It's hard to decide whether to describe Lark Lane as an eat street, as a shopping destination or as an entertainment hotspot. In truth, this quaint little lane in South Liverpool is all of those things. The media tend to describe it as somewhere between a bohemian oasis and a hipster's paradise. I just call it home. It's the perfect place to grab brunch with your brood, relax with a drink with your friends or simply wander through on your way to the park. Have a read, see what you think, and the next time you're looking for somewhere to hang out at the weekend, maybe you'll choose the lane.
Whether you feel like getting your Greek on or are in a Mexican frame of mind, you're pretty much guaranteed to find a Lark Lane restaurant to suit. The nature of the lane means that many of the businesses act as restaurants in the day and bars at night, but there are a few designated restaurants knocking about. Good picks for a meal include the Red Fort (Indian) and Chy (Chinese), although for me at least, there's really no beating the Pad Thai at Chilli Banana. More relaxed eateries include Bistro Noir, Esteban, Marantos, Rhubarb and Que Pasa Cantina.
A handful of the eateries on the lane fall more into the cafe category, and again, you can expect a good choice. Local favourites include Raggas - a Caribbean eatery serving up the most delightful veggie curry (among other dishes). There's also the fabulous Green Days - a vegetarian cafe above 13 Lark Lane Gallery, the Moon and Pea Bistro - a retro-style eatery known for its scrumptious breakfasts and cheeky slices of cake, and the Sri Lankan Deli - a newcomer to the lane that is quickly growing a local fan base courtesy of their homemade vegetable samosas.
And then there are the bars. Unless there's an event on in the park, Lark Lane tends to be a bit sleepy during the day, but that all changes when night falls and the laid back restaurants crank up the tunes a notch and welcome the revellers. Hotspots include the American-style Meat and Liquor and Que Pasa Cantina where you'll find a relaxed vibe and one of the few beer gardens on the lane. Plus, there's Keith's Wine Bar - an old timer that's been around since 1979. The paint is peeling from the walls, but no one seems to care after a glass or three of red.
If you can drag yourself away from the lure of the food and drink on offer, there's more than a few shops to explore on the lane. As you might expect, you won't find high street names down here (with the exception of the Co-Op fiasco). Instead you can delve into a treasure trove of galleries, antique shops, and delightful one of a kind stores. Don't miss Larks - an old fashioned gift emporium with a vintage chic vibe, GASP - where kitsch, classic and retro items are the order of the day, and Arts Hub 47 - a creative co-op showcasing the work of local artists.
If you like your eggs straight from the hen's proverbial, then you'll want to swing by the Lark Lane Farmer's Market. Held on the fourth Saturday of the month at the Aigburth Road end of the lane, it's the place to go for an excellent choice of locally produced cheeses, specialist meats, flowers, plants, coffee, and -- you guessed it -- lots more. Plus, there's cake and lots of it. At the risk of being mistaken for a pensioner, you'll want to take a granny trolley along. Either that or break your back trying to get all your goodies home in one piece. Your call.
The proximity of Lark Lane to Sefton Park typically means that when there's something on in the park, you can expect the lane to be heaving with visitors. It is after all a natural next step when events such as the Liverpool Food and Drink Festival, Africa Oye, and LIMF come to a close. There was some talk during 2013 about putting on a Lark Lane Festival, but the pesky officials at the council soon put an end to that chatter. To that end, specific Lark Lane events tend to be limited to the Lark Lane Book Club and the monthly arts and crafts markets at the Old Police Station.
I hope you'll come and check out Lark Lane for yourself sometime soon. Perhaps you'll love this charming Aigburth hangout just as much as I do. For more information, check out the Lark Lane Guide.


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This monochromatic look book by Keiko Lynn is to die for, I especially love this pink combo!
Stephanie's post about sponsored content was so informative and I learned a lot about how bloggers receive and work with sponsored posts.
Two songs I am LOVING right now: Shawn Mendez's "In My Blood" and Carrie Underwood's "Cry Pretty"
These heart sunglasses are all the rage this spring and I am so tempted to buy them in every color!
I always LOVE Rebecca's looks, but I especially love this Milkshake + Diner Look.
I am on the book launch team for Girl Defined's newest book "Love Defined" and I am soooo excited about the book and the content!
My best friend and I went to the movies last weekend to see "Midnight Sun" and it was sooo good! I had seen the trailer and knew just a little bit about the story, but I didn't expect to be crying by the end of it.
These White bauble ball drop earrings have been my favorite spring jewelry piece so far.
I am kind of obsessed with jumpsuits and this bright 60's inspired Jumpsuit from SHEIN is to die for (and I just ordered it).
Krista of Covering the Bases shared an older post of hers on Insta. Stories about how to take better blog photos and I thought you all would find it helpful!
Krista also introduced me to "ice rolling" and I bought this ice roller that I have been using daily!
Lilly James is one of my favorite British Actresses and she is staring in a new British period drams called "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society" that looks sooooo good and has so many Downton Abbey characters like Matthew Goode, Jessica Brown Finley, and Penelope Wilton.
I have currently been reading the thrilling "If I Run" trilogy Seriesand just started the last book "If I live" which just came out in March.....I can't wait to see how it ends!
I love how you do these recent faves posts and hope you keep doing them!
Did you know that Netflix is making a movie (or series) based on All the boys I've loved before?


text:
The Balkans in 2003 and 2008
The Balkans in 2003
Macedonia is a useful microcosm of the post-communist countries of the Balkan (self-importantly renamed by its denizens "Southeast Europe"). Prodded by its pro-Western president, Boris Trajkovski, it vocally - though implausibly - aspires to NATO and European Union membership. Its socialist prime minister - newly-elected in a remarkably smooth transfer of power - has just inked a landmark "social contract" with the trade unions.
Macedonia boasts of being an island of modernity and stability in an otherwise volatile (and backward) region. Indeed, in a sign of the times, Macedonian cellphones were rendered Internet-enabled this month by Mobimak, one of the two providers of wireless communications services.
Yet, Macedonia's nationalist opposition boycotts both parliament and the peace process launched by the Ohrid Framework Agreement in August 2001. Macedonia's biggest minority, the Albanians - at least 30 percent of its population, as a recently concluded census should reveal, unless blatantly tampered with - are again restless. Though an erstwhile group of terrorists (or "freedom fighters") made it to the legislature and the government, splinter factions threaten to reignite 2001's civil war. Inter-ethnic hostilities are in the cards.
The country's new government, egged on by a worried international community, has embarked on an unprecedented spree of arrests intended to visibly combat a paralyzing wave of corruption and crime. Several privatization deals were annulled as well. Regrettably, though quite predictably, this newfound righteous zeal is aimed only at the functionaries and politicians of the opposition which constituted the former government.
In the meantime, Macedonia's economy is in tatters. At least one quarter of its population is below the poverty line. Unemployment is an unsustainable 31 percent. The trade deficit - c. $800 million - is a shocking 28 percent of its puny gross domestic product. Macedonia survives largely on remittances, charity, aid and loans doled out by weary donors, multilateral financing institutions and friendly countries. It is slated to sign yet another IMF standby agreement this coming February.
And this is the situation throughout most of the region. Macedonia is no forlorn exception - it is the poignant rule. Flurries of grandiose meetings, self-congratulatory conferences and interminable conventions between the desperate leaders of this benighted corner of Europe fail to disguise this hopeless prognosis.
Decrepit infrastructure, a debilitating brain drain, venal and obstructive bureaucracies, all-pervasive kleptocracies, dysfunctional institutions, reviving enmities, shoddy treatment of minorities and a reigning sense of fatalistic resignation - are cross-border phenomena.
International commitment to the entire region is dwindling. The British, German and American contingents within NATO intend to withdraw forces from Bosnia and Kosovo next year. Aid to refugees in Kosovo and Croatia may cease altogether as cash allotted to the United Nation's for this purpose has dried up.
Both Serbia and Montenegro have endured botched presidential elections. Disenchantment with much-derided politics and much-decried politicians is evident in the abysmally low turnout in all the recent rounds of voting. Tensions are growing as Yugoslavia is again slipping into a constitutional crisis. The new union of Serbia and Montenegro is a recipe for instability and constant friction. A lackluster economy doesn't help - industrial production has nudged up by an imperceptible 2.5 percent from a vanishingly low basis.
Political and economic transformations are likely to stall in Yugoslavia as nationalism reasserts itself and the reform camp disintegrates. Solemn mutual declarations of peace and prosperity notwithstanding, tension with neighboring countries - notably Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina - will flare up.
Despite some private sector dynamism and the appearance of law and order, Kosovo's unemployment rate is an impossible 57 percent and more than half of its destitute inhabitants survive beneath the poverty line. Its status unresolved and with diminishing international profile, it fails to attract the massive flows of foreign investment needed merely to maintain its utilities and mines. It is a veritable powder keg adjacent to a precariously balanced Macedonia.
Bosnians of all designations are rearming as well. The country has become a center of human trafficking, illicit weapons trading, smuggling and worse. The IMF, the World Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) are doing their best to resuscitate the moribund economy, but hitherto to little avail. The World Bank alone is expected to plough $102 million into the ailing economy. A dearth of foreign investment and decreasing foreign aid leave the ramshackle country exposed to a soaring balance of payments deficit.
Albanians are busy putting their crumbling house in order. The customs service is revamped in collaboration with concerned neighbors such as Italy. Transport infrastructure will connect Albania to Greece, Bulgaria, Macedonia and even Yugoslavia. Albania's air control system will be modernized next year. Still, a sapping budget deficit of almost 7 percent of GDP ties the government's hands.
Indeed, infrastructural projects represent the Balkan's Great White Hope. Transport corridors will crisscross the region and connect Bulgaria to Macedonia, Greece, Albania, Yugoslavia and Hungary. A Balkan-wide electricity grid is in the works and might even solve the chronic shortages in countries such as Albania.
Yet, not all is grim.
The Balkans is clearly segmented. On the one hand, countries like Macedonia, Albania, Yugoslavia and Bosnia seem to be cruelly doomed to a Sisyphean repetition of their conflicts and the destitution they entail. Slovenia, Croatia, Bulgaria and Romania, on the other hand, are either EU candidates or would be members. Slovenia - though it vehemently denies its regional affiliation - would be the first Balkan country to join the European Union in May 2004. Romania and Bulgaria are slated to follow it in 2007.
So much of Croatia's economy - especially its banking system - is in European hands that it is a de facto EU member, if far from being a de jure one. It, too, relies on IMF financing, though: the latest $140 million standby arrangement was just initialed.
Croatia's external debt is out of control and it needs all the foreign exchange it can lay its hands on. Labor unrest is growing and likely to mushroom in the dark winter months ahead - despite impressive strides in industrial production, up 10 percent year on year in November. Additionally, Croatia is intimately linked to the German market. It is an important export market for its goods and services (such as construction). Should the German economy stagnate, the Croats may suffer a recession.
Relationships with Slovenia are not too improved either. Several rounds of incendiary verbiage were exchanged between these uneasy neighbors over the fate of money owed to Croats by Slovenian banks and a co-owned nuclear facility. These - and trade issues - will be satisfactorily resolved next year.
Bulgaria has descended from euphoria, upon the success of the Simeon II National Movement in the June 2001 elections, to unmitigated gloom. It is besieged by scandals, skyrocketing energy prices, a totteringly balanced - albeit IMF sanctioned - budget, a growing current account deficit, surging unemployment and a privatization process in suspended animation.
Next year will be better, though: the telecoms, the electricity utility and its regional branches, the State Savings Bank and tobacco firms are likely to be disposed of, sold to consortia of foreign - mainly Greek - and domestic investors. GDP is already growing at a respectable annual clip of 4.5 percent.
Public debt declined by 15 percent in the last 4 years. Households' real income and consumption will both continue their double digit takeoff. Moody's recently upgraded the country's credit rating to "positive" and Standard and Poor followed suit and elevated the rank of four local banks.
Next year's big positive surprises - and erstwhile miscarriages - share a common language: Romanian.
Romania's NATO membership in 2003 will seal the astounding turnaround of this bleak country. Almost two thirds of its burgeoning trade is already with the EU. Unemployment dropped by a significant 2.4 percent this year. Some commentators foresee a snap election in the first half of the year to capitalize on these achievements, but this is unlikely.
Recently, the IMF has unblocked funds, though reluctantly. This time, though, Romania will keep its promises to the Fund and implement a rigorous austerity and enterprise reform package despite the vigorous opposition of unionized labor and assorted virulent nationalists assembled in the Greater Romania Party.
The tax system is already rationalized - corporate tax is down to 25 percent and a value added tax was introduced. The government currently consumes merely 6 percent of GDP. Privatization proceeds have shot up - admittedly from a dismal starting point. The Ministry of Tourism alone enjoyed an influx of $40 million of foreign direct investment. Some major properties - such as Romtelecom - will go on the block next year.
Both Moody's and the Japan Credit Rating Agency have upgraded the credit ratings of the country and its banks. GDP is predicted by the Economist Intelligence Unit to grow by 4.6 percent next year and by a hefty 5 percent in 2004. In purchasing power parity terms, it is already up 20 percent on 1998. Foreign exchange reserves have doubled since 1998 to c. $6 billion.
Even Moldova is affected by the positive spill-over and has considerably improved its ties with the IMF. It is pursuing restructuring and market-orientated reforms. It may succeed to reschedule its Paris Club debts next year. The United States - the country's largest donor - will likely increase its contribution from the current $44 million. The Moldovan president met United States President George Bush last week and came out assured of American support.
The Balkan in 2003 will be an immeasurably better place than its was in 1993, both politically and economically. Still, progress has been patchy and unevenly divided. Some countries have actually regressed. Others seem to be stuck in a time warp. A few have authentically broken with their past. While only five years ago it would have been safe to lump together as basket cases all the post-communist Balkan countries, with the exception of Slovenia - this is no longer true. It is cause for guarded optimism.
Interview granted to Barry Scott Zellen, Deputy Editor, "Strategic Insights", and Research Editor of the Arctic Security Project at the Center for Contemporary Conflict.
Q. During the 1990s, American and NATO forces directly engaged, through diplomatic and military means, the challenge of state collapse and the resulting explosion of ethnic and tribal violence that accompanied state failure. What do you think were the main lessons learned, through these experiences, for decision-makers in the western world?
A. No nation-state collapsed in the 1990s. Only implausible and unsustainable multi-cultural, multi-ethnic experiments (such as Czechoslovakia, the USSR, and Yugoslavia) did. The lessons the West has learned were simple enough: in some parts of the world ethnically homogeneous nation states are stable players and to be preferred to other, more varied types of polities (hence Western support of Kosovo's independence); the combination of bayonets and butter works and yields peace and prosperity (e.g., in the Balkans); sovereignty should be subjected to the continuous scrutiny of the international community and to armed intervention to forestall humanitarian catastrophes; international consensus and coalitions work (as in Bosnia or in the first Gulf War), while, in an increasingly multipolar world, unilateral action doesn't (see America's ill-fated Iraq war).
2. Now that America has embarked upon its Global War on Terror, often taking unilateral military action and asserting its intent to pre-empt emergent threats, do you believe its planners and decision-makers have forgotten the lessons of the 1990s, and of the Balkans in particular?
A. Most definitely. Consider Iraq: had these lessons been implemented, Iraq should have been broken down to three, ethnically-homogenous mini-states (or autonomies), perhaps within a confederation or a common market; a massive, Marshall Plan type of economic reconstruction and development program would have been on offer; and the USA should and would have refrained from unilateral action.
Consider Israel: had these lessons been recalled, Israel would have been coerced into acquiescing in the creation of a viable Palestinian state and forced to retreat from most of its territorial acquisitions during the Six Days War; the West would have dangled EU membership or association in front of the belligerent parties; a massive economic development program would have been proposed and financed; and the USA would have never forfeited its role as an honest broker by allying itself so visibly with one of the parties to the conflict (Israel).
3. When Yugoslavia broke up, the emergence of smaller sovereign and independent nation-states from its former multinational fabric was facilitated by the diplomatic support of many major powers in the West, suggesting to some degree a shared responsibility for the resulting crisis. Do you think in the years since, the risks of state collapse along underlying subnational, ethnic or sectarian fault lines have been forgotten by some of those very same western powers?
A. I don't regard the disintegration of multi-ethnic and multi-cultural entities to be a risk. On the very contrary, I consider the existence of artificial entities, comprised of multiple ethnicities, to be a destabilizing geopolitical factor. In some parts of the world (Europe, the Middle East, Africa), ethnically-homogeneous nation-states are the only long-term viable and peaceful solution. Inevitably, the breakdown of polities sometimes entails gory conflict and ethnic cleansing. But this is not a law of nature: witness the peaceful dissolution of Czechoslovakia and the USSR, for instance. Yugoslavia's bloody demise was the exception and was brought on by its leadership's refusal to let go of a multi-ethnic past.
4. When the United States intervened to prevent further ethnic violence in the Balkans, and deployed military forces to bolster peacekeeping operations with American muscle to ensure that the peace forged at Dayton held firm, it was motivated to some degree by a humanitarian impulse, and the subsequent years saw the concept of humanitarian interventions come into favor again after the earlier failure in Somalia had left many Americans less than enthusiastic about the concept. In the post-9/11 years, do you see a very different America, motivated by different values, more intent on breaking states to pre-empt the emergence of future strategic threats than in fixing them? Does the Iraqi situation also suggest a rapid deterioration of America's strategic memory, having only recently emerged from its Balkan experiences as a proponent of humanitarian intervention to prevent genocide, ethnic cleansing, and other human rights abuses -- and then, after 9/11, quickly becoming a more neoimperial power intent of remaking foreign states in its own democratic image, and seemingly oblivious to the complex ethnic topology underlying the many sovereign states of the Middle East and South Asia whose borders do not correspond to or reflect an underlying demographic uniformity?
A. I never bought into the "humanitarian intervention" or "let's forge new democracies" smokescreens. The instigators of armed conflicts always resorted to narratives: moral-ethical, millennial, religious, national, political, or mystical-metaphysical. Communism was about extracting the proletariat from the abusive clutches of capitalism; Napoleon's murderous spree was couched in the values of the French Revolution and he, too, claimed to be spreading democracy throughout Europe; at first, Hitler presented himself as the natural protector of oppressed German minorities in Central and Eastern Europe.
The truth is that nations act out of self-interest. America's involvement in the Balkans was not motivated by idealism, spurious or real. The passing of the USSR left a power vacuum in Europe and elsewhere, in erstwhile theatres of the Cold War. The USA stepped in to make clear who is the new sheriff in town and to establish its credentials as the sole superpower. Bosnia-Herzegovina and, later, Kosovo served merely to illustrate that saying "no" to the USA was not an option and that defiant dissidents in the New World Order will be severely penalized. The "humanitarian intervention" cover story was good for forging international coalitions and was thus used only twice and exclusively in Europe (America stood by and watched the Rwandan genocide unfold, for instance). Now, no longer in need of partners (or so it believes), the USA doesn't even bother to pretend any more.
5. The aftermath of the Iraq invasion, which quickly devolved from a swift and decisive strategic victory to a festering and protracted insurgency waged by new, sub-state opponents driven by a sectarian or ideological vision, has provided fertile ground for the rise of a new terror threat in the formerly stable Iraqi polity: what does this suggest in terms of the strategic wisdom of America's post-9/11 policies, particularly its concept of strategic pre-emption?
A. Iraq was never a stable polity. Its history is strewn with coups, massacres, insurrections, and strife. Like many other Middle Eastern "states", Iraq was invented by the British and, being ethnically-heterogeneous, never amounted to much. America's invasion of Iraq was about securing oil supplies and sea lanes and about establishing front bases in the fight against virulently anti-American militant Islam and its benefactors (e.g., Iran). Seen from this neocon point of view, America's invasion of Iraq is a strategic success. The USA is now in direct control of the entire Gulf. Even Iran does not dare confront the Americans openly. And the United States is aiming at the soft belly of a combative and resources-rich Russia. There was nothing the USA could have done to quell an insurgency in a region prone to such misconduct. It comes with the territory.
Q. What can the Balkan experiences of the 1990s teach us about the current world situation, the roots of terror, the causes of state failure, and the path toward peace and stability?
A. The 1990s in the Balkans have taught us, above all, that sustainable peace is a last resort. Peace among nations is the result of attrition and exhaustion, of mutual terror and actual bloodletting - not of amicable agreement and visionary stratagems. It took two world wars to make peace between France and Germany. By forcing an unwanted cessation of hostilities upon an unwilling populace in the early stages of every skirmish, the West ascertains the perpetuation of conflicts.
Wherever possible and applicable, the West should dangle economic carrots (such as EU membership) in front of the bloodied pugilists (although not ram them down their reluctant throats in shows of air superiority, as it did and still is doing in Serbia). Humanitarian aid should be provided and grants and credits for development to the deserving. But the military succor afforded by the likes of Germany to the likes of Croatia and by the benighted Americans to the most extreme elements in Kosovo served only to amplify and prolong the suffering and the warfare.
The West obstinately refused - and still does - to contemplate the only feasible solution to the spectrum of Balkan questions. Instead of convening a new Berlin Congress and redrawing the borders of the host of entities, quasi-entities and fraction entities that emerged with the disintegration of the Yugoslav Federation, the West foolishly and blindly adhered to unsustainable borders which reflect colonial decision making and ceasefire lines. In the absence of a colonizing power, only ethnically-homogeneous states can survive peacefully in the Balkans and elsewhere. The West should have strived to effect ethnic homogenization throughout the region by altering borders, encouraging population swaps and transfers and discouraging ethnic cleansing and forced assimilation ("ethnic denial").
But the West's missteps in the Balkans were not confined to the political and geopolitical realms.
The West (actually, America) has many long arms, the IMF and World Bank being the most prominent. These ostensible multilaterals have committed yet another strategic blunder. Instead of weaning their clientele - the post-Communist countries in transition - off central planning and command economics, they engaged in Washington-based micromanagement of their economies. The Bretton-Woods institutions have become all-pervasive, multi-tentacled approximations of the Communist party. They dictate policy, involve themselves in the minutest details of daily management, veto decisions (economic and non-economic), cajole and threaten governments, block private sector lending and compete in the international credit and investment markets.
The post-Communist countries in transition - and Iraq today - are like infants taking their first steps in the demanding world of free markets and capitalism. The multilateral financial institutions are the mother figures. Good mothers let go, encourage in the child a sense of independence, self-reliance, learning by mistakes and the predictability of just rewards and punishments. Bad mothers refuse to acknowledge the emerging boundaries of their off-spring. They reward clinging behaviour and punish every act of separation and individuation. They are overweening, doting, crushing figures. In short: they micromanage.
Q. Looking at historical what-ifs, do you believe that if the U.S. election of 2000 was decided in favor of Vice President Al Gore, who was a "humanitarian hawk" that had long sought to persuade President Clinton to engage the Balkans directly (and militarily), might America have pursued a different strategy after 9/11, and avoided military actions that with hindsight are now known to have induced state failure and ethnic violence in Iraq?
A. No. I don't believe that history is driven by "personalities". This is a dangerous outlook that gave humanity strongmen and tyrants. History and its processes and trends are the ineluctable outcomes of a dialectic. Whoever is the occupant of the White House, he would have probably acted the same. Granted, Gore would have more rigorously sought an international coalition to invade Iraq and he would have resorted more often and more forcefully to the "humanitarian intervention" narrative. But, he would have invaded Iraq (or Iran) all the same. The needs to secure energy supplies and safeguard shipping lanes are timeless and independent of the personal predilections of office-holders. The transition from a symmetrical Cold War to the asymmetrical threats posed by militants, terrorists, freedom fighters, and fundamentalists throws up geostrategic constraints that are as likely to have shackled and compelled Gore as they did Bush.
Q. And looking ahead, do the Balkan experiences, especially with regard to peacemaking and national reconciliation, offer a model that might help bring an end to the GWOT through the reconciliation of the state level and sub-state forces currently engaged in conflict?
A. In one word: no. The experience of the Yugoslav secession wars is applicable, perhaps, to the dissolution and disintegration of other multi-ethnic states, but it has little to teach us on how to cope with sub-state actors, such as militias, terrorists, freedom fighters, insurgents, fundamentalist religious militants, and so on.
The GWOT is not global. It is actually a localized or, at most, regional conflict between the West (and, really, the USA) and a few low-intensity warriors, who reside and operate in Muslim countries throughout Asia (and, to a far lesser extent, Africa).
Communism, Fascism, Nazism, and Religious Fundamentalism are as utopian as the classical Idea of Progress, which is most strongly reified by Western science and liberal democracy. All four illiberal ideologies firmly espouse a linear view of history: Man progresses by accumulating knowledge and wealth and by constructing ever-improving polities. Similarly, the classical, all-encompassing, idea of progress is perceived to be a "Law of Nature" with human jurisprudence and institutions as both its manifestations and descriptions. Thus, all ideas of progress are pseudo-scientific.
Still, there are some important distinctions between Communism, Fascism, Nazism, and Religious Fundamentalism, on the one hand, and Western liberalism, on the other hand:
All four totalitarian ideologies regard individual tragedies and sacrifices as the inevitable lubricant of the inexorable March Forward of the species. Yet, they redefine "humanity" (who is human) to exclude large groups of people. Communism embraces the Working Class (Proletariat) but not the Bourgeoisie, Nazism promotes one Volk but denigrates and annihilates others, Fascism bows to the Collective but viciously persecutes dissidents, Religious Fundamentalism posits a chasm between believers and infidels.
In these four intolerant ideologies, the exclusion of certain reviled groups of people is both a prerequisite for the operation of the "Natural Law of Progress" and an integral part of its motion forward. The moral and spiritual obligation of "real" Man to future generations is to "unburden" the Law, to make it possible for it to operate smoothly and in optimal conditions, with all hindrances (read: undesirables) removed (read: murdered).
All four ideologies subvert modernity (in other words, Progress itself) by using its products (technology) to exclude and kill "outsiders", all in the name of servicing "real" humanity and bettering its lot.
But liberal democracy has been intermittently guilty of the same sin. The same deranged logic extends to the construction and maintenance of nuclear weapons by countries like the USA, the UK, France, and Israel: they are intended to protect "good" humanity against "bad" people (e.g., Communists during the Cold war, Arabs, or failed states such as Iran). Even global warming is a symptom of such exclusionary thinking: the rich feel that they have the right to tax the "lesser" poor by polluting our common planet and by disproportionately exhausting its resources.
The fact is that, at least since the 1920s, the very existence of Mankind is being recurrently threatened by exclusionary ideas of progress. Even Colonialism, which predated modern ideologies, was inclusive and sought to "improve" the Natives" and "bring them to the White Man's level" by assimilating or incorporating them in the culture and society of the colonial power. This was the celebrated (and then decried) "White Man's Burden". That we no longer accept our common fate and the need to collaborate to improve our lot is nothing short of suicidal.
Islam is not merely a religion. It is also - and perhaps, foremost - a state ideology. It is all-pervasive and missionary. It permeates every aspect of social cooperation and culture. It is an organizing principle, a narrative, a philosophy, a value system, and a vade mecum. In this it resembles Confucianism and, to some extent, Hinduism.
Judaism and its offspring, Christianity - though heavily involved in political affairs throughout the ages - have kept their dignified distance from such carnal matters. These are religions of "heaven" as opposed to Islam, a practical, pragmatic, hands-on, ubiquitous, "earthly" creed.
Secular religions - Democratic Liberalism, Communism, Fascism, Nazism, Socialism and other isms - are more akin to Islam than to, let's say, Buddhism. They are universal, prescriptive, and total. They provide recipes, rules, and norms regarding every aspect of existence - individual, social, cultural, moral, economic, political, military, and philosophical.
At the end of the Cold War, Democratic Liberalism stood triumphant over the fresh graves of its ideological opponents. They have all been eradicated. This precipitated Fukuyama's premature diagnosis (the End of History). But one state ideology, one bitter rival, one implacable opponent, one contestant for world domination, one antithesis remained - Islam.
Militant Islam is, therefore, not a cancerous mutation of "true" Islam. On the contrary, it is the purest expression of its nature as an imperialistic religion which demands unmitigated obedience from its followers and regards all infidels as both inferior and avowed enemies.
The same can be said about Democratic Liberalism. Like Islam, it does not hesitate to exercise force, is missionary, colonizing, and regards itself as a monopolist of the "truth" and of "universal values". Its antagonists are invariably portrayed as depraved, primitive, and below par.
Such mutually exclusive claims were bound to lead to an all-out conflict sooner or later. The "War on Terrorism" is only the latest round in a millennium-old war between Islam and other "world systems".
Such interpretation of recent events enrages many. They demand to know (often in harsh tones):
Don't I see any difference between terrorists who murder civilians and regular armies in battle?
Both regulars and irregulars slaughter civilians as a matter of course. "Collateral damage" is the main outcome of modern, total warfare - and of low intensity conflicts alike.
There is a major difference between terrorists and soldiers, though:
Terrorists make carnage of noncombatants their main tactic - while regular armies rarely do. Such conduct is criminal and deplorable, whoever the perpetrator.
But what about the killing of combatants in battle? How should we judge the slaying of soldiers by terrorists in combat?
Modern nation-states enshrined the self-appropriated monopoly on violence in their constitutions and ordinances (and in international law). Only state organs - the army, the police - are permitted to kill, torture, and incarcerate.
Terrorists are trust-busters: they, too, want to kill, torture, and incarcerate. They seek to break the death cartel of governments by joining its ranks.
Thus, when a soldier kills terrorists and ("inadvertently") civilians (as "collateral damage") - it is considered above board. But when the terrorist decimates the very same soldier - he is decried as an outlaw.
Moreover, the misbehavior of some countries - not least the United States - led to the legitimization of terrorism. Often nation-states use terrorist organizations to further their geopolitical goals. When this happens, erstwhile outcasts become "freedom fighters", pariahs become allies, murderers are recast as sensitive souls struggling for equal rights. This contributes to the blurring of ethical percepts and the blunting of moral judgment.
So, would I rather live under sharia law? Don't you find Liberal Democracy vastly superior to Islam?
Superior, no. Different - of course. Having been born and raised in the West, I naturally prefer its standards to Islam's. Had I been born in a Muslim country, I would have probably found the West and its principles perverted and obnoxious.
The question is meaningless because it presupposes the existence of an objective, universal, culture and period independent set of preferences. Luckily, there is no such thing.
In this clash of civilization whose side am I on?
This is not a clash of civilizations. Western culture is inextricably intertwined with Islamic knowledge, teachings, and philosophy. Christian fundamentalists have more in common with Muslim militants than with East Coast or French intellectuals.
Muslims have always been the West's most defining Other. Islamic existence and "gaze" helped to mold the West's emerging identity as a historical construct. From Spain to India, the incessant friction and fertilizing interactions with Islam shaped Western values, beliefs, doctrines, moral tenets, political and military institutions, arts, and sciences.
This war is about world domination. Two incompatible thought and value systems compete for the hearts and minds (and purchasing power) of the denizens of the global village. Like in the Westerns, by high noon, either one of them is left standing - or both will have perished.
Where does my loyalty reside?
I am a Westerner, so I hope the West wins this confrontation. But, in the process, it would be good if it were humbled, deconstructed, and reconstructed. One beneficial outcome of this conflict is the demise of the superpower system - a relic of days bygone and best forgotten. I fully believe and trust that in militant Islam, the United States has found its match.
In other words, I regard militant Islam as a catalyst that will hasten the transformation of the global power structure from unipolar to multipolar. It may also commute the United States itself. It will definitely rejuvenate religious thought and cultural discourse. All wars do.
The West is not fighting al-Qaida. It is facing down the circumstances and ideas that gave rise to al-Qaida. Conditions - such as poverty, ignorance, disease, oppression, and xenophobic superstitions - are difficult to change or to reverse. Ideas are impossible to suppress. Already, militant Islam is far more widespread and established that any Western government would care to admit.
History shows that all terrorist groupings ultimately join the mainstream. Many countries - from Israel to Ireland and from East Timor to Nicaragua - are governed by former terrorists. Terrorism enhances social upward mobility and fosters the redistribution of wealth and resources from the haves to haves not.
Al-Qaida, despite its ominous portrayal in the Western press - is no exception. It, too, will succumb, in due time, to the twin lures of power and money. Nihilistic and decentralized as it is - its express goals are the rule of Islam and equitable economic development. It is bound to get its way in some countries.
The world of the future will be truly pluralistic. The proselytizing zeal of Liberal Democracy and Capitalism has rendered them illiberal and intolerant. The West must accept the fact that a sizable chunk of humanity does not regard materialism, individualism, liberalism, progress, and democracy - at least in their Western guises - as universal or desirable.
Live and let live (and live and let die) must replace the West's malignant optimism and intellectual and spiritual arrogance.
Edward K. Thompson, the managing editor of "Life" from 1949 to 1961, once wrote:
"'Life' must be curious, alert, erudite and moral, but it must achieve this without being holier-than-thou, a cynic, a know-it-all or a Peeping Tom."
The West has grossly and thoroughly violated Thompson's edict. In its oft-interrupted intercourse with these forsaken regions of the globe, it has acted, alternately, as a Peeping Tom, a cynic and a know it all. It has invariably behaved as if it were holier-than-thou. In an unmitigated and fantastic succession of blunders, miscalculations, vain promises, unkept threats and unkempt diplomats - it has driven the world to the verge of war and the regions it "adopted" to the threshold of economic and social upheaval.
Enamored with the new ideology of free marketry cum democracy, the West first assumed the role of the omniscient. It designed ingenious models, devised foolproof laws, imposed fail-safe institutions and strongly "recommended" measures. Its representatives, the tribunes of the West, ruled the plebeian East with determination rarely equaled by skill or knowledge.
Velvet hands couched in iron gloves, ignorance disguised by economic newspeak, geostrategic interests masquerading as forms of government, characterized their dealings with the natives. Preaching and beseeching from ever higher pulpits, they poured opprobrium and sweet delusions on the eagerly duped, naive, bewildered masses.
The deceit was evident to the indigenous cynics - but it was the failure that dissuaded them and others besides. The West lost its former colonies not when it lied egregiously, not when it pretended to know for sure when it surely did not know, not when it manipulated and coaxed and coerced - but when it failed.
To the peoples of these regions, the king was fully dressed. It was not a little child but an enormous debacle that exposed his nudity. In its presumptuousness and pretentiousness, feigned surety and vain clichés, imported economic models and exported cheap raw materials - the West succeeded to demolish beyond reconstruction whole economies, to ravage communities, to wreak ruination upon the centuries-old social fabric, woven diligently by generations.
It brought crime and drugs and mayhem but gave very little in return, only a horizon beclouded and thundering with vacuous eloquence. As a result, while tottering regional governments still pay lip service to the values of Capitalism, the masses are enraged and restless and rebellious and baleful and anti-Western to the core.
The disenchanted were not likely to acquiesce for long - not only with the West's neo-colonialism but also with its incompetence and inaptitude, with the nonchalant experimentation that it imposed upon them and with the abyss between its proclamations and its performance.
Throughout this time, the envoys of the West - its mediocre politicians, its insatiably ruthless media, its obese tourists, its illiterate soldiers, and its armchair economists - continue to play the role of God, wreaking greater havoc than even the original.
While confessing to omniscience (in breach of every tradition scientific and religious), they also developed a kind of world weary, unshaven cynicism interlaced with fascination at the depths plumbed by the locals' immorality and amorality.
The jet-set Peeping Toms reside in five star hotels (or luxurious apartments) overlooking the communist, or Middle-Eastern, or African shantytowns. They drive utility vehicles to the shabby offices of the native bureaucrats and dine in $100 per meal restaurants ("it's so cheap here").
In between kebab and hummus they bemoan and grieve the corruption and nepotism and cronyism ("I simply love their ethnic food, but they are so..."). They mourn the autochthonous inability to act decisively, to cut red tape, to manufacture quality, to open to the world, to be less xenophobic (said while casting a disdainful glance at the native waiter).
To them it looks like an ancient force of nature and, therefore, an inevitability - hence their cynicism. Mostly provincial people with horizons limited by consumption and by wealth, these heralds of the West adopt cynicism as shorthand for cosmopolitanism. They erroneously believe that feigned sarcasm lends them an air of ruggedness and rich experience and the virile aroma of decadent erudition. Yet all it does is make them obnoxious and even more repellent to the residents than they already were.
Ever the preachers, the West - both Europeans and Americans - uphold themselves as role models of virtue to be emulated, as points of reference, almost inhuman or superhuman in their taming of the vices, avarice up front.
Yet the chaos and corruption in their own homes is broadcast live, day in and day out, into the cubicles inhabited by the very people they seek to so transform. And they conspire and collaborate in all manner of venality and crime and scam and rigged elections in all the countries they put the gospel to.
In trying to put an end to history, they seem to have provoked another round of it - more vicious, more enduring, more traumatic than before. That the West is paying the price for its mistakes I have no doubt. For isn't it a part and parcel of its teachings that everything has a price and that there is always a time of reckoning?
Q. Does Globalization have anything to do with the rise of terrorism?
From Venezuela to Thailand, democratic regimes are being toppled by authoritarian substitutes: the military, charismatic left-wingers, or mere populists. Even in the USA, the bastion of constitutional rule, civil and human rights are being alarmingly eroded (though not without precedent in wartime).
The prominent ideologues of liberal democracy have committed a grave error by linking themselves inextricably with the doctrine of freemarketry and the emerging new order of globalization. As Thomas Friedman correctly observes in "The Lexus and the Olive Tree", both strains of thought are strongly identified with the United States of America (USA).
Thus, liberal democracy came to be perceived by the multitudes as a ruse intended to safeguard the interests of an emerging, malignantly narcissistic empire (the USA) and of rapacious multinationals. Liberal democracy came to be identified with numbing, low-brow cultural homogeneity, encroachment on privacy and the individual, and suppression of national and other idiosyncratic sentiments.
Liberal democracy came to be confused and confuted with neo-colonial exploitation, social Darwinism, and the crumbling of social compacts and long-standing treaties, both explicit and implicit. It even came to be associated with materialism and a bewildering variety of social ills: rising crime rates, unemployment, poverty, drug addiction, prostitution, organ trafficking, monopolistic behavior, corporate malfeasance, and other antisocial forms of conduct.
The backlash was, thus, inevitable.
Europe's Four Speeds
How the West Lost the East
Left and Right in a Divided Europe
The Concert of Europe, Interrupted
The Eastern Question Revisited
The Clash of Islam and Liberalism
Other Current Affairs Briefs
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Fans of keyboard shortcuts will love MindControl, a clever utility that lets you open files and perform other operations without lifting your hands from the keyboard. When you press a defined key combination, MindControl displays a pop-up list of all the commands you've programmed it to carry out. You can cycle through the list using the arrow or tab keys, or you can type the first few letters of any command into a text box at the bottom of the list. When you've highlighted the command you want, press the return key to run it.
You can program MindControl to open nearly any item on your Mac or network; it also lets you open Web pages and compose e-mail. MindControl's repertoire includes basic functions such as restart and shutdown, and its ability to open AppleScripts further extends its functionality. You can specify the keystrokes that activate MindControl, but you have only four key combinations to choose from.
Although MindControl is superfluous if you already own a macro utility such as CE Software's QuicKeys (Reviews, April 2000), other Mac users will find it a worthwhile addition.
Mail Delivery MindControl lets you open a new e-mail message that has the recipient, subject, and body already filled in.


text:
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Peril in the Cotswolds
Rebecca Tope
Thea Slocombe, née Osborne, is trying to settle into normal, domestic life with Drew and his two children in Broad Campden. But in the course of an attempt to make friends locally, she finds the body of a close neighbour and suddenly feels much less settled and secure. No longer a h...
Cotswold Mysteries
The Michaelmas Murders
Mandy Morton
As the Town's annual flower and produce show approaches, it's all doom and bloom up on the allotments, with prize vegetables going missing and a dead body on Bonny Grub's onion patch. Baronial landowner Fluff Wither-Fork is beside herself and calls in the No. 2 Feline Detective Agency.&nbs...
No2 Feline Detective Agency
Marked to Die
Sarah Hawkswood
October 1143. A mysterious archer who kills cleanly and 'dissolves' into the forest, a missing train of pack mules on the salt road from Wich, and a lord in the wrong place at the wrong time, mean a crime the lord Sheriff of Worcestershire cannot ignore. Bradecote, Catch...
Bradecote & Catchpoll
Fifteen years ago, 29 Barley Street in Menham, South London, became notorious as the scene of alleged poltergeist activity which led to the death of young Holly Wasson. The shadow cast by this episode is still felt in the town, and among the gang of friends who were caught up in the t...
Matt Hunter
Herring in the Smoke
L C Tyler
Roger Norton Vane is dead. Twenty years ago he went for a walk in the Thai jungle with his partner, Tim MacDonald, and never returned. After years of wild speculation, fruitless searches and unconfirmed sightings, finally his death is to be made official and somebody will inherit his accum...
Herring Mysteries
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Halenkovice () is a municipality and village in Zlín District in the Zlín Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 2,000 inhabitants.

Halenkovice lies approximately  south-west of Zlín and  south-east of Prague.

References

Villages in Zlín District

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text:
Latin Jazz legend Bebo Valdés dies at 94
The father of renowned Cuban pianist "Chucho" Valdés, Bebo, who started his career at Havana nightclubs in the 1940s, was a corner stone in the golden age of Cuban big band music.
A pianist, he also composed and arranged songs, and led two big bands, as well as creating his own rhythm, the batanga.
Valdes came to fame as the musical director of the Tropicana club in Havana. From 1948 to 1957, he worked as singer Rita Montaners pianist, also arranging many of her songs. While working at the Tropicana, he also performed with US legends Nat "King" Cole and Sarah Vaughan.
The veteran musician lived for years in the town of Benalmadena in Malaga, where he had re-launched his career with the film "Calle 54" (2000) by Spaniard Fernando Trueba. His latest projects included the soundtrack of the animated film "Chico and Rita" directed by Trueba and designer Javier Mariscal, nominated for an Oscar last year.
His recordings includes the album "Lagrimas Negras" (2003), with Spanish singer Diego el Cigala, which won seven Grammy Awards, and in 2009 recorded "Juntos por siempre" with his son "Chucho".
For full article see www.radiohc.cu
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text:
'Wolverine' looking sharp as summer starts
10:20 AM PDT 5/2/2009 by Carl DiOrio , AP
'X-Men' spinoff has earned $35 mil since midnight Thursday
Fox's Hugh Jackman starrer "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" didn't need to claw its way to No. 1 over the first day of the summer boxoffice season.
A spinoff of Fox's lucrative "X-Men" franchise, "Wolverine" easily topped the daily rankings Friday with an estimated $35 million in its first day of release. The tally included almost $5 million rung up from more than 1,500 performances at midnight Thursday.
Still, with piracy problems imperiling its opening and the swine flu complicating projections for its first weekend, it comes as welcome relief to studio execs that "Wolverine" remains likely to register upward of $80 million through Sunday. That was the consensus forecast headed into the weekend, and its Friday boxoffice seems to bear out that projection.
"X-Men: The Last Stand" -- the second and most recent "X-Men" sequel -- stands as the franchise's top grosser. "Last Stand" bowed in May 2006 with $122.9 million and grossed $234.4 million overall domestically.
Elsewhere among this weekend's wide openers, Warner Bros.' romantic comedy "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past" -- starring Matthew McConaughey and Jennifer Garner -- registered $5.8 million Friday. That was the second highest total of the day.
And Roadside Attractions' Lionsgate-distributed "Battle for Terra" -- a sci-fi animated feature with a voice cast topped by Dennis Quaid -- fetched just $255,000 Friday, in 12th place among the daily rankings. The PG-rated pic is expected to draw primarily young boys with parents in tow and should turn in more respectable numbers once the weekend's matinees kick in.
Last weekend's No. 1 opener -- Sony's Beyonce Knowles starrer "Obsessed" -- attracted $4.1 million in third place on Friday, or a big 63% less than its daily tally from a week earlier.
Warners' Zac Efron starrer "17 Again" registered a fourth-best tally of $2 million in Friday coin, yielding a $44.1 million cume through three weekends.
Carl DiOrio


Akhshay Kumar Starer Padman is a movie based on the story of a poor man who after marriage could not afford the sanitary pad for her wife and his journey towards making a machine which will reduce the cost of sanitary pads starts.
In this Journey, his wife leaves him and tells him to just buy a sanitary pad from the market and forget about the machine and all that. But his will and dedication make it possible to make a pad just for Rs 2 and because he doesn't sell the technology or the pads for high rates and contributes all this towards the nation and other poor countries, so he is named as PadMan.
Download Padman Full Movie in HD.
If you face any issue while downloading Padman Full Movie in HD, comment below.


Brief Summary: Deep analytics driven review of IP assets delivered in a clear and concise report.
Detailed Description: Portfolio valuation is a data managed process driven by the IP team where several sources of data and analytics are used to review a patents strengths, categories, marketplace strength (current and future), possible invalidity, prior art, similar portfolios, and other companies who own IP in the same space. This data is filtered by the IP team and turned into a concise report with our proprietary IP Score available for client delivery.
Brief Summary: Mining hidden gems in your IP portfolio and using our data driven process to find how these assets can be used in untapped ways or verticals can lead to new revenue streams.
Detailed Description: After an extensive analysis of your portfolio we segment assets that we deem to be unused, forgotten, or written off. Using several sources of data and analytics we find any hidden potential in these assets and work through potential monetization opportunities. In addition, forgotten IP assets can be run through our "Portfolio Pairing™" service to find collaboration opportunities leading to monetization from already owned, untapped assets.
Brief Summary: Using our proprietary multi-step, industry specific process, we conduct a strategic inventing session to create new patents and claims around your products, new patentable concepts or designs, existing patent applications, future needs, and industry.
Detailed Description: Strategic Inventing sessions are most effective when conducted on a quarterly or bi-annual basis to ensure a constant flow of innovation and defense for your operation. The process is regimented and creates an opportunity for a wide range of the participants, including named inventors, technology personnel, or any creative or innovative team members, to look at the subject matter from different angles, as well as encouraging "outside the box" thinking. Matters for consideration include future market needs, enforcement potential, competition, and numerous others. There are multiple and varying 18 Step processes, of which we will select one based on your industry, and assist your team through the regimented idea creation process. As the process becomes more ingrained the complexity increases to take the level of output to a more granular level. For example, a simultaneous, dual reverse session can be conducted in which two disparate teams are given a different 18 step process and asked to review a patent, portfolio, or product line from different perspectives. One team starts the process looking at the subject matter as it stands today and works forward, while the other team starts the process looking at the subject matter as it might look 10 years in the future and works backward. Where the teams meet can provide actionable data points that our team can turn into an innovation roadmap. Continuation and Continuation-in-Part patent processes are explored here as well.
Brief Summary: Mining the internal resources of the company for patentable ideas and ensuring your innovations are being protected as well as adding additional protections to existing patents and patents pending through the Continuation and Continuation-in-Part patent application processes.
Detailed Description: Unlock the hidden value or your employees and your current patent disclosures using an employee invention disclosure process. Implementing a process to extract possible inventions from the operations, employees, day-to-day processes. The disclosure form consists of an online process where the individual details every aspect of the possible invention. This data can be supplemented by the IP team to take into account prior art, competitor analysis, how the invention fits into overall company goals, etc. Future function would include the ability for employees to login to a secure portal to monitor progress of an invention (was invention approved by the IP team and subsequently been turned into a patent application, etc). Another possibility would be a company leader board tracking inventions. Finally, of course, any patent that issues out of this process would contain the employee as a named inventor.
Brief Summary: Using our proprietary algorithm, we can help put a number on the possible damages accruing in the marketplace based on current and past infringement of your IP assets.
Detailed Description: Using a proprietary algorithm we have developed over the past several years, and several sources of data and analytics we create an accurate snapshot of your competitive marketplace based on the infringing your IP. Our upcoming automated platform will allow you to login and see real time infringement numbers that can be adjusted based on several factors (conservative or aggressive outlooks for example). In addition, the tracking index displays numerous competitor data points and real time stock information of, potential infringers, giving concise insight into how your infringed IP is having demonstrable impact on the marketplace.
Brief Summary: Wall in competitors by using our data driven process to patent your own product or expand existing IP in ways that blocks a competitors innovation opportunities while strengthening your own product and portfolio and bolstering your defense against infringement.
Detailed Description: Using several sources of data and analytics we examine and research your product and IP assets to identify areas of patent coverage in addition to future or pending patent needs or lack of coverage to identify unpatented areas, industries or verticals to strengthen and fortify your own product or existing IP. We also review the anticipated development cycle of your product line over the next 1, 2, and 3 years as well as any possible future applications that may be developed. We then do a similar analysis on your direct competitors and compare the two data sets. Using this complete data set we create an IP roadmap for your company and build claims that protect your future innovations while limiting innovation opportunities for your competitors.
Brief Summary: Using our extensive network within the IP industry, we can discover untapped synergies for IP holders in disparate industries, and open up new opportunities for revenue streams through IP licensing, IP collaboration, or Joint Ventures.
Detailed Description: Our extensive network within the IP industry, and our ability to analyze and map patent relations, allows us to find undiscovered partnership opportunities industry wide and across unknown or untapped verticals. After a deep analysis of your IP assets using several sources of data and analytics we evaluate our findings using our proprietary Portfolio Pairing™ and patent and concept fortification process, as well as techniques such as game theory analysis. The process, which consists of analyzing patent categories, strengths, past litigation, prior art, and numerous other data sources, seeks to find alternatives to traditional avenues of IP monetization that can consist of lengthy and expensive litigations, as well as joint venture opportunities with companies in disparate industries where the synergies may not be apparent. We attempt to discover win-win situations where IP collaboration, a strong foundation of support, and a data driven process lead to greater potential monetization opportunities.
Brief Summary: Using a data driven process we seek to find alternatives to traditional means of settling infringement disputes between direct or indirect competitors, and to avoid costly litigation, while finding a true win-win situation.
Detailed Description: Similar to our IP Matching service, our IP Adjacencies service seeks to provide two key benefits to IP holders. First, we attempt to create an alternative to patent attorneys and costly litigation. Mediation through analysis is a data driven process that consists of a deep review of the IP holdings of the companies in dispute in an attempt to find undiscovered partnership, or joint venture opportunities that will not only allow you to avoid the lengthy and costly litigation process, but will present new revenue opportunities that will dwarf any potential settlement through litigation. Secondly, we can examine your entire industry and find the direct or indirect competitors that present interesting and potentially lucrative IP collaboration opportunities.
Brief Description: Using several sources of data and analytics we can assist your team in the litigation process by providing damages analysis, infringement analysis, and counter suit opportunities.
Detailed Description: Patent litigation is a lengthy and costly process that involves volumes of documentation and data. Our processes can help sift through this and discover valuable data points to assist in internal decision making. Using our proprietary algorithm we can assist in damages calculations, or using our infringement analysis find potential opportunities for a counter suit, or expansion of the original complaint. Also, using our extensive network within the IP industry we can assist in securing third party experts, or attorneys to create claims charts, or provide legal analysis.
Detailed Description: Are you prepared to demonstrate that you have the necessary rights to assert a patent? The inability to be able to properly show that you have these rights can undermine your efforts when trying to create, or enforce intellectual property. THE IPN will conduct a full audit of your intellectual property to ensure that assignments properly demonstrate current ownership, and when necessary will correct errors.
Brief Summary: Wall in competitors by using our data driven process to patent your own product, or expand existing IP in ways that blocks a competitors innovation opportunities while strengthening your own product and portfolio and bolstering your defense against infringement.
Detailed Description: Using several sources of data and analytics we examine and research your product and IP assets to identify areas of patent coverage in addition to future or pending patent needs, or lack of coverage to identify un-patented areas, industries or verticals to strengthen and fortify your own product or existing IP. We also review the anticipated development cycle of your product line over the next 1, 2, and 3 years as well as any possible future applications that may be developed. We then do a similar analysis on your direct competitors and compare the two data sets. Using this complete data set we create an IP roadmap for your company and build claims that protect your future innovations while limiting innovation opportunities for your competitors.
The Automatic Invention Inventor Platform.
1. Map the problems of the World from catastrophic earth ending problems to the minor inconveniences of people and animals Worldwide and all the problems in-between. This data is being organized Geographically and sorted by severity.
2. Map the innovations of mankind, from the patents, to exposed legacy trade secrets, common cures, medicines, procedures, patents and solutions.
3. Seek solutions present and future through algorithmic and proprietary means . The IPN is creating a first-of-its-kind IP Integration model that seeks to pair, process, and suggest solutions, to the World's problems through the application of intellectual property, innovations, known solutions and inventions to solve the problems we have throughout the World.
How? - With great care and precision we're building both the problem finding spiders that will comb the World for our gripes, pains, and pandemic theories. We will, through automation and horsepower unavailable to all previous generations, leverage cloud computing to intelligently index, and classify the Worlds' problems.
Why?- We have studied this for over 2 years and have developed proprietary systems that make it possible. The search engines, content providers and internet archives including scientific and University data sets make both the problems and innovations data available. Our hypothesis and invention is about taking concepts like IP pairing and integration innovation to illustrate that many of the World's problems have already been solved. It is truly a question of the will and resources to apply them. Flooding in coastal areas is foreseen and modern inventions already address this issue as one example. We intend to illustrate how the problem is solved to invoke the will and the resources through demonstrable facts and business opportunity.
Who? - The IPN and our partners. Every single day until it is completed. Then we will version it out phase by painful phase.
How long will it take? - We don't know yet.
Want more information? - Contact The IPN.
WE BUILD YOUR ENTERPRISE SOFTWARE PLATFORM AND WE PATENT IT FOR YOU AS WE GO.
World Class Scoping- We work with your teams from any starting point. Whether we are reviewing your documentation or creating it for you through secure and confidential data capture and collection sessions, we get your scope done and you own the work product.
Patents & Trademarks -THE MOST COST EFFECTIVE AND VALUE ACCRETIVE PROCESS AVAILABLE. THIS IS THE IPN SWEET SPOT. WE FILE WHILE THE SOFTWARE IS BEING ROLLED OUT. WE TRAIN YOUR TEAMS OR PROVIDE MANAGED SERVICES TO GROW YOUR PORTFOLIO.
Developer Documentation - Our process insures your software is developed with all of the developer notations and documentation.
End-User Documentation - User manuals that are copy written are created and a system is passed on to our customers or managed by The IPN to insure all user-manuals track with all updates and changes to the software.
Patent as you go - It's The IPN way.
Mobile Advertising- drive traffic to any campaign or ap, leveraging our industry leading knowledge and network.
Flawless deployment - Cross platform, device agnostic, we take you through step-by-step. We can pass off or manage any aspects desired.


text:
Q: merge adjacent repeated rows into one I want to merge adjacent repeated rows into one ,
for example , I have a table demo with two columns ,
data | order
-------------
 A   | 1
 A   | 2
 B   | 3
 B   | 4
 A   | 5

I want the result to be :
A
B
A

How to achieve this by one select SQL query in oracle ?

A: please, try something like this
select *
from table t1
where not exists(select * from table t2 where t2.order = t1.order - 1 and t1.data = t2.data)

A: The answer suggested by Dmitry above is working in SQL, to make it work in oracle you need to do some modifications.
order is a reserved keyword you need to escape it as follows.
select
    *
from
    Table1 t1
where not exists(
    select * from Table1 t2
  where
      t2."order" = t1."order" - 1
    and
      t1."data" = t2."data"
) order by "order"

Working Fiddle at http://sqlfiddle.com/#!4/cc816/3

A: You can group by a column
Take a look at http://docs.oracle.com/javadb/10.6.1.0/ref/rrefsqlj32654.html
Example from official oracle site:
SELECT AVG (flying_time), orig_airport
FROM Flights
GROUP BY orig_airport

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The Lord knows the heart of man and even his inner thoughts, and the Lord knows those who genuinely seek Him. If there is one person on this earth who makes a genuine attempt to know the Lord, the Lord will make Himself known to him. This will make every condemned person without excuse on the judgement day when Christ the righteous will separate the wicked as a shepherd separates the goats from the sheep. Seek the Lord while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near, for there may not be another chance. Respond to the invitation to receive Christ as your Lord and Saviour. Praise the Lord!


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"There Are Too Many Entrenched Interests"
The Six Stages Of Health Tech Grief Part 3
First, we talked about paying patients and building new EMRs.
Then, we talked about the self-insured employer route.
Those posts make me seem super pessimistic + sipping the haterade. But I've actually never been more optimistic about new digital health companies and the changing of the guard.
So today, I wanted to address the folks that make it to the trough of disillusionment and think about giving up because there "are too many entrenched interests."
We've seen lots of interesting and great healthcare businesses built in the last decade, it just takes time and you need to find a specific edge.
Today's post is an adaptation of a talk I gave at PWC's healthcare conference last year.
The Incumbents Have Never Been More Vulnerable
The business models of virtually every single healthcare company founded 10+ years ago are vulnerable.
In pharma, the ROI on R&D is getting worse and worse as blockbuster drugs become harder to find. We're now entering the world of one-time curative therapies (e.g. gene and cell therapies), and we're already seeing reimbursement issues as the the system buckles supporting these costs. I get the rationale, but we now have drugs that cost over $2M each. Most pharma companies have largely ignored products that don't target a disease that's rare, cancerous, or automimmune.
COVID has shown us just how vulnerable hospitals are. Hospitals in rural areas have been financially unviable for a while, with many at risk of closure for some of the most vulnerable areas. Large hospitals have focused on increasing referrals into their hospitals via acquisitions at the expense of physician and patient frustration, and have treated value-based reimbursement as a side project compared to their revenue streams from fee-for-service (where they get paid per service given, incentivizing volume of services).
Insurance carriers have leaned into some of the newer models like Medicare Advantage, but innovation from carriers has largely overlooked some of the largest segments of the population that have become the most relevant during COVID - Medicaid and the individual exchanges. Most of the innovation in the Medicaid space has come from carriers acquiring their way to basically becoming the only option a state has (and those carriers have found success doing so). Most of the innovation in the individual marketplace has been carriers leaving it.
Plus health insurance carriers still face the existential threat of a complete overhaul of the payer system after the election. Either way, if you believe employment and insurance coverage will be separated, few carriers have positioned themselves to take advantage of that switch.
And let's not forget all of the middlemen that you've never heard of yet somehow generate $billions$ in revenue. There's been more scrutiny on the role these companies play in increasing prices and reducing competition by refusing to play ball with new companies that are mildly competitive (*cough*PBMs*cough*).
With a handful of exceptions, almost every large healthcare company has doubled down on their existing business model that was relevant in a fee-for-service world. Most simply keep acquiring and keep lobbying to keep the current rules in place. Virtually none have leaned into new business models where the technology is an ESSENTIAL part of the business and could not function without it.
So yes, while there are entrenched interests, they're actually quite vulnerable thanks to a combination of new technology and sweeping regulatory changes.
The New Infrastructure
The underlying infrastructure to build a healthcare company has changed, and most of the entrenched companies have been slow to adopt them. Leaning into these infrastructure changes will not only let your company optimize for speed but also take advantage of modern tech.
The cost to start a new healthcare product has never been lower and the capabilities have never been better.
Today a phone has incredibly powerful cameras, different types of light sensors, accelerometers, microphones, face dot projector, and more powerful chips to power a lot of the analysis locally on your phone. All of these tools are in a device we carry every day, and have the capacity to capture more types of data about what's in the environment around us.
Sensors in general have become so cheap and many of them are now medical-grade. Hardware advances + the compute to interpret the data have made home diagnostics more of a reality than ever before. That's why we have all of these barely readable market maps filled to the brim with companies that can get every single possible data stream about us.
Health data hubs
While still pretty nascent, we're now seeing some health data hubs that are patient controlled such as the Apple Health app with the HealthKit developer tools that let third-parties build on top of that data. And now access to that data and distribution can be yours…for a 30% tax paid to the App Store and searching 1000 forums to figure out "why my app got rejected, can anyone help?".
These health hubs get more valuable over time as the passive data streams coming from sensors and diagnostics need to be connected other contextual forms of health data (health record, labs, etc.).
"BuT PeRsonAL HeAlTh ReCordS haVe bEeN tRIed In ThE PaST", you'll scream. And I'll yell back that it's different because the data collection is now passive via sensors, there are integrations into the existing healthcare system, and new interoperability rules should standardize this data.
In the tech startup world, the cost of spinning up a startup plummeted like crazy thanks to Amazon's Web Services division (AWS) letting startups rent out Amazon's data storage and compute power. This not only dropped the cost of starting a company from millions to hundreds of dollars, but also allowed pay-as-you-use models that could scale with the companies as they grew.
Now, that speed and cost reduction is coming to healthcare thanks to HIPAA-compliant cloud services. There are 119 different HIPAA-compliant AWS cloud services today, vs 25 in 2017. Some of these are really cool healthcare specific ones like AWS Comprehend Medical, which parses unstructured text data and maps it to identifies it as different medical terms.
Startups can now start stringing these HIPAA-compliant services to create entire products, something that wasn't possible even a few years ago. And you won't realize know how insane your AWS bill is until years later anyway when the few engineers that understand how the pieces of the system work together leave, but that's a "future you" problem.
I'm naively hopeful that COVID is forcing more companies to hyper accelerate their shift from on-premise data storage to storing data on the cloud. CIOs now actually have to do the work of migration instead of answering surveys about how they're planning to adopt cloud services. This is hopefully going to make it even easier for new startups to work with different healthcare companies that need to exchange data.
Services-as-APIs
This one is relatively new and pretty exciting. There are several companies now that allow you to access their healthcare services with a line of code that integrates right into your existing workflow.
This is really useful because previously, you'd have to build a lot of these services in-house to use any of them. Now you can literally plug-in a line of code and each time someone orders generic drugs from your sans-serif site, on the back-end a company like TruePill handles the pharmacy dispensing side of it. This makes it really easy to plug these services into your own workflow, and only pay them as you use the which is great as you scale.
This should sound very similar to the AWS example I gave earlier. Startups can outsource these services to other companies, so that the startup can focus on whatever specific thing differentiates them.
Other examples of Service-as-an-API include Eligible for medical billing, CredSimple for credentialing and making sure your doctor isn't a felon, and Wheel for telemedicine consults.
Tech And New Healthcare Business Models
Tech alone is not going to help you win if you're a new healthcare business.
I see lots companies that try to compete with existing healthcare giants at their own game by trying to win on a metric that doesn't matter (UI/UX, NPS, etc.). Buyers are risk-averse - if your offering is the same as a healthcare incumbent and your pitch is "we use tech" or "we have a better UX" you will not win.
To win, the technology has to enable a new business model. This can happen with a combination of the following:
Taking on more outcomes-based risk. Charging less upfront and more on delivery is truly putting your money where your mouth is. A lot of new value-based care models could be good businesses if a company built itself completely around it.
Example: Omada Health, a diabetes management company, only billed employers when participants enrolled in the program, engaged in the program, or lost weight. That's a much easier pill to swallow if you're an employer than the traditional per-employee-per-month billing, and it's Omada betting on its solution.
Example: ChenMed is a white-glove primary care company that focuses entirely on Medicare Advantage members and dual-eligible members (eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid). ChenMed gets paid a fixed amount for each patient. By focusing on a smaller but sicker cohort, they spend more time per patient and address more of the issues happening outside of the clinic. The business leans entirely into a value-based care arrangement and builds its processes around that.
Finding a new segment to pay. This will change your go-to-market strategy, pricing, etc.
Example: Companies like Nurx, Lemonaid, etc. have patients with low-severity issues fill out forms which are reviewed by doctors, and then prescriptions are written as needed. This uses tech to let doctors asynchronously "see" way more patients an hour going through a stack of forms instead of a face-to-face visit, which brings the cost of a visit + a prescription for low-risk issues down to cash pay prices (e.g. $25 for a visit). The cash pay/uninsured segment has generally been considered too small for large healthcare companies to pursue and difficult to make the economics work.
Create/leverage a new distribution channel. A product native to a distribution channel will look very different than one that's testing a channel out.
Example: Oscar made a big bet on the individual exchanges when they came out. The product for the exchange looked very different because in this case the buyer and the user were the same person (vs. employers who shop for you). This is where customer experience actually did matter. When I needed insurance, the enrollment portal sucked so hard that I literally just went to Oscar's site directly to sign up.
Build a novel workflow. Most companies optimize their entire system around a specific workflow, so if you can compete on that front it's very hard for incumbents to modify all of their processes to a new workflow.
Example: The Apple Watch + telemedicine combination that's being used in the various Apple Watch for heart condition monitoring is an example of a proactive healthcare workflow instead of a reactive workflow. Normally patients reach out to providers when they feel ill. But in this workflow the physician (or other person delivering care) has be notified via data from the wearable, triaged into severity, prioritized in some sort of queue, matched with a doctor, both parties have to be notified, and then a telehealth consult has to be initiated and logged. That's not easy.
Entrenched interests are tough to navigate, but I would say that this crisis is forcing every line item and service provider to be scrutinized and see exactly what they're providing. Right now, every buyer in healthcare is trying figure out how their different healthcare service providers can help them in a remote-first way, and most of these companies are not equipped to do that since they've neglected building process around modern tech.
Plus, the regulatory landscape is changing very rapidly. Even the AAMC, representing physicians, is cool with a lot of the telehealth reimbursement changes! (Though they comically want to be paid a facility fee…for a TELEmedicine visit…). Like damn, these rules might ACTUALLY stay. Anticipating some of these regulatory changes and using tech to lean into them is one of the biggest healthcare opportunities ever,.
I genuinely feel like post-COVID it's never been a better time to build a healthcare company, so don't give up!
If you want to see the full presentation I gave last year on this topic, you can check it out here.
Nikhil aka. "It's Time To Build!!! (…a digital health company)"
Twitter: @nikillinit
IG: @outofpockethealth
If you're enjoying the newsletter, do me a solid and shoot this over to a friend or healthcare slack channel and tell them to sign up. The line between unemployment and founder of a startup is traction and whether your parents believe you have a job.


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Retired Army Sergeant Wants to Turn Cargo Containers Into Homes for Veterans
South Florida is now one of the top places in the U.S. for veterans to settle.
By Willard Shepard	• Published at 5:37 pm on November 11, 2019
As South Florida and the rest of the country honors veterans Monday, one retired U.S. Army Sergeant-turned-realtor is making sure no veteran ends up homeless.
South Florida is now one of the top places in the U.S. for those coming off military service to settle. Many smoothly transition to civilian life, but for others, the stress of combat can lead to trouble.
Broward County said it's spending $600,000 a year to help veterans, while Miami-Dade is spending about $300,000 to help 1,000 vets in a variety of ways.
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Enter Josef Barmoha.
Barmoha left South Florida to be an Army mechanic when he was in his teens. Now, he's back and has launched his nonprofit to address the trouble with veterans who are homeless or unable to afford a mortgage.
"So, as a veteran leaving the service knowing that that's the world we live in —the pain and suffering we had to deal with in a good way and in a bad way of course — we now have a home we can give to veterans that we can create mortgage free," Barmoha said.
Josef figured using containers to provide homes is the most efficient way to go. Most times the containers are seen on ships or on a truck. The name "Foxhole Command" has a special place for soldiers.
"A Foxhole, as you know, is when we are in a deployment status, we build a foxhole. That is our sectors of fire where we sleep, we eat," Barmoha said. "So, Foxhole Command is more so to save a life — give another life, another chance for veterans to do something good with themselves — create a family."
Barmoha said they can be adapted to fit the needs and wants of the veteran.
The vets who get a container home will also obtain a steady job — one that will help coordinate the next veteran selected and provides job skills working with contractors.
"At the same time we are providing an actual employment to the veteran," Barmoha said. "So, we are not only giving them a home."
Barmoha said he is working with county and local governments to obtain the land that's needed. Private developers and land owners are also in the mix when it comes to finding the property. The homes will be energy efficient, provide solar energy, and can withstand a Category 5 storm and beyond.
"The first home is planned and scheduled to be built in January," Barmoha said.
If you'd like to help, click here.


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Home ► ► News: By Month ► Update Mar. 27: Schools to remain closed through April 15
Update Mar. 27: Schools to remain closed through April 15
Filed in Archive, District News	by joellen.gardner	on March 27, 2020
The following is a message from Superintendent Jody Monroe:
Dear BC family:
Last year, the district adopted a new mission statement: To educate and prepare all students to reach their potential, discover their purpose and be engaged community members. At the time, we never dreamed that a public health emergency of this magnitude would challenge us to find new ways to stay focused on this mission. But we are trying and we will continue to try with the help of faculty and staff who have demonstrated they are committed to the cause, undeterred in their support to BC students and families.
To limit the spread of the COVID-19/Coronavirus, Governor Cuomo today extended statewide mandatory school closures for another two weeks through April 15. This extended closure was expected and the school district will move forward with its plans to expand at-home learning opportunities and instruction for students K-12.
Educational opportunities online
While instruction will not be the same as in a traditional classroom, our elementary students will have opportunities to be engaged and continue practicing skills in preparation for a return to their regular classrooms. Middle school and high school students will be able to build on the foundation that will prepare them for future grade levels, courses, and post-secondary goals.
Most importantly, our students will continue to connect with their teachers online.
At the elementary level, teachers will offer a daily schedule by grade level that is intended to provide structure and routine for students and parents. This information can be found at the new BC Learning from Home Google site for elementary schools.
At the middle school, instruction and resources will be organized and shared by the student's team.
At the high school, individual teachers will provide instruction, content, and resources for each course.
All instructional content will focus on fundamentals and essential standards. The virtual schedule at all levels will be a compressed one, with teachers prioritizing material that will support students in their journey through K-12 education.
Flexibility is key to this at-home learning plan. The district understands the unique challenges families are facing at home and the stress our students and parents are experiencing. So with this new learn-at-home plan, patience, understanding and empathy will lead the way, every day. Students will be encouraged to participate but will not be restricted by a traditional schedule. Grading will only take place as assignments are either "Complete (Evidence of Learning)" or "Incomplete (Not Yet Learning)." And there will be opportunities to resubmit work. No number or letter grades will be given.
The important elements of this expanded virtual learning plan for BC students can be found here, by grade level:
This information will also be available and accessible on the district website.
You have questions, we may have answers
All of this is new to us, however, you may find you have questions about this plan or about other ways the COVID-19/Coronavirus Outbreak is impacting the district. We have set up a new Q&A email so we can help sort some of these questions out. While our buildings are empty, our staff can and will try to help answer your questions as best we can. If we don't have an answer, we will tell you that too. Please feel free to email your questions to districtoffice@bethlehemschools.org.
#WeAreBC
While we have been making progress on the logistics of making sure students are fed, that they have the technology they need and are connected to their teachers, we want to be sure we don't forget about the great community spirit we are known for. Like this, from our staff at Eagle Elementary School. Next week, we want to turn our attention to sharing as much good news as possible. And we can't do it without you! If you have something you want to share, please send it to goodnews@bethlehemschools.org. We could all use some.
Please continue to check our COVID-19 webpage for updates on food distribution, mental health resources, child care, health reminders and much more.
And as always, thank you for your support you have shown over the past few weeks. It means so much. You can reach me by email at jmonroe@bethlehemschools.org


The kids and I haven't been fishing in roughly two years. My dear husband has gone several times. I'm not complaining, but it would be nice if we could have gone with him.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those women that has her man on a leash or tells him he can't hang out with the boys. I'm glad that he still spends time with his friends. He enjoys their company.
Yesterday he went fishing with a long-time family friend. This friend does really well and is a fishing fanatic, in my opinion. There's rarely a time this man gets skunked. However, last night was close to being one of those times; nothing he caught was worth keeping.
On the flip side, dear hubby caught a decent Striped Bass (aka Striper).
He enjoys the sport and also fishes to help feed our family. I'm proud of my hubby.
Length: 34″ Weight: 16 lbs. 1 oz.
Striped Bass caught from shore in Love Ladies, NJ.
Before you ask, the bait used was a 6″ Hake that was caught earlier.
Anything smaller or larger has to be released.
Federal Government allows each state to decide on their own limits.
Anything beyond 3 miles off shore is International Waters.
Any fish caught are illegal to keep.
you have a permit to keep a third fish.
I found an interesting article while searching for links for this blog post.


text: Q: Does normalization of a random vector, destroy uniformity? If I have a random vector in Rn that has a uniform distribution in the domain [a,b]n, a<0, b>0. Is uniformity lost or preserved (in the unit sphere) if I normalize the vector (using the euclidean norm)?


Once the weather warms up and patios get into full swing, many diners and students taking online chef courses are ready to raise a glass or two. Whether you want to be budget-friendly with your purchases or choose a vino that will really knock your guests' socks off, there are plenty of options for sensational summer wines.
Need something to pair with those fresh summer salads? Trying to find a vino that is a perfect match for vegetarian meals? Look no further than Austria's favorite white wine, Grüner Veltliner. With its acidity and light flavor, it's a natural pick for patio drinking. There are spicy, peppery versions as well as varieties with stone fruit notes, so make sure to read labels or ask an expert at the wine store before purchasing.
For something a little drier, try opening up a bottle of sauvignon blanc to go with your next meal. With vanilla and oak notes, this wine is an ideal pairing with appetizers. Even if you have a seafood dish as your main course, this French wine is an excellent choice. Many chefs in international cooking schools love to choose sauvignon blanc to partner up with swordfish, mussels, scallops, shellfish and grilled vegetables.
You may have heard of French champagne as an international cooking student, but France's neighbor to the west serves up some pretty amazing bubbly. Spanish cava is produced and aged similarly to most sparkling wines. However, it tends to be lighter and drier – making it the perfect companion to fresh summer fruits.
You might think that pink wine is subpar, but nothing could be further from the truth! Rose wines are made in some of the most elite wine regions on earth, from Provence in France to northern California. For pairings, the possibilities are endless, as rose has notes of both red and white varietals. From charcuterie to veal to paella, rose is an excellent choice. For cheeses, Navarra rose is a particularly well-designed option that can stand up to even the stinkiest, bluest hunk of fromage.
Do you want to stick with a red varietal? Nero d'Avola is a light red wine grown in Sicily that is the perfect vino with which to unwind. Also called Calabrese, this grape used to be cultivated for blending, but has recently entered a renaissance with sommeliers and chefs. Need something to stand up to those chargrilled steaks or smoky summer barbecue? A bottle of Nero d'Avola should do the trick.