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Principal » Análisis » blog de anegrete
Post-pandemic multilateralism? or America alone
Jue, 09/17/2020 - 17:23 -- anegrete
Armando Negrete
The US president self-defined himself as a "tariff man" has engaged in direct aggression towards the multilateral organisations responsible for preserving peace and coexistence between nations and the international economic order. After four years in office, he and his team have weakened the multilateral order without any alternation. Given this, the main question is: what is the international relations scenario if this trend towards disarticulation continues? International relations are approaching a critical point.
The international order, based on the Pax Americana after WWII, consolidated the US economic power and established the global political order through a structure of multilateral institutions such as the UN and her special agencies: International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (later the World Trade Organization, WTO). They functioned as an "extended arm" of her foreign policy. The US President and his team have ignored this foreign policy orientation and destroyed many of its foundations.
In trade terms, almost immediately after his investiture, he put the brakes on the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) negotiations and, shortly afterward, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Agreement (TTIP) with the European Union, both begun during the Obama administration. In early 2018, he announced a series of tariffs on washing machines and solar panels unilaterally and later on steel and aluminum. In mid-2018, using the argument of unfair trade and tariff abuses, he pushed a trade war with China. At the end of that year, the renegotiation of a new North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico concluded, but his threats of further tariffs continued.
The WTO's multilateral legal framework for trade was boycotted, since September 2018, by the US by putting the brakes on the process of renewing the body of judges of the dispute settlement body. Since the end of 2019, with the completion of the judges' term, the body is unable to resolve disputes. Finally, in May 2020, the WTO Director, Roberto Azevedo, presented his resignation from the Organisation, to join the multinational Pepsico as Head of Corporate Affairs. It became a headless institution without an arbitration body.
In military matters, the US government has expressed her disdain for international agreements and multilateral organisations; spoken out against the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and even said its wish to withdraw. In 2018 it quit the Joint Comprehensive Action Plan, better known as the Iranian Nuclear Agreement, which committed Iran to eliminate its uranium reserves and not build any new reactors. In 2019 it pulled back from the Treaty on Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces, which it had maintained with Russia since 1987 and limited the types of weapons it could develop. It also exited in 2020 from the Open Skies Treaty, which allows air surveillance flights over the 35 signatory countries' territory and promotes transparency in military forces and activities.
In 2017, the Trump government reneged from the Paris Agreement, which committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and taking action to mitigate climate change in the area of development and the environment. The same year, it departed from the talks at the United Nations for the Global Compact on Migration, which sought cooperation in migration management and refuge, because it violated US sovereignty. That same year, due to Palestine's sovereign recognition, it left the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) and, for the same reason, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC).
Recently, amid the global health crisis caused by the COVID19, she once again turned her back on the multilateral order. First, the US announced her abandonment of the World Health Organisation (WHO), the pullback of medical personnel, and the closure of regional offices linked to the WHO, alleging corruption in the Organisation and covering up for China on the seriousness of the pandemic. Shortly after that, she refused to participate in the Global Vaccine Access Service for COVID19 (Covax), which seeks cooperation to develop, produce, and equitably distribute the vaccine because it coordinates the effort.
The quitting of and confrontation with multilateral institutions has weakened the world order. In the face of the most severe economic crisis in capitalism and an unresolved global health crisis, international cooperation has to move forward without the USA, or even despite it. The critical point for multilateralism is not only the elections to the US executive next November. The Pax Americana's multilateralism horizon is about to end to be replaced by a directly led unilateral US order. Instead, faced with this multifaceted crisis, a new era of cooperation and international relations has begun with different structures, new economic forces, and China's significant involvement with other emerging economies.
Unilateralism
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Sputnik spoke to Infowars host Alex Jones to get his view on the situation around his ban from social media platforms and his take on Brexit.
The American Civil Liberties Union has slammed critics of Infowars host Alex Jones, who consistently call for his banning from social media platforms such as twitter. Jones was recently banned for seven days by the platform.
They see it as a dangerous precedent and direct threat to free speech in the country. The union recommends less retrograde steps such as removing individual posts that they see as a violation of its terms of service or to deprioritise their placement on social media newsfeeds.
Sputnik: What do you make of your ban from twitter? Is freedom of speech in the US under threat?
Alex Jones: What's happening is, big tech has aligned with the Democratic Party and some major corporations to try to shut down nationalism and populism here in the United States and tries to basically steal the midterm elections that are coming up, in just 79 days from now.
This is classic monopoly, where you have Apple and Google and Facebook, and Twitter and all these other major conglomerates, who control more than 95% of the internet coming together and saying ban Alex Jones. That was all done because Senator Warner, who is seen as the top Democrat now in the US, he has basically threatened an internet takeover, from the big tech companies if they don't basically align against free speech.
Trump has allowed a vacuum by not regulating the internet, by not defending free speech and not coming in and defending an internet bill of rights and it's allowed foreign interests, the EU to try to regulate the internet, the Chinese communists to try to regulate it, but also the Democratic Party.
As Republicans have said "hey we're free market, we're hands off, we're going to leave the internet open and free", that creates and opening and vacuum for the sharks to come in, with intimidation, to try and bully folks into allowing internet censorship. They've chosen me to be demonised, they've built me up as this bad guy, and now after they've demonised me for two years, they're trying to have me as the first domino that falls in the first amendment in the United States.
Sputnik: Has political correctness in the US gone too far?
Alex Jones: Well sure; it's corporate correctness, this is what it is. Big multinational corporations want to integrate the United States with Islam, Socialist and Communist Republics south of the border and they just want a compliant, controlled population.
That's what political correctness is now, it's a form of authoritarianism and the public not just here, but all over the world has roundly rejected it, with the Brexit with Russian sovereignty, with Catalonia, the Brazil elections, in Greece, Italy, Iceland and Reykjavik. Everywhere, people want self-determination, they want to control their own lives, and they don't want a monopolar corporate world government that dominates the nation states. They want a multipolar world.
Sputnik: What are your thoughts on Brexit?
Alex Jones: I think Brexit is great because you have the bureaucracy of the EU, set up as a so called steel deal years ago, unelected, sure they have a parliament but it's ceremonial. You have the EU commission as a dictatorship, that's already making 93% of the laws in the UK, and so the people voted to be self-determinative, they voted to pull out and now the EU is threatening to sabotage any trade deals they've got with the continent, which would hurt Europe and the UK and everybody else and saying no, you have Brussels and Junker saying, we will decide what you do, it's a true tyranny.
Regardless of what they push, or what they do, if they try to steal Brexit from the British people and from the UK, it'll only make them come back even stronger, with self-determination in the final equation. That's why the leftists are trying to flood Europe with a lot of Islamists and other populations, to try and water down the nationalism of the countries, but I think in the end it's going to backfire and we're going to see the EU break up in the next 5 years, I think we're going to see Eastern Europe become self-determinate, and I think you're going to see the United States doing the same thing, because people have a hunger for individualism, a hunger for liberty and a hunger for their own destiny.


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Hierarchical organization
A hierarchical organisation is any system of relations among entities wherein the direction of activity issues from a first party to a second party, but not the other way around. This is the dominant mode of organization in the world today. Originally hierarchy meant rule by priests. The modern sense of the word came about as a result of the hierarchical way in which the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches were organized. It may be useful to visualize a pyramidal power structure, those nearest the top have more power than those nearest the bottom.
In religion, there is one god who commands, but cannot be commanded.
In government, the federal section controls the state section.
At work, your boss tells you what to do, and his boss tells him what to do, but you don't tell anyone what to do until you get promoted.
The opposite form of organization is that system of relations wherein the direction of activity is not fixed in one way, but flows back in forth between the entities involved. In other words, the parties must consent to each others direction of activity. An example of this is a partnership or a commune.
This term is utilized often by anarchists who oppose it in human relations. However, the term also refers to cognition, where it denotes an ascending series of abstractions, where each set of abstractions is subsumed by a larger abstraction.
Both meanings have in common a structure of diminishing ascendence, where there are more members of the organization at the bottom, and increasingly less as we move up through the levels.
See also Reverse hierarchy
Hierarchical organization is a common way to structure a group of people, where members chiefly communicate with their immediate superior and with their immediate subordinates. Structuring organizations in this way is useful partly because it can reduce the communication overhead.
Not all organizations have this structure. The opposite extreme is described as "flat" or "single-level".
Although it is not always the case, superiors in a hierarchy often have higher status and power than their subordinates.
Organizational development (OD) theorist Elliott Jacques identified a special role for hierarchy in his concept of requisite organization.
Hierarchiology is the term coined by Dr. Laurence J. Peter, originator of the Peter Principle, to refer to the study of hierarchical organizations and the behavior of their members.
Hierarchial organizations include most corporations, governments, and the Roman Catholic Church. In fact the word hierarchy was first used in the religious sense.
One branch of political philosophy is vehemently opposed to hierarchical organisation: the libertarian socialist branch of anarchism.
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[Episcopal News Service] A small white chapel of Western design sits amid the high-rise residential buildings of Macau, a former Portuguese colony now administered by the People's Republic of China. Popularly known as the "Morrison Chapel" in honor of Scotsman and Presbyterian minister Rev. Robert Morrison, the first missionary to land in the region in 1807 and the first to translate and publish the Bible in Chinese, it was the first Protestant chapel built on Chinese soil.
From there, Protestant Christianity spread throughout China.
"This is where the gospel came to the Chinese," said the Rev. Stephen Durie, an Anglican priest and pastor of the chapel, officially christened a century ago as a nondenominational House of God, during a tour of the grounds in late February.
Christianity actually first reached mainland China in the seventh century during the Tang dynasty but didn't begin to flourish until the 19th century. Later, in 1949, Mao Zedong banned the religion following the Chinese Revolution. It didn't resurge until after his death in 1976 and the end of the Cultural Revolution. Now, with the communist central government's sanction and oversight, Protestant Christianity has spread dramatically, manifesting in an unprecedented post-denominational, independent fashion.
During a recent three-week visit to Anglican Communion provincial churches and Episcopal churches in Asia, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori visited China at the invitation of the China Christian Council (CCC) and the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM). She attended meetings in Shanghai, Nanjing and Beijing, where she met with the minister of the State Administration for Religious Affairs (SARA), the Chinese government agency that oversees religious practice.
Jefferts Schori's visit marked the first time a presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church met with government officials in China.
Wang's joke rings true for the Chinese church; the dramatic increase in Christians over a short time has challenged it to train pastors adequately and acquire land, especially in densely populated urban areas, on which to build churches. And it has challenged the atheist government to protect the rights of Christians, as well as other believers and nonbelievers.
Wang singled out having enough "properly trained pastors" as the biggest problem the church faces. "If there are no good pastors during the process of development, great problems will happen," he said. Christianity's rapid development in China has drawn much attention from nonbelievers, and it's important for Christians "to set a good example," he added.
The CCC must not only find its own way to develop, but also look toward others and learn from their development, said Wang.
The CCC and TSPM form the official, government-sanctioned Protestant church in China. ("Three-Self" stands for self-governing, self-supporting and self-propagating.) TSPM serves as a liaison between churches and government, while CCC focuses on church affairs.
SARA serves as a bridge between religion and the central government and coordinates relationships among religions to make them all equal, said Wang. Besides overseeing the TSPM, SARA also oversees the four other sanctioned religious groups: Muslims; Roman Catholics, of which the government's Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, not the pope, is the supreme authority; Buddhists; and Taoists.
"That is another phenomenon in China … there's more harmony between religious and nonreligious people. When conflicts do happen, an organization like SARA is needed to safeguard the lawful rights of people," said Wang. In China's history, he added, meaning since 1949 and the formation of the People's Republic, there have been no religious wars or conflicts, nor one dominant religion. Recently, however, he said, Muslim populations have clashed in the western part of the country.
During her four-day visit to China, Jefferts Schori met with the minister of SARA and attended meetings with church leaders; Nanjing Union Theological Seminary faculty; and staff from the Amity Foundation, a faith-based social service provider.
During her meeting with SARA, Wang said that the churches and governments of China and the United States should strengthen their relationships through the continued exchange of information, and "the Chinese church and America, especially the Episcopal Church, should have an understanding and support each other," he said.
Jefferts Schori explained to Wang and his staff that one of the roles of the Episcopal Church's Washington, D.C.-based Office of Government Relations is listening to the cares, concerns and perspectives of the faith community in relation to the government, and that it also exists to challenge the government.
That includes very delicate international situations, such as implementing a two-state solution in the Middle East, where a peaceful solution's impact would be felt around the world, she said. Similarly, peace on the Korean peninsula would have a positive regional impact, she said.
Before visiting China, Jefferts Schori visited the Episcopal Church in South Korea, where her colleagues expressed concern for North Korean refugees in China being sent back to North Korea.
Unlike some religious groups in the United States, the Episcopal Church understands itself as empowering people of faith to take their place in society and "function as whole people," said Jefferts Schori.
Within Chinese society, churches existed before 1949; after that year and the Korean War, when all the missionaries left, there were Chinese churches, the Rev. Kan Baoping, CCC general secretary, during a meeting in Shanghai. The council and TSPM share a headquarters there on the campus of the former Holy Trinity Anglican Cathedral, which is in the process of being restored.
"All of a sudden the church lost all its resources, and after that we understood what the church is in China," said Kan. The Three-Self movement was born in the early 1950s to bridge the gap between church and state, he said.
During that decade, TSPM began to embrace Christianity as an indigenous religion, and all Protestant worship became nondenominational. In 1978, China's constitution was modified to guarantee the freedom of religion, with some exceptions. The CCC formed in 1980.
Between 1840-1842, he elaborated, Western forces invaded China and adopted "patronage" treaties that protected the rights of missionaries. These treaties were negotiated between China and the British Empire after the First Opium War, which began in 1839 as a result of trade disputes and poor diplomatic relations.
"Chinese people thought [the treaties] were a big humiliation to the dignity of the nation of China and hated the Western military powers and missionaries from other countries," said Gao.
From there, he explained, Christians recognized the importance of starting an independent movement in which Christianity no longer was referred to as an "alien religion," thus letting it develop within the unique Chinese context.
The CCC operates seven departments: training, social services, research, overseas relations, publications, editorial and administration. The council is headquartered in Shanghai, with local councils established in cities and regions.
Besides unregistered house churches, Christianity in China has seen the proliferation of mega-churches, whose charismatic leaders who prefer to go it alone and manage their churches as private businesses, and have proved a challenge to CCC/TSPM, said Kan.
The Chinese government in Western media often is criticized and accused of human rights abuses for detaining religious leaders. But for the most part, the religious leaders that ENS met in China said they thought they had an open relationship with the government.
Ng explained it this way: TSPM and CCC are the official Protestant church, but the government has taken a more flexible approach to house churches so long as they don't violate the law.
In an interview with ENS in Hong Kong after Jefferts Schori's visit, the Rev. Peter D. Koon, general secretary of the Province of Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui and a Shanghai native, offered his perspective and said the full story of freedom of religious expression in China wasn't always reported.
On its website, Falun Gong calls itself an "an advanced practice of Buddhist self-cultivation." It has been outlawed by the Chinese government and is considered a "cult" by some in both East and the West. Followers of Falun Gong believe that illness and misfortune result from karmic retribution and refuse medical treatment.
In another example, there was a complaint when the government closed down two churches in a city of 120 churches, he said. One was an illegal structure, and the other was in a crowded community and the neighbors complained, he said.
China has 56,000 registered Protestant Christian churches and between 20 million and 40 million registered Christians. An exact number is difficult to discern for several reasons, including apprehension about officially registering because some people fear a second "cultural revolution," church leaders said.
During the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, the government forbade Christian worship of any kind, forcing believers underground. Some were jailed, like the Rev. Xinli Yu, Beijing Christian Council president and principal of Beijing's Yanjing Theological Seminary.
Born in 1939 and the son of a pastor, Xinli "made trouble" while studying in seminary before the revolution started, was arrested and spent 22 years in a labor camp. Released from the camp in the 1980s, he went to work for the church as a maintenance man and in 1984 was ordained a pastor, he said in Mandarin as interpreted during a meeting at the headquarters of the Beijing council.
In Beijing, a city of 20 million people, there were 200-300 churches before 1949. Today, there are 21, each with more than 1,000 members. One, headed by a woman, the Rev. Du Feng Ping, has more than 5,000 members and conducts four to five services each Sunday.
Besides their congregations, pastors and their staff members often oversee "meeting points." In Beijing, nearly 1,000 meeting points serve between 70-80,000 believers. They work like this: At first, 10 or 20 believers gather in a house. Eventually the group outgrows its space and approaches the Beijing Christian Council for help in finding a larger space. Often, Xinli said, SARA assists the church in land negotiations in resistant communities.
Each year in Beijing, 1,000 people on average are baptized and become church members. To become a member, a person must attend regularly for one year, take a special catechism class, then talk to the pastor and be baptized, Xinli said, adding that children typically are not baptized.
As elsewhere, in Beijing the emphasis has been on training young pastors to meet the growing demands of increasing membership. More than 100 young pastors – 60 percent of them women — and church workers are in Beijing. Many were not related to the church before 1980 when, following the open policy, young people came.
In 1979, China's National People's Congress passed "reform" and "open" policies, which brought the country into contact with the outside world.
As the church in China grows and as the demand for qualified pastors increases, young people are flocking to China's 21 seminaries, with the national seminary being Nanjing Union Theological Seminary.
The seminary, which opened in 2009, is among 15 universities in what is called "University Town," a suburban area of new construction, including strip malls, a giant stadium and roundabouts outside Nanjing.
The provincial government donated the land for the new seminary, and the central government financed part of the construction, with the balance raised through individual donations, the Rev. Yilu Chen, the seminary's executive vice president, said in Mandarin through an interpreter.
"The government's viewpoint on religion has changed a lot. In the past, the government thought religion was poisonous to people and that it prevented society's development," he said.
Much like seminarians in the Episcopal Church, seminarians in China must be sponsored by a congregation. Once they complete their studies, they return to serve for three years in the sponsoring congregation before being ordained, said the Rev. Manhong Melissa Lin, associate professor of Christian ethics at the Nanjing seminary.
"We believe that if younger people can be trained in seminary, they can serve in churches for a long time," said Yilu.
There are 330 seminarians with an average age of 25 enrolled at Nanjing, which offers a four-year bachelor of theology degree and a three-year master of divinity degree. A doctoral program is slated to be added eventually.
The campus can hold 500 seminarians; this year 500 people applied for 115 open slots. Seminarians come from all of China's mainland provinces except Tibet. Tuition is 4,000 yuan, or around $600.
The seminary, Yilu said, urgently needs qualified professors and teachers. It has sent six professors overseas to earn doctorates and also relies on visiting professors from overseas. It also is looking at partnerships. In February 2011, CCC and TSPM church leaders, accompanied by government officials, visited the Episcopal Church Center in New York to discuss ways to work together.
Charitable work is another area in which the Chinese Church has looked to the Episcopal Church for help, with a delegation, including SARA's deputy minister, visiting the church center in August 2011.
Churches engaging in social service works is somewhat new territory, for both them and the government, as evidenced in a the Feb. 28 headline in the South China Morning Post, "New Controls on Religious Groups' Work." The story said that the government recently tightened controls on religious groups to stop them from spreading religion and "undermining national interests" by accepting donations from overseas entities that come with political and or religious conditions.
During a meeting in Shanghai, Kan, the CCC general secretary, said the government used to frown upon churches providing social services to communities out of concern for that they would share their message and recruit members, but that its stance has changed in recent years.
"Now the government is encouraging the churches to exercise their social-service arm," he said, adding that the church has responded by offering training and resources to churches.
The Amity Foundation, founded by Anglican Bishop K.H.Ting and other Chinese Christians in 1985, was one of the first nongovernment organizations and the first faith-based one established to address the needs of society. Today it provides social services ranging from education and medical assistance to disaster relief and helping rural farmers take advantage of solar energy. Episcopal Relief & Development is one of its strongest partners, said She Hongyu, assistant general secretary of Amity, during a presentation in Nanjing at the Amity Printing Co., which is part of the foundation.
Despite partnerships, the Amity Foundation has moved away from foreign donations.
"We started out 100 percent dependent on donations from abroad. In 2004, we established our own fundraising in China," She said.
This year, Amity Printing is on schedule to print its 100 millionth Bible; profits from the printing of Bibles in 75 languages and shipping to 70 different countries and regions help finance the foundation's work.
Jefferts Schori said that she was struck by the government's change in attitude toward religious bodies engaging in social services.
"There is a parallel with Cuba. When the state discovered what religious communities could do for the benefit of the larger community, the state began to support at least the existence of those religious communities," she said, "if not to actively support their development and growth, which I think the Chinese government has done, providing land for the seminary in Nanjing and building the facilities, they see that as a benefit.
In Cuba, unlike in China, government members can hold religious beliefs.
In addition to Ng, Alex Baumgarten, the Episcopal Church's director of government relations; the Rev. Charles Robertson, canon to the presiding bishop; and Richard Schori, the presiding bishop's husband, joined Jefferts Schori in China, Hong Kong and Macau.
"I am surprised and in awe of a church that has encountered so much social change over the last six decades and nonetheless is able to be a positive and consequential force in shaping the society around it for the better," said Baumgarten in an interview with ENS upon leaving China.
— Lynette Wilson is an Episcopal News Service reporter and editor. She traveled with the presiding bishop in China, Hong Kong and Macau.
Is there an opportunity to teach in seminaries in China?
My grandparents were missionaries for 40 years. He was the first Bishop of Anking and she was a graduate of the Philadelphia School for Deaconesses after graduating from Northwestern. They were my role models.
It would be wonderful to go there, though I understand the authorized church is controlled and there are underground churches. Nothing was mentioned of this.
See what Aspinwald started – and Boone. VTS strikes again.
As the grandson of a British missionary, who became an American citizen, from a family who spent up to the 1949 Revolution, I have felt the pull of China all my life. First, as being born and raised in Japan, and as an adult working as a senior level fundraising officer at Japan Society, I took an educational sabbatical to study in London East Asian Art and Culture, I turned my focus to China, where I earned an MA in Chinese Art and Culture at London's prestigious School of Orientaland African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London, where I studied Mandarin and studied at Sotheby's Institute of Art in their East Asian MA program. It is impossible to understand contemporary China without knowledge of its incredibly rich visual culture and language, I am now an art historian of Chinese and Japanese art and culture, I am a deeply committed member of Trinity Church Wall Street where I have felt my beliefs in Christ and the welcoming spirit of the Episcopal Church can, at this moment in history, build some successful partnerships. My discernment as a newly confirmed Episcopalian came early when I felt God's call to bring my family history full circle, with a life time of building blocks in understanding the complexities of the early 20th century missionary experience in China, to the 21st century, in which China is opening its doors, starting with the Sichuan earthquake, when China opened its doors to help from outside, from churches, governments, and NGO's. Despite its great successes, in my visits to China, there is still massive poverty, and as materialistic needs and wants are answered, there is a thirst and a hunger for spiritual nurture. Since the Sichuan earthquake, there has been an opening up of a timely dialogue at all levels, from the student level to upper echelons in the government to see how Christianity can be a positive force. This article confirms my strongly held beliefs that China can be a welcoming partner, with the respectful manner in which the Episcopal Church spreads the Gospel by "walking the walk". With my family legacy in China through the late 19th century to now, my understanding of China's deep and rich culture, and bright future, I pray that God will give me the strength to use my knowledge in building ecumenical bridges with a country. I feel a sense of excitement that I have a deep well of knowledge,and a strong desire to participate in bringing Christ's message to the world's second largest economy through the Episcopalian Church. I am finding my own path through Trinity Church and the great number of faith-based organizations, the Asia Society, my continued studies of China's distinguished past. The Chinese, after the Cultural Revolution, are once again taking great pride in their over 5000 year culture, which has contributed so much. The Chinese delight and respect foreigners who take an interest in their cultures, and with that knowledge and interest, I feel that with God's help I can be a positive force for Trinity Church and the larger Anglican Communion. I would welcome response and ideas of individuals and organizations I should talk to. I have decided to devote full time to these efforts, and to give my service to God by working to develop relationships with China. I can be contacted at jhmacjr@aol.com.
It's a bit presumptuous to claim that it was the Episcopalians who bought the bible to China, when Jesuits and Catholics settled not just Macao, but had the first westerners accepted as Emperor's scholars with Matteu Ricci back in the 1500's. While I enjoyed the commentary on the dance of the church's with the Communist government, the article shows great respect to the Catholics who held to their belief throughout much oppression and still hold themselves independent of Communist control… something perhaps the Episcopalians should consider lest they be seen as lackeys of the government… oh… I forget.
I didnt claim that the Anglicans were the first to bring the Bible to CHina, it was the Jesuits.
The Catholics have a lot of housecleaning to do, before they can hold themselves up as paragons of virtue. China is not going to let the Catholics run amuck with no oversight or control.
My daughter has moved from Shanghai to Kunming. She is unable to locate a church in that city. Although Episcopalian, she was more comfortable in the Roman Catholic Churches in Shanghai than the Protestant. Can anyone help her locate a R.C. community or a Protestant one in Kunming?
I agree with Jim. Nothing mentioned here of the existence of christianity in China as early as the 5th Century. See a new book published this year by Daniel H Bays entitled a new History of Christianity in China which highlights the arrival of Christianity in China in the early centuries. That aside, the article above does highlight the good that faith in Christ is doing in the country.
Thank you for this fascinating article. The radical ecumenism among Chinese Christians, hailed by Presiding Bishop Jefferts-Schori, is deeply inspiring for the Anglican Church's interfaith and interdemoninational efforts. The Church in China appears successful in its primary focus to serve, and thus avoids the factionalism that gets in the way of the crucial Gospel message to love one another. Without proselytizing, an organization like Amity–which I am gratified to see is supported by ERD- – is spreading the Word, "walking the walk," and playing a vital role in the new society of China as it highlight the generous giving nature of committed Christians.
They don't need a seminary-trained teacher, just give them Bibles and let God be their teacher.
I spent 2009/10 in Beijing as ESL facilitator, worshiping and helping with the English Fellowship service at Haidian Christian Church in the Haidian District. In China, worship and becoming a Christian is a privilege. Whereas in America where Christians take such a privilege for granted, at the Haidian church alone, people lined up around the block in all kinds of weather to wait for their chance to come into the church that seats about 1,500. There are three or four services every Sunday–and every one is packed full.
How very ironic…the presiding officer of the Episcopal Church is welcome with open arms by the Chinese government and in the same month, they detain Coadjutor Bishop Peter Shao Zhumin of Wenzhou and his chancellor Father Paul Jiang Sunian for "learning classes." Bishop John Wang Ruowang of Tianshui was detained for the same "remedial" education in January. Why? Because these good men are faithful, orthodox Catholics in union with the Sucessor of Peter and the Chinese refuse to recognize them as legitimately holding their offices.
Hmmmm… if I were Katherine, I'd be worried.
I hope through Chinese and the Korean evangelists,the neighboring countries could see the word of Gospel.


WHAT goes on behind the scenes is just as important as what happens on the pitch and at Chester City we have been busy making sure the infrastructure is right to keep the club going forward.
This week we appointed UEFA Class A coach David Bell as technical co-ordinator to provide a link between the youngest players associated with the club through to the youth set-up.
He is very experienced in this role, having been at Bristol City and Cardiff City as well as the FA and the FA of Wales. I have known David for some time and I believe he can play a vital role with us, assessing our coaching system at all levels and ensuring there is smooth progression through the ranks.
Another innovation has been the provision of statistics from all our matches. We have a statistician in the stands who records everything about the game as far as our players are concerned.
The results are available to the players so they can assess exactly what they did during the game and quite often they are surprised by what the stats reveal.
I believe this is a useful alternative to watching videos which my assistant Mark Aizlewood and I do. The players can become bored with this over 90 minutes, while the stats tell a similar story of who did what and how often.
It is important to keep things fresh and anything which adds variety is comed.
It is too easy to get stale which can be reflected in the play on match days. Knowing that someone is keeping a meticulous record of what goes on in a game can keep players on their toes.
Players sometimes believe they were more influential than, in fact, they were. Stats don't lie, there is no hiding place!
Discipline is important at a football and this week we took action against Cortez Belle following his red card at Northampton last Friday.
I wasn't sure what happened at the time, but having watched a video of the incident I was satisfied we needed to take internal action and we have fined him two weeks wages.
I will not tolerate this kind of incident. He let himself and his team-mates down being sent-off and then having to serve a four-match suspension.
He is a raw talent and we can give him guidance but a lot of his actions are down to him and he must learn quickly if he is to make progress in the game.
Mark Aizlewood was also ordered from the touchline following this incident and he has fined himself, realising he has a duty to set an example.
I was very disturbed by the racial abuse dished out to the England players in Spain last week.
I thought this kind of thing had long at least in our country. It was also worrying that the Spanish media and coach refused to condemn the abuse.
It is up to the supporters to report anyone they see guilty of racial abuse and the authorities must take the propriate action to stamp it out.
I hope FIFA take a serious view of the incident last week and make it known any repeat would have serious sequences, not just for the offenders, but for the host club or country.


Audit International, the leading specialists in Internal and External Audit Recruitment across Europe, the US and Asia have learned the Chartered Institute of Internal Auditors is to update its qualifications to reflect the profession's increasingly global stance.
IIA organization will adopt the IIA Certified Internal Auditor (CIA) certification, which develops and assesses practitioner skills and the new Qualification in Internal Audit Leadership (QIAL) From June 2015.
The IIA decided to develop the offering, which provides experienced heads of internal audit with the opportunity to gain recognition for their leadership skills and gain chartered status.
Regarding those who currently are studying, a three year transition programme will enable to switch their studies to the new qualifications and for existing qualification holders to add the new designations.
For further information, IIA has published detailed information on its website and The Institute is contacting as well all qualified and studying members to explain how the changes affect.


This is a small, down home pharmacy. Fast, efficient service. Friendly, knowledgeable staff. Right across the street from West Valley Hospital. The only drawback is that they close early.
Posted by by Nancy R. at Judy's Book on December 16, 2005. Brought to you by Judy's Book.
Posted by Citysearch-70489736 on November 05, 2005. Brought to you by rateitall.


The word migraine might not mean much to you, but to many women and myself it is one that carries a hefty sentence.
"I had a big car accident and I fractured my skull, and obviously I had a bit of a headache. But, I would rather have that fractured skull headache than any migraine ever." - Margaret Lammiman - as she picks up a digestive biscuit in her house in Kingston.
Women With Migraine explores the extreme effects migraines and how they impact everyday life and why they continue to remain overlooked by medical professionals. A new drug is currently being trialled to prevent migraines – could this be the cure sufferers have been searching for?


Luxury automaker Audi has improved upon its Traffic Light Information system by adding a Green Light Optimized Speed Advisory (GLOSA) feature, to help driver's avoid the frustration of getting stopped by red traffic lights. The system works by suggesting the the optimal driving speed, so that a upcoming traffic signal is more likely to be green as the vehicle approaches.
Jaguar Land Rover is trailing a new technology called The Green Light Optimal Speed Advisory (GLOSA) system, which allows cars to "talk" to traffic lights and inform the driver the speed they should drive as they approach intersections or traffic signals.
On Thursday, President Trump signed a presidential memorandum directing the Commerce Department to develop a long-term comprehensive national spectrum strategy to prepare for the introduction of next-generation 5G wireless networks. 5G network speeds are a key requirement for the commercial roll-out of autonomous driving and connected car technology.
Rental car company Avis Budget Group Inc. announced an agreement with the Ford Motor Co. to connect more than 35,000 Ford vehicles in Avis' U.S. fleet. The connected vehicles will also provide valuable vehicle data to Avis, to help to car rental company manage its fleet of Ford vehicles.
Telecommunications giant AT&T and Harmon, a division of Samsung best known for its high-end audio products, have co-developed a new device called the Harman Spark, which turns any ordinary vehicle into a connected car.
GM has begun the automotive industry's first-ever embedded, in-dash fuel payment and loyalty experience with Shell gas stations. Customers refueling their eligible Chevrolet, Buick, GMC and Cadillac vehicles at Shell stations, will be able to use the Shell Pay & Save app available from the GM Marketplace to pay for their fuel directly from their vehicles' infotainment screen.
Autonomic, a wholly owned subsidiary of Ford Smart Mobility LLC, and Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing arm of Alibaba Group, have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to bring to China the Transportation Mobility Cloud (TMC), a standard transportation and mobility solution for connected vehicles developed by Autonomic.
Aurora Labs, an Israeli-based company working on predictive maintenance solutions for automotive software, announced it closed an $8.4 million A round of financing led by Fraser McCombs Capital and MizMaa Ventures. Aurora will use the new funds to expand its international presence beyond its recently opened Munich, Germany office and to expand its research and development.
The automotive industry's push toward autonomous driving and connected vehicles requires the transmission of large amounts of data from the autonomous vehicle to the cloud. To support this need, major automakers, including Volkswagen are partnering with tech companies in a alliance to develop solutions for in-vehicle networks.
U.S. carmaker Ford Motor Co said on Wednesday it signed a letter of intent with China's internet search giant Baidu to develop artificial intelligence (AI) and smart connectivity in cars.
More than 70 leading automotive and tech companies, including Apple, LG, Samsung, Panasonic, Audi, General Motors, BMW, Hyundai, Qualcomm, and Volkswagen, have joined together under the Car Connectivity Consortium (CCC) to create the Digital Key standard for the automotive industry.
Baidu, Inc. and China Mobile announced a comprehensive strategic partnership in emerging technology including areas such as artificial intelligence (AI), big data and 5G, leveraging the respective core strengths of each.
Hyundai is making it easier for drivers to pay for for goods and services right from their vehicle's telematics unit, including gasoline, food, or parking with a new partnership with Xevo, which provides in-car purchasing options.


Cardno Limited (ASX: CDD) announced on Friday that it had, with immediate effect, terminated its CEO Andy Goodwin's contract.
According to the company's announcement, this was due to his failure to follow lawful directions of the board on the Snowy Mountain Engineering Corporation (SMEC) issue. The SMEC is being investigated by the federal police over allegations of financial crimes.
The revolving door at Cardno continues to turn as this is now the seventh CEO that the company has had in less than 5 years.
With that in mind, I wouldn't invest in Cardno right now. The role of a visionary, capable and stable management team cannot be understated. Consider the role Alan Joyce has played in turning around Qantas Airways Limited (ASX: QAN) or the role Nicholas Moore has played at Macquarie Group Ltd (ASX: MQG).
Instead of Cardno, I'd rather put my money in these three revolutionary Aussie companies.
That's why at The Motley Fool we've been scrutinizing the ASX to uncover the kinds of companies that we believe could turn into the next Cochlear or REA Group.
You can follow Kevin on Twitter @KevinGandiya. The Motley Fool Australia has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. This article contains general investment advice only (under AFSL 400691). Authorised by Scott Phillips.


text:
Q: Как не декодировать JSON для VkApi? Пишу бота для vk.com, который будет постить картинки на страницу группы. Есть вот такая функция:
upload_url = api.photos.getWallUploadServer(group_id=Settings.owner_id)
    files = {'photo': open('img/img.jpg', 'rb')}
    r = requests.post(upload_url["upload_url"], files=files)  # отправляем файл
    print(r.text)
    dict_param = json.loads(r.text)  # Парсим json
    server = dict_param["server"]
    hash_photo = dict_param["hash"]
    photo = dict_param["photo"]
    save = api.photos.saveWallPhoto(group_id="143550839", server=server, hash=hash_photo, photo=photo)

saveWallPhoto возвращает такую ошибку:
vk.exceptions.VkAPIError: 121. Invalid hash.
Погуглив, узнал, что такая ошибка может возникать из-за декодирования JSON'а, который возвращает сервер и хранится у меня в переменной r.
Как обратиться к значениям JSON, не декодируя его?

A: Через регулярные выражения, используйте
result = re.search(r'(str[\: ]+)(value)', json)

где str - требуемый параметр, value - его значение, json - ваш JSON, а в переменной result будут возвращаться все совпадения.
Регулярка приблизительно, надо будет адаптировать для конкретного поиска.

A: Проблема в
upload_url = api.photos.getWallUploadServer(group_id=Settings.owner_id)

group_id должна быть больше нуля.


text:
Here's How Brands Are Using TikTok to Go After a New Age Group With Major Spending Power (Hint: It's Not Gen Z)
Gen Z has been obsessed with the popular video app since it launched--but older generations are starting to download and watch in growing numbers. Here's how brands are transforming their TikTok marketing to reach a new wave of adopters.
By Amanda Pressner Kreuser@mastheadmedia
Unless you've been living under a rock (or perhaps just returned to earth after a very long trip away) you've probably heard that Tik Tok is the hottest new social platform. You've read up on it, downloaded it to your phone, scrolled the feed, and maybe even posted a clip or two yourself. If you did all that--and you're over the of age of 25--consider yourself way ahead of the game.
While Gen Z originally catapulted TikTok and its quirky, 15 to 60-second vertical videos into the zeitgeist, users from other generations--Millennials, Gen X and even Boomers--have also been getting involved in ever-accelerating numbers. Together, these more established generations--along with the brands who want to court them--have been redefining the way that we leverage the TikTok platform.
Here are a few fascinating ways that big brands are making inroads with TikTok's users across generations.
Early TikTok adopter ESPN was on a mission to capture younger audiences--and its done an impressive job by jumping on the platform and posting clips like this one of ESPN sports television personality Stephen A. Smith walking along to viral music hit "Old Town Road") along with jaw-dropping sports stunts and ridiculously impressive young athletes. However, ESPN has no doubt noticed that its more mature fan base--like Millennials, Gen X and even Boomers--are scrolling through, so the brand's video content is evolving.
The brand, which has nearly 4 million followers, now consistently uploads game replays and video highlights on TikTok, which has been a content mainstay for older sports fans who have watched the TV network over the years. It's important to note that these videos are set to the trending hip hop beats that Gen Z loves, so ESPN keeps both younger and older fans coming back for more.
If you scroll through all the videos featured on Apple Music's TikTok account (which has nearly 200K followers), you'll come to find that Apple Music isn't necessarily trying to make a play at Gen Z--the brand is sending marketing messages in the exact same tone as you would see in its distinctive ads running on TV, in print, and other digital media.
The bulk of what you can watch on the brand's TikTok account are quirky interviews of trending music artists and polished lyric videos--a far cry from the comedy-centric and "memeable" videos that made the video app so popular with Gen Z in the first place.
Unlike the majority of brands that tailor or recreate their marketing strategy to suit TikTok user and Gen Z preferences, Apple stays true its core consumers and uploads videos Millennials and earlier generations will appreciate.
Beauty brand e.l.f Cosmetics has been making a major splash on TikTok since joining the platform in 2018 (the year Tik Tok itself launched). The brand has even gained a reputation for creating arguably "the most influential campaign on TikTok" when it launched a sponsored hashtag challenge campaign, #eyeslipsface, that included an original song.
Inspired by Kash Doll's hit "Ice Me Out," the song is called "Eyes Lips Face" as a parody on the acronym namesake of the brand. Campaign engagement went through the roof, with videos tagged #eyeslipsface being viewed collectively over 1.2 billion times. But here's an interesting twist--many of the campaign participants are not a part of Generation Z.
e.l.f. Cosmetics has been a long-time favorite of the Millennial generation and the brand's TikTok account reflects that. While e.l.f wants to play cool with Gen Z, it still never alienates its Millennial followers--even on TikTok.


text:
const AuthenticationController = require('./controllers/AuthenticationController')
const SongsController = require('./controllers/SongsController')
const BookmarksController = require('./controllers/BookmarksController')
const ViewHistoryController = require('./controllers/ViewHistoryController')

const AuthenticationControllerPolicy = require('./policies/AuthenticationControllerPolicy')
const isAuthenticated = require('./policies/isAuthenticated')

module.exports = (app) => {
  // AuthenticationController
  app.post('/register',
    AuthenticationControllerPolicy.register,
    AuthenticationController.register)
  app.post('/login', AuthenticationController.login)

  // SongsController
  app.get('/songs', SongsController.index)
  app.get('/songs/:songId', SongsController.show)
  app.post('/songs', SongsController.post)
  app.put('/songs/:songId', SongsController.put)

  // BookmarksController
  app.get('/bookmarks', isAuthenticated, BookmarksController.index)
  app.post('/bookmarks', isAuthenticated, BookmarksController.post)
  app.delete('/bookmarks/:bookmarkId', isAuthenticated, BookmarksController.delete)

  // ViewHistoryController
  app.get('/history', isAuthenticated, ViewHistoryController.index)
  app.post('/history', isAuthenticated, ViewHistoryController.post)
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Q: pureftp truncates filenames containing whitespace I'm running 1.0.28-3+squeeze1 of pure-ftpd on a debian 6.0.6 installation:
Running: /usr/sbin/pure-ftpd -l pam -d -u 1000 -O clf:/var/log/pure-ftpd/transfer.log -8 UTF-8 -B

The pure ftp configuration (/etc/pure-ftpd/conf):
==> AltLog <==
clf:/var/log/pure-ftpd/transfer.log

==> FSCharset <==
UTF-8

==> MinUID <==
1000

==> NoTruncate <==
yes

==> PAMAuthentication <==
yes

==> PureDB <==
/etc/pure-ftpd/pureftpd.pdb

==> UnixAuthentication <==
no

==> VerboseLog <==
yes

I want to be able to transfer files which contain whitespaces in their filename. At the moment I can't transfer such files using Filezilla for example (tried different clients, the same outcome).
This is the server response when trying to upload a file named: test_import 1.xml. As you can see below from the logs only test_import is considered, the rest is ignored. It might be something related to quotations but I can't figure out what and how to change.
==> /var/log/syslog <==
May 21 11:49:08 server01 pure-ftpd: (?@server02.com) [INFO] upload is now logged in
May 21 11:49:08 server01 pure-ftpd: (upload@server02.com) [DEBUG] Command [cwd] [/home/ftp/temp]
May 21 11:49:08 server01 pure-ftpd: (upload@server02.com) [DEBUG] Command [type] [I]
May 21 11:49:08 server01 pure-ftpd: (upload@server02.com) [DEBUG] Command [pasv] []
May 21 11:49:08 server01 pure-ftpd: (upload@server02.com) [DEBUG] Command [stor] [test_import]
May 21 11:49:08 server01 pure-ftpd: (upload@server02.com) [NOTICE] //home/ftp/temp/test_import uploaded  (28 bytes, 76.36KB/sec)

==> /var/log/pure-ftpd/transfer.log <==
server02.com - upload [21/May/2014:11:49:08 +0200] "PUT /home/ftp/temp/test_import" 200 28


Smashwords – Books Tagged "gay memoir"
These results show books which have been specifically tagged with this keyword. You can also try doing a general search for the term "gay memoir" .
Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis has become part of our dialogues with not only personal physicians but friends and lovers. The gay, bisexual, queer and transgender community is exploring Truvada, the daily pill prescribed to HIV-negative people that prevents transmission of the virus, while the straight world catches up. Evan J. Peterson writes about his experiences in a wry & honest manner.
Thirteen candid and provocative essays by Jarrett Neal on the status of black gay men in the new millennium.
Award-winning author Felice Picano returns with a new collection of memoirs, True Stories Too: People and Places from My Past, expanding his highly praised portraits and anecdotes to reveal histories of his family, friends, and lovers. In this new volume Picano also delights with wonderful new tales of the many places he has lived in and visited, including NY, California, RI, Germany, and Japan.


text:
Ana Prodanova
Ana is making the movie about the movie The last of Aporver
The writter, director, editor, producer ... true movie lover
Why did you make the movie about the movie The Last of Aporver?
First of all, I always wanted to work on a "making of" film because I am really interested to show what is "behind the scenes" - the long and extremely hard working process of making a film. "The Last of the Aporver" has a long and a very interesting story of making that took 10 years and more and it's an adventure itself. The film immerses us into a magical world, but the emotions and ordeals that the filmmakers experienced while making it are just as interesting. It is like revealing the recipe of our favourite meal at a dinner party. Second, I really like working with Tomas Krejci and when he asked me I said "yes" without hesitation. He is a real professional and most importantly he is a noble and genuine artist, so working with him on a project is always a valuable experience.
How long have you been working on the movie?
I have been working on the film for a month now, and there is still a lot more work to be done.
What is the purpose of the movie about the movie The Last of Aporver?
I believe that when the audience sees a movie in the theatre (especially when it's a big fantasy film) they don't really know where to place it. That is to say, they never know how much money has been spent, how many years the script has been developed, and what was the authors ambition. I want the viewers to know that this was not just another 3D popcorn movie made with a lot of money. For example, there is no CGI used, but there are 3000 hand painted images. This technique has not been used in a Czech film since the 60's. "The Last of the Aporver" is one of Tomas' biggest and most personal projects and he risked loosing a lot just to make it, and what is most important - it is made with a lot of love and has a heart.
When and where can we watch your movie?
The film will be released online in about a month. Also it will be distributed alongside the feature film, so whenever the TV buys it or there is a DVD release, the "making of' will be enclosed there too.
Are you a big fan of the movie The Last of Aporver?
Yes, I am a fan of the movie. It uses a very interesting technique, as I mentioned already, and I do believe it will become a modern cult film in the Czech Republic and abroad. I think it tells us a simple story in a very beautiful way, I think the characters are compelling and the actors who created them are very well chosen. So I am really looking forward to the premiere! :)
What do you think about the movie The Last of Aporver?
I think that more people should see it, because it's one of those movies that one could never say: "I just wasted two hours." The feeling you get is more like: "I wish I could move to that planet."
Do you like science fiction or fantasy movies?
I have to say that it's not my favourite genre, but like in any genre there are amazing films that I love, for example "Star Wars", "Harry Potter" or "The Lord of the Rings". Actually I am one of those people who wants to have studied at Hogwarts. :)
Which movies have you made?
I have made a few short films, some of them screened at festivals around Europe. For example, my film "Katka"(2014) is about a lonely and abused housewife and her dreadful birthday party. I have a film made in French and in Black and White "L'Ours"(2012) which is about an actress who falls in love with her co-actor in the piece "The Bear" by Anton Chekhov. In my film "Aspects of coffee drinking"(2011) a young lady talks to her coffee machine and gets in a crisis when the machine breaks.
All of them have been written, directed, edited and produced by me, because I love all those different jobs on a film and I can't give up any of them :)
What is your plan for future? Will you make any other movie about some movie?
My plan for the future is to co-direct another short movie which I am writing at the moment. It will be about a female obsession with her relationship - I think a very common situation nowadays. I have this idea of making a feature film composed out of series to shorts which all deal with similar topics and eventually entangle in one coherent story. I also like to make a book with photographs taken by me and stories that I wrote. Basically I have a lot of ideas, and very little time - but I am never bored. :)
If the opportunity arises, I would definitely make another "making of" movie because it's always a lot of fun and I always learn something interesting.
Thank you for a nice interview, Ana!
Jan Vavricka
E-mail: galerie(at)vanili.cz
FACEBOOK | LinkedIn | Google+


text:
is a 2011 Japanese live-action film based on Tobaku Hakairoku Kaiji, the second part of the manga series Kaiji, written and illustrated by Nobuyuki Fukumoto. It is the second film of a trilogy directed by Tōya Satō and premiered in Japan on November 5, 2011. It was followed by Kaiji: Final Game released in 2020.

Cast
Tatsuya Fujiwara as Kaiji Itō
Yūsuke Iseya as Seiya Ichijō
Yuriko Yoshitaka as Hiromi Ishida
Katsuhisa Namase as Kōtarō Sakazaki
Teruyuki Kagawa as Yukio Tonegawa
Suzuki Matsuo as Taro Ōtsuki
Hayato Kakizawa as Murakami
Ken Mitsuishi as Kōji Ishida
Tarō Yamamoto as Jōji Funai
Kyūsaku Shimada as Yoshihiro Kurosaki
Maxwell Powers as Swamp (voice)

Soundtrack
Yugo Kanno composed the music for the film. The original score was released on November 2, 2011.

Release
Kaiji 2 was announced in November 2009. Kaiji 2 was theatrically released on November 5, 2011, in Japan. It was released on Blu-ray and DVD on April 25, 2012.

The film was screened at the anime convention AM² in Anaheim, California in June 2012.

Reception

Box office
Kaiji 2 was Japan's nineteenth highest-grossing film of 2011, earning  () at the Japanese box office that year. The film also grossed $68,175 overseas in Singapore, bringing the film's international total gross to $21,068,175.

Critical reception
In a review of  Kaiji 2, Maggie Lee of The Hollywood Reporter felt little suspense and satisfaction with the characters and the actors' performance. She wrote that the cast "cranks up their acting" but due their "cardboard" roles they "have no hopes of being more than that". Lee expressed no excitement in the "character reversals", pointing out that they have become quite common in the survival game genre, with works like Liar Game or The Incite Mill, stating "no matter how many times the key persons in Kaiji switch their allegiances, it no longer surprises." Nevertheless, Lee praised the camera movements, music and sound levels, ultimately calling the film a "geeky but still entertaining sequel to the crowd-pleasing "gambling" genre."

References

External links
 Official website
 Nippon TV English official website

Films about death games
Films set in Japan
Films about gambling
2010s Japanese-language films
Kaiji (manga)
Live-action films based on manga
Toho films
Films directed by Tōya Satō

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Tornado is as his name suggests "a powerful phenomena with destructive force". Years of high school athletics have conditioned him to the level of competition that Gladiators demands.
Tornado hails as a champion long and triple jumper as well as a lightning quick sprinter but don't be fooled by his good looks as this Tornado possesses the explosive power and speed needed to chase and catch even the fastest of Challengers.
Challengers dread the fact of knowing that only a few metres behind them, on Pursuit or Skytrak, the awesome acceleration of Tornado is just waiting to be released. He'll wipe out anything in his path if he gets the chance!
When not flying up The Wall, Tornado can be found snow skiing, Jet skiing or cruising on his motorcycle.


The Hash House Harriers is an international group of non-competitive social running clubs. Enthusiasts refer to themselves as "hashers" and to the activity as "hashing". Although the parameters that each chapter sets may differ, in general, a hare sets a trail and is followed by the pack. At the run's conclusion, hashers typically eat, drink, and socialize. The group typically gets together to humourously note on-trail misbehaviour with tongue-in-cheek drinking songs and "down downs".
The following summary is borrowed from the New York City Hash House Harriers. Go to their web site to read the complete introduction.
Hashing is a mixture of athleticism and sociability, hedonism and hard work; a refreshing break from the nine-to-five routine. Hashing is an exhilaratingly fun combination of r*nning, orienteering, and partying, where bands of Harriers and Harriettes chase Hares on eight-to-ten kilometer-long trails through town, country, jungle, and desert, all in search of exercise, camaraderie, and good times.
It began in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in 1938, when a group of restive British company men started a hare & hounds r*nning group. They named the group after their meeting place, the Selangor Club, aka the "Hash House." Hash House Harrier r*ns were patterned after the traditional British public school paper chase. A "Hare" would be given a short head start to blaze a trail, marking his devious way with shreds of paper, soon to be pursued by a shouting pack of "Harriers." Only the Hare knew where he was going . . . the Harriers followed his marks to stay on trail. Apart from the excitement of chasing down the wily Hare, solving the Hare's marks and reaching the end was its own reward, for there, thirsty Harriers would find a tub of iced-down beer.


An exceptional and unique collaboration between 'the House of Lesage' and Chanel in creating the brand-new Chanel Mademoiselle Privé Watch.
What makes this watch so-special? Is it because its Chanel?
You see, it's designed with the 'know-how' of the famous French embroidery designer François Lesage. This man inherited the Maison Lesage from his father and became a well known designer in the high fashion industry in Paris. During the late 20th Century, many traditional embroidery houses in France faded away, but François Lesage was one of the few that kept his business alive. Not only that, he also collaborated with well-known fashion brands like Givenchy, Balenciaga and Dior. The company was sold to Chanel in 2002.
Up until today, the House of Lesage has only been producing embroideries in Haute Couture and Prêt-à-Porter. This is the first time that the expertise has been used to create amazing watches. Fruited with all the work of Lesage's traditional craftsmanship and experience, the camellia is embellished with colored silk threads, which has been put together with needle point-painting technique. A lot of effort has been invested before the finishing product is send to your local boutique.
The Chanel Mademoiselle Privé with embroidered Camellia detailing is pricey, but it's an iconic jewelry that not many people want to invest. It's the best gift ever to treat yourself or for your long-time special friend.
18k white gold is injected with 562 brilliantly cut diamonds and attached to a black satin strap.


La llave del amor, script interactivo no necesita selecciones ni filtros, bájalo pinchando sobre la imagen y disfrútalo.
Thank you so much for this post. I want to let you know that I posted a link to your blog in CBH Digital Scrapbooking Freebies, under the Page 2 post on Feb. 09, 2011. Thanks again.


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Nearly Lost You: Hard-To-Find '90s Albums ("Hindu Love Gods")
"Nearly Lost You: Hard-To-Find '90s Albums" gives you exactly what the title implies: a rare or out-of-print album from the '90s in its entirety. "But Mr. Analog Kid," you ask, "Are there really that many CDs from the '90s that you can't buy anymore? It doesn't seem too long ago that I was rocking out to Hootie and sucking down some Zima!"
I hate to tell you this, but Zima debuted as a local promotional item in late 1992. That was 22 YEARS ago. You can't even buy Zima any longer, as it was discontinued in 2008. Getting old sucks, doesn't it?
If you need a reminder of exactly how big R.E.M. was in the late '80s and early '90s, look no further than the Hindu Love Gods album. The record features a batch of covers recorded by R.E.M. (sans Michael Stipe) and Warren Zevon during a recording session for Zevon's 1987 comeback album Sentimental Hygiene. Peter Buck, Mike Mills, and Bill Berry were apparently not very happy about the release of Hindu Love Gods, and one listen will tell you why: it's really not very good. But if you take it for what it is– a "let's-get-drunk-and-roll-tape" party session– Hindu Love Gods is actually a lot of fun. After all, where else are you going to find a record with cover versions of songs from both Prince and the Georgia Satellites?
In the end, I think R.E.M. could have quashed the release of Hindu Love Gods if they had really wanted to. The band had first used the "Hindu Love Gods" moniker on a one-off 1986 7″ single, so they must have given Zevon the OK to use the name. They also likely realized that their friend could use the publicity (and the cash) that came with the album's release, as Sentimental Hygiene didn't exactly set the world on fire. (Note: Sentimental Hygiene is an excellent album, and I highly recommend it– especially if you are a fan of Zevon and/or the big R.E.M. guitar sound of the Document era. Buck, Mills, and Berry really shine on the album.)
Hindu Love Gods has been out of print for years and years now, so you'll have to find it in a second-hand store if you want a physical copy. Until then, enjoy the music here on the Analog Kid blog!
Hindu Love Gods: Hindu Love Gods
Giant/Reprise Records, 1990
1. "Walkin' Blues" (Robert Johnson)
Walkin' Blues
2. "Travelin' Riverside Blues" (Robert Johnson)
Travelin' Riverside Blues
3. "Raspberry Beret" (Prince)
Raspberry Beret
4. "Crosscut Saw" (Fred Ingrahm/Bill Sanders)
Crosscut Saw
5. "Junko Pardner" (Bob Shad)
Junko Pardner
6. "Mannish Boy" (Bo Diddley/Muddy Waters/Melvin London)
Mannish Boy
7. "Wang Dang Doodle" (Willie Dixon)
8. "Battleship Chains" (Terry Anderson)
Battleship Chains
9. "I'm A One Woman Man" (Tillman Franks/Johnny Horton)
I'm A One Woman Man
10. "Vigilante Man" (Woody Guthrie)
Vigilante Man
Warren Zevon: "Even A Dog Can Shake Hands" (Zevon/Berry/Buck/Mills)
From the album Sentimental Hygiene
Virgin Records, 1987
Even A Dog Can Shake Hands
R.E.M.: "Fireplace" (Berry/Buck/Mills/Stipe)
From the album Document
IRS Records, 1987
Prince: "Raspberry Beret" [12″ Version] (Prince)
From the 12″ single Raspberry Beret
Warner Brothers Records, 1985
Raspberry Beret [12″ Version]
Georgia Satellites: "Battleship Chains" (Terry Anderson)
From the album Georgia Satellites
Elektra Records, 1986
Posted by The Analog Kid on October 15, 2014 in Alternative, Rock, Soul/R&B and tagged Analog Kid, Bill Berry, Document, Georgia Satellites, Hindu Love Gods, Mike Mills, Peter Buck, Prince, Sentimental Hygiene, Warren Zevon.


Definition - What does Pig Iron mean?
Pig iron is an intermediary product when iron ore is smelted with a fuel with high carbon, such as coke. This is usually done with limestone to act as the flux. Anthracite as well as charcoal can be utilized as fuel as well.
It has a fairly high carbon content combined with silica and dross constituents, making it very brittle. Pig iron should not be directly utilized as a material with the exception of some limited applications.
The common mold shape that is used for ingots was with a branching structure formed within sand. This configuration is similar to the look of a litter of piglets suckling on a sow. Once the metal has hardened and cooled, the little ingots or "pigs" are broken into a thinner runner, hence the name "pig iron."
As pig iron undergoes remelting, there can be uneven ingot sizes and the inclusion of sand from the mold, causing slight problems in terms of handling and casting. Most pig iron is manufactured and used in steel mill compounds. Pig iron is melted in blast furnaces and transferred straight to steel plants in its liquid state.
This product is highly beneficial in the metal and steel casting industries, especially when sold as ferrous feedstock. It has many uses, such as in steel making, specifically in electric arcs. It can also be the main product in the production of cupola furnaces, gray iron castings and other similar products.


Cosmos could no longer continue, and is now inactive.
The match between Cosmos and PsychoSwarm ended 0:2.
The match between Cosmos and X's Men ended 0:2.
The match between Cosmos and Pirate Boat ended 1:2.
The match between Cosmos and No Face ended 2:1.
We've crossed oceans of time to be with you.


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Q: Avoid impossible states with a data model for a card game in Haskell I am trying to implement the Jass card game in Haskell and would like to make the game state as explicit as possible or avoiding impossible states with types.
The standard variant involves four players. The players opposite each other form a team.
In a game rounds are played until one team reaches the target score.
At the start of each round each player is dealt with 9 cards one player gets to choose the trump, and lead the first trick.
In a trick every player has to play one card. The cards are compared with respect to the leading suit and trump and the player with the highest card wins the trick. The points of the tricks are added to the score of the winner's team. The winner also is lead on the next trick. In a round tricks are played until each player has no cards left.
There is a more detailed explanation on wikipedia and a german explanation on jassa.at.
My data model for the player looks something like this
data Player = Player
    { playerID :: PlayerID
    , name :: String
    , cards :: Set Card
    , sendMessage :: Message -> IO ()
    , receiveAction :: IO Action
    }

this way I can just use different send and receive functions for like command line or network players.

*

*I would like the represent the game as a state machine with a pure update function, however in most states there is only one action from only one player that is valid and so i think that in the update function a big part is just handling invalid inputs.

I don't know what would be the best way to represent these parts of the game state.

*The Players.

*

*My first idea was to use a simple list and rotate this list every time so the current player is always the head. This is easy to do, but i also think it's easy for something to go wrong, like what if the list is empty, or there is only one player and so on...

*Use an Array for the players and use the index for the current player. This has the advantage that to get to the next player I just have to increase the index. Somewhere i have to use mod to cycle the array but that's not really a problem. I also tried this with XDataKinds to have the size of the array on the type level and so the nextPlayer function can handel the mod. This also has the advantage that for the teams I can just use the even and odd player indices. But with this i have to store a extra Map from playerID or index to the cards of the players. So now the array and map can get out of sync.

*Trick
I am not sure if i should store a list of played cards and who played them or just a record with the lead, highest card, winner and the value of the played cards and keep track of all played cards in a writer monad.

*Rounds and Tricks
This is kinda the same for both, should i store a list with all played rounds and tricks or only the current round and trick and save the sum of the points from the previous rounds/tricks

A: There is temptation to have the type checker prove your program is perfect. However, that will become an endless pursuit. There really are not the hours in the day to spend teaching a computer how to be sure what you're sure is sure is for sure for every surety.
What I do is start with some way of solving the problem and then learn as I go what the pain points are. Which mistakes am I actually prone to making? In your case, I would implement the game (or part of) in some way I can figure out, and then from that experience I will know how to do it better.
cycle :: [a] -> [a] takes a list and repeats it forever. You can do this for your players and take the head of the list forever.
For non-empty lists there is Data.List.NonEmpty.
A way to only construct valid game states is to define an abstract data type. Rather than exporting the data constructors for a type, you only export functions of your own definition which can construct the type. That way, you can do whatever (runtime) checking or fixing you want.
Another tool is unit testing. Encoding propositions as types is difficult, especially in Haskell, and so the vast majority will not be. Instead, you can use property-based unit testing to recover a modicum of assurance.


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Wolves vs Cardiff | 5 things to know
Wolves fell to their first defeat in nine games in all competitions against Huddersfield Town on Tuesday night, but despite the result, Nuno Espirito Santo's side still ended up climbing the Premier League table to seventh. Here are five things to look out for at Molineux on Saturday as Wolves look to get back to winning ways against Cardiff City.
1. RUDDY GETS THE NOD
Nuno Espirito Santo confirmed John Ruddy will start between the sticks for the first time in the Premier League this season. Rui Patricio has been in goal for every minute of league action this season, but Ruddy has been given the nod, with Nuno keen to keep his goalkeeper sharp ahead of an important FA Cup quarter final in two weeks' time. Ruddy last played a league game against Sheffield Wednesday in April 2017 but has since kept three cup clean sheets this term. It means Nuno is making at least one change to the side which lost to Huddersfield, will there be more?
As for the opposition, with multiple players absent from their recent defeats to Watford and Everton, Cardiff expect to have a fully-fit squad for the visit to Molineux on Saturday. This means Neil Warnock should be able to call on Victor Camarasa, Oumar Niasse and Joe Ralls after they played no part in recent matches, while Harry Arter found himself on the bench against Everton, so could the midfielder be in for a recall to the starting 11?
2. THE HISTORY BOOKS
When delving into the top flight history books, prior to the creation of the Premier League, the records favour Wolves against Cardiff. Saturday will be the first top division meeting between the two clubs at Molineux since a 1-1 draw on 23rd September 1961. Ted Farmer scored Wolves' goal on the day, while Alan Harrington was Cardiff's goal scorer. Overall, the Bluebirds have only won one of their seven top flight trips to Molineux, drawing three and losing the other three. That solitary victory arrived on New Year's Eve of 1955 at their old home, Ninian Park, however Wolves had won the corresponding fixture 9-1. For Warnock individually, he brought his QPR side to Molineux in the Premier League in September 2011, when he masterminded a 3-0 victory. Saturday will be just his second Premier League visit to Molineux as a manager.
3. DEFENDERS AMONG THE GOALS
In those previous five matches against Cardiff, four of Wolves' goals have come through defenders. Two of those goals came from Danny Batth in a 3-1 victory at Molineux in April 2017 (the other was scored by Helder Costa), while the other two – both coming in the separate 2-1 defeats at the Cardiff City Stadium in 2016 and 2018 – were notched by Matt Doherty. The Irishman has had his shooting boots on this season, netting on six occasions, while making eight assists in Premier League and FA Cup fixtures. The attacking threat of the defender has already made him a hit among Fantasy Premier League players, and with the defensive scoring record Wolves have against Cardiff – of which he has been a big part of – this weekend's game might by one to give the flying wing-back a place among your team.
4. CAV JOINS THE 100 CLUB
Wolves named an unchanged starting 11 for the 12th time in the Premier League this season in Tuesday night's defeat to Huddersfield Town, more than any other side, and one of the positives which came out that game was Ivan Cavaleiro making his 100th appearance for the club. Coming on in the 66th minute in place of Diogo Jota, the Portuguese international worked hard to get Wolves going in the game, but to no avail. With no fresh injury worries for Wolves heading into Saturday afternoon's clash with Cardiff, has Cavaleiro done enough to convince Nuno to rotate his starting line-up?
5. ROLLERCOASTER RIDE
There have been plenty of ups and downs for both Wolves and Cardiff in the previous meetings between the two sides, with the Wanderers coming out on top on more occasions than this weekend's visitors to Molineux. Wolves have claimed 28 previous victories compared to Cardiff's 20, while 14 games have ended in draws. During the past five games, both teams have alternated wins, with Cardiff being victorious in December 2016, before Wolves won in April 2017. Cardiff won 2-1 at Molineux in August 2017 but Wolves took the spoils 1-0 in April last year – after the Bluebirds missed two penalties in added time. Cardiff won 2-1 at home earlier on this season, so will Saturday's result go the way of the form book? Hopefully for Wolves supporters – and captain Conor Coady – it will.
#WOLCAR
Podence | Wolves won't be 'surprised again' by Brentford
"I love being here. The family that we are building, all the club, it's been fantastic for me, so I'm very happy."
Pedro Neto


We spent the last couple years using the ZyXEL ZyWALL 2WG after encountering major compatibility and configuration challenges with a Cisco RV220W. Although Cisco is very slow to update its firmware and clients (sometimes giving the impression of being abandonware), two years was enough time for there to be some changes. The QuickVPN client now works on Windows 7 64-bit (that was a known issue), and firmware has been updated. Given the changes, we decided to try out the CISCO SYSTEMS RV180W-A-K9-NA Wireless N VPN Router.
The ZyWALL needed to be replaced. Although it "generally worked," wireless connections would be dropped regularly and require a reconnect, multiple users could not VPN from a single remote location, and one of our staff had frequent VPN connection problems. Inconsistent issues are some of the hardest to troubleshoot, and having three of them simply meant that the router was no longer an ideal solution for our office.
Because all SMB VPN are cheap, and this appeared to have a 50/50 chance of working. Amazon reviews showed it at 2.5 stars when we purchased (non-wireless version is rated higher). Netgear small business is also stuck at 3 stars, and even the low-end Sonicwalls get panned. In my research, it appeared that anything under $500 is really hit-or-miss, and the ratings were only high on products when there were not many reviews (i.e., the misses had not been reported yet). That might be cynical, but it did not seem like there was any amazing solution in the SMB space. If there were, one of the giants would probably gobble it up, repackage it, and charge more. So I went into this configuration knowing that half of the people who did the same thing wanted to throw the router away afterwards. Fortunately, the specs look pretty good and should theoretically support our small office (datasheet).
As with the previous VPN installations, there were some bumps in the road.
Pre-firmware upgrade problems: Before upgrading the firmware, problems included inability to access remote network after successful QuickVPN connection, a "certificate cannot be found" error with QuickVPN, and an inability to get standard IPSEC tunnels to connect using third-party client software.
Firmware upgrade problem: Upgrading the firmware with a configuration in place broke the interface. Eventually, with some grumbling, I reset it to factory settings and manually configured it. The interface was fine after the settings were reentered.
QuickVPN tweaks: Upgrading the firmware and manually entering the configuration from scratch resolved the challenges I had with QuickVPN, so I would strongly encourage you to go that route.
Existing Shrew Soft tutorial failed: This tutorial was designed for the SA 500, and the differences (or the updates to Shrew Soft) made it inadequate for configuring the RV180W. However, the configuration described below came from a merger of this tutorial with our current ZyWALL configuration.
QuickVPN connected easily with the updated router firmware. However, it is a black box solution with no configuration options. It was able to access the remote network except for one key system that had two network cards (i.e., to provide connectivity fail-over). Due to the way that QuickVPN handled the client IP address (it appeared to pass through the remote LAN's IP address), our dual-network device was unable to route packets back to the client. Because of the importance of that network resource and the lack of access to QuickVPN configurations, we quickly turned to a more direct IPSEC VPN option, which is outlined below.
The following is the (redacted) vpn configuration file we used. Note that there are several settings that need to be changed for your environment: the domain name, the manual IP address, the pre-shared key (from the "Authentication > Credentials" tab), and the remote network topology (from the "Policy" tab).
The router obviously needs to have a matching configuration. Go through a Basic VPN Setup, and then you can edit the settings to match the ShrewSoft configuration above.
The above configuration references using the User Database. To configure the user database, click on the "VPN Users" link in the left navigation. When adding a user, assign them to the XAUTH protocol and enable them.
Adjust the .vpn file for each user so that they get their own IP address. The .vpn file can contain your Pre-Shared Key and all other information except for the user name and password. You can write a simple script to auto-generate the per-user .vpn files to manage the IP assignment, or you can adjust the instructions above to use DHCP. In either case, the client setup is quick and easy once you align the settings between the RV180W and the ShrewSoft VPN Client.


Power Play is a cleanse rich in healthy fat, a powerhouse of fuel for your muscles and energy systems. Now you can workout AND cleanse at the same time!
Start the detox process with Alpha Green to support the liver, and mid-morning move on to protein-infused Marathon and energy- enhancer Staminator, beverages that are infused with the herb Schizandra berry. Schizandra is an adaptogen that helps support the adrenal glands, which in turn give you resiliency and stamina.
Next is Trainer, our delicious chocolate protein shake developed for muscle recovery. The afternoon juice Immunition and our Energy shot provide the antioxidants needed to repair your over-worked muscles. Plus an extra shot of Turmeric, a potent anti-inflammatory, will help put out the fire from post-workout soreness!
We end the day with a well-earned Almond Chill to help you relax for a good night's sleep.


Started in 2006, WEAVES is an effort to promote the excellent workmanship, colour combinations and fine quality of Indian handlooms. It is also a step to help weavers earn their livelihood through their traditional profession and pass the skills from generation to generation keeping the weaving tradition alive. It creates a marketing platform for weavers to sell their products directly to customers all across the country.
WEAVES, has traditional Indian handlooms in cotton, silk and other natural fibres that are known for their richness, exquisiteness, variety and fine quality which are an integral part of Indian culture. Passage of time has brought about a change in the weaves, patterns and designs boasting of glamour, magnificence and exquisiteness but the importance of handlooms still remains the same.
WEAVES has a unique collection of sarees, dresses and dress materials, kurtas, kurthis, stoles, dupattas, bedsheets, home linen and many more. It covers variety from every nook and corner of the country and offers something for every age group. From kids, college students, office goers to elders, there is something for every age group.
Where - Pebble, Palace Grounds, Bangalore. gate no 9.
Innovative curated flea market + Live painting + Yarn bombed performance art + Live music + home made food and more. And all this under the starry sky and a beautiful banyan tree.


Well, I did get home in time to watch my widget, and election coverage on four websites and two live video streams. It was a crazy day at the county clerk's office in Rio Arriba. That office did an excellent job looking out for the rights of voters; the craziness was due to rogue campaigners who went within 100 feet of the polling place, some misunderstandings about registration, and one insane situation where a former felon was told by a parole officer that he couldn't get cleared to vote unless he voted for McCain.
Then I came home, burned toast (toaster is broken), set off the smoke alarm, and ate in front of my computer (we don't get television - no antenna, no cable). I am happy to see the outcome. When I was a kid, I remember having some teenagers throw rocks at our house, ring our doorbell, and shout racial epithets at my Asian father. I am, frankly, stunned that my child will be born after we've elected and inaugurated our first minority president. S/he won't even remember the Obama presidency. It'll be taught in his/her history class. This isn't why I supported Obama, but it's quite a bonus.


eh cool la. but i don't think tmnet will accept the report generated from this leh. they probably ended up asking you to use the one in streamyx main page with the speed-o-meter.
I just reliased that my topic is in the wrong section... eh.. paiseh..
I know my 512k RM66 like can get 414kbps, a fast one. But to International line like Aussia or US, or UK, I get less than 200kbps... meaning Tmnet is lying to us.
I tried it twice, first time got 304kbps for download, 312kbps for upload. Second time, download was 401kbps, upload was 306kbps.
Youth is like diamonds in the sun...and diamonds are forever.
that speed, is it the link I gave below or Tmnet own tester?
It's the link that you gave me.
I tried again, I got a 435kbps for download, 311kbps for upload. I'm subscriped to the RM 77 512kbps + modem.
It should be reliable cause third party sites like this normally are not biased.
Take for example the TMNet speedometer that they insist us to try on, in measures only the speed from our computer directly to their computer/server in West Malaysia. Of course the speed is fast.
But normally internet lag happens when the data is being sent out from our country. So if you can get good result from the test, it means your internet line is good and reliable.


I remember the combination of delight and wonder I felt when my baby sister's nose turned an adorable shade of orange. My mother explained that her curious complexion was due to an overdose of sweet potatoes and carrots. From that point on I made it a point to never go too far with my love for orange vegetables. A discolored nose was cute on a baby, but not fashionable for a six-year-old.
I love sweet potatoes. I love them roasted with salt, butter, and sage, cut into fries, mashed with cinnamon, heck, I'll even get into that whole marshmallow brown sugar territory.
I have utmost respect for this humble tuber. After all, it is without a doubt one of the most versatile vegetables you will find in the produce section. It can be savory or sweet. It will happily become soup, pies, waffles, or biscuits. The possibilities are limitless! Let us no more give into the erroneous notion that this superb tuber is only for overly sweet holiday casseroles. Sweet potato fans unite! Join the Beta CaroTEAM today! Heehee… I find myself very amusing at times.
Oh come on, let's just make some biscuits.
Before we go any further I should mention that these biscuits are drop biscuits - meaning that there is no rolling or cutting involved. We just pull a quick batter together and use an ice cream scoop to portion out our biscuits. Drop biscuits are certainly different from the fluffy buttermilk biscuits your grandmother baked, but they still deserve to have their place in the culinary world.
For those of you who are intimidated by biscuit making, these are a good way to begin.
While the biscuits bake we whip up a batch of honey butter. I could put honey butter on everything. We are also going to fry up a bit of ham. I used a thickly sliced black forest ham - I like the contrast between the salty ham and the sweet butter.
When the biscuits have cooled slightly, spread on the butter - don't be stingy, and layer with ham.
This is my weekend - well this, plus a mug of hot chocolate, flannel shirts, and good company. May your weekend be slow and meaningful, may you begin well.
Combine honey and butter in a medium bowl. Use an electric mixer to whip until the ingredients are well combined and the butter is fluffy. Place in a small bowl and cover with plastic; refrigerate until ready to use.
In a large bowl whisk to combine flour, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt. Toss the cubed butter into the flour mixture and use the tips of your fingers, or a pastry cutter to work the butter into the flour, breaking it up into pea-sized pieces.
In a separate bowl, combine milk, vinegar, and sweet potato puree; stir until well combined. Pour the mixture into the bowl of dry ingredients and use a spatula to fold the dry mixture into the wet. Mix until just combined, being careful to not over mix. The mixture should look homogenous, but not completely smooth.
Use a 2-ounce ice cream scoop to portion out the batter. Place the biscuits directly onto a baking sheet lined with parchment.
Bake for 15-20 minutes or until fluffy and golden. Allow to cool slightly before slicing. While the biscuits are cooling, prepare the ham.
Place a nonstick frying pan over medium high heat. Fry ham, in batches, for about 1 minute on each side. The goal here is twofold: you want to develop the flavor a bit by browning each side as well as heating the meat through.
Slice each biscuit in half and butter each side with honey butter. Place several slices of ham in each biscuit and serve immediately. Enjoy!
*These steps may all be done in advance. The puree can be stored in an airtight container and refrigerated until ready to use. If you are making these biscuits for breakfast I would recommend making the puree the night before to save a bit of time in the morning.