p>this photo was shot at outside an arms tradeshow hosted by Canada's Department of Defence at the Ottawa Civic Centre. this image ran on the cover of the Carleton University student newspaper.
after seeing this shot, a lot of people asked whether i had set it up, something i have always been very against. "photo illustrations" as they are called nowadays.
the main demo held on the 21st attracted over 2000 concerned Ottawans. i shot a roll of the protesters parading down Bank Street and gathering in front of the facility. punx in skull facepaint carrying mock missles, chalk drawing on the pavement, graffiti on newspaper boxes, flowers and signs attached to the large gates constructed around the city owned athletic facility specifically for this event.
the next day at 8am a couple hundred protesters congregated outside the entrances to the attrocity exhibition. as the gates opened to admit the buyers and sellers, those opposed locked arms in front of the gates, while others weaved coloured yarn throught the protesters. some of the weavers held dolls symbolizing the children that would be killed or maimed by the weapons being peddled inside. eventually the police dragged away the peaceful protesters and closed the gates. in the fracas a doll was dropped and crushed and i got this shot.
almost 12 years later, weapons proliferation continues despite the lack of any real threats... George W. Bush resurrects Reagan's missle defence initiatives - The Empire Strikes Back?
example: "Hulk Hogan went from a saintly persona to one of turpitude to bolster his popularity."


text:
Richard L. "Rick" Hern
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Obituary of Richard L. Hern
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After battling a long-term illness, Richard L. Hern passed away on Sunday January 31, 2021. Rick grew up in the Penn Beach area of Pennsville, NJ. He spent his college years in Athens, Ohio & graduated from Ohio University. Rick was a proud owner (along with his brother, Mike) of Meadowood Nursey, previously located across from the Pennsville Park. He continued to work in the landscape & horticulture field and had a passion for sharing his knowledge & teaching others. He loved watching his Philadelphia Eagle's. Rick was a kind soul & would give you the shirt off of his back. He was a fun-loving & always had a smile on his face. Rick is survived by his wife, Beth Hern (Coffey). Proud father of Katy Hern (Allison Coyne) & Grandfather of Lance Hern (Kayla Demaris). Also, the Great-Grandfather of Lancelot Jr. & Everly. Rick adored his pet cats: Kozmo, Slick & Cassius. Rick was 1 of 5 children of Margret & Frank Hern (both predeceased) Siblings: John Hern, Terry Hern (predeceased), Mike Hern & Annie Hern-Cannady. He loved all his family from Chicago dearly. If you want to honor Rick, simply pay it forward in his name. www.laughreyfuneralhome.com
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


More than two thousand years ago an incident shook the world – the Crucification of Christ. Seemingly barbaric, bizarre, savage and ruthless…yet, it was a distinct part of the Cosmic Plan. The ripples of this unbearable pagan episode are felt even now when anyone genuinely reflects upon the life of Jesus with a pure intent to know, understand, learn and grow. This extreme occurrence gave birth to the solemn period of Lent which culminates on Easter Day. There is an ancient Hawaiin belief – Ho'oponopono, which states that if we are a witness to any incident even if we simply hear of it…may it be whatever is happening around us…we are a part of it and are responsible for it. It is not related to reproach, fault finding or blaming…but it indicates a healing process – in order to heal any situation…it is our responsibility to heal ourselves first.
And so, right now, we are in the midst of a sombre phase…where millions are involved in a penance of sorts…heartbeats that remember the selfless life, the sacrifice…the incomparable gentle love, the spontaneous forgiveness…and the matchless compassion so classically synonymous with Christ. While one participates in a 'Fast' one indulges in a feast too. Fasting is an abstinence which goes beyond food…and this takes place while incessantly feasting on the Holy Name and the accompanying divine dictums, messages, parables, and so on…from dawn to dusk and dusk to dawn.
Lent is a 40 day period and Beloved Bhagawan chose this period of Lent for His immensely mystifying leela…and all that He chose to put His Form through for the sake of humanity – akin to forsaking His Form for the sake of humanity. His ways are unfathomable to our finite minds…yet, it doesn't stop us from thinking, introspecting, wondering about this particular span of time and what it entails for all humans.
The Supreme Father and His compassionate Son…sacrosanct advents that took so much upon Themselves for the benefit of the human race. Infinitely incomprehensible, utterly perplexing, puzzling and interwoven with humans and earth matters…because humans and earth matter to Him…in Whom merges the Son with the line – I and my Father are One. The depth of what They exemplified with their Incarnation is totally inexplicable …much too vast and completely beyond human ken and understanding.
So, what does the human heart feel for Jesus…for Sathya Sai…for Their advent…their 'life' on this planet? Is it filled with Paschatap – regret/lament and Prayaschit – atonement? Does it want to do something? Does it feel responsible in some minute way? Isn't it true, that oft times it's not what we have done…but what we have omitted to do; it's not what we have thought…but what we have forgotten to think; it's not what we say but that which we have overlooked to mention that turns us into a defaulter of sorts?
Is there a tug in the heart…to remodel our thoughts, alter our words, rectify our actions, re-intensify our endeavours so as to live to please only Sai?
What does Bhagawan and all that He stood for and exemplify mean to each of us?
Should not each moment of this span of time be spent in reflection, reaction, resound and deep response? So much went into this span of time…the Divine Decision to take so much upon the Sacred Form…the onus lies upon us all to accord it reverence supreme.


text:
BIDD
Belgrade initiative 4 Digital and Public Diplomacy
Who is who in Digital and Public Diplomacy
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Relax for Digital Diplomacy
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Tekstovi na srpskom
Tehnologije SERBIAN only
Urednikov ugao
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Šta je digitalna diplomatija i kako se može primeniti u Srbiji
Kosovo: What Everyone Really Needs To Know
Winners and Losers in the Syrian Civil War
In "Classic " Diplomacy, Magazine, World
Belgrade initiative 4 Digital Public Diplomacy
The Syrian civil war, which has seen a stalemate for nearly three years, shows no signs of a negotiated political solution. The Geneva II peace talks, that opened on 22 January, are highly unlikely to result in a breakthrough, absent a miracle. There is irreconcilable tension between the oppositional Syrian National Coalitions's (SNC) demand for
The Syrian civil war, which has seen a stalemate for nearly three years, shows no signs of a negotiated political solution. The Geneva II peace talks, that opened on 22 January, are highly unlikely to result in a breakthrough, absent a miracle. There is irreconcilable tension between the oppositional Syrian National Coalitions's (SNC) demand for a future Syria without President Bashar Al-Assad and Al-Assad government's policy priority to secure international support to fight what it calls rebellious terrorists. That may well leave a military victory, either by the government or the opposition rebels, as the final option to break out of the deadlock.
If this were to happen, three recent developments seem to favor a possible win by Bashar Al-Assad. First, in recent weeks, government troops have recorded some notable military successes by reversing rebel territorial gains in the south and eastern parts of Syria and by stamping them out from areas adjacent to Damascus. Secondly, the continued infightings between rebel groups, particularly between the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and other moderate Islamist groups are damagingly reducing their fighting capacities against government troops. Thirdly, international support for the rebels is gradually drying out. The SNC agreed to join Geneva II peace negotiations after the US and Britain had threatened to withdraw support for them.[1] A win by President Bashar Al-Assad would, however, inevitably affect the interests and strategic matrices of the regional powers deeply involved in the Syrian civil war – Iran, Israel, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. This point is explained below by highlighting what drove each of the parties to take sides in the civil war and what they stand to win or lose in Syria if Bashar Al-Assad stays in power.
The outbreak of armed hostilities in Syria put Iran in a state of flux. Already tired of confronting the West over its nuclear program, Tehran saw the war as a Western and Gulf Arab conspiracy to isolate it regionally and globally, heavily constrain its room for maneuverability and cut off its link to ally Hezbollah.[2] Sensing an impending strategic paralysis, despite gains the US unintentionally produced for Tehran by eliminating its two arch foes – Taliban Afghanistan in the East and Saddam Hussein's Iraq in the west, the Iranian government responded to the Syrian civil war by siding with the Assad government. The defeat of Assad would mean a much weaker Iran surrounded by Arab adversaries on the west coast of the Persian Gulf, US military bases posing threats from all around, a resurgent Turkey on the north-western borders that has historically competed against Iran and an emboldened Israel that never hid its intentions to militarily strike and destroy Iranian nuclear facilities and infrastructures. That prompted Tehran to send military advisors, arms shipments and economic aid for Assad.[3]
Despite hard economic sufferings at home spawned by unilateral US and EU sanctions, Tehran bankrolled the Assad government by providing $500 million per month plus credit lines to finance food and energy imports[4] Tehran's ally Hezbollah, driven by similar strategic compulsions, has responded by deploying fighters on Assad's side. Assad's possible victory, at the end, will not only compensates Iran's unwavering support, it will also make Tehran a much emboldened actor vis-à-vis its regional and global adversaries. Assad's victory may bring a window of economic opportunities for Tehran – the construction of the proposed Iran-Iraq-Syria oil pipeline connecting Iran to the energy markets in the Mediterranean now looks a real possibility.
Israel and Syria have been technically at war since 1967, the year Tel Aviv occupied the Golan Heights from Damascus and formally annexed it in 1981. But the Ba'athist regime in Damascus, especially after the 1973 Arab–Israel war, has avoided direct confrontation with Israel. Late President Hafez Al-Assad, father of President Bashar Al-Assad, turned Syria into a self-restrained opponent of Israel. The younger Assad, with minor exceptions like the 2006 Hezbollah–Israel war in which he firmly stood behind the Iran-supported Hezbollah fighters, has pursued a similar policy of restraints. The civil war, however, brought unilateral changes to Israel's Syria policy as it has extended support to the anti-Assad rebels. Nevertheless, Tel Aviv's ultimate objective was not the immediate removal of Assad but a prolonged civil war that would eventually cut into the vitality of the government as well as the rebel fighters. The Israeli leaders were never sure that a new government in Damascus would be friendly or more hostile, like the Muslim Brotherhood-supported Mohammed Morsi government in Egypt, toward Tel Aviv, apparently though the government and the military view the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah alliance as a greater menace to Israeli security.[5]
An outcome that sees Assad remain in power, however, seriously jeopardizes Israeli strategy. The battle-hardened Syrian army and Hezbollah fighters pose a greater threat to Israel than ever before and there will be little surprise if Damascus, after settling scores with the rebels at home, raises its demands on Golan Heights and undertakes military operations to recapture its territories under Israeli control since 1967. Furthermore, the presence of al-Qaeda and Islamist fighters around its borders creates additional strategic concerns for Israel. To liberate their Palestinian brothers and sisters from Israeli occupation these forces may launch strikes against targets inside the Jewish state. That clearly means Israel is faced with a new specter of threats to its security.
Qatari involvement in Syria, spurred by its military operations in Libya alongside NATO, is no less than a political and strategic riddle. A tiny Gulf emirate, roughly equal to the size of the state of Connecticut in the United States, Qatar has attempted to play a much bigger role than its size and demographic strength (fewer than 250,000 citizens) would support. This small state has found itself in the forefront of the Arab pro-democracy movements, with all hard and soft power tools, especially Al Jazeera news channel, at its disposal to politically transform the Arab world. Qatar has sought two principal objectives through its active role in the Arab Spring – promotion of its regional and global leadership profile, and the development of an alliance of Sunni Islamic forces across the Middle East and North Africa, though Doha has no political ideology to export. Qatar has traditionally maintained good relations with the Muslim Brotherhood and hosted Islamist leaders like Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi of Egypt and Ali al-Sallabi of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group who respectively played prominent roles in the anti-Mubarak and anti-Gaddafi movements. Similarly, Doha has openly sided with the SNC dominated by Muslim Brotherhood leaders who have been the major recipients of Qatar's massive financial and military aid.[6]
Qatar's two giant neighbors – Iran and Saudi Arabia have, however, criticized it for military adventurisms in Libya and Syria. While the Iranians lambasted Doha for its role to install a pro-Western government in Damascus, the Saudis disliked Qatar's support for the Muslim Brotherhood forces in Egypt and Syria, who Riyadh views hostile to the Al Saud rulers.[7] Doha's inability to change the political landscape in Syria and the evolving hostile relations with Tehran has persuaded the Qatari rulers to rethink their involvement in Syria. The new Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, who ascended to the throne in June 2013, has decided to curtail Qatari high-profile foreign policy role to repair relations with Iran and Saudi Arabia[8] while losing its traditional foreign policy neutrality and millions of dollars for the rebels.
Dictated by its perceived self-interests to confront Iranian influence in the Middle East, Riyadh has supported the majority Sunnis to topple the Assad government, a close strategic ally of Tehran. The Shiite – Sunni divide has had its repercussions on Saudi policy towards Syria as well. Saudi Arabia is a leading Sunni power and sees itself as the defender of the Sunnis everywhere, while Iran has emerged as the leading Shiite power in the Muslim world. It is in Syria where these two Muslim states championing the two rival sects of Islamic religion stood face to face to each other.[9] Guided by its Sunni cult of Wahhabism, a strict version of Islam that brands the Shiites as non-believers or the rejectionists of true Islamic beliefs, Riyadh has firmly upheld the cause of the Sunnis financially, militarily and by sending Saudi Salafist fighters to Syria.[10] Recently, the Saudi government has formed a new front called the Army of Islam, an umbrella organization of 50 jihadist groups, to keep up the fight against the Assad government as well as the al-Qaeda fighters.[11]
Simultaneously, the Saudis have sought direct American intervention or, at least, military strikes on Syria following the 21 August 2013 Al-Ghouta chemical attacks blamed on the government troops. The US decision to militarily stay off the Syrian war and its recent courting of Iran by signing an interim nuclear deal on 24 November 2013 has angered the Saudi rulers who have threatened to act on their own.[12] Given Moscow–Washington cooperation to bring the opposing Syrian parties to the Geneva II peace conference, Saudi Arabia would have stood to lose if it had abandoned Geneva negotiations. Riyadh lacks the capacity to disregard world powers and to follow a unilateral course in Syria.
For Turkey the Syrian civil war presented a big dilemma. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Islamist government and his AKP party rose to power in 2002 based on democratic politics and practices. Despite the recent crisis in Turkish democracy which resulted in mass anti-government demonstrations, the Syrian people's fight against dictatorial Assad government was an issue that Turkey could not easily overlook. On the other hand, an unstable Syria, torn apart by violence and conflicts, was likely to encourage Turkey's minority Kurdish people to advance their separatist aspirations. Turkey's policy of 'zero problems' with the neighboring countries, pursued since 2002 after the AKP party was voted to power, faced a serious crisis. Prime Minister Erdogan vigorously criticized Assad for his brutal handling of the crisis and finally took up the cause of the anti-government forces. Ankara soon became the meeting ground for the SNC, a conduit for supplying military and non-military goods to the FSA and other militant groups, followed the Arab League and the West to impose economic and air traffic sanctions on Damascus and occasionally got involved in cross-border skirmishes. Ankara's preferred party in the Syrian war, like Qatar, has been the Muslim Brotherhood and it initially supported political reforms in Syria hoping that they would create opportunities for the Brotherhood to capture power peacefully.[13]
Turkey's maneuvers in Syria did not yield the results due to Iranian and Russian stiff opposition. As the civil war keeps drawing to an end, a post-war Syria with Assad in power would be a bitter pill for Turkey to swallow and Ankara–Damascus relations are unlikely to thaw in the near future. Ankara also stands to lose its booming trade relations with Damascus, which was expected to jump from US $1.844 billion in 2010 to $5 billion in 2012.[14] The Turkey – Syria free trade accord that was put into force on 01 January 2007 has also been put on the shelf after the armed conflict had broken out in March 2011.
To sum up, the Syrian civil war has drastically shaken up the political and strategic environment of the Middle East region. The war has turned Syria into a major breeding ground for terrorism and religious extremism, two unwelcome developments that are likely to impact regional politics and international relations for quite some time to come. All outcomes to the civil war will likely produce a new Syria wrapped up with political and economic glooms and uncertainties. From a cost-benefit analysis viewpoint, while some regional parties have reaped some strategic benefits at a great cost, others stand to lose.
"Classic " Diplomacy
The Domestic Dimension of Public Diplomacy 11th July 2019
The Domestic Dimension of Public Diplomacy Nov 6, 2018 Discussions of public diplomacy often favor an international scope, especially as states address how they are perceived by publics abroad. But as Jitka Pánek Jurková of Charles University in Prague notes in a new analysis, the domestic dimension of public diplomacy is drawing increased attention. What […]
How to Build a More Diverse Foreign Policy Sector 10th July 2019
How to Build a More Diverse Foreign Policy Sector Oct 16, 2018 For many, the terms "male, pale and Yale" come to mind when thinking of foreign policy leadership. This can have dire consequences for foreign policy practice. As civic and community engagement firm Vestige Strategies notes in a recent report on diversity and inclusion […]
Diplo Portal Belgrade
Ancient Antiquities, Reda's Folklore, Arabic Contemporary Music and Virtual Reality Commemorate History, Present and Future At The National Day Celebration of the Egyptian Embassy in Belgrade at the National Museum of Serbia 15th July 2019
The Ambassador of Egypt in Serbia, Amr Aljowaily, hosted the National Day celebration, attended by Speaker of the National Assembly, Deputy Prime Ministers, Ministers of Interior, Labor and Technological Development among a large number of prominent figures from the political, cultural, economic, social and media circles in Serbia, in addition to accredited ambassadors of the […]
The Bastille Day marked in Belgrade 15th July 2019
In the Garden of the French Embassy in Belgrade a sumptuous reception was held on the occasion of the great national holiday of France on July 14 – the Day of the Fall of Bastille. The reception was attended by a large number of officials from political, cultural and public life. In the gardens of […]
Catalog of Destroyed and Desecrated Churches in Kosovo ( VIDEO )
Twitter Suspends Hamas Accounts
By ROBERT MACKEYLast Updated, Sunday, Jan. 19 | Several Twitter accounts used by the military wing of Hamas have been suspended by the social network in recent days, angering the Islamist militants and delighting Israel's military. #Twitter has suspended the official account of #Hamas, a terrorist group that uses social media to threaten #Israel http://t.co/g1UxKc9fpf
The State of Gastrodiplomacy
By Paul Rockower It is fitting that a magazine devoted to studying innovations and trends in the field of public diplomacy has turned its focus on an increasingly popular forms of cultural diplomacy: gastrodiplomacy. Public Diplomacy Magazine's Summer 2009 issue on Middle Powers explored the behavior of middle powers and the contours of "middlepowermanship." Articles
How Belgrade based diplomats use Digital Diplomacy and Internet 2016
https://youtu.be/Vv9wJo9KCps
Stiže istina o ruskoj vojsci: Šojgu pravi svoj Holivud
Digital Diplomacy, Public diplomacy, Tekstovi na srpskom
Ministarstvo odbrane Rusije namerava da napravi sopstveni filmski studio na parku "Patriot", u kojem je upravo završen Međunarodni vojno-tehnički forum "Armija 2019". Kako se očekuje, posebna pažnja će biti posvećena snimanju blokbastera. Ministar odbrane Rusije Sergej Šojgu izrazio je u intervjuu televiziji "Zvezda" razočarenje u domaću kinematografiju. Po njegovom mišljenju, jako slabo se prate savremeni
Amnesty USA Endorses Key Uighur Legislation Making Its Way Through Congress
John Brown's Public Diplomacy Press and Blog Review
Francisco Bencosme, Asia Advocacy Manager, hmedium.com/@amnestyusa; original article contains a footnote and additional photographs
Image from article, with caption: A policeman gestures as Muslims arrive at for morning prayer in China's Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region
Amnesty International USA is mobilizing its two million members and supporters behind two key pieces of human rights legislation — S. 178, the Uighur Human Rights Policy Act of 2019, and the UIGHUR Act. Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and 20 other Senators introduced the Act of 2019. The UIGHUR Act of 2018 (H.R.7384) was initiated by Congressman Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) and four other legislators. Up to one million Uighurs and other ethnic minorities are being arbitrarily detained in so-called "re-education camps" –an afront to international human rights law. The new Congress needs to assert its leadership on this key human rights issue and swiftly pass legislation without haste.
While commentary on the legislatio..
Brain drain in Serbia today
Digital Diplomacy, E Government, Migrations, Public diplomacy
How does the Serbian government cope with the problem of brain drain today? The latest OECD publication, SOPEMI 2014 shows that 39 thousand persons emigrated in 2012 from Serbia to OECD countries only. (At the beginning of the global economic and financial crisis, the emigration from Serbia to OECD countries amounted to 27,000 in 2008.)
The Romanian Foreign Minister is now on Twitter
"Classic " Diplomacy, Digital Diplomacy, Public diplomacy
Romanian Foreign Affairs Minister Bogdan Aurescu has an official Twitter account – @BogdanAurescu. The account has been launched on September 1st 2015, marking the opening of the Annual Conference of the Romanian Diplomacy. The event was designed to support the direct communication between the Foreign Ministry, the Romanian Heads of Mission and Consular Affairs abroad,
Uncle Sam Needs More Geeks
Digital Diplomacy, Magazine, Public diplomacy
Editor's Note: Nick Sinai is a Walter Shorenstein Media and Democracy Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, a Venture Partner at Insight Venture Partners, and a former U.S. Deputy CTO at the White House. One of President Obama's guests at this year's State of the Union address was Kathy
About BIDD
Belgrade Initiative for Public and Digital Diplomacy leads, researches and implements the best examples of public and digital diplomacy that exist in SEE region and globally. BIDD network is supporting online activism in region and mapping out the inter-cultural values and vivid digital inter-discussion. Digital as the medium that is bridging public opinion with foreign policy, guide colleagues in digital diplomacy of the neighboring countries through regional perspective without fragments. BIDD gathers different generations of university researchers, industry specialists, public policy officials and experienced diplomats who got educated and worked in Serbia, Germany, The United Kingdom, France, Italy, Russia, PR of China, Middle East, USA, Brazil and s.o. BIDD network grows daily and its actively seeks partnerships.
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text:
FTA to issue tax residency and commercial activities certificates
Abu Dhabi - The authority will begin receiving applications for the issuance of Tax Residency and Commercial Activities Certificates via its e-services portal as of November 14, 2020.
The authority emphasized that the new service provides advantages and ease for the issuance of certificates to those registered with the tax system.
Published: Wed 4 Nov 2020, 5:31 PM
The Federal Tax Authority (FTA), in coordination with the Ministry of Finance (MoF), has completed its preparations to issue both digital tax residency and commercial activities certificates, in line with the Cabinet Decision No. 65 of 2020 on fees for services provided by the Federal Tax Authority issued October 2020.
The authority will begin receiving applications for the issuance of Tax Residency and Commercial Activities Certificates via its e-services portal as of November 14, 2020.
The FTA explained that there are two categories of tax certificates which are issued to companies and individuals. The first category is for the 'Tax Residency Certificate', a certificate issued by the FTA upon request to enable applicants to benefit from Double Tax Avoidance Agreements (DTAA) signed between UAE and other countries.
The second is the Commercial Activities Certificate which is a certificate issued by the FTA to enable applicants to refund VAT paid in advance outside the UAE, whether or not DTAAs are applicable.
The authority emphasized that the new service provides advantages and ease for the issuance of certificates to those registered with the tax system, as all their data is available in the FTA database so they can apply for Tax Certificates through direct and quick digital procedures.
The authority clarified that via their online services portal, the user is directed to the login page to enter his/her username and password to log in, and upon successfully registering with the services portal, the user will be directed to the list of all requests related to tax certificates assigned to him/her, appearing in the control panel. The registrant has the opportunity to choose to submit one or several requests, and once selected his/her desired option, all the details of the request will appear and will be provided with the choice to approve, complete, reject or re-fund any taxes paid outside the UAE which allows for a tax refund. The registrant may download the attachments to verify the data, complete the process and fol-low-up the status of their request.
Khalid Ali Al Bustani, director-general of the FTA, confirmed that this step is part of an ongoing cooperation between the FTA and the Ministry of Finance as a strategic partner to the authority, noting that a joint working group from both entities have made the necessary arrangements to ensure a smooth transfer for the digital issuance of Tax Residency and Commercial Activities Certificates from the ministry to the authority.
"Both Tax Residency and Commercial Activities Certifi-cates allow investors in the UAE, including companies and individuals, to benefit from double taxation avoidance agreements to which the State is a party, with the aim of preventing duplication, in addition to recovering VAT imposed on Emirati businesses in various countries in the event they were registered with the Authority," Khalid Al Bustani said.
The authority clarified that eligible individuals can easily issue Tax Residency and Commercial Activities Certificates through a simple registration process via the Federal Tax Authority's official website. The process is completed by submitting the required supporting documents and paying the fees specified in the UAE Cabinet Decision No. 65 for 2020. These specified fees were set as a requirement to apply for the Tax Residency Certificate, as an application is reviewed for any normal or legal person that is not registered with the authority and providing a print copy of the digital Tax Residence Certificate.
The Cabinet Decision also set the fees required to apply for a Commercial Activi-ties Certificate for businesses registered with the Authority, and to review the ap-plication and issue a digital Commercial Activities Certificate and to provide a print copy for the certificate that was issued.
-- business@khaleejtimes.com


text:
Wellington is a town in Monroe County, Wisconsin, United States. The population was 544 at the 2000 census.

Geography
According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 35.4 square miles (91.7 km), all of it land.

Demographics
At the 2000 census there were 544 people, 185 households, and 152 families in the town.  The population density was 15.4 people per square mile (5.9/km).  There were 221 housing units at an average density of 6.2 per square mile (2.4/km).  The racial makeup of the town was 98.71% White, 0.18% Native American, 0.55% from other races, and 0.55% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 1.65%.

Of the 185 households 40.0% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 73.5% were married couples living together, 5.4% had a female householder with no husband present, and 17.3% were non-families. 15.1% of households were one person and 5.4% were one person aged 65 or older.  The average household size was 2.94 and the average family size was 3.29.

The age distribution was 32.7% under the age of 18, 6.4% from 18 to 24, 26.7% from 25 to 44, 23.0% from 45 to 64, and 11.2% 65 or older.  The median age was 34 years. For every 100 females, there were 100.7 males.  For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 117.9 males.

The median household income was $36,146 and the median family income  was $37,500. Males had a median income of $26,250 versus $17,500 for females. The per capita income for the town was $14,962.  About 11.5% of families and 16.5% of the population were below the poverty line, including 23.7% of those under age 18 and 5.5% of those age 65 or over.

References

Towns in Monroe County, Wisconsin
Towns in Wisconsin

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


A well-aligned early care and education system includes streamlined communication and coordinated services that address the full range of academic, behavioral, health and family issues.
As a culmination of the National League of Cities' (NLC) two-year project to help cities align early childhood care and education systems from birth through third grade, NLC hosted the National Briefing for Educational Alignment for Young Children in Washington, D.C. recently. This event brought together high-level federal officials, national organizations and mayors from across the country on a rainy November day to discuss lessons learned from six cities that have been developing citywide systems to promote educational alignment for young children over the last two years.
With the support of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation (WKKF), NLC's Institute for Youth, Education, and Families supports cities in their alignment efforts through its Educational Alignment for Young Children (EAYC) initiative.
The national briefing featured opening remarks from Clarence Anthony, CEO and executive director of the National League of Cities, and Joelle-Jude Fontaine, program officer for WKKF. Clifford Johnson, executive director of NLC's Institute for Youth, Education, and Families, moderated a panel of three mayors committed to ensuring that families have access to high-quality early care and education for their children. The panelists included Betsy Price, mayor of Fort Worth; Pedro Segarra, mayor of Hartford; and Lovely Warren, mayor of Rochester.
Mayor Price emphasized the need to engage the business community on early learning issues, and Mayor Segarra noted how his city's control of the school distrticts has influenced their work around educational alignment. Mayor Warren discussed how Rochester is a program-rich community that is working to be more results-driven.
After an engaging discussion that provided a unique mayoral perspective on the necessary building blocks for early childhood success, Dr. Libby Doggett of the U.S. Department of Education (DOE), Dr. Ellen Wheatley of the Administration for Children and Families and Calvin Johnson of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development joined the mayors on stage for comments and Q&A from the audience.
Dr. Doggett stated the need for creative partnerships between DOE and communities, and promoted the use of DOE funds for programs for children ages birth to three. Dr. Wheatley appreciated the mayors' focus on family engagement and emphasized the need for cities to support all child care providers including home-based providers. Mr. Johnson emphasized HUD's potential to better support young children living in public housing, highlighting the fact that the number of young children in public housing is so great that they could make up their own large city.
The briefing then segued into table conversations about key takeaways from the panel discussion and next steps for the six EAYC cities. Participants emphasized the importance of local leadership in improving outcomes for cities' youngest residents.
Stakeholders need more opportunities to exchange and build on innovative ideas and successes.
Empowering and listening to parents is critical.
Mayors and city councilmembers can act as champions for early childhood by making it a citywide priority.
Cities need to think creatively about where and how collaboration can occur, and with whom.
NLC's National Briefing on Educational Alignment for Young Children brought together a diverse set of voices and perspectives in the early childhood field and beyond to think critically about how policymakers and practitioners can improve outcomes for the nation's youngest learners. NLC's Institute for Youth, Education and Families is committed to supporting municipal leadership in early childhood and serving as a resource and facilitator for collaboration within and among cities across the country.
About the Author: Lauren Robertson is the associate for early childhood in NLC's Institute for Youth, Education, and Families.


To stay on top of your game as an employer you need to be able to recruit the best people out there and – even more challenging – you need to be able to retain them. You do this by keeping your employees engaged, motivated and happy. The key to all this is knowing your employees – understanding what makes them tick and listening to what they have to say. We have created the tools that will help you do just that. With this information at your fingertips, the solutions to your HR dilemmas are just a click away.
of what is going on with your staff. Click on the links below for more information on each service.
Employee's Voice provides you with detailed information gathered first hand from your employees that you can act upon to stay on top of your business.
Pulse is a quick and easy way to measure a number of elements that could be crucial to create and maintain a positive working environment.
Generational Insights provides insights into the wants and needs of Generation X, Y and Z in the workplace and how they differ in their approaches to work.
Insight into employee satisfaction has never been more valuable. Equally, HR management has a greater role in business strategy setting, thus giving more weight to data on employee attitudes and perceptions. We want to know more, we want to quantify more – and Employee's Voice has a way to do so.
Employee's Voice benchmarks the perception employees have of their employers through a structured and data-oriented approach. The survey explores 8 domains with each domain having 4-8 statements covering different aspects of the domain.
Pulse is a quick and easy way to measure a number of elements that could be crucial to create and maintain a positive working environment. Pulse Insights can help to take HR-related decisions, monitor the working atmosphere, and identifying any shifts in attitudes and believes. It allows you to get a snapshot of how your employees are feeling about a new initiative, a change in procedures or, even, the new office décor. These insights can help you bridge the gap between the gut feeling of management and what is actually happening within the heart of the organisation.
Generational Insights highlights the differences (and the similarities) that exist between Generations X, Y and Z in order to help businesses adapt their systems and strategies to create a synergised workplace.
Our dynamic reporting tool will allow you to get insight into the patterns between the different generations. This information is sure to support your decisions and strategies to lead your multigenerational teams to success.
Don't just hear it from us.
"It's always a pleasure doing business with Esprimi. What I particularly appreciate is the positive approach of the team. Unusual requests, tight deadlines and new methodologies are met with let's see how we can do this. The objective of research is of course to learn, and I feel that in this fundamental aspect the Esprimi team shares my curiousity and desire to uncover hidden insights, not just for the sake of learning, but for real business impact."


※ It's not a cheap build.
i have 600c and want to try this..how good is in delve?
Tried to open your path of builder I think you have your profile set to private it wont let me view it.
I did it very well to the 300 Depth.
I am really liking the build guide! How far can I get with 1 ex and 100c?
And also, could you make a leveling tree for this build? If no, I will just level and take nodes that I think are necessary.
In order to earn a currency, it is better to do the fossil farming at the Depths(20~50) of the mine.
How do I do the fossil farm?
plz refer to this video.


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Advisory and Transaction
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CBRE unveils its newly created business unit - Small Caps
CBRE Group, Inc. Ranked #15 On Best Corporate Citizen List
Co-living Report
The co-living sector has gathered momentum recently, in response to the need for high quality, community-led urban accommodation for young professionals moving to urban locations.
The "Europe Co-living: Key Trends and Key Cities" report looks at the economic, social and real estate trends across Europe, which have given rise to this new asset class and the dynamics of six key markets – London, Amsterdam, Berlin, Madrid, Milan and Vienna – where the co-living concept is more established.
In Portugal, there are a few concepts of co-living, although the majority with a reduced number of units, and not purpose-built. However, Portuguese investors are already developing new and large-scale projects, the first two of which opened this year. International operators specialised in these types of units are not yet present in Portugal, although several have already shown interest in our country. Portugal presents the main fundamentals for the development of this concept - affordability, urbanization and social changes - and in this way CBRE expects more co-living projects to appear in the near future.
Affordability: The exponential growth of housing prices (45% since 2013) and stricter mortgage regulations, are making the purchase of houses in Portugal more difficult. Lisbon is one of the European cities where mortgage as a percentage of income ratio is higher and, simultaneously, has increased more over the last 5 years.
Urbanisation: Population living in urban areas in Portugal has increased 20% between 2000 and 2020. In addition, over the last 10 years Portugal has recorded one of the highest employment rate growths in cities in Europe, increasing 7 percentage points. Typically, it is the younger population who move to cities for job opportunities. This younger generation, who demand flexible, central and sociable accommodation, is the primary target for co-living.
Social changes: The average age at which people are marrying and having children has increased, in Europe in general, and in Portugal in particular. In Portugal the average age of marriage was 32 for women and 34 for men in 2019, which compares to 26 and 27 respectively in 1999. Similarly, the age at which Portuguese women are having children has increased, over the last two decades, from 26 to 30,. These key life stages are often a trigger that drive a house-buying decision. As these are being increasingly delayed, it will translate into more people residing in rented stock for longer.
In addition, it is widely considered that the Millennial generation and their successors in Generation Z value flexibility and job mobility much more than their predecessors and, as such, renting is a more natural fit for their preferred lifestyle. In Portugal, the strong increase of foreign workers over the last years leverages the demand for the co-living format due to its flexibility and community environment.
Finally, co-living seeks to address the increasing problem of loneliness. Despite the rapid rise of technology and social media designed to improve connectivity, isolation and loneliness is increasing, especially in cities. According to Eurostat, 8% of people in Portugal do not have someone they can talk to. Interactions in communal spaces such as shared dining facilities, resident events, gym classes and lounge areas in co-living accommodation are intended to help residents foster friendships, conversations and community spirit.
The CBRE team involved in several co-living projects, has an extensive experience in this format. We are available to clarify any questions and support the growth of this emergent asset class in Portugal.
Please click here to access the full report.
Morbi Gravida Ornare Metus
Vestibulum Augue


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Poor Credit
1.6 SW SPORT 5d 120 BHP
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HP £3995.00 £199.00 £3796.00 £5124.80 £0.00 £1.00 5.85% P.A. 10.9% APR 61 mths £0.00 £82.08 x 59 £83.08 Apply
Used Peugeot 207 cars in Plymouth
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Black Metal, Blackened Death Metal, Death Metal, Melodic Death Metal, Swedish, Thrash Metal
Originally formed under the short-lived name of Elizium and then switching names for a more striking impact upon signing a worldwide deal with Century Media Records, Sweden's newest metal threat DEVIAN is the brainchild of former Marduk members Legion (Vocals, ex Ophthalamia) and Emil Dragutinovic (Drums, also in The Legion) after their departure from the Black Metal commando in their strife to come up with a new breed of wretched Scandinavian Metal.
Together with guitarists Joinus and Tomas Nilsson, DEVIAN form an unstoppable organic extreme Metal machine driven by a raving hunger and deadset determination.
Rather than simply adjusting to continue on their stylistic path chosen with the latest Marduk appearances for Legion and Emil, DEVIAN decided to go for a more dynamic old school vibe, which is built upon a very catchy combination of melody and aggression. With references to bands like Slayer, Iron Maiden, Possessed, Morbid Angel, Dissection or even Mot?rhead, you will easily understand that DEVIAN gathers some of the best elements of blackened Death- and Thrash Metal with strong influence from traditional Heavy Metal.
After an intense year of songwriting, DEVIAN had collected more than enough quality material to invade Sweden's Art Decay Studio with producer Rickard Kottelin (The Legion) for the recordings of their first opus "Ninewinged Serpent". Mixing duties for the album were handled by sound-wizard Fredrik Nordstr?m at Studio Fredman (At The Gates, Arch Enemy, Dimmu Borgir, etc.), while the final punch in mastering came courtesy of Peter In De Betou / Tailor Maid and Greece's dark artwork master Seth (Paradise Lost, Soilwork, Old Man's Child, etc.) suitably packaged the release with a very morbid visual theme, which nicely enhances the album's thick and bleak lyrical content.
Vocalist Legion comments on the album: "It's a pummeling blackened death thrasher, where we really tried to challenge ourselves and bring fresh elements to the music compared to our efforts in previous projects. It's no-bullshit raving metal straight from the heart charged with uncontrollable anger, haunting melodies and bone crushing heaviness. It's got a lot of power and soul and we are all extremely proud of what we've managed to achieve." "Ninewinged Serpent" is a truly infernal Scandinavian metal overkill destined to leave sonic scars!
God To The Illfated
Ninewinged Serpent


Muffins are marvelous—especially when they're made just for your dog!
Bananas, and chia seeds, and bananas…oh my! There's a lot of goodness packed into these pooch-perfect muffins. Not only do they contain The Honest Kitchen's Thrive dehydrated food, but these marvelous muffins are bursting with bananas and chia seeds. Chia seeds are a wonderful source of omega-6 fatty acids, which help to promote a healthy coat. Delicious muffins and a bright, shiny coat—that's a win-win situation!
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Spray or grease muffin pan with olive oil to ensure they don't stick.
Add oil, eggs, and vanilla to bananas. Whisk together with a fork.
In a large bowl, mix together the rice flour, quinoa flour, The Honest Kitchen Thrive dehydrated food, chia seeds, baking powder, and baking soda.
Add the wet mixture to the flour and stir until combined.
Using an ice cream scoop or a large spoon, fill the muffin cups about ¾ full.
Bake for 15 to 20 minutes or until tops are golden brown.
Cool on a wire rack, and serve when ready!
To make sure that muffins are cooked fully, insert a toothpick into the center of a muffin. If it comes out clean, the muffins are ready to come out.
Do Dogs' Feet Fall Asleep?


Omerta – the Italian Mob word for Code of Silence. You don't talk about The Family. The only people you can truly trust are Family.
While everyone is debating whether or not it was proper for Trump to establish back-channel communications with Russia, no one is asking why he sent Kushner instead of Flynn? And what if the purpose of the meeting wasn't to establish a line of communication?
The list of people and events linking Russia to the Trump campaign/White House is growing so long, I feel the need to start keeping track.
How Many Trump Appointments Also Have Conflicts of Interest?
A parade of Willie Sutton's are being appointed to guard the bank.
Nearly Ten Million Fewer Democrats Voted in 2016 Than 2008. Why?
Democratic votes fell by a ratio of more than 28:1 in this election.
Okay DNC, You Own This. 10 Positives to come from a Trump victory.
In Plato's most famous novel "Republic", he used the technique of magnifying small problems to reveal their true nature. Trump IS that magnification of the GOP.
Newly leaked "deleted" Clinton emails suggest she may have solicited donations to her Foundation while she was Secretary of State, which may be a crime.
Is Hillary a Closet Republican? Her record would suggest so.


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Arkansas Business.com editor Lance Turner kicks off Joel Gambill Distinguished Alumni Speaker Series Oct. 1-2
JONESBORO, AR – Lance Turner, interactive editor of Arkansas Business.com and a regular panelist on AETN's weekly public affairs program, "Arkansas Week," will be the first speaker in the Dr. Joel Gambill Distinguished Alumni Speaker Series on October 1-2 at Arkansas State.
While on campus, he will speak to journalism and radio-television classes and have the opportunity to visit with students and faculty about challenges and opportunities in the media world.
Lance Turner graduated with a bachelor's degree in journalism and printing in 1999 from ASU. Throughout college, he worked in various editorial positions for the student newspaper, The Herald, including news editor, online editor and editor.
Turner joined Arkansas Business Publishing Group in 1999. After working as a reporter and columnist for more than a year, he became interactive editor of ArkansasBusiness.com, leading the business news organization's daily online news efforts.
In addition to managing ArkansasBusiness.com, Turner oversees all web content for Arkansas Business Publishing Group (ABPG) of Little Rock, which produces more than 20 weekly, monthly and annual magazines and newspapers in Arkansas. The company's other websites include ArkansasSports360.com, which covers Arkansas sports with news, blogs and video, and InArkansas.com, a daily guide to where to shop, eat, play and work in Arkansas.
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The Tissue Culture & Art Project
The Tissue Culture & Art Project (TC&A), (an on-going research and development project initiated in 1996) was set to explore the use of tissue technologies as a medium for artistic expression. We are investigating our relationships with the different gradients of life through the construction/growth of a new class of object/being – that of the Semi-Living. These are parts of complex organisms which are sustained alive outside of the body and coerced to grow in predetermined shapes. These evocative objects are a tangible example that brings into question deep rooted perceptions of life and identity, concept of self, and the position of the human in regard to other living beings and the environment. We are interested in the new discourses and new ethics/epistemologies that surround issues of partial life and the contestable future scenarios they are offering us.
Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr
A Semi-Living Worry Doll H
Artists: The Tissue Culture & Art Project (Oron Catts & Ionat Zurr)
Medium: McCoy Cell line, Biodegradable/bioabsorbable Polymers and Surgical Sutures.
Dimension of original: 2cm x 1.5cm x 1cm
Date: from The Tissue Culture & Art(ificial) Wombs Installation, Ars Electronica 2000.
Artists' statement:
"The Guatemalan Indians teach their children an old story. When you have worries you tell them to your dolls. At bedtime children are told to take one doll from the box for each worry & share their worry with that doll. Overnight, the doll will solve their worries. Remember, since there are only six dolls per box, you are only allowed six worries per day."
We decided to give birth to seven dolls, as we are not kids anymore. We may not be allowed to have more than six worries but we surely have. The genderless childlike dolls represent the current stage of cultural limbo: a stage that is characterized by childlike innocence, and a mixture of wonder and fear when we create the new sex – hence, a new era. We gave them alphabetical names as we think that we can find a worry for each letter of the language that made us what we are now. While working on the Tissue Culture & Art Project, people expressed to us their anxieties. These dolls represent some of them. You are welcome to find new worries and new names… You will be able to whisper your worries (not just in terms of biotechnology) to these dolls and hope that they will take these worries away.
Doll A = stands for the worry from Absolute truths, and of the people who think they hold them.
Doll B = represents the worry of Biotechnology, and the forces that drive it. (see doll C)
Doll C = stands for Capitalism, Corporations
Doll D = stands for Demagogy, and possible Destruction.
Doll E = stands for Eugenics and the people who think that they are superior enough to practice it.
Doll F = is the fear of Fear itself.
G = is not a doll as the Genes are present in all semi-living dolls.
Doll H = symbolizes our fear of Hope…
Our worry dolls were hand crafted out of degradable polymers (PGA and P4HB) and surgical sutures. The dolls were sterilized and seeded with endothelial, muscle, and osteoblasts cells (skin, muscle and bone tissue) that are grown over/into the polymers. The polymers degrade as the tissue grows. As a result the dolls become partially alive! Will they take our worries away?
The process, in which the natural (tissue) takes over the constructed (polymers), is not a "precise" one. New shapes and forms are created in each instance, depending on many variants such as the type of cells, the rhythm of the polymer degradation and the environment inside the artificial womb (bioreactor). It means that each doll transformation cannot be fully predicted and it is unique to itself. Our 'next sex' is still in the realm of a dialogue with nature rather than a complete control over it. Our dolls are not clones but rather unique.
Victimless Leather- A Prototype of Stitch-less Jacket grown in a Technoscientific "Body"
Medium: Biodegradable polymer connective and bone cells
Dimension of original: variable
The Victimless Leather project is concerned with growing living tissue into a leather like material. This piece represents the culmination of ten years artistic research by The Tissue Culture & Art Project into the possibility of Technologically Mediated Victimless Utopia.
This artistic grown garment confronts people with the moral implications of wearing parts of dead animals for protective and aesthetic reasons and further confront notions of relationships with living systems manipulated or otherwise. An actualized possibility of wearing 'leather' without killing an animal is offered as a starting point for cultural discussion.
Our intention is not to provide yet another consumer product but rather to raise questions about our exploitation of other living beings. We see our role as artists as one in which we are providing tangible example of possible futures, and research the potential effects of these new forms on our cultural perceptions of life. It is not our role to provide people with goods for their daily use. We would like our work to be seen in this cultural context, and not in a commercial context.
As part of the TC&A project we are artistically exploring and provoking notions relating to human conduct with other living systems, or to the Other. This particular project deconstructs our cultural meaning of clothes as a second skin by materialising it and displaying it as an art object.
This piece also presents an ambiguous and somewhat ironic take into the technological price our society will need to pay for achieving 'a victimless utopia'.
Odd Neolifism
21st Century: Art in the First Decade
ORON CATTS & IONAT ZURR
Odd Neolifism 2010
Bioreactor, glass, CO2, nutrient solution, living cells, and taxidermy and preserved specimens on loan from the collections of QM Loans, Queensland Museum, Brisbane; the University of Queensland's Zoology Museum, courtesy of the School of Biological Sciences; and Mr David Burnett, Curator International Art, QAG/GoMA.
The Tissue Culture & Art Project is hosted at SymbioticA — The Centre of Excellence in Biological Arts, School of Anatomy and Human Biology, The University of Western Australia
Commisioned for '21st Century: Art in the First Decade'
Images courtesy: Queensland Art Gallery / Gallery of Modern Art
Photography: Natasha Harth
Odd Neolifism is an updated cabinet of curiosities that comment on the current taxonomical crisis in which old and new life forms are emerging and abstracted.
The piece combined of a more traditional display of life forms – taxidermy and preserved organisms, as well as a contemporary approach – fragments of organisms which either stand as the essence of the whole organism, or in some cases hybridised together to form a new life form.
These living cells or hybridomas (a technology of forming hybrid cell lines by fusing a specific antibody-producing B cell with a myeloma cell) will be grown in a techno-scientific surrogate body – a Wave Bioreactor with the appropriate nutrient media. The Bioreactor is a cell culture device suitable for applications of cell culture in suspension, or on microcarriers, as well as cellular therapeutics.
The dead media (taxidermy and preserved specimens) are juxtaposed together with the living Semi-Living media (cells and hybridomas) to raise questions about our changing perceptions as well as changing relations to life on all levels.
The Mechanism of Life – after Stephane Leduc , 2013
Artists: Oron Catts, Ionat Zurr and Corrie van Sice
Medium: Custom design rapid prototype printer, computer, chemicals and dyes.
In his 1911 book Stephane Leduc tried to prove that life is merely a chemical process. In a series of experiments he was showing the emergence of life like phenomena of different degrees of complexity. This piece recreates Leduc's experiments using custom made rapid prototyping printer to create "protocells". The work deals with cultural amnesia and reimagining. With current attempts in creating synthetic life, it is important to culturally probe into the ideas of the Mechanism of Life.
In our piece, we re-enact one of the simplest protocell protocols offered by Leduc, working with the diffusion of two concentrations of solutions that create transitory, cell-like droplets The droplets resemble cells with membrane and nuclei, they last for a few moments before succumbing to entropy and dissolving into a murky liquid, "much like life".
This protocol is automated using another hyped technology: three-dimensional (3D) printing. There is much discussion about 3D printing technology as the next industrial revolution – something that parallels the assembly line of Fordism at the time Leduc was working on The Mechanism of Life. The promise of 3D printing technology is, in its core, based on information transfer as the business model; the focus is on the instructions/data as the currency, while the materiality is merely an optional manifestation. This is problematic as, at the very same time, the 3D printing industry suggests the ability to print actual life, or at least parts of the living. This very seductive scenario of printing life from scratch is played off in this work against the unstable, uncontrollable and transient nature of the protocell droplets as a material. To a large extent, this piece deals with issues of cultural amnesia and reimagining, pointing attention to the use of certain visuals and expressions to persuade, hype, and then disappoint. In a time when the idea of creating synthetic life is in the forefront, it is important to culturally probe current and past approaches to the idea of The Mechanism of Life. The printed "protocells" are unstable and temporary; they take on forms that appear organic and then disappear. More than a proof on the mechanism of life, they are a suggestion for a humble approach to the question of what life is and how far we are willing to make life into a raw material for our own ends.
Semi Living Steak 2000
In this project Semi-Living food was grown. The first steak was made out of pre-natal sheep cells (skeletal muscle). Cells were harvested as part of research into tissue engineering techniques in utero. The steak was grown from an animal that was not yet born.
Based on research in the Tissue Engineering and Organ Fabrication Laboratory in Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, in 2000–2001
Technology seems to promise us (among many other things) an illusion of a victimless utopia. TC&A argue that this technologically meditated victimless utopia is but a transformation of explicit violence into a hidden implicit one on a much greater scale. As urban culture seems to find it hard to stomach images of real violence (as oppose to cinematic and constructed simulated violence) its obsession with ever growing consumption inevitably created increasing amounts of victims from the ecology to other animals and humans. There is a shift from "the red in the teeth and claws" of nature to a mediated nature. The victims are pushed farther away; they still exist, but are much more implicit.
For example, parts of the living are fragmented and taken away from the context of the host body (and the mere act of fragmentation is violent) and are introduced to a technological mediation that further "abstracts" their livingness. By creating a new class of Semi-Being, which is dependent on us and our technology for survival, we are also creating a new class for exploitation.
This Semi-Living Steak project investigated the eating of "victimless meat" by growing semi-living steaks from a biopsy taken from an animal, which is left in the paddock alive and healthy. As the cells from the biopsy proliferate, the 'steak' continues to grow and expand in vitro, while the source, the animal from which the cells were taken, is healing.
On an ethical level the project addressed the most common zone of interaction between humans and the living world, and also probes the apparent uneasiness people feel when someone 'messes' with their food. The project offered the illusion of 'victimless' meat consumption. Potentially this work presented a utopian future in which the killing and suffering of animals destined for food consumption will be reduced. Maybe even the ecological and economic problems associated with the food industry can be reduced dramatically. However, by making our food a new class of object/being – a Semi-Living – there is the risk of making the Semi-Living a new class for exploitation.
The TC&A Semi-Living Steak project was the outcome of a residency at the Tissue Engineering & Organ Fabrication Laboratory at Harvard Medical School in 2000. The first steak was grown from pre-natal sheep cells (skeletal muscle), harvested as part of research into tissue engineering techniques in utero. The steak was grown from an animal that was not yet born.
Disembodied Cuisine 2003
Artists: The Tissue Culture & Art Project
Photography: Axel Heise
For Disembodied Cuisine, we grew Xenopus laevis cell line (XTC) over biopolymer for food consumption. The semi-living frog steak was grown for more than two months and was consumed as food by the artists and eight other volunteers by the end of the exhibition.
Titled 'Disembodied Cuisine', the installation played on the notion of different cultural perceptions of what is edible and what is foul. Semi-living frog steaks were grown, thus problematizing the French taste and their resentment towards engineered food, and the objection by some other cultures to the consumption of frogs. Frog skeletal muscle was grown over biopolymer for potential food consumption, while the healthy frogs lived alongside as part of the installation. In the last day of the show, the steak was cooked and eaten in a Nouvelle Cuisine style dinner, and the four frogs that were rescued from the farm were released to a beautiful pond in the local botanical gardens.
'There are eight people on earth who have already eaten lab-grown flesh, and artist and tissue scientist Oron Catts at the University of Western Australia is one of those few. As part of the Tissue Culture and Art Project's Disembodied Cuisine, he was part of the team that grew some frog meat on a slide, fried it up and ate it as a part of a "feast" to end their project into the uneasy relationship of meat and science. Following earlier successes in 2001 at growing lamb in a lab, Catts and his team grew coin-sized frog steak in 2003 at a cost of roughly $650 a gram, just millimetres thick. ..They fried the thumbnails of frogmeat in garlic and honey with a dash of Calvados….
The Lilliputian amphibian steaks were served with a selection of herbs, also lab-grown from plant tissue culture. Eight people sat down to this micro-degustation. The results were a success, at least in terms of replicating an uneasy relationship.
"Four people spat it out. I was very pleased" [i]
Stir Fly
Artists: The Tissue Culture & Art (Oron Catts & Ionat Zurr) in Collaboration with Robert Foster
Medium: Custom-made Bioreactor, Insect Cells, Nutrient Media and Blood Serum
Date: From Grow your Own, Science Gallery, Dublin 2013
Stir Fly is a contestable domestic appliance that could be used in the kitchen of every home: a prototype of a domestic bioreactor designed to culture and farm in-vitro insect meat. A bioreactor is a device that supports a biologically active environment—in this case, a vessel to grow cells taken from a fly. Unlike warm blooded animals' cells and tissues that need to be kept at 37 degrees Celsius, insect cells grow at room temperature which makes the process effective and readily available to the domestic environment. However, note the bag above, it holds nutrient fluid, consisting of all the food the cells need in order to grow, it includes animal derived substances such as fetal calf serum. The nutrient fluid is fed into the sterilized device that contains the fly cells; a magnetic stirrer agitates the fluid so that the cells can maximize their nutrient uptake. This work takes the idea of in vitro meat and animal protein production, and translates it into an absurd conclusion—and in the process unveils the nutritional requirements of the cells.
Vessels of Care & Control
Artists: The Tissue Culture & Art Project (Oron Catts & Ionat Zurr) in collaboration with Mike Bianco.
Medium: compost, beehive, bees, acrylic dome, clay, wood, glass, water, tissue flasks, pumps, plastic tubes, thermostat and Water Storage Crystals
Date: Kenpoku Arts Festival, Japan 2016
In Vessels of Care and Control: Compostcubator & Hivecubator we explored how life forms are cared for by other life forms. Potentially we were looking, as a symbolic gesture, how non-human living systems, can become surrogate bodies to human (or more than human) living fragments. Rather than optimisation in the sense of engineering control – the electrical incubator – we look at living systems as ideal surrogates bodies. We critiqued contemporary biology for increasingly becoming a discipline of isolation and control, particularly in the area now known as synthetic biology. Much of the rhetoric and practice in this field seems to focus on controlling living systems at the molecular level. However, we argue that one of the fundamental vehicles of controlling life—something that engineering biology can't do without in its many manifestations—is the ability to simulate and control the environmental conditions of the biological body. Our artistic incubators – life support vessels – highlighted the impossibility of total control through technology and the importance and beauty of leakage, contamination, diversity, and fertilization as keys to survival.
In many respects the living systems acted as the incubator's thermostat. It is not surprising that this facility for living systems was translated into the machine. The invention of the thermostat represents one of the first examples of first order cybernetics systems and one of the first when humans developed (semi) autonomous technology to care for other living systems.
The two incubators are:
Compaostcubator – The heat for the incubator was generated from a compost pile decomposing in the centre of a clay/mud structure providing the heat needed for the (sometime human) cells grown in tissue culture flasks which were positioned in specially crafted compartments. This was part of a series of an artistic meditation loosely based on the story of the Golem (which literally means crude, unshaped or raw) and which explored the "alchemy like" transformation of different materials into substrates with the ability to support and act on life. In the 16th century story of the Golem, an animated being was created from non-living material to serve and defend part of a population, an attempt to destabilise the prevailing logic of the transformation of life into raw material for engineering ends. Our piece poetically restaged the creation of the Golem in order to touch upon some of the important lessons of the story: the creation of life from crude matter and human knowledge and the point that human hubris and life should not be mixed/ should not lead to an interference in life?
The hivecubator followed studies showing that bees are fastidious at maintaining the beehive at temperatures between 32-36ºC and also seem to regulate CO2 between 0.10 and 4.25% so the beehive can operate as an incubator in which cells can be grown. The bees function as a living incubator to maintain and grow cells, semi living fragments of bees' bodies.
These two living systems staged in the gallery had to take care of disassociated living fragments (tissue cell, and cell lines) growing in a plastic tissue culture flask, thereby moving away from notions of control, optimisation, computation and information, to those of kinship, interdependence, multispecies ecologies and genome instability. When during the exhibition, the beehive incubator was attacked by wasps, the dead bees became food for the compost incubator; which in turn, at least in theory, provided heat for the cells in the tissue culture. Our hands bled from making the clay structure in which to host the compost; and our blood was consumed by flies hovering around the compost. It smelled, it was somewhat chaotic, it was unstable, it was alive!
[i] From an interview with Oron Catts: http://www.sbs.com.au/blogarticle/107961/the-taste-of-test-tubemeat June 2008.
www.tca.uwa.edu.au/
Read the rest of this article, and view all articles in full from just £10 for 3 months.
Art, Creativity, Science, Technology
About Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr
ORON CATTS AND IONAT ZURR Award winning artists, researchers and Curators, Catts and Zurr formed the internationally renowned Tissue Culture and Art Project. Catts is the Co-Founder and Director of SymbioticA: the Centre of Excellence in Biological Arts at the University of Western Australia and a Professor of Contestable Design at the Royal College for the Arts UK. Dr Ionat Zurr is researcher and SymbioticA's academic co-ordinator as well as a faculty member at the School of Design, The University of Western Australia Both are Visiting Professor at Biofilia – Based for Biological Arts, Aalto University Finland (2015-2020), and have been Research Fellows at the Organ Fabrication and Tissue Engineering Lab, Harvard Medical School (2000-2001). They are considered pioneers in the field of biological arts and publish widely, exhibit internationally and their work has been collected by MoMA New York. Catts & Zurr ideas and projects reach beyond the confines of art; their work is often cited as inspiration to diverse areas such as new materials, textiles, design, architecture, ethics, fiction, and food.	View all posts with Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr →
← Account of a Collision
Parallax: Perspectives in Astronomy and Photography →
between Art and Science
Issue | November 2017
How can we understand collaborations between Artists and Scientists?
Eleanor Armstrong
Reflecting on successful collaborations: Spit Crystal
Judit Agui
Account of a Collision
Charles Ogilvie and Daniel Crow
Parallax: Perspectives in Astronomy and Photography
Melanie King
Nine-tenths of the iceberg: research as the unseen component of artists' work
Sarah Craske and Charlotte Sleigh
Aesthetics get Synthetic: Knowledge Link through Art and Science – Otavio Schipper & Sergio Krakowski
Otavio Schipper and Sergio Krakowski
Aesthetics get Synthetic: Knowledge Link through Art and Science – Charles Cotton
Charles Cotton
Aesthetics get Synthetic: Knowledge Link through Art and Science – Tom Robinson
Aesthetics get Synthetic: Knowledge Link through Art and Science – Agnes Meyer-Brandis
Agnes Meyer-Brandis
Aesthetics get Synthetic: Knowledge Link through Art and Science – Alex de Vries
On my FEAT
Pinar Yoldas
CRITICAL CONNECTIONS: Connecting Art, Design and STEM
Svenja Kratz and Jacina Leong
Wunderkammer in a Book
Charissa Terranova
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May 17, 2019 Issue 50
Creativity, Imagination and Philosophy
We talk about artistic inspiration all the time – but scientific inspiration is a thing too


Dave Logan voice of the Broncos joins the show to recap the Broncos win over the Chargers. Logan said the pass interference call on Courtland Sutton was the worst he's ever seen, and praised the Broncos for overcoming it. Phillip Lindsay is the best back for the Broncos. Von Miller had the play of the game with his interception.


England Under-18s head coach Jim Mallinder has named Leicester Tigers trio George Martin, Jack van Poortvliet and Joe Browning in his squad for the opening game of the Six Nations Festival.
England take on Wales at Hartpury on Saturday (2.10pm, live on FreeSports TV), before fixtures against Ireland (Wednesday) and France (next Sunday).
Second-rower Martin will captain the side, with the starting XV containing six members of the squad that toured South Africa in August.
The festival, which is being hosted by England at Hartpury University and College, will see three sets of fixtures at Gillman's Ground, Sixways Stadium and Kingsholm, all live via FreeSports TV.
Mallinder said: "It's been a few weeks since this age group last met up and the challenge for the team now is to quickly switch on to how we want to play.
Tigers academy forward Ben Muncaster is also at the festival as part of the Scotland Under-18 squad.


text:
set -e

# Usage
usage() {
    echo "Usage:"
    echo "    ${0} -i <loader_id> -p <protocol> -h <host>"
    exit 1
}

# Constants
SCM_TYPE="gerrit"
LOADER_PATH="${PLUGGABLE_SCM_PROVIDER_PROPERTIES_PATH}/CartridgeLoader"
SCM_PROVIDERS_PATH="${PLUGGABLE_SCM_PROVIDER_PROPERTIES_PATH}/ScmProviders"
GERRIT_SSH_USER=$GERRIT_JENKINS_USERNAME
GERRIT_PERMISSIONS_PATH='${PROJECT_NAME}/permissions'
GERRIT_URL=$(echo ${ROOT_URL} | sed "s/jenkins/${GERRIT_HOST_NAME}/g")

while getopts "i:p:h:" opt; do
  case $opt in
    i)
      loader_id=${OPTARG}
      ;;
    p)
      protocol=${OPTARG}
      ;;
    h)
      host=${OPTARG}
      ;;
    *)
      echo "Invalid parameter(s) or option(s)."
      usage
      ;;
  esac
done

if [ -z "${loader_id}" ] || [ -z "${protocol}" ] || [ -z "${host}" ]; then
    echo "Parameters missing"
    usage
fi

# Setup Cartridge loader properties
LOADER_FILE=$LOADER_PATH/${loader_id}.props
touch $LOADER_FILE
cat > $LOADER_FILE <<EOF
loader.id=${loader_id}
gerrit.endpoint=${host}
gerrit.user=${GERRIT_SSH_USER}
gerrit.port=${GERRIT_SSH_PORT}
gerrit.protocol=ssh
gerrit.permissions.path=${GERRIT_PERMISSIONS_PATH}
gerrit.permissions.with_review.path=${GERRIT_PERMISSIONS_PATH}-with-review
EOF

# Setup SCM Provider properties
GERRIT_PROVIDER_ID=${loader_id}-{protocol}
case $protocol in
ssh)
  PROPS_FILE=${SCM_PROVIDERS_PATH}/${loader_id}-${protocol}.props
  touch $PROPS_FILE

cat > $PROPS_FILE <<EOF
scm.loader.id=${loader_id}
scm.id=${loader_id}-ssh
scm.type=${SCM_TYPE}
scm.code_review.enabled=true
scm.protocol=ssh
scm.port=${GERRIT_SSH_PORT}
scm.host=${host}
scm.url=${GERRIT_URL}

scm.gerrit.server.profile=${GERRIT_PROFILE}
scm.gerrit.ssh.clone.user=${GERRIT_SSH_USER}
EOF
  ;;
http)
  PROPS_FILE=${SCM_PROVIDERS_PATH}/${loader_id}-${protocol}.props
  touch $PROPS_FILE

  cat > $PROPS_FILE <<EOF
scm.loader.id=${loader_id}
scm.id=${loader_id}-http
scm.type=${SCM_TYPE}
scm.code_review.enabled=true
scm.protocol=http
scm.port=${GERRIT_PORT}
scm.host=${host}
scm.url=${GERRIT_URL}

scm.gerrit.server.profile=${GERRIT_PROFILE}
EOF
  ;;
*)
  echo "Invalid protocol: Must use http or ssh"
  usage
  ;;
esac

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub