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Brian Massumi

Semblance and Event: Activist Philosophy and the Occurrent Arts

Brian Massumi, Semblance and Event: Activist Philosophy and the Occurrent Arts, MIT Press, 2011, 220pp., $30.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780262134910.

Reviewed by James Williams, University of Dundee

Following ideas, images, sensations and intense affects charted by William James, Alfred North Whitehead and Gilles Deleuze, Brian Massumi invites us into an aesthetic meditation that is also a meditation on art. Among the most demanding of creative forms, meditations are at the same time pliable, seductive and powerfully divisive. They demand great craft and achieve wide resonance with their readers. Yet they are also capable of engendering disgust or baffled disinterest, most often when the expectations of the audience fall out of the range of the work or when the projected ideas meet with visceral opposition.

Semblance and Event satisfies all these conditions. It is a beautifully written piece with complex rhythms interweaving philosophy, aesthetics, science and art-practice. Yet this very weave is bound to shock, irritate or darkly amuse critics seeking pure forms in each of these disciplines. It is not that logical argument, abstract aesthetics, pure science and raw art-practice are absent from the book. They are sublimated. So the surface of the writing flows from reflection, scholarship and direct experience, revealing them in distilled form only. There is great beauty to this rarefication. Ideas and experiences are elevated above the heavy and messy work of construction, conflict and friction. Toil, frustration, struggle and abnegation are cloaked beneath the meditative unrolling.

Meditation calls for commentary. It also inspires. Sometimes, it meets with violent opposition. I will attempt some commentary in what follows and gesture to possible sources of inspiration. First, though, let's set the violent opposition aside, for there is little value in entering into the fruitless debate about differing standards of argument. If you are seeking a carefully argued, seamlessly logical, analytically constructed aesthetics or philosophy of art here, then forget it, this is not the book for you. If you are looking for an introduction or critique of James's or Whitehead's philosophies, this is again not for your eyes. As pictured in Isabelle Stengers's generous blurb, Massumi's prose achieves 'indiscernibility' between disciplines and experiences. It is 'participative' rather than critical. It does not introduce a set of thinkers, nor put their thought in academic context. Philosophies instead become part of hybrid acts. They become part of the action. This action is a participative meditation across art, science and philosophy.

As such, the book is resistant to simple logical dismemberment and to categorical situation in historical and disciplinary positions and lines. Does this matter? Yes, it probably does, but the place for any assessment of the conflicting demands of logical abstraction and of the rigour of disciplines and carefully distinguished values is not in the reception of any single work. It is a barren enterprise to take the book as a particular case in any 'conflict of faculties' or divide between traditions. Its motivations and portents are signs of a much wider problem with many positive and negative directions. The problem is best approached through a wider set of symptoms, manifestations and arguments.

Partly because of the way it stretches the meditative form, Massumi's thought demands interpretation. We have become used to great accessibility in philosophical meditations and, more widely, in literary autobiography or other shorter confessional forms. They work with common language and with the appearance of a 'degree zero' of style such that everyone can feel invited to follow and think alongside the meditator. This is not the case for Semblance and Event. Instead, we are given esoteric meditation, with all the attendant risks and felicities of esotericism. The esoteric style, with its emphasis on doctrine and secrecy, seems out of step with meditation as an inclusive open-hearted form. Massumi manages to bond the two through a distinction between syntactical style and vocabulary.

His phraseology is elegant, simple and enticingly set in motion through a discrete counter-point of puzzles and partial answers. From chapter to chapter, we follow a good story-teller, a patient interviewee and simple, companionable, inner and outer voices. Descriptive passages are accurate and direct. Long and short sentences, well-balanced clauses, patterns of questions and responses, carefully chosen examples and apposite quoted passages succeed one another with ease and good timing. Yet this syntax carries fearsome words, difficult neologisms, out-of-place technical terms, didactic distinctions between distant terms and complex propositions presented as fact. There is a kind of conjuror's art to this strange juxtaposition of a bright everyday -- portrayed elegantly -- but pierced by the uncanny. Massumi's writing combines the delight of an attractive scene made magical and the unease of the familiar rendered unreliable.

We can see this alloy of esotericism and accessibility early on in the book when Massumi begins to introduce us to one of its principal concepts: the event. He is reflecting on process philosophy of art, where art and philosophy become a joint activity through shared occurrence, or joint event-hood. Philosophy thereby loses its abstraction and external critical viewpoint. It gains a more direct involvement in artistic creation and sensibility. This activity is underpinned conceptually by a shift from objects to events:

The reality of the world exceeds that of objects, for the simple reason that where objects are, there has also been their becoming. And where becoming has been, there is already more to come. The being of an object is an abstraction from its becoming. The world is not a grab-bag of things. It is an always-in-germ. To perceive the world in an object frame is to neglect the wider range of its germinal reality. (6)

The clauses and propositions slip along one another easily. Each claim is digestible yet set in an economical form which expands with musical repetitions and echoes. There is a satisfying rhetoric reminiscent of early sophistry. It is too easy to pass from premise to conclusion when encouraged by a 'simple reason'. Claims depend on stark and familiar use of the copula. A thing 'is' or 'is not', in various attempts at clear extensive or intensive definition.

Things are not as they seem, though. Nor should they be given the demanding and innovative art and philosophy events to follow in the book. It turns out that the reason given by Massumi is not simple at all, because it depends on a sleight of hand around uses of tense. The copula is mistreated badly; torn from its bearings in space and time. What has been is still. This has been is becoming. 'To be' is the main verb in each of Massumi's sentences, but then one claims being as an abstraction from becoming thereby calling itself and others into a web of paradoxes. The 'is' of 'to be' is 'becoming'. Negation and neglect also work in familiar ways, but then the negation of negation and the neglected thing turn out to be very strange wisps indeed: the 'always in germ' and 'germinal reality'.

Should we be impatient or damning in response to these contradictions and this evasiveness? No. Massumi is giving us an alternative line of thought which defines existence as event and event as complex and multiple becoming. He has chosen a mode of presentation that communicates this as straightforwardly as possible, but with risks of paradoxical conjunctions such as a rich descriptive language based in the present that describes events that cannot be simply present or simply located at a particular space-time.

Very few philosophers have done this as thoroughly and with such tenacious commitment to the ubiquity of becoming and event. The title of the book is therefore accurate. Massumi is giving us an aesthetics of events that leads to an emphasis on the role of semblance in things as counter to events. Events and the desire for semblance are in tension with one another. He is therefore pushed to use somewhat barbaric terms such as 'always in germ' and 'germinal reality' to indicate how anything is really an ongoing genesis driven from the past and towards the future. Nothing really 'is'. It is really only a semblance that we only enter into contact with through mutual genetic interaction. We interact through processes of genesis. Philosophy therefore has to become activist and part of the action in order to come into vital contact with the event. This explains the deep objection to detachment and abstraction as fundamental philosophical tools.

Instead of abstraction Massumi seeks immersion. This explains the second original side to his book. It immerses philosophy through a virtual extension of settled sensation and, more precisely, through the power of art-events to bring disorder to thought and bodily order through virtual effects beyond the boundaries of familiar experience. This is why he focuses on the occurrent arts, that is, on artistic events and events in art. Many of these occurrent forms are quite obviously event-like and involve now familiar techniques of installation and sensory manipulation. This leads to an opposition to representation in art and to claims mapping art to real experiences of actual things.

Massumi develops a critique of perspective in landscapes because formal order is imposed on the virtual potential of non-sensuous events, that is, events where perception and sensibility are set in motion through affective and bodily movements which break subject-object relations. A possible objection comes out here, since it is far from obvious that a landscape by Claude does not have virtual powers in pretty much the same way as the less representational works it inspired in, say, Turner. Indeed, Claude's works were events for Turner. The event is a contact and a transformation. It does not therefore depend on what does or does not transform something else, but rather whether there is or is not transformation in any given case. So though it makes sense to associate events with motion, it is a mistake to associate them with the extent, purity or intensity of motion. Something has to be moved, but kinds and scales of motion are not set before the event.

We might well call Claude representational because of the formal order of his work. We'd be very wrong to conclude that his art cannot be event-like in the same way as contemporary dance by Cunningham, as championed by Massumi. When he lauds Cunningham because he 'disables metaphor and cuts communication' (138), Massumi gives us clues to an objection to his association of event with virtual effects beyond the boundaries of formal order, because these effects work through what they disable. If a maelstrom of sensory disruption is our everyday state, it will be hard to experience the kinds of disorientation and movement Massumi seeks in art events. There will be no space for the non-sensory because all will be non-sensory.

Events require order. They work in relative ways between different states of order, jumping between them thanks -- it is true -- to disruptive sensory effects. There can be an imperceptible yet immensely disruptive virtual effect in apparently the most ordered and safe forms of experience. Indeed, the greater the order perhaps the greater the effect, when it finally comes. For instance, imagine a represented and familiar scene where all that is missing is the sign for a departed loved-one. A missing glove or pair of glasses amidst formal order could be the most moving and terrible event. How then are we to decide between semblance and event? Movement can become a fetish for process philosophy of art such that we forget the ordered conditions for the deep effects of that movement.

We can see movement becoming fetish in Massumi's sensitive discussion of the painter and installation artist Robert Irwin. At first, Massumi traces Irwin's careful and tentative passages away from vision given form by a well-ordered outside world. Then, though, each passage is subsumed into a progression to a final extreme state where movement and event explode out: 'Composing-away. Irwin carried his work through a "succession of reductions" leading all the way to ground zero". Ground zero was a detonation site.' (159) It is not surprising that Irwin describes such a progression. Artists tend to view their latest work as best and as a fulfillment of early work. It is a matter of survival and presentational narrative, if nothing else. The philosopher should not be so easily led towards a final extreme point, because each of the earlier passages was such a point and because the latest field of detonation will fade too and take its place in another sequence.

Massumi might answer that his definitions of events allow for this resting with each stage rather than with an extreme. This is hard to justify, though, because his account of mutual transformation, of conjoined events, depends on an extreme account of the non-sensual as break and irruption of the pure. It also depends on a dialectic which moves away from 'beautiful semblance', drawn partly from Benjamin, and towards 'non-sensuous' composition or co-movement. I have no doubt that some events are captured well as the heading of this dialectic and as non-sensual in that way. Here is Massumi's description of one such in the work of Irwin:

The effect takes some time to set in. It nags at you. You think you feel a little disoriented, a tad dizzy perhaps. You feel something niggling, like a stirring on the periphery of vision itching for you to turn your attention to it. But attend as you might, you find nothing to look at. Then it happens. Bam! The scrim suddenly jumps into sight. It's less that you looked at it, than it jumped out at you. It suddenly appeared out of nowhere: out of the self-activity of vision. (164)

It is worth noting the method of suggestion at work in this passage. Massumi feels and 'you' do not. This is significant because it points to the risk of a surreptitious assumption about the effects in given events and, more seriously, about the types of events associated with scales and types of non-sensual effects, where the virtual encroaches on some prior well-ordered real. Not every event is 'Bam!' Some are 'whisper', 'drip', 'wait', 'nothing', 'brush'. Each one of these is singular and not common. They gain their force, not from a position on a procession to the great events of rupture and disorientation, but from change with no need for a violent work of non-sensuous virtual effects.

However, even if correct, these qualms about direction and absolutes take nothing away from the deep value of Massumi's book, which does not lie in any final conclusions, claims or position. Semblance and Event is not about such conclusions but rather about a sensual and intellectual communication of events and processes. His meditations on art will inspire and reward not only philosophers curious about the aesthetic promise of process philosophy, but also artists and many other practitioners as they seek inspiration from the philosophy of events as co-creation.


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Optoma IntelliGO-S1 Portable Android Operated Projector Review

Portable video projectors are a hot trend these days, with the market dominated by affordable Asian imports. Inexpensive projectors are a topic of debate. Some reviewers say that they’re ground breaking, while others see them as nothing more than disposable toys.

Where should consumers draw the line? Well, that all depends on their intended usage. Pico projectors are popular because they are often 90% cheaper than brand-name hardware. To cut costs, they removed features that typically come standard with brand-name projectors. This is where the debate comes from. For some consumers, the lower specifications work perfectly. In their eyes, a pico-projector is an incredible deal. For others, these projectors don’t provide what used to be a standard feature.

Generally speaking, these projectors can be divided by looking at the imaging technology, size, and light source. Pico projectors are compact and use direct-lit LED displays. Full size projectors have a dedicated lamp, use DLP or indirect lighting systems, and are often fairly large. There are a number of options on each side of the playing field, but it’s rare for manufacturers to blur the line between these contrasting hardware types.

The Optoma IntelliGO-S1 is one of these rare models. We’ve already covered a number of Optoma products and found them to be above average. From their top-tier UHD65 4K projector to the home theater centric HD29 Darbee, Optoma has shown time and time again that they’re committed to creating a great user experience at a low price.

But the IntelliGO-S1 is unlike any of their other models. They’ve created something that looks, feels, and behaves like a pico-projector. Even though the price is much higher than competing models, it’s much lower than full size projectors. Is this the first portable projector that doesn’t make any compromises? Or is this an overpriced alternative trying to compete with more affordable options? To answer this question, we had to put it to the test.

Optoma IntelliGO-S1

First Look

This ultra-compact projector is smaller than most tablets, and weighs less than a pound. It features a large variety of connectivity options, a bright LED light source, and a native resolution of 720p. But what makes it stand out is the inclusion of it’s own operating system. It runs Android 4.4 Kit Kat, providing it with the same features as a modern smart TV. You can stream your content over the network, from an external storage device, or even from your Netflix account.

Design & Durability

Visually speaking, this projector is very much understated. The two-tone plastic enclosure creates a modern, yet subtle accent that would look great in any home theater. While the form factor and construction material are similar to what’s being used in most pico-projectors, the build quality is much better than we’ve come to see. We can’t describe it as anything other than top-notch. From the feel of the buttons to the metal accent around the lens, there is no question about the durability of this projector.

Optoma IntelliGO-S1

Touch sensitive navigation buttons are located on the top of the projector, and are backlit by LEDs. This provides simple navigation, although you’ll want the remote for full control. Strangely enough, the remote is made from white plastic. It doesn’t really match the design of the projector. Beyond that, we don’t have many complaints. It lets you navigate, change the volume, and provides one-touch access to some of the core features and menus.

Cooling vents are located on the front of the projector as well as on the side. There are more vents with most models, but this helps it run quietly. Proper cooling allowed them to offer a 20,000 hour lamp life, which is above average for this form factor. Since LED backlighting isn’t replaceable, a long lamp life is ideal.

Most projectors require that you connect an external video source to use them. If that’s your game plan, Optoma includes a set of ports that should suit almost every application. For HD Video, you’ve got HDMI which supports both MHL and 3D. SD video can be supplied through the dedicated AV ports.

Optoma IntelliGO-S1

But in our eyes, this projector is best used with the included software. You can pair it with your mobile devices via Bluetooth, or connect to the internet through WiFi or Ethernet. External storage devices can be connected to the SD card slot, or one of the USB ports. USB 3.0 is provided for data, while the USB 2.0 port is best used for power.

If you’re connecting external speakers, you’ve got two options. Digital speakers can use Bluetooth, while everything else is covered with the 3.5mm audio output.

Video Quality

The IntelliGO uses an RGB LED direct-lit image source. As a WXGA rated display, you get a resolution of 1280×800. Since 720p is 1280×720, this is technically a pixel perfect 720p video signal. In most video applications, 40 pixels on the top and bottom won’t be used. But if you connect a computer, you’ll be able to get a 16:10 display instead of the standard 16:9.

This resolution is a huge step up from the EDTV resolutions offered by cheaper projectors. Even at large sizes the video is crisp and detailed. But the high resolution isn’t the only thing responsible for the detailed image, it also has to do with the optics. You’re getting 100% glass optics with this projector. There is no blurring, and no distortion. This is one of the few affordable projectors that we’d be more than happy to use as our full time television. Although it’s true that 1080p (or even 4K) would be better, those kinds of resolutions just aren’t available at this price point.

Optoma IntelliGO-S1

At 500 lumens, the brightness of this projector doesn’t seem competitive with the other options out there. After all, some models have double-digit price points and are rated for 1000 lumens. In reality, those other projectors only look more attractive. It’s important to compare apples to apples.

Optoma had this projector rated for 500 ANSI lumens. ANSI is a measurement standard. This measurement describes the amount of light that actually hits your display. Most projectors are providing the brightness of the bulb.

In between the projector and the wall, the light has to pass through the optical system and an LCD display. Just as sunlight gets dimmer as it passes through your sunglasses, what you see on the wall is often much dimmer than the original light output. We’d consider this projector competitive with 1000 or even some 1500 lumen rated models.

What does this mean in the real world? This projector produces a bright, vibrant image in a dim room. You might be able to turn on a lamp, but the darker it is the better. If you plan to use it during the day, you should probably invest in blackout curtains.

Optoma IntelliGO-S1

Smart Functionality

One of our favorite aspects of this projector is that they provide a fully-functional version of the Android Operating system. Any app that works on an Android TV box will work on this projector. For movies and television, we were able to enjoy content through Netflix, Hulu, Flixter, and Kodi. For music, it works great with Spotify, Amazon Music, and Pandora. It comes with the Play Store, so you can access any app available. There are some apps that are only designed to be used with touch screen devices. In those cases, you might run into one or two that doesn’t work. But for the most part, you’ve got access to the full suite of Android software.

The Wowoto H8 – a similar projector that we recently reviewed – had built in screen sharing software. That made it easy to stream games and apps from your Android or Apple mobile device. Unfortunately, Optoma leaves you up to your own devices to get this working. There are apps on the market, but some are paid. We did get screen sharing working with our Android phone, but it required a little fiddling. If you’re looking for a plug and play screen sharing solution, the Wowoto could be a better option.

Optoma IntelliGO-S1

Final Verdict

The Optoma IntelliGO-S1 should be used as a benchmark for what a portable projector can be. It supports HD resolutions, and has an excellent application of the Android ecosystem. It’s well made, easy to use, and provides an excellent user experience.

Most importantly, Optoma doesn’t engage in deceptive marketing practices. These days, using ANSI lumens is rare for portable projectors. There is a good chance that Optoma will lose business by using this rating, as it makes their projector look worse on paper than other models. But they do have a reputation to keep, and the IntelliGO lives up to the high design standard we’ve come to expect from them.

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Sold Prices for Rudlen Cottage Warren Lane, Bury St. Edmunds IP30 9RT

Sold Price details for Rudlen Cottage Warren Lane

Woolpit, Bury St. Edmunds, IP30 9RT

Last Sale Price

£234,000 on 4th Sep 2015 £55,500 on 19th Sep 1996 £178,500 321.62% Increase
4th September 2015 Property sold for £234,000
19th September 1996 Property sold for £55,500

Property Details

This Semi Detached property is a Non-Newbuild and is located at Rudlen Cottage Warren Lane, Bury St. Edmunds IP30 9RT. The most recent sale for this property was recorded on 04/09/2015 for £234,000. The earliest sale for this property was recorded on 19/09/1996 for £55,500. There are currently 33 properties for sale in IP30 with an average asking price £432,836. There are currently 6 properties to rent in IP30 with an average asking rent of £453 PCM.

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Source acknowledgment: This Nethouseprices information is extracted or derived from information produced by Land Registry. © Crown copyright material is reproduced with the permission of Land Registry under delegated authority from the Controller of HMSO. This material was last updated on 01 March 2018. It covers the period from 01 January 1995 to 31 January 2018.

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Associate Manager - HRM Operations

Posting Details

Certain positions will be posted internally for 5 business days from the posting date. External Candidates please be sure to use the External Application form. If the External Application form is not available, this posting is not yet open to External Candidates.

Position Information

Position Title Associate Manager - HRM Operations
Requisition Number STFR004383
Division/College Human Resources Management
Interdisciplinary Division/College
Location Boston Main Campus
Full-time/Part-time Full Time
Grade 12
Posting Date 02/22/2018

The Associate Manager, HRM Operations, leverages strong analytical and sound decision making skills in managing the day-to-day operations and various processes of the HR Operations function. This position oversees the maintenance of employee data (faculty, staff, student employees, and temporary employees) in the HR Systems and provides leadership, guidance and direction to the HR Operations team to ensure accurate, efficient and timely processing of HR-related transactions. Responsible for data integrity and creates various reports and audits (with HRIS) to monitor all transactions and assure accuracy in reporting for all areas relying on HR data. Promptly resolves any issues related to transactions or data. The incumbent participates in projects related to the HRM system and leads user acceptance testing. This role requires building and maintaining relationships with key constituents across the university.

Bachelor’s degree with 4 – 6 years of experience, preferably experience in HR Operations in a higher education environment and in managing a staff. Working knowledge of HR transaction processing and demonstrated experience in achieving process improvements, including utilizing technology to streamline processes. Exceptional management skills and a demonstrated ability to deploy resources appropriately to meet day-to-day deliverables and work load; management oversight of staff, including coaching, delegation and accountability. A proactive, customer-service orientation and able to work in a face-paced, high volume environment. Demonstrates solid judgment in decision making and in regular communications with the appropriate management. Strong analytical skills and strong computer skills (Excel). In depth knowledge of HR & Payroll systems, experience with Banner HR, a plus.

Additional Information

This position requires a background check.

Documents Needed to Apply

Required Documents
  1. Resume
  2. Cover Letter
  3. References
Optional Documents

Posting Specific Questions

Required fields are indicated with an asterisk (*).

Northeastern University is an Equal Opportunity, Affirmative Action Educational Institution and Employer, Title IX University. Northeastern University particularly welcomes applications from minorities, women and persons with disabilities. Northeastern University is an E-Verify Employer.


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my dearest darlingest emlyn.

Emlyn bought me this headband in NYC.  She thought I would like it.  I do.  Apparently, it is a vintage velvet flower glued to a band.

it’s intimidating to work into an outfit. it can’t be too simple or else it looks out of place, but if it’s too intricate, it overwhelms..

3 Responses to “my dearest darlingest emlyn.”

  1. 1 hannah
    January 27, 2010 at 2:18 am

    hey sarah! (this is hannah from cty haha) so again, i love your blog. and i love the vintage flower-y thing and i really wish i could wear the awesome clothes you wear! (:
    alsooooo i adore the shorts/mukluks you have in a post further down… where did you get them?
    THANK YOU!! hopefully i’ll see you this summer, i’m aiming for physics sesh 2. (:

  2. 2 scorbynw
    January 27, 2010 at 9:40 am

    Hey, Hannah! The mukluks are from a store up in the town where I live, the shorts are from Old Navy. I swore off shorts for years (hated my knees) and only recently decided they’re not so bad, and only this past summer started to actually love wearing shorts.

  3. 3 hannah
    January 28, 2010 at 12:45 pm

    ohhh my gosh haha same problem! (although I’m not sure why you think that… :P) I can’t stand my legs! I am loving black tights soo much this winter because they’re so flattering. (: and my fave shorts last summer were from old navy as well (:

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“Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever... it remembers little things, long after you have forgotten everything.”--Aaron Sisking

“When the Devil quotes Scriptures, it’s not, really, to deceive, but simply that the masses are so ignorant of theology that somebody has to teach them the elementary texts before he can seduce them”–Paul Goodman

“Nonsense and beauty have close connections.”--Marquis de Sade

“This is the very perfection of a man, to find out his own imperfections.”--Saint Augustine

" i hope someday, somebody wants to hold you for twenty minutes straight and that's all they do. they don't pull away, they don't look away, they don't try to kiss you. all they do is wrap you up in their arms and hold on tight without an ounce of selfishness to it."--Waitress

“I regret that it takes a life to learn how to live."--Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

“It is not my mode of thought that has caused my misfortunes, but the mode of thought of others”--Marquis de Sade

“Death keeps no calendar”–English Proverb

January 2010
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Fit Tips

A diet rich in Vitamin C can reduce the risk of wrinkles & drying skin.

Shoulder shrugs & other exercises using your trapezoids can reduce chronic neck pain by 80%.

Over 200 species of bacteria are in and amongst the dust at your desk - wipe it down daily with lysol or another disinfectant to prevent sore throats and colds.

Something as simple as eating 2 ounces of yogurt a day (an individual container typically has 6 ounces) can protect you from gum disease.

Get an annual skin check on your scalp to reduce the risk of melanomas. These unseen moles can double your risk of death.

Getting plenty of calcium and Vitamin D daily can decrease your stress levels by 20%.

Wash your sheets in water that's at least 140 F to kill dust mites, and prevent eczema and irritations to sensitive skin.

A 30 minute make out session can improve allergy symptoms.

At the top of your movement in a crunch, exhale forcefully to make your abs work harder.

You can improve your golf skills without evening picking up a club - throw a golf ball at a specific target on the carpet. This alone will help you judge your speed and alignment.

Fitness Survey


text:
Proof that innovation does not have to be expensive, this year's Dyson Prize goes to American designer Isis Shiffer for her invention of the EcoHelmet, a foldable paper helmet that aims to reduce the risk of cyclists getting head injuries for just $5.

While wearing a bicycle helmet is not a silver bullet against accidents, it can reduce the risk of incurring fatal head injuries in the event of one, as various statistics have shown over the years. Shiffer was inspired to come up with the EcoHelmet when she noticed a problem with bike-sharing programs – namely that rental bicycles didn't come with helmets. Tired of lugging her own around and certain that she wasn't the only one, she decided to come up with a solution that would make it easier and safer for more people to ride a bike.

While there have been earlier attempts to come up with a cardboard helmet, they have for the most part been a niche idea. If all goes to plan, the EcoHelmet has the potential to reach a far larger audience. Made from cardstock paper, Shiffer's invention is designed to be affordable, recyclable and safe. Its radial honeycomb cell structure enables it to withstand impact from all directions, protecting the user's head just as well as a regular polystyrene helmet, she says. In a test using a crash-testing rig, it was able to withstand the impact caused by a 10-pound object dropped from a height of three feet.

Shiffer spent a year and a half perfecting the design while still a student at New York's Pratt Institute of Design (she has since graduated) and tested the prototype at Imperial College in London while on an exchange program in the UK. "They had a European standard helmet crash setup that allowed me to gather enough data on Ecohelmet's proprietary honeycomb configuration to know it was viable and worth developing," she said.

Apart from bragging rights, Shiffer also receives £30,000 to further develop her invention as international winner of the James Dyson Award. For a start, further testing needs to be done before it can be sold in the US as federal safety standards require bike helmets to be able to withstand impact from the equivalent of a six-and-a-half feet drop. She has since joined forces with a team of LA-based branding, retail and marketing veterans to realize her goal of bringing the EcoHelmet to market. It is expected to sell for around $5 and its foldable design means we could see it being dispensed from vending machines at bike-share stations.

"EcoHelmet solves an obvious problem in an incredibly elegant way. But its simplicity belies an impressive amount of research and development," commented British inventor James Dyson in a statement. "I look forward to seeing EcoHelmets used in bike shares across the world."

James Dyson tries on the EcoHelmet (Credit: James Dyson Award)

The James Dyson Award is an international competition that challenges design and engineering students and recent graduates to come up with innovative solutions to the world's problems. Previous winning entries have included a beetle-inspired irrigation device that can harvest water from air and a portable inflatable incubator.

The two runners-up for this year's award were asthma management system Respia, which tracks the user's respiratory health and medication intake; and Smart Contact Lens Platform, a non-invasive diabetes management system that lets users measure their blood glucose via a sensor embedded on a contact lens.

Here's Shiffer giving us a closer look at her invention:

View gallery - 11 images


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2014: The End Game in Telecommunications: The Perfect, Man-Made Storm

  • “Since deregulation, landline costs skyrocket. The monthly cost of measured AT&T phone service (in California) has soared more than 260% since 2008.” Los Angeles Times, Dec 6th, 2013
  • “Internet Service Providers Are Now the Most Hated Companies in U.S…” “ISPs received the lowest customer satisfaction ranking of any industry in America. And that’s saying something, considering ACSI (American Customer Satisfaction Index) typically surveys nearly 50 industries per year.” Huffington Post, May 22, 2013
  • “Fire Island Erupts Over Verizon’s Wireless Voice Link. Forget about not being upgraded to fiber optic services. Customers are ‘extremely disappointed,’ ‘horrified,’ ‘very frustrated,’ with ‘grave distress and dissatisfaction’ about Verizon’s plan to stop fixing their phone lines and giving them an inferior wireless replacement, Voice Link, which can’t handle basic services like fax, DSL or even reliable e911 service.” Huffington Post, July 3rd, 2013
  • “Killing Copper? Customers Say They Felt Pressured into FiOS.” “‘Consumers are filing complaints with us alleging that Verizon is engaged in deceptive marketing practices,’ said Eric Friedman, Director of Maryland’s Montgomery County Office of Consumer Protection.” NBC Washington, December 10th, 2013
  • America Is 32nd in the World in Broadband Download Speeds and 42nd in Upload Speeds, Net Index by Ookla, January 1st, 2014

As the above quotes demonstrate, America is not a happy camper with their phone companies, AT&T and Verizon (not to mention their cable companies). But, truth is, the year 2013 will be remembered as the year that, for the first time in telecommunications history, an incumbent utility phone company, Verizon, decided to not repair the customers’ wires after a major storm.

Unfortunately, all of this has just been a prelude to a reduction of business or residential customers’ rights and services throughout the US, regardless of whether the customer is using a wired or wireless phone or who wants broadband or cable competition in 2014.

And this is not about market forces or even technology driving change. This is a man-made storm to make more money and get rid of regulations. The major incumbent phone companies, which also own the largest wireless companies, and who also, with the cable companies, control most of broadband, Internet and cable services, are working together — a ‘cabal,’ a ‘trust,’ or some might call it — Mob Bell.

We are all for capitalism and making hefty profits in a free market. This ain’t that. The incumbent companies are utilities that control essential infrastructure and instead of competition they are now colluding in multiple ways and have figured out how to have the government protect them — as a group. It harms the U.S. economy and it harms every customer in multiple ways.

The Perfect, Man-Made Storm: The End Game in Telecommunications

The 2013 scorecard shows that America has been under attack by the companies, who are taking more and more control by erasing oversight, regulation and obligations.

  • Buying the Takeover of Telecom. In just three years, 2011-2013, five companies — AT&T, Verizon, Centurylink, Comcast and Time Warner, and the cable association, NCTA, spent an estimated $227 million dollars in federal lobbying and campaign financing. This is separate from the state lobbying, foundation grants or sponsorships. (Source of the basic data: Opensecrets.org)
  • 30 States have Stripped Away Some, if Not Almost All Basic Telecommunications Regulations, Obligations and Oversight. In Florida, the state commission was defunded in many areas and they can’t even ask the phone companies how many lines are in service. And the state law removed most of the obligations including ‘carrier of last resort’ — the obligation to make sure that customers have access to wireline phone service or that the company repairs the lines after a storm. It also allows the company to force customers onto their own wireless company-supplied service — or just dump the customer.
  • The Rise of ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council in Telecommunications. ALEC is a group designed to facilitate their corporate members, such as AT&T and Verizon, in creating ‘model legislation’ that is used by ALEC-member state legislators, many of whom are funded by these same corporations with campaign financing or ‘foundation grants’ for their districts.
  • 2014 Goal: The changes in the 30 states were based on ALEC’s model legislation and the 2014 goal is to finish the job in the remaining states.
  • NOTE: In December, 2013, FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai congratulated ALEC on its ‘model legislation’ that pushed the strip-mining of the regulations.
  • The AT&T-FCC IP Transition is in Full Swing at the FCC. This federal campaign is based on essentially the same AT&T conjured state-based model legislation. The FCC has created a Technology Transition Task Force to force this transition, even though it has little to do with technology and everything to do with AT&T’s plan to make more money and get rid of regulatory oversight.
  • The Telco Congressional Campaign has Started. With 30 states now swallowed by AT&T, Verizon and Centurylink’s strip-mining of regulations, there’s a new cry from telco-friendly Congressional politicians to start erasing the entire Telecommunications Act of 1934, updated in 1996.
  • 19 States Restricted Municipalities from offering Competitive Broadband. At last count, this other telco-cable-ALEC based model legislation and campaign helped to restrict, if not completely stop municipalities from offering competitive broadband services, even when the incumbents were never going to do it.
  • Hyped and Manipulated Data Are Now the Standard. From the ‘wireless only’ statistics, which only represent residential voice service and no data or business services, to the ‘access line accounting’ that doesn’t include the majority of data lines in service, such as DSL to U-Verse TV, the companies have skillfully been able to bring in reasonable sounding, but ‘distorted’ statistics to make their case.
  • No More Serious High Speed Wired Deployments or Cable Competition. Verizon announced that it is no longer going to expand its FiOS deployment outside of the current ‘footprint’. Meanwhile, AT&T has stated it will be building out some more of U-Verse, its ‘copper-to-the-home’ service, but in the end, AT&T will service less than 50% of their territory with TV capable services — in 22 states.
  • As noted, America is 32nd in broadband download speeds and it is going to get worse due to this slowdown in upgrading the wired networks.
  • The Wireline-Wireless-Cable Collusion. Verizon’s wireless company isn’t competing with the wireline company and Verizon has a deal with the cable companies to bundle their cable services with wireless in areas they aren’t upgrading. Moreover, customers can’t get competitive broadband, Internet or cable services over the wires coming into their homes

And the Implications Are Pretty Horrific. The Apparent AT&T and Verizon Plan:

  • Let the copper wiring degrade — which appears to have been the plan for the last decade. Then they can claim it has ‘chronic problems.’
  • Close down the copper wiring in areas they don’t want to serve and push these customers onto wireless — which they also own.
  • Close down the copper wiring in areas that are considered the ‘upgraded’ networks — Verizon’s FiOS or AT&T’s U-Verse — and force customers to migrate to ‘upsell them’.
  • ‘Harvest’ all customers who don’t want to switch with continuous rate increases — or until they scream uncle.
  • Get the state and federal regulators to allow them to do these actions without any regulations or push-back.
  • Keep competitors and business segments that depend on copper off the networks and take over their clients. This includes the remaining competitors, companies offering cloud services, and the alarm industry.
  • ‘Vertically integrate,’ meaning allow only the companies’ broadband, Internet, phone or cable affiliates to use the wires and give them advantages to harm competition of any sort.

How Many People are Impacted by All of these Maneuvers?

Regardless of what the companies say, using their own data, closing whole areas of the U.S. will impact everyone including small businesses, residential customers, schools, libraries, municipalities, among others. And this won’t be only in rural areas. We found:

  • AT&T’s U-Verse is probably 99 percent copper-to-the-home. Out of 76 million locations, AT&T only has 5 million U-Verse TV locations–less than 7 percent.
  • AT&T could be abandoning 57 percent of customers,
  • Verizon also only 5 million households have FiOS TV out of 27 million households in its territories–only 18 percent of households. 82 percent of the wires are still copper.
  • Verizon could be abandoning 47 percent of customers.

Not a Fair Fight: There’s No Level Playing Field.

With a cabal of companies and their associations spending $227 million on federal lobbying in just three years — that over $70 million a year, (and as mentioned, this doesn’t including state lobbying and campaign financing, foundation grants or sponsorships) and our side spending… well, squat, there is no even playing field.

The Creation of Mob Bell: The Return of Humpty Dumpty.

In 1984, the original AT&T was broken up because it blocked competition. Seven ‘Baby Bells’ were created, each controlling specific states. And there were also independent local companies, such as GTE.

AT&T became a ‘long distance’ company, and there was also the maverick MCI. In 1996, the Telecom Act was created to open up the wires to all forms of competition –phone or broadband or Internet or even video service. AT&T and MCI entered the local phone markets, as did thousands of independent Internet Service Providers and CLECs (Competitive Local Exchange Companies).

(NOTE: Every ‘triple play’ still has a ‘long distance’ charge for ‘interstate’ calls, i.e., calls made across state lines, and there are separate related taxes, fees and surcharges.)

During the 1980’s and 1990’s, AT&T, MCI and the other competitors acted as a ‘balance’ to the force. By 2007, the Baby Bells married each other, the FCC removed requirements to let competitors use the networks and AT&T and MCI were bought. Three mega-Bells were formed– AT&T, Verizon and Centurylink — that don’t compete for wireline services, even though every merger was predicated on them going at it.

Today, there aren’t any deep-pocket companies who currently act as a balancing force. Google, Microsoft and Apple and many other Tech companies have deals with the network providers so they aren’t going to stand up for the public. And with the recent rash of the telco-ALEC bills defunding the state commissions, severely limiting their oversight, and a dysfunctional FCC, there is no balance for the public interest.

How can AT&T in California raise rates 260% over the last few years, with similar rate increases happening throughout the US, for example, if there was real competition?

Conclusion: The Squeeze Play Is On.

The public is totally unaware of these issues and much of the press appears to simply parrot the corporate press releases. However, as the opening quotes detail, customers may have started to notice the problems when it impacts them.

The question is: Will the telcos be able to buy the changes they want and fool the public and politicians and thus have carte blanche to simply raise rates, shut off customers, force-migrate them to their own affiliate wireless companies or onto their other services they don’t want, with no force to compel them to upgrade ALL of the utility customers?

Don’t Get Mad: Get Even.

Over the next few weeks, we will be offering our own plan for the future.

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This year, like every other year, is shaping up to be a triumphant one for Amazon. It is on the cusp of becoming the first trillion dollar company ever. In the coming months it will announce the opening of a second headquarters—and likely bank billions in tax breaks and other incentives from the lucky city it chooses to grace with its presence. The company’s founder and CEO Jeff Bezos will continue to be the richest person in the history of the world. Amazon will continue to grow at a rapid clip, gobbling up e-commerce market share and posting staggering revenues. It will even post profits. And it will pay next to nothing, and possibly nothing at all, in federal taxes.

Earlier this week, Matthew Gardner of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy reported that Amazon, which recorded $5.6 billion in profits in 2017, paid zero in federal taxes, thanks to “various tax credits and tax breaks for executive stock options.” That’s remarkable in isolation, but especially remarkable when you consider that Donald Trump’s corporate tax bill hadn’t even gone into effect; Amazon projects it will get an additional $789 million in benefits from the passage of that bill. And it’s even more remarkable given that Amazon was already paying a much lower rate than other companies. The tax bill may have cut the corporate tax rate from 35 to 20 percent, but Amazon had paid only an 11 percent rate over the previous five years, meaning that “the company was able to shelter more than two-thirds of its profits from tax during that five-year period,” Gardner wrote.

Tax avoidance is not new to Amazon. “More so than any company I can think of,” Gardner told me,  “Amazon appears to have built their profit maximization strategy around avoiding taxes at various levels.” Amazon has used local, state, and federal tax laws to its benefit, while doing everything in its power to avoid posting profits. (The stock market rewards the company anyway, as it uses its low-profit strategy to decimate competitors and swallow up industries.) It’s reached the point where Amazon, over the past few years, has made an effort to pay some tax—largely, it seems, to avoid bad press.

The fact that it paid a zero percent rate in 2017 comes at an awkward time. As Amazon forces cities and states to offer it tax breaks for its new headquarters, combined with the hundreds of millions of dollars it will rake in next year from the tax bill, the company has become an outlier in the fierce competition to game the system, snatching the crown from Apple to become the country’s most prominent tax grifter. It has done this by being aggressively innovative, but it has reached a new stage in which it has become too successful—too big, if you will—to tax.

Exploiting tax loopholes is one of Amazon’s most important long-term strategies. As Splinter’s Emma Roller noted earlier this week, Bezos initially wanted to build Amazon’s headquarters on a Bay Area Native American reservation in order to receive a generous tax break from California. The deal fell through and Amazon landed in Seattle, but the pursuit of tax breaks continued. For years, Amazon’s exponential growth was fueled by its refusal to collect state taxes on transactions—the company once distributed color-coded maps to staffers indicating which states they could travel to without attracting the attention of tax collectors. Amazon only began collecting sales tax in all 50 states in April of last year, 20 years after it went public.

Because it has rarely been profitable—Bezos’s strategy has been to reinvest money toward growth, rather than waste it on dividends or taxes—Amazon has largely been able to skirt large tax bills. A year ago, Scott Galloway ran the numbers and was troubled by what he found:

The most disturbing stat in business? Since 2008 Walmart has paid $64 billion in corporate income tax, while Amazon has paid $1.4 billion. This is despite the fact that, in the last 24 months, Amazon has added the value of Walmart to its market cap. The most uncomfortable question in business, in my view, is how do we pay our soldiers, firefighters, and teachers if a firm can ascend to $460 billion in value (#5 in the world) without paying any meaningful corporate taxes.

This is quite a deal. Federal and state governments have essentially doled out tens of billions of dollars to Amazon, not to mention all the benefits the company and its employees reap (soldiers, firefighters, teachers, etc.) from being an American company. Despite this, Amazon has spent the past year going to localities around the country and asking for even more tax breaks.

In the first round of bidding, those localities delivered. Philadelphia offered $3 billion. Montgomery County, Maryland, offered $5 billion. Newark, New Jersey, offered $7 billion. While the second round of HQ2 bids have not been made public yet, Amazon has created a nationwide race to the bottom, in which cities offer billions in return for what can generously be described as a questionable return on investment.

Amazon’s federal tax avoidance is problematic for obvious reasons, but the federal government can do without the billions the company has not paid over the past 20 years. “It’s one thing for the federal government to delay or even forego entirely collecting taxes on profitable corporations,” Gardner told me. “But even as a one-shot deal, the prospect of state and local governments giving up billions of dollars of tax revenue has a real cost. It endangers the state and local governments to pay for services for the rest of us.”

Amazon received these generous bids because it would have been political malfeasance for mayors, governors, and other civic leaders to avoid playing ball—no one wants to be blamed for losing out on a chance at hosting Amazon’s headquarters. But, as Amazon’s federal tax avoidance schemes show, it’s not clear that cities and states will benefit. Yes, some economic development will follow Amazon. Yes, there will be an infusion of well-paid, non–tax-avoiding Amazon employees. But by effectively paying hundreds of thousands of dollars per employee, those benefits may be cancelled out. It’s quite literally a zero-sum game.

All of this points to the larger absurdity at the center of Amazon’s rise. In interviews, Jeff Bezos repeatedly touts Amazon’s ability to meet the needs of its consumers and to win over new ones. The company has been built, in his telling, on its relentless drive to put the customer first. And yet Amazon also takes from that very consumer. Despite being among the most successful companies of all time, Amazon still acts—and is still treated like—a young upstart in need of perks to grow.

Amazon has turned into a coddled behemoth. It will likely hit the one trillion dollar mark right around the time that it’s breaking ground on a second headquarters—a headquarters that it will effectively be paid to build. And it will celebrate the feat by paying a pittance in federal taxes.


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Solar Powered Tiki Lights How-To

Looks like it’s lighting day at Critiki News! Tikiwahine has put together detailed, step-by-step photos and instructions for the creation of a solar-powered tiki light for use outdoors. Using a string of common tiki patio lights, and a set of rather plain solar-powered lights, and some other common pieces of hardware, she was able to create six colored plastic tiki lights that collect solar energy during the day, and provide just the right glow to her jungle at night. She has also generously offered to sell these lights to anyone who doesn’t feel up to making them.

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My Travels: The State of Portland Tiki in 2017

Our family travel plans for early 2017 kept changing on us, and ultimately fate sent us on a road trip to Oregon.

The first leg of our trip was in central Oregon, and I have nothing to report because it is a tiki desert. I’m not going to stop pleading until it happens (or my family moves away from Bend): someone, please, open a tiki bar in Bend.

But the second leg was in tiki-dense Portland. Even with the loss of its Trader Vic’s (RIP), it remains one of the better tiki destination towns out there. I’m in Portland relatively frequently, but there have been a ton of changes since my last visit, and I had a lot of exploring to do.

The Tiki Putt in Gresham, Oregon

The Tiki Putt

The Tiki Putt is in Gresham, a suburb on the northeast side of Portland, and was right on the drive from Bend. Literally, no detour needed, it’s right on the path. My expectations were low, low, low, but I am a completist, so of course I was going to stop. I’m so glad I did!

Some care went into this! A scene at the Tiki Putt in Gresham, Oregon

Some of the tiki here is admittedly on the cringe-inducingly cheesy side, but if you can look beyond that, there are some beautifully constructed scenes and murals. It looks like they did a first quick pass with 2D elements, then brought someone in to do some more immersive scene work.

The lava tube at the Tiki Putt in Gresham, Oregon, photo by KevinCrossman

Critiki member KevinCrossman recently commented that it’s not great as a mini golf course, and I can believe that. Notable exception: the nifty, swirling “lava tube” hole that goes right through the volcano. Overall, keep those expectations low when you visit—but I’ll be back. I can’t help but imagine a big ol’ party full of tiki lovers decked in their best black light aloha wear. Wouldn’t that be a blast?

I added 37 pictures to the Critiki listing for The Tiki Putt.

The Alibi in Portland, Oregon

The Alibi

Of all the tiki spots I was going to visit on my trip, The Alibi was the one that had me holding my breath. A rare classic mid-century tiki bar, The Alibi is living Polynesian pop history, and when it dies someday, we can never have it back again. It has survived for a long time thanks to the steady hands of its managers. While it’s true that the drinks it served could be downright dreadful, I’m not going to question what they did, because it worked. In the 1980s and ’90s, when all the other great old tiki bars were closing, The Alibi remained.

But now, for the first time in many years, it is under new management, the same folks behind the lauded refresh of the historic Sandy Hut in Portland. They closed The Alibi briefly for a quick refurb, and reportedly had upped the cocktail game. Would it still be The Alibi that lives in my heart? One of my favorite places on the planet?

Side and back room at The Alibi

YES. The clean-up was just that: a clean-up. It is the same Alibi, it just looks better than it has in years. If anything, the reality now better matches the rose-tinted vision that lives in my brain. (Though I will miss the weird saloon-door bathroom stall in the ladies room, I must concede that the new setup is far more functional.) And the cocktails—they could only be better—are indeed noticeably upgraded, a giant leap for The Alibi. It’s still a solid notch below the top-tier craft cocktail tiki joints, and that is a-okay with me.

The light-blocking barrel entrance to The Alibi

There is a right way and a wrong way to go to The Alibi. The wrong way: go at night, be bombarded by karaoke, a very young party crowd, and all the wrong music. The right way: go for lunch. There are no windows at The Alibi, and a barrel entryway locks the light out. The place will be a proper dark lounge: a calming space where you can luxuriate, enjoy conversation with your friends, and feel no pressure to give up your seats for waiting customers. You can ask the bartender to put on Exotica music (they have a playlist!), and order yourself a flaming pu-pu platter. While you’re there, drink a toast to the karaoke-loving evening shift kids who keep this place in business for you to enjoy.

I’ve added 30 pictures to the Critiki listing for The Alibi.

Hale Pele in Portland, Oregon

Hale Pele

Hale Pele has also quietly undergone some shifts in upper management, though the day-to-day team that makes the magic happen is still the same. I didn’t expect to notice much of a change, and I didn’t, my experience there was as lovely as ever. It remains one of the hottest spots in Portland despite its out-in-the-neighborhoods location; if you want to bring a big group with you, be sure to reserve the Hut well in advance. You won’t find a (public) tiki bar with better drinks in Portland, plus outstanding decor, plus perfect mood music, plus smiling service… it’s a regular on Critiki’s Ten Best Tiki Bars in the World list for a reason.

I’ve added two pictures to the Critiki listing for Hale Pele.

No Bones Beach Club in Portland, Oregon

No Bones Beach Club

This was my first visit to No Bones Beach Club, which also has a location in Seattle. No Bones is all vegan fare, with a portion of proceeds donated to animal causes. The decor is definitely more “beach” than “tiki,” a bit more airy and surfy than most places in Critiki, but there are a few neat elements.

Tiki at No Bones Beach Club

The food was a very pleasant surprise: it was outstanding. No one in our party is vegan, but each of us was raving about our meal. As for the drinks… oh dear, let’s see… did I mention that they make very good food?

I’ve added 13 pictures to the Critiki listing for No Bones Beach Club.

The Monkey Hut in Portland, Oregon, photo by Kamala Kingsley for Hana Hou!

The Monkey Hut

What if I told you there is a tiki bar in Portland that is even better than Hale Pele? You won’t get better tiki drinks anywhere than the ones a The Monkey Hut. The bartender makes each one special just for you, tailored to exactly your tastes, with his own syrups created with a persnickety attention to history and detail. Every ingredient is worth a deep dive, and you can taste the results.

Drinks at the Monkey Hut, photo by Kamala Kingsley for Hana Hou!

And the bar is dark, so dark… full of artifacts, each with a story. Lots of Polynesian pop history to be had here. The music is enchanting, the company only delightful… and it’s kid-friendly, to boot! Naturally, a place this good comes with a catch: it’s a home tiki bar. Craig “Colonel Tiki” Hermann and Heather “Tiki Mama” Gregg are some of my dearest and oldest tiki friends, and they were the ones I was coming to Portland to visit. It’s a wonder I made it to any of the other tiki spots in Portland, but I’m nothing if not dedicated. You may not be able to visit the Monkey Hut yourself, but you can make a virtual visit thanks to video from the Q&A session we broadcast during a party at the Monkey Hut.

I did not take any pictures of the Monkey Hut, I had been transported to a realm where devices don’t matter and was enjoying the company of my hosts. Here is the Critiki listing for The Monkey Hut, and here is a gallery of pictures taken by Kamala Kingsley for the Hana Hou! home tiki bars article.

This was my first time doing a bit of tiki traveling since rolling out Critiki’s Upcoming Visits feature, which lets you post on Critiki about your travel plans so that the locals can come meet you. (Locals can follow their nearby tiki locations and get notified of these upcoming visits.) By golly, it worked! Mahalo to all of the wonderful new people I met on this trip, and hooray for getting to reconnect with some old friends, too.

One thought on “My Travels: The State of Portland Tiki in 2017

  1. Glad you had a good time in Stumptown. I moved away 5 years ago and still miss it. I pop into The Tiki Putt everytime I make it back to Gresham. The rotating lava tube of death remains my favorite!

    Liked by 1 person

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Child development in the best way

Is your child getting developed in a proper way? If you do not know the answer, read this to know the status of your child’s development. In this age of competition, it is very tough to reach the position of your expectation without tenacity and hard work. The children should be taught with this mentality, so that it helps them in the long run.

But considering their future, we are ruining their present in a bad way. May be, after a few years, our children will not know, what a playground is! This fact is really threatening. Though, you may feel that you are brightening the future of your child, but it is not an all-round child development. An all-round child development means many things.

The ways of proper development

A child at a small age should be allowed to play, learn, read and do all those things, which you too did at your childhood. Though, you did not have so much of competition for your time, but lack of all-round development will surely hinder a child’s development at a matured age. A time will come, when they will be fed up with studies and all those stuff.

Maybe, that will be the most important part of their career. But on the other hand, the children, who enjoyed all the things in their childhood, will never face such difficulties and thus, they will actually be successful. The only way to eradicate this difficulty is to permit them do, whatever they want to do.

Hopefully, this kind of child development will never suffocate them and thus they will be successful. Visit our website daily for more topics like these, our research work can help you to manage your child development. According to the studies by newspsychology website you can get a lot of solutions to your psychological issues, with our vast well research studies will definitely help you.

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Trust College Job circular in August 2016 |

Trust College Job circular in August 2016

Hello BD Jobs Seeker, Welcome to the Jobs | Are you looking for all about the Trust College Job circular in August 2016  bdjobs circular / Chakrir khobor details here. This circular is available and you can see here all information for getting job.

trust college logo

Currently the company is looking for young, dynamic and energetic young candidate to work with the core management team .If you really looking for this Jobs, Please Read the below content carefully to get the perfect full perception. We collected for you Trust College Job circular in August 2016 Government / Private / Bank Job Vacancies Full information. Apply Now!! The circular details are following bellow:

Trust College Job circular in August 2016

Trust College, founded in 2005, born out of a vision Mr Bashir Ahmed Bhuiyan, Founder and Principal of Trust College long ago foresaw during his prolonged teaching career. With his singular pursuit to circulate the aroma of quality and calibrated education.

Post Name: Lecturer – (Class XI – XII) Physics/ Chemistry/ Mathematics/ Biology/ ICT

Institute Name: Trust College

Number of job vacancies: 02 positions for each subject (10)

Type of Jobs: Education

Job category: Full Time

Job Level: Entry / Mid / Top Level

Job description / Responsibilities: To initiate all obligations in teaching, curriculum development and course management supporting the academic activities.

  • To take responsibility for the development and delivery of learning, teaching materials, and assessment as per the guidance of the relevant Education Board and the Institution’s Policy.
  • To demonstrate inventive approaches of teaching and support for students through the use of a wide range of learning resources.
  • To undertake any work assigned by the College Authority possibly with a range of external counterpart(s).
  • To contribute to the promotion and external profile of the College, attend training course/meeting/seminar(s) and many more.
  • To coordinate between the Institution-Student-Guardian(s).
  • To perform academic administration & other activities as and when required (exam proctoring, viva conducting, registration duty etc.)
  • To assess students which include monitoring monthly attendance, setting and marking assignments/class tests/ term papers/ finals, and maintaining academic discipline.

Educational Requirements:

  • Must have a B.SC and M.Sc in the relevant subject from any reputed university.
  • NTRCA registered are ONLY eligible to apply

Experience Requirements: Substantial teaching experience on the relevant subject at a reputed Institution will be given preference

Additional Job Requirements:

  • Training(s) on teaching-methodology from reputed Institutions will be given a priority.
  • Be able to communicate in Bengali & English fluently and consequently teach in both versions as per the Education Board’s guidance.
  • Good knowledge in class controlling and student dealing is essentially required.

Other Benefits: As per college policy

Salary: Negitiable

Jobs Location: Dhaka

Age limit for jobs: Age 26 to 40 year(s)

Job Posting Date: 24th August 2016

Jobs Deadline: 23rd September 2016

Jobs Source:

Web Address: N/A

Address: N/A

TRUST College circular

Conclusion About Jobs:

Dear Bangladeshi Job seeker! No need more words require about the ****  jobs information in this session of this content. If you require knowing more information or complain about this, Just place a comment & make sure that, you don’t send Personal any information via the Comment section. Thanks for visiting us.


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Hoooo Am I?

5 Oct

1.  If you could add one room to our house, what would it be?

The room I lost when I moved to this house – a craft room!  Somewhere where all my supplies can be easily accessed, with good lighting a large roomy work table.  I do a lot less now, in part because it’s such a pain to get to what I need.
2. How many pillows do you sleep with at night?
A bunch – I think there are currently 4 regular pillows, 1 memory foam pillow, and 1 body pillow.
3. What is the best costume you’ve ever worn for Halloween?
Glinda the Good, the MGM version – big floofy hair, a very tall translucent and glittered crown, a large disgustingly sweet pink dress… I spent the night making my voice sound like hers and annoying everyone.
4. If you could erase one item off the face of the earth, what would it be?
Um…. er….  Beavis and Butthead reruns?
5. Where do you do your best thinking?
In my thinking chair!  Where I sit and think…think…think…

2 Responses to “Hoooo Am I?”

  1. Tiffany October 5, 2010 at 8:20 pm #

    Hear Hear on wiping out Beavis & Butthead!

  2. Kat October 5, 2010 at 10:57 pm #

    Hope you can find some kind of a craft are for yourself again.

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Testing the Teachers

More and more our educational system is using paper and pencil multiple choice tests to stand for educational accountability and high standards. While the use of these tests on our children is ruining meaningful instruction in our schools, in this column I am going to address how these same types of tests are keeping qualified teachers out of our schools.

Teachers in California have been subjected to multiple choice tests as a requirement for entering the field for many decades. However, their use has recently increased, as has their difficulty, in the name of raising standards. Teachers currently have to pass the CBEST, a reading, writing and arithmetic test very similar in form to the standardized tests grade school children take. Teacher candidates have been required to pass this test now for many years before or during their student teaching. Recently another test has been added, a subject area test known as the CSET. This test is considerably harder (though no more relevant to the practice of teaching), and must be passed before a teacher candidate may even begin student teaching. Besides this test, there is the RICA, which is focused on the teaching of language arts. It requires that the teacher demonstrate that they have learned the methods of teaching reading currently in favor by the state (though many renown learning theorists do not agree with the practices that the test advocates).

The argument is that these tests assure the public that our teachers enter the schools with a set of basic skills necessary to anyone who will teach our children. However, do they measure up to that? I would argue not. A recent piece of evidence is that a number of past graduates of the program where I currently teach, who became teachers before the requirement to pass the CSET before entering teaching, have been unable to pass it since. These teachers are currently teaching in our public schools. They have been evaluated in their actual practice as competent and even outstanding teachers. Yet, because they have not passed this paper and pencil test, these dedicated teachers may no longer be able to serve the needy youngsters of our public schools. Therefore, either those who are in a position to actually see these teachers in action, and see the results of their teaching with the children, are wrong, or these tests are screening out qualified candidates.

A further factor in the negative impact of these tests is that those who have the most difficulty passing these tests are disproportionately students of color and under-represented minorities. The percentage of teachers of color compared to the student body in California is extremely low. While the number of minorities in the teaching force has been increasing over the last few decades, over the last ten years this increase has been extremely slow. In fact, from 1998 to 2004 there was practically no increase in the percentage of teachers of color (from 24% to 25%). This means that the gap between teachers of color and students of color is widening as more of our students come from minority backgrounds (growing from 62% to 66% during that same period). Therefore, over the last decade our teachers have become less representative of the student body than they were.

In the name of high standards, we have instituted mindless tests that have little or nothing to do with the qualities we need in teachers. I believe we should eliminate these tests. Schools of education have plenty of means of screening out unqualified candidates by actually examining their academic work as well as the practical work they do in the field.

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Nichols and Dimes

Innovative Basketball Research

My Thoughts on Team Chemistry

Although it would be silly for me to try to speak for everyone, I would guess that the modern NBA “stathead” thinks the whole notion of team chemistry is ridiculous.  The fact that team chemistry can’t be statistically measured isn’t our beef with it (we acknowledge there are a lot of things that can’t be measured).  The problem is that team chemistry is usually the catch-all reason for why teams are good when it doesn’t seem like they should be.  Stats guys tend to take a more scientific look at things.  They often see things that explain why these teams mysteriously play so well.  Maybe a team has an efficient offense that is much better than it looks because it plays at a slow pace and doesn’t score a ton of points every game.  Maybe it has some players that are considered “scrubs” by most people but are surprisingly adept at defense.  Or maybe the team is just lucky.

Whatever the case may be, I’ve historically never been a fan of talk of team chemistry, intangibles, and all the warm and fuzzy things that help NBA fans sleep at night.  As I wrote in one of my previous articles,

“The problem is when things like locker room chemistry are given as reasons for team success.  It’s easy to pick examples of teams that have won with a group of players that got along and shared the same mentality, but it is just as easy to pick examples of teams that were quite the opposite.  Michael Jordan once punched out Steve Kerr in practice, and MJ often verbally tormented his players.  Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant led the Lakers to three championships despite not being the best of friends.  Dwyane Wade and Gary Payton exchanged verbal jabs with each other during a playoff series last year against the Bulls, and then held up the championship trophy a few weeks later.”

With all that being said, I’ve warmed up to the idea very slowly.  The Celtics last year at least made you think a little bit about all those intangible things.  I will never feel that teams need to be large groups of best friends to win, but I will admit that a strong team philosophy that includes hustle and teamwork (especially on the defensive end) is crucial to winning it all.  As someone who tries to get people to look at defense too when analyzing players, it would be foolish of me not to concede that.  The key is just not taking things too far.  Cute off-the-court stories make for good newspaper articles, but they generally don’t make people better at playing the game of basketball.

October 3, 2008 - Posted by | Commentary

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Poached Eggs Paprika

Published August 20, 2015 by Ninik Becker

Spaghetti poached egg paprika

Poached Eggs Paprika recipe by Ninik Becker.

This recipe is inspired from ‘Shakshouka’. The difference is, in this recipe I used very simple seasonings and added carrots, and eat it with spaghetti.

Ingredients :

  • 5 eggs
  • 1 red bell pepper, cut into strips
  • 1 yellow bell pepper, cut into strips
  • 1 medium carrots, cut into strips
  • 1 yellow onion, finely slice into half ring
  • 3 cloves garlic, finely sliced
  • 1 or 2 ripe tomato, chopped
  • 1 tsp paprika powder
  • 1 tsp red chilli powder, optional
  • pinch of salt, pepper, sugar. Adjusted
  • 300 ml chicken broth/water
  • olive oil

Paprika ingredients

Heat one or two tablespoon of olive oil, sauté onion and garlic until softened, add carrot strips. Stir briefly and add all paprika strips into the pan, stir to coat evenly.

Add chopped tomato, paprika powder, chilli powder, salt, pepper, sugar. Stir well to combined.

Cook paprika until softened

Pour chicken broth /water into the pan and bring to boil. Lower the heat and cook until vegetables softened and the liquid slightly reduced. Adjust the seasoning to your taste.

Crack eggs one by one into the pan.

Crack egg into the pan

Poach the eggs in the paprika sauce until the whites set and firm, the egg yolk still soft, and the sauce thickened.

Poached eggs paprika

Cook spaghetti according to the package instructions, put on the serving plate and spoon poached eggs paprika over the spaghetti, enjoy while still hot.

Spaghetti Shakshouka

Enjoy !

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Randomness: Health & Body

So random question – I’m thinking of maybe sort of recording digitally, through blog or photos or video or all three, my current poking and plodding through the new-to-me world of vegetarian foods, frugal eating, health, exercise. I’m unsure where to home it. I think Instagram and YouTube hold the most promise in terms of potentially monetizing things in the future, but I’m not certain I’m up to trying to keep up with another set of platforms. I like having my blog here, and I like being able to put whatever I want here (on Nickified.com – I know it also goes elsewhere), but this is me and writing, not me and health, food, or fitness.

Do you think I should just set up a side blog?

Or if I do this, should I keep it here with perhaps a special featured image and content behind a “More” tag so people who aren’t interested don’t have to slog through it?

2 Replies to “Randomness: Health & Body”

  1. I think a fair amount of writers, being people who tend to sit quite a bit, might share your interests.

    Also, if you ever write a character, perhaps a series, who shares your health and food views, having those on your blog might up your credibility and make you more interesting to readers who share the journey. Just a thought.

    1. I think I’m going to keep it apart for now. Just for a bit. Then I can do weird things comfortably until I’m comfortable with them. I can merge later I think. 🙂

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From Kenan Maliks blog Pandaemonium.

Last October I wrote an essay about the decision of the European Court of Justice to deny a patent to the German neuroscientist Oliver Brüstle who had developed a method for turning human embryonic stem cells into neurons which could then be transplanted into patients with diseases such as Parkinson’s. The Court had decided that no patent could be valid on a process that involved the destruction of an embryo; such a patent was subversive of ‘human dignity’ and hence ’immoral’ and contrary to ‘public order’. I was critical of the Court’s decision, and equally so of Greenpeace, the organization that had brought the case before the Court:

If the court judgment is difficult to fathom, the attitude of Greenpeace is even more so.  So hostile has the organization become to ‘big science’ that it is happy to line up with some of the most reactionary and obnoxious groups in Europe and jeopardize vital medical research… It is about time we stopped indulging theologians and Luddites in the absurd myth that they occupy the moral high ground. They don’t. They are using moral norms drawn from dogmatic and reactionary visions of life to prevent the practical alleviation of human suffering.

A version of that post was published in the Swedish newspaper Götesborg-Posten. Greenpeace took umbrage at my criticism of the organisation, and its Swedish campaign director Patrik Eriksson wrote a reply, to which I responded. I am publishing here Eriksson’s reply to my original essay (translated into English) together with my response.

‘Greenpeace stands up in defence of free and independent science’

In response to  Kenan Malik’s essay in Göteborgs-Posten, in which he accuses the environmental group Greenpeace of opposing stem cell research, we want to make clear our views. First, I want to state clearly that Greenpeace is not opposed to stem cell research. We do not regard embryonic stem cell research as unethical. Nor do we take a stand as to whether or not a cluster of non-predetermined cells, so-called stem cells, should be regarded as a human being, and, thus, we are not opposed to the destruction of stem cells. Greenpeace is a religiously and politically independent organization, and does not support socially conservative arguments as Kenan Malik  claims.

Access to embryonic stem cells is essential for scientists looking for a cure for severe diseases, such as multiple sclerosis or other neurological conditions. The issue at hand, however, is the risk that patenting of human embryos could lead to commercial exploitation of the human body. This is banned under the European Union Patent directive (98/44, Art.6), as well as in many individual countries and in the UN Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine, dated 4th April, 1997. Malik paints a picture where patents are a prerequisite for science. This is a skewed view of reality. On one hand, patents can protect those who invest in medical research and manufacturing of remedies. But these are far from the only tools available – trade secrets, for example, can be maintained without patents. On the other hand, patents might become an iron wall excluding a majority of scientists searching for similar remedies but lacking the patent owner’s privileged access. Publicly funded scientists will then be forced to spend taxpayers’ money to buy access to data owned by private interests. As a consequence, a patent would impede progress.

Kenan Malik clearly did not understand what the challenge was about, nor the results of the court judgment. Because of the challenge to Brüstle’s patent, the European Court of Justice was forced to create a framework for what should be considered as acceptable in the relationship between science and patents. For science, just as for any activity, there must be a clearly defined set of rules and a framework, so that research can be conducted in a way that is acceptable for society. Such frameworks are nothing new or controversial, but have for a long time been a characteristic of medical research in particular. In addition, there has been a long-standing demand for a distinct framework for science, both from the pharmaceutical industry and the scientific community. So it is good that the European Court of Justice has been forced to revise the rules and regulations for patents based on stem cell research and make its standpoint clear.

This is, in other words, all about establishing limits for what a company should be able to patent, not about science as such. We strongly object to Malik’s accusations that Greenpeace is ‘hostile to big science’, his attributing to us certain alleged ‘moral’ views that we have never held, as well as claims that we have raised objections against the destruction of stem cells or embryos. So let us be explicit: Greenpeace stands up in defence of free and independent science. The challenge to Oliver Brüstle’s patent application is based on the belief that human cells should not be commercialized or exlusively owned by private companies. This does not mean that stem cell research as such is a bad thing.

Patrick Eriksson
Campaign director, Greenpeace

‘I am unsure whether Greenpeace is being naïve or disingenuous in so distorting the facts’

My thanks to Patrik Eriksson response for his response to my essay on the European Court of Justice ruling on patents deriving from embryonic stem cell research, and on Greenpeace’s unfortunate role in the affair. I am unsure, however, whether he is being naïve or disingenuous in so distorting the facts to make his case.

Eriksson suggests that Greenpeace took up this case because ‘of the risk that patenting of human embryos could lead to commercial exploitation of the human body’. If  Oliver Brüstle had been attempting to ‘patent human embryos’, I, too, would have opposed him. As I observed in my original essay, I disapprove of patents on natural processes or entities.  In fact, Brüstle was attempting to patent not an embryo, nor even a cell, but a laboratory process, a method of generating neurons from human embryonic stem cells.

Suppose Brüstle had patented a technique to produce neurons from adult, rather than embryonic, stem cells. Would Greenpeace have objected? Unlikely. The key issue, therefore, is not that of patents but that of the legal and moral status of embryos, and of cells that derive from them. And that was the question upon which the Court primarily focused.

Under European law, patents must ‘safeguard the integrity and dignity of the person’ and not damage ‘public order or morality’. Patenting a process relating to cells derived from human embryos can undermine ‘the integrity and dignity of the person’ only if such cells in some sense possess ‘the integrity and dignity of the person’. The judges ruled that they do. Every fertilised egg, they insisted, must be recognized as an entity whose ‘human dignity’ had to be protected. They, therefore, banned any patents on scientific techniques that involve the destruction of embryos. The court, in other words, was not defending human dignity or civil liberties. It was insisting that the moral status of a handful of invisible, undifferentiated cells should be the same as that of a real, living human being. That, to me, is immoral, and deeply damaging to both human dignity and civil liberties.

It is disingenuous of Eriksson to suggest that Greenpeace does not ‘take a stand as to whether or not a cluster of non-predetermined cells, so-called stem cells, should be regarded as a human being.’  It could not have brought this case if it did not believe that such cells possess ‘human dignity’.  Indeed, in the press release that Greenpeace produced after the European Court ruling, its International Senior Campaigner Lasse Bruun is quoted as saying that the ruling had ‘strengthened the protection of human life against commercial interests’. The press release concludes by insisting that the court decision will not affect medical progress because ‘in recent years, researchers have found alternative methods for obtaining stem cells, without the need to destroy human embryos’.

The question of whether medical research will be affected is a matter for debate. I, like many others, believe it will. What is clear, though, is that, contrary to what Eriksson says, what truly troubles Greenpeace is ‘the need to destroy human embryos’. In this Greenpeace shamefully lines up with the some of the most reactionary voices in Europe.

Kenan Malik

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Alenya Living Room Collection

The sleek style of the track arms along with the boxed seat and back cushions all supported by dark finish legs makes the warm inviting Vintage Casual design of the Alenya upholstery collection the perfecting addition to the relaxing décor of any living area.

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An open letter to the CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch

08 May

A/N: This is my response to comments made by Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Mike Jefferies about not wanting overweight women to wear his brand.

Dear Mr. Jefferies,

You disgust me. After reading your comments about hating fat girls in this article, I am wholeheartedly offended and appalled. You have not only offended me, but you have offended every young girl who has struggled or is struggling with their weight. You have offended every young girl who is battling with low self-esteem because they feel threatened by these “beautiful, skinny” girls that you so target in your stores.

It took a lot of balls (even though yours are shriveled up like prunes) for you to declare that fat girls will “never be part of the in crowd” and that  you “market cool, good-looking people” and that including fat people in your market demographic would make your clothes undesirable.

Now, I understand you don’t carry XL and XXL clothes in your stores and the comments you made were probably strictly business, but you are sending the wrong message out there to fat and curvy girls who try their damndest to be the best that they can be. You have no right to belittle every fat and curvy girl in this country. How dare you? How dare you be such an inconsiderate, heartless monster!! Did you inject too much Botox in your puny brain the day you gave the interview?

Now, I am not your typical customer. I have never bought a single piece of crap in your store nor do I want to now. Yes, I understand that there’s a fight against obesity, but your comments make matters worse. Your comments about only going after the “attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends” will make girls go into downward spiral of depression, excessive peer pressure, and unhealthy consequences. By saying that, you are encouraging fat and skinny young girls to not eat very much. Your comments are encouraging diseases like bulimia and anorexia. Is that really how you want your business to be portrayed?

Let me tell you something about fat girls. Number one, I am one of them and proud of it. I have always struggled with my weight. I have been teased at times because of my weight and height. It hurt my feelings, and it took me years to finally accept myself as a beautiful person. Number two, fat girls are just as pretty, if not more beautiful and sexy, than skinny girls. There are fat girls that have great attitudes about life, are confident about themselves, and have plenty of friends. Fat girls are just as attractive as skinny girls. There are female celebrities (i.e.: Rebel Wilson, Melissa McCarthy, to name a few) who are the epitome of the fact that true beauty doesn’t come from the outside, it comes from the inside. Let this be a lesson to every young girl out there: there’s nothing wrong with a little junk in your trunk!!

Clothing stores like yours should highly encourage girls with different body shapes and sizes to feel good about themselves, not exclude them because of their appearance. Appearance isn’t everything. A&F is not supposed to be a clique. Your comments are a classic case of discrimination, and it’s mind-boggling that in the 21st century, we have to deal with ignorant people like you (who are supposed to be beacons of hope and positive role models)  say stupid stuff. You make me sick.

I don’t know if you’ve had a scarring moment in high school that made you feel totally worthless or if you were actually part of the popular in crowd. Frankly, I don’t give a shit about your past. But Mr. Jefferies, you don’t know what’s like to be a woman. We women stick together. We are powerful, we are strong, and we are smart. We are force to be reckoned with.

In the words of Lady Gaga:

“There’s nothin’ wrong with lovin’ who you are, she said, ’cause He made you perfect, babe. So hold your head up, girl and you’ll go far. Listen to me when I say. I’m beautiful in my way. Cause God makes no mistakes. I’m on the right track, baby, I was born this way. Don’t hide yourself in regret. Just love yourself and you’re set. I’m on the right track, baby. I was born this way.”

I don’t expect you to apologize for your comments. No matter what you say, I can guarantee  people are going to boycott your store. I know you will never read this open letter. But if you ever do, let me give you the two pieces of advice: if you want to help the fight against obesity, leave it to the experts and put your money where your mouth is.

Unsincerely yours,

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Posted by on May 8, 2013 in Random Thoughts

Tags: , , , , ,

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