LIBERO COPPER ANNOUNCES CLOSING OF PRIVATE PLACEMENT
Libero Copper & Gold Corporation (TSX-V: LBC) (OTCQB: LBCMF) (DE: 29H) is pleased to announce that it has closed the final tranche of its non-brokered private placement consisting of a cumulative total of 12,583,666 units, with each Unit consisting of one common share and one share purchase warrant at a price of $0.15 per Unit for aggregate gross proceeds of approximately $1.9 million. Each Warrant shall entitle the holder thereof to acquire one additional Share at a price of $0.22 until expiry on January 6, 2025. The net proceeds will be used for exploration at the Mocoa and Esperanza porphyry copper projects and general working capital.
Existing strategic investor, Anglo Asian Mining Plc, invested in the final tranche of the Offering to maintain their 19.9% interest in Libero Copper by purchasing 2,600,000 Units, which, along with 70,000 Units purchased by the CEO, will be subject to a four month hold period ending May 7, 2023 pursuant to applicable policies of the TSX Venture Exchange. Ian Slater, Chairman, participated in the Offering for 1,000,000 Units which will be subject to a four month hold period ending May 1, 2023 pursuant to applicable policies of the TSX Venture exchange.
8,913,666 Units under this Offering were sold pursuant to the listed issuer financing exemption under Part 5A of National Instrument 45-106 – Prospectus Exemptions. Since the Offering was completed pursuant to the Listed Issuer Financing Exemption, the securities issued in the Offering will not be subject to a hold period pursuant to applicable Canadian securities law.
The securities described herein have not been, and will not be, registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the “U.S. Securities Act“) or any U.S. state securities laws, and may not be offered or sold in the United States or to, or for the account or benefit of, United States persons absent registration or an applicable exemption from the registration requirements of the U.S. Securities Act and applicable U.S. state securities laws. This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy securities in the United States, nor in any other jurisdiction.
About Libero Copper & Gold
Libero Copper is unlocking the value of a collection of porphyry copper deposits throughout the Americas in prolific and stable jurisdictions. The portfolio includes the Mocoa deposit in Putumayo, Colombia; Esperanza in San Juan, Argentina; and Big Red and Big Bulk in the Golden Triangle, BC, Canada. These assets are being advanced by a highly disciplined and seasoned professional team with successful track records of discovery, resource development, and permitting in the Americas.


Liz Jellema Joins Creative Fundraising Advisors as Chief Operating Officer
Creative Fundraising Advisors (CFA) announced today that Liz Jellema will join the firm as its new Chief Operating Officer, effective January 5, 2022.
In her role, Jellema will provide oversight of the operations, culture, values, talent, marketing and communications, and financial performance of the full-service, fundraising consulting firm.
Jellema joins CFA from the University of Chicago where she served as Director of Operations and Strategic Initiatives for the Rustandy Center for Social Sector Innovation at the Booth School of Business.
“Liz is an action-oriented leader with a growth mindset,” says Paul Johnson, President of CFA. “She is highly strategic, collaborative, and detail oriented, which will serve our firm and our clients well. Liz has the skills to effectively co-lead our firm through a period of rapid growth and development.”
Since CFA was founded in 2014, it has grown from sole practitioner practice to a full-service, nationally focused, strategic fundraising firm with consultants based in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and Pittsburgh. CFA principally supports clients in the arts, education, environmental, and human services sectors.
CFA’s client base has grown to include The Actors Fund (NYC), Gotham Film & Media Institute (NYC), Philadelphia Contemporary (Philadelphia), St. John’s College (Annapolis), Northside Achievement Zone (Minneapolis), North Carolina Museum of Art (Raleigh), Friends of the Mississippi River (Minneapolis), Headlands Center for the Arts (San Francisco), Santa Fe Community Foundation, Academy Museum of Motion Pictures (Los Angeles), Street Poets (Los Angeles), Orange County Museum of Art (Costa Mesa), and numerous others.
Johnson notes that Jellema’s rich work experience positions her well for the COO role. “Liz has held leadership positions at a start-up, a government-related economic development agency, and at one of the world’s top business schools. Her background is ideal for CFA as we continue to build a robust portfolio of clients from numerous sectors and locations across the U.S.”
Prior to joining the Booth School, Jellema served as vice president of engagement for CityBase in Chicago, director of research at World Business Chicago, and as an analyst at AECOM Economics. She earned her bachelor’s degree in business administration, real estate and urban land economics at the University of Wisconsin, a master’s degree in urban planning at the University of Michigan, and a certificate of civic leadership at the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago.
Jellema was drawn to the COO position because of CFA’s reputation in the nonprofit arena and its significant growth potential. “I am energized by opportunities where I can make a difference by translating strategy to operations and where the culture is client-centered,” she says. “CFA is in the right place at the right time to continue along its trajectory from start up to a powerhouse. I look forward to working with this team to support the mission-driven clients we serve.”


Tom Verde
Although the building that held Cairo’s Dar al-’Ilm, or House of Knowledge, disappeared long ago, it stood not far from the Mosque of al-Aqmar, right, along Muizz Street, a thoroughfare that dates back to the founding of Cairo in the 10th century.
Cairo’s House of Knowledge
January/February 2019PDF
Written by Tom Verde
On March 24, 1005, a man reputed for madness came to his senses long enough to establish one of the most progressive and influential academic institutions of the Middle Ages.
“On this Saturday ... the so-called House of Knowledge in Cairo was inaugurated,” wrote the chronicler al-Musabbihi, a friend of the new institution’s founder, Caliph al-Hakim, who had assumed his title nine years before. Though al-Musabbihi’s original manuscript is lost, copied sections survive in the writings of 14th-century Egyptian historian al-Maqrizi.
As al-Musabbihi and others at court well knew, staying on al-Hakim’s good side could be tricky. The “Mad Caliph,” as he was later called, could be mingling jovially with his subjects in the streets at one moment and ordering the summary execution of an esteemed courtier the next—or the extermination of the city’s dogs because their barking annoyed him.
Loaka1 Creative Commons
Al-Hakim ruled as caliph in Cairo from 996 to 1021 ce. Although he vanished without a trace, he left a cultural and scientific legacy in Dar al-‘Ilm, which furthered astronomy, mathematics, medicine, law and other fields of knowledge.
So al-Hakim—the name means “the Wise”—must have been having an especially even-keeled day when, as al-Musabbihi reported, he commanded that books and “manuscripts in all the domains of science and culture, to an extent to which they had never been brought together for a prince” fill the shelves of his new Dar al-‘Ilm, or House of Knowledge.
For more than 100 years, Dar al-‘Ilm distinguished itself as a center of learning where astronomers, mathematicians, grammarians, logicians, physicians, philologists, jurists and others conducted research, gave lectures and collaborated. All were welcomed, and it remained unfettered by political pressures or partisan influences.
“There is no evidence that it ever served as a propaganda institution. It was created simply as a public academy,” says historian Paul Walker of the University of Chicago, who has written on the Fatimid dynasty of which al-Hakim was a member.
Among the breakthroughs that emerged from Dar al-‘Ilm were discoveries in optics by polymath astronomer, mathematician and philosopher Ibn al-Haytham and in astronomy by Ibn Yunus, an astronomer who lived during the late 10th and early 11th centuries. Their charts, tables, experiments and empirical research would inform the work of later scientists and thinkers in Europe. (See “Legacy of Knowledge,” sidebar.)
It was sectarian infighting and philosophical clashes that ultimately ran roughshod over the founding aims of Dar al-‘Ilm 114 years after its opening. Its doors closed in 1119, and attempts to revive it veered from its founding, nonsectarian principles.
Yet during its heyday in the first half of the 11th century, Dar al-‘Ilm, as its name implied, advanced the knowledge of its era, the pursuit of which, according to a famed hadith, or saying, of the Prophet Muhammad, “is an obligation upon every Muslim.”
The History Collection / Alamy
Dar al-’Ilm drew scholars from across the Muslim world. It was established in 1005 with books donated by Caliph al-Hakim, whose own palace library was said to hold some 400,000 volumes.
Egypt was a real center of learning during this whole classical period, and Cairo in particular. People came there to learn from all over the Islamic world.
—Paula Sanders, author of Ritual, Politics, and the City in Fatimid Cairo
While unique in some ways, Dar al-‘Ilm was not the first of its kind. Baghdad’s Bayt al-Hikma (House of Wisdom), established early in the ninth century by the Abbasid Caliphate, is the most famous of its predecessors.
Jundaysabur Academy, founded around 555 ce in the province of Khuzestan, near the current Iran-Iraq border, was perhaps closer in spirit to the Cairo academy. It was devoted mostly to the study of medicine and philosophy and attracted scholars from many corners of the Middle East.
Other models included an early ninth-century palace library, Khizanat al-Hikma (Library of Wisdom)—maintained by Yahya ibn Abi Mansur, chief astronomer to Abbasid Caliph al-Ma’mun, patron also of the Bayt al-Hikma. Scholars from throughout the caliphate, especially those keen on astronomy, traveled there to learn. In 10th-century Mosul, in modern Iraq, a wealthy patron named Ja‘far ibn Muhammad al-Mawsili founded a library where he lectured on poetry, while students studied a variety of topics—and were supplied with free paper. In Basra and Ramhormoz, in southern Persia, a certain Ibn Sawwar established libraries where research scholars were offered stipends. To the north, in Rayy—“the finest city of the whole east,” barring Baghdad, as 10th-century geographer Ibn Hawqal wrote—more than 400 camel-loads of books lined the shelves of its Bayt al-Kutub (House of Books). And around 993 in the Baghdad suburb of al-Karkh, a vizier named Abu Nasr Sabur ibn Ardashir founded the Abode of Knowledge, whose library was said to keep more than 10,000 volumes.
This last institution, founded just 12 years before Dar al-‘Ilm, was likely al-Hakim’s most direct inspiration, according to Heinz Halm, professor of Islamic studies at the University of Tübingen. It was through al-Hakim’s contacts in Baghdad that the caliph learned of Sabur’s institution, and he was thus “encouraged to promote the sciences in his own empire in a similar and even more generous manner and to raise the cultural level of his followers,” Halm wrote in his 1997 study, The Fatimids and their Traditions of Learning. Yet al-Hakim did not merely copy: He incorporated elements of the other earlier institutions, including stipends for scholars, support staff and free writing supplies.
The time and place were just right.
“Egypt was a real center of learning during this whole classical period, and Cairo in particular. People came there to learn from all over the Islamic world,” says historian Paula Sanders of Rice University, author of Ritual, Politics, and the City in Fatimid Cairo.
Perhaps not surprisingly, Dar al-‘Ilm’s founding coincided with the rise of Fatimid regional power. Expanding west from Syria in the 10th century, the Fatimids seized Egypt and North Africa from local client rulers of the Iraq-based Abbasids. In 969, Caliph al-Mu‘izz li-Din Allah founded Cairo—al-Qahira (the Victorious) in Arabic—which became the dynasty’s political and economic capital.
Down Muizz Street, the intricately decorated facade of the mosque, together with the rest of the street’s surviving medieval architecture, now all rub shoulders with storefronts advertising cell phones, sweets and bric-a-brac.
One of Dar al-’Ilm’s best-known scholars was Ibn al-Haytham, whose discoveries in optics included the correct hypothesis that human sight involved light rays entering the eye—rather than emanating from the eye, as previously believed.
By the time al-Mu‘izz’s grandson al-Hakim took the throne 30 years later, Fatimid governing authority was located in Cairo’s Eastern and Western Palaces. These royal administrative and residential quarters—now gone—stood facing one another in the heart of the city, separated by a 2.5-hectare parade ground called Bayn al-Qasrayn (literally meaning “between the two palaces”) along all that now remains: Muizz Street, one of Cairo’s oldest, most atmospherically historic thoroughfares.
Al-Maqrizi (quoting al-Musabbihi) pointed out that Dar al-‘Ilm was located in a house that formally belonged to a slave-steward of al-Hakim’s father, Caliph al-Aziz. That house, explains Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities for Legal Affairs Archeologist Ahmed Maher, was lost long ago. But it was once appended to the northern wing of the four-and-a-half hectare, staple-shaped western palace, opposite the Mosque of al-Aqmar, which still stands and dates from about a century and a quarter later.
Down Muizz Street, the intricately decorated facade of the mosque, together with the rest of the street’s surviving medieval architecture, now all rub shoulders with storefronts advertising cell phones, Arab sweets and touristy bric-a-brac. Maher, who specializes in the medieval Islamic period, peers through the modernity and hazards an educated guess as to what Dar al-‘Ilm’s interior may have been like when it opened its doors some 10 centuries ago.
“I think there would have been a great hall,” for lectures, in addition to cubicles for individual study and shelves for books, Maher says. Al-Musabbihi’s eyewitness description all but confirms Maher’s speculation:
After the building was furnished and decorated, and after all the doors and passages were provided with curtains, lectures were held there by the Qur’an readers, astronomers, grammarians and philologists, as well as physicians.
This scholarly staff was supported, al-Musabbihi wrote, by “[g]uardians, servants, domestics and others.” In addition to these “blessings, the like of which had been unheard of,” al-Hakim “granted substantial salaries to all those who were appointed by him there to do service.”
Salaries and other financial support flowed from a waqf (endowment) established by al-Hakim, the terms of which have survived in fragments of Dar al-‘Ilm’s original deed, quoted by al-Maqrizi. While records of the scholar salaries are absent, tallies of Dar al-‘Ilm’s annual budget for support staff and upkeep have survived:
For the purchase of mats and other household effects, 10 dinars; for paper for the scribe, i.e. the copyist, 90 dinars—that is the greatest single item—‘for the librarian 48 dinars; for the purchase of water 12, for the servant 15, for paper, ink and writing reeds for the scholars studying there 12; for repairing the curtains 1 dinar; for the repair of possibly torn books or loose leaves 12; for the purchase of felt for blankets in the winter 5; for the purchase of carpets in the winter 4 dinars.
Here the deed fragment breaks off, and the distribution of the remaining 48 dinars of Dar al-‘Ilm’s annual 257-dinar budget remains a mystery. (One dinar averaged 4.25 grams of gold.)
Leonardo da Vinci addressed “the problem of Alhazen” (as Ibn al-Haytham was known in the West) in the early 16th century in his encyclopedic Codex Atlanticus. The problem posed by Ibn al-Haytham concerned calculating the angle at which a ray of light is reflected by a concave mirror.
Al-Maqrizi also makes clear that the largest expense was the cost of paper. Per al-Hakim’s edict, people “of all walks of life, whether they wanted to read books or dip into them” were not only permitted to browse Dar al-‘Ilm’s collection of around 1,500 books but were also provided with free “ink, writing reeds, paper and inkstands” should they wish to walk in and copy any book they pleased.
“That’s astonishing. People didn’t know what to make of it,” says Walker, though Sanders stipulates that given its setting in the royal palace, Dar al-‘Ilm would have been frequented by a literate and sophisticated clientele, as opposed to the general public.
The books were gifts from al-Hakim, whose own personal library was said to house no fewer than 400,000 volumes on history, jurisprudence, grammar, philology, biography, astronomy, alchemy and other sciences.” This included 2,400 boxed Qur’ans, each illuminated in gold, silver and lapis lazuli. By the fall of the Fatimid dynasty in 1171, al-Maqrizi reported that the royal library housed an estimated 1.6 million books, and not long after him, poet Ibn Abi Tayyi of Aleppo praised the palace library as “one of the wonders of the world.”
Such anecdotal reckonings were likely inflated. But even if the shelves of al-Hakim’s library contained but one-tenth of its reputed inventory, it “would have been larger, by a factor of fifty or more, than any contemporary library in Christendom,” observed scholar Jonathan Bloom, author of Paper Before Print: The History and Impact of Paper in the Islamic World.
But Dar al-‘Ilm’s greatest asset was its brain trust. Among the most notable drawn to it was Ibn al-Haytham, who today is regarded as the father of modern optics.
Legacy of Knowledge
Research at Dar al-’Ilm would inform the works of later European scientists and thinkers, including 13th-century philosopher Vitello and Roger Bacon, both of whom drew upon Ibn al-Haytham when writing their own tomes on optics. Enlightenment-era astronomer Johannes Kepler explicitly credited Ibn al-Haytham when developing his theory of retinal imagery, as did Kepler’s contemporary mathematician-philosopher René Descartes when wrestling with the question of where light lands when reflected off a curved or spherical surface, a puzzle that later became known to mathematicians as “Alhazen’s problem.” (“Alhazen” was Ibn al-Haytham’s Latinized name.) Ibn al-Haytham solved the problem using geometry and a study of curved planes; an algebraic solution was not discovered until the mid-1960s. Artists and art historians also theorize that Ibn al-Haytham’s work on optics enhanced the use of perspective in Renaissance art, particularly the paintings of 15th-century artist Lorenzo Ghiberti, who quoted Ibn al-Haytham in his commentaries.
Ibn Yunus’s critical reassessment of the Greco-Roman astronomer Ptolemy, whose Amalgest placed Earth at the center of the universe, helped pave the way for the kind of thinking that led to the theory of heliocentrism posed by 15th century Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus. As late as the 19th century, Ibn Yunus’s time-keeping tables were still being used in Cairo, while his observations on planetary conjunctions remained useful to astronomer Simon Newcomb of the United States Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C., while formulating his theories on lunar motion in the 1870s.
Today, Ibn Yunus’s intellectual descendants–-Arab astronomers from Morocco, many of them members of the Arab Astronomical Society—continue to contribute to global scientific efforts with telescopes such as those at the Oukaïmeden Observatory in Morocco’s Atlas Mountains. In 2016 data from the observatory helped identify TRAPPIST-1, a planetary system composed of a central, ultra-cool red dwarf orbited by seven exoplanets within the constellation Aquarius.
“The primary motivation for the search for extrasolar planets is identifying how frequent habitable worlds and life may be within the Galaxy … [ and] to better know about the formation of our own solar system,” said Zouhair Benkhaldoun, director of the observatory and president of the Moroccan National Committee for Astronomy, speaking to a writer for the website Nature Middle East. And in Cairo, scientists like Yehea Ismail of The American University in Cairo recognize the contributions of their predecessors and continue to build upon their foundations. Ismail’s research is in nanoelectronics, which seeks to reduce transistors to increasingly microscopic sizes that may add power and functionality to products from smartphones to biochips that could, for example, help analyze blood chemistry.
“What I am doing is cutting edge, but it is a continuation,” he says. “The European Renaissance and Industrial Revolution stood on the shoulders of medieval Arabs.”
Born in Basra, Iraq, in 965 ce, little is known of Ibn al-Haytham’s early years, beyond that he served there as a vizier. Preferring science to politics, he spent most of his time studying Aristotle, Euclid and other Greeks while developing his own passions for mathematics, physics and astronomy.
Exactly when Ibn al-Haytham traveled to Cairo to join the faculty at Dar al-‘Ilm is unknown, but by the time he got there, his opinion of himself seems to have grown as inflated as some of the estimates of the caliph’s book collection. Standing before al-Hakim, he bragged that he could accomplish something the Egyptians never had achieved: control the annual flooding of the Nile. Al-Hakim enthusiastically funded the project, and Ibn al-Haytham set off on an expedition upriver.
After examining the Nile’s powerful flow at Egypt’s southern border, Ibn al-Haytham realized the task was beyond his capabilities. He further rationalized that any civilization capable of such engineering wonders as the Great Pyramids would surely have regulated the flow of the Nile long ago, were it possible. He quietly tiptoed back to Cairo, where in order to avoid al-Hakim’s anticipated wrath, he feigned madness. He spent the rest of his days, before passing away around 1040, earning a modest living copying manuscripts in his quarters at Dar al-‘Ilm.
He also continued to study mathematics, physics and astronomy, as well as optics, which he helped pioneer as a physical science. In his greatest surviving work, Kitab al-Manazir (Book of Optics), he became the first to correctly postulate that the “act of vision is not accomplished by means of rays” that emanate from the eyes to fall upon objects, as some of his classical predecessors, notably Euclid and Ptolemy, believed. Rather, he surmised, “vision is accomplished by rays coming from external objects and entering the visual organ.”
He arrived at his conclusion via experimentation using lenses, mirrors and what he called his al-bait al-muzlim, or in Latin, camera obscura, which translates simply as “dark room.” Noting that light entering a darkened room through a pinhole cast an inverted image of the outside world onto the opposite wall, he concluded from this and other observations and experiments that light itself traveled in rays, a fundamental principle of optics. In doing so, he anticipated the modern scientific method by refusing to take at face value the writings of those who had come before him, relying instead on his own experiments and accumulated data—and even then he reserved judgment:
“A person studying science with a view to knowing the truth ought to turn himself into a hostile critic of everything that he studies,” he observed in Al-Shukuk ‘ala Batlamyus (Doubts Concerning Ptolemy). “He should criticize it from every point of view and in all its aspects. And while thus engaged in criticism he should also be suspicious of himself.”
Research at Dar al-’Ilm laid foundations for later studies by scientists, philosophers and artists from other parts of the world. Ibn al-Haytham’s work in optics influenced the use of perspective in Renaissance art, and in the early 15th century, Italian artist Lorenzo Ghiberti quoted him in his commentaries.
Another of Dar al-‘Ilm’s most famous scholars, and also a champion of empiricism, was astronomer-poet Abd al-Rahman ibn Yunus. Born between 950 and 952 in Fustat, the first Muslim capital in Egypt, he was an almost stereotypically absent-minded professor, known to be careless and even comical in his attire and appearance, according to al-Musabbihi. Yet while he may have come across as sartorially slap-happy, he was keenly observing, recording and calculating the movements of the heavens.
His most famous work is the monumental al-Zij al-Hakimi al-kabir, an astronomical handbook (zij) with records of observations and tables. The title also reflects its dedication to al-Hakim, his patron, as well as its ponderous length (kabir means “large”). At 81 chapters, it was indeed twice the length, and contained twice as many tables, as earlier works of its genre.
He not only recorded astronomical observations he made between 977 and 1003, but he also compared them to those of earlier astronomers. This comparative, empirical approach was previously unknown in Islamic astronomy. The text reveals other insights: For instance, where applicable, his calculations took into account the atmospheric refraction of the sun’s rays at the horizon. His tables of solar, lunar and planetary longitudes and latitudes are considered the most accurate of the medieval Islamic period.
He also provided instructions for the conversion of dates among the Muslim, Coptic and Syrian calendars, as well as finding the meridian and determining the position of the qibla (the direction of Makkah) and the phases of the moon. Such knowledge was critical, explains Doris Behrens-Abouseif, professor emerita of Islamic Art and Archaeology at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies.
“Astronomers were always very important in Islamic culture, to calculate prayer time, to calculate when Ramadan begins, when you begin fasting, when you have to stop. All of this is not possible without looking at the moon,” she says.
Ibn Yunus’s calculations were uncannily precise, even to the point of his own life. One day in 1009, even though he appeared to be in good health, the astronomer announced that he would die in seven days. He locked himself in his house and began to recite from the Qur’an while washing ink off his manuscripts. A week later, he was dead.
The death of Dar al-‘Ilm was not quite so neatly planned. Nor was that of its founder.
Pictorial Press Ltd / Alamy
A page from Polish astronomer Johannes Hevelius’s Selenographia (A Description of the Moon), published in 1647, recognizes the influence of Alhasen, or Ibn al-Haytham, left, and Galileo, right, on his pioneering description of the lunar surface.
University of Oklahoma History of Science Collections
Polymath Ibn al-Haytham wrote his seven-volume study of optics, Kitab al-Manizir (Book of Optics), at Dar al-’Ilm. Printed in Latin in 1572 as part of German scholar Friedrich Risner’s Optical Thesaurus, it enhanced the study of optics in the West.
By 1020 the caliph had taken to donning a rough cloak and riding alone at night on a donkey into the hills east of Cairo, ostensibly for purposes of meditation. In February 1021, during one such outing, al-Hakim disappeared. Foul play was suspected after a search produced nothing but his riderless mount and bloodied cloak.
The caliphate began to gradually unwind. Under al-Hakim’s grandson al-Mustansir, who ruled from 1036 to 1094, clashes among the army’s Berber, Turkic, Persian, Arab and Sudanese troops intensified. A famine contributed to political instability and weakened the economy. Soldiers went unpaid, and though al-Mustansir sold off personal treasure to compensate them, they wanted more. In 1068 they looted the palace, including the royal library and Dar al-‘Ilm. According to al-Maqrizi, some of the books fell into the hands of Berber tribesmen who reputedly used some of the covers to make sandals. As for the pages, they were burned for fuel, and their ashes “formed great hills” that in al-Maqrizi’s day were called tilal al-kutub—hills of books. Others, al-Maqrizi noted, “reached the great metropolises” of other countries.
When religious zealots took over Dar al-‘Ilm in 1119, the government shut it down. It reopened, briefly, in 1121 but was shut down once more for the same reasons. In 1123 Caliph al-Amir ordered its reopening but, to keep a closer eye on its proceedings, had it relocated to the Eastern Palace, where he resided. Although it appears to have survived another 48 years, until the end of the Fatimid caliphate in 1171, there are no records of research conducted there at any time after 1119.
Despite political tides and storms, this period of Egyptian history was one of economic success, and Cairo remains a preeminent capital to this day. Historians further credit that success also to the era’s intellectual legacies, when Dar al-‘Ilm shone brightest of all.
January/February 2019View PDF
Tom Verde (tomverde.pressfolios.com) is a senior contributor to AramcoWorld. Like the majority of those who responded to a 2015 global survey, his favorite color is blue.
Travelers of Al-Andalus, Part 1: The Travel Writer Ibn Jubayr
Written by Daniel Grammatico and Louis Werner // Art by Belén Esturla
Our six-part series begins with a two-year pilgrimage by one of the great founders of the literary genre of rihla, or travelogue. Over later centuries, his style was widely emulated (and plagiarized), and today the rihla of Ibn Jubayr uniquely illuminates a 12th-century Mediterranean world of paradoxical complexity.
Malika VI: Sayyida Al-Hurra
Written by Tom Verde // Art by Leonor Solans
When she governed the Moroccan coastal city of Tétouan, the Spanish accused her of organizing piracy, while at home she won respect from both Moroccans and post-1492 Andalusian émigrés. On land and sea, hers was a life charted by crisis.


The Cosmopolitan Hotel and Restaurant
There is no other building in Old Town San Diego State Historic Park that more clearly symbolizes the transition of San Diego from a Mexican pueblo into an American city. The lower floor of The Cosmopolitan was built of adobe by Juan Bandini, a wealthy Californio, in 1827 as a family home. The upper story was added in 1869 by Albert Seeley as a hotel for weary travelers on Seeley’s stagecoach line between San Diego and Los Angeles. The building has been meticulously restored to its original 1870s glory and is now, once again, home to a boutique hotel and a lively restaurant. Dine outdoors on the orchard patio or indoors in the Grand Sala, scene of many an elegant party attended by some of San Diego’s most notable early characters. For more information about the Cosmopolitan including menus and hotel info, Click Here.
Old Town San Diego Attractions.


Galaxy Note 8 is Not going to be the First Dual-Camera Device from Samsung
0 0 Admin Thursday, 8 June 2017 Edit this post
After exploding Samsung Galaxy Note 7, Note 8 is here.
There have always been a constant flow of news and updates from the field of technology as new smartphones are always in the news. Most of the news and updates speak of the probable features as well as the release date of the smartphones of which many do not eventually turn out to be real. But a lot of those rumors turn out to be true at the end which makes it all the more important to keep an eye on the rumors and updates.
Now among the smartphone developers whose devices come out on the headlines, we have Samsung. More often than not the headlines of the news feed from the field of technology concern Samsung. The types of devices vary from one to the other. Often it is a new smartphone. At times, it is a phablet and on occasions there comes news regarding wearables from Samsung. But in the last few months the rumors and speculations which are hitting the headlines from Samsung concern the Samsung Galaxy Note 8. Particularly after the unveiling of the Samsung Galaxy S8, there has been a considerable rise in the frequency of the updates regarding the Samsung Galaxy Note 8.
The latest news which has come out, however, does not sound too great for all those who have been waiting for an incredible Galaxy Note 8. It has been reported that Samsung Galaxy note 8 will hit the market with a single-lens rear camera setup. Instead of the Galaxy Note 8, it is going to be the Samsung Galaxy X which will feature the dual-lens camera on its rear camera setup. Previously it has been rumored that Samsung Galaxy Note 8 will be the first handset from the South Korea-based smartphone developers which will come out with a dual-lens camera setup. However, the latest report certainly provides a major blow to such speculations.
But that does not at all hint at the fact that Samsung Galaxy Note 8 will not be one of the better handsets which will hit the market. This is because the phablet is going to come out with a number of new features which are not there in most of the popular smartphones or phablets developed by other manufacturers. In fact, Samsung Galaxy Note 8 seems t be the biggest bet for Samsung in order to establish their supremacy in this section of the market.
The Samsung Galaxy Note 7 did not do them any favor with the exploding issues. And hence, it is reported that Samsung is much more cautious regarding the battery in its upcoming flagship device in the Note line-up. It's believed that the upcoming flagship will have a better backup and won’t bear any risk of any sort of an explosion.
Other than that, there are lots of things which will resemble the Samsung Galaxy S8 which has already grabbed the eyeballs of the experts. For the time being, Samsung Galaxy Note 8 promises a lot, and the rest depends on how it fares when it comes out on the market. For that to happen, we need to keep on waiting for a bit longer, that is the second half of the year 2017.
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Youth Voice: Galaxy Note 8 is Not going to be the First Dual-Camera Device from Samsung
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What diseases are caused by chromosomal mutations?
Admin September 29, 2019 Advice
1 What diseases are caused by chromosomal mutations?
2 What are examples of chromosomal diseases?
3 What are the signs and symptoms of chromosomal abnormalities?
4 What are the symptoms of chromosomal abnormalities?
5 Can a human have 49 chromosomes?
6 What is Paris Trousseau syndrome?
7 What are the most common chromosomal disorders?
8 What are the five types of chromosomal mutations?
[1][2] Other common types of numerical disorders include trisomy 13, trisomy 18, Klinefelter syndrome and Turner syndrome. Chromosomal deletions, sometimes known as partial monosomies, occur when a piece or section of chromosomal material is missing. Deletions can occur in any part of any chromosome.
What are examples of chromosomal diseases?
Examples of chromosomal abnormalities include Down syndrome, Trisomy 18, Trisomy 13, Klinefelter syndrome, XYY syndrome, Turner syndrome and triple X syndrome.
What are the five common chromosomal disorders?
What You Need to Know About 5 Most Common Genetic Disorders
Down Syndrome.
Thalassemia.
Cystic Fibrosis.
Tay-Sachs disease.
Sickle Cell Anemia.
What is the Jacobsen syndrome?
Jacobsen syndrome is a condition caused by a loss of genetic material from chromosome 11. Because this deletion occurs at the end (terminus) of the long (q) arm of chromosome 11, Jacobsen syndrome is also known as 11q terminal deletion disorder.
What are the signs and symptoms of chromosomal abnormalities?
Symptoms depend on the type of chromosomal anomaly, and can include the following:
Abnormally-shaped head.
Below average height.
Cleft lip (openings in the lip or mouth)
Infertility.
Learning disabilities.
Little to no body hair.
Low birth weight.
Mental and physical impairments.
What are the symptoms of chromosomal abnormalities?
What is the most common cause of chromosomal abnormalities?
A chromosomal abnormality occurs when a child inherits too many or two few chromosomes. The most common cause of chromosomal abnormalities is the age of the mother. As the mother ages, the ovum is more likely to suffer abnormalities due to longer term exposure to environmental factors.
What are the 10 common genetic disorders?
Albinism. Albinism is a group of genetic conditions.
Angelman syndrome. A rare syndrome causing physical and intellectual disability.
Ankylosing spondylitis.
Apert syndrome.
Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease.
Congenital adrenal hyperplasia.
Cystic fibrosis (CF)
Can a human have 49 chromosomes?
49,XXXXY syndrome is an extremely rare aneuploidic sex chromosomal abnormality. It occurs in approximately 1 out of 85,000 to 100,000 males. This syndrome is the result of maternal non-disjunction during both meiosis I and II. It was first diagnosed in 1960 and was coined Fraccaro syndrome after the researcher.
What is Paris Trousseau syndrome?
Definition. Paris-Trousseau thrombocytopenia (TCPT) is a contiguous gene syndrome characterized by mild bleeding tendency, variable thrombocytopenia (THC), dysmorphic facies, abnormal giant alpha-granules in platelets and dysmegakaryopoiesis.
How do you know if you have chromosomal abnormalities in pregnancy?
Chorionic Villus Sampling ( CVS ) and amniocentesis are both diagnostic tests that can confirm whether or not a baby has a chromosome abnormality. They involve sampling of the placenta ( CVS ) or amniotic fluid (amniocentesis) and carry a risk of pregnancy loss of between 0.5 and 1 per cent.
What is the most common chromosomal abnormality?
Down syndrome, on the other hand, is by far the most common chromosomal abnormality, affecting 1 in 800 babies. The risk of having a child with this condition increases with maternal age, rising exponentially after a woman reaches age 35.
What are the most common chromosomal disorders?
There are many types of chromosomal disorders. The most common is Down syndrome, which is most often caused by an extra copy of chromosome 21. Fragile X is a disorder that has DNA abnormalities on the X chromosome .
What are the five types of chromosomal mutations?
These mutations make considerable changes in the genomic DNA. Furthermore, the five types of chromosomal mutations are translocations, gene duplications, intra-chromosomal deletions, inversions, and loss of heterozygosity.
What disorders are caused by genetic mutations?
Generally, genetic disorders that are caused by mutations in single genes include cystic fibrosis, Marfan syndrome, and sickle cell anemia. These genetic disorders occur in approximately one of 200 births, and are referred to as monogenetic disorders.
What are three types of chromosomal alterations?
Chromosome mutation is a large-scale alteration of the chromosomes of an organism, where either the number or the structure of the chromosomes changes. There are three main types of chromosomal mutations namely duplications, inversions, and deletions.
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Lifeway trade publishing ends 2022 with abundance of accolades
By Aaron Wilson
NASHVILLE, Tenn. – B&H Publishing Group wrapped up the year in a highly decorated fashion. In November and December, the trade publishing arm of Lifeway Christian Resources received awards and recognitions from several organizations including Christianity Today, The Gospel Coalition and the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association (ECPA). These recognitions come on the heels of B&H Español winning a record 13 awards earlier in the year from the Spanish Evangelical Publishers Association (SEPA) including best Bible and best book.
“It’s hard to overestimate the impact books have had in my life,” said Lifeway President and CEO Ben Mandrell. “I’m deeply grateful we’re able to contribute beautiful titles and meaningful design work. Prior to coming to Lifeway, I didn’t understand the enormous amount of work required to produce a quality book or Bible. Our teams work hard, and I’m proud of them.”
Top Shelf Book Awards
For the fifth year in a row, B&H Publishing was recognized by the ECPA for creating some of the best cover design in Christian literature.
Lifeway took home two Top Shelf Book Cover Awards this year for the “CSB Notetaking Bible, Stained Glass Editions” and for the pair of books, “The Risen One” and “The Expected One” by Scott James. Art direction for the Bibles and books was overseen respectively by graphic designers Jeff Godby and Jade Novak.
Winners were announced November 17 at the Design Forward event held at Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee. A panel of 38 judges representing multiple Christian publishing houses voted on the nominations.
“Book design is one of the most intimate, meaningful forms of product design in the world, because designers are crafting objects that people live with every day,” said Devin Maddox, B&H publisher. “I am so proud of our designers and the countless freelancers we work with because they are being recognized for excellence in work that really matters.”
The Top Shelf Award program is managed by the ECPA to recognize design excellence in the Christian publishing industry. This year marked the 10th anniversary of the annual award program.
On December 5, The Gospel Coalition released their favorite reads of 2022 and named the following two B&H titles winners in their respected categories:
“Spurgeon the Pastor: Recovering a Biblical and Theological Vision for Ministry” by Geoffrey Chang (History & Biography)
“Does God Sleep: A Book About God’s Power” by Amy Gannett (Children’s)
“The Boy from the House of Bread” by Andrew Wilson also received an Award of Distinction in the Children’s category.
Closing out the year, on December 13, Christianity Today named “Heaven and Nature Sing: 25 Advent Reflections to Bring Joy to the World” by Hannah Anderson winner in the Bible & Devotional category for its 2023 Book Awards.
Christianity Today also named B&H a finalist for the following titles:
“Logic and the Way of Jesus: Thinking Critically and Christianly” by Travis Dickinson (Apologetics & Evangelism)
“You’re the Worst Person in the World” by Scarlet Hiltibidal (Young Adults)
“Fruitful Theology: How the Life of the Mind Leads to the Life of the Soul” by Ronni Kurtz (Theology: popular)
“God in Eternity and Time: A New Case for Human Freedom” by Robert E. Picirilli (Theology: academic)
More information about each of these award-winning titles can be found at Lifeway.com.
Aaron Wilson is a writer for Lifeway Christian Resources.
About Lifeway Christian Resources
In operation since 1891, Lifeway Christian Resources is one of the leading providers of Christian resources, including Bibles, books, Bible studies, Christian music, Vacation Bible School and church supplies, as well as camps and events for all ages. Lifeway is the world’s largest provider of Spanish Bibles. Based in Nashville, Tennessee, Lifeway operates as a self-supporting nonprofit. For more information, visit Lifeway.com.
Filed Under: B&H, News


Home » climate and security » RELEASE: The Council on Strategic Risks Significantly Expands Its Ecological Security Program
RELEASE: The Council on Strategic Risks Significantly Expands Its Ecological Security Program
October 20, 2021 — To fill an urgent gap in understanding and addressing the security implications of global ecological disruption, the Council on Strategic Risks (CSR) has significantly expanded its Ecological Security Program over the past months, with the help of a grant of close to $1 million from the V. Kann Rasmussen Foundation. The program, housed within CSR’s Converging Risks Lab, addresses all elements of global ecological disruption, including biodiversity loss and beyond, caused by drivers such as habitat change, direct (and often illegal) exploitation of organisms, climate change, pollution, and the spread of damaging invasive or otherwise destructive organisms.
Ecological disruption–from the loss of biodiversity and their ecological benefits that support life or through the emergence of new ecological harms–remains largely absent from the agendas of the U.S. and international security communities. This absence persists despite its profound implications for political instability, geopolitical clashes, food and water stress, mass displacements of people, and other adverse security outcomes.
The warnings on biodiversity loss are increasingly dire. In 2020, a World Wildlife Fund report declared that losses were occurring at a rate unprecedented in history, with an average 68 percent decline in mammals, birds, reptiles, and fish since 1970. These global statistics underplay the extreme destruction in some regions, such as the tropics, while failing to capture declines in insects and other invertebrates that underpin ecological networks in soil, marine, and freshwater systems. UN Secretary General António Guterres echoed these sentiments last week during a major international conference devoted to combating biodiversity loss, warning of humanity’s “suicidal war against nature” and looming ecological collapse.
At the same time, new ecological harms are emerging from conditions created by the rapid reconfiguration of Earth’s terrestrial, marine, and freshwater systems. Intensifying human-wildlife interactions, especially in newly-disrupted habitats, catalyze zoonotic spillovers that can lead to pandemics and their associated political, social, and economic disruptions. Freshwater pollution spurs increasingly harmful algal blooms–and their powerful neurotoxins– that pose risks to human health, economic livelihoods, and critical infrastructure. Irruptions of insects and other pests, such as the desert locust swarms afflicting large regions in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East beginning in 2019, can devastate food security and economic stability. The emergence of antimicrobial resistance, already viewed by many nations as a critical security concern, is amplified by human-altered environments.
Security risks also accompany many forms of environmental crimes, such as illegal fishing, illegal logging, and wildlife trafficking. In addition to driving large losses of biodiversity, these risks include benefits to the transnational organized criminal organizations that perpetrate these crimes, the corrupt entities that facilitate them, and the proceeds of such crimes to malign actors.
In an effort to bring long overdue attention to and additional research on this issue, the Council on Strategic Risks (CSR) has initiated a major effort to: conduct research and analysis on the inextricable connections between threats to national and international security and the disruption of the biosphere; to develop measures to deepen the capabilities of national security agencies to analyze and assess these connections; and to inform policies that, if adopted and funded in the near term, can mitigate these threats.
The program deepens and expands upon the analytical framework that underpins CSR’s landmark ecological security report The Security Threat That Binds Us and the programmatic and policy responses recommended in that report.
“Accelerating losses of biodiversity and their associated ecological functions undermine the foundation on which humanity depends, a harrowing predicament whose importance cannot be understated. At the same time, we have created conditions that benefit many harmful ecological agents, such as pathogens, pests, and other organisms evolutionarily predisposed to take advantage of such changes. The set of risks to people and institutions arising from ecological disruption, whose consequences are as serious as those posed by climate change, is a persistent blind spot for the security community.” – Dr. Rod Schoonover, Head of the Ecological Security Program at CSR’s Converging Risks Lab
“Launching and now expanding this program was a strategic move to fill an urgent need: We see evidence of the security implications of various forms of ecological destruction daily, yet the analytical, community building, and policy implementation work required were not being done in a concerted enough manner. The Council on Strategic Risks team, including our Center for Climate and Security, has unique methods and a long track record of filling such gaps, and we knew we needed to act.” – Christine Parthemore, CEO, The Council on Strategic Risks
“I first began working on environmental security issues as Deputy Undersecretary of Defense (Environmental Security) in the 1990s and into the early 2000s. Since then, ecological risks, from biodiversity loss, ocean health, and ecosystem decline, have rapidly accelerated. A major part of the drive to launch the Council on Strategic Risks nearly five years ago was to address urgent yet underappreciated security issues like this one. The Ecological Security Program is of critical importance to fulfilling this mission.” – Sherri Goodman, Chair of the Board, the Council on Strategic Risks
“Unfortunately, in a complex world with increasingly serious and converging risks, we can’t afford to choose to deal with just a few. We must deal with them all. The climate crisis goes hand in hand with a major ecological security crisis, and it must be taken seriously and acted upon, by the highest levels of government, before it’s too late. Our Ecological Security Program, led by a team of key experts on the intersection of ecological and security risks, is designed to help us address this crisis — both in terms of better understanding it and better understanding what to do about it. It’s essential to our founding mission of addressing systemic risks to society.” – Francesco Femia, Co-Founder and Research Director, The Council on Strategic Risks
“Tackling ecological security in the long-run requires the development of a new generation of national security leaders that understand the risks and how to address them. I’m thrilled that a key pillar of this effort is a fellowship program, modeled on our successful Climate Security Fellowship program, to do just that.” – Erin Sikorsky, Director, The Center for Climate and Security
“At CSR, we know first-hand how powerful it is to bring together diverse experts that do not normally collaborate in order to develop solutions to existential, multi-faceted risks. By establishing an innovative community of practice—known as The Alliance for Ecological Security—we will be once again breaking down silos to facilitate conversations, policy recommendations, and collaborative action aimed at tackling ecological disruption.“ – Andrea Rezzonico, Deputy to the CEO and Deputy Director, The Converging Risks Lab
“Nowadays, it’s not enough to produce cutting edge research in order to have desired effects, it’s also necessary to articulate compelling narratives that reach a broad audience.” – Dr. Natasha Bajema, Director, The Converging Risks Lab
“It is axiomatic that threats to the national security of the United States and our allies and partners are not static; new threats emerge, other long-standing threats grow and diminish in their nature, location, and intensity. As these threats evolve, so too must the responses of the United States and our allies and partners. We have begun to deal in serious ways with the security threats of climate change; now we must also begin to deal in serious ways with the ecological security threats highlighted by the Ecological Security Program.” – Brigadier Gen. Bob Barnes (Ret.), Member, Council on Strategic Risks Board of Directors
Contact: Francesco Femia, ffemia at csrisks dot org
For further information on the Ecological Security Program, see the program page here.
For further information from The Council on Strategic Risks, follow our blog.
Tags: ecological security, program
By Francesco Femia & Caitlin Werrell in climate and security on October 20, 2021 .
← Climate Security Fellows Report 2021 Climate Change and Health Featuring CSR’s Andrea Rezzonico →


Ask the Author: Meg Cannistra
The Proust Questionnaire, popularized by the French essayist and novelist Marcel Proust, is said to reveal a person’s true nature through a series of probing, soul-searching questions. In the hot seat today: Meg Cannistra, author of the MG magic-realism debut, THE TROUBLE WITH SHOOTING STARS (S&S, 2019).
What is your idea of perfect happiness? A drizzly fall morning with my cats curled up next to me.
What is your greatest fear? Settling. Getting too comfortable.
What is the trait you most deplore in yourself? I’m a neverending worrier. I start many sentences: “I’m just worried that…”
What is the trait you most deplore in others? Anger and entitlement that harm others.
Which living person do you most admire? It’s corny, but I think my dad. Growing up he was always working and often away on business trips. He moved us from Chicago to Florida when I was little, so it wasn’t always easy seeing our family. I resented him for these things until I got older and understood that he worked so hard to take care of my mom, sisters, and me. To me, that’s admirable.
What is your greatest extravagance? Makeup and skincare. I love a good moisturizer.
What is your current state of mind? Excited. I’m going on my bachelorette trip to New Orleans. I’ve never been and can’t wait.
What do you consider the most overrated virtue? Politeness. It’s important to be respectful and kind toward others, but never at the expense of your boundaries.
On what occasion do you lie? If the server gets my order wrong at a restaurant I usually say everything’s fine and pretend like it’s what I ordered. I don’t want to put anyone out and I’m not a picky eater, nor do I have any allergies.
Which words or phrases do you most overuse? When I’m writing I overuse words like “well” “smile” and “nod.” It gets out of control in early drafts!
Besides writing, which talent would you most like to have? I’d love to learn magic tricks and perform magic. That would be a lot of fun.
What do you consider your greatest achievement? Publishing a book!
If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be? I’m hoping the well-loved and pampered cat of a rich, older woman.
What is your most treasured possession? My engagement ring. My fiancé used the diamond from my mom’s engagement ring and set it in this beautiful custom setting. It’s so precious to me.
What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery? Living for other people’s dreams.
What do you most value in your friends? Their warmth and humor.
Who are your favorite writers? This list could be super long, but I’ll keep it short. I love Libba Bray, Neil Gaiman, Toni Morrison, Edith Wharton, Gabriel García Márquez.
Who is your hero of fiction? Harriet the Spy! She’s my all-time favorite character and still a huge hero of mine. <I concur, Meg. 🙂 >
Which historical figure do you most identify with? Vincent Price. He lived an eccentric life and loved working on horror movies. He made horror so much fun and was so passionate about the genre. He was also a cook and had several cookbooks with his wife, which I love!
What is your motto? “Passion is energy. Feel the power that comes from focusing what excites you.” – Oprah Winfrey
MEG CANNISTRA grew up in Sarasota, Florida, where she spent her childhood chasing after older sisters and cousins and learning how to cook. After living in New York City and northern New Jersey for a few years, Meg now resides with her two cats, Gloom and Doom, in Charlotte, North Carolina. She has a BA in English literature from Flagler College and an MFA in creative writing from Hamline University. When she’s not taking pictures of her cats or wandering around grocery stores, she writes magical, mysterious, and sometimes scary stories. The Trouble with Shooting Stars is her debut novel. Learn more about Meg on her website and follow her on Twitter and Instagram.


Tom Verdoot at Pexels
Mountains reaching down
To the chilly waters’ flow
Secluded meeting
Cruising Oslofjord
November 25, 2017 November 24, 2017 / padresramblings / Leave a comment
Oslofjord from the City
The Oslofjord is about 100 kilometres long and connects the city of Oslo with the North Sea. As we had traveled the northward passage at night, we had the opportunity to take in the scenery and history of the bay on our southward exit.
The “fjord” in its northern section (Drøbak to Oslo) is lined with tree-lined hills, and small settlements, and it is dotted with islands of various sizes.
The October voyage was cool and crisp, but allowed for much of the changing colours of autumn to be taken in. While much of the coastline was rocky, there remained a sense of tranquility, with calm seas, and natural beauty.
Islands and inlets
As we traveled further south the clouds came down to meet the hilltops and made for some really spectacular views. The islands, some no more than large rocks, and others tree-topped with small settlements of their own gave a variety and diversity to the scenery.
Oscarsborg Battery
On one of the larger islands, we came across the Oscarsborg Fortress, which played a vital role in Norway’s defense on the 9th of April 1940. In what has come to be known as the Battle Drøbak Sound, the island’s batteries, and the torpedo batteries on the main land came into action to repel the Nazi invasion. The valiant defense led intentionally to a Norwegian victory with the sinking of the German cruiser Blücher, and the damaging of the Lützow. The success was short-lived as the Germans continued their assault on Oslo via a different route, it remained important as it allowed time for the Norwegian Royal Family, the parliament, and the national gold reserves to escape before the Nazi arrival.
After Oscarsborg we continued into the ever widening bay as it extends southwards towards the North Sea. We soon were into the shipping lanes, and the coastline and islands blurred into the distance.
Leaving Islands Behind Us
Coastline beginning to fade into distance
This was a wonderful passage, and while Oslofjord is not a true fjord in geographical terms, it has made me want to make a “fjords cruise” in the future.


To Die On Kilimanjaro, Part 3
Around 750,000 years ago, give or take a few centuries, an apocalyptic explosion along one of East Africa’s many fault lines, vomited up lava and fire for thousands of years, giving birth to the first of Kilimanjaro’s three separate but closely aligned peaks. Shira, the mountain’s first volcanic cone, eventually collapsed. Mawenzi arose soon after, then went dormant. Forty thousand years later came the last and most famous cone, Kibo.
Kibo holds the summit and its famed and imperiled snows. The first non-Africans to see Kilimanjaro were mostlikely Arabs who traveled the contient’s caravan route in the sixth century C.E. However, Ptolemy wrote of a ‘snow mountain’ around 100 C.E. The next known reference to Kilimanjaro came from an Arab geographer and Chinese writer who, at the turn of the 15th century, wrote of a ‘great mountain’ west of Zanzibar. In the early 16th century, a Portuguese geographer noted the existence of an “Ethiopian Mount Olympus.” No one in the West was aware that a “giant, snow-crowed mountain existed so close to the equator until 1848.
If one follows the history of Kilimanjaro [even from a distance] you know that the first known ascent was in 1889 by Hans Meyer, who, along with Ludwig Purtscheller, predicted that all of the mountain’s ice would disappear within three decades.
In 2001, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted that Kilimanjaro’s ice cap would be gone by 2020. This latter prediction has proved more accurate than the first. A third of the ice has disappeared since 1990. Mayer, however, was not entirely wrong; more than 80 percent of the glaciers have melted since Meyer’s time, and it is thought that as recently as the 15th century the snows of Kilimanjaro began at the upper edge of what is now the forest zone.
Global warming has a way of killing people on Kilimanjario. In January 2006, at the Western Breach while approaching what is called ‘Kibo’s Arrow Glacier, three Americans were killed by a rockslide estimated to have been traveling at more than 125 feet per second. The cause of the slide was linked to Kibo’s receding ice, which causes rocks previously frozen to the mountain’s face to loosen and slip. The Western Breach route to the summit, once one of the most popular, has since been closed and may never open.
Thousands of people climb Kilimanjaro every year, and have been doing so since the 1930s. It is estimated that this year about 30,000 will make the attempt, which as we are told in promotional literature printed by such companies as Thomson Safaris (www.thomsonsafaris.com); Tusker Trail (www.tusker.com) and Mountain Madness (www.mountainmadness.com) or the more expensive (www.africacalls.com) and Tanganyika Film & Safari Outfitters (www.tanzania-safari.com) requires no “technical skill.” It is true that of those 30,000 only about 18,000 will make the summit. And each year between 8-9 people do die, from heart attacks and Acute Mountain Sickness.
Back in the summer of 1958 Gina’ husband and his “boys” had no ‘technical skill’ and little equipment when they went for a long walk up Kilimanjaro, but as the Brits in Arusha would learn people die from other causes on the mountain, not just heart attacks or AMS. Phillip, however, would not die on Kilimanjaro. On the terrace of the British Club he turned to Gina and said he wouldn’t leave her.
[End of Part 3]
Ado John Sule on “The Nzeogwu I Knew” by Tim Carroll (Nigeria)
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Home > Instruments Virtuels > SDX New York Studios Vol.1
SDX New York Studios Vol.1
Toontrack SDX
159,- €169,-$ 179.-
Factory sounds of Superior Drummer 2 for the new Superior Drummer 3
This SDX expansion includes the full core sound library from the now discontinued Superior Drummer 2, a drum recording that has truly become an industry staple.
The New York Studios Vol.1 SDX is the first volume in Toontrack’s project of capturing the three most famous drum rooms in the New York area – studios that changed the face of the music industry and that bear witness to some of the most groundbreaking recordings in modern pop and rock history. Avatar Studios, in which this library was captured, has won several industry awards and is known for having one of the finest acoustic environments in the world for drums.
Since its inception in the 1970s, it’s hosted bands and artists like Aerosmith, Bon Jovi, Journey, Kings of Leon and The Clash. The sounds were recorded by engineer duo Neil Dorfsman and Pat Thrall together with drummer Nir Z. Between them, they have won several awards and over the past three decades worked with a wide range of top artists such as Meatloaf, Celine Dion, Nick Lachey, Sting, Bruce Springsteen, Dire Straits, Beyoncé, Björk, Kiss, Joss Stone, Genesis, John Mayer and Chris Cornell. “The room is tailor-made for drum recording. It’s large, it’s ambient, it’s punchy, it sounds fantastic. We really captured all of the things this room has to offer,” comments Grammy Award-winning engineer Neil Dorfsman.
In total, you get approximately 20 GB of raw, unprocessed drum sounds captured in meticulous detail in one of the most acknowledged drum rooms in modern music history. These classic drum tones have over the years seeped through to almost every facet of the music industry. In fact, you likely hear them on a regular basis in TV features, movies and top productions, regardless of where in the world you are. This goes to show that properly captured quality drum tones never get old, worn or dated. Combined with the powerful sound shaping tools of Superior Drummer 3, this collection of drums offers some genuinely raw and unadulterated creative power. Welcome to New York and the Avatar Studios.
Approx. 20 GB of meticulously sampled drums
Samples available with drum sticks, rods, brushes and felt mallets
Recorded at the renowned Avatar Studios in New York City by Pat Thrall, Neil Dorfsman and Nir Z
Extensive MIDI library included
New graphics and presets optimized for Superior Drummer 3
Amazing sound and easy to use! Very realistic results!
Gute Sounds
The New York vol.1-2-3 are the best sound libraries on earth, combined with the SD3 core. Pure joy!
To use this product, an installed and activated Version of Superior Drummer 3 (or higher) is required.


You are here: Home / Articles / Poverty Safari: growing up with ACEs and toxic stress
Poverty Safari: growing up with ACEs and toxic stress
February 5, 2018 by Carol Craig 1 Comment
In his semi-autobiographical book Poverty Safari Darren McGarvey reports that when he talked to the media and spoke at meetings, people wanted him to tell them about ‘his dead mum’.
Darren’s personal story is acutely dramatic and it’s easy to see how the media would be drawn to its more sensational elements. But humans, as a species, think and communicate in stories. So, Darren’s dramatic tales of his childhood and adolescence were bound to have a compelling effect on listeners.
In contemporary Scotland there’s a rising tide of interest in the effects of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). These refer to a growing body of research on the negative effects of household dysfunction on a child’s life. These effects don’t simply undermine the child’s physical and mental well-being. They can also affect that individual’s mental and physical health for their whole life. McGarvey doesn’t ever directly mention ACEs but he certainly understands some of the science underlying this research and Poverty Safari undoubtedly helps readers to understand the significance of childhood experiences on mental and physical health.
The ACE research
As a result of their research the two doctors at the heart of the ACE concept, Anda and Felitti, drew up a questionnaire which asks respondents ten questions about their experience of household dysfunction until their late teens. Were they hit, sexually abused, emotionally/verbally abused, or emotionally neglected? Did their parents split up? Was their mother beaten up? Did someone in the household abuse alcohol or drugs or suffer from depression or take their own life? Was someone in the household imprisoned? And were their physical needs (for food and shelter) catered for? Respondents get a point for each yes.
The story Darren recounts of his childhood and adolescence involves many ACEs. His mother was an alcoholic and a hard drug user. McGarvey was often physically abused by his mother. He was also verbally abused and humiliated. His emotional needs for love and affection were not routinely met. He often went hungry and could go to school not properly dressed. And his parents split up.
The ACE questionnaire is not a precise instrument and is simply trying to measure the amount of ‘toxic stress’ to which a young person was subjected. Darren does not say anything about his mother being hit but he does recount watching his siblings being physically abused. For example, he recalls ‘a child being tied to a chair for being cheeky’ and ‘a baby being booted across the floor for crying by the faceless male drunk she had in occasionally’. Incidents like these would have a similar effect to watching your mother being beaten. Also, his mother’s drink and drug habit was so acute, finally leading to her death at the young age of 36, that this is akin to a parent having a mental health problem or committing suicide. So according to McGarvey’s story he scored at least 8 ACE points.
This is a conservative estimate of the amount of toxic stress McGarvey endured. The ACE questionnaire only looks at ten common causes of household dysfunction. It doesn’t include factors which also have this impact on young people but which occur outside the home such as community or peer violence (something Darren McGarvey reports he suffered from) and homelessness, (which he also experienced as a teenager). Nor does the ACE questionnaire give extra points for the severity of the adverse experience. It’s certainly clear from Darren’s story that things happened to him that no child should have to endure.
Downhill slope
According to the ACE research there is a very clear ‘dose dependent’, graded relationship between adversities and future outcomes in mental and physical health, addictions and violence to name only a few of the damaging effects. Some of the figures are startling. For example, studies show that only one per cent of those with an ACE score of zero have ever tried to commit suicide but someone with a score of 4 or more is 1220 times more likely to attempt suicide. The American research shows that a child who scores 7 or more ACEs grows up with a 360 per cent higher chance of developing heart disease. People with an ACE score of 6 or higher are at risk of their lifespan being shortened by 20 years. This is a figure that Scots should pay attention to since we have one of the worst, but as yet unexplained, premature death statistics in Western Europe.
ACEs may also explain our problems with drugs and alcohol. An ACE study in Wales has shown that someone who scores 4 or more is four times more likely to be a high-risk drinker and 16 times more likely to have used crack cocaine or heroin than someone who scores zero. Higher ACE scores reveal even more staggering correlations with health-harming behaviours. For example, a boy with an ACE score of 6 has a 4,600 per cent increase in the likelihood of using illicit intravenous drugs, such as heroin, later in life than someone who scores zero. Violent behaviour also correlates with ACEs. The Welsh study shows that individuals who scored 4 or more ACEs were 15 times more likely to have committed violence against another person in the last twelve months than someone who scored zero. McGarvey’s life is testimony to these trends. When he was in his late teens he became an alcoholic and a user of hard drugs.
ACEs and toxic stress
But why should ACEs lead to substance misuse and have such a profound effect on mental and physical health? The answer is ‘toxic stress’. Our stress response involves the release of certain hormones. It is designed to be activated when there is danger, then switch off when that danger has passed. But when a child grows up in a fearful, unpredictable environment their stress response can stay permanently on. Stress hormones have a profound effect on the developing brain and immune system. They can set the child up for future, if not current, ill health. The term ‘toxic stress’ is used to convey the idea that this is a particularly injurious type of stress because the child has no escape. They can’t flee or fight. They can only freeze.
ACE researchers use the term ‘hypervigiliance’ to explain how stress becomes the dominant state and it’s a term Darren uses to explain what happened to him:
The hypervigilance that had helped me to navigate my difficult childhood was now turning like a screw in the back of my waking mind, making it almost impossible for me to feel relaxed. Drugs relieved me of this burden. They soothed those difficult emotions. They did exactly what they were designed to do: they killed the pain. And they were so effective that life without them quickly became too difficult to bear. Before long, a life without drink or drugs was too abstract to contemplate.
This is such a succinct explanation of one of the reasons why ACEs can undermine lives. Many people who suffer from multiple ACES can never relax and switch off. The constant feeling of pain leads so many to self-medicate. They turn to the numbing effects of drugs and alcohol, something we can see in the ACE data.
McGarvey also argues that hypervigilance is an issue for many people in Pollok. He maintains that day to day violence is common for many living there but that even when there is no reason to be fearful ‘the state of hypervigilance keeps you on alert regardless, making daily life considerably stressful.’ These feelings of anxious expectation of violence or trouble are then heightened by day to day feelings of insecurity which emanate from poverty.
The existence of emotional stress, how it affects us and what we do to manage it throughout our lives, is one of the most overlooked aspects of the poverty experience.
The class dimension
He points out that everyone, regardless of class, can experience stress and that sometimes stress can be positive as it motivates people to take action. He also acknowledges that middle-class people can also suffer from stress- induced illnesses. McGarvey paints a positive picture of life in Glasgow’s west end, for example. He went there as a young lad to attend therapy and the way he describes his first visits is memorable. He immediately thought the atmosphere on the busy street was oddly that of ‘relaxation’ – the pavements were clean, docile dogs went by on leads (unlike the feral hounds he was used to), and people dressed to suit themselves and not because they are ‘afraid of being stabbed’.
But household dysfunction can lurk behind the tranquil exterior of houses in more up market neighbourhoods. There too it can undermine children’s lives. This is one of the central messages in my new book Hiding in Plain Sight where I explore what it was like to grow up in Milngavie’s upmarket council estate in the 1950s and 60s. Few people suffered from the type of extreme experiences that Darren recounts in his own life. There was little violence in the street but nonetheless the health of some of my peers has been poor. For reasons I outline in the book, I put much of this down to ACEs.
In a recent blog entitled ‘It happens in Nice Middle Class Families Too’ Mairi Stones describes living in a big house in a village in a family that owned a yacht and two cars. Her father ran his own successful business employing over a hundred people. They had all the things that money can buy including lovely annual holidays. But ‘hidden beneath this façade of loveliness lurked some giants’. She now knows they would be called ACEs but she has always just thought of them as her ‘dysfunctional alcoholic upbringing’. She discloses that she lived with ‘physical, emotional and sexual abuse’ and witnessed domestic violence.
Stones reminds us that deprivation takes many forms. Even though she grew up in a family with a ‘cushion of cash’ she was deprived of feelings of love, protection and security. The result was ‘devastating’. What’s more, as a rich girl she perpetually doubted her right to feel unhappy with her lot. This reinforced her poor sense of self-worth.
Research in the UK shows that ACEs affect people from all classes. However, those though who score 4 or higher tend to come from poor backgrounds. That said all of us interested in ACEs have to maintain a balanced perspective. Alleviating poverty and better and more generous public services have a big role to play in reducing ACEs. So such changes are of fundamental importance. But it is also important that professionals don’t focus on ACEs in a way that suggests that the problem is all about poor kids. It isn’t. It simply isn’t true that it is only the poor and those living in deprived communities who grow up with adversities.
In my book I argue that bringing up children is Scotland’s Achilles heel. Historically, many of us have suffered not just from harsh punishment but also from the emotional abuse and neglect which is endemic in our culture. This is hard to accept but we won’t see improvement in health or other social indicators until we start looking closely at children’s experiences.
Hope and resilience
Darren McGarvey suffered acutely from a variety of ACEs. His is a tragic story but it also offers hope. Despite what happened to him he has grown up to become a creative, original thinker. An astute social commentator. And we must always remember that ACEs do not completely predict someone’s destiny. Resilience also matters.
If we examine McGarvey’s story we see that he survived because various people helped to foster his resilience. School was not only a safe space. It allowed him to come into contact with people who looked out for him and showed they were interested in his welfare. Despite his dysfunctional mother, who was also a victim of her own upbringing, there were other people in Darren’s family who gave him support and encouragement. Later he received some helpful psychological therapy. A few years in the Fire Station project for homeless young people also helped enormously.
I think it telling that Darren McGarvey ends Poverty Safari on the subject of child-rearing. He writes:
Today, I realise that the best contribution I can make to society is to raise a healthy, happy secure child. Today, I realise that the most practical way of transforming my community is to first transform myself and, having done so, find a way to express how I did that to as many people as possible.
He’s aware that many on the left will see this as a cop out but he’s ready with his reply. Of course, the left must continue to argue and campaign for structural change, he tells us, but no real change can happen unless poor people begin to feel powerful in their own lives.
Indeed, Darren McGarvey ends his book with a challenge to us all. Personal change, he asserts, ‘is the most radical thing a person can do’. And for many that means changing not just their lives but the way they bring up their children.
The first part of Carol Craig’s two-part review of Poverty Safari was published here in January
Poverty Safari (Luath Press) is available in bookshops and online via Amazon, i-Tunes etc
Filed Under: Articles, Culture, Education, Health, Inequality Tagged With: Glasgow, health, inequality, mental health, poverty, young people
About Carol Craig
Carol Craig, chief executive of the Centre for Confidence and Well-being, is a trustee of Upstart. She is an author and series editor for Postcards from Scotland. Her latest book is Hiding in Plain Sight: Exploring Scotland’s ill health.
florian albert says
‘bringing up children is Scotland’s Achilles heel.’
I did not consider this to be true before reading Carol Craig’s article. Reading it has not changed my mind.
Carol Craig accepts that Darren McGarvey’s childhood experiences were extreme and atypical. Few parents attack their children with a bread knife. Beyond that she writes that the health of ‘some of her peers has been poor.’
It is entirely possible that adverse childhood experiences contributed to this (somewhat vague) state of affairs. It is much more likely that later poor health is associated with the huge social changes which afflicted the Scottish working class after the 1950s and 1960s.
My own recollection of a council scheme upbringing is of an overwhelmingly secure environment. It was a security, economic and emotional, which was to evaporate in the near future.
When working class society collapsed, the middle classes ruthlessly looked after themselves in the new society which emerged from the 1980s onwards. (Many of these were recent ‘escapees’ from the working class; first generation graduates.)
It was at this point that an underclass beset by ill health, physical and emotional, emerged. Such people had always been there, but not in sufficient numbers to constitute a distinct class.


Work gets under way on new state-of-the-art Buckie nursery
21st February 2018 by insideMoray
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WORK IS UNDER WAY on refurbishment of Lady Cathcart in Buckie for the provision of a new nursery.
Dorroch & Allan are contractors for the project that will transform the building over the next six months to include new changing facilities, development of a family room and specialist provision for children with additional support needs.
There will also be an outdoor learning area, space for messy play and a modern garden will also be created as part of the £672,000 investment delivered by Moray Council.
The project is the first phase of the fully-funded commitment by the Scottish Government to offer 1140 hours of Early Learning & Childcare for three and four year-olds, and eligible two year-olds, by 2020.
Moray Council’s Director of Education and Social Care, Laurence Findlay said the refurbishment would bring a “new lease of life” to the former school, adding: “Lady Cathcart has been a feature of education in Buckie for nearly 150 years so to see it have a new lease of life will be wonderful for locals and of great benefit to the children who’ll receive their nursery education here.
“This is an exciting time for early learning and childcare in Moray – we have the opportunity to modernise our approach to the service delivery and that means being able to provide new nursery facilities like the one we’ll see in Buckie.”
Maree Todd MSP, Minister for Childcare and Early Years, said: “The work being undertaken in Moray to deliver this expansion is extremely exciting; it will not only provide up to date facilities and a new outdoor play area, it will also bring a building back to life to benefit the children in the area for years to come. I look forward to seeing the final result.”
Further refurbishments and building programmes for nurseries in Moray will be announced alongside the publication of the Early Learning & Childcare delivery plan later this year.
Call for way-markers to be placed in popular Keith woodland
Moray alerted to national rural business and tourism awards


[Rachel Marsden] Stupid immigration reform idea
By 류근하
Published : Jun 10, 2011 - 18:59 Updated : Jun 10, 2011 - 18:59
As Barack Obama inches toward reforming the immigration mess in America ― whenever that might be ― here’s a stunning example of political rhetoric over substance.
The idea comes courtesy of far-right leader Marine Le Pen, a serious contender for the French presidency in next year’s elections. That is, until she self-immolated with this doozy.
Le Pen sent a note to all 577 members of French parliament calling for an end to dual citizenship. Her rationale? “The patent failure of dual citizenship has reached various sporting events, after which young French bi-nationals don’t wave our flag, but rather that of another nation.”
Le Pen also questions whether France would have intervened militarily in Libya if there weren’t so many Franco-Libyans on French soil, and considers the disastrous implications of any future French military intervention in Algeria, predicting a “potentially explosive situation” on French soil because of the number of Algerians in France.
First off, people hoisting Third World flags at sporting events in France aren’t necessarily dual citizens. They could be residents, or illegals, or maybe even anti-imperialist French (in the same way that Noam Chomsky, who never has anything good to say about America, is 100 percent American). Citizenship doesn’t automatically elicit national loyalty or pride, even by birth.
In theory, French naturalization requires five years of residency, an interview and careful selection. If France has failed to properly select in awarding citizenship, then that’s the crux of the problem. Fixing it by stripping everyone of every origin of any sort of dual citizenship will hardly force integration. If anything, it’s a surefire way to alienate immigrants. Personally, nothing would peeve me off more than moving to a country, fully integrating and wanting to be considered an equal in the eyes of the law, and being told that officially I would always be considered second class. My response to that, as a self-employed entrepreneur, would be to not give that country a cent of my tax dollars and send it all to my country of origin.
This is what politicians forget when they make stupid, sweeping propositions regarding immigrants: Not all are looking for handouts. Some of us come from countries with better handouts if we were really interested, thanks. We are producers, entrepreneurs, wealth creators. Rupert Murdoch is an immigrant. He became a citizen of America for practical business reasons: so he could own TV stations. Highly desirable immigrants often choose to pursue citizenship to avoid all sorts of paperwork hassles and everyday barriers. In France, for example, you can’t even get financing for a stereo without citizenship or a 10-year permanent residency card.
If France ever started stripping bi-nationals of their French citizenship or forcing them to choose ― and perhaps they can start with President Nicolas Sarkozy’s wife, Carla Bruni, an Italian-born naturalized French citizen, and his father, who was born in Hungary ― it’s not like you could ever force them to forget where they came from.
The far right is proposing a superficial solution to a much deeper problem. The answer is in revamping economic policy to attract precisely the kind of immigrants you want.
Stop taxing businesses to death and instead offer them tax incentives for hiring locally so they don’t have to import cheap labor for jobs that locals won’t do (at least not without one day off out of every three, and incessant whining). To this end, French kids need to be better educated about the value of tradesmanship. A 2007 Ipsos poll revealed that nearly 70 percent of the French would encourage their kids to strive for a job shuffling paper in the civil service. The rest, judging by the popularity of business-management programs, want to sit around running things. That simply isn’t feasible, lest the French managers all have to move to China, India or Africa ― or continue to bring in workers from “undesirable” countries for labor that needs to be done on-site.
Facilitating bi-citizenship, rather than threatening to strip it across the board, could in fact help resolve economic and societal woes. Making the process as easy as possible for the right kind of workers would strengthen that country’s competitiveness in the global economy and create more wealth and opportunity for others in the long run. And chances are, those people aren’t the kind of boors who would feel the need to wave a foreign flag while setting fire to cars in celebration of a sporting win.
And if you’re curious about where this idea would place France in relation to the rest of the world on the same issue: more restrictive than America, which doesn’t strip dual citizens of their American citizenship, but less restrictive than China and Russia (and Rupert Murdoch’s native Australia), which generally only allow you to hold one citizenship at a time. Even the most hardcore anti-subversion attempts related to citizenship are silly, since someone can renounce their citizenship of origin as needed, then reapply for it later. None of this posturing amounts to a solution.
By Rachel Marsden
Rachel Marsden is a columnist, political strategist and former Fox News host who writes regularly for major publications in the U.S. and abroad. Her website can be found at http://www.rachelmarsden.com. ― Ed
(Tribune Media Services)


#1061 – Dick Bernard: September 11
September 11, 2015 /0 Comments/in Community, History, Immigration, Media, Peace & Justice, Politics, Technology, War /by dickbernard
NOTE: I’ve added a postnote to this post.
Nuclear weapons, from display at Hiroshima Nagasaki Exhibit at Landmark Center, St. Paul Aug 23, 2015
Seventy years ago today, September 11, 1945, my mother’s brother – my Uncle and Navy Lieutenant George Busch – was on board the Destroyer, the USS Woodworth, which had anchored the day before in Tokyo Bay. (WWII was over, the surrender signed nearby on September 2, 1945.)
I know this from the ship daily log books which I had requested back in the 1990s. Uncle George was on the Woodworth, from January, 1943, through the end of the war, till docking in Portland Oregon October 20, 1945, thence reentering into American civilian peace-time society.
Presumably on September 11, 1945, those on the Woodworth had an opportunity to take a look at what was left of Tokyo.
from Bombers over Japan WWII, Time-Life Books 1982, page 198
Perhaps some of them – perhaps my Uncle George? – did as my Dad’s cousin and best man, Marvin, an Army veteran, who was field promoted to Colonel by the end of the war, and was for a short time head of a Prefecture on Japan. He told me once that his first act on reaching Japanese soil was to “piss on it”. So it is with showing dominance over enemies after conquest, and disrespecting the vanquished, even though his Prefecture was far from the seat of things militarily – it was just a rural area in northern Japan.
The war in the Pacific had been a vicious one for all, and in addition, Marvin’s cousin, my Dad’s brother Frank, had gone down with the Arizona at Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941.
Marvin and Frank, circa 1935, probably Oakwood ND
There have been lots of September 11ths before and since 1945.
September 11, 2015, in addition to the obligatory nod to THE 9-11, will probably feature, on TV tonight, the endless commercials attacking one of our MN Congressmen who apparently is not condemning the Nuclear Agreement with Iran and is viewed as politically vulnerable. One ad ends with a horrific fireball, a “mushroom cloud”, as if it is some unique invention to be pioneered by the Iranians if we don’t see to it that they’re kept under our heel. Such propaganda is expensive and persuasive. We have become slaves to sophisticated media messages which are difficult to escape.
But there are alternative realities as well. Tomorrow somewhere in the Twin Cities a large number of new citizens will proudly take the oath, and graduate to full citizenship in the United States. It is doubtless a ritual shared in all countries, all that differs is the precise way it is done.
And these new citizens will be proud of their new citizenship, as they’re proud of their own homeland, and are likely more aware than the vast majority of us about what it means to be an “American”. They’ve had to study our system, and they are knowledgeable. Sorry, more of us aren’t as aware….
We all will do as we will do today, and tomorrow and next week and on and on and on.
Three simple suggestions:
1. To become acquainted with the organization Green Card Voices, which is doing very significant work to bring to life those who have spent years as Green Card holders in the U.S. enroute to citizenship.
2. If you’re in the Twin Cities, take time to go to the Landmark Center in St. Paul, and see the exhibit provided by the City of Nagasaki about the bomb and its affect August 9, 1945. It is a relatively small exhibit, but if you pay attention to it, you’ll easily be there more than an hour. It’s on till November 28. The schedule is here:
3. To pick up and reread, or read for the first time, George Orwell’s “1984”, published in 1949, which I probably didn’t see till college days. It is rather disquieting to translate his novel to present day American terms: actors like “telescreen”, “Proles”, and all of that. (I looked up September 11, 1984, and there really wasn’t all that much happening that particular day. But Orwell was in many ways a visionary, and most of us are todays Proles, who allow life happen to us without much regard to the consequences.)
Each one of us has a certain command of our own “ship”, and we can impact positively or negatively on how it sails, and how it impacts ourselves, and others.
Same source as above, Aug. 23, 2015
POSTNOTE: After publishing the above I watched the 9-11-2015 evening news which, as expected, emphasized again, on this 14th anniversary of 9-11, the continuing national mourning of what seems to be our now perpetual “Pearl Harbor”.
No “mushroom cloud” ads appeared, as erroneously predicted by myself, perhaps because a concerted effort to stop the deal failed in the U.S. Congress on Sep. 11 – a date probably specifically strategically selected for the vote.
No doubt, we experienced a tragedy 9-11-01, but the biggest tragedy of all is our continual obsession of the need to be in control; and the seeming narrative that the only way to prevent war is to be stronger and more threatening than the other party in preparing for the next war…more or less the narrative of George Orwell’s 1984. We seem to need to have an enemy to validate our existence. We are made to live in constant fear of some other.
9-11-01 took the lives of 3 Minnesotans, it was reported tonight. In the 2000 census there were 4.9 million Minnesotans. (There were 281 million Americans in 2000.) After 9-11 has come continuous war, Iraq, Afghanistan, ISIS/Syria, with all the attendant loss of life and disruption of normal lives, including the present day refugee crisis. ISIS/ISIL is a direct outgrowth of our actions in Iraq, including regime change.
We don’t seem to learn, we need to change the conversation, beginning within ourselves.
I wonder if we have the capacity to do this….
https://thoughtstowardsabetterworld.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/thoughts-300x138-1.jpg 0 0 dickbernard https://thoughtstowardsabetterworld.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/thoughts-300x138-1.jpg dickbernard2015-09-11 16:15:582015-09-11 16:15:58#1061 – Dick Bernard: September 11
#1060 – Dick Bernard: The First Day of School #1062 – Dick Bernard: The "Debates"


Our family tradition began more than 68 years ago with Sam Perrella — or as we like to call him, Grandpa Sam.
As World War II soldiers returned home from Italy telling tales of their favorite food, the popularity of pizza in the U.S. grew. Sam Perrella, a former miner who owned a small café in Keewatin, picked up on this growing trend. Having connections in Chicago, Sam visited with some pizza makers and returned home with an idea that sparked and gave birth to what is now Sammy’s Pizza.
In October 1954, armed with enthusiasm and their own secret recipes, Sam and wife, Louise, opened the doors of the first Sammy's Pizza restaurant in Hibbing, MN.
As their business flourished, they helped their family and a close friend open their own pizza restaurants. Today, some 68 years, 15 locations and more than 25 million pizzas later, Sammy's is now in it's fourth generation of pizza makers, who all still use Sam’s original recipes.
In 2015, PMQ Pizza Magazine, the pizza industry’s No. 1 publication, inducted Sammy’s into its Pizza Hall of Fame — which pays tribute to popular pizzerias in business for 50 years or longer.
In 2018, Sammy's was also voted 'Best Pizza in Minnesota' in Minnesota Monthly Magazine's Pizza Bracket Challenge.
Sammy's Pizza & Deli was opened in 1958 by Jim and Marguerite (Perrella) Acheson.
The restaurant has remained in the family ever since — and today is owned and operated by Mike Acheson, who purchased the restaurant from his brother Jim Acheson Jr. (the son of the original owners) in 2019. Jim Acheson Jr. has previously owned and operated the restaurant for more than 41 years.
It was at Sammy's in Lakeside where Mike first got his start in the pizza business. There he worked for more than 17 years with his brother Jim, and mother Marguerite before eventually opening his own restaurant in Cloquet in 2000. Mike, along with his son, Michael, who has been a key part in the success of Sammy's Cloquet over the past 8 years, will be regularly present managing the daily operations at both locations moving forward.
When you visit, our hope is that you’ll realize Sammy’s makes much more than great pizza — we make works of art inspiring traditions with family and friends, as well as in our local Lakeside community.
Thank you for making Sammy’s Pizza a part of your family tradition. We look forward to your next visit!


Japanese Rail
Posted on December 6, 2020 by bakatsundoku
After writing a post absolutely excoriating certain aspects of Japanese culture (and rightly so), maybe this is a good time to post about something I really love about Japan.
One of my favorite things to do of late, especially as I’ve been a little ill lately, is to watch YouTube videos of the Japanese rail system. No talking, no narration, just hours of trains going through the Japanese countryside and cityscape.
America really could never make such a system work. It’s simply too big. Even as we’re planning to build a shinkansen-style high speed rail in Texas, even that’s just from Houston to Dallas. Which, I suppose, is about the same distance (give or take) from Tokyo to Nagoya. That gives you an idea of the scale of America – just two cities within Texas are about a third of the distance throughout the entirety of Japan. Japan is a small, dense country. The United States is a very large, sprawling country
So I don’t think to myself “why does Japan get such a comprehensive rail system and we don’t?” I already know the answer. But that doesn’t mean I don’t absolutely love the Japanese rail system.
As a child, I used to be a roadgeek. Still am, to some degree. I would judge a city by two criteria: the size of its downtown, and the complexity of its freeway system. I few up in a city in Ohio that didn’t have much in the way of interesting roads, so I would love to go to places like Detroit or Cleveland that had cool roads and interchanges. The country has changed a lot lately, and we have taken to favoring aesthetics and social concerns over complexity and sheer impressiveness. I understand the reason for that, but something special has been lost. The cities in America just aren’t what they used to be.
Japan’s road and rail system still has some of the aesthetics of American cities that were list decades ago. Dense, narrow roads criscrossing all over each other. Rail stations, one after another, teeming with people. In densely populated areas like Shibuya and Shinjuku, the rail lines go underground, overground, left, right, crossing over and under, expresses, locals and even shinkansen jockeying for position and yet somehow managing to make it work with almost clockwork precision. It’s damned impressive. Here in America we have… Amtrak… and a few light rail and subway lines in cities that don’t even come close to the comprehensiveness of Japan’s rail system.
The sad thing was, at the turn of the 20th century, we were well on our way. We had streetcars and passenger rail systems that were the envy of the world. But auto manufacturers paid cities and states off to remove the rails, and switch to an automobile-based infrastructure. That’s why we have such good roads and such horrible rail.
Something was lost. But not in Japan. There, it’s still going strong.
I don’t know if I’ll ever go to Japan. It’s not looking good for that eventuality. But I can’t imagine not taking a Shinkansen across the country, hopping the enoden or the “romance line”, taking a rail line around Mt. Fuji, or even the nichinan line around the south of Japan. Seems like a fun thing to do.
Maybe someday.
Uncategorized enoden, Japan, Nichinan, Rail
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