text:
Ted Cruz Forcing Vote on His 'Drain the Swamp' Bill!
Breaking News: Ted Cruz is launching a major push to force a vote on his 'Drain the Swamp' term limits legislation!
There isn't a whole lot that Republicans and Democrats agree on these days. The country is more politically polarized today than at any point since the Civil War. Just think about that for a second: the last time that Americans were this politically divided, there was a civil war...
But there is one thing that almost all Americans seem to agree on: career politicians are ruining this country.
The media has spent the past week talking about Baltimore Congressman Elijah Cummings (D - 36 years). Trump called Cummings out for abandoning the people of his district and ignoring the fact that they are living in squalor. The Left and the Media teamed up to brand Trump as a racist.
Why? Well, Trump was absolutely right. Elijah Cummings has represented the people of Baltimore -- in both the Maryland Legislature and the United States Congress -- for 36 consecutive years. And in all that time, the problems that he promised to fix have only gotten worse.
Take a look around the country and you will notice the same thing. When you see Nancy Pelosi (D - 32 yrs) and Chuck Schumer (D - 38 yrs) attack Donald Trump (R - 2 yrs), remember that they launched the same exact attacks against Ronald Reagan back in the 80s...
Republicans and Democrats don't agree on much these days, but one thing we can agree on is the fact that career politicians are hurting this country. 89% of Republicans, 76% of Democrats, and 83% of Independents agree that there should be some kind of term limits for members of Congress.
Ted Cruz (R - 6 yrs) and Francis Rooney (R - 2 yrs) have a bill that would do just that. But the GOP and Democrat leaders are blocking it from reaching the floor for a vote and debate!
Please, you cannot let the Pelosi, Schumer, and McConnell win! Send your instant FaxBlast to Congress now and FORCE a vote on Ted Cruz's Drain the Swamp term limits amendment!
The legislation is S.J.Res.1 / H.J.Res.20. These bills would limit Congressmen to serving just three terms (6 years) and Senators to serving only two terms (12 years).
Benjamin Franklin once said that "in free government, the rulers are the servants, and the people their superiors -- for the former therefore to return to among the latter was not to degrade, but to promote them."
The Founders designed Congress around a service model. Citizens would be elected to Congress, bring fresh ideas to DC solve the country's problems, and then return to private life.
But that isn't what is happening today. Honestly, what kind of new and fresh ideas could these people possibly bring to the table after spending 30+ or 40+ years in Congress?
People don't run for re-election 5 or 6 times to serve their communities... They do it to serve themselves.
Cruz and Rooney's bill would put an end to this once and for all. But this isn't the only proposed fix.
Rep. Rooney has another bill called the Thomas Jefferson Public Service Act. This legislation would reduce Congressional salaries to just a single dollar for anyone who spends more than 12 years in Congress and would truly return us to a service model. Other bills would cut off pensions and benefits for anyone who spends more than a dozen years in Congress, creating an incentive for Congressmen and Senators to retire early (so they can keep their benefits).
But all of these bills are being blocked. This issue is literally the one thing that almost all Americans agree on, and the Democrat and Republican leaders are teaming up to stop it from moving forward.
They understand that this is the single biggest threat to their power.
We are so close to winning! Send your instant FaxBlast to Congress now and FORCE a vote on Ted Cruz's Drain the Swamp term limits amendment!
Make no mistake: the powers-that-be are going to fight us tooth and nail. People like Mitch McConnell (R - 34 yrs), Chuck Schumer, and Nancy Pelosi want to cling to power as long as they can.
But this fight is about so much more than that. Powerful lobbyists have already 'bought' these Congressmen and Senators. Companies and organizations have spent hundreds of millions, if not billions, to influence Congress. They will do anything to protect their "investments."
Still, at the end of the day, these Politicians don't serve their corporate donors or the lobbyists. They serve you. As Benjamin Franklin said, you have the power, not them.
The Cruz-Rooney bill restores the balance of power. It returns the power to the People and puts an end to career politicians once and for all.
Right now, there is a major push to force a vote on this common sense legislation. But Ted Cruz can't do it alone. He needs your help right now to finally Drain the Swamp once and for all!
Don't let this opportunity slip away! Please, you must send your instant FaxBlast to Congress now and FORCE a vote on Ted Cruz's Drain the Swamp term limits amendment!
For the People,


This page contains a single entry by Perry Middlemiss published on September 27, 2011 6:54 AM.
Poem: The Walled Garden by Clem Lack was the previous entry in this blog.
Reprint: Mrs Aeneas Gunn: "We of the Never-Never" is the next entry in this blog.


You are Ghost: Mercenary Super-Hacker.
Your mission: Break in, hack terminals, get out. Don't get caught.
Up-Down: Move up or down when next to stairs.
Medbh Campbell for inspiration, Jessica for thoughts, help and some amazing art work, OpenGameArt contributors for sound effects and music (a full list is at the bottom of the page), the makers of PyGame, Python and SDL, and Devi, for inspiring us with the game jam!


The DPA 4099-DC-1-201-B is a professional microphone with a bass clip and feature CORE technology. This is the perfect mic solution for PA amplification and live recording of acoustic upright bass. It offers a sound that is considerably more natural than an internal microphone or pickup. There are several excellent placement possibilities on the instrument. The sound it provides is considerably more natural than an internal microphone or pick-up. The mic fits instruments with a body depth between 35 mm (1.4 in) and 122 mm (4.8 in).
The DPA 4099-DC-1-201-B is a professional microphone with a bass clip and feature CORE technology. This is the perfect mic solution for PA amplification and live recording of acoustic upright bass. It offers a sound that is considerably more natural than an internal microphone or pickup. There are several excellent placement possibilities on the instrument. The sound it provides is considerably more natural than an internal microphone or pick-up. The mic fits instruments with a body depth between 35 mm (1.4 in) and 122 mm (4.8 in). Users will appreciate how gently this condenser mic adheres to their prized instrument. It is elegant, lightweight, unobtrusive and designed to stay out of the way during a performance. The mounting mechanism makes it easy to move the mic between instruments with just one hand.


text:
Featured StoryNews
Crunchyroll to air Phantasy Star Online 2 The Animation
Phantasy Star Online 2 The Animation debuted today in Japan, and we've been anxiously awaiting for one of the major anime streaming sites to announce they'll air it in the West.
That wait it over, and Crunchyroll has announced Phantasy Star Online 2 The Animation will air every Friday beginning Jan. 8 at 10 p.m. PST and will be available to Crunchyroll members in the USA, Canada, UK, Ireland, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, Finland, Latin America, Turkey, the Middle East and North Africa.
The show features a completely original story that takes place on earth in the near future and follows "Itsuki Tachibana, a player of Phantasy Star Online 2, and the challenges he faces both in and outside of the game. The anime series will be the eighth project to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the Phantasy Star Online series, with the original Phantasy Star Online 2 game having been released in 2012 by SEGA.
PSO 2 The Animation is directed by Keiichiro Kawaguchi, with Mitsutaka Hirota handling both scripting and series composition. Character designs are provided by Minoko Takasu, with animation produced by TELECOM ANIMATION FILM.
crunchyroll Phantasy Star Online 2 the animation
Chris is the editor-in-chief of Mega Visions Magazine and the co-creator of SEGA Nerds. Over the years, he's written for publications like Joystiq, PSP Fanboy, RETRO magazine, among others. He's also an avid pro wrestling fan, and it's still real to him, dammit.
SEGA announces premiere date for Phantasy Star Online 2: The animation
Phantasy Star Online 2 anime coming West in 2016
Review: Phantasy Star Online 2 The Animation series premier
A PSO2 The Animation Art Exhibit will happen in Japan
SEGA Nerdcast: Episode 97 (Talkin' our favorite anime video games)

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Backsplash ideas bathroom vanity designs tsc is one images from bathroom vanity backsplash inspiration of Time Beads photos gallery. This image has dimension 640x480 Pixel and File Size 71 KB, you can click the image above to see the large or full size photo. Previous photo in the gallery is ceramic tile carpet bscconstruction blog. For next photo in the gallery is brown dual vanity sink transitional bathroom studio. You are viewing image #22 of 23, you can see the complete gallery at the bottom below.


text:
Tommy FH Ayres Spring Stand Rocking Horse RARE
Shop Home > Sold
Helen Robbins Tel: 07970 803334 email: [email protected]
Tommy is an F H Ayres Spring Stand rocking horse. The spring stand rocking horse was first introduced in 1895 when a patent was applied for, and this was granted in 1896. It consists of metal springs replacing the more normal wooden pillars, and would have been made alongside their other hobby horses up until around World War I. The metal springs were designed to provide an oscillating movement when the horse was rocked, `by these means an action graceful and natural whilst free from unpleasant jerks can be imparted to the body, with a steady support'.
Tommy has had his overpaint removed to reveal the original paint which was in good condition and which required little enhancement. He retains all the signs associated with his life as a well loved horse, including wear to the top of his neck and beautiful craquelure to the gesso in places. This craquelure cannot be faked and is a sign of an original condition horse. He has been given new hair and tack which has been aged to complement the originality of the horse. The stand has been stripped and checked, given a french polish and waxed. He can be put back to gentle use by a new family.
Price £3500. Offers invited close to the asking price. We post Worldwide


Image Title: Elegant Red Oak Flooring Hardwood Floors Unfinished Red Oak Floor Designs. Filename: elegant-red-oak-flooring-hardwood-floors-unfinished-red-oak-floor-designs.jpg. Image Dimension: 750 x 880 pixels. Images Format: jpg/jpeg. Publisher/Author: Rupert Jast. Uploaded Date: Wednesday - January 23rd. 2019 02:55:51 AM. Category: Interior. Image Source: diy.com.
Tap The Thumbnail Bellow to See Related Gallery of "Elegant Red Oak Flooring Hardwood Floors Unfinished Red Oak Floor Designs"


Royal Belts in Ristenbatt Vacuum's Secure Online Store.
This belt is designed to fit the early Power Nozzle used with Royal Metal Tank vacuums. It is a flat stretch type belt so it should be changed at least once per year to keep your vacuum cleaning well. The power nozzles that use this belt have metal bottom plates.


text:
Tag Archives: Bruce Willis
344. TWELVE MONKEYS (1995)
August 9, 2018 Pete Trbovich	3 Comments
AKA 12 Monkeys
"I think we should try to avoid defining things precisely. Too many films are packaging the world too neatly for us, and I don't think the world should be packaged neatly. But hidden things and unknowns… The more you can encourage that on the screen, the better for the mental state of the world." –Terry Gilliam, "FilmScouts" interview
DIRECTED BY: Terry Gilliam
FEATURING: Bruce Willis, Madeleine Stowe, Brad Pitt
PLOT: The future is a grim world where most of humanity has been wiped out by a virus and the rest live underground. James Cole, a prisoner in this future, is recruited to travel back in time on a mission to discover the source of this virus and help his present time develop an antidote. Thanks to unforeseen mishaps and the shaky technology of time travel, his mission goes off track.
This feature was inspired by La Jetee, Chris Marker's 1962 experimental science fiction short film done almost entirely with black and white still photographs and narration. Terry Gilliam knew the structure of the film, but did not view it before making Twelve Monkeys (obviously, screenwriters David and Janet Peoples were intimately familiar with the earlier film). The core story of James Cole witnessing an execution while stuck in a time loop is the main element surviving from La Jetee. The virus, Brad Pitt's character, and Madeline Stowe's role are all the scriptwriters' invention, as well as an updating and cultural shift to an American setting.
One scene that does survive from La Jetee is a character tracing the timeline of their existence on a cross-cut tree stump. Gilliam makes a double-homage by showing the scene from Vertigo during a convenient Hitchcock film marathon showing at the theater where Willis and Stowe hide out.
Gilliam cites a trip to the dentists' office, with its multiple layers of protection for everything to keep it sterile, as inspiration for the protective gear—including the "body condom"—Bruce Willis wears in his trips to the world's surface.
Brad Pitt had never played an unhinged lunatic before Twelve Monkeys; Gilliam was excited at the prospect of casting him against type. Later, Pitt would become known for his manic portrayals in films such as 1999's Fight Club.
On-set rumor has it that Gilliam got Pitt to be a more convincing crazy person by confiscating his cigarettes during filming; Pitt was acting while experiencing nicotine fits.
There are TV screens present at some point or another in nearly every scene of the film; Gilliam's intended to show us as dehumanized by media. Gilliam firmly asserts his place in the cyberpunk genre with the quote: "I've always had a problem with the belief that technology was going to solve all of our problems." Twelve Monkeys continues this theme from 1985's Brazil.
Twelve Monkeys received two Oscar nominations: Pitt for Best Supporting Actor and Julie Weiss for Costume Deign. It won neither.
The SyFy Channel original series 12 Monkeys is a spinoff of this movie.
INDELIBLE IMAGE: Insert the obligatory lament that there are so many indelible scenes that it's hard to pick one. We'll go with the giant "video ball," a metal sphere festooned with lenses and video screens, which is always hovering in front of James Cole as the scientists interrogate him in between time hops. It's a signature of the film's "complex style over function" motif and the most sure moment where you can walk into the film cold and still say "Aha, this must be a Terry Gilliam movie!"
THREE WEIRD THINGS: "Mentally divergent" Cassandra Complex; tooth surgery; giraffes galloping down the freeway
WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Besides Terry Gilliam's trademark rococco visuals, off-the-wall plotting, and larger-than-life characters, Twelve Monkeys has something else that sets it apart from other time travel movies: it is completely without plot holes, and even without paradoxes except that of the stable time loop which gives us the story. Upon first viewing, the story seems to be chaos. Repeat viewings are necessary to assemble a clear story out of the puzzle pieces, every single one of which fits perfectly down to the tiniest details. It's such a flawless whole when fully mapped that constructing it was a cerebral feat on the order of Fields-medal mathematics.
Original trailer for Twelve Monkeys
COMMENTS: Warning: this review contains spoilers.
Make no mistake: Twelve Monkeys is a very clear, coherent narrative. You just need a wall of pushpin charts, a ball of yarn to connect all Continue reading 344. TWELVE MONKEYS (1995) →
1995Brad PittBruce WillisMust seeNonlinearPuzzleScience FictionTerry GilliamTime Travel
CAPSULE: BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS (1999)
May 15, 2018 Pete Trbovich	11 Comments
DIRECTED BY: Alan Rudolph
FEATURING: Bruce Willis, Nick Nolte, Albert Finney, Barbara Hershey
PLOT: If this movie had a plot, it would be about a penultimate meeting between a used car salesman going mad and a brilliant but unrecognized sci-fi writer. (That's what it said on the tin, anyway.)
WHY IT WON'T MAKE THE LIST: This is a list of the 366 Weirdest Movies of All Time, a designation which requires a length of video to be both (a) weird and (b) a movie. Breakfast of Champions fails at (b). Just because it is on film and has actors and sets does not make it a movie, in the same way a pile of random lumber and bricks is not a house. (And it isn't even the weirdest Kurt Vonnegut adaptation; that honor goes to Slapstick.)
COMMENTS: The present author has put off this review for far too long, because when it comes to director Alan Rudolph's aborted run at adapting Breakfast of Champions by the late Kurt Vonnegut Jr. into a film, there are no right answers. There is no way to talk about a movie that is stuttering mute about itself. Bottom line: Breakfast is white noise, static, not even interesting enough to be called chaos. Even after you take into account that Vonnegut and Hollywood go together like pickles and peanut butter, and even after you grant that of all the Vonnegut novels to pick for film adaptation, this is the one with the big red warning sign saying "DO NOT ADAPT!" on it, and even after you allow that Rudolph the red-assed director worked from a screenplay he wrote himself and was therefore punching about twenty million kilotons above his weight… there, see? We're out of space already!
Kurt Vonnegut doesn't lend himself to short book reviews, either, so bear with us:
IN THE BOOK: Dwayne Hoover is a used car dealership owner who's going nuts. Kilgore Trout (a stock character in many Vonnegut novels) is a hack science fiction author who's a half-mad genius. Eliot Rosewater, another half-mad millionaire philanthropist from yet another Vonnegut novel, writes Trout a fan letter that sends the author on an odyssey to appear at an arts festival in Hoover's town. Hoover and Trout meet, Trout gives Hoover a copy of his latest novel, Hoover reads it, the book triggers full-blown insanity, and he blows up his life and pretty much exits the story. Vonnegut appears in his own story for the only time in his career, to approach Trout and confront him with the reality that he is himself a character in somebody else's novel, electing to set him free. On top of this, Vonnegut skips around, telling things out of order, draws cartoon pictures in the story, makes satirical points about consumerism (among many things), and frames humans as vats of chemical reactions with no free will. He also says this novel is intended as a purge to rid himself of mental clutter. It is a unique work in Vonnegut's career; you can see the seam between his earlier work and later works.
IN THE MOVIE: Some or none or all of the above happens. It is honest to God impossible to tell. If you ran the book through a blender Continue reading CAPSULE: BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS (1999) →
1999Alan RudolphAlbert FinneyBarbara HersheyBewareBruce WillisComedyFlopHollywoodKurt VonnegutNick Nolte
CAPSULE: SIN CITY: A DAME TO KILL FOR (2014)
August 27, 2014 Gregory J. Smalley (366weirdmovies)	1 Comment
DIRECTED BY: Robert Rodriguez, Frank Miller
FEATURING: Mickey Rourke, Powers Boothe, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jessica Alba, Eva Green, Josh Brolin, Clive Owen, Bruce Willis
PLOT: Three stories involving gamblers, thugs, private detectives, strippers, corrupt senators, and femme fatales, and other disreputable denizens of the mythical Sin City.
WHY IT WON'T MAKE THE LIST: It doesn't do anything new or better to distinguish itself from its Certified Weird predecessor; not that that's necessarily a bad thing, entertainment wise, but the original represents the Sin City franchise on the List of the 366 Best Weird Movies well enough.
COMMENTS: First, the good (or bad) news: this 2014 followup does such a good job recreating the look and feel of the surprise 2005 hit, right down to renovating the rapidly aging faces of Mickey Rourke and Bruce Willis to the point where they're indistinguishable from their decade-younger selves, that you could edit the stories from A Dame to Kill For into the original Sin City and never notice the difference. The tangled timeline—some of the stories here take place before any of the events in the first movie, while others are roughly contemporaneous with it—helps with that sense that Dame is not so much a sequel (or prequel) as it is an organic extension of the original, almost as if we were viewing deleted scenes. Returning from the first film is Rourke's Marv, that slab of grizzled muscle with a vertical nose and a horizontal chin, who unites the stories and plays a supporting role in two out of three tales; Willis' romantic cop Hartigan, in what is basically a cameo; and Jessica Alba's diva stripper Nancy, now an alcoholic wreck. Josh Brolin tackles a younger (yet somehow more bitter and jaded) version of the role played by Clive Owen in the original, while Powers Boothe's corrupt politico has a greatly expanded part as the new principal antagonist for two of the three characters. There are numerous callbacks to the previous films (e.g., a portrait of Nick Stahl's Yellow Bastard on his fathers' wall) and origin stories (we learn how Manute got his stylish gold eye). The real stars here are the new characters, though: Joseph Gordon-Levitt's Johnny, a gambler with a golden touch whose boyish looks are a welcome contrast to the craggy male miens that otherwise populate the city, and especially Eva Green's seductress Ava. Green is frequently nude—in fact, her first appearance naked, on a diving board in front of a digital moon, is itself justification for the movie's existence—but she is also the first female character in the Sin City universe who is a worthy adversary for a male. Her femme fatale performance is campy, but riveting, and with ruby red lips and turquoise eyes accentuating her classical black and white beauty, she's a breathtaking update of the archetype. The digital cinematography is as crisp and beautiful as the original film: the whites of characters' eyes sometimes appear to glow, as does their spurting blood, and there are wonderfully evocative effects like tendrils of steam that hang in midair without dissipating. There are scattered weird visual touches, the most impressive of which is a giant poker hand (you'll know it when you see it). Overall, fans who loved their first visit should find plenty of reason to go slumming again in this City, while those who had their misgivings about the trip may find themselves depressed by the burg's seedier aspects, now that it's really showing its age.
Given that the new Sin City is pretty much of a piece with its predecessor, its lackluster performance with critics and box office patrons requires explanation. The core fanbase seems appeased, based on a decent 7.2 IMDB rating, so we assume that the movie failed to put casual fans' butts in theater seats. The lesson is that nine years between installments is not exactly striking while the iron is hot, no matter how faithful to the original you make the followup. On the critical side, Dame bashing may be partly a chance to reappraise the original, which caught reviewers by surprise with its technique. (Nathan Rabin candidly takes this tack in his review for The Dissolve). In 2005 nothing else quite leapt off the screen the way Sin City did, and the glowing visuals, star power and cinematic energy caught critics by surprise and allowed them to overlook the film's many flaws: its painful faux-Chandler dialogue, pornographic brutality, and adolescent understanding of both masculinity and femininity. Since the visuals are no longer original, today's reviewers appear to be looking past the screen's gilded surface and letting their misgivings about the movie's lack of any worldview beyond appreciation of the awesomeness of violence dictate their opinions.
"…it was easy to imagine that A Dame to Kill For would try to one-up the original, to push the envelope of perversity in some fresh and jarring (if likely unsuccessful) way. Instead, Rodriguez and Miller have erred in the opposite direction, offering up a movie that feels timid, half-hearted, eager to play it safe. The former path might have been a mistake. This one feels almost like a betrayal."–Christopher Orr, The Atlantic (contemporaneous)
2014ActionBlack and WhiteBruce WillisClive OwenCrimeFilm NoirFlopFrank MillerHollywoodJessica AlbaJoseph Gordon-LevittJosh BrolinMickey RourkeRobert RodriguezTinted footage
171. SIN CITY (2005)
June 4, 2014 Gregory J. Smalley (366weirdmovies)	6 Comments
"It's pretty damn weird to eat people."–Marv, Sin City
DIRECTED BY: Robert Rodriguez, Frank Miller, Quentin Tarantino ("special guest director")
FEATURING: Bruce Willis, Mickey Rourke, Clive Owen, Jessica Alba, Nick Stahl, Jaime King, Rosario Dawson, Elijah Wood, Benicio Del Toro, Brittany Murphy, Josh Hartnett
PLOT: The movie tells three stories (with some common characters) set in the mythical Basin City: in one, a police detective risks his life to stop a child-killer. In a second, a brutal, mentally ill criminal hunts down the men he believes killed the only woman who ever showed kindness to him. A final strand tells of a suave assassin who attempts to prevent someone else's accidental killing from turning into an all-out war between the cops, the mafia, and the self-governing prostitutes of Old Town.
A fan of Frank Miller's original series of Sin City comics, Robert Rodriguez wanted to make the movie as true to the book as possible: "a translation, not an adaptation." The actual comics were used as the storyboards. The stories selected were "The Hard Goodbye ," "The Big Fat Kill ," and "That Yellow Bastard " as well as the short "The Customer is Always Right."
Rodriguez shot the opening segment, "The Customer is Always Right," in one day as a proof-of-concept to convince Miller that he could do justice to the art style. He then used that clip to convince actors such as Bruce Willis and Benicio Del Toro to sign on to the project.
Rodriguez insisted that Miller receive a co-director credit on the film, but the Directors Guild of America objected to the credit (they do not allow co-directing). He then decided to give Miller full credit, but Miller refused. Rodriguez then resigned from the Guild so the co-directing credit could remain.
Quentin Tarantino directed a single scene in the movie (a segment from "The Big Fat Kill" involving a conversation between the severed head of Del Toro's "Jackie-Boy" and Clive Owen's "Dwight"). Tarantino directed for a salary of $1 as a way to repay Rodriguez for composing music for Kill Bill: Vol. 2 for $1.
The movie was entirely shot on Rodriguez's "digital backlot" (green screen studio) near his home in Austin, Texas.
Sin City screened in competition at Cannes and won the Technical Grand Prize.
Plans for a sequel (based on Miller's "A Dame to Kill For ") were announced immediately after the film was completed; the followup feature was delayed until 2014, however.
INDELIBLE IMAGE: From the very first frame—a woman in a blood-red backless cocktail dress on a balcony staring out over a steel-grey city—Sin City's pulp Expressionism is consistently startling and poetic. Since we're fascinated by the weird, we'll select the first sight of the Yellow Bastard, the bald, satellite dish-eared pedophile killer dyed the color of French's mustard, as our unforgettable take-home image from the movie.
WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: A marriage between the mythologies of film noir and violent comics, Sin City's bloody tales are set in an abstract urban hellscape inhabited by invulnerable tough guys and rough sexy dames. They play like the lost works of Raymond Chandler's alternate universe grandson, written to scrape up a few bucks for a bottle of booze while he was down and out in Gotham City. With a cast of cannibal serial killers, jaundiced pedophiles and ninja hookers, the adventures of the hard-boiled demigods of Sin City are as fantastical as its random splotches of color in a monochrome landscape are visually unreal.
Original trailer for Sin City
COMMENTS: Sin City earns its "recommended" label almost solely on the basis of its visuals (bolstered by some finely weird touches), and not for its Continue reading 171. SIN CITY (2005) →
2005Benicio Del ToroBlack and WhiteBruce WillisClive OwenCrimeElijah WoodFilm NoirFrank MillerHollywoodJessica AlbaJosh HartnettMickey RourkeQuentin TarantinoRecommendedRobert RodriguezRosario DawsonTinted footage
CAPSULE: THE FIFTH ELEMENT (1997)
January 27, 2010 Gregory J. Smalley (366weirdmovies)	2 Comments
DIRECTED BY: Luc Besson
FEATURING: Bruce Willis, Milla Jovovich, Gary Oldman, Chris Tucker
PLOT: 300 years in the future, an ex-special ops agent turned taxi driver must collect four stones and discover the fifth element to stop the universe from being destroyed by evil, with the help of a scantily-clad supreme being.
WHY IT WON'T MAKE THE LIST: The Fifth Element is unique and has its devoted fans, but although it's much busier and more colorful than the average Hollywood space opera, in the end, it's not so much weird as simply chaotic and overstuffed.
COMMENTS: You can probably gauge your tolerance for The Fifth Element according to your tolerance for antic comedian Chris Tucker and his amphetaminic falsetto. Although he's not a major player in the story, for better or worse his blond, over-coiffed, simpering talk-show diva dominates every scene he's in, and is emblematic of the grotesquely overdrawn elements that populate Besson's world. Furthermore, his unnecessary presence is introduced through a senseless plot contrivance (the idea that this Oprah-on-a-galactic-scale pop icon would be obsessed with building a broadcast around a non-celebrity contest winner), which is itself symbolic of the way the script seizes any opportunity to shoehorn in any idea that occurs to it. A few of those ideas include a future New York City grown up to the sky and jam packed with flying cars, Milla Jovovivh as a cloned carrot-haired "supreme being" wrapped in a tiny ace bandage, and Gary Oldman as a villainous comic-relief corporate honcho with a southern accent and a dedicated phone line to receive important calls from Ultimate Evil. It's insanely baroque, and the craziness itself is the glue that holds it together even as the wild story makes only a token gesture at sense, relying instead on the viewer to fill in the gaps through their familiarity with conventions of other blockbuster "save the universe" sci-fi epics. Although it starts out looking like a Die Hard/Raiders of the Lost Ark hybrid set in space, at approximately one hour in comic relief completely hijacks the movie when Oldman's Zorg threatening meeting with a high priest ends with him choking on a cherry and frantically punching buttons for random automated tasks on his desk. The comedy never looks back, and this reliance on humor is the film's ultimate downfall, because it is not very funny. It's filled with characters comically fainting, or being shut inside a collapsible refrigerator as Bruce Willis frantically tries to entertain multiple guests in his shabby apartment, or Chris Tucker delivering yet another incomprehensibly high-pitched monologue. The movie is messy as hell, bouncing back and forth from action to comedy to spectacle to apocalyptic mythology with an eight-year-old kid's enthusiasm and attention span, and that lack of focus may make the movie come off as mildly weird to those used to more disciplined Hollywood epics. The Fifth Element has one thing unconditionally in its favor: the costume and set design is masterful, keeping the eye busy and delighted even while the mind wanders off the plot. The background characters are all so punked out that the few clean cut authority figures stand out as the weirdos. Although The Fifth Element is a cult movie some people treasure precisely because of its idiosyncratic flaws, which make it unlike any other would-be blockbuster, I can't count myself among them.
With it's overwhelmingly American cast and genre, there's little that's distinctively French about this movie except its director, Luc Besson, who had previously scored arthouse and critical successes with the stylish La Femme Nikkita (1990) and Leon [The Professional] (1994). Nonetheless, it was the most expensive French made film to date, surpassing the great weird fantasy The City of Lost Children [La cité des enfants perdus].
"…one of the great goofy movies–a film so preposterous I wasn't surprised to discover it was written by a teenage boy. That boy grew up to become Luc Besson, director of good smaller movies and bizarre big ones, and here he's spent $90 million to create sights so remarkable they really ought to be seen."–Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times (Cannes premiere)
ActionBruce WillisComedyFrenchGary OldmanLuc BessonScience Fiction


text:
Streams and Waterfalls
Wetlands and Bog Gardens
Wild Ponds wins Chelsea Gold!
When previous Chelsea Gold Medal winning garden designer Gary Breeze needed wildlife gardening experts to design the planting for his 2017 Chelsea garden, he looked no further than Wild Ponds and our sister company Natural Gardens. His instinct was rewarded by the judges with a prestigious Gold Medal, with TV presenter Monty Don praising the "attention to detail" of the planting.
The Broadland Boatbuilder's Garden is sponsored by the International Boatbuilding Training College, in the Artisan Gardens category. The garden centres on a three quarter-size replica of a 900 year-old oak boat under construction, surrounded by Norfolk reedbeds and water plants.
To produce the look of a natural habitat we decided to grow the reedbed in sections, allowing the native plants to develop together over some months. The sections were then linked together on site to form an entirely realistic reedbed. Complementary planting includes Broadland specialist plants such as water soldier (host of the Norfolk Hawker dragonfly larvae) and milk parsley (for Swallowtail butterfly caterpillars).
Where possible, we also recycled surplus native plants from local sources. Among these, Ryburgh Wildlife Group provided waterside vegetation, following necessary annual clearance of its open water wader scrape, and Stibbard Primary School donated surplus water soldier from its wildlife pond. Native willows were rescued following ditch clearance by a local farmer. Friends also gave surplus native water plants from their own ponds.
"Not only is it personally very satisfying to have achieved one of gardening's professional pinnacles of a Chelsea Gold, it is equally rewarding to have involved the local community in the garden's creation. I understand that children from the local primary school are excited at having been part of it and this can only interest them more in wildlife."
The garden also received BBC gardening presenter Monty Don's seal of approval. "The celebration and attention to craftsmanship, the planting around it, reflects the Norfolk Broads where the boat was found," he said during Tuesday evening's TV coverage. "The attention to detail, the way the orchids are put in the grass, the moorhen nest in the corner, the way the water is set – everything is a celebration of craftsmanship."
Monty Don praises the Chelsea Garden (courtesy BBC):
https://www.wildponds.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Monty-Don.mp4
By Ian Wilson|2019-08-12T08:57:57+00:00August 9th, 2017|Wildlife|0 Comments
Native wetland plants for colour, structure, and wildlife
Autumn – the best time of year to clean out your wildlife pond
When is the best time of year to put in a wildlife pond?
Installing a wildlife pond
Pond Building
© Wild Ponds | All Rights Reserved
Covering East Anglia including: Norwich, Norfolk, Suffolk & Cambridgeshire


text:
Hybrid is the best bet for electric car
Oct 1, 2020 Bet, car, electric, Hybrid
By Mustafa Ziraba
Nowadays, car manufacturers are assigning more resources for the development of engines which leave little to no carbon footprint. As a result of these efforts, the hybrid and electric car types were born. However, because of certain factors, in Uganda, the hybrid is your best bet.
With every car owner, the fuel price and their car's fuel consumption are always points to ponder with sometimes distant dreams of owning an electric car. Would the idea of an electric car work in Uganda?
To answer this question, we need to first categorise the different variants of electric cars. The two main ones are the fully electric cars that use electricity only and the hybrid electric that use some variation of a traditional engine and electricity. That said, the former would be a bit complicated as they are a new technology, making them quite complex even for the savviest of mechanics in Kampala.
This is because there is hardly any charging infrastructure and maintenance support. Globally though, this is changing rapidly with Elon Musk's Tesla breaking the ice with their offerings that have proven that the future of fully electric cars is not out in the wild.
While few models exist, Uganda's favourite manufacturer, Toyota has not put its weight behind the fully electric car going in for the hybrid instead with their Prius hybrid, which have been around for the longest time.
In the used car market, you would not be hard pressed to find a hybrid from any of the popular Japan car manufacturers such as Honda, Nissan and Toyota.
Hybrid basically means mishmash of both the conventional engine and an electric motor powered by batteries, merging the best features of today's engine cars and electric cars while keeping emissions and fuel usage to a minimum.
The traditional engine kicks in when higher speeds are needed or when the weight of the car necessitates more power.
The system makes decisions on whether to use the electric motor or engine based on which would be most economical. It will then take into account other factors such as driving conditions and cruising speeds so that your car is always seamlessly operating the way you expect it to.
Unless the hybrid is incorporated into an already existing model as it is in more recent models, when you look at most older hybrids, you do not seem to get very excited. In fact, you become bored just staring at them. The styling is quite frankly a bad attempt at looking futuristic. There could have been a lot more creative inspiration put into the design which is almost always attributed to aerodynamics to save on fuel.
With the first generation models, do not expect much if you plan to drive hard as they are simply not designed to do anything but drive sensibly. However, when you need to accelerate hard, the battery supplies additional energy to boost drive power, while the engine and motor provide smooth acceleration response.
But under lighter load conditions, such as stop-and-go traffic, hybrids alternate between the two, oftentimes running purely on battery power alone. The engine switches on and off almost seamlessly, and it takes an alert driver to detect it. The only indications are the noise level, which goes from unnatural silence to a light engine hum.
When you put your foot on the brake the Prius' "regenerative braking system" uses the kinetic energy of the wheels to generate electricity which charges the battery, so almost no power is wasted. Most hybrids take full advantage of lightweight materials, everything from its body shell to the accelerator has been designed to be as lightweight as possible to enhance their efficiency.
While hybrids possess many great benefits, they also come with a few cons.
For instance, due to the complex computer system needed to make this car work, hybrid owners should expect more complex and expensive repairs than a regular car.
On the other hand though, manufacturers such as Toyota and Honda have been at it for the longest time making their Hybrid no less reliable than their mainstream cars. Nevertheless, I would suggest avoiding the first-generation cars (1999-2004), as they are slow, much smaller inside, and now likely quite high-mileage.
If you really must go electric, Hybrid is your answer. Get a newer model from one of the tested brands. Many models we are familiar with from the Japan used car market, specifically from Toyota's stable including but not limited to the Alphard, Corolla, Noah, Kluger, Vitz and Harrier, all have Hybrid versions post 2010.
In the pandemic, Manchester manufacturer finds a niche making material for masks in high demand
Hendrick and Childress to establish common Chevrolet engine
2020-2021 Buick, Cadillac and Chevrolet Cars and SUVs: Recall Alert | News
Electric car customers seek driving range of over 500 kilometres
Virgin boss Filippi elected new FE teams' and manufacturers' association head – Formula E


I want to discourage young people from joyriding after I was arrested for driving a stolen car.
It was the first time I had driven a car and the first time I had been joyriding – I thought it would be a bit of fun.
When I got caught and was held in the police cell I just didn't know how to feel as I'm not that type of person. I felt like I really let myself down.
I want to reduce the numbers of young people giving into the pressure or temptation to joyride.
I want people to learn from my mistake and say no to joyriding.


Police have cordoned off part of Salisbury after a man and a woman - reportedly two Russians - were taken ill not far from the restaurant where Sergei and Yulia Skripal fell unwell after being poisoned with novichok.
Wiltshire police said that as a precaution, the Prezzo restaurant and surrounding roads were cordoned off.
Amanda Worne said on Twitter: "Feeling a little apprehensive as Salisbury leaps to action again when 2 Russians are taken ill in Prezzos showing the same symptoms as before ..... AND WE WERE SITTING NEXT TO THEM! "Now under police supervision waiting for medical team to give us the all clear!"


text:
Vegas by the Sea? Florida Bets on High-Stakes Poker
By Thomas R. Collins / Hollywood, Fla. Sunday, Dec. 26, 2010
Thomas Cordy / The Palm Beach Post / ZUMApress.com
Nicole Schmidt, center, reacts to her winning hand in a Texas hold 'em poker game outside the JJ Muggs restaurant and bar in Albacoa, Fla., on July 15, 2010
Steel to Slots: Bethlehem's Casino Bet
Live rock music pummels the air, martinis flow, and the slot machines and blackjack tables are jammed with hopeful gamblers. It's just 7:30 on a Saturday night at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood, Fla., just north of Miami, and cars are clogging State Road 7 below the Seminole Hard Rock's glowing towers, ready to disgorge even more players.
But there's an added reason the Seminole Hard Rock complex is drawing such a horde of gamers these days: poker. Really high-stakes poker. Last spring, the Florida legislature changed the state's gambling laws to allow casinos and other gambling sites to eliminate the maximum bet a player can place to "buy in" to a poker game — a limit that just a few years ago was a paltry $2.
(See TIME's photo-essay "Poker Faces.")
As a result, venues like the Seminole Hard Rock, which is located on a Seminole Indian reservation and operated by the tribe, are suddenly magnets for professional poker players like Michael "the Grinder" Mizrachi, one of the best-known poker faces in Florida, who calls the state's new no-maximum rules "a dream come true. There's nothing better than playing poker with beaches." The World Poker Tour (WPT) — the series of televised poker tournaments that helped launch the big-time poker boom in 2002 — agrees. Almost immediately after the law changed this year, the WPT swooped in and struck a deal with the Seminoles to hold a televised tournament next April at the Hollywood casino — where it will cost $10,000 just to sit at the table. Says WPT CEO Steve Heller: "I think Florida is destined to be one of the top three to five poker markets in the U.S."
Does that mean Florida is destined to become the next Nevada? Gambling is indeed expanding in the Sunshine State. The poker change came on the heels of a deal struck between the legislature and the Seminoles to give the tribe exclusive rights for five years to spread blackjack to most of its seven reservations — an arrangement that guarantees the recession-ravaged state at least $1 billion in revenue. Higher-stakes poker rooms are now sprouting up, not just at Indian casinos but also at more traditional Florida gambling sites like dog tracks, jai alai frontons and thoroughbred-horse tracks called "racinos." Although the sites still often set buy-in maximums, poker games these days can sometimes require a minimum bet of $50 and produce pots reaching the tens of thousands of dollars.
(Read about new, aggressive styles of play in the World Series of Poker.)
Legislators say it's premature to envision Las Vegas in the Everglades. Vegas casino owners, like the proprietors of the Las Vegas Sands, are making pitches to open dazzling resorts in Florida. But whereas gambling like high-stakes poker is ubiquitous in Nevada, there are areas of Florida like Orlando, home to Walt Disney World, where Mouseketeers and one-armed bandits don't exactly mesh. "The state's just so diverse, so [a Vegas-style scenario] is not a natural progression," says state representative Bill Galvano, a Republican from the Gulf Coast who helped lead negotiations with the Seminoles. Adds state representative Jim Waldman, a South Florida Democrat who also took part in the Seminole deal: "I don't think you're going to have another Vegas. What you're going to have are more options for people who want to gamble" in Florida.
(See video of poker's arrival in China.)
Still, Pat Fowler, executive director of the Florida Council on Compulsive Gambling, says that since the state relaxed its poker rules, her group has seen a steady month-by-month increase in the percentage of people calling its help line (888-ADMIT-IT) for problems with blackjack and poker. "We don't know [yet] what the social costs of [the new] policy are," says Fowler, whose organization receives $1.75 million a year from the Seminoles for gambling-addiction treatment under the new deal.
Meanwhile, high-roller tourists are flocking to Florida. Hayden Perez, 34, from Lincoln, Neb., recently played a no-limit cash game at the Seminole Hard Rock that didn't go so well. "I'm not buying dinner for my friends right now, let's put it that way," says Perez, who wouldn't say how much he lost. Perhaps he should check out Mizrachi's "Deep Stacks Live" poker-instruction course, which the Florida champ is hoping to expand now that the sky's the limit in his home state. Mizrachi says other poker pros have told him they've decided to relocate to South Florida. After taking a break from an all-night game session, he simply says that Florida "is a great place to play poker."
See the best business deals of 2010.
See the world's most influential people in the 2010 TIME 100.


Oster® Classic Series Blender Jar Lid - Black is rated 4.5 out of 5 by 2.
Rated 5 out of 5 by Ice Crush Baby from Tip of the lid Recently I had to replace my blender jar. (someone dropped it) and in the process I ordered a bunch of stuff, but not the lid. (silly me) So here is the lid. It fit, came sooner then expected, service was great, the website is easy to use. I am 100% satisfied. Now excuse me, I have a Margarita to make.


Brushwood is a beautiful development situated on one of Richmond Hill's last remaining pieces of tree-lined, picturesque land. It's a place where you and your family have the chance to be inspired by your surroundings, leave behind the hustle and bustle, and paint the perfect picture to suit your lifestyle. If you're looking for the pinnacle of Bathurst living, look no further than Brushwood.
This master-planned community presents a welcome opportunity to step back in time and slow things down. It's a development reminiscent of the old-world while offering some of the most prestigious, fine, and convenient amenities York Region has to offer.
Bathurst St. & King Rd.
You Can Compare Up To 3 Models.
Register for Updates from CountryWide Homes.
Please fill out the form below to receive the latest news from our master-planned communities in the GTA.


Spartan inspired colors for my charr Warrior. Used different shades of gold and bronze for the armor so it appears almost the same shade of gold.
Always keep Black Citadel and Camp Resolve safe!
Fashion Guru How come this look has no comments yet? It's friggin awesome! The Fused sword is spot on, makes you think she nabbed it from the Molten Alliance after she led an attack against them. I know Eternity is nice, it's the single most expensive weapon skin in the game, but I'd like to see a skin that's more in line with the rest of the look. Gold nonetheless!
Fashion Guru Ooh, the colors you chose here are awesome with those weapons. Good choice on the dark templar pauldrons with the vigil chestplate, that looks awesome all together!
Trendspotter Easily one of the best Charr looks I've ever seen nice work!
Stylist Such a great combo of unique armor pieces. They blend together so well. This charr definitely stands out from the crowd. Love it!


text:
Solr 5.0.0 is easy to deploy with cloud Cores and automatic managed-schema but no more schema.xml file to copy.

Solr 5.0.0 can edit a core's configuration via with the Schema REST API.

Solr 5.0.0 breaked Haystack version 2.3.1 because it uses managed-schema by default and removes the need to copy a schema.xml file.
It also provide a ``bin/solr`` command that start and a Solr daemon service, or administrate the Cores.

This what the  ``manage.py solr`` command provided by this Django App

# Install

After cloning this repository

  mkvirtualenv django-haystack-solr-commands
  cd django-haystack-solr-commands
  python setup.py install

You will need **wget, tar, rm**

Configure Haystack and this app by adding at to your server settings.py to following:

    HAYSTACK_CONNECTIONS = {
      'default': {
        'ENGINE': 'haystack.backends.solr_backend.SolrEngine',
        'URL': 'http://127.0.0.1:8983/solr/haystacksolrcommandsexamplecore/',
      },
    }

    SOLR_DIRECTORY = "."
    SOLR_VERSION = "5.0.0"
    SOLR_CORE = 'haystacksolrcommandsexamplecore'

Add ``haystack_solr_commands`` to your INSTALLED_APPS and run :

  python manage.py solr

# Versions tested:

- Python 2.7+
- Django 1.4+
- Haystack 2.3.1+ with Solr 5.0.0+ support
- Search engine used : Solr 5.0.0+ with the latest pysolr
- Oracle Java JVM version 7 or 8

# About Solr 5.0.0

What major changes in 5.0.0 breaks Haystack 2.3.1 apart from the schema.xml and the daemon service start and stop commands ?

Quoting CHANGES.txt in the 5.0.0 distribution :
```
* The following legacy numeric and date field types, deprecated in Solr 4.8, are no
  longer supported: BCDIntField, BCDLongField, BCDStrField, IntField, LongField,
  FloatField, DoubleField, SortableIntField, SortableLongField, SortableFloatField,
  SortableDoubleField, and DateField.  Convert these types in your schema to the
  corresponding Trie-based field type and then re-index.  See SOLR-5936 for more
  information.
```
**Sortable*Fields** have been replace with their equivalent **Trie*Field**

Since 4.8.0, Apache Solr now requires Java 7 or greater (recommended is Oracle Java 7 or OpenJDK 7, minimum update 55; earlier versions have known JVM bugs affecting Solr).
Apache Solr is fully compatible with Java 8.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
High intensity interval training (HIIT) produces small improvements in fasting glucose, insulin, and insulin resistance in sedentary older men but not masters athletes
Lawrence D. Hayes*, Peter Herbert, Nicholas Sculthorpe, Fergal Grace
School of Health and Life Sciences
Institute for Clinical Exercise and Health Science
Clinical Exercise Science
The aim of the present investigation was to investigate whether 6 weeks' high intensity interval training (HIIT; 6 x 30 s sprints at 40% peak power, once every five days) preceded by 6 weeks' aerobic preconditioning would affect fasting insulin, glucose, and the homeostatic model assessment of insulin resistance (HOMA1-IR) in older men. A secondary aim was to establish whether lifelong exercisers (LEX) exhibited improved fasting insulin, glucose, and HOMA1-IR, compared to sedentary older males (SED). Twenty-two males (62 ± 2 years) comprised the SED group and 17 males (60 ± 5 years) were enrolled as LEX. Participants were tested at phase A (baseline), B (after preconditioning), and C (post-HIIT). There was no effect of time (P=0.116) or interaction (P=0.727) on insulin. However, there was an effect of group (P<0.001). In terms of magnitude, HIIT induced a small decrease in SED insulin compared to baseline (15.8 ± 8.1 uIU·ml-1 at baseline and 14.0 ± 7.8 uIU·ml-1 post-HIIT; Cohen's d=0.23) and compared to post-preconditioning (17.5 ± 9.7 uIU·ml-1; Cohen's d=0.40). LEX insulin was unchanged throughout (all differences were trivial). Insulin was lower in LEX than SED at phase A (P<0.001, Cohen's d=1.31), B (P=0.023, Cohen's d=0.78), and C (P=0.004, Cohen's d=1.01). There was no effect of time (P=0.290), group (P=0.166), or interaction (P=0.153) for glucose. In terms of magnitude, HIIT produced a small reduction in SED glucose compared to baseline (5.7 ± 1.3 mmol·l-1 at baseline and 5.3 ± 0.9 mmol·l-1 post-HIIT; Cohen's d=0.36), and compared to phase B (5.6 ± 0.8 mmol·l-1; Cohen's d=0.35). LEX glucose was unchanged throughout (all changes were trivial). SED had moderately higher blood glucose than LEX at phase A (Cohen's d=0.49), and B (Cohen's d=0.63), but only a trivial difference existed at phase C (Cohen's d=0.15). There was no effect of time (P=0.110), or interaction (P=0.569) on HOMA1-IR. However, there was an effect of group (P=0.002). In terms of magnitude, SED HOMA1-IR was unchanged from phase A to B (4.2 ± 3.0 and 4.5 ± 2.9 arbitrary units respectively [Cohen's d=0.10]). However, at C (3.5 ± 2.6) there was a small decrease compared to B (Cohen's d=0.36), and A (Cohen's d=0.25). LEX experienced a small increase in HOMA1-IR from phase A to B (1.6 ± 1.3 and 2.3 ± 2.8 respectively [Cohen's d=0.32]), followed by a small decrease from B to C (1.7 ± 1.1 at phase C [Cohen's d=0.28]), and a trivial change from A to C (Cohen's d=0.08). HOMA1-IR was lower in LEX than SED at baseline (P=0.002, Cohen's d=1.12), after preconditioning (P=0.024, Cohen's d=0.77), and post-HIIT (P=0.014, Cohen's d=0.90). Results of this study provide preliminary evidence that HIIT preceded by preconditioning results in small improvements in fasting insulin, glucose, and HOMA1-IR in SED. Yet, a larger confirmatory study is required to determine whether these effects translate into a larger sample.
Experimental Gerontology
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.exger.2020.111074
Published - 15 Oct 2020
masters athletes
10.1016/j.exger.2020.111074
2020 08 22 Hayes et al HIIT acceptedAccepted author manuscript, 494 KBLicence: CC BY-NC-ND
Dive into the research topics of 'High intensity interval training (HIIT) produces small improvements in fasting glucose, insulin, and insulin resistance in sedentary older men but not masters athletes'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.
High-Intensity Interval Training Medicine & Life Sciences 100%
Insulin Derivative Chemical Compounds 71%
Insulin Resistance Medicine & Life Sciences 57%
Fasting Medicine & Life Sciences 56%
Glucose Chemical Compounds 51%
Insulin Medicine & Life Sciences 47%
Lawrence Hayes
School of Health and Life Sciences - Lecturer
Hayes, L. D., Herbert, P., Sculthorpe, N., & Grace, F. (2020). High intensity interval training (HIIT) produces small improvements in fasting glucose, insulin, and insulin resistance in sedentary older men but not masters athletes. Experimental Gerontology, 140, [111074]. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.exger.2020.111074
Hayes, Lawrence D. ; Herbert, Peter ; Sculthorpe, Nicholas ; Grace, Fergal. / High intensity interval training (HIIT) produces small improvements in fasting glucose, insulin, and insulin resistance in sedentary older men but not masters athletes. In: Experimental Gerontology. 2020 ; Vol. 140.
@article{b5b9715fb3b044f89d2ebc392a327702,
title = "High intensity interval training (HIIT) produces small improvements in fasting glucose, insulin, and insulin resistance in sedentary older men but not masters athletes",
abstract = "The aim of the present investigation was to investigate whether 6 weeks' high intensity interval training (HIIT; 6 x 30 s sprints at 40% peak power, once every five days) preceded by 6 weeks' aerobic preconditioning would affect fasting insulin, glucose, and the homeostatic model assessment of insulin resistance (HOMA1-IR) in older men. A secondary aim was to establish whether lifelong exercisers (LEX) exhibited improved fasting insulin, glucose, and HOMA1-IR, compared to sedentary older males (SED). Twenty-two males (62 ± 2 years) comprised the SED group and 17 males (60 ± 5 years) were enrolled as LEX. Participants were tested at phase A (baseline), B (after preconditioning), and C (post-HIIT). There was no effect of time (P=0.116) or interaction (P=0.727) on insulin. However, there was an effect of group (P<0.001). In terms of magnitude, HIIT induced a small decrease in SED insulin compared to baseline (15.8 ± 8.1 uIU·ml-1 at baseline and 14.0 ± 7.8 uIU·ml-1 post-HIIT; Cohen{\textquoteright}s d=0.23) and compared to post-preconditioning (17.5 ± 9.7 uIU·ml-1; Cohen{\textquoteright}s d=0.40). LEX insulin was unchanged throughout (all differences were trivial). Insulin was lower in LEX than SED at phase A (P<0.001, Cohen{\textquoteright}s d=1.31), B (P=0.023, Cohen{\textquoteright}s d=0.78), and C (P=0.004, Cohen{\textquoteright}s d=1.01). There was no effect of time (P=0.290), group (P=0.166), or interaction (P=0.153) for glucose. In terms of magnitude, HIIT produced a small reduction in SED glucose compared to baseline (5.7 ± 1.3 mmol·l-1 at baseline and 5.3 ± 0.9 mmol·l-1 post-HIIT; Cohen{\textquoteright}s d=0.36), and compared to phase B (5.6 ± 0.8 mmol·l-1; Cohen{\textquoteright}s d=0.35). LEX glucose was unchanged throughout (all changes were trivial). SED had moderately higher blood glucose than LEX at phase A (Cohen{\textquoteright}s d=0.49), and B (Cohen{\textquoteright}s d=0.63), but only a trivial difference existed at phase C (Cohen{\textquoteright}s d=0.15). There was no effect of time (P=0.110), or interaction (P=0.569) on HOMA1-IR. However, there was an effect of group (P=0.002). In terms of magnitude, SED HOMA1-IR was unchanged from phase A to B (4.2 ± 3.0 and 4.5 ± 2.9 arbitrary units respectively [Cohen{\textquoteright}s d=0.10]). However, at C (3.5 ± 2.6) there was a small decrease compared to B (Cohen{\textquoteright}s d=0.36), and A (Cohen{\textquoteright}s d=0.25). LEX experienced a small increase in HOMA1-IR from phase A to B (1.6 ± 1.3 and 2.3 ± 2.8 respectively [Cohen{\textquoteright}s d=0.32]), followed by a small decrease from B to C (1.7 ± 1.1 at phase C [Cohen{\textquoteright}s d=0.28]), and a trivial change from A to C (Cohen{\textquoteright}s d=0.08). HOMA1-IR was lower in LEX than SED at baseline (P=0.002, Cohen{\textquoteright}s d=1.12), after preconditioning (P=0.024, Cohen{\textquoteright}s d=0.77), and post-HIIT (P=0.014, Cohen{\textquoteright}s d=0.90). Results of this study provide preliminary evidence that HIIT preceded by preconditioning results in small improvements in fasting insulin, glucose, and HOMA1-IR in SED. Yet, a larger confirmatory study is required to determine whether these effects translate into a larger sample.",
keywords = "aging, exercise, glucose, HIIT, insulin, masters athletes, sedentary",
author = "Hayes, {Lawrence D.} and Peter Herbert and Nicholas Sculthorpe and Fergal Grace",
doi = "10.1016/j.exger.2020.111074",
journal = "Experimental Gerontology",
publisher = "Elsevier B.V.",
Hayes, LD, Herbert, P, Sculthorpe, N & Grace, F 2020, 'High intensity interval training (HIIT) produces small improvements in fasting glucose, insulin, and insulin resistance in sedentary older men but not masters athletes', Experimental Gerontology, vol. 140, 111074. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.exger.2020.111074
High intensity interval training (HIIT) produces small improvements in fasting glucose, insulin, and insulin resistance in sedentary older men but not masters athletes. / Hayes, Lawrence D.; Herbert, Peter; Sculthorpe, Nicholas; Grace, Fergal.
In: Experimental Gerontology, Vol. 140, 111074, 15.10.2020.
T1 - High intensity interval training (HIIT) produces small improvements in fasting glucose, insulin, and insulin resistance in sedentary older men but not masters athletes
AU - Hayes, Lawrence D.
AU - Herbert, Peter
AU - Sculthorpe, Nicholas
AU - Grace, Fergal
N2 - The aim of the present investigation was to investigate whether 6 weeks' high intensity interval training (HIIT; 6 x 30 s sprints at 40% peak power, once every five days) preceded by 6 weeks' aerobic preconditioning would affect fasting insulin, glucose, and the homeostatic model assessment of insulin resistance (HOMA1-IR) in older men. A secondary aim was to establish whether lifelong exercisers (LEX) exhibited improved fasting insulin, glucose, and HOMA1-IR, compared to sedentary older males (SED). Twenty-two males (62 ± 2 years) comprised the SED group and 17 males (60 ± 5 years) were enrolled as LEX. Participants were tested at phase A (baseline), B (after preconditioning), and C (post-HIIT). There was no effect of time (P=0.116) or interaction (P=0.727) on insulin. However, there was an effect of group (P<0.001). In terms of magnitude, HIIT induced a small decrease in SED insulin compared to baseline (15.8 ± 8.1 uIU·ml-1 at baseline and 14.0 ± 7.8 uIU·ml-1 post-HIIT; Cohen's d=0.23) and compared to post-preconditioning (17.5 ± 9.7 uIU·ml-1; Cohen's d=0.40). LEX insulin was unchanged throughout (all differences were trivial). Insulin was lower in LEX than SED at phase A (P<0.001, Cohen's d=1.31), B (P=0.023, Cohen's d=0.78), and C (P=0.004, Cohen's d=1.01). There was no effect of time (P=0.290), group (P=0.166), or interaction (P=0.153) for glucose. In terms of magnitude, HIIT produced a small reduction in SED glucose compared to baseline (5.7 ± 1.3 mmol·l-1 at baseline and 5.3 ± 0.9 mmol·l-1 post-HIIT; Cohen's d=0.36), and compared to phase B (5.6 ± 0.8 mmol·l-1; Cohen's d=0.35). LEX glucose was unchanged throughout (all changes were trivial). SED had moderately higher blood glucose than LEX at phase A (Cohen's d=0.49), and B (Cohen's d=0.63), but only a trivial difference existed at phase C (Cohen's d=0.15). There was no effect of time (P=0.110), or interaction (P=0.569) on HOMA1-IR. However, there was an effect of group (P=0.002). In terms of magnitude, SED HOMA1-IR was unchanged from phase A to B (4.2 ± 3.0 and 4.5 ± 2.9 arbitrary units respectively [Cohen's d=0.10]). However, at C (3.5 ± 2.6) there was a small decrease compared to B (Cohen's d=0.36), and A (Cohen's d=0.25). LEX experienced a small increase in HOMA1-IR from phase A to B (1.6 ± 1.3 and 2.3 ± 2.8 respectively [Cohen's d=0.32]), followed by a small decrease from B to C (1.7 ± 1.1 at phase C [Cohen's d=0.28]), and a trivial change from A to C (Cohen's d=0.08). HOMA1-IR was lower in LEX than SED at baseline (P=0.002, Cohen's d=1.12), after preconditioning (P=0.024, Cohen's d=0.77), and post-HIIT (P=0.014, Cohen's d=0.90). Results of this study provide preliminary evidence that HIIT preceded by preconditioning results in small improvements in fasting insulin, glucose, and HOMA1-IR in SED. Yet, a larger confirmatory study is required to determine whether these effects translate into a larger sample.
AB - The aim of the present investigation was to investigate whether 6 weeks' high intensity interval training (HIIT; 6 x 30 s sprints at 40% peak power, once every five days) preceded by 6 weeks' aerobic preconditioning would affect fasting insulin, glucose, and the homeostatic model assessment of insulin resistance (HOMA1-IR) in older men. A secondary aim was to establish whether lifelong exercisers (LEX) exhibited improved fasting insulin, glucose, and HOMA1-IR, compared to sedentary older males (SED). Twenty-two males (62 ± 2 years) comprised the SED group and 17 males (60 ± 5 years) were enrolled as LEX. Participants were tested at phase A (baseline), B (after preconditioning), and C (post-HIIT). There was no effect of time (P=0.116) or interaction (P=0.727) on insulin. However, there was an effect of group (P<0.001). In terms of magnitude, HIIT induced a small decrease in SED insulin compared to baseline (15.8 ± 8.1 uIU·ml-1 at baseline and 14.0 ± 7.8 uIU·ml-1 post-HIIT; Cohen's d=0.23) and compared to post-preconditioning (17.5 ± 9.7 uIU·ml-1; Cohen's d=0.40). LEX insulin was unchanged throughout (all differences were trivial). Insulin was lower in LEX than SED at phase A (P<0.001, Cohen's d=1.31), B (P=0.023, Cohen's d=0.78), and C (P=0.004, Cohen's d=1.01). There was no effect of time (P=0.290), group (P=0.166), or interaction (P=0.153) for glucose. In terms of magnitude, HIIT produced a small reduction in SED glucose compared to baseline (5.7 ± 1.3 mmol·l-1 at baseline and 5.3 ± 0.9 mmol·l-1 post-HIIT; Cohen's d=0.36), and compared to phase B (5.6 ± 0.8 mmol·l-1; Cohen's d=0.35). LEX glucose was unchanged throughout (all changes were trivial). SED had moderately higher blood glucose than LEX at phase A (Cohen's d=0.49), and B (Cohen's d=0.63), but only a trivial difference existed at phase C (Cohen's d=0.15). There was no effect of time (P=0.110), or interaction (P=0.569) on HOMA1-IR. However, there was an effect of group (P=0.002). In terms of magnitude, SED HOMA1-IR was unchanged from phase A to B (4.2 ± 3.0 and 4.5 ± 2.9 arbitrary units respectively [Cohen's d=0.10]). However, at C (3.5 ± 2.6) there was a small decrease compared to B (Cohen's d=0.36), and A (Cohen's d=0.25). LEX experienced a small increase in HOMA1-IR from phase A to B (1.6 ± 1.3 and 2.3 ± 2.8 respectively [Cohen's d=0.32]), followed by a small decrease from B to C (1.7 ± 1.1 at phase C [Cohen's d=0.28]), and a trivial change from A to C (Cohen's d=0.08). HOMA1-IR was lower in LEX than SED at baseline (P=0.002, Cohen's d=1.12), after preconditioning (P=0.024, Cohen's d=0.77), and post-HIIT (P=0.014, Cohen's d=0.90). Results of this study provide preliminary evidence that HIIT preceded by preconditioning results in small improvements in fasting insulin, glucose, and HOMA1-IR in SED. Yet, a larger confirmatory study is required to determine whether these effects translate into a larger sample.
KW - aging
KW - exercise
KW - glucose
KW - HIIT
KW - insulin
KW - masters athletes
KW - sedentary
U2 - 10.1016/j.exger.2020.111074
DO - 10.1016/j.exger.2020.111074
JO - Experimental Gerontology
JF - Experimental Gerontology
Hayes LD, Herbert P, Sculthorpe N, Grace F. High intensity interval training (HIIT) produces small improvements in fasting glucose, insulin, and insulin resistance in sedentary older men but not masters athletes. Experimental Gerontology. 2020 Oct 15;140. 111074. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.exger.2020.111074


text:
25 August 2022 / SF News / Joe Kukura
Former Hemlock Tavern Site, Now 54 Units of Empty Housing, Finally Moving Forward After Condo Conversion Compromise
More than 50 units of housing have sat empty for two years on property that used to be the home of Hemlock Tavern, but they can now be occupied, as the Board of Appeals rules on a developer who said they were building apartments and then switched to condos.
It's a San Francisco story that's been told countless times over the recent decades: A longtime popular nightclub closes because an owner wants to convert the land into a much more lucrative housing project. But this one is being called "unprecedented," thanks to some highly unusual extenuating circumstances.
The former Polk Street bar Hemlock Tavern was torn down in 2019 to make way for 54 residential units. The new building with all 54 of those apartment units was promptly built, and was mandated to include eight affordable, below-market-rate (BMR) units to meet the city's requirements. More than 2,500 households applied for those units, and a few lucky winners were awarded.
This is all the usual script for a San Francisco housing development, but then the script got flipped. The developer Dolmen Property Group decided to make the units into much more lucrative condominiums instead of apartments, after the rental market took a pandemic hit. And as the Chronicle reports, that led to legal fights that kept the building empty for two years, fights that were finally resolved at Wednesday's San Francisco Board of Appeals meeting.
The Dolmen Property Group was still allowing the eight affordable units. But their switching to a for-sale condo model rejiggered the economics of it, and meant that the people who'd been awarded the affordable housing rental apartments suddenly could not afford to buy there.
"Switching from rental to for-sale would essentially force those lottery winners into attempting to qualify to become homeowners — something many of them may not be able to do, or may not be interested in doing," as the Chronicle explains. "In addition, the developer at first argued that the for-sale units should target households making 90% of area median income, rather than the 55% that would have been required as a rental."
The fight went on for years, with at least two of the affordable housing lottery winners suing. In the compromise deal approved Wednesday at the Board of Appeals, Dolmen Property Group agreed to keep that lower 55% of median income threshold for the BMR units, so the lottery winners can still potentially get the homes.
In voting to lower the threshold for them, Board of Appeals President Rick Swig noted that buyers and renters are "absolutely are different" and "live in different worlds," adding that the condo rate "left behind a significant portion of our residents."
SF Planning Department zoning administrator Corey Teague said the situation was "unprecedented," but come on… it shouldn't have been! This was the obvious, common-sense compromise that the developer should have made years ago. You can totally, justifiably complain that there is too much red tape in getting built in San Francisco. But in this case, the developer pulled the switcheroo, and chose to renege on what they'd already agreed to. Those units certainly did not sit empty for two years because of any red tape.
This won't bring back the Hemlock Tavern. But thankfully, at least the matter is now resolved and the limbo, vacancy period for the new building is over.
Related: Eight-Story Condo Development With Replacement Grubstake Diner on Ground Floor Wins Planning Approval [SFist]
Image: Google Street View
— SFist - San Francisco News, Restaurants, Events, & Sports —
SF News
Day Around the Bay: SF Kids Throw 'Wolf of Wall Street'-Themed Kegger, Are Alright
New Alameda County DA Pamela Price Reopens Case Against Officers Who Conducted Fatal Arrest of Mario Gonzalez
New Proposed Bill Would Require CA Gun Owners to Carry Liability Insurance
See all 37470 posts →
Mohammed Nuru Sentenced to Seven Years for Fraud, Bribery
Disgraced former SF Public Works Director Mohammed Nuru was sentenced to seven years in prison Thursday afternoon, with prosecutors saying, "Mr. Nuru can still be Mr. Clean on the outside" but "deeply corrupt on the inside."
Sausalito Cleared Homeless Out Of Marinship Park — By Paying Them Each $18,000 to Leave
Sausalito managed to clear a sprawling encampment in Marinship Park this month that had been growing more unsanitary and problematic over the last two years, but they did it via a court settlement that included cash payments.
Joe Kukura
Joe Kukura is an SFist staff asst. editor / reporter who has been published in almost every San Francisco publication, including Hoodline, SF Weekly, Thrillist, and Broke Ass Stuart.


Over 125 years of exam experience…and still going strong!
U.S. Certified Music Exams is proud to partner with the world-renowned Conservatory Canada examination system, creating a North American standard in music education.
Conservatory Canada's roots go back to 1891, when the London Conservatory was first founded. In 1910, the London Conservatory became affiliated with The University of Western Ontario and it became an examining Board. In 1915 that affiliation was dissolved, and in 1919 the Institute of Music Arts was founded (as a teaching institution). In 1922, the London Conservatory and Institute of Musical Arts amalgamated and existed until 1934, when they were incorporated under the name Western Ontario Conservatory of Music. The reach became truly national in 1997 through a merger with The Western Board of Music (established in 1934, serving all of western Canada, and based in Edmonton, Alberta).
Students successfully completing Conservatory Canada exams may be eligible for school credit and extra credit for university admission.
We are committed to outstanding service, through caring, prompt and supportive individual attention.
We treat all teachers, students and examiners with respect.
We uphold ethical and fair treatment in all endeavors.
We strive to make every examination a positive experience.
We champion the recognition and celebration of achievement.
We embrace progressive change, appropriate to the overall needs of our constituents.
Copyright © 2019 US Music Certification Exams.


Regas team have worked tirelessly to improve every aspect of this new tonearm. Offering improved ergonomics, usability and sonic performance.
arm clip and an improved spring housing with easier to read numbers. Other improvements include a Rega made, low capacitance phono cable terminated with high quality 'Neutrik' plugs, improved lower friction, precision horizontal and vertical bearings and a re-designed 100g mild steel balance weight.


Marx (August Diehl) is a young man who, when the film begins, has already found the love of his life Jenny (Vicky Krieps who is seen in a very different role to that she played in Phantom Thread) and is working for a small radical newspaper "Rheinsche Zeitung" in Cologne. She comes from a well- heeled background.She provides domestic certainty in his life albeit, after a while, with the assistance of her own long standing nanny. But the newspaper falls foul of the German authorities and Marx flees with Jenny to Paris. Meanwhile, in Manchester the young Friedrich Engels (Stefan Konarske) is working grudgingly for his father in the cotton spinning mill his father owns "Ermen and Engels". Young Engels had already met Marx as he too had contributed to the Rheinische Zeitung. They were a pair of young lads with radical social thoughts but were not adverse to a night on the town. The film depicts a scene in the mill where Engels meets a feisty young Irish girl Mary Burns, who will in time become his life long partner. The Marx's live a peripatetic life as subversives and they flee Paris, then arrive in Brussels, Ostend and London. The film is littered with small meetings attended by what would now be called activists at which the likes of Proudhon propound their radical views but Marx is primus inter pares in this society.
The entire is beautifully shot in contemporary costume. Peck portrays Marx as a family man with this drive to explain how capitalism worked to the disadvantage of the many and to the advantage of the few who possessed capital. It is an engaging glimpse of the early life of Karl Marx, but that is about it. It ends before he bestrides Europe as a radical left wing thinker along with Engels.


Italy's Amalfi Coast is a byword for romance and picture-postcard settings. Add to this the chance to take in world famous sights such as Pompeii and Mount Vesuvius and you have all the makings of a truly memorable holiday. You'll be staying at the delightful Hotel Santa Lucia, located in the exquisite coastal town of Minori – where ancient pastel-coloured houses and a Roman villa sit within toe-dipping distance of the sea.
Please note if opting for the excursion, entrance to Pompeii (€15 per person) and Vesuvius (€10 per person) incurs an extra charge. Lunch costs €14 per person, to be paid locally. Private beach access is available for hotel guests at a preferential rate from 15 May until 10 October.
Please note that excursions run in April on Monday and Thursday only, and from May to October on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday only. The meeting point is from Minori main parking.


text:
Private Lives and Public AffairsOnora O'Neill
Vol. 6 No. 19 · 18 October 1984
Private Lives and Public Affairs
Onora O'Neill
Public and Private in Social Life
edited by S.I. Benn and G.F. Gaus.
Croom Helm, 412 pp., £19.95, July 1983, 0 7099 0668 4Show More
Public Man, Private Woman
by Jean Bethke Elshtain.
Martin Robertson, 376 pp., £22.50, February 1982, 0 85520 470 2Show More
Women's Choices: Philosophical Problems facing Feminism
by Mary Midgley and Judith Hughes.
Weidenfeld, 242 pp., £12.95, September 1983, 0 297 78221 5Show More
Liberal thinkers are keen on self-criticism, a necessary discipline for those who don't accept intellectual authority. But it can have embarrassing moments, when too much is stripped away and exposed. Most of the essays in Public and Private in Social Life explore aspects of 'the familiar liberal conception of public and private'; three are 'external' critiques of liberal thought, and three describe related distinctions drawn in distant cultures. Nearly all the essays are thoughtful and tough-minded; and many have interesting things to say: but in spite of the underlying commitment to liberalism there is no point at which criticism and self-exposure are compensated for. We are left to wonder whether there is any coherent way in which liberal thought can distinguish the public from the private.
Liberal discussions of law, of economics and property, of politics and of personal life, are filled with proposals for distinguishing public from private. The questions taken up here include: how can we distinguish public from private law? What sorts of public regulation does private property preclude? Are public and private morality distinct? Can we lead clean private lives if we rummage in dirty public affairs? Can we if we don't? Many of the discussions are penetrating, even revealing. Why is it, however, that they have so much to say about the dilemmas and embarrassments of liberalism, and so little about conclusions liberals might establish? One answer may lie in a move made by the editors in the leading essay, which many of the contributors take up.
Stanley Benn and Gerald Gaus suggest that the discomfort of liberal thinking on the public-private distinction arises because liberals use two distinct conceptual frameworks. The first, individualist framework takes as private what is done, expressed or owned by particular persons; and as public what cannot be assigned to individuals. In this view not only political life but many social and economic arrangements – civil society – are public. All these arrangements, including the state itself, may be judged in terms of contribution to the goals, activities and interests of individuals. To extend the private sphere is to extend the area of life under individual control. Libertarian liberals (unrepresented in these essays) bite on this bullet and aim to assign as much as possible to individuals.
But most liberals are ambivalent. They doubt whether everything private can be assigned to individuals. In particular, they think that institutions which pursue limited or sectoral interests, rather than the public interest, are not really public. They seek a narrower but stronger conception of the public domain, which will include only those spheres of life which seek the public interest or common good. But the individualist framework proves inadequate for this. Only if we also have a conception of 'a public' as a united body with common interests can we have an adequate conception of 'the public interest'. 'A public' in the relevant sense must be not an aggregate of individuals, but an 'organic' unity. It must be bound by shared history and aspirations and have some unity of life and will, standardly embodied in modern times in the institution of the nation state. In terms of this 'organic' conception of a public, not only the activities of individuals, but those of all partial or sectoral institutions, from families to giant firms, are not public. The activities of individuals and of such institutions can be judged in terms of their contribution to the public good. On the individualist model the values of the private sphere are prior and public matters are judged by their contribution to private interests: on the organic model the values of the public sphere are prior and private affairs are judged for their contribution to the public interest.
Benn and Gaus suggest that 'no single model of public and private can provide a coherent account of all aspects of the public and private in liberal theory and practice.' Other contributors generally agree. But what's at stake here isn't just a failure of theory to account for the full complexity of some domain. Benn and Gaus offer as 'a reason for preferring our two-model theory' that it 'deepens our understanding of some of the enduring tensions of liberal thought'. And so it does. But it also limits our understanding, for it incorporates incompatible accounts of the relation between human beings and institutions. The fertility of self-contradictory starting-points is a dangerous source of insight.
One result of endowing liberal thought with two foundations is that the boundaries between internal and external critique are seldom sharp. Alan Ryan's interesting discussion of ownership and appropriation owes more to Hegel and Marx than to liberal discussions; the discussion of public and private law by Eugene Kamenka and Alice Erh-Soon Tay owes more to traditions of jurisprudence and historical inquiry than to either model of liberalism. Gaus follows a clearly liberal debate over the regulation and control of market structures. Yet in noting ways in which state regulation may be captured by private interests, so producing the illusion of an accommodation of public and private interests (since the latter remain unrepresented), he points to what, from another vantage point, would appear an internal contradiction of capitalism. Here too self-criticism edges towards external critique.
Of the external discussions of liberal thought on the public and private the most revealing is Carole Pateman's, which probes the accommodation of women's subordination in liberal thought. It is surely more than an intellectual or historical oddity that so many advocates of the Rights of Man proved willing for so long to settle for the rights of men. Pateman suggests that the accommodation works because liberal individualists work with an abstract conception of human individuals which allows them to affirm women's equal citizenship while ignoring the social and economic structures and ways of life and thought which perpetuate women's subordination. On her diagnosis, liberals are committed not so much to a contradictory as to a non-exhaustive account of the public-private distinction. They take account only of what is private in the individualist sense – assignable to individuals – and what is public in terms of the organic model – aimed at the common good. They ignore the institutions of civil society, whose 'patriarchal' character escapes notice, criticism and remedy. A less abstract view of human individuals would make clear the frivolity of discussing equal rights and citizenship without discussing social and economic realities.
Is it open to liberal thinkers to take a less abstract view of human individuals? In the last and most interesting chapter of her book Beth Elshtain suggests that it is. Most of Public Man, Private Woman is a reading of the ways in which public and private have been charted in European thought, including an extended discussion of the curious alliance between 'patriarchal' social relations and liberal thought. The last chapter questions how the alliance might be destroyed. One route, favoured not only by libertarian liberals but by some feminist thinkers, might be to take individualism more seriously. Simone de Beauvoir and Shulamith Firestone both argued that if women are prevented by their traditional domestic roles and intimate ties from enjoying equal rights and citizenship, then these ties should be severed. Birth control, abortion, the abolition of the family and sexual liberation provide means to destroy the private sphere to which women have been relegated. This line of thought locates the incoherences of 'patriarchal' liberalism, not in its abstract conception of human individuals, but in the persisting failure of women to abstract themselves from social forms which impair their individuality. On this account the failure lies, not in the excessive abstractness of liberal theory, but in the inadequate abstractness of existing women.
Elshtain herself proposes a different 'reconstruction of the public and private'. There are indeed good reasons for looking in other directions. The consistency which liberal thought might acquire by taking an individualist model more seriously would be countered by a loss of understanding of the priority accorded to private over public good in that model. If private interests and concerns are no more than the arbitrary preferences of abstract individuals – and what more can abstract individuals have, however rationally these preferences are ordered? – then it becomes obscure why public arrangements should be organised to meet these preferences. A more convincing account of the fundamental value of private affairs might be available in a theory which linked the value of the private sphere to the specific sorts of lives that are led there.
Such a move would require a form of liberalism in which individuals were understood, not abstractly, but rather as historically and socially determinate beings. This is the type of liberalism Elshtain advocates. She is not the only feminist writer to do so. A number of recent feminist books, of varied philosophical and political outlook, have emphasised the ineliminability of some determinate features of women's lives and, in particular, of mothering. They include Adrienne Rich's Of Woman Born, Selma Fraiberg's Every Child's Birthright: In Defence of Mothering, Mary O'Brien's The Politics of Reproduction, Carol McMillan's Women, Reason and Nature, as well as Women's Choices: Philosophical Problems facing Feminism by Mary Midgley and Judith Hughes, which appears as one of Weidenfeld and Nicolson's Social Democrat Books. A common theme of these books is that we aren't just abstract autonomous beings, but beings who grow to autonomy only if appropriately nurtured by particular others. Hence a concern with individuals neither should nor can view them in abstraction from a specific social and cultural context. Such concern must take account of what is needed to reproduce autonomous human beings, and that includes mothering. Once we get away from an abstract conception of human individuals, the liberal agenda changes. As Midgley and Hughes in particular stress, our real choices must be made among the quite specific options which are actually available to us. In Britain in the Eighties these do not include the full range of possibilities which more abstract approaches might consider worth canvassing. We cannot seriously choose a life of sexual apartheid, for example, or choose to be parents without incurring the responsibilities of child-rearing. Nor on the other hand can we any longer seriously propose that girls make marriage their career. Responsible liberal thinking will not spend time on such unavailable options.
Elshtain generalises this line of thought and suggests that a reconstructed liberalism must take a more determinate view of human individuals. It can neither unjustly confine some lives to a merely private sphere, nor utopianly envisage the destruction of that sphere of life, but must instead insist on the importance of that sphere and its particularities for all our lives. Family structures and private lives would not be invisible in such liberal thinking, but central. Being visible, they would be subject to liberal evaluation, and only some forms of family and intimate lives would meet liberal standards. In this way individualist liberals might deftly make off with some organic clothing. And in the process they might re-establish reasons for holding that public matters should be arranged to sustain the private sphere.
Elshtain realises that once liberals adopt this less abstract conception of human individuals the public sphere, too, will look quite different. Abstracted individuals can be thought of as formal equals who arbitrate rationally between conflicting interests and preferences. But this handy basis for political thought isn't available if we take a determinate view of individuals. Hence a reconstruction of the private entails a reconstruction of the public. The public sphere cannot be thought of merely as a space for the interaction of individuals, who come together to advocate their varied visions of the common good. Authentic citizens dirty their hands with the particular tasks of the present; politics is earthy and particular; and genuine polity needs not a Platonic dismantling of the private and particular but its revaluation. This picture juxtaposes liberal concern with human rights and freedom, with a view of human individuals as socially determinate beings, while also employing a conception of common good which Benn and Gaus doubt that any other than 'organic' forms of liberalism can sustain. Yet the 'tension' between organic and individual forms of liberalism may still be there.
For how can the public realm take account of the full particularity of individual human lives unless those lives are 'organically' coordinated in the life of a community? Elshtain takes it that the private domain is primarily that of familial relationships. She can therefore think of the public sphere as a separate domain which may – but need not – take account of private lives. But private lives are not solely familial. Indeed, one long-standing liberal concern has been to free individuals from family demands. In Elshtain's writing, as in that of some other feminists, the core of private life is the concerns of mothering and of family life. It is as if the other aspects of private lives were still considered abstractly. But if we look at private lives in their full particularity, we see not only that family needs may be threatened by inadequate recognition of particularity, but that recognition of particularity may itself undermine the separation of private and public which liberals seeks to sustain. Once we start thinking about human individuals in their full particularity – not just as family members but as neighbours, friends, lovers, workers – we may find that we are considering a fully determinate community with specific social and economic arrangements and possibilities for personal and familial ties: in short, an organic conception of society in which the private sphere no longer appears as separate from or prior to the public sphere. The cost of an individualism which acknowledges the full particularity of individuals may be that the public-private distinction is undermined and that the most intimate liberal concerns are rejected. The tensions of a two-model theory of liberalism cannot be banished by merging the models.
Onora O'Neill is the President of the British Academy.
Living within the truth
The New Restoration
Diary: In Berlin
More by Onora O'Neill


Over the past couple of months, I've been working my way through the Cold Feet box set. It's been years since I watched it so it was almost like watching it new with only parts being vaguely familiar.
Cold Feet was a great series. I enjoyed it at the time but it was even better this time round. I was only around 14 when the first series began so I didn't truly appreciate a lot of it at the time. I'd never been in love and babies? Yuck, who wanted them?
It was a great series; funny yet dealing with difficult issues such as divorce, death, infertility and miscarriage. It was a pleasure to watch and, in this case, re-watch. I haven't seen a series as good as Cold Feet in a long time, which is a shame. I can't imagine buying anything that has been on tv recently and watching it all over again.
I used to catch Cold Feet when it was on sometimes, but like you, I was younger and didn't appreciate it back then!
It was wasted on us youngsters, wasn't it?
I really enjoyed it second time round and it was fun spotting locations I knew when they were out in town as it's set in Manchester, which s where I'm from.


In this article, you'll learn how to track and measure 3 important social media metrics to help you improve your social media marketing.
Tweets get buried quickly. Knowing when your followers are online plays a crucial part in your tweet's visibility and success.
Tweoid is a tool that looks at the recent tweets of your followers and provides you with analytics and data that show when your followers are the most active.
Facebook Insights offers a simple way to find out when your fans are most likely to be active on Facebook.
If you're active on social media, you're likely to share a lot of content from your blog, website, YouTube channel or other media platforms.
When you share a link to your various platforms, your goal is to have people click on your link. The click-through rate (CTR) your links receive is most likely your primary metric for measuring success.
To measure your CTR, you need a URL shortener to track clicks.
Bitly is a free URL shortener with a set of tools to create shortened links, share your links and measure the CTR on your links.
You can shorten links from within the Bitly dashboard or use an extension for Firefox or Chrome to automatically shorten and share links straight from your browser.
After you've shortened a link with Bitly, click on it from the library at any time to get detailed information on its CTR, click sources, geographic distribution of clicks and more.
Most brands use more than one social media platform to drive traffic to their websites and generate new leads.
Although each platform has its place in your strategy, you'll want to find out which platform generates the best ROI so you can put more effort into your marketing on that platform.
Google Analytics can help you track the leads and conversions from each social network. It provides detailed information on your major traffic sources among other things.
You can track many metrics on social media, but the metrics you choose to measure should reflect your business goals.
We recommend tracking these social media metrics because they give you the information you need to better market your business and products.