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NEWS and CRITICS
OPINION & CRITICS
The five big goals of Joe Biden's first 100 days
mamadou December 27, 2020 December 26, 2020 News, North America, Politics
Ever since Franklin Delano Roosevelt's time in the White House, which lasted from 1933 to 1945, US presidents have been judged on what they achieved during their first 100 days in office. FDR – who took office at the peak of the Great Depression – enacted so many pieces of significant legislation during his first 100 days that books have been written about this period of his presidency.
Incoming US President Joe Biden – who regards FDR as one of his personal heroes – has explicitly referred to the 100-day milestone when outlining his policy goals. And he has compared the severity of the challenges he faces to those Roosevelt confronted when he took office. Unless Democrats take control of the Senate in the January 6 Georgia run-offs, Biden will have to rely largely on executive orders, rather than legislation, to get things done.
President-elect Joe Biden sees Franklin Delano Roosevelt as his role model. CREDIT:AP
Confirming his crew
An immediate priority for Biden will be getting as many of his cabinet nominees confirmed by the US Senate as possible. Many of his picks – such as Antony Blinken for secretary of state – are expected to be swiftly confirmed. But Republicans are expected to put up a fight and attempt to block some of Biden's nominees to signal to the party's conservative base that they will not be push-overs.
Neera Tanden, a prolific tweeter whom Biden has chosen to run the Office of Management and Budget, is likely to face significant resistance from Republicans. There has also been some pushback to Biden's plan to nominate Lloyd Austin as his secretary of defence given Austin only retired from the military four years ago, rather than the seven years required under US law. Austin will need a special waiverfrom Congress to take the job.
Biden will be hoping for speedy Senate approval for key cabinet picks such as Lloyd Austin, his choice for defence secretary.CREDIT:AP
Tackling the pandemic
Biden's top priority in the early days of his presidency will be the coronavirus pandemic, which will likely still be killing around 3000 Americans a day when he takes office on January 20. COVID-19 hospitalisations have continued to hit record highs throughout December and the country is recording around 200,000 new infections a day.
COVID-19 vaccinations have already begun under the Trump administration, but Biden's team will be responsible for overseeing the rollout to the general population. They will have to make difficult decisions about who receives the vaccine next: for example, should frontline workers or the elderly be first in line? Biden has said he believes 100 million vaccine doses could be administered within his first 100 days – that is, by the end of April. He will also have work to do to build up trust in the vaccines among sceptical communities, including African-Americans and Republicans.
Biden has also said that, on inauguration day, he will call for Americans to wear masks for 100 days, describing it as their "patriotic duty" to slow the spread of the virus until vaccines are widely available. He will also move quickly to rejoin the World Health Organisation, which Trump withdrew the US from in June.
Reviving the economy
Biden will also inherit a struggling economy that has seen millions of Americans fall into poverty over recent months. Biden has said that even a $US900 billion ($1.2 trillion) financial rescue package will not be enough and he will quickly press Congress to pass another round of stimulus to help boost the economy. One of his big priorities is securing federal support for state and local governments so that all American schoolchildren can return to the classroom within his first 100 days as president.
Climate change reforms
Biden has said that taking action on climate change will be one of his major priorities. He is expected to rejoin the Paris climate agreement as one of his first significant presidential acts – something he can do without any input from Congress. He has also said that, within his first 100 days, he will convene a climate summit with leaders from the biggest global economies. Expect the Biden administration to immediately rescind a large number of President Trump's executive orders on energy, particularly a March 2017 order calling on every federal agency to dismantle their climate policies. He also plans to reinstate stringent fuel efficiency standards introduced in the Obama era but scrapped by Trump.
Welcoming more immigrants
Biden has vowed to make a series of significant changes to immigration policy in his first 100 days – including cancelling Trump's emergency declaration that has allowed him to fund the construction of a wall on the border with Mexico. He has said that he will reinstate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which allows people who were brought to the US legally as children to remain in the country and apply for work permits. He has also said that he would rescind Trump's ban on people from Muslim-majority countries such as Iran, Syria and Yemen from entering the US. Biden has also vowed to soften US asylum laws and to move quickly to introduce legislation that would provide a pathway to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants.
US President-elect Joe Biden said that the breach of the government data apparently carried out by the Russia poses a 'grave risk' to national security.
But will he wipe student debts?
Senior Democrats are also pushing Biden to use executive authority to cancel up to $US50,000 in debt per borrower for college students who took loans. Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer recently said: "We have come to the conclusion that President Biden can undo this debt, can forgive $50,000 of debt the first day he becomes president. You don't need Congress; All you need is the flick of a pen."
Biden has yet to commit to the measure, which would reduce debt levels for tens of millions of American college graduates.
By : Matthew Knott – The Sydney Morning Herald
100-day, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Joe Biden, President elect, United States
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By amyegentry	Gender Politics, Interviews, Literatures, Women Writing
"The Roy G. Biv of Female Experience": A Big Ol' Interview with Libba Bray
*vital note: You can find an abridged version of this interview on CultureMap Austin. Enjoy!
Preparing to interview young adult novelist Libba Bray, I wrote at the top of my notebook page, "THE GOAL IS NOT TO BE HER FRIEND."
Though seemingly written in reality-TV-ese, these words of advice are reasonable. If there's anything that Jennifer Egan interview taught me (and dear God let there be something), it's that a reporter should never secretly want the approval of the interviewee, because that is the road to a little town I call Klonopinsville. So I rode into this encounter in full battle armor, having banned myself on pain of death from all forms of gushing, as well as any appeals to common ground or comments that might be construed as hints at my own humanity.
Imagine my surprise when Libba Bray turned out to be a human herself, with a gift for hilarious turns of phrase and a healthy supply of anger against patriarchal politics and religious shame-mongering. She was brave, open, weird, and funny. When I tentatively followed up a question about her religious upbringing by asking her about her current spiritual beliefs, not only did she answer me at great length, but she asked me the same question right back. And then listened to the answer.
At Libba's request I'm not putting up that part of the interview, but there's a ton of fascinating stuff in this version. She talks about her gay Presbyterian minister father, the life-changing car accident that left her with a glass eye when she was 18, and the crippling depression that followed. And oh, thank god, she talked feminism. She brought it up on her own, and she nailed it time and time again. Listening to her on the phone, I was pumping my fists and silently cheering.
While there are no plans for matching friendship bracelets, I believe if it came down to a reality TV-style survival situation, she would have my back.
OED: How did you get started writing YA, after being a playwright?
LB: The first books I wrote, I actually wrote for a packager. They hire people to go, "McNovel, drive-through, please!" They would say here's your premise, we'd like you to write a book. It taught me an awful lot. If you can outline a book and then write it in six weeks, you can do just about anything. But I wanted to write my own stories. My first idea, honestly, was, man, wouldn't it be cool to write a Victorian "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"? That was the inspiration [for A Great and Terrible Beauty], and then I just kind of kept noodling around with it. I loved Victorian novels growing up, I loved Wuthering Heights and I loved Jane Eyre and anything gothic.
OED: You say that it was "love at first sight" for you with YA. What was it that drew you?
LB: I want to say, the sincerity of the story telling? I just read this great quote by Junot Diaz. He was talking about true intimacy, and he was saying that it was the willingness to be vulnerable and to be found out. I loved that phrase, that you were willing to be found out. That's what I felt that YA did. It wasn't pretentious, and it wasn't hiding its heart. It wanted to be found out. The first YA book that I remember really falling in love with was Rats Saw God by Rob Thomas. Rob Thomas went on to make "Veronica Mars," and he's from Texas. . . I felt this kinship. It just felt very honest to me, and I appreciated that. It was kind of a relief. It felt like those moments when you go to a party and you're standing around for a long time going, I don't fit in here, and what am I going to talk to these people about, and everybody's getting drunk, and then you find this one person and you end up sitting in some corner talking about all these arcane things, and then before you know it you're having a conversation about the meaning of life and it's four o'clock in the morning? That kind of feeling, that kind of intimacy? I felt like that's what I got from YA.
OED: Do you think that sincerity is part of why there's been this big boom in YA fiction?
LB: I always hesitate to generalize about YA because it's so vast . . . But I would say the teens, our audience, keeps us honest. Because they can smell bullshit a mile away, and they will call you on it. And so you really kind of have to be willing to get down to it. This is one of the things I always say when I'm doing writing workshops when teens. I always say, "You can lie, because fiction is made up of lies. But just don't bullshit me. And there's a difference." So I think that's it . . . you don't have to bullshit.
OED: I'm not a big follower of YA, but I was walking through Bookpeople one day and I saw your covers and the first thing I thought was there's somebody who—you're working within the YA wheelhouse but you've done so much different stuff, and that seems to be kind of unique. So I wonder if you could talk about playing with different genres.
LB: I like to read a lot of different stuff, and I think that's part of it. As rudimentary as this sounds, some days I wake up and I think "I would like to wear an outfit that's very Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday." Or, "Today I would like to dress like Devo.". . . I like horror, and I like political thrillers, and I like supernatural things. But I also really like satire, and I like Thomas Pynchon and I like—trying to think of something far afield from Thomas Pynchon, but my brain cells are not working! I mean I like so many different things that I couldn't imagine being tied to one kind of storytelling, that's just not the way that I am. I am an eclectic person, and so, because my interests are quite varied and my reading tastes are quite varied, I feel like it would make sense that my storytelling would also be quite varied.
One of the things that was tough for me in writing the Gemma Doyle trilogy was, there's humor in there, but the humor is very particular to a Victorian sensibility. And so it's corseted, for lack of a better term. It's restrained. So it was kind of fun to then be able to open up the throttle and write something like Going Bovine. All of my friends who knew me really well, when I came out with A Great and Terrible Beauty, all went, "Huh, that is not the book I thought you would write." And then when I wrote Going Bovine all my friends went, "Oh yeah, I totally get that you would write that book!" But anybody who's read the Gemma Doyle trilogy, they went, "Huh, that is not the book I thought you would follow up with." [Pause.] Or perhaps I just have a penchant for career suicide.
OED: It is interesting because those Gemma Doyle books, I remember seeing them on the shelf for the first time years and years back, they've got the sexy young adult thing going on with the covers.
LB: They were pretty daring for the time, the covers.
OED: I kind of made a beeline for them for that very reason. But it's a trilogy, and there are so many YA series that can stretch on and on. Especially since those books were so successful, to go in a different direction seems very daring in a way.
LB: She eats danger for breakfast! And then she gets, like, a little repeating action. Danger repeats on her. Yeah, it was a craaaaazy thing to do, but you know you must [parodic serious tone] tell the story you need to tell.
OED: I'm right in the middle of Beauty Queens right now. And I have to say, I love it. And I think it really has to do partly with, like you said, the release of the corsets. I thought, Oh, all bets are off! Also being a Texas Girl, as soon as that Taylor [Miss Texas] character opened her mouth I was like there it is! That is the accent, I can hear it. I was like, oh, I know those girls!
LB: I'm not gonna lie, it was really fun. I hail from the home town of two Miss Americas you know. I'm from Denton, north of Dallas. I always say it's like Tatooine with a Walmart.
OED: In Beauty Queens, the satire that you mentioned really comes out swinging. That is a book with a very intense point of view, which is part of what makes it so delightful to read. And I wonder, people have asked you about gender in your books before, but also the critique of consumerism and all that, is that something you feel really strongly about?
LB: I heard Lois Lowry speak this summer, and I loved what she said. She was talking about how people say to "write what you know." And she said, "I want to write about what troubles me, what keeps me up at night." And I thought, yes! That is part of it, is that there's something that's like, I'm not entirely—I have all kind of thoughts and feelings about that, but I feel like I need to explore that.
A few years ago David Levithan called me up and said, "I have an idea for a story and you need to write it. Let's go have lunch." He said the magic word, which was lunch. And so we went to have lunch and he said, "Okay here's the one sentence: planeload of teen beauty queens crash on an island." And I was like aw, dude! I want to write that book! But I was finishing up [the Gemma Doyle trilogy], so I said, "Okay, but it's going be a while before I can get to that." My first thought was, I'm just gonna do a crazy, crazy book, like a full six-pack of crazy. I thought that would be so fun, to lampoon that kind of stuff. And then when I actually got down to writing it, I thought, I don't want to lampoon these girls, because I feel for them. The truth is that so much had happened in terms of setting women back in that amount of time, and I was really troubled by that. I thought, why is there so much misogyny? I mean I know that misogyny is always with us, but why is there so much misogyny? Why are we so hard on ourselves? I had walked into the grocery store or 7-11 or something, and there were all those magazines up front, you know like the tabloids and People. And every single freakin' magazine cover was "So-and-so, what will she wear! Look at her engagement ring!" "So-and-so tells you all—she wants babies!" You know. And it was all so just reductive and regressive. Hey man, I love being married and having a baby. I have a son, and I enjoy motherhood and all that. But it became almost Stepford Wife in the way that we were supposed to kind of parrot these things back. It's like, "Of course my family is the most important thing!" All of these things that just felt like a corset again. And I thought, what is going on that this kind of stuff is happening? And I felt troubled by it, and I felt angry.
And at the same time I had a lot of questions about gender. I think that one of the things that I enjoy about writing is that it forces me to question my own status quo. It is really easy to get complacent and think, well I believe this, or I think this. And when you start getting in there and digging around in the guts of the story, you're like, I thought I believed this, but I don't know, I'm not really sure, maybe I'm just really guarded about this. Maybe I'm not willing to be vulnerable about what this feels like. I think sometimes in literature we can also kind of police ourselves.
I know a lot of people talked about Twilight, and they would say, oh, but the heroine is so, she kind of lets this man make her decisions. And I thought, that may not be the—I'm saying fantasy here, because it's the only word I can think of, it's not really the right word. But you know, like, that may not be the particular fantasy or trope that works for me. But could we ever deny that—Listen man, I read Wuthering Heights! I wanted me a little Heathcliff action. I mean like, why can't we indulge that fantasy and also be like, "And now I would like the ERA passed, please. Also, this lipstick is fuckin' killer." I always say I want the whole Roy G. Biv of female experience. I don't want it to just be Roy, or G., or Biv. . . . Also I was pissed off, I was pissed off about everything that was going on, the way that we were being sort of chipped away at. Also I really love James Bond, and I was like "I want a female James Bond." And there's a way in which they could all be Bond girls, but instead they become Bond.
The one thing I was very, very clear about was, I did not want this to be a big cat fight. Because my experience with my own female friends is that we have been there for each other through everything, and that we're a support system for each other. I didn't want it to become this female against female kind of thing, because that wasn't my experience.
OED: The book is full of women who are struggling with their identities, not just as women, but as people of color, or disabled, or transgendered people. A lot of the heart of the book seems to come from that struggle with identity. So I wondered if there was any basis for that in your own life, if your experience either as a woman or with your identity has informed that.
LB: Absolutely. And this actually gets back to your question, too, about why does YA appeal. One of the things I always say is, "Because we never stop coming of age." It doesn't matter if you're 14 or 40, you're still working on identity, you're still trying to figure out who you are, and who you are now. Like all right, well who am I now? And I think that never goes away. It's interesting, when I started writing Beauty Queens I thought Adina [the feminist character] was going to be my touchstone. And that did not turn out to be the case at all. In fact, the passage that I wrote where I went, that's it, now I'm under the skin of the novel, was Mary Lou. There's the whole part where she talks about her sister Annie, and she talks about sex and sexuality. And I think that was a huge part for me. Growing up in Texas, where there is this sort of—you're supposed to be alluring, but also have a sort of Britney child-bride thing. You're supposed to be sort of alluring, but also kind of wholesome. And you're not supposed to take charge of your sexuality. And I just did not feel that way! I was like, well I feel kind of large-and-in-charge about my sexuality! And I grew up in the church as well, you know, and I thought, but I feel so, you know, I feel really sexual, and why is that I have to hide that? Why is the world is so afraid of that? Why is it that I have to apologize for it and pretend that I don't have it, that I don't enjoy it, that it's not like this great juicy awesome thing? Why is it that I have to feel shame about it? And that has bothered me my whole life. I think it is a real push-pull for women, and I think we get a lot of mixed messages, and I think we give ourselves mixed messages. And we give our daughters mixed messages, because it just perpetuates. And that is one of the things that I would love to be able to just completely deconstruct is that whole . . . I think it is very much tied into religion.
OED: How restrictive was your Presbyterian upbringing? I also was raised in a Presbyterian almost mega-church myself, so . . .
LB: Really? Was it really conservative?
OED: Well, it had not been so. In the '70s and early '80s when I was really young, it was really inflected by that hippie movement. . .
LB: Sounds like we had very similar—yeah, the church you're talking about is exactly the one I know, so keep talking.
OED: Now there's big screens with bouncing balls, and everything is projected onto these screens, and there's a praise band, and now it just seems so conservative to me, I just can't stand it. But when I was growing up in it, as a young child, it was a very loving nurturing kind of hippie-ish place for me to be.
LB: I had almost exactly the same experience. And a thing that informed it was the fact that my father was a minister, and my father was gay. I was 14 when he came out to us. The message from my liberal, Democrat, Presbyterian, the-Bible-is-an-allegory folks was, "This is fine, and there's nothing wrong with being gay, and we can talk about it. But you can't tell anybody, because your dad could lose his job, or worse." So my dad was in the closet, but then so was I, because I had to keep it a secret. I'd go visit my dad and his lover, and we'd go out to Oak Lawn, which was the gay area of Dallas, and it was like leading a secret life, a double life. Someday I would love to be able to write about it, because it was a really interesting thing.
But I had the same kind of thing, where when I was young and we were living in Corpus Christi—this would be the late '60s early '70s through the '70s—because of the hippie movement, and because of the Civil Rights movement, I think there was this wonderful opening up of the church at that time. I felt the same way, it felt kind of hippie-ish. Kind of like, "Agape, y'all!" And then when we moved to Denton it was like the climate changed. The '80s had come in, and the religious right starts kicking in. It was a sea change. It felt restrictive to me. Definitely those mixed messages about how girls were supposed to be. And my mom, God bless her, she's lovely, but she came of age in the '50s, postwar, with very different messages about how you were supposed to be. I think she's very cool, I love my mom, but certainly the message was, "How about this nice dirndl skirt?" It was like, How about I die first? How about I stab myself through the head with a knitting needle? I was not wearing that ugly ass thing!
OED: Church clothes, right?
LB: Church clothes, exactly. So, certainly that was an influence on me. And again it gets back to the why's of things. Why is it this way? Okay, this is what you say, but how is it that you're basing an entire system of oppression on it? If you get to say, well God told me. . . Where am I supposed to go with that argument? Well, tell God he's wrong! Or have your God talk to my God, because my God isn't saying that. One of our Gods is wrong, and I'm just sayin', I'm going to put my money on mine. . . . That is part of what I wanted to get to in Beauty Queens too. Just pay attention to the rhetoric. Pay attention to the messages. Because if you can deconstruct the rhetoric, it's like "The Matrix." Those are the bullets that you are trying to learn how to dodge and make fall in front of you. But if you don't know how to think critically, if you can't hear a message like "Well, we really want to protect women" and understand that "protect" really means "oppress"—Yes, it makes you angry to hear that, but then you also have to think, where does that come from? I have to snake it back to where it comes from. What is the fear, what is the threat that it seems to pose for these people? Because unless you can trace it back, you can't really start trying to root it out at the source, you can't really try to fight. But when push comes to shove about somebody trying to take your rights away, you can try to do all that, but if you're up against somebody who's irrational, you just have to fight like hell. You just have to say Oh hell no, you are not taking my rights.
OED: Yeah, sing it. What's going on now is just making me feel that way every day.
LB: It's mind-boggling. . . the hate that is coming out.
OED: Unbelievable.
LB: It's not just one or two misguided people. I mean like, this is scary stuff. And it is I don't know did you by any chance, I don't know if you ever read my blog, but I had done a blog post, it's called Transvaginal Overdrive, and it was a hysterical post. It was spelling out, here's all the legislation, just in case you were asleep, here's what's been happening. But it is terrifying to me.
OED: Have you seen , this is a pretty awful and bizarre thing to see, the Youtube video that's a commercial for "legitimate rape" as birth control? It is hilarious satire, it's perfectly done, and it's very informative as well. But it's harrowing to watch at the same time. It's almost too scary. . . Now I feel like I've taken us on this road.
LB: No it's fine, I love conversations that go all over the place. Just like I like to write lots of different genres.
OED: I do too! I was going to ask you, so you're writing from a place of anger and curiosity and sort of trying to work out these feelings. But do you also write specifically to educate? Is there a pedagogical thing behind your writing for young girls specifically?
LB: No. Because I think that when you get into that, it's a PSA and not a story. There always has to be a beating heart to a story. It gets back to that Junot Diaz quote, your willingness to drop all your defenses and explore yourself, with a sort of brutal honesty. And if you are adopting some kind of pedagogical perch, then you're not there. You're not inside your story, you're outside of your story.
[religion stuff]
OED: Can you talk a little bit about your accident? Only if you want to, but you brought it up earlier and I understand that it was a pretty serious accident that had a long-lasting effect.
LB: So it was about three weeks after high school graduation, and I was driving my dad to the airport. He was actually flying off to the Presbyterian General Assembly. And I had gotten the car, I had had it about a month. It was stick, not automatic. So I was getting a little more practice, and he asked if I could take him to the airport and I said sure. As I was coming back, it was raining, and I hydroplaned. I went into a spin, my brakes locked, and you know just that kind of panic of, like, not being in control of your car. And . . . um . . . I was right near a major intersection, and I thought I don't want to go into the intersection, so then there's a grassy median, and I thought, okay, if I can just get to the median. Well I say "okay," but I was in panic. All I can think is maybe I hit the gas instead of the brake, because it was like clutch, brake, you know, all that stuff. I hit this big light pole. The front end of the car caved in, and I hit the steering wheel so hard with my face that it broke it off at its column. I basically broke my face. I lost my left eye, broke my legs, although I didn't realize that until they were getting me out of the—and I definitely had, while I was out, I had that "see your life in reverse" moment. I can remember that. And so yeah, so. . . . I was in exploratory surgery for nine and a half hours, and then I was in the hospital for two weeks in Dallas while they tried to put me back together. It was quite physically painful. I broke my jaw, they had to wire it shut, and I couldn't breathe because my nose was completely demolished, and my cheekbones.
But the big thing was about the eye. I couldn't see, because I couldn't open my right eye, so it was like being in a sensory deprivation tank in a way. The doctor would come in, and he would shine a flashlight, and he would say, "Tell me when you can see the light." And for a while on my left side, there was some residual light. And then by day three, I remember he came in and said "Tell me when you can see the light". . . . . and it was a long time. I thought, I'm pretty sure he's not going to go "Psyche! I wasn't even shining a light!" I thought, he's clearly shining a light, and I can't see it. I can't see it. And he said, here's the deal. You have damaged your eye basically beyond all repair. Um. And he said, you can keep your eye, but it will look unsightly and the risk of infection is good, and if you get an infection then it can travel to your right eye and you can go blind. Or you can remove the eye and we can fit you with a prosthesis. And I remember my parents were really upset, because they were like, you can't ask her that! And he said, she's 18. She has to make the decision, because she has to live with it for the rest of her life. Of course I said, take it, I don't want to go blind.
Even at 18 there's some of that magical thinking of childhood. You just think, well, this can be fixed, this can be a do-over, I'll be fine, by the time they finish with me I'll be good as new. And then of course, by the end of the summer, um . . . . they fitted me for my first prosthesis and I finally got my jaws unwired, and I looked at myself. And I was like, that's not my face. That is not my face, and what the hell is this piece of plastic where my left eye used to be. And it hit me. It was like a death. It was that realization of, like, oh wait a minute. This is not a do-over. And also coming to terms with mortality at 18 was pretty heavy. Because you think of yourself as so invincible. Um . . . so it was huge.
I moved into the dorm and all my friends were going out to parties. I had not really dated much in high school, and I remember my teachers always saying, when you go to college, I swear, you're going to get dates. So I thought, wow, when I got to college, that's when things are going to be fun. And here I was in college, and I felt like I was getting robbed of the experience.
And people can be cruel. There was a guy I had worked at an independent bookstore after school when I was in high school. One of the guys who used to come in there all the time, he was a filmmaker—pretentious asshole. I ran into him on campus when I moved into the dorm, and he didn't recognize me. I told him who I was, and I told him what had happened. And he said, Oh I wondered, he said, because you know, part of your face, over here, is as beautiful as it always was. Except the rest of you looks like Frankenstein. Yeah. Like, oh, thanks for that.
I felt broken on the inside as well as on the outside. The only thing I can say is, it was just despair. I was suicidal. I was so depressed I stopped going to class, I was in the same pair of sweats for like two weeks. There was a lot of self destructive behavior, I call that my Lindsay Lohan period. I had no one to talk to, I felt completely cut off. I would listen to side four of Quadrophenia over and over again. Pete Townsend kind of helped save my life. But the other thing, one of my graduation gifts was, somebody had given me a journal. And I started to write in it, because that was the only way, honestly, to keep from killing myself. I just started to write down everything I thought I couldn't say out loud. And that was when I discovered how powerful writing was. Because it literally saved my life. And then I began to do it for its own sake, I began to look forward to the writing. And that's what got me through.
OED: Wow. That is really an amazing story. Isn't that amazing, that that experience actually became formative for your writing.
LB: Yeah. I mean, to get back to our larger spiritual questions, there's a part of me that's like, well now, huh . . . There is that trial, there is that—and then the worst possible experience of your life turns out to be the thing that saves you.
OED: That's pretty intense.
LB: That is pretty intense. Now maybe you should ask me about, like, nail color. "That was okay, cool, thanks Libba. But like, what I really want to know is like, okay, Justin Bieber or Taylor Swift? Okay, you can only pick one!"
OED: "If you could be a type of tree what would you be?" . . . But yeah, I was going to ask if you had read Jennifer Egan's Look at Me.
LB: I have not.
OED: The main character is a model who gets into a terrible car accident and her face has to be completely reconstructed. The first part of the book is about her walking around and feeling unrecognizable, the feeling of being unrecognized, for a model who's been looked at her whole life.
LB: Yeah, I mean certainly I was not a model! But just the experience of not having the same face.
OED: That must be so weird.
LB: And it's also such a crash course in perception. Because people treat you differently. It doesn't matter that you're the same person, people treat you differently.
OED: Well that kind of goes back to that whole question of identity. I mean, that seems to be a profound interrogation of the whole concept of identity, right?
LB: Yeah absolutely. I mean, I think it's one of the things that's really interesting about David Levithan's book Every Day. There is a character, and his—and I just said "his"! There you go. The character's name is "A", that's it. The character has no gender, no culture, no race. It is a pure being who wakes up in the body of somebody different every single day. Trying to get past your notions of gender, of race, of culture, of sexuality. Those boundaries that we erect are kind of fascinating to me. Because I think there's so much more fluidity.
OED: Yeah. But they're so hard to tear down. I mean you go around, you think that you've done away with that sort of thinking and then you go and assign a gender automatically, and it's male!
LB: Right, exactly.
OED: I catch myself all the time reading about characters in books, and I'm just picturing a white guy. And I'm like, Oh right, because people are just white, right? Like, automatically! You know, the default position is that. It's amazing how you can spend so much time working to erode that, those ideas, and still be weirdly imprisoned by them.
LB: I know. It's like when you're a kid, and you go, well infinity goes on until . . . uh, hold on.
OED: We haven't talked about The Diviners much. So, you took off the corset from the Victorian Era, and now you're in with the flappers. . .
LB: Wow, Diviners. So I basically just took everything that I'm interested in and threw it into a big Cobb salad of a series. The Diviners is set in the 1920s in New York City. It combines horror and politics and, I suppose, superheroes, in a way. The inspiration for that was, I was writing it as historical and supernatural, but at the same time I had wanted to write something about post-9/11 America. Because, and this is four or five years ago, I thought, we are doing things like waterboarding, we are torturing people and calling it "enhanced interrogation techniques." Is this really the America that I belong to? You know, what is it, this America, how is it that we're letting this happen? . . . So I started reading up on the 1920s, and I was doing this research. And as I looked at it I thought, well holy cow, we never learn anything do we? Because there were all these uncomfortable parallels between the two, like the anti-immigration fervor, the fears of terrorism because of anarchism and the red scare, and the eugenics movement, which is scary as hell. So you know I'm looking and start reading about all of this stuff, and I thought, wow, the monsters that we think we're fighting are never as scary as the monsters that are actually happening. And so it is a story about America and politics, and the American myth, and flappers and booze and things that go bump in the night. And monsters.
OED: I absolutely love the heroine.
LB: She's pretty unapologetic.
OED: She's fun to hang out with.
LB: You know that if you ever got stuck somewhere, she would have the gin.
Postlude: Libba Bray making me feel better about the Jennifer Egan thing.
LB: No, I have been there. My friend Laurie still talks about my John Turturro story.
OED: Oh my god, you met John Turturro?
LB: Yeah, because he used to live in my neighborhood, and he was on the train one night. And it was like I had fucking Tourettes, man. I don't know what my deal was. I went up to him–and first of all, whatever possessed me to go up and speak to him?–but I went up to him, this was maybe 15, 18 years ago, and I went up to him and was like, "I just have to tell you, I think you're really great."
And he was like, "Thank you."
"I just, I just, I think you're great."
He's like, "Thank you."
I was like, "No, I mean, like Barton Fink, you were, you're great. You're so, so great."
And he moves away from me. "Thank you. Thank you."
"Just, yeah. No, I'd go see you in anything, I would see you in anything. You're just, you're so–" And inside I'm screaming Shut up! Shut up! Jesus Christ, shut your pie-hole! And it's like I can't stop, I cannot stop telling him how great he is. And he is so gracious, and the doors open and he bolts. And I'm standing on the subway going, I just made an ass of myself. I made an ass of myself with John Turturro. Yeah.
OED: So now there's this person that will now forever think of you–like they'll ever think of us ever again!–but like, if they do, they'll be like, oh remember that crazy person who just was completely out of line every second? Yeah, totally.
LB: So, you're among friends.
Tagged Beauty Queens, Gemma Doyle trilogy, Going Bovine, Libba Bray, The Diviners, YA fiction, young adult fiction
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Eysturoy (Deens: Østerø) is het op een na grootste eiland van de Faeröer, zowel naar grootte (286,3 km²) als naar bevolking (10.586).

Op het zeer bergachtige eiland ligt de Slættaratindur, het hoogste punt van de Faeröer. De belangrijkste plaatsen op het eiland zijn Fuglafjørður, Runavík, Gjógv en Nes.

Eysturoy wordt door een nauwe zeestraat gescheiden van Streymoy, het grootste eiland van de archipel. Een brug over deze straat verbindt de beide eilanden. Deze brug wordt schertsend de enige brug over de Atlantische Oceaan genoemd, hoewel de bewoners van het Schotse eiland Seil hetzelfde beweren. Vanuit het relatief dichtbevolkte zuiden van Eysturoy is Tórshavn op Streymoy per veerboot sneller te bereiken dan via deze brug.

Een tweede verbinding tussen Streymoy en Eysturoy is in aanbouw, de 11 kilometer lange Eysturoyartunnel. Deze moet de reistijd tussen het zuiden van Eysturoy en de hoofdstad aanzienlijk verkorten.

Faeröers eiland

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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Tech investors take a Warren Buffett approach to raising money for blood cancer research
Venture capitalist David Lee was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma 24 years ago when he was a graduate Student at Stanford. Rhett Krawitt's acute lymphoblastic leukemia was discovered eight years ago when he was just a toddler.
Both are now cancer-free. Lee has a thriving investment career in Los Angeles and Krawitt is a Bay Area fourth-grader who plays tennis and piano and excels at sailing.
They're almost four decades apart by age but are uniquely linked because of the diseases they've overcome. Now, they're joining forces to spearhead a novel fundraising effort that convinces prominent start-up investors to donate their most precious asset: time.
Starting last week, Lee and about three dozen other venture capitalists from 23 firms in California began auctioning lunch, dinner or coffee meetings, offering winning bidders a chance to pitch an idea, get business advice or just make a valuable connection. All of the proceeds from the 2018 VC Master Lunch Auction Series, hosted on the website Charitybuzz.com, go to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, the world's biggest nonprofit focused on eliminating blood cancer.
"VCs could easily just write a check, but giving their time is oftentimes a lot more valuable," said Lee, who lured many of the investors to the fundraiser by telling them about Krawitt's story. "This is clearly something deeply personal to me."
It's an idea popularized by Warren Buffett, who's held an annual auction for the past 18 years, with the highest bidder winning a private lunch meeting with the billionaire investor. During that stretch, Buffett has raised over $26 million for the Glide Foundation, a San Francisco charity for the homeless. The 19th fundraiser starts later this month.
The VCs in the LLS auction won't bring in Buffett-type money. But Lee, who co-founded Refactor Capital in 2016, said that people will likely pay thousands of dollars for these meetings — the site estimates the value for each at $2,500 — knowing they're getting unusual access to influencers and that the money is going to a worthy cause.
"Cancer touches all of us and I applaud any effort to raise funds and hopes for those in need," said Mark Suster, a partner at Upfront Ventures in L.A. and one of the event's participants. "When David contacted me and we saw a way we could help raise money, it was a no-brainer."
Other firms represented in the auction series include Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia, First Round Capital, Founders Fund and DFJ. The first set of auctions began Wednesday, and by Friday afternoon there were bids totaling over $15,000. The top bid for lunch with Suster and his investing partner, Kara Nortman, stood at $3,750.
"They're happy to discuss your entrepreneurial ideas or business or just share a great meal and talk about tech & investing," according to the web page for Suster's auction.
The auctions last two weeks, and in some cases the cost of the meal is included with the highest bid, while in others the winner is responsible for paying. For each meeting, there's no expectation that funding or any sort of business deal will follow.
Tremendous progress in recent decades
Blood cancer researchers have made tremendous progress in recent decades. In the U.S., the five-year survival rate of leukemia quadrupled since 1960 to over 60 percent, while for Hodgkin's disease the rate has more than doubled to almost 90 percent, according to LLS. For pediatric cancer, the success rates are even higher.
But as oncologists pursue clinical trials for expensive immunotherapy and more personalized treatments, outside financing is more important than ever, especially with projected declines in federal funding.
"It takes a lot of time and patience and investigators, who can spend the time running these clinical trials and asking the really important questions," said Mignon Loh, a pediatric oncologist at the University of California, San Francisco, and one of the doctors on Krawitt's team. "The LLS has made it possible for many researchers, including scientists and physicians, to be able to spend the time conducting research that has led to treatments that Rhett received."
The industry is evolving at a rapid clip.
In 2017, the Food and Drug Administration approved the first chimeric antigen receptor T cell (CAR-T) therapies, enabling doctors to use a patient's own immune system cells to fight cancer cells. So far, the therapies, which cost hundreds of thousands of dollars each, have been used for patients who don't respond to traditional chemotherapy or suffer a relapse.
The connection between Lee and Krawitt dates back five years. At the time, Krawitt was two and a half years into his treatment, during which he had endured intensive chemotherapy sessions and a long list of shots and oral medications, as well as a serious infection in his bloodstream that complicated his recovery.
Lee and Krawitt were introduced as part of an LLS fundraiser in 2013, when Krawitt was five years old. As part of the fund-raising effort, the duo filmed an interview that ran on TechCrunch and helped raise over $100,000 from VC auctions. Last week, the two cancer survivors were reunited for the first time since, this time to film a video about their progress and promote an even bolder philanthropic effort.
"Thanks to my doctors and nurses, my family and friends, and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, now I'm gone with the cancer," Krawitt says in the video.
Krawitt is used to public attention. In the years since his diagnosis, he's testified in Washington on behalf of LLS, been in the press for his family's effort to mandate vaccinations for school children, spoken in front of hundreds of donors at an LLS fundraiser and has been honorary skipper for the Leukemia Cup Regatta, a sailing competition.
His dad, Carl, has been right with him along the way. Carl Krawitt said that beyond the medical benefits and advances that come from LLS, the organization also provides educational and counseling services that are essential for patients and their families.
One service he highlighted was the First Connection program, where families that have been through the traumatic experience of dealing with leukemia or lymphoma provide peer support to a person or family who's just received a shocking diagnosis and needs help and advice. Krawitt said he and his wife, Jodi, took advantage of First Connection during Rhett's treatment and are now volunteers themselves.
"When your kid gets diagnosed with cancer, you're like, well what do I do?" Krawitt said. "LLS was one of the organizations that was there to provide answers. And not just provide answers but actually provide you with questions that you didn't even know you needed to ask."


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Why top automakers spend millions on concept cars they don't plan on making
Aj Caldwell
Concept cars are big hits at auto shows, but the most daring designs rarely make it to production.
They come in many shapes and sizes, are made for a variety of reasons, and can cost automakers millions to make.
Business Insider spoke with the design department of some of the top automakers to find out why automakers spend millions on concept cars they don't plan on making.
The following is a transcript of the video.
Narrator: Concept cars: a glimpse into the future. You may find them synonymous with outrageous designs, exaggerated interiors, and features that have never been seen in a production car, like this floating key. They're typically revealed at auto shows where enthusiasts and the media "ooh" and "ahh" at the future of mobility. It's no secret that these one-off designs can be expensive to build, sometimes with a seven-figure price tag. With so much invested in these cars, why does it seem like we rarely see these concepts make it to production? And why does it seem like the coolest elements are stripped away when they do? We spoke with the design department of some of the top automakers to find out why automakers spend millions on concept cars they don't plan on making.
Ralph Giles: First of all, people don't realize that concept cars, yes, we would show them at auto shows typically, and they're there for the media to enjoy. But long after the media is gone, the auto show's around for a couple weeks, and the public comes around, and they may not know much about the brand sometimes, and they go, "Whoa," and they come across this concept car that makes an unmistakable statement about where the brand wants to go with technology.
Narrator: That's Ralph Giles. He's the head of global design for Fiat Chrysler Automobiles. He's worked on the design of the 2005 Chrysler 300, 2014 SRT Viper, and many more.
Ralph: So vehicles like the Prowler, the Jeep Rescue, and the Challenger, and even the Viper, all of those were concept cars at one time. And what happened there is again the public reacted to them in a visceral way, in a way that says, "You have to build that car." Sometimes, people will mail us checks, deposits to see this car through and very passionate letters. None of that would've happened had the concept not been there. So when we see that, we think we might've struck something here.
Narrator: Concept cars can also be used to hype up a model that is actually planned for production.
David Woodhouse: If we have a new launch of a new version in our portfolio, we would tease that with a specific type of concept that would be a slight exaggeration of the production car. So it would be slightly more idealized. And of course, that's to generate interest but also awareness that this product is coming to market a year or two later.
Narrator: Like the Lincoln Navigator concept, it boasted gullwing doors and steps that deployed when the door lifted open, almost inviting the passengers in. These exaggerated features didn't make it to the 2018 production car, which had standard doors and a single retracting step. But the concept did capture attention and brought excitement for the production version of the car.
David: Those really extreme ones are the hardest, but they would still have an influence on the market ahead. So you might not have seen them in the first couple of years after you first experienced them, but maybe the longer run, 10 years down the line, maybe they had a big influence on the trend of automotive design.
Narrator: Like BMW's Vision Efficient Dynamics concept car in 2009, it was designed to be a high-performance hybrid, balancing speed and fuel efficiency. Five years later, it became the BMW i8. The design stayed intact, but some of the flashy features like the see-through doors and moving grill didn't make it to production. The i8 was a success for BMW, and now we're seeing performance hybrids from almost every brand. But concept cars aren't just to gauge consumer interest or create excitement for a version of the concept that will be released. There's yet another reason. Car companies use concepts to test out how new technology might work in cars of the future, even if the exact concept will never hit the market.
Taro Ueda: We are approaching, as I discuss, a more interesting technology innovation era, and then we will try out future potential. Using that technology means we are not just making the show car for the marketing purpose.
Narrator: Take driverless cars for example. That technology is popping up in almost every concept, yet the technology itself seems so far away. Turns out these concepts are testing out how driverless technology could respond to the way people interact with cars in the future. According to Volkswagen's Klaus Bischoff, the way people interact with cars today is already different than how they used to. We have ride-sharing services like Uber and on-the-go rental services like Zipcar. Driverless cars could be the next step in the evolution of those services.
Klaus Bischoff: We are at the transition of a new era of mobility. Electric cars will only be the beginning. The concept cars today are the pioneers of this new age of mobility.
Narrator: So concepts today are paving the way for how we ride in cars tomorrow. Take the Renault EZ-GO concept as an example. The designers imagined a future where passengers hopped in a driverless car and take them to their destination. Will the car of the future look exactly like this concept? Probably not, but we know automakers are working on a future where these types of services could be possible.
Ralph: I think many of what you see will ultimately make it into production. Again, elements, it'll take time. Concept cars are a great way for designers to explore the ideas and in a way compare notes 'cause as more and more competitors show their work, they travel the internet. But at the end of the day, I think it keeps... it raises the bar. It really does make us go back and wanna compete that much harder.
Narrator: Concepts are complex. They come in many shapes and sizes and are made for a variety of reasons. From testing public opinion to testing the latest technology, concept cars are the first step in moving the auto industry forward. Without the opportunity to explore innovations and see what other automakers are experimenting with, cars would simply stay the same.


This year marks the tenth anniversary of Old Henry, a house blend made for Holt's Cigar Company by none other than José "Pepín" García. Holt's, as you may know, is the Philadelphia tobacconist that launched the Ashton brand in 1985 and today maintains a strong catalog and online presence. That means you don't have to traipse to 1522 Walnut Street in downtown Philadelphia to get your hands on some Old Henry smokes.
It's probably no surprise, then, that the Old Henry portfolio has grown over the years. Additions have included Gold Label (Connecticut-seed Ecuadorian wrapper), Maduro (Connecticut Broadleaf wrapper), and the subject of today's review: Pure Breed.
I sampled two Pure Breed Toros for this review, both of which were provided to me by Holt's. This format costs $6.50 for a single or $93.95 for a box of 25. It boasts a clean, attractive wrapper with tight seams and minimal veins. The pungent pre-light notes are sweet hay and cocoa powder, and the cold draw has a fair amount of resistance.
Once an even light is established, right off the bat you'll find a hearty dose of red and black pepper with some creamy sweetness and roasted nuts in the background. Marshmallow, dry oak, and dried fruit are apparent through the retrohale. The abundant resting smoke is sweet and aromatic with a mouth-watering chocolaty appeal.
As the Toro progresses, there short spurts when the taste turns light and papery. Just when I think the flavor is fading, though, I'll happily find a burst of creaminess and sweetness to pique my attention and enjoyment. The finale ushers in a reprise of Pepín's signature blast of pepper.
Construction is pretty good throughout. Both samples exhibited fairly straight burns that only required a touch-up here and there. The ash holds well. And the draw, while a bit stiff at first, opens almost immediately to provide abundant smoke with easy puffs.
If you're a Pepín fan, you can't afford to not give the cigars in the Old Henry portfolio a try. I doubt any of them will knock your socks off with incredible complexity, but the bang-for-your-buck value is tough to beat. My advice is to pick up the Best in Show sampler, which features two Toros from each of the four Old Henry blends for just $29.95 ($3.74 per cigar).
The Pure Breed Toro might be the highlight of the assortment, with its abundant flavor and sweet creaminess. In my book it earns a solid rating of three and a half stogies out of five.


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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


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Monitor the health of your community here
Benefits of Magnesium Aspartate
Magnesium as Treatment for Bipolar Disorder
Supplements to Heal Tendinitis
Side Effects of Nexium 40 mg Capsules
Malate Vs. Malic Acid
Benefits of Magnesium Malate Supplements
Written by Caroline Thompson
Magnesium malate is a combination of malic acid and magnesium. Malic acid is an organic compound mostly found in fruits. The salts of malic acid are known as malates. Malic acid is an intermediate compound that is necessary to generate cellular energy. Magnesium is the mineral responsible for more than 300 chemical reactions in the body. Half of the magnesium present in the body is in your bones. Magnesium malate is beneficial for a variety metabolic, muscular and physical conditions.
Constipation Treatment
Magnesium malate helps loosen stools and is used as a laxative to treat constipation. It is also used as a cleansing agent before a colonoscopy or bowel surgery. Magnesium has a natural laxative effect and malic acid has a natural stood softening effect. The two ingredients combined enhance the effects.
Magnesium malate helps loosen stools and is used as a laxative to treat constipation.
Fibromyalgia Pain Relief
Magnesium combined with malate is used to help reduce symptoms and pain of fibromyalgia patients. A placebo controlled study by Guy E. Abraham M.D., F.A.C.N., and Jorge D. Flechas, M.D., M.P.H., published in the 1992 issue of the "Journal of Nutritional Medicine" treated 15 fibromyalgia patients between the ages of 32 to 60 suffering from musculoskeletal pain, stiffness and chronic aching with magnesium malate supplements. The total daily dosage was 300 to 600 mg of magnesium and 1,200 to 2,400 mg of malic acid. After eight weeks of treatment, all patients reported significant improvements in pain. Patients switched to placebo tablets reported a recurrence of myalgia after 48 hours.
Magnesium combined with malate is used to help reduce symptoms and pain of fibromyalgia patients.
Patients switched to placebo tablets reported a recurrence of myalgia after 48 hours.
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Relief
Magnesium malate supplementation is effective for chronic fatigue syndrome, or CFS. A randomized double blind study by I.M. Cox, et al., published in the March 1991 issue of "Lancet" treated 32 CFS patients with magnesium sulphate or placebo in a six-week study. Seventeen CFS patients treated with magnesium said they benefited from the treatment; in contrast, three of the 17 CFS patients on placebo said they felt better. Malic acid, often combined with magnesium, increases energy production, aids in energy recovery and helps reduce symptoms of persistent fatigue and chronic fatigue syndrome.
Magnesium malate supplementation is effective for chronic fatigue syndrome, or CFS.
Seventeen CFS patients treated with magnesium said they benefited from the treatment; in contrast, three of the 17 CFS patients on placebo said they felt better.
Glucosamine & Calcium
Tourette's and Magnesium
Kinds of Magnesium for Fibromyalgia
Magnesium Amino Acid Chelate and Anxiety
Can a Vitamin B12 Deficiency Cause Arthritis Symptoms?
Urology Channel: Kidney Stones Alternative Treatment
Medline Plus: Magnesium
Fibro Care Center: Malic Acid and Magnesium for Fibro Pain
Nutrition Review: Krebs Cycle Intermediates
Science Links Japan: Augmented Laxative Action of Sugar Alcohol by Organic Acids and Inorganic Salts
The Magnesium Web Site: Management of Fibromyalgia: Rationale for the Use of Magnesium and Malic Acid
Engen DJ, McAllister SJ, Whipple MO, et al. Effects of transdermal magnesium chloride on quality of life for patients with fibromyalgia: a feasibility study. J Integr Med. 2015 Sep;13(5):306-13. doi:10.1016/S2095-4964(15)60195-9
Fairley J, Zhang L, Glassford N, Bellomo R. Magnesium status and magnesium therapy in cardiac surgery: a systematic review and meta-analysis focusing on arrhythmia prevention. Journal of Critical Care. 2017 42:69-77. doi:10.1016/j.jcrc.2017.05.038
Fang X, Wang K, Han D, et al. Circulating magnesium levels and incidence of coronary heart diseases, hypertension, and type 2 diabetes mellitus: a meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies. BMC Med. 2016 8;14 (1):210. doi:10.1186/s12916-016-0742-z
Ferreira I, Ortigoza A, Moore P. Magnesium and malic acid supplement for fibromyalgia. Medwave. 2019 May 28;19(4):e7633. doi:10.5867/medwave.2019.04.7632
Gerdle B, Forsgren MF, Bengtsson A, et al. Decreased muscle concentrations of ATP and PCR in the quadriceps muscle of fibromyalgia patients--a 31P-MRS study. Eur J Pain. 2013 Sep;17(8):1205-15. doi:10.1002/j.1532-2149.2013.00284.x
Holton K. The role of diet in the treatment of fibromyalgia. Pain management. 2016 May;6(4):317-20. doi:10.2217/pmt-2016-0019
Lengert N, Drossel B. In silico analysis of exercise intolerance in myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome. Biophys Chem. 2015 Jul;202:21-31. doi:10.1016/j.bpc.2015.03.009.
Metta V, Sampathb N, VM R, Iska A. Primary restless legs syndrome in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus : efficacy of magnesium & co enzyme q10 therapy. Journal of the Neurological Sciences. 2015 357(1):e271. doi:10.1016/j.jns.2015.08.952
National Institutes of Health 2019. Magnesium Health Fact Sheet for Health Professionals. https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Magnesium-HealthProfessional/
Nissani M. A bibliographical survey of bruxism with special emphasis on non-traditional treatment modalities. Journal of Oral Science, 200143(2):73-83. doi:10.2334/josnusd.43.73
Porter NS, Jason LA, Boulton A, Bothne N, Coleman B. Alternative medical interventions used in the treatment and management of myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia. J Altern Complement Med. 2010 Mar;16(3):235-49. doi:10.1089/acm.2008.0376
Reid S, Chalder T, Cleare A, Hotopf M, Wessely S. Chronic fatigue syndrome. BMJ Clin Evid. 2011 May 26;2011. pii: 1101.
Schutten JC, Joosten MM, de Borst MH, Bakker SJL. Magnesium and Blood Pressure: A Physiology-Based Approach. Adv Chronic Kidney Dis. 2018 25(3):244-250. doi:10.1053/j.ackd.2017.12.003
Uysal N, Kizildag S, Yuce Z, et al. Timeline (bioavailability of magnesium compounds in hours: Which magnesium compound works best? Biol Trace Elem Res. 2019 Jan;187(1):128-136. doi:10.1007/s12011-018-1351-9
Wanli G, Hussain N, Zongsuo L, Dongfeng Y. Magnesium deficiency in plants: an urgent problem, The Crop Journal, 2016 4(2): 83-91. doi:10.1016/j.cj.2015.11.003.
Caroline Thompson is a professional photojournalist who has been working for print and online publications since 1999. Her work has appeared in the "Sacramento Bee," "People Magazine," "Newsweek" and other publications. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in photojournalism from California State University at Hayward and a personal trainer certification from the university's Health and Fitness Institute.


There's a good reason your parent tells you to cover your mouth when you sneeze or cough! When an illness is contagious, it means one person can catch it from another. By covering your mouth when you sneeze or cough, you can prevent bacteria and viruses from getting in the air. It's also important to wash your hands, whether you are sick or well, to prevent the spread of germs on objects that other people will touch. Some contagious sicknesses that kids get are colds, the flu, and chicken pox.


Tom Forte of D.A. Davidson discusses Pinterest's upcoming IPO on CNBC's "Closing Bell."
CNBC's Tyler Mathisen, Dominic Chu, Leslie Picker and Contessa Brewer discuss Pinterest's IPO, IBM's meltdown, Godiva's chocolate cafes and the latest Jeopardy champ.
A team in Redmond, Washington, is working to build a competitor to Alexa, Siri, and the Google Assistant.
Netflix raised its prices on plans in the U.S. and announced intentions to do the same in other countries. But In India the streaming service is lowering its prices as it looks to add more subscribers in a country that has 460 million internet users.
David Ethridge, U.S. IPO services leader at PwC, and Eric Hippeau, Lerer Hippeau managing partner, join "Squawk Alley" to take a look at the IPOs debuting Thursday.
Zoom has already raised its price range and sources now say that the company is likely to price at the top end of that range or even higher.
Netflix posted earnings and revenue that beat analysts expectations for Q1 2019, but provided light guidance.
A day after settling a multibillion-dollar battle with Apple, Qualcomm's CEO tells CNBC he looks forward to working with the iPhone maker.
Providers of sexual content could be blacked out if they fail to verify the age of browsers.
Rett Wallace, Triton Research CEO and co-founder, joins "Squawk Box" to discuss where he sees Pinterest's IPO going after calling Lyft's decline.
Qualcomm skyrockets further after ending Tuesday up 23% following two major wins for the chipmaker.
Pinterest is expected to price its initial public offering above the expected range, according to sources familiar with the matter.
The David vs. Goliath contest pits a small startup against one of the most powerful technology companies in the world.
Netflix reported its first-quarter 2019 earnings after the bell as more media companies enter the streaming space.
Twitter claimed it has "made strides in creating a healthier service" on Tuesday following reports about the social media giant's shortcomings in managing abusive content.
Heather Bellini, lead software and internet industry analyst at Goldman Sachs, joins "Squawk Alley" to discuss her views on Facebook's growth potential ahead of earnings.
A new Wired feature details Facebook's internal hand-wringing over how to confront the public and its own employees about several PR fires.


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ACCEPTED

#### According to
Index Fungorum

#### Published in
Kew Bull. 364 (1955)

#### Original name
Peziza russa Berk. & Broome

### Remarks
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An 8mm experiment, HEAD FILM features Peter Fisk (filmmaker Wakefield Poole's partner), Poole's beloved Andy Warhol "Marilyns," Julia Child and the kitchen sink (literally and figuratively). The film creates whimsy by incorporating household film footage, pop culture references from television and Poole's eclectic and sometimes campy use of music.
Made as part of a Triton Gallery show to publicize the poster art of Canadian artist Vittorio Fiorucci, filmmaker Wakefield Poole cut apart posters and hand-animated the film using his 8mm camera to create stop-motion.
This is the stupidest waste of time ever. A few minutes of watching a couple guys cooking in various stages of undress, followed by an interminably long display of Marilyn Monroe's face in ugly colors.


This is the history of Intercity 11667 which ran from Schiphol Airport to Amersfoort Schothorst on January 12, 2019. This train ran almost without any delays. This train was operated by NS. The total journey time for this train service was 52 minutes.
Many more statistics about this train are available in our statistics section. See all train statistics and punctuality for Intercity 11667.


Al-Othman Holding Group began their successful story back in 1967 as "Mohammed A. Al-Othman Trading & Contracting Est." specialized in infrastructure projects. That establishment has now reached total manpower of 3,500 employees. At present "Al-Othman Holding Company" is a Group of companies engaged in investing in a broad array of activities which includes banking, insurance, agriculture, trading and manufacturing companies locally and internationally.
To Be One of The Key-Player in Supporting Saudi Arabia and The Gulf Region Economy.
We Are Dedicated in Providing Various Type of High Quality Product and Reliable Services, Considering their Impact on Supporting the Region's Economy.


Girl Nation, an Adelaide-based teenage R&B and Pop recording group, will soon play at the Governor Hindmarsh on Sunday, April 14. The group is made up of six powerful singer/dancer teen artists including Taylah (16), Isla (15), Mateja (13), Alessia (15), Emma (16) and Rylee (15). All of them studied at the Australian Company of Performing Arts (ACPA).
Riding on their success of live performances at last year's Adelaide Fringe, the Royal Adelaide Show, the Adelaide Christmas Carols at Elder Park, as well as performing at the closing ceremony at the Australian Scout Jamboree, Girl Nation will now present a brand-new show. The girls will perform songs by favourite pop artists, plus new, original songs and content.
Tickets are limited and are available through www.trybooking.com.au or The Gov through Oxtix. Proceeds from the night will go towards funding a Girl Nation record.
The concert is appropriate for all ages, so students are invited to come celebrate the start to their April school holidays. Doors open at 6:30 p.m.


my mother painted with pat cucarro in san francisxo in the early 60's. i noticed a thread regarding him and his paintings going back to 1998 - several people asked about the value of their paintings - i have 3 signed oil paintings, one is a miniature of a street scene, the other two are of clowns.
-- KHecht (kathrynhecht@aol.com), March 22, 2003.


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Posts Tagged 'Franz Waxman'
A PLACE IN THE SUN – Franz Waxman
The film was adapted from a 1925 novel "An American Tragedy" by Theodore Dreiser. Director George Stevens hired Michael Wilson and Harry Brown for the screenplay, and assembled a stellar cast to at last bring this tragic story to life. George Stevens (Montgomery Clift), Angela Vickers (Elizabeth Taylor) and Alice Tripp (Shelley Winters) were hired as the principles and paired with a great cast of supporting players. The film centers on George Eastman, a poor man raised by an evangelical mother, who is tragically undone by his own actions. He leaves Chicago dirt poor, determined to make a name for himself working in the company of his wealthy Uncle in California. While there he begins dating Alice, a girl he met in the plant. All seems fine until he becomes completely enamored with Angela, a drop dead gorgeous socialite whom he meets at a party. He abandons Alice without a thought and begins dating Angela. The two fall in love, yet things begin to unravel when Alice discloses to George that she is pregnant. When she threatens a public disclosure if he does not marry her, George feels cornered and so devises a plot to murder her. When the time comes to strike through a staged boat accident, his conscience prevails and he relents only to see Alice drown anyway by accident. He survives, but inexplicably fails to report her death to the authorities. As such, although innocent, circumstantial evidence and his own guilty behavior make authorities suspicious. His arrest comes just as Angela's father grants him permission to marry his daughter. He is then tried and sentenced to death in the electric chair. Read more…
Categories: 100 Greatest Scores, Reviews Tags: 100 Greatest Scores, A Place in the Sun, Film Score, Franz Waxman, Reviews
SUNSET BOULEVARD – Franz Waxman
Director Billy Wilder and producer Charles Brackett created a brilliant film noir screenplay, which told the story of a once proud but now aged Hollywood actress who wished to end her seclusion and regain past glory. For the principle actors, Gloria Swanson was given the part of Norma Desmond. A young William Holden was selected for Joe Gillis and Erich von Stronheim was cast as Norma's former husband and now butler Max von Mayerling. The story tells the tale of Joe Gillis, a young screenwriter down on his luck that drives into Desmond's estate while fleeing a car repossesor. Norma, who has written a script to propel her comeback, hires Joe to create a screenplay. She lavishes her wealth and affection on him, which he freely and shamelessly accepts. Ultimately she falls in love with Joe and when he rejects her she shoots him. The story ends as a now elegantly dressed yet mad Norma descends her grand staircase to greet the police. Halfway down she pauses and announces proudly that she is happy to be making films again, ending with "All right, Mr. De Mille, I'm ready for my close-up." The movie was both a commercial and critical success earning eleven Academy Award nominations, winning three for Best Screenplay, Best Art Direction and Best Film Score. Read more…
Categories: 100 Greatest Scores, Reviews Tags: 100 Greatest Scores, Film Score, Franz Waxman, Reviews, Sunset Boulevard
THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN – Franz Waxman
Franz Waxman's superb seminal score for The Bride of Frankenstein is as iconic as the movie itself. It has the epic sweep of a Wagnerian opera, yet its beauty, and its genius lies within its evocative strangeness, disquieting dissonance, haunting melodies and unusual timbres. So successful was Waxman's effort that it earned him a studio contract, and set the standard for scoring the horror genre for decades. Indeed, much of Waxman's techniques have been interpolated into other films, most notably Flash Gordon's Trip To Mars (1938), and his approach for eerie castles firmly embedded into the collective consciousness of popular culture. What sets his effort here apart was his success, his brilliance in speaking to the complex elements of the film's narrative; the horror, the grotesque, the sinister and the comedic. That he was able to succeed on all counts reveals genius. Read more…
Categories: 100 Greatest Scores, Reviews Tags: 100 Greatest Scores, Film Score, Franz Waxman, Reviews, The Bride of Frankenstein
FRANZ WAXMAN – Fathers of Film Music, Part 5
Article by Craig Lysy
Born: 24 December 1906, Königshütte, Germany.
Died: 24 February 1967
Franz Wachsmann was born of Jewish ancestry in the city of Königshütte in Germany (now Chorzów, Poland). He was the youngest of eight children and suffered permanent impairment to his eyes from a scolding water accident in the kitchen at age three. Very early on Franz revealed a natural gift for the piano, but his development was stymied by his father, a salesman in the steel industry, who preferred that he pursue a more traditional career. As such young Franz became a bank teller and used his meager earnings to support his piano lessons.
Waxman was determined to pursue music and so in 1923, at age 16, he enrolled in the Dresden Music Academy where he studied composition and conducting. His success playing popular music on piano allowed him the means further advance his education by later enrolling in the prestigious Berlin Conservatory. During his work as a pianist with a dance band called the Weintraub Syncopaters, he met lifelong friend Frederick Hollander, who introduced him to Bruno Walter, one of the preeminent conductors of the age. Waxman's career momentum began to build as he gained notoriety as an orchestrator for the German film industry. He got his first break to score Hollander's film for the Marlene Dietrich "The Blue Angel" (1930). But a dark pall was descending upon German society and later that year Waxman suffered a severe beating by Nazi sympathizers in Berlin that led him to flee Germany with his wife to Paris. Read more…
Categories: Fathers of Film Music Tags: Franz Waxman
MOVIE MUSIC UK CLASSICS
Director Billy Wilder and producer Charles Brackett created a brilliant film noir screenplay for Sunset Boulevard, which told the story of a once proud but now aged Hollywood actress who wished to end her seclusion and regain past glory. For the principle actors, after considering Mae West and Mary Pickford for the leading role Gloria Swanson was given the part of Norma Desmond. A young William Holden was selected for Joe Gillis and Erich von Stronheim was cast as Norma's former husband and now butler Max von Mayerling. The story tells the tale of Joe Gillis, a young screenwriter down on his luck that drives into Desmond's estate while fleeing a car repo man. Norma, who has written a script to propel her comeback, hires Joe to create a screenplay. She lavishes her wealth and affection on him, which he freely and shamelessly accepts. Ultimately she falls in love with Joe and when he rejects her she shoots him. The story ends as a now elegantly dressed yet mad Norma descends her grand staircase to greet the police. Halfway down she pauses and announces proudly that she is happy to be making films again, ending with "All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up." The movie was both a commercial and critical success earning eleven Academy Award nominations, winning three for Best Screenplay, Best Art Direction and Best Film Score. Read more…
Categories: Reviews Tags: Film Score, Franz Waxman, MMUK Classics, Oscar-Winning Scores, Reviews, Sunset Boulevard
A Place in the Sun was adapted from a 1925 novel "An American Tragedy" by Theodore Dreiser. Director George Stevens hired Michael Wilson and Harry Brown for the screenplay, and assembled a stellar cast to at last bring this tragic story to life. George Stevens (Montgomery Clift), Angela Vickers (Elizabeth Taylor) and Alice Tripp (Shelley Winters) were hired as the principles and paired with a great cast of supporting players. The film centers on George Eastman, a poor man raised by an evangelical mother, who is tragically undone by his own actions. He leaves Chicago dirt poor, determined to make a name for himself working in the company of his wealthy Uncle in California. While there he begins dating Alice, a girl he met in the plant. All seems fine until he becomes completely enamored with Angela, a drop dead gorgeous socialite whom he meets at a party. He abandons Alice without a thought and begins dating Angela. The two fall in love, yet things begin to unravel when Alice discloses to George that she is pregnant. When she threatens a public disclosure if he does not marry her, George feels cornered and so devises a plot to murder her. When the time comes to strike through a staged boat accident, his conscience prevails and he relents only to see Alice drown anyway by accident. He survives, but inexplicably fails to report her death to the authorities. As such, although innocent, circumstantial evidence and his own guilty behavior make authorities suspicious. His arrest comes just as Angela's father grants him permission to marry his daughter. He is then tried and sentenced to death in the electric chair. Read more…
Categories: Reviews Tags: A Place in the Sun, Film Score, Franz Waxman, MMUK Classics, Oscar-Winning Scores, Reviews
DEMETRIUS AND THE GLADIATORS – Franz Waxman
Demetrius and the Gladiators was the sequel to the first CinemaScope picture, "The Robe". Twentieth Century Fox chief, Darryl F. Zanuck, decided that there was money to be made with the new revolutionary format and so production was already under way as "The Robe" premiered. Of the original cast, Victor Mature (Demetrius), Michael Rennie (Peter), and Jay Robinson (Caligula) returned to reprise their roles and were joined by newcomers Susan Hayward (Messalina) and Debra Paget (Lucia). The story unfolds as a classic tale of faith and personal redemption. Demetrius, the guardian of the Robe of Christ loses his faith when his love Lucia, is ravaged by Roman gladiators and apparently dies. When his fervent prayers fail to revive her he becomes bitter and angry with God. Demetrius abandons his faith and embarks upon a life of violence, indulgence and lust. But when he later discovers that Lucia had not died due to the grace of God he regains his faith and lives to see the day of the emperor Caligula's death, when the long suffering Praetorian Guard at last turns on him. This sequel outperformed The Robe and was both a commercial and critical success. Read more…
Categories: Reviews Tags: Demetrius and the Gladiators, Film Score, Franz Waxman, MMUK Classics, Reviews


Happiness is to stay close to nature. #Bhutan #Paro #fortress #photography #landscape #landscapehubphoto #ig_countryside #ig_world_photo #architecture #ig_landscape #wonderland #travel #travelingram #ig_travel #tourism #lushgreen #travelblogger #travelling #earthfocus #travelshots #travelislife #travelpassionate #travelpassion #addictedtotravel #traveladdiction #travelbucketlist #travelscapes #travelhike . . . .


Big Zulu – Is'khali Samashinga 100Bars Mp3.
Download Big Zulu Is'khali Samashinga 100Bars, Talented South African rapper Big Zulu drops his first song of the year titled Is'khali Samashinga 100Bars.
Is'khali Samashinga 100Bars by Big Zulu comes up after the release of his 2018 album dubbed "Ushun Wenkabi".
Big Zulu Is'khali Samashinga 100Bars mp3 is available to stream or download below. Don't forget to share on Facebook or Twitter.


Have you seen the ads for that "As Seen on TV" the Sticky Buddy gadget? It's a hand-held roller with a sticky surface for picking up debris. You can wash it off and use it over. I decided to try it on my Epson scanner glass surface, and then I tried it on a positive film that I was going to scan. It did an excellent job. Every spec of dust was gone. My original intention was to use the roller to pick up dead flying insects off the outside walls, which it did quite handily until the roller quickly filled up with wings and legs and stuff. After that I used a broom. Other people I know would have used a hose to wash the bugs off the walls.
By the way, there was no mention on the box of "clean scanner glass" and "film" for recommended uses. It's try at your own risk.
We actually have one of those and I never considered that use! Thanks for the tip, Robert!
I may buy another one of those gadgets to use just for dust on film and scanner glass. I'll use the other roller for the more disgusting debris.
I bought a new Sticky Buddy and tried using it on the scanner glass, but a new one has too much sticky, I could barely roll it on the glass. It's gonna have to be used on something else a few times first to lessen the stickiness.
Hoping to make a short film by this summer.


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What Mammals Have Long Noses?
By Betty Lewis
Many people are tempted to trim their big noses, undergoing plastic surgery in the pursuit of the perfect nose. Animals don't sweat their looks, so if they're walking around with a huge honker, they don't care. Those long noses usually play an important role in their survival.
The tapir is referred to as a "living fossil" because of his prehistoric roots. Related to the primitive horse and rhinoceros, prehistoric tapirs lived in North America, Europe and Southeast Asia, going back 50 million years. This guy's large nose didn't develop until fairly recently; it's only been the last few million years that the tapir's nose grew to its present length. The tapir's nose and upper lip form a trunk he uses to grip, handy for grabbing and cleaning branches and plucking fruit. You can find tapirs in Central and South America, where they live in forests and grasslands, or in Southeast Asia, enjoying life in the swamps and forests of Sumatra and Malaysia. The smallest tapir, the woolly tapir, lives in the Andes Mountains. Despite their long history, all four species of tapirs are threatened or endangered from hunting and habitat loss.
The aardvark looks a bit like he couldn't decide who he wanted to look like, with his long, rabbit-like ears and kangaroo-type tail, however this African mammal is known for his prominent snout. He finds all his food through his sense of smell, so his long nose leads the way in his quest for dinner. He also sports a long tongue, which helps him extract termites from their mounds. Though his eyesight is poor, he has great hearing and powerful claws to help him dig for his food. The aardvark is nocturnal, spending afternoons in cool, underground burrows.
Proboscis Monkey
This guy's nose is so large he's referred to as the proboscis monkey, and he has the largest nose of all primates, growing to about 6.5 inches. The lady monkeys don't seem to be put off by this large schnoz -- scientists believe the large size helps attract mates. The large nose amplifies the male monkey's mating calls, gaining the female's attention and potentially intimidating the competition. If you want to see this monkey in his natural setting, you'll have to go to the jungles of Borneo. He's a great swimmer, preferring to eat seeds, leaves and unripe fruits, with the occasional insect. The proboscis monkey is endangered, threatened by loss of habitat and predators, including humans.
No discussion of long-nosed mammals is complete without the elephant. His nose is his trunk, useful for a variety of tasks. He uses this tool for more than smelling and breathing; he drinks with it, grabs things -- including food -- and trumpets news with it. This boneless organ can weigh 400 pounds on its own and reach up to 7 feet long. With approximately 100,000 muscles and two finger-like appendages at the end, an elephant's trunk can pick up a tiny peanut or hoist a 300-pound log.
National Geographic: Tapir
National Geographic: Aardvark
PBS: Tale of the Trunk
National Geographic: Proboscis Monkey
USA Today: All About Elephants, From Trunk to Tail
San Diego Zoo: Tapirs, Tapirus
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