King Albert of Belgium cheered by crowds.
Funeral of Dylan Thomas in Wales. Exterior cemetery scenes.
Rumanians celebrating the centenary of George Cosbuc's birth.
Nice item about Bermuda and the famous people that once lived here.
American President Kennedy honours poet Robert Frost in White House.
A tour around the Scottish areas where Sir Walter Scott lived and worked.


Outdoor Leader Trainers of America (OLTOA) is a small organization of people who are passionate about teaching and spending time in the outdoors. We specialize in Canoeing and kayaking instruction & guided trips for people of all levels,and Maine Guide and ACA Instructor training courses. Great pride is taken in giving every customer a safe, quality and enjoyable learning experience.
Come join us for a kayak expedition or an Allagash canoe trip!


Your voucher is valid for 10 months. Your experience will begin at either 9.00am or 1.00pm. Minimum age 10 years. Minimum height 135cm. You will be required to sign an activity form prior to participating on the experience. Drivers are divided into groups of 4 to share the same cars and instructor throughout the experience. Spectators are welcome at an additional cost – please check with the supplier upon booking. All dates are subject to availability.


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Home » Tesla Massively Lowers Prices Overnight, Makes Model Y And 3 A Crazy Deal
Tesla Massively Lowers Prices Overnight, Makes Model Y And 3 A Crazy Deal
By Matt Hardigree
Tesla has lowered prices of its vehicles seemingly across the board in an unannounced late night move, with prices dropping as much as 23% for a Tesla Model Y Performance and 6.4% for a Tesla Model 3 RWD. This move seemingly was done to take advantage of a procedural move by the IRS, which we wrote about earlier, that makes it possible to get the full $7,500 tax credit on a Tesla for a few weeks. Additionally, Tesla also dropped prices on other vehicles in the lineup, even though it may not qualify for tax credits.
"Honestly, I'm not even sure what to make of these changes," Ryan Levenson, who owns the EV Cannonball Run record in a Tesla and makes videos about EVs, told me in a DM. "A Part of me is excited more people can afford to buy a Tesla and part of me is disappointed for recent customers who had to pay more to buy a car just a couple days ago, especially anyone who purchased in the last 12 days."
"If I were to guess, this is an effort to qualify for the tax incentives while getting the largest possible quantity of new cars on the road in 2023," said Levenson.
The Inflation Reduction Act, which passed last year, fundamentally altered the way the government gives credits for buying an electric vehicle. Prior to the law, the government's initial tax credit had no price or income cap but was limited to 200,000 vehicles per automaker. The new law removes the 200,000 limit but puts additional requirements (like sourcing of battery materials) on automakers to qualify for the full $7,500. We have a write-up explaining this you can read.
Because of a debate over interpretation of the law, the IRS has delayed offering a final ruling on certain aspects until March 31st of this year. The income levels requirement is in place (meaning you need to make $150,000 or less filing solo or $300,000 filing jointly) and, more importantly, the price limit of a vehicle also is in place. A vehicle has to be under $55,000 if it's a regular passenger vehicle and $80,000 if it's an "SUV." This is important.
Up until this evening, a Model 3 Performance cost $63,900 which meant it didn't qualify. It's now listed as $53,990, which means it does potentially qualify. If you meet the other requirements you could, in theory, buy a Model 3 Performance for $46,490. The base Model 3 was also dropped to $43,990, which means you can potentially get into a Model 3 for $36,490.
The same can be said for the Model Y Long Range, which was dropped to $52,990 from $65,990. That vehicle, too, should qualify. The Model Y Performance has also seen a massive price drop (at 23%, likely the biggest) to $56,990, though this probably keeps it out of range for a federal tax credit.
Price drops aren't just limited to lower-end Teslas, as others have noted:
BREAKING: @Tesla has reduced the price of the Model S/X in the US:
• Model S: $94,990 (from $104,990, 9.5% drop)
• Model S Plaid: $114,990 (from $135,990, 15.4% drop)
• Model X: $109,990 (from $120,990, 9.1% drop)
• Model X Plaid: $119,990 (from $138,990, 13.7% drop) pic.twitter.com/uKeRxwGcvT
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) January 13, 2023
In addition to keeping ahead of the quirk in federal tax law, this is likely also to be a boon for Tesla when the company needs to change the narrative from stories about CEO Elon Musk only caring about Twitter now and crashes involving cars with semi-automated driving systems.
While it's possible that Musk is doing this out of the goodness of his heart, the reality for the company is that it's been losing market share as brands like Ford, Kia, Volvo, Polestar, and others offer comparable vehicles. According to a report from S&P Global Mobility discussed in this CNBC article, Tesla's share of the EV market has dropped in the United States from 79% in 2020 to 65% in the third quarter of last year. The firm predicts that Tesla's share will drop to 20% by 2025. This same issue is happening around the world, with Tesla dropping prices in China just days ago. Some have also pointed out the discovery of rare earth metals in Sweden, but the timing of that is questionable.
"Price changes of this magnitude are unprecedented and while it'll surely increase demand this quarter, in my opinion it also has the potential to really hurt brand loyalty," said Levenson. "Whatever it is, I don't think any other OEM can compete with this, Tesla had the largest margins on their cars in the industry and probably still will after this which is potentially the most insane part."
It's important to point out that the most popular interpretation of the law is that the vehicles need to be delivered by March 31st, so you can't just order one and file it on your taxes later. This is perhaps why Tesla says delivery is estimated between January – March 2023 on their website.
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BigFeatured, elon musk, Inflation Reduction Act, Model 3, Model S, Model X, Model y, Tesla
Matt Hardigree
Howdy! I'm the Publisher of The Autopian which means I'm to blame for at least a small part of this. I used to run another car site and then made movies and TV shows. Now I'm here to convince you to buy a Peugeot.
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xpumpx says:
i put my southern maine zip in and it showed up as cars available for boston. there are 6 model Y's available about $55-60k each and all have awd. there are 5 models 3's total available and none of them are awd and all are about $44-47k. thats within 200 miles of me, which is the largest range they offer. they also say they have to be registered in Massachusetts. how does one from maine even get into one of these vehicles? i cant seem to find a new model 3 awd for sale.
eddyboi says:
The company is in trouble and they know it. Because the honeymoon is over. Electric cars used to be exciting and new. They are becoming mainstream. And so people are less likely to be excited about a company that makes benign looking lozenge shaped cars that haven't had a major design update in over a decade. Their CEO didn't help either and soured many people when he started acting like an asshole and his awful takeover of Twitter. They still have time but they have got to get on it now. Get the cybertruck out. Yeah- it crazy looking and I don't personally like it but its different and will get a lot of attention. The entire Model Lineup needs a serious styling overhaul to make it look fresh. And lastly? Getting rid of Elon would go a long way to heal people's perceptions.
05LGT says:
Is Tesla losing market share of US vehicles? Share of BEV sales is a less relevant metric. It's easy to calculate and it gets clicks, but share of vehicle sales is $$, BEV percentage is important to the entire world and the industry, but Tesla share of BEV is driven by two movers and not picking that apart gives you a misleading value.
StalePhish says:
Agreed. If you start out with 95% EV market share, and suddenly there are 30 other companies competing, you're going to lose market share, there's no way around it. But in the grander scheme of things when you're competing against all vehicles, a 0.1% to 5% market share sort of change is much more valuable. And that's what they're going for. After all, Tesla's mission statement is not "to be the best EV", it's "Accelerating the World's Transition to Sustainable Energy". And that they have succeeded at.
ThatOneGuy says:
TSLA's share of EV's is relevant to how investors view them. Their stock price was super high not because of historical sales or profit, but because of what their sales and profit would be if they could maintain prices and keep a high (unreasonably high) share of EV sales. I'm not saying that this expectation was reasonable, but it's clear they're not keeping pace with overall EV growth enough to satisfy investors. Other, newer entrants are eating their cake. To me this seemed inevitable, especially with new competition, limited product launches/refreshes, and low (relative to "major" OEMs) production capacity. That it's happening already means that TSLA is no longer synonymous with EVs they way their investors thought.
The stock price wasn't driven by visions of reasonable growth, but of keeping 50%+ of EV market while the market grew to overtake ICE vehicles. I wouldn't say TSLA the company is failing, but that irrationally unreasonable expectations are falling back down into merely wildly optimistic territory. The impact of the price drop is complicated by the fact that they raised prices frequently and supply is not quite as constrained (by things like chip shortages and COVID stops) as it had been. To me they get a pass on this until they have to do it again to keep their factories busy or if inventory begins to build.
FrankenCamry says:
Some quick googling says they went from 2.2% in 2021 to 4% in 2022, which tracks pretty well with their sales increases. So, yes, quite a lot of fun with statistics on this one to claim they're in imminent decline.
Rob William says:
My1994Saab900 says:
Like the stock market eh? Dang I bought Amazon at 200 and now it is 150. Perhaps Tesla could work out some deal with Casinos
wgn_luv says:
So for the past year+, Teslas had OEM markup as opposed to dealer markups on other brands? Is that it?
While I am a sucker for a deal, I'm not interested in this deal.
DoYouHaveAMomentToTalkAboutRenaults says:
I don't know if anyone at Tesla will read this, and I don't think I should be handing out advice to multi-billion dollar corporations for free, but here: crate kits for EV conversion. It's all the rage these days, and rather than fight the people who salvage wrecked Teslas, you could be in business with them. Seems like a no-brainer to me.
Also, getting rid of that Elon guy couldn't hurt.
Tesla is production constrained, so any motors and batteries they manufacture means less cars they can sell. There are other companies that make EV crate motors and kits though, like EV West
I know other companies make EV crate kits, but Tesla could basically take the cake in that market, as they make the EV tech everyone wants (hence the scavenging for wrecked Tesla powertrains), and are big enough that they can price their crates competitively. I think ultimately it would be a way better way to adapt to market trends than panic-slashing prices.
But they're not selling as many cars as they'd like, otherwise they wouldn't be slashing prices overnight, so keeping production figures hardly makes sense. They're just piling up inventory. They could throttle car production for a while and concentrate on a cheaper product to build that I think could be a serious sales hit, which they could then scale back again once there's more demand for their cars.
JDE says:
I guess the question is does tesla have stock to actually sell right now? and if not will the price stay firm after next week if you actually buy a car not yet built?
The question I have is if this price decline is in fact profitable, then why was the price so much more prior? How much are others getting raked over the coals here. I guess also how much did Elon get in the form of green credit dollars from the likes of GM/Dodge/Ford to offset emissions? and are those still a thing? I suppose if you wanted to clear out old inventory, could make money from a weird loophole that gets EV's government subsidies and can sell them even cheaper to the customers without losing anything going into your pocket, then Maybe that is the plan here.
Somewhat Like a Rock says:
Getting carbon credits was pretty much their entire business model, as far as I can tell.
The price was higher because people were willing to pay it, and Tesla production couldn't keep up with demand. Basically, the extra markups in 2021/2022 went to Tesla instead of dealers.
The carbon credits are still a thing, but apparently fluctuate a lot. First link I found googling said in Q1 2022 they actually increased and were responsible for ~20% of Tesla's profit. So, they definitely help the company but Tesla's no longer really reliant on them.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Samsung & Others Guilty of Hiding Binding Arbitration Clauses in Terms & Conditions
Published on: March 1, 2017 | Levin & Perconti
Late last year, stories began flooding the news about Samsung's Galaxy Note7 phone, a device that bears more resemblance to a small tablet than a smartphone. Released just last August, by October so many complaints of spontaneously exploding phones had been thrown at the company that they decided to stop all sales of the Galaxy Note7 until they could determine the cause of the fires. In the same press release, Samsung implored all users to immediately turn off their phone and send back for either a refund or for an entirely different model. What many Galaxy Note7 users likely didn't notice was that buried at the bottom of the phone's box was a small 16 page booklet containing a paragraph stating that users could not sue Samsung. Instead, they were agreeing to binding arbitration as a means to settle any claim of injury or death arising from use of their product.
Teen Among Many Injured By Galaxy Note7
In Illinois, Michael Taylor, 19, went to sleep with his Samsung Galaxy Note7 on the charger next to his bedside. He woke up hours later to excruciating pain in his leg and to his smartphone on fire. The phone had exploded while charging, causing severe burns to the teen's leg. When he consulted with an attorney in an attempt to sue Samsung for his injuries, it was discovered that hidden deep in a booklet seldom read by users, Taylor had unknowingly agreed to arbitration. Without knowing it, Taylor had waived his right to a jury trial, agreed to use an arbitrator chosen by Samsung to settle his dispute, and to pay Samsung's legal fees if the arbitrator determined Samsung was not at fault. While that same part of the booklet also states that consumers can opt out within 30 days of purchase, it is hardly likely that most consumers would read a 16 page booklet of terms and conditions. Users assume that the products they purchase are safe and that they are protected by law should an injury occur from its use. Instead of taking true ownership for the burns suffered by Mr. Taylor, Samsung hid behind the agreement they placed in the product packaging, stating that he agreed to abide by their arbitration process to settle any grievances.
Samsung Overruled
Michael Taylor just might be in luck due to a recent court decision. On January 19th, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court's finding that Samsung's use of binding arbitration agreements in product packaging does not constitute consent by the user and that the placement of such agreements is unlawful. While many class action lawsuits have been filed against the South Korean-based technology giant, it is unknown how many will be affected by the recent ruling by the court.
Other Companies Guilty of Hiding Arbitration Agreements in Fine Print
CBS News conducted a review and found a lengthy list of other corporations guilty of sneaking binding arbitration clauses into user agreements and other fine print. Among many others were Uber, Motorola, Nintendo, Dell, and FitBit. Taken directly from Uber's legal agreement (available online through uber.com) is the following statement: 'By agreeing to the Terms, you agree that you are required to resolve any claim that you may have against Uber on an individual basis in arbitration, as set forth in this Arbitration Agreement. This will preclude you from bringing any class, collective, or representative action against Uber, and also preclude you from participating in or recovering relief under any current or future class, collective, consolidated, or representative action brought against Uber by someone else.'
The unfair reality of concealing legal agreements in densely worded, seemingly irrelevant documents may be over, thanks to the latest court ruling against Samsung. While it remains to be seen if companies will update their terms and conditions to eliminate arbitration clauses, the law is now on the side of those who have been injured by faulty products and forced into submission by these hidden 'agreements.'
About Levin & Perconti
Levin and Perconti is one of the most well-respected injury firms in Chicago. Our product liability attorneys have secured numerous large judgments for victims of faulty medical devices, electronics, toys, and other products that had previously been deemed safe for public use. If you or a loved one has suffered injury or death from use of a product, you may be entitled to compensation. A consultation with one of our skilled attorneys is free and can be requested by filling out our online case evaluation form or by calling us toll-free at 877-374-1417.
Posted in: Burn Injury, Personal Injury, Product Recalls and Products liability
Updated: March 1, 2017 4:05 pm


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This Couple is Creating a New Line of Frozen West African Meals
RUFARO SAMANGA
Chicago-based couple Perteet and Fred Spencer have signed a deal with Whole Foods to produce frozen traditional West African meals.
Forget the frozen pizzas and TV dinners. Americans now have the opportunity to explore the numerous flavours of West African cuisine. Chicago-based couple Perteet and Fred Spencer have signed a deal with American company Whole Foods to produce a new line of frozen traditional West African meals. The Spencers are the founders of AYO Foods, derived from the Yoruba term meaning "joy", and wanted to bring some of their favourite recipes to locations where they feel West African cuisine especially is still underrepresented, Travel Noire reports.
Speaking about the major deal with BLACK ENTERPRISE, Perteet says the following:
"Our home has always been a gathering point for friends and family because we love the joy that is born out of those special moments together. None of these moments happen without a great meal. As we thought about building a business together, nothing inspired us more than using our strong industry experiences to create these moments for others by sharing some of our family's favorite recipes that were under-represented in mainstream grocery stores."
The new line of frozen meals is set to be made available in Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and in the Chicago-based grocery store, Green Grocer. While the recipes to be included in the new line have not as yet been revealed, AYO Food products including Jollof rice, egusi soup and cassava leaf soup may just be a part of it.
OkayAfrica's Kiratiana Freelon writes, "When it comes to African restaurants, Chicago is no Paris or London, where fancy eateries and humble spots coexist." Freelon goes on to add that, "Chicago's African restaurants are all still family-run businesses that to tend cater to Africans seeking an affordable taste of home."
Tags Frozen West African
Female Founders Face Funding Hurdles And Report Less Runway Amid Pandemic
Ghanaian startup named overall winner of Ecobank Fintech Challenge


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Rhodes is the fourth biggest island (1.410 km2) of Greece and the biggest among a complex of islands called Dodecanese. The island counts 130.007 inhabitants and the capital - the city of Rhodes - 53.709. The capital of Rhodes lies outside and within the walls of a well preserved Venetian castle, built by the Knights of Saint John, and is one of the finest examples of medieval architecture.
Within the walls of the castle lies the old town of Rhodes, the world's best characterized well preserved old traditional inhabited town. The beauty of its capital, its interesting sites and its many Byzantine churches make this Greek island one of the most popular islands of Greece.
Ialysos (Greek: Ιαλυσός), also known as 'Trianta', is the second-largest town on the island of Rhodes (Ρόδος, ''Rhodos'') in Greece. It has a population of approximately 12,000, and is located 8 kilometres south of the town of Rhodes, the island's capital, on the island's northwestern coast.
The town is situated near the site of the ancient Doric ''polis'' of Ialysos, which is also the name of the modern municipality (in Greek δήμος, dēmos, or "people") consisting of the town Trianta/Ialysos and the surrounding areas. While official sources use Trianta as a name for the town, and Ialysos for the whole municipality, unofficial usage tend to favour Ialysos to describe both the modern town and the municipality.
Until the mid-1980s Trianta/Ialysos was a small village with a population of around 2,500 people, but during the following years population grew to about 12,000, as it to an increasing degree became a suburban district to the town of Rhodes. Ialysos has in addition become a tourist destination, with several hotels and resorts located on the coast, especially in the new settlement of 'Ixia', situated between the towns of Ialysos and Rhodes. Being on the usually windward north-western coast of the island, it is also a noted location for wind-surfing.
The climate. Rhodes - the island of Apollon (god of the sun according to Greek mythology) is one of the sunniest parts of Greece. Its climate is mild Mediterranean characterized by sunny and dry summers and mild winters. Refreshing breezes and winds are blowing during the months of July and August, making the summer evenings comfortable.
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This typically Touraine house, surrounded by a walled garden in a quiet village, is a perfect holiday rental to visit the Indre et Loire region and discover its castles, gardens and cave houses. Enjoy the tranquility of a peaceful village along the Loire (80 meters from the holiday house) and many activities nearby such as horse riding club (5 minutes walk) or renting bike or canoe (4km). The shops are 2km away and wine lovers will be delighted by tasting the famous wines of the Loire. Do not miss Saumur and its world famous equestrian school, known for its Cadre Noir show. If you love History, the splendid chateaux of the Loire will be a must-see with their sublime gardens. TGV station and airport in Tours are 25km away. This is a perfect holiday home for a quiet stay in the Loire Valley.


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Best Kinesiology and Exercise Science colleges in Minnesota
List all Kinesiology and Exercise Science colleges in Minnesota
Best Kinesiology and Exercise Science colleges in Minnesota 2022
Kinesiology and Exercise Science
Best Kinesiology and Exercise Science colleges in Minnesota for 2022
University of Minnesota-Twin Cities offers 2 Kinesiology and Exercise Science degree programs. It's a very large, public, four-year university in a large city.
Bemidji State University offers 1 Kinesiology and Exercise Science degree programs. It's a small, public, four-year university in a remote town. In 2020, 22 Kinesiology and Exercise Science students graduated with students earning 22 Bachelor's degrees.
Winona State University offers 1 Kinesiology and Exercise Science degree programs. It's a medium sized, public, four-year university in a faraway town. In 2020, 69 Kinesiology and Exercise Science students graduated with students earning 69 Bachelor's degrees.
Northfield, MN
St Olaf College offers 1 Kinesiology and Exercise Science degree programs. It's a small, private not-for-profit, four-year university in a faraway town. In 2020, 32 Kinesiology and Exercise Science students graduated with students earning 32 Bachelor's degrees.
Saint Cloud State University
Saint Cloud State University offers 1 Kinesiology and Exercise Science degree programs. It's a large, public, four-year university in a small city.
Minnesota State University Moorhead
Minnesota State University Moorhead offers 1 Kinesiology and Exercise Science degree programs. It's a medium sized, public, four-year university in a midsize suburb. In 2020, 36 Kinesiology and Exercise Science students graduated with students earning 36 Bachelor's degrees.
University of Minnesota-Duluth
University of Minnesota-Duluth offers 1 Kinesiology and Exercise Science degree programs. It's a large, public, four-year university in a small city. In 2020, 45 Kinesiology and Exercise Science students graduated with students earning 45 Bachelor's degrees.
Southwest Minnesota State University
Marshall, MN
Southwest Minnesota State University offers 1 Kinesiology and Exercise Science degree programs. It's a medium sized, public, four-year university in a remote town. In 2020, 50 Kinesiology and Exercise Science students graduated with students earning 50 Bachelor's degrees.
Augsburg University offers 1 Kinesiology and Exercise Science degree programs. It's a small, private not-for-profit, four-year university in a large city. In 2020, 32 Kinesiology and Exercise Science students graduated with students earning 32 Bachelor's degrees.
Saint Bonifacius, MN
Crown College offers 3 Kinesiology and Exercise Science degree programs. It's a small, private not-for-profit, four-year university in a outlying rural area. In 2020, 6 Kinesiology and Exercise Science students graduated with students earning 6 Bachelor's degrees.
List of all Kinesiology and Exercise Science colleges in Minnesota
University of Minnesota-Twin Cities Minneapolis, MN
Concordia University-Saint Paul Saint Paul, MN
Bemidji State University Bemidji, MN
Winona State University Winona, MN
Bethel University Saint Paul, MN


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The Student Gallery is a collection of high quality, student-produced work from Linked Learning pathways. Students and teachers have the ability to nominate projects to the gallery, and those projects chosen by ConnectEd will be posted.
Crime Time WebsiteSubmitted by Jonathan H.Made for Time Warner Cable's philanthropic initiative, this flash website educates 7th grade students on how to use math and science to solve a criminal investigation.
Life In A BoxSubmitted by Henry C.This mockumentary features students at a fictitious high school struggling with a unique kind of peer pressure. The students combined government, English and video production lessons to examine social issues through video.
Wake Up Call: Time to ACT on Climate ChangeSubmitted by Jeff K.Media Enterprise Alliance/Muse Video's 2012-2013 multimedia class brought together eight Oakland MetWest students to create an animation project to urge young people to step up and make more sustainable choices and take action on climate change.
Crime Time Website 1Submitted by Rick C.Made by sophomores (Ashley H., Reef L., Manny J., Jasmine C.) at San Diego's Digital Media & Design for Time Warner Cable's philanthropic initiative, this flash website educates 7th grade students on how to use math and science to solve a criminal investigation.
Law and Justice MagazineSubmitted by Daniela I.We explored the changing landscape of political and cultural equality for women since the early 1900's. We created a magazine in an attempt to answer the question, "Has the dream of equality been fulfilled?"
Guide to College Admissions & Financial AidSubmitted by David L.I believe strongly in higher education and equitable access to higher education, which is why I wrote this comprehensive guide about college admissions and financial aid. I combined college resources with articles of my own to give students a better understanding of the college process.
ShakespeareSubmitted by Jin K.Two students worked together to create this interpretive portrait of William Shakespeare. Phillip K. drew the portrait and Jin K. illustrated and colored it in Photoshop.
Crime Time Website 2Submitted by Rick C.Made by sophomores (Janine G., Josh E., Travis G.) at San Diego's Digital Media & Design for Time Warner Cable's philanthropic initiative, this flash website educates 7th grade students on how to use math and science to solve a criminal investigation.
SaviorSubmitted by Lou B.Music and music video written, recorded, and produced by student Kari D.
The full moon gave the sky a subtle glow while a link of cars left a glowing trail.
I created a film poster for a short film I created called Adolescence.
Made by sophomores (Janine G., Josh E., Travis G.) at San Diego's Digital Media & Design for Time Warner Cable's philanthropic initiative, this flash website educates 7th grade students on how to use math and science to solve a criminal investigation.
Made by sophomores (Ashley H., Reef L., Manny J., Jasmine C.) at San Diego's Digital Media & Design for Time Warner Cable's philanthropic initiative, this flash website educates 7th grade students on how to use math and science to solve a criminal investigation.
Media Enterprise Alliance/Muse Video's 2012-2013 multimedia class brought together eight Oakland MetWest students to create an animation project to urge young people to step up and make more sustainable choices and take action on climate change.
The project that the students participated in was an interdisciplinary, multi-school architectural project where they worked with professionals and community groups to design a potential Autism / Cerebral Palsy accessible playground for the Porterville Sheltered Workshop.


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Indonesia's business communities riled by hasty reforms
President Joko Widodo's administration has made reform a top priority, but seemingly rushed measures introduced by his ministers are creating havoc, raising concerns and angering many business owners and executives.
Not everyone is smitten with Susi Pudjiastuti, Indonesia's maritime affairs minister. Fishermen gather near a presidential palace in Jakarta to demand she be sacked in Febr
Roughly six months since coming to power, one ministry after another in Widodo's government has started announcing various regulations. Some of the new measures do not seem to be well thought out. The mess stemming from rushed efforts to deliver on a key election promise could curb much-needed investment as well as an export recovery.
And with economic growth languishing at its lowest level in five years, the timing could not be worse.
Playing to the public
"Some stores are already suffering 10% to 30% sales declines," an executive of a chain of convenience stores said.
The executive was bemoaning a new regulation that prohibits sales of alcoholic beverages at convenience and other small stores, even if the beverage's alcohol content is 5% or less. Many of these stores' customers used to stop by to pick up some beer along with some edibles. Now they don't come in, so the new regulation's negative impact has reached beyond alcohol sales.
The Ministry of Trade introduced the rule, which took effect April 16. The intent is to "correct deteriorated public morals," Trade Minister Rachmat Gobel has said.
Nearly 90% of Indonesians are Muslims, whose religion bans booze. Some view the new regulation as the minister pandering to religious conservatives.
Not to be thwarted, the minister has indicated the possibility of banning online sales of alcoholic beverages.
Naturally, these developments are deeply concerning for the booze industry. A rumor is even circulating that Bintang, the country's No. 1 beer brand, will postpone plans to expand a brewery.
The new rule's fairness is also being questioned. When the ban was announced, the ministry insisted it would cover the popular tourist spot of Bali. But the trade minister exempted the island at the 11th hour, enabling beach vendors to continue selling beers to tourists.
Wrong priorities?
Indonesia has been plagued by a chronic current account deficit. The situation has opened the trade ministry to protectionist temptations. This can explain why some recent "reforms" seem to run contrary to what most people expect.
A new measure requiring natural resource exporters to use letters of credit to settle their transactions was to take effect April 1. It was canceled at the last minute, however, creating confusion among many related businesses.
When President Widodo took office Oct. 20, he skipped over career politicians to fill his administration with experts who possess knowledge and experience in relevant fields. Trade Minister Gobel, for instance, was a successful businessman who managed a joint venture with Japan's Panasonic.
The president calls his team a working cabinet. The subtext is that any minister not producing results will quickly lose his or her job. This has put ministers under pressure to introduce attention-grabbing policies, gain popular support and please Widodo.
Susi Pudjiastuti, a former fish broker who now serves as the country's minister of maritime affairs and fisheries, is Widodo's most popular minister. With her husky voice and a tattoo on one of her legs, she stands out. Her bold actions, such as capturing illegal foreign fishing boats and sinking them with explosives, have stunned many, both at home and abroad. At the same time, they have jacked up her approval ratings.
However, fishermen and fishing-related businesses are quite unhappy about new regulations introduced under her watch.
When fishermen picketed in front of a presidential palace in February, one sign read, "Susi may be a public idol [idola in Indonesian], but she is as deadly as Ebola."
Since Susi took her position, the fisheries ministry has banned trawling, catching pregnant lobsters and transferring catches from one ship to another while out at sea. In addition, fishing licenses for foreign-registered fishing boats are not being extended.
These measures, introduced in the name of preventing overfishing and illegal exports, have resulted in "halving the volume that fishermen hand over to seafood companies," a high-ranking representative of a fisheries industry organization said.
More uncertainties
Growing uncertainties over the Widodo administration's reform drive are also putting other industries under a shadow. If Indonesia's economy is to thrive, it will need foreign investment and higher exports. But the Ministry of Industry is considering new regulations that could hinder the growth of the country's auto industry.
The ministry has turned its attention to the fact Japanese brands control 90% of Indonesia's auto market. To nurture the domestic industry, the ministry is contemplating caps on imports of autoparts and exports of finished vehicles.
"Ad hoc, stopgap measures like these can lead to lowering the Indonesian car industry's global competitiveness," said an executive at an Indonesian unit of a Japanese bank.
As chaos and frustration mount, there are growing calls from Indonesia's business community for the president to replace economy-related ministers. But giving in to these pleas might not produce anything positive. The best course of action could be to give the new government a little more time. SADACHIKA WATANABE, Nikkei staff writer


Gallipolis City Commission is made of five elected members and three appointed employees, the city manager, the dual role city clerk and auditor and the city solicitor.
GALLIPOLIS — Two spots are open this year on the Gallipolis City Commission, the legislative branch of the municipality of Gallipolis.
A candidacy statement and nominating petition has to be filed by Feb. 21 before a potential primary, which would be May 7. Petitions must have five signatures of individuals with the ability to vote within Gallipolis.
"Your nominating petition must be signed by five qualified electors of the City of Gallipolis, Ohio, in ink, in front of the circulator who will then complete the bottom half of such petition. The candidate cannot circulate the nominating petition," reads paperwork supplied by the city's legal counsel.
Paperwork must be returned to the Gallia Board of Elections in the Gallia Courthouse with a copy to the Gallipolis City Auditor Annette Landers by Feb. 21. Paperwork and information can be found at the Gallipolis Municipal Building at 333 Third Avenue.
Commissioners are responsible for legislating the laws of the municipality, receive no salary for the position and serve four-year terms.


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text:
Raymond Ronny Sutton (born 1950) is an American Anglican bishop. He was bishop coadjutor in the Diocese of Mid-America of the Reformed Episcopal Church, since 1999, a founding member of the Anglican Church in North America, in 2009. He is the former Rector of the Church of the Holy Communion in Dallas, Texas, president and Professor of Scripture and Theology at Cranmer Theological House in Houston, Texas, and headmaster of Holy Communion Christian Academy (formerly Bent Tree Episcopal School). Sutton was born in Louisville, Kentucky, and moved to Dallas at age thirteen.

He is currently head of the Ecumenical Relations Committee of the Anglican Church of North America.

He took over the leadership of the Reformed Episcopal Church and the Diocese of Mid-America on November 24, 2016, upon the death of Royal U. Grote Jr., on a provisional level, with his installation taking place on June 15, 2017.

Personal life
Sutton is married to Susan Jean Schaerdel of Dallas. They have seven children and four grandchildren.

Education
 Bachelor of Fine Arts [B.F.A.] – Southern Methodist University in (1972)
 Master of Theology [Th.M.] – Dallas Theological Seminary (1976)
 Doctor of Philosophy [Ph.D.] – Wycliffe Hall, Oxford University, in association with Coventry University (1998)
 Doctor of Theology (hon.) – Central School of Religion
 Doctor of Divinity (hon.) – Cummins Theological Seminary

Career

Sutton served in parish ministry from 1976 until 1991. He was a co-pastor with James B. Jordan of Westminster Presbyterian Church in Tyler, Texas, which was a prominent church in the Christian Reconstructionist movement. Other members included Gary North and David Chilton. The church belonged to the Westminster Presbyterian Church of the Association of Reformation Churches in America. North praised Sutton for uncovering that Meredith G. Kline's five-point covenant model applied to the whole Bible, and that it applies to three covenant institutions of family, state and church.

Sutton served as Dean and Associate Professor of New Testament at the Reformed Episcopal Seminary in Philadelphia from 1991 until 1995; and Dean and Professor of Theology at Cranmer Theological House in Shreveport, Louisiana from 1995 until 2001. Since the Synod of the Reformed Episcopal Diocese of Mid America in February 2013, he is once again the president of Cranmer Theological House based in the Houston area. Cranmer House also supports a satellite campus in Dallas at Sutton's parish, The Church of the Holy Communion (The DMA Pro Cathedral).

Sutton was ordained a bishop coadjutor of the Reformed Episcopal Church in 1999 and arrived at the Church of the Holy Communion in 2001.

Works
Sutton has authored several theology works:
 The Sacramental Theology of Daniel Waterland (Doctoral Thesis—Coventry University), 1998.
 Signed, Sealed and Delivered: A Study of Holy Baptism, Classical Anglican Press, Houston, TX (2001).
 Captains and Courts, a Biblical Defense of Episcopal Government.
 Second Chance: Biblical Principals of Divorce and Remarriage, Biblical Hope for the Divorced, Biblical Blueprint Series Vol. #10, The Institute for Christian Economics, (1988).
 That You May Prosper : Dominion by Covenant, The Institute for Christian Economics, (1987).
 Who Owns the Family? : God or the State? Biblical Blueprint Series Vol. #03, Dominion Press, Ft. Worth, TX, (1986).
 Ray Sutton, David Chilton, Gary DeMar, Victoria T. deVries, Michael Gilstrap, Power for Living, Arthur S. DeMoss Foundation, (1983).

Articles
 Sutton, Ray R. "Covenantal Evil." Covenant Renewal 2 (1988) 4.
 Sutton, Ray R. "Oath and Symbol." Covenant Renewal 3 (1989) 4: 1–4.
 Sutton, Ray R. "Clothing and Calling." in The Reconstruction of the Church. Christianity and Civilization Vol 4. ed. James B. Jordan. Tyler, Texas: Geneva Ministries, (1985).
 Sutton, Ray R. "The Saturday Night Church and the Liturgical Nature of Man." in The Reconstruction of the Church. Christianity and Civilization Vol 4. ed. James B. Jordan. Tyler, Texas: Geneva Ministries, (1985).
 Ray R. Sutton, "The Church as a Shadow Government," Christianity and Civilization III: Tactics of Christian Resistance, Geneva Divinity School, (1983).
 Ray Sutton, "The Baptist Failure", Christianity & Civilization, James B. Jordan, ed., Geneva Divinity School, (1982).

Editor
 What is Anglicanism?, Latimer Press (2004), by Mark F. M. Clavier, co-edited by Ray Sutton and Peter C. Moore.

References

External links

|-

Living people
21st-century Anglican bishops in the United States
Bishops of the Anglican Church in North America
Bishops of the Reformed Episcopal Church
Presiding Bishops of the Reformed Episcopal Church
Reformed Episcopal Seminary faculty
Southern Methodist University alumni
Alumni of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford
Dallas Theological Seminary alumni
Religious leaders from Louisville, Kentucky
1950 births

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
↑149 · Steve Earle, Mike Scott
· 148 · Everclear
↓147 · H, Wishing Tree, Fish, Marillion
We Never Talk About the Past Anymore
148 · 27 November 97
Everclear: So Much for the Afterglow
"Is a CRX a good snow car?", my friend's husband wonders, as he drops her off at my office. A less auspicious evening is hard to imagine. New England winter, which seemed unfathomably remote when I left for London, has come crashing down in my absence, blasting the leaves from the trees and then raining on them, for good measure, so that the easy victory of raking them all up and stuffing them cheerily, autumnally, into orange plastic bags with leering jack-o-lantern grins on the outside, is no longer available. It is 6:30pm, the Friday night after my return. It is now obvious that I should have scheduled a day or two off, to recover from my vacation; days off are precious, yes, but so is my sanity. I came back on Monday afternoon, I played in a soccer game Monday night, I went back to work Tuesday, I wrote reviews Tuesday night, I went to another concert Wednesday night. What I did Thursday night I can't imagine, but it must not have been very restful, because here, Friday evening, I am perilously close to shutting down. I want nothing so much as to crawl blearily home, wrap myself in a blanket on my couch, put on a stack of warm, familiar records, and fall asleep ten minutes into the first one. The rest I get on this couch is a much higher grade than the rest I get anywhere else. It was my parents' couch, the good couch, when I was growing up, and I would never have been allowed to sleep on it. It sat, brightly, in our living room, reserved for company or Christmas morning or, though perhaps this last one was not in my parents' plan, my first real kiss. They switched furniture aesthetics the year I got out of college, though, and neither the couch's Swedish design nor its Greek-cotton upholstery fit with their new Shaker environs, so it became mine. The cotton is farther off white than it once was, but no less cool or soft, and I stopped growing just soon enough that it remains the perfect length. I can practically feel it against the backs of my arms, even now, as I stand by my car searching for the reserve of strength needed to scrape the ice off the windows. It has been sleeting for several hours, and is sleeting still. The parts I can see of the sky, the lower parts, where I can look without turning my face into the sleet, are a void. Hundreds of years of genetic programming argue for retreat. My couch whispers softly, from across the city, and I hear it like a cotton glacier sliding slowly over my head. A CRX is a terrible snow car, but it could get me home.
We aren't going home, though. I'm too tired to think, it's rush hour, the highways are covered with an inch of variegated, semi-solidified slush, and my wipers are batting at the ice on my windshield with a desultory hopelessness. So I am, of course, about to get on the worst commuter road in Boston and drive to Providence, Rhode Island, to see Everclear. It is my own fault, admittedly: I conflated two ticket agencies, and thus failed to get tickets for the show in Boston, the night before, before the sleet started. (The show at which three professional football players dove off the stage into the audience, sending a small, hapless woman to the hospital with a life-threatening spinal injury, Boston's answer to Altamont.) So, as penance, I'm driving to Providence. Providence, normally, is not very far away, but at 35 miles per hour it's a lot farther away than I'd like. This will be the fifth city I've seen Everclear in, the third long car pilgrimage seeing them has required. But there is no question of not going.
We make it to the show more or less on time, even with the side-trip to the world's most chaotic and wonderful sandwich shop, Geoff's, on the way (disconcertingly unchaotic at 9pm on a night when all right-thinking people are at home, and a little less wonderful as a result). Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel looks like an airplane hangar, not a hotel, and smells like an airplane hanger where customs has sequestered two smuggler's seaplanes, one full of damp, moldering marijuana and the other full of battery-operated humidifiers, for the past month. How many people have elbowed their way inside, I hesitate to suppose, but there is nowhere from which you can see the stage where we are not in physical contact with at least three of the nearest ones. I will have three major revelations before the night is over. The first revelation is that I am rapidly nearing the end of the phase of my life in which standing pressed in a crowd of sweaty college boys in baseball caps seems like a sensible way to experience live music. The third revelation is that I currently believe Everclear to be the best rock band in the world.
This is a stupid thing to say, of course, a bit of irremediably subjective critical presumption that is of no earthly use to anyone. "Best rock band in the world" is a contentless concept; there can no more be a best rock band than there can be a best sentence, or a best tree. The fact that a question is pointless, however, doesn't make it unanswerable. You have one, too, those of you who live musical lives as obsessive as mine, an unsolicited best-rock-band-in-the-world nomination of your own. It is a game we play, pinning "best" on things, a nominally grown-up version of the pinning games we played at birthday parties, blindfolded, when we were six (was it really within my lifetime that blindfolding a six-year-old, in a room full of them, and arming him with a pin, didn't seemed deranged?). Nobody, with the possible exception of the tailless donkey himself, cared what happened to the tail. The object of the game, which even the six-year-olds realize instinctively, I think, is to see who can humiliate themselves with the most grace. The best-rock-band game is not much different. Life, come to think of it, is not much different. The alliances you declare are reflections on yourself. When you pick a band, you stake yourself to a mythology.
When I say Everclear is the best rock band in the world, then, I am saying several things about what rock is, that they might fleetingly be its archetype. I am saying that guitars should howl like jet engines, that drums should be hit as hard, and frequently, as possible, that a bass is a percussion instrument, that singing and yelling are indistinguishable in the transport of passion, that the best anthems are songs of recovery, that pain is how you know you're touching life, that abandonment is the communal narrative of childhood. I am saying that rock is its own form of intoxication, that the blues do not do defiance justice, that pop is the component of joy in any noise. I am saying that rock is the music of uprising, and there is always higher to rise. More than anything, though, I realize, as the palpable sensation of imminent delirium courses through the hangar in the six seconds of caught breath before each new song, rock is the music that makes you want to jump up and down, forget that you ever knew what fear or diffidence felt like, and throw yourself into the infinite welcome of the mosh as if it expresses divine proof of human imperviousness and the tangibility of boundless love. I resist the pull, tonight, because I suspect my friend's husband will want her back in one piece, but this is what Everclear does better than any other band I know of. Aerosmith is better at glam strut, the Stones at ageless twelve-bar-blues equanimity, U2 at post-modern sensory bombardment, Guided by Voices at drunken and fragmented pop reverence. Marillion is more talented, the Manic Street Preachers more inspiring, Tori Amos more intense, Mecca Normal more riveting. There are a hundred bands, I'm sure, that do a hundred things better than Everclear does, and you have the right to hold up any of those hundred things as the Soul of Rock, and thus any of those hundred bands as the best rock band in the world. (And, of course, there are a hundred things other than Rock for bands to be the Soul of.) Tonight, though, emerging from a sleet storm at the end of a week that has drained away my capacity for coherence, what I need most desperately is a transfusion.
The second revelation I have tonight, which lends an element of petulance to the resignation of the first revelation, and a touch of bittersweetness to the rapture of the third, is that Everclear are no longer my own. I have seen them, now, six times, which for me is a lot, more times than I've seen any other band save the ones that my ex-girlfriend's brother was in while we were together. Even before tonight's show started, though, I knew that the other five belong to an era that has passed into history. I-knew-them-when one-upmanship is insufferable, I realize, and my Everclear seniority, as I was badgered by a friend into buying World of Noise only a few weeks before Sparkle and Fade came out, is not especially impressive, but for a while they were one of my bands, a band obscure enough that I could show up to see them open for Filter and be one of the few people there to see them. They would come out and meet people after their set, not to bask in fan glow, it seemed, but because touring is lonely, and a smiling, exhausted face to hold a conversation with might help them survive another night of it. Everclear was a collaborative effort, and we were part of it. The first time I heard "Santa Monica" on the radio, driving home from my abortive experiment in attempting to coach a kids' soccer team, I nearly crashed my car; I turned it up so loud that my speakers began accompanying the snare hits with ominous papery noises of their own, and drove through North Cambridge like Paul Revere, rousing the countryside for battle. I taped their first 120 Minutes appearance with the same giddy excitement that you clip articles about yourself out of your high school paper.
The band's moments of celebrity, however, turned out to be a trend. By the end of 1996, hearing "Santa Monica" on the radio was routine, and they were headlining their own shows. They played Saturday Night Live (where they were only allowed one song, bizarrely), made the late-show rounds, put out singles, made videos. Magazine articles poked through Art's personal life, and sat in judgment on him for knowing music-industry buzzwords. I could feel them starting to slip away. Not until they walked onto the Lupo's stage, however, and I heard the crowd roar -- not, in fact, until I saw in their eyes that they expected the crowd to roar -- did I understand that, somewhere along the way, they have become rock stars. They won't come out to meet people this tour, and if they did, they'd no longer remember my face. They have become big enough to sustain the entity of the band without my help, besieged enough to put up defenses where there was once need. Everclear's is hardly the first such transformation, but it's the one I've lived through the most personally. I miss them. I am proud of them, certainly, proud of their newfound confidence, proud of the professionalism I wasn't entirely sure they were capable of. But when Craig Montoya stands on an amp, instead of hiding behind his hair, when he exhorts the crowd in between songs, instead of gasping for breath while he waits for his life-or-death battle with his own bass to be rejoined, when Art insists on playing the last four measures of a song again so that Steven (Steven!) can hit the delay switch like he's supposed to, when an airplane hangar full of sweaty college boys in baseball caps sings along to "Strawberry" -- when I can no longer sustain the illusion that I am a participant in this experience, rather than merely an observer, a part of me feels like I've lost a friend.
Perhaps the strangest irony, though, is that despite this sense of loss, So Much for the Afterglow thrills me. Or maybe "despite" is wrong; often I build up such tangled personal associations with bands that I lose the ability to evaluate their records neutrally, but between the shift in my overall Everclear experience and the musical differences between this album and the first two, So Much for the Afterglow ends up, for me, being burdened by no connections at all. I adore it helplessly. It is one of those very rare albums where every end of a song leaves me with a desperate, hollow ache to play it again, but every beginning of the next song makes me forget the last one ever existed.
The break So Much for the Afterglow makes with World of Noise and Sparkle and Fade is immediate and unmistakable. The album-opening title track (whose text is half a portrait of relationship stasis and half a self-referential refusal to dwell on the past) begins with a buoyant a cappella round of airy Brian-Wilson harmony. You could probably start an album with a brief, sampled bit of this, and still revert to Sparkle and Fade's raw power-trio punk for the rest of the record, but this is real singing, not a sample, and it goes on for nearly forty seconds, too long to be mistaken for a casual whim. The band does explode into action, eventually, but the "Na na" backing vocals and impish handclaps on the chorus are miles from the acidic vitriol of "Heroin Girl" or "You Make Me Feel Like a Whore". Even the guitar tone, which on Sparkle and Fade was an unadorned head-jammed-into-speaker-cab squall, here gets processed into a metallic, overdriven, bigger-than-life crush. Montoya's bass sound gets a similar overhaul on "Everything to Everyone", acquiring a bright, springy shine. Greg Eklund alternates his usual manic thrash with a bit of martial stutter, Art's meter-straining lyrics skimming over the song's rhythm like he's surfing it. Slide guitar twang, an oscillating solo riff, sighing backing vocals and a chorus chant of "Come on, come on" borrowed verbatim, I could swear, from Jane Siberry's "Temple", give the song an unexpected composure, somewhere between the calm experience of the Stones and the ragged glory of Soul Asylum. Where most of the songs on Sparkle and Fade were underdog apologetics of one sort or another, "Everything to Everyone" turns around and holds its victimized narrator at least partially responsible for her victimization.
"Ataraxia (media intro)", the short third track, seems like the album's one misstep to me. It means to sound like a stiff, old-fashioned filmstrip narration, I think (and may be one), but the sing-song rhymes ruin the effect. It's there to make certain nobody misses the anti-anti-depressant topicality of "Normal Like You", but if the line "The Prozac doesn't do it for me anymore", in the first verse of the song itself, doesn't alert you to the subject, then you're probably too heavily sedated to make sense of the argument anyway. The backlash against Prozac and homogenized normality flirts with insensitivity ("Clinical depression is a disease", somebody is bound to point out), and it's easy for me to snipe from the safety of what, I guess, passes for mental health, but the Orwellian behavior-control overtones of modern psychiatry's eagerness to medicate depression are deeply disturbing to me, and it seems worth offending a few people who are at the mercy of lithium imbalances to make the larger social point. Neurosis and depression are the source not only of an enormous amount of powerful art, but of, I suspect, a large majority of the productive insights the human race has ever had. Lots of things depress me; the world is an ugly, petty, unjust, disheartening place, and that should depress you. Maybe Prozac could provide me with a perpetual dull bliss, but the philosophical distinction between medicated tranquillity and wireheading is subtle at best; if taking pills to make yourself cheerful seems like an okay idea to you, why would you turn down the opportunity for artificially-induced perpetual orgasm, once they work the technology out? Orgasms are pleasant enough, but I don't understand how someone could countenance wireheading and not consider just killing themselves immediately to be an optimization. Prozac is less extreme than wireheading, but the idea of taking medicine to make me defy my own nature is fundamentally abhorrent to me (which explains why alcohol and drug use perplex and revolt me, as well). I'm sure Prozac would make me, circularly, less intolerant of Prozac, but taking a drug to overcome unwillingness to take a drug is about the most starkly horrifying and soulless idea I've ever heard (which is why the first four pages of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? are about the scariest thing I've ever read).
Bells, tambourine rustle and wheezy organ enliven "I Will Buy You a New Life", next, a sort of reexamination of Sparkle and Fade's "Summerland" to see what new resources can do to the problem. Having relied heavily on poverty and related social predicaments for his subject matter up until now, Art is left with an odd (if hardly original) dilemma now that he's made enough money singing about having been poor that he's not poor anymore. "I Will Buy You a New Life" doesn't try to be coy about it ("I hate those people who love to tell you / Money is the root of all that kills. / They have never been poor, / They have never had the joy of a welfare Christmas"), and the chorus' repetition of the title seems, initially, sincere, but "I know we will never look back", early in the song, turns into "I know we can never look back" by the end, and if money can change lives so easily, why does the narrator end up having to plead "Will you please let me stay the night?"
The point where I gave myself up to this album, completely, the very first time through, is "Father of Mine", just before we reach the midway point. I'd seen Art on his solo acoustic tour, and he played several new songs, but I couldn't tell, from the solo settings, whether I thought Everclear had another album in them or not. Art is not a sophisticated guitarist, and stripped down to acoustic form, many of his songs start to sound worryingly alike. Whatever the chords are to the song at hand, he almost invariably strums them the same cadence; in full band arrangements, especially with the sonic diversity of So Much for the Afterglow, this seems like a stabilizing factor to me, not a problem, but when that's all there is to a song, especially to a whole set of songs, it doesn't work as well. The more this bothered me, the more I tried to concentrate on his lyrics, instead, but the lyrics aren't the same without the band's musical power behind them, either. "Father of Mine" was the song he played that boded the most poorly for the next album, I thought. Abandoned-by-father was a far too predictable premise, like he was filling in one of the logical blanks in a matrix of generic troubled-childhood topics. The mood of the album version, however, is completely different. The guitar core is still pretty standard (much of it sounds like "I Will Buy You a New Life" sped up and pitch-shifted), but Eklund inserts a charming hi-hat/snare syncopation, and with amplification behind it the chorus' simple descending guitar riff makes a propulsive sense that it didn't, to me, in acoustic form. The repeated chorus line, "Daddy game me a name, / Then he walked away", which seemed like an uninspired complaint in the solo rendition, turns into an anthemic survival affirmation when the band howls it at the top of their lungs, a simultaneous declaration of independence and condemnation of the father's desertion. The song manages a delicate balancing act between how much the father's love meant to the child (demonizing him completely would have been much easier) and how much damage his departure did, and between bitter fury and the narrator's resolution not to repeat his father's mistakes with his own child. Watching a pulsing horde of sweaty college boys in baseball caps sing along to a song about how they're going to try to be good fathers almost convinced me that the world isn't essentially evil.
The embryonic syncopation from "Father of Mine" turns into a between-beats cowbell for "One Hit Wonder", on which Art backs away from the microphone and lets his voice stray into its gravely margins (where he sounds, at times, distinctly like Steven Tyler), and a few blasts of gleaming horns even creep into some of the later moments. The lyrics, which in most Everclear songs carry the music along with them through force of will as much as anything else, this time relax into the song's musical pace, making this one of the few Everclear songs that doesn't lend itself to moshing. "El Distorto de Melodica", however, the instrumental that follows, compensates for "One Hit Wonder"'s relative calm with a throbbing industrial buzz that I imagine owes at least a small debt to all those nights spent trying to talk over the din of Filter. "Amphetamine", the obvious sequel to "Heroin Girl", is almost as flat-out a sprint as Sparkle and Fade's "Nehalem", but the steady "White Men in Black Suits", despite a return to the familiar trope "I am just a boy / Working in a record store", seems to me to have some almost English-Beat-like slinkiness to it. Being reminded of the English Beat in the middle of an Everclear song is very strange, but nothing compared to how surprised I am when "Sunflowers" starts, next, and the hook from Big Country's "I'm Not Ashamed" leaps out of Art's guitar. I'm sure Big Country didn't invent this particular trill, either, but the choppy stop/start choruses of the two songs are nearly identical, as well. It suddenly occurs to me that this whole ringing, expansive album reminds me of Big Country's Why the Long Face. Half of me is thrilled by this, as Big Country are my favorite band, and the striking resemblance between the two albums supports my firm belief that Why the Long Face ought to have been a wild commercial success here, if only anybody had ever heard anything from it. The thrill quickly gives way to a black rage, though, when I realize that the millions of people who will buy this record still won't know that Big Country is alive and well and making records they'd probably like.
Country inflections run, subtly, through much of So Much for the Afterglow, but they surface blatantly in "Why I Don't Believe in God", where Art switches to banjo and mournful slide guitar. The text, a bookend for "Father of Mine" that traces another vein of family dysfunction back to the narrator's mother's nervous breakdown, which amounts to another abandonment, is dense with urban references that clash with the trebly country instrumentation, but the weary chorus finds some thematic common ground between retributive punk and campfire dirges. The song also, by slowing the album down, sets the stage for the finale, "Like a California King", which might have seemed sluggish next to "So Much for the Afterglow" or "Amphetamine". There's another Big Country riff in this one, and the twinkling mandolin has a Celtic flair to it, as well. The venomous lyrics are obviously about another band, so you can amuse yourself trying to figure out which one if you like, but the song seems to me more important as a sequel to World of Noise's similarly stubborn ode to self-esteem, "Loser Makes Good", in which case the specific identity of the other band is no more significant than the name of the college boy (presumably sweaty and baseball-cap-wearing) in the earlier song. "Like a California King" seems a bit too measured, however, to be the end of an Everclear album, so I'm not surprised to find one more bonus track lurking after the sadly inevitable minute of dead space. Why they wouldn't list this one, a fast, pounding, seasonal rant called, if the chorus is the title, "I Will Be Hating You for Christmas", I have no idea, but it restores the sense of ramming abruptly into a brick wall that is the way all great rock albums should end.
The end of the concert is similarly abrupt; the house lights come on almost before the band has managed to get off the stage, and the undertow of people spins us out a door into the streets of downtown Providence like an army of battling tops. The sleet has finally stopped. The roads home turn out to be empty and dry, as if the ordeal of the earlier journey was a critical part of the night's experience, while the return trip is just the credits running. Perhaps I've lost a band, but success is a terrible thing to begrudge anyone, and turning against a cult band after their breakthrough is one of underground culture's least attractive habits. Perhaps I've lost my tolerance for nightclubs, but club shows were always awful ways to hear music. It is time to move on. I need to sleep for about sixteen hours straight, and I badly need a shower. I need to go home and not drive or fly anywhere for a while. I need to buy some snow boots. I need to get this sodden layer of leaves off my patio somehow. There are real friends I need to telephone, books I need to read, closet doors I need to paint some less-repulsive color. If Prozac isn't going to be the mindless answer to everything I've yet to reconcile myself to, then I'll need to start thinking up better solutions. The couch is part of it, and the blanket, that much I think I've figured out. Bands, albums: these are tails with pins sticking out of the end. Clearly I'm going to need to find, somewhere, an awful lot of patient donkeys.


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Trump "looking into" 3D guns issue
FILE – In this May 10, 2013, file photo, Cody Wilson holds what he calls a Liberator pistol that was completely made on a 3-D-printer at his home in Austin, Texas. Eight states filed suit Monday, July 30, 2018, against the Trump administration over its decision to allow a Texas company to publish downloadable blueprints […]
President Donald Trump says he is consulting with the National Rifle Association over whether it makes sense for a Texas company to publish downloadable blueprints for a 3D-printed gun.
Trump tweeted Tuesday he is "looking into 3-D Plastic Guns being sold to the public," adding that he "already spoke to NRA."
The president expressed doubt, saying "doesn't seem to make much sense!" He did not offer further details.
The National Rifle Association did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Trump spoke after eight states filed suit against the administration, contending the hard-to-trace plastic weapons are a boon to terrorists and criminals and threaten public safety.
The suit, filed Monday in Seattle, asks a judge to block the federal government's late-June settlement with Defense Distributed, which allowed the company to make the plans available online.
Joining the suit were Democratic attorneys general in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Maryland, New York and the District of Columbia. Separately, attorneys general in 21 states urged Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Monday to withdraw from the settlement with Defense Distributed, saying it "creates an imminent risk to public safety."
People can use the blueprints to manufacture a plastic gun using a 3D printer. But gun industry experts have expressed doubt that criminals would go to the trouble, since the printers needed to make the guns are very expensive, the guns themselves tend to disintegrate quickly and traditional firearms are easy to come by.
Cody Wilson, the founder of Defense Distributed, first published downloadable designs for a 3D-printed firearm in 2013. It was downloaded about 100,000 times until the State Department ordered him to cease, contending it violated federal export laws since some of the blueprints were downloaded by people outside the United States.
The State Department reversed course in late June, agreeing to allow Wilson to resume posting the blueprints. The files were published on Friday.
The company filed its own suit in Texas on Sunday, asserting that it's the victim of an "ideologically fueled program of intimidation and harassment" that violates the company's First Amendment rights.
More National/World Stories
by MATTHEW DALY Associated Press / Jul 17, 2019
The House voted, 230-198, to hold Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in criminal contempt. The vote, a political blow to the Trump administration, is largely symbolic because the Justice Department is unlikely to prosecute the two men.
by ALAN FRAM and MARY CLARE JALONICK | Associated Press / Jul 17, 2019
by MIKE STOBBE | AP Medical Writer / Jul 17, 2019
NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. overdose deaths last year likely fell for the first time in nearly three decades, preliminary statistics suggest.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday posted the provisional numbers showing nearly 68,000 drug overdose deaths were reported last year. The number may go up as more investigations are completed, but the agency expects the tally will end up below 69,000.


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