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Tag Archives: Ethnicity
Political Correctness Makes You More Creative
("Europe According to Germany" by Yanko Tsvetkov used under CC 2.0 via)
Study On Avoiding Stereotypes Smashes Stereotype About Avoiding Stereotypes. Sounds like an Onion headline. The recent study at UC Berkeley reveals that encouraging workers to be politically correct—that is, to challenge and think beyond stereotypes—results in their producing more original and creative ideas. As Olga Kazhan points out at The Atlantic, this flies in the face of conventional wisdom, which asserts that political correctness stifles the truth for the sake of acquiescing to the hypersensitive. Yet the study shows that truth and knowledge are obscured when facts are simplified into stereotypes.
Take, for example, the belief widely held in the West that women talk more than men do. Unpacking this stereotype unleashes several revelations about modern Western culture. All in all, women do not use more words than men on average. Women do talk more than men in certain small groups, but men talk more than women at large social gatherings. Listeners, however, tend to become more easily annoyed by women talking in such settings, so they notice it more. Baby girls in the West do start talking earlier than baby boys do, leading pop culture to promulgate the idea that female loquaciousness must be inborn. Yet more than one study have found that girls' advantage may very well be because mothers talk more to their infant daughters than to their sons. And what about the stereotype that women remember emotional experiences better than men do? There appears to be evidence for this, rooted in the fact that American adults tend to ask girls more questions about their feelings during their developmental years, while encouraging boys to instead focus on their actions and achievements.
So while the genders may behave differently in some respects, further scrutiny shows that we certainly treat the genders differently. Political correctness demands we alter this. And then see what happens.
But instead of being seen as a great generator of progress and innovation, political correctness is more often perceived as a silencing technique, if Google's image search is any indication. There is some valid cause for this concern. One of the worst tactics taken up by some minority rights activists is the phrase You can't say that. It often stems from the noble idea that no one should have to endure threats, harassment and direct insults in everyday life. But simply banning bad words can lead to the destructive assumption that simply using the right words makes everything okay.
After all, avoiding stereotypes is not about shutting up but embracing depth and nuance. Professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi researches happiness and creativity, and in his latest book, he finds that one of the best tools for innovation is not limiting our own selves to gender stereotypes:
Psychological androgyny… refer[s] to a person's ability to be at the same time aggressive and nurturant, sensitive and rigid, dominant and submissive, regardless of gender. A psychologically androgynous person in effect doubles his or her repertoire of responses and can interact with the world in terms of a much richer and varied spectrum of opportunities. It is not surprising that creative individuals are more likely to have not only the strengths of their own gender but those of the other one, too.
While the studies cited here focus on gender stereotypes, it's easy to see how political correctness can foster productivity when applied to all sorts of minorities. For example, one way to react to urgings to avoid antiquated terms like "Bushmen" and "Hottentots" is to ask why. This will reveal that "Hottentot" was a name assigned by Dutch and German colonists meant to caricature the sound of the Khoekhoe language, and that "Bushmen" was a derogatory name for the San first assigned to them by the Khoekhoe. This uncovers the fact that the San have been the most exploited people of southwestern Africa, primarily because their society has no system of ownership. They have been stereotyped as primitive and therefore less intelligent, but like so many non-state societies surviving into the present day, they have done so by developing skills that help them live in isolation – i.e., in unforgiving environments where other peoples have perished.
Or you can react to the urging to avoid "Hottentots" and "Bushmen" by simply saying, "I'll call them whatever I want to call them!" As the saying goes, stereotypes are there to save us the trouble of learning.
Tags: Creativity, Ethnicity, gender stereotypes, Political Correctness, politics, Stereotypes
Categories Scars & Class, Scars & Cognitive Ability, Scars & Gender, Scars & Psychology, Scars & Race, Ethnicity & Nationality
Are East Germans A Minority?
(Image by S. Freimark used under CC 2.0 via)
I needed only head out my front door and walk to the end of my block to get to the Light Border commemorating that 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall tonight. The price to pay for this was the waves of tourists that have been washing through the street all weekend. Parents trying to explain to it to their children have been constantly underfoot. Which makes you pause and wonder, How do you explain it?
The fall of the Wall is my very first memory of watching the news a child. It was bizarre to see so many people rejoicing that It is finally over!, when I had only just discovered that it had ever been there in the first place. In later years, I of course learned more – specifically, the American version of the story that asserts that Ronald Reagan brought down the Wall and America won the Cold War. The fact that so many Berliners were chanting, "Gorbi! Gorbi!" amidst the celebrations 25 years ago is conveniently left out of this narrative.
I moved from New York to Berlin 10 years ago, when the shine of Reunification had well worn off. The former East Germany was known as the land of unemployment and racism, and the former West Germany was known as the land where little had changed and nobody cared about the East. The terms Jammer-Ossi ("Whiny Easterner") and Besser-Wessi ("Uppity Westerner") were well known. Some East Germans began talking about what they missed about the old country: a much lower crime rate, better kindergartens, consumer products low in quantity but built to last. And, above all, no unemployment.
One of my earliest jobs in Berlin put me in a room with five other coworkers. One of them hailed from Munich and, while reading the morning paper, regularly scoffed about East German nostalgia. "There's nothing to be nostalgic about!" she huffed. "It was disgusting, just like the Third Reich!" My other coworkers remained silent, but after her umpteenth outburst, a young man finally sighed, "It wasn't the Third Reich. Yes, there was no freedom of speech or travel, but it was not about eugenics or mass genocide!" The conversation quickly unraveled into uncomfortable silence.
One of the women who had remained silent all along later approached me at the water cooler. "What did you think of that?"
"I thought she was maybe being a bit rude," I shrugged.
"So rude! I just didn't want to get into it. I fled East Germany to the West in the Seventies."
My eyes widened.
"That's a long story and I don't want to get into it. But I can't take her pig-headed opinions about it. She's always going off about the dumb East Germans, but she doesn't understand what those people went through!"
Indeed, few of us truly can. For the former East Germany to not only experience unemployment for the first time but massive unemployment—up to 25% in some places—is like a town where no one has ever been sick suddenly overrun with the flu. In the early 1990s, the very idea of writing resumes and performing job interviews struck many East Germans as crass: "You mean I have to keep telling people how awesome I am till they hire me? That's prostitution!"
I have friends from the East who still feel pressured to abandon all hope of working anywhere near where they grew up, moving out of state in search of better futures in Frankfurt or Hamburg or Cologne. Many of their parents were white collar professionals shocked to find themselves unemployed after the Wall came down and have never been fully employed since. I also have friends from the West who moved to the East after Reunification and were ostracized in the workplace. Tensions have eased a bit in the 10 years I've lived here, but Berlin is undoubtedly the place you're most likely to see people who grew up on opposite sides of the Wall intermingling. The extent of prejudice between the two former nations became a legal issue last year when a woman sued a potential employer for discrimination. Interviewers at a company in southern Germany had scrawled on her job application "Drawback: East German." The court ruled against the plaintiff on the grounds that East Germans do not qualify as an ethnic minority.
Legal arguments aside, those who grew up in East Germany certainly have a different history that has had considerable impact upon their culture. Girls and boys named "Mandy," "Cindy," "Jenny," or "Kevin" are easily identifiable as coming from East Germany, where Hollywood movies in the 80s and 90s set a trend. A recent study revealed that such names invoke prejudice among school teachers who often assume such children will come from anti-intellectual home environments. East Germans over 30 pride themselves on being able to read Cyrillic, while their relationship to Russia is less affectionate. When the Soviet Forces occupied the East, they looked upon it as That Country That Invaded Us Twice In 20 Years. Russia lost more of its citizens to Nazi Germany—the conservative estimate is 20 million—than anyone else. East Germans in turn saw the Soviets as That Army That Raped Over 1.4 Million Of Us. The two countries never became true friends.
But would it help to spread diversity awareness and promote tolerance between East and West Germans if the former were recognized as a minority? Or should we stick to seeing the Cold War and the Fall of the Wall as a struggle not of nations but of ideas? After all, it was democracy, not nationalism, that was the driving force behind the peaceful revolution that brought down the Wall. Yet democracy is frequently given little thought beyond its associations with that nebulous word "freedom." As one East German friend pointed out, too many portrayals of Reunification focus a lot more on the freedom to buy a Porsche and choose between 16 different brands of toothpaste than the freedom from government surveillance, knee-jerk patriotism, voter suppression, and execution by the state. One of the quotes of the East German uprising most well-known over here—but rarely heard in the U.S.—came from protester Steffi Spira: "I want my grandchildren to grow up in a country where they do not have to salute the flag!"
When the Nationalist Party and Neo-Nazi groups find substantial support in the East among the disaffected youth of today, their opponents frame it as a battle not against evil but for democracy. Because nothing undermines dictatorship better than the idea that Everybody matters. It is the essence of both democracy and minority rights. And no developed nation knows as well as Germany how fragile this idea is.
Tags: Berlin Wall, Class, East Germany, Ethnicity, Minority, Reunification, Unemployment
Categories Scars & Race, Ethnicity & Nationality
The Real Reason You Should Learn A Foreign Language
(Image by Eric Andresen used under Creative Commons license via)
"Emily Sanford speaking, how may I help you?"
"Yeah, hi, I just got put through to you by one of your coworkers, and that guy can barely speak a damn word of German! Why do you hire foreigners? Because they're so cheap?"
"I'd be happy to help you if you could tell me why you are calling, sir."
"I need to ask about where to distribute some flyers your company mailed me, but I really want to know first why on earth you hire foreigners? I mean, seriously? Is it to save money?"
I pressed him for the details about the flyers, suppressing the urge to blurt out something in German to the effect of, "I American. I no understanded what you say me in Deutschy language."
Contempt for immigrants who can't speak the local language at the C1 Level or higher seems to pervade every country. I've witnessed an initiative to make English the official language of my parents' tiny village in Upstate New York after some white farmers heard two words of Spanish on the street, and I've been yelled at here in Germany by surly locals for speaking English in public. These complaints are usually steeped in the explicit or implicit stance that if you can't speak the language, you shouldn't be here.
Yet speaking a second language is unlike any other skill. Plenty of fiercely intelligent people are terrible at foreign languages and, unlike being terrible at arithmetic or project management, this weakness will render any of their other talents virtually invisible if the job market does not operate in their mother tongue. Speaking the local language flawlessly and eloquently is the best bet to integration in any society. And if it doesn't happen to be a language you grew up speaking, it's a lot of work.
I speak German, French, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, and Dutch, but "speak" is a relative term. I can hold basic conversations in Russian and Spanish, but they're always peppered with errors. (I'm probably the American equivalent of the intelligible but amusing foreigner who says things like, "I vant you to come sit on de table.") A few years of self-teaching have led me to understand almost anything written in Dutch, but I can't understand the nightly news and I can't say anything not in the present tense. My in-laws in Stockholm sweetly praise whatever I dare to say in their language, but I miss most of the details of whatever they say among themselves. After starting a book called Swedish In Three Months seven years ago, I'm still on chapter four.
I'm fluent in German and French, but "fluent" is too simplistic a word for the complexity of what it denotes. My German feels about as good as my English was back when I was in middle school. That is, I can say almost anything I want to say, but I sound a lot less diplomatic and nuanced than I would like to. I still learn new words every day. (Added to my vocabulary this week were "chisel," "epic," and "sexual exploitation.") Explaining an intricate issue like a budget report to a superior at work can still make me falter. I occasionally hear myself using the wrong gender or preposition, an instant giveaway that I'm foreign. And because double-digit numbers in German are said in reverse order (e.g. "twoandthirty" instead of "thirty-two"), I hate taking down numbers. Always have and always will.
This is why it would be deceptive of me to simply say, "I speak seven languages." To Brits and Americans, it sounds like bragging, and to Europeans, it sounds suspicious. After all, it's an unspoken but well-known fact that Brits and Americans who fancy themselves cosmopolitan love to exaggerate whatever knowledge of a foreign language they have, especially when they're in the company of those who can't possible test them on it. As British-Canadian satirist Christian Lander writes at Stuff White People Like:
… two years of college Italian does not confer fluency. For the most part, these classes will only teach a white person how to order food in a restaurant, ask for a train schedule, and over pronounce words when they are mixed into English. Amazingly this small amount of proficiency is more than enough to warrant inclusion on a resume under "spoken languages."
… When you hear a white person say that they speak your native language, you will probably think it's a good idea to start talking to them in said language. WRONG! Instead you should say something like "you speak (insert language)?" to which they will reply "a little" in your native tongue. If you just leave it here, the white person will feel fantastic for the rest of the day. If you push it any further and speak quickly, the white person will just look at you with a blank stare. Within a minute you will notice that blank stare has shifted from confusion to contempt. You have shamed them and your chance for friendship is ruined forever.
Finally, though they won't admit it, white people do not believe that learning English is difficult. This is because if it were true, then that would mean that their housekeeper, gardener, mother-in-law … are smarter than them. Needless to say, this realization would destroy their entire universe.
Indeed, my linguistic repertoire doesn't sound at all impressive to the 216 million people around the world who speak four languages or more. Most of these people live in Africa and, unlike me, their range always encompasses completely unrelated languages like French and Bangangte, or English and Wolof. 45% of my Facebook friends speak two or more languages well enough to say or describe whatever they want to say. For them, and half of the people on earth, speaking more than one language is like knowing how to drive or swim. Sure it requires dedication and practice, but it's not something you flaunt once you learn how to do it. You just do it.
Conventional wisdom says it's best to be complimented on your language skills by a native speaker. But if that native speaker is monolingual, they will only notice what you can't do. It takes a polyglot to appreciate how far along you are because they know just how much work goes into what you're trying to accomplish. Anyone who's lived 24 hours a day in another language knows about the headaches, the falling into bed exhausted at 8 pm, the horrors of meeting someone who talks fast.
Tech reviews across the Interwebs have been abuzz this year about a new language program called DuoLingo. The online program claims to be revolutionizing the way Anglophones learn other languages via the addictive nature of video games. That DuoLingo inspires passion and dedication is wonderful, and after checking out the advanced German program, I'm impressed with how authentically modern the dialogue is. (None of that old school drivel still found in too many online programs: "I am charmed to make your acquaintance. Which way to the discotheque?") But I'm skeptical of the company's insistence that you can learn a language without ever speaking to people.
Does the game teach you how to develop an intelligible accent? Does it teach you how to dive into a dinner conversation with sentences shooting at you from every direction? And, perhaps most importantly, does the game warn you about the crucial cultural connotations of certain words? To cite just a few examples, in German a "Pamphlet" isn't just a pamphlet, it's a manifesto. The word "deportieren" means what it sounds like except it's only used to describe someone being sent away to a concentration camp. And you will come off as crass if you ever call a German woman "Fräulein." As with all my knowledge of German slang, I learned these lessons from German people, not dictionaries. Language is culture and there are no cultures without people.
And just like every culture on earth, every language is a moving target. What sounds hip and what sounds sophisticated and what sounds rude and what sounds stuffy differs from generation to generation, from place to place, and from person to person. It's exhausting, but it's also pretty cool. In an increasingly homogeneous world, the most resilient differences are linguistic. American tourists are often disappointed to discover that businessmen in London dress more like Bill Gates than Winston Churchill, or that women in Barcelona don't walk around with roses clenched between their teeth. But no matter the visual monotony, their ears are guaranteed to be confronted with new music.
Yet, despite its shortcomings, I suspect that DuoLingo's personless approach to foreign language learning is exactly what many bilingual wannabes yearn for. In my experience, the number one reason adults will avoid or give up learning a foreign language is not that they dislike grammar or are overwhelmed by accents – it's that whenever you try to speak a new language, you are bound to be laughed at.
Unlike learning to dance or sew or build a shed, you can only master a language by repeatedly practicing in the company of experts—i.e., native speakers—who are not paid to have the patience of teachers. No matter how good you are, the moment you venture out of the classroom to talk to others, someone will smirk at you and someone will correct you and someone else will get frustrated with how long it takes you to say the simplest thing. Someone is bound to make fun of you. And adults do not like being made fun of.
They don't like being corrected mid-sentence or being told they sound "cute." It reminds them of being back in school, and they'll do anything to avoid it. This is why trying to learn a foreign language from a romantic partner often puts strain on the relationship. Sure it's fun to proudly whisper "I love you, my sweetness" to your boyfriend in another language. But it's exasperating to try to discuss a film you just watched together and see a smirk creep across his face as you say, "I think that part not so good, but other part a little, little okay, but it hard understand why the… the… the… what's the word?"
Adult pride can be so sensitive that there are debates as to whether or not it's rude to correct a grown person's linguistic mistakes outside of the classroom. I'm of the camp that insists on gulping down our pride because, as my French hostess told me my third day in Provence, "Do you want to learn French or don't you?!" Her commitment to this credo was proven when she shouted grammatical corrections to me from another room while I was talking on the phone.
But there are other conflicts where the rules for etiquette are not so clear. My partner and I recently told a Danish-German couple about our latest trip to Stockholm. We had had a few tiffs about my being left out of the Swedish conversations and his relatives being left out of the English conversations.
Our friends nodded knowingly. "The answer to that problem," the Dane said with a grin, "is that it's incredibly rude of them to leave you out of a conversation by speaking a language that's hard for you, and it's also incredibly rude of you to insist that everyone switch to a language that's hard for them just for your sake."
Indeed, being excluded from anything is a nasty feeling and nothing excludes like a foreign language. Then again, once a couple is fluent in more than one common language, the ability to speak in code is a pretty sweet reward. (Ex: "Do you mind if we change the subject, honey? I don't want to hear him get going on this again… ")
Many adults insist that they would have become fluent in a foreign language if only their parents had paid for early lessons because kids pick up languages better. There is truth to this argument – children living abroad for a year or more are indeed more likely to become fluent than their parents are, but few understand why. I do not believe the pop science assumption that kids have an easier time learning languages because they are neurologically predisposed. Studies at Cambridge University—and my own experience as an English teacher in Berlin pre-schools—show that kids above the age of three start off a new language with the same bad accent and tendency to make mistakes as adults do. The three advantages children do have over adults are all social.
First of all, while they don't exactly enjoy being laughed at, kids are far less self-conscious about making mistakes than teenagers and adults are. Secondly, immigrant and expat kids can easily be immersed in the local language simply by being enrolled in school, as opposed to their parents, who must first land a job in the language and therein already demonstrate some proficiency. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, kids have a lot less to learn to achieve fluency in their age group than adults do. A first grader's mastery of a language involves being able to talk about Disney films and their favorite flavor of ice cream and all that other stuff found at the intermediate level of any language course. Fluency for an adult means being able to engage in debates about the next election or to write business letters or to make witty jokes with a killer punch-line, all skills for which we each need 12 years of schooling just to master in our first language, never mind a second one.
Learning a foreign language takes a lot of patience and a sturdy ego. In return, it endows you with empathy for students of your own language. And with this empathy it is not rude to smile at a non-native speaker's mistakes or to poke fun at languages and accents. It's hilarious to hear someone with a thick German accent try to say "weather vane" (usually comes out as "fezzerwane"), and it's just as hilarious to hear Americans try to say, "Geschlechtergleichberechtigung" ("gender equality").
When I was staying in Tokyo two years ago, my friend Kazumi would call me to dinner. "Em-i-liiii!"
"Hai!" I'd reply with exorbitant enthusiasm.
This always made her and her fiancé burst into giggles. "So cute how you say, 'Hai!' " she would smile.
"So cute how you say my name," I'd smile back.
This exchange would not be so innocuous if one of us were portraying the other's accent as a sign of stupidity, or complacently refusing to ever leave our own linguistic comfort zone.
When Brits complain about the invasion of other languages and dialects, they ignore that millions throughout Asia, Africa, Oceania, the Americas and the Caribbean gave up their first language for the King's English lest they face punishment. When Americans insist that they shouldn't have to learn another language because immigrants and foreigners should learn theirs, they ignore that more than three-quarters of us are descended from ancestors who had to learn English as a second language. Many Americans seem to believe they did it so that we wouldn't have to. But if they want to fully comprehend what exactly their ancestors achieved and what exactly they're asking of immigrants today, then they will have to try to do it themselves. If I had wanted to be truly fair to my caller so angry about my coworker's German, I would have switched into my own language and waited to see how well he fared.
Learning a foreign language is not about picking up enough exotic words to be able to show off at dinner parties. It's about understanding why foreigners make mistakes in our language by exposing ourselves to the mistakes we are bound to make in theirs. It's about both the guest and the host, the tourist and the immigrant, not giving anyone attitude for failing to speak flawlessly to them in their own language. It's about forging a path to greater empathy, until it expands into your own backyard and all around the world.
Tags: Culture, Ethnicity, foreign language, Immigration, Language, Minorities, Nationality, Second Language, travel
Categories Scars & Class, Scars & Cognitive Ability, Scars & Race, Ethnicity & Nationality
Heritage on St. Patrick's Day? It's Complicated
(Image by Folke Lehr)
Along with millions of other Americans, I used to boast a bit every March 17th: "You know, I really am Irish." It's a common American pastime to cite one's known heritage, either as demonyms ("I'm English and Irish and… ") or percentages ("I'm a quarter Irish, one eighth Polish…" ). I still believe in self-determination, but having lived in Europe for nearly a decade, I have ceased to rattle off these titles. Not only is the latter a vain attempt at exactitude with no chance of ever being exact—we're not even really sure if my great-grandmother was Polish or Belarusian—but it resembles the sort of puzzle-piecing that only pseudo-scientists of suspicious political convictions find relevant. And it makes Europeans laugh. And then correct me. "No, you're not Irish. Your ancestors were Irish." Which is true.
While Americans sometimes refer to their ancestors' nation as their "homeland," they usually can't construct a sentence in the country's official language and certainly cannot name the country's current head of government, the second largest city, or any of its history that isn't directly related to U.S. history. At best they know a handful of expressions, a recipe or two, maybe the region where their parents' parents' parents lived. For this reason, their claims to nationality usually strike the natives as silly.
But the melting pot concept is often admirably used to celebrate diversity. It bungles any sense of loyalty and prevents jingoism. I can't really argue that the English are "naturally" evil for what they did to my Irish ancestors when my last name is Sanford. My known ethnic heritage is a split between some of Europe's most notorious conquerors (English, German) and their victims (Irish, Polish). To claim only one or two of them as "my people" feels ridiculous. If I ever have children, their great-grandfathers will have fought on opposite sides of World War II.
Then again, not everyone's heritage is such a hodge-podge, and plenty of conservative genealogists try to prove why the blending of certain cultures is "better" than the blending of others. That the perpetrators of segregation, Nazism, apartheid, aristocracy, and the internment camps are the most famous fans of genealogy causes me to cringe whenever anyone claims pride in having Irish or Italian or Icelandic "blood."
Such pride is much more understandable when coming from minorities who have been made to feel that they don't belong in the country they were born in. My grandfather, Michael Sullivan, was the grandson of Irish immigrants to America. He was the oldest of 9 children, my mother has 43 cousins, and I've never tried to count how many of us there are in my generation. He often began sentences with the word " 'Twas," and liked to sing folk songs that seemed to have come from Ireland, but may very well have originated in immigrant settlements in the States. This is the extent of my experience with his Irishness, but his was far more profound. He grew up in a time when he could easily find signs reading, "Irish need not apply," and "mick" was a word he hated in the way that only people who have been called a slur do. When he married Barbara Tupper and her grandmother found out he was Catholic, she crossed my grandmother out of the family Bible. All this made John F. Kennedy's election in his lifetime radical. It is my grandfather's story and it is important. But it's not my story.
An attempt to make it my story would feel intellectually dishonest and pretty flaky to boot. As Andrew O'Heir writes this week at Salon: "Irishness [in America today] is a nonspecific global brand of pseudo-old pubs, watered-down Guinness, 'Celtic' tattoos and vague New Age spirituality, designed to make white people feel faintly cool without doing any of the hard work of actually learning anything." Indeed, my middle name endows me with no expertise when it comes to picking out Celtic music or Irish books and films. I can't tell what most Irish people actually enjoy and what's just on display for tourists any more than I can tell what Finnish people actually enjoy and what's just on display for tourists.
As said before, taking an interest in other cultures is always preferable to xenophobia. But it often comes with the temptation to flaunt minimal efforts like feats of greatness. Claiming credentials based on ancestry feels not entirely wrong, but not entirely right either.
The boundaries of countries and ethnicities are as blurry as our sense of self. Heritage is often seen as the recipe that resulted in an individual, yet there are so many more ingredients to the recipe. Yes, I wouldn't be here today if the branches of my family tree were arranged any differently, but I also wouldn't be here today if my parents had slept together in April 1981 instead of March. And placing too much importance on genetics insults any families who cannot or choose not to have children using only their own reproductive cells. Family is what you make of it.
This is not to say that everyone should always downplay their roots. Children with at least one parent who emigrated from another country often have undeniable ties to their ancestral culture – in any case, ties that are far more likely to be based on fact than fictitious romanticizing. Most of what constitutes our inexplicable sense of culture comes from traditions and foods and pastimes we experienced growing up, and great writers like Amy Tan, Gary Shteyngart, and Sandra Cisneros show that growing up with two cultures affords you special insights into both. If my German partner and I ever have children, we plan to raise them bilingually (English and German) and bi-culturally (Thanksgiving and St. Martin's Day), teaching them anything there is to teach about where their mother grew up and where their father grew up. Whether or not to add some Swedish into the mix—my mother-in-law came from Stockholm—is a point of endless debate between us.
If we ever have grandchildren, it will be interesting to see how they approach their American heritage. If they're at all ashamed or excessively proud, I'm determined to discuss it, but if they're merely disinterested, so what? I predict that my great-grandchildren will not feel any strong connection to their American heritage, nor should they. As my partner points out, maybe they will be half-Czech or married to a Burkinabé and have their hands full raising their own children bilingually. Cultures and people move and morph constantly throughout time and space.
When I finally traveled to Ireland two years ago, there were traces of culture that seemed somehow familiar. And that was moving. But most of the charm—"The Irish Sea really is that green! They really do sing in the pubs!"—came from recognizing things I'd grown up seeing in movies, not in my grandfather's house. And I also found traces of culture the following year in Amsterdam that were faintly familiar to me because, although I have no known Dutch forebearers, I grew up on Long Island.
My most impressive sense of belonging in Ireland came from the fact that I was not the palest person around. Not by a long shot. (Hence my captioning the above photo taken on the cliffs of Howth in an e-mail sent to friends: "If there's anything Sullivan about me, it's my complexion.") Lookism can be a very powerful force. But it does not have to be. In Dublin, we were never once served by someone who didn't have a Slavic accent. If the current flood of Eastern European immigrants end up staying in Ireland, their children will have much more of a claim to the place than I do.
They'll at least be able to remember the name of the prime minister, after all.
Tags: Culture, Ethnicity, Family, Identity, Ireland, Irish, Lookism, Nationality, St. Patrick's Day
Categories Scars & Appearance, Scars & Race, Ethnicity & Nationality
The Most Racist Place On Earth
(Image used under CC license via)
Where in the world are people most likely to say that they would not want "people of another race" as neighbors? The results, from the Swedish World Values Survey, were published this week in The Washington Post in the form of a map by Max Fisher, who drew some conclusions here. The Swedish research team, meanwhile, found that racism does not necessarily decrease when economic freedom increases. (But homophobia does.)
The results are fascinating, but they should not be seen as inerrant proof of how things stand. Nor should the map be used as a travel guide. In the case of Sweden, which has seen on-going riots in the poor suburban neighborhoods of Stockholm all week, qualifying as less racist than other countries hardly proves you are racism-free. And as Fisher points out, there is no guarantee that the respondents answered honestly.
When both Americans and Germans hear the word "race," only the most socially inept among them do not know to respond very, very carefully. In Germany, even seemingly objective words like "home" and "deport" make most people immediately think of the Holocaust. But if you said to a white German, "How would you feel about having gypsies live next door?", or if you said to a WASP American, "How would you feel about having neighbors who are illegal immigrants?", you might get a more cynical answer. (I use the offensive terms "illegal immigrants" and "gypsies" for hypothetical purposes. Readers outside the U.S. and Europe should note that "undocumented immigrants" and "Roma" are more objective, less derogatory terms.) Almost everyone in the U.S. and Germany knows racism is a bad thing, which is why most racists will not admit to it. As Desmond Tutu said, five minutes after apartheid ended in South Africa, you couldn't find anyone who had ever supported apartheid.
Indeed, while readers in India have been reacting angrily to their nation's standing in the survey, there is a tremendous risk that people from the countries that appear less racist are, or will become, dangerously complacent about their supposed open-mindedness. The U.S. and U.K. appear slightly more tolerant than Germany, but a friend from India has openly said she feels much more respected and protected here in Berlin than in New York, where she has been harassed by Homeland Security officials, or in London, where her brother was beaten up for being a "Paki." Anecdotal evidence is less empirical than statistical evidence, but statistical evidence is far from infallible.
Take for example the fact that France ranks as one of the most racist nations in the West. The strongest evidence to support this finding is probably the popularity of the right-wing, anti-immigration party National Front, which won 17.9% of the vote in the first round of last year's presidential election. But racism cannot always be measured so plainly. In the United States, hate groups are on the rise, but most segregationists and white supremacists vote either Republican or Democrat because they must operate in a two-party system if they want to get anything done. Many members of Congress have been members of the nationalist Council of Conservative Citizens (also known as the CCC, which sounds a lot like another white supremacist organization), which in 1997 presented the former head of the National Front with a Confederate flag. The U.S. ranks as more tolerant than France in the survey, yet a great deal of its racism survives covertly.
And on the flipside, America's history reveals more overt racism than France's. All anti-miscegenation laws were lifted in France 175 years earlier than in the United States. French literary giant Alexandre Dumas, author of The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, was the son of France's first black general, Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, who was the highest ranking black general in any Western country until Colin Powell rose to the rank in 1989. Racial segregation laws did not exist in modern France until the Nazi Occupation, which is why many black American celebrities like Josephine Baker expatriated there. Anecdotal evidence suggests people of sub-Saharan background have been better integrated into French society than people of Arab and/or Muslim background, but this is difficult to examine because, unlike in the United States, it has been illegal in France since 1958 to collect data on race or ethnicity.
Indeed, what do we mean by people of a "different race"? What do you imagine? In the United States, we tend to think of ethnicity as something we can't quite put our finger on, while race is widely thought to be based on indisputable biological facts. Having pale skin, brownish wavy hair, and no epicanthic fold makes people think of me in the U.S. and Europe as white, affording me all the privileges that implies. The precise details of my ethnicity and heritage—growing up in a WASP family with ancestors who were English, Irish, German, Polish, Scottish, and also possibly Jewish—are rarely an issue. Nowadays. But marriage to my Irish Catholic grandfather in 1943 led my grandmother to be disowned by her own grandmother.
And today the ethnicity of a white person of Middle Eastern background is a major issue for many right-wing Westerners. Some will argue that the dark hair and olive skin tone common among Middle Easterners renders them a separate, biologically identifiable race, but then what about Greek or Spanish people? What about Austrians and Southern Germans? What about that Harry Potteresque raven-hair/pale skin combination so common in the U.K. and Ireland? Is this starting to sound silly? Jokes about redheads suddenly become less innocuous in light of violent gingerism. For better or for worse, predominantly white societies recognize tremendous physical diversity across Europe, but usually fail to differentiate between Chinese and Japanese, or West Africans and East Africans. Race is in the eye—or mind—of the beholder.
Years ago, my German-Swedish boyfriend almost went through the roof when a teenage friend of the family said she felt a bit nervous in Berlin "because of all the immigrants around." How could she say such a thing in front of his American girlfriend?! he seethed. But she didn't think of me as an "immigrant" because I'm middle class, I have the same hair color and complexion as the majority of German citizens, I celebrate Christmas, and I immigrated to Berlin simply because I loved the city, not out of economic necessity or a fear of persecution at home. Around the world, some people are intolerant of any race that they perceive as different from their own, while others are intolerant of only certain races. Which kind of racism is preferable?
No matter the answer, the existence of the second kind proves that both kinds of racism are unnatural.
Tags: Ethnicity, Ethnocentrism, Immigration, Race, Racism, White Supremacists, World Values Survey
Categories Most Read, Scars & Appearance, Scars & Class, Scars & Race, Ethnicity & Nationality
Picking & Choosing Our Tragedies
(Image by Eric Fischer used under CC license via)
What a week. A suicide bomber in Pakistan killed four people. A fertilizer plant explosion in Texas killed at least fourteen people. Sixteen people died in a goldmine collapse in Ghana. President Obama and members of the U.S. Senate were sent letters laced with poison. A journalist in Mexico was assassinated, presumably by agents of the drug wars. At least 65 people died in terrorist attacks in Iraq. More than 150 people just died in an earthquake in Szechuan. And after two young women and a little boy were murdered by bombs at the Boston Marathon, it felt surreal if not uncomfortable to see my last post about America's inexperience with bombs at home emblazoned across the blog. But what to say?
For most of the week, we had no trace of a motive for the Boston bombing. And now that one suspect of Chechen origin is dead and his brother is in custody, we still don't have anything we could officially call a reason. Polemicists on the right and left are using the event as "evidence" for the necessity of their own political agendas, arguing that we should have used drones, or that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev should face a military trial, or that we need more surveillance cameras everywhere, or that the two suspects seem more like the psychotic teens of Columbine than terrorist operatives. As John Dickerson observed in Slate yesterday:
We need more restraint and less wild guessing. Free-flowing debate in the search for meaning is a part of these moments and a part of the human condition, but … In these fast-moving times when the only thing that is certain is that the first piece of news has repeatedly been wrong, perhaps those lawmakers and pundits who want to be part of the final conversation should (paraphrasing Mike Monteiro) follow the Quaker rule: Be meaningful or be quiet.
Of course, we all like to think ourselves meaningful. But so far, with no official motive, the only irrefutable point any politician has made thusfar came from the Ambassador from the Czech Republic, who urged the media to note that Czechs and Chechens belong to two different countries located over a thousand miles apart.
Distance and borders matter, obviously, since none of us are equally horrified by every single one of this week's tragedies. But why? I had friends in the Boston area who were stuck at home during Friday's lockdown. (Two were hoping to be allowed out in time for them to make it to the annual birthday celebration of their late brother Bill, whom I wrote about at this time last year in a post on grief.) But I'll hazard to guess that most of those glued to the news updates from Boston did not have loved ones there. The story dominated the headlines across the ocean in Germany, in France, in the U.K. Everyone seemed to be watching.
The simplest reason for this is that people are naturally empathic, upset to see others upset and, in the words of the Czech ambassador, "It was a stark reminder of the fact that any of us could be a victim of senseless violence anywhere at any moment." But dead people in Pakistan and Iraq no longer serve as reminders of that fact. They instead represent our ability to compartmentalize, to exile certain tragedies to a semi-numb region of the mind, either because they seem too frequent for us to commit to or because we want to believe there is some crucial difference between Us and Them, protecting us from their fate. It's not malicious of us to compartmentalize in this way—to tear up upon sight of the beautiful little boy in Boston while not even checking to see if any of the victims in Iraq were children—but it's not fair either.
And so I stared down my last post about World War II bombs, feeling inexplicably uncomfortable, wondering whether it was callous of me to not say anything about the tragedies going on in my old home country, yet knowing World War II would never have happened had my new home country not embraced a dangerous idea of what makes a country "home." Borders are always bizarre. In a digital age, distance is all in the mind. I'll never be able to rationally explain why some things feel "close to home" and others don't. I'll always care more about the safety of those I know personally than those I don't, but I'll never be completely comfortable with this fact because ignoring our common humanity is what builds borders and facilitates cruelty. I'll always tear up if you show me a picture of an innocent victim. I'll always try to remember to ask why we are shown pictures of some victims, and not others.
Or, as a friend in Boston observed during the lockdown, "It is so hard to be inside on this gorgeous, beautiful spring day. Minor problem, but reminds me how lucky we are most of the time to feel safe outside our homes."
Tags: Boston Bombing, Culture, Empathy, Ethnicity, Grief, Humanity, Nationality, WWII, Ya'an Earthquake
Categories Scars & Class, Scars & Psychology


The vacation is arriving fast, and you also can't seem to think about something special that may fit your financial plan. Christmas is a unique time of the year. Christmas is among the parties for Christians. Just remember that Xmas could be your ability to have a great time with your nearest and dearest. The most crucial issue to consider about Christmas is that it's not about the Christmas gift ideas. Keeping that in mind, you will have the ability to locate cheap Christmas gift suggestions your individual is guaranteed to love for the season. Santa and that I haven't had a wonderful relationship in the last few years at our home.
But What About Cheap Christmas Presents?
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Fantastic Art Images! Little pieces of artwork that show beautifully under our Jeweler's Glass to create delightful jewelry and embellishments. Printed on archival quality paper. All domestic and international copyrights apply.


DELAND, Fla., Feb. 21 (UPI) — A 16-year-old boy could face as little as four months in prison on his manslaughter conviction in Deland, Fla., for the beating death of a 13-year-old at a skateboard park.
James Watson was convicted of punching Shane Farrell in the jaw and then fatally kicking him in the head after he fell.
He will receive the juvenile equivalent of sentencing March 13 before Circuit Judge James R. Clayton.
The maximum penalty would be confinement until he is 21 years old, if he is determined to be a "serious or habitual offender."
But his attorney, Raymond Warren, said he hopes the boy can go home in as little as four months.
"He's a respectful and polite young man with some emotional problems that hopefully can be helped with a treatment plan," Warren said.
Prosecutor Karen Foxman said Watson is a "violent offender" and showed it during the fight in Nov ember.
Watson, who has no record of violence, could also be eligible for three years in detention followed by two years of probation.
Warren defended a 17-year-old girl in 1999 who drove over three children, killing one and seriously injuring two others.
She was released after four months.
Foxman said that was a case of negligence not violence and as a result there was a difference. Warren said under the terms of the manslaughter conviction there is no difference.
Watson was initially charged as an adult with second-degree murder, which would have meant at least 10 years in prison if he was convicted.
The charge was later reduced to manslaughter and he was tried as a juvenile. If he is convicted he will held until he is 21 years old.
Both boys were the size of an adult. Farrell is 6 feet tall despite his age, and Watson is 5 foot 10 inches.
In a written confession, taken an hour after the fight, Watson said: "The fight started because the boy Shane was giving my 8-year-old brother ciggerets, and tried smoking marijuana with him. He also made my brother steel him cigars from a convenient store. When I saw him he immediately said he didn't do anything like that and I didn't know what I was talking about.
"Then I punched him in the jaw and kicked his head, when he fell. I kicked him with the side of my foot," the written confession said.


Wellow School Association would like to buy Wellow School it's own defibrillator at a cost of £500.
At Wellow School, we obviously hope never to have to deal with this situation. However, if we do have to, we want to be able to give the unfortunate victim the best chance to survive. This means buying an Automated External Defibrillator, or AED to be permanently available on the school site.
Sudden Cardiacc Arrest - SCA - can happen at any age, including the young. It occurs in people who often appear healthy and have no known heart disease or other risk factors for SCA. It happens to children. It could happen to your child or grandchild.
With the combined use of chest compressions and prompt use of a defibrillator together with a rapid ambulance response, survival rates increase dramatically up to an impressive 50-60%. Every second counts.
Sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) is a condition in which the heart suddenly and unexpectedly stops beating. If this happens, blood stops flowing to the brain and other vital organs. The person loses consciousness and collapses. SCA usually causes death if it is not treated within minutes. The most effective treatment for this is chest compressions (CPR) combined with the administration of a defibrillator (AED).
support the Forest Glade FC "In a HeartBeat" defibrillator appeal.
To help purchase a Defibrillator for the Cricket club that can be used by the community to save lives.


Want to know what it's really like for 16-18 year olds doing an apprenticeship?
Watch Luke talk about his experience as a Digital Marketing Apprentice with Get Manic, an SEO and Digital Marketing team based in Brighton.
Very Interesting and useful info about apprenticeships and thanks for sharing the info and keep sharing.


text:
New Species of Snail Named After Joe Strummer
By Alex Hudson
Today (December 15) is Clash member Paul Simonon's 58th birthday, but another party is being thrown for the band's late singer-guitarist Joe Strummer. The punk icon has officially made a mark on the animal kingdom, since a newly discovered species of snail was recently named after him.
The snail is called A. strummeri, the Santa Cruz Sentinel reports. According to scientists, they look a bit like punk rock mollusks because their spiky shells resemble mohawks or spiked jackets.
"Because they look like punk rockers in the '70s and '80s and they have purple blood and live in such an extreme environment, we decided to name one new species after a punk rock icon," said scientist Shannon Johnson of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute.
These snails are the size of golfballs and can be found thousands of feet below sea level, near hydrothermal vents. They belong to the genus Alviconcha. Their yellow colouring means they don't particularly look like the dark-haired Strummer, but naming it after Johnny Rotten might not have the same ring to it.
This is hardly the first time that a newly found creature has been named after a musician. There's a Beyoncé fly, a Lou Reed spider, a Neil Young spider and a Greg Graffin prehistoric bird, among others.
More Joe Strummer
Joe Strummer Joe Strummer 001
Spurred on by the discovery of a treasure trove of unreleased material from the late Joe Strummer's personal archive, this box set is a reve...
Joe Strummer Celebrated with Retrospective Box Set
While Joe Strummer is primarily recognized as a co-founder of the Clash, his music career reaches much farther than his accomplishments with...
Joe Strummer Honoured with Digital Anthology, Reissues
If those documentaries and biopic rumblings have taught us anything, it's that Joe Strummer has not been forgotten in the decade since his d...
Joe Strummer Biopic in the Works
In the years since Joe Strummer's sudden death in 2002, the music world has remembered the late Clash icon with multiple documentary films (...
Joe Strummer Doc Set For DVD Release On July 8
Julien Temple's documentary focusing on the life of the late Joe Strummer is set to be released on DVD July 8, 2008. The Future is Unwritten...

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Q: op amp as comparator/switch - strange behaviour I have the following schematic (extract):

The purpose of this is to enable a pin (chip enable) and to disable the 5V supply ("5V consumer") if the threshold at the signal IN is above a certain threshold (VRef=0.5V). So far so good, the circuit works fine under "normal" circumestances.
The problem is that when I use the PCB with different power supply and input signals (for testing purposes), th op amp does not switch any more. Here are the differences:

*

*power supply:

*

*normally: USB(5V) -> battery charger IC -> 4.2V

*testing: 5V from Raspberry Pi -> battery charger IC -> 4.2V. In this case I noticed that the 5V are actually about 4.8V, but that's still enough.
In both cases, no battery is connected so the battery charger is acting as a voltage regulator.

*signal IN:

*

*normally: analog audio signal with a bias voltage of 1.3V and no more than +/- 0.4V peak-to-peak voltage.

*testing: 1.3V DC voltage

So when testing, I measured the 1.3V at the signal IN pin and the 0.5V at the VRef pin of the op amp, but it did not switch, i.e. the chip enable pin remained low and the 5V consumer voltage was still enabled.
The total power consumption of the PCB is under 50mA, so it should not be a problem for the Raspberry Pi to power it. The power supply unit is also rated at 1000mA.
Any idea why this happens? Am I overseeing something?
Thanks!
UPDATE
Maybe it's relevant, so I added the circuit which switches the ~1.4V at the signal IN pin:

One thing I noticed: while sweeping the input signal ("signal IN") from 0V to about 2V, I noticed that the op amp does switch above the threshold of about 0.55V, but the output voltage jumps from about -15mV (input under 0.55V) to only 60mV (input over 0.55V).
UPDATE 2
I disconnected the output of the op amp (no load) and now it does not switch any more at all (using the testing method). The output remains low.
I also measured the output of the op amp with an oscilloscope (both with and without load) and it does not switch fast high and low (so it averages to 60mV), as Spehro Pefhany suggested. The voltages are pretty clean, i.e. no spikes or large AC variations.
UPDATE 3
In the last update I said that the op amp does not switch without a load. That was a mistake from my part: it still does switch, but the ON-voltage is at about 30mV.
UPDATE 4
If I power the board (first schematic) normally (5V from USB) and use the Raspberry only to switch the signal (second schematic), the op amp switches correctly! So I tend to think that there is a problem in my power supply. I power the board with the Raspberry very similar as I switch the signal IN (second schematic), except without the R18 and R21 (so I basically feed-through the 5V). The 5V (at Q8) are coming directly from the Raspberry pin header.

A: What you describe SHOULD work, so it seems you may be just crossing over a limiting boundary when you change modes. Try it with NO load on the op-amp. If that still doesn't work then circuit is not as you believe OR opamp is damaged.
LM321 data sheet
Presumably the chip enable pin does not provide a massive pullup? Or does it?
Try it with nothing connectd to LM321 output pin.
Things to look at include:
Supply voltage. 3V in datasheet so 4V2 or 5V OK.
Max Vcommon_mode = Vdd - 1.5V or 2V depending on conditions. In either case you SHOULD be well below that.
Massive output pullup - see above. The LM321 and LM314 (quad big brother) data sheets provide sink currents at high supply voltages but not at low voltage. IF these decrease with supply voltage you may be below the 1 to 2 mA needed by the LED etc.

A: The output impedance of the RPi might be high enough to give you some negative (or positive) feedback through the VCC line to the op-amp.
Sweep the input beyond your normal ranges (but within the allowable maximums from the datasheet) while watching the output of the op-amp:

*

*If it moves with the input then it's acting like an amplifier instead of a comparator.

*If it switches, but at a much higher voltage, you have hysteresis due to positive feedback.

A: The ~60mV differential implies that that "chip enable" input is actually an output and is effectively shorting the LM321 output to ground. Or something like that. Another possibility is that it is very briefly switching above ground and back again and it averages to ~60mV. If you don't have access to an oscilloscope, one way to check that is to connect another LED + resistor from the output to ground. You wouldn't be able to see the slight reduction in brightness of D1 if the output was switching above ground with a low duty cycle, but you would be able to see the difference between dark and dimly lit for an LED connected from the output to ground (with a few hundred ohms in series).
Using the LED to level shift the output a bit is clever, and should work, but your system should have some kind of UVLO lockout protection so if the 4.2V battery drops too low, the battery will be protected for one thing, and secondly so the MOSFET won't damage or unsolder itself when the gate voltage becomes insufficient to fully turn it on. Maybe you've got that elsewhere.

A: I found the problem: it was a mean, little shortcut to GND at the output of the op amp.
So I was looking in the wrong place at first. The circuit as-is works fine.
Thanks for all the answers!

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


I suffered a long time of dreaming night after night and couldn't sleep properly. I had mysterious and prophetic dreams. I was brought by the many angels to heaven. where I saw more angels and many children. The place was beautiful and peaceful which is full of love and happiness. I saw the moon and the sun collide then a big ball of fire fell down here on earth, fire scattered everywhere that nowhere to escape.
In some of my dreams, I was traveling around the world and I saw the many happenings. Sometimes, I got lost and took me a long time to find my way. In the jungle, many animals want to attack me but I managed to escape. I was floating on a stormy ocean holding only a small wood then found myself safe by the seaside. The bridge broke when I was in the middle, luckily I managed to cross. Somebody wants to kill me but I defended myself and I killed him. Having a baby when I was single and I saw my two daughters before giving birth to them. Riding in a white flying horse together with King Phillip of Spain that took us to Englatera, this dream was before coming here to England. Before I met my husband, I saw him in my dream.
I saw the tsunami three months before it happened. The Virgin Mary told me to get ready; heat wave, heavy rain and strong flood are coming. I saw war with soldiers of different nationalities and I felt it was endless. I heard many bombings, missiles and nuclear bombs. In the crucifix, I saw tears fell down in the Lord's cheek then I asked the Holy Spirit why, "a big catastrophe is coming" was His answer. I also saw famine, draught, diseases, pests, drugs and more chaos to come. I had some dreams that I am healing and advising people.
Those dreams made me tired and sleepless nights with headaches. No one had helped me, so I prayed to God to guide me, then one day I bought a book that helped me to understand what was happening. I bought more spiritual books, many were about dreams and healing. . I have read books about psychology and some authors are psychiatrist, their patients have mysterious dreams and it helps a lot in curing their sickness, if they understand their dreams. Through further research, I have gathered more information.
Through my own experience, reading and research I was able to have the knowledge of knowing and understanding by interpreting my own dreams and healed myself. With my special gift, I can also interpret other people's dreams and I want to help anybody who is disturbed with their dreams..
Aside from family and friends, I already helped and interpreted dreams of other people around the world. Dreams are important in our lives and the messages are connected to the future. If we take our time to understand them, we can prepare for the future. Some dreams are prophetic and direct messages, others you need to understand the symbols. It depends on your situation, you need to understand what's happening and observe what's around you.
If you don't understand your dream or bothers you, and disturbs your sleep, why not ask me I can help you to feel better, happy and healthy. Full details of my dreams are in "Dreams and Messages" page.
I don't charge but accept donations.


Like I need more things to do… but, I would like to read all 100 of these. I'll aim for 10 per year, although that seems ambitious. The idea is that these are books I'd like to read ANYWAY, right? Here's the list if you'd like to read along. Books will be in RED when I've read them (get it?). I've already read a handful of these, some of them might need a re-read.


The PROJECTS GIZMO allows you to create a repository of work and information relating to some activity you have accomplished. This Gizmo is found using the Gizmos tab on the toolbar.
Next, click in your portfolio where you want the content to go. Then, select from exisitng Projects or choose Add New to build a new Project.
When you use the Projects Gizmo, a window will appear asking you to select a project that you have already made or to create a new project. The Projects help page can give you detailed information on creating a project.
After you make your selection or create a project, you will see the project on your portfolio page. It will have the same background image as the one you selected for the project. It will also show the title of the project. If you hover your mouse over it, you will see the edit button appear and the background will be faded.
Be sure to check out our pages on creating and editing projects below!


"If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men. But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep." I Corinthians 15:19-20.
This is the faith for which Hillcrest was founded, thousands have sacrificed, and students have come. It has been taught because it is of "first importance." It is the central teaching of our Christian faith, but it is also most important in our daily affections and choices.
To the Colossians (2:20, 3:1), Paul wrote "Since you died with Christ…" and "Since you have been raised with Christ…" Since we died with Christ, the messages and expectations of natural philosophies (worldviews) have nothing for us. They lack power for changing our lives and they offer no eternal hope.
I sense that many members of the Class of 2017 are beginning to see the present and eternal blessings of Christ's, and their own, death and resurrection! May we also!


text:
Q: Why do we need "try-finally" when using @contextmanager decorator? I wonder why we need to use a try-finally when using a the @contextmanager decorator.
The provided example suggests:
from contextlib import contextmanager

@contextmanager
def managed_resource(*args, **kwds):
    resource = acquire_resource(*args, **kwds)
    try:
        yield resource
    finally:
        release_resource(resource)

It seems to me, however, that this will do the exact same thing:
@contextmanager
def managed_resource(*args, **kwds):
    resource = acquire_resource(*args, **kwds)
    yield resource
    release_resource(resource)

I'm sure I must be missing something. What am I missing?

A: Because a finally statement is guaranteed to run no matter what (except a power outage), before the code can terminate. So writing it like this guarantees that the resource is always released

A: finally makes sure that the code under it is always executed even if there's an exception raised:
from contextlib import contextmanager

@contextmanager
def exception_handler():
    try:
        yield
    finally:
        print("cleaning up")

with exception_handler():
    result = 10 / 0

If there were no try-finally, the above example wouldn't cleanup itself afterwards.


text:
mask revision
The effects masks have on the wearer in both Rituals and Theatre with specific reference to Noh and Kyogen theatre.
The mask affects the wearer in both Noh Rituals and Theatre. Noh is an original and independent art form. And the word Noh has a strong meaning. Noh is an original and independent art form. It will overtake the Dengaku, Sarugaku and the other song and dance theatre art form. The Noh plays incorporates the significant elements of the Dengaku as well as the Sarugaku in both music and dance. Noh was the brainchild of Kwannami Kiyotsugu from the 1333 to 1384 time period. He was a Sarugaku writers. The Noh ritual and theatre art form was later polished with the help of his son Zeami Motokiyo who lived from 1363 to 1443 time period (ShinkŌkai 1960, ix).
The Noh mask is used to disguise the natural voice of the actor or actress. The Noh mask is also used to portray another character, for example the samurai legend named Shintaru, in an aural display as it exquisite catapults the audience to Japanese community many decades ago. (Sheppard 2001, 32). The picture below shows a Noh mask.
Noh Mask
Reference: http://www.noh-masks.com/
Both the Noh and Kyogen actors feel that they use a mask because the audience should see the person or thing that the mask represents and to cover the identity of the actor and actress behind the mask. Both theatre plays were created in Japan during the fourteenth century. They are both known as the art of Nogaku or simply as Noh and Kyogen. The Noh play is a serious drama that where the movements of the actors and actresses are refined, elegant and with elusively beautiful. The main persons that the actors and actresses portray here are generally taken from Japan's rich historical past or classical literature. The play uses the medium of song or music and dance. The themes of Noh plays are often related to man's destiny. This type of play is characterized a simple stage.
(Reference: http://www2.ntj.jac.go.jp/unesco/noh/en/nohgaku.html)
Further, the Kyogen mask is used to hide the person or actor and portray the person depicted by the mask. The Kyogen play is a spoken drama where the crown often laughs at the humorous antics and other comedic renditions of life in Japan six hundred years ago. Expectedly, the Kyogen mask alone looks funny. The Kyogen character has no name because he or she represents a group of people. For example, the Kyogen person represents the typical peasant working in the farm. Or, the Kyogen play represents a soldier in the battle field. The Kyogen mask represents the typical young or old people of Japan. Also, the Kyogen person being the subject of the play is usually a god or deity, spirits of animals and plants, beautiful and ugly people of Japan during that time period six centuries ago. Basically, the Kyogen plays were aimed at making the people laugh during the entire length of the short play. The usual Kyogen character is the funny Taro Kajo (Reference: http://www2.ntj.jac.go.jp/unesco/noh/en/nohgaku.html). Shown below is a picture of a Kyogen mask.
Kyogen Mask
Referencc: http://www.nohmask21.com/eu/kyogenmask.html
The mask affects the wearer in both Noh Rituals and Theatre. First, the wearer cannot show his or her expressions with the mask on. Second. The mask will hide the gender of the theatre performer. Third, the minimalist style of vocal and mimetic characterization masks the gender of the theatre performer. Fourth, the mask of the actor or actress in the Noh rituals and theatres forces them to develop powerful technique and devote tremendous concentration to tackle these stage obstacles.
Also, the masks also increase the intensity Noh. Another use of the mask is to improve the theme of the Noh plays.
First, the Noh face mask wearer feels that he or she cannot show his or her changing expressions with the mask on. This is an obstacle that mask theatre performer has that actors in non –mask theatre performances do not have. Thus, the Noh ritual and theatre performer feels that his or her audiences will not completely understand what the actors and actresses are trying to communicate to them. According to Nagao Kazuo, one reason for this obstacle is that the mask performance style of the Noh theatre performances is a six hundred year art form. The actors and actresses feel that they mask creates a theatre atmosphere of misunderstanding or misconception. The Japanese term for this is gokai. The Noh performers feel that they have to portray the people living in Japan six hundred year ago. The first Noh performers felt that they were to portray the culture, tradition and lifestyle of the Japanese people of the same time period in the past. The Noh performers feel that that the current crop of theatre audiences often misunderstand the message or the story that the stage performers try their best to permeate four corners of the entire Noh theatre. This is because the modern day Japanese as well as foreign Noh audiences do not have an inkling of how the Japanese during the time six hundred years ago have lived, eaten, worked and cared for their family and personal life (Trimillos 1997, 4).
Second. The Noh stage actor or actress feels that the mask hides the gender of the theatre performer. Clearly, the Noh stage performer feels that the mask will not give away whether the stage performer is a man or woman. In addition, the Noh stage performer feels that the audience will not be able to know whether the actor or the actress is in his teens, in his twenties, in his thirties or ever older with the mask covering the face. In the same manner, the Noh actor or actress feels that his or her physical features behind the mask is more important than the main purposes of the No and Kyogen theatres. The Noh stage performer feels that the mask makes him or her double his or her efforts to paint a quality portrayal of the character envisioned by the play writer in this unique music and dance routine. The Noh stage performer feels that books cannot describe well the Noh music and dance act as well as hearing the music from actual viewing the plays themselves and seeing the mask themselves(Inoura, and Kawatake 1981, 3). The Noh performer feels that the mask creates the curiosity in their audiences
in order to learn more about the past and why the mask is very important to cover the Noh performer's gender. The stage performer feels that the people will be bored if the audience does not know the gender of the audiences. For, the Noh performer feels that gender is an important miniscule data that is that is needed to give the audience a complete picture of the entire Noh and Kyogen play. Some may say that the gender would be immaterial. The website http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXNOTFGOP7Y&feature=related shows a Noh actor ( or actress) that moves back and forth in around a small stage floor. The stage actor uses a fan to help him or her communicate to the audience his messages. There are other members of the cast who are sitting in a circle around the actor. The Noh mask hides the unique physical features of the actor or actress. Also, the robes of the actor or actress in this website does not indicate he or she is a Japanese, Chinese, Korean, American, British, French or Indian performer. Likewise, this website shows that the music is hard to understand because it is in Japanese. This proves that the Noh actor or actress finds that the mask makes him more exhausting to portray the story as well as the play characters to the non –Japanese audiences like the Americans and the European Union residents.
Third, the Noh actor or actress feels that the mask forces him or her to sway back and forth to complement the minimalist style of vocal and mimetic characterization of each performance. The Noh actor or actress feels that the confusing and sleepy effect of the Noh mask can be easily compensated by making the plays shorter in terms of length of play in order to prevent boredom to infect their audiences. The actor feels that he must muster more than the required effort in each Noh play to overcome the sleep -enticing effect of the single expression of the Noh mask. The Noh actor feels that the mask has lessened the efficacy of the plays in portraying celebrating deities, longevity, poetry, harmony, fertility, exorcism among other lesser themes(Brazell 1998, 36).
Fourth, the actor or actress feels that the Noh mask the Noh and Kyogen theatres forces them to develop powerful technique and devote tremendous concentration to tackle these stage obstacles. The saying a picture paints a thousand words is very with the following picture of a Noh theatre play. A Noh picture is found in the appendix taken from the link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Noh3.jpg. These actors and actresses feel that the powerful techniques that they developed are needed to eliminate the mask's effects. A good example of the use of the powerful techniques was to depict the theme of religion and Buddha. Buddha is represented by a lion's mask signifying leadership or kingship (Asai 1999, 32). Buddha is a spiritual leader of India. His followers are led by Buddhist monks. His religion is Buddhism(Griffiths 1994, 36).
On the other hand, some Noh actors feel that the mask increases the intensity of the Noh and Kyogen stories. They feel that it is wrong to think that masks do not have an effect on the wearer in both the rituals and theatre with specific reference to Noh and Kyogen theatre. For, the actor feels that the mask is the key to the success of each Noh play. The quote
"NOH as an independent and original art form…In addition to his dramatic activities, Zeami composed a number of works, the most important of which is called the Kwadensho (the Book of the Flower), or more properly, Fūshi-kwadensho in which he explained the nature and æsthetic principles governing Noh plays, and gave detailed instructions concerning the manner of composition, acting, direction, and production of these dramas" (ShinkŌkai 1960, ix).
The above paragraph evidences that the Noh actor or actresses feel that the mask lets him or her become something or someone he or she is not. This is needed to make people patronize this unique Japanese play. The Noh actor or actress feels that the mask is used improve the theme of the Noh plays. For, the Noh actor and actress feels that the mask is needed to shut himself or herself out of the scene because the theme of the entire play is centered around the character or a skills and not the actor or the actress. For, the Noh actor and actresses feel that the main purpose of the Noh play is to successfully open the mind of the audiences to open their ear to the music and lessons that portrays the lives of the people that lived in Japan six hundred years ago and not to prop the Noh actor or actress up(ShinkŌkai 1960, ix). And, the actors and actresses feel that the Noh mask is used to increase the quality of the play.
One crucial form of masked performance remains to be introduced – a form that can be dubbed as acoustic, musical or vocal masking.. The alteration of the human face by a mask often entails an alteration of the human face by a mask often entails an alteration of the human voice. When the mouth is covered by the mask, vocal sounds acquire a deeper, more resonant tone. The masked voice generally sounds distanced and somewhat bigger than life. For example, the over the head masks of ancient Greek theatres that functioned as sound boxes for the performer and allowed the actor's voice to resound with the power of a god or a mythic hero. In the Noh performances, the masks are valued for their subtle aesthetic influence on the voice. The voice resounding from the mask is used to show that the mask's voice originated from another world. In the Noh ritual performances, the invoked deity the mask is necessary to show that it is deity and not the actor or actress that is speaking. The Noh mask is used to disguise the natural voice of the actor or actress. The Noh mask is also used to portray another character, for example the samurai legend named Shintaru, in an aural display as it exquisite catapults the audience to Japanese community many decades ago. (Sheppard 2001, 32). The picture below shows a Noh mask.
The mask affects the wearer in both Kyogen Rituals and Theatre.
The mask affects the wearer in both Kyogen Rituals and Theatre (7 pages). First, the wearer cannot show his or her expressions with the mask on. Second. The mask will hide the gender of the theatre performer. Third, the minimalist style of vocal and mimetic characterization masks the gender of the theatre performer. Fourth, the mask of the actor or actress in the Noh rituals and theatres forces them to develop powerful technique and devote tremendous concentration to tackle these stage obstacles.
Also, the masks also increase the intensity Noh. Another use of the mask is to improve the theme of the Noh plays (Foley 2007).
First, the Kwogen performer feels that the mask hides his or her expressions with the mask on. This is a hindrance that the Kyogen comedy theatre performer has that actors in non –mask theatre performances do not have. Thus, the Kwogen ritual and theatre feels that his or her audiences will not completely understand what the actors and actresses are trying to communicate to them. According to Nagao Kazuo, one reason for this obstacle is that the mask performance style of the Kyogen stage performer is that Kyogen was created at the same time Noh rituals and theatres were created. This creation happened six hundred years ago. The actors and actresses feel that the Kyogen mask creates a theatre atmosphere of misunderstanding or misconception. The Japanese term for this is gokai. The Kyogen performers feel that the mask helps them portray the people living in Japan many centuries ago. The Kyogen performers back then felt that they were tasked to portray the culture, tradition and lifestyle of the Japanese people of the same time period in the past. The Kyogen performers feel that the mask complicates the unfolding story onstage. For, both the modern day Japanese audience as well as foreign Kyogen audiences do not have a small knowledge of how the Japanese during the time six hundred years ago have lived, eaten, worked and cared for their family and personal life (Trimillos 1997, 4).
Second. The Kyogen stage performers feel that the mask hides the gender of the theatre performer. For, the stage performer feels that the sex of the person is an essential part of the entire theatre scene. In addition, the Kyogen performer feels that the audience will not be able to know whether the stage performer is in his teens, in his twenties, in his thirties or ever older with the mask covering the face. For, the stage performers feel that they have to also show to the audience that the person or character they are portraying is young, old, fat, thin, white, black, yellow, male or female to make the story telling more complete or convincing. The Kyogen performer feels that the mask them double their efforts to portray the same quality of plays as compared with a play where the mask is not part of the show. In addition, the Kyogen actor and actress feels that books cannot describe well the Kyogen conversational comedy act. The audience has to actually see a live Kyogen performance to appreciate everything. (Inoura, and Kawatake 1981, 3). The Kyogen stage players feel that the mask creates the curiosity in their audiences to learn more about the past and why the mask is very important to cover the Kyogen performer's gender. For, the Kyogen stage people feel that gender cannot be left out of the story. On the other hand, some quarters decry that the stage performer's gender would be immaterial. Also, the robes of the Kyogen actor or actress in this website does not indicate he or she is a Japanese, Chinese, Korean, American, British, French or Indian performer. This proves that the Kyogen stage performers feels that the mask make them exhausted to portray the story in order to successfully make the audience laugh.
Third, the Kyogen stage performers feel that the mask forces them to sway back and forth to complement the minimalist style of vocal and mimetic characterization of each performance. These Kyogen stage performers feel that the difficulty to convey their message across to the audience must be compensated by making the plays shorter in terms of length of play. The Kyogen stage performers feel that the mask has lessened the efficacy of the plays in portraying the ordinary peasants and everyday person in the Japanese community back then (Brazell 1998, 36). In the Kyogen play, the stage performers cannot use their faces to show a funny, happy, smiling or other facial expressions.
Fourth, the Kyogen stage performers feel that the mask forces them to develop powerful technique and devote tremendous concentration to tackle these stage obstacles. These stage performers feel that the powerful techniques that they developed are needed to eliminate the mask's effect of having only one facial expression throughout the play. (Asai 1999, 32).
On the other hand, some Kyogen stage performers feel that the mask increases the intensity of the Kyogen comedy skits. Evidently, the mask creates both a positive and a negative effect on the wearer in the ritual and theatre plays. For, the Kyogen performer feels that the mask is the key to the success of each Kyogen play. The Kyogen stage performer feels that the mask lets them become something or someone they are not. They feel that the mask makes their play more hilarious or funny. And the stage performers fell that the mask is needed to make people this patronize this unique Japanese play. For, the Kyogen stage performers feels that the mask is needed to shut themselves out of the scene because the theme of the entire play is centered around the funny person or soldier that represents each one of the Kyogen play audiences. For, the Kyogen stage performers feel that the main purpose of the Noh play is to successfully open the mind of the audiences to open their ear to the extremely funny antics and words that spun by them on the simple stage. For, the Kyogen play portrays the lives of the people that lived in Japan six hundred years ago and not to prop the Kyogen actor or actress up(ShinkŌkai 1960, ix). Truly, the Kyogen stage performers feel that the Kyogen mask is used to increase the quality of the play.
The Kyogen stage performer feels that the mask will help improve the play because the mask complements the stage performance in terms acousticity, musicality and vocal quality. The stage performers feel that the alteration of the human face by a mask entails a corresponding alteration of the human voice. For, the mask filters the natural human voice of the Kyogen stage performer and converts it into a better sounding act. This is the secret ingredient that makes the Kyogen play a good theatre play to watch. The mask are then valued by the stage performers for this reason alone. For, the Kyogen mask is used to produce a sound that is not the sound of the Kyogen stage performer but of the person pictured in the Noh and Kyogen face masks. (Sheppard 2001, 32).
The stage performers feel that the Noh and Kyogen theatre can be defined as a small and confined arena where actors perform. The stage performers hide behind masks. They move around in the small stage in mime perfection. The Noh and Kyogen theatres' stage effects are often described as scarce. The Noh and Kyogen performers take away the barriers between the visible and the invisible. The stage perfomers of both the Noh and Kyogen stage plays feel that the masks have an effect on the wearer in both rituals and theatre with specific reference to Noh and Kyogen theatre. The stage performers feel that the mask Noh and Kyogen masks definitely hides the stage performers' facial expressions in both the rituals and theatre plays. The stage performers feel that the audience will not know if the person depicted by the stage performer is happy, sad, smiling or just plain angry because the mask is an obstacle to be hurdled. The mask also covers the actor's and the actress' expression that she is mad. Second. Also, the stage performers feel that the mask will hide the gender of the theatre performers. Thus, the audience will not know whether the stage performer is a male or a female. The stage performer feels that the audience must add the sex of the person acting in order to show that the play centers on a male or a female character in history, literature or other sources. For, they feel that the secrecy of the actor's sex would also confuse some of the audiences' interpretation of the story unfolding onstage. Fourth, the stage performers in both the Kyogen and Noh plays feel that the mask affects their performance because the stage performer must employ a minimalist style of vocal and mimetic characterization that masks (hides) the gender, physical features (fat or thin, young or old, etc) of the theatre performer. The stage performers feel that the above effects of the mask can be curtailed by making the plays shorter in terms of length of the play. The Noh and Kyogen plays are very popular because they stories are unfolded in a short time periods. For, the stage performers of the Noh and Kyogen plays feel that the singular expression of the Noh and Kyogen masks easily bores their audiences.
Conclusively, the stage performers in both the Noh and Kyogen theatres feels that the mask forces them to develop powerful onstage projection and acting techniques and to devote tremendous concentration to tackle the mask's effect of hiding the stage performers' facial and other related expressions. And. the stage performers feel that the mask forces them to develop the powerful stage acting and projection techniques in order to give a performance that the audience agreeably understands. A good example of the use of the powerful techniques was to depict the theme of religion and Buddha in the Noh plays. The mask will be a picture of Buddha so that the people will see Buddha and not the actor doing the Buddha part. On the other side of the fence, the stage performer of the Kyogen play feels that they needs the help of the mask to successfully increase the hilariousness of the stage performance. For, the stage performers feel that the mask is an obstacle that must be overcome by using the power techniques in both the Noh and Kyogen play. (Asai 1999, 32). The stage performers feel that the use of the mask is needed to improve the theme of the Noh and Kyogen plays. For, the picture of the person depicted by mask will add intensity to the play. The stage performers feel that the mask in both the Noh and Kyogen plays will trigger the audience to forget the stage performers because what they see is the face mask of the person depicted by the Noh and Kyogen story. It is unquestionably true that the mask affects the wearer in both Rituals and Theatre with specific reference to Noh and Kyogen theatre.
Asai, Susan M. 1999. Nomai Dance Drama: A Surviving Spirit of Medieval Japan. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=9609613.
Brazell, Karen, ed. 1998. Traditional Japanese Theater: An Anthology of Plays. New York: Columbia University Press. http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=99574419.
Foley, Kathy. 2007. The Kyogen of Errors. Asian Theatre Journal 24, no. 1: 284+. http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=5018928873.
Griffiths, Paul J. 1994. On Being Buddha : The Classical Doctrine of Buddhahood /. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=102489262.
Inoura, Yoshinobu, and Toshio Kawatake. 1981. The Traditional Theater of Japan. New York: Weatherhill. http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=96907323.
Roper, Lyndal. 1994. Oedipus and the Devil: Witchcraft, Sexuality, and Religion in Early Modern Europe. New York: Routledge. http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=107672325.
Sheppard, W. Anthony. 2001. Revealing Masks: Exotic Influences and Ritualized Performance in Modernist Music Theater. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=105709200.
ShinkŌkai, Nippon Gakujutsu. 1960. The Noh Drama. Rutland, VT: Charles E. Tuttle Co. http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=101460784.
Trimillos, Ricardo D. 1997. No and Kyogen in the Contemporary World. Ed. James R. Brandon. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press. http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=2969444.
NOH & KYOGEN mask : Retrieved Jan 9, 2008,
< http://www2.ntj.jac.go.jp/unesco/noh/en/nohgaku.html>
Noh mask, Retrieved Jan 9, 2008, http://www.noh-masks.com/
Kyogen Mask, Retreived Jan 9, 2008,
<Http://www.nohmask21.com/eu/kyogenmask.html>


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