after hours to indulge his penchant for reading the illicit material. It is there that he witnesses a rendezvous between two lovers. When he hears that the woman was murdered he debates whether he should ‘step up’ and tell the police what he has witnessed, risking his job and his reputation. This one has a delightful post twist!
The Boxdale Inheritance – The third story features a young Chief Inspector Adam Dalgliesh. His godfather, a canon, has recently inherited a large sum of money. Although he could sorely use the money, he is reluctant to accept as he is wary of the money’s provenance. He enlists Dalgliesh to look into a cold case to set his mind at rest.
The Twelve Clues of Christmas – The fourth story finds a young Dalgliesh stopped in his car on the way to visit his aunt for Christmas. A man tells him that a relative has just committed suicide and he needs to call the police as the phones at Harkerville Hall are not working. Dalgliesh drives him to a phone box, then home to the Hall. When Dalgliesh views the dead man’s body and the room where he lay, he notices several inconsistencies which pique his keen detective’s mind.
Although she can be quite verbose (I trait I admire), P.D. James has adapted admirably well to the confined and restricted scope of the short story. Her characters are still well developed and her settings and descriptions well wrought.
A few of my favorite quotes/descriptions from this book:
“Bereavement is like a serious illness. One dies or one survives, and the medicine is time, not a change of scene.”
“Her mean little mouth and dark suspicious eyes suggested that her mind was as tightly corseted as her body.”
(about Stutleigh Manor) “It loomed up out of the darkness, a stark shape against a grey sky pierced with a few high stars. And then the moon moved from behind a cloud and the house was revealed; beauty, symmetry and mystery bathed in white light.”
I immensely enjoyed all four of the stories contained in this book. My favorite was “A very commonplace murder”, due mostly to its wonderful plot twist.
I received this book from Knopf/Penguin Random House via Edelweiss in consideration of a review.
The late Phyllis Dorothy James was a prolific novelist who was constantly honing her craft right up to her death at age 94 years. Her love of words and description shines through her many novels. She was the recipient of many honors, including the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award and the National Arts Club Medal of Honor for Literature, and in 1991, she was honoured with the title of Baroness James of Holland Park. In 2008, she was inducted into the International Crime Writing Hall of Fame.
P.D. James was the author of twenty novels, fourteen of which featured her priggish and contemplative detective, Adam Dalgliesh.


Phoenix guard Diana Taurasi scored 26 points, including her 1,000th career 3-pointer, and DeWanna Bonner had 17 points and 12 rebounds as the Phoenix Mercury spoiled Dallas center Liz Cambage’s return in an 86-78 victory over the Wings in the season opener for both at Talking Stick Resort Arena in Phoenix on Friday.
Taurasi, the WNBA career leading scorer entering her 14th season, made five 3-pointers, giving her 1,001 for her career. Her fifth three with 2:13 remaining gave the Mercury an 81-72 lead after Dallas had closed to within four.
Bonner missed the 2017 season after giving birth to twins.
Cambage had 18 points and nine rebounds and Skylar Diggins-Smith had 18 points and nine assists for the Wings. Cambage, 6-foot-8, spent the last five seasons playing overseas after spending two seasons with Tulsa.
Phoenix 6-foot-9 center Brittney Griner, who led the league with a 21.7 scoring average in 2017, was limited by early foul trouble and finished with 13 points, seven rebounds and two blocked shots.
Glory Johnson had 12 points and Kaela Davis had 10 for Dallas. Diggins-Smith, who had 11 points in the fourth quarter, made two free throws to trim a 14-point deficit to 74-70 with 3:36 remaining before the Mercury responded.
Briann January and Leilani Mitchell had 10 points for Phoenix.
Cambage needed only 29 seconds to score in here first game in the WNBA since 2013. A native of Australia, she averaged 23.1 points and 10.5 rebounds while leading the Deakin Melbourne Boomers to the league finals.
Taurasi scored 14 points in the second quarter to give the Mercury a 44-42 lead at half, and Bonner scored five straight late in the third period for 61-53 lead entering the fourth.
—Field Level Media


Police say a gunman fatally shot two people at a nail salon in West Virginia before officers fired at the shooter, killing him.
Summersville police said Friday that officers responded to an active shooter Thursday evening at Jo’s Nails & Spa.
Police say two officers shot the gunman and he was pronounced dead at the hospital.
Police identified the alleged shooter as 52-year-old Patrick Wayne Cater and the two victims as 45-year-old Khuyen Van Le and 40-year-old Phi Anh Le.
The two victims were married coworkers.
Police Chief John Nowak said Cater had been working there earlier, left, and came back with a semiautomatic pistol.


text:
What should be on the priority list of the new government?
Since Slovenia has the opportunity to create and maintain a predictable business environment, the new Slovenian government should start by respecting the principles of the rule of law. The first step should be the necessary tax reform to achieve strong competitiveness in the labour market. This will not be reached by raising taxes and associated contributions on labour costs, but rather by equalising the conditions for citizens with a normative status. We encourage the adoption of tax reform aimed at stimulating value added work and not to increase the tax on profits from capital investment and company profits. We are also facing difficulity in keeping high quality staff in the country because taxation on individuals is presently excessive. In order to motivate our workers we should adopt labour legislation. As the digitalisation era is progressing fast, we need to put more focus on the impact of the following legislation. Suggestions include advanced EIDAS regulations, possible issuing a qualified digital certificate to all citizens, embedded on the ID or the health insurance card, thus facilitating digitalisation of business.

domain: finance


text:
Jermaine Jackson has revealed plans to open a Jackson-themed hotel resort.
The Jackson 5 member told The National that he is currently researching locations for a five-star hotel, which he wants to name after his son Jermajesty.
Jackson says that the resort, which is still in the earliest stages of planning, will have memorabilia featuring his famous family displayed everywhere.
The 58-year-old performer is currently scouting possible locations in Abu Dhabi and China.
"We are very early in the process," Jackson says of the project. "Talks are going on and it is progressing well. A good area we found is near Ferrari World, so we are looking at that."
The brother of late singer Michael Jackson revealed that he feels especially connected to the Middle East since converting to Islam in 1989.
"I always feel very welcome when I am over there, and the people are kind and gracious. Also my wife is Afghan and she has been a Muslim all her life.
"She speaks fluent Arabic and she has supported me in understanding and strengthening my beliefs. So when I come to this part of the world I feel like I did come full circle."
Jackson recently announced plans to change his last name to 'Jacksun' for "artistic" reasons.
View all of today's best celebrity pictures - Photo gallery:

domain: news


text:
Serena Williams some time back posted a video of playing Super Mario Bros. This time it was another game. Close to her Sister and her Mother, the American put up a picture of the popular game Street Fighter which she was playing with her Mother.
Serena has been going into the throwback mode, first posting about her first ever WTA match and then posting something about Venus. Having decided to skip the final part of the season, it seems like Serena is relaxing a lot during her off-season and is making the most of it.
Click through to see the image!
ALSO READ Serena Williams sad without Sister Venus (PIC INSIDE) .

domain: game


An article I wrote about suburban development patterns, infrastructure maintenance obligations, and tax revenue was published by Strong Towns yesterday, for which I’m very grateful. Here’s the link:
I wanted to pick up the thread at what I think the concrete solution is. Of course I subscribe to the Strong Towns idea of incremental and financially productive growth. But for Gallatin, what would that mean on the ground?
Gallatin is a vast municipal entity. Roughly 40,000 people are spread over 32 square miles. We are a small town that covers a lot of ground. As such we don’t just have one central node of activity, with residences spreading out from that. We have several different nodes that have sprung up over the past 70 years, either spurring more annexations or developing because of them.
In an environment like this, the call to concentrate on the core and halt sprawl cannot imply the abandonment of these outlying nodes. Though I think there is some feeling that widespread abandonment of sprawl will occur one day (from increased transportation costs, economic collapse, or something that just makes it fundamentally unviable), in the meantime we must remember that all of this “stuff” on the edges of our historic cities is sunk capital, is living, working, and playing space for a good chunk of our citizenry. That’s why I think our short-term strategy should be to adopt a node-focused zoning regime that identifies focal points for development and “freezes” the level of development in areas not so identified. Over time, these nodes could develop into small villages in their own right. When the “collapse”–or, at least, the great change in our thinking about transportation costs–occurs, these centers of activity could be resilient enough to remain as self-contained communities.
The market is starting to move in this direction. However, it is hampered by the zoning ordinances that govern most small cities, which are at the same time too restrictive and too permissive. Too restrictive in that nodal areas are suppressed from developing to their full potential; too permissive in that gobbling up land at the fringes and building disconnected tract housing seems like what our ordinances were designed to facilitate.
An example is Harpeth Village, out Highway 100 in Davidson County before you get to the Natchez Trace Parkway. There’s a Publix, a few strip mall type retail/restaurant spaces, and some outparcels. But just across the road is the townhome section of the development, which provides an acceptable density footprint in its little corner within walking distance of the amenities. The whole thing also backs up to other retail/restaurant strip centers.
While it’s nothing pretty (big wide parking setbacks, the usual chain stores), it is getting at a live/work/play model. What if we were to take this as a node, and to authorize much more intense levels of density and usage? Unleash the market, so to speak?
I’m not advocating total laissez faire. The other side of the coin I’m proposing would involve placing strict limits on development at a certain distance from the nodes. Ideally, these limits would begin at the maximum extent of walking distance from the center of the node and grow more restrictive as distance increased. Hopefully offices and other employment would congregate to these nodes as well as increased residential density and a panoply of commercial uses. This would allow us to maximize the productivity of infrastructure at the nodes and save the farmland out beyond them. The intensely used nodal infrastructure would get replaced more often but would generate the money to pay for those repairs while the less intensely used backroads connecting the nodes would last longer and be subsidized, basically, by the productivity of the nodes.
This is basically a riff on the idea of “retrofitting suburbia” but put into the context of a citywide or micro-regional vision for growth. But it’s important it’s combined with both unleashing the market on the nodes while restricting the market at the fringes. This in effect is a way of taming the market to do what we want it to do. The way we’ve set up development, land ownership, and economies of scale in this country necessarily produce the single-site, to-a-finished-state, all-at-once leapfrog type development that is stretching our cities to the breaking point and gobbling up our beautiful countryside. It is producing amorphous blobs of semi-urbanization that is not only environmentally and fiscally irresponsible: it also destroys town identity and sense of place. We have to put up sensible controls that will accomplish what a growing number of people see as the desirable form of growth. This is both pro-market and pro-government, and it comprehends the ways we can both channel and encourage the creative abilities of our developers.
Also, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that Memphis’ comprehensive plan update, Memphis 3.0, is following a similar strategy. It will be interesting to see how their “anchor strategy” translates into concrete zoning controls.


Many social policies require the substantial commitment of resources in order to provide benefits for future generations. Conventional policy assessment by the usual willingness to pay valuation criterion raises the issues of whether the future benefits of a policy should first be discounted to a smaller present value before comparison with its current costs in order to assess its merits, and if so then what discount rate should be utilized for these calculations. There is, however, less at stake in this debate than the partisans on either side commonly realize. This is because of the failure of policy analysts to recognize that all policies have pervasive and eventually universal and eternal “person-altering consequences” for genetic identities, the nature of which is explained in this Article. These consequences, if measured by estimated willingness to pay, will provide truly massive benefits for future generations, but they are not amenable to meaningful quantification. Therefore, these discounting issues do not arise with regard to these kinds of consequences. Moreover, because the largest proportion by far of the persons who will be impacted by a policy will be affected in a person-altering manner, the resolution of these discounting issues with regard to valuing the future impacts of a policy on existing persons is of limited practical importance.
Journal of Land, Resources & Environmental Law
endogeneity of identity, genetic identity, policy impacts – future generations, person-altering consequences, policy evaluation, cost-benefits, discounting issues
Gregory S. Crespi, Identity Renders the Discounting Debate Largely Irrelevant, 30 J. of Land, Resources & Env'l L. 75 (2010)


text:
You don’t need to make a trip to the grocery store to get an almond joy. This copycat coconut and almond candy recipe is a cinch to make.
One of my favorite candy bars is an Almond Joy. The delicious coconut base, topped with an almond and covered in chocolate is like a party in my mount.
Today, I am trying my hand and making a copycat homemade version. The recipe couldn’t be more easy.
Some times you feel like a nut…sometimes you don’t!
Home coconut almond candy is easy to make
I really had a fancy for some Almond Joys today and didn’t have any in the house, so I thought how hard can it be? As it turns out, super easy!
The secret to this candy is the coconut, of course, and also the almonds. Be sure to use the freshest ingredients for both of these for the best candy.
The recipe combines unsalted butter with shredded coconut, powdered sugar, toasted almonds and semi sweet chocolate coating. That reminds me…time for an almond joy. (with nuts, just because…)
Pin this recipe for coconut almond candy
Would you like a reminder of this copycat recipe? Just pin this image to one of your candy boards on Pinterest so that you can easily find it later.
- ½ cup Unsalted Butter
- 3 cups Shredded Coconut
- 2 cups Confectioners Sugar
- ½ cups Toasted Almonds
- 12 ounces of Semi-sweet Chocolate Coating
- Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper or spray a baking sheet.
- Melt the butter in a large sauce pan.
- When the butter is melted, remove it from the heat and stir in the coconut and sugar.
- Form mixture into round balls which are slightly flattened.
- Top each ball with 1 almond. Each piece takes about a heaping tablespoon.
- Place chocolate coating in a small glass bowl and microwave on high in 30-second intervals, stirring after each interval, until chocolate is melted and smooth.
- You can also melt it in a bowl which is placed in simmering water if you prefer.
- Dip each ball into the chocolate and coat evenly. Use a fork to lift the candies out of the melted chocolate and allow the excess chocolate to drip off. P
- lace the candies on the cookie sheet and allow them to cool completely.
- Store in an air tight container.
Amount Per Serving: Calories: 163Total Fat: 10gSaturated Fat: 6gTrans Fat: 0gUnsaturated Fat: 3gCholesterol: 8mgSodium: 38mgCarbohydrates: 19gFiber: 2gSugar: 17gProtein: 1g
Nutritional information is approximate due to natural variation in ingredients and the cook-at-home nature of our meals.

domain: food


text:
Gurdaspur, February 14
Verbal skirmishes were the order of the day during elections to the two Municipal Corporations and six municipal committees in the Gurdaspur parliamentary constituency today even as some adept policing ensured violence-free poll.
Authorities had yesterday claimed that Qadian, Dhariwal and Batala were likely to be “hotspots”, but no untoward incident was reported from the areas today. In Qadian, sitting MLA Fateh Jung Bajwa appealed to the public to maintain peace.
“I was informed by officials that trouble was brewing in my Assembly seat, Qadian, and that I should make an appeal to people. My pleas worked,” said Fateh.
Senior police officers admitted his appeal helped their cause in a big way.
In Batala, nearly 150 cops were deployed in ward No. 34, where Naveen Nayyar, Congress candidate and sister of former three-time MLA Ashwani Sekhri, is pitted against former Congressman and ex-vice president of the MC Harinder Kalsi. Despite police presence, supporters of both groups entered a verbal duel, leading to a potentially volatile situation. — TNS
Smooth polls in Gurdaspur


'I can't say that I've ever seen him look defeated'
Some say Oregon State head coach Mike Riley is the most likable football coach in the NCAA, but there's more to coaching major college football than being a nice guy. His former teammates, current staff and players lined up to tell our cameras about the qualities (plural) that make Riley a success:
Oregon State plays Arizona on the Pac-12 Networks this Saturday at 7 p.m. PT. Tune in to our pregame show at 2 p.m. PT (ahead of UCLA-Colorado at 3 p.m. PT) to see our full feature on the Beavers' beloved head coach.


text: Global News Hour at 6 March 28 2019 10:55pm 03:21 Debate over dress code in the B.C. legislature A battle has erupted in the B.C. legislature over how women should dress, after one female staffer says she was told her bare arms were “unprofessional.” Keith Baldrey reports. The right to bare arms: Women in B.C. legislature fight for changes to ‘outdated’ dress code Responsive site?


text:
“ People are running, but there is no place in the world to which they can flee to escape themselves. Ultimately, each one must face himself. ”
People that have trust issues only need to look in the mirror. There they will meet the one person that will betray them the most.
I want you to see life bare, as it is; and the bare is not ugly. The bare is very beautiful. The bare is very tremendous.
Power doesn't corrupt. People are corrupt. When they get empowered, it becomes apparent.