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Online gambling has been going for a long time and has advanced to a stage with the implementation of trending technologies. Nowadays, people can gamble from betting shops and through computerized devices in their home or anywhere convenient.

However, that’s not all because a new technological advancement has made things a lot better. A few years ago, the popularity of cryptocurrency has increased to the extent that everybody in the world is familiar with the name Bitcoin(BTC).

The ever increasing popularity of Bitcoin made the cryptocurrency world, the territory of almost everyone both geeky and tech-savvy people. In 2007, bitcoin made a remarking breakthrough by reaching a market value of $20,000 for 1 Bitcoin.

Since then Bitcoin has proven its worth to both businesses and other elementary organizations. With this, the implementation of blockchain has taken place in the online gambling industries for the sole purpose of utilizing the benefits of Bitcoin.

Online Gambling with Bitcoin

The online gambling industry has embraced cryptocurrencies for a long time. Even before the implementation of blockchain in the gambling industries because of the remarkable breakthroughs created by Bitcoin, which can simplify the overall gambling process by generating massive revenues. Gambling with Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies nowadays is extremely easy because of its current popularity and unlimited usage globally.

You don’t physically have to touch a bitcoin because it’s a digital currency. Gamblers need secured online wallets to store their cryptocurrencies, which can be traded on exchanges. With Bitcoin, a lot of opportunities have opened up for different businesses. Bitcoin stored on wallets can be used to purchase items from online stores or exchanged for other physical currencies such as US dollars.

However, Bitcoin has achieved a huge amount of reputation today because of its decentralized nature. Being the main reason why the government and other authorities have no control over issues associated with Bitcoin. It’s because of this that Bitcoin has skyrocketed to what it is today, reaching a threshold of over $30,000 in December 2020.

What Bitcoin Gambling Platform Provides?

When it comes to what Bitcoin provides to the online gambling industries, the decentralized nature of blockchain plays a crucial role in providing improved gambling experience, which includes:

Even if you are a gambler that doesn’t care whether your information leaks out after placing a huge wager that can either result in a win or loss. There are professional investors that take privacy seriously, which is where the Blockchain system plays a crucial role in online gambling. With the implementation of blockchain systems in online gambling, you can play your favorite game with any amount possible while maintaining anonymity.

Nowadays, there are tons of online gambling websites like that offer different varieties of information about online betting websites. That’s not all because if you are a fan of CSGO, then there is tons of beneficial information to utilize.

Who wouldn’t want to gamble on a platform that makes everything transparent, starting from the process of transactions to the overall gambling activities? Gambling with Bitcoin in online gambling platforms has improved the popularity of blockchain because of transparency. When transacting with Bitcoin, there are no hidden charges associated with it, which ensures transaction transparency

Improved Security and Flat Fees

Blockchain system utilizes an improved security protocol known as advanced cryptography that secures user’s data. Unlike any other systems, the blockchain network is perfectly secured from hackers as long as users keep their details hidden.

Blockchain offers a flat fee for any amount of transaction you processed. Unlike other currencies that charge a massive amount of fee for processing transactions that will take days to complete. The Bitcoin gambling website makes use of the blockchain network, which allows every transaction to be completed immediately without delay.

The overall speed of blockchain in decrypting and processing information is faster than the wire transfer method. With blockchain, your deposits and withdrawals are bound to be processed in minutes, instead of days.

Tax-Free and Promotions

Unlike regular betting websites that charge taxes to gamblers. Since blockchain is far from the reach of governments, there are no taxes associated with the utilization of the Bitcoin gambling platforms. You don’t have to worry about abiding by the state taxation law when gambling with the Bitcoin platform.

The Bitcoin online gambling platform is often referred to as the home of bonuses and promotional offers. There are always ongoing bonus and promotional offers for casino games on the Roobet website, which can be redeemed with Roobet promo code.

Guide to Gambling with Bitcoin Platforms

A lot of online gambling platforms that utilize the blockchain system have emerged today popularizing the use of Bitcoin. These platforms offer sports betting associated with different types of casino games and other new gambling game developments. The evolution of game development has made things perfectly easy, as you ought to find almost any type of game in blockchain gaming platforms.

Nobody would have imagined that games like CSGO would be up and running on online gambling platforms, but it’s happening today. These games are mostly developed by professional developers such as Microgaming and NetEnt.

Even if you are a novice in search of the best Bitcoin gambling platform, sites like Roobet online casino bring gaming to another level. With immense bonuses that can be redeemed with the Roobet promo code. All these Bitcoin casino games are unique, which is among the things that make it fun while playing.

Starting the journey of gambling with Bitcoin online gambling platforms requires you to register on a reputable platform, which includes:

  1. Bitstarz
  2. Cloudbet
  3. Bitcasino
  4. mBit
  5. Stake

All of the above Bitcoin online gambling platforms offer different games, bonuses, and promotional offers. Registering on these platforms is quite easy as verification processes are not required. However, you will need to have an active Bitcoin wallet on any reputable exchange, as indicated above where you will store, buy, and transfer your Bitcoin. The below list comprises of top trending Bitcoin exchanges that will get you started on online gambling with Bitcoin, which includes:

  1. Coinbase
  2. Binance
  3. Coinmama
  4. Gemini
  5. Bittrex

Online gambling with Bitcoin has been made easier than ever, with the emergence of different blockchain integrated betting websites. All you just need to get started is creating an account on your favorite exchange and Bitcoin gambling platform.

This article was originally published by on 2021-01-19 01:16:55. It can be viewed in it’s original state here: Source link .

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Mr Lyons Palm Springs Bar Mr Lyons Palm Springs Best Beef Wellington Served on a Plate Mr Lyons Surf and Turf Mr Lyons Salad Garnished with edible flowers and fennel
Mr Lyons Steak House Restaurant Palm Springs Logo

EST. 2015

233 E. Palm Canyon Drive
Palm Springs, CA 92264
Wed & Sun: 5P - 10P
Old-school and modern at the same time, with a sophisticated edge. Be transported to a bygone era, when jazz standards and martinis ruled the day. The steak-centric menu boasts infinite sides and is delivered with impeccable tableside service. A modern take on the classic steakhouse, with a menu that puts local small farms first.

Rob G

Meat is at the heart of the sprawling menu, including slow-roasted Prime rib, a massive 36-ounce Prime tomahawk rib chop, and beef Wellington in puff pastry with sticky Bordelaise sauce.
– LA Magazine

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Your Product Review

Bulk Case of 24 Glitzy Copper Wreaths

Change Your Country

Note: By changing your country, the pricing will display in the currency of the chosen country. This is simply for your convenience, and final totals are still charged in USD. Conversion rates updated every 24 hours
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Blackboard is a learning management system used by Western Technical College to support face-to-face classes, blended courses, and online instruction.

If you are new to Blackboard, there are a variety of handouts and instructional materials available on this web site. Please use the links below to access information about getting started with Blackboard and help with specific Blackboard functions.

Can’t find an answer to your Blackboard question in the resources below?

Blackboard Assistance for Faculty

  1. Email with your question.
  2. Be as specific as possible with the problem you want to solve. Include screen captures if that helps make your point.
  3. This email group includes Western’s Blackboard administrator, instructional technologist, and faculty members who are experienced Blackboard users.
  4. When the group receives the email, the first person with an answer will reply.

Getting Started With Blackboard

Follow this tutorial for an overview of Blackboard: Blackboard Overview

Blackboard’s YouTube Video Playlist for Instructors

Check out this YouTube video playlist for instructors with of over 60 videos designed to show you how to effectively use Blackboard.

Blackboard Checklist

Follow this tutorial for a checklist of tasks to complete at the beginning and end of each trimester: Blackboard Checklist

Blackboard Content Pages

Below are a variety of pages to access information about specific Blackboard functions. They are grouped according to the following topics:

Adding Content to Course

Types of content, assignments, tests, surveys, and pools, interactive tools and media are covered. This includes tools such as wikis, blogs, journals, and discussions as well as Safe Assign and Respondus.

Communication Tools

Blackboard offers a variety of functions to allow instructors to communicate with their students–and to allow students (and groups) to communicate with each other. This page contains tutorials on announcements, email and course messages, notifications and achievements.

Course Management

Blackboard offers instructors a variety of course management tools–tools that will allow instructors to customize their course sites, control availability of the course, create work groups, and more. Specifically, this includes setting up your course and setting course availability; enrollment; import, export, or archiving courses; combining sections; groups; and learning modules.

Date Management

Managing the dates that assignments and content are available, as well as due dates, can be found in Date Management.  Also information on adaptive release, where a set of criteria are met to release more items, can be found in this area.

Grade Center

The Grade Center is a powerful tool that allows instructors to monitor student progress and provide timely feedback to students on graded work. In this page you will find information on organizing the grade center, student view of the grade center, grading student work, and customizing your own view of the grade center.

Monitoring Features

Student performance may be monitored in a number of ways, including the use of grade center color codes, Performance Dashboard, and the Retention Center. Also included in this section is a tutorial on reporting options.

If you have a Blackboard question that is not answered in one of the tutorials available on this web site, please send an email to


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Campus Logistics

Western Technical College is located in La Crosse, WI. We also have five regional locations in Black River Falls, Independence, Mauston, Tomah, and Viroqua.  For information on the Regional Learning Centers see: Regional Learning Center (RLC) Contacts and Resources

Western Calendars

Here is a link to the Official Trimester calendars as well as other college calendars for the year: Western Calendars

To learn how to export a calendar from InfoSilem Portal to your Outlook calendar, see this PDF.

Hours of Operation

Details on the access times to different areas of the college can be found on Western’s “Annual Security And Fire Report and Policy Statement”.

Construction Updates

There are a variety of construction projects happening at Western’s main campus and some extended campuses. For updated information on construction projects, visit the Vision 2020 SharePoint site at Western Construction. The campus maps and parking web page has information about parking and to know which spaces and buildings are currently accessible.

Parking at Western

Parking permits are not required at the Regional Learning Centers; however, street parking at the La Crosse campus is limited and available in two-hour increments. Parking permits are required for use of the La Crosse campus’s parking lots and parking ramp prior to 3:00 p.m. on weekdays.

For information about obtaining parking permits at the La Crosse Campus, visit the Parking Permits web page.

(Parking meters may be used at the Health Science Center, or parking permits for that building may be purchased from the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.)

Ride for Free!

Western students, staff, and faculty members can use the city bus system for free using their Western I.D.

There is also free bike parking available throughout the campus.

Obtaining Western ID Cards, Keys & Name badges

Please contact your Division Office (at the La Crosse Campus) or the Operations Assistant (at each Regional Learning Center) for information about obtaining a Western ID, keys, name badge, or business card.

In the case of an emergency, immediately dial 911 and then contact the appropriate Western personnel.

  • At the La Crosse Campus, notify Security at 608-785-9191.
  • At the Regional Centers, notify the front office staff at the campus.

Safety Procedures

Western has designated procedures to follow in case of most emergencies that could happen on campus. Although not every conceivable situation is addressed, the guidelines can assist students, staff, faculty and visitors cope with most campus emergencies. All students, staff faculty and visitors are expected to follow the established procedures to the best of their ability. Western will regularly test the emergency drills including annual testing of evacuation procedures.

Guides are in every classroom and office on all Western campuses. They’re also publicized annually in Western’s Annual Security And Fire Report and Policy Statement.

The Security Office, located in Kumm Center, Room 100, is dedicated to ensuring a safe and secure campus, which in turn provides a secure learning environment. The College’s security force patrols the La Crosse campus throughout the day and night. In the evenings, in La Crosse, Security can chaperone individuals to their cars upon request.

  • La Crosse Campus security: 608-785-9191.
  • Regional Center security: notify the front office staff at your regional campus

Receive Emergency Notifications

Any students, faculty, or staff can register to receive emergency notifications on their cell phones and/or home phone. Type in “Western Technical College” when registering. Notification sign-up must be completed each trimester.


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Raspberry Pi and Docker Registry

Recently I have been using a Raspberry Pi 3B+ bought from a classified advertisement site called Bikroy.com. A student wanted to sell this, as his final college project was done. It was cheaper with an acrylic casing and a fan. However, I wanted to use this Pi for several pet projects. Initially I did install Pi-Hole for network wide adblocker and along with samba with a spare portable hard disk. It was working OK. No extra pressure in this 1GB ram Pi. I thought Why not give it a little bit more pressure?

Thus, I planned to install docker registry in it for my “local private docker hub” type of need. Let me share what I had to do.

Continue reading Raspberry Pi and Docker Registry

Lighttpd Server with SSL

Lighttpd is one of the speediest webserver which will make you feel like you got a highspeed internet connection with low price. However , i will explain you how to create ssl certificate and use it in lighttpd vhost for accessing particular websites with particular certificate. Continue reading Lighttpd Server with SSL

Multiple WordPress in Lighttpd & Php5 in Ubuntu VPS or Server

Lighttpd = Security, speed, compliance, and flexibility.

It is pronounced as “Lighty”. Lighttpd is rapidly redefining efficiency of a webserver . It is Designed and optimized for high performance environments. With a small memory footprint compared to other webservers. 128mb ram can run it like a mig29 with several wordpress(I will try two today). It has advanced feature set like FastCGI, SCGI, Auth, Output-Compression,URL Rewriting and many more. It is perfect for every server and also for VPSs with low memory. You will be amazed by its speed with low ram and swap. It is totally free.

Continue reading Multiple WordPress in Lighttpd & Php5 in Ubuntu VPS or Server


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on Unity in Christ

“Be united with other Christians. A wall with loose bricks is not good. The bricks must be cemented together.”
– Corrie Ten Boom

“What ever disunites man from God, also disunites man from man.”
– Edmund Burke

“I don’t believe God wants our church life to be centered on buildings and services. Instead, God wants our churches—whatever specific forms our gatherings take—to be focused on active discipleship, mission, and the pursuit of unity.”
― Francis Chan, Erasing Hell: What God Said about Eternity, and the Things We Made Up

“There are congregations on nearly every corner. I’m not sure we need more churches. What we need is a church. I say one church is better than fifty. I have tried to remove the plural form churches from my vocabulary, training myself to think of the church as Christ did, and as the early Christians did. The metaphors for her are always singular – a body, a bride. I heard one gospel preacher say it like this, as he really wound up and broke a sweat: “We’ve got to unite ourselves as one body. Because Jesus is coming back, and he’s coming back for a bride not a harem.”
― Shane Claiborne, The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical

“On the concept of unity- “Thatʼs right-Jesusʼ most pressing concern before leaving the earth was our unity. He was looking ahead, to every generation of believer. And as he prayed, he made it clear that our witness as his body in this fractured , messed-up, chaotic world would depend on our love for another.”
― Ed Galisewski, A Simpler Faith: Hope For Those Who Struggle With Church

“THE RIGHT RELATIONSHIP OF THE GOSPEL TO ALL OF MINISTRY There is always a danger that church leaders and ministers will conceive of the gospel as merely the minimum standard of doctrinal content for being a Christian believer. As a result, many preachers and leaders are energized by thoughts of teaching more advanced doctrine, or of deeper forms of spirituality, or of intentional community and the sacraments, or of “deeper discipleship,” or of psychological healing, or of social justice and cultural engagement. One of the reasons is the natural emergence of specialization as a church grows and ages. People naturally want to go deeper into various topics and ministry disciplines. But this tendency can cause us to lose sight of the whole. Though we may have an area or a ministry that we tend to focus on, the gospel is what brings unity to all that we do. Every form of ministry is empowered by the gospel, based on the gospel, and is a result of the gospel.”
― Timothy Keller, Center Church: Doing Balanced, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City

“Worship at its best is a social experience with people of all levels of life coming together to realize their oneness and unity under God. Whenever the church, consciously or unconsciously caters to one class it loses the spiritual force of the ‘whosoever will, let him come’ doctrine and is in danger of becoming a little more than a social club with a thin veneer of religiosity.”
― Martin Luther King Jr, The Words of Martin Luther King, Jr

“To gather with God’s people in united adoration of the Father is as necessary to the Christian life as prayer.”
– Martin Luther

“The union of believers is grounded in the mystical union of Christ and His Church. The Bible speaks of a two-way transaction that occurs when a person is regenerated. Every converted person becomes “in Christ” at the same time Christ enters into the believer. If I am in Christ and you are in Christ, and if He is in us, then we experience a profound unity in Christ.”
– R.C. Sproul, Tabletalk

“One hundred religious persons knit into a unity by careful organization do not constitute a church any more than eleven dead men make a football team.”
― A.W. Tozer

“Has it ever occurred to you that one hundred pianos all tuned to the same fork are automatically tuned to each other? They are of one accord by being tuned, not to each other, but to another standard to which each one must individually bow. So one hundred worshipers met together, each one looking away to Christ, are in heart nearer to each other than they could possibly be, were they to become ‘unity’ conscious and turn their eyes away from God to strive for closer fellowship.”
― A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God

“IT IS YOUR JOB TO PROTECT THE UNITY OF YOUR CHURCH. Unity in the church is so important that the New Testament gives more attention to it than to either heaven or hell. God deeply desires that we experience oneness and harmony with each other. Unity is the soul of fellowship. Destroy it, and you rip the heart out of Christ’s Body. It is the essence, the core, of how God intends for us to experience life together in his church. Our supreme model for unity is the Trinity. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are completely unified as one. God himself is the highest example of sacrificial love, humble other-centeredness, and perfect harmony.”
― Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For?

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Crunchy Cornslaw – a new twist on the same ol’ slaw

Crunchy Corn Slaw Fish Tacos with Corn Slaw
This weekend we had a cookout with some of our friends from church and decided we’d bring a good coleslaw to go with the bbq type meats everyone would be cooking.  So we decided to do a punny version of coleslaw and bring cornslaw.  I started dreaming it up because every summer for the past four or five years, Matt and I have inadvertently gravitated toward a Corn Dish of the Summer.  A few years ago it was an amazing creamed corn, a year after that it was Esquites (a bowl full of the equivalent of Mexican street corn) and last year it was this amazing miso buttered corn with scallions and bacon, a la Momofuku.

Now, I’m not saying this is THE corn dish of the summer of 2014, but it’s a start.  We really like it.  To compliment the sweetness of the corn, I added a Granny Smith apple and poppyseeds.  To offset the sweetness, I added plenty of purple cabbage and red onion and fresh poblano peppers – everything diced the same size (that’s important).  Then, I made my own mayo because we had just run out and I didn’t remember it the TWO times I’d been to the grocery store that day.  I was not going back.  So, homemade mayo with a little dijon and brown sugar and sherry vinegar – the perfect sauce for our perfect summer slaw!

Corn Cole Slaw
This stuff was fantastic as a side for smokey sausages on the grill (and grilled bread, of course!)  Tonight, I made fish tacos and made a little Srirracha mayo with the leftover batch of mayo from the slaw and topped our tacos with the still-crunchy slaw.  Amazing!  Welcome to summer, my friends!

Fish Tacos with Corn Slaw and Srirracha Mayo

Crunchy Cornslaw

4 large ears of corn
1/2 head purple cabbage, diced
2 poblano peppers, diced
1/2 cup red onion, diced
3 carrots, peeled and grated
1 Granny Smith apple, diced
1 TBS poppyseeds
1 cup of mayo (homemade or not – just don’t buy something fake or low fat or “miracle”)
2 TBS dijon mustard
2 TBS sherry vinegar
1 TBS brown sugar
salt and pepper to taste

In a large bowl, cut all the corn from the cobs directly into the bowl.  Add cabbage, peppers, onion, carrots, apple and poppyseeds and stir to combine.  In a smaller bowl, mix together the mayo, mustard, vinegar and brown sugar and fold into the corn mixture until everything is coated.  Season to your taste with salt and pepper.  If you want to make your own mayo, I’ll give you our super easy recipe below!  Happy cooking!

Homemade Mayo *
makes about 2 cups

2 large eggs
4 tsp dijon mustard
2 tsp white wine vinegar
1 tsp kosher salt
2 cups non-flavored oil like canola, grapeseed, vegetable

Add the eggs, mustard, vinegar and salt to a large cup and add the oil (if using an immersion blender). Start processing as you gradually lift the immersion blender up, letting the oil get sucked under in a steady stream.  If using a food processor, add everything except the oil to the processor or blender and blend for 30 seconds.  While running, slowly drizzle the oil in a thin, steady stream until all the oil is added and the mixture is smooth.

*adapted from Spike Mendelsohn’s awesome book, The Good Stuff

Fish Tacos

2 fresh cod fillets or other firm, white fish
1 egg, beaten
1 cup panko breadcrumbs
1 tsp Old Bay seasoning
salt and pepper
olive oil for pan frying

Pat the fish fillets dry with paper towels and season each side with salt and pepper.  Cut into fish-stick sizes (mine were about 3-4″ sticks) by cutting the fillet across it’s width.  Put the beaten egg in a large bowl and the panko and seasoning mixed together in a separate bowl. Dip each stick into the beaten egg and then roll in the panko/Old Bay mixture and pat on all sides to fully coat.  Lay the coated fish sticks on a clean paper towel while you finish the others.

In a large, non-stick skillet over medium-high heat, add about 4 TBS of olive oil and let it heat till it shimmers.  Add the fish sticks without crowding (I had to do two batches) and fry till golden brown on each side.  Keep warm and crisp in a 250F oven until ready to assemble the tacos.

For assembly:

Dollop some srirracha mayo (there’s no recipe here – just add srirracha or any hot sauce to mayo and mix it up till it’s a heat level you like!  Mine was about 2 TBS per cup of mayo) along the center of a soft-taco sized tortilla.  Lay two fish sticks on top of the mayo and then top with the cornslaw.  Enjoy!

Palmer House Ragu

Palmer Ragu
Matt and I first read about homemade ragu in the book, Heat, by Bill Buford.  The section on ragu was about Mario Batali and his story of his own family’s obsession with their homemade bolognese sauce, or, ragu.  He said every Italian family had one, and each family was so fiercely defensive and prideful about their ragu recipe, that some men even seriously considered a woman as marriage material or not, based on the quality of her version.  Though the section was a bit humorous, I really felt that this was a dish with a history and a soul and an identity.  No two people can make the same ragu, and so each person should work on perfecting their own to their own liking!

Matt and I consulted an online recipe years ago when we made ragu the first few times.  This time, Matt said, “Let’s not consult anything.  We know how it goes; let’s do our own.”  So we did!  It was really fun to create our own concoction and add a little of this and a little of that till we thought it tasted “right.”  A pretty good description in Heat of the proper way to cook a ragu is simple:  “Take a liquid and a solid and cook it till it’s neither.”

So I’ll give you our now-official family ragu recipe.  I encourage you to come up with your own as you go!  Make a huge batch and freeze for later – you won’t be sorry. You can thaw it easily in a skillet with a little beef stock.  This stuff is great saucy or thick.  We like ours super chunky and less liquidy, so we let it verge on the dry side.  Matt made potato gnocchi to go with it, but we’ve done every noodle you can imagine, and my personal favorite is a nice, wide fettuccine noodle.  Garnish with shaved Parmesan and serve with a hearty glass of red and you’ll be so good you won’t know what to do with yourself.

potato gnocchi Palmer Ragu Night

Palmer House Ragu

3 tbs butter or olive oil
2 cups diced carrots
2 cups diced celery
2 cups diced onion*
1 lb ground beef (85%/15%)
1 lb ground pork
1/2 lb ground sausage
1 cup white wine
1 cup whole milk
1-28 oz can diced tomatoes
salt and pepper to taste
1 tsp oregano
a few gratings of whole nutmeg
pasta of your choice

*it’s important to try to make all your vegetables the same size dice so that they all cook and break down at the same rate.  We keep everything at about a 1/4″ dice.

In a large stockpot (I adore my Lodge ceramic dutch oven.  Half the cost of Le Creuset and just as good), over medium heat, add the butter and cook until it starts bubbling.  Then, add in the carrots, celery and onion, and cook, stirring occasionally, until beginning to soften.  Add in the meats and stir well to incorporate with the vegetables.  Cook until most of the pink is gone, but not all.  Add in the wine and bring to a simmer and cook until most of the liquid is gone.  Do the same with the milk.  After the milk is cooked off, add in the diced tomatoes and stir well to incorporate.  Add about a teaspoon of kosher salt and a few grinds of fresh pepper and let that sucker cook all afternoon.  We let ours bubble away for about 3 hours and as it cooks, I randomly come stir it, ladle off the fat that starts to separate so that the finished result won’t be too greasy.  Really, you can’t  cook this too long.  You can cook it too fast, but if it starts to dry out, simply add some water or beef stock and keep stirring.  When you like the look of it, add in the oregano and nutmeg and season again with salt to taste.  Let it cook another 30 min or so to let the flavors develop.  Serve over freshly boiled pasta (long noodles are the best) with shaves of Parmesan and a few shakes of crushed red pepper.  That’s how we roll, anyway.  Enjoy and mix it up however you like!  The secret is in the long cook time.  It’s amazing what a few ingredients will do together, over time!

Homemade Pizza with Duck, Sage and Dried Cherries

Duck Sage and Cherry Pizza

It’s Use Up the Leftovers Before the Christmas Road Trip Day!  This can be a fun little game and can even force you into being more creative than usual.  I love leaving an empty fridge before a big trip.  Helps to not have Ghosts of Dinners Past to greet you when you get back.  When the holidays are over, I want to move forward.  I don’t want to stare at a pan of bread pudding in the fridge.  I want to start fresh!

I had a bit of leftover duck terrine from Sunday (another wonderful recipe from Homemade Winter), a few sage leaves and dried cherries and thought that would be a great pizza combination.  It was, indeed!  We also made a pizza with leftover ground beef, goat cheese and sauteed leeks, and one with Matt’s favorite combo: Parmesan, pistachios and rosemary.  I made my trusty tomato soup and we dunked our pizza crusts in it, and had a wonderful “Pre-Christmas” lunch together before heading off tomorrow to spend a week going here and there and everywhere!

I’d recommend instead of the duck terrine, which I am 99.9% sure you don’t have in your fridge, that you just use any good quality ground sausage.  The combo of sausage and sage and cherries is classic and works no matter what.  For the sauce, just use a drizzle of olive oil and sprinkle Parmesan cheese all over the crust before topping it.  I put the sage leaves on during the last few minutes of cooking so they wouldn’t burn, and I positioned some plain mozzarella over the cherries so they wouldn’t burn, and it worked out great.

For the recipe, I’ll include a link to Matt’s perfected pizza crust, which makes 3 medium sized pizzas, and I’ll let YOU raid your own fridge for the toppings you so desire!  Here are some fun combinations:

  • Corn, chorizo and potato
  • Ham, cheddar and scallion
  • Canned tomatoes, basil, mozzarella and sliced garlic
  • Leek, goat cheese and bacon
  • Broccoli, alfredo sauce, bacon and parmesan
  • Asparagus, red onion and manchego

The fun is in the leftovers you find.  Don’t limit yourself to “normal” toppings – you never know what great combinations you could create!

Sage, Duck and Cherry Pizza

Chicken Fricassee, Deconstructed

chicken fricassee 2

Chicken Fricassee was one of the first meat dishes I made for Olive when she was a baby, just starting out on solids.  (The first meat she had was homemade beef ragu – I kinda threw the rule books out when it came to feeding her and I haven’t regretted it a single day.)  I made the dish from that month’s Martha Stewart Magazine and took a little bit of each component and blended it up with a little extra chicken stock. Olive consume it with a great fury.  The flavors are so simple and so rich – it truly is a comfort food dish.  And if you think it’s “fancy” because it has a French name, fear not – it’s basically a chicken pot pie without the pie.  All those amazingly comforting flavors of chicken soup, thyme, carrots, peas, cream gravy, butter – they’re all there.  You serve it over rice or pasta and revel in the comfort.  It’s not difficult and it tastes like pure love.

I’ve made that Martha Stewart version several times, but for this recipe, I worked out of the Bonne Femme cookbook and decided to deconstruct it because Olive is able to eat each component just chopped up small, but not big enough to tackle chicken still on the bone.  So I cooked the chicken, shredded it after it had cooled, and then assembled, garnishing with the pan gravy at the very end for an easy to eat version that everyone really loved.

chicken fricassee

chicken fricassee 3

chicken fricassee 2

Deconstructed Chicken Fricassee*
serves 4

2.5-3 lbs bone-in, skin-on chicken parts (legs, thighs, breasts, whatever – I used the whole chicken in pieces)
salt and pepper
2 tbs vegetable oil
1/2 a white onion, chopped fine
1/2 cup low-sodium chicken broth
1/2 cup dry white wine (or more chicken broth, if you don’t have any)
1 bay leaf
4 carrots, peeled and cut into 1/4 x 2″ sticks
1/2 cup frozen pearl onions
2 tbs unsalted butter
2 tbs AP flour
1/4 to 1/2 cup milk
2 tbs chopped fresh tarragon
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
2 tbs fresh lemon juice

Pat the chicken pieces dry with paper towels and season with salt and pepper on both sides.  Heat the oil in a large, deep skillet or stock pot over medium-high heat until it shimmers.  Add the chicken and cook, turning occasionally, until brown on all sides, 10-15 minutes.  Transfer the chicken to a plate and drain off all but a tbs of fat from the pan.

Add the onion to the pan and cook briefly, stirring, until fragrant.  Add the chicken broth and wine, stirring to loosen any browned bits from the bottom of the pan.  Return the chicken to the pan.  Add the bay leaf and bring to a boil, then reduce heat.  Cover and simmer for 25 minutes.  Then, scatter the carrots and pearl onions around the chicken; cover and simmer until the chicken is done (internal temp should register 170 on an instant read thermometer), about 15 minutes more.

With a slotted spoon, transfer the chicken and vegetables to a large bowl; cover with foil to keep warm.  Discard the bay leaf.  Pour the pan juices into a measuring cup and set aside.  Melt the butter in the pan over medium heat.  Stir in the flour with a wire whisk to make a smooth paste.  Cook and stir for one minute.  Slowly add the pan juices back to the pan, stirring with a wire whisk until smooth.  Cook the mixture until it boils and thickens, then continue to cook for one minute more.  Whisk in enough milk to make a sauce of the desired consistency and bring to a simmer.  Stir in the tarragon, parsley and lemon juice.

I then shredded up the chicken by hand, scattered an equal amount into each bowl over a heap of rice, arranged the vegetables on top of the chicken and then spooned my pan sauce over everything and cracked a lot of black pepper on top of that!  There’s something magical about fresh black pepper and a rich chicken dish.  It’s just perfect.

*adapted from the Bonne Femme cookbook, which is perfect

Asparagus Tart – Roasting is still the best way to eat vegetables

asparagus tart 3

I know I said I’d write about what got the most requests on my question last week, but I haven’t had time to do a good job with the requests I got, so that will come at a later post.  The top requests were for kale.  Honestly, I’m a bit stumped.  What, exactly, is the mystery?  Put it in stuff?  Ha!  That would be my suggestion.  Stir it into soups, toss it in salads and wilt it a bit with warm roasted chicken or hot bacon.  However, I don’t want to be flippant, so I will look up some good uses for kale, the sad-replacement-for-chips, and get back to you.  The other suggestion that intrigued me was for proper hash browns.  My friend, Maria, said that she had tried them several times and hadn’t gotten that good, diner-esque texture to them.  Honestly, I haven’t, either.  So I am interested to look up ways to cook hash browns well and that will most definitely be a post, as it will be a learning process for me, as well.

Today I wanted to simply give you an awesome recipe that we had last night for dinner, as our “starter” dish.  A beautiful use of asparagus (hey, Tracey, you asked for asparagus recipes, too!) and a lovely and exciting way to serve them that feels indulgent (bet you’ve never used that word in association with asparagus) and fun for children, and even doable for one-year-olds learning to eat bigger chunks of food.  Olive ate about 6 bits of this tart and then she was done. I consider that a success.

Having a box of frozen puff pastry in your freezer at all times is a good move.  This stuff can make you look like a fabulous cook in about 20 minutes.  You can top it with anything and bake and have great appetizers, desserts, or a crust for a savory tart, like this one.

Also, I wanted to mention my deep love and perhaps borderline obsession with using up leftovers.  My goal at the end of most weeks is for my fridge to be empty, save condiments and milk.  It’s good to think of ways to use up your leftovers and I know no better way than to use eggs to achieve almost-better-than-the original-meal leftovers.  This morning, I took leftover pieces of the asparagus tart and fried an egg and put it on top.  Lots of fresh ground pepper and a few drops of hot sauce.  So good.

Asparagus Tart

serves 4

1 sheet of puff pastry, thawed
1 bundle of fresh asparagus, ends snipped and cut in half, length-wise (I found that this helped them cook faster than the original recipe)
Olive oil to coat the asparagus – 2 tbs
Freshly ground pepper and kosher salt
2 oz shredded Manchego cheese – Parmesan or Swiss would also work

Preheat the oven to 400F.  On a greased, rimmed baking sheet, roll out your puff pastry to about 9×13″ rectangle.  Poke all over the bottom with a fork and bake for 15 minutes, until golden.  Toss your asparagus in olive oil. When the pastry comes out, it will have shrunk.  It’s okay, I swear.  Cover the tart in the shredded cheese and lay your asparagus spears side by side, touching, and alternating head to toe (this just makes more asparagus fit and it looks prettier.)

asparagus tart 1

Sprinkle the top of the tart with salt and pepper.  If you have leftover asparagus spears, just place them, cut side down, on the baking sheet around the tart.  They turned out to be gloriously crispy when they came out.  Bake for 25 minutes until the asparagus is nicely wilted and slightly browned.  Let cool slightly, cut with a sharp knife into squares and serve!

In the morning, heat leftovers in a 350F oven and fry an egg to place on top.  Enjoy with a cup of coffee and try not to think about the fact that it’s only Wednesday.

asparagus tart 2

*original recipe from Martha Stewart Living

Green on Green Salad

green on green 2

It’s the first day of Spring!  I used to be a complete fall/winter gal, and as far as loving cardigans to a fault, I still am.  But the new mother side of my life has made me  crave warmer weather, the ability to leave the screen door open so we can hear the birds, and not worrying if my kid is constantly too cold.  This time last year, I had a two week old baby in the house.  We were scared and bewildered, yet happy to have her as a part of our pack.  It’s been such a learning process.  Is there a “right” way to do things?  Well, if there is, I was sure on the hunt this year.  I asked every person I knew who might have an ounce of understanding or empathy, what they thought the “right” way was to feed/sleep/play/instruct my baby.  I’m sure they, like me, are breathing a sigh of slight relief that along with her first birthday passing, so has a large amount of my questions.  I think part of me craves that close knit village type atmosphere of raising a baby.  Mothers, grandmothers, aunts, cousins; all within arms reach of advice.  While that isn’t our reality, I am very thankful for technology that has made virtual villages out of our spread-apart lives.

One of my favorite parts of this “virtual village” is the way in the short time this blog has been up and running, I’ve been able to answer questions of fellow moms across several states on the basics of cooking, what to cook for baby, where on earth do you get Chinese 5 Spice?! and so on.  I love cooking so much and I hope that along the way, I can make at least one other person excited to cook a meal for their family or try something new.  I love when someone tells me, “I salt my pasta water because of you” (which is funny because at least three people have told me this, and I learned it from Mario Batali. Salty like the ocean!) I feel useful, even though I might be stuck in this house (or feel stuck from time to time), I feel knit together with so many by a common ambition for the quest for good food and a simple sense of accomplishment.

This salad is once again, from THE best cookbook of my year, so far, The Bonne Femme cookbook.  I served this salad with the broccoli and cauliflower recipe from Monday and seared chicken breasts with a simple pan sauce  (butter, chicken stock, pan drippings, reduce, reduce, reduce) and sliced, toasted almonds.  Very filling meal, very heart healthy – no one felt deprived!  (baby side note: Olive didn’t try this.  She was still sickly when I made it.  Will try again with her soon)

Green on Green Salad

serves 4

1 garlic clove, minced
Salt and freshly ground black pepper (about 1/4 tsp each)
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 teaspoons honey
a few drops of Tabasco, Cholula, Tapatio, or whatever peppe sauce you like best
4 cups baby arugula or just a bag of mixed greens
1/2 cup, halved, thinly sliced cucumber
1/4 cup thinly sliced scallions
1 avocado, peeled and sliced

In a small bowl, use the back of a spoon (or I use a drink muddler) to mash the garlic clove with the salt and pepper.  Add the lime juice and whisk until the salt is dissolved.  Add the olive oil, whisking until incorporated.  Whisk in the honey and red pepper sauce.

In a large bowl, toss the greens with enough dressing to make the leaves coated, but not too heavy.  Arrange the arugula on a large platter.  Toss the cucumber and scallions with a bit of the dressing and arrange them on top of the greens.  Arrange the avocado slices across the top of the salad.  Drizzle just a little more dressing on top of the avocado and serve.

green on green 3

Italian Pot Roast on a Snowy Day

It’s a day to be a little quieter, more reflective, or maybe just be still.  It snowed last night more than it’s snowed in a few years and it’s still coming down outside.  The wind is crazy as it always is in Lubbock, TX, which makes the wind chill around negative ridiculous.  Matt is getting to work from home – one draw back of having a desk job is that on a snow day, you still have to work.  But at least it can be done from the comforts of home.  Hot cups of coffee and a sweet, bundled up baby in tow.  I had dreams of going to the grocery store today to stock up for another week of good meals, but I think I’ll just warm up the amazing pot roast we had last night, roast an acorn squash till it nearly burns and make do with what we have.  If you have any cut of meat in your freezer like a roast, pork loin, whole chicken, try this recipe.  Stay in out of the cold and just let the oven do the cooking today.

pot roast

Pot Roast of Beef Braised in Red Wine*
6 servings

Vegetable oil
4lbs boneless beef roast, preferably chuck
1 tbs butter
3 tbs onion, finely chopped (about 1/2 of a medium sized onion)
3 tbs carrot, finely chopped (about 1 medium sized carrot)
1 1/2 cups dry red wine (Barolo, California Syrah, Zinfandel or Shiraz are all fine choices)
1 cup beef broth
1 1/2 tbs chopped, canned Italian tomatoes (we use Cento brand)
A pinch of dried thyme
1/2 tsp fresh marjoram or an 1/8 tsp dried
Black pepper, fresh ground

  • Preheat oven to 350F.
  • Put just enough vegetable oil in a large skillet to coat the bottom of the pan.  Turn the heat on to high and when the oil starts to shimmer, put in the roast.  Brown it well on all sides, then transfer to a platter and set aside.  Set aside your skillet without cleaning it out for use later.
  • In a separate pot with a tight-fitting lid, large enough to accommodate the meat, put 2 tbs of vegetable oil, the butter and the onion and cook on medium until the onion becomes a pale gold color.  Add the carrot and celery.  Stir thoroughly to coat well, and cook for 4 to 5 minutes, then add the browned meat back into the pan.  (We used a dutch oven)
  • Pour the wine into the skillet that you’d used to sear the roast, turn on the heat to medium high, and allow the wine to bubble briskly for a minute while scraping the pan with a wooden spoon to loosen cooking residues stuck to the pan.  Add the contents of the skillet to the pot with the meat.
  • Add the beef broth.  It should come up two-thirds of the way up the sides of the meat, and if it doesn’t add more broth or water.  Add in the tomatoes, thyme, marjoram, salt, and several grindings of pepper.  Turn the heat on to high, bring the contents of the pot to a boil, then cover the pot and put it on the middle rack of the preheated oven.  Cook for about 3 hours, turning the meat every 20 minutes or so, basting it with the liquid in the pot, which should be cooking at a slow, steady simmer.  All the liquid may evaporate before the roast is done.  If that happens, add 3 or 4 tablespoons of water.  Cook until the meat feels very tender when prodded with a fork (about 3 hours.)
  • Remove the meat to a cutting board.  If the liquid in the pot is too thin and hasn’t reduced to less than 2/3 cup, put the pot on the stove on high heat and boil down, while scraping the cooking residues stuck to the pot.  Taste the juices and correct for salt and pepper.  Slice the meat against the grain, put the slices on a warm platter, arranging them so they overlap slightly, pour the pot juices over them and serve immediately.

We served this with roasted carrots and it was the perfect accompaniment.  I hope you all have a warm, cozy day and enjoy the momentary break from reality!

*Recipe adapted from Marcella Hazan’s amazing book, Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking


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How to Search Genealogy on Pinterest

How to Search Genealogy on Pinterest

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Presenter: Lisa Lisson

As a genealogy researcher and creator of the Are You My Cousin? blog, Lisa Lisson takes the overwhelm out of genealogy research and keeps researchers moving forward finding their ancestors. Whether researching ancestors alongside clients or writing how-to articles and books, Lisa uses her 12 years of research experience to help others build a solid research plan, find the needed genealogy records, and get the most out of those resources. When not working with clients or writing genealogy articles, Lisa can be found pursuing her passion for  running, traveling with her husband or simply enjoying time with her two adult children.

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Tag Archives: abyss

The debt race

Well you know what I think about debts. It’s the “evil”, and piling up debt after debt is a sure way to loose really big.   It seems in the USA two countries are hard struggling to be the biggest … Continue reading

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Forge 160 Glove Men's
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Due to the lasting impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, some items may require additional build time before shipping.

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An superb close-fitting ultra lightweight thin polyester/merino wool blend glove from Rab without those annoying sewn-on touchscreen pieces and patches that detract from the comfort, dexterity, and feel of this style of glove. Thin gloves like these are mostly designed for their fit and feel instead of for their durability.  Please keep in mind that many of our customers can wear out multiple pairs of this type of thin glove every season from any brand, depending upon how they are being used.

  • Polyester/Merino Wool blend fabric
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  • Nice fabric cuff
  • Ultra Lightweight
  • Use alone or inside of an appropriately sized outer glove or mitten
  • 1.1 oz (30 g)


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Postal & Federal Medical Retirement: The Commodity of More

Of course, by definition, a commodity purchased or otherwise acquired is “more” — but that is not what is meant, here.  The commodity of more implies a greater good beyond the acquisition of the thing itself.  We buy things not for the thing itself; rather, we are sold the goods because of what they represent.  Otherwise, why do companies spend so much on advertising?

If the thing itself is so valuable and needed — or wanted — to such a great extent that it would sell without the “extras” of advertisements, then companies would merely place them on shelves and each morning, like the breadlines in the old Soviet Union, there would be a great clamor to purchase the product.

No — the products we buy are attached to the symbols they represent; of greater status; of more leisure; of increased comfort and superior lifestyle; of a life representing success.  But here is the catch: The commodity of more is like that proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back; at some point, the “more” becomes the greater stress that makes everything less — less worthwhile, less attractive; less enjoyable.  Especially when a medical condition enters the picture-perfect portrait of life.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal worker from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, consider filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits when the commodity of more has reached a breaking point.

Consult with a FERS Disability Lawyer who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and consider whether or not the commodity of more might not be traded in for a life of less — less stress, less failure, less deterioration of one’s health.

Robert R. McGill, Esquire


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Oregon State meets UCLA in Pac-12 quarters

No. 5 seed Oregon State (14-12, 11-10) vs. No. 4 seed UCLA (17-8, 13-6)

Pac-12 Conference Tournament Quarterfinals, T-Mobile Arena, Las Vegas; Thursday, 5:30 p.m. EST

BOTTOM LINE: Oregon State and UCLA are set to do battle in the quarterfinals of the Pac-12 tournament. The only meeting between the teams this season came on Jan. 30, when the Bruins created 15 Oregon State turnovers and turned the ball over just seven times en route to a 57-52 victory.

STEPPING UP: Ethan Thompson is averaging 15.5 points to lead the charge for the Beavers. Warith Alatishe is also a primary contributor, accounting for 9.4 points and 8.4 rebounds per game. The Bruins have been led by Jaime Jaquez Jr., who is averaging 11.8 points and six rebounds.EFFECTIVE ETHAN: Thompson has connected on 31.6 percent of the 114 3-pointers he’s attempted and has made 6 of 22 over the last five games. He’s also made 78.5 percent of his foul shots this season.

WINNING WHEN: UCLA is a perfect 11-0 when it holds an opponent to 62 points or fewer. The Bruins are 6-8 when opponents score more than 62 points.

ASSIST-TO-FG RATIO: The Bruins have recently created buckets via assists more often than the Beavers. UCLA has 38 assists on 78 field goals (48.7 percent) across its past three outings while Oregon State has assists on 38 of 83 field goals (45.8 percent) during its past three games.

DID YOU KNOW: UCLA has committed a turnover on just 16.8 percent of its possessions this season, which is the second-lowest percentage among all Pac-12 teams. The Bruins have turned the ball over only 11.1 times per game this season.

For more AP college basketball coverage: https://apnews.com/Collegebasketball and http://twitter.com/AP_Top25

This was generated by Automated Insights, http://www.automatedinsights.com/ap, using data from STATS LLC, https://www.stats.com

Copyright © 2021 . All rights reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.

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Feb 7 2014

My Ideal Board Meeting

In my new book, Startup Boards: Getting the Most Out of Your Board of Directors, in addition to decomposing and explaining a lot about the functioning of board meetings, I also describe my ideal board meeting.

I had four of them this week. That’s a lot of board meetings in a week, but my weeks tend to either be “lots of board meetings” or “no board meetings” as I generally bunch them up. Thankfully, all four of them used my ideal board meeting template.

A critical aspect of my ideal board meeting is that the entire board package should be sent out several days in advance to all board members. It should be thorough, including whatever the CEO wants the board to know about what has happened since the last board meeting. While I prefer prose to a PowerPoint deck, either is fine. Optimally it’s in a format like Google Docs where everyone on the board can comment on specific things, allowing open Q&A on the board material prior to the board meeting. I like to decouple monthly financial reporting from the board package, but including a look back of the financials, along with discussion and framing is useful. But the meat of the board package should be what’s going on now and going forward, not looking back. The looking back is for support of the discussion.

Then – the board meeting has a simple structure intended to fit in three hours. Optimally all participants are either in person or on video conference. Since I’m not traveling for business right now, almost all of my board meetings have a video conferencing component. When done correctly, it’s often just as effective as an in-person meeting, and in some cases (if you follow my video conferencing rules) even more effective. What is not effective is when one or more people are on an audio conference.

Once everyone is settled, break the board meeting into three discrete sections. They, and their descriptions, follow:

Administration (30 minutes): Board overhead, resolutions, administration, and questions about the board package.

Discussion (up to 2 hours): Discussion on up to five topics. The five topics should fit on one slide or be written on the white board. The CEO is responsible for time boxing the discussion, or if he needs help, he should ask the lead director to do this. If you don’t have a lead director, read my book and get yourself one. This should be a discussion – you’ve got your board in the room – use it to help you go deeper on the specific topic you are trying to figure out. These topics can be on anything, but my experience is that the more precise the context is, the richer the discussion. I prefer for the full leadership team to be in the meeting for this part, although it’s entirely up to the CEO who is in the room.

Executive Session (30 minutes): CEO and board only. Here the board can give feedback specifically to the CEO or sensitive issues around personnel or other things the CEO wants to discuss separately from the management team can be covered. At the end, the CEO leaves and let’s the board have some time alone where the lead director checks in if there is any feedback the board would like to give the CEO.

If you have less than five topics, the board meeting can take less time. Or if the five topics only take an hour to go through, the board meeting can take less time. There is nothing ever wrong with ending a meeting early. Ever.

Now this template doesn’t always work – you often have other specific things you have to address. When a company is going through an M&A process, the board meetings tend to be frequent and cover other stuff. Or, when the company is in a downward spiral, or dealing with a crisis, the focus is often very precise.

But in my world, the day of the “board update” is over. I find no value in sitting in a room for three hours, paging through a PowerPoint deck while people present at me, and the people around the table ask an endless stream of questions, mostly demonstrating that they haven’t been engaged in what the company has been doing since the last board meeting.


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Tuesday, 6 October 2009

(Scroll to the end of the Article!)

Slightly enhanced version of one of the four experimental pics

After the first "Psychic Photography"-Experiment, held after weeks of preparation at the end of July 2009, and after a summer holyday-break the Felix Group came last Tuesday, the 11th of August 2009 together to see, what the spirit-control-team was planning and if further photos could be achieved.

Much earlier than normal, the channeling sitter announced he recognized the energy matrix of the entity, that considered himself as "Hans Bender", the deceased icon of German Parapsychology.

So after 10 more minutes of very audible trance induction "Hans Bender" this time spoke at much more length than the times before. Before he began to give very thorough descriptions how we had to execute the single steps of action to do our part of a succesful outcome, he first greeted every single of the present 10 sitters and thanked them being part in his experiments.

He explained, that in fact the channeling sitter has no bigger part in the production of the "psychic photos" and other phenomena than any other attending circle member. The possibility to give through highly detailed channeled instructions is the only reason why the sitters channel-efforts were essential.
A second slightly enhanced photo out of the row of 4 experimental photos

Hans Bender explained, that it is the trance per se, that opens the access to deeper realms of reality, where it is possible to influence the dimensional matrixes that create the physical realm and enables us to produce "Physical Phenomena". That deeper level is a spiritual level, because the highly complex physical reality is nothing but a mental, a spiritual concept, that interacts with our consciousness to create the illusion we live in as long as we are burdened with our physical body.

That is why spiritual entites are freed of the limitations of time and space...
The two positive pics unaltered

After he mentioned that today there were 2 loving spirits standing very near to the circle he goes on to reveal his highly peculiar code of conduct for todays experiments.

This time 4 photos were planned by the "chemists" he told us and that maybe the enclosing spirits were able to display themselves somehow on the outcomes. If that happens, one sitter immediately recognizes who these close standing entities were, he said.

click to enlarge
Then we were instructed over 20 minutes how to achieve positive results:
- Three sitters had to be involved, one photo-snapper, one, that immediately overtakes the shot photo and stores it into a wooden box, and one sitter, that finally guards the box with all photos in it until we were told to look into it.

- The photo-snapper had 15 minutes after all preparations were done (placing the mirror on the table, chosing the polaroid we were instructed to use, having the box ready) and the light extinguished again to choose freely a moment from which one he had 1 minute - but definetly not longer than 14 seconds for each shot - to shoot all 4 photos and give them to the adjoining sitter.
click to enlarge
- The photo snapper should open the polaroid to illuminate the shooting process with the green control light; after everybody saw the photo transported to the outside, the cam had to be closed immediately avoiding the green light destroying "the chemists" preparations.
Unfortunately the fact that after the closing of the cam the reopening took several seconds to lit the green light back on - and only 14 seconds were allowed as maximum - brought us into a considerable time-pressure that lead to the fact that two of four times the "snapper" forgot to close the cam, before he overhanded the photo to the adjoining sitter with the wooden box.
that maybe caused the two non-result photos.

- Finally after all photos were stored into the box it had to be overhanded to the circle leader, who should hold the box exactly 37 minutes in front of his belly, between the navel and the lap-area. What shall I say - we do not know why - but the spirit-entities may have had their reasons, we considered.

Exactly 37 minutes after the last photo was taken we left the seance room and lit the bright white light in the Seance-rooms corridor to check the outcomes.
click to enlarge
Who the two figures are we by now have not discovered. We even do not know, if these figures are the spirit entities allegedly standing near to the sitters circle as it was mentionede by "Hans Bender".
Fact is, that despite it was announced, no one was able to identify someone on the photo.
On the other hand the pics are basically much too cloudy to identify someone without a shadow of a doubt.
Nevertheless three sitters, a mother and her two daughters, meant they maybe have an idea who the figures are and they are researching at the time and checking old family photos.

What seems to be obvious is that the right handed figure is a child and the left handed an adolescent or a young adult. When we discover more, we will let you know.

Here we close our informal report in the hope to develop that highly interesting joint venture with a motivated spirit team to further heights in the future.

UPDATE: One lady sitter in the meantime has obviously identified the two figures. They are their two favorite Aunts, hanging as a historical photo in her living room.

It may be legitimate to consider, that this photo, seen daily by the lady sitter - who bythe way was the one sitter storing during the experiment all made photos into the wooden box - may have played a role as master-sample, so to speak for the creation of the "Psychic Photo".
Thank you for reading.

1 comment:

Keith Clark said...

Excellent! I have waited to hear of such experiments for some time now. I can't wait until we see more success!


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The man behind Second, web boss Azad Chaiwala, insists that the service promotes fidelity, morality and old-fashioned family values.

The 33-year-old entrepreneur believes in his product so much that he plans to select his next two wives from the company.

Users are greeted by a picture of a beaming, multi-cultural family and the proclamation: "We want bigger, stronger families." Speaking to the Sunday Mercury Chaiwala claimed polygamy across all religions is more popular than it has ever been.

If she doesn’t find someone to her taste, she says, she is content with her independence.

And it suits 21st century Muslims in the UK and around the world too.

Despite the popularity of arranged marriages (when a friend or family member plays matchmaker that is, and not the typical forced marriage situations shown in films and TV), many Muslims are opting to choose their own partners.

That means after a short courting period – that is, going on a few dates (some may be chaperoned if they want, it’s totally up to them) – they decide if they want to settle down.

It’s not always the case, however, as some people want to get to know one another for a longer period of time.

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One thought on “muslim dating agency uk”

  1. All the Shane West fans out there who have landed on this page have come to the right place because here you can catch up with various aspects of his life including the best night of his life, girlfriend history and more.


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GMC Game Jam Time

I have been slacking off quite a bit lately on the game development front, so I am finally jumping straight in again! The end goal is to hopefully after 96 hours have a fully working and realized game that I can release.

The jam starts on May 28th, and I will be doing some streams and blog posts during the dev period! So be sure to keep your eyes peeled and ready to keep up!


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‘Parade of Lights’ goes Friday More holiday fun set for Saturday

Scott Street will be the place to be tomorrow evening when the local Business Improvement Association’s annual “Parade of Lights” gets underway at 6 p.m., signalling the true start of the holiday season for downtown Fort Frances.
BIA co-ordinator Patti Anderson said this morning the festive event is really coming together (even the forecast looks decent) and encourages everyone to show up for the parade.
“[The temperature] will be cool, but it will be fine. And the town has cleared the snow banks, so it will be safe,” she noted. “Thank goodness the town did that. It would be way more treacherous if they hadn’t.”
Anderson said she’s had 10 individuals and groups, plus some perennials like the Fort Frances Fire Department and OPP, confirm their participation so far in this year’s parade, but she’s expecting many more to show up at the Shevlin wood yard at 5 p.m. to line up.
The route will follow Scott Street from the Shevlin wood yard to Central Avenue.
Anderson also said she’d like to see more volunteers participate in tomorrow’s parade.
“They can dress up. We can get them costumes through Masquerade,” she noted. “We’re trying to get volunteers to wear them and walk along with the parade.
“The kids just love to see them,” she added.
Anyone wanting to put a float in this year’s parade, or volunteer their time, can contact Anderson at 275-9774.
Something new to the parade this year is that Canada Post will be collecting letters to Santa during it.
Children who want to write letters to Santa, and have Canada Post deliver them, should address them to: Santa Claus, North Pole, H0H 0H0.
Every kid who sends a letter is assured a response, said Anderson.
As in past years, B•93 FM and the local Salvation Army will be leading the parade in order to collect non-perishable food items, toys, and money donations for the Christmas hamper program.
In related news, the BIA’s annual “Lunch with Santa” will be held this Saturday (Dec. 2) from 11 a.m.-2 p.m. at Warp 9. Kids can get their photo taken with Mr. and Mrs. Claus, and a bite to eat, for $2.
Parents are encouraged to bring their own cameras, but those who don’t can buy pictures of their child with Santa for $2 each.
There also will be a mailbox there from Canada Post for kids to mail their letters to Santa.
For those who can’t attend “Lunch with Santa,” Anderson said jolly St. Nick may be back in town on Saturday, Dec. 17 for a photo session at Howarth’s Home Centre.
Meanwhile, the festive spirit will be alive on Scott Street each and every weekend leading up to Christmas.
For instance, a free gift-wrapping service will be offered at the Fort Frances Museum on Dec. 2, 10, and 17.
As well, parents are welcome to drop their kids off there while they get some shopping done as volunteers will be showing Christmas movies and serving up popcorn.
And next Saturday (Dec. 10), the museum will be having Christmas crafts for kids.
As well, Diane Maxey and her Choraliers will be filling Scott Street with familiar Yuletide songs that day.
And to coincide with the holiday shopping season, daily draws for $100 in gift certificates are being held on B•93 FM starting today.
Participating businesses will have a poster in their windows, letting customers know they fill out ballots there each day to try and win the draw.
An ad on page A6 of yesterday’s Times lists these businesses.


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Lax squad prepares for playoffs

Gavin Cranford, Staff Reporter

If there was one word to describe this year’s boys lacrosse team, it would be “developing.” As the regular season wraps up, the squad currently has a 6-4 record, most recently capturing a 13-7 win on April 25 against Eastern View. The district tournament will begin on May 11. Fauquier’s seed has yet to be determined. However, the team is optimistic about playoff play.
“We’re clicking as a team, and we know how each player on our team plays,” senior Nick Succop said. “We know more plays on offense, and our defense is doing really well.”
Succop and senior Collin Steves brainstormed a revolutionary method to ensure the team’s success in the postseason.
“We’re growing playoff mustaches,” Steves said. “Other sports bleach their hair or shave mohawks, but lacrosse is a man’s sport, and men have facial hair.”
Succop is sure that the team’s effort to grow facial hair will translate into a run for the district title.
“The hardest part of winning will be the mental part,” Succop said. “Growing mustaches will help with the mental part. The look will present the players as leaders.”
The squad faces Culpeper on May 2. The Falcons will conclude their regular season play at home on May 6, facing crosstown rival Kettle Run. The games are critical to postseason success, according to Succop.
“It won’t be easy, but we have to win it out now,” Succop said. “We’ve beaten Culpeper before.We have the idea in our minds that we can’t beat Kettle Run, but we should be able to beat Kettle Run this time.”
The Falcons have experienced their fair share of challenges this season, according to head coach Eric Morrison. Both newcomers and veterans have come together to conquer difficulties.
“Most of our players are young, but I think most are ready for the challenge and the rest will learn quickly,” Morrison said. “We even have two freshmen, Tyler Bane and Jack Liebel, who have had key roles from the start. They worked hard all summer and it shows.”
The team knows how little experience some of the players will have to start, but the senior leaders have a voice on the field and help the younger players.
“A lot of young guys are going to have to play big parts this year,” senior Colin Diehl said. “But they are ready for it.”
The team captains believe it is important to pass on their work ethic, desire to win, and by the end of the season, their leadership.
“There’s a lot of responsibility put on the seniors this year, since there are only four of us,” Diehl said. “We are definitely prepared and can handle the pressure. I remember looking up to the seniors when I was a freshman on varsity, and now it’s my turn to set the example, on and off the field.”
Diehl, who has lettered for four years in lacrosse, embraces being as a leader. Rising varsity players practiced over the summer with older players, to gain experience at a higher level.
“A larger number of players played all summer long, so they are fit and ready,” Morrison said. “Last year’s team lost some close games, and I think we now know how to win those types of games.”
The team was initially disappointed with their performance in the first few games. Despite the slow start, they are building upon working cohesively.
“The season definitely started out pretty rough,” sophomore Robert Morrison said. “But after the first couple games we started to mesh, and now we’re looking really good.”
Robert also adds that the team will continue to develop through the playoffs.
“We’re trying to focus on getting up early in games and holding the lead,” Robert said. “Playing defensively is a lot easier than trying to fight uphill.”
Junior Kenny Palmer says despite their slow start, the team’s hopes are still set high.
“We had a couple bad losses in the beginning but we still had a good start. We won a couple games and started to come together as a team,” Palmer said. “There’s a lot of competition between us, Kettle Run, and Culpeper this year, and we’re still looking to be the top team in the district.”


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Maryland Sheep and Wool!

I remember when I first heard about Maryland Sheep and Wool, almost ten years ago. I was studying abroad in London and joined a knitting group in the hopes of meeting locals — unbeknownst to me, the group was comprised almost entirely of American ex-pats!  They had all been in the UK for decades but tried to return to the US annually for Sheep and Wool.  When I moved to Maryland to start graduate school, I was so excited that I would be so close to the fabled festival!

This year was my fourth visit to MDS&W, and it did not disappoint.  Early Sunday morning, a carload of us (including a friend from the UK who planned her first trip to the US to coincide with the festival!) headed out to West Friendship.  We got there just after it opened and spent the whole morning and early afternoon exploring — I usually go around midday, and it was so nice to get there a bit earlier!  I always forgot just how crowded the festival can get.

Despite my repeated claims to my friends that I never buy much at MDS&W  (In past years, I’ve been so overwhelmed by the sheer amount of wool that I’ve often come away with very little, which is a testament to the size of the festival as I typically have no trouble buying yarn!), this year, I came away with a nice haul.  Some of my purchases were planned, like this Green Mountain Spinnery Cotton Comfort yarn for a Morning Mist top.  Three out of four of us got yarn for this project, and I got some for my mom as well — I was really missing her at the festival, especially as it was Mother’s Day!  In a last minute decision, I went for the colors in the pattern sample.  My mom went for a gorgeous, golden yellow called Yarrow.

I’d planned to get a more vibrant color, but couldn’t resist this gray!
The happiest yellow!

One thing I love about going to the festival year after year is getting to visit the same vendors — I’m especially appreciative that many stay in roughly the same spot each year!  After seeing the lovely ladies in the Green Mountain Spinnery booth, I made a beeline for Marigoldjen‘s tent, which usually sits near the back edge of the festival.  I picked up this gorgeous skein of her BFL superwash sock yarn in Lazy Days, along with a coordinating mini skein.  I’ll use some of the yarn for socks, but with 655 yards in the skein, I’ll have enough left over for another small project.

I can’t wait to cast on with these beauties!

After my visit to Marigoldjen, I stumbled into the Ross Farm tent, and I’m so glad I did.  They had an absolutely beautiful array of wool.  I got myself a lovely skein of sport to try out, maybe for a Newhaven hat.  I love that they are an operation breeding rare and heritage sheep breeds, just up the road for me.

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Henrietta 2.0

Because all the yarn can be a bit overwhelming, I came armed with a list of some projects out of different weights of yarn and the required yardage — I had planned to get sock yarn if any struck my fancy, and I had Newhaven on my list for any stray skeins of sport that I found.  But my last purchase was completely unplanned!  I stopped by Jill Draper Makes Stuff‘s booth, and she had a gorgeous sample Asagi knit up in her Esopus yarn.  I tried it on and loved the fit — and found out it only took two skeins.  So I impulse bought two in this lovely mustard colorway:

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I meant to take loads more pictures of the festival than I actually did, but snapped a few of some of the adorable lambs and sheep.  I love getting to see all the different breeds!

Isn’t she majestic?
A sleepy day old lamb, rejected by it’s mother.
The friendliest sheep!

With our friend over from the UK, it’s been a very fun (and busy!) week and a half of sight seeing in the mid-Atlantic. I’ve managed a bit of knitting while we’ve been on the road that I’m excited to share with you soon.  And I finished my May Cardigan just in time for the festival (more on that later this week).  Until then, below are a few of my favorite pictures of this past week’s adventures!

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Havre de Grace, Maryland
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The Orioles lost big when we went to see them last Wednesday, but I love knitting at baseball games!
We did a long yomp at Gettysburg Monday.

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View from the Pennsylvania Monument

And I’ll leave you with this gal!

We ended our walk by a field with some very inquisitive horses.

Happy Tuesday!

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10 thoughts on “Maryland Sheep and Wool!

  1. It’s so nice to see what other people come away with from MDS&W! I was there Saturday and also saw the day old lamb with the quiet gentleman – I think the lamb got more attention than his booth did. 😛

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text:
Year: 1982
Director: Hal Needham
Cast: Henry Silva
A cheesy, cheap as chips action adventure movie that I saw by accident on TV one afternoon. A couple trekking through the desert (one of whom reminds you of Michael Caine) stumbles across an ultra-elite fighting force, complete with motorcycles that fly and shoot missiles and a hero oozing with 1970s charisma.

A cheap waste of time but fun if you haven't got anything better to do.

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text:
The Lonely Road

by Mark Fisher

From Film Quarterly Spring 2010, Vol. 63, No. 3

A new kind of apocalypse emerges in Cormac McCarthy’s 2006 novel, The Road. Nature here is not an active presence which verdantly reclaims former human habitations, as in a certain apocalyptic tradition which started with Mary Shelley’s The Last Man. Rather, nature asserts itself by failing any more to be the invisible support upon which any conceivable human life-world depends. A catastrophe has happened—McCarthy doesn’t explain what it is because, for those who endured it, the catastrophe would be inexplicable, a sudden and total destruction of the taken-for-granted network of cause and effect upon which all narratives (about life, society, the world) had up until then relied. It is an eco-catastrophe, which, like a reverse neutron bomb, destroys every-thing—plants, trees, animals—except people. This is bitterly ironic if, as might be the case, the catastrophe has been caused by human action. What we can be sure of is that human action cannot now put it right. Nothing can. Such hope as there is in The Road is not based on reason; how could it be? The hope that persists is either hardwired into the organism itself, a stupid ineradicable drive to persist in conditions where death would be preferable, or it is some kind of Gnostic religious impulse, a faith in a distant and unknowable God that has, to all appearances, abandoned the Earth. The two, unnamed central characters—the father and son whose desperate struggles we follow—refer to themselves as “carrying the fire,” that spark which makes human existence more than bare life, and which distinguishes them from the cannibalistic brutes around them who will do anything to survive. McCarthy’s Hobbesian Protestantism emerges in its starkest form in The Road, where the world is ash and the stars are dimmed. Earth has becomes a dead crust; the dark, heavy matter that the Gnostics thought was the lowest form of being has now reached its most degraded state. “All the beings of our world are, in the eyes of the Gnostics, the sediment of a lost heaven,” Jacques Lacarriere writes in The Gnostics (City Lights, 2001, 19). “And from the bottom of this dark sea, man perceives nothing of the luminous surface of the upper world except in ephemeral forms, evanescent phantoms which are like phosphorescent fish that alone illuminate the age-old darkness of the great ocean depths. And our matter, because it is heavy, because it is dark—the darkest and heaviest of all—is also the least dynamic, the most immobile, as fixed and as heavy as atoms reduced to their nuclei. Immobility, the glacial cold of matter and flesh deprived of primal fire and sinking ineluctably towards that absolute zero which is the final stage of material death.” With all the dead forms on which we have lived now used up, Earth in The Road is a burned-out husk that approaches this “final stage of material death,” tending toward total entropy and inertia.

John Hillcoat’s reverent film adaptation renders very convincingly McCarthy’s vision of an environment reduced to shades of ash grey. The problem is not so much what Hillcoat leaves out, but what he adds. In the Guardian (January 7, 2010), Peter Bradshaw complained that the film has omitted an incident from the novel where parents eat the remains of their own infant child’s corpse; but this is one of the few moments in the book which has a touch of the Grand Guignol, and its removal does little to soften the horror. What does soften it is the addition of a voiceover, which as Bradshaw pointed out, “has a calming, distancing function, no matter what revulsions are being described.” The very form of the voiceover presumes a time of tranquillity when the man could look back and reflect on his tribulations, but there is no such time in The Road. McCarthy’s novel is harrowing because its post-apocalypse is not a time of interregnum, a temporary interruption in civilization preceding its restoration: it is the long, drawn-out end. Things are already appallingly, unbearably bad, but they can only get worse. The voiceover form presumes a future audience that has weathered the terrible storm where none can feasibly be imagined. Even Anne Frank had the (in the end justified) hope that the time of Nazi barbarism would pass and that her writings would be read by a sympathetic audience. But in The Road, language itself is dying and those who speak it will surely be extinct within a very few generations. “The world shrinking down about a raw core of parsible entities,” McCarthy writes (Picador, 2007, 93). “The names of things slowly following those things into oblivion. Colors. The names of birds. Things to eat. Finally the names of things one believed to be true. More fragile than he would have thought.”

In Lacanian psychoanalysis, a key concept is that of the “big Other”—an imagined judge whom we try to impress or convince, and whose virtual presence gives social reality its consistency. What is so inappropriate about the voiceover is that it implies a big Other to whom it is addressed. Yet The Road shows that, virtual as the big Other may be, it depends on concrete representatives: institutions, shared social conventions, language itself. When these disintegrate, it dies too. Viggo Mortensen’s man has divested himself of illusions—the environment he exists in cannot sustain them, that is part of its horror—so it is hard to believe that he could hold onto the illusion that there is anyone out there who could listen to his account. The voiceover is as incongruous as Nick Cave and Warren Ellis’s mournful music, which also strikes the wrong note. The world of The Road, clearly, is a world in which mournfulness is a luxury—but it is a luxury which the film’s marketing felt it could not do without. The Weinstein Company press notes tell us how “poignant” the film is, but “poignant” is not a word that comes to mind much when you read the novel. The shared, symbolic domain in which poignancy could be meaningful has been shattered. Hillcoat’s view that the film “can be viewed as a more mythic metaphoric journey of the soul, a fable, an adult fairytale about the passing of one generation to another, that inescapable reality of mortality and the archetypal parent’s greatest fear, guilt and heartbreak in leaving the child behind” neutralizes the novel’s horrific sense of impending extinction, which is both unthinkable and yet horribly plausible. It will happen eventually, and, when it does, the “passing of one generation to another” will only be an excruciating extension of the process of extinction itself.

Nostalgic consumption The Road. Photo: Macall Polay, 2929/Dimension Films. Courtesy of The Weinstein Company.

Nostalgic consumption The Road. Photo: Macall Polay, 2929/Dimension Films. Courtesy of The Weinstein Company.

Post-apocalyptic fictions, as Fredric Jameson has noted, have often been pretexts for imagining utopia. Yet The Road—like Children of Men, perhaps the most interesting post-apocalyptic film of recent years—is instead a symptom of the inability to imagine alternatives to capitalism’s entropic, eternal present. In Children of Men, the world might be ending, but capitalism goes on—franchise coffee bars and internment camps coexist. In The Road, capitalism has definitively ended, but this by no means clears a space for imagining something different. Rather, as we watch the film we feel very intensely the absence of capitalism’s structures, institutions, and—especially—commodities. Capitalism and its lost commodities themselves becomes posited as a utopia: the can of Coke that the man shares with his son in a significant scene stands in for a whole world of commodity plenty that there is now no longer any point pining for. What is left over from capitalism, however, is its sense of individualism: a dogged and resourceful frontier spirit that persists even though there are no frontiers left to conquer, only the corpse of nature and the few remaining products of dead human labor to pick over. The man and the boy exist in a world in which Margaret Thatcher’s dictum has come true: here there really is no such thing as society, only individuals and their families. Well, that isn’t quite right, actually: in addition to individuals and families, there are organized gangs of cannibals, and I will return to this figuration of collectivity shortly.

We are confronted with humanity in a version of what Hobbes supposed to be its natural state. In the section of Leviathan preceding his famous description of life as “nasty, brutish, and short,” Hobbes writes of: “a time of Warre, where every man is Enemy to every man, wherein men live without other security, than what their own strength, and their own inventions shall furnish them withall. In such conditions, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the earth, no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society, and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death” (part 1, chapter 13). All of which captures the situation in The Road very well; except that The Road is much worse than the infernal strife that Hobbes imagined. For Hobbes, it would still possible for humans to remove themselves from the state of nature, precisely by submitting themselves to the authority of a big Other, the sovereign. Whereas in The Road, the end of nature also entails the end of the big Other. No sovereign could replenish this wasteland. The death of nature here means that the conditions of perpetual war which Hobbes imagines can never end. The strange implication is that only when nature has perished can human beings actually descend into the state of nature: only then can they emerge as what they “really are.” But such purported definitions of the true nature of humanity are invariably ideological operations and this goes for McCarthy’s bleak fiction, and its adaptation, too.

As contemporary capitalism tries to do, The Road forecloses the possibility of collectivity. When, in the aftermath of the catastrophe, the man and his wife stay locked down in their own house, you wonder why it is that they didn’t go to neighbors, friends, or extended family—why, that is, their first impulse wasn’t to band together with others to deal with the terrible new situation. This possibility is not considered in The Road, either in the novel or the film. Instead there are only loners, who are either helpless or hostile; gangs who only organize together in order to exploit others; and—albeit only in the novel and the film’s closing moments—another family. The novel refers, very much in passing, to communes: the character called the thief in the film, played by Michael Kenneth Williams, is referred to by McCarthy as “an outcast from one of the communes” (273), but even this tiny implied trace of possible positive collectivity is expunged by Hillcoat. The boy repeatedly wonders if he and his father are still “the good guys”—a question which hangs in the air because, time and again, the man refuses to help others or to consort with them except in very limited ways or for a very short periods of time.

Birth in a barren land Threads. © 1984 BBC. DVD: BBC Worldwide (U.K.).

In the novel, the man reflects on the power of traumatic images. “Just remember that the things you put into your head are there forever” (11), the man tells his son. (“You forget some things dont [sic] you?” the boy asks. “Yes. You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget,” his father replies: the mordant wisdom of this world without a future.) There are of course shocking moments in Hillcoat’s film—one thinks especially of the scene in which the man and the boy stumble into a darkened cellar where people are being stored as living meat—but there are no images here quite so harrowing as those in Barry Hines’s 1984 British TV drama, Threads. Reading McCarthy’s novel, I was frequently reminded of Threads, whose cataclysm is the result of a nuclear war, but which is devoid of even the thin redemptive promise that The Road feebly holds out. Many of the images in Threads—of a woman giving birth in a brutal new world in which language has devolved to grunts; of the haggard survivors generations after the war, pathetically hoeing toxic, unyielding soil—are indeed likely to remain in my head forever, having long since fused with nightmare. But even in such conditions of utter horror, Threads remains concerned with problems of collectivity, of how society could reconstruct itself when all the “threads” that had previously held it together have been obliterated; the same is true of Terry Nation’s less harrowing series, Survivors, which originally ran between 1975–77. (The BBC is currently screening a high-gloss remake.) In Survivors, nature is not destroyed; instead a swine flu-like virus has killed nine-tenths of the human population. With 1970s ecopolitics in the background, the major questions that Survivors posed were all about collectivity: how are resources to be conserved, how is labor to be organized. Such questions are meaningless in The Road, where conservation of resources can only temporarily stave off their inevitable total depletion, and where, in the absence of any raw materials for production, labor can only amount to scavenging.

What is missing from The Road can also be inferred by contrast with a more recent apocalyptic thriller, Terminator Salvation. All of the criticisms of McG’s renewal of the franchise for its lack of plot or character development are no doubt justified. But there is something deeply resonant about Terminator Salvation’s imagery at the moment. In the wake of the financial crisis of 2008, we find ourselves surrounded by what the theorist Alex Williams has called “ideological rubble”: the neoliberal “End of History” has been debunked, but we are not in a new world so much as a bombed-out space, strewn with the debris of failed political-economic systems. After the financial crisis, neoliberalism can no longer claim to offer the only system that works; it, too, is now a relic, albeit a relic that still dominates our current (post-catastrophic) world. Terminator Salvation‘s cybergothic, Black Metal vision gives mythic form to this desertified political terrain. The film pitches us into the future war that, in the earlier films, we have only seen in glimpses, this future war between embattled human collectives and the cyborg armies of technocapital presaging a new struggle over the present. The Road, like Threads, acts as a kind of negative inspiration—after living with such horror in fictional form, we feel that we would do anything to avoid it occurring in actuality. Terminator Salvation is galvanizing in a different way. What is its pulp existentialist slogan, “There is no fate but what we make,” if not an alternative way of saying that, against all the odds, another world is possible?

Mark Fisher is the author of Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? (Zero Books, 2009).

  1. Fantastic article laying out the case for the choices that were made (or equally, the opportunity that weren’t pursued) by the filmmakers/producers for this film. All the elements that I and many others have found problematical in the film like the voice-over, the music (the main theme in The Road, instantly triggered for me Arvo Pärt’s Spiegel im Spiegel and the bit from Hilary & Jackie’s OST when I saw it at the Toronto International Film Festival for its premier in Toronto) and the ornamental product placements (“killer coke” the most jarring to me) are quite nicely laid out and worked out in this piece.

    It’s too bad that this novel of McCarthy’s was given that wide-mainstream stamp of approval by-the-one-that-shall-not-be-named. Ever after this was earmarked for big-time consumption and distribution dollars to be had. In the shadow of this fact, this film was shelved many times it seemed before it finally went to wide release in Oct 2009, as I recall. I wonder, during this time, what kinds of ‘refinements’ and decisions were made to the film. Nevertheless, this is the film as it is now.

  2. Fantastic article laying out the case for the choices that were made (or equally, the opportunity that weren’t pursued) by the filmmakers/producers for this film. All the elements that I and many others have found problematical in the film like the voice-over, the music (the main theme in The Road, instantly triggered for me Arvo Pärt’s Spiegel im Spiegel and the bit from Hilary & Jackie’s OST when I saw it at the Toronto International Film Festival for its premier in Toronto) and the ornamental product placements (“killer coke” the most jarring to me) are quite nicely laid out and worked out in this piece.

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