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evilelitest2 · 4 years

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Do you know of any good resources on how and why Reagan won? He seemed to have a lot of resistance from the Republican old guard and all four of my grandparents absolutely despised him. But he somehow won with what sounded like was a very unpopular platform, and I don't understand exactly what happened.

I mean most electoral histories will have you covered, are you looking from a cultural perspective or an electoral perspective, or just a general overview of the 1980 election? Personally I recommend the book “Backlash” on the larger reactionary movement of the 80s which is in no way relevant today...

But in short there are many reasons why Reagan won, many of them depressing familiar today

1) Ronald Reagan was an actor and was a really charismatic speaker, specifically he was very good at seeming friendly, approachable and non condescending. It was extremely easy to understand Reagan’s message if you weren’t paying attention and he didn’t seem like some sort of elite who understood policies or knew where Cambodia was on a map, because he didn’t either. With the possible exceptions of JFK, and OBama, Reagan is likely the most charismatic president in the last century and that makes a big difference in the election

2) Jimmy Carter was a bit of a mess. I love Carter and I think he is one of the most moral people to ever be president (judging on a scale) but...his administration was extremely chaotic, inept, and really bad at messaging.

3) Reagan cheated. At his most famous debate with Carter, it turns out Reagan’s team had actaully managed to get Carter’s debate plans before hand, so Reagan knew exactly what Carter was going to say which is why Reagan seemed so invincible in the debate

4) The Economy. Due to a wide variety of reasons including but not limited too the fallout of the Vietnam War, the OPEC oil crisis, the natural eb and flow of the market, and the failure of Kenysian economics meant that when the 1980 election was happening, America was in a pretty bad economic place. Unemployment was high, inflation was spiraling and for many white people it was the first time they had ever experienced an economic downturn

This wasn’t really Carter’s fault, just like the economic boom in the 80s wasn’t really Reagan’s fault (though the initial crash certainly was) but that is how it was perceived.

5) The Failure of Kenysian Economics. Now when I say “failure” i don’t actually mean “this is a bad system” Kenysan economics got us out of the Great Depression after all and lead to the largest economic boom in US history. However they aren’t the end all, especially when politicians running things don’t really understand what they are doing. So while they aren’t nearly as awful as the Free market economics that would follow, people were becoming disillusioned with the prior economic model

6) Vietnam. Oh dear god Vietnam. Reagan would be the first president who didn’t preside over Vietnam in any way, which meant he wasn’t tainted by the total fuck up that was that war. America was still reeling from losing our first major war to a small nation that nobody had heard off before they started to kick our ass, and the battle over Vietnam has basically torn the country apart. A huge amount of people felt pissed and humiliated over the defeat, and rather than question why we went to war or the morality of our tactics, blamed protesters and leftists for not supporting the war enough, a stabbed in the back myth if you will. Also Vietnam was a Democrat fuck up, Republicans weren’t in power when it started under JFK and LBG, who collectively created the horrific circumstances of the war. The republicans who oversaw it were the comparatively (to Reagan) more ‘moderates” of Nixon and Ford. So American both felt humiliated and weak from looking a major war to a people we saw as inferior and was blaming everything associated with the left for it. Reagan’s “Make America Great Again” message was extremely attractive to a lot of people, and since he didn’t have anything to do with the war, you couldn’t blame him for its failure.

7) The Soviet Union. The presence of the USSR hung over every US election since Woodrow Wilson, but after Vietnam a lot of Americans felt like the USSR was winning. This was ironically utterly untrue as the Soviet Union would collapse only 11 years later, but the perception in America was that the US had been defeated by COMMUNISM and needed to get our groove back for round II. And Reagan was by far the most aggressively confrontational anti Communist president we have had since FDR, so much so that he accidentally almost triggered a nuclear war and destroyed all of civilizations...whoops. But that is what American wanted back then

8) The rise of the religious right. For most of the 20th century, while religion was certainly a thing which effected politics, the US political landscape was largely secular, religion being evoked more than it made its own demands. But due to rise of the Counter Culture movement, religious folks sort of went into panic mode and suddenly conservative fundamentalist Christianity was one the rise. And Reagan embraced them 100%, leading to the fundementalist cancer that lives with us to this day

9) The death of the Counterculture. At the exact same time as the Religious Right came into power, the group it was opposing had largely collapsed. I mentioned this before when talking about the civil Rights movement, but once overt legal segregation had been outlawed, what was left were the far more serious, complicated and unclear problems, which lead to a lot of hippies burning out, falling into infighting, declaring victory and going home, or turning to more radical and largely ineffectual approaches. And since so much of the counter culture was linked to to its fashion and aethetic, as the Hippie style/music/clothing/demeanor became lame and uncool, the causes behind them were seen as uncool as well. Also the most dedicated leftists quickly turned to auto cannibalism and spent more time fighting each other rather than focusing on their enemy a dynamic which the left can always be counted on (cough what happened to Counterpoints cough)

10) The larger cultural backlash. America as a whole was feeling threaten by the left, and by extention the progressive made for women, racial minorities, and sexual minorities, and was pushing back against them. The 60s and 70s was a moment of sudden shocking change which took the old guard by surprise and they didn’t know what to do, but once the left had burned themselves out a bit, the Right was able to reorganize, refocus their efforts, and remake their arguments to reassert the oppressive systems they so valued. And for a lot of Americans who were passively bigoted, the incredibly fast pace of change got them scared and they sought comfort in the return of the familiar. Again Reagan wasn’t just an actor, he was a cowboy actor from shitty kitch family films. And as we’ve seen before in terms of Whitelash or Male Fragility, fear of losing privilege can get people to vote against their own interest (cough union workers cough)

11) America was facing a big choice. After WWII, we were basically the only major nation with a good economy, which we were able to turn into a great economy, and had an over 20 year post war high. But other nations started to compete with us (most notably Japan) and our status as the singular nation started to be threatened by the EU, India, China, Latin America, and our own changing history. For the first time, Americans started to realize that maybe, not right away, but eventually, we would just be one nation among many again, rather than the only superpower. Simultaneous, the threat of Climate change first started to be noticed, and Americans started to realize that maybe we should tone down the materialism, the consumerism, and the reliance on fossile fuels. Carter infamously wore sweaters in the white house to save on gas and put solar panels on the roof, which was seen by many Americans (idiots) as weakness.

Basically we had a choice, we could either

A) Prepare our nation for the transformation period we were going for, and slowly start to move off oil as our economy changed and we had to make adjustments for it

B) FUCK THAT. THIS IS AMERICA AND WE DON”T COMPROMISE FOR ANYTHING. YOU KNOW WHAT...LETS BE EVEN MORE RECKLESS

Americans were asked to choose between accepting an uncomfortable reality or embracing a comforting delusion.

12) The Iran Hostage crisis. This made Carter look weak internationally and everybody knows that America looking weak is worth destroying our own internal economy.

13) The Democrats were in the middle of a civil war. The Civil Rights movement and the Great Society had torn the democrats apart which means Carter was never really able to get his own party to obey him like the Republicans did. WHats worse is that the aftereffect of the Vietnam War had basically crippled LBJ’s Great Society Program, meaning the Democrats were really chaotic

14) Finally, it is important to remember, the Democrats had held power from 1932 all the way to 1980s, the US was kind of a single party state for most of the century, and a lot of people were pretty sick of them. Corruption, incompetence and hypocrisy are around in every party and the democratic congress in particular was widely hated, so the Republicans felt like this new exciting thing, something which could maybe bring a new era in America. “Its morning in America”

And of course, Reagan was in many ways what white America wants, a giant self congratulatory message that lets us avoid dealing with real issues....

#Ask EvilElitest2 #Ronald Reagan #American Politics #1980 Election #Jimmy Carter #Vietnam War #Counter Culture #HIppies #Backlash #Republicans #Democrats #The Great Society #OPEC #enviromentalism

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itsbrivalentine-blog · 5 years

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Life After Death

Preface:

When I was debating about a topic for my memoir “Life after Death” I bounced many ideas around. Originally, it was going to go a completely different route with the topic. After starting it I came to a severe writers block. The words didn’t seem to flow, nor did the story have any entertainment value or compelling aspects. Frankly it was boring. After trying to force my original topic I gave up, then finding myself back at the drawing board, so to speak. I did research on what a memoir really is, and kept coming to the same conclusion. If I wanted to write something true and compelling it would have to be raw and deep. The one idea I kept coming back to was my troubled time, and my mothers death. It was one of the most unspoken events in my life. I though to myself “dig deep, bring the raw and emotionally true feelings out”. It scared me writing this memoir; to put such and emotional topic on display, for me to be completely transparent, and vulnerable. But I’m proud to say I did it. In a way it was a healing and therapeutic experience. I feel my story of struggle and triumph will be a relatable and healing experience for others.

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Life after Death

In life we all have many different paths, but our roots have very similar circumstances. My mother was a native Californian in the 60′s and 70′s era; as you can imagine, she was a little freer spirited and liberal, if I were to describe her in a few short words. Although she took the path of education and decided to be a contributing member of society her free loving spirit never left. Growing up she never killed the spiders we found in the house. She would simply get a jar or Tupperware, trap it, put the lid on, and take it outside to set it free. I was lucky enough to have great parents. My mother was very hands on, always active in my schooling and my life. She led me down a path of morals and set me up with the building blocks for me to be a strong woman. Despite her presence and teachings, life can be harsh, and you can either stand strong through trials and tribulations or you can let them devour you. That is a repeated lesson I had to learn in the years to come.

High School can either be the best years of your life, full of friendships, and memories that shape you, or a tormenting waste of time you grit your teeth and bear it. My high school is a little of both, small town America in a northern state. Part of a town full of desolation and nothing to entertain teenagers. The diner on the weekends is a desirable spot, you can find an eclectic variety of people. Booths of old men reading over the paper, highlights of last week's High school football game the main topic of their conversation. Random tables of high school students speaking loudly and throwing straw wrappers at each other, all the while tormenting their waiters and others surrounding them. Then on the other side of the diner you can see families enjoying meals and memories, a picture of my life just years before. A life that does not exist anymore.

My eighth-grade year was a year of many milestones. The year marked one chapter closing and another chapter opening. Unbeknownst to me I was in for more of a ride than I expected. My mother had fell ill and was diagnosed with cancer. My family held hope, and my mother stronger than all of us continued life and held an image as if nothing had happened. She stayed strong; I assume for the sake of our family. My world and my brothers were crushed with the news, our life had come to a screeching hault. All of our dreams, future hopes, and plans now hung in the unknown. My future excitement for high school now represented pain and sorrow.

The Chemo treatments started; it took a hard toll on our whole family. My mother tried to act as if nothing would change, but we all knew the possible truth. No one wanted to be honest and discuss the possibilities, especially my father and mother. As the Chemo treatments got stronger the weaker my mother became. She tried to hide the frailness and the toll it took on her body, although we could all see, and subconsciously knew what was in our future. As the treatments continued the closer the grim reaper came, my mother fought him but fate could not be stopped. Death had visited my family and tore it apart.

I returned to school. As I walked into class, I was greeted with a slip to visit the counselor's office. I already knew what the visit was pertaining to. I walked through the doors and found an empty chair; I felt the eyes of the whole room staring. It felt like I was the zoo animal with spectators all around staring at me. I knew what the looks were about, everyone had heard the news of my mother. The counselor's door opened; then, I heard my name being yelled out from inside the office. When I stepped in her office, I was greeted with a saying that had been so familiar over the last week. She said, “I am so sorry for your loss. If there is anything I can do, please don’t be a stranger.” It was a saying I had come to hate so deeply. It felt like my family was the gossip of everyone's conversation, as if we were a charity and pity case. The rest of the school day was like torture. I was in a daze, I would see the teacher's lips move and saw the writings on the board, but I couldn’t process anything. It was as if my body was there, but my mind wasn’t. I remember over and over again trying to keep the tears from coming down my face, the pain and realization of my new life would come in waves. It seemed like this was the tone for the rest of the school year.

High school was finally here. It had been only a few short months since my mother had passed away, but the memory was still very much alive. I had such high hopes for high school and my freshmen year. It was a chance to meet new people, make new friends. It was a chance to leave the label of the poor girl who lost her mother behind. I had focused so much on what I had high hopes for and neglected to realize the true possibilities of what high school really could and would be like. I had already learned kids could be very mean and harsh, but the older we were the more the words hurt. Just like any other high school mine was full of peer pressures. I was to the age now of corruption. The only difference now was the absence of my mother, and her guidance, she had instilled good morals, but she didn’t prepare me for the pain and emptiness I felt in my heart. I was introduced to prescription pills, I took them to fit in, but after trying them I realized it filled the void. The second lesson of high school don’t trust anyone. I had been set up from the very girl I was trying to fit in with, she had hidden her pills in my backpack and told the principle. My father came down to the school, and in the principal's office the look of shame and embarrassment broke my heart, I knew I had messed up. Heading home after getting suspended I explained to my father what happened, to him it was unacceptable. My first real mistake was a pre-set to the rest of my high school career.

The months flew by; my freshmen year was almost over. I had fallen behind, and been labeled once again, because of my choices early in the year. Once you have a label it will be forever hard to overcome and distance yourself from; another lesson I had learned since my mother's passing. I was still trying to find my place in high school. Freshmen year proved to be one of the most challenging and terrible years of my life, it was a time I needed my mothers guidance . Summer break came, and my home life was even more of a mess. My father was trying to fill the void of my mother just like I had tried. Alcohol had been a pass time for him, but now was an escape. Beer was his medicine, and the bar was his safe place. He went through girlfriends like I changed my clothes. All of which were women who had deeper issues of their own. The list was endless, thief's, drug addicts, and users. My father was so lonely, he desperately wanted that love and companionship back in his life.

Sophomore year had now started, I was finally finding normalcy and happiness. I had made a few good friends I trusted, and my grades were decent. It seemed like I was in a twilight zone compared to the last two years of my life. I was becoming a normal teenager. Football games on the weekends, sleepovers after. My brother and I forged a very close relationship, we were almost inseparable. He was so protective over me, especially after watching the revelations of the near past. We had only each other to lean on, or so it felt. Everyone knew we had lost our mother, but what they didn’t realize was theoretically we had lost our father too. The alcohol had stolen him from us. He was physically there, but everything you need from a parent we lacked. We were left to our own devices to make it in the world.

As the days went by and our lives continued, we were constantly hit with trials and tribulations. My brother and I were strong; we were raised close, and grew even closer. We relished the teachings of our mother, and kept her memory alive in our conversations. It was as if my brother had taken on the father role, he wanted to protect, and wanted greatness from me. But I failed him, the peer pressures once again proved too much. It was a combination of bad choices and bad judgement. I had been diagnosed with depression from a doctor, I was prescribed numerous prescriptions over the next couple months. Every medicine promised normalcy; but failed and gave me crazy side effects. My father and doctor failed me as well, I told them I was not depressed, but what did I know I was just a kid. The last medicine I took ended in an extreme outburst, resulting in my brother's car windows being smashed out with a bat. The scene played out with my brother mentioning he did not like the outfit I was wearing, it was not appropriate attire for bowling. At the moment I remember being so overwhelmingly upset and full of rage. After the extremely intense scene ran its course, and my brother calmed down, he realized that was not my character by any means. Finally, someone believed me, the medicine was not what I needed. It was apparent depression was not what I was suffering from, it was grief.

My junior year finally came around, and like I mentioned peer pressure had won. Like my father, alcohol has become a therapy and pass time of mine. The people I had grown up with now had went their own ways. We were older, some of us had found ourselves, and others had been lost in the temptations, and defeated by life's circumstances and events. I myself fell into both categories. I had been defeated it felt at times, but somehow learned how to always come out on the other end prevailing with my pride. The memories of my mother's words playing in my mind “Hold your head high, stand strong in your convictions, you are strong, and you have a heart of greatness.” At times it was the words I clung to in my darkest days, the days filled with loneliness. I could relate to the feelings my father felt, but still couldn’t justify his actions. I learned to bury my feelings; life was easier that way. I felt like I was letting my mother down, I knew I wasn’t doing right. The life I was leading didn’t feel like a life of greatness and conviction. It was a life of a lonely lost little girl who was trying to find life after death, a girl searching for something, but that something was unknown. It was a dark empty feeling, and the ones I had depended on were struggling with the same defeats. As the year neared an end I fell behind. Graduation didn’t look like an option anymore. My brother's disappointment and heartache for what my life had become became a turning point for me.

Although my senior year had approached, I wasn’t celebrating my last year of school like my classmates. They had worked so hard, and were ready to end this chapter, they were ready to see what life as an adult had in store for them. On the other hand, I wasn’t as excited, I had a glimpse of what life was like being an adult left to my own devices. That life proved troublesome and hard, too hard for just a child. I had lost my best years it felt like; I had taken on struggles beyond my years. Everyone speaks of high school being your best years, years full of defining points, they were defining that was for sure. However, I don’t think the context they used defining was the same defining I had lived. When you are a grade school child usually there is a career day, a day where parents come in and speak about their profession. Generally, at the end of their presentation they ask the children in class what they want to be when they grow up, I remember my answer being an Anesthesiologist. The parents would chuckle, then they would ask if I could spell that; as they stood amazed, I would belt out like I was in a spelling bee, confidently knowing I was spelling it right. My future was envisioned so differently as a child, I had high hopes, my mother had high hopes as well. She knew my brother and I were smart, and competent of anything we wanted to do. But the life that had played out for me seemed a life of unfavourability, I had lost my self-assurance. My life goals and plans were not the same as when I was a child, the whole world did not feel like it was at my fingertips anymore.

I was my greatest downfall, my greatest critic, and my greatest strength. Most mothers greatest wish and accomplishment is seeing their child grow, I wish mine would have had that chance to watch as I grew into the woman she always knew I was capable of becoming. My mother led by example, showed her children honest ways, and encouraged us to be independent strong people. Through my pit falls, trials, and tribulations my mother shined through. I was her daughter, more than I realized. Although no one could have predicted our futures it did not matter, she lived her life full of love, happiness, and fulfillment. Her legacy lived on within my brother and I, we found ourselves, and became better people because of our struggles. The ground work she laid could not be erased, even when we did not realize it the universe did. Life dealt me cards and i played them; my poker face had become mastered. I had conquered my inner demons finally, and found peace. Not a day passes that I don’t come across a lesson learned through my mother, either indirectly, or directly.

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mcmansionhell · 6 years

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Looking Around - On Sound (Part 1): Noise

If you are able, take a moment - 30 seconds or so - and simply listen.

What do you hear?

If you, like me, are sitting in a quiet part of the house, you probably hear the wind rustling outside, the hum of electronic appliances, an airplane, or perhaps the faint rumble of distant cars.

If you are reading this in a coffeeshop or in an office, you probably hear footsteps; several simultaneous conversations; espresso machines or copiers; laughter; traffic.

Regardless of where you are or what you are doing, when you listen to your environment, what becomes immediately apparent is the total ubiquity of noise.

There are few moments of sustained quiet in our lives. After all, to reach a place without much noise requires traveling a great deal of distance from any urban or suburban setting, often where there are little to no amenities (which are the source of a great deal of noise themselves.) And so, over the centuries, we simply learned to live with noise.

A Brief History of Noise (not the genre of music, sorry)

Before modern industrialization, there was relatively little noise pollution, just as there was relatively little light pollution. Every evolution in human infrastructure has brought about more and more noise. I’m sure there were a nostalgic few in the distant past who longed for the days before cobblestone streets and the endless fractious clacking of horse-drawn carriages.

We don’t have much documentation on pre-technology noise, but it is posited by some that regular, consistent noise originated with two developments: the keeping of time and urbanization. The Medieval church bell (and later the public mechanical clock) is posited by sound scholar R Murray Schafer in one of the first texts to be written on the subject, The Soundscape, as being one of the first consistent, documented sources of urban noise.

According to Schafer, as cities and towns consolidated around industries present in early capitalist (or feudalist) societies, several different types of noise were introduced, such as the noises of infrastructure like water-powered mills, the labor of tradesmen (think a blacksmith’s anvil), the opening and closing of businesses, the public advertisement of wares via town criers - and each of these soundscapes - the word given to sonic profiles of specific places and times - were unique depending on their geography and the customs of the people who lived there.

An old water mill, the heavy industry of yore. Public Domain.

However, it wasn’t until the Industrial Revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries that the noise level in urban areas began to amplify with the invention of heavy machinery such as the steam engine, the hydraulic press, and of course, the railroad. Even previously quiet activities began to make noise - such as sewing with the invention of the sewing machine or writing with the typewriter. With the development of modern capitalism, this noise only proliferated more and more, as the railways expanded and brought noise to even the most rural areas, continued by the invention of the internal combustion engine and the inescapable sound of rubber tires on tarmac. The more a city produced, the more powerful it was, and the noisier it became.

The next big shift in noise was electricity, which ended the cycle of work according to the rising and setting of the sun, and therefore expanded noise deep into the night. The hum of electronics at 50 or 60 Hz, a hum you’re probably hearing somewhere right now, became ubiquitous.

Importantly, for the first time, through electronic sound reproduction, sonic content was divorced from its event. Before sound reproduction, a sonic event was finite - restricted to a specific source, in a specific place and a specific time. With the telegraph, (and later, radio) a sound source was no longer relegated to a specific place - it could travel long distances and be received by distant ears - though it was still often restricted by time. It wasn’t until the invention of recording that sound became completely separated from its event for the first time in human history - a severing of both time and the human senses.

For all of the good broadcast and recording has done for us, namely giving us the ability to reach larger numbers of people and to preserve sound instead of only images, it has a rather sinister side effect, which is turning the previously respected sound-making practices of music and speech into at best, background noise, and at worse, a nuisance. After all, when was the last time you went shopping or out to dinner in a place without background music?

youtube

In fact, in 1969, the General Assembly of the International Music Council of UNESCO passed a resolution denouncing “the intolerable infringement of individual freedom and the right of everyone to silence, because of the abusive use, in private and public places, of recorded or broadcast music.” (Schafer, 97)

But - you might say - “I like when they play jazz at the coffeeshop. It helps me work. I don’t think it’s noise at all!”

This brings some interesting questions into play: what is noise anyway, how do people relate to noise, and is it inherently bad?

What is Noise?

What is noise? The definition of noise has been shaped by both culture and technology, but Schafer posits a variety of qualities that have been used to define noise.

The first, earliest, and perhaps most practical definition of noise is simply unwanted sound. This definition is useful because it is subjective - some sound can be perfectly desirable by some and not for others.

The second definition of noise is unmusical sound. “Unmusical” is used here not as a subjective pejorative, but describing the physical qualities of sound composed of non-periodic vibrations (such as wind or leaves) as opposed to the periodic vibrations produced by most musical instruments. To clarify, when people refer to “white noise” they are using this definition of noise.

The third definition consists of noise as any loud sound. This is the second most used definition of noise today and the one used by legal statues on noise.

The fourth definition of noise is noise as a disturbance in any signaling system. This is the type of noise referred to in electrical, broadcast, and recording engineering (Schafer 184). I would expand this definition to include mechanical systems that are either in disrepair or inefficient, such as a poorly executed air conditioning/ventilation system or a sputtering muffler.

Noise and the Law

Of course there is a so-called “objective” definition of noise, that is the legal definition of a specific sound exceeding a specific decibel limit. But, as Schafer points out, it is rather silly that a car producing 86 decibels of sound is noise but a car producing 85 decibels is not.

Some of these noise laws can be beneficial, specifically those limiting industrial or environmental noise pollution from highways and factories, or those that exist to protect the hearing of workers, such as the 1981 hearing protection and noise exposure standards set by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).

However, many garden variety noise ordinances are often more societally harmful than they are sonically helpful, for they require a greater police presence, discourage reasonable neighbor-to-neighbor conflict resolution, are often racialized, and disproportionately punish both young and poor people who cannot afford to pay expensive fines.

Above all, these laws are really unenforceable. Properly calibrated scientific environmental noise measuring equipment is very expensive, and there is a significant difference in data between professional and amateur equipment. And really, the ordinances aren’t about policing noise - they’re about policing behavior.

Noise and Society

While Schafer’s book (which was written in 1977 and is steeped in all kinds of “return to nature” sentiments that have not aged well) was without a doubt groundbreaking in that it was one of the first examinations of the role sound has played both historically and environmentally, there is an underlying assumption that I fundamentally disagree with: the supremacy of silence over sound.

An RF anechoic chamber. Photo by adamantios (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Schafer posits that the mechanical noise of the modern era is inherently unnatural, but ignores the fact that true silence is also unnatural. The only truly silent place is an artificial one: an anechoic chamber. As a student of acoustics, I’ve had the displeasure of being in an anechoic chamber and experiencing the suffocating terror that is total silence, a silence so strong you can hear every sound made by your internal organs, a silence so strong people can only stand being in an anechoic chamber for mere minutes.

There is a reason silence is described as “eerie” or “foreboding”: it’s because the act of making sound is inescapable, it’s a function of physics - there’s only a matter of time before the silence is lapsed. And yet there is a recurring societal notion that silence is somehow virtuous - an idea that manifests itself in several ways, such as the ideas that a well-behaved child is quiet, or that “proper” women are seen and not heard, or - on a more lighthearted note - the stereotype that musicians have inherently lax morals and will run off with your teenage daughter.

The idea that life was better when it was quieter is also rather silly, because with noise also came great improvements in our quality of life. However, disputing the idea that silence is superior to sound does not mean that noise should be defended, because many types of mechanically-based environmental noise from industry and infrastructure is deeply harmful to our health and well-being.

One term Schafer uses is much more powerful and insightful in describing the role noise plays in our world: sound imperialism. It is true that environmental, mechanical noise, like an invading empire, has conquered and occupied our lives against our will. We did not ask for noise, and we did not have a say in the matter. (Personally, if it were up to me, my pharmacy would stop playing breakup songs from 2004.) Also, we are biologically defenseless against noise - our ears and brains developed for a very different sounding world, one with much less noise.

Via OSHA

The effect this ceaseless barrage of noise has on our ears and brains is an environmental health hazard - both for us, and for the natural world, where it disrupts plant and animal life. Talk to any acoustician (hi!) or audiologist, and the health results of escalating environmental noise is grim, whether it’s ear fatigue, tinnitus, or permanent hearing loss at younger and younger ages. We often cite earbud use as being particularly traumatic to our hearing, but ignore the primary reason most people use earbuds: because they are more effective than conventional headphones at blocking out external noise.

Environmental noise is not individualized - it can’t be resolved by calling your neighbor and asking them to stop playing the drums at 12:30 AM, or by politely letting your roommates know that you will be having friends over and that it might get loud. Environmental noise, like all forms of pollution, takes place on a large scale - it is systemic, and it is mired in power.

Industrial giants, energy lobbyists, and HVAC people who always seem to end up working on concert halls all have a vested interest in keeping things noisy, because it is time consuming and expensive to make things that are quiet (and energy efficient). It’s not shocking that things that are bad for the regular environment are also bad for the sonic environment - car dependency, nonrenewable resource extraction, factories, the list goes on. And, like other types of pollution, the people who are most exposed to noise pollution are working people (occupational noise), poor people and people of color.

If you think that you’re not effected by noise pollution because you don’t go to, like, 50 metal shows a day or whatever: you know that immediate feeling of lethargic relief you get when you enter a quiet building after a busy day of work, a walk in the city, or a long car ride? That’s auditory fatigue.

You know that feeling of being in a busy place and feeling like you can’t concentrate anymore even though you’ve spent the day doing relatively little? Your brain is tired because your ears have no choice but to receive sound waves all the time, regardless of how actively you are listening. Studies have emerged showing that environmental noise is also harmful to those who are d/Deaf or hard of hearing. It’s a problem for everyone.

Quiet the Source

Ultimately, when UNESCO claims people have a “right to silence,” what they really mean is that people have the right to live in a world without being subjected to the violence of auditory trauma. We shouldn’t have to carry earplugs everywhere we go, or keep building noise barriers on the side of roads.

In the field of noise control, the first line of defense and often the most effective strategy for solving a noise problem is to simply quiet the source. That means both making mechanical objects that are quieter and more efficient, more sound regulations for manufacturers and realizing and changing our toxic cultural norms about sound like “music is supposed to be painfully loud”, or “actually bars and restaurants are supposed to be painfully loud”, or “no matter what retail store you go in, it’s good and productive somehow to hear the same fifteen songs from 2000-2008 [also usually too loud]”.

Via CDC.gov

These changes are societal, large scale, and will stretch years into the future. As for more immediate solutions, theres... acoustics! Which is what our next (less depressing) installment (and my Master’s degree lol) will be about.

If you like this post, and want to see more like it, consider supporting me on Patreon! Also JUST A HEADS UP - I’ve started posting a GOOD HOUSE built since 1980 from the area where I picked this week’s McMansion as bonus content on Patreon!

Not into recurring donations or bonus content? Consider the tip jar! Or, Check out the McMansion Hell Store ! 100% of the proceeds from the McMansion Hell store go to charity!

Copyright Disclaimer: All photographs are used in this post under fair use for the purposes of education, satire, and parody, consistent with 17 USC §107. Manipulated photos are considered derivative work and are Copyright © 2018 McMansion Hell. Please email [email protected] before using these images on another site. (am v chill about this)

#architecture #sound #looking around #acoustics #soundscapes #sound studies #noise #pollution #history

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fuckyeahevanrwood · 6 years

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Evan Rachel Wood and Julie Taymor on Why Across the Universe ‘Scared the Shit Out of People’

The Beatles have always had a cinematic presence, from the 1964 faux-documentary A Hard Day’s Night to the experimental shorts of John and Yoko. But no director has ever used the Beatles’ music as inventively and audaciously as Julie Taymor, whose 2007 film Across the Universe is being rereleased in theaters for three days by Fathom Events. Using 33 Beatles songs and minimal dialogue, Across the Universe tells the story of three young adults in the late 1960s: Lucy (then 17-year-old Evan Rachel Wood), an all-American girl who wants to change the world; her brother Max (Joe Anderson), a rebel who gets dragged into Vietnam; and Jude (Jim Sturgess), a working-class artist from Liverpool who follows his dreams across the ocean. Their stories coalesce in New York City, where they befriend blues musicians, acid heads, radical extremists, a closeted lesbian, and Bono in a ridiculous mustache. Fictional characters become entangled in real events (the Detroit riots, the Columbia student protests), using songs from every Beatles era to express a nation’s political and psychedelic awakening.

Taymor’s film is as visual as it is musical. The magical-realism elements Taymor brought to her Oscar-winning film Frida and her Broadway hit The Lion King are blown to epic proportions in Across the Universe. “I Want You” becomes a nightmare ballet about Max’s recruitment and subsequent dehumanization in Vietnam, ending with an image of soldiers carrying the Statue of Liberty as they crush villages underfoot. “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite” is a psychedelic circus featuring collage animation and 20-foot puppets. “Because” scores an underwater love-in. Even in more traditionally constructed scenes, the scale is breathtaking; the entire film was shot on location and, according to Taymor, employed 5,000 extras.

Across the Universe also runs well over two hours — not a big deal in this age of bloated superhero adventures, but in 2007, the length of Taymor’s cut alarmed Sony executives. Without her approval, the studio test-screened an alternate cut that eliminated much of the film’s political content and minimized the nonwhite supporting characters. Taymor fought back hard, and while she won final cut, she was smeared in the press (industry publications used words like “ballistic” and “hysteria”) and, she says, torpedoed by Sony’s marketing department. The film polarized critics (Roger Ebert loved it, Ann Hornaday hated it) and opened to limp box office, failing to recoup its budget.

And yet — in the past decade, the audience for Across the Universe has grown, its inevitable cult-classic status realized. At the present moment, the film’s portrayal of ’60s activism and art as weapons against government oppression seems especially resonant. In the lead-up to the Fathom Events release, Vulture had a candid conversation with Taymor and Wood about the unusual process of making the film, the bizarre logistics of Wood’s first nude scene, the ongoing challenges facing female directors, and the potential influence of Across the Universe on millennial activists. (Given the timing of the interview, we also threw in a few Westworld season-finale questions.)

There’s no film quite like Across the Universe, so I’d imagine making it was a unique experience. Evan Rachel Wood: It was one of the best experiences of my life. I was 17. Once I heard Julie was making a Beatles movie, I remember just thinking, “There’s nobody else that can do this. And I won’t let anybody else do it!” It just had to be. And then I got the part and we all spent about seven or eight months in New York together.

Julie Taymor: We rehearsed it like a normal musical in theater … and it bonded everybody. I’ll never forget Evan walking in the hallways with this Bowie T-shirt, because at one point we’d asked David Bowie if he was going to play Mr. Kite. And I think that at the moment Evan was really like, “Bowie, Bowie!”

ERW: Well, yeah, I mean I’m always like, “Bowie, Bowie.” But I was also all about Eddie Izzard. I was always doing Eddie’s stand-up in the hallway.

JT: One of the things that I remember profoundly — this was during the Iraq War right? And it was really touchy subject. When we did the march down Fifth Avenue to Washington Square, the anti-Vietnam War march with the Bread and Puppet Theater puppets — everybody thought they were marching against the Iraq War. Now this is what I wanted to say: When Across the Universe came out ten years ago, it was right before Obama. And maybe this is just my own feeling, but I feel that this movie was very popular amongst young people. And I think people were very inspired by what the youth of America did in the 1960s, how they really made things change.

ERW: I even remember that a lot of people in the neighborhood wanted us to leave up the peace signs and protest signs, because it wasrelevant.

I have a vivid memory of going down to the Lower East Side when you were filming and seeing a whole block transformed into a ’60s fantasy of New York City. It was magical, like stepping into a dream. Were there any moments that felt like that to you as you were making it? ERW: Oh my God, all of it. Certainly the scene where we stumble upon the puppets and the blue meanies and Eddie Izzard started coming out and singing. That was when I was really on a different planet.

JT: We shot that in Garrison, New York, and all of those were papier-mâché handmade puppets, giant puppets. There is almost no CGI in that section. It’s all real.

ERW: I think “I Want You” is one of my favorite numbers in the movie.

JT: I was walking on a beach in Mexico when I came up with the idea — I’d done the Haggadah at the Public Theater years before, where the slaves are carrying the pyramids across the sands of Egypt. And I got the idea of all the young boys in their underwear and their army boots supporting [the Statue of] Liberty, and the image of Liberty charging through the jungles of the Third World, mashing and stepping and destroying all the trees. You know, the irony of us being this country that says we’re bringing Liberty, at the same time we’re bringing it at the expense of many people.

Evan, what was involved in the scene where you and Jim Sturgess are singing “Because” and making out underwater? ERW: Speeding up the songs, and then learning how to sing them really fast. So the scenes were like, [sings] “becausetheworldisrounditturnsmeon…” And then she slowed it down so that it looked like it was in real time. So we filmed underwater all day. We would just take a deep breath and dive under and then try to get the song out as quickly as possible.

JT: And she also had to work hard to hide her breasts, right Evan?

ERW: Oh, I always had to hide my breasts. I could only show one boob because it was PG-13. Two made it an R but one was fine! And that was my first nude scene.

Julie, you fought the studio to get final cut on this film, when Sony wanted to shorten it. I was reading some of the press from that time, and I was noticing how gendered the language is when they write about you and this movie. There’s a Variety article that says, “She went ballistic to save her child.” JT: Thanks for reminding me. I’d almost forgotten how awful that was.

I’m sorry to bring it up! But I think it’s important to acknowledge that double standard. JT: You know, for me, I’ve been through it. Being a successful director on Broadway brings out all kinds of knives and hatred. But the misogyny business is true. And I put blinders on and just tried to do the work. I think every director, male and female, has babies, you know what I mean? It’s not just women. But you’re right. It is sexist dialogue. We loved our movie. And it wasn’t that it wasn’t working. It was working. They just smelled the money and thought if we dumb it down, literally, and get rid of the politics — I saw a cut where they got rid of the Detroit riot. There was no black child who was killed.

ERW: Prudence wasn’t even gay!

JT: Yeah, they cut “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” so many of the things that I knew young people and everybody would love. Evan had a line — this was one of the first signs of the kind of difficult road that would come. Lucy, who’s 16 or 17, is walking home from school and her best friend says that one of their friends got pregnant. And Lucy says, “I’m never having children. Having children is narcissistic, like putting out carbon copies of yourself.” I remember my best friend, when I was 16, telling me that. I mean, that line came from experience. But the studio said at the time, “Oh, Lucy can’t say that, it will make her so unlikable.” No, will make her likable! Because you have that sign that when she’s a high-school student, that she will become someone like Gloria Steinem or Jane Fonda, that she’s going to become an activist.

The other thing is the poster. The poster that we’re releasing it with now is the underwater poster, the psychedelic poster of them kissing. The one that they put out, the strawberry, everybody who made this film hates. Well, if we’re being honest! [Laughs.] The problem with it is, I think what happens in Hollywood is they think that you can only market to 14-to-15-year-old girls. And we always said this movie, even if it’s PG-13, will appeal from 10-year-olds up through the parents. I mean, the Beatles appeal to all ages. If you watched the karaoke James Corden video with Paul McCartney in Liverpool, all these people in the bars were from 16 years old up to 80. And I’m hoping that with this rerelease this summer, we’ll see the teenagers and the young adults, and also the families.

Evan, you tweeted recently that you’ve been struggling to sell a movie that you will direct with a script written by women. ERW: Oh my goodness, the responses are just breathtaking. I mean, split down the middle: Some people totally get what I’m saying and some people are so angry with me! But the thing is, what I was trying to say was not a sense of entitlement like, “I should have this,” even though I do believe that I could make a really great film. It was just to expose what these rooms are like that you walk into over and over and over again. And until you have the more inclusive pitch rooms with women and people of color and LGBT representation, then you’re not going to see this movie.

And I hear people saying all the time, “Why aren’t there more female directors, why aren’t there more stories about women?” So I wanted to say, “Hey, just so you guys know, I’m really trying. And nada.” I’m starring in the film, I co-wrote it, I’m directing it, I had an amazing cast, I had amazing DPs, an amazing crew. So everybody that read it was like “absolutely,” but the only people that are wishy about it are financiers, because it is very female-driven. And I do believe that they just don’t understand this film. So that’s what I was trying to say.

You did get a number responses that are just people saying, “ I want to see that film.” ERW: And I did get a lot of inquiries after that tweet. But also lot of people saying my idea is probably not very good, and you’ve never directed anything, and how dare you. I do believe that if I was a man with 25 years’ experience in the industry, who’s worked with some of the greatest directors in the history of film, and who’s lived and breathed it since I was a child — to say that I would have nothing to offer, when I know there are other people with a penis, with less than I have backing me up, that get green-lit, that’s where I’m taking issue. [Laughs.] Because it does seem like there’s an imbalance and it’s unfair. And that’s what I was trying to call out.

Julie, do you have any advice for Evan in this situation? JT: Listen, I’m going through the same thing after 40 years. Evan knows, there’s a movie that I wanted to make with her, a female-driven epic love story. Haven’t been able to do that one. I mean, we still try, and I’m doing [a film adaptation of] Gloria Steinem’s My Life on the Road that will be extremely female-driven! And we will be making it this fall. But I have a number of films that have not gotten off the ground and things that I’ve wanted to do. And it probably has a lot to do with the ballistic-baby concept. Even if people realize that the press has misogynistic writing or fear of a powerful woman, unless they meet you personally — and then I often get people being so surprised! [Laughs.] But I work with a lot of the same people over and over and over again, so I have a very good team and very good friends and collaborators. Evan and Jim, all of the kids on Across the Universe, we’ve stayed close.

Quite honestly, ten years ago, when women were in big positions, they were not supporting other women. They were terrified of losing their job and they had to support the boys’ films. I don’t need to name names, you can all go look at it, but it wasn’t necessarily better that women were at the top because they were frightened of making a mistake and that they would then be called out for having supported chick flicks or women’s things. It was fear. For me it’s more. I have the scarlet letter of “A” on me — not “adultery,” but “art.” Even though The Lion King is the most successful entertainment in the history of all entertainment. [Ed. note: Broadway’s The Lion King has grossed $8 billion to date, more than all the Star Wars movies combined.]

ERW: And Across the Universe is a masterpiece.

JT: And it’s also been very, very successful without a whole lot of press. I mean, Frida didn’t get press either.

ERW: We even said that when we were making it: “This is going to be a cult classic, this is going to be something that throughout the years will continue to grow and grow.”

JT: The studio is all new people now, and they love it. And they’re very supportive. But I think it’d be great if they would just rerelease the film completely, because it didn’t go out enough as a movie. But they’re dipping their toe in with Fathom. If it does really well this summer, maybe they will do a real rerelease, which would be amazing because I do feel like it’s time. The success of La La Land — well, that had two very big stars in it, but it really comes on the heels of what Across the Universe did ten years ago.

ERW: I want to add about Julie, that she has such a strong vision and she holds true to her conviction. She’s a real artist. And yes, that does scare the shit out of people, because they don’t understand.

JT: Well, they think I’m not interested in commercial success. You gotta be kidding, of course I am!

ERW: Exactly. They underestimate what people want and how art moves people. I mean fuck, look at the Beatles, they changed the world. But I’ve worked with male directors that are complicated and have the same kind of conviction and they’re kind of hailed for it. But when you’re a woman, and you say, “I’m not going to do that, it’s not right,” they’re like, “Well she’s crazy. She’s difficult.” Julie is not crazy or difficult. She’s an artist. And I’ve worked with male artists that are similar that don’t get any shit for it.

JT: Well, thanks Evan. The thing is that we all knew what the movie was, and we presented it all. Maybe the falling Vietnamese ladiessurprised the producers because that was the first day of shooting. That I can understand, kind of gulping for a moment. But the rest of it, we did what was on paper and what we rehearsed. I didn’t change anything. I just did what I intended to do. I remember Amy Pascal jumping up and down in the first screening at Sony, just going, “It’s the best thing I’ve ever seen.” And the marketing woman was thrilled. Somebody else got in there and just smelled the money. But at any rate, you heard that already. And yes, I have gone through it and I will continue. But there’s enough great people wanting the kind of films that I want to make and the theater that I want to make. So you know, I’m not dying here.

All right, I know I can’t wrap this up without asking some Westworld finale questions. Evan, is that okay with you? ERW: Ha! Of course.

How much time did you and Tessa Thompson spend practicing Dolores together? ERW: That is so funny. You know it’s hilarious because we became really good friends at the beginning of season two, and then we started hanging out, and then all of a sudden we realized that we were gonna be the same person [laughs] and it was very strange! This show is so funny. Because they didn’t tell us anything.

But I thought she did an amazing job. I would send her recordings of myself doing the dialogue, and then she really sold it. I thought it was great. But you know, we weren’t really doing scenes together and I was basically playing a different character this season. So when she found out she had to kind of be me, she came to me and said, “Wait — what have you been doing?” [Laughs.] I’m like, “OH! Oh right! Yeah, I’ve got to do the voice for you and everything!” So I just made recordings and she really made it her own, it was good.

Ed Harris told us he has no idea what’s going on in the showwhile he’s making it. Have you had a similar experience? ERW: I had no idea what was happening in season two. At all. And we shot out of order, so most of the time — I mean, it was insane to be an actor on season two. I don’t know how I feel about it. [Laughs.] But it was a ride. We stopped reading the call sheets. We would show up and Jeffrey and I would ask what episode we were in. It was kind of that level of — we just lived in the moment in whatever scene that we were doing, and that’s how we made it.

#evan rachel wood #interviews #across the universe #vulture #julie taymor #interviews 2018

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soundsof71 · 6 years

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DAVID CASSIDY & THE PARTRIDGE FAMILY MEET RICHARD PRYOR, LOUIS GOSSETT JR, and “THE BLACK PANTHERS” in “SOUL CLUB” (aired January 29, 1971)

Sure, The Partridge Family was a single-camera comedy with a laugh track, mostly aimed at kids, a barely plausible framework on which to hang some flimsy pop songs -- but it never shied away from a variety of social issues, including women's rights and racial justice. My favorite episode was "Soul Club", which first aired in January 1971. It featured one of the show's better songs, "Bandala", and a few other things that merit some additional context.

"Soul Club” also featured RICHARD PRYOR and LOU GOSSETT (as he was credited)!! It was in fact a back-door pilot intended to kick off a series with the two of them that sadly never came to pass.

Gaze upon Richard and Lou, and think about ABC trying to launch a sitcom for them out of The Partridge Family. Yikes! I’m sorry we never got to see that, but I’m glad we got to see this.

The pair played brothers who had intended to book The Temptations into their inner city Detroit social club (the titular “Soul Club”), only to have the white, white, oh so white, Partridge Family roll up instead. The Temptations concert had been the brothers’ last hope to save their club. They’d gotten in deep to a loan shark, and were counting on The Temptations to deliver a big payday.

It was immediately apparent that the Partridges weren’t going to be able to help them – ah, until they actually DID help. Heartwarming hilarity ensued as the Partridges played a street fair benefit show.

Along the way to saving the day (which they did), Danny Partridge is made an honorary member of "The Afro-American Cultural Society,” a thinly-veiled and highly favorable representation of the Black Panthers.

In fact, when you look this episode up yourself – and you should – many accounts report that the episode DID feature the Black Panthers. (For a start, try Googling “Partridge Family Black Panthers.”)

(Danny Partridge welcomed into “The Afro-American Cultural Society” as Richard Pryor and Louis Gossett Jr look on.)

Even without the actual Black Panthers, a number of scholarly sources have nevertheless cited the “Soul Club” episode as a pivotal moment in American cultural history. That part is absolutely true. This was among the first wholly positive depictions of militant black pride in mainstream media, maybe even the first, and it was A Big Deal.

After all, these were days when J. Edgar Hoover denounced the Black Panther Free Breakfast Program as “the greatest threat to the internal security of the United States of America” – not the Black Panthers in general, but free breakfast in particular.

The Partridge Family, instead, literally normalized the idea of people of color being PEOPLE – parents, kids, volunteer firefighters, musicians – who were politically engaged in improving their communities, a much different picture than the prevailing stereotype of communities of color as bomb-throwers bent on race war.

I didn’t need the perspective of history to tell me that this was a big deal. Watching on that Friday night in 1971, I could FEEL that it was a big deal.

Don’t forget that Soul Train was still 9 months away from national syndication, and there were few shows on TV at the time featuring any characters of color. There were two black leads on Room 222 airing the same night as The Partridge Family, plus Flip Wilson’s variety show, and on a weekly basis, that was about it for people of color making regularly scheduled appearances on prime time American television in 1971.

As a result, this may have been the largest collection of black people that most of white America had ever seen in one place, and they were dancing. And trying to improve their community, and otherwise, going about their day’s business. Maybe we didn’t need the FBI crawling all over these communities like we’d been told. Maybe, thought white Americans like me, just maybe, it was enough to support them where we could, and otherwise just let them be, because they’re just trying to make a better life for themselves, same as me. Their advancement is certainly not at my expense.This was a radical, radical concept at the time. Kinda still is. Again.

And how’s this for radical? A Black family and a white family sharing a meal. Look, I was living in the South when this aired, and yeah, I do want to emphasize the thing that lots of southerners do, that your image of how racism works in practice there probably needs refinement, but I definitely remembered being shocked when we moved there in the mid-60s and seeing “Whites Only” signs on not just water fountains and restaurants, but public swimming pools, doctors offices, and all kinds of other places.

The signs were gone by 1971, but the side-by-side drinking fountains and other very visible vestiges of the seriously segregated 60s were still standing. There were LOTS of segments of public life that, in practice, were very much segregated. Black and white families eating elbow to elbow at the same table was something that much of America had never seen, much less experienced. And maybe still haven’t experienced.

None of which would matter in the context of a show about a singing musical family if there wasn’t a great song somewhere in there.

And there is: “Bandala,” one of the best in the show’s entire run. Kind of a kick – members of the Afro-American Cultural Society are shown serving as the song’s string and horn sections! This might have been the only time in the show’s run that it acknowledged that the plethora of sounds that we’re hearing couldn’t possibly have been coming only from the Partridges themselves.

(Music nerd note: the actual sounds of The Partridge Family’s instruments provided courtesy of The Wrecking Crew! Most often in the form of Hal Blaine on drums, Joe Osborn on bass, and Larry Knechtel on keyboards, including the glorious harpsichord on the Partridges’ ur-hits “I Think I Love You” and “C’mon Get Happy”.) Wait for Pryor and Gossett to show up around the 2-minute mark in this clip, “giving five” to each other in a variety of creative ways, some involving hip bumps. Yes indeed, friends. Hip bumps.

There are obviously far more than the usual number of nits to pick with an episode like this, but that’s for another time. (Or for your replies. Feel free. It is problematic, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t also a cultural watershed of its era.)

In the meantime, I hope you can enjoy the clip above for what it is, a terrific David Cassidy vocal on a nifty pop tune, with some endearing moments in the episode as a whole, featuring a colossal missed opportunity for Pryor & Gossett, but its very ambitious heart in the right place.

#david cassidy #david cassidy rip #the partridge family #black panthers #1971 #richard pryor #1971 music #soul club #music on tv #music on tv 1971 #the wrecking crew

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dallasareaopinion · 4 years

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What happened to conservatism in America?

Happy Saturday everyone, it is the weekend, you remember what we all use to live for in the good ole days of about two months ago.

Yet there are more important matters afoot right now and priority one is working towards a vaccine so we can all breathe a bit more. Until then there is time to reflect on numerous topics.

As many of you already know I consider myself an independent conservative and have since 1980. And it has become more pronounced over time. To understand what happened to something it is a good idea to discuss what we are looking for, so I will start with some background and then work towards what happened or where conservatism went. And as many regular readers know I can wander around quite a bit, yet this time I will try to benefit you and stay on track, but be aware the track will bend some. And remember this is an opinion blog, so most of this is a combination of recent history, what I have read over the years, and a bit of the argument what is conservatism in America.

I will start with the notion that American Conservatism reached a zenith in the 1950′s and 1960′s. Some people may argue the civil rights movements, the women’s movements, the anti-war movement, and hippies, etc of the 60′s say we were more of a liberal country in the 60′s. I differ by saying the national dialogue incorporated rash social change in America and there were some great strides in these areas, but more or less most Americans were still moderately conservative and infamously defined by Richard Nixon as the silent majority. The election of 1972 spoke volumes to this point. Most Americans had too much change and were wanting something more stable which is a significant trait of moderately conservative people. If the social change dynamic of the people had changed the fabric of most people’s ideology then McGovern would have flipped the switch. If you know the results of that election you know where America stood and it was painfully obvious the switch had not been flipped and the nostalgia of the Eisenhower years were already present.

And even in 1964 and 1968 hard conservatism to nationalism to right-wing ideology was pervasive in America. Yes, LBJ won in 64 and ushered in one of the greatest social changes to occur in modern history. I did not say the most successful social change, I said greatest and there is a reason for the difference. We did change laws, we did not change many people’s perspectives yet large swaths of this country still held beliefs that were not appreciative of this change, hence the rise of the George Wallace and the American party in 1968 and the eventual success of Nixon over Humphrey.

So lets back up a minute and discuss what is conservatism in America. It is not the American Party of 1968, it is barely the Republican Party of Goldwater in 1964, and definitely not the current Republican Party of Trump. It is not the Robber barons of the late 1800s, it is not the infamous military-industrial complex of Eisenhower’s farewell speech, it is not the military-industrial complex of Reagan’s era, and it is definitely not the current oligarchs, one-percenters or whatever you want to call a large portion of the billionaire and their stooges class of the current day. Now this latter group of industrialists or Wall Street greed will wrap themselves up in a Conservative flag to convince the portion of America that is truly conservative that their agenda is the conservative agenda to continue to their long path to creating a fiefdom for themselves in our country. And I will come back to discuss this in a bit.

This country is made up of immigrants either escaping a wide variety of persecution, poverty, or some historic form of totalitarianism to people truly looking for the promise of a better life. This is our history starting even before our forefathers wrote the Constitution. This document encapsulated the original escape from previous oppression into a new experiment of representative government that allowed the people to explore what the meanings of rights and freedoms could give to ordinary citizens. We now have a whole country whose primary belief put into writing was everyone was equal. We know in practice we are still working on that concept, yet we began with this belief.

And these immigrants found out something else about this country and it was an interesting word for millions of people around the world: opportunity. Our Country said opportunity belonged to everyone. That word is not in the Constitution yet it has become every bit a part of our heritage as our Constitution.

So two factors begin to define who we are as Americans. We have the rights to determine our own lives and with those rights, we can improve our lives. And these became core values to who we are as a people. So being a conservative would mean you would want to preserve these values.

And these values grew throughout the 1800s as more people came from all over the world. Many experienced hardship, prejudices, success, failures, saw dreams wiped out, or became leaders of a new land. Others took advantage of a wide-open country, not just in space but in opportunity. Through it all certain values began to take shape. Some people call it the protestant work ethic, yet more than protestants worked hard to be successful. Immigrants from all around the world came and started businesses or became successful. They brought with them their cultures which over time created the “melting pot” theory behind who we are as Americans. Yet many of these immigrants originally suffered discrimination then eventually their descendants would discriminate against other newcomers. Our history is filled with horror and mistakes, but we moved forward slowly. And needless to say, the ongoing discrimination of the original forced immigrants, African Americans, continues to this day. And they have become the scapegoat for right-wing hate groups throughout our history. The growing pains continue.

So we have a belief that hard work is important and we deserve the fruits of those labors. We also brought our cultures and in those cultures were families and the importance of family carried into our culture as immigrants relied on family to help them get started, or their children to help them run their business or farm. These children would grow up and experience a better life than their parents through either the growth of the family business or the eventual development of a public education system that allowed people new opportunities to become professionals.

This led to the beliefs that people in the 1950′s cherished. We believed that any person has a right to work hard, they have a right to an education, they have a right to protect and cherish their family. And this wasn’t just for white people, but unfortunately, some groups began the destruction of our newfound values by saying other groups were trying to take away what they cherished most. Most people in this country weren’t trying to take away what White America had, but the fear-mongering grew just as fast as the economy so the divides we rail against as anti to our values were just as prevalent as our values. Yet all Americans of backgrounds from all over the world held our values. They all wanted to work hard to be successful and offer better opportunities to their children. And America was about to show the world it could be done. And part of that showing the world was our civil rights and women’s movements of the 1960′s. A society cannot make these leaps without having established a high self-worth. And we were creeping towards it.

In the 1960′s we were a predominantly moderately conservative country that was making some of the largest social changes in the history of the world. Simultaneously two factors were working against us taking our values and moving forward to even greater heights. They are the underlying current of nationalists attacking the social changes and the consolidation of power by the economic elite. And both these groups flew the conservative flag to build their hold on America. And many Americans were just beginning to receive public education across the board. One of the factors playing against our country was the economic elite preventing the growth of a stronger public education system along with other policies under the guise of fiscal conservatism. And conservatives can tend to be fiscally conservative also. Yet the verbiage of controlling spending that developed over the next couple of decades was disguised as conservative policy was instead the elitists working to control the rise of a large strong middle class that they saw in the 1950s and 1960s. Elitists aren’t fools and they want to maintain power so they realized a strong middle class was detrimental to their goals of absolute economic power. Their control began in earnest during the 1980s. Reagan became the standard-bearer of modern conservatism under the guise of harking back to a time when America was strong. America was still strong, he just had the luxury of us surviving a crisis and a minor in retrospect of our history.

We had survived a world war, a depression, another world war so by the 1950s many Americans were glad to relax a bit and enjoy the success our country built. Reagan created a we want to return to that feeling environment and talked about rebuilding our great wealth. Well, he built some wealth alright, but for whom as the wealth gap we see now began to grow significantly. And all the while communicating that our values of family and opportunity for all were our core values. They are our core values, but the actual implementation of heightening them was not happening in our society. This disconnect of what was being said by the leaders of our country and the Republican party and what people actually started feeling in their lives began. Cognizant dissonance doesn’t work well inside a person’s brain and somewhere in the 1980′s going into the 90′s, some people were starting to feel it.

And in the 1990′s what Republican leadership was saying versus what they were doing really started to divide. And along with this difference came their new toy, Fox News. Fox News had one purpose and that was for corporate America to instill in Americans that Conservatism began with what the elitists wanted. They instilled anger, angst, fear into Americans that people were taking away their values, their beliefs and leaving open for others to fill in the gaps on who that might be. What some of us call the alt-right now began to fill in that gap. And yes this message was targeted to white middle and upper-middle class and retired white working-class people. And all the while Americans were beginning to hear much about their rights and their livelihoods being taken away by all sorts of groups when in reality, their lives and livelihoods were being taken away by corporate elitists as they moved jobs overseas for cheaper labor and continued to consolidate their wealth grab. Sure we had the technological revolution and we have a few new billionaires, but the good ole boy club of Wall Street and others consolidated more and more power through the wealth grab and lobbying in D. C.. And the message large swaths of Americans began to hear through Fox was conservatives were under fire and they needed to act. This began the left versus Fox media war. And the left was the enemy. On a side note, the media is pretentious and the Democrats are clueless, but they are not the enemy for those of you that need to be reminded. Yet the idea that conservatives were under attack began and they needed to make sure they elected Republicans to fight their battle for them. And this fight was actually being played against them and the rest of our country and all the while the flag of conservatism was being hijacked so much so that too many Americans equated elitism with conservatism and the underlying cognizant dissonance continued to grow. Many Americans now viewed Fox as a reliable source of news when what they were being told was true to a point; their livelihoods were under attack, but the actual culprit was the fox in the hen house.

And yet the core values of Americans are still the same even today. We still believe in family, working hard, better education for better opportunity for our children, people should be responsible for themselves, yet society can help people. This is how we grew in the 1800s, how we survived two world wars and a depression, and what came to define American politics in the 1950s. Granted none of it was perfect, we still have a long way to go to make sure all Americans experience the good from these values, but they still exist in most Americans. And here is one irony, by most Americans, I mean most Americans, not just white middle class, but Black middle class, Asian middle class, Hispanic middle class, and more. Americans by and large to this day still want better and think we can accomplish this in our society. Obviously, some groups still have a higher hill to climb, but overall Americans do want to help others so eventually that hill can be climbed. So to be conservative in America you conserve these values. And most Americans conserve these values. So what happened?

Nothing and everything. Conservatism, real conservatism is alive and well in America. Its’ voice has been totally taken away. Fox News never represented their audience, the pretentious left media turned them away when they raised their nose up on them, the Democrats became a hodgepodge of various social groups and lost track of the original backbone of the party, the worker and yet their hodgepodge of social groups make up most of the labor in this country. They seem to have forgotten how they can help. The elitists are always for the elitists so their values have never coincided with true conservatism. True conservatism goes against what the elitists want, which is absolute economic power. Yet, our values say opportunity should truly exist for all, including the opportunity to be rich and successful. And if the elitists want us for their use and abuse; our families, our cultures, our heritages mean nothing to them. And yet this is who we are as Americans. Why don’t we hear this, again conservatism has lost its voice.

And that leaves us in the present. Most of this country is still moderately conservative and cherish the values that made this country great such as the hard work, the reliance on family and church, our shared experience, our desire to be cognizant of others and their needs, this is the fabric of the American people of all shapes sizes and colors. We are great because we are a unique blend of the world, that came together to build something wonderful. That something wonderful is still building, maybe right now we have taken a far turn away, but if you really observe Americans all the aforementioned values are exhibited day in and day out. There is no voice.

Right now multiple groups claim to have the conservative mantle. They are lies. The Corporate and elitists aren’t conservative, just greedy. Fox News has devolved into something that is hard to put a finger on but only gives lip service to the words of conservatism, our government spends money like nothing to appease the masses (and I am not counting the stimulus for Covid19, that is something, I wish better, but something that needed to be done) hard-right fanatic groups are not conservative and are working expeditiously to destroy our country, yet they too say they wave the conservative flag. Way too many Trump supporters are not conservative, they are historically apolitical people who have managed to jump on his bandwagon instead of being attached to true political thinking, not all mind you, but way too many.

So what happened to conservatism in America? Nothing, other than it got lost.

And this is why I say we need new parties because a groundswell of people rising up to stand up for their rights are going to stand up for their families, their children, their opportunities, their rights, their freedoms, their beliefs (freedom of religion, it is not freedom from religion) and their shared understanding that we are a people that want and need each other in the good times and the bad times together and it is our government when representing the people that achieves these ends for all. The government is not the entire solution (another conservative value), just one of many tools to help society achieve even greater heights than before.

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biofunmy · 4 years

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How streaming, diversity, #MeToo shaped TV decade of change

LOS ANGELES — “Game of Thrones” was both an unprecedented achievement and old-school role model in the TV decade that’s rolling its final credits.

Installments of the elaborately produced hit were doled out one at a time by an established outlet, premium cable channel HBO. That was standard TV operating procedure until, suddenly, it wasn’t. The new era arrived in 2013 when a full season’s worth of “House of Cards” popped up amid Netflix’s on-demand movies and old TV shows.

The drama’s unexpected home appeared simply to be an option to the 500-channel universe born in the 1990s. But “House of Cards” foreshadowed a streaming gold rush and volume of programming dubbed Peak TV in 2015 — and with no drop in altitude in sight.

The result: Nothing is the same, whether it’s how much television we consume; how and where we do it; who gets to make it, and the level of respect given the creatively emboldened small screen. We don’t just watch TV, we binge it until we’re bleary-eyed if not sated. We still change channels with a remote control, but more often we’re logging in to watch shows on our phones or other devices and on our schedules, not network-dictated appointment TV.

We’re couch potatoes and office and car and everywhere potatoes.

A comic strip, “Zits,” recently summed up the current reality in three panels. “What’s on?” a father asks his teenage son, who’s sitting cross-legged in front of a TV set and is bracketed by a smart phone on one side and a laptop on the other. “Everything ever videotaped, filmed, recorded, photographed or otherwise documented whenever I want to watch it,” the teen answers, nonchalantly tossing popcorn into his mouth.

“I miss television,” the downcast dad tells his wife.

ALL HAIL STREAMING

Generational nostalgia aside, consumers have embraced the change in their media world, said Robert Thompson, director of Syracuse University’s Bleier Center for Television & Popular Culture.

“This was the decade that streaming became for many, many people the dominant way in which they watch television,” said Thompson. It’s a rapid shift that bears little relation to the previous entertainment industry revolution, cable TV.

Only about a quarter of U.S. homes had cable in 1980 despite its availability since the mid-20th century. While growth finally exploded in the ‘80’s, it wasn’t until the tail end of the 1990s and the arrival of HBO’s “The Sopranos” and “Sex and the City” that premium cable received critical praise and honors, Thompson said.

In contrast, it took less than a decade for leader Netflix to skyrocket from about 12 million U.S. subscribers at the decade’s start to 60 million this year and 158 million worldwide. The streamer reportedly lavished $15 billion on programming for 2019 alone, and earned buzz with series including “The Crown,” “Stranger Things,” and “Orange is the New Black.”

Even major films, among them Martin Scorsese’s “The Irishman,” are making themselves at home on Netflix while still in theaters.

Others in the fray include Hulu and Amazon Prime Video, although “streaming wars” became the aggressive phrase applied to the increasingly competitive marketplace. With newly emboldened (and sometimes mega-expanded) media companies intent on getting a piece of the streaming action, there was a growth surge that won’t abate in the new decade.

Apple TV Plus launched Nov. 1 with Oprah Winfrey and Steven Spielberg among its first wave of producers, and was quickly followed by Disney Plus. The latter has a storehouse of Disney movies and TV shows to draw on, along with acquired properties from Marvel Entertainment and Lucasfilm and its “Star Wars” franchise.

Among the other services set for 2020: Peacock from NBCUniversal; Quibi, run by ex-Disney chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg and former eBay head Meg Whitman, and HBO Max, is counting on HBO, TBS and the Warner Bros. studio assets acquired by parent company AT&T to lure subscribers.

While cord-cutting became a quest for viewers seeking to shed hefty cable bills, there is still a price tag for the gusher of riches, as much as $14.99 monthly for HBO Max alone.

A bonus for viewers as they sort through the competing options: More programming doesn’t just mean more of the same.

VARIETY STORE

If retailers can provide every type of yogurt known to humanity, why can’t TV take the same eclectic approach? It has in the past 10 years, as the increasing demand for content and the growth of niche programming created opportunities for diverse and candid voices. Ongoing efforts by advocacy groups also contributed to the gradual but unmistakable shift.

Donald Glover illustrates the before and after. The future multi-hyphenate writer, musician, actor and director had a respectable run as a cast member on the network sitcom “Community.” Two years later, he was the creator and star of FX’s “Atlanta,” which drew raves for its innovative storytelling focused on African American characters.

Jill Soloway called on family experience to create the groundbreaking “Transparent,” about a trans woman and how her decision to be open has a ripple effect on her children and their circle.

Ryan Murphy, already established as a successful producer with “Nip/Tuck”and “Glee,” exercised his clout to make FX’s “Pose,” set in the LGBTQ ballroom culture scene of the 1980s and ‘90s. Its star, Billy Porter , became the first openly gay man to win the best actor Emmy. Credit RuPaul and his “Drag Race,” which arrived on the cusp of the previous decade and grew in popularity, for setting the table.

Even mainstream broadcasting expanded its field of vision, with ABC the first network in 20 years to air an Asian American family sitcom, “Fresh Off the Boat,” ending this season. Nahnatchka Khan was its executive producer, one of the women who gained prominence behind the camera in a sector long dominated by men.

As producers, directors and writers, women put complex female characters in the center of the frame — a switch from the male antiheroes of “The Sopranos,” “Breaking Bad” and other turn-of-the-century hits. With women taking the reins as storytellers, female characters became as varied and complex as their male counterparts and began to encompass a fuller view of the modern experience.

Lena Dunham’s “Girls” presented more than cookie-cutter young women, both in body and spirit, and foreshadowed the rise of actresses whose talent demands more attention than their weight, including Aidy Bryant of “Saturday Night Live” and Chrissy Metz of “This Is Us.”‘

African American women took the spotlight in creator-star Issa Rae’s “Insecure,” while Jenji Kohan’s “Orange is the New Black,” featured characters notable for their ethnic, sexual and class diversity. Writer-actress Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s “Fleabag” provided the decade’s big finish with its bold sexuality, earning six Emmys last fall including top comedy.

Some established female producers further cemented their success. Shonda Rhimes added “Scandal” and “How to Get Away with Murder” to her body of work, with the latter’s star, Viola Davis, becoming the first African American to win a best drama actress Emmy. Ava DuVernay, already a filmmaking force, spearheaded “When They See Us” and “Queen Sugar.’”

Reese Witherspoon, adding producing to her portfolio, made good on her vow to bring strong female characters to the screen with the hit series “Big Little Lies” and “The Morning Show.”

Statistics confirm the anecdotal evidence. Across all TV platforms in 2017-18, women accounted for a historic high of 31% of those working in key behind-the-scenes jobs including directors, writers and editors , according to research by San Diego State University’s Center for the Study of Women in Television & Film.

Good, but not good enough, said Kirsten Schaffer, executive director of the advocacy group Women in Film, which joined with the Sundance Institute in 2017 to create and lead ReFrame, an initiative that works with companies and others to foster hiring of women across the media landscape.

“Our goal is to have the industry reflect the population of the United States,” Schaffer said, and that’s 51 percent female and 17 percent women of color.

While television moved toward better reflecting the world at large, it was forced to look inward as well.

#METOO FALLOUT

Revelations of sexual misconduct hit the TV industry hard and with more lasting effect than any other sector of Hollywood, even compared to producer Harvey Weinstein’s fall from moviemaking heights.

Two of media’s top powerbrokers were brought down in the #MeToo era. Les Moonves was ousted in 2018 as CBS CEO after an outside investigation of abuse claims, with Moonves denying any non-consensual sexual relations. Roger Ailes, who built Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News Channel into both a lucrative operation and major force in American politics, was forced out in the wake of sexual harassment claims.

Harassment claims also ended the Fox News career of host Bill O’Reilly, who called it a “hit job.”

Matt Lauer (“Today”), Charlie Rose (“CBS This Morning”) and PBS host Tavis Smiley were wiped away from TV screens for alleged misbehavior of varying types and their denials notwithstanding. “60 Minutes” executive producer Jeff Fager, a CBS News veteran, denied the misconduct claims that got him fired.

Top-tier actors and a famed comedian lost their jobs, including Jeffrey Tambor of “Transparent,” Kevin Spacey of “House of Cards” and Louis C.K., whose TV projects included “Louie,” which he starred in and produced. Tambor and Spacey rebutted the misconduct allegations, Louis C.K. apologized.

The reverberations continue. NBC repeatedly has been confronted by Ronan Farrow’s claim that he was prevented from breaking the Weinstein story on its airwaves, which the network denies, while CBS was criticized for renewing “Bull” despite actress Eliza Dushku’s claim that she was dropped for complaining that the show’s star, Michael Weatherly, made crude comments about her on set.

Dushku received a reported $9.5 million settlement under its then-CEO — Les Moonves.

———

Lynn Elber is at [email protected] and Twitter at http://twitter.com/lynnelber.

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codingforkids-blog1 · 5 years

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The kids frequently visited the room to see the numerous projects being completed

The community have been spending some time during their breaks, producing different items using the different materials provided from the children. They have used wooden blocks, clay, nails and glue to make a variety of items. Some of the jobs were in the'construction' stage, some of these were completed and labelled. The kids frequently visited the room to see the numerous projects being completed.

They discussed the projects and made a decision to share their thinking and queries with the creators. The kids were inspired, they wanted to create their own endeavors. They used the Instagram substances to make iPhones, iPads, vehicles and homes. This Book Week, Luna (my caravan) and I travelled more than 400 kilometres visiting city colleges and students in regional Victoria.This is Luna. I was also lucky to be invited to present the Daylesford Words in Winter Young Writers Awards. So many entries, so much talent. Well done to the winners and to everyone who entered. Composing and finishing a narrative is a fabulous achievement. Distributing it to a competition is huge.

We're so lucky to have Amber Jepsen seeing today. Here she shares her inspiring road to book. I've always loved writingsince I could recall. As a very young child I can remember constantly writing little stories and books, some which you would call quite"inventive"! It was at that era I was decided to become a writer, with my biggest fantasy to be published. It was only when I was 10 and dwelling bound for 3 months as a result of significant spinal surgery that my dream began coming true.

All my stories appeared to get a focus on the creatures around me, and there are lots considering we live on a 60 acre farm. Nevertheless, it was my aide in Main School sent me a photo of her four newborn Silkie chicks, that inspiration struck me and I composed the first short story"The Silkie Gang".

At this point it was not going to turn into a book, let alone be printed. But once you're stuck in your home for three months, you have a great deal of free time. Though I'd written six short stories, I still hadn't considered making it into an actual book. It was just when a teacher from college read them that she decided to make my fantasy a reality. It took a good year of extreme editing, going through each story over and over, communicating back and forth with a professional editor that consented to find onboard. Once we'd reached a marginally mistake-free bunch of stories, along with the name"Poultry Passion -- Stories By Highshire Farm", the rejections started.

We contacted innumerable publishers that turned us away, and many media outlets. Most media firms rejected us, but we managed to find the ABC's 7:30 report to run a story in my journey with my book. At this phase, many amazing regional men and women who had contacts to a lot of others in the writing industry, had come together and aided through all phases including editing, displaying and publishing. Without these folks, the book never could of happened.

After many months of planning, in the age of 12, my book was published and the 7:30 report aired. It had been an incredible experience to publish my own book and has made me think that any young person who has a passion for composing can follow their dreams too.

You've likely heard that the expressions"learn from the mistakes". This is surely true when studying a new language. Each mistake you make helps you determine the area for improvement.

Your objective is communication! This means having a meaningful interaction with another person in the language you are learning. It means making yourself known, and understanding the other person in return. 5 tips for learning from your mistakes

Be aware of common errors: spend additional time studying to prevent these mistakes. Error correction: Decide on a mistake correction coverage with your tutor. Among the very best methods is for the mentor to take notes and ask you to look at the mistake and determine exactly what was wrong. Error analysis: You need to identify what the error was, why you left the mistake. Is it because you didn't understand the grammar, or perhaps you understand the rule but need further training to help it become more automatic? Was it that you're translating from L1? No matter the reason, work with your mentor to eliminate it. Practice makes perfect: Ask your tutor to prepare some exercises for you in another lesson. Keep practicing until you feel confident!

For more information visit: online coding courses

#online coding courses

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hakotenuwa-blog · 5 years

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IVF Centres in Bangalore at Elawoman

Gunasheela Hospital is a Surgical and Maternity clinic that houses a team of expert and expert medical doctors who are dedicated to help couples fight and overcome fertility issues. We apprehend how critical a toddler is for a family. With the maximum advanced and complete-fledged departments of Gynecology and Obstetrics, Infertility, Embryology, Andrology, Biochemistry and O/T, we are properly equipped and self-enough with a wide variety of the latest diagnostic & therapeutic gadget and provide the fine of Faculty, centers and treatment beneath the identical roof.

Dr. Sulochana Gunasheela’s most important consciousness was to welcome little bundles of pleasure to the sector.While she spent years handing over these little youngsters to happy parents, there was one thing of all of it that broke her heart – that of dropping a infant. She met with plenty of couples who have been not able to conceive, or couldn’t bring the baby to term. She determined to explore options in medical technology, to are looking for a few solution. As the chances would have it, this changed into around the time the scientific world had delivered its 1st IVF – or as it became well known – ‘check tube’ infant.

“Could I deliver the era, and this exceptional possibility, to couples in India?” she puzzled. To solution this query, she got down to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, USA, in which she studied ‘Assisted Reproductive Technology’. In 1985, Dr. Sulochana was capable of increase her maternity domestic into something tons greater and that’s how the Gunasheela Fertility Centre turned into born. The First-of-its-type in South India at its concept, the Gunasheela Fertility Centre become prepared with the fine reproductive technology the sector needed to provide at that point. Thirteen hard years had been spent in research and development.

South India’s IVF infant turned into born on the fifth December 1988. Thus commenced the ART of making mothers. The following years noticed the good Doctor helping many, many couples to correctly carry a toddler to time period. This visionary and pioneer became the outstanding infertility professional and hundreds of hopeful couples sought her aid. All the whilst, studies endured and the quantity of women experiencing the ineffable joy of motherhood increased. New developments, new breakthroughs and new infrastructure have been just around the nook. Now, the subsequent era stepped up, and began the initiative of taking the Gunasheela Fertility Centre to the following level. Dr. Devika Gunasheela, daughter and successor to Dr. Sulochana, joined the practice.

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Sulochana Gunasheela Surgery and Maternity Hospital Is One of the Well Known Maternity Hospitals in Bangalore. Dr. Sulochana Gunasheela Practices at Sulochana Gunasheela Surgery and Maternity Hospital at Basavanagudi, Bangalore.

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Dr. Raajam Murali S R Is a Consultant Gynecologist at Gunasheela Surgical and Maternity Hospital, Bangalore. She Provides a Full Spectrum of Gynecological Treatments and Incorporates a Personal Approach to Care in a Relaxed and Calming Environment. With Immense Experience inside the Field of Gynecology. She Is Well-Versed in Gynecological Procedures Like Pap Test Screening, Ovarian Cysts, Caesarean Section, Endometriosis, HPV Vaccination, and Also in Treating Conditions Like Genital Tract Infections, PCOS, Abnormal Female Hair Distribution, Urinary Inconsistency, Pelvic Pain, Post-Menopausal Bleeding, and Vagina Skin Disorders. Over the Course of Her Career, Dr. Raajam Has Earned Immense Respect Among Both the Medical Fraternity and Her Patients for Her Unmatched Medical Proficiency.

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jessicakehoe · 5 years

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We Chat With Veronica MacIsaac, The World’s Only Tartan Fashion Designer

You might say Veronica MacIsaac was fated to be a tartan fashion designer.

Born of Scottish descent to parents on Celtic Cape Breton Island, her mother went into labour with her at a pipe band party. Today she is known world’s only fashion designer who specializes in women’s modern tartan clothing. Based out of Halifax, Nova Scotia, MacIsaac gets customers from across Canada, Scotland and beyond. (And no, she’s not related to fellow Cape Bretoner Ashley MacIsaac.) In honour of National Tartan Day, we caught up with her to discuss her career, the A-listers she’s come into contact with, and the crucial difference between plaid and tartan.

How did tartan became a part of your life?

It has been a part of my life since I was born. My great-grandfather played the bagpipes and he piped the troops onto the battlefield in World War I, so it has been a big part of our lives for generations. My brother was surrounded by bagpipes and I took highland dancing lessons. My brother still to this day is a piper. That is what he does for a living.

When I was really little I had a little kilted skirt that a lot of my cousins had worn, it was passed down through the family. When I was about seven, I outgrew it so my mom, who has a textiles degree from StFX, and was always a seamstress, decided that she was going to make kilts. She started MacIsaac Kiltmakers, which is now a big internationally known kilt-making company. But originally, it was just because I needed a new kilt for highland dancing.

So what is the difference between plaid and tartan?

Tartans have been around for several hundred years, and each tartan denotes a clan, a family group, a place, a military service. It is a very specific thing. There is a tartan registry board. It has all that information, and it has exactly how many threads each colour cross each other, it’s all very regulated. In the U.K., plaid is actually a garment — it’s something that you wear. But in North America the term “plaid” is just crossed checkered fabric. However, people use it all the time incorrectly. I cannot tell you the amount of times in articles and newspapers they use the term “mad for plaid” and that drives me crazy, it’s not correct. To boil it down, all tartans are plaid. But not all plaids are tartan.

Photo by Brent McCombs / Alter Ego Photography

Is there a big market for your work as a tartan designer?

As an independent fashion designer, if you don’t have a real solid niche it is a really tough industry to break into. However, because I have this super specific niche, I think a lot of people are surprised that I can make a living making tartan clothing, but I do. It is my full-time job. Because it is so niche it is really easy to market towards. Because I am the only one in the world that does what I do, it makes it that much easier. I can just target any of the Scottish communities in the world and I am the one person doing it. It makes it a little easier that way. So far I am surprised that no one else is doing it. I am still the only one.

What kind of designs are you creating out of tartan?

A lot of designers have a really really specific aesthetic and the thing that is always constant with me is the tartan. I try and switch it up a lot. I can’t keep making the same shape in tartan because that will always look the same. I do like things to be fairly structured. I take a lot of inspiration from the ‘40s, ‘50s, ‘60s; those are my favorite eras of fashion, so I definitely lean into that a little more. But I have done everything from tartan lingerie to gowns to baby clothes.

Who are your clothes for?

My whole main thing is I want to create clothing for people who want to wear their own personal style, but in a heritage fabric. If somebody would normally wear a pencil skirt, it would be a tartan pencil skirt in their family tartan. A style they would actually wear. I try to have a variety of styles that suit different body shapes, different heights and different ages.

Have you ever had any A-list or famous customers?

There is an annual event in New York called Dressed To Kilt and Sean Connery was the chairman of the show when it first started. I went down and did it for two years in a row, and all the models in the runway show are celebrities and TV stars and newscasters and sports stars. I did meet and dress a lot of stars in that way, but not I don’t have any famous personal customers I would say. There are a lot of A-listers inside the Scottish community, but that’s not quite the same.

What has been the proudest moment in your career?

I did a photoshoot in Soldiers Cove, Cape Breton, with my cousin Marsalie on our family’s homestead where our grandmother grew up, and her father and his father; it had been in our family for a couple hundred years and isn’t inhabitable anymore. She is wearing my McQueen tartan gown, which is my favorite piece that I have ever designed or created. The photo is incredible. It got published on the Italian Vogue website, and then it was published in print in British Vogue later that year. My cousin Marsalie, the model, is an officer in the Canadian Navy. She found out she was winning a Navy medal the same day she was going to be in British Vogue. I thought, “How cool is that?” There can’t be many navy officers that are also models. So I guess that was more for her than me, but still, being in British Vogue, that was pretty great.

Photo by Brent McCombs / Alter Ego Photography

What does working with something that is so rooted in your background and culture mean to you?

I have a lot of friends in the entrepreneur community and they don’t understand why I still do this. To them, it would make more sense to have my stuff massed produced, it would make more sense to just a line with stock tartans and have it be easier on me. But to me, wearing your tartan is a sense of pride and a sense of heritage and history. I’ve always known what my background is, what my heritage is and what my history is, so to me it is just wearing the tartan that multiple generations of people before me wore. I think that’s an important thing.

What’s the best part of your job?

There is something so lovely to me about finding a customer and have them come to me and say “I know I am Scottish but I don’t know what my tartan is or what it looks like.” And when I show the tartan to them, that look on their face of “oh wow this represents so much of my history.” I love seeing that in people.

Tartan is not just a fabric, it is something of great historical significance in Scotland. Scotland has had a lot of trouble and strife over the years and for 37 years in the 1700’s, the English government banned tartan from being worn because they were trying to squash the highland clan system. If you were caught wearing it, your first offence you were jailed for six months, your second offence you were jailed for seven years. So, the Scotsmen never wanted to stop wearing their tartans, so they would wear it underneath other garments.

It’s not just that tartan is pretty and has pretty colours. To me it’s more than that. It’s about resilience, and keeping your values, and keeping that heritage strong and passing it on to the next generation.

The post We Chat With Veronica MacIsaac, The World’s Only Tartan Fashion Designer appeared first on FASHION Magazine.

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felixluis · 5 years

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volunteerismandanarchy · 5 years

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Why We Miss the WASPs

Their more meritocratic, diverse and secular successors rule us neither as wisely nor as well.

By Ross Douthat

Opinion Columnist

New York Times, Dec 5, 2018

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/05/opinion/george-bush-wasps.html

The nostalgia flowing since the passing of George H.W. Bush has many wellsprings: admiration for the World War II generation and its dying breed of warrior-politicians, the usual belated media affection for moderate Republicans, the contrast between the elder Bush’s foreign policy successes and the failures of his son, and the contrast between any honorable politician and the current occupant of the Oval Office.

But two of the more critical takes on Bush nostalgia got closer to the heart of what was being mourned, in distant hindsight, with his death. Writing in The Atlantic, Peter Beinart described the elder Bush as the last president deemed “legitimate” by both of our country’s warring tribes — before the age of presidential sex scandals, plurality-winning and popular-vote-losing chief executives, and white resentment of the first black president. Also in The Atlantic, Franklin Foer described “the subtext” of Bush nostalgia as a “fondness for a bygone institution known as the Establishment, hardened in the cold of New England boarding schools, acculturated by the late-night rituals of Skull and Bones, sent off to the world with a sense of noblesse oblige. For more than a century, this Establishment resided at the top of the American caste system. Now it is gone, and apparently people wish it weren’t.”

I think you can usefully combine these takes, and describe Bush nostalgia as a longing for something America used to have and doesn’t really any more — a ruling class that was widely (not universally, but more widely than today) deemed legitimate, and that inspired various kinds of trust (intergenerational, institutional) conspicuously absent in our society today.

Put simply, Americans miss Bush because we miss the WASPs — because we feel, at some level, that their more meritocratic and diverse and secular successors rule us neither as wisely nor as well.

Foer suggests this nostalgia is mostly bunk, since the WASPs were so often bigots (he quotes Henry Adams’s fears of a “furtive Yacoob or Ysaac still reeking of the ghetto”), since their cultivation of noblesse oblige was really all about “preserving [a] place at the high table of American life,” and since so many of their virtues were superficial, a matter of dressing nicely while practicing imperialism, or writing lovely thank-you notes while they outsourced the dirty work of politics to race-baiting operatives.

“Those who are mourning the passing of the old Establishment should mourn its many failures, too,” he writes. Which is fair enough: The old ruling class was bigoted and exclusive and often cruel, it had failures aplenty, and as a Catholic I hold no brief for its theology (and don’t get me started on its Masonry).

However, one of the lessons of the age of meritocracy is that building a more democratic and inclusive ruling class is harder than it looks, and even perhaps a contradiction in terms. You can get rid of the social registers and let women into your secret societies and privilege SATs over recommendations from the rector of Justin and the headmaster of Saint Grottlesex ... and you still end up with something that is clearly a self-replicating upper class, a powerful elite, filling your schools and running your public institutions.

Not only that, but you even end up with an elite that literally uses the same strategy of exclusion that WASPs once used against Jews to preserve its particular definition of diversity from high-achieving Asians — with the only difference being that our elite is more determined to deceive itself about how and why it’s discriminating.

So if some of the elder Bush’s mourners wish we still had a WASP establishment, their desire probably reflects a belated realization that certain of the old establishment’s vices were inherent to any elite, that meritocracy creates its own forms of exclusion — and that the WASPs had virtues that their successors have failed to inherit or revive.

Those virtues included a spirit of noblesse oblige and personal austerity and piety that went beyond the thank-you notes and boat shoes and prep school chapel going — a spirit that trained the most privileged children for service, not just success, that sent men like Bush into combat alongside the sons of farmers and mechanics in the same way that it sent missionaries and diplomats abroad in the service of their churches and their country.

The WASP virtues also included a cosmopolitanism that was often more authentic than our own performative variety — a cosmopolitanism that coexisted with white man’s burden racism but also sometimes transcended it, because for every Brahmin bigot there was an Arabist or China hand or Hispanophile who understood the non-American world better than some of today’s shallow multiculturalists.

And somehow the combination of pious obligation joined to cosmopolitanism gave the old establishment a distinctive competence and effectiveness in statesmanship — one that from the late-19th century through the middle of the 1960s was arguably unmatched among the various imperial elites with whom our establishment contended, and that certainly hasn’t been matched by our feckless leaders in the years since George H.W. Bush went down to political defeat.

So as an American in the old dispensation, you didn’t have to like the establishment — and certainly its members were often eminently hateable — to prefer their leadership to many of the possible alternatives. And as an American today, you don’t have to miss everything about the WASPs, or particularly like their remaining heirs, to feel nostalgic for their competence.

The interesting question is whether they had to die off as they did. The decline of the old establishment is often portrayed as a simple inevitability — with all those baby boomers storming the universities, all that demographic change sweeping away white Protestant America, how could the WASPs hope to preserve their rule?

Certainly something had to change. But along with the establishment failure in Vietnam, which hastened the collapse of the old elite’s authority, there was also a loss of religious faith and cultural confidence, and a belief among the last generation of true WASPs that the emerging secular meritocracy would be morally and intellectually superior to their own style of elite. Thus under '60s mandarins like the Yale president Kingman Brewster the WASP ascendancy did not simply fall; it pre-emptively dissolved itself.

I’m not sure that self-abnegation has aged well. In any scenario the WASP elite would have had to diversify and adapt. But its virtues were to some extent transferable to a more diverse society: The establishment had always been somewhat permeable to arrivistes, Jews and Catholics imitated WASP habits in the 1940s and 1950s, and in our era their admirable influence is still felt in figures as different as Barack Obama and Mitt Romney.

So it’s possible to imagine adaptation rather than surrender as a different WASP strategy across the 1960s and 1970s. In such a world the establishment would have still admitted more blacks, Jews, Catholics and Hispanics (and more women) to its ranks … but it would have done so as a self-consciously elite-crafting strategy, rather than under the pseudo-democratic auspices of the SAT and the high school resume and the dubious ideal of “merit.” At the same time it would have retained both its historic religious faith (instead of exchanging Protestant rigor for a post-Christian Social Gospel and a soft pantheism) and its more self-denying culture (instead of letting all that wash away in the flood of boomer-era emotivism). The goal would have been to keep piety and discipline embedded in the culture of a place like Harvard, rather than the mix of performative self-righteousness and raw ambition that replaced them.

Such an effort might also have had spillover effects on politics. It’s de rigueur for liberals to lament the decline of the Rockefeller Republicans, or the compromises that a moderate northeastern WASP like George H.W. Bush made with Sunbelt populism. But a WASP establishment that couldn’t muster the self-confidence to hold on to Yale and Harvard was never likely to maintain its hold on a mass political organization like the G.O.P. Whereas an establishment that still believed in its mission within its own ivied bastions might have been seen as more politically imposing in the wider world — instead of seeing its last paladin, a war hero and statesman in a grand American tradition, dismissed in the boomer era as a “wimp.”

The point of this counterfactual is not to just join the nostalgic chorus around Bush’s departure for the Great Kennebunkport in the Skies. Rather it’s to look forward, and to suggest that our current elite might someday be reformed — or simply replaced — through the imitation of the old establishment's more pious and aristocratic spirit.

Right now, almost all the discussion of our meritocracy’s vices assumes the system’s basic post-WASP premises, and hopes that either more inclusion (the pro-diversity left’s fixation) or a greater emphasis on academic merit (the anti-affirmative right’s hobbyhorse) will cure our establishment’s all-too-apparent ills.

But nostalgia for what was best about the old establishment might point to a more radical theory of the case, one proposed by Helen Andrews in a 2016 Hedgehog Review essay on meritocracy and its discontents:

The meritocracy is hardening into an aristocracy — so let it. Every society in history has had an elite, and what is an aristocracy but an elite that has put some care into making itself presentable? Allow the social forces that created this aristocracy to continue their work, and embrace the label. By all means this caste should admit as many worthy newcomers as is compatible with their sense of continuity. New brains, like new money, have been necessary to every ruling class, meritocratic or not. If ethnic balance is important to meritocrats, they should engineer it into the system. If geographic diversity strikes them as important, they should ensure that it exists, ideally while keeping an eye on the danger of hoovering up all of the native talent from regional America. But they must give up any illusion that such tinkering will make them representative of the country over which they preside. They are separate, parochial in their values, unique in their responsibilities. That is what makes them aristocratic.

This idea is heresy to our current ruling class; it would have been simple wisdom to the WASPs. If we would learn from their lost successes in our own era of misrule, reconsidering this idea — that a ruling class should acknowledge itself for what it really is, and act accordingly — might be a fruitful place to start.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTOpinion) and Instagram, join the Facebook political discussion group, Voting While Female, and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter.

Ross Douthat has been an Opinion columnist for The Times since 2009. He is the author of several books, most recently, “To Change the Church: Pope Francis and the Future of Catholicism.”

You can follow him on Twitter: @DouthatNYT

#New York Times #Ross Douthat #Opinion #WASPS #Meritocracy #Ruling Class #George HW Bush #Politics

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therealandrewcameron-blog · 6 years

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Characters Names from Super Mario and their Origins

When I discovered that out I did two things. To begin with, I whipped out the message of mine (yes, I maintain it that real/nerdy that I continue to have a well used NES connected in the room) of mine and then made certain I can still beat the game at will. (I can. Childhood not wasted.)

Secondly, I initiated down a rabbit hole of reading through Mario internet sites and Articles and Wikis. In the procedure, I stumbled upon the etymologies of the brands of a number of the key players in the Mario universe. Therefore, in honor of the video game which often changed the planet, here they are, given in handy 11-item list form.

Mario.

When Mario debuted to the arcade game "Donkey Kong", he was just known as Jumpman. (Which also is actually the generic brand associated with that Michael Jordan dispersed leg Nike logo. Two of the most legendary icons ever before each have generic versions of themselves referred to as Jumpman. But just one has today reached the attempt of remaining extremely powerful that he shaved himself a Hitler mustache prior to filming a business and nobody had the balls to fix him.)

In 1980, as the Nintendo of America crew shipped Jumpman to raise him right into a franchise-leading star (Hayden Christensen style), an individual seen that he looked like their Seattle office building's landlord... a person called Mario Segale.

Mario Segale did not obtain a cent for turning out to be the namesake of probably the most prominent video game character ever, however, he most likely is not insanely concerned; in 1998 he sold his asphalt business for over $60 million. (Or 600,000 extra lives.)

Luigi.

Luigi actually has one of probably the weakest brand origins of all of the mario characters with names in the Mario universe (once again showing exactly why, for life that is real, he'd have a larger inferiority complicated compared to Frank Stallone, Abel or that 3rd Manning brother).

"Luigi" is merely the result of a team of Japanese men trying to consider an Italian brand to enhance "Mario." Why was the Italian name they went with? When they all moved from Japan to Seattle, the pizza spot nearby to the Nintendo headquarters known as Mario & Luigi's. (It has since gone out of business.)

Koopa.

Koopa is a transliterated model of the Japanese rap for the adversary turtles, "Kuppa." Stick with me right here -- kuppa is the Japanese word for a Korean recipe called gukbap. Basically it's a cup of soup with cereal. From what I definitely inform it's absolutely unrelated to turtles, especially malicious ones.

In an interview, Mario's author, Shigeru Miyamoto, said he was deciding between three distinct brands because of the high-speed of evil turtles, every one of that were called after Korean foods. (The other 2 were yukhoe and bibimbap.) And that means among two things: (one) Miyamoto likes Korean food and needed to give it a tribute or (two) Miyamoto thinks Koreans are evil and really should be jumped on.

Wario.

I sort of missed the debut of Wario -- he debuted in 1992, right around when I was hitting the era where I was extremely awesome for cartoon y Nintendo games. (Me and the middle school buddies of mine have been into Genesis just. I was back on Nintendo within 4 years.)

Seems his name functions both in Japanese and english; I kinda assumed the English way but didn't know about the Japanese element. In English, he is an evil, bizarro marketplace mirror image of Mario. The "M" turns to become a "W" and Wario is produced. The name likewise operates in Japanese, when it's the variety of Mario and "warui," which means "bad."

That's a pretty high quality scenario, since, as I covered thoroughly in the summary 11 Worst Japanese-To-English Translations In Nintendo History, not every language distinction finesses back and also forth that smoothly.

Waluigi.

When I first seen "Waluigi" I assumed it was hilarious. While Wario became an all natural counterbalance to Mario, Waluigi sensed extremely comically shoehorned (just tacking the "wa" prefix before Luigi) -- including a huge inside joke that somehow cleared every bureaucratic step and cracked the mainstream.

Well... in accordance with the Nintendo men and women, Waluigi is not only a gloriously lazy decision or an inside joke gone substantial. They *say* it's based on the Japanese phrase ijiwaru, which means that "bad guy."

I do not understand. I feel like we'd have to supply them much more than halfway to buy that.

Toad.

Toad is built to look as a mushroom (or perhaps toadstool) thanks to the massive mushroom hat of his. It is a great thing the games debuted before the entire generation realized the right way to earn penis jokes.

Anyway, in Japan, he's considered Kinopio, which is a mixture of the term for mushroom ("kinoko") and also the Japanese version of Pinocchio ("pinokio"). Those mix being something along the lines of "A Real Mushroom Boy."

Goomba.

In Japanese, the guys are labeled as kuribo, that results in "chestnut people." That makes sense because, ya know, if somebody asked you "what do chestnut people look like?" you'd almost certainly arrive at food roughly similar to these heroes.

Once they were shipped for the American version, the group stuck with their Italian initiative and called them Goombas... based off the Italian "goombah," which colloquially means something as "my fellow Italian friend." Furthermore, it type of evokes the photo of low-level mafia thugs without too many capabilities -- like people's younger brothers as well as cousins who they'd to work with or mother would yell at them. Which also is true for the Mario Bros. goombas.

Birdo.

Birdo has nothing to do with this particular initial Japanese name. Right now there, he's considered Kyasarin, that typically results in "Catherine."

In the instruction manual for Super Mario Bros. 2, where Birdo debuted, the persona explanation of his reads: "Birdo thinks he is a girl and additionally likes being named Birdetta."

What I do believe all this means? Nintendo shockingly decided to generate a character who battles with his gender identity and then called him Catherine. In the event it was a bit of time to go to America, they got cold feet so they decided at the very last minute to contact him Birdo, even though he's a dinosaur. (And do not give me the "birds are descended from dinosaurs" pop paleontology line. Not buying that connection.) That way, we would just understand about his gender misunderstandings in case we look at the mechanical, and the Japanese were pretty sure Americans had been sometimes too lazy or perhaps illiterate to accomplish that en masse.

Princess Toadstool/Peach.

When we all got introduced to the Princess, she was regarded as Princess Toadstool. I suppose this made good sense -- Mario was put in the Mushroom Kingdom, so why wouldn't its monarch be called Princess Toadstool. Them inbreeding bluish bloods are usually naming the kids of theirs after the country.

No person appears to be sure the reason they went that guidance, nevertheless. In Japan, she was known as Princess Peach from day one. That title did not debut here until 1993, when Yoshi's Safari arrived on the scene for Super Nintendo. (By the manner -- have you ever played Yoshi's Safari? In an off-the-wall twist it is a first-person shooter, the only person in the entire Mario the historical past. It is like something like a country music superstar putting out a weird rock album.)

Bowser.

In Japan, there's simply no Bowser. He's simply referred to as the King Koopa (or similar variants, like Great Demon King Koopa). And so exactly where did Bowser come from?

During the import method, there was a concern that the American masses would not recognize how the small turtles and big bad man could certainly be called Koopa. So a marketing staff put together dozens of selections for a title, they liked Bowser the very best, and slapped it on him.

In Japan, he is still hardly ever called Bowser. Over here, the name of his has become extremely ubiquitous that he's even supplanted Sha Na Na's Bowzer as America's most famous Bowser.

Donkey Kong.

This's a more literal interpretation than you think. "Kong" is based off of King Kong. "Donkey" is a family friendly way of calling him an ass. That is right: His label is an useful variation of "Ass Ape."

Super Mario Bros. is a video recording game released for the family Computer and Nintendo Entertainment System in 1985. It shifted the gameplay far from its single-screen arcade predecessor, Mario Bros., in addition to instead showcased side scrolling platformer concentrations. Although not the very first game of the Mario franchise, Super Mario Bros. is the most famous, along with launched various sequence staples, from power-ups, to timeless enemies like Goombas, on the basic concept of rescuing Princess Toadstool from King Koopa. As well as kicking off a complete series of Super Mario platformer online games, the untamed good results of Super Mario Bros. made popular the genre to be a whole, really helped revive the gaming sector once the 1983 video clip game crash, as well as was largely accountable for the original good results around the NES, with which it's included a launch name. Until eventually it had been finally surpassed by Wii Sports, Super Mario Bros. was the very best marketing videos game of all moment for nearly three years, with more than forty million copies sold outside of us.

#mario characters with names

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foolish-arachni-blog · 6 years

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eleven Origins of eleven Super Mario Characters' Names

Nintendo heroes produce their VR (arcade) debut with fresh Vive-driven Mario Kart

Bandai Namco revealed a virtual simple fact model of Mario Kart, Mario Kart Arcade GP VR, that is going to make the debut of its over a VR arcade the company is opening using Tokyo, Japan next month.

The game appears to mark the VR debut of one of Nintendo's flagship franchises, nevertheless, it's essential to observe it's licensed by Nintendo as well as developed by Namco - just like the non-VR predecessor of its, Mario Kart Arcade GP.Few specifics are still obtainable in English concerning the game, nevertheless, it's mentioned around the arcade's site as running on HTC Vive headsets and also specially-designed racing seats.

Nintendo has so far been publicly reticent concerning the promise of VR - previous year frontman Shigeru Miyamoto told investors that for VR wearing particular, we're continuing our research, along with looking into enhancement and have a thoughts to how the present key products of ours are meant for being played for a rather lengthy period of time of time.

We're exploring the options of providing an experience that offers value when played for a short time, he continued. And the way to do away with the concerns of long-duration use.

When I found that out I did 2 things. For starters, I whipped out my copy (yes, I keep it that real/nerdy which I continue to have an old NES hooked up in my room) and made certain I will be able to beat the game at will. (I can. Childhood not wasted.)

Secondly, I launched down a rabbit hole of looking through Mario internet sites as well as Wikis and Articles. In the operation, I stumbled upon the etymologies of the labels of several of the main players in the Mario universe. Consequently, in honor of the video game that changed the world, in this article they are, presented in handy 11 item list form.

Mario.

When Mario debuted to the arcade game "Donkey Kong", he was just known as Jumpman. (Which even happens to be the generic brand regarding that Michael Jordan spread leg Nike logo. Two of the most legendary icons ever both have generic versions of themselves known as Jumpman. But only one has today arrived at the effort of simply being so impressive that he shaved himself a Hitler mustache prior to filming a commercial and the balls were had by not one person to correct him.)

In 1980, as the Nintendo of America crew brought in Jumpman to lift him straight into a franchise-leading star (Hayden Christensen style), an individual noticed that he looked like their Seattle office building's landlord... a guy known as Mario Segale.

Mario Segale did not obtain a dime for becoming the namesake of probably the most famous video game persona ever, however, he probably is not very concerned; in 1998 he sold the asphalt small business of his for more than $60 million. (Or 600,000 additional lives.)

Luigi.

Luigi actually has one of probably the weakest name roots of most of the mario brothers characters in the Mario universe (once again displaying exactly why, in life that is real, he'd have a greater inferiority complex compared to Frank Stallone, Abel or even that third Manning brother).

"Luigi" is simply the product of a team of Japanese men attempting to consider an Italian label to enhance "Mario." Why was that the Italian brand they went with? When they all moved from Japan to Seattle, the pizza area closest to the Nintendo headquarters known as Mario & Luigi's. (It has since gone from business.)

Koopa.

Koopa is a transliterated version of the Japanese name for the opponent turtles, "Kuppa." Stick with me here -- kuppa is the Japanese term for a Korean plate known as gukbap. Basically it's a cup of soup with elmer rice. From what I tell it's totally not related to turtles, above all malicious ones.

In an interview, Mario's author, Shigeru Miyamoto, stated he was deciding between three labels that are distinct for the race of evil turtles, each one of which have been named after Korean foods. (The alternative 2 were yukhoe and bibimbap.) Which means among two things: (one) Miyamoto likes Korean food and needed to give it a tribute or even (two) Miyamoto thinks Koreans are evil and must be jumped on.

Wario.

I sort of overlooked the debut of Wario -- he debuted in 1992, right around when I was hitting the era just where I was too awesome for cartoon y Nintendo games. (Me and my middle school buddies were into Genesis just. I was again on Nintendo within four years.)

Seems his name operates both in english and Japanese; I kinda assumed the English way but did not know about the Japanese element. In English, he is an evil, bizarro world mirror image of Mario. The "M" turns to be a "W" as well as Wario is born. The name additionally works in Japanese, when it is the variety of Mario and "warui," that means "bad."

That is a pretty good situation, since, as I covered extensively in the list 11 Worst Japanese-To-English Translations In Nintendo History, don't assume all language distinction finesses back and also forth very smoothly.

Waluigi.

When I 1st seen "Waluigi" I believed it was hilarious. While Wario became an all natural counterbalance to Mario, Waluigi believed so comically shoehorned (just tacking the "wa" prefix before Luigi) -- like a huge inside joke that somehow cleared each and every bureaucratic phase and cracked the mainstream.

Well... in accordance with the Nintendo men and women, Waluigi is not only a gloriously idle decision or maybe an inside joke become massive. They *say* it's based on the Japanese phrase ijiwaru, which means "bad guy."

I do not know. I feel like we'd have to cater for them more than halfway to get that.

Toad.

Toad is built to look as a mushroom (or toadstool) because of the gigantic mushroom hat of his. It is a great thing the games debuted before the entire generation realized how you can make penis jokes.

Anyway, in Japan, he's called Kinopio, which happens to be a blend of the name for mushroom ("kinoko") as well as the Japanese version of Pinocchio ("pinokio"). Those combine to be something around the collections of "A Real Mushroom Boy."

Goomba.

In Japanese, the men are known as kuribo, which regularly results in "chestnut people." That is sensible because, ya know, if somebody requested you "what do chestnut individuals look like?" you would most likely reach something nearly like the figures.

When they had been brought in for the American version, the staff stuck with the Italian initiative of theirs and called them Goombas... primarily based off of the Italian "goombah," which colloquially means something like "my fellow Italian friend." Furthermore, it sort of evokes the picture of low-level mafia criminals without too numerous competencies -- such as individuals younger brothers as well as cousins who they'd to work with or perhaps mom would yell at them. Which also goes for the Mario Bros. goombas.

Birdo.

Birdo has practically nothing to do with this particular initial Japanese title. Right now there, he's considered Kyasarin, that typically results in "Catherine."

In the training manual for Super Mario Bros. two, where Birdo debuted, the persona explanation of his reads: "Birdo believes he's a girl and additionally would like to become named Birdetta."

What In my opinion this all means? Nintendo shockingly decided to generate a character that battles with his gender identity and referred to as him Catherine. In the event it was time to show up to America, they got cold feet so they determined at the last second to call him Birdo, though he's a dinosaur. (And do not provide me the "birds are descended from dinosaurs" pop-paleontology series. Not shopping for that connection.) In that way, we would just understand about his gender confusion if we read the mechanical, and the Japanese were fairly certain Americans were sometimes too idle or perhaps illiterate to accomplish that en masse.

Princess Toadstool/Peach.

When we all got released to the Princess, she was regarded as Princess Toadstool. I guess this made good sense -- Mario was put in the Mushroom Kingdom, so why would not its monarch be named Princess Toadstool. Them inbreeding bluish bloods are always naming their young children immediately after the country.

Nobody seems to be sure why they went the guidance, however. In Japan, she was regarded as Princess Peach from day one. That name didn't debut here until 1993, when Yoshi's Safari became available for Super Nintendo. (By the way -- have you played Yoshi's Safari? In an off-the-wall twist it is a first-person shooter, the only one in the entire Mario times past. It's like the equivalent of a country music superstar putting out a weird rock album.)

Bowser.

In Japan, there is simply no Bowser. He is simply called the King Koopa (or maybe similar modifications, including Great Demon King Koopa). And so exactly where did Bowser come from?

During the import method, there was a problem that the American masses wouldn't see how the little turtles and big bad fellow could certainly be known as Koopa. So a marketing team developed many options for a name, they adored Bowser the very best, and slapped it on him.

In Japan, he is still rarely known as Bowser. Over here, the name of his is now extremely ubiquitous that he is even supplanted Sha Na Na's Bowzer as America's many prominent Bowser.

Donkey Kong.

This is a much more literal interpretation than you think. "Kong" is based off King Kong. "Donkey" is a family-friendly method of calling him an ass. That is right: His label is a valuable model of "Ass Ape."

Fantastic Mario Bros. is a video game introduced for the family Computer and Nintendo Entertainment System in 1985. It shifted the gameplay far from its single-screen arcade predecessor, Mario Bros., along with instead highlighted side scrolling platformer concentrations. Though not the very first game on the Mario franchise, Super Mario Bros. is the most famous, along with introduced various set staples, from power ups, to timeless adversaries as Goombas, to the standard premise of rescuing Princess Toadstool out of King Koopa. Along with kicking raised a few inches off a complete number of Super Mario platformer video games, the wild good results of Super Mario Bros. popularized the genre as a complete, helped revive the gaming sector as soon as the 1983 footage game crash, and was mainly accountable for the first good results on the NES, with that it was bundled up a launch title. Until eventually it had been ultimately surpassed by Wii Sports, Super Mario Bros. was the very best marketing video game of all of the time for almost three decades, with more than 40 million duplicates sold internationally.

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