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Sometimes Cancer Has to Be Hilarious
By Luke Ryan
Cancer isn't funny, but it's definitely good for a laugh. Anyone who's heard Tig Notaro's famous comedy set performed in shock just after her diagnosis will know there's no reason that the subject can't handle comedy. It's actually most likely the best way to handle it, rather than sitting in grim contemplation. When Luke Ryan survived cancer twice by his early 20s he had the same response. He wrote a comedy festival show, and then a book.
Luke will be part of our One Night Wonders show in Melbourne this Friday night, July 25, appearing alongside spoken word performer Abe Nouk and a headline set from Eleanor Jackson. All of them are brilliant. There's event information in the sidebar to your right, or you can reserve a seat here. You're welcome to rock up on the night, but it's a small venue so booking is sensible.
— GDS
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Chemo – Chapter 1
I'm as serious as cancer / When I say rhythm is a dancer.
– 'Rhythm is a Dancer' by SNAP!
At the age of twenty-two I was diagnosed with cancer. Again. Occurring eleven years after my first guided tour through the cancer nightmare factory, it was, to put it lightly, not quite how I saw my year panning out. At that time, at that age, the next twelve months were supposed to involve (in rough order of priority): drinking with friends, drinking alone, getting laid, general time wastage, working a low-paid job, watching bad daytime television and pretending to study. Chundering multiple times a day was pretty close to the bottom of the list, right above being sent to prison for murder and getting caught having sex by my parents.
Nobody ever really plans for cancer, but having already been through the horror once – and, moreover, having been told six years previously that I was wholly cured – I was perhaps less prepared than most. This might sound strange to an outsider, but when you are cured of cancer, you are cured. You ride that particular pony of good health until it drops dead from exhaustion. Or from the surprise tumour growing in its right shoulder. I would scoff at the newspapers and their day-to-day insistence that mouthwash, or mobile phones, or the mere act of breathing was going to give me cancer. These were rules that didn't apply to me anymore. I'd done my time. Cancer was a problem for other people now. As I figured it, from here on in I could expect an uninterrupted sixty years of good health before dying peacefully surrounded by family and friends while being shot out of a cannon at my eightieth birthday.
And then, suddenly, there we were. Cancer. The Big C. C-Town. A huge ol' fucking tumour. Back to the barricades once more, men. Hold our calls and re-classify our hopes and dreams into the folder that says 'Survival'. Let's just book that cannon for my twenty-third birthday and go from there.
When I meet new oncologists, one of the first things they'll ask me about is my 'family history'. Tumours aren't necessarily genetic, but my body's passion for producing them would appear to demand something more than mere happenstance.
As it is, its continuing attempts to kill itself raise serious questions about my rightful place within the Darwinian order. When my second tumour appeared, I half expected my parents to sit me down and tell me about the Ryan Family Curse – the long litany of cancer-stricken forebears on each side of the family that had somehow culminated in producing me, cancer's version of a superhero.
But we are, as a family, no more or less disposed towards tumours than anybody else. My aunt Julie had breast cancer, my uncle Pete prostate. Pop had colon cancer, but this was a man who would eat three Four'n'Twenty pies without blinking, so perhaps that was to be expected. All of them survived. The only real outlier in all of this was my Dad's mother, Mary, who died when he was sixteen, the victim of what the family suspects was ovarian cancer. I say suspects because, this being 1961, such matters weren't openly discussed with the children. They didn't even know she was ill until weeks before her death. But she's the sole mortal post in our collective story, the only arbitrary victim of cancer's predations. The quite literal death in the family. As Grandpa Kevin had later remarried, I did not even know Mary existed until I was ten. Even her children weren't discussing it openly with their children.
And then there's me. An osteogenic sarcoma at eleven, a pleomorphic undifferentiated sarcoma at twenty-two. At thirty-three, I plan on exploding at a party filled with friends and loved ones. Just to really drive the point home. And unlike Mary, I'm discussing it with everyone.
Sarcoma is a little-known cancer variant that accounts for around fifteen per cent of childhood cancers but fewer than one per cent of those seen in adults. Usually affecting the body's connective tissues – bone and muscle – they're known to be aggressive, resistant to most chemotherapies and awful people to invite round for dinner. When discovered, sarcomas are treated rapidly and brutally, with every weapon at oncology's disposal: chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and the ominously named 'salvage' surgery. No quarter is given. The whole thing plays out as a crash course in well-planned ruination. But within these doom-laden prophecies there lies a broad spectrum of experience.
I am in the reasonably strange position of having had cancer at two very distinct phases in my life. Most people if they're going to go through it more than once tend to do so a few years apart – a kind of chained together half a decade of awfulness, where the second incident can be considered an extension of the first. But for me the events could not have been more distinct. In 1997 I was a wholly dependent child, by 2007 I had entered something approaching adulthood. The gravity of the first I could almost ignore, the second incident brought home with staggering intensity the fact that I might die. There is something to be said for the blissful ignorance of childhood.
Yet by the same token, the way I talk about my two bouts with cancer is not so dissimilar to how women might talk about the gulf between individual pregnancies. In one, I vomited constantly, lost a dangerous amount of weight and was bedridden in hospital for close to an entire year. In the other, I was sprightly, asymptomatic and even managed to pack on a couple of kilos. I spent my life at the pub, and weekly hospital visits were the biggest reminder that I was, in fact, ill. Had they not both happened to one person I'd struggle to believe we were talking about the same disease. Indeed, if it wasn't for the lingering trauma of my first tumour, the eight-month paid holiday (thank you, Centrelink) that was my second would feel almost vulgar to write about.
Yet cancer is nothing if not a multifaced beast. It resists categorisation and simplification. It can be vast and irreparable or small and fleeting. It can be tragic or comic. It can be all of these things or none. But in the end what really unites those whose bodies have turned against them is something more basic altogether: fear, and the ever-present hope that one day this will all return to normal.
I'm not sure if there's such a thing as being an expert at having cancer, but perhaps in this field I could be considered decorated in my own way. My body certainly wears its scars like medals, a tangled constellation of dents and pocks and long white lines that stretches from neck to knee. They have been the defining events of my existence, two major, evenly spaced derailments of my life's path. They are also, given my white, suburban, middle-class, Catholic upbringing, quite possibly the only things of interest to have ever happened to me. You take the good with the bad.
Still, the potential hilarity of the disease wasn't the firstthing on my mind when the doctors told me they'd found a seven-centimetre growth on my right lung. It wasn't even the second, or the third, or the two-hundredth. (That thought, like the 199 before it, could not in good conscience be printed in a family-friendly book.) But as I once again entered what Christopher Hitchens described as 'the land of malady', I found myself keenly aware of how being diagnosed with cancer shifts you – defines you anew in the eyes of friends and strangers alike. I was, perhaps, especially awake to this because I didn't look or feel ill. Even after I lost my hair, people preferred to think I was making a bold fashion choice than to assume the worst. But then I'd utter that single, all-powerful phrase: 'I have cancer.' Three spoken words that are the conversational equivalent of a needle being scratched off a record. If you need to look for a silver liningin your cancer diagnosis, then take this: you have the power of life and death over every social interaction you have. Use it wisely.
Being a young man with cancer ups the ante even further because you can pretty much guarantee that you are going to be the only person in your social circle who has cancer. Moreover, there is a better-than-even chance that you're the only person your friends have ever met who has cancer. Some responsibility. I am cancer's ambassador for the early twenties set. Best leave a good impression. Make 'em smile, try not to spew on the soft furnishings and wipe your feet on the way out.
There are certain expectations of people who have cancer, certain ideas of the stories they are able to tell and the way they are able to tell them. Having cancer deposits you in a world of inspirational New Idea spreads on one side, tawdry tabloid hysteria on the other. You're a hero or you're a survivor. Admiration and fear, each as deadening as the other. I wanted none of that and was willing to go to lengths to deny it.
The grating thing about it for me, in the initial blush of my second tumour, wasn't the prospect of chemotherapy, or surgery, or the looming spectre of my own mortality, or even the abrupt sidetracking of my life plans. Rather it was the fact that once more I was going to be the guy who had cancer. The sympathy case, the person who carved awkward silence through every conversation he came across. The guy whose bald head would radiate the message: 'One day you will die. But I will die sooner. Want to hang out?'
I'd been through all that before. The novelty had worn off. It had only been a few years since I'd stopped prefacing my introductions to people with the fact that I'd once had cancer, a conversational tic born of worry that people I met might be confused about the limp and built-up shoe I was left with after the bout in 1997. I was in no rush to find myself hemmed in once more by such a fundamental character trait. But suddenly there I was. Back over the border in this country of uncomfortable conversation and pitying looks, standing amidst the awkwardness of friends and the unfettered sympathy of strangers. The reduction of myself down to that dreary designation – the cancer guy. I feared that more than anything else right then.
So I turned to stand-up comedy – the one type of performance where you can be guaranteed that nobody will take you seriously. Well, that and mime.
I'm willing to admit that this might be a peculiarity of youth. At twenty-two it's hard to justify your existence as being driven by anything more than well-meaning hedonism, and I had little interest in submitting my quality of life, the shape of my life, to this awful, abstract force. I didn't want special treatment or the consideration of others. I wanted this to be utterly, unarguably normal. I wanted there to be no barrier, no gaps in the dialogue. I wanted cancer to be happenstance, incidental, an experience that had no intrinsic value beyond that which I put into it. More than anything, I wanted people to laugh about it, because that's the only way I knew how to deal with the shit of life.
Comedy became my way of fulfilling this cancer manifesto. It was my way of taking control of the narrative, of setting the boundaries of what this cancer meant. In a land colonised by silence and uncertainty, I wanted to speak first and to make it clear that this was all OK. That I was OK. That there was no difference between Luke with cancer and Luke without cancer. And that, in treatment's aftermath, I wasn't feeling the panicI sometimes felt.
This book is, in its small way, another gesture towards these declarations. It's not a book about denying cancer, but about seeing cancer as part of a life, rather than its sum total. An attempt to find the best in the worst, and the humour in the irredeemable. To get as much out of these tumours as they've gotten out of me. To call them ordinary until it starts to sound like the truth.
I'm still alive. The end of the story has been given away. All I can do now is try to find some meaning in the detail.
I should add that I do, on occasion, feel a certain sense of apprehension that I don't deserve to be writing a book about myself at the undeniably young age of twenty-eight. After all, who am I to tell you about life? What have I achieved? As I see it, all I've really done for the past couple of decades is pick up novelty illnesses and vomit a bit. When I expressed this reservation to my housemate a while back, he paused, looked at me for a second and then said, 'You know, you have had cancer twice. I don't think people are really going to begrudge you this.'
Fair point. So, here's my book.
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Chemo is out now in bookshops and e-book sites through Affirm Press.
Luke Ryan


Edwardsnowden.com, a site raising stores for informant Edward Snowden's legitimate barrier battle, is reporting that it will acknowledge bitcoin gifts for the reason.
Snowden had long ago released a great many characterized records to different parts of the media, demonstrating confirmation of government keeping an eye on Internet clients and wiretapping telephone calls. He has been stowing away in Russia following the time when and is needed by the U.s. on charges of robbery and undercover work.
The Obama Administration has been famously hard on informants. Legitimate guards of comparable circumstances can be truly lavish for the respondents being referred to, keeping in mind Snowden has some capable individuals in his corner, for example, Congressman Ron Paul, a lot of people are not ready to acknowledge the thought of Snowden not confronting what they call the proper outcomes.
Beside bitcoin, Snowden is likewise tolerating gifts through Paypal, and additionally through Mastercards, checks and cash exchanges.


text:
Let's Bend Over Backwards to Embrace Flexible Working
By Melissa Jackson
The benefits of flexible working have been tried, tested and championed during the Covid pandemic, but not all companies are embracing its potential, it seems. A survey suggests that 50% of women would quit their job if it didn't offer flexible working. However, for some, broaching the subject with an employer can be a difficult conversation. But, difficult conversations should not be swerved if we are to bring about change that benefits not just women, but all sectors of the workforce.
When young mother Alice Thompson raised the question of flexible working, as she prepared to return to work after maternity leave, she met a brick wall. As a sales manager at a small London estate agent, she had invested her "heart and soul" in her career and wanted to return to the office with hours that were more compatible with family life. Her reasonable request, in my eyes, was to ask to work a four-day-week and to leave at 5pm each day instead of 6pm. But it was denied. Alice hit the headlines recently after taking the company to a tribunal and winning a £185,000 pay-out, but it was an "exhausting" battle that exposed the ugly face of sex discrimination.
She told BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour, "If they needed me for the full hours, maybe eight 'til five instead of nine 'til six, that's something I could have worked around.
"But it was shut down, every avenue, not listened to, not considered. And I was left with no other option but to resign.
"How are mums meant to have careers and families? It's 2021 not 1971."
A survey by Marie Claire magazine and LinkedIn found that 50% of women would quit an existing job and 52% would turn down a job offer if the company didn't include the flexible working they required to maintain a work/life balance.
Andrea Thompson, Editor-in-Chief of Marie Claire, said: "The latest research is that employers must acknowledge that flexibility is vital if they want to retain female talent and achieve genuine gender equality at work.
"Equality in the workplace can only happen when flexibility is perceived as something for all – women, men, parents and non-parents. Why should caring responsibilities be a concern solely for women?"
Of course, flexible working opportunities should be open to all. This way it will become standardised and less of a "big deal" to accommodate; and the "difficult conversation" … a difficult conversation no more.
According to the flexible working consultancy, Timewise, 78% of UK job ads make no reference to flexible working. Timewise CEO Melissa Jamieson lamented that "thousands of women get stuck in jobs that are beneath their level of skill and ability, because these are the only kinds of role they can find with the flexibility they need".
In other words, flexibility with boundaries.
So, what are your rights when it comes to flexible working?
All employees who have been with a firm for at least 26 weeks have the right to make a flexible working request
If you make a request, your employer must consider if fairly and make a decision within a maximum of three months
A flexible working request could involve shorter hours, different start and finish times, a job share or doing your hours over fewer days (compressed hours).
It's been widely documented that a flexible work environment attracts and retains the best staff. So, be bold and if flexible working is your goal, feel empowered, engineer that discussion and highlight the benefits it will bring to the company and to you. Who knows, you might start a long-overdue revolution in the workplace and do yourself and all your colleagues a favour.
For more thought-provoking reading from Melissa, take a look at Are We Being Cowards If We Don't Speak Out?
Posted by The Voice / September 13, 2021

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Rev. Dr. Joseph Lowery's wife, Evelyn, dies
by Yvette Caslin
Spelman College president Dr. Beverly Tatum, Mrs. Evelyn Lowery and Spelman LEADS exec. dir. Jane Smith
Civil rights icon Rev. Dr. Joseph Lowery is mourning the loss of his wife of 67 years, Evelyn, who passed away today after suffering a massive stroke last week. The Lowerys were married May 5, 1946, and have been leaders in the Atlanta community for more than five decades. According to her bio, Lowery, along with her husband, president emeritus of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, demonstrated against segregation and participated in the Selma to Montgomery March for black voting rights in 1965.
In 1979, seeing a special need for women and families, Lowery founded the SCLC/Women's Organizational Movement for Equality Now Inc., the sister organization of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Through that organization she has spearheaded education and mentoring programs, HIV/Aids awareness initiatives and raising funds for scholarships for high school seniors. Over the years, Lowery has also taken the lead in recognizing the contributions of fellow activists. She has moved to develop coalitions and alliances with a variety of women's groups throughout the nation and other parts of the world.
In 1980, she founded the "Drum Major for Justice Awards Dinner" and in 1987, she founded the Evelyn G. Lowery Civil Rights Heritage Tour, a two-day motor coach tour through out Alabama. She has erected 13 monuments of Icons of the movement which include: Viola Luizzo, Jimmie Lee Jackson, Albert Turner Sr., Rev. James Orange, Rev. Hosea Williams, Congressman John Lewis, Mr. Earl T. Shinhoster, Rev. James Reeb, Amelia Boynton Robinson and Mrs. Rosa Louise Parks among others. In 1988, she founded the Women's Empowerment Training Center for GED/computer training. In 1995, she created the Bridging-The-Gap Girls to Women mentoring program.
In 2004, Lowery was herself honored at the International Civil Rights Walk of Fame at the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site, located in Atlanta. In 2012, the civil rights champion was honored at the eighth annual Spelman College Leadership Conference with the Legacy of Leadership Award.
Tags: evelyn lowery civil rights, evelyn lowery dies, evelyn lowery honored, evelyn lowery passes away, evelyn lowery spelman, evelyn lowery suffers a stroke, joseph lowery
Yvette Caslin
I'm a writer, image architect & significance marketer. Love photojournalism, creative expression & originality.
Yvette Caslin September 26, 2013
Executive producer Tamra Simmons learns to 'Cook It Out' to find love
Jae Davis January 20, 2020
Shang shares his thoughts on social media comedians who try stand-up comedy
A.R. Shaw January 17, 2020
Mo Ivory shares insight on Georgia State College of Law's course on Ludacris
Tamra Simmons discusses producing 'Surviving R. Kelly' and what's next for her
Rapper Jizzle Buckz reveals how rap saved him after serving time in jail
Phyllis Yvonne Stickney shares her thoughts on classic roles, women in comedy
Rev. Dr. Joseph Lowery speaks out on sentencing of Atlanta teachers found guilty of racketeering
Yvette Caslin April 19, 2015
Director Ava DuVernay on the King family's reaction to 'Selma'
TJ Armour January 5, 2015
Evelyn Lowery funeral update
Rev. Dr. Joseph Lowery's wife, Evelyn, goes home from hospital after massive stroke
Joseph Lowery's wife, Evelyn, rushed to hospital after suffering stroke
Terry Shropshire September 19, 2013
Political icons and Obama supporters open headquarters in Atlanta
Ric Mathis June 12, 2012


Raja Yoga, also known as the royal yoga, is the eightfold path to self-realization, long ago masterfully described by Pantanjali in the Yoga Sutras. The eight steps of Yoga include: moral principles and ideals, focus on physical postures, energy control, detachment, concentration, meditation and contemplation. This form of yoga brings you back to the core of who you are, apart from all outside influences. In your heart you will find the most precious gift, your true self.
A part of Raja Yoga is Hatha Yoga, in which practicing asanas (yoga postures) are central. This works to preserve your health and reduce or resolve many complaints in the physical body. Raja Yoga has a powerful effect on your mental health and spiritual growth. This is done through Pranayama (breathing), concentration, visualization and meditation exercises.
Effective in the treatment of ADHD, depression, anxiety and eating disorders.
Yoga practice takes you on an inward journey where you come to know yourself at a deeper level. Your spiritual heart opens and you become more sensitive to how you live your life and what your true purpose is in life. If you have the passion and true devotion to grow in this area, you can eventually reach the enlightened state.
Focus on the here and now to let go of your worries.
Asanas (yoga postures standing, sitting or lying down).
An explanation of the various yoga principles, chakras, etc.
The classes are suitable for everyone. You do not have to be flexible to start Yoga. Yoga is a perfect practice if you're primarily looking for relaxation or deepening. It is your personal and unique journey. Everyone works on his or her level in the exercises. If you regularly practice yoga you will notice that your mind and body will naturally become smoother and healthier. Amid all the chaos and challenges in your life you will always know how to regain your balance and function better in every way. This is the true gift of a regular yoga practice.
For course times & prices click here.


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Introducing LUWRAIN
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Introducing LUWRAIN: Can GNU/Linux help us rethink accessibility solutions for the blind?
Linux Journal, 2015, №7, Техас, США.
Версия для печати в формате PDF
Страница статьи в ACM Digital Library
Michael Pozhidaev has been dreaming of changing the ways of accessible interaction for people with vision problems for more than ten years. Michael is 32 years old, has a PhD in computer sciences and is employed as a software architect at Electronic Moscow. He loves piano music and goes crazy when he gets a chance to take a flight on a big jet or visit a new airport. He welcomes messages sent to michael.pozhidaev (at) gmail (dot) com.
When blind people work on personal computers, their mental perception of images replaces visual data on the screen. Users construct these images by getting portions of data transmitted from the machine in one of two alternative ways: either through the help of a speech synthesizer or through a braille display. The most popular solution to this kind of accessibility technology allows users to work in a typical graphical user interface (GUI) with the assistance of screen-reading software. The utilities, usually called screen readers, announce every step users perform by describing each change occurring on the screen as words.
This approach was a true breakthrough in the world of accessibility for blind people in information technologies. There have been a tremendous number of success stories of people with disabilities who are able to work, study and do a lot of other things completely on their own. Despite these wonderful benefits, there still are unresolved problems, mainly caused by the GUI itself. When using existing screen readers, the mental images should correctly conform to the rather complicated window environment. Children who are born blind are never able to see the sky and clouds. How can they understand a screen reader's feedback? The feedback always comes in terms of GUI elements, which always have a visual nature. Would blind people feel comfortable enough using this? Audible announcements of GUI changes on a computer might be a suitable solution if users had some prior experience in a windows system before losing their eyesight. Unfortunately, this is not always the case.
The second reason to look for an alternative solution is the fact that GUIs are convenient and effective only with a mouse. Unfortunately, a mouse typically is not used for work with screen readers. Blind users have to work with keyboards only, sometimes emulating mouse actions with keyboard commands.
The LUWRAIN Project
All of these factors make work a major struggle with a GUI, and research has to continue to discover new ways of interacting to improve the situation. Research efforts have yielded some new technologies, such as Adriane, but let's take a closer look at one more concept.
LUWRAIN is a GNU/Linux distribution in which the main user environment as an implementation on Java. Although its main part is suitable for running on any other operating system that has proper Java support, LUWRAIN launched in this way will be less functional than as a standalone OS.
LUWRAIN attempts to accomplish the following tasks:
Making personal computers accessible to blind people who were unable to use them before due to various reasons.
Making the environment of popular everyday applications more comfortable and effective for people who spend a lot of time working.
Suggesting a solution for the problem of distributing accessible applications for blind people (it is exactly for this reason that LUWRAIN supports launch on any system with Java support).
LUWRAIN isn't a competitor to screen readers, because screen readers attempt to ensure that all things accessible for sighted users will be accessible for blind users as well, but without any care for practicality or convenience. On the contrary, LUWRAIN offers a solution for everyday work for a fixed number of tasks with maximum comfort and speed. If LUWRAIN's functionality is insufficient for a particular situation, you can install it just as an application and leave other tools untouched.
Text-Based Interface
LUWRAIN's main characteristic that distinguishes it from a screen reader's approach is its new type of interaction. If you want to make an environment comfortable and effective, you should simplify the image in the mind that reflects the working space on the screen. While working, a user's thoughts should be focused on the work itself, and needless interface elements should not distract the user. Regarding LUWRAIN's user environment, it would be fair to acknowledge that LUWRAIN adopts a number of ideas previously proposed in the Emacspeak add-on for the GNU Emacs text editor
Let's take a closer look at the LUWRAIN interface. LUWRAIN rethinks the behavior of popular widgets in such a way that no visual data may be involved in their representation. A monitor still is used, but now it plays a supplementary role. Pictures on it help users with low vision, but there is nothing difficult if graphical information is totally unknown. Next, LUWRAIN also requires a redesign of general application structure, because all new controls must be organized in a completely different way from what people are used to seeing with a GUI.
Historically, when the GNU Emacs authors tried to implement that definitely were much larger than the bounds of the text editor (for example, mail reading, calendars, file management and so on), they didn't realize what a brilliant idea they actually had. They clearly proved that nearly all objects can be represented in text form only. Indeed, roughly speaking, if you'd like to write somebody a message, you can ask one script to prepare a message template in a text file having a "To:" string on the first line, a "Subject:" on the second and the message body on the rest. After filling out all the necessary values in the offered template, you call another script, which looks at what you wrote, constructs a valid e-mail, and sends it through your favorite relay.
The text itself (as well as everything that can be described as text) is the most suitable data structure for blind people because they can explore it easily through speech or braille.
When users jump from one line to another, they hear the line's text.
When moving from letter to letter, users get the character under the new cursor position.
Several extra commands enhance navigation. For example, when jumping between words, users would "hear" the next word. This behavior always is the same, regardless of what screen-reading technology the users choose. The substantial difference is that in a GUI, this kind of navigation is used for text edits only (which are, apparently, just a subset of a large variety of existing controls). In Emacspeak and in LUWRAIN, it is used everywhere.
Besides generally improved accessibility with a ubiquitous text interface, users have some additional advantages. If the text is everywhere, users can do a text search in any place they want. Users can press the corresponding hotkey and type the corresponding substring. After that, the search either finds the substring or ensures that this string is absent. The second useful aspect is that in any arbitrary place, regardless of whether it is a file manager panel, a calendar page, an address book entry or a media player control, it is possible to copy the entire content as text to the clipboard — for example, for e-mailing to a friend.
It is important to be able to know what items are absent on the screen, because screen readers mostly take care of describing only the elements they recognize. Usually there is no way to ensure that something isn't shown on the screen, because users can't trust that screen readers understand the GUI completely. If everything is offered in text form, this is easy to do, because no problems arise when going through the text from top to bottom. In a GUI, on the other hand, it is much harder, because the focus doesn't need to stop at every element on the screen. Some of them can be skipped.
Constructing an Application for LUWRAIN
It is impractical to try to access an entire application's functionality in one solid text space, so usually it is recommended to split an application's objects into several parts called areas. Each area implement the text-interface behavior. Their exact setting is dependent on the purpose of the application and should be designed very carefully. If you consider a double-sided file manager, you can see that it requires three independent areas: two panels for directory browsing (left and right) and one more for listing continuous user actions (copying, moving or deleting). All of them behave independently,which means they have their own cursor, and changes in one of them do not influence the others.
All of them are shown on the screen in such a way that allows filling the entire screen space (as tiles). Two panels are positioned as usual, and the action list goes to the bottom. Once again, appearance on the screen no longer plays a substantial role; it is just a complementary source of information for people with low vision. But as the screen still exists, let me mention a few additional details about it. For better adjustment for special needs, it requires some new features. Each area on the screen is filled only with text data drawn with a monospaced font. Users can choose the color scheme and the font size freely during work without any support by the application.
Each of the three areas, which the file manager consists of, behaves as a list. However, no matter what they are, they should be accessible as text. Each particular item is on a separate line; the movements are announced with some supplementary information, such as whether the current item is a directory or a regular file. All extra comments can be switched off if the user holds the Ctrl button on the keyboard while jumping from line to line. This little trick significantly increases efficiency, but it is not the only example in the file manager. LUWRAIN has such tricks in various places everywhere, and that makes the environment truly more suitable for blind people compared with screen readers, which sometimes are not able to distinguish the main content from the decoration.
LUWRAIN Widgets
LUWRAIN has its own library of classes that are useful for constructing an interface with the controls. Generally it is similar to the usual GUI widgets, but redesigned in the ways described previously. This library includes lists, trees, text inputs, forms, menus, some special items like calendars and so on. Of these, the forms are probably the most difficult. The forms in LUWRAIN are text areas containing one particular control on each line. Lines begin with a control name and can represent a text input, a yes/no check box, an embedded list and so on. Lists always take a single line while a selection is always performed in a separate area.
In contrast to GNU Emacs, LUWRAIN doesn't have real buffers with real text content for all objects. Text representation is there just as some sort of intermediate level, obscuring internal structures. The internal structures can be very complicated without any restrictions, and their logical level makes them easily observable by a user. You can design your own approach on how to handle any new nontrivial data model in a text way, creating a new custom control.
The Environment Internals
Behind a rather simple front-end conception, there is a complete UI infrastructure based on events dispatching and handling with the support of multithreading and user dialogs (like some type of modal windows). As I already mentioned, the main language chosen for LUWRAIN is Java. Discussing all reasons for this decision here is almost pointless, as the pros and cons for any particular language are very arguable. But, one thing plays a crucial role — the substantial number of existing libraries created for Java developers, the most important being JavaMail, Rome (the RSS parser), Apache POI (office document filters) and many others. The LUWRAIN core translates various input commands and internal environment actions to events that pass through the main loop queue and, after that, are dispatched to the corresponding object, considered to be the most suitable destination.
The events also are useful for multithreading synchronization. The application may issue as many threads as it wants, although only one of them is allowed to perform operations with the user environment. For this purpose, LUWRAIN has a corresponding type of events that safely allow data exchange between the background threads and user interface.
Pop-up Areas and Applications
The main loop procedure is capable of the recursive calls needed for the appearance of dialog areas (modal windows). These areas can be shown as a single method call placed inside some other wrapping handler. An existing unfinished upper handler freezes the top-level event loop, and that potentially could freeze the entire user environment, but the recursive loop instances solve this problem.
A user gets the dialog areas along one side of the screen. Regular applications may open them only along the bottom, but LUWRAIN opens its main menu on the left (yes, LUWRAIN has a main menu, which can be opened by the corresponding button on the keyboard where everybody expects it to be), and on the right, there is the context menu with the actions associated with the focused object. Most actions in the main menu are accessible through short commands, which can be issued from the command line. It takes the system-wide commands only, which should be applicable regardless of what applications are currently opened. Having this additional input method increases speed, because in a noisy environment — say, in an airport or aircraft — it is easier to type "message" quickly than to select menu items by listening their names.
Applications in LUWRAIN always fill the entire screen space. Only the amount of system resources limits the number of concurrently launched instances. Users easily can switch between applications by pressing Alt-Tab. (Actually, the term "application" isn't the most proper one, as LUWRAIN applications share the same memory space inside the Java virtual machine and don't go to separate processes, but it's the easiest term to describe them.) The LUWRAIN distribution includes several standard applications, such as a double-sided file manager, mail client, feeds reader, music player, command line to launch bash expressions (implemented through Java Native Interface), address book, personal scheduler, office document viewer and editor, notepad and others.
GNU/Linux Environment
Now you know enough about everything that happens inside the Java virtual machine, but there are a lot of external things that revolve around it. LUWRAIN should interact with system level services for managing network interfaces, attaching/detaching removable media and for other similar tasks. The most convenient way to do that is, evidently, D-Bus. D-Bus is accessible from Java, and a number of existing D-Bus services cover a lot of needed features (for example, you can use Network Manager for network configuring). This means LUWRAIN will be consistent, as more services are introduced to D-Bus. If one day Lennart Poettering and the community around him get system in a commonly acceptable state that no longer raises any concerns, that will add the final missing piece to a nice design of LUWRAIN as a complete operating system.
LUWRAIN is capable of being installed by blind people freely without any sighted help. This is achieved by cloning a live CD system to the hard drive and can be done rather quickly.
The LUWRAIN story would be really nice if all things could be executed inside the Java virtual machine, but unfortunately, that's not the case. Let's step back a bit and think about whether LUWRAIN is applicable for all commonly required tasks. It is not necessary to consider The GIMP or various types of CAD software, because the nature of such programs requires eyesight, regardless of what interface is offered for them. However, there are a couple cases that are exceptions for LUWRAIN. These are Web browsing and some closed applications (the most popular example of this is Skype). You can't complete these tasks in Java with a text-based interface, so there needs to be some alternative solutions.
Both Mozilla Firefox and Chromium support accessibility features for blind people but in different ways. Chromium does it through its Google ChromeVox extension which can work independently from any other GNU/Linux assistive infrastructure. I don't discuss it in detail here because it just works. Firefox does it through access to the so-called AT-SPI (Assistive Technology - Service Provider Interface). AT-SPI initially was a part of the GNOME Accessibility Project and allows gathering all information of launched applications and their GUI elements into a single place. After collecting this information, it can be passed to some assistive technology that transforms it into speech and provides it to the user. Usually this job is done by the Orca screen reader, but Orca itself is strongly linked to the GNOME environment and isn't used for any LUWRAIN tasks. LUWRAIN includes a special tool to replace Orca that is intended for collecting AT-SPI information and translating it to a human-understandable form. (Great thanks to Mike Gorse, who always is ready to help and clarify details of AT-SPI behavior!) The nature of basic Skype operations allows their transformation to a text-based interface, but it is closed software and LUWRAIN is unable to do anything with it. In the meantime, the GNU/Linux version's UI is based on Qt, which also is supported by the AT-SPI functions. All that is needed is to compile and install the special qt-at-spi bridge.
No doubt, it would be better not to have any exceptions for LUWRAIN's text-based interface proposal, but we should be happy that it is possible to overcome such special cases in an appropriate way.
Speaking of the LUWRAIN details that work outside the Java virtual machine, let me point out that all tools launched in the X.org server (LUWRAIN's main window, a Web browser, Skype) are under control of the special tiny window manager (of course, not written from scratch).
In concluding this LUWRAIN technical overview, it is interesting to consider what LUWRAIN can and cannot change in the lives of potential users, although this project is still in a rather early stage. How will users possibly perceive of this system, which has many significant differences compared with most existing solutions? What new areas could it open in the technical world?
First and most important, LUWRAIN is aimed to be useful for users who previously were unable to interact with PCs due to various reasons. It might be appreciated by seniors for general operations, because LUWRAIN requires a minimal amount of technical knowledge. Its interface is constructed in a way that makes usage possible for most users after following the short system guide offered for everybody on booting the live CD. Experienced users likely will be able to work without any prior learning at all (according to a series of our small experiments).
However, some things still may raise concerns. The environment is "in itself", which means that creating a new application will not make it available for blind users by default. Also remember that LUWRAIN doesn't imply the exclusive selection of a platform to work. Users can have several machines for different tasks. On a desktop, users can continue using a particular required application, but on a laptop, LUWRAIN could offer a better environment than any other OS. Also, if people want to use LUWRAIN due to its better organization, but aren't able to abandon Microsoft Windows or Mac OS X (for instance, because other family members use it), they still can install LUWRAIN on any OS with proper Java SE support. The same is true if users are unable to switch to GNU/Linux due to some specific software.
Let me also note that LUWRAIN allows using bash expressions. Does anyone refuse to ping just because it is a command-line tool? The command line itself is one of the most accessible conceptions for blind people.
Because LUWRAIN provides an easily understandable interface for blind users (hopefully) and potentially could launch on any OS with Java SE support, it could be considered as a platform for distributing accessible speech-enabled applications. Perhaps there are vendors who would like to have an application that will be accessible reliably to blind people. For example, it could be used for payment systems, social applications for health care purposes and so on. With LUWRAIN, vendors can do this without any prior experience in creating accessible tools, because it just takes already prepared Java classes. LUWRAIN not only promises that it will be understandable for blind users, but in addition, it offers a platform for launching a newly created application, which is free of charge, eliminating barriers to software costs.
© 2009–2023 Михаил Пожидаев
Последнее обновление от 31 января 2023 г.


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Insider Accounts of Institutional Corruption
by Garry C. Gray
I have a vivid memory of the moment when I discovered that a company I worked for was scamming people in the name of the local wheelchair basketball association.
I was fourteen years old and my job was to phone people in the community to ask if they'd like to support the association by purchasing coupon books. It seemed like a win-win, and I remember that many people were happy to help out. Rarely was anyone suspicious enough to ask how much of the proceeds the association actually received. As soon as I said the words "wheelchair basketball" I had primed them into the spirit of giving, or otherwise declining regretfully. I eventually discovered from another employee that the association received only 10% of the funds. I was appalled.
The whole business model depended on people making the good-hearted assumption that the wheelchair basketball association would be receiving a substantive portion of the proceeds. There was no doubt in my mind that coupon book sales would have been dismal had we openly and directly disclosed their meager 10% cut. Nevertheless, I realized that the "good worker" could shrug off remarks that the practice was unethical, by citing the fact that everything was legal, or pitching the "they didn't ask" argument. But no amount of insight or rationalization could alleviate the uneasy feeling in my gut that only we, the insiders, knew what was going on, and the public trusted us.
My employment there didn't last long, but it did have lasting effects on my research years later. Becoming an insider seemed to be the ultimate strategy to examine the research questions I was asking. It was the ideal way to generate understanding about implicit and normalized behaviors inside organizations, and the ways that local cultures influence everyday decision-making. However, as researchers, the methods we select are a function of time, resources, access, and training, as well as ethical considerations that guard against possible harms to research subjects. In other words, in many—if not most—cases, it is not possible for scholars to become true insiders who can generate insights first-hand through a combination of experience, immersion, and direct observation, as inspired by Bronislaw Malinowski and Margaret Mead in their early ethnographic studies.
Alternatively, the insider account offers another path to discovery. Insider accounts can be extremely fruitful, especially if the researcher is skilled at palpating the contours and nuances of the insider's opaque world. This is what Lawrence Lessig strived to do when he interviewed Jack Abramoff as part of the "In the Dock" series at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. Corruption in Congress, particularly as it has manifested in the interactions between lobbyists and public officials, has become a systemic problem that extends far beyond Abramoff's individual behaviors. Abramoff was an insider willing to talk about this.
Abramoff's insider accounts have provided a lens for analyzing the rationalizations, patterns of interactions, and insider tricks of the trade that are used to perpetuate the social organization and structure of institutional corruption in lobbying and Congress. In my recent article, Insider Accounts of Institutional Corruption: Examining the Social Organization of Unethical Behaviour published in the British Journal of Criminology (2013), I draw on Abramoff's insider accounts to not only provide this analysis, but also to demonstrate the use of insider accounts as an empirical pathway into examining the world of professional misconduct and unethical behavior.
Although insider accounts are not representative, they do reveal structures, loopholes, and contexts that are conducive to unethical behavior. The article describes five techniques that Abramoff employed to his advantage: 1) the creation of fronts through non-profit organizations and advocacy groups, 2) indirect gifting, 3) revolving doors of employment, 4) corrupt riders, and 5) creating conditions to rationalize unethical behavior. Drawing on the weaknesses of the system, he actively established and exploited dependencies by members of Congress and their staff. These actions, he explained, are widely practiced and constitute a system of institutional corruption that is still operating today.
Whereas the formula that telephone solicitors might use is relatively straight-forward to understand, Abramoff has described a series of complex and nuanced techniques designed precisely to obscure unethical behavior from the public eye. One of the difficulties of researching unethical behavior is that these practices are often embedded within seemingly lawful institutional activities. The scholar must then consider how it might be possible to discover, tease apart, and disrupt these less visible normalization patterns of unethical behavior.
Insider accounts, while difficult to obtain, provide key insights into the subtle and often taken-for granted routines of professionals. They can make visible practices that insiders may enact unreflectively, but which an outsider analyzing the account may be able to discern. In this way, they can be a window to sophisticated and insidious modes of institutional corruption that threaten the integrity of our public institutions, and the trust they depend on for continued legitimacy.
See also: Government & Law, Economics, Garry C. Gray
Academia & Non-Profit
DKPHarvard New article published by U.S. News & World Report featuring the Democratic Knowledge Project. Read the article "Teaching Civics After Jan. 6 With new guidance, hopes for a resurgence in teaching students how democracy works" here t.co/YgHjo8TDPf
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HarvardEthics Myisha Cherry is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at UC Riverside and a former visiting Edmond J. Safra Graduate Fellow in Ethics. Read our profile on Prof. Cherry here t.co/O7g9Eyucap @myishacherry t.co/Q79WVjkurf
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HarvardEthics Please take a moment to explore the remarkable work that our faculty, fellows, and affiliates have been up to this year. You can check out our 2021 year in review materials here t.co/x0aywKyfUB t.co/IB1XWHJ97G
HarvardEthics "As we look forward to the festive season, let us harken to these jolly philosophical ghosts of Christmases past," Max Khan Hayward writes. t.co/210DKcLeQm
HarvardEthics Please take a moment to explore the remarkable work that our faculty, fellows, and affiliates have been up to this year. You can check out our 2021 year in review materials here t.co/x0aywKyfUB t.co/vgU7QqJccP
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Trasua Theme: This the main theme package file that you need to use in order to set up your website.
Trasua Child Theme: Child Theme can be used for further customization of the theme. The modifications can be lost in case you perform them directly on the theme. Child theme preserves the modifications.
Trasua Theme documentation: The documentation file provided with the package contains step by step guide to set up the theme. It does not have to be uploaded to the website.


text:
gofmt_check() {
	unformatted=$(gofmt -l .)
	if [ -n "$unformatted" ]; then
		echo "go fmt found problems with the following files:"
		echo "$unformatted"
		echo "Please check https://blog.golang.org/go-fmt-your-code :)"
		return 1
	fi
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Civilisation revolves around relationships. They are the very woof and warp of life – the very fabric of life. Relationships are the driving force of survival, whether it is the physical connection between a male and a female in the creation of progeny (survival of the species); the connection between a manager and a staff member; the connection between a player and a team captain, or a player and another member of a team. No matter how wide and how far you extrapolate the concept of relationships, they are involved in every facet of life.
Some relationships are stormy and some placid, but no matter what the connection, one's survival is very dependent upon them. In the case of Charles Dickens' Ebenezer Scrooge, the only relationship this miserly, self-centred individual enjoyed and considered of value was a connection with money. However, in creating wealth and possessing money he nevertheless had to relate to others. He had, for example, a relationship with his clerk, even though he looked upon that downtrodden individual as a possession. Indeed, no man is an island! A truly happy relationship involves respect for the other or for the other's viewpoints and a free exchange of views.
The writer of the following was a product of an abusive family environment, but a relationship repair action completely rehabilitated her life.
By 2002 I was ready to give up, there seemed no reason to carry on this life that had become a confusion of emotional pain, loss and depression. I had forgotten how to laugh or enjoy the wonderful and simple pleasures I had previously known. A dear friend suggested I see John Mace. I'd tried all the usual counselling and anti-depressants with only temporary relief, so I was sceptical, but I went and my life began its turn-around. After a few sessions I was feeling more positive about myself but something still nagged at me. John in his wisdom suggested I carry out a relationship procedure to do with a person (in this case my father) who had had such a negative influence on me. That session was the key. Once those negative beliefs, feelings and emotions were negated I began to live again.
I no longer reacted badly to triggering events; the raw emotions and overwhelming tears just weren't there. It was a joy to wake in the early hours of the morning and revel in the peace I felt and knowing that at last I had been given a tool so simple yet so powerful that I could access in the event I needed it. What a marvellous sense of freedom and empowerment! I have since done several relationship sessions and marvel at the results. I feel like I've been wearing extremely dirty, cracked glasses for so long and have been given a new pair to view life in a positive, healthy way. My thanks seem inadequate but nevertheless, I thank you.
Although interpersonal relationships are the predominant feature in life, it has to be understood that people also relate to groups, organisations and 'things', and it is how the client feels about any of them that has to be addressed, for these feelings govern the relationship.


Michael Nir takes us into a world that few of us think about. This is the world of speaking, communicating, presenting and selling, without ever saying a word. That's right. This is all about the silent language of your body, your posture, how you stand and so forth. Very enlightening and a must for anyone that has a job or a business.


text:
New Disney Attractions Get an Official Date
Cars Land and Buena Vista Street prep for their big summer opening.
BIG NEWS: When Disney President and CEO Bob Iger dons a hard hat and comes for a tour of a new area and attraction at Disney California Adventure, you know something big is just around the corner. Mr. Iger did just that on March 6, so that the March 7 news that the new Cars Land, Buena Vista Street, and the Carthay Circle Theatre all have their official opening date was a bit expected and more than a bit welcome in various corners. Of course, a mid-June date has been bouncing around the ether for some time now, but the official, in-bold word arrived on Wednesday, March 7: The three new areas and venues will debut on Friday, June 15.
GOOD TIMING: With spring break vacations starting to break out all over, the timing couldn't be better; thoughts are turning to summer and summer trips. Certainly many people with Lightning McQueen-loving tots will plan their Anaheim stay after June 16, but we're more keen to know about the super fans who intend to be there to be one of the first to ride. Or to stroll Buena Vista Street, a period recreation of what Hollywood looked like in 1923, the year Walt Disney arrived. For more on Mr. Iger's park visit, or to follow along with all the getting-close-to-opening news, check out the Disney Parks & Resorts blog.


text:
Animal cruelty bill advances despite opposition from pet advocates
By: Sophie Nieto-Munoz - January 4, 2022 6:55 am
A pit bull looks out from a cage in the Liberty Humane Society shelter July 24, 2007 in Jersey City. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)
A bill seeking to revise animal cruelty laws moved out of the Assembly Agriculture Committee Monday after 90 minutes of passionate testimony from animal advocacy groups largely in opposition.
The measure (A6099) would amend the law prohibiting the cruel tethering and confinement of dogs by adding a ban on tethering dogs in an area exposed to waste, debris, or flooding. People would also be barred from tethering dogs on vacant properties under the bill.
The measure would establish new procedures for what happens to pets seized from owners and who pays for their care. Police would be able to go on private property to seize pets they believe are in immediate danger, and owners found to be neglecting their pets would have to pay for their care while they're held in a shelter or other animal facility.
While most animal advocates agreed on expanding the language barring cruel tethering and confinement of dogs, dozens of animal lovers were opposed to the bill's language about the taking of pets.
Kathy McGuire, a certified animal control officer and president of NJ Aid for Animals in Camden, said a problem with the bill is people often don't know what to look for when determining whether someone is being cruel to animals.
She told the story of Mush, a cat roaming outside who was picked up by an animal control officer who assumed he was injured after being hit by a car. The cat had no collar or microchip, and was euthanized at the Red Bank Veterinary Hospital.
But Mush was born with spina bifida, which gave him a curved spine and made it difficult to walk. His owners told Patch Mush was in perfect health.
McGuire also recalled the time 50 huskies were rescued in Winslow Township and were being brought to the Camden shelter. McGuire said the dogs' owner may have been "in over her head" but was not abusing them.
"There was no cruelty involved," she said.
Other advocates stressed that pets are property — as well as family — and the Constitution protects the seizure of private property without due process.
Under the bill, the officer who seizes an animal would be required to send a letter to its owner within seven days detailing the alleged violation and identifying where the pet is being kept. The shelter would then have 30 days to file a complaint with evidence showing the pet needed to be protected from harm or was in immediate need of medical attention.
If the court finds the animal was properly taken into custody, the owner would be responsible for all costs related to the animal's protection and medical attention. In extreme circumstances, veterinarians could decide to euthanize the animal, the cost of which would also fall to the owners, under the bill.
Mike Fry, an animal welfare advocate, also believes the law could result in pets being taken away from families and killed before court proceeding are over. Under the bill, a person found not guilty would be able to reclaim the money, but pets would likely already be under the ownership of the shelter — Fry argues these pets could be adopted by other families or killed.
Brian Hackett of the Animal Legal Defense Fund testified in support of the bill, saying the law is needed in New Jersey to help animal care agencies that are caring for pets taken from abusive owners by charging bad owners and holding them accountable. It would also allow rescue organizations to help those animals find foster homes, he said.
"This isn't a situation of someone doesn't have a proper dog house and the animal is seized, or my grandma has a few cats and she can't take care of them properly. These are largely utilized in large scale cruelty cases, such as dog fighting cases and mass hoarding cases, where there's extensive cost of care for these animals and can bankrupt a municipal shelter," he said.
And although the bill was advanced out of committee, legislators agreed there needs to be "continued dialogue" on how to best protect pets and innocent owners.
"We all care about our pets. There's a lot of feelings, a lot of different definitions of what is neglect. In the end, this is about abusing animals, and what do we do when this happens," Assemblyman Eric Houghtaling said, adding that it would be a "great thing" for the sponsors to amend the bill.
The companion bill was voted out of the Senate Environment and Energy Committee Dec. 9, and has not been voted on by the full Senate. The current legislative session ends Jan. 11 at noon, and bills would need to be reintroduced to be considered in the next session.
by Sophie Nieto-Munoz, New Jersey Monitor

Animal cruelty bill advances despite opposition from pet advocates

by Sophie Nieto-Munoz, New Jersey Monitor
January 4, 2022

Sophie Nieto-Munoz
Sophie Nieto-Muñoz, a New Jersey native and former Trenton statehouse reporter for NJ.com, shined a spotlight on the state's crumbling unemployment system and won several awards for investigative reporting from the New Jersey Press Association. She was a finalist for the Livingston Award for Young Journalists for her report on PetSmart's grooming practices, which was also recognized by the New York Press Club. Sophie speaks Spanish and is proud to connect to the Latinx community through her reporting.
House Democrats pass Biden's $1.85 trillion 'Build… by Laura Olson November 19, 2021


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Gigante isn't a great movie, but it's likeably humble and scruffy around the edges. Writer-director Adrián Biniez refreshingly doesn't wallow in intended pathos; his picture doesn't have that pleading earnestness that can overwhelm certain new neorealist movies that serve good intentions in place of apparent frivolities such as insight (don't see Frozen River). The scenario is ready-made for Marty-style self-pity: An overweight supermarket security guard in Montevideo, Jara (Horacio Camandule) becomes infatuated with Julia (Leanor Svarcas), the pretty, younger cleaning woman he watches in the store's cameras. But Biniez doesn't condescendingly pity Jara, and he doesn't rub the man's belly or his boredom in our faces. Biniez hangs back as his lead walks a road perilously close to stalking, the suspense meant to derive from our apprehension of how far Jara is willing to take his preoccupation. Jara, as many overweight men of a certain salary bracket in love before him have, assumes Julia to be an untouchable object meant for better men—though his detective work gradually leads him to believe otherwise.
There's an obvious tightrope walk inherent to these pictures in which the day-to-day banalities of normal people are meant to add up to something with the shape and hindsight of traditional fiction. The imposition of a point of view can compromise the authenticity of the characters and the milieu, but a shapeless, "naturalistic" approach, in the wrong hands, can be pointless; the filmmakers having nothing apart from principle and attempted empathy to give us. (The Dardennes' pictures are the ideal contemporary balance.) Gigante has the usual issues: it's vague and not particularly cinematic, a collection of (purposefully) static, sometimes too self-consciously staged medium shots that reveal little of Jara and Julia apart from what we already assume of their lonely hearts stereotypes. Biniez mistakes hollow for ambiguous: We wait for more to happen.
The leads compensate. Moments of Camandule, this big burly teddy bear, rocking out to metal and making popping sounds with his mouth to puncture the overwhelming boredom of his jobs, are dryly funny. The stalking issue isn't as creepy, or as contrived, as it would normally be because Camandule shows us that it's just a natural extension of his clueless what-the-hell spirit, another preoccupation to get him through the day. Camandule's performance frees the picture of most of its sentimentality, making the events palpable. Svarcas doesn't have much to do; she's the promise of better things seen almost exclusively through Jara's eyes, but she still suggests mystery and play. We see her as more than just hot stuff, and we get hints of a life with the kind of down time that just might allow her to give Jara a shot, at least in the movies.


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October 5, 2018 October 5, 2018 Shona Craven
A Star is Born and Hollywood's coercive 'romance'
I'D heard great things about A Star is Born, the new film starring Bradley Cooper as a rock star and Lady Gaga as a waitress-slash-singer-songwriter in need of a big break. "Outrageously watchable and colossally enjoyable," said The Guardian. "A remarkable feat of both performance and filmmaking" said Empire magazine. Five stars all round.
The film in 135 minutes long. I lasted 55 minutes. I walked out at the point where Ally (Gaga) wakes up in her bedroom to find that her father has granted Jackson (Cooper), an unstable man she's known for a matter of days, unrestricted access to their home while declining to rouse his daughter, let alone inform her of a visitor's arrival.
Of course, when Jackson touches her face Ally doesn't flinch, or scream, or scrabble to compose herself (despite the character having been established as chronically insecure about her appearance, no thanks to her horrible dad). She is delighted.
How on earth did this script get signed off, let alone the film get made and then released with great fanfare worldwide?
I know this is a remake. I don't know how closely it resembles the previous film. But this is 2018. Why the hell, post-Weinstein, is male entitlement, coercion and pushing at boundaries still being dressed up by Hollywood as "romance"? How on earth did this script get signed off, let alone the film get made and then released with great fanfare worldwide?
Are there no new stories to tell? Are there no stories about women who aren't trophies, or ego-boosting projects, or prey to be pursued by men? Are there no stories about relationships that don't involve large age gaps and massive power imbalances?
At the start of the film the two protagonists meet when Jackson stumbles into the bar where Ally is about to deliver a storming performance of La Vie En Rose. He's taken backstage and the two chat a little – she's nervous but flattered, he's drunk and inappropriate. He asks if he can peel off one of the false eyebrows she has stuck to her face. Perhaps we're supposed to imagine this is the moment of intimacy she's been dreaming of all her life, but I suspect not. She allows him to do it, then covers her face with embarrassment. Later, when she explains that she's self-conscious about her nose, she allows him to touch that too. His "thing" is established: pushing against her personal boundaries. Getting her to do things she's not comfortable with.
He's an entitled, powerful man and he always gets what he wants
Jackson can do what he likes, because he's famous. He's an entitled, powerful man and he always gets what he wants. Nowhere is this expressed in a more sinister fashion than when, the day after their all-night-but-chaste first encounter, he sends his driver to sit outside Ally's home until she agrees to get on a plane to come and watch him in concert.
"No" doesn't mean "no" – it means "apply more pressure".
Of course, this is a well-established romance-film trope, from Ryan Gosling's ferris-wheel suicide threat in The Notebook to Heath Ledger's mortifying marching-band declaration of love in 10 Things I Hate About You with all sorts of other pressure in between. The subtext is always the same: she wants it, she's just playing hard to get, so you just need to try harder. But at least the aforementioned gestures involve the subjective factor of the pursuing man's personal charm. "Wooing" by assigning an employee to stake out the woman's home feels like it belongs in a different category altogether.
Complying with Jackson's demand means quitting her job, but we're treated to scenes showing Ally and her friend on a private jet, then standing at the stage of the stage wearing their all-access lanyards, so presumably it's all worth it.
The message is clear: this older, more powerful man knows what is best for the young ingenue
During their encounter the previous night Ally sang a self-penned song for Jackson, so in a move as implausible as it is unethical he decides to perform a swiftly prepared arrangement of it on stage and coerce her into joining him for a duet. She has not consented to her material being performed and is ambushed into joining the performance but, of course, it is a triumph and becomes a viral hit. The message is clear: this older, more powerful man knows what is best for the young ingenue, so her consent is irrelevant. It doesn't even matter if she's not awake when something starts, because it's guaranteed she'd be loving it when she wakes up.
I couldn't stomach any more once the dad teamed with Jackson – in thrall to celebrity and, one assumes, happily surprised by any man taking an interest in the daughter he describes as ugly to anyone who will listen.
Feel free to fill me in on what happens in the rest of this grubby, shitty, soul-destroying Exhibit A of why Hollywood needs to completely rethink its definition of "romance".
Published by Shona Craven
Writer, editor, talking head	View all posts by Shona Craven
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On December 1 no advances were reported in the Mosul campaign, but the Iraqi forces (ISF) were back at it on December 2. Zuhur in east Mosul was declared freed for the third time, but once again it appeared that fighting was still going on there. The Islamic State counterattacked in Qadisiya, while the ISF moved into Meshraq, the 47th neighborhood of the city entered so far.
Front line commanders tried to lobby to change the tactics for taking Mosul, but Abadi and his military advisers denied them. Before the assault on the city began flyers were dropped telling residents to stay in their homes. This was done because the government and aid agencies lacked the means to take care of a mass exodus of people out of Mosul. What has happened is that the civilians have gotten in the way of the fighting. The Islamic State has hid amongst them, while the ISF has been greatly restrained in using its heavy firepower when there are so many citizens in the way. Officers went to Baghdad asking for them to be allowed to tell people to evacuate the battle zones, but the prime minister rejected their plea. That means the advance will continue at its deliberate pace.
In the west the Hashd announced that they had surrounded Tal Afar. They are now waiting for ISF forces from the north to shift to the town. One of those units will be the 92nd Brigade, 15th Division. Many of the soldiers are said to be Shiites driven out of the town by the insurgency. The commander of the 15th Division General Emad Silawi said that the Hashd might follow into the town, which could set off problems as Turkey and the Iraqi Turkmen Front have both warned against those forces going into Tal Afar claiming they will set off a sectarian conflict. Baghdad has an agreement with Ankara negotiated by the Americans to keep the Hashd out.
In the south, an officer from the 9th Division commented on how poorly the liberated areas are being held. He said that the police units that moved in behind the army were such lackluster quality that they could only do guard duty. He went on to say that army reinforcements had to be called up from Baghdad to help with holding the territory.
The director of the International Red Cross just returned from a trip to Iraq and was worried about the length of the campaign. He told the press that Mosul could take months to clear. That could lead to a humanitarian disaster, and a stretching of resources. Already he said there are some days when more than 100 are wounded from the fighting. The hospitals in Irbil are already overflowing with these casualties. Winter weather with freezing temperatures and rain are also starting in Iraq flooding displaced camps. These problems will only get worse the longer the operation lasts.
Finally, Reuters talked with a man who was displaced from Bashiqa that was recently freed. He like many others would like to go home but the town and the surrounding area is strewn with IEDs and mine fields. A member of the Mines Advisory Group said that it found more then 350 IEDs in just one town outside Bashiqa. While a few thousand people have gone back to their homes since the Mosul operation started almost all of those have been in the Nimrod district or eastern Mosul. Otherwise the other areas appear to be unsafe due to unexploded ordinance. It might take months to clear all of these areas since such a large swath of territory has been liberated in Ninewa.


Welcome to SPIN's Singles Mix! SPIN staffers have rounded up their favorite, must-hear tracks for your personal playlists. Collecting the finest from electronic pioneers, romantically jilted rappers, Australian cover singers, and more, these are the songs you need to know right now.
Dean Blunt and Inga Copeland have carried over the broken-pop predilections of their days in Hype Williams into new efforts under their own name, but this week they reanimated the project — which had lain dormant since they announced their breakup in 2013 — for a one-off called "Distance." Its plucked strings and disembodied synth lines are unsettling and otherworldly and immediately endearing, a mostly positive dreamscape you find yourself trying to escape anyway. Still, when you wake up everything's just the same. Based on their recent pattern of working, count on this being the last ghostly glimpse of the duo for a while. — C.J.
Australia guitar-pop songstress Summer Flake does Mick Jagger and Keith Richards proud in this smoothed-over cover of their psychedelic 1965-written jam. Featured on her new EP, Time Rolls By, "Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind" used to be accompanied by a parade of literal bells and whistles, but Flake slows the pace down to emulate a lazy, twangy rhythm, places her distorted chords front-and-center, and layers her easy vocals to create a lush, summer-into-fall anthem. — R.B.


text:
photo courtesy of Marion Tränkle
Marion Tränkle
Marion Tränkle is an artist and designer based in Amsterdam. Her work engages systems thinking, cross-disciplinary perspectives, and experimentation.
She preferences live-performance as her artistic environment and to constantly negotiate between the carefully constructed and generative processes, between risk and responsibility, and between autonomous performance and human intervention.
She studied architecture at the TU Berlin, hold degrees in Contemporary Dance from the Amsterdam School of the Arts and from the Media Technology program at Leiden University, and was awarded her PhD from the School of Arts, Brunel University London in 2012. Last year she spent focussing on software engineering.
Her stage scenarios and installations have been shown internationally including Thessaloniki Biennale at the State Museum of Contemporary Art, OK Centre for Contemporary Art in Linz, Netherlands Media Art Institute Amsterdam, University of Michigan, Bavarian State Opera Munich, State Theatre Saarbrücken, and the Artefactfestival for Art and Media.
Marion has taught at Universities and Art Institutions in the Netherlands, Canada, and her native Germany. Currently she is associated with the Department of Industrial Design at TU Eindhoven.
mariontraenkle.eu
Participant in the KABK Teaching Tools Research Group 2020


Outcomes models set out all of the steps needed to achieve higher-level outcomes for an organization, program, policy, sector or collaboration. Variations on the concept of an outcomes model go under names such as: logic models, program logics, intervention logics, program theories, theories of change, strategy maps, ends-means diagrams, results-chains, fishbone diagrams etc.). If you draw your models according to the guidelines below you'll find that your outcomes models can be used for any of the steps within Easy Outcomes and also for a variety of other purposes, even if you're not using Easy Outcomes. The examples used below are shown visualized in DoView outcomes software. (You can find a copy of these guidelines inside any copy of DoView - look in Help>DoView Help >Building Outcomes Models>Building Good Outcomes Models).
Some other ways of drawing outcomes models, for instance those that demand that you only include outcomes which you can currently absolutely prove you changed, lead to much more limited outcomes models. Such models may be able to be used to deal with your accountability issues, but they're not much good for other purposes. You want your model to be able to be used for more than just accountability, for instance to help you think strategically about alternative steps you could take to achieve outcomes and to help you identify potential evaluation questions etc. A well built outcomes model will be able to help you with all aspects of priority setting, monitoring, evaluation and contracting when you are using steps within the Easy Outcomes system. A Powerpoint presentation setting out the guidelines below is available on the Easy Outcomes Resources page - you can use the presentation with a group prior to working with them to build an outcomes model.
Drawing good outcomes models is as much an art as as a science, the guidelines* below provide a starting point for those new to drawing outcomes models, and points for consideration for those who have drawn outcomes models in the past.
1. Use outcomes not activities. You can change an activity (doing) into an outcome (done) by just changing the wording (for example, 'Increasing stakeholder support' to 'Increased stakeholder support'). So don't get too worried as to whether something is an 'outcome' or a 'activity' or 'process' when you are putting it into your model. You can always turn an activity or process into outcomes form by just changing the wording.
2. Let your outcomes model include any of the 'cascading set of causes in the real world'. The steps that you put into your models do not have to be limited just to your measurable, attributable (ones you can absolutely prove you changed) or accountable outcomes. There's usually a lot of resistance to putting into your outcomes models non-measurable and non-attributable outcomes. This is because stakeholders want to manage their risk around being held to account for the outcomes that appear in their models. This is a genuine risk, but it is best managed by being making it clear to all stakeholders that the initial outcomes model is not limited only to accountable outcomes, it should include all outcomes and steps. Measurement, attribution and accountability are all dealt with in Easy Outcomes, but at a later stage after you have drawn your initial model.
The diagram above shows a 'full' outcomes model on the left which contains all of the 'cascading set of cause in the real world' related to a program. In the middle of the diagram there is an outcomes model has been restricted to just 'measurable' outcomes and steps (the green ones) and the model on the right, has been further limited to just those outcomes which are attributed to a single player. The much reduced outcomes model on the right is useful for accountability purposes for the particular player and their funders, but it is not much use for any other stakeholders. However, the outcomes model on the left can be used for all of the steps within Easy Outcomes and is of much more interest to a range of players than the very restricted model on the right.
3. Don't force your outcomes model into particular horizontal 'levels' within the model such as inputs, outputs, intermediate outcomes and final outcomes. In some cases this may distort a good clear visualization of the flow of causality in the real world. For instance, in some outcomes models, outputs may reach further up one side of an outcomes model than another. Forcing artificial horizontal layers onto an outcomes model often distorts it and makes it harder for stakeholders to 'read' the natural logical flow of causality in the model.
The diagram above shows how forcing outcomes into horizontal levels can distort an outcomes model. For some outcomes models it may make sense to think only in terms of one level of 'intermediate outcomes' between outputs (in yellow at the bottom) and high-level outcomes (at the top of the model). However for other types of program, it may be more appropriate to have many levels of intermediate outcomes between outputs and outcomes. For instance, it would distort the model on the right to force it into the framework of the model on the left and demand that the three levels of intermediate outcomes be amalgamated into only one level. The concept of distinguishing outputs from other steps is useful for accountability purposes and in Easy Outcomes it can be achieved not by using layers, but by marking (e.g. with color or brief letter codes) the steps which are outputs after the outcomes model has been drawn.
4. Do not 'siloize' your model. Silozing is when you draw an outcomes model in a way that artificially forces lower level outcomes to only contribute to single separate high-level outcomes. In the real world, good lower-level outcomes can contribute to multiple high-level outcomes. Any outcome can potentially contribute to any other outcome in an Easy Outcomes model, the way you draw the model should allow for this. (You need to draw your model in software which lets you do this. DoView software does not force you to siloize your outcomes model. Any outcome (step) can be connected to any other outcome at any level through using DoView's linking tool).
The diagram above shows a very simple illustration of siloization. Imagine that the blue steps in the outcomes model on the left can only be visualized as influencing the blue higher-level step and the yellow steps can only be visualized as influencing the yellow higher-level step. The real world usually looks much more like the model on the right. In this case, the highlighted blue lower-level step is shown to influence both the blue higher-level step and the yellow higher-level step. (Influence - 'makes happen' - is shown in DoView by an inverted V on the bottom edge of the step which is influenced. This inverted V represents an arrow head).
5. Use 'singular' not 'composite' outcomes. Composite outcomes contain both a cause and an effect (e.g. increase seat-belt use through tougher laws). This should be stated as two, rather than just one outcome. Words like through, or by in an outcome or step show that you're looking at a composite, rather than a singular outcome.
7. Put outcomes into an hierarchical order. The normal DoView convention is to have highest level outcomes at the top and then drill down to lower level outcomes (you could have it another way - for instance from right to left). Use the simple rule that you can tell that outcome A is above outcome B in a case where, if you could magically make A happen, you would not bother with trying to make B happen.
8. Each level in an outcomes model should include all the relevant steps needed to achieve the steps or outcome(s) above it.
9. Keep measurements/indicators separate from outcomes and steps they're attempting to measure. Measurement should not be allowed to dominate an outcomes model. If it does, you're drawing a model of what you can measure, not what you want to do. Put your measurements (indicators) in as a next stage after you've drawn your model. The only time measurement should be included directly in an outcomes model is where the results of the measurement itself is a step in an outcomes model (e.g. an audit process).
In the diagram above, the outcomes model on the right shows the initial outcomes model which has been drawn. The outcomes model on the left shows indicators (measures) for outcomes which have subsequently been placed on the outcomes model. It should not be assumed that all outcomes will always have an associated measurement.
10. Put a 'value' in front of your outcomes and steps (e.g. suitable, sufficient, adequate, effective).
You don't need to define these 'values' at the time you are first building your model. This allows you to move on and get the model built without having to delay over every outcome as your and those you are working with identify the specifics of how the step or outcome will be 'suitable', 'sufficient, 'adequate' or 'effective'. In a technical sense these values identify parts in the outcomes model where you could drill-down further in the future, if this is necessary. If appropriate, in the future, you can launch an evaluation sub-project to specify what exactly these values mean in regard to a particular step or outcome.
11. Build models as large as you like by creating many modular outcome 'slices' (separate sub-diagrams of parts of your outcomes model). Outcomes models should not be limited to just a single page if the world of the organization, program, sector or collaboration needs to be visualized with an outcomes model larger than this. The way to build models as large as you like, is to break them into a set of interlinked sub-diagrams which in Easy Outcomes are known as 'slices'. Slices can be seen as a series of cuts through the world of outcomes in your area of interest. For instance, you might have slices at the national, locality, organization and individual level. Because the steps and outcomes in each slice are related (e.g. all in the 'organizational' slice relate to the organizational level) it is easier for the reader to quickly understand this sub-component of the outcomes model. Using a modular approach also lets you quickly borrow and amend sub-diagrams from other models which have been built in the past (see www.OutcomesModels.org for models from which you can borrow). The trick is to get the smallest number of slices needed to effectively communicate the relevant outcomes in the model. (DoView lets you quickly navigate through models made up of multiple slices with it's 'hop-to' hyperlinks).
12. Don't assume that you need a single high-level outcome at the top of an integrated organizational outcomes model. Outcomes models should be about the external world, not just about a particular organization. Often organizations are delegated to undertake interventions in a number of areas or sectors that are best modeled separately. If you build separate models for the conceptually different areas or sectors an organization is intervening in, you can then just take that specific model and use it in discussions with stakeholders from that sector. This keeps things really clear for external stakeholders because the specific outcomes model which they're interested in is not enmeshed with other steps and outcomes from other sectors they're not interested in. In addition, if you have drawn your models as generic 'cascading sets of causes in the real world' as suggested in 2 above, rather than restricting them only to steps and outcomes which are attributable to one particular organization, you'll find that they are a lot more useful for external stakeholders. External stakeholders can just look at the model, identify the particular steps and outcomes their activity may be focused on, and see how this fits into the overall picture of the outcomes model.
The diagram above shows on the left an overly 'integrated' organizational outcomes model where the brown and green steps and outcomes which relate to different topics have been mixed together into a unitary outcomes model. As an example of this, imagine that a public health organization is working on both smoking and water quality issues where the brown steps and outcomes relate to smoking and the green relate to water quality. It is better for the outcomes model to have been built as it is on the right where the steps and outcomes related to smoking have been drawn separately (brown) from those related to water quality (green). This means that when the public health organization goes to discuss the outcomes model with stakeholders involved in water quality, these other stakeholders can easily see the part of the model which is relevant to them (the green part). In the case above, such discussions have then gone on to result in additional green steps being added to make a more comprehensive diagram of the relevant steps and outcomes on this topic.
13. Include both current high priority and lower priority steps and outcomes. Your outcomes model should be as accurate a model as you can draw of the 'cascading set of causes in the real world ' therefore it's not just about the current priorities you can afford to work on if they are a sub-set of the wider outcomes picture. Once you' ve drawn your outcomes model you can then map, a typically more limited number of, priorities onto your more comprehensive outcomes model. This allows you to think strategically about alternative options in the future and reflect this by changing your priorities. If your outcomes model only includes your current priorities it gives you no guidance as to how your current priorities map onto the range of options which are available in the real world. In a public sector context, this also allows outcomes models to support public sector employees providing 'free and frank advice' about how the world is – that is, the cascading set of causes in the real world. It's also consistent with the idea of them providing evidence-based policy advice as they can accumulate evidence under the links within the model (see the Easy Outcomes Step 2b on adding evidence to links within models). It's then up to elected government officials to decide what their priorities will be and these can be mapped onto the underlying broader outcomes model. This approach means that outcomes models do not have to change every time there's a change in the elected official in charge or of the government as a whole. If elected official priorities change then the priorities mapped onto the model simply change.
The diagram above shows how the broader outcomes model on the left build, for instance by a public service department, has had an elected representative's priorities mapped onto it (in pink). These could change at any time that the elected representative changes, but the underlying model should stay the same unless the external world which it is modeling changes. The model on the right which just consists of the pink priority steps, shows how limiting an outcomes model just to current steps produces an impoverished model compared to the comprehensive model on the left.
* These guidelines are an adaptation of the set of outcomes model standards which has been developed Duignan, P. (2006) Outcomes model standards for Systematic Outcomes Analysis [http://www.parkerduignan.com/oiiwa/toolkit/standards1.html].