text:
Cring Ransomware seen exploiting VPN Vulnerabilities
Written by Karolis Liucveikis on April 09, 2021
The recent Exchange Server vulnerability and news that the flaws were being used to spread ransomware dominated many InfoSec headlines. However, Kaspersky's recent discovery of the Cring ransomware strain using an old VPN vulnerability as the initial attack vector reminds us that ransomware operators can always dig into the old bag of tricks to pull off a successful attack.
On January 26, 2021, Swisscom CSIRT tweeted,
"CRING a new strain deployed by human operated ransomware actors. After the actors have established initial access, they drop a customized Mimikatz sample followed by #CobaltStrike. The #CRING #ransomware is then downloaded via certutill."
While it was clear that an attack had occurred, it was unknown at the time exactly how the ransomware managed to gain a foothold on the target network then infect the target network.
In what is a bittersweet reality, an attack occurred on an enterprise which allowed Kaspersky researchers to analyze the attack and the malware used. Victims of this campaign tended to be industrial enterprises located within Europe. In one case the attackers managed to cause a temporary shutdown of industrial processes as the attacker managed to compromise servers used in industrial control processes.
As mentioned above, the attackers did not use any new or previously unknown vulnerabilities but rather a VPN vulnerability dating back to 2018. The vulnerability, CVE-2018-13379 impacts Fortigate VPN servers. The vulnerability has been patched and Fortinet issued warnings to customers to update and patch the flaw as soon as possible.
Warnings had been issued as late as March 2020, showing that the companies were aware of unpatched systems being exploited. If unpatched, Fortiguard devices are vulnerable to what is called a directory traversal attack. These attacks will look to gain access to credentials like passwords that are stored without proper encryption somewhere within the directory. In this instance, the vulnerability if properly exploited allows the attacker to access system files on the Fortigate SSL VPN appliance. Researchers noted,
"Specifically, an unauthenticated attacker can connect to the appliance through the internet and remotely access the file "sslvpn_websession", which contains the username and password stored in cleartext."
To find vulnerable servers the attackers simply scanned for vulnerable IP addresses. The attackers could have also purchased a list containing vulnerable IP addresses. To support this claim, Kaspersky researchers pointed to a post on an underground hacking forum from August 2020 advertising such a list was available to purchase.
Once the vulnerability is exploited, the attackers use two freely available tools to supplement lateral movement across the network. The first of these tools is Mimikatz which has also been used recently by the Pysa ransomware gang in attacks against the education sector. Mimikatz is used in the Cring campaign to steal Windows account credentials of those who had previously logged into the now compromised system.
The second tool, and a classic one used by hackers, is CobaltStrike is advertised as a legitimate system penetration tool to help detect bugs and vulnerabilities in code. However, hackers use the tool to distribute malware. In the case analyzed by Kaspersky researchers, CobaltStrike is loaded via a malicious PowerShell script that installs CobaltStrike Beacon. This grants the attacker a backdoor into the compromised network granting the attackers remote control of the compromised system.
Cring Ransomware
Once a backdoor is installed and the attackers are granted remote control, they will drop the Cring ransomware module that is responsible for encryption. Researchers noted,
"After being installed on the system, the cmd script named execute.bat was executed. The script launched PowerShell under the name "kaspersky". The attackers used this technique to mask the traces of the malware activity and disguise the operation of the malware as that of security solutions. A command to download a file from the internet was passed to the running PowerShell shell. The file's URL was http://45.67.231[.]128/ip.txt.
The downloaded file was saved as C:\__output….Although the file specified in the URL had the extension .txt, it was in fact the executable file of the malware – the Cring ransomware. At the time of analyzing the malware hosting server, the file ip.txt had already been removed, but the attackers had uploaded a newer version of the Cring malware (the file NoNet.txt) to the server."
Cring not only attempts to hide processes by labeling them as "Kaspersky'' but is also capable of detecting and deleting backups. Researchers discovered that the malware could remove backup copies and halt services for Veritas NetBackup and Microsoft SQL Server. The malware will also close programs that might hinder encryption. This is important as often files opened or in use cannot be encrypted unless closed.
To do the malware will close Microsoft Office and Oracle Database software. Lastly, before encryption begins the malware will remove backup files with the following extensions: VHD, .bac, .bak, .wbcat, .bkf, .set, .win, and .dsk. The malware can also remove a file or folder with the term "backup" in the name.
Only once these steps are completed will the malware move to encrypt files from a wide variety of file types including the usual suspects like .doc, .docx, .vdhx, and .xlx. A complete list of targeted file types for encryption can be found in Kaspersky's published research including a comprehensive indicators of compromise list. As to how the malware encrypts data, researchers stated,
"Next, the malware started to encrypt files using strong encryption algorithms, which means that files could not be decrypted without knowing the RSA private key held by the attackers. Each file was encrypted using AES and the AES encryption key was in turn encrypted using an RSA public key hard-coded into the malicious program's executable file. The RSA key size was 8,192 bits."
Best Practises Ignored
In the successful attack which caused a shutdown of industrial processes, it is clear that commonly accepted best cybersecurity practices were not implemented or ignored. The exploitation of an old and patched vulnerability was the initial attack vector allowing the attackers to gain a foothold into the network. The victim had an outdated and vulnerable firmware version on the Fortigate VPN server (version 6.0.2 was used at the time of the attack) that could be exploited by attackers. This despite several warnings from Fortinet and a patch available for the vulnerable Fortigate VPN servers.
While the above-mentioned flaw was the initial vector, several other factors made the attack worse than it had to be. First, the antivirus database of the security solution found on the network was not updated in a regular or timeous fashion. This prevents the solution from detecting the intrusion and malware then subsequently blocking the threat. Researchers also noted that components of the security solution were turned off. These, if turned on, may have helped prevent the attack from going further once the vulnerability was exploited.
Second, the network infrastructure and who had access to what would be a major point of concern. In summary, there were no restrictions to access different systems on the network, anyone no matter their position within the company would have been able to access any system. For hackers who look to gain privileged access to networks to launch malware, their job is made infinitely easier when too many employees have privileged access. In the attack, this allowed the attackers to infect industrial processes they should not have been able to access with any ease.
Last, while not being discussed by Kaspersky's researchers and might not have been an issue in this instance, it is important to have a comprehensive offline backup policy. Given that Cring will search and delete backups as well as certain file formats associated with backup software, having offline or offsite backups would prevent a lot of damage and financial loss. It is common for ransomware to target backups as this forces the victim to pay if they cannot recover data.
Karolis Liucveikis - experienced software engineer, passionate about behavioral analysis of malicious apps.
Author and general operator of PCrisk's "Removal Guides" section. Co-researcher working alongside Tomas to discover the latest threats and global trends in the cyber security world. Karolis has experience of over five years working in this branch. He attended KTU University and graduated with a degree in Software Development in 2017. Extremely passionate about technical aspects and behavior of various malicious applications. Contact Karolis Liucveikis.
This page provides information on how to avoid infections by malware or viruses and is useful if your system suffers from common spyware and malware attacks.
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Software giant Microsoft has teamed up with Andhra Pradesh to help the state deliver low-cost Internet connectivity in rural areas through unused TV spectrum, the first initiative of its kind in the country.
Microsoft agreed on Friday to connect four educational institutions in Srikakulam district under a pilot project. The company has implemented the project on a pilot basis in Singapore, South Africa, Kenya, Ghana, Botswana, Namibia and Tanzania.
Microsoft India chairman Bhaskar Pramanik said the technology known as TV White Space helps address last-mile connectivity challenges and can be used during emergencies and disasters.
The facility offered by Microsoft dynamically allocates unused TV spectrum for Internet broadband transmission while regular TV transmissions continue uninterrupted, the AP chief minister's office said.
Compared to wi-fi, which has a 100-metre range, TV White Space propagates signals in a radius of at least 10 km.
"With this pilot project, Microsoft has shown that innovation and technology can make a society technologically advanced, eventually creating a knowledge based economy ," CM N Chandrababu Naidu said.
Microsoft has also agreed to offer the state a cloud-based machine learning solution for schools, Microsoft India R&D managing director Anil Bhansali said.


text:
<?php
namespace CoreDomain\Entity;

use CoreDomain\Exception\DomainRuleException;
use CoreDomain\ValueObject\DateTime\DateWithTimeRange;
use CoreDomain\ValueObject\Text\String;
use CoreDomain\ValueObject\Id\UUId;

class Event
{
    /**
     * @var UUid
     */
    private $id;

    /**
     * @var String
     */
    private $title;

    private $dateWithTimeRange;

    public function __construct(UUId $id, String $title)
    {
        $this->id = $id;
        $this->title = $title;
    }

    /**
     * @return UUId
     */
    public function getId()
    {
        return $this->id;
    }

    /**
     * @return String
     */
    public function getTitle()
    {
        return $this->title;
    }

    /**
     * @return mixed
     */
    public function getScheduledDateWithTimeRange()
    {
        return $this->dateWithTimeRange;
    }

    /**
     * @return bool
     */
    public function isScheduled()
    {
        if ($this->dateWithTimeRange !== null) {
            return true;
        }

        return false;
    }

    /**
     * @param DateWithTimeRange $dateWithTimeRange
     * @throws DomainRuleException
     */
    public function schedule(DateWithTimeRange $dateWithTimeRange)
    {
        if ($this->isScheduled()) {
            throw new DomainRuleException();
        }

        $this->dateWithTimeRange = $dateWithTimeRange;
    }

    /**
     * @throws DomainRuleException
     */
    public function unSchedule()
    {
        if (!$this->isScheduled()) {
            throw new DomainRuleException();
        }

        $this->dateWithTimeRange = null;
    }

    /**
     * @param DateWithTimeRange $dateWithTimeRange
     * @throws DomainRuleException
     */
    public function reschedule(DateWithTimeRange $dateWithTimeRange)
    {
        if (!$this->isScheduled()) {
            throw new DomainRuleException();
        }

        $this->dateWithTimeRange = $dateWithTimeRange;
    }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Q: Extraction probability We have an urn with 40 balls of those 12 are white 11 are red and 17 are green. We extract 6 of them. We must find the probability that 3 are white 2 are red and 1 is green.
The solution should be 0,054
I'm struggling with these arguments and I didn't find some clear explanations about them,as far as I've understood we shouldn't use combinatorics when we don't have equiprobable spaces, which should be the case of this example since every color has a different probability to be extracted. Searching on the web (in italian) I've seen similar examples that use combinatorics, I've tried to apply those solutions for my problem but none of them gave me the expected result, what am I missing?

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Just a quick post today, because I have so much on my plate! I write a weekly Star Wars post for the FandomPost, and I really should be typing that up right now.
Last year I gave up and started coloring my hair. I know, I know... It shouldn't really be a big deal. I spent so many childhood years hating my hair color that I don't even know why I got so attached to it as an adult.
As a kid I always described my hair as "mouse poop". Instead, I longed to have jet black hair or a curly red mop like many of my favorite characters in stories. WHO had just plan, boring, somewhere between brown and blond hair??
Then I grew to love it. I had lots of different shades of browns and blonds naturally, and I was terrified that coloring it would destroy that ordinary look. The grey threatened to completely take over anyway, so I gave in. I got it done.
Shall I also admit that I'm not very good about keeping up with being stylish? The last time my hair was cut and colored was June 25th - right before my trip to Ireland. Yeah... it's been that long. My nine year old pestered me for several months to remember to go get it done again, and then gave up a few months ago.
Now it is freshly colored and cut... and I really love it. I just wish I didn't have to spend two hours stuck in a chair to get it dealt with. I guess that's the real reason I only do it a few times a year.


text:
Q: How to remove folder path within zip file.I want only txt files in zip file I am created the zip file in this path "D:\Nagaraj\Dotnet\Zipfile\Zipfile\Filebuild\Hi.zip". But within this Hi.zip file creating the folders "D:\Nagaraj\Dotnet\Zipfile\Zipfile\Filebuild\Hi" after that added 2 txt files showing....So I need to remove folder path in zip file ...I am using following code and sharpziplib library...thanks in advance.
*enter code here*
StartZip("D:/Nagaraj/Dotnet/Zipfile/Zipfile/Filebuild/Hi/", Server.MapPath("Filebuild/Hi.zip"));

public void StartZip(string directory, string zipFileName)
{
    ZipFile z = ZipFile.Create(zipFileName);
    z.BeginUpdate();
    string[] filenames = Directory.GetFiles(directory);

    foreach (string filename in filenames)
      {
        z.Add(filename);
        string s = Path.GetFileName(filename);
      }
      z.CommitUpdate();
      z.Close();
}

A: Using the following code, you can remove the folder path:
FileInfo hfinfo = null;
hfinfo = new FileInfo(HFileName.ToString());
if (!hfinfo.Exists) {
    hfinfo.Create();
}
HGetTData.ToString().TrimEnd();

sw.Write(HGetTData.ToString());
HGetTData.Length = 0;

sw.Flush();

sw.Close();
sw.Dispose();

z.NameTransform = new ZipNameTransform(hosttmppath);
z.BeginUpdate();
z.Add(HFileName.ToString(), fname[i] + ".txt");
z.CommitUpdate();

FileInfo theFile = new FileInfo(HFileName.ToString());
if (theFile.Exists) {
    File.Delete(HFileName.ToString());
}


Calibre has been updated again, and it brings good news for owners of Kobo's new tablet.
The Kobo Vox is now supported by Calibre, and that means it's not going to be a lot easier to transfer your Epub and PDF eBooks to your Vox. Admittedly, it wasn't hard before, but calibre does make it easier to manage an eBook library across several devices.
The update also adds support for several smartphones, direct downloads from a Polish eBookstore, ebookpoint.pl, as well as a number of bug fixes and tweaks.
I'm sure most readers have read this before, Calibre is my preferred eBook and eReader management tool. I think it's the best free tool for organizing my eBook library and transferring my eBooks to my eReaders (almost all are supported). It supports conversion from and to a wide variety of eBook formats, and it can draw content from a number of sources like RSS feeds, eBookstores, and free eBook sites.


text:
A letter from Flux's Director on 2016
Future site of the Windmill Community Garden, right across the street from Flux, where we'll host public programs next year.
Flux is a slice of old-school NYC. Like the 1960s' "Flux Houses" in downtown Manhattan, our multidisciplinary family is prolific, socially engaged and scrappy. Our nearly 50 artists-in-residence of 2015 produced just as many public events this year including group exhibitions, concerts, potlucks, panels, and the unclassifiable. We commissioned dozens of new artworks (just Strobe Network itself included over 75 video artists), and we provided $30,000 for artistic work, in addition to providing the low-cost facilities and support that premise creativity. Even before crunching all these numbers, we knew that Flux does more with less, and it's all because we are a community that cares deeply about the singular civic role Flux performs.
Groups like Flux are an endangered species in today's NYC, and the truth is that we've narrowly avoided displacement. The day before Thanksgiving, Flux Factory signed a 5 year lease extension to remain in the Alfred Mainzer Greeting Card Factory. We're also very grateful to the Hyde & Watson Foundation for awarding us $9,000 to help patch up our building for coming years. We love LIC and we're thrilled to serve our neighborhood longterm. This stability was hard-won and our real work toward permanent sustainability is just beginning. We are setting a fundraising goal of $25,000 by 2017, and now is your first chance to join a revamped Friends of Flux program we'll soon roll out in full force. We aim to take Flux to a higher level, and we need your support to get there.
Fully tax-deductible support on the levels of $250, $500 or $1000 will make you a pilot Friends of Flux member, with overflowing thankfulness, perks & opportunities such as curator tours, studio visits, friends-only gifts and more. Or donate any fully tax-deductible amount you like.
We're pleased to announce that come Spring, we'll partner in creating the Windmill Community Garden right across the street. We can't wait to host workshops, performances and cook-outs in a green space we'll share with the Dutch Kills Civic Association, Growing Up Green Charter School, Newcomers High School & more neighbors.
In March, we'll host the Fung Wah Biennial, a group exhibition taking place on Chinatown buses roving around DIY spaces in nearby cities. This is just the first of four annual projects in which Flux will commission a group of artists to create new works on a theme – as always, our collectivist selection process uses an open call that includes artists both local and international, both emerging and established.
Even before we board those Chinatown buses, we'll host new exhibitions and events produced by artists-in-residents Yi Zhou, Ariel Abrahams, Anna Bitkina & Maria Veits, Abigail Entsminger & Seth Larson, Gil Lopez, Ayden Grout, Tommy Nguyen, and Wieteke Heldens. Meanwhile, Test Patterns co-curator Maddie Hewitt is headed to Claremont, France as part of a new partnership with Artistes En Residence — we're building on Flux's recent trip to St. Petersburg, Russia, to become an organization that routinely sends our artists out to the world. We do not sleep much, to say the least! Just last week, our current Residents met to select 20 new artists to interview among those who applied for 2016 residencies – we're immensely excited to meet a group of folks diverse in creative practice and international in background, while commonly sharing a commitment to collectivism.
Roopa Vasudevan just wrapped up a Flux residency, during which she curated 3 exhibitions and created numerous artworks. Looking forward to her next Flux stint in Fall 2016!
On a more personal note — when I began working at Flux mid-2014, I knew I'd entered a deeply meaningful life course. My love for Flux is only getting stronger as I've sounded the magnitude of what we do and can grow to achieve. Just one wonderful friend I've made this year is Roopa Vasudevan — in her 3 month residency, she co-curated Hands Up, Test Patterns and our Flux-Artist-In-Residence group show, created many new artworks and even organized our secret santa! Roopa shared a note with me: "Flux has been such a valuable place to me in the last couple of years. I really believe that I have met some of the best people in the world there, and have been incredibly fulfilled and productive throughout the duration of both my residencies. Curating the FAIR show this past Fall was such a treat because it gave me the chance to work with flux artists who I have known and admired from (quite literally) the first day I arrived, and I was so proud of the amazing and unique work that this crazy and talented group put together. Flux Factory holds an incredibly special place in my heart, and I'm looking forward to being just as involved in the future."
previous post: Flux Factory's Perpetual Pinata Parlour
next post: Pivot


Madani Channel is providing educational and social guidance for humanity across the world started its operation from Karachi Pakistan in the year 2008. Programmes are broadcasted in various languages, including English, Urdu, and other regional languages. Madani Channel covers around six famous satellites covering major parts of continents, while Live internet streaming for all.
Major programs are focused on religious, ethical and social reformation of human character, focusing on health, religious & global Education, economic reforms of individual or organizations along sharia guidance.
The aim of this channel to spread the message of true Islam to the world.
This is a Sunni Islamic Channel Owned by Hafiz Shafiqraza from India. This channel provides Islamic videos like TILAWAT, HAMD O NAAT, MUNAJAT, AHLE SUNNAT VAL JAMAAT K OLMA E KIRAM K BAHETARIN BAYANAT, MASNUN DUAAYE, ISLAMIC CARTOON, MAZARATE AULIYA E KIRAM KE HASIN MANAZIR, and much more.
If you like the post please share with your friends and family on Social Media.
If you have any Sunni Islamic YouTube channel suggestion, please leave a comment.


text:
Airman Missing In Action From WWII Is Identified (Packard)
Release No: 08-030 Oct. 21, 2008
The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) announced today that the remains of a U.S. serviceman, missing in action from World War II, have been identified and will be returned to his family for burial with full military honors.
He is 2nd Lt. Ray D. Packard, U.S. Army Air Forces, of Atwood, Calif. He will be buried on Oct. 22 in Prescott, Ariz.
Representatives from the Army met with Packard's next-of-kin to explain the recovery and identification process and to coordinate interment with military honors on behalf of the Secretary of the Army.
On Aug. 25, 1944, Packard was a pilot in a flight of 22 P-38 Lightning fighter aircraft that left the allied airfield at St. Lambert, France, to attack enemy airfields near Laon-Chambry, France. Enroute to their target, the fighter group was intercepted by more than 80 German fighters near Beauvais, France. During the ensuing dogfight, 11 P-38s were shot down, including Packard's which crashed 15 miles south of Beauvais near the town of Angy. Five of the pilots escaped and evaded enemy capture and two were taken as prisoners of war. Of the four men who were missing in action, three were later recovered and identified, but Packard remained unaccounted-for.
In 1951, a U.S. Army Graves Registration Command team investigated the incident and interviewed a French citizen who said he recovered human remains from a P-38 crash site in Angy. The team also interviewed the mayor of Angy who said that the remains had been buried in a local cemetery, but had later been exhumed and he didn't know what happened after the disinterment. The team went to the crash site, but only found small pieces of aircraft wreckage.
In 2006, a Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) team traveled to Angy to investigate the incident. The team interviewed the son of the French citizen interviewed in 1951. He turned over to the team human remains and other non-biological evidence recovered from the crash site. The team interviewed another French citizen, an aircraft wreckage hunter, who turned over remains and other evidence from an excavation that he conducted at the site.
In 2006 and 2007, JPAC teams conducted two excavations and recovered more human remains, aircraft wreckage, and material evidence including Packard's identification tag.
Among other forensic identification tools and circumstantial evidence, scientists from JPAC used dental comparisons in the identification of Packard's remains.
For additional information on the Defense Department's mission to account for missing Americans, visit the DPMO web site at http://www.dtic.mil/dpmo or call (703) 699-1169.


text:
George Cables: A Heartfelt Tribute To His 'Muse'
In the 1970s and '80s, Cables was the pianist of choice for saxophonists Dexter Gordon and Art Pepper; Pepper called him his favorite pianist. Critic Kevin Whitehead says Cables' new trio album, My Muse, is so unassumingly good, you could miss just how good it is.
Other segments from the episode on October 26, 2012
Fresh Air with Terry Gross, October 26, 2012: Interview with Robert Moog; Review of "My Muse" the new recording by pianist George Cables's trio; Interview with John Cage; Review of the film "Cloud…
Bob Moog: The Fresh Air Interview
Moogfest, the festival of electronic and visionary music, takes place on Saturday and Sunday in Asheville, N.C., the city music pioneer Bob Moog called home. Moog was the inventor of the Moog synthesizer. He died in August 2005. Fresh Air listens to an interview from February 2000.
John Cage At 100: Remembering A Revolutionary Composer
September marked the centennial of the birth of composer John Cage and celebrations are being held around the world in his honor. His compositions include spoken texts, radios, toys and the sounds of vegetables being chopped. Cage died in 1992. Fresh Air listens back to an interview with Cage from 1982.
'Cloud Atlas': You're Better Off Reading The Book
David Mitchell's exquisite novel Cloud Atlas has been adapted for the screen by the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer. The film is never dull, but critic David Edelstein found that unlike the book, the film fails in its attempt to tie six distinct stories together.
Guests: Robert Moog – John Cage
DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli of the website TV Worth Watching, sitting in for Terry Gross. Robert Moog, creator of the first music synthesizer, died in 2005, but he's still remembered and celebrated as one of the key pioneers of electronic music. A two-day music festival called Moogfest begins today in Asheville, North Carolina, showcasing dozens of Moog enthusiasts, including Thomas Dolby, Nas, Morton Subotnick and The Magnetic Fields.
Moog lived and worked in Asheville, where his company still manufactures synthesizers and another eerie-sounding instrument, the Theremin. Electronic music was still a new concept in the mid-'60s, when Moog created his synthesizer. It didn't take long for other people to manufacture their own versions of the instrument.
The synthesizer caught on in all forms of music, from the avant-garde to rock, pop and novelty. This medley includes just a few examples.
BIANCULLI: That was Sun Ra, Wendy Carlos from "Switched-On Bach," Todd Rundgren from a compilation of Thelonius Monk tunes and Kraftwerk, Heart, The Who, The Beastie Boys, Parliament and Stevie Wonder. Terry Gross spoke with Robert Moog in 2000. For their interview, he brought a mini-Moog to the studio and gave a demonstration.
ROBERT MOOG: OK, so here's a plain sound.
MOOG: This is a pure electronic pitch. Now I'll - I will frequency modulate it. By that I mean that I will vary the pitch of its tone periodically.
MOOG: So most people would say that was a different sound than just this. Now I can speed up and slow down the modulation.
MOOG: Or make it a different shape.
MOOG: Here's what we call a square wave. It makes the tone sound like a trill.
MOOG: So that's just one example of how we can use one electronic circuit to periodically or even aperiodically change the operation of another one and make musically interesting sounds in the process.
Now, you know, regular instruments, acoustic instruments operate through physically doing something to the instrument: You pound it, you press it, strum it, bow it, blow air into it. Compare that with the principles of an electric music instrument like the Moog.
MOOG: The energy to make the sound is there. It comes out of the wall. So the...
GROSS: Electricity.
MOOG: Yes.
GROSS: And so your knobs allow you to just change the shape of the sound wave, the amplitude, the shape of it.
MOOG: Yeah. And we can increase the complexity of the sound, for instance...
MOOG: There's one tone. Now we can add a second tone.
MOOG: Here's one, the other, together...
MOOG: They form a richer, third tone. So we can add sounds and waveforms together. We can use one waveform to shape what we hear from another circuit. We can also filter out the overtones, the harmonics that are made by these waveforms.
GROSS: Do you want to give me an example of that?
MOOG: Here's...
MOOG: Let's get a brighter sound. There.
MOOG: This is called a low-pass filter. Originally, it was a technical term, but musicians these days - at least the ones who plug in - understand what that means. So I'll close the filter, and we'll cut out first the higher overtones, and then all of them.
MOOG: Now when I vary the filter slowly like that, you can hear what's happening, that the sound is getting more mellow and less bright as I turn down the knob here labeled cut-off frequency. But, if instead of my turning the knob, I use a waveform that goes up and then down every time I hit a key, we'll get a sound like this.
MOOG: Now that opening and closing of the filter was done not by me, but by the envelope generator. Now I'll make it faster, and you'll see what effect that has on the sound.
MOOG: And still faster...
MOOG: Now that happens so fast, that we - if I had to do that with my hand, I couldn't possibly, because my hand can't move that fast. But electronics can move that fast. So now I have a different sort of sound. I have a plucked-string-like sound.
MOOG: Because I've set up a sound here that's bright and with lots of harmonics at the beginning, and then within, say, I don't know, 30 or 40-thousandths of a second, it dies down, and our ear identifies that as a string-like sound.
GROSS: Now your Moog synthesizer was designed to do things that a piano could never do, yet you gave it a piano keyboard.
GROSS: Did you ever consider alternate design, since you were creating a new system altogether?
MOOG: We considered a lot of alternate designs, and, in fact, the first synthesizer systems that we built in the mid-'60s had a wide variety of control devices. Besides a keyboard, we had a device called a ribbon controller that you run your finger along, as if it were a violin string. We had drum controllers. We even had doorbells. We experimented with everything, joysticks, and we arrived at a keyboard because: A, musicians were familiar with it. B, at that time, they were readily and cheaply available so that we didn't have to spend a lot of money on tooling. And B, it did serve a musical purpose at least some of our customers wanted served - not all, but some of our customers were interested in playing convention melodies and harmonic content from a keyboard.
GROSS: Right, exactly. I mean, you know, on the one hand, you had, like Walter Carlos, later Wendy Carlos, performing "Switched-On Bach," using the Moog to play a kind of new-fangled-sounding version of Bach. And at the same time, you had a lot of avant-garde composers and musicians using the Moog synthesizer to create a kind of avant-garde music that hadn't been possible before.
MOOG: That's right. One of our first customers was Vladimir Ussachevsky, who at that time was the head of the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. He was - he's sort of the grandfather of taped music in this country, and he was interested in getting away from the keyboard. He bought quite a few electronic modules from us, but he never bought a keyboard from us.
GROSS: Are there records from the '60s, when you were first - and the early '70s, when the Moog was first catching on, that you think sound almost embarrassingly dated today?
MOOG: Well, you know, the first use of Moog synthesizer on the West Coast sounds embarrassingly dated. It's a record called "Zodiac Cosmic Sound."
GROSS: How can that not sound dated?
MOOG: What happened is - this was in 1967, and we were wondering whether we could stay in business because, you know, we weren't making any money, and nobody understood our products. We were invited to exhibit our new synthesizers at the Audio Engineering Society on the West Coast. So at that exhibit, we were then invited to bring this one instrument that nobody had ever seen out there to a recording session of "Zodiac Cosmic Sounds."
And a synthesizer was used to make some distinctly novel electronic - it begins the album. What the album is, it starts off with very conventional-sounding Hollywood movie music.
(SOUNDBITE OF VOCALIZING)
MOOG: And then with a low organ tone, the narrator comes on. He had a voice as deep as crude oil, and he said: Nine times, the color red explodes like heated blood. The battle's on. And...
MOOG: Like that. The producers at the time were very impressed with themselves about how in this was and how hip and how many they were going to sell. Now, when you play it, people just break out laughing.
GROSS: So is it the bum-ba-bums that you were doing on the synthesizer?
MOOG: No. They were done more or less conventionally.
GROSS: Where did the synthesizer come in?
MOOG: Just drop-in sounds. Let's see if I can set one up. The mini-Moog is really not big enough to do all the sounds that we did, but for instance, let's start with one sound.
MOOG: Play another sound.
MOOG: OK, that's about a whole tone apart. We'll add a third sound.
MOOG: OK. Now, that's the general sort of sound that they liked.
MOOG: Then we just glide up a little bit here.
MOOG: That sort of sound.
BIANCULLI: Robert Moog, speaking with Terry Gross in 2000. More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
BIANCULLI: Let's get back to Terry's 2000 interview with Robert Moog, inventor of the Moog synthesizer and a pioneer in the field of electronic music. His legacy is being celebrated today and tomorrow at the Moogfest in Asheville, North Carolina.
GROSS: What are the early records - the first records that you think really helped the Moog synthesizer catch on?
MOOG: The biggie was "Switched-On Bach." In light of that, everything else pales. "Switched-On Bach" came out at the end of 1968. I can remember playing a cut from it at an Audio Engineering Society convention in New York City about a month in advance of its release, and I can remember all those cynical, experienced recording engineers listening to this and being so overjoyed that a piece of work so innovative and of such high quality was being done that they give Carlos a standing ovation.
GROSS: Did you like "Switched-On Bach"?
MOOG: Oh, yes. Yes. In fact, I visited Carlos several times while Carlos and his associates were working on the piece, and I was just bowled over every time I came. Something new was there to be heard.
GROSS: Well, why don't we hear some music from "Switched-On Bach," and it was Walter Carlos back then, wasn't it?
GROSS: Yeah. So this is Walter Carlos at the Moog synthesizer.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC, "TWO-PART INVENTION NO. 8 IN F MAJOR")
GROSS: That's Walter Carlos playing "Switched-On Bach," the record that helped really establish, commercially, the Moog synthesizer. My guest is Robert Moog, the creator of the Moog synthesizer and the related synthesizers that he's since created. He's a pioneer of electronic instruments.
When you created the first Moog synthesizer, was it out of an interest in electronics or music, or both?
MOOG: I had been building electronic musical instruments since I was a kid. It was always a hobby of mine, and I always approached it as an electronics person, you know, somebody who liked to work with a soldering iron and a pair of pliers, who also had some musical training.
By the time I got to building synthesizers, I had perhaps 20 years' experience building electronic musical instruments.
GROSS: Well, I know you built Theremins, and we'll get to that in a couple of minutes. What else did you build?
MOOG: Back in the '40s and early '50s, building simple electronic projects was a popular hobby of many people. Back then, you could buy, you know, a few parts and - with tubes and build something on your kitchen table, and it would actually work.
So there were magazines describing all sorts of hobby projects, and I can remember building one-note organs, two-note organs, radios, a phonograph, you know, amplifiers. And that was my life. That's what I did back then. Other kids went out and beat each other up or played baseball, and I built electronics.
GROSS: I think your father was an amateur radio operator?
MOOG: Yes, he was. He was a professional engineer. He worked for Consolidated Edison in New York City.
GROSS: That's the electric company.
MOOG: Yes, it is. And he worked for them all his life, and he was also an amateur radio operator.
GROSS: So this was HAM radio?
GROSS: So do you think your father's HAM radio stuff had an impact on you?
MOOG: Why, sure. He was the one who taught me how to do electronics. He taught me how to use a soldering iron. My father had a very complete hobby basement with machine tools and all sorts of electronic stuff. I used to love to go down and just be with him and work with him.
GROSS: It was a real guy thing for you?
MOOG: I think so, yeah, yeah. It was a dad-and-son thing, especially.
GROSS: Did mom ever go down to the basement?
MOOG: No. Mom had the rest of the house.
GROSS: Now, before you started inventing your own instruments, you built Theremins. So let's start with what a Theremin is. You've brought one with you. I imagine this is one that you've built.
MOOG: Yes, it is. Well, it's one that my company built.
GROSS: Right. That's good enough.
MOOG: Close enough.
GROSS: Give us a taste of the basic sound of the Theremin. Our listeners will recognize it from lots of science-fiction movies.
MOOG: OK, let me describe what I'm doing. I'm not touching the instrument when I'm playing it now. I'm moving my hands around it to control the volume and the pitch of the sound. I'll just make a very quick sound, and then maybe later I can actually try and play a melody.
MOOG: So when you wave your hands around a Theremin, that's the sort of sound you get. It's not particular musical, but it certainly sounds different from a piano or even a synthesizer. A Theremin is an electron musical instrument with two metal antennas. One is a vertical rod on the right-hand side of the instrument. The closer you get your right hand to that rod, the higher the pitch goes.
So if you imagine a violin string in the air between your shoulder and the pitch antenna, and by moving my hand along that string, you can imagine the sort of gestures I make.
GROSS: But it's an imaginary string.
MOOG: It's an imaginary string. I'm not touching anything when I play. On the left-hand of the instrument, there is a loop, a metal loop which controls the volume. The closer I get my hand to that loop, the softer the sound gets. So my gestures consist of moving my right hand back and forth from my right shoulder to the pitch antenna to make the notes, and moving my left hand up and down as if I'm conducting an imaginary orchestra out there to control the volume, articulate the sound.
GROSS: Would you play us a science-fiction effect on the Theremin? You could even play something from one of the movies that the Theremin, one of the movies - scores that the Theremin was used in.
MOOG: A science-fiction effect. I'll try.
GROSS: And do you get that little vibrato by wiggling your hand back and forth?
MOOG: Yes. I move my right hand from my wrist rapidly back and forth, just as a violinist does.
GROSS: Would you like to leave us with some music on the Moog synthesizer?
MOOG: Let's see...
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SUMMERTIME")
MOOG: Well, that's some music. I don't know how much, but it's some.
GROSS: Robert Moog, it's been a real pleasure to talk with you. Thank you so much.
MOOG: Thank you, Terry. I'm glad to have the opportunity.
BIANCULLI: Robert Moog, speaking with Terry Gross in 2000. He died five years later. Today and tomorrow, a music festival called Moogfest in Asheville, North Carolina celebrates the spirit and legacy of Robert Moog. I'm David Bianculli, and this is FRESH AIR.
DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli sitting in for Terry Gross. In the 1970s and '80s, George Cables was the pianist of choice for saxophonists Dexter Gordon and Art Pepper; Pepper called him his favorite piano player. Cables also recorded a lot with jazz stars Joe Henderson, Freddie Hubbard, Bobby Hutcherson and Frank Morgan.
George Cables has his own new album, a jazz trio. Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead says this time it's personal.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MY MUSE")
GEORGE CABLES: (Instrumental)
KEVIN WHITEHEAD: George Cables' tune "My Muse," from his new album of the same name, a tribute to his late partner Helen Wray. Over the years, Cables wrote three songs on it for her. Whether he's in a playful or tender mood, these tunes are from the heart. He can swing and sound lost in reverie at the same time.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MY ONE AND ONLY LOVE")
WHITEHEAD: George Cables on the standard ballad "My One and Only Love." He's a terrific pianist, but his new album is short on flashy gestures and long on tuneful refinement. It reminds us great jazz can be about restraint as well as abandon, about freedom within established forms. Power drummer Victor Lewis is mixed a little low for my taste, given his discretion to begin with; he radiates quiet strength, stoking a low fire instead of torching the place. The drummer sneaks a Brazilian march rhythm under "Helen's Song."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HELEN'S SONG")
WHITEHEAD: George Cables is so fluent in the ways of the keyboard and pedals and song forms and harmony, so aware of his available options every second, he doesn't need to fall back on ready-made licks. But not all of the trio's decisions are made in the moment. As a structural feature, he loves yoking together his left hand and Essiet Essiet's bass, to give the music an extra-fortified low end. They play in tight unison so often, those doubled bass lines are the trio's signature. Fused piano and bass have such a distinct color, when they merge it's almost like another instrument making an appearance.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE WAY WE WERE")
WHITEHEAD: George Cables and Company, making a silk purse out of Marvin Hamlisch's "The Way We Were." The trio polish their music to such a high gloss, you could underestimate it if you think jazz always needs a healthy dose of grit to stay real. "My Muse" is so unassumingly good, you could miss just how good it is. It gives good taste a good name.
BIANCULLI: Kevin Whitehead writes for Point of Departure, Downbeat and Emusic, and is the author of "Why Jazz?" He reviewed "My Muse," the new recording by George Cables on the HighNote label. Coming up, an interview from our archives with composer John Cage.This is FRESH AIR.
DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST: This fall, arts organizations around the world are celebrating what would have been the 100th birthday of composer John Cage, who was born on September 5th, 1912.
John Cage began serious music studies in the 1930s, and quickly gravitated to the avant-garde and the idea of composing music through chance. He wanted to release his music from the limits of his own taste, memory and emotion. His radical ideas about composition led to equally radical experiments with instruments. By 1937, Cage created what he called the prepared piano, a method of altering the piano's tonal and percussive qualities by placing wood, metal or rubber objects on the piano strings. He later became one of first composers to use synthesizers and computers. Sometimes Cage didn't use instruments at all but used recorded voices and even radio static to help build his chance compositions.
Here's a excerpt from his 1959 work "Indeterminacy," in which Cage tells 90 stories in 90 minutes taking about one minute for each story. The piano and electronic music score was composed and realized by David Tudor. The collision of dialogue and music, like the collision of ideas, is purely intentional.
JOHN CAGE: This summer I'm going to going to...
(SOUNDBITE OF PIANO CHORDS)
CAGE: ...give a class in mushroom identification at the New School for Social Research. Actually, it's five field trips, not really a class at all. However, when I proposed it to Dean Clara Mayer, though she was delighted by with the idea, she said, I'll have to let you know later whether or not we'll give it. So she spoke to the president who couldn't see why there should be a class in mushrooms...
(SOUNDBITE OF CYMBALS)
CAGE: ...at the New School. Next she spoke to Professor MacIvor, who lives in Piermont. She said: What do you think about our having a mushroom class at the New School? He said: Fine idea. Nothing more than mushroom identification develops the powers of observation.
CAGE: This remark was relayed...
CAGE: ...both to the president and to me. It served to get the class into the catalogue and to verbalize for me my present attitude towards music: It isn't useful, music isn't, unless it develops our powers of audition. But most musicians can't hear a single sound. They listen only to the relationship between two or more sounds. Music for them has nothing to do with their powers of audition, but only to do with their powers of observing relationships. In order to do this, they have to ignore all the crying babies...
(SOUNDBITE OF PIANO KEYS)
CAGE: ...fire engines, telephone bells, coughs, that happen to occur during their auditions. Actually, if you run into people who are really interested in hearing sounds, you're apt...
CAGE: ...to find them fascinated by the quiet ones. Did you hear that? They will say.
CAGE: In 1954, when I went to Europe, I no sooner arrived in Paris then I noticed that the city was covered with posters publicizing a mushroom exhibition that was being held in the Botanical Gardens. That was all I needed.
CAGE: Off I went. When I arrived, I found myself in a large room filled with many tables upon which were displayed many species of fungi. On the hour from a large centrally-placed loudspeaker a recorded lecture on the deadly, poisonous...
CAGE: ...amanitas was delivered. During this lecture, nobody in the hall moved or spoke. Each person's attention was...
(SOUNDBITE OF DRUMMING)
CAGE: ...so to speak, riveted to the information being given. A week later, I was in Cologne...
CAGE: ...in Germany attending a concert of electronic...
(SOUNDBITE OF BREATH)
CAGE: ...music. There was also an audience and a large loudspeaker. However, many in the audience were dozing off, and some were talking to their neighbors.
(SOUNDBITE OF VOCAL RHYTHMS)
CAGE: I went to a concert upstairs in Town Hall.
(SOUNDBITE OF RUMBLING)
CAGE: The composer whose works were being performed had provided program notes. One of these notes was to the effect that there is too much pain in the world.
(SOUNDBITE OF RECORD SCRATCH)
CAGE: After the concert I was walking along with the composer and he was telling me how...
(SOUNDBITE OF RECORD)
CAGE: ...the performances had not been quite up to snuff.
(SOUNDBITE OF PIANO)
CAGE: So I said, Well, I...
CAGE: ...enjoyed the music, but I don't agree with that program note...
(SOUNDBITE OF SCRATCHING)
CAGE: ...about there being too much pain in the world. He said, what? Don't you think there's enough?
CAGE: I said...
(SOUNDBITE OF WHISTLE)
CAGE: I think there's just...
CAGE: ...the right amount.
BIANCULLI: Terry Gross spoke to John Cage in 1982 when he was 70 years old. He explained that he really wasn't drawn to music the way most composers where.
CAGE: My father was an inventor, and I've never thought that, as many people do, that music should be in my head and that I should learn how to write down what I already hear. I really can't hold a tune and I don't know solfege at all - so that I found ways of writing music to produce sounds that I haven't heard, and that other people haven't heard. If I'd study solfege, if I had a feeling for harmony, which I don't, I think I would simply write what people have already heard or what I would've thought - thought I heard. The result is I have a curious feeling every time I write a new piece, particularly one for an orchestra that involves so many people and so much trouble you know to bring into existence. I think up until the last minute that maybe it's just going to be...
CAGE: ...a great mistake, or that we won't discover anything with it.
TERRY GROSS, HOST: A lot of your work hasn't been about that relationship with sounds to other sounds but of sounds in and of themselves, individual sound, a sound for itself. Is that too, do you think, from not wanting to work with harmony?
CAGE: I had an interest in each single sound from the beginning. At first I began putting the sounds together into - as I'd been taught - into motives and repeating them and varying them. But gradually, and through a study of oriental philosophy and through the use of chance operations, I have found ways, I think, of letting sounds move from their own centers rather than centers in my mind.
GROSS: What's your attitude towards random sounds in your home? I'm thinking now about...
CAGE: I just love them.
GROSS: Uh-huh. Like apartments in Manhattan, which is probably the noisiest city in the world.
CAGE: I live on - and 6th Avenue is very, very noisy. And sometimes there's burglar alarms...
GROSS: Oh yeah.
CAGE: ...and they may last three of four hours. It's quite, that's quite a problem. I think that our, we almost have an instinct to be annoyed by a burglar alarm. But as I pay attention to them they're curiously slightly varying.
GROSS: What if you're paying attention to something else at the same time?
CAGE: Well, I think that one of our most accessible disciplines now is paying attention to more than one thing at a time. And if we can do that with equanimity, then I would suggest paying attention to three things at the same time. And you can practice that as a discipline. I think it's more effective than sitting cross-legged. I mean to say cross-legged in relation to...
GROSS: In meditation.
CAGE: Yes. It opens the - I think the meaning of meditation is to open the doors of the ego from a concentration on itself to a flow with all of creation, wouldn't you say? And if we can do this through the sense perceptions, through multiplying the things to which we're able at one in the same time to pay attention, I think we accomplish much of the same thing. At least that's my faith.
GROSS: You've rejected taste and memory in the chance processes work. What's restricting about taste and memory for you?
CAGE: There's a beautiful remark of Marcel Duchamp: To reach the impossibility of transferring from one like object to another the memory imprint. And I think the trouble with memory, both from a poetic point of view, is made clear too by the remark of René Char, the French poet, that each act is virgin, even the repeated one. To see things as being new rather than things that we already know before we are experiencing them.
I think this is one of the things that leads to trouble between two people when someone says of another person, I knew what she would say or I knew what he would say. I would hope that we don't get into that frame of mind with respect to one another, hmm?
GROSS: You know, it's interesting to me because you have such a really rich and detailed memory and use it so beautifully in your storytelling and in your writings, which become your pieces also.
CAGE: Mm-hmm.
GROSS: I know that that memory does come into play.
CAGE: There's another remark I've come across in the last year or so that I like and it's by the composer Erik Satie and it's related to that remark that I just quoted from Char - he checked his version. Satie says experience is a form of paralysis.
Do you see the relation? If we think we know what the other person is going to say, hmm, and if we don't approach things as virgin, hmm, then our minds and our attitudes turn out - become paralyzed and that's why we want to have each thing new, hmm?
To have - to realize that two Coca-Cola bottles are not identical and what makes them not identical is that they're not at the same point. They can't be at the same point in space. Since they're not at the same point in space they automatically receive - each one receives light differently than the other.
So that it can be as fascinating as going to a museum to look carefully, attentively at two Coca-Cola bottles, hmm? And something of that is implicit in a great deal of 20th century art.
GROSS: I like to think of you and Marcel Duchamp playing chess together because here...
CAGE: Well we actually didn't play much.
GROSS: You didn't play?
CAGE: No. No.
GROSS: Oh. Oh.
CAGE: I played with Teeny Duchamp, his wife and he would criticize our game.
CAGE: And he said to me once, he said, don't you ever want to win?
GROSS: Did you play to win when you played chess?
CAGE: I didn't then. I played chess in order to be with him. I wanted to be with him as much as possible. Now that he's dead, my game has improved.
GROSS: Did you talk much during those chess games with Teeny, talk with Duchamp?
CAGE: No, I had a kind of confidence that if I was just near Duchamp that that would be enough, that I didn't have to ask him questions or converse. Once I remember he said let's sit down and have a conversation. We sat down. I don't remember what we talked about.
GROSS: Well, that's...
CAGE: I just liked being with him.
GROSS: Was that so, that being with him and not talking got for you some of what you wanted to be around him for?
CAGE: Yes, I think his presence, his being, was both question and answer, hmm?
BIANCULLI: John Cage, speaking to Terry Gross in 1982. He died a decade later at the age of 79. September 5th marked the 100th anniversary of his birth and celebratory events are scheduled throughout the fall season. Coming up, "Cloud Atlas." Film critic David Edelstein reviews the new movie starring Tom Hanks. This is FRESH AIR.
DAVID BIANCULLI: For "Cloud Atlas," the sibling directors of "The Matrix," Larry and Lana Wachowski, teamed with filmmaker Tom Tykwer, who directed "Run, Lola, Run," to co-direct an adaptation of David Mitchell's epic bestselling novel. The omnibus film stars Tom Hanks in multiple roles and also features Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent and a large ensemble cast. Film critic David Edelstein has this review.
DAVID EDELSTEIN, BYLINE: First I need to talk about the book, because it's not as if "Cloud Atlas" the movie came from nowhere. And if you think it's only the movie you want to know about, I think you need a context for what's onscreen. Author David Mitchell writes exquisite pastiches and "Cloud Atlas" is in the form of six distinct and enthralling novellas set in six different eras with six different literary styles.
First comes the journal of a 19th century lawyer for a slave-trading company. Then a series of early 20th century letters from a down and out composer who apprentices himself to an elderly musical giant. We jump to a 1970s paranoid conspiracy thriller, then a 2012 tale of a debt-ridden publisher tricked into signing himself into an old age home.
In a totalitarian future, a South Korean restaurant is staffed by female robots called fabricants, a couple of which are beginning to think for themselves, with tumultuous social consequences. The last story is set in a post-apocalyptic future in which some denizens are hunter-gatherers, others cannibals.
From story to story there are echoes, counterpoints, variations, characters in one time aware of characters in the previous one through print or film or oral history. So it's as if a baton is being passed. The idea that everything in the universe is connected doesn't come from a character's speech. It seeps into you as you read.
The movie, directed by Andy and Lana Wachowski and Tom Tykwer, doesn't have discreet episodes. Every one of its stories is interwoven with every other. It's an epic hash of crisscrossing fragments tied together by music in a vain attempt at fluidity. I found it disjointed, distractingly busy.
Unlike the book, it telegraphs the theme from its first scene on. The main actors have parts in all six stories, often in egregious disguises. They're a very uneven stock company. Tom Hanks, speaking in a sub-literate patois, opens the film as a post-apocalyptic tribesman, then shows up with a putty nose and snaggle teeth in the 19th century, and so on.
I like Hanks, but when it comes to transforming, he's no Peter Sellers. It's always: Hi, Tom. The even less versatile Halle Berry is primarily a gossip rag reporter who ferrets out chicanery in the nuclear industry. Hugo Weaving plays sundry one-dimensional villains while Hugh Grant manages to embody a cannibal in war paint without losing his English lockjaw.
Korean Doona Bae is the fabricant. She has a lollipop head and a live body but it's hard to detect much under the surface. There is one fine performance: Jim Broadbent as the publisher. And one splendid one: Ben Whishaw as the young composer. But the dialogue is full of flashcards and placards.
Tom Hanks gets to sum the film up in the episode in which he's a nervous nuclear scientist with blond hair in love with Halle Berry's reporter.
(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE, "CLOUD ATLAS")
TOM HANKS: (as Isaac Sachs) Belief, like fear or love, is a force to be understood as we understand the theory of relativity and principles of uncertainty, phenomena that determine the course of our lives. Yesterday, my life was headed in one direction. Today, it is headed in another. Yesterday I believed I would never have done what I did today. These forces that often remake time and space, that can shape and alter who we imagine ourself to be, begin long before we are born and continue after we perish.
EDELSTEIN: "Cloud Atlas" is never dull. It's like a series of clunky but energetic B movies, inflated by lines like: Separation is an illusion. And: My life exists far beyond the limitations of me. It's certainly passionate. You can see why the Wachowskis were drawn to the book. They've expressed a belief in the transmigration of souls, the body but a weak and temporary vessel, and politically they're radical.
For them, every age has oppressors with unchecked power who preserve artificial boundaries - racial, sexual, economic, spiritual. As in "The Matrix," the answer in "Cloud Atlas" is free your mind. Once you do, there is but one possibility: overthrow the man.
My own mind was too dismayed by all the howlers in the dialogue and acting to be freed. The movie is too literal-minded to be a good head trip. But I should add that audiences at the Toronto Film Festival premiere reportedly stood and cheered for 10 minutes. With its busy transitions and metaphysical heft, "Cloud Atlas" could be this year's "Inception." You'll travel farther, though, if you read the book.
BIANCULLI: David Edelstein is film critic for New York Magazine.
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.
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2.2 Google
Google runs over a distributed network of thousands of low cost computers. The parallel execution is the key of the fast processing of the queries. The Google's spider is called Googlebot and it is made up several computers requesting continuously pages which are downloaded and then passed to the Google's indexer. There are two different kind of crawling techniques: in the deep crawling, Googlebot fetches a page and then it creates a list of all the links connected to that page, it is a good way to retrieve all the pages of the same website; on the contrary, during fresh crawling, popular frequently changing pages, for example those from websites of newspapers, are crawled at a rate roughly proportional to how often the pages change.
The indexer store all the text that was crawled in the database; then the index is sorted alphabetically by search terms, with each index entry storing a list of documents in which the particular term appears and the location within the text where it occurs. Like in all the major search engines, the common words, called stop words, are ignored to save disk space and speed up search results. Since they would be present in the majority of the pages, they are not useful to narrow the list of results. Some stop words are for instance: "how", "when", "where", "the", "a" and any characters.
In the Google ranking system there are hundreds of factors involved but the main one is based on the so called PageRank algorithm which considers inbound and outbound links, I will analyse in deep this algorithm further on. The ranking is one of the functions of the Google's query processor; another is to apply the spelling correcting system. This is one of the ways Google uses machine learning techniques to automatically learn relationships and associations within the stored data. In the spelling correcting system, the search engine checks if you have typed an orthographically wrong word or if there is a similar sentence with a much longer number of results.
Approximately once a month the Google's index is updated: the PageRank of all the crawled pages is calculated and since this requires on average 40 iterations of the algorithm, the calculations take several days to complete. During these days the ranking positions of the pages fluctuate; sometimes minute-by minute, that is the why it is nicknamed Google's Dance.
There is another circumstance during which Google dances: the Updates. It is called Update every time the Google's ranking algorithm is changed to improve the service to the users. In particular every change has the aim to spot better and better SEO spam techniques. Those are particularly dangerous for a search engine when are used in unethical and unscrupulous ways to mislead the search engine and let it thinks a website has a different relevant content.
The first Update was the world famous "Florida Update" (November 2003). It was followed by the Austin, Brandy, Bourbon, and Jagger updates. But the huge one was the first one. It took eight weeks to re-establish stable listings; a quick search over the Internet is enough to see how many upset webmasters were involved in this change. The update consisted in the introduction of semantic contextualization software and a variation of the Hilltop Expert Document Algorithm.
The semantic components were quite mild, it is general belief that Google is moving to a semantic-type system but also nowadays you still are not able to write "glass, nails, and wood" hoping to find windows.
The Hilltop was more important; it cut the importance of the reciprocal links. Since it was understood the importance of the inbound links for the PageRank, lots of website started to exchange links. After the Update the weight of those links was dramatically reduced.
Perhaps the greatest effect of the Florida Update was the sudden rise in the popularity of blogs. The reason is that all the owners of a blog have a link on the website to their blog entry, and these are not reciprocal links. Every link increases of a bit the PageRank, when the blogs are thousands, the ranking of the website will go sky high. By the way, Google owns the main blog software developer, Blogger.
The last change in the Google search engines is called Bigdaddy (February 2006) but it was not a real update, like the Google engineer Matt Cutts said: "in this case the changes are relatively subtle (less ranking changes and more infrastructure changes). Most of the changes are under the hood, and this infrastructure prepares the framework for future improvements throughout the year". Anyway in other threads of his forum Cutts said about a site: "Some one sent in a health care directory domain. It seems like a fine site, and it's not linking to anything junky. But it only has six links to the entire domain. With that few links, I can believe that out toward the edge of the crawl, we would index fewer pages." It means that links into and out of a site are being used to determine how many pages of the site should be included in the index. Since the Web is exponentially growing day after day, not all the pages can be indexed and kept in a distributed database. In order to keep in the index more and more websites, the idea is to index much more pages for the major websites and just few pages for the minor ones. Those will be at least represented by their home page and some other major pages. This is a solution to a problem which may cause to have only big websites indexed and small or young websites not indexed at all.
In this change a new attempt to fight the reciprocal links was made, in particular links which connect not related website are now considered junk, Cutts makes the example with free ring tones website and Omega 3 fish oil sites.
Even if it was from February that Google was working on BigDaddy, during the summer 2006 the new system did not seem stable yet, there were still lots of complains about duplication of results, non existing links and different results only after few seconds with the same search term.
Now let us analyse the most important aspect of the optimization from a Google standpoint.


Was saving money one of your new year's resolutions? Do you want to cut back on your spending after the festive period or generally just be more money savvy this year? DriveElectric have put together a list of our top 10 green money saving tips to help you do so. These are ideas that the team have tried or are going to test out in 2019. Hopefully some of the tips below will help get this year off to a good start and create greener future for you and everyone around you!
Of course we were going to suggest this – we are the electric vehicle leasing experts after all. Driving an Electric Vehicle opens up plenty of ways you will save money from reduced fuel costs to other things like lower maintenance costs, lower running costs and if you're based in London there's no congestion charge to pay.
Electric vehicle or not, is every journey you make in your car essential? Think about walking for shorter journeys, and for those trips that are a little further than you can walk, try cycling. By doing so your weekly travel costs will be reduced and your emissions will be lower. You'll also get the added benefit of a spot of exercise too.
In the UK it's Clean Air day on the 20th June 2019. If you are unable to leave your car at home for the day perhaps you could make a pledge to so something else to help reduce air pollution? Even something as simple as checking your tyres are inflated will make your car more efficient and less polluting: there are lots of handy tips available on the Clean Air Day website.
Cold water washes keep you washes 30* or under, wait till you have a full load of washing (your machine uses more water when running two half loads than it does for one full load), head outside in the summer dry clothes on washing line. Another tip would be to do your laundry at night as some energy providers charge more during peak hours when the demand for power is high (depending on your tariff).
If you turn down your thermostat a notch or two, you could save a lot over the year on your heating bills.
We've just had a quick walk around DriveElectric HQ and 65% of the people at their desks at the moment have a reusable water bottle with them – we think that's pretty good. But we haven't benchmarked this against the other offices in the area, we can feel a twitter poll coming on.
6. Read your favourite newspaper or magazine online.
Reading the online edition of your newspaper of choice or your guilty pleasure magazine is usually cheaper than buying the print version. Some newspapers offer cost saving subscriptions and apps you can use read when you're on the go. The great thing about online news is that you are also helping the environment by reducing waste through consuming less paper.
Conservation of your devices and appliances is one of the key things you can do to reduce your carbon footprint around the home. By switching off your devices you could see a significant reduction in your energy bills as well as lowering your carbon footprint.
Changing your energy provider to a company which uses 100% renewable energy is a great eco way to save which anyone can do. Making the switch is simple and easy, you can compare and search the different tariffs online.
By swapping your normal light bulbs in the home with energy efficient alternatives, you could save on your energy bill vastly over the year. And it might be the obvious one but turn off your lights when you leave the room.
You could also walk around your home wearing a head torch in the evenings… is that a step too far? Going to bed earlier could be a workable compromise to the head torch idea – the lights in your home can go off a bit earlier, and you can feel well rested in the morning. Win win.
In the UK alone, an estimated 10 million tonnes of food and drink are wasted post-farm gate annually (worth around £20 billion). Reducing your food waste could lead to a massive household saving over the year, alongside reducing your carbon footprint. So buy sustainably where you can, plan your meals, and be savvy with your leftovers. Check your cupboards and make a shopping list before you hit the supermarket to avoid buying unnecessary items you don't need.
There are lots of apps you could use to keep track of your shopping list, Gemma on our marketing team uses one called 'Wunderlist' for her food shopping – you can add other people with the app to a list so your whole family can add items as they run out at home (though there might be certain family members who shouldn't have that power in your household!). The great thing about being app-based rather than paper based is that you can add to the list when you're on the go, and there's no need to remember to take the paper list with you to the shop.


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KU Men's Basketball Team Announces Non-Conference Basketball Schedule
Kansas men's basketball has always produced one of the toughest nonconference schedules in the nation and the 2020-21 slate is no different. The Jayhawks' 18-game home schedule renews an old rival with Missouri, a battle against preseason top-10 foe Creighton, clashes with Pac-12 foe USC and Ivy League power Harvard.
Adding the Big 12 Conference contests, Kansas will potentially face 10 teams, 12 games, currently ranked in the NCAA March Madness Power 36 for 2020-21, with No. 2 Baylor and No. 4 Creighton each ranked ahead of No. 7 Kansas. Kentucky at No. 8, Virginia (10), Texas Tech (17), West Virginia (18), UCLA (19), Texas (22) and Oklahoma (26) are also potential upcoming KU foes ranked in the NCAA March Madness preseason poll. Virginia and UCLA, along with Georgetown, are part of the Wooden Legacy Tournament, Nov. 26-27, 2020, in Anaheim, Calif. Additionally, these figures do not include KU's Jan. 30 opponent for the Big 12/SEC Challenge.
"Once again we will have one of the toughest schedules in the country," Kansas head coach Bill Self said. "We have a minimum of four games against teams that will be ranked in the preseason top 10 with Kentucky, Creighton and Baylor. And that does not even mention the other teams that will be ranked like USC, Colorado, West Virginia, Texas Tech, Texas and the SEC opponent just to mention a few. I'm already excited for the season and know our fans will be as well."
Kansas Athletics recently announced that for the 2020-21 season, Allen Fieldhouse will expand from three to eight pricing tiers, including four tiers that are lower than any season ticket price from last season. This new structure will lower the cost of season tickets for almost 45 percent of Allen Fieldhouse season ticket holders from last year.
Additionally, the Dec. 12 Border Showdown vs. Missouri at the Sprint Center is only available by purchasing season tickets through KU. Once KU season ticket sales are completed, all remaining inventory for the Dec. 12 game will be made available to Missouri. If they do not sell that allotment, those limited tickets will be made available to the general public.
To order season tickets, fans must be active members of the Williams Education Fund, which starts at $100 annually. Men's basketball season tickets are allocated according to Williams Education Fund policies and subject to availability. More information is available through the Williams Education Fund by calling 785.864.3946 or [email protected].
The season starts off with the two winningest programs in NCAA Division I history with Kansas facing Kentucky in the Champions Classic at the United Center in Chicago on Nov. 10. KU will then open home play for three games against Southern Utah (Nov. 13), Eastern Illinois (Nov. 16) and Stony Brook (Nov. 20) before heading to the Wooden Legacy Tournament.
Creighton finished No. 7 in the final Associated Press poll in March and will make its first trip to Allen Fieldhouse on Dec. 3. KU will then host Omaha Dec. 8 before playing host to Missouri Dec. 12 in the first of six Border Showdown Series matchups. USC will then play at Allen Fieldhouse on Dec. 19 and KU will close out the pre-holiday slate at former conference foe Colorado on Dec. 22. KU will host Harvard on Dec. 29 before opening Big 12 play Jan. 2.
Kansas is coming off a 28-3 record in 2019-20 where the Jayhawks won the Big 12 regular-season title with a conference record 17 wins in going 17-1 and winning its final 16 games of the season. KU ended 2019-20 No. 1 in the Associated Press and USA TODAY Coaches' polls before the pandemic shortened season.
KU ended No. 2 in the 2019-20 NET rankings. The Jayhawks' strength of schedule was No. 1. Kansas was the only school with 12 Quadrant 1 wins. KU's 20 Q1 and Q2 combined wins are also more than any other school.
Over the last 17 seasons, the Big 12 has proven to be one of the toughest league's in the NCAA, making the Jayhawks' run of 15 league titles since 2004 even more impressive. Beginning in the 2003-04 season, the Big 12 has ranked as the nation's No. 1 conference in the RPI/NET rankings six times and in the top-three on 11 occasions. In 2019-20, the conference trended in the same direction as it ended as the second highest-rated league in the NET rankings.
The Big 12 Conference schedule will be released later in the summer. Below is brief series information on the 2020-21 KU nonconference schedule.
Nov. 10 (Tues.) – Kentucky (Champions Classic, United Center, Chicago)
The two winningest programs in college basketball square off in the Champions Classic. Kentucky at 2,318 wins and Kansas at 2,302 victories are the only two schools to amass 2,300 all-time wins.
Kentucky is coming off a 25-6 season where it won the SEC by three games going 15-3 in 2019-20.
Kentucky leads the overall series with Kansas, 22-9, but the Jayhawks have won three of the last four meetings.
In the Champions Classic, Kentucky holds a 2-1 series advantage. While at Kansas, Jayhawks' head coach Bill Self is 6-4 against Kentucky.
Kentucky is coached by former Kansas assistant John Calipari who is 330-77 in 11 seasons at UK and 733-215 in 28 seasons overall.
Nov. 13 (Fri.) – SOUTHERN UTAH
Kansas and Southern Utah will be meeting for the first time in men's basketball.
Southern Utah went 17-15 last season and finished seventh in the Big Sky Conference with a 9-11 league mark.
The Thunderbirds are coached by Todd Simon who is 53-78 in four seasons at Southern Utah.
Nov. 16 (Mon.) – EASTERN ILLINOIS
Eastern Illinois will be the second-straight team Kansas will be facing for the first time in men's basketball.
The Panthers finished 17-15 in 2019-20 and tied for fifth in the 12-team Ohio Valley Conference with a 9-9 league record.
Eastern Illinois is coached by Jay Spoonhour who is 110-139 in eight seasons at EIU.
Nov. 20 (Fri.) – STONY BROOK
Kansas and Stony Brook will also be meeting for the first time.
Stony Brook finished second in the American East Conference last season, posting a 20-13 overall and 10-6 league record.
The Seawolves are coached by Geno Ford who is 20-14 after his first season at Stony Brook. Ford is 185-169 overall with stints at Kent State and Bradley prior to Stony Brook.
Nov. 26-27 – TBD (Wooden Legacy Tournament, Anaheim Arena, Anaheim, Calif. – Georgetown, UCLA, Virginia)
In a series which started in the 1987 NCAA Tournament, Kansas is 3-1 all-time against Georgetown and the Jayhawks have won the last three meetings. The two teams last met in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 10, 2014, a KU 75-70 road win.
Last year Georgetown posted a 15-17 record and finished tied for ninth in the Big East with a 5-13 league record.
The Hoyas are coached by legendary alum Patrick Ewing, who is 49-46 in three seasons at Georgetown.
UCLA leads the series with Kansas, 10-8, but the Jayhawks have won the last four and five of the last six meetings with the Bruins. The last two battles were in the Maui Invitational, a KU 92-73 win in 2015 and a KU 72-56 victory in 2011.
Last year, UCLA went 19-12 and finished second in the Pac-12 Conference with a 12-6 league record, one game behind league champion Oregon.
The Bruins are coached by Mick Cronin, who will be entering his second season at UCLA and is 384-182 overall with stints at Murray State and Cincinnati before taking over UCLA in 2019.
Kansas is 2-1 all-time against Virginia with all three meetings in 1995 and 1996. UVA won the NCAA Tournament Midwest Regional Sweet 16, 67-58, on March 24, 1995, in Kansas City, Mo., while KU won 72-66 in the Great Eight on Nov. 29, 1995, in Auburn Hills, Mich., and 80-63, on Nov. 27, 1996, in the title game of the Maui Invitational.
With the abrupt ending to the 2019-20 season, Virginia will still be defending its 2019 NCAA National Championship next year.
The Cavaliers went 23-7 in 2019-20 and finished tied for second in the Atlantic Coast Conference at 15-5, one game behind league champion Florida State.
UVA is coached by Tony Bennett who is 277-96 in 11 seasons at Virginia and 346-129 overall with three seasons at Washington State before taking over at Virginia in 2009-10.
Dec. 3 (Thurs.) – CREIGHTON
Creighton will make its first-ever trip to Allen Fieldhouse as its last visit to Lawrence was in 1950. Kansas leads the series 9-6 but the teams' previous meeting was in the 1974 NCAA Midwest Regional opening round, at KU 55-54 win in Tulsa. Kansas would later advance the 1974 Final Four in Greensboro, N.C.
Last season, Creighton finished No. 7 in the Associated Press poll posting a 24-7 overall record. The Blue Jays tied Villanova and Seton Hall for the Big East regular-season title with a 13-5 league record.
Creighton is coached by Greg McDermott who is 231-116 in 10 seasons at Creighton and is 511-311 overall.
Dec. 8 (Tues.) – OMAHA
Kansas won the only series meeting with Omaha, 109-64, on Dec. 18, 2017, in Allen Fieldhouse.
Last year the Mavericks finished 16-16 overall and tied for fourth in the Summit League with a 9-7 conference record.
The Mavericks are coached by Derrin Hansen who is 241-214 in 15 seasons at Omaha.
Dec. 12 (Sat.) – MISSOURI (Border Showdown Series, Sprint Center, Kansas City, Mo.)
On October 21, 2019, the Border Showdown between Kansas and Missouri was renewed starting with the Dec. 9 contest at Sprint Center in Kansas City, Mo. The two teams will meet six times over the next six seasons through 2025-26 with two meetings at Sprint Center (2020, 2025), two in Lawrence (2021, 2023) and two in Columbia (2022, 2024).
The Border Showdown was known as the longest continuous rivalry west of the Mississippi River until 2012 when Missouri departed the Big 12 for the SEC.
This series dates back to 1907 and Kansas holds a 174-95 advantage. The two teams did meet in and exhibition game at Sprint Center, a KU 93-87 win on Oct. 22, 2017, in a fundraiser for Hurricane Katrina relief efforts.
Last year, MU went 15-16 overall and tied for 10th in the SEC with a 7-11 league record.
The Tigers are coached by Cuonzo Martin who is 50-46 in three seasons at MU and 236-166 overall with stops at Missouri State, Tennessee and California prior to Missouri.
Dec. 19 (Sat.) – USC
This series dates back to 1935 with Kansas leading 11-5. The Jayhawks have won the last seven matchups with the Trojans with the last meeting a 63-47 KU win in Los Angeles on Dec. 22, 2011.
Last season, USC finished 22-9 and tied for third in the Pac-12 Conference at 11-7, two games behind league winner Oregon.
The Trojans are coached by Andy Enfield who is 132-102 in seven seasons at USC and 173-130 overall, which includes two years at Florida Gulf Coast before taking over at USC in 2013.
Dec. 22 (Tues.) – at Colorado
This series between Kansas and Colorado dates back to 1931 and KU leads 124-40 after its 72-58 win on Dec. 7, 2019, in Lawrence. Colorado's 75-72 win on Dec. 7, 2013, in Boulder, ended a Kansas 19-straight series win streak against CU. Kansas has won 46 of the last 48 meetings with CU dating back to 1991. As conference members – Big Seven, Big Eight and Big 12 – Kansas was 116-35 against Colorado, which included 21 meetings in the Big Seven/Eight Holiday Tournament and postseason conference play. As members of the Big 12, Kansas was 31-1 against Colorado – 29-1 in regular-season play and 2-0 in the league tournament.
Colorado finished 21-11 in 2019-20 and tied for fifth in the Pac-12 Conference at 10-8.
The Buffs are coached by former Kansas guard Tad Boyle who is 210-134 in 10 seasons at CU and 266-200 in 14 seasons overall. Boyle coached four seasons at Northern Colorado before taking over at Colorado in 2010-11.
Dec. 29 (Tues.) – HARVARD
Kansas won its only meeting with Harvard, 75-69, on Dec. 5, 2015, in Allen Fieldhouse.
Last season Harvard finished 21-8 and second in the Ivy League at 10-4, one game behind Ivy champ Yale at 11-3.
The Crimson are coached by Tommy Amaker who is 251-139 in 13 seasons at Harvard and 426-277 overall. Amaker, who has guided the Crimson to seven Ivy League titles in the last 10 seasons, was head coach at Seton Hall from 1997-98 until 2000-01, Michigan from 2001-02 until 2006-07 before taking over at Harvard.
Jan. 30 (Sat.) – at TBD (Big 12/SEC Challenge)
After its 74-68 win against Tennessee on Jan. 25, 2020, in Allen Fieldhouse, Kansas is 5-2 in the SEC/Big 12 Challenge, having split with Florida in 2013-14 and 2014-15, as both teams claimed home victories. KU then swept a home-and-home series with Kentucky, claiming a 90-84 overtime in Allen Fieldhouse in 2016 and a 79-73 win in Lexington, Kentucky in 2017. In 2018, Kansas defeated Texas A&M, 79-68, in Allen Fieldhouse and lost at Kentucky, 71-63, in 2019.
With the Big East/Big 12 Battle starting up in 2019-20, dating back to 2007, Kansas is 8-4 in conference challenges (1-1 vs. Arizona, 2-0 vs. UCLA, 1-1 vs. Florida, 2-1 vs. Kentucky, 1-0 vs. Tennessee, 1-0 vs. Texas A&M and 0-1 vs. Villanova).


Cheerleaders for professional teams in California might soon receive minimum wage as well as overtime and sick leave if the governor signs a bill that has already been approved by the state Senate.
Several former National Football League players have objected to the terms of a $765 million settlement in a class action lawsuit over concussions and brain damage.
The most important decisions any athletic director will likely make are personnel decisions. Unfortunately, with the pressure to win greater than ever, most new coaching hires will be lucky to make it past their third year. As a result of the tenuous nature of the profession, it is essential that the language within coaches' contracts be as clear as possible, especially when a decision is made to terminate a coach's contract.
Pending a wrongful termination lawsuit filed by her partner, an athletic administrator for the University of Iowa has been reassigned. Jane Meyer, a senior associate athletic director, has been reassigned to the school's facilities management office, where she will assist with construction contract quality and compliance.
We know that cancelling a health club membership can be confusing. After all, it can be spelled "cancelling" or "canceling." It's quite maddening, really.
The Toyota Center, site of Houston Rockets home games and other sports and entertainment events, is operated, maintained and managed by Clutch City Sports and Entertainment, L.P. Prior to the facility opening in 2003, Clutch City entered into a naming rights agreement with Gulf States Toyota to have the facility named the Toyota Center.
The A's are inking a deal to remain in the O.co Coliseum for 10 years; the Raiders are making separate plans to tear it down and build a new stadium on the exact location. Forget Orange County — real California drama happens in Oakland.
Perhaps following the lead of their counterparts in Cincinnati and Oakland, five former members of the Buffalo Bills cheerleading squad, known as the Jills, have sued the team, as well as the Jills' current and former management companies.
Construction of the University of Connecticut's new $33 million basketball practice facility has been put on hold due to illegal payments to workers by two of the construction companies working on the project.
In the sports and recreation industry, it is common to hire outside consultants to conduct risk management audits. Typically, these audits involve a site visit to inspect the facility, observe some of the activities or programs taking place in the facility, and interview members and employees of the organization. A review of the organization's policies, procedures and insurance coverage is also conducted. At the end of the visit, a written report — which usually includes a series of recommendations on how the organization can reduce its risks and legal exposure — is provided.


Jägersee is a picturesque lake at the end of the valley of Kleinarl, situated at an altitude of 1099 m in the Radstädter Tauern. Like the higher situated Tappenkarsee, the Kleinarlerbach runs through the Jägersee provides it with fresh (melting) water. The lake is stocked with rainbow trout from the Tappenkarsee.
In the 18th century, the Salzburg archbishops built the Jägerhaus on the side of the lake. The estate has been owned by the family Nesselrode since the 20th century who takes care of the hunting around and fishing in the lake.
The Jägersee is a popular destination, due to its location in the conservation area (LSG18). It is directly accessible by car or public transport. A combined walking / bike path offers easy access on foot or by bicycle from Kleinarl, which is only a few kilometers away. The lake is surrounded by a path that is easily accessible for prams, and there is a cozy terrace where you can rent a rowboat.
From Jägersee a hiking trail leads towards the Tappenkarsee. It is about 3 hours from the parking lot at the Jägersee. In the summer it is possible to drive further up the road until the Schwabalm. From there the walk is only 2 hours.
In winter there is a cross country skiing trail from Wagrain to Jägersee which offers a scenic drive through the valley of Kleinarl. This trail passes the terrain of Stockham, and you can start skiing right from your apartment.
Would you like to discover the Jägersee? Walk its beautiful trails? Or ski cross country to the Jägersee? Book an overnight stay at our accommodation in Kleinarl, and you will be assured of a carefree holiday.


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Posted on January 17, 2019 by Andrea Buck.
Students' thankfulness and wishes for the world are the foundation of the blessings chain we hang each year in the sukkah. Magen Davids covered in birdseed, tziporim of shalom, and bouquets of clippings from our buttefly garden add individualized touches of beauty.
Posted on September 28, 2018 by Andrea Buck.
Posted on January 20, 2018 by Andrea Buck.
G'milut chasadim, acts of loving kindness, and tikkun olam, repair of the world, are two Jewish values playing out predominantly in this year's religious studies classes.
Our 5th and 6th graders were challenged by Morah Susan Rees to develop a tzedakah (literally justice in Hebrew though often referred to as charity) project. They chose to adopt 29 Jewish families whose homes were destroyed by Hurricane Harvey and send them gifts of care and comfort over the course of the school year.
The first gifts – fleece blankets and pillows our students knotted together – arrived in Houston in plenty of time for Hanukkah. Our students' thoughtfulness extended to researching the favorite colors of the children from the families and having their names stitched into a corner of their blankets.
This project has grown into a school-wide affair: Our preschool families chipped in to buy boxes of Hanukkah candles for the Houston families, which all our students dipped in various colors of wax.
It has grown into a synagogue-wide affair: Parents and DuSTY teens helped cut the blankets, tie knots and supervise the candle-dipping. Congregants and the students' relatives donated more than $2,000 to help cover costs.
It has even reached into the Twin Ports community: Halvor Lines transported the blankets for free on one of their trucks bound for Houston.
And it has fully blossomed down at Temple Sinai synagogue where those families received their new blankets and pillows, along with some Hanukkiyah and even a tallit, lovingly donated from our congregants.
Posted on October 6, 2017 by Andrea Buck.


yea... plans have been change over the summer, i was doing scientific research over the summer about universe to multi-dimensions over different quantum form of physics among different universes, where lead me into unique form of questions and conclusions. So yeah.
You left your binder at my house!
anyone who has questions what so ever. feel free to leave them in the comments below.