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No. 227: Long-Term Care Insurance—A Major Ruling in a Lawsuit against CalPERS
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Ann I. Jones recently handed down a major ruling in a class action lawsuit against the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS). The case relates to large premium increases CalPERS imposed on owners of long-term care (LTC) insurance policies.
On August 6, 2013, the plaintiffs filed the original complaint after CalPERS notified them of an 85 percent increase in the premiums for their LTC insurance policies. On January 10, 2014, the plaintiffs filed an amended complaint. (See Sanchez v. CalPERS, Superior Court of California, County of Los Angeles, Case No. BC517444.)
The Parties
The plaintiffs in the original complaint were Alma Sanchez and Holly Wedding. The plaintiffs in the amended complaint are Sanchez, Wedding, Richard M. Lodyga, and Eileen Lodyga. Sanchez is no longer a class representative because of her advanced age and incapacity; she was born July 5, 1925.
The defendant in the original complaint was CalPERS. The defendants in the amended complaint are CalPERS, eight current and former members of its administrative board (Rob Feckner, George Diehr, Michael Bilbery, Richard Costigan, J. J. Jelincic, Henry Jones, Priya Mathur, and Bill Slaton), and the actuaries who initially helped set the premiums (Towers Watson and two predecessor firms).
The Causes of Action
The amended complaint asserts six causes of action: (1) breach of fiduciary duty, (2) breach of contract, (3) breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, (4) rescission, (5) declaratory and injunctive relief, and (6) professional negligence. The sixth cause of action was against Towers Watson, with whom the plaintiffs have settled.
The Defendants' Motion
On March 10, 2017, the defendants filed a motion for summary judgment or, in the alternative, summary adjudication. Here are a few comments (selected and edited) from the defendants' motion:
In accordance with the Public Employees' Long Term Care Act adopted by the California legislature in 1995, CalPERS provides the nation's only self-funded, voluntary, and not-for-profit LTC insurance program. In 1995, LTC insurance was a relatively new product and robust actuarial data were not available to assist insurers in pricing. CalPERS retained a leading LTC actuarial firm, Towers Perrin, and a leading LTC administrator, Long Term Care Group, to assist in designing the LTC program, developing a premium rate schedule, and administering the LTC program.
CalPERS is a government entity, not a for-profit corporation. Accordingly, when it set its pricing, CalPERS did not incorporate a profit margin or the cost of commissions for insurance brokers. In addition, because the LTC program is not subject to insurance regulations, CalPERS enjoyed flexibility in investing the LTC fund.
CalPERS retained Coopers & Lybrand to review Towers Perrin's initial pricing model and provide an actuarial second opinion. Coopers did not recommend that CalPERS make any changes to the premium schedule for the LTC program, nor did Coopers recommend that any changes be made to the pricing assumptions made by Towers Perrin.
The actuarial assumptions used by CalPERS, like those used by the rest of the fledgling LTC insurance industry, did not prove to be accurate. In addition to substantial deviations relating to policy lapse rates and claims experience, financial market crashes in 2002 and 2008 led to premium increases throughout the LTC industry. Many private insurers exited the LTC insurance business: decreasing from over 100 private LTC carriers in 2002 to only about a dozen today. Other private insurers went into receivership. To address this industry-wide problem, CalPERS instituted substantial premium increases in 2003 (30 percent increase) and 2007 (41.7 percent increase), and 5 percent thereafter in 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013. In early 2013, CalPERS advised policyholders of a further rate increase of 85 percent spread out over two years, beginning in 2015.
The Plaintiffs' Opposition
On April 28, 2017, the plaintiffs filed an opposition to the defendants' motion. Here are a few comments (selected and edited) from the plaintiffs' opposition:
In 1995, CalPERS decided to compete in the LTC insurance market by offering LTC insurance to CalPERS' members and their families. To sell its policies, CalPERS aggressively marketed the program through written materials, seminars, and word of mouth. CalPERS' advertising stated that, as a trusted, non-profit entity, it could offer rates that were 30 percent less than those of commercial carriers. Class Members were also repeatedly told that premiums were "designed to remain level" throughout the life of the program and to enroll at a young age. By 2003, CalPERS' aggressive marketing campaign led to more than 175,000 people enrolling in its LTC program. Compared to private insurance, CalPERS' LTC plan was initially cheaper, provided excellent benefits, and was purportedly managed by CalPERS, who the Class Members thought they could trust.
That trust was misplaced. After several years advising Class Members that the LTC trust fund was a "great success," in 2003, CalPERS announced a 30 percent rate increase for all policyholders as "a direct result of the LTC fund's lower than expected investment earnings related to the prolonged downturn of the stock markets." CalPERS raised premiums again in 2007 and 2010. But in 2013, CalPERS announced that, on top of all other rate increases, it was increasing premiums for LTC policyholders with certain benefits by another 85 percent!
The 2013 rate increase resulted from three failures by CalPERS. First, at the outset of the program, CalPERS mispriced certain policies that included a benefit known as "inflation protection." Second, at the beginning of the program, CalPERS adopted a highly aggressive investment strategy. In 2012, when CalPERS decided to change this investment strategy, it had to increase premiums. Third, CalPERS' pricing model did not include any reserves. In 2012, CalPERS decided to incorporate a 10 percent reserve into its pricing model and that too resulted in increased premiums.
In 1996, CalPERS retained Coopers & Lybrand to examine its LTC program and provide recommendations regarding its investment strategies and pricing. Coopers warned CalPERS that its conduct would likely lead to "criticism that it had 'low-balled' premiums to attract sales, with the intent—or at least willingness—to make future increases." But CalPERS ignored those warnings.
The Ruling
On June 15, 2017, Judge Jones handed down her ruling. She denied the defendants' motion for summary judgment. With regard to the defendants' motion for summary adjudication, she granted the motion as to the first cause of action (breach of fiduciary duty) and the fourth cause of action (rescission). However, she denied the motion as to the second cause of action (breach of contract), the third cause of action (breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing), and the fifth cause of action (declaratory and injunctive relief). Thus she allowed the case to proceed with three of the causes of action, and the case may go to trial early in 2018.
The Sanchez case is reminiscent of a personal experience I had 20 years ago. In No. 144 (posted February 16, 2016), I said I had seen an LTC insurance promotional letter distributed by a predecessor of Genworth. The letter included this sentence, with the indicated underlining: "Your premiums will never increase because of your age or any changes to your health." I wrote to the company expressing the opinion that, although the sentence was technically correct, it was deceptive because the company had the contractual right to increase premiums on a class basis. A company officer said he understood my concern, because some companies had increased premiums, but he provided reasons why the sentence was not deceptive. One reason, for example, was that the company had never increased premiums and had an "internal commitment to rate stability." Later I saw a promotional letter virtually identical to the earlier letter except that the company had quietly removed the sentence about which I had expressed concern. I say "quietly" because the company did not inform me it had made the change. Now the plaintiffs in the Sanchez case allege, in paragraphs 35 and 37 of the amended complaint, that CalPERS in 1995 said the premiums for its LTC insurance were "set," the "rates do not increase simply because of age or illness," and the rates are "locked in for the life of your coverage."
I plan to report on the results of the trial. I also plan to report on any settlement agreement that the parties may reach.
I am offering a 120-page complimentary PDF consisting of the text of the amended complaint (39 pages), the defendants' motion (33 pages), the plaintiffs' opposition to the defendants' motion (33 pages), and the judge's ruling (15 pages). Email jmbelth@gmail.com and ask for the July 2017 package about the Sanchez/CalPERS case.
No. 226: The Age 100 Problem—The Achilles' Heel of Life Insurance—Lands in Court
On July 20, 2017, Gary Lebbin and a trust he created filed a lawsuit against Transamerica Life Insurance Company relating to what I have called "the age 100 problem in life insurance." The case involves universal life and illustrates problems faced by elderly insureds. The following paragraph is in the introductory section of the complaint:
2. For decades, life insurance carriers, such as Transamerica, sold permanent universal life insurance policies, marketed as "insurance for life," utilizing outdated mortality tables that did not take into account the fact that Americans were, and are, increasingly living to and past the age of 100. The result has been the improper termination of life insurance policies that were originally sold to policy holders as "permanent insurance." The life insurance industry has left its customers (who faithfully paid their premiums with the expectation that they would have coverage for the remainder of their lives) uninsured. Further twisting the knife, these terminations have exposed customers to adverse tax consequences that are in direct contradiction to the guarantees made when these policies were purchased.
The case was assigned to U.S. District Judge Theodore D. Chuang. President Obama nominated him in September 2013 and the Senate confirmed him in May 2014. (See Lebbin v. Transamerica, U.S. District Court, District of Maryland, Case No. 8:17-cv-1870.)
The Plaintiffs
Lebbin was born in September 1917 in Germany, came to the United States in 1938 to escape Nazi persecution, and married in 1944. His wife died in 2015 at age 97. He has two children, four grandchildren, and seven great-grandchildren. In 1990 he created a trust that purchased two second-to-die universal life policies from Transamerica with a total face amount of $3.2 million. His two children are the trustees of the trust.
The Policies
The policies are second-to-die policies on Lebbin and his wife. Now that she is deceased, the policies are single-life policies. They are based on the 1980 Commissioners Standard Ordinary (CSO) mortality table, in which the terminal age is 100. The terminal age is the age at which the table shows no survivors among insureds. In other words, the death rate in the year prior to the terminal age is 1 (or 1,000 deaths per 1,000 lives). Thus the table is based on the assumption that no one among the insured population survives to age 100. Lebbin will reach the terminal age in September 2017.
Marketing of the Policies
Lebbin says Transamerica represented the policies as "permanent" coverage that would insure him and his wife "for life," that would provide for the "cash value earnings" to grow income-tax-deferred, that the death benefit would be income-tax-exempt, and that "withdrawals (and thus the ability to determine when and if the cash value earnings would constitute taxable income) would be within the control of the Plaintiffs."
I visited the Transamerica website in July 2017. Here is how the company describes whole life and universal life:
Whole life insurance provides permanent protection for life as long as premiums are paid. In addition to guaranteed cash value that you can access through a loan, your loved ones are guaranteed to receive a death benefit. You should expect to pay a higher premium than you would for a term life policy, but your premiums remain the same throughout your lifetime.
Unlike term and whole life insurance, universal life provides an additional level of flexibility. It allows policy owners to modify the amount and frequency of premium payments as long as there is sufficient cash value in the policy to cover monthly deductions. When the insured dies, a guaranteed amount of money, or death benefit, is left to the named beneficiaries. In addition to the death benefit, universal life also contains a cash value. The cash value grows tax-deferred until funds are withdrawn.
The Insuring Agreement
The insuring agreement is the heart of any insurance policy. Here is the full insuring agreement in Lebbin's policies:
While the policy is in force, Transamerica Occidental Life Insurance Company will pay the death benefit to the beneficiary if both Joint Insureds die before the policy anniversary nearest Joint Equal Age 100, or will pay the net cash value, if any, to the owner on the policy anniversary nearest Joint Equal Age 100 if both or either Joint Insured is living on that date. All payments are subject to the provisions of this policy.
The definitions section of the policy says "Joint Equal Age" is "the adjusted age of the Joint Insureds which reflects a risk that would be equivalent to two people of the same age, class of risk, and smoking status." Since Lebbin's wife is no longer living, the policy is now a single-life policy. Here is the effective language of the insuring agreement:
While the policy is in force, Transamerica Occidental Life Insurance Company will pay the death benefit to the beneficiary if the Insured dies before the policy anniversary nearest age 100, or will pay the net cash value, if any, to the owner on the policy anniversary nearest age 100 if the Insured is living on that date. All payments are subject to the provisions of this policy.
Lebbin alleges that, on top of the loss of the death benefit, his (or the trust's) receipt of the cash values of the policies at age 100 will have adverse income tax consequences. I do not know the magnitude of the tax problem because I do not know how Transamerica calculates the amount of taxable income shown on the Form 1099 it sends to the policyholder. Nor do I have access to the statements that Transamerica promised to provide to the policyowner each year.
Extended Maturity Riders
The 2001 CSO mortality table has a terminal age of 121. According to the Lebbin complaint, some life insurance companies—but not Transamerica—offer the option of an Extended Maturity Rider (EMR) for universal life policyholders who own policies based on older mortality tables that have a terminal age of 100. Although EMRs are discussed in actuarial publications, I am not aware of any discussions of EMRs for traditional whole life policies. Here is Principal Life Insurance Company's brief description of its EMR for universal life policies:
If the insured reaches the stated maturity age, maturity is extended to the date of his or her death. The rider is automatically added to policies in states where approved, and there is no charge for the rider. There will be no charges during the maturity extension period. However, loan interest will continue to be charged. No additional premium payments, other than loan payments, will be allowed.
According to the Lebbin complaint, he wrote to Transamerica and asked the company to attach EMRs to his policies. The company declined the request.
The Complaint
The counts in Lebbin's complaint are breach of contract, negligent misrepresentation, fraud (intentional misrepresentation), violations of Maryland's Consumer Protection Act, unjust enrichment, declaratory relief, reformation, and rescission. He requests, among other forms of relief, a declaratory judgment, compensatory and punitive damages, an injunction, reformation or rescission, pre-judgment and post-judgment interest, attorney fees, and court costs.
I first wrote about the age 100 problem in 2001, in two articles in The Insurance Forum. I also wrote about the problem in No. 141 (posted February 1, 2016), where I said I was writing to four companies in which my wife and I own life insurance to ask about the problem. Three letters went to policyholder service departments. They did not understand my inquiry. One, for example, sent beneficiary change forms.
The fourth letter went to an executive who understood my inquiry. He said his company writes to the policyholder several months before the insured reaches age 100. The company offers to hold the money after age 100, pay interest on it, refrain from charging further premiums, and pay the money at the insured's death. He sent me a sample letter. It did not address the question of whether the policyholder who accepts the offer would have constructive receipt (for income tax purposes) of the death benefit at the terminal age after having accepted the offer to allow the company to hold the money until the insured's death. The standard company response to the income tax question is to "consult your tax adviser," despite the fact that there is no way a tax adviser would be in a position to answer the question.
It is an understatement to say the age 100 problem is serious. Indeed, I think the problem is the Achilles' heel of life insurance. The bedrock principles of life insurance marketing are the income-tax-deferred inside interest and the income-tax-exempt death benefit. The problem is so serious that, as I said in my second Forum article on the subject, the companies do not want to discuss the matter. I further believe that neither the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) nor the income-tax-writing committees of Congress want to discuss the matter.
Now we have the Lebbin case. It is not a class action; indeed, there is no time for a class action because Lebbin is close to the terminal age. Even if the case survives the inevitable motion to dismiss the complaint, there would be no time for discovery, and there would be no time for a trial. I believe and hope that Transamerica and Lebbin's attorneys will be able to reach a confidential settlement that will solve his immediate problem.
I think the only way to force the industry and other interested parties to address the age 100 problem is to mount a class action. If it survives the motion to dismiss the complaint, and if a class is certified, the parties would have powerful incentives to avoid a trial, and any proposed settlement would be in the public domain.
In No. 141, I offered a 37-page complimentary PDF consisting of the two 2001 Forum articles (4 pages), an excerpt from a variable universal life prospectus (1 page), a 2009 IRS request for comments (8 pages), a 2009 comment letter from the American Council of Life Insurers (22 pages), and a 2010 IRS revenue procedure (2 pages). The package is still available. Email jmbelth@gmail.com and ask for the February 2016 package about the age 100 problem.
I am now offering a 54-page complimentary PDF consisting of the Lebbin complaint (20 pages) and an exhibit showing the $2 million Lebbin policy (34 pages). Email jmbelth@gmail.com and ask for the July 2017 package about the age 100 problem.
No. 225: Genworth Financial—Voluntary Dismissal of a Class Action Lawsuit Filed by Long-Term Care Insurance Policyholders
On December 28, 2016, Erika Leifer and two other long-term care (LTC) insurance policyholders filed a class action lawsuit against Genworth Financial, two subsidiaries, and four executives. The plaintiffs had been notified of substantial increases in the premiums for their policies. The plaintiffs alleged that the premium increases had harmed millions of current and former Genworth LTC insurance policyholders, that the defendants had wrongfully depleted reserve liabilities, and that the defendants had enriched themselves. (See Leifer v. Genworth, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Virginia, Case No. 3:16-cv-1008.)
The Original Complaint
The situation faced by Leifer, a resident of New York, illustrates what prompted the lawsuit. In September 2002, at age 51, she bought an LTC insurance policy from Genworth Life Insurance Company of New York (GLICNY). The quarterly premium was $500.24. About two years later, she bought another LTC insurance policy from GLICNY. The quarterly premium was $270.40. Here is a paragraph of the original complaint:
26. By letters dated February 20, 2016, GLICNY informed Plaintiff Leifer, now age 65, that the premiums on both of her long-term care insurance policies would be increasing by 60%, and warning that "it is possible that your premium will increase again in the future." In that letter, GLICNY explained that the decision to increase premiums was not based on any change in health or "the current economic environment." Rather, "Our decision to increase premiums is primarily based upon the fact that the expected claims over the life of your policy are significantly higher today than was anticipated when your policy form was originally priced, and as a result, a premium increase is warranted."
I reported on the case in No. 197 (posted January 13, 2017). There I offered readers the 61-page original complaint.
The Motion to Dismiss the Original Complaint
The defendants did not respond to the original complaint. Instead, on March 27, 2017, they filed a motion to dismiss the original complaint. They also filed a memorandum and several other documents in support of the motion. They said the motion was based on the "lack of subject matter jurisdiction (due to a lack of standing)" and "failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted."
The Amended Complaint
The plaintiffs did not respond to the motion to dismiss the original complaint. Instead, on April 10, they filed a 114-page amended complaint on behalf of 19 policyholders. They are residents of California (2), Florida (2), Maryland, Michigan, New York (2), North Carolina (2), Pennsylvania (5), South Carolina, Texas (2), and Virginia.
Aside from the expanded version of the "parties" section in the amended complaint because of the increased number of plaintiffs, the 58-page "factual background" section in the amended complaint was about twice the size of the corresponding section in the original complaint. Also, there were eight counts in the amended complaint, compared to seven counts in the original complaint. Here are the first and last paragraphs of the expanded "introduction" section in the amended complaint:
1. This case concerns the financial harm caused to current and former policyholders of Genworth long term care ("LTC") insurance policies in the United States, as a direct result of Genworth's deliberate misconduct in wrongfully depleting needed policy reserves—which is the portion of an insurer's revenue held aside to pay future claims—while masking its true financial condition by not disclosing facts required by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners ("NAIC") and statutory accounting fundamentals.
31. Consequently, Plaintiffs, as well as other similarly situated policyholders that comprise the Classes, now seek either restitution, damages for the diminution in their LTC policies' economic value, or damages for out-of-pocket losses incurred by former policyholders who have had to pay higher premiums for new LTC coverage to replace terminated Genworth policies.
The Motion to Dismiss the Amended Complaint
The defendants did not respond to the amended complaint. Instead, on May 22, they filed a motion to dismiss the amended complaint. They also filed a memorandum and several other documents in support of the motion. They used the same reasoning they used in the motion to dismiss the original complaint.
The Plaintiffs' Notice of Withdrawal
The plaintiffs did not respond to the motion to dismiss the amended complaint. Instead, on June 10, they filed a notice of withdrawal of the amended complaint and of voluntary dismissal of the case "without prejudice." That expression means the case can be refiled later. On June 26, the judge endorsed the notice and said "so ordered."
Why the plaintiffs dropped the case is a mystery. I asked one of the plaintiffs' attorneys, with whom I am acquainted, for an explanation, but received no reply. I will not speculate on why they dropped the case. I will say I am perplexed in view of the enormous amount of resources that must have gone into preparation of the original and amended complaints.
The dropping of the Leifer case is reminiscent of a class action lawsuit I wrote about in No. 110 (posted July 17, 2014). There the 105-page complaint (and 67 additional pages of exhibits) alleged phony reinsurance transactions with affiliates and participation in a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) enterprise. The lead plaintiffs were Clarice Whitmore, an Arkansas resident who bought an annuity in 2012 from Security Benefit Life Insurance Company, and Helga Maria Schulzki, a California resident who bought an annuity in 2013 from EquiTrust Life Insurance Company. The defendants were Guggenheim Partners LLC, Guggenheim Life and Annuity Company, Security Benefit Life, and EquiTrust Life. The complaint was withdrawn without explanation one day after it was filed. In No. 110, I offered readers the 172-page filing. (See Whitmore v. Guggenheim, U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois, Case No. 1:14-cv-948.)
I am offering a complimentary 118-page PDF consisting of the amended complaint in the Leifer case (114 pages) and the notice of voluntary dismissal (4 pages). Email jmbelth@gmail.com and ask for the July 2017 package relating to the Leifer lawsuit against Genworth.
No. 224: Savings Bank Life Insurance Company of Massachusetts—The Plan to Convert into a Mutual Company
On May 19, 2017, James Morgan, president and chief executive officer of Savings Bank Life Insurance of Massachusetts (SBLI), notified policyholders about a plan to buy out the stockholders and convert the organization into a mutual company. He said the board of directors had unanimously approved the plan, and implementation required the approval of a majority of the policyholders who vote on the plan. He said a special meeting of policyholders was to be held on June 28. He urged them to vote in person at the meeting, or by another method. A "Summary Policyholder Information Statement" accompanied the notification letter and described the plan. Policyholders interested in further details were invited to request a more lengthy "General Policyholder Information Statement."
On June 22, 2017, Leslie McEvoy, a policyholder who received the notice, filed a class action lawsuit in state court against SBLI. She also filed a motion for a preliminary injunction blocking implementation of the plan, and she asked for an expedited hearing. The case was referred to Superior Court Justice Mitchell Kaplan. (See McEvoy v. SBLI, Suffolk Superior Court, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Case No. 2017-1961.)
SBLI has 30 stockholders who are savings banks in Massachusetts. SBLI plans to buy back all the shares of Class A common stock for $500 per share and all the shares of Class B common stock for $128 per share, for a total of $57.3 million. SBLI plans to obtain the money by issuing a surplus note (explained later). The Massachusetts insurance commissioner has approved the plan, subject to approval of the policyholders.
The general thrust of the plaintiff's opposition to the plan is that the notice to the policyholders is "grossly defective," that the policyholder vote based on that notice would not be valid, and that the plan should not proceed until SBLI provides an adequate notice. Some of her objections to the plan are mentioned in the first paragraph of the complaint:
Plaintiff is seeking preliminary and injunctive relief related to the imminent vote of SBLI's policyholders — scheduled to occur at a Special Meeting on June 28, 2017 — on SBLI's proposed Plan of Conversion. Plaintiff seeks to enjoin the Special Meeting and block the policyholder vote on grounds that the Notice disseminated by SBLI to its policyholders and holders of annuity contracts eligible to vote, whose affirmative vote is statutorily required to secure approval of the Plan of Conversion, is false, deceptive and misleading. Plaintiff and the Putative Class of its participating policyholders will be irreparably harmed if the Special Meeting is allowed to convene and/or the policyholder vote, which is based on the grossly defective Notice, is allowed to proceed. [Emphasis in original.]
The Alleged Problems
The plaintiff alleges that SBLI's notice is "false, deceptive and misleading" because of several major problems. Here are five of those alleged problems.
First, SBLI has $219 million of net operating losses (NOLs) to carry forward. If the Internal Revenue Service deems the conversion a "change of control" transaction, SBLI may be deprived of a significant portion of the NOLs. The notice did not disclose the likelihood or the consequences of such a development.
Second, the notice did not disclose that Piper Jaffray (PF), SBLI's financial advisor, analyzed the plan and prepared a fairness opinion. The plaintiff alleges that PF said the plan would provide a windfall to the stockholders and adversely affect the policyholders.
Third, the notice did not disclose that the costs of the surplus note may adversely affect the policyholders. A surplus note is a debt instrument that increases the issuing (borrowing) company's surplus because the company is not required to establish a liability for the amount borrowed. A surplus note is subordinate to the issuing company's other obligations, can be issued only with the prior approval of the insurance commissioner in the issuing company's state of domicile, and interest and principal payments can be made only with the commissioner's prior approval.
Fourth, when a stock company issues participating (dividend paying) policies, invariably there are questions about the relative interests of the shareholders and the policyholders in the earnings and surplus of the company. The plaintiff alleges that SBLI's plan will dilute the interests of the policyholders, and that the notice does not adequately address the problem.
Fifth, the notice asserts shareholders have a 37.5 percent interest in SBLI's original surplus. The plaintiff alleges that the assertion is false.
In addition to the complaint, the parties have filed many other documents. Here are a few of them. The plaintiff filed a motion for a preliminary injunction, with a supporting memorandum. SBLI filed an opposition to the motion for a preliminary injunction, with supporting memoranda. SBLI also filed the general policyholder information statement, frequently asked questions, an independent auditor's report, and financial statements.
The Milliman Opinion
SBLI retained Steven Schreiber, FSA, MAAA, of Milliman, Inc., an actuarial consulting firm, to provide an opinion as to whether the proposed plan of conversion is fair to the policyholders from an actuarial standpoint. The opinion, dated January 4, 2017, is appended to the general policyholder information statement offered to policyholders. The plaintiff alleges that the Milliman opinion is "flawed," and that SBLI's use of the opinion in connection with the proposed plan is "irrelevant and erroneous." Therefore the plaintiff alleges that inclusion of the opinion in the general policyholder information statement is "misleading."
The Milliman opinion says it can be used as necessary in connection with the proposed plan, but any other use of the opinion requires Schreiber's consent. I asked him for permission to provide it as part of a complimentary package I plan to offer to my readers. He declined to grant permission, citing "Milliman's longstanding policy of not discussing or distributing client work product."
On June 27, Judge Kaplan held a hearing on the plaintiff's motion for a preliminary injunction. It is my understanding that the judge expressed concern about SBLI's notice in several areas. However, because the special meeting of policyholders was the next day, and because the plan could not be implemented quickly, he decided not to issue an injunction immediately. The reason why the plan could not be implemented quickly is that SBLI has not completed arrangements for the surplus note.
The Special Meeting
On June 28, the special meeting of policyholders was held. It is my understanding that about 60,000 of SBLI's 480,000 policyholders voted, and that about 90 percent of those voted in favor of the plan.
On June 30, Judge Kaplan issued an order denying the plaintiff's motion for a preliminary injunction. He analyzed the plaintiff's allegations, generally sided with SBLI on them, and said the plaintiff was not likely to succeed on the merits of her allegations. The judge also said that "speed is more important than a carefully crafted explanation of the court's reasoning, so that the plaintiff may consider any other opportunities for the relief she requested."
Since the early 1990s, most insurance company reorganizations have been demutualizations. In such a reorganization, a policyholder-owned (mutual) company converts into a shareholder-owned (stock) company.
During the same period, some mutual companies have partially demutualized by creating a mutual holding company (MHC). In some such cases, the companies later dissolved their MHCs and demutualized; however, some MHCs still exist. I have expressed the opinion that creating an MHC is contrary to the interests of policyholders.
Prior to the early 1990s, most insurance company reorganizations were mutualizations, in which a stock company converts into a mutual company. An example is Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States. Originally it was a stock company. However, after revelations in the Hughes-Armstrong investigation of 1905, the company mutualized. In 1992, the company demutualized under the sponsorship of AXA, a French company, and became AXA Equitable Life Insurance Company.
The Provident Case
Provident Mutual Life Insurance Company of Philadelphia, which at the time was an old and highly-regarded company, had an experience about 20 years ago reminiscent of the SBLI case. Provident notified its policyholders that the board of directors had approved a plan to create an MHC. The Pennsylvania insurance department held a hearing, the company amended the plan, the department approved the plan, the company asked the policyholders to vote on the plan, and 89 percent of those voting approved the plan.
However, a group of policyholders had filed a lawsuit in a Pennsylvania state court seeking an injunction blocking implementation of the MHC plan. They alleged that the policyholder information statement omitted important information, and that the policyholder vote therefore was not valid. Two days after the vote, the judge issued a preliminary injunction blocking implementation of the plan. Later the judge made the injunction permanent. Provident eventually scrapped the MHC plan and demutualized under the sponsorship of Nationwide Corporation.
As the Provident case progressed, I wrote extensively in The Insurance Forum about the case; the last major article was in the November 1999 issue. Jason Adkins, the lead plaintiff's attorney in the SBLI case, was involved in the Provident case.
In general I agree with the plaintiff's allegations about the shortcomings of SBLI's notice to policyholders. Therefore I disagree with Judge Kaplan's order. In my opinion, the motion for a preliminary injunction should have been granted, the initial policyholder vote should have been voided, SBLI should have modified the notice and sent it to the policyholders, and another policyholder vote should have occurred.
I do not know whether the plaintiff can appeal Judge Kaplan's order or take some other action to seek relief. I plan to report significant further developments in the case, should they occur.
I am offering a complimentary 68-page PDF consisting of SBLI's notification letter (1 page), SBLI's summary policyholder information statement (18 pages), McEvoy's complaint (29 pages), Judge Kaplan's order (14 pages), and the article in the November 1999 issue of The Insurance Forum (6 pages). Email jmbelth@gmail.com and ask for the July 2017 package about SBLI's mutualization plan.
No. 227: Long-Term Care Insurance—A Major Ruling i...
No. 226: The Age 100 Problem—The Achilles' Heel of...
No. 225: Genworth Financial—Voluntary Dismissal of...
No. 224: Savings Bank Life Insurance Company of Ma...


Discussion in 'Windows XP' started by hitman6267, Jan 2, 2006.
see what is using up all your CPU time or using an usually high amount of memory at the time.
when starting up... clicking on a button on my keyboard the buttons that do actions lke open media player thats sometimes... i cant open taskmanager and see because i can scroll down.. cant click anything.
the cd room is F: ... what is that ? i should write that with my xp cd in the cd room ? what does it do ?
start\run(type and hit ok dont get this part... do u mean open start menu type cmd in run the type \expand f:\i386\explorer.ex_ c:\Windows\explorer.exe ? Dont think so. And would something happen ? i have sp2 on this windows ( not on cd ) has the explorer.exe been updated ?
did that.. it asked for the xp cd gave it ran for a while then t ended... Dont know if it worked will post soon. Thank you.


Are You a Fixer Upper, too? What Body Image and Home Improvement Have in Common - Compared to Who?
I love home improvement shows. I'm so inspired watching the amazing transformations. These brilliant designers take a hideously ugly, old and dilapidated home and turn it into a modern day dream house. It's really quite impressive.
I'm also a little obsessed with Fixer Upper. (Maybe a "little" is an understatement.) Last year while we were searching for a new home, I Googled how to be on the show. When I suggested to my husband that we move a mere 65 miles away (to be within range of houses Chip and Jo will re-do), he turned off our cable.
I made the pilgrimage to Waco with some friends (and my daughter–she's also a fan) the day after Christmas. They had an 80% off sale! (Yes, that's an eight and a zero!) So, I sent this photo to my husband.
See how full our hands are as we wait in line to check out? Dear husband didn't know about the sale so I sent this picture to make him nervous!
There's a deeper reason why these home improvement shows are such a huge phenomena! The reason they hold so much appeal to me (and to women everywhere) is more subtle than most realize.
We love home improvement shows because they give us hope!
It's not hope that someday we'll live in a gorgeous home with shiplap (though I may, personally, aspire to that!). Rather, shows like Fixer Upper give us hope for salvation.
Yes, yes, I did say salvation. Follow me here.
Home improvement shows illustrate salvation as we witness something unlovely and unwanted transformed into something beautiful. We all have a deep longing for this kind of metamorphosis.
I'll admit. That's what I always wanted–a good makeover! I viewed my body as my own personal "home" improvement project. I needed personal trainers, estheticians, hair dressers, Estee Lauder counters, and diet books to improve the way my soul's house looked.
I assumed that if I could transform my outsides, I would feel free from the body image issues that plagued me.
It never worked out that way, though.
In front of the Magnolia store in Waco.
But much like the homes Chip and Jo re-do, I needed more than just new countertops and fresh paint. I had to reorient my view and see myself as a true fixer upper. The work of establishing my value (in Christ) and the transformation that happens with true salvation, required more than just cosmetic change.
Magnolia just created a new "Demo Day" t-shirt. I know they'll sell because demo seems so fun, right? Swinging a sledgehammer to knock out a wall? Yeah! Sign me up!
Demo is one of the first steps in cleaning out the old to make room for the new–wiping the proverbial "slate" clean. It's necessary before any re-modeling project.
But what also happens in the demolition process? They find hidden problems. Always. Tearing back dry wall reveals asbestos. Ripping out a ceiling shows water damage. Pulling up the floors exposes a huge termite problem. There's always some issue that couldn't be seen from the outside, but demolition exposes these issues.
And the new home owners? At first they freak out! The fret over how much repairs will cost or how they're "over-budget." But in the end, they acknowledge this truth: Uncovering and remedying the hidden problems always makes the home better.
When I found myself in counseling a few years ago, I discovered that God wanted to take a bulldozer to my heart. He desired to expose the junk I had hidden behind its walls.
What did I find after demolition? My body image issues were more from "bad wiring" and faulty beliefs in my heart than they were about my touching thighs. It wasn't until he finished his excavation, scraping off the sin and patching up the wounds, that I was free to feel transformed.
At the Magnolia Silos with my daughter and our friends: Laurel, Brandy & Erin.
I rock at choosing paint colors. (In the store at least.) I re-covered some chairs last month and they look nice in my kitchen. But, who am I fooling? Home design is not my area of expertise.
And so it goes with life design. I can make a list of the things I want to improve about myself, but I can't make the changes on my own. I need a designer with experience–one qualified to re-design lives, not just kitchens and bathrooms.
I tried to solicit help from body change experts, certain they were the kind of designers I needed for a "better" life. Fitness and diet experts would help me "makeover" my new body, but the changes they offered weren't permanent. When I'd give up the diet, or run out of money for personal training, and it'd be back to square one on the body change front.
Then I found a designer who knew what he was doing. His plan for my life was bigger than sculpting me a bikini body. He showed me how to find my purpose–to live for something greater than just looking better on the outside. He also showed me how to love others and find freedom when I trusted him with my life's design. That designer was Jesus.
Fortunately, he has a ton of experience in the area. While I was under-qualified to fix myself up, he holds the credentials of master builder.
Gracious, I often lack faith too.
Sometimes it feels like the work is going too slow. Is anything even changing? Will I ever be different?
Other times it feels like too much is going wrong. . . We'll never get back on track here, God. Maybe we should just scrap the whole project?
But, the great designer knows what He's doing.
Just like home improvement, real transformation takes time. We must trust the designer's plans, knowing his sanctification process–the fixing up–takes time. But, just like the great reveal on Fixer Upper, the end results are always worth the struggle.
Thanks, Heidi! Who's our mutual friend? 🙂 Tell her thanks for introducing us! 🙂 Appreciate your comment!
I looooove Fixer Upper! Joanna has my style down pat. I have also considered moving to Waco, just to have them work on my house.
Thanks as always for the message!


text:
Tag: espionage
5 Reasons Why Christopher Marlowe is an Elizabethan Hipster Poet
On March 6, 2015 January 28, 2018 By matthewrettinoIn Essays, History, literature2 Comments
Bonus: He grew hipster moustaches literally centuries before they were trendy.
Elizabethan England's most celebrated poet and playwright, in underground kind of way, was Christopher Marlowe, although he was soon eclipsed by Mr. Will Shakespeare, whose popular plays would define the mainstream for centuries to come. It was the 90s. The 1590s to be precise. Marlowe was at the height of his powers, writing the politically subversive and experimental poetry that would come to define his generation. Doctor Faustus, for instance, would stand the test of centuries as a profound representation of Renaissance humanism.
Many have tried to label Marlowe. Attaining his MA at Cambridge, he was a member of a generation of college wits. The civil service was not large enough to accommodate the young poets of London, so they turned to more edgy professions, like poetry.
Poet, playwright, spy, homosexual, Catholic, atheist: even if the labels didn't make any sense, they stuck. Marlowe's response? Haters gonna hate.
Here are five reasons why Marlowe was basically a hipster:
1. He avoided all labels.
Although Edward II depicts the homosexual relationship between a king and his favourite courtier (fun fact: Edward II is Longshanks' son in Braveheart), Marlowe cannot be outed of the closet based on textual evidence alone. In a similar way, scholars have argued about whether Doctor Faustus celebrates or a condemns Renaissance humanism and the pursuit of scientific knowledge–they have to settle on seeing the play as expressing a paradox. Neither can they determine with absolute certainty whether he was an atheist, or for that matter, a closet Catholic. You can't pin Marlowe down or place him in any particular intellectual camp–being classified would make him way too mainstream.
2. He was over-educated and underemployed.
Sound familiar? Like a certain generation of young, college- and university-aged people today (such as yours truly), he had no money unless he sought patronage. Furthermore, his education in classical literature went nowhere towards finding him a job. He couldn't just be a cobbler like his father, Mr. John Marlowe. Way too mainstream. Instead, the only way Marlowe was able to get his MA was by serving in Her Majesty's Secret Service–such as it existed back then. Marlowe was sent to France to spy on Catholics for Elizabeth I, or at least that's what scholars have argued. If only that was all you had to do today: become James Bond for a while and then bang! your degree is conferred, your tuition paid. (I'll stop dreaming about it now.)
3. He was into retro.
Marlowe painstakingly tried to bring back the first-century Roman poet Ovid. Although he was not alone in reviving interest in Ovid's poetry, most people came to know Ovid only in grammar school textbooks. Marlowe remixed a collection of Ovid's poems, the Elegies, by translating them into English verse. Then he brought Ovid to popular audiences by writing highly pretentious allusions to Ovid's Metamorphoses into his plays. I don't suppose you'd understand the reference, but…
4. He was unappreciated as an artist for centuries.
Marlowe's art was so ahead of his time that his seventeenth- and eighteenth-century readers devalued him as only a necessary precursor to the Bard–John the Baptist to Shakespeare's Christ. Well, the Romantics reappraised him after almost 200 years and his works, which explore tyranny and the dark side of politics, had new resonance in the twentieth century. Like Vincent Van Gogh, the archetypical unappreciated artist, the genius in Marlowe only became relevant after his death.
5. He wrote in blank verse before it was cool.
Rhymes were way too fashionable. Not to mention, they were just distasteful. I mean really. His contemporaries were infatuated with couplets, Spenserian stanzas, and rime royal. Marlowe was one of the first to realize that rhymes were overrated. Iambic pentameter blank verse in English, so characteristic of Shakespeare's great dramatic speeches, was actually pioneered by his more underground predecessor. Unfortunately, Shakespeare is given all the cred for this. What everyone should come to realize is that Marlowe was not some kind of mindless trend follower; he started one of the greatest poetic trends in English literature, thank you very much.
7 Ways in which Saruman is like John Dee
On December 20, 2013 December 17, 2013 By matthewrettinoIn literature8 Comments
The Vinciolo Journal turns 1 year old January 5th, two days after J.R.R. Tolkien's Birthday, so in celebration of both events, I am making a series of Tolkien-related posts. This is the first of several … 7 ways Saruman resembles Queen Elizabeth's court astrologer and geographer John Dee.
In comparing these two figures (the visual similarities are themselves suggestive), I am in no way trying to slander John Dee or imply that he was a maniacal, power-crazed wizard. He was a humble, lonely man–as lonely as any man favoured of the Queen could possibly be, although his intellectual influence had enormous implications, not least with regard to the colonization of the New World. However, there are so many similarities between these two magicians that it cannot be easily ignored.
So, without further ado, here is my list:
1. Physical resemblance to Christopher Lee
Not only is John Dee a magician, but he looks like a wizard himself–and Christophe Lee portrayed the wizard Saruman with exquisite tact in The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy. The flat gaze and the white beard are the chief forms of resemblance between the actor and wizard. Although Dee's hair is not as long Lee's Saruman, his hair may still be white, provided he is not bald beneath the black bonnet he's wearing in his portrait. Set Saruman in black robes and attach a starched ruff around his throat and, after a haircut, you basically have John Dee.
2. Crystal balls
Saruman has his palantír while John Dee has his shewstone. Both are crystal balls they use for magically surveying the land. Made by Fëanor, greatest of the Noldor and maker of the Silmarils, the palantír stones were mostly lost in Middle Earth, except for a few. The stone seen in the film is at Orthanc in Isengard, the same stone Saruman uses to communicate with Sauron and keep track of the progress of the Fellowship of the Ring. There is another stone in that the steward of Gondor controls at Minas Tirith. As for the shewstone, or "seeing stone," of John Dee, it is displayed currently at the British Museum. You can see it if you like. Rumour has it that it is a sacred Aztec polished obsidian stone taken from Mexico during the Spanish conquest.
John Dee's shewstone at the British Museum
Saruman and the Palantir of Orthanc
3. Spoke with 'angels'
The warning Gandalf gave Saruman about the palantír, that "you never know who else might be watching," is also applicable to Dee's shewstone. Both crystal balls give you the power to speak with spirits–but also for the spirits to talk to you. Dee and Edward Kelley used the shewstone to communicate with angels, who gave Dee revelations from the world of the dead. Supposedly, the angelic language Dee developed called Enochian came as a result from such spiritual meetings.
In a similar way, Saruman uses his palantír to speak with a fallen 'angel,' Sauron. Indeed, The Silmarillion reveals that Sauron is a god-like or at least angelic being. He is one of the Maiar, the spirits who serve the Valar, though one who became corrupted by evil in his service to the Great Enemy Morgoth. When Saruman begins to peer into his palantír in search of knowledge, he discovers the Ring of Power, which he comes to desire for himself. However, he becomes twisted, desiring power above all else. In the end, he betrays the forces of the West and captures Gandalf in his tower, committing "the treason of Isengard."
4. Consorted with a necromancer
This one was implied in #3. Edward Kelley was a necromancer who communed with angels and the dead. On the other hand, Saruman communicates with "the Necromancer," which is a name given to the vague, evil presence that lurks in the shadows of Mirkwood in The Hobbit and later is revealed to be Sauron himself. Supposedly, Sauron was into demon summoning and raising the dead back to life at this time, instead of leading orcs to war against Gondor.
Sauron the Necromancer
Edward Kelley the Necromancer
5. Polymath Wizards
Saruman and John Dee were both wizards of great learning and were capable (or thought they were capable) of using magic. Furthermore, both wizards possessed plenty of non-magical knowledge. Dee was a mathematician, cartographer, and mechanic, once in his younger years designing a bird with artificial wings that could fly. Saruman was something of a chemist as well, designing the gunpowder which his uruk-hai use to demolish the walls of Helm's Deep.
6. Spy Network
Astonishingly, both John Dee and Saruman had spy networks. Frodo and company must worry about spies from the White Wizard as much as they worry about Sauron's own Black Riders. In addition to the ruffians Sauron employs to infiltrate and scourge the Shire in The Return of the King, he has a swarm of crows called Crebain, which he uses to spy on the Fellowship. John Dee's spy network consisted of a network of foreign agents abroad, many probably on the lookout for Catholics plotting in France to return to England and kill the Queen. He may also have used spirits and the magic of his shewstone to spy on enemies abroad.
7. Similarity to John Faust
At last, Saruman and John Dee are both so attracted by mysterious power that they make deals with the devil they later severely regret. They have what I call a Faust complex. Doctor John Faust was a historical scholar in Germany who is said to have made a deal with the devil, whom he summons at a crossroads at midnight in a necromantic ritual, in order to attain forbidden knowledge of magic. In the end, after squandering his time, Faust is dragged to hell by demons. His story has been adopted innumerable times: Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe and Faust Parts I and II by Goethe being the two chief examples. The Godfather is another takeoff on this archetypical story: Michael Corleone makes a "deal with the devil" to enter the mob and then remains locked in, becoming supremely powerful at the price of his soul.
Saruman's deal with Sauron is a similar complex. "There is only one Lord of the Rings," warns Gandalf, "and he does not share power." Saruman learns how to breed uruk-hai from Sauron and plans to ravage Middle-Earth for his new master, planning to find the One Ring for himself and become master of all. But in the end, his designs fall flat. When nature rebels and the Ents take over Isengard, a powerless Saruman is force to flee to the Shire, where he avenges himself by desolating the land. Finally (spoilers here), his longtime servant Gríma Wormtongue stabs him in the back, frustrated by his own master's cruelty.
John Dee's Faustian narrative is a little less extreme. Of course, his story is not fantasy, but historical. Nonetheless, Dee makes a deal with Edward Kelley to speak with angels and becomes mystified. Actually, scholars now believe Kelley created an elaborate hoax: Dee never spoke to angels directly, but through Kelley, who they supposedly possessed. Kelley may well have faked the whole thing, however. Upon his return to England, he became unable to acquire aristocratic patronage, probably because many could not see the value in his knowledge, or because they were frightened by his connections to the occult. When he died, it was of natural causes and in poverty. Real life often doesn't follow the contours of archetypical plots. Nonetheless, Dee's gradual isolation and loneliness as a result of his ties to the occult might have seemed damnation enough to him.
Faustus woodcut: http://en205uaakersfall2010.blogspot.ca/2010/09/marlowe-dr-faustus.html
John Faust: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Georg_Faust
Palantir: http://www.tin-god.com/newswatcher-team-america-world-assassins/palantir/
Dee: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dee
Shewstone: http://www.flickr.com/photos/james_hastings/4429958552/
Kelley:http://www.hauntedamericatours.com/museum/Necromancy.htm
Saruman: http://www.ilsolco.com/la-sindrome-di-saruman-e-pietrangelo-buttafuoco/
Sauron: http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/Sauron
King Arthur Conqueror of the Arctic? Historical Fantasy and Early British Imperialism
On December 13, 2013 December 23, 2013 By matthewrettinoIn History2 Comments
John Dee was Queen Elizabeth I's court astrologer, mathematician, and geographer–and he might have become the first lord of the North American territory we now call Canada.
Dee is known as a "Renaissance man" for the breadth of his knowledge and for his tendency towards the occult. On a trip to the Continent, he supposedly attempted to summon angels with fellow sorcerer Edward Kelley. Back home, he was a respected courtier whom Elizabeth would often consult–he set the day for her coronation, for example, based on favourable astrological conditions. His knowledge of geography enabled Sir Francis Drake to circumnavigate the globe. In addition to coining the term "British Empire," Dee is known for employing a spy network, being the first to sign his name under the code "007."
One gift Dee gave to his Queen was a book called The Limits of the British Empire, or in Latin Brytanici Imperii Limites, which he wrote between 1577 and 1578. A wonderful edition of his work, with an introduction, was printed in 2004 by editors Ken MacMillan and Jennifer Abeles based on a manuscript copied by an amanuensis in 1593, which I have consulted.
Sir Walter Raleigh
Among the things Dee claims in the book is that Queen Elizabeth had rights–the justification for which go back to ancient times–to most of the territory we now call North America. Dee claims that King Arthur and his knights conquered lands near the Arctic Sea, even a territory we now identify with Baffin Island. He also negotiated that he should be allowed ownership of all lands above the 50th parallel. Except for a thin interval of land just above the Canadian border with the modern U.S., that would encompass all of Our True North Strong and Free!
Of course, at the time, England's colonial strength in its first decade of New World settlement was not a powerful force. Sir Walter Raleigh's settlement on Roanoke Island proved, in the end, to be a disaster, although it produced a few fascinating discoveries and occasioned John White to paint a series of watercolours of Native folk. Roanoke Island was abandoned mysteriously and no one to this day knows why.
Aside from such ephemeral settlements, England's imperial strength was mostly limited to the occasional raid on Spanish ships. Privateers such as Sir John Norris and Sir Francis Drake were both explorers and ship-plunderers. Martin Frosbisher and Humphrey Gilbert were given licenses to start overseas colonies close to the Northwest Passage. However, there was a distinct lack of overseas activities through much of the 1590s, when the surviving manuscript of Brytanici Imperii Limites was written.
John Dee's book advocated for the recovery of ancient British lands, including the North Atlantic, the British Isles, Scandinavia, the Iberian Peninsula, and half of North America. His sources ranged from Byzantine Emperor Justinian, Geraldus Mercator, Jacobus Choyen of s'Hertogenbosh, Hector Boece, and Geoffrey of Monmouth's Brut–a chronicle of Arthurian legends.
It was becoming urgent that England compete with Spain for the New World, which Dee occasionally named "Atlantis" or "Meta Incognita." The Spanish empire was at its height and came to be associated with the cruelty that it was inflicting on its Native people and the barbaric human-sacrificing rituals of the Aztecs. (Of course, when England did settle the New World, they spread another wave of cruelty across the Native populations, in addition to the spreading of lethal diseases. ) While Spain sought to conquer through papal bulls, planting markers, and reading texts of conquest to often illiterate indigenous peoples (that never goes down well), the Brits divided their land with fences and houses.
Frosbisher's plan to settle parts of North America was a state secret, but also an object of interest to the Spanish ambassadors in London. Any settlement in the New World, which was seen as territory partitioned between Spain and Portugal, could lead to an act of war.
Alexander VI (aka Roderigo Borgia) wrote the famous papal bull Inter Cetera in 1493 (a hundred years before Dee's manuscript was written) and the still more famous Treaty of Tordesillas. Both these documents split the territories in New World between the two Iberian countries along an arbitrary line in the Atlantic Ocean. None of this allowed England a toehold.
How could Dee overcome this opposition? Through sneaky legal loopholes and little imagination.
Basically, he alluded to a section of Justinian's Digest that might well be the foundation of that oldest and dearest piece of legislation: finders keepers, losers weepers. Next time you find a penny on the ground, you can tell your irate friend that "what presently belongs to no one becomes by natural reason the property of the first taker."
Of course, the land was owned–by hundreds of thousands of Native American peoples. In all fairness, John Dee might not have been aware of this truth, since the New World was still vastly undiscovered. But he might have taken the hint from Raleigh's Virginia settlement that other people might already live there.
Although Lord Burghley doubted Dee's accuracy, he laid the legal groundwork for England to claim everything from Terra Florida (which is Florida) to the territory of the Duke of Moscovia in Russia.
Arthur's knights stranded in the Arctic.
Now the imagination came in. Tracing the ancestry of Britain from Troy through the legendary founder Brutus and down to King Arthur, Dee referred to how Arthur conquered thirty kingdoms in the North Atlantic and Scandinavia. Since Arthur conquered these lands for Britain first, Elizabeth had a right to them now, so long as she settled the land. Arthur, a Welsh king, was supposedly an ancestor of the Welsh Tudors, whose arrival on the English throne in 1485 signaled the revival of the "British" empire, after a long domination of England under the Saxons.
Dee's mysterious Welsh source book–supposed to be the same nonexistent book on which Monmouth bases his History of the Kings of Britain–claims that King Arthur conquered the Arctic regions in the 530s. Arthur's conquests of the Arctic, in which he encountered pygmies (Sibereans? Proto-Inuit tribesmen?), are recorded in Arthuri Gestis, or The Deeds of Arthur. During Arthur's voyages, he encountered many troubles, including fast-flowing seas that blocked his passage to Northern Norway. Four thousands knights lost their lives in these treacherous passages among the straits of Norway. In the mountains around the North Pole, there were cities in Arthur's time. The lands he conquered include Iceland, Ireland, Greenland, Shetland, Orkney, the Faroe Islands (Friseland), Grocland (NW corner of Greenland), Icaria (an island off of either Ireland or Labrador), Estotiland, and Drogio.
Estotiland is Baffin Island. Dee's source about the Estotiland came from the journey of two Venetians to the Arctic region in the thirteenth century, Niccolo and Antonio Zeno. In 1558, Niccolo Zeno, a relative of the pair, published an account of this extraordinary story.
Zeno describes Estotiland as an island smaller than Iceland with a mountain in the middle and four rivers. It was ruled by a king in a beautiful, populous city, who kept interpreters. Legends told of a famous library of ancient texts in a strange language only two people in the city could speak, though the library was eventually destroyed. This Scandinavian civilization had gold mines, cultivated and brewed beer, and spoke like Europeans, trading with Greenland for skins. Possibly the texts were in Latin, a language uneducated commoners could not speak.
When most Canadians think of Baffin Island, they probably think of an expansive wasteland filled with ice and snow. But who knew it once had a king?
The Zeno brothers also discovered the "province of Drogio," which likely corresponds to Labrador. How about we sign a petition to make Newfoundland and Labrador to change their name to Newfoundland and Drogio? They even supposedly landed in Saguenay, Quebec (or "Saguenaya") two hundred years before Jacques Cartier did in 1535!
In addition to this fascinating Canadian content, I find how Dee's book absolutely busts the myth that Christopher Colombus discovered the New World to be particularly gratifying.
His other sources for Brytanici Imperii Limites come from semi-legendary figures, such as Saint Brendan, who sailed from the British Isles in 560. He landed in Bermuda, which he called Insula Demonum, or "Island of Demons." Should we be surprised that he claimed to see supernatural frights on an island known to exist in what is now known as the "Bermuda Triangle"? (Fun fact: Cambrien Machutus, a sailor on Brendan's ship, became St. Malo, which became the name of the city in which Jacques Cartier was born in 1491!)
In 1170, Lord Madoc, a Welsh prince, an ancestor of Queen Elizabeth, was outraged that his father would leave him no inheritance. So he set sail across the world. He settled, of all places, in Mobile Bay, Alabama! "Devil's Backbone," a mound in Indiana, is attributed to the Welsh Prince. This was the first British colony in the New World and Dee used it as precedent to establish England's rights to conquer the new continent.
There is such a wealth of stories in these legends … but how to separate reality from myth? I'm afraid I do not have the answers. A king on Baffin Island, a Welsh nobleman settling Alabama, John Dee as Lord Canada, and King Arthur as Emperor of the Arctic … these are only a few of the truly radical stories out there. Supposedly Egyptians sailed up the Mississippi, which I cannot confirm or deny, though Neil Gaiman certainly confirms this in American Gods.
I would certainly like to credit these tales. They are the type of stories archeological evidence can do little to confirm.
In conclusion, Brytanici Imperii Limites is a fine example of "historical fantasy" used to justify imperialism and the "rights" of the English to settle North America. It reveals that the justification the British first used for their settlements in North America was based on a 900-year-old lie in Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain.
"Dee built an empirical edifice of pseudohistorical sources to provide practical political advice to the English State," say MacMillian and Abeles (26). But after a certain point, pseudohistory becomes real history. I imagine that Dee's book can provide available inspiration to writers of historical fantasy or alternate history for generations to come.
The British would later found the Thirteen Colonies that would becomes the United States–and conquer Canada from the French.
http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/ralegh.htm
http://www.erroluys.com/America/Images.htm
http://www.amazon.com/John-Dee-British-Military-International/dp/0275978230
http://www.strangehistory.net/2012/12/15/king-arthurs-last-men-stranded-in-the-arctic-north/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil%27s_Backbone_%28rock_formation%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dee
http://www.raremaps.com/gallery/archivedetail/23290/North_America_and_the_West_Indies_A_New_Map_Wherein_The_British_Empire/Bowles.html
http://danaenatsis.com/2012/05/15/rocks-and-stones-skin-and-bones/
http://www.artexpertswebsite.com/pages/artists/white.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baffin_Island
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2011/may/16/those-bad-borgias/
Behind Guy Fawkes II: The Gunpowder Plot
On November 1, 2013 October 23, 2013 By matthewrettinoIn HistoryLeave a comment
Persecution of Catholics did not relent after James I assumed the throne.
"But 'The Gunpowder Plot'–there was a get-penny! I have presented that to an eighteen- or twenty-pence audience nine times in an afternoon. Your home-born projects prover ever the best; they are so easy and familiar. They put too much learning i'their things nowadays, and that, I fear, will be the spoil o' this."
-Leatherhead, Bartholomew Fair by Ben Johnson, Act 5 Scene 1
A get-penny was a bestselling performance–in this case a puppet show of the Gunpowder Plot, so as Johnson attests through this quote, the drama of the 5 November was as popular today as it was in the seventeenth century.
When James I took the throne, Catholics flocked across the channel from France to return to England, hoping for toleration in the form of a law similar to the 1598 Edict of Nantes, which granted toleration to French Huguenots. However, several things were to go wrong.
First, there was the Bye Plot, in which William Watson, a priest, planned to kidnap the king and hold him for ransom until he declared toleration law. Then the Main Plot, which followed, was led by certain high-ranking courtiers like Lord Cobham and Sir Walter Raleigh. It aimed to get rid of the Scottish King James and replace him with Lady Arabella Stewart. In 1604, due to Puritan Scottish advisers, the king began to harden in his stance towards Catholic toleration. 19 March 1604 marked the passing of recusancy laws that formed a continuation of Elizabeth's anti-Catholic policies.
Robert Catesby was a main ringleader among the Gunpowder Plot conspirators. He belonged to a wealthy Catholic family from Warwickshire. His cousin, Francis Tresham, was also prepared to use physical violence to achieve his aim of initiating a regime change. Jack and Kit Wright were notable swordsmen who fought during Essex's failed rebellion of 1601, which saw the disgruntled earl beheaded. These two men would have known Guy Fawkes from school at St. Peter's,York. Fawkes himself was a veteran of the wars against the Dutch in the Netherlands. Thomas and Robert Wintour, relatives of Catesby, also owned Huddington Court, a priest refuge. Thomas' uncle had been a priest. He'd been hanged, drawn, and quartered—presumably for treason—a gesture I doubt Thomas appreciated.
Wintour and Fawkes are both known to have travelled to Spain in order to seek support. The Spanish under King Philip III was making a peace treaty with the English. Sceptical that the treaty would force the English king to tolerate Catholics, the conspirators prepared for another, more violent means of having their way.
The Gunpowder Plot conspirators. Guy Fawkes' name appears as Guido because he was closely associated with the Spanish.
In winter 1604, Wintour met Catesby and Jack Wright in their house in Lambeth, which was a stone's throw across the Thames from Westminster—their target. The Gunpowder plot was Catesby's idea, and hardening their resolve, once Fawkes had crossed the Channel, they met at a house behind St. Clements in the Strand. There, Father John Gerard, a Jesuit, celebrated Mass. Jesuits in England at this time were not allowed to enter England as "secular" priests: Elizabeth I had banished them from England by decree 5 November 1602. After the Mass, the conspirators swore an oath. The John Gerard was most likely not present for the oath, although Protestants would associate the conspiracy with the Jesuit order for a long time.
Parliament opened 19 March 1604. On 24 May, Thomas Percy acquired a lease on a small house near the House of Lords, where they were to excavate a shaft from the cellars to the foundations of the House of Lords' chamber, and then lay the powder in a stack of concealed barrels. The peace treaty with Spain was signed, and it included no mention of Catholic toleration. The situation worsened when the king appointed a committee to prevent Jesuits from subverting the king's authority.
The plotters encountered many setbacks. Their house was requisitioned while they were digging the mine, which risked the exposure of the plot. A plague outbreak forced Parliament to prorogue until 3 October 1605. They hoped for Princess Elizabeth to survive the explosion—a female monarch, they felt, would be more easily manipulable. Apparently, they had forgotten how much they suffered under the last female monarch, the last Elizabeth.
Robert Wintour, Kit Wright, and John Grant (a notorious participant in the Essex rebellion and the brother-in-law of Robert Wintour), entered the conspiracy in March 1605. Soon, they discovered coal in storage in the Lords' meeting house. This meant they could place powder directly under the House of Lords. Presumably, the coal would help the fires burn afterwards. On 3 October, Parliament was prorogued once more, until the fateful day of 5 November.
Robert Cecil, spymaster and secretary of state. One of the successors of Francis Walsingham's office, and a master in snooping out Catholic threats.
On 27 October, Catesby had reason to suspect the plot had been betrayed. He suspected Francis Tresham, for his connections to Mounteagle, but he denied it enough to convince the conspirators he was innocent. They pushed forward with their resolution. Thomas Percy met lord Northumberland in an attempt to see if he had heard about the conspiracy, but found that he was ignorant of it. The gunpowder was undisturbed, reported Fawkes.
Nonetheless, on Friday 1 November, the king read Mounteagle's letter at Whitehall Palace. The next day, the Lord Chamberlain was ordered to search the palace at Westminster …
Fawkes enters the chamber with a slow match on 4 November. He comes face-to-face with the Lord Chamberlain. Imagine Guy's surprise when the Chamberlain takes him to be a servant of the house. They are standing right in front of a pile of gunpowder barrels concealed only beneath a pile of brushwood and wooden sticks. Fawkes sighs in relief when the Chamberlain, satisfied, resumes his inspection of the rest of House of Lords.
The lie Fawkes uses to get out of that tight spot is not really a lie at all, but an omission of the truth: he said the sticks belonged to the tenant of the house, Thomas Percy, a respectable gentleman pensioner. However, Monteagle finds this suspicious. Why would Percy, a known Catholic, own a second house near Parliament when he has his own house in nearby London? The king has Sir Thomas Knyvet, a Justice of the Peace, an old friend of Robert Cecil, and one of the king's privy chambermen, perform a more thorough search.
At midnight, they found Fawkes with thirty-six barrels of gunpowder, red-handed. Fawkes claimed he was actually "John Johnson," Percy's servant, but I doubt it took much of a genius to know he was lying and thought of that name on the spot.
Fawkes had intended to light the fuse after hearing the king enter Parliament above, then escape across the Thames before the whole thing blew. Sir Everard Digby and his men were stationed in an inn called the Red Lion in Dunchurch, posing as hunters, awaiting Step 2, which Catsby would have initiated after arriving from London with the intent of initiating a Catholic uprising. However, when news of the arrest reached them, the assemble huntsmen lost heart, losing all sense of guidance and momentum.
Catesby, Ambrose Rockwood, and John Grant fled from Catholic safehouse to safehouse, avoiding the law. Once, they were wounded in an accidental gunpowder explosion, when they left damp powder too close to a fireplace. So grim was their situation that "Jack White suggested to Catesby that they should blow themselves up with the remaining powder" (Cannadine 28).
What followed at Holbeach was like a showdown in the Wild West. The sheriff of Worcestershire arrived with two hundred men and exchanged fire with the conspirators. The Wright brothers (not the inventors of the airplane, but the Catholics Jack and Kit Wright), were killed. Tom Percy and Rob Catesby were brought down by a single bullet. Catesby died after crawling back to his house and hugging onto a statue of the Virgin Mary. The survivors were rounded up and brought to the Tower.
Under torture, Fawkes confessed to the crime. He hated the Scots, many of whom were Puritans, and he hated the Scottish king James for assuming the English throne. The earl of Northumberland, whom the plotters were suspected of planning to use as a lord protector after Princess Elizabeth took the throne, was thrown in the Tower. On 27 January 1606 the surviving plotters were tried: Guy Fawkes, Tom and Robert Wintour, Sir Everard Digby, John Grant, Robery Keyes, Ambrose Rockwood, and Thomas Bates. They were executed over the course of several days.
Thomas Bates was the one who spoke of the involvements of three Catholic priests: Father John Gerard, Father Oswald Tesimond, and Father Henry Garnet, who was the only one in England at the time. Garnet was hanged, drawn, and quartered 28 March 1606.
On 5 November 1605, Londoners rang bells and lit bonfires in celebration of the deliverance of the kingdom from unthinkable treachery. In 1606, the day became a religious occasion and later in the century, effigies of the Pope were burned in public every 5 November. The tradition of burning effigies of "the guy," meaning Guy Fawkes, would only arrive in the next century.
We can only imagine what would have happened had the plot succeeded. Chances are that the explosion would have set Westminister ablaze, inflicting destruction over a wide area. Hundreds or even thousands of people, including the bulk of the power structure of England, would have been annihilated spectacularly. Perhaps it was the consciousness of this conspiracy in history that inspired the string of similar conspiracies in twenty-first century popular culture: for example, the anti-mater bomb placed under St. Peter's Basilica during the papal conclave in Angels and Demons, and the Nazi theatre explosion in Inglourious Basterds. Nothing like the Gunpowder Plot happened before 1605. And since then, nothing else has happened quite like it (except perhaps the failed attempt to crash a plane in the White House on 9/11).
Just as people today imagine what might have happened had the conspiracy succeeded, people back then tried, and imagined horrors. The paranoia stirred by the failed plot led to worse persecutions for Catholics. Collective fears also helped shape how the history of the plot was understood in posterity.
Next week: Jesuitophobia and the History of Catholic Conspiracies
Guy Fawkes: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/cristinaodone/100187789/health-and-safety-threatens-bonfire-night-and-making-me-feel-sympathy-for-guy-fawkes/
Robert Cecil: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cecil,_1st_Earl_of_Salisbury
King James I: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:King_James_I_of_England_and_VI_of_Scotland_by_John_De_Critz_the_Elder.jpg
Christopher Marlowe : An Elizabethan Assassination Conspiracy?
On March 24, 2013 March 25, 2013 By matthewrettinoIn History1 Comment
A portrait of Marlowe from Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, painted in 1585, the same year he may have become a spy for England. Who killed him? But more importantly, why?
On 30 May 1593, Christopher Marlowe, illustrious author of such plays as Faustus, The Jew of Malta, and Tamburlaine, walked into the Deptford house of the widow Eleanor Bull. There, he encountered three men: Robert Poley, Ingram Frizer, and Nicholas Skeres. Marlowe never left the place alive: a knife wound in the eye dispatched him presently to the afterlife.
The question that has been buggering Elizabethan historians is, why?
The assassination of Marlowe has spawned countless hypotheses, many conspiratorial. What they teach in high schools is that Marlowe was murdered in a bar fight. However, closer analysis of events suggests that Marlowe's death may have had to do with a little more than simply an excessive bar tab.
Historians such as A. D. Wraight in his book In Search of Christopher Marlowe and Curtis C. Breight in Surveillance, Militarism, and Drama in the Elizabethan Era have investigated the mystery behind one of literature's greatest dramatists.
First, the witnesses.
The three men called to the witness box during the trial were all gentlemen. Robert Poley was a secret agent of some repute in the service of Queen Elizabeth. Nicholas Skeres served as a court messenger and was likely also an agent, having played a major part in the disclosure of the Babington Plot, which led to the beheading of Mary Queen of Scots. Ingram Frizer was a retainer in the service of Sir Thomas Walsingham II, before becoming joined to his son, also named Thomas, who was Marlowe's patron. It was Ingram knife that was found lodged in Marlowe's skull.
The evening seems to have begun pleasantly enough. They had dinner and walked in the garden, making business conversation. After their 6:00 supper, the coroner Willian Banby remarks that Ingram and Marlowe became involved in an inflamed argument "about the payment of the sum of pence, that is, le recknynge" (qtd. in Wreight 293).
Marlowe, lying on a bed in the room where they had supped, then drew a dagger and rushed at Ingram, whose back was against him as he sat at the table and the other men. Marlowe struck two wounds in Ingram's head, an inch long and a quarter inch deep.
Ingram struggled against Marlowe to save his own life and, in the fight, reclaimed the dagger. The wound he inflicted in Marlowe's right eye went in two inches, supposedly killing Marlowe instantly.
Mr. Banby's story proves that Ingram acted "in the defense and saving of his own life" (293). Queen Elizabeth eventually pardoned Igram for his crime.
However, Wraight notes how unsatisfactory the testimony has been to scholars, ever since Dr. Hotson's observation that Robert Poley and Nicholas Skeres may have lied to save the life of Ingram Frizer. What, after all, could explain how Marlowe, with the advantage of surprise, only managed to inflict two cuts to Ingram's skull? Did Skeres and Poley merely stand back and watch? There is even medical evidence that says "a knife thrust two inches in depth into the brain would not result in instantaneous death, or necessarily death at all"! (296)
Furthermore, upon his release from prison, Frizier immediately re-entered the Walsinghams' employment. Such forgiveness on the part of patrons was exceptional; other men, whether servants or gentlemen, found no such forgiveness after becoming prisoners of the state.
Marlowe was also supposed to appear before the Privy Council—he may or may not have actually done so—on 20 May 1593, ten days before his death. The charges he was supposed to answer for included blasphemy. He later made his fatal journey to Deptford. The connection, or absence of connection, between his murder and these charges has never been proved.
Naturally, such anecdotes give rise to all kinds of theories.
Perhaps the juiciest theory is advanced by Dr. S. A. Tannenbaum, who claims that Sir Walter Raleigh had Marlowe silenced out of fear that he would confess to the atheism of those involved in the fabled School of Night. A face-saving gesture by a Machiavellian hermeticist.
A secret society speculated to have existed, the School of Night was centred around Raleigh and consisted of scientists, courtiers, and poets such as George Chapman, Thomas Harriot, and Marlowe. However, all other evidence seems to acquit Raleigh of conspiracy to commit murder. His noble personality and his lack of caring about his public image, Wraight says, suggests he would not stoop to whacking Marlowe, or using him as a scapegoat.
But could the assassination still have had a political motive?
There is convincing evidence to support the theory that Marlowe was a spy. In 1587, the Privy Council awarded Marlowe an MA from the University of Cambridge as a reward for serving his country in certain secret affairs. Waight says he might have been a spy since 1585. Later on, reports of Marlowe's shady dealings include an attempt to falsify coinage in Flanders in 1592, where he was briefly arrested. He was suspected of siding with Catholics, but may have been attempting to penetrate the group associated with the Catholic plotter William Stanley as a double agent.
Might he have fallen in with Catholics again, shortly before his death?
Perhaps Marlowe's patron Thomas Walsingham involved the trio of secret agents in a great conspiracy to eliminate the poet, and have each other pardoned according to a pre-arranged giving of false testimony. Or, we may imagine with a smile Marlowe's hasty burial in the Deptford parish church as evidence that Walsingham had his agents replace Marlowe's body with another corpse! Of course, Marlowe would have had to disappear, if he was going to write Shakespeare's plays in total secrecy…
These conspiracy theories have a way of fogging the real evidence. Elizabethan England's witch hunts, Puritan hearsay, and paranoia about Catholics, atheists, and "Machievels" played their part to create a paranoid society. Curtis C. Breight describes how Sir William Cecil, the Secretary of State, maintained a police state reminiscent of the McCarthy era, if the use of twentieth-century anachronism can be forgiven.
Similarities between both eras of Elizabethan espionage (including that of our present Queen) have also been drawn: James Bond's MI6 origins had their origins under Sir Francis Walsingham and William Cecil's intelligence networks. When spies are behind every corner, you have to careful what you say about your political or religious beliefs. And Queen Elizabeth, as ahead of the Church of England, represented both State and Church.
Cecilian England gives rise to one final theory about Christopher Marlowe's death, one that may be as incredible as the others. It says that Cecil gave the order, because of Marlowe's Catholic sympathies.
At the time, England was supporting the French king Henri IV against the radical Catholic League. The war was unpopular, necessitating the use of Protestant propaganda. Christopher Marlowe wrote a play called The Massacre at Paris, which told the story of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre. On 23 August 1572, King Charles IX ordered the assassination of Huguenot (French Protestant) leaders in Paris, resulting in the deaths of anywhere between 5,000 and 30,000 souls. However, some scholars have argued that the play, told from the perspective of the Catholic Duke of Guise and Catherine de Medici, who act as Machiavellian characters, depicts the Protestants as no better than their Catholic foes.
Might it be likely that Marlowe was considered too much of a intellectual rebel?
Perhaps. We may never know, after all, what really happened to Christopher Marlowe after that supper in Deptford. What historians do confirm is that history is arguable. Whether we might personally believe in the conspiracies, or adopt a more grounded understanding of what happened, we each construct a narrative of events that may or may not represent the true course of history.
If one thing is certain about Marlowe's death, it is that his disappearance has spawned many stories to fill the void of his absence. It is only human nature, after all, to find meaning to the unexplainable.
The sign over Marlowe's grave.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Somewhere towards the end of 2015, I came onboard with OML to guest-curate the Design stream for the third edition of the Coalition, an effort to look collectively at the creative industries and kickstart conversations around it. My interest was piqued with the mandate to not showcase the best that we have to offer as an industry, but rather to kickstart conversations on the bits of practice that may not be the glory of our wins, but more the challenges and questions that practising design raises on a day to day basis. Essentially the brass tacks, the small niggling doubts and the business of practising.
If there's one word that has overshadowed the 'storytelling' stream of design consciousness this year it has to be 'making'. If you've been following us on Facebook & Twitter, it is likely you've been subjected to our year-end countdown—#MakingOf2015. In the manner that designers, brands and the world are celebrating 'making', the connotations are multifarious—sometimes it is about pride, at other times about discovery by doing and so on. But this post at the end of the year, is not about all of these. It is about our view of making and why it excites us. It is about making meaningful.
A quick-roundup of what transpired at this month's edition of Show & Tell Saturday, the 13th in this series at the studio.
The session kicked off with artist and print-maker Dhvani Behl talking about her journey from a child who never thought she could draw (well) to a print-maker who just debuted with her solo show in September this year. I first saw actual samples of her work at her debut exhibition titles Enso: The Language of a Printmaker at the Alliance Francaise in Delhi.
We are hiring, and here's everything you need to know.
One. We make sense of the world around us with design. Here's How.
Two. We partner with fearless brands & change-makers in India. Our Work.
Three. We work as a team with diverse skills and collaborative exchange. Team, Facebook.
Four. We engage with and value in equal measure, strategy, content and craftsmanship. Read this & this.
Five. We work on commissioned projects and self-commisioned initiatives, like Dekho & Rising.
Back in March 2014, a Indian-American teen claimed, to great media fanfare, that the US government could save ink and therefore resources and money by switching typefaces. What seemed a rather clever suggestion on the surface was quickly shot down by the type design community, and though we can commend a 14 year old boy for having his ideas and heart in the right place, the professionals, it turns out, had a point. It also turned out that this was neither the first time anyone had thought about typefaces and ink consumption, nor was this the first time someone had meticulously studied the differences between typefaces with respect to this issue.
The thing with salads is, that they never really turn out exactly the same as the last time you made it with the same ingredients. Which brings me to project teams and the exciting proposition that together all the members can create something brand new, each time. But some salads turn out better than others, as do project teams. Here's a quick list of what to look out for.
Disclaimer: This post, on account of its title may read as a how-to-date-a-client. Apologies for the disappointment some of you may experience in the next half of this sentence, for it is NOT. It is however, the first of many in a series of short posts (one hopes) on on ways of looking at design practice, with real world/life metaphors. Because let's face it, design is really a life choice of sorts.
Over the past 2 years I have had the pleasure of early & sneak previews of a remarkable editorial design & publishing effort by Anugraha, through my conversations with friend & peer Deshna Mehta. Being in it and being of it is a contemporary visual handbook, documenting experiences and conversations from one of the largest faith gatherings on earth, the Kumbh Mela of Allahabad in 2013. The short note below is my reading of this mammoth telling, published as part of the introduction to the set of 8 books that make up the Kumbh story.


text:
Q: unable to create table on database in flask_sqlalchemy on repl.it it seems that this problem only arises when i am using flask application factory method
here is the link to repl, and
here is the link to post i made asking fro help (Kindly read the comment section)

*

*I have commented the app.run() part so that it won't start server

#!main.py l:3
#if __name__ == '__main__':
#    app.run(host='0.0.0.0')

*After running the repl once on the console side i typed

from app.main.models import *
with app.app_context():
    db.create_all()

now in theory these line of code should create database with table defined init such that if i do Food.query.all it should return (in theory) an empty list => [] but it returns an error RuntimeError: No application found.
note : Kindly fork the repl you don't need an account for that just click on the fork button beside run because it might show wired when many people run it together

A: It seems that you've not commit the session & it's not the best practice to import function by *. You should specify specicfic module or Maybe you haven't insert any values in db so you are getting an empty list. I'm not sure about this.But your solution might be in between.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


The item Great World of Sound, Magnolia Pictures and DWS Media, LLC present in association with Plum Pictures ; producers, David Gordon Green, Richard Wright, Craig Zobel ; produced by Melissa Palmer ; written by George Smith, Craig Zobel ; directed by Craig Zobel, (videorecording) represents a specific, individual, material embodiment of a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in Hamilton East Public Library.
Martin is an uncomplicated guy who responds to an ad in the paper for a company called Great World of Sound. Joining the crew, Martin partners up with larger than life Clarence, and the two hit the road to discover and sign new musical talent. As the veneer falls away from GWS, the two have to reconcile the excitement with the reality of the job. Have they become scam artists, or are they the victims of the scam?


Every Second Saturday of the month. We go out among the streets of Lafayette serving the homeless population. Please contact us if you would like to volunteer with us in this ministry. Please remember our church's mission, is to meet people at the point of there needs.
We would love to hear from you. Please summit your volunteer form.


Recent studies show that schools with vegetable and fruit gardens are successfully combining nutrition lessons with science, and students are reaping the benefits.
"Gardens can be a powerful strategy for enhancing classroom instruction not only in basic science, but also in ecological literacy and nutrition," says Daniel Desmond, University of California Cooperative Extension adviser emeritus and food and society policy fellow. "The current childhood obesity crisis has many of the over 3,000 school gardens in California focusing on the science of nutrition. School gardens have demonstrated a unique ability to develop a relationship between children and their food, resulting in a change in dietary habits, nutrition, and health," he explains.
An August 2006 analysis conducted by the School Nutrition Association found that "from Los Angeles to Brownsville, Texas, most of the nation's 100 largest school districts by enrollment are requiring nutrition education," and 6% of these districts had school gardens. The districts account for 16% of the schools, 21% of the teachers, and 23% of the nation's K–12 students, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
Desmond points to two studies that examined the garden/nutrition/science connection. Results of a study published in the January 2002 issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association demonstrated how combining learning activities in a school's vegetable garden with nutrition lessons gave teachers a chance to incorporate science in the curriculum, with an added bonus: Students became more willing to try different vegetables.
Three fourth-grade classes from three schools participated in the study, which was conducted by Jennifer Morris and Sheri Zidenberg-Cherr of the University of California, Davis. Participating teachers used nutrition lessons that covered such topics as "plant parts, nutrients, Food Guide Pyramid, serving sizes, food labels, physical activity, goal setting, consumerism, and snack preparation." Each lesson had a garden component that incorporated science activities such as seed planting, worm bottles, weed identification, bug boxes, garden fertilization, seed dispersal, butterfly studies, and crop harvest.
Students at the first school, which served as the control site, received no formal nutrition or gardening education. Students at the second school were taught only the nutrition lessons. At the third school, students studied nutrition and did hands-on garden/science activities.
The study showed that students who were exposed to the nutrition lessons increased their preference for several vegetables, but the students who studied nutrition and did hands-on science in the garden became willing to try many more vegetables, including vegetables that were not grown in their garden. The researchers noted that this positive effect lasted six months after the lessons were completed. "These results lend support to the inclusion of vegetable gardens within the school setting," they concluded.
Students participating in the program learned healthy eating habits by participating in "the full cycle of life from seed to table and back again," observed researchers Heather Graham, Gail Feenstra, Ann M. Evans, and Sheri Zidenberg-Cherr. Because they studied nutrition and waste management practices, such as composting, students correspondingly became less likely to waste food, according to food service staff at the participating schools. The researchers also noted that such environmentally based learning has resulted in higher student grades and better test scores.
Of the teachers participating in this study, 66% reported that science was taught using nutrition. Most teachers used the garden to teach subjects such as science (90%), nutrition (71%), environmental studies (60%), agricultural studies (57%), and math (56%). Sixty-four percent linked the garden to language arts by having students do journal writing in the garden and connecting the garden with literature. Teachers also reported that field trips to farms provided hands-on learning opportunities and helped students make connections among the garden, the school cafeteria's salad bar, recycling, and the food and farming system.
Teachers looking to start a school vegetable garden should visit the how-to section of The Edible Schoolyard website. Originated by chef and author Alice Waters, The Edible Schoolyard is an award-winning nonprofit program located on the campus of a Berkeley, California, middle school.
The NSTA Press® two-part book set Garden Genetics: Teaching With Edible Plants uses activities and inquiry-based experiments with familiar foods to teach genetics while helping students make connections to ecology, evolution, plant biology, and social science. The set, which includes both teacher and student editions, is adaptable to biology students at all levels. Consult store.nsta.org for more information.