We live in a global village where electronic communication has eliminated the geographical barriers of information exchange. The road is now open to worldwide convergence of information interests, shared values and understanding. Nevertheless, interests still vary between countries around the world. This raises important questions about what today’s world map of information interests actually looks like and what factors cause the barriers of information exchange between countries. To quantitatively construct a world map of information interests, we devise a scalable statistical model that identifies countries with similar information interests and measures the countries’ bilateral similarities. From the similarities we connect countries in a global network and find that countries can be mapped into 18 clusters with similar information interests. Through regression we find that language and religion best explain the strength of the bilateral ties and formation of clusters. Our findings provide a quantitative basis for further studies to better understand the complex interplay between shared interests and conflict on a global scale. The methodology can also be extended to track changes over time and capture important trends in global information exchange.
“We live in a global world” has become a cliché (Kose and Ozturk, 2014). Historically, the exchange of goods, money and information was naturally limited to nearby locations, since globalisation was effectively blocked by spatial, territorial and cultural barriers (Cairncross, 2001). Today, new technology is overcoming these barriers and exchange can take place in an increasingly international arena (Friedman, 2000). Nevertheless, geographical proximity still seems to be important for the trade of goods (Overman et al., 2003; Serrano et al., 2007; Fagiolo et al., 2010; Kaluza et al., 2010) as well as for mobile phone communication (Lambiotte et al., 2008) and scientific collaboration (Pan et al., 2012). However, since the Internet allows information to travel more easily and rapidly than goods, it remains unclear what are the effective barriers of global information exchange. As information exchange requires shared interests, we therefore need to better understand global connections in interest, and the factors that form these connections.
Although globalisation of information has been discussed extensively in the research literature (Friedman, 2000; Fischer, 2003; Nye, 2004), currently there is no method to quantitatively map bilateral information interests from large-scale data. Without such a method, it becomes difficult to justify qualitative statements about, for example, the complex interplay between shared values and conflict on a global scale. We use data mining and statistical analysis to device a measure of bilateral information interests, and use this measure to construct a world map of information interests.
To study interests on a global scale, we use the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia, which has evolved into one of the largest collaborative repositories of information in the history of mankind (Mesgari et al., 2014). The free online encyclopedia consists of almost 300 language editions, with English being the largest one (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Size_of_Wikipedia. This multi-lingual encyclopedia captures a wide spectrum of information in millions of articles. These articles undergo a peer-reviewed editing process without a central editing authority. Instead, articles are written, reviewed and edited by the public. Each article edit is recorded, along with a time-stamp, and, if the editor is unregistered, the computer’s IP address. The IP address makes it possible to connect each edit to a specific location. Therefore we can use Wikipedia editors as sensors for mapping information interest to specific countries.
In this paper, we use co-editing of the same Wikipedia article as a proxy for shared information interests. To find global connections, we look at how often editors from different countries co-edit the same articles. To infer connections of shared interest between countries, we develop a statistical model and represent significant correlations between countries as links in a global network. Structural analysis of the network suggests that interests are polarised by factors related to geographical proximity, language, religion and historical background. We quantify the effects of these factors using regression analysis and find that information exchange indeed is constrained by the impact of social and economic factors connected to shared interests.
Relating information interests to geographical location
As one of the largest and most linguistically diverse repositories of human knowledge, Wikipedia has become the world’s main platform for archiving factual information (Mesgari et al., 2014). One important feature of Wikipedia is that every edit made to an article is recorded. Thanks to this detailed data, Wikipedia provides a unique platform for studying different aspects of information processes, for example, semantic relatedness of topics (Auer and Lehmann, 2007; Radinsky et al., 2011), collaboration (Kimmons, 2011; Keegan et al., 2012; Török et al., 2013), social roles of editors (Welser et al., 2011) and the geographical locations of Wikipedia editors (Lieberman and Lin, 2009).
In this work, we used data from Wikipedia dumps (http://dumps.wikimedia.org/enwiki/) to select a random sample from the English Wikipedia edition, which is the largest and most widespread language edition. In total, the English edition has around 10 million articles, including redirects and duplicates. Since retrieving the editing histories of all articles is computationally demanding, we randomly sampled more than 6 million articles from this set. For each English article, we retrieved the complete editing history of the same article in all language editions that the English Wikipedia page links to. Finally we merged all language editions together to create a global editing history for each article. For each edit, the editing history includes the text of the edit, its time-stamp and, for unregistered editors, the IP address of the editor’s computer. From the IP address associated with the edit, we retrieved the geolocation of the corresponding editor using an IP database (http://www.ip2location.com/). For the purpose of spatial analysis, we limited the analysis to edits from unregistered editors, because data on the location for most of the registered Wikipedia editors are unavailable. The resulting dataset contains more than 6 million (6,285,753) Wikipedia articles and about 140 million edits in total. We use these edits to create interest profiles for countries.
Inferring shared interests from edit co-occurrence
We identify the interest profile of a country by aggregating the edits of all Wikipedia editors whose IPs are recorded in the country. If an article is co-edited by editors located in different countries, we say that the countries share a common interest in the information of the article. In other words, we connect countries if their editors co-edit the same articles. Indirectly, we let individuals who edit Wikipedia represent the population of their country. While Wikipedia editors in a country certainly do not represent a statistically unbiased sample, there is a higher tendency that they edit contents that are related to the country in which they live (Hecht and Gergle, 2010b). Therefore, we approximate the interest profile of a country with collective editing behaviour of editors in that country.
Inferring the location of all editors on the country level is non-trivial. Although we have data on all edits, we do not know the location of registered editors because their IPs are not recorded. One proposed approach to tackle this problem makes use of circadian rhythms of editing activity to infer the location of the editors (Yasseri et al., 2012). This method approximates the longitude of a location but provides little information about its latitude. Therefore, we must limit the analysis to the activity of unregistered editors with recorded IP addresses. This will arguably affect the results. Not only do registered editors contribute to 70% of all 140 million edits, they also have somewhat different behaviour. For example, many of the most active registered users take on administrative functions, develop career paths or specialise in covering selected topics (Arazy et al., 2015). On the other hand, some unregistered editors are involved in vandalism, but often their activity nevertheless indicates their interest.1 While we can only speculate about how including registered editors would affect the results, unregistered editors can nevertheless provide useful information about shared interests between countries.
From the co-editing data, we create a network that represents countries as nodes and shared interests as links. The naive approach is to use the raw counts of co-edits between countries as weighted links. The problem with this approach is that it is biased towards the number of editors in each country. Some countries may be strongly connected, not because of evident shared interests but merely as a result of a large community of active Wikipedia editors. To address this problem, we propose a statistical validation method that filters out connections that could exist only due to size effects or noise. The filtering method assumes a multinomial distribution and determines the expected number of co-occurring edits from the empirical data. In other words, we infer significant links in a bipartite system in which countries are in one set and articles are in the other set. There are other existing methods to evaluate the significant correlation between entities in bipartite systems. For example, Zweig and Kaufmann (2011) proposed a systematic approach to one-mode projections of bipartite graphs for different motifs. In another work, Tumminello et al. (2011) used the hypergeometric distribution and measured the P-value for each subset of the bipartite network. Moreover, Lancichinetti et al. (2015) proposed a community detection method to classify topics to articles more efficiently, and Serrano et al. (2009) used a disparity filtering method to infer significant weights in networks. Finally, Ronen et al. (2014) adopted a statistical approach to determine significant links between languages in various written documents. However, the model that we use has the advantages that it makes it easy to account for size variation inside an article and to compute the z-scores for analysing the country-based editor activity.
In this section we outline the formalisation of the model. We link countries based on their co-occurring edits over all Wikipedia articles. For a specific article a, we calculate the link weight between all pairs of countries that edited the article, as follows: if editors in country i have edited an article kia times, and editors in country j have edited the same article kja times, then the countries’ empirical link weight, wija, is calculated as:
Since the total number of articles is over 6 million, most country pairs have co-edited at least one article. Therefore, the aggregation of all articles results in numerous links between countries, and the countries with relatively large editing activities become highly central. Accordingly, we cannot know if the link exists by chance, or because countries actually tend to edit the same articles more frequently than expected. To determine which links are statistically significant, we compare the empirically observed link weights with the weight given by a null model. In the null model, we assume that each edit comes from a country randomly picked proportionally to its total number of edits. More specifically, the random assignments are performed by drawing the countries from a multinomial distribution. That is, for each edit, country i is selected proportional to its cumulative editing activity, , where M is the total number of edits for all articles. Note that each edit is sampled independently from all other edits, and that the cumulative edit activity of a country in the null model on average will be the same as the observed one. This null model preserves the average level of activity of the countries, but randomises the temporal order and the articles that countries edit. Figure 1 shows an example of this reshuffling scheme with four articles.
From the null model, we can analytically compute the expected probability, μija, that two countries i and j edit the same article a (detailed derivation in the Supplementary Information S1): where na is the total number of edits in article a.
To compare the empirical and expected link values, we compute standardised values, so called z-scores. For countries i and j and article a, the z-score zija is defined as where the standard deviation σija, is computed in the Supplementary Information S1.
The z-scores are useful for comparisons of weights, since they account for the large variations that exist in the articles’ edit histories. We then sum over all articles to find the cumulative z-score for countries i and j
Using the Bonferroni correction, we consider a link to be significant if the probability of observing the total z-score is less than 0.05/N, where N is the number of countries. Since the total z-score is a sum over many independent variables, we can approximate the expected total z-score distribution with a normal distribution. The normal distribution has average value 0 and standard deviation , where L is the number of Wikipedia articles. Thus, the threshold for the significant link weight is , where 3.52 is derived from the condition that P(z>3.52) = 0.05/N, where N = 234 countries and P is the standard Gaussian distribution (with zero average and unit variance). If the total z-score is larger than the threshold, we create a link between countries i and j with weight according to
In summary, the interest model maintains the average level of activity of the countries and randomises the articles that they edit. By comparing results from the interests model and empirical values, we can identify significant links between countries.
Clustering countries with similar interests
To investigate the effective barriers of global information exchange, we first identify large-scale structures among the thousands of links between countries. In this way, we can highlight the groups of countries that share interest in the same information. To reveal such groups among the pairwise connections, we use a network community detection method based on random walks as a proxy for interest flows. While the community-detection method we use is good at breaking chains of links, we may connect some countries primarily based on strong connections with common countries and not between themselves. Nevertheless, simplifying and highlighting important structures provide a valuable map to investigate the large-scale structure of global information exchange.
In our clustering approach, we first build a network of countries connected with the significant links we find in our filtering. To identify groups of countries, we envision an editor game in which editors from different countries are active in sequence. In this relay race, a country exchanges information to another country proportional to the weight of the link between the countries. Accordingly, the sequence of countries forms a random walk and certain sets of countries with strong internal connections will be visited for a relatively long time. This process is analog to the community-detection method known as the map equation (Rosvall and Bergstrom, 2008; Rosvall et al., 2009). Here we use the map equation’s associated search algorithm Infomap (Edler and Rosvall, 2015) to identify the groups of countries we are looking for and to reveal the large-scale structure.
Results and discussion
We will discuss the results at four levels of detail, from the big picture to the detailed dynamics, and highlight different potential mechanisms for barriers of information exchange. First, we will show a global map of countries with shared information interests, and continue with the interconnections between the clusters. Then we will consider each cluster separately and examine the interconnections between countries within the clusters. Finally, we will apply multiple regression analysis to examine explanatory variables to the highways and barriers of information exchange.
The world map of information interests
The world map of information interests suggests that cultural and geopolitical features can explain the division of countries. Between the 234 countries, we identified 2,847 significant links that together form a network of article co-edits. By clustering the network, we identified 18 clusters of strongly connected countries (see Supplementary Table for a detailed list of countries in each cluster). The resulting network is illustrated as a map in Fig. 2, where countries of the same cluster share the same colour. The map suggests that the division of countries can be explained by a combination of cultural and geopolitical features. For example, the United States and Canada share a long geographical border and extensive mutual trade, and are clustered together despite the fact that other English-speaking countries are not. Moreover, religion is a plausible driver for the formation of the cluster of countries in the Middle East and North Africa, as well as the cluster of Russia and the Orthodox Eastern-European countries (Gupta et al., 2002). Another factor in the formation of shared information interests is language. For example, countries in Central and South America are divided into two clusters with Portuguese and Spanish as common languages in each cluster, respectively. Colonial history can also shape similarity in interests, as in the cluster of Portugal, Angola and Brazil, as well as the cluster of former Soviet Union countries (Hensel, 2009). Overall, there is strong empirical evidence that geographical proximity, common religion, shared language and colonial history can explain the division of countries.
To examine the connections between clusters, we looked at the network structure at the cluster level. The network in Fig. 3 shows the connections between the clusters of countries illustrated in Fig. 2 with the same colour coding. Connections tend to be stronger between clusters of geographically proximate countries also at this level. Interestingly, the Middle East cluster in turquoise has the largest link strengths to other clusters, forming a hub that connects East and West, North and South. Interpreting the strong connections as potential highways for information exchange, the Middle East is not only a melting pot of ideas, but also plays an important role in the spread of information.
To get better insights into how the clusters are shaped, we zoomed into the country networks within clusters. In the upper left corner of Fig. 3, we show the strongest connections within the Central European cluster. It suggests that countries are linked based on the overlap of the official languages (Hale, 2014). For example, Belgium has three official languages, Dutch, French and German. Indeed, Belgium is connected closely with the Netherlands, France and Luxembourg. We observed the same pattern in other clusters, and the triad of Switzerland, Germany and Austria is another example of strongly linked countries with a shared language.
Just to illustrate what interests can form the bilateral connections, we looked at a number of concrete examples. First, we ranked the articles according to their significant z-scores for each pair of countries. Then we looked at the top-ranked articles and here report the results for two European country pairs: Germany—Austria in the European cluster and Sweden—Norway in the Scandinavian cluster. The articles with the most significant co-edits relate to local and regional interests, including sports, media, music and places (see Supplementary Table). For example, the top-ranked articles in the Germany—Austria list include an Austrian singer who is also popular in Germany, and an Austrian football player who is playing in the German league. The top-ranked articles in the Sweden–Norway list shows a similar pattern of locally related topics, for example, a host of a popular TV show simultaneously aired in Sweden and Norway, a Swedish football manager who has been successful both in Sweden and Norway, and a music genre that is nearly exclusive to Scandinavian countries. Altogether, the top articles suggest that an important factor for co-editing is related interests, which in turn may be an effect of shared language, religion, or colonial history, as well as geographical proximity or large volume of trade between countries.
Regression analysis of the highways and barriers of information exchange
To quantify the impact of social and economic factors behind the shared interests, we performed a Multiple Regression Quadratic Assignment Procedure (MRQAP) analysis. This method is specifically suited when there are collinearity and autocorrelation in the data (Krackhardt, 1988; Dekker et al., 2007). We performed the MRQAP using the netlm function in the sna R package (Butts, 2008). The dependent variables in the regression model were the significant z-scores that we obtained from the data. Our independent variables were geographical proximity, trade (Subramanian and Wei, 2007), colonial ties,2 shared language3 and shared religion,4 as suggested by the analysis of the map of information interests (see the Supplementary Information S2 for a more detailed description of the data).
All independent variables show significant correlation with the data (see Table 1). To observe the variation between different independent matrices, we examined them in different models. In model R0, we examined the influence of shared language, which explains 13% of our observation. In model R1, we added shared religion, which increases the power of the model to 19%. In model R2, we included the geographical proximity. It slightly increases the R2 and has negative relation to the observed z-scores, since short distance corresponds to high proximity. In models R3 and R4, respectively, we added colonial ties and trade. Including all these explanatory variables into the regression model enabled us to increase the explanatory power of the model to 22%. The correlation of each variable with the observed z-scores can be inferred from the t-statistic. Shared language shows the strongest association, followed by shared religion, geographical proximity, colonial ties, and volume of trade (see Table 1).
The influence of language on shared interests is not surprising. It is well known that interests are formed by cultural expression and public opinion, and language is an important platform for these expressions (Usunier and Lee, 2005). That the relation between language and interests is important has also been demonstrated by the surprisingly small overlap between languages in Wikipedia (Hecht and Gergle, 2010a; Callahan and Herring, 2011) and the variation in the editing of controversial topics (Yasseri et al., 2014).
Moreover, the influence of religion is in line with the Huntington’s thesis that the source of division between people in the post-Cold War period is primarily rooted in cultural differences and religion (Huntington, 1997). Similar results were found in other studies that analysed Twitter and email communication worldwide (State et al., 2015).
Overall, the analysis reveals that information exchange is constrained by the impact of social and economic factors connected to shared interests. In other words, globalisation of the technology does not bring globalisation of the information and interests. Language, religion, geographical proximity, historic background and trade are potential driving factors to polarise the information interests. These results coincide with earlier works that highlight the impact of the colonisation, immigration, economics, and politics on the cultural similarities and diversities (Tägil, 1995; Feldman-Bianco, 2001; Risse, 2001; Bleich, 2005; Castells, 2011; Gelfand et al., 2011; Hennemann et al., 2012).
By simplifying and highlighting the important structure in the myriad edits of Wikipedia, we provide a world map of shared information interests. We find that information interests despite globalisation are diverse, and that the highways and barriers of information exchange are formed by social and economic factors connected to shared interests. In descending order, we find that language, religion, geographical proximity, historic background and trade explain the diversity of interests. While technological advances in principle have made it possible to communicate with anyone in the world, these social and economic factors limit us from doing so and information interests remain diverse. Questions remain how different social and economic factors affect different regions, how they relate to conflicts on a global scale, and how the impact of these factors changes over time. It would therefore be interesting to extend the methodology to track changes over time.
The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available in the Google Sites repository: https://sites.google.com/site/mappingbilateralwiki/.
How to cite this article: Karimi, F. et al (2015) Mapping bilateral information interests using the activity of Wikipedia editors. Palgrave Communications. 1:15041 doi: 10.1057/palcomms.2015.41.
See Wikipedia’s policy and fight against vandalism here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vandalism_on_Wikipedia.
We used ICOW Colonial History Data Set, version 1.0. available on http://www.paulhensel.org/icowcol.html.
We used Ethnologue available on http://www.ethnologue.com/.
We used the World Religion Database available on http://www.worldreligiondatabase.org/.
The authors thank Alcides V. Esquivel, Daniel Edler, Claudia Wagner and Micheal Macy for valuable discussions. Authors also thank the Wikimedia Foundation for providing free access to the data. F.K., L.B., A.L. and M.R. were supported by the Swedish Research Council grant 2012-3729.


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Lessons on Navigating the Minefield of Restrictive Covenants
Over the last several years, Wisconsin appellate courts have decided a number of cases that have changed the law regarding the use of restrictive covenants in employment agreements. The decisions have given both employers and employees additional guidance on the enforceability of employment restrictions. Manitowoc Company, Inc. v. Lanning is currently pending before the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which is considering the enforceability of a restrictive covenant that prohibited a departing employee from soliciting other employees of the company. The court heard oral arguments in the case in early September. Additionally, on September 7, 2017, the Wisconsin Court of Appeals issued a decision in which it ruled that three restrictive covenants were unenforceable.
If you use restrictive covenants (including covenants not to compete, provisions protecting confidential information, or provisions prohibiting solicitation of employees or customers), it is important to stay up to date on this area of the law and to modify your employment agreements as needed to minimize the possibility that a restrictive covenant will be deemed unenforceable.
Restrictive Covenants in Wisconsin
Like many states, Wisconsin has a specific law governing the use of restrictive covenants by employers. In Wisconsin, the law is Section 103.465. In general, a restriction must be reasonable, and it is the employer’s burden to demonstrate reasonableness. Wisconsin courts typically look at five factors in evaluating the reasonableness of a restrictive covenant. A reasonable restrictive covenant:
- Is necessary for the protection of the employer;
- Provides a reasonable time limit;
- Provides a reasonable territorial limit;
- Is not harsh or oppressive to the employee; and
- Is not contrary to public policy.
Restrictive covenants are generally disfavored and regarded with suspicion by courts because the law encourages the mobility of employees. Generally, if a restrictive covenant is unreasonable, a court will not rewrite it to make it reasonable. Rather, the court will rule that the restriction is unenforceable. For example, if a restriction’s duration is three years and a court determines that a two-year period is reasonable but a three-year period is not, the court will not rewrite the restriction to make it only two years and then enforce it.
Additionally, until relatively recently, if any part of a set of restrictive covenants was found to be unenforceable, all restrictive covenants in the agreement were unenforceable. Wisconsin courts will now look at whether restrictive covenants are divisible.
John Karsten was a longtime employee of Terra Engineering and had served as its president and as a member of its board of directors. In 1991, he signed an agreement that included restrictive covenants limiting his ability to engage in competitive activity against Terra during his employment with the company and following his separation from employment. Twenty-two years later, he left Terra and began working for Midwest Drilled Foundations & Engineering, LLC, Terra’s competitor. Terra claimed that Karsten directed business to Midwest in violation of his restrictive covenants.
Karsten filed a lawsuit asking the court to declare that the restrictive covenants were unenforceable. Terra countersued Karsten for violating his noncompete, and added a tortious (wrongful) interference claim against Midwest. The trial court ruled that the restrictive covenants were unenforceable, and Terra appealed.
The first question the Wisconsin Court of Appeals addressed was whether Section 103.465 applied to Karsten’s restrictive covenants. The court had to make that determination because it decided Selmer Company v. Rinn in 2010. In that case, the court ruled that Wisconsin’s restrictive covenant law applies when either (1) the covenant is a condition of employment or (2) the employer possesses an unfair bargaining advantage over the employee.
In Karsten’s case, the court rephrased the test in the converse: Section 103.465 does not apply when a restrictive covenant is not a condition of employment and the employer does not possess an unfair bargaining advantage over the employee. The court concluded that Karsten’s restrictive covenants were a condition of employment even though they were contained in a stock option agreement.
After finding that the restrictive covenants were governed by the reasonableness analysis in Section 103.465, the court addressed whether the challenged restrictions passed the reasonableness test. The court could have found that the restrictions were indivisible (therefore, if one failed, all three were unenforceable). Instead, it assumed the restrictions were divisible and examined the reasonableness of each of the restrictions.
The first restriction prohibited Karsten from working for a competitor in states or comparable foreign political subdivisions in which Terra sold or actively attempted to sell its products or services. The restriction had a two-year duration, which the court said was not unreasonable per se. Although there may be a question of whether the circumstances dictate that two years is too long, restrictions with a duration of two years or shorter generally are upheld. Longer durations generally are found unenforceable. In Karsten’s case, the court observed that the restriction lacked any meaningful territorial limitation. Also, Terra did not show how many states or countries it marketed its business in during the 12 months prior to Karsten’s separation.
Terra made two arguments for why the restriction should be deemed reasonable. First, it argued that it applied only to products and services over which Karsten had managerial control while working for the company. The court noted that “management responsibility” language may be an appropriate limitation in the right case. However, in this case, Karsten was prohibited from performing similar work for anyone in any state or territory in which Terra had customers or had attempted to obtain even one customer during the specified period. That prohibition allowed Terra to include all potential customers in any territory where it marketed its business, even if it had no interest in soliciting the customers.
Second, Terra argued that Karsten held a high-level position. The court agreed that was a valid consideration, but remained concerned that the restriction was not narrowly tailored to Terra’s actual customers. To use the high-level-employee factor to establish the reasonableness of a restrictive covenant, an employer must show why the issue makes a difference when comparing the individual to other employees—for example, midlevel managers or sales personnel. Thus, the court found that the restriction was overly broad and unreasonable.
The second restriction prohibited Karsten from working in any capacity that utilized his special skills in selling any products or services that were similar to Terra’s to any company to which Terra sold or attempted to sell its products during the previous 12- month period. It, too, was found to be overly broad and unreasonable. There were two primary problems with the restriction: (1) There was no territorial limit, and (2) Karsten was effectively barred from soliciting customers Terra was unsuccessful in soliciting.
The final restriction the court examined is routinely used by many employers—a restriction on disclosing or using confidential company information. Karsten was prohibited from performing similar work that would reasonably be expected to use confidential information he acquired during his employment with Terra. The term “confidential information” was broadly defined, as it nearly always is in this type of restrictive covenant. The court did not quibble with how “confidential information” was defined, but it nevertheless found the restriction unenforceable for two reasons. First, if Karsten engaged in similar work, he would be required to prove “beyond a reasonable doubt” that the confidential information had become public, if that was his argument. The court was troubled by the use of the high standard of proof, which typically applies only in the criminal context. Second, the restriction did not require the actual use of confidential information. Rather, it was enough that the similar work “would reasonably be expected” to use confidential information.
Also, the court questioned whether the Selmer Company decision remains good law in Wisconsin. After the Karsten ruling, it may be difficult for an employer to rely on the Selmer Company exception to persuade a court to uphold an otherwise questionable restrictive covenant. Karsten v. Terra Engineering & Construction Corporation, No. 2016AP2025 (Wis. Ct. App., Sept. 7, 2017).
Preparing a restrictive covenant that is enforceable is always difficult, particularly given Wisconsin’s policy favoring employee mobility and the suspicion with which courts look at such restrictions. This area of law has become more complicated because of decisions coming from Wisconsin’s appellate courts. Some areas of the law are fairly intuitive. We all know that employers cannot fire or refuse to hire an individual because of his gender, race, or religion and that nonexempt employees typically must be paid overtime for all hours worked in excess of 40 in a workweek. Restrictive covenants, including covenants not to compete, confidential information restrictions, and nonsolicitation agreements (for customers or employees), are far more nuanced. If you use restrictive covenants for some or all of your employees, be certain that your legal counsel has had an opportunity to review the agreements to ensure they comply with existing law.
This article, slightly modified to note recent updates, was featured in the October 2017 issue of the Wisconsin Employment Law Letter, which is co-edited by Axley Brynelson Attorneys Saul Glazer and Michael Modl and published by BLR®—Business & Legal Resources. Reproduced here with the permission of BLR®—Business & Legal Resources.

domain: law


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domain: sociology


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DIY Solar Air Heater From Old Downspouts And Scraps
Have you ever heard the saying “there is more than one way to skin a cat”? Well the same can be said about DIY solar heaters! We all know you can make this type of heater from pop or beer cans but did you know to get more air flow, and thus better heating, you can use downspouts?
A solar air heating panel will definitely supplement your daytime heating and reduce your utility bills. This panel pictured above cost about $130 to construct but if you looked around on Craigslist, etc. I am sure you could find free materials.
I found this picture heavy article on how to make one and man, I need to get on this. I think this winter is going to be cold, so I might as well save some $$ on my heating bills. See how to make one below:
Bonus: Root Cellar That Can Be Used as a Bunker
If you can't afford the box culvert option you can look into is building a backyard root cellar that can be used as a bunker.
If you want to learn how to build a backyard bunker like your grandparents had, without breaking the bank, then check out Easy Cellar.
Easy Cellar will show you:
- How to choose the ideal site
- Cost-effective building methods
- How to protect your bunker from nuclear blast and fallout
- How to conceal your bunker
- Affordable basic life support options
Easy Cellar will also show you how a veteran, with only $421, built a small nuclear bunker in his backyard.


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|Prodigy circa 1997|
I was born in the summer of love, May 1967, to parents barely out of their teens, so rock music has been the soundtrack to my entire life, but there was a time in the early/mid 90’s when I walked away from rock. Ironically, this occurred exactly at the time when “my” side of the rock divide had “won”, i.e., when the grunge and alternative movements hastened the demise of the detestable trifle known as hair metal. Anyone who has read any of my other posts knows that there are precious few genres of music, and of rock music in particular, that I DON’T like, but hair metal is indeed one of those genres. One of the things I hated most about late 80’s hair metal was how unoriginal and homogeneous it was, especially compared to the new wave musical movement that immediately preceded it. New wave was all about having your own unique look, sound, and band name, and extremely few new wave acts looked or sounded that similar. Hair metal, in contrast, seemed to be all about imitating exactly the look and sound of the bands that had already made it. So nearly every hair metal band had long, hairsprayed hair, spandex a la David Lee Roth, and/or leather and studs in the manner of Rob Halford of Judas Priest. And every group put out a watered down version of the hard rock/blues of the New York Dolls augmented with as much Jimmy Page-style guitar pyrotechnics as they could cram in. Moreover, every album had the same tiresome lyrics obsessed with “partying” and poontang, but of course they also always had that one ballad to show off their tender side. Watching MTV during this time was a tedious parade of videos showcasing these pretty boys prancing around a giant stage while girls in ripped acid wash jeans screamed and/or gyrated, and there was a bewildering onslaught of groups—Poison, Ratt, Warrant, Winger, Whitesnake, White Lion, Firehouse, Bang Tango, Dangerous Toys, and on and on.
And then, in 1990, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and other “grunge” bands from the Pacific Northwest climbed out of the clubs and took the charts by storm. Grunge combined the rawness of the early hardcore bands like Black Flag with the slower, heavier, longer sound of 70’s metal pioneers like Black Sabbath and Deep Purple. Flag themselves were one of the first to lead this charge, starting with albums like Loose Nut and Slip It In, which showcased their increasing interest in pre-punk 70’s rock forebearers.
At the same time that grunge was capturing the ears of Middle American teens, “alternative” was also gathering interest. Alternative music grew out of punk and new wave and what was also called “college music” or “independent” or “indie” music in the mid to late 80’s. First-wave English new wave groups like Depeche Mode, the Cure, and the Smiths/Morrissey had been gathering popularity throughout the 80’s to the point where they were filling arenas by the end of the decade, while groups like Jane’s Addiction, Sonic Youth, and R.E.M. moved from small independent American labels to the majors. All of a sudden, the music you used to only be able to hear on college radio and see in small smoky clubs and read about in zines like Flipside was everywhere.
This is exactly when I started to become disenchanted with, even disinterested in, rock music. By 1990 I’d been passionately involved in punk and new wave for almost a decade, and while I was overjoyed to see hair metal swept aside like the insignificant piffle that it was, I wasn’t super excited by what replaced it either, for several reasons. First and foremost, even by the late 80’s I was becoming bored with loud, angry music; indeed, as I have gone on about in prior posts, by 1989 my favorite band in the world was the 70’s glitter rock-influenced band Celebrity Skin, who’s silly, feel-good music, outrageous costumery and zany stage antics made them incredibly entertaining live, unlike most super-serious grunge and alternative acts. But Celebrity Skin broke up in early 1991 (a few days after the death of Freddie Mercury, appropriately enough) and that was a major blow to my desire to see new bands or hear new music. My then-girlfriend/now-wife and I had spent much of the previous three years religiously following the Skinners and their stablemates on Triple X Records such as the Ultras, Pygmy Love Circus, the Miracle Workers, and Liquid Jesus, through LA’s circuit of small clubs, but with Skin broken up, this lost much of its meaning for both of us. The only other band that came even remotely close to capturing the entertainingly flamboyant nature of Celebrity Skin was Jane’s Addiction, but by the early 90’s they were awash in drug abuse and similarly self-indulgent rock star occupations. We saw Jane’s A one last time, at the Universal Amphitheater, in 1992, and went away disillusioned with how far they’d fallen from their exciting, revolutionary beginnings. We were in our mid-20’s then but felt more like 100 next to all the teeny boppers with their dreadlocks and nose rings in perfect imitation of their hero Perry.
Another problem I had with grunge music was how macho it was. Much of it was loud, heavy, slow, and the bands who created it seemed to revel in the post-hardcore machismo of the mosh pit. Unlike Celebrity Skin’s concerts, which were filled with gorgeous, tall, skinny punky model types in vintage 70’s Halston minidresses and platform shoes, you rarely saw women at most grunge shows, which seemed filled instead mostly with the same manly meatheads who a couple years before were holding their lighters aloft during Whitesnake’s encore. I wasn’t then, nor am I now, much of a fan of anything particularly testosterone-laden, so that too turned me off in a big way from grunge.
And while part of me was happy to see bands I’d formerly liked such as Sonic Youth, the Meat Puppets, and Camper Van Beethoven sign on to major labels and release records, none of these albums ever captured my interest the way their earlier work did. Sonic Youth is a particularly good example; quite honestly, I haven’t particularly liked anything they’ve done since Evol. I didn’t even like Daydream Nation!!!!
As the early 90’s unfolded I became less and less interested in where traditional rock music was going. In part for the reasons above, and in part because in 1995 my girlfriend finished her Ph.D. in Los Angeles and moved to Columbus Ohio to do postdoctoral research, I was going out to see bands only rarely. Also, I was focused on trying to finish up my own Ph.D. and move to Ann Arbor where I had a postdoc set up and which was as close as I could get to Columbus. That year I worked incessantly, seven days a week and was often out of town running additional experiments up at the NASA-Ames Research Center at Moffett Field. On the rare occasions that I was in town and not working, I would usually just go to Harvelle’s, the legendary blues club in Santa Monica, or I would go out with my buddy and then-roommate Gil to clubs like Young Moguls and watch old flicks and drink beer.
My final year in Los Angeles, 1996, I bought on a whim an album that set me at least temporarily onto a slightly different path. The album was 1991’s Lust by the Lords of Acid. I’d been sort of keeping an eye on electronic music for a while; I’d been a huge fan of first-run synth bands like Depeche Mode and early Pet Shop Boys since 1983, but had lost interest in that music in the mid-80’s as I’d gotten more interested in hardcore punk and hard rock like AC/DC. I knew vaguely that some bands, particularly in Europe, were producing an entire culture centered around electronic dance music, but had never seen any of these bands live nor had I really heard much of that music. I bought the Lords of Acid album mostly because I thought their name sounded cool; I wasn’t then and am not now much of a druggie but I had to admire a band that came right out and glorified hallucinogen use right in their name!
Listening to this album now is almost embarrassing; while Lords of Acid would evolve into a band of loud, brutal energy, this album sounds really cheesy and dated. The synths sound really simplistic, like cheap Casios and the beats are pretty simplistic. And almost every song is about sex—“Rough Sex”, “I Sit On Acid”, “Pump My Body To The Top”, “I Must Increase My Bust”, etc. Their later work developed more of a rock edge, and songs like “Drink My Honey”, “Mister Machoman”, “Do What You Wanna Do”, the incomparable “The Crab Louse” and the title track off 1994’s Voodoo-U, and “Slave To Love”, “Rover Take Over”, “Loverboy Lovergirl”, and “I Like It” off 1997’s Farstucker had a much harder edge, almost approaching the violent industrial metal of bands like White Zombie.
But at the time listening to this album was a revelation. This was a whole new genre of music that I hadn’t ever explored, and as always this was very tempting to me. I was particularly fascinated by the loud, grinding, chiming synths of songs like “Rough Sex”, which very much reminded me of the rawness and stridency of punk.
In June of 1996 I moved to Ann Arbor to start a postdoctoral research position studying gene therapy in the Department of Human Genetics at the University of Michigan Medical School. At the time I was obsessed with learning some of the techniques of the still-somewhat-new field of molecular biology. Splicing genes, growing cells in a dish, and creating and studying genetically engineered animals were my focus, and because these all seemed so futuristic, I was extremely obsessed with anything that seemed forward looking. It was around this time that I discovered Wired magazine, with its focus on emerging technology and how it would change our lives, and became a devoted reader (I still enjoy it today). I also started reading speculative fiction books and short stories that centered on plausible science fiction.
So it seemed only natural to also seek out music that wasn’t a throwback like most rock was but that was also similarly forward focused. I still remember that for Christmas 1996 my then-girlfriend and I went skiing with her family in Lake Tahoe, and on the drive up to Incline Village from Long Beach I listened incessantly to a new electronica compilation CD I’d bought just before leaving Ann Arbor called Wipeout XL. Even more than Lust, this CD really sucked me into the burgeoning electronica movement. Wipeout XL was the soundtrack to a video game, which in itself was a pretty novel concept at the time. It contained some of the best electronica tracks of the mid-90’s, including “We Have Explosive” by another group with a terrific name, The Future Sound of London. With it’s heavy, syncopated breakbeat, robotic vocals, dub echo, guitar-like blasts, and especially the atonal electronic noise that anchors the entire song, it was so incredibly different from most rock music. And yet, it also wasn’t. Mostly what it seemed like to me was a deconstruction of a typical rock song, a taking apart of the basic elements of rock music—guitar licks, beats, bursts of lyrics—and reconstructing them into something altogether different. The second song, “Atom Bomb”, by Fluke, had a similarly atonal, deconstructed manner as well that I also loved. My favorite, however, was the instrumental version of “Firestarter” by the Prodigy, with its squalling electronic feedback sample overlying what in essence was a traditional rock song, albeit with a much heavier beat. These bands seemed to be trying to cross the divide between hard/pure electronic music on the one hand, and traditional rock music on the other, and while I also liked other, more traditional electronic songs on this album (like “Petrol” by Orbital and “Afro Ride” by Leftfield), I was most attracted to these heavier, more rock-influenced electronica acts.
My love of the song by Prodigy led me to explore this band’s output. I quickly learned that this band had a rich history of work, mostly singles, stretching back to the start of the 90’s. Their earlier stuff was much more straightforward electronic dance music at the heart of English rave culture—repetitive, long, and very very electronic. But starting in 1995 their music expanded beyond these simple beginnings and became much more compelling, at least to me. 1995’s Music For the Jilted Generation was a tremendous step forward, while at the same time it was still anchored in the long drugged out songs of their past, like the eight-plus minute “Break & Enter” and “The Heat (The Energy)”. But songs like the galloping, grinding “Voodoo People” and the squawking “Their Law”, with its heavy breakbeat, were pointing toward a new synthesis of rock and electronic music.
But it was a single from this album that really blew me away. At some point early in 1997 I bought a CD single of “Poison”, and this really floored me. This is still to this day one of the funkiest, most danceable songs I have ever heard; when Liam Hewlett drops in the hyperfuzzed bass line and super heavy breakbeat, after the pulsing droning throb of the intro, it sounds like hip hop from the distant future. The multiple vocal samples and the coursing, competing synth blasts give this song a wild, textured feel. This remains to this day one of my favorite songs, electronic or otherwise, of all time.
Prodigy of course would go on to significant fame and success, although they never made it as big as people predicted because of the inevitable backlash against electronica that started in the early 2000’s. But their album Fat of the Land was a total triumph in my opinion. From the opening panzer-like bass rumble and breakbeat blast of “Smack My Bitch Up” onward, this was music that grabbed you by the throat and never let go. The ominous, almost creepy “Breathe” is another standout, as is the lurching hip hop of “Diesel Power”. “Funky Shit” harkens back to their rave beginnings, pulsing and oscillating in pure dance mode. “Serial Thrilla” merges metal guitar with big beats and Keith Flint’s punky, snotty vocals, while “Mindfields” is another eerie, slowly building electronic masterpiece. “Narayan” has a freaky, Indian/psychedelic feel, especially the break, with it’s ominously chanted vocals, and it eventually swirls into their smash hit “Firestarter”. Start to stop this is one of the very best, most complete albums of the 90’s of any genre, with no real weaknesses anywhere.
After this I sought out as many electronica albums as I could find. One of my next purchases, because I’d by now read so much about it, was the Chemical Brothers’ 1994 release Exit Planet Dust. From the funky, soulful beginning of the very first song, “Leave Home”, this album had me hooked. And indeed, one of the things I enjoyed about electronica then and still respect now is how album-oriented it was. This was clearly intended by the Chemical Bros to be played as one long groove; you could put this on and just leave it on for the entire party, and each song melds into the next without ever letting the energy sag. I also loved the super scratching on “In Dust We Trust”; these guys had clearly been listening to a LOT of American rap music from the 80’s and were doing their part to push the art of turntabling to the next level. But it was the next two songs, “Song to the Siren” and “Three Little Birdies Down Beats”, that just blew me away. “Siren”, with its Indian-sounding samples layered over a dense mat of beats, samples, and sounds was, and is, an amazingly complex and fascinating song. But by far my favorite song was “Birdies”, with its staccato beat that emerges from “Song to the Siren” along with a blasting, airhorn-like synth line, which merges with two other wild, flailing synth lines, that builds this song up from a simple beginning into something that is raucous and strident, and yet somehow still danceable at the same time. Again, I was struck by how they could take sound effects that individually were strident and unpleasant and by layering them together over infectious beats could create music that was totally enjoyable and, as mentioned, still super danceable. This too is one of my favorite songs to this day.
But in addition to their wildly rocking side, the Chemical Brothers also had their mellow side. Much of the rest of Planet Dust demonstrates this. “Chico’s Groove” is spacy, sounding like something off the soundtrack for a “2001: A Space Odyssey” type science fiction movie. “One Too Many Mornings” pulsates and soars, while “Life Is Sweet” explores hippie psychedelia. “Playground of a Wedgeless Form” has a buzzy throb and strange guitar-plucking samples/sounds placed over a big, heavy beat. But it was their collaboration with folk singer Beth Orton that ends the album, “Alive Alone”, that also garnered some favorable attention. Orton’s clear, sweet voice fit strangely well over the Brothers’ pulsing, funky maelstrom of sound. This too is a terrific song that has aged incredibly well.
I have enjoyed every Chemical Brothers album since this, but to me this was always their very best work. In particular, I like “Block Rockin’ Beats”, the incomparably funky “Piku”, and Beth Orton’s dreamy “Where Do I Begin” off Dig Your Own Hole; the trippy “Sunshine Underground”, the funky “Orange Wedge”, and the swirling “Asleep from Day” off Surrender; “The State We’re In” from Come with Us, and “Come With Us” from Chemical Four.
Another compilation album I purchased around this time (mid 1997) was Deconstruction Presents. This is a hybrid collection of some of the best DJ/electronica music created in the 90’s. Much of this CD consists of house music, the less rock-y, more purely dance style of music that had taken clubs by storm in the late 80’s and early 90’s, and while that isn’t my favorite type of electronic music, there are some phenomenal tracks in this vein, including the sweet, trippy “The Gift” by Way Out West and Miss Joanna Law, and Sasha & Maria’s breathy “Be As
one”, “Anthem” by N-Joi, which samples lyrics from Gwen Guthrie’s song “Peanut Butter” and “I Found Love” by Darlene Davis. The best house songs here in my opinion though are the two De’Lacy songs, the mid-tempo herky-jerky“Hideaway” and the smooth as butter “That Look”, both of which feature the incomparable Rainie Lassiter on vocals. “Everybody Everybody” by Black Box has the pounding piano and smooth vocals of classic disco, while “I’m Rushin’” is a little funkier but has the same diva vocals.
But to me one of the strangest and most interesting dance songs of all time is “Swamp Thing” by The Grid. A strange amalgam of southern banjo, blasts of synth, and driving beats, this is unlike anything I’ve ever heard since. Few bands have attempted a modern take on square dance music, but this is as close as it comes to that. Fantastic.
Another song that really grabbed my attention on this album was the leadoff track, “Landslide” by Harmonix. No, this isn’t a remake of the Stevie Nicks classic, it is essentially a raved-up remix of “Where the Streets Have No Name” by U2, and it is one of the most beautiful, optimistic, joyful songs ever recorded.
In terms of more breakbeat oriented electronica, this album contains the utterly fantastic “Dirt” by Death In Vegas. Very much cut from the same cloth as the Chemical Brothers’ Exit Planet Dust songs, this one consists of a mashup of huge heavy beats, surging synth lines, heavy throbbing bass lines, and strange vocal samples. A couple years or two later I also acquired a few songs from their album Scorpio Rising, including “23 Lies”, the guitar-based “Leather”, and “Scorpic Rising”, which features Liam Gallagher of Oasis on vocals. But my favorite Death in Vegas song, and a song I still love to hear on my workout playlist, is “Song For Penny” off the Lost in Space Soundtrack. I love the rising and falling alarm-like sample that begins it, and the roaring, feeding back guitars layered over the dense, galloping drums. This is pure punk rock, again taken apart and then re-constructed as a danceable but still loud and raw song. I absolutely love this song.
Another album I bought around this time was one that has fallen off most people’s radar, Endorfun by LCD. This is not the same band as LCD Soundsystem, but rather is two Swedish guys trying to create their country’s answer to the Chemical Brothers. While not quite as rock influenced as the Chemical Bros, this album nevertheless flows along on a single continuous groove too and has many standout tracks, including the incredibly funky title track (which is very reminiscent of “Leave Home” by the Chemical Brothers); the slower but still funky “Elektronik”; “Gear Boxing”, which reminds me of “Song To the Siren”; “Cry Baby”; and the more purely electronic “Bank Robber”, “Suprime Weirdness”, and “Think Smart”. This is a terrific album top to bottom and deserves to be recognized more for its quality.
In addition to the Prodigy and the Chemical Brothers, two other bands rose out of the electronica movement of the mid/late 90’s to achieve a measure of success. One of these was the Crystal Method from Las Vegas, one of the few American bands to break into this genre dominated by European acts. Their 1997 album Vegas was a smash hit that yielded several hit singles, though the band also experienced a backlash when some of these songs were sold for commercial purposes and resulted in immediate over-exposure. In particular, the song “Busy Child” was crafted from the exact same blueprint as the Chemical Brother’s “Three Little Birdies Down Beats”: simple vocal samples and huge, heavy, driving breakbeat, over which strange buzzing, squawking, strident synth signatures were layered progressively to create a sound that by the end of the song is densely layered and almost harsh but still extremely danceable. This song is another of my all-time favorites from this era and genre, though it did get a little over-exposed as it was used for a Gap ad later that year.
Vegas is filled with excellent tracks like this, such as the leadoff song “Trip Like I Do”, built around the sampled vocals of a stoned young woman imploring someone that “I want you to trip like I do”; its surging intro, with a spoken word overdub and dense, atmospheric underpinning, ultimately blasts into a frenetic attack of beats and synth bass. The pulsing, syncopated “Cherry Twist” and the spacy, guitar-riff centered “High Roller” are two other high points. “Keep Hope Alive” is another standout; I purchased a maxi-CD-single of this that has some even better, trippier versions of this song, like the slower, dub-heavy Trip Hope mix and the Latin-tinged Dubeliscious Groove (Fly Spanish Version). This is another album that really has no major weak spots; every song is pretty incredible.
2001’s Tweekend was nearly as solid. Starting with the huge, funky “PHD”, and continuing through the nearly-as-funky “Wild, Sweet, and Cool”, this album gets you up and dancing in a hurry. “Roll It Up” and the melodic “Murder” are much like the songs on Vegas. My favorite song on this album, though, is “Name of the Game”, with its fantastic vocal intro (“Attention all you motherfuckers!”) and pulsing bass and huge guitar riffs.
I wasn’t as big a fan of 2004’s Legion of Boom; in some ways I saw it as a step backward. Things didn’t pop and sizzle like they did on either of their first two albums and there wasn’t a standout track or two like there was on those two albums either. “Starting Over” is decent, and I like the hip hop flavor of “The American Way”, and the trance-y “I Know It’s You” as well as the funky metal of “Weapons of Mass Distortion”, but otherwise am not a huge fan.
The fourth huge band to come out of the 90’s electronica movement is of course Daft Punk, who last year won a Grammy for their work with Pharrell on their album Random Access Memories. I haven’t really gotten into this album much because I’m still obsessed with their debut album, 1997’s Homework, which I consider to be one of the greatest albums ever. An amazing amalgam of disco, house, hip hop, and big beat electronica, this is yet another electronica album you can just throw onto the CD player and leave playing till the end. The distorted voice that begins “Daftendirekt”, that eventually resolves into the words “Da funk back to the punk c'mon”, gives a little indication of where this music is going to take you. “Revolution 909” starts with party crowd noise, sirens, and traffic sounds over an insistent disco beat sample and just percolates suggestively for over five minutes but is one of the most danceable songs on earth. This is disco stripped of everything else: divas, even vocals, and all other instruments, but it shows just how potent that disco beat is. “Da Funk” was a major hit single, and Spike Jonze even made a legendarily strange video for it featuring a man with a giant dog’s head walking around a New York neighborhood blasting the song from his ghetto blaster while he runs errands and meets friends. This song too is insanely danceable, especially when the Punks drop the big beat around the 40 second mark. This is a HUGE, bass heavy beat that throbs in your chest when you play it at even modest volume, the very distilled essence of funk. A yowling synth line kicks in soon after, but the part of the song that really takes off is after the break, where a squeaky, scratching synth line kicks in and the beat drops back in. This part of the song is just insanely fun to dance to; I once requested this in one of Ann Arbor’s surprisingly good dance clubs and the place went WILD. My friend Gil once said this about Jane’s Addiction’s “Whores” but I think it applies here too: “This makes me want to bang my head AND shake my ass at the same time!”
“Phoenix” is another deconstructed disco song. Starting with just a polyrhythmic beat, it eventually adds a chiming sample and scratching synth line and a meandering bass line. Again it is amazing to me how simple but effective this music is, and how much you can take away from a typical disco song and still be left with something magical and danceable.
“Phoenix” melds right into the next disco-house jam, “Fresh”. To me another incredible aspect of this album is how Daft Punk build their songs across the length of the album. “Revolution 909” is the simplest, “Phoenix” has a little more to it, and “Fresh” more still. This song too follows a common pattern of several other songs on this album, starting from a single sonic element, progressively adding more elements to it, but then resolving back to simplicity.
“Around the World” starts with a muted beat and, like “Fresh”, builds this initial sample up, eventually adding robotic “Around the World” vocals repeating before fading out.
Another high point of the album for me is “Rollin’ and Scratchin’”, which begins with an insistent, almost irritating beat, and adds a progressively more atonal, screeching synth element and buzzing bass to it until the entire song is a cacophony of wildly frantic noise. I also love how this song reaches a crescendo, drops back somewhat, but then comes back just as forcefully as ever before resolving back to the simple beat. I once put Homework on at a friend’s party in Ann Arbor and by the midpoint of this song my beloved CD was forcefully ejected and I was banned evermore from touching the CD player! This song is still hard to take for anyone not raised on strident, atonal music like I was.
“Teachers” is a funky run through a list of some of Daft Punk’s influences, including DJ Funk, Dr. Dre, George Clinton, Gemini, and Li’l Louis among many others, while “High Fidelity” has to be the only song in history to sample “Just the Way You Are” by Billy Joel, and only goes to show that these guys can make ANYTHING danceable. “Rock ‘n Roll” is another progressively building noise blast in the same vein as “Rollin’ and Scratchin’”, while “Oh Yeah” sounds like robot hip hop. “Burnin’” and “Indo Silver Club” are solid but not especially memorable, but Daft Punk end on a strong note with “Alive”, a sussurating five minute dance groove that makes you just want to hit “start” all over again.
1997 seemed to be the year that electronica peaked, and after that it didn't really seem like there was much innovation. But I definitely have liked some electronic music (which now is usually called electronic dance music or EDM) since then. In the same vein as Daft Punk are Finland’s Ural 13 Diktators. Songs like “Tonight”, “Techno Game”, and “Dream World” from their Disco Kings EP from 2001 are the same melding of beats, disco, and house that flavored Daft Punk’s Homework, as are “Still Alive”, “Victorious Night”, and the title song from 2003’s Raid Over Europe. But my favorite song by them is the almost-terrifying “Laser Karaoke”, with its HUGE bass-beat throb and loud, ominous foreign shouting “LASER KARAOKE” vocals. This song is another one that sends subliminal signals to your legs and ass to MOVE.
Another weird European electronic band is Junkie XL aka Holland’s Tom Holkenborg, who split the difference between electronic dance music like the Chemical Brothers and digital hardcore in the vein of Alec Empire and Atari Teenage Riot. A great example is “Underachievers”, from 1997’s Saturday Teenage Kick, which starts with a record skip and a few weird sound effects before dropping a beat and adding a few squealing and buzzing synth lines, but then busts into a full-blown punk-metal guitar blast and breakbeat before moving into Holkenborg’s rapid-fire rapping. This is a great song combining all of the best aspects of modern music—dance, rap, metal/punk. I especially like the scratching solo in the middle. “Junkie Expanding Limits” evokes the Beastie Boys off Check Your Head, with its dense samples, heavy beats, and scratching, and of course because of the rapid-fire rapping. “Saturday Teenage Kick” is magnificent because it samples the guitar line from “Divide and Conquer” by Husker Du off Flip Your Wig, and crafts a really rocking but melodic song from it to boot. One thing I’ve always loved in rap music is when it samples classic rock songs; Run DMC pretty obviously did this first with Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way” (which technically isn’t a sample and is more of a remake), and the Beastie Boys plundered everyone from Zep to AC/DC to Deep Purple, and my favorite example of this is “She Watch Channel Zero?!” by Public Enemy, which famously samples “Angel of Death” by Slayer. “Melange” is reminiscent to the buzzing, blasting breakbeat of Crystal Method.
Holkenborg followed up with 1999’s Big Sounds of the Drags, and the standout track here is “Action Radius”, with its swirling beginning that resolves into yet another gigantic blast of guitar riffage before dropping into a massive beat. Holkenborg’s rapping is almost hectoring here, but the chorus is kind of big and sing-song-y. “Check Your Basic Groove” and “Love Like Razorblade” are cut from the same cloth as Crystal Method’s “Keep Hope Alive”, while “Synasthesia” races along like “Fresh” by Daft Punk. “Zerotonine” has a sweet strings sample and a milder rapping cadence, and “Legion” has a mellower acoustic vibe that sounds to me like some of the stuff Everlast did after he left House of Pain.
Another electronic band I like are Denmark’s Junior Senior. The Michael Jackson sampling “Move Your Feet” is another gorgeous disco/electronic/dance mashup, as is “Go Junior, Go Senior”, both off 2001’s D-D-Don’t Don’t Stop the Beat.
England’s Fluke seemed for a time like they might join the “Big Four” of the Chemical Brothers, the Prodigy, Crystal Method, and Daft Punk, and indeed their 1997 album Risotto is nearly as good as albums by these groups. In addition to the aforementioned Wipeout XL track “Atom Bomb”, this album also has the hyper-rhythmic “Absurd”, the swirling, romantic “Kitten Moon”, the pulsing, percolating “Mosh”, and the surging “Squirt”, as well as the ominous seven minute album ender “Goodnight Lover”. However, other songs, like “Amp”, “Reeferendum”, “Bermuda”, and “Setback” never really move beyond enjoyable and often verge on repetitious.
Two other English acts, Fatboy Slim and Basement Jaxx, also had hit songs during this period, Fatboy Slim with the fantastic bombast of “Right Here, Right Now” and the Jaxx with “Where’s Your Head At”. I also like “Killafornia” by Fatboy Slim and the disco smoothness of “Romeo” and “Just 1 Kiss” by the latter.
With respect to contemporary electronic dance music, one DJ I especially enjoy is David Guetta. A couple years ago they ended the Grammies featuring performances by Guetta and Deadmau5, and I thought Guetta, Li’l Wayne and Chris Brown’s version of “I Can Only Imagine” blew poor little mousie out of the water. This song is just fun and upbeat, and for a while was my son’s favorite song (when he was six or seven); I just love how the sweet piano pounding builds the chorus until it blows apart into a pulsing fuzz bass and frantic synth.
I’ve also tried to explore other prominent current DJs and EDM musicians. I have developed a fondness for Skrillex, especially the songs “Bangarang” (this is my personal fave for obvious reasons, with its wild screeching synth), “Kyoto”, “Rock n’ Roll (Will Take You To the Mountain) (another favorite of mine), “Kill Everybody”, and “All I ask Of You”. I also like Nicky Romero’s “Toulouse”, another great strident squacking synth line set over a danceable groove. Afrojack is another favorite particularly the percolating “Prutataaa” and “Funk With Me”, and the house-influenced “As Your Friend”, which feature Chris Brown on vocals.
Eventually I grew away from solely listening to electronica. In fact, one of the things that prompted me to move back into rock was the rise of Napster; it allowed me to sample, for free, many songs, artists, and genres that I hadn’t before, plus it allowed me to acquire a ton of old songs I used to like. Slowly I moved away from electronica, but I never completely lost my love for the songs mentioned here. I still think electronica invigorated contemporary music in a major way, and helped to mix together genres like hip hop, disco, and rock that hadn’t always been mixed together well in the past.
I recently re-explored my old electronica songs. Last winter we had a number of storms and cold snaps here in Colorado, and were forced to spend a lot of time indoors. My then seven-year-old son and I, along with my wife, would put on a playlist of electronica songs and dance to them to alleviate the boredom and give us some physical activity. My son developed a fondness for electronica that has continued to this day, though currently his top favorite artist is Eminem. But his second favorite artist is the Prodigy, especially “Breathe” and most other songs on Fat of the Land. In fact, he insisted that I make him a Prodigy t-shirt, which I did. We also watched a performance by the Prodigy from a European mega-concert from a few years ago that was really enjoyable. It has been fun to re-explore this music with my son and I’m glad he appreciates it as much as I do.

domain: artistic


Chapter 17. “Back to the Future” (1:31:12 – 1:41:41)
Logline: Literally racing against the clock, Doc Brown must contend with some last minute problems before he can send Marty back to 1985.
The Sequence. Here we are, the highlight of the whole damn trilogy. This final push to get Marty back to 1985 is all things; suspenseful, exciting, funny, dramatic, and heartwarming. And although it’s all the stronger for the groundwork the movie has laid beforehand, after you’ve seen Back to the Future once you can revisit this sequence by itself and enjoy it just as much. That’s because its a sequence with its own internal structure and conflicts. There’s a beginning, middle, and end; problems arise and are resolved over the course of ten minutes.
The clock tower scene seems constructed to have as many dramatic elements built into it as possible, but in a way that feels natural. There’s lightning, because the whole plan revolves around needing a bolt of electricity. There’s wind, because with lightning comes a storm. The bolt could have struck any old building but the writers make it a clock tower, which is not only on theme, it also places a great big literal ticking clock front and centre the entire scene. And we see that the choice to have the bolt strike at 10:04 was not random either, because the clock strikes ten and distracts the Doc in a crucial moment. And now there’s a loud bell on top of everything else that’s dramatic in the scene. The soundtrack is just incredible too, it’s playful and urgent, then triumphant when the moment calls for it.
Doc Brown fully comes into his own. You can’t help but love the secondary character who puts his own life at risk to save the hero, even when he doesn’t really need to. Think about this too; he’s actively making his own life worse. The guy doesn’t get out much, and if Marty doesn’t make it back to 1955, the Doc has a friend to hang out with. Even so, he’s just as invested in getting Marty home.
George’s story has been played out, but I come away from the scene feeling like Doc has life in him. He deserves a couple more movies on the basis of this sequence.
The Big Picture. Even this late in the movie, the story is still introducing a hook that’ll keep us invested; Marty’s plan to save the Doc by going back ten minutes early. After Doc risks his life to save Marty, we want to see Marty return the favour. It doesn’t matter that we’ve already had one crowd pleasing climax (George winning over Lorraine) and this scene is giving us another another; you’d better believe we’re not going home until we know the Doc is ok.
1:31:43 – Marty has taken the time to change back into his classic outfit for this classic scene.
1:33:00 – The shouting over the wind gives the scene urgency even though nothing bad has happened yet.
1:35:17 – You know those are pretty awesome lightning effects over the clock tower. Doesn’t have that composited look 80s effects often have (like Marty’s hand in the last scene).
1:36:03 – That purple light on the silver DeLorean sums up this entire trilogy for me.
1:36:51 – There’s no real reason not to have the rod already on the car, but Marty needs to get out of the car and run around to keep the momentum of the scene going. If we intercut Doc nearly falling off the clock tower with Marty just sitting there you’d lose steam.
1:37:24 – It’s a good notion, going back early ten minutes early to save the Doc, but it wouldn’t have worked out. He would have had to reveal himself to the earlier Marty too, who then probably wouldn’t have gone back in time in the first place, meaning Marty wouldn’t have the knowledge needed to save the Doc and oh no I’ve gone cross eyed.
1:37:25 – Actually Marty could have gone back like a couple weeks early, warned Doc, then hid out for a bit until the other Marty went home… ten minutes beforehand is the worst time he could have picked. Between this and the “Hey I’ll have sex with my Mom” thing, Marty really needs to leave the planning to Doc Brown.
1:39:04 – The cliche had been avoided earlier, but NOW Marty bangs on the car and it comes to life.
1:39:35 – Knowing when to intercut parallel action can make a scene all the better. Marty already racing towards the town square with the Doc being nowhere close to having the experiment ready to go increases the suspense.
1:39:41 – The plug coming loose from the other end is a pretty diabolical moment. At that point it really does seem like the plan will fail.
1:39:53 – Now there’s two ticking clocks. The clock and the odometer marching towards 88 miles per hour.
1:40:30 – If you ask me, the moment the Doc slides down the cable to save the day is when a franchise is born.
Chapter 18. “Doc’s Decision” (1:41:41 – 1:46:41)
Logline: Arriving back in 1985, Marty races to save Doc Brown’s life.
The Big Picture. On the heels of all these climactic moments and with some loose ends still to wrap up, Back to the Future doesn’t waste time. It doesn’t milk suspense in the way the clock tower scene did. And the opportunities were there. Maybe the DeLorean could have gotten so far before stalling, maybe Marty could try to hail a cab, maybe he could grab a skateboard and try to race to the rescue. It could have been a whole thing. But instead you start on Marty running away from the town square, then cut to him getting to the mall. You’d really be playing the odds to try and top the previous scene from an action/drama perspective, so it’s best to just have a very quick and very direct resolution.
The Doc has changed a lot in the last 30 years. Christopher Lloyd plays the character as less wound up, even compared to how he came off in the previous 1985 sequence. Maybe gaining knowledge in 1955 that he’d make something of himself made him less manic.
1:41:43 – I’ve never questioned why a helicopter is flying over Hill Valley at 1:30 in the morning. For the purposes of the movie it’s there because helicopters weren’t around in 1955 and it’s a way to show we’re back in the 80s, but in the context of the film what’s it doing there? Looking for the Libyan terrorists?
1:42:38 – One of the more confusing moments, Marty calls the bum (who we haven’t seen before) Red. And since nothing is a throwaway in BttF I thought it was the 1955 mayor of Hill Valley Red Thompson. But it was just an improv from Michael J. Fox.
1:44:23 – Do the Libyans die in the crash? There’s problems either way, if they’re alive they’re going to come after the Doc again. If they die Hill Valley wakes up to find that there’s a van full of dead Libyan terrorists in their town, which I imagine would cause a stir even in a more innocent time.
1:44:57 – Doc’s bullet proof vest looks a lot like the T-1000’s chest after taking a lot of bullets.
Behind the Scenes
-People went to the Hill Valley mall at 1:35 on this day in 1985, just in case something happened.
Chapter 19. “Future Shock” (1:46:41 – 1:51:51)
Logline: Marty discovers that his actions in the past have impacted the future, and meets his new and improved family.
The Sequence. I’m not going to be the first to make hay of the existential dread that’s just under the surface of Back to the Future. That Marty has returned to a life that’s not his, that by changing the lives of five people (his family and Biff) so dramatically, the effects must have rippled out all across the town and beyond. How different would Marty himself be, having been raised by such different parents? Will the McFly parents even know their son anymore? Who even is Marty?
Eh. It’s all just shorthand. Given the tone of the movie, all we’re really meant to take away is that the McFly family is happier now, and the nemesis of their family is now a loser (though he still has his own company). It may seem like the movie is shallow and materialistic by showing that the nicer home improved their live. That Marty’s parents are thinner and therefore better people. But really, we’ve just got to wrap up this movie as quickly as possible. It’s the fastest way to dramatize the concept of a happier family.
I’m sure the intention of the writers is simply that the family is doing better, Biff sucks now, and everything else is the same. But if we wonder about the implications beyond that, it’s because the movie does spend some time getting us to consider how even small actions can ripple out and change destinies. There’s something troubling under this scene, but I don’t know if we’re meant to feel that.
The far bigger problem is how comfortable the McFlys are having Lorraine’s attempted high school rapist around. He even comes into their house without knocking like he’s a 90s sitcom neighbour. But I guess we don’t know what’s happened in the 30 years since 1955. We don’t know what may have convinced the McFlys that Biff has changed.
In the end, I guess its their business. But if Biff ever gets nominated for the Supreme Court don’t think I won’t forget about this.
The Big Picture. I know it’s just a joke, but what do you make of Doc wanting to do something about Marty and Jennifer’s kids? Is this really irresponsible of him? What’s the difference between altering the past and altering the future? Is it all playing God with fate, or do you not care if it’s the future because you’re not impacting a world you haven’t experienced? And what about YOU? Have you ever thought about how your actions are changing the future right now?
When I ask questions, it means I don’t want something to be over. It’s been so much fun having a closer look at Back to the Future that I’m not ready to leave. Fortunately I can go watch Back to the Future Part 2. And then say “Later I’ll watch Back to the Future Part 3” only to forget all about it. That sounds about right
1:47:04 – Who sets their alarm for 10:28?
1:47:09 – You only glimpse it for a moment but Marty has got that now iconic photo of he and his siblings on his wall.
1:48:01 – My parents have been together for 30 years and they go golfing every morning, so I love that that’s shorthand in BttF for “Lorraine and George are a solid couple.”
1:48:08 – This is by far the most normal Crispin Glover has ever seemed on film. And the movie is like “Lorraine has still got it at age 47” but the real life Lea Thompson looks even better.
1:48:56 – Biff has even got a combover in 1985 that he didn’t have before. Maybe he can afford a wig in the other 1985.
1:50:10 – I’d actually never noticed how few scenes Jennifer was in. They couldn’t have dug a hole in the ground for Melora Hardin to stand if they really were that concerned about her height?
1:50:34 – Freeze frame on the stuntman who races into Marty’s driveway. It looks like Chevy Chase is driving the DeLorean (modern day Chevy Chase.)
1:51:44 – Those windy trees makes the final shot more dramatic, and even more of an impressive feat that they managed to composite a flying car into it.


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With all the information circulating about Australian literature, you might ask why we need this Anthology. Does it offer anything new? Usually, it is not hard to find some basic information about a writer and their works. This might be brief notes and comments from the writers themselves, their publisher or publicist, or enthusiastic readers. Wikipedia has a lot of information freely available on many writers and literary works, though not so much on Australian writers. Book reviews and other commentary are regularly available in newspapers and magazines and their related websites. These items are generally quite short – ranging from a few sentences to about a thousand words – and they usually represent first impressions. Reviews are often written by creative writers or by people who specialise in reviewing, and are directed towards the general reader. Reviews published in newspapers or magazines evaluate a book, and implicitly or explicitly direct a reader to buy – or not to buy – the book being discussed.
Reviews versus criticism
Criticism is different from each of these forms. Put broadly, criticism's main function is interpretation rather than evaluation, and it is written for a specialist, or for someone seeking a more nuanced discussion of the work, rather than for a general readership. This usually means that it is not as readily available as less specialist material because it tends to be published in academic journals. Academically oriented critical articles are directed to readers interested in reading interpretations of work that bring to bear specialist knowledge on a text or group of texts. The audience tends to be university students or other researchers and academics. Rather than considering the work as a whole, a critical essay generally tries to consider a specific problem or approach in detail, using a range of references, theoretical positions and interpretive stances. In that sense, it can sometimes seem a bit peripheral or not helpful to someone who is trying to write an essay (for example) on a specific topic, or trying to put together a book review for their reading or discussion group. By considering a range of critical writings, however, you can build up a deeper picture of a writer's work, their writing style, their preferred themes, their attitude towards those themes, where their work fits with that of international or national writers and the complexity and richness of their creative work.
Why study Australian literature?
Why study Australian literature? Our initial reaction to this question is: why not? But that is perhaps being a little flippant. Reading literature of any type can influence us and hopefully lead to an understanding and an appreciation of who we are as individuals and as a group and this can add to a sense of belonging. Alternatively, if you feel you don't belong, you might find a writer's work that resonates with your own experience. Reading Australian literature, therefore, can help in our reflections upon who we are as individuals and as a people, offering insights into those distinct and diverse characteristics that make us Australian. Reading stories written by Australian writers may give a sense of 'us' as a nation and of where our particular place might be in the world. More to the point, there is some very good Australian literature that just needs, even demands, to be read, whether for enjoyment or study.
The purpose of The AustLit Anthology of Criticism is to give readers an opportunity to access excellent criticism of some major Australian texts. The aim is to enrich your reading experience. It may be the first time you will read and assess critical/academic articles written by experts in the field. We have selected articles that we think are particularly interesting, useful, or authoritative pieces – although, if you look carefully, you'll also find that some of our critics disagree with each other, and even with the writer, about what specific books mean. It is hoped that in presenting you with this information, the Anthology will be a useful tool which helps in your study of Australian literature.
In choosing the authors, we took into account whose work was currently being studied in the senior secondary school English curriculum in all Australian States and Territories. The Anthology provides access to articles about authors and their works that most closely align with texts regularly being taught at secondary and lower tertiary levels. While there were regional differences – for example, Beverley Farmer's work is only studied in Western Australia – there were nonetheless similarities in the choices made in both authors and texts. While this influenced which writer and texts we finally went with, there was also a bit of crystal-ball gazing on our part – and making decisions on which authors were going to stay on the curriculum list, who was going to come on to it in the next few years and finally who, for whatever reason, will be dropped sometime in the future. Time will tell how right we got it!
For these reasons, among other texts, Cloudstreet has been chosen for Tim Winton , the True History of the Kelly Gang for Peter Carey and My Place for Sally Morgan. In the case of poets, it was possible to introduce a wider scope in the critical response to their work, but, unfortunately, the playwrights/dramatists suffered the same fate as the novelists: our attention has had to be limited, in most cases, to a single work that is most frequently read and studied. Nevertheless, the authors chosen represent a range of Australian creative work – prose, poetry and drama, past and present including such poets as Les Murray, Bruce Dawe and Judith Wright, dramatists David Williamson, Hannie Rayson and Louis Nowra and novelists like David Malouf, Henry Handel Richardson and Marcus Clarke.
What is available
Each author profile begins with a short biography which is directly linked to the AustLit biography page for that author, which gives a more in-depth biography. This biography is followed by a précis of the author's work and a description of the articles. To conclude there is a short bibliography which includes key texts in biography, autobiography, critical articles and books and reference materials. This bibliography is not designed to be totally inclusive, as space does not allow for this. The inclusion is based on their general availability and is also linked back to AustLit.
For students and teachers
The AustLit Anthology of Criticism is designed to be a resource for students and their teachers at secondary and lower tertiary levels. In particular, it is hoped that teachers will use the Anthology, not only in their formal teaching program, but also as part of building the research skills-base for their students.
Finally, it is with thanks that we acknowledge the funding support of both AustLit: The Australian Literature Resource and The University of Queensland.
Leigh Dale and Linda Hale

domain: library


Microsoft has laid off a number of staff at its Vancouver studio after cancelling work on two games.
As reported by Kotaku, development on Microsoft Flight and Kinect-based interactive children’s TV title Project Columbia has been stopped as the console giant realigns its plans for the studio.
It did not reveal how many staff had been let go as part of the changes, but stated there were more projects in the pipeline at the developer.
“Microsoft Studios is always evaluating its portfolio of products to determine what is best for gamers, families and the company, and this decision was the result of the natural ebb and flow of our portfolio management,” read a statement form the company.
“Many factors were considered in the difficult decision to stop development on Microsoft Flight and Project Columbia, but we feel it will help us better align with our long-term goals and development plans.”
It is believe around 35 developers are employed at Microsoft Vancouver, with previous reports suggesting the entire studio had been let go.


text:
Former managing director of Endeavor Colombia with experience in investment promotion, angel investing (8 deals), sourcing and coaching top entrepreneurs.
Former managing director of Endeavor Detroit with experience managing +$140M AUM in startup investments for the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, and sourcing and coaching top entrepreneurs.
Former president of Endeavor Global and director at Endeavor Catalyst, $120m AUM. Cofounder Collective Academy. Adjunct Professor of Scaling Up at Columbia University, sourcing and coaching top entrepreneurs.
Former managing director of Endeavor Argentina with 5 years as Supervielle Director, responsible for its U$10M CVC. >U$3B in Investment banking and M&A transactions.
Former GP and managing partner with expertise managing 300+ transactions and $2.5b AUM in PE, real estate and venture funds (Prudential Investment, O’Connor Capital Partners, Vander Capital Partners).

domain: economics


The Immigrant and Music Initiative (I AM I) celebrates the diverse cultural contributions from immigrants that make New York City the world’s leading music hub. Music creators from around the world will have the opportunity to learn from, network, and connect with each other and continue an important conversation about the significant impact of immigrants on the music industry.
This session will give insight into how the music industry is structured and what are the many areas and opportunities that an immigrant music creator can explore – from songwriter, producer and engineer to A&R, management and marketing. Attendees will learn how to leverage their cultural background to forge career pathways in the music industry
MIXER EVENT TO FOLLOW
Date and Time: Tuesday, June 6, 2023, 07:00 PM – 10:00 PM
Location: Berklee-NYC. 441 W 53rd St, New York, NY 10019, United States


text:
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The perfect Christmas gift for you or a loved one
Rinse the lentils a few times, then tip into a bowl, cover with cold water and leave to soak. Meanwhile, heat 2 tbsp oil in a shallow casserole or sauté pan, and cook the onion with a pinch of salt for 10 mins until it starts to turn golden. Add the garlic, ginger, turmeric, chilli powder, cumin seeds and ground coriander, and cook for 3 mins until the mixture is sticky. Stir in the tomato purée and tamarind, if using, followed by the chopped tomatoes. Simmer for 8-10 mins until you have a thick paste.
Rinse the soaked lentils again until the water runs clear, then drain. Stir the lentils into the tomato base, then tip in 600ml water (use some to swill out the tomato can) and the stock cube. Bring to the boil, then reduce the heat to a gentle simmer, cover and cook, stirring occasionally, for 50 mins-1 hr, topping up with more water if needed, until the lentils are soft and have started to cook down into the sauce. Stir through the garam masala. Can now be left to cool completely, then chilled for up to three days or frozen for up to six months (see below).
To cook the prawns, reheat the chilled or defrosted frozen sauce in a saucepan until simmering (see below), then tip in the prawns and cook for 5 mins. Season with salt to taste, then drizzle with the rest of the oil and stir briefly. Slice the green chillies and sprinkle these over with a few coriander leaves, then scatter with pickled onions (see recipe below) to serve.

domain: food


text:
ONLINE CATALOG SEARCH
Edward Hale Brooks Interview Details December 3, 1964
Summary of Topics Covered:
Brooks relates the occasion when the plane in which he was flying crashed in Ireland. Brooks discusses the selection of George C. Marshall over Major General Hugh Drum for Army Chief of Staff. He talks about the relationship between General Marshall and Secretary of War Henry Stimson and sheds light on the human side of those charged with the war effort from Washington.
To obtain a transcript of this interview contact The George C. Marshall Research Library.
Forest Pogue recorded audio of this interview. The original tape and a digitized version are available from the George C. Marshall Research Library. Please contact the library to obtain a copy.
Interview transcripts and audio files may be listened to, read, quoted from, cited, and reproduced for purposes of research. They may not be published in full except by permission of the George C. Marshall Foundation.

domain: history