Clouds are frequently considered for the information they can give us about the weather, about what types of crops will fare well, and about what clothes we may wear comfortably. It is less common, however, to find clouds consulted for the wisdom they may offer us about ourselves. In fact, even saying so aloud can seem ridiculous. In popular culture, appeals to keep one's feet on the ground and one's ears close to the ground undermine some very practical lessons we can learn from the skies, while expressions like down to earth, and pie in the sky create the impression that gazing upwards is a dangerous hobby – only for the foolish, and something that should be avoided at all costs. It is not surprising, therefore, that despite the presence of clouds in our everyday lives their wisdom has become easy to overlook, for rarely does it feature on billboards, in the pages of popular magazines, or on highly-rated television programs. It is for this reason today, that I would like to examine more closely what clouds may teach us about an important and complex question often faced in modern living. One which regularly haunts the subconscious thoughts of many down below. The question is that of retaining one's sense of identity amidst a large and sometimes confusing crowd.
We are reminded often that the world as we know it has become far more interconnected than ever before. As each day passes our exposure to other people – both in real life and through digital media – increases so phenomenally that it becomes difficult to comprehend exactly how many people actually exist, each living lives as complex and intricate as our own. But with this knowledge there occasionally appears an unwelcome feeling of being small, ordinary, or of following the same pattern as everyone else. On the worst days – when crossing a busy city street amidst the hustle and bustle of peak hour – it is easy to feel as though one's sense of identity is quietly slipping away, that amidst such noise and movement one is merely inconsequential, and that if one is not careful, one may disappear. Nor is it uncommon to find oneself feeling far lonelier at a crowded dinner table than alone in one's bedroom eating chips and pottering about. But it is here, I believe, that clouds may help.
A visible mass of condensed watery vapour floating in the air at some considerable height above the general surface of the ground.
It even contains an entry that reads simply 'a type of the fleeting or unsubstantial.' And although there are three major categories into which clouds are classified, it remains true that no two clouds look alike. It also remains true that crowds function primarily in groups: in speech, when we name a cloud, we use a singular term to refer to what is actually a multitude of countless raindrops and ice crystals. This reveals how natural it is to think of clouds as singular rather than separate entities. In short, even the Oxford English Dictionary, perhaps without even realising it, agrees that clouds are far more mysterious than it would seem at first glance.
If one were to pay too much attention to things like advertising, or the fashion pages of magazines, the idea of sonder may seem a horrible prospect. Be more, be better, stand out, do the never done proclaim so many adverts, adding fuel to a distinctly modern insecurity about being too much like anybody else. Or worse yet, being only an extra on complex and crowded stage. When one compares the fervent promotion of individualism (and I speak here primarily about individual expression, not individual rights) in the contemporary human world, to the slow and measured pace of clouds as they drift thoughtfully and patiently through the skies, it is difficult to deny that clouds seem to have accepted something that we humans have not. For the idea of sonder – though at first glance it may seem cause for despair – is really an eloquent acceptance of the complexity of the world, and an acknowledgement that the stranger next to you is just as complex as yourself. It can make us more appreciative of, and respectful towards, the unique experiences of other people. It reminds us too that we are not, and needn't be, the centre of the universe. Sonder is far more in line with the melancholic wisdom of clouds as they pass silently above us each day, making no demands for attention and no loud calls for an audience.
Like sonder, clouds acknowledge the occasional necessity, or inevitability, of the crowd. They understand that bearing occasional resemblance to others needn't negate one's individuality. They do not trouble each another with patronising accusations of adhering to a 'herd mentality' when it is uncovered that one enjoys something that has perhaps become suspiciously popular, or when it is revealed that one drives the same car as somebody else. For even in the fanciest of cars you must spend most of your time driving cooperatively within the lines specified upon the road.
Clouds do not use the same false dichotomies as advertising, with its assertions that if one is not a leader, one is inevitably a follower. In fact, I have just realised whilst writing this, that the word "cloud" very closely resembles the word "crowd" – and yet, because of the endless shapes and formations into which clouds can transform themselves at the blink of an eye, it is far more common to think of them primarily as creatures of independence and not conformity. This is despite the fact that they are, by their very nature, bound to a larger group. Clouds understand that when we rely too heavily on only one term or concept to define ourselves, unfair generalisations become far too easy, as does the risk of missing the finer details that cannot be captured in a cursory glance. Labels may help us to understand the world and each other, but it is important to remember that they often overlap, interact with one another, and should not be taken as the definitive measure of anyone's identity. As if to prove the point, just one minute ago I spotted a cloud drifting by that resembled an extremely detailed and terrifying monster, but which then quickly and unexpectedly took the form of a shoe.
Since 2005, the society has devoted itself to bringing the wisdom of clouds to a wider audience. On their website members elect a cloud of the day, share images of the shapes and creatures they have found in the clouds, and are currently writing a proposal to create the world's first museum of clouds. For as they point out, clouds remind us of transience, of expressions or states of being that come and go, and that needn't be used as the only means of defining oneself or another.
There is a view of life which holds that where the crowd is, the truth is also, that it is a need in truth itself, that it must have the crowd on its side. There is another view of life; which holds that wherever the crowd is, there is untruth [for] a crowd – not this or that, one now living or long dead, a crowd of the lowly or of nobles, or rich or poor, etc., but in its very concept – is untruth, since the crowd either renders the single individual wholly unrepentant and irresponsible, or weakens his responsibility by making it a fraction of his decision. […] A crowd is an abstraction, which does not have hands; each single individual, on the other hand, normally has two hands.
Never at any time was even the most cowardly of all single individuals so cowardly, as the crowd always is. For every single individual who escapes into the crowd, and thus flees in cowardice from being a single individual, […] contributes his share of cowardice to "the cowardice" which is: the crowd.
There is much truth to what Kierkegaard writes, for feeling as though your mind has been made up for you, against your will by a larger force around you is never a good thing. When Kierkegaard writes that in being part of a group one's responsibility is made only 'a fraction of his decision', he acknowledges the need (or perhaps inevitability) for compromise when dealing with multiple parties. To never submit to compromise is to dictate, and the modern suspicion that our status as an individual will diminish if we accept too much compromise is one that is prone to overstatement. (For an interesting discussion about this in the contemporary media, see The Argument Culture by Deborah Tannen). Clouds too understand this need, and calmly address it when required. Discussing how clouds are able to remain in the sky without falling down, the Free School informs us that 'individual droplets are not heavy enough to overcome the resistance of the air below them until they join together into much larger drops,' producing what we recognise as rain.
But as well as understanding the need for cooperation in serious endeavours, clouds also possess far more wisdom than humans for another reason. In understanding that it is sometimes necessary to remain in a group, clouds know too that there are other times when it is wiser and more necessary to break away from that group if it ceases to properly represent them. Clouds accept that identifying occasionally as part of a group does not threaten their status as a freethinking and serious individual, not do they let only the crowd or their status as an individual define them. They move seamlessly between each mode with the stoutness to accept when each is necessary, and the courage to leave when it is not. For (as Kierkegaard suggests) there are times when it is far wiser to leave than to stay, depending of course, on each particular context.
Kierkegaard and clouds both remind us that it is sometimes wiser to calmly and with consideration break away from a group that no longer represents one's values or identity. In fact, their ability to move from one mode to the other is exactly what is so enchanting about watching them. When the poet below writes that his clouds are 'now gorgeous, now sombre, then fading away,' he captures the way in which watching the skies can prompt the same calming pleasure that we get from watching a crowd from the window of a train – somewhere where we are close enough to see the details in the paining before us, but not too far for them to distort into a picture of what may otherwise seem like monotony. And when it comes to whether or not such scenes should be seen as a threat, clouds are wise enough to not care for the question and to never ask it, avoiding much of the anxiety it creates in the modern world.
1 Official manifesto of the Cloud Appreciation Society.


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The Unmutual Website is sad to announce that George Leech, stuntman on "The Prisoner" who portrayed one of the security guards in "The General", passed away in June 2012. He was 80.
A highly respected stuntman, he is best known for his work on various blockbusters including several James Bond Films and supervising the stunts on the drama series "Gangsters".
TUW would like to extend its sincerest sympathies to George's family and friends. A full obituary can be read HERE.
With thanks to David Stimpson for this news item.


This python print faux leather skirt is exactly what you want to be seen come after-hours.
Time to ditch that predictable black mini skirt for good. Crafted from textured faux leather material, it features an A-line silhouette and a concealed zip closure at the back. For a quick getup, a mock neck sweater and over the knee boots are recommended.


Ok, I'm back. Sorry for the late post but I came home to a broken computer and a forgotten password. I've gotten over those hurdles, now its time to plan a run!
This week you'll be running on Saturday instead of Easter Sunday. We'll meet at 8 at Brueggers as usual but a day earlier. The route will take you up to Melrose Common, over to Swains Pond around to Lebanon St, left onto Forest St over to Main St where I'll have water stop 1 waiting for you in the Citizen's Bank parking lot. Since its Saturday and the bank will be open, lets move through that stop quickly!
From there you'll head out past Oak Grove T Station, up Greenwood Street to the Fellsway East. Follow the Fellsway to the LynnFells parkway to the knoll near the high school. I be there next for water stop 2.
Keep going along the LynnFells until you get to Main St in Saugus, go left and run up to Nahant St. Take a left on Nahant and pop out at Nicks where you'll find me again for a water stop.
Take Main Street back and finish up your first taper run on your way to running Boston.
If you're running shorter, there are turn backs along the route in many places. Figure out how far you want to run and make a turn towards Brueggers when you need to. If you want to run longer, a typically add on for this route is just to run up to and around Pine Banks. Grab a sip of something as you run past Brueggers.
Remember, because its Saturday the traffic will be heavier as we get later in the morning. Be aware. Run safe.
If I don't see you Saturday, have a Happy Easter.
Are we all excited to get our legs moving along THE course of all courses?
So, here's the plan, or at least version 1 of the plan. Let me say upfront that I am not able to give you the Jim Carson level of service. I may not have an opportunity to do all kinds of fancy handouts like Jim does, but, if I do, you'll all be the first to know.
Everyone should arrive at the parking lot behind Bruegger's at 6:45a.m. this Sunday morning. The caravan of vehicles will be leaving the parking lot by 7a.m.
We have 6 vehicles right now, which gives us a few empty seats to play around with should anyone show up at the last minute.  Car assignments are below, but one note – Joe W. needs to speed back to Melrose when he is finished with his run. He'll be riding with Catherine. If you want to ride back with Catherine and  Joe on the earlier side, you need to keep him in your sights along the course and be ready to go (which means making sure your dry clothes are put in Catherine's car at the very start).
Driver – Derek or Lisa, passengers – Tom G., Bill O., and Don K.
Driver – Ginny R., passengers – Sue W., Carol C., Dorota, and Michele D.
Drivers – Brian and Lois/Lisa, passengers – Tim P., Jose, Christina A.
Driver – Catherine, passengers for the ride to Hopkinton – Michele, Joe W. and Chris H. THIS CAR WILL LEAVE EARLY FROM BC.
Again, cars will be leaving the parking lot at 7 a.m. Be there or be… running your miles in Melrose while the rest of us are on a grand adventure in Hopkinton, Ashland, Framingham, Natick, Wellesley, Newton and Chestnut Hill.
Please take a look and know where you're going. It is a very simple course with one major turn at the Boston Fire Station, however… we have had runners miss the turn. I don't want anyone to add any extra miles due to stepping off course. So please, if you're worried, study the map and at each waterstop ask about what you need to know to get to the next waterstop.
We will be using the same waterstop locations as last year. I'll have some handouts on Sunday morning, but if you want to see them, look at the blog entry for last year – Jim supplied location and pictures.
Post your questions, special flavor of Gatorade/Powerade requests, and anything else you have to say here (that is acceptable to post, of course).
I'll update as needed. If there are no updates, I'll see you all bright and early on Sunday morning.
Alicia, Carol, Dorota, Christina, Katie, Audrey, Michele, Sue C., Sue W.
Make sure I know you're coming so I can finish up a plan before week's end. I'm so looking forward to this year's adventure with you all!
One week before we run the most miles of the training season and we're headed out for some peaceful water views and a few hills. This is the point in our training when Jim gives some great advice about what to think about this week and next. Â Like… now is a good time to check your sneakers. Despite the snow, you must admit you've been running a lot. Also a good time to get your pre-race meal confirmed – what works and what doesn't should be figured out now. As for marathon day clothes… that one is a little tougher to test out as we still need to dress for the weather that is happening now. Â So, think about all of the things you'll be worried about come the big day and start nailing down with certainty what is going to work best – food before the race, fuel along the course, sneakers, socks, underwear (oh blush) and/or running bra, sunglasses, hair ties, BodyGlide, etc… Now is the time for experimentation if you are uncertain.
Okay, so on to the route. Water views. Hills. Sounds lovely, doesn't it? Same route as last year, so a cut and paste of Jim's instructions from last year seems to fit the bill.
The run will take you up to Melrose Common on East Foster, over to Swain's Pond along Swains Pond Ave, right onto Lebanon, left onto Forest,  and over towards Oak Grove. If you don't know where those places are check the map. This run has gotten a few people lost in the past. when you come up to the ponds, Swains Pond Ave turns right, don't go straight up the big hill. When Swains Pond Ave comes out to Lebanon. GO RIGHT. A few people have veered off to the left and headed into Malden. Eventually they come back, but its best not to add unnecessary miles on. When you come out of Forest St in Malden there will be a Citizen's Bank across the street. Water Stop 1 will be in the lot.
The second leg of this run is past Oak Grove Station on Winter St. Run directly across to Glenwood St. Follow this curvy hilly road out to Highland Ave. You'll recognize the paper boy at the rotary, go right onto the Fellsway East. Take those hills all the way to the LynnFells Parkway, past Grimsby's, Dunkin Donuts, the hill into Melrose, to the knoll across from the Melrose Middle School. That's where you'll find water stop 2.
After that stop take the LynnFells all the way to the Saugus entrance to Breakheart. You'll find another water stop there.
Loop Breakheart back to the water stop.
Follow the LynnFells back to the knoll for another stop.
Go back over the LynnFells hill to Grimsby's, turn left onto West Wyoming, and another left onto Main St and bring it on home to Brueggers!
If you're running the short route, take a look at the map, since we're looping Melrose Center for the first 7 miles you can make this one a few different distances to fit your training.
There are Three waterstops that I'll need some help with. Anyone?
I know some of our comrades are headed to the New Bedford Half Marathon so best of luck to all of them!
Here it is… the weekly ROLL CALL! Who is in?
Ahhhhh. This week we get a nice drop down to 16 miles for the marathoners, 8 miles for the half marathons. Â Yes, you've just become the annoying person who remarks that you're 'only' running 16 miles or 'just' 8 miles this week. Â Funny how perspective shifts over the course of 10 weeks.
This week we do have a little challenge with our route. I'm fairly certain that Breakheart is likely still impassable. We will be changing just that portion of the run in a way that keeps to our one water stop and doesn't go far off path.
So, who is in for a little post-storm run?


text:
The Campaign for the German Imperial Constitution, Frederick Engels 1850
III. The Palatinate
From Karlsruhe we went to the Palatinate [Marx and Engels left Karlsruhe for the Palatinate on May 24, 1849.–Ed] first stopping at Speyer where d'Ester and the Provisional Government were said to be. They had, however, already left for Kaiserslautern, where the government finally took up its seat at what it considered to be the "strategically best located point in the Palatinate". In its stead we found Willich and his volunteers in Speyer. With a corps of a few hundred men he was holding in check the garrisons of Landau and Germersheim, altogether over 4,000 men, cutting their lines of supply and harassing them in every possible way. That very day he had attacked two companies of the Germersheim garrison with about eighty riflemen and driven them back into the fortress without firing a single shot. The next day we accompanied Willich to Kaiserslautern where we met d'Ester, the Provisional Government, and the very flower of German democracy. Here also there could, of course, be no question of official participation in the movement, which was quite alien to our party. So after a few days we went back to Bingen, were arrested on the way, in the company of several friends, by Hessian troops, on suspicion of being implicated in the uprising, transported to Darmstadt and from there to Frankfurt, where we were finally set free.
Shortly after this we left Bingen and Marx went with a mandate from the Democratic Central Committee to Paris, where a crucial event was about to take place, as representative of the German revolutionary party to the French social-democrats.[164] I returned to Kaiserslautern to live there for the time being as a simple political refugee and perhaps later, should a suitable opportunity offer itself, take up at the outbreak of fighting the only position that the Neue Rheinische Zeitung could take up in this movement: that of soldier.
Anyone who has seen the Palatinate even once will understand that in this wine-producing and wine-loving province any movement inevitably assumes a most cheerful character. The ponderous, pedantic, Old-Bavarian beer-souls had at long last been shaken off and merry Palatinate wine-bibbers appointed in their place. One had finally seen the last of that pompous pettifoggery practised by the Bavarian police which was so delightfully parodied in the otherwise dull pages of the Fliegende Bl�tter and which lay more heavily than anything else on the hearts of the gay people of the Palatinate. The first revolutionary act of the people of the Palatinate was to restore the freedom of the taverns; the entire Palatinate was transformed into one enormous pot-house and the quantities of strong drink which were consumed "in the name of the people of the Palatinate" during those six weeks were beyond all calculation. Even though active participation in the movement in the Palatinate was nowhere near as widespread as in Baden, and even though there were many reactionary districts here, the entire population was as one in this general wine-bibbing and even the most reactionary philistine and peasant was carried along on the general wave of merriment.
One did not need an especially penetrating glance to recognise how bitterly the Prussian army was to disillusion these cheerful Palatinate souls in a few weeks' time. And yet the number of people in the Palatinate who did not revel in the most carefree manner could be counted on one's fingers. Scarcely anyone believed that the Prussians would come, but everyone was quite sure that if they did come they would be thrown out again with the greatest of ease. There was no trace here of that staunch gloominess whose motto "Ernst ist der Mann"[Seriousness above all things. –Ed] is engraved on the brow of every Baden people's militia officer and which still did not prevent all those wonderful things happening which I shall have to relate presently - that respectable solemnity which the philistine character of the movement in Baden had impressed on the majority of its participants. In the Palatinate people were only "serious" by the way. Here "enthusiasm" and "seriousness" only served to gloss over the universal jollity. But people were always "serious" and "enthusiastic" enough to believe themselves invincible before any power in the world, and especially the Prussian army; and if in the quiet hours of reflection a faint doubt raised its head, it was brushed aside with the irrefutable argument that even if it were true, one still should not say it. The longer the movement dragged on and the more undeniable and massive the concentration of Prussian battalions between Saarbrucken and Kreuznach, the more frequent became these doubts, and the more vehement the bluster, precisely among the doubters and the timid, about the invincibility of a "people enraptured with its freedom", as the people of the Palatinate were called. This bluster soon grew into a regular soporific system which, encouraged only too readily by the government, had the effect of relaxing all work on defence measures and exposing everyone who opposed it to the danger of arrest as a reactionary.
This carefree attitude, this bluster about "enthusiasm" carrying all before it, in view of its minute material resources and the tiny corner of land where it asserted itself, provided the comic side of the Palatinate "uprising", and gave the handful of people whose advanced views and independent position permitted a detached judgment more than enough cause for hilarity.
The whole outward appearance of the movement in the Palatinate was cheerful, carefree and spontaneous. Whereas in Baden every newly appointed second lieutenant, in the regular army or the people's militia, laced himself into a heavy uniform and paraded with silver epaulettes which later, on the day of the battle, immediately found their way into his pockets, people in the Palatinate were much more sensible. As soon as the great heat of the first days of June made itself felt all the worsted coats, waistcoats and cravats disappeared to make way for a light tunic. It seemed as if all the old unsociable constraints had been thrown off along with the old bureaucracy. People dressed in a completely free-and-easy fashion, dictated solely by comfort and the season of the year; and together with differentiation in clothing disappeared in a moment every other differentiation in social intercourse. All social classes came together in the same public places and in this unrestrained intercourse a socialist dreamer would have glimpsed the dawn of universal brotherhood.
As the Palatinate, so its Provisional Government. It consisted almost exclusively of genial wine-bibbers, who were never so astonished as when they suddenly found themselves having to be the Provisional Government of their Bacchus-beloved fatherland. And yet there is no denying that these laughing regents conducted themselves better and accomplished relatively more than their Baden neighbours under the leadership of the "staunch-minded" Brentano. They were at least well-intentioned and in spite of their carousing had a more sober understanding than the philistine-serious gentlemen in Karlsruhe; and hardly any of them became angry if one laughed at their easy-going fashion of making revolution and their impotent little decrees.
The Provisional Government of the Palatinate could not get anything done as long as it was left in the lurch by the Baden government. And it completely fulfilled its obligations towards Baden. It sent envoy after envoy and made one concession after another solely in order to come to an understanding, but all in vain. Herr Brentano was obdurate.
While the Baden government found everything ready at hand, the Palatinate government found nothing. It had no money, no weapons, a number of reactionary districts and two enemy fortresses on its territory. France at once banned the export of arms to Baden and the Palatinate, and all arms dispatched thither were impounded by Prussia and Hesse. The government of the Palatinate sent agents forthwith to France and Belgium to buy up arms and send them back; the arms were purchased but they never arrived. The government can be reproached with not proceeding with sufficient energy in the matter and in particular with failing to organise the smuggling in of rifles through the large number of contrabandists along the frontier; the greater blame, however, lies with its agents, who acted very negligently and in part allowed themselves to be fobbed off with empty promises instead of getting the French arms at least as far as Saargemund and Lauterburg.
As far as funds were concerned, not much could be done with bank-notes in the little Palatinate. When the government found itself in pecuniary embarrassment it at least had the courage to take refuge in a forced loan on a progressive, albeit gently graduated, scale.
The only reproaches which can be made against the Palatinate government are that in its feeling of impotence it allowed itself to be too much infected by the universal light-heartedness and the related illusions about its own security; and that therefore, instead of energetically setting in motion the admittedly limited means of defending the state, it preferred to rely on the victory of the Montagne in Paris, the taking of Vienna by the Hungarians or even on actual miracles which were to happen somewhere or other to save the Palatinate –uprisings in the Prussian army, etc. Hence the remissness in procuring arms in a country where even a thousand serviceable muskets more or less would have made an infinite amount of difference and where finally, on the day the Prussians marched in, the first and last consignment of forty rifles arrived from abroad, namely from Switzerland. Hence the frivolous selection of civil and military commissaries, who consisted mainly of the most incompetent and confused dreamers, and the retention of so many old officials and of all the judges. Hence finally the neglect of all the means, even those immediately at hand, of harassing and perhaps taking Landau. To this question I shall return later.
Behind the Provisional Government stood d'Ester, like a sort of secret General Secretary or, as Herr Brentano put it, like a "red camarilla which surrounded the moderate government of Kaiserslautern". Moreover, this "red camarilla" included other German democrats too, in particular Dresden refugees. In d'Ester the Palatinate regents found that broad administrative vision which they lacked, together with a revolutionary understanding which impressed them because it always confined itself to what was immediately at hand, to that which was unquestionably practicable, and was therefore never at a loss for detailed measures. Because of this d'Ester acquired a significant influence and the unconditional confidence of the government. If even he at times took the movement too seriously and thought for example that he could achieve something worthwhile through the introduction of his for the moment totally unsuitable municipal regulations, it is none the less certain that d'Ester impelled the Provisional Government to each comparatively vigorous step and in particular always had appropriate solutions at hand when it came to conflicts over details.
If in Rhenish Prussia reactionary and revolutionary classes stood facing each other from the very outset and if in Baden a class which was initially in raptures about the movement, the petty bourgeoisie, gradually allowed itself at the approach of danger to be won over first into indifference and later into hostility towards the movement it itself had provoked, in the Palatinate it was not so much particular classes of the population as particular districts which, governed by local interests, declared themselves against the movement, some from the first and others little by little. Certainly the townspeople of Speyer were reactionary from the start; in Kaiserslautern, Neustadt, Zweibrucken, etc., they became so with the passage of time; but the main strength of the reactionary party was to be found in agricultural districts spread over the whole of the Palatinate. This confused configuration of the parties could only have been eliminated by one measure: a direct attack on the private property invested in mortgages and mortgage-usury, in favour of the debt-ridden peasants who had been sucked dry by the usurers. But this single measure, which would immediately have given the whole of the rural population a stake in the uprising, presupposes a much larger territory and much more developed social conditions in the towns than is the case in the Palatinate. It was only feasible at the beginning of the insurrection, simultaneously with an extension of the uprising to the Moselle and the Eifel, where the same conditions obtain on the land and find their complement in the industrial development of the Rhenish towns. And the movement was directed outwards just as little in the Palatinate as it was in Baden.
Under these conditions the government had only limited means of combating the reactionary districts: isolated military expeditions into the refractory villages, arrests, especially of the Catholic priests, who placed themselves at the head of the resistance, and so on; appointment of energetic civil and military commissaries, and last of all propaganda. The expeditions, mostly of a very comical nature, only had a momentary effect, the propaganda none at all, and the commissaries mostly committed blunder upon blunder in their pompous ineptitude or confined themselves to the consumption of vast quantities of Palatinate wine and the inevitable bluster in the taverns.
Amongst the propagandists, the commissaries and the officials of the central administration, the democrats, of whom even more had gathered in the Palatinate than in Baden, played a very considerable role. Here, in addition to the refugees from Dresden and from Rhenish Prussia, a number of more or less enthusiastic "men of the people" had turned up to consecrate themselves to the service of the fatherland. The government of the Palatinate, which unlike its Karlsruhe counterpart understood instinctively that the resources of the Palatinate alone were not equal to the demands even of this movement, received them gladly. It was impossible to spend more than two hours in the Palatinate without being offered a dozen of the most varied and on the whole very honourable posts. The democrats, who saw in the Palatinate-Baden movement not a local uprising which was becoming daily more local and more insignificant, but the glorious dawn of the glorious uprising of all Germany's democrats, and who everywhere in the movement saw their more or less petty bourgeois tendency prevailing, fell over themselves to accept these offers. At the same time, however, each felt he owed it to himself only to accept a post which satisfied his naturally very lofty pretensions of the part he should play in an all-German movement. At first this was possible. Whoever came along was at once put in charge of an office or made a government commissary, a major or a lieutenant-colonel. Little by little, however, the number of rivals increased, the positions became fewer and there started a petty, philistine place-hunting which presented the disinterested spectator with a highly diverting spectacle. I imagine I do not have to underline the fact that in this strange hotchpotch of industry and confusion, importunacy and incompetence which the Neue Rheinische Zeitung has so often had occasion to wonder at among the German democrats, the officials and propagandists of the Palatinate faithfully mirrored the whole unpleasant medley.
As a matter of course I also was offered any number of civil and military positions, positions which in a proletarian movement I would not have hesitated for a moment to accept. As things were, I turned them all down. The only thing I agreed to was to write some agitational articles for a small paper of which the Provisional Government had large quantities distributed in the Palatinate. I knew that this too would come to nothing, but I finally accepted the offer upon the urgent request of d'Ester and several members of the government in order at least to demonstrate my good will. Since I naturally felt few constraints, exception was taken to the very second article I wrote because it was too "inflammatory"; I wasted no words, took the article back, tore it up in d'Ester's presence and that was the end of the matter.
The best of the foreign democrats in the Palatinate were, incidentally, those who had come fresh from the struggle in their home provinces: the Saxons and the Rhenish Prussians. The handful of Saxons were mostly employed in the central offices, where they worked hard and distinguished themselves by their administrative knowledge, their calm, clear understanding and their lack of any pretensions or illusions. The Rhinelanders, mostly workers, joined the army en masse; the few who initially worked in the offices later also took up the musket.
In the offices of the central administration in the Fruchthalle[165] at Kaiserslautern there was a very easy-going atmosphere. What with the general laisser aller, the complete lack of any form of active intervention in the movement and the uncommonly large number of officials, there was on the whole little to do. It was a matter of hardly more than the day-to-day business of administration, and this was disposed of tant bien que mal. Unless a courier arrived, some patriotic citizen came with a profound proposal concerning the salvation of the fatherland, some peasant brought a complaint or some village sent a deputatlon, most of the offices had nothing to do. People yawned and chatted, told anecdotes and made bad jokes and strategic plans and went from one office to another trying as well as they could to kill time. The main topics of conversation were naturally the political events of the day, about which the most contradictory rumours were circulating. The intelligence service was greatly neglected. The old post-office officials had almost without exception stayed at their posts and were needless to say very unreliable. Alongside them a "field-post" was set up, superintended by the Palatinate Chevaulegers[166] who had come over to our side. The commandants and the commissaries of the border areas paid not the slightest heed to what was happening on the other side of the border. The government took only the Frankfurter Journal and the Karlsruher Zeitung and I still remember with delight the astonishment it gave rise to when I discovered in the officers' club, in an issue of the Kolnische Zeitung which had arrived several days before, the news of the concentration of 27 Prussian battalions, 9 batteries and 9 regiments of cavalry, together with their exact location between Saarbrucken and Kreuznach.
At last I come to the main point, the military organisation. About three thousand Palatinate soldiers from the Bavarian army had defected with bag and baggage. At the same time a number of volunteers, from the Palatinate and elsewhere, had placed themselves under arms. In addition to that the Provisional Government issued a decree calling up the first age group, in the first instance all unmarried men between the ages of eighteen and thirty. This call-up, however, only took place on paper, owing partly to the incompetence and negligence of the military commissaries, partly to the lack of arms and partly to the indolence of the government itself. Wherever the lack of arms was the main obstacle to the whole defence, as it was in the Palatinate, every means had to be used to muster arms. If none were forthcoming from abroad, then it was necessary to fetch out every musket, every rifle and every sporting-gun which could be unearthed in the Palatinate and place them in the hands of the active fighters. However, there were not only large numbers of private weapons at hand, but on top of that at least another 1,500 to 2,000 rifles, not counting carbines, in the hands of the various civic militia units. One could at least have demanded the handing over of private arms and rifles in the hands of those civic militiamen who were not obliged to join the first call-up and did not intend to volunteer. But nothing of the sort happened. After much insistence a resolution along these lines was finally adopted regarding the arms held by the civic militia, but never put into effect the Kaiserslautern civic militia over three hundred philistines strong, paraded at the Fruchthalle every day in uniform, shouldering their arms, and the Prussians, when they marched in, had the pleasure of disarming these gentlemen. And thus it was everywhere.
In the official newspaper an appeal was issued to the forestry officials and the keepers of the woods, asking them to report to Kaiserslautern in order to form rifle corps; of these it was the forestry officials who did not turn up.
Throughout the whole land scythes were forged, or at least a call went out to that effect; a few scythes were actually produced. In the Rhenish Hessian corps at Kirchheimbolanden I saw several casks of scythe-blades being loaded and sent to Kaiserslautern. The journey takes roughly seven to eight hours; four days later the government was forced to abandon Kaiserslautern to the Prussians and the scythes had still not arrived. If the scythes had been given to those civic militiamen not yet mobilised, the so-called second age group, as compensation for giving up their guns, then the affair would have made sense; instead of this the lazy philistines kept their percussion-guns and the young recruits were expected to march against the Prussian cannon and needle-muskets with scythes.
While there was a general lack of fire-arms, there was by contrast a just as remarkable profusion of cavalry sabres; those who could not lay hands on a gun strapped on all the more eagerly a clattering broadsword, believing that by merely so doing they stamped themselves as officers. Precisely in Kaiserslautern these self-stamped officers were too numerous to count and the streets rang day and night to the clatter of their fearful weapons. It was the students in particular who by this new manner of intimidating the enemy and by their pretension of forming an academic legion entirely of cavalry on foot rendered great service for the saving of the fatherland.
In addition there was half a squadron of defected Chevaulegers at hand; however, they were so scattered due to their work for the field-post, etc., that they never came to form a special combat corps. The artillery, under the command of "Lieutenant-Colonel" Anneke, consisted of a few three-pounders whose horses I do not recall having ever seen, and a number of mortars. Lying in front of the Fruchthalle at Kaiserslautern was the most beautiful collection of old iron cannon-barrels one could ever wish to see. Needless to say, most of them remained lying there unused. The two biggest were laid on colossal home-made gun-carriages and carried off. The Baden government finally sold the Palatinate a shot-out six-pound battery together with some ammunition; but without a team of horses, a crew of sufficient ammunition. The ammunition was as far as possible manufactured; the team of horses and riders was made up tant bien que mal with requisitioned peasants and horses; for the crew a few old Bavarian artillerymen were gathered together to train men in the ponderous and complicated Bavarian drill.
The top leadership of military affairs was in the worst hands. Herr Reichardt, who had taken over the military department in the Provisional Government, was active, but lacked vigour and professional knowledge. The first commander-in-chief of the military forces of the Palatinate, the enterprising Fenner von Fenneberg, was soon dismissed on account of his ambiguous conduct; he was temporarily replaced by Raquilliet, a Polish officer. At last it was learnt that Mieroslawski was to take over the supreme command of Baden and the Palatinate and that the command of the troops of the Palatinate was to be entrusted to "General" Sznayde, also a Pole.
General Sznayde arrived. He was a small, fat man, who looked more like an elderly bon vivant than a "Menelaus, caller to battle"." General Sznayde took over the command with a great deal of gravity. He had a report made on the state of affairs and at once issued a whole series of orders of the day. Most of these orders related to uniform (tunics and marks of rank for officers – tricolour armbands or sashes), or appeals to veteran cavalrymen and riflemen to come forward as volunteers (appeals which had already been made ten times without success) and things of a similar nature. He himself set a good example by immediately procuring a hussar tunic with tricolour braid, in order to inspire the army with respect. The really practical and important things in his orders of the day were merely repetitions of orders long since issued and proposals already made earlier by the handful of good officers present, but never carried out, and which only now, through the authority of a commanding general, could b be put into effect. As for the rest, "General" Sznayde placed his trust in God and Mieroslawski and dedicated himself to the pleasures of the table, the only reasonable thing that a so totally incompetent individual could do.
Amongst the other officers in Kaiserslautern was the uniquely capable Techow, the same Techow who as a Prussian first lieutenant with Natzmer and gave the Berlin arsenal over to the people after having taken it by storm [167] and, sentenced to fifteen years detention in a fortress, escaped from Magdeburg. Techow, chief of the Palatinate general staff, proved in all things to be knowledgeable, circumspect and calm, perhaps a little too calm to be trusted to make the rapid decisions on which everything often depends on the battlefield. "Lieutenant-Colonel" Anneke proved to he incompetent and indolent in organising the artillery, though he rendered good services in the ordnance shops. At Ubstadt he won no laurels as commander-in-chief and from Rastatt, where Mieroslawski had put him in charge of the materials for the siege, he escaped across the Rhine under strange circumstances already before the investment, leaving his horses behind.
There was not much to be said for the officers in the various districts either. A number of Poles had appeared, some in advance of Sznayde and some with him. As the best of the Polish emigres were already in Hungary, one may suspect that these Polish officers were a pretty mixed bunch. Most of them made haste to obtain an appropriate number of saddle-horses and give out a few orders, paying only scanty attention to their execution. They tended to lord it over people and wanted to treat the peasants of the Palatinate like cringing Polish serfs. They were not familiar with the country, the language or the command, and hence accomplished little or nothing at all as military commissaries, i.e. organisers of battalions. In the course of the campaign they soon strayed into Sznayde's headquarters and shortly afterwards, when Sznayde was assailed and roughly handled by his soldiers, disappeared altogether. The better ones among them arrived too late to be able to organise anything.
There was not much talent of any use among the German officers either. The Rhenish Hessian corps, though it included elements who could have developed militarily, was under the leadership of a certain Hausner, a completely useless man, and under the even more lamentable moral and political influence of the two heroes Zitz and Bamberger, who later in Karlsruhe extricated themselves so successfully from the situation. In the Palatinate hinterland a former Prussian officer, Schimmelpfennig, organised a corps.
The only two officers who had already distinguished themselves in active service before the Prussian invasion were Willich and Blenker.
With a small corps of volunteers Willich took over the observation and later the siege of Landau and Germersheim. A company of students, a company of workers who had lived with him in Besancon, three weak companies of gymnasts (from Landau, Nerrstadt and Kaiserlautern), two companies formed from volunteers from the surrounding villages and lastly a company of Rhenish Prussians armed with scythes, most of them fugitives from the Prum and Elberfeld uprisings, gradually mustered under his command. In the end they amounted to between 700 and 800 men, certainly the most reliable soldiers in the whole Palatinate; most of the N.C.O.s had seen service and some of them had been familiarised in Algeria with guerrilla warfare.[168] With this scanty force Willich took up a position halfway between Landau and Germersheim, organised the civic militia in the villages, using them to guard the roads and do outpost duty, beat back all the sorties from the two fortresses in spite of the superior forces, in particular of the Germersheim garrison, blockaded Landau so effectively that almost all its supplies were intercepted, cut off its water-supplies, dammed up the Queich so that all the fortress cellars were flooded, and yet there was a lack of drinking-water, and harassed the garrison every night with patrols which not only cleared out the abandoned outworks and auctioned the guardroom stoves they found there for five guilders each, but also pushed forward even into the fortress trenches and frequently caused the garrison to open fire on a corporal and two men with a cannonade of twenty-four-pounders which was as intense as it was harmless. This was by far the most brilliant period during the existence of Willich's volunteer corps. If only a few howitzers had been at his disposal at that time, or even only field-guns, according to the reports of the spies who daily went in and out of Landau, the fortress, with its demoralised, weak garrison and its rebellious inhabitants, would have been taken in a few days. Even without artillery a continuation of the siege would have compelled capitulation in a week. In Kaiserslautern were two seven-pound howitzers, good enough to set fire to a few houses in Landau during the night. Had they been on the spot, then the unheard of, the taking of a fortress like Landau with a few field-guns, would have become a probability. Every day I preached to the general staff in Kaiserslautern the necessity of at least making the attempt. To no avail. One of the howitzers stayed in Kaiserslautern and the other found its way to Homburg, where it almost fell into the hands of the Prussians. Both came over the Rhine without having fired a shot.
"Colonel" Blenker, however, distinguished himself even more than Willich. "Colonel" Blenker, a former travelling salesman for a wine-firm, who had been in Greece as a philhellenist and later set himself up as a wine-merchant in Worms, can in any case be numbered among the most outstanding military personalities of the whole glorious campaign. Always on horseback, surrounded by a numerous staff, big, strong, with a defiant face, an impressive Hecker-type beard, a stentorian voice and all the other characteristics that go to make up a South German "man of the people", and among which, as everybody knows, intelligence does not exactly feature, "Colonel" Blenker gave the impression of a man at the mere sight of whom Napoleon would have to sneak away, a man worthy to figure in that refrain with which we opened these accounts. "Colonel" Blenker felt he had it in himself to overthrow the German princes even without "Hecker, Struve, Zitz and Blum" and immediately set about the task. It was his intention to fight the war not as a soldier but as a travelling wine-salesman, and to this end he resolved to conquer Landau. Willich was not yet there at that time. Blenker got together everything at hand in the Palatinate, both regular troops and people's militia, organised foot-soldiers, cavalry and artillery that had all been jumbled up together, and moved off in the direction of Landau. A council of war was held in front of the fortress, the assault columns formed up and the position of the artillery fixed. The artillery, however, consisted of a few mortars whose calibre varied from 1/2 lb. to 1 3/8 lb., and was brought up on a hay-cart which at the same time served to carry the ammunition. The ammunition for these various mortars consisted of one, I repeat one, 24 lb. cannon-ball; there was no question of any gunpowder. After everything had been organised, everyone moved forward full of contempt for death. The glacis was reached without meeting any resistance; the march continued, right up to the gate. At the head were the soldiers who had defected from Landau. A few soldiers appeared on the ramparts to parley. They were called upon to open the gate. There began already a quite good-natured exchange and everything appeared to be going according to wish. All at once a cannon-shot rang out from the ramparts, case-shot whistled over the heads of the assailants and in no time the whole heroic army broke into wild flight together with their Palatinate Prince Eugene. Everyone was running, running, running, with such irresistible momentum that the couple of cannon-balls loosed off soon afterwards from the ramparts were already no longer whistling over the heads of the fleeing men, but only over their discarded guns, cartridge-pouches and knapsacks. A few hours away from Landau a halt was finally made and the army was gathered together again and led home by Herr "Colonel" Blenker, without the keys of Landau but none the less proud for that. Such is the story of the conquest, of Landau with three mortars and a 24 lb. cannon-ball that never happened.
The case-shot was fired off in all haste by some Bavarian officers, when they saw that their soldiers wanted to open the gate. The gun was brought off the target by soldiers themselves, and it was because of this that nobody was hit. But when the Landau garrison saw what an effect this random shot had, there was naturally no more talk of surrender.
Hero Blenker, however, was not the sort of man to take such a piece of bad luck lying down. He now resolved to conquer Worms. He moved up from Frankenthal, where he commanded a battalion. The handful of Hessian soldiers stationed in Worms made themselves scarce and hero Blenker marched into his home town with drums beating and trumpets sounding. After the liberation of Worms had been celebrated with a solemn luncheon, the main ceremony began, that is, the rendering of an oath of allegiance to the Imperial Constitution to twenty Hessian soldiers who had stayed behind sick. During the night after this prodigious success, however, the imperial troops under Peucker brought up artillery on the right bank of the Rhine and gave the victorious conquerors a most violent awakening with the early thunder of cannon. There was no mistake about it: the imperial troops were sending over round shot and shells. Without uttering a word hero Blenker gathered together his brave men, and stole away from Worms back to Frankenthal. The muse will report further particulars of his later heroic deeds in the appropriate place.
While in the districts the motliest collection of characters were each in their own way giving themselves vent and the soldiers and people's militiamen, instead of drilling, sat in the taverns and sang, the gallant officers were in Kaiserslautern busy thinking up the most profound strategic plans. It was a question of nothing less than the possibility of holding a small province like the Palatinate, accessible from several sides, with almost wholly imaginary forces against an extremely real army of over 30,000 men and 60 cannon. Precisely because in such a situation every project was equally useless and equally absurd, and precisely because all the conditions for any strategic plan were absent, precisely for those reasons these profound military men, these thinking heads of the Palatinate army, were all the more resolved to concoct some strategic miracle which would bar to the Prussians the way into the Palatinate. Every freshly baked lieutenant, every sabre-trailer from the academic legion finally established under the auspices of Herr Sznayde, with the rank of lieutenant for every member, every administrative pen-pusher, stared pensively at the map of the Palatinate in the hope of finding the strategic philosophers stone. It is easy to imagine the amusing results this had. The Hungarian method of warfare was especially popular. From "General" Sznayde down to the as yet least recognised Napoleon in the army one could constantly hear the phrase: "We must do as Kossuth did, we must give up a piece of our territory and retreat, here or there, into the mountains or onto the plain according to the situation." "We must do as Kossuth did," the cry went up in every tavern. "We must do as Kossuth did," echoed every corporal, every soldier and every street-urchin. "We must do as Kossuth did," echoed the Provisional Government goodnaturedly, for they knew better than anyone else that it was best not to meddle in these things, and in the long run it was all the same to them how it was done. "We must do as Kossuth did, or we are lost."– The Palatinate and Kossuth!
Before I go on to describe the campaign itself, I must briefly mention a matter which has been touched on in various newspapers: my momentary arrest in Kirchheim. A few days before the Prussians marched in I accompanied my friend Moll on a mission he had undertaken to Kirchheimbolanden, on the border. Here was stationed a part of the Rhenish Hessian corps, in which we had acquaintances. We were sitting in the evening with these and several other volunteers from the corps in an inn. Among the volunteers were a number of those serious, enthusiastic "men of action" of whom mention has been made on more than one occasion and who foresaw no difficulties in beating any army in the world, with few arms and much enthusiasm. These are men whose experience of the military does not extend beyond the changing of the guards, who never pay the slightest heed to the material means of attaining a given purpose and who for this reason mostly experience such a shattering disillusion in their first battle, as I was later to observe on more than one occasion, that they make off as fast as their legs can carry them. I asked one such hero if he really intended to defeat the Prussians with the thirty thousand cavalry sabres and three and a half thousand fire-arms, including several rusty carbines, available in the Palatinate, and I was in proper train to enjoy the holy indignation of a man of action wounded in his noblest enthusiasm when in stepped the guard and declared me under arrest. At the same time I saw two men rush upon me from behind foaming with rage. One of them announced that he was Civil Commissary M�ller and the other was Herr Greiner, the only member of the government with whom I had never entered into more intimate contact, on account of his frequent absence from Kaiserslautern (he had been turning his wealth into movable property on the quiet) and his suspicious-looking, snivellingly sullen appearance.[169] At the same time an old acquaintance of mine, [Victor Schily.–Ed.] a captain in the Rhenish Hessian corps, stood up and declared that if I were to be arrested, he, together with a considerable number of the best men in the corps, would leave it at once. Moll and others were for defending me there and then with force. Those present split into two parties, the scene promised to become interesting and I declared I would naturally allow myself to be arrested with pleasure: it would finally be clear for all to see what the colour of the Palatinate movement was. I went with the guard.
The next morning, after a comical interrogation which Herr Zitz put me through, I was handed over to the civil commissary and by him to a gendarme. The gendarme, on whom it had been impressed to treat me as a spy, handcuffed me and led me on foot to Kaiserslautern, accused of disparaging the uprising of the Palatinate people and inciting against the government, which, by the way, I had not mentioned. On the way I succeeded in getting a carriage. In Kaiserslautern, where Moll had hurried on ahead of me, I found the government highly bewildered at the valiant Greiner's bevue and even more bewildered at the treatment meted out to me. Needless to say I carried on quite a bit at the gentlemen in the presence of the gendarme. Since no report from Herr Greiner had yet arrived, I was offered freedom on parole. I refused to give my parole and went into the cantonal gaol–without an escort, which condition was agreed to at d'Ester's request. D'Ester declared that he could stay no longer after such treatment had been meted out to a party comrade. Tzschirner, who arrived just at that time, also took a very resolute stand. The same evening the news spread throughout the town and everyone who belonged to the resolute trend immediately sided with me. On top of that, news arrived that disturbances had broken out in the Rhenish Hessian corps on account of this affair and that a large part of the corps intended to disband. It would have taken less than that to demonstrate to the provisional regents, in whose company I had been daily, the necessity of giving me satisfaction. After I had spent 24 quite amusing hours in gaol, d'Ester and Schmitt came to see me; Schmitt explained to me that I was unconditionally free and that the government hoped that I would not be deterred from continuing to take part in the movement. Besides this, I was told, the order had been given that in future no political prisoner was to be brought in handcuffed, and the investigation against the investigator of this infamous treatment as well as of the arrest and its cause was proceeding. After the government had taken these steps to give me all the satisfaction that it could for the moment, since Herr Greiner had still not sent in a report, the solemn faces on both sides were discarded and the company had a few drinks together in the Donnersberg. The next day Tzschirner departed for the Rhenish Hessian corps in order to appease it and I gave him a short note to take with him. When Herr Greiner returned he made such a snivelling exhibition of himself that his colleagues gave him a doubly severe dressing-down.
At the same time the Prussians marched in from Homburg. Since things thus took an interesting turn, since I had no intention of letting slip the opportunity of gaining some military education, and lastly since the Neue Rheinische Zeitung also had to be represented honoris causa in the army of Baden and the Palatinate, I too buckled on a broadsword and went off to join Willich.
164 The Central Committee of German Democrats was elected at the Second Democratic Congress, held in Berlin from October 26 to 30, 1848. It included d'Ester, Reichenbach and Hexamer. Marx was handed a mandate of the Central Committee by d'Ester at the end of May 1849.
The French social-democrats – the party of petty-bourgeois democrats and socialists grouped round the newspaper La Reforme.
At the time of Marx's trip to France a clash was brewing between the Montagne, which represented the Reforme party in the Legislative Assembly, and conservative circles. The Montagne took action on June 13, 1849.
165 The Fruchthalle – a covered fruit and vegetable market in Kaiserslautern where the central administration of the Palatinate revolutionary Provisional Government had its offices in 1849.
166 Chevaux-ligers (literally: light horses) – light cavalry armed with sabres, pistols and carbines in some West-European countries.
167 On June 14, 1848, Berlin workers and craftsmen, outraged by the national Assembly's renunciation of the March revolution, took the arsenal by storm in an attempt to uphold the revolutionary gains. This action, however, was spontaneous and unorganized, and army reinforcements and units of the bourgeois civic militia were soon able to push back and disarm the people.
168 An allusion to the participation of some of the N.C.O.s of Willich's German refugee volunteer corps in France's colonial war in Algeria, which ended on the eve of the February 1848 revolution.
169 An allusion to "wailers" (Heuler) – the name the republican democrats in Germany applied to the moderate constitutionalists who, in turn, called their opponents "agitators" (Wuhler).
Next Section | 1850 Works | Marx Engels Archive

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Researchers from the University of Washington have taken a leap forward in the study of human brain to brain interface. The first non-invasive human brain to brain interface has been experimentally tested.
One of the researchers, Rajesh Rao, has successfully sent a brain signal via the internet to control the hand motions of his colleague to move his fingers in a keyboard.
The experiment has been conducted using brain recordings and a form of magnetic simulation. Rao sent the impulses to Andrea Stocco, at another part of the Washington University campus, and succeeded in moving Stocco's finger with the impulse sent from the other side.
The experiment is the first of the kind in human to human interface. Earlier, researchers at the Duke University had demonstrated brain to brain communication between two rats and researchers from Harvard University had demonstrated interface between a human being and a rat.
Stocco has been quoted saying about the experiment that though the internet was earlier the medium to connect computers, it can now be used to connect human brains also.
The experiment was conducted as follows: Rao sat in a lab, wearing a cap with electrodes connected to an EEG machine to read the activity of his brain. Meanwhile, Stocco was sitting in another lab wearing a swim cap marked with the stimulation site for the transcranial magnetic stimulation coil placed directly over his left motor cortex, which controls movement of his hand.
Rao played a video game in the computer, and when he was supposed to fire a cannon at the target, he just imagined that he is moving his right hand over the keyboard. Instantaneously, Stocco moved his fingers over the keyboard, doing what Rao imagined to do.
The new research will pave the way for new experiments and inventions using human brain to brain interfacing.


Updated! GossipCop Robert Pattinson poses with an alligator on the April 2011 cover of Vanity Fair, Gossip Cop is told.
Legendary photographer Annie Leibovitz shot pics of the superstar for the mag's cover story, which is tied to the release of Pattinson's upcoming film Water for Elephants.
As for the four-foot reptile, Pattinson's alligator pal is a nod to the Louisiana set of Breaking Dawn.
In the profile, sources tell Gossip Cop, Pattinson does not discuss his relationship with Kristen Stewart.
Mostly, we hear that Pattinson comes across as a genuinely good guy and reluctant star.
This rumored photoshoot was posted early this month.
Andrea Mineo got the scoop from the Vanity Fair writer that interviewed him.
"VanityFair writer who intvu'd RPatz told me RP drove cross country w/ friends to film WaterForE he wanted to avoid getting mobbed @ airport."
"She says RPatz is extremely intelligent read 20 books while filming the movie and likes choc covered pretzels and pretzel M and M's."
"She also told me that RPatz is bewildered by fan admiration - he's not sure if it's for him or Edward."
"I interviewed Rob myself a few yrs ago. He is so lovely and genuine truly."
"It's on stands March 3rd he is on the cover wearing a hat!"
"yes it is on stands Mar 3 but it's the April issue of VF."
Rob wrapped his scenes for WFE on August 3rd and left Nashville via BNA airport August 4, 2010.
The Britpack's road trip started September 5, when he was first spotted in New Mexico until the last sighting of him in Louisiana with Kristen around September 11th. Then he popped up in London September 18th to watch Marcus Foster's show in London while Kristen continued filming for 'On The Road'. This only means he was done with WFE before the 'great hobo road trip'.


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BAMCon Previews: Fan~thropology with Charles Dunbar.
Posted on April 30, 2013 by Armand Inezian
In Anticipation of BAM-Con, I am pleased to be hosting a interview with BAM-Con spotlight guest, sociocultural-anthropologist and author of "Pilgrimage, Pageantry and Fan Communities", Charles Dunbar.
Q: For starters, what are you hoping to do/ speak about at BAMCon?
CD: First and foremost, I'm hoping to have an awesome time. Or rather, anticipating having an awesome time. Conventions for me still hold the same appeal they always have, despite my lecturing and networking: fun, fellowship, escapism and community. I plan to speak a bit on the latter topic, in addition to a number of talks on mythology, the evolution of anime and a few looks into Japanese sacred practice. All the better to educate and inform, in addition to finding the elusive raucous party with which I shall amaze via my 1337 skills and perhaps some card games for horrible people.
Q: Are you hosting anything at BAMCon? If so, what and when?
CD: I have 7 panels over the weekend: Spirits, Wheels and Borrowed Gods, which covers Japanese religion and how anime interprets it; Yokai Nation, which is a look at monster culture in Japanese history; Dead Like Us, which looks at shinigami, afterlife myths and memorial practice; Chocobos Ate My Baby looks at Final Fantasy as a narrative/literary system; Castles, Forests and Bath Houses explores the films of Studio Ghibli and their philosophical roots; 50 Years of Anime Openings looks at anime's technological evolution through the opening sequences; and We Con, Therefore We Are is a look at the evolution of the congoer and how the fandom dynamic has changed.
Q: How would you define your area of interest- in layman's terms?
CD: Knowledge otaku. That's the best way of looking at it: I crave knowledge and information. And when I've learned new things, my next goal is to relay that information to others in a meaningful way. This concept isn't restricted to anime, either: I love military history, economics, bad decisions with sarcastically ironic outcomes, trash television, music and foreign film, and can speak at length about any of these. I approach any topic I speak on with the same mindset: learn the culture and ethic behind the topic, deconstruct the abstract points, then find a way to make that knowledge interesting.
My decision to study anthropology was based on this as well: it is a discipline that thrives on understanding culture, differences and similarities, and excels at presenting that information to laymen. So whether I'm lecturing on Japanese religion, death culture or politics in the Ghibli films, expect (generally) thorough research and information blasted at you from a fire hose.
Q: I noticed that many of your most recent projects are focused on your "ID Project", a project encouraging people to sort of quantify (or at least describe and take measure of) their state of "being a fan". Are we living in a new era of refined fandom?
CD: We're living in an era of evolving fandom. There was a point where fans defined themselves through what they were fans of, and that tended to be a single, encompassing property or medium. Now fans define themselves through community membership, careers, casual interests and "flavor of the month" properties. Fans have become exposed to so many new and exciting ideas of what being a fan is, in addition to challenges to discover how to fit into the rapidly growing and changing fan world.
The ID Project was my way of asking people to think about how their fandom has evolved, and what it means to them. It's easy to say "I love [x] anime" or "My favorite thing is [y]," but often those same fans have trouble discovering what that really means. There's a difference between being a fan and being a fan of something, and I wanted to know how fans discovered their fandom, and why that fandom became important in their lives. I wanted people to look inside themselves, beyond the love of one particular thing, and ask how that love has helped them grow as a person.
Fandom isn't some topical aspect to your personality, in many cases it's one of the core defining elements of the self. As fans, we need to understand that, and identify its impact. Sometimes that's obvious. Sometimes it's not, and when one discovers what the true impact of fandom is, it can be enlightening or scary.
Q: What is the most surprising thing that you've learned from your ID Project?
CD: That many of us overlook the true role fandom plays in our lives. That many of us spent long periods of time trying to identify what it meant to be a fan. And, perhaps most telling, many of us judge our own fandom based on the perceptions of the community at large, and other people. While we should be conscious of the "rules of the community," we should also understand that fandom is personal. I would even go so far as to label it as kin to religious action: it has a different emotional meaning to each person, and that meaning is what gives it both strength and inspires devotion. When we put the views of others before ourselves, we are limiting what fandom can accomplish for our own lives, and focusing too much on "arbitrary" doctrines and rules.
Q: The fact that so many objects of fandom (characters, stories, invented universes) are owned by corporations. Good, bad, or moot?
CD: Moot. Fandom as we know it would exist regardless of who owns creations. Fandom is a response by fans to created works, and builds upon those works based on the fan in question. But its not limited to "corporate control" at all. It's just that much of fandom revolves around that because the control is what is used to bring the creative work to the forefront. When the corporate entity decides to "limit" or "crack down" on fandom, the fans may go "underground" or launch their own "fan canon," regardless of what the corporation might deem appropriate. Fandom is deeply personal, and it comes down to the person and how they choose to relate to the property. Remember, "Fifty Shades of Grey" started out as a fandom creation, and became its own work with attached fandom by the end.
Q: Would you say that evolving fandom with its emphasis on community and DIY is a sane response to 1980's style consumer culture, or is it the sign of an unhealthy economy?
CD: It's a result OF consumer culture. Some people are content to consume, which is perfectly fine, and pours economic capital into the property and allows it to survive. Those fans are no less fans that the ones who create, and are a necessary part of the fandom.
Some wish to create, which is another aspect of fandom: add their own "mark" to the property, their own interpretation or their own desires for where it goes in the future. Some wish to educate, some wish to craft, some wish to adapt and some wish to support. All of this is part of healthy fandom. The DIY movement, which was a result of fans disillusioned with not just consumer culture, but with mainstream "absorption" of their own culture, highlighted a specific type of fan, who channeled those emotions into creativity, "rebellion," and a sense of "taking back" what was lost. The hallmark of DIY is "do what you want, and if it doesn't exist, create it." That's a central point to Jenkin's convergence model, a central tenet of the participatory fan, and the way in which fandom grows beyond its initial "boundaries." Without that DIY ethic, fandom would be limited to sanctioned properties and fans who only wish to appreciate the content, not make it their own.
Q: Are we living in the era of mashup and pastiche? Does that harm originality? Can anyone be original?
CD: An original take on someone else's ideas is still original. The "power" behind mashup is rooted in satire, which is itself a powerful aspect of fandom creativity. For some, that is their elected method of originality. It still represents creativity and requires the same effort as creating an original work. It also allows for people unaccustomed to original work to gain a foothold on the mechanics of creativity, in order to write original work. A good example would be Gainax and CLAMP, who were satirists and doujinshi artists before they founded their studios and produced original work. Inverarity, an author on fanfiction.net, wrote five well-received (and in fact "famous") Harry Potter fan-fiction novels before embarking on her own original stories. Sometimes ambition outpaces skill, or skill requires inspiration. Both of those can be fueled through fandom. In fact, in some cases, going through a fan community can even be beneficial, since the community is often more supportive and willing to assist than "going it alone."
Q: Should you ever apologize for being a fan of anything?
CD: No. Never feel sorry for your fandom. Of course, that doesn't mean you should have pride for being a fan of something horrible (or illegal), but if you're a fan of something, don't feel bad for it. We all have "guilty pleasures," and there's nothing wrong with appreciating them. Don't let anyone get you down.
Q: If you were a supervillain, what would your power(s) be and which superhero would defeat you?
CD: If I were a super-villain, nobody would realize it until after I had managed to neutralize every single hero and seize complete control. Then I'd probably be beaten by Ned Stark's bastard, or John Cena.
Q: Complete the following statement: If I see a _________ at BAMCon, I will just ______________.
CD: Complete the following statement: If I see a Minako Arisato (Female MC from Persona 3) at BAMCon, I will just die from "waifu" overload.
If you enjoyed this interview, you might also like my interviews with BAMCon organizer Amelia Ritner, the nerdcore +2 Comedy crew, and cosplayer/ pro-belly dancer Kiwii.
here is a very tiny url that is a shortcut leading back to this very blog post: http://tinyurl.com/cxncp4j
About Armand Inezian
Armand Inezian is a grant administrator by day, and a writer by night! VampCon- a dark, fantasy thriller- is his first novel. He resides in Boston with his wife, two children, three cats, and one house that needs a lot of work.
View all posts by Armand Inezian →
This entry was posted in Convention, Interviews, Philosophy and tagged 1337 skills, BAMCon, Charles Dunbar, Chocobos Ate My Baby, fan canon, Fandom, ID Project, Inverarity, Jenkin's convergence model, mashup is rooted in satire, Minako Arisato, otaku, Therefore We Are, We Con. Bookmark the permalink.


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Reader's Report: The Martian
Posted on July 11, 2014 September 11, 2018 by Heather Allen
The third installation for my Reader's Report Series! The Martian by Andy Weir
For those who are unfamiliar, a reader's report is a report that an editorial assistant will write on a recently submitted manuscript as part of their weekly tasks. This reader's report is for editors who are too busy to read the manuscript. In a way, an EA will help the editor to decide whether or not to acquire the book. Basic information is given like a complete summary of the plot, a critique, overall conclusion, positioning, comparative titles, and the jacket copy. In order to be hired as an editorial assistant at a certain imprint, you not only have to know the imprints titles, but also comparative titles. I definitely need more practice writing them since I work in medical publishing, where they are unnecessary. Since reader's reports are generally more comprehensive, the one's on my blog will be shorter and not contain spoilers for those who have not read the books! I am definitely open to critique, so comment away!
Reader's Report: The Martian by Andy Weir, Crown/ Random House, February 11, 2014.
I received this book from BloggingForBooks.org in exchange for an honest review.
Fun fact about this title: it was originally self-published in 2012!
***** 5 stars out of 5
Mark Watney, a botanist and engineer for NASA, has been left for dead on the desolate desert planet Mars. He doesn't blame the crew for leaving him, they were following procedure and were sure he was dead anyway. It was a freak accident in a dust storm that blew him away from his crew in zero visibility. The crew aborted their mission and started their return trip to Earth. Once Watney regained consciousness, he returned to the "Hab," short for Habitat, an air-locked living quarter for Astronauts (they are the thrid set of astronauts to visit Mars). Watney assesses his situation and figures that he only has 1 year to live on the freeze dried food packs, but since he's a botanist he devises and executes a plan to grow potatoes inside the Hab. This extends his life significantly. The other problems he has to solve include creating water, Hab and rover maintenance, and communicating with NASA.
Meanwhile on Earth, the NASA scientists only realize he's alive after noticing that the solar panels of the Hab are being dusted regularly (to keep power going). They immediately jump into action to send rescue packs and plan to bring him home.
Watney explores Mars in a modified rover vehicle to retrieve an old communication system abandoned in an earlier mission. With the new communication system he is able to convey to NASA that he is still alive and his plans for food. NASA and Watney agree that his best chance of rescue is to go to the Ares 4 Station (set up for the next crew) and have his former crew-mates rescue him from there.
There are continuing challenges through each part of the book, Watney (as we are consistently, but not overly reminded) is always in a fight for survival. At one point the Hab explodes because of pressure and luckily he survives, but he has to repair it, which causes delays for his rescue plan. He's also modifying the rover even more for a long distance trek to the Ares 4 station. This trek causes a lot of complications.
For a spoiler free ending, I'm declining to tell you what happens at the end!
Critique:
The voice is strong. The pacing is quick. The language is difficult to follow at times (very "math" heavy), but beyond that, it was structured well, made sense, and was an enjoyable read. The author made it sound like he had been to Mars and learned everything firsthand and was putting it into layman's terms.
This was a fun read. I enjoyed the voice and humor that was brought to the dire situation. There were some parts that were very "astronaut" heavy, where Watney describes chemistry or engineering (i.e. math) situation that went completely over my head, but I was able to gather when things were going good or bad. I was definitely rooting for him the entire time. At first I was thrown off by the NASA perspectives, but I think they enhanced the narrative, and I secretly enjoyed the panic they were experiencing verses the calm demeanor of Watney. This is a great addition to the Crown list.
Positioning:
Robinson Crusoe on Mars! Since this book has already been published, I would agree with the positioning that it is like "Apollo 13" meets "Cast Away."
Competitive Titles:
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: (synopsis from Goodreads) Who has not dreamed of life on an exotic isle, far away from civilization? Here is the novel which has inspired countless imitations by lesser writers, none of which equal the power and originality of Defoe's famous book. Robinson Crusoe, set ashore on an island after a terrible storm at sea, is forced to make do with only a knife, some tobacco, and a pipe. He learns how to build a canoe, make bread, and endure endless solitude. That is, until, twenty-four years later, when he confronts another human being. First published in 1719, Robinson Crusoe has been praised by such writers as James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and Samuel Johnson as one of the greatest novels in the English language.
The Grey by Ian Mackenzie Jeffers: (synopsis from Goodreads) John Ottway has found the job at the end of the world, working as a hunter for an oil-camp on the North Slope of Alaska. It's brutal, cold, and isolated, and there's little he needs to do but wait for the day when he has the courage to end his life, as he plans to, some day, "at a time to be determined." But the plane that ferries him and the other camp workers between the Slope and civilization crashes in the tundra, leaving Ottway alone with a handful of terrified survivors to face a punishing landscape, wolves who see them as an invading pack, and, ultimately, the prospect of a death he didn't choose in its most insistent, inexorable form. As he battles to save the lives of those with him, he looks into the darkness of an unforgiving nature and must weigh the abysses in himself and the wrongs he carries against what he leaves behind, and choose whether his own life is worth saving, or not. This is an expanded version of the novella Ghost Walker by Ian Mackenzie Jeffers, on which the film 'The Grey' is based.
Jacket Copy:
Marc Watney, boatanist and engineer for NASA, is stranded on Mars after his crew-mates leave him, thinking he died in a sandstorm. As Watney points out, it's not their fault. And now he lives in a self-sustaining habitat and has everything he needs: food, water, and shelter, but he soon realizes that his food supply will dwindle before NASA has time to rescue him. In a fight for his own survival, he rigs an old communication system to talk to NASA, begins growing potatoes (on Mars!), and makes a plan for his rescue. Will it be enough?
Posted in BooksTagged Books, publishing, Random House, reader's report, reading, The Martian
Reader's Report: Dear Daughter
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California real estate agents must complete 45 hours of state approved courses every 4 years, including mandatory courses that are different for first time renewals. We offer the courses that satisfy the California state elective continuing education requirements.
Sign up for California Continuing Education Courses These online courses are DRE approved to satisfy California continuing education requirements.
Per the state's requirements for online CE courses, a licensee has two (2) attempts on the final exam. If the exam is not passed the second time, the licensee must repurchase and retake the entire course, including the final exam.
At least 18 clock hours of consumer protection courses; and the remaining clock hours required to complete the 45 hours of continuing education may be related to either consumer service (ways licensees can work better or make more money) or consumer protection courses.
Salespersons Renewing for the First Time - Refer to details at www.dre.ca.gov/lic_ce_require.html for requirements if licensed before or after 10/1/2007. Requirements are also outlined at the bottom of the purchase page.
Licenses are issued for a four-year period and should be renewed prior to the expiration date listed on the license. As a reminder, the DRE mails a renewal form to the licensee's mailing address of record approximately 90 days prior to the license expiration date. The form is sent as a courtesy only and non-receipt of the form does not relieve the licensee from the responsibility of renewing the license.
You should consult the official state California Real Estate Commission website for full details of California real estate continuing education requirements.


When you need roof repair services, you need to make sure that the roofer you hire isn't going to take advantage of the circumstances. The staff members at Dimensional Roofing and Diagnostics offer the strongest roof repair services in Wild Peach Village, TX. We're dedicated to giving our clients the highest level of roofing repair services they have ever known. We work with only the best roofing manufacturers to get the best roofing materials available. We also hire only the most experienced, reliable roofing contractors to attach these products. For those times when you require a commercial roofer for minor roof repairs, our staff is here for you. Give us a ring at (512) 402-8528 to set up your next roofing appointment.
Dimensional Roofing and Diagnostics is here for you if you require a commercial roofer. We provide several different roof repair services for different styles of commercial roofs. Contact us to set up an inspection and we'll help you understand the condition of your roof and whether you need minor repair, a full blown replacement or if a roof restoration is a viable option. We provide you all the facts about your roof you'll need to make an informed decision. Our office is committed to providing you superior client care. In addition to great customer care, we provide excellent roofing at affordable prices because we believe in honest, reliable roofing. We are here to help keep your business operating smoothly. If you want to employ a dependable, honest roofer near you, call (512) 402-8528.
One way we take care of our clients is by providing the best quality of materials. This is why we are proud to be able to install a wide range of metal roofing products. A metal roofing system offers incredible protection from the weather. A metal roof is an excellent choice for office building roofs. The next time your roofing system is ready to be replaced, perhaps you should think about upgrading to metal roofing. You can purchase a metal roof in many different hues and styles. Think about installing steel or aluminum when you want a metal roofing system that is both strong and aesthetically pleasing. If you are interested in a typical looking roofing system with the power of metal roofing, metal shingles are also an excellent choice. Contact our staff at (512) 402-8528 to schedule an appointment to install metal roofing in Wild Peach Village, TX.
When your commercial roof is experiencing problems, you need a roofer you are able to rely on to perform the repairs for a reasonable price. Dimensional Roofing and Diagnostics has been faithfully serving business owners for several years now. When you need repairs, a roof replacement or a roof restoration, we have the training and expertise you need to the get the job done right. Our roofing contractors are skilled at repairing both flat and low sloped commercial roofs. Contact our office at (512) 402-8528 to set up your next commercial roofing appointment.
If the time comes to upgrade your current roofing materials, metal roofing is always an excellent choice. Purchasing a metal roof not only gives you superior protection, but it can also improve the worth of your property. Whether you have a commercial roof, metal roofing is a great choice for any roof. Metal roofing materials come in several different alloys, styles and colors, so you can install the roof that is perfect for your business. If you're ready to install metal roofing on your business, call Dimensional Roofing and Diagnostics at (512) 402-8528.
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A roof replacement may feel like the only option you've got when your commercial roofing products begin to weaken. A roof restoration is a great alternative to a complete replacement. When you get your roofing system restored, our roofing contractors will apply a liquid coating over the top of your current roofing products. The coating is meant to fill in all the cracks in your roof. Give Dimensional Roofing and Diagnostics a ring at (512) 402-8528 to schedule your roof restoration today. We're here for all your commercial roofing needs.
Dimensional Roofing and Diagnostics is constantly searching for ways to improve the roofing experience for our clients. For those moments when you need a commercial roofer to perform roof repair services in Wild Peach Village, TX, we are here for you. When you need a strong, dependable roofing system that will endure any storm, we've got the materials and expertise required to install it. See the list below to learn more about the roof repair services we offer and then give us a call at (512) 402-8528 to set up an appointment. For a powerful, reliable roof, let us handle all your roofing concerns.


When I received an email saying I'd won a makeup workshop I quite literally laughed out loud (as I'm sure some of you who know me are doing at the thought of me in makeup).
This is me most of the time...no makeup.
The woman doing the workshop was a little unsure what to do with me since I told her I don't wear makeup (although I'm not sure why someone who does would need a workshop). I laughed when she said, "Your eyebrows I would...correct." She's not the first person to want to "do something" with my eyebrows. She tried a couple times to convince me but really, I'm not into anything that has to be maintained. She settled for "painting" them and said blonds really need to have well-shaped eyebrows because our complexion is so fair. Um, okay. That's not going to happen.
She also told me that, as a blond, I should either get my eye lashes permanently colored (I have no idea what that involves and can't even imagine it but I'm fairly certain it's not something I would ever want to do) or wear a lot of mascara. She put the mascara on and my eye wouldn't stop watering. This made the mascara run and she had to keep cleaning it off. I can tell you I will not be wearing mascara!
The one thing I do like is that the puffiness under my eyes is not nearly as visible. Other than that, I can't wait to wash this junk off! My eyes are not happy and I feel like my lashes weigh a ton. Really, it's just not my thing.


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Q: is response.redirect always an http GET response? is response.redirect always an http GET response? or it could be POST?....

A: In most API's the standard redirect implementation does a 302 which is indeed per definition GET. As per your question history you're familiar with ASP.NET, I'll however add examples for Java Servlets as well.
ASP.NET:
Response.Redirect("http://google.com");

Servlet:
response.sendRedirect("http://google.com");

It implicitly sets the response status to 302 and the Location header to the given URL.
When the current request is a POST request and you want to redirect with POST, then you need a 307 redirect. This is not provided by the standard API, but it's usually just a matter of setting the appropriate response status and header.
ASP.NET:
Response.Status = "307 Temporary Redirect";
Response.AddHeader("Location", "http://google.com");

Servlet:
response.setStatus(307);
response.setHeader("Location", "http://google.com");

Note that this will issue a security/confirmation warning on the average client which requests the enduser for confirmation to send the POST data to another location.

A: A redirect is an Http response sent to the client. The response contains an Http Header called Location which must contain an absolute url.
The client then issues a GET request against this url.
So, no, POST is not an option.
More details here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URL_redirection

A: Assuming that you are using asp.net, maybe server.transfer might be what you are searching for. Instead of sending the new url back to the client, you can pass the processing to another page and keep the form state.

A: Response.redirect uses only GET..It can't be a post..And in between what is the language?

A: Contrary to most answers here the redirected HTTP request is only GET if

*

*the original request was GET, or

*the status code was 303, or

*the status code was 301 or 302 and the original request was POST.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


No fewer than 8000 primary one girls in Katsina State are to receive N160 million scholarships under Nigeria Partnership on Education Project (NIPEP) supported by Global Partnership for Education (GPE).
The state Commissioner for Education, Professor Halamatu Sa'adiyya Idris, disclosed this at the flag off of the scholarship scheme at Matazu in the state at the weekend.
Prof. Idris revealed that the parents of each of the benefitting girls would receive N20, 000 as part of the programme aimed at improving access to quality basic education in Katsina with particular attention to girls' participation.
She expressed confidence that the programme would build on the on-going government expenditures and commitments towards improving education service delivery among others.
Flagging off the disbursement of the scholarship, Governor Aminu Bello Masari of the state advocated for a law against the withdrawal of children from school after enrolment.
The governor, who pointed out that traditional rulers in the state would be empowered to ensure compliance with the law, also assured that the envisaged amendment of the state primary education law would provide adequate protection to pupils.
According to him, the review of the law had become necessary following the report of UNICEF which revealed sexual harassment in some schools across the state.
Similarly, Governor Masari charged parents of girls benefitting from the scholarship not to divert the funds to other purposes beside the objective of the scholarship.
READ Also Donald Trump sets to debate for a chance to survive, not win.
UNICEF's Chief Field Officer in Charge of Katsina – Kano Zonal Office, Mrs. Fatima Yelda, urged parents to ensure that their children and wards go to school regularly.
Making the call in a goodwill message during the disbursement of the scholarship, Mrs. Yelda advised the government to tackle the problem of sexual harassment of girl child by any person in position of trust over them.


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Welcome to Costco, I love you
posted by Jason Kottke Oct 07, 2014
From David Fear at Rolling Stone, an appreciation of the "Genius of Idiocracy", the smartest stupid movie ever made.
This is Judge's vision of the future — a landscape of staggering vulgarity and franchising run amuck, where Carl's Jr. can take your kids if you can't pay for their "big-ass fries," consumers eat tubs of butter while watching the Masturbation Channel and the President is a porn star/five-time TV wrestling champion. As he mentions in the interview below (jump to the 27-and-a-half mark), Judge was in line at Disneyland with his family when two women, each with kids in strollers, started screaming obscenities at each other. "I [started] thinking, what if the movie 2001, instead of the monolith and everything being pristine and advanced…what if it was The Jerry Springer Show and giant WalMarts?" With basic human intelligence now bred out of existence, the profoundly stupid have inherited the earth and they've turned it into both a giant, poorly run superstore and an Orwellian dystopia sponsored by Olive Garden.
Counterpoint by Matt Novak at Paleofuture: Idiocracy Is a Cruel Movie And You Should Be Ashamed For Liking It.
What's so wrong with this thinking? Unlike other films that satirize the media and the soul-crushing consequences of sensationalized entertainment (my personal favorite being 1951's Ace in the Hole), Idiocracy lays the blame at the feet of an undeserved target (the poor) while implicitly advocating a terrible solution (eugenics). The movie's underlying premise is a fundamentally dangerous and backwards way to understand the world.
If you haven't seen it, decide for yourself and watch the film on Amazon. (via @khoi)