By Andrew Liszewski
If you’re ever lucky enough to fly Air New Zealand, you might want to actually pay attention to the safety video that plays before takeoff. The airline hired WETA, the effects shop responsible for The Lord Of the Ring films, to punch up the video. And not surprisingly, they delivered (and then some) with a short film called?An Unexpected Briefing that looks like it takes place in Middle Earth.
From Forbes?..
I have assumed ever since I could spell sports that the NCAA requires schools to provide a qualitative nutritional program for student athletes ? since the schools lure these special teenagers away from their parents? kitchens in exchange for a scholarship ? since schools vow that they care more about the students than winning games ? and since a strong healthy athlete is good for winning games. And particularly in the big-money sports like football where the teenagers are subjected to grueling boot camps during hot 2-a day summers and beyond, with time commitments akin to a full-time-job. And whatever food isn?t provided by the school, I?ve pretty much assumed they get all kind of extra benefits, including however many broccoli spears and carrots sticks they need.
But when a premier group of sports dietitians have to beg the NCAA to require that schools properly feed student-athletes, something in the value system is malnourished. The President of the Collegiate and Professional Sports Dietitians Association (CPSD), Amy Bragg, directs performance nutrition for the University of Alabama athletics department. Currently, the NCAA regulations restrict players to one formal ?training meal? per day for scholarship athletes, no matter what the sport, no matter how rigorous the training. The CPSD request to the NCAA is to go beyond that regulation, to allow the student athletes ?unfettered? access to ?whole foods?and, as necessary, dietary supplements, to replace nutrients, fluids and electrolytes expended while preparing for their sport.?
You mean they don?t already do that? Surely the NCAA, an association of colleges and universities that are trustees of these teenagers does the right thing for something as basic as food ? especially for the sports that generate the vast majority of the revenue for the organization and pays most of their salaries and expenses.
To read the full story?..Click here
Source: http://www.lensaunders.com/wp/?p=6023
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Source: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/cnbc/49559404/
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This photo provided by the Fulton County Police Department and released Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2012 shows shooting suspect Floyd Palmer. Police say a volunteer leading a prayer service at the World Changers International Church in College Park, Ga., was shot and killed by a former church employee. (AP Photo/Fulton County Police Department)
This photo provided by the Fulton County Police Department and released Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2012 shows shooting suspect Floyd Palmer. Police say a volunteer leading a prayer service at the World Changers International Church in College Park, Ga., was shot and killed by a former church employee. (AP Photo/Fulton County Police Department)
Fulton County Police spokeswoman Cpl. Kay Lester speaks to reporters outside the World Changers International church in College Park, Ga., after a fatal shooting inside Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2012. Police say a volunteer leading a prayer service was shot and killed by a former church employee. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)
A Fulton County Sheriff's Deputy stands guard outside the World Changers International church in College Park, Ga., after a fatal shooting inside Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2012. Police say a volunteer leading a prayer service was shot and killed by a former church employee. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)
Fulton County Police public information officer Kay Lester holds up the picture of Floyd Palmer, the suspect being sought in a fatal shooting at World Changers Church International in College Park, Ga. Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2012. A church volunteer leading prayer was shot and killed inside the chapel of the megachurch. (AP Photo/Atlanta Journal-Constitution, John Spink) MARIETTA DAILY OUT; GWINNETT DAILY POST OUT; LOCAL TV OUT; WXIA-TV OUT; WGCL-TV OUT
Church members leave the main sanctuary building at World Changers Church International in College Park, Ga. on Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2012, next door to the chapel where a church volunteer leading prayer was shot and killed. Authorities were searching for former church employee Floyd Palmer, who is suspected in the shooting. (AP Photo/Atlanta Journal-Constitution, John Spink) MARIETTA DAILY OUT; GWINNETT DAILY POST OUT; LOCAL TV OUT; WXIA-TV OUT; WGCL-TV OUT
COLLEGE PARK, Ga. (AP) ? The man suspected of calmly walking into a service at an Atlanta-area megachurch and gunning down a church volunteer leading a prayer was committed eight years ago to a psychiatric hospital after a violent incident in Maryland, court records show.
Police in Georgia said former church worker Floyd Palmer, 51, entered a chapel at World Changers Church International just before 10 a.m. Wednesday and opened fire, killing church volunteer Greg McDowell, 39.
"He walked in calmly, opened fire, and left as calmly," Fulton County Police Cpl. Kay Lester said.
Palmer was a former facilities maintenance employee at the church who resigned in August for "personal reasons," Lester said.
The church's well-known founder and leader, the Rev. Creflo Dollar, was not there at the time.
Palmer was taken into custody without incident a few hours later at a Macy's at a mall in Atlanta's upscale Buckhead neighborhood, Lester said. Police spotted his black Subaru station wagon with tinted windows in the parking lot of Lenox Square. They didn't recover a weapon.
Lester said Thursday that police searched Palmer's home overnight in Riverdale, south of Atlanta. She didn't have details on what was found.
Palmer faces murder and other charges, according to online jail records. An initial court appearance for Palmer was set for Thursday morning. At the hearing, Palmer would have the opportunity to ask for bond, Fulton County sheriff's spokeswoman Tracy Flanagan said.
Court records show a man named Floyd Lester Palmer, born on the same day in 1960, was charged in Baltimore in 2001 with attempted murder, assault and handgun charges. He was committed to a psychiatric hospital in 2004 after pleading not criminally responsible to lesser charges. The records show he was released the next year subject to conditions that were to remain in effect for five years.
The court filings include motions by the defense for a dangerousness evaluation, which was later withdrawn.
Details of what led to the charges weren't immediately known. Baltimore police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said the department did not have arrest records in the case, which is not unusual in cases where someone has been committed. Palmer's attorney in the case, Kenneth Ravenell, was out of the country on Wednesday, his staff said.
About 20 to 25 people were gathered in the chapel when the shooting happened. No other people were wounded and the gunman fled.
Investigators were working to determine if Palmer and McDowell knew each other.
"We do not know if the victim was targeted," Lester said. "We are looking into that as he was the only person that was shot."
Ken Terry, a pastor at the church who is acting as a spokesman for McDowell's family, said the church family was distraught and trying to comfort McDowell's family.
"He would be considered a model dad," Terry told reporters. "To have this happen is just devastating."
Although the campus has security officers and surveillance cameras, Lester said the suspect was known to some at the service, so his presence wouldn't have been unusual.
The violence upset members and neighbors of the church, which is one of the largest in the United States, claiming 30,000 members at the main campus and a ministry of satellite churches across the country.
Along with Bishop Eddie Long, Dollar is one of the most prominent African-American preachers based around Atlanta who have built successful ministries on the prosperity gospel, which teaches that God wants to bless the faithful with earthly riches.
Dollar didn't immediately respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press, but he preached Wednesday evening at a Bible study in the campus's larger World Dome sanctuary. He repeated the importance of having faith in God even when bad things happen and rejecting fear and doubt.
"We pray for this family," he said, referring to McDowell. "We pray for both families and then we pray for every family that's in here tonight."
Earlier Wednesday, several church members walked over to the scene after hearing about the shooting.
"It doesn't surprise me," said Adolph Hanley, 66, of College Park. "People don't want the real Word."
He said of the fatal shooting: "That's the devil's work."
"Why would anyone want to hurt the church?" he asked.
Albert Henry, 55, of Riverdale, said his 5-year-old son was in day care near the chapel when the shooting took place. He said staffers called and told him to pick up the child.
"I can't believe someone just did it in the House of the Lord," said Henry, as his boy sat in the back seat.
Linda Pritchett, 43, a church member for 10 years, said the shooting didn't make her feel less secure attending services. She said people cannot give in to fear. But she said she grieved for the victim and his family.
"When something happens to one of us, it hurts all of us," she said.
___
Dominguez reported from Baltimore. Associated Press writer Jeff Martin contributed to this report from Atlanta.
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Associated Press Sports
updated 4:51 p.m. ET Oct. 25, 2012
ATHENS, Greece (AP) - Riot police used pepper spray and stun grenades against hundreds of Greek soccer fans who tried to break through a police cordon at a Europa League game Thursday. The young fans hurled rocks and gasoline bombs at the police.
Three people were hurt and four detained from the violence that happened during and after a match between Panathinaikos and Lazio at Athens' Olympic Stadium. Before the game, police had intervened to separate rival fans.
The three injured fans were treated with first aid. Their injuries were not considered serious.
Panathinaikos and Lazio are in Group J of the European competition, with Tottenham and Maribor.
? 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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More newsPST: To say Wednesday's games saw some huge upsets would be an understatement. From Shalke beating Arsenal to Borussia Dortmund beating Real, we break it down.
KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) - All that Sporting Kansas City needed Wednesday night was a draw against the Philadelphia Union to wrap up its second consecutive Eastern Conference regular-season title.
Source: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/49558142/ns/sports-soccer/
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NEW YORK (AP) ? Gasoline across the U.S. is cheaper after a week of rapid price declines. But it still isn't cheap.
The national average for a gallon of gas has dropped 13 cents in the past week to $3.625. That's the biggest weekly decline since the 7-day period ended Nov. 28, 2008, according to Oil Price Information Services analyst Fred Rozell.
Falling oil prices, rising supplies of gasoline and a switch by refiners to cheaper winter blends of gas have contributed to lower pump prices.
But gasoline is still more expensive than it's ever been for this time of year. The previous record for Oct. 23 was last year's $3.46 per gallon.
Rozell says gasoline has averaged $3.65 so far this year, 10 cents above the record set in 2011.
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GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) ? The emir of Qatar received a hero's welcome during a landmark visit to Gaza on Tuesday, becoming the first head of state to visit the Palestinian territory since the Islamist militant Hamas seized control of the coastal strip five years ago.
The landmark visit by Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani handed the ruling Hamas ? branded terrorists by the West and isolated by an Israeli blockade ? its biggest diplomatic victory since taking power. It was also a strong sign of the rising power of oil-rich Qatar, and the mounting influence of Hamas' parent movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, since last year's Arab Spring uprisings.
While Gazans celebrated the emir's arrival, the rival Palestinian government of Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank was less enthusiastic. Israel condemned the visit as undermining peace.
Hamas wrested control of Gaza from Abbas' Fatah forces in 2007, and West Bank officials fear the emir's visit will give the Iranian-backed Hamas a lift in their feud and make the split between the two territories more permanent.
In a speech at Gaza's Islamic University, the emir urged the warring Palestinian factions to reconcile.
"Why are you staying divided?" he said. "There are no peace negotiations, and there is no clear strategy of resistance and liberation. Why shouldn't brothers sit together and reconcile?"
While Abbas has welcomed Qatar's plans to deliver hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to impoverished Gaza, he also stressed in a phone call with the Qatari leader this week that he is the internationally recognized leader of the Palestinians.
Israel, which brandishes Hamas as terrorist for its suicide bombings and strikes on Israeli civilian targets, denounced the visit.
"It is quite strange that the emir of Qatar should take sides with Hamas, that he will favor Hamas over Fatah that he would even decide to take sides in the Palestinian internal conflict," said Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman, Yigal Palmor. "This is more than strange, especially since Hamas is internationally recognized as a terror group ... by hugging Hamas publicly, the emir of Qatar has thrown peace under the bus."
In Gaza, white and maroon Qatari flags flapped in the streets and a song called "Thank you, Qatar" played on the radio and on TV. In the border area, Hamas set up a large, carpeted greeting tent, reminiscent of a luxurious desert camp and staged an honor guard ceremony after the emir crossed into the territory from Egypt.
Thousands of cheering and waving Palestinians lined the main road to Gaza City to greet the emir, who rolled down the window of his armored car to shake hands with dozens of people. Women on balconies threw flowers and rice on his convoy.
"This man is bold. I like him. At least he came and visited us, and didn't play games promising like the others," said Majed Tawel, a 33-year-old teacher. "Hamas has won a new victory today and (Abbas) lost."
The emir was received by Gaza's Hamas prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, who said the visit sent a powerful message.
"Gaza is not alone and Palestine occupies the hearts of Arabs," Haniyeh said. "Your visit today officially announces the break of the economic blockade and political blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip by the forces of injustice."
He said the emir had promised a total of $400 million of aid projects, an increase over earlier plans for $250 million in aid. During his four-hour visit, the emir launched a housing project, hospital and received an honorary degree.
In a sudden change of schedule, the emir called off a planned public address in Gaza City's main soccer stadium. Hamas officials cited the emir's tight schedule, but the stadium was only sparsely filled at the time of the cancellation.
Instead, Sheik Hamad delivered a speech at a smaller venue at Gaza's Islamic University, a Hamas stronghold.
The emir was presented with an honorary doctorate and several presents, including a key from a Palestinian house in what is now Israel. Such keys are a symbol used by Palestinian refugees whose families lost homes during the war surrounding Israel's establishment in 1948.
The Qatari projects will bolster Hamas and help ease its economic woes. Although the Islamist group remains firmly in control, the Israeli blockade has hit Gaza's economy hard.
Israel imposed the blockade after the Hamas takeover in a failed effort to stir up Gazans against their violently anti-Israel rulers. It was forced to ease the land blockade after a deadly May 2010 raid on a blockade-busting flotilla, but still maintains a tight naval embargo in an effort to stem the weapons flow to the coastal territory. Egypt also bans most trade in and out of the coastal strip.
In addition, much of the international community shuns Hamas, a stance that forces it to rely heavily on an underground economy.
At the stadium, Gaza women piled into the back stands reserved for them hours ahead of the emir's speech. They sat under the watchful eye of Hamas policewomen in uniforms of long blue robes, light blue headscarves and navy hats.
"I'm desperate, trying to find a job for my son," said Kifaya Gharabli, 42, who came early in the morning in hopes of catching a glimpse of the Qatari visitors.
Part of the aid package is a $150 million housing project near the southern town of Khan Younis. It will be built near the site of a former Israeli settlement, abandoned when Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. The project is called Hamad City ? after the Qatari emir ? and is expected to take about two years to build.
Gaza has been in dire need of building materials since an Israeli military offensive in early 2009, launched in response to years of Hamas rocket fire. Israel restricts the entry of building materials, saying they could be diverted by Hamas for bunkers or military use. In order to get around the Israeli blockade, Qatar plans to ship in the materials through the Egyptian border.
The emir's visit highlighted Qatar's efforts to make its mark on a region in turmoil, in part through a strategy of diverse alliances. The Gulf state expanded its regional influence during the Arab Spring uprisings that toppled dictators in Libya, Tunisia and Egypt last year, lending support to opposition and rebel forces.
At the same time, it hosts a major U.S. air base and thousands of American troops. And while Qatar is leading Arab calls to aid Syrian forces trying to topple Bashar Assad, it has close ties with Syria's key ally, Iran.
Qatar already wielded considerable indirect influence through pan-Arab broadcaster Al-Jazeera, whose launch in 1996 was bankrolled by the Qatari government. It also won the right to host the 2022 World Cup, defeating far bigger bidders, including the United States and Japan.
Also, it demonstrated a bold independence in 1996 when it allowed Israel to open a trade office in the capital, Doha, following the signing of an interim peace accord with the Palestinians. But it shut that office after Israel's 2009 offensive in Gaza and began boosting aid to Hamas, whose leadership relocated to Qatar after leaving war-torn Syria.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/qatari-emir-urges-palestinians-reconcile-155628339.html
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Joel Mchale presumably finished up his guest stint on "Sons of Anarchy" in one of only two possible scenarios. As he'd conned Gemma out of her vehicle, McHale's character was either going to wind up dead, or lying on the ground after a serious beating from the Sons. He was lucky it was Nero who made the final call, as he lived to breathe another day.
Following up on last week's reveal that Clay was behind the home invasions, with the Nomads doing the dirty work, Clay tried to work his magic and get all blame shifted away from him. He convinced the Nomads to take out Unser -- who'd pretty much figured it all out -- and then made sure things went a different way. The Nomads thought Clay was there to keep Unser from his weapons. He was really there to help Unser kill them.
With two down, there's only one Nomad left out there who knows the truth. Who will get to him first? Was he the one behind the attempt to take out -- or was it just to warn? -- Chibs and Jax? They were shot at by two men in a van, and managed to take one down. When they pulled his mask off, the guy was black. That would seem to tie Pope into the shooting, but it could be subterfuge?
Much more clear was that Gemma displayed terrible judgment when she agreed to take Jax's kids for the weekend. She'd just been getting high and drinking with Unser, so she was in no shape to drive. Nevertheless, she headed off alone and almost drove into a tractor trailer. Instead, she veered off the road and crashed into the trees. As the episode ended, the baby could be heard crying, neither Abel or Gemma were moving, and somebody was bleeding.
Find out how they all fare when "Sons of Anarchy" continues on Tuesdays at 10 p.m. ET on FX.
TV Replay scours the vast television landscape to find the most interesting, amusing, and, on a good day, amazing moments, and delivers them right to your browser.
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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/24/sons-of-anarchy-joel-mchale-run-video_n_2007887.html
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So you decided to take advantage of the historic low interest rates and the bottom of the market? Here are some tips from the pros to make sure your credit score is the best it can be and assure you can finance you Malibu Home Purchase.
1-If you have a $5,000 credit card limit and owe $4,500 that will ?ding? your FICO score while owing under $1,000 will probably not matter.
2-If you make the payment 30 or more days after it is due your FICO will get whacked and 60 days is deadly.
3-If you finally manage to pay off a credit card you have had for years that will improve your FICO unless you then close it.? Bad move as closing it lowers your score.
4-Money in the bank?? Always a great goal and essential for buying a home and a good night?s sleep.
Source: http://www.livingmalibu.com/financing-your-malibu-home/
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Australia's Woodside Petroleum confirmed Tuesday that it is in an early phase of a bidding process for licenses offshore Israel.
In a published statement on the company's website, Woodside said it?is bidding for the 349/Rachel and 350/Amit petroleum licenses covering the Leviathan gas fields.
"Woodside will not be giving out additional information at this point. Any speculation about price and commercial terms is premature [at this stage]," a spokesperson representing Woodside told Rigzone.
The Leviathan field is located in 5,361 feet (1,634 meters) of water offshore Israel. Noble Energy confirmed in January last year a significant natural gas discovery at the Leviathan prospect. The well encountered a minimum of 220 feet (67 meters) of natural gas pay in several sub-salt Miocene intervals. The results are in line with the pre-drill estimated resource range, with a gross mean for Leviathan of 16 trillion cubic feet.
Noble holds 39.66% of Leviathan; Delek Group Ltd. subsidiaries Delek Drilling Ltd. Partnership and Avner Oil Exploration Ltd. Partnership each hold 22.67%; and Ratio Oil Exploration Ltd. Partnership holds 15%.
?
Quintella has reported on the upstream and downstream oil and petrochemicals markets from 2004. Email Quintella at quintella.koh@rigzone.com.
Generated by readers, the comments included herein do not reflect the views and opinions of Rigzone. All comments are subject to editorial review. Off-topic, inappropriate or insulting comments will be removed.Related Companies
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?This is a great example of what we can do to not only to save lives, but add jobs.??
? Sen. Amy Klobuchar, speaking about medical devices Oct. 10 at the Hormel Institute.
In presidential debates, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney claims that he would label China as a currency manipulator on ?Day One? in the White House. It is a sharp contrast to the president?s ?No Drama Obama? approach to China policy.
In the cacophony of China-bashing and scapegoat rhetoric, Beijing?s currency manipulation is a major concern. The issue, however, is a double-edged sword: America?s insistence on the appreciation of Chinese currency (the Renminbi or Yuan) may benefit the U.S. manufacturing sector, but will surely lead to higher costs for American consumers for imported Chinese goods.
The real question is the national debt, for which China and Japan hold $1.15 trillion and $1.12 trillion respectively. When the Chinese share of our national debt as a percentage of the total U.S. public debt (and the yearly interest payment of over $25 billion to China) declined over the past two years, the value of Renminbi exchange rate against the dollar appreciated. And America?s trade deficit with China declined.
To reduce public debt and trade deficit, Minnesota in 2011 exported more than $1.3 billion worth of food products and almost $1 billion more in industrial goods and services to China. Gov. Mark Dayton recently led a trade delegation to China; Minnesota presents a model for trade promotion strategy that is collaborative. For example, the Hormel Institute ? in a research triad with the Mayo Clinic and the University of Minnesota ? works with Chinese medical researchers in Henan Province. Sen. Amy Klobuchar observes that Minnesota-made medical devices ?save lives? and ?add jobs? in the state.
The larger question is: Should the Republicans battle with America?s leading banker, world?s largest low-cost exporter, and America?s growing export market?
Unlike Romney?s changing campaign tactics and policy positions, the Obama administration quietly and persistently imposed tariffs on Chinese tires and filed subsidy complaints against Beijing at the World Trade Organization (WTO). In the meantime, the Sino-American Strategic and Economic Dialogue is deepening as the White House unveiled the Asia pivot strategy along with the Trans-Pacific Partnership to expand American exports.
The purpose-driven Obama?s strategic policy architecture is Hamiltonian, with a new trade and military strategy in the Indo-Pacific region; Jeffersonian aspirations of religious freedom and human rights have been placed in the pragmatic framework of the president?s larger strategic vision.
Meanwhile, Romney?s battles with China include much smaller political maneuvers focused on unfair trade practices (like the intellectual property rights) and human-rights violations.
America, however, needs an overarching strategy. In his "The Art of War," Chinese sage Sun Tzu observed in the fifth century B.C., ?Those who win battle after battle are not the most skillful. Those with greater skill employ strategy to make their opponents yield before reaching the stage of conflict.? This adage resonates with President Ronald Reagan?s ambitious former Soviet Union strategy that won the Cold War.
It appears that the Obama White House has also taken the Chinese statesman?s rule to its heart to achieve America?s founding philosophic vision.
The founding strategy and philosophy that led to America?s superpower status is associated with Hamiltonian means to Jeffersonian ends. It took more than a century for the United States to realize Jeffersonian and democratic ideals of equality for slaves and women ? two untouchable issues during the early years of the Republic. The evolving national unity, social mosaic, and equal rights resulted from the Civil War, the Women Suffrage Movement, and the Civil Rights Movement.
In Beijing, economic reformer Deng Xiaoping, like the Hamiltonians, advocated a robust manufacturing base for economic development in the 1980s. The founding father of modern China, Dr. Sun Yat-sen, inspired by Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln, elevated the consciousness of freedom and democracy for the post-Deng generation. Despite, however, the newly introduced political reform policy of ?intra-party democracy? within the Communist Party of China (CPC), ?neither the old guard Communist Party leaders nor the so-called ?princeling? class of the Mao Zedong era offspring would turn China into a practicing democracy anytime soon. In addition to workers and laborers, the Internet-based, educated young students as well as the CPC youth cadre with their own social networks have now become the unpredictable cohort of potential change agents of freedom in the future.
The United States hardly needs rhetoric. Bill Clinton opportunistically denounced China as the ?butchers of Beijing? in the 1992 presidential campaign with little effect, much like Romney?s accusation of ?unfair? trade practices. Having faith in the nation?s exceptionalism, America?s grand strategy for a Pacific century should be marinated with the best of China?s millennia-old civilization and its historical ambitions for legitimacy tempered by a long view of history.
For example, when Chinese admiral Zheng visited my native country of Sri Lanka in 1405, the Ming emissary demanded that the Sinhalese king pay tribute and obedience to the Chinese Emperor. Long before the Muslim eunuch?s seven expeditions to the Indian Ocean, Chinese interest in the Buddhist nation goes back to the Great Kublai Khan in 1284 when the founder of the Yuan Dynasty wanted to take the sacred tooth relics of Buddha. Historical failures didn?t deter the ensuing Chinese emissaries until Zheng returned to the island and brought the captured king, his queen, and the dignitaries to China in 1411. The prisoners were eventually released, but China?s final attempt to install a Ming Dynasty representative to the island?s throne failed in 1414.
This illustrates China?s patience and persistence. Like the United States, China has its own struggles in history but shares a common vision: Economic development must come first before realizing Jeffersonian ideals.
With America?s retreat from the Indian and Pacific Ocean regions in recent years, China has attempted to restore its international legitimacy and historical supremacy. As the crown jewel of the multibillion-dollar Chinese ?string of pearls? naval strategy across the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea, Beijing is now constructing the over $100-million Lotus Tower in Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka. The Buddhist-inspired (through the Lotus Sutra), soaring telecommunication tower symbolizes not only Beijing?s foreign policy slogans of ?Peaceful Rise? and ?Harmonious Society,? but also projects a symbol of ancient power radiating from the former Middle Kingdom.
Suddenly awakened to this reality, Obama?s Asian pivot strategy is intended to realize America?s founding vision of Jefferson?s ?Empire of Liberty? in the Indo-Pacific region. Shortsighted China-bashing with political rhetoric, trade tactics, and military battles is counterproductive and it would most likely be costlier than the two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. Nonetheless, China ? holding over one-trillion dollars of U.S. government securities and American taxpayers annually paying Beijing over $25 billion of interest as debt service ? wouldn?t profit from financing a war against them.
The vibrant and more educated young Chinese, who are already exposed to the taste of liberty and social networks, would be the 21st ?century?s missiles of freedom. They need more dosages of American inspirations that are extended through Dr. Sun Yat-sen to make China a democratic nation. These include academic exchanges, cultural connections, scientific contacts, and the use of other ?soft-power? instruments ? from both sides of the Pacific. Like America?s progress toward ?the eventual Jeffersonian ideals of equality, the next Chinese ?fairness revolution? will organically rise from internal sources.
China doesn?t need to worry about America as a ?concircling? (containing and encircling) enemy with its allies of Japan, South Korea, and India. The two intertwined Chimerican (China and American) economies must succeed for mutual prosperity and social stability ? by creating more wealth and jobs. Just as the Hamiltonian Might and Jeffersonian Right led to American exceptionalism through creative tension and innovation, Chinese leadership has knowingly?and nervously?set in motion a great drama. Beijing has now begun to unfold the balancing act of reviving historic China between the Nation of Might (with its ancient maritime claims and imperial ambitions with legitimacy) and the Nation of Right with its Confucian virtues and Asian values.
With these complexities, the United States needs a better understanding of China?s history and struggles in formulating policies that would realize America?s vision.? ?
To govern from the White House, Mitt Romney, if elected, needs to seek Chinese wisdom from "The Art of War" in devising an Obama-like grand strategy that combined the best elements of both American exceptionalism and Chinese civilization that are inherently pervasive in the psychic makeup of the two proud nations.
That?s a kind of win-win strategy that would further help Minnesota?s comparative advantage. ??
Patrick Mendis, a distinguished senior fellow and affiliate professor of public and international affairs at George Mason University?s School of Public Policy, is the author of ?Trade for Peace? and ?Commercial Providence: The Secret Destiny of the American Empire.? A former AFS high school exchange scholar to Northern Minnesota from Sri Lanka, Dr. Mendis is an alumnus of the University of Minnesota.
If you're interested in joining the discussion by writing a Community Voices article, email Susan Albright at salbright [at] minnpost [dot] com.
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Dish Network customers have been without AMC and its family of channels since July 1st, but thanks to a settlement between the satellite company and Cablevision's former Voom HD unit, AMC will be back on the air starting tonight. The possibility of a settlement leaked out late last week via a court filing, and it looks like Dish CEO Charlie Ergen will avoid taking the stand Monday after all. According to the terms, Dish will hand over $700 million in cash plus its 20 percent stake in Voom, and receive 500MHz of video and data spectrum licenses in 45 areas. In a separate deal, Dish and Cablevision spinoff AMC Networks have a new multiyear deal that should bring back AMC (on channel 131) in time for The Walking Dead to air tonight, and all of its other channels (IFC, WE tv, Sundance and for the first time, Fuse) starting November 1st. While Dish had previously claimed the channel deal was being held up by AMC's distribution of its shows via iTunes, Netflix and Amazon, now that lawsuit is over those concerns seem to have faded away.
Continue reading Dish Network settles Voom HD lawsuit, AMC comes back on the air tonight
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The captain of the Costa Concordia appeared in a pre-trial hearing this week, and almost every headline characterized him as being in a "fighting mood." The cruise line veteran admitted to making mistakes, but, according to his attorney, he wants to make sure responsibility for the crash and the 32 lives lost is shared among all who were to blame.
The captain is accused of maneuvering the ship too close to the shore of an island off the coast of Italy for a "salute" to officials there. He says that he did, but he also says that it's a common practice among the Costa fleet. And, he says, he was able to steer the ship into shallow water in order to avoid the loss of more lives.
Another theory of the crash was floated at the hearing: The generator equipment was not operating properly. Because the hearings were closed, though, the details are a bit sketchy. It is not clear if the alleged malfunction could have contributed to the crash, contributed to the delay in calling for help or both.
At the same time, parent company Carnival Corp. is facing a mounting number of lawsuits from passengers and businesses blocked by the grounded ship. The American company continues to insist that the Italian line is a separate corporate entity; as a result, Carnival says, all legal actions should be filed in Italy.
For the passengers, the prospect of trying the cases in Italy is disheartening at best. First, says one attorney, the clients will have to pay for representation out of their own pockets, because Italy does not allow contingency cases. Noneconomic damages, too, are more difficult to collect, and many passengers have been traumatized by the events of Jan. 13.
The businesses affected by the accident have another concern: Italian law does not allow class action lawsuits.
Sources:
NBC News, "Experts: Costa Concordia equipment may not have been working before crash," Oct. 21, 2012
Insurance Journal, "U.S. Lawsuits Target Carnival in Italy Cruise Crash," Curt Anderson, Sept. 13, 2012
Our firm helps people who have been injured in accidents like the Costa Concordia sinking discussed in this post. If you would like to learn more about our practice, please visit our Huntsville, Alabama, personal injury and wrongful death page.
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The Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ200 ($599.99 direct) is the first superzoom camera to feature a fixed-aperture f/2.8 lens, which means that the same amount of light is captured, regardless of whether you are zoomed out at 25mm or all the way in at 600mm. It's a speedy performer, images are sharp, and videographers will appreciate the excellent 1080p30 video quality and the option to add an external microphone. The relatively fast aperture allows for shallow depth of field at longer focal lengths for stills and video alike. It's good enough to oust the Nikon Coolpix P510 ?as our Editors' Choice superzoom, although that camera remains a good buy for shooters on a tighter budget.
Design and Features
Looking a lot like a scaled-down D-SLR, the FZ200 takes its design cues from other superzoom cameras. It measures 3.4 by 4.9 by 4.3 inches (HWD) and weighs about 1.3 pounds. A neck strap is included, but I found it most comfortable and convenient to use with a good wrist strap. The 24x lens is a power zoom design, which keeps the size down compared with a manual zoom camera like the Fujifilm X-S1, which measures 4.2 by 5.3 by 5.9 inches, and weighs 2.1 pounds.
You get two zoom controls?one built into the shutter release and the other on the left side of the lens barrel. The top plate of the camera houses the hot shoe, pop-up flash, stereo microphone, Record button, Drive Mode control, On/Off switch, and the programmable Fn1 button. Controls on the rear of the camera include the EVF/LCD toggle, a Play button, AF/AE Lock (which doubles as the programmable Fn2 control), ISO, White Balance, Self-Timer, and a programmable Fn3 button.
The 3-inch, 460k-dot rear LCD is hinged so you can adjust its position. It's not as sharp as the 921k-dot LCD found in the Nikon P510, but is sharp and bright enough for use on a sunny day. You're in for a pleasant surprise when you use the 1,312k-dot EVF?it's stunning. It's nearly as sharp as the eye-level display in the Fuji X-S1, and using the camera at your eye makes it easier to get a steady shot when the lens is zoomed in to any degree.
The camera doesn't have all of the bells and whistles that the competition boasts. The Coolpix P510 has a GPS module, which adds location data to your photos, a feature that nature photographers and vacationers who reach for a superzoom may miss. It does offer a hot shoe, so you can use an external flash or mic, a feature that is often omitted from cameras in this class. And you can't discount the benefits of an f/2.8 lens at a 600mm equivalent field of view. You can actually get a smooth, blurred background when working at the minimum focus distance and longest zoom setting. Even a larger manual zoom camera like the Fujifilm FinePix HS30EXR , which is f/2.8 at the wide end, closes down to f/5.6 as you zoom all the way in?capturing only a quarter of the light that the FZ200 can manage.
Performance and Conclusions
A speedy shooter, the FZ200 starts and shoots in just about 1.3 seconds, records a short 0.1-second shutter lag, and is able to grab a burst of 12 shots in just over a second. It can also shoot at 5.5 frames per second for 16 shots, or at 2 frames per second for as long as you'd like?assuming you stick to grabbing JPG files. Shooting in Raw+JPG limits your 2fps capture to about 13 frames before the rate slows. It bests the Canon SX40 HS , which requires 2.5 seconds to start and shoot, shoots a photo every 0.4 second, and notches a lengthy 0.5-second shutter lag.
I used Imatest to check the sharpness of the FZ200's lens. A result of 1,800 lines per picture height translates to a sharp image, which is right about where the FZ200 lands with its 1,811-line score. Noise is well controlled, at less than 1.5 percent through ISO 800. The Nikon P510 does better on paper, staying under this threshold through ISO 1600, but a close examination of the same scene side-by-side shows that the FZ200 is decidedly sharper at ISO 800. At ISO 1600 the FZ200 suffers from loss of image detail, but is still noticeably better than the Nikon P510. When you consider the Panasonic's Raw shooting capability and fixed f/2.8 lens you have a camera that is capable of capturing excellent images in a wide variety of lighting conditions.
Video is recorded at up to 1080p60 in AVCHD format. You can also opt for MP4 recording, but that tops out at 1080p30. The quality is excellent, with saturated colors and crisp detail. The stereo audio is polluted a bit by the sound of the lens zooming in and out and refocusing?it's not overbearing, but it is audible. There is a mic input and a hot shoe for mounting an external mic, which should be utilized for any serious video work. A mini HDMI port lets you connect the camera to an HDTV, and a proprietary USB port is on board for computer connectivity. Standard SD, SDHC, and SDXC memory cards are supported.
The Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ200 is the best-performing superzoom we've tested, and that earns it our Editors' Choice award?in spite of its rather high $600 sticker price. It's got a fast f/2.8 lens, does well at higher ISO settings, produces sharp images, and video quality is excellent. If you're on a budget, the former winner in this category, the $430 Nikon Coolpix P510, remains a solid option with its longer 42x zoom range and sharper rear LCD. But it falls behind when it comes to the EVF and aperture, and it lacks the ability to connect an external microphone or flash.
More Digital Camera Reviews:
??? Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ200
??? Olympus SP-620UZ
??? Carl Zeiss Planar T* 1,4/50
??? Carl Zeiss Distagon T* 1,4/35
??? Carl Zeiss Distagon T* 2,8/15
?? more
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November is National Family Caregivers month and in the U.S., there are over 65 million family caregivers currently taking care of a loved one going through a crisis. In honor of caregivers around the world, LA?s the Place interviewed?talk show host Leeza Gibbons, who has created the non-profit organization Leeza?s Place. Leeza?s Place is a place for family caregivers to get educated, empowered and energized.
Gibbons knows how hopeless, exhausted and overwhelmed a caregiver can feel. She has been there personally and walked the talk. Nearly a decade ago, she stepped out of the spotlight to take care of her mother afflicted with Alzheimer?s. Her mother, Gloria Jean Gibbons, died in May 2008, at the age of 72, nine years after her diagnosis.? As a promise to her mother to ?tell her story and make it count? after her diagnosis of Alzheimer?s disease and her family?s subsequent caregiving challenges, Gibbons created The Leeza Gibbons Memory Foundation in 2002.
But she?s not just about raising awareness. Leeza is a woman of action. In a few short years, her group has opened numerous Leeza?s Places across the country ? in California, Texas, Illinois, New York, and Florida.
Leeza?s Place, the signature program of the Foundation, opened its first doors in 2003 as the manifestation of what Leeza ?wished we had when we were going through this journey.? Leeza?s Place is home to all types of family caregivers.
Leeza?s Place offers these resources:
Education ? Caregiving doesn?t come with an instruction manual. That?s why they offer extensive Alzheimer?s information and free e-learning workshops. They also have a Virtual Library with more than 5,000 books, journals, cassettes, videos and CD-ROMs to borrow.
Support - They help connect caregivers with professionals and one another. Their 24/7 Helpline (800.272.3900) is staffed around the clock to offer information and assistance, and ALZConnected?, their online caregiver community, is a great place to find and share support on a national and local level.
Tools - From a Care Team Calendar that helps organize family and friends to Alzheimer?s Navigator?, an online assessment tool that creates customized Alzheimer?s action plans, the organization has a variety of tools to help caregivers cope.
In addition to offering tools and education, Leeza?s Care Connection at Providence St. Joseph Medical Center has launched. Leeza?s Care Connection, located in Burbank, CA, is a place where caregivers can come together to become stronger, more resilient and grounded, developing a set of skills that help them handle their new life of change. Leeza?s Care Connection has been a natural extension of the overall vision of the foundation.
Being a celebrity herself, she also brings awareness to other celebrities working to cure and aid those with Alzheimer?s disease. On her My Generation show, she recently interviewed Maria Shriver. Both women have more in common than working in television: They have parents who had?Alzheimer?s disease. Alzheimer?s has no cure. It devastates families and has the potential to bankrupt the nation?s health care system. But Shriver, Gibbons and celebrities like legendary University of Tennessee women?s basketball coach Pat Summitt, who has been diagnosed with Alzheimer?s, are shining new light on this dark disease ? and the future is hopeful.
People with Alzheimer?s Disease or who know someone with the disease can also go to www.AlzheimersDisease.com for support, information and answers.
If you or a loved one is diagnosed with Alzheimer?s disease, visit leezasplace.org for help and support.
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Imagination Play & Self-Directed Moral Development
More and more studies I see are confirming that undirected play, and particularly imagination play, is critical to optimal human learning and development. Studies also show the flip side, that instruction or even adult direction of the play of young children stunts their development (which is a profound indictment of this growing practice in American preschools and kindergartens).
I was blessed to have been born to two parents who were intelligent and highly creative people who, even in the conformist era of the late 1950s, somehow understood the value of imagination play to my development, and gave me the right sort of toys and environments to engage in such play, along with plenty of time on my own.
Is the ability of forming new images and sensations when they are not perceived through sight, hearing, or other senses. Imagination helps provide meaning to experience and understanding to knowledge; it is a fundamental faculty through which people make sense of the world, and it also plays a key role in the learning process? Children often use narratives or pretend play in order to exercise their imagination. When children develop fantasy they play at two levels: first, they use role playing to act out what they have developed with their imagination, and at the second level they play again with their make-believe situation by acting as if what they have developed is an actual reality that already exists in narrative myth.
From age five I began to construct my own conceptions of the world including my own mythology of the human narrative, as detailed in my piece ?Plastic Dinosaurs and the Tragedy of Jinx Island?. I created some pretty involved play scenarios and resulting character and story narratives. Borrowing ideas from my favorite sci-fi/fantasy movies of the time, like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Mysterious Island and The Lost World, I used the chalked out floor, Civil War soldiers, Lincoln Logs, plastic dinosaurs, shoe and larger boxes (cobbled into ships and submarines with scissors, tape and cellophane for windows) to develop my own stories. This included giving names, traits and back-stories to many of the individual plastic soldiers, including one designated as Captain Nemo himself, with all the moral ambiguities and violent antiwar extremism of his complicated character. Captain Nemo, also known as Prince Dakkar, is a fictional character featured in Jules Verne?s novels Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870) and The Mysterious Island (1874)? Nemo, one of the most famous antiheroes in fiction, is a mysterious figure. The son of an Indian Raja, he is a scientific genius who roams the depths of the sea in his submarine, the Nautilus, which was built on a deserted island. Nemo tries to project a stern, controlled confidence, but he is driven by a thirst for vengeance and a hatred of imperialism (particularly the British Empire) and wracked by remorse over the deaths of his crew members and even by the deaths of enemy sailors. As detailed in my previous piece, starting at age five, I was directing the development of my own ethical compass, that would help me reconcile my future participation In a human culture with morally ambiguous practices such as military conflict and ideological extremism. As called out in the bit from the Wikipedia article above, I was creating a ?make-believe situation by acting as if what I have developed is an actual reality that already exists in narrative myth?. There was nothing so dramatic in my real-life with other kids, my own parents, and the other middle-class families we interacted with. Run of the Town
Part and parcel with developing that ethical compass I developed a strong sense of awareness of and responsibility for my own self. I suspect that my parents? awareness of the extent of my development in this area encouraged them to grant me a great deal of freedom to venture from the house on my own, starting at about age five, when they let me walk to and from school each day, about three-quarters of a mile across the nearby park and down through a single family residential neighborhood.
As detailed in my previous piece, ?Have Bike Will Travel?, by age eight my mom had worked out ground rules with me that I could go where I wanted in the neighborhood and even downtown (about a mile away from our house) as long as I started home ?when the streetlights came on?. This of course given that Ann Arbor was a mid-sized, middle-class, progressive college town, with a fairly homogeneous population.
So on summer and weekend days and school-day afternoons (particularly in late spring and early fall) I would venture out either on foot or by bicycle to friends? houses, the park across the street, other nearby parks for little league baseball practices, the town library, my favorite toy and five-and-dime stores, and ice cream parlors. Ann Arbor had (and continues to have) friendly tree-lined streets and cozy little parks nestled within its friendly neighborhoods. I recall that most of my peers who I considered friends were granted a comparable freedom of movement.
So other than walking to and from school, the occasional visit to a family friend?s house with my parents, going out to dinner a couple times a month with my parents, or taking day trips on weekends with my dad, the majority of occasions I left the house to go somewhere was at my own initiative and to my own chosen destination. What better way for a kid to develop the currently much prized and talked about skill of ?executive function?. Per the Wikipedia article on this subject?
Executive functions is an umbrella term for cognitive processes that regulate, control, and manage other cognitive processes, such as planning, working memory, attention, problem solving, verbal reasoning, inhibition, mental flexibility, multi-tasking, and initiation and monitoring of actions. The executive system is a theorized cognitive system in psychology that controls and manages other cognitive processes. It is responsible for processes that are sometimes referred to as executive functions, executive skills, supervisory attentional system, or cognitive control. Whereas in school I was every day directed by adults to where I should come to learn, what to learn when I got there, when I should learn it, how and from whom; outside school I would set out on most journeys from my house at my own direction as to where, when, how, and to see whom. Both of these scenarios are part of adult life, but we usually enter into the former, and continue to abide by its strictures, at our own direction. As I got closer to and then into my preteen years, that externally directed school environment, where I was part of an arbitrary larger group of same-age peers, got more and more problematic for me.
Setbacks at Home and in School
As detailed in my piece, ?Jane & Eric Get Divorced?, when I was 10, this cataclysmic event occurred and my dad moved out of the house. I experienced a profound sense of loss, plus internalizing that my family was somehow ?dysfunctional? and that I might somehow be as well.
A year later, I started junior high in 7th grade when I was 11, and I don?t recall any of the teachers or counselors even being aware of my parents divorce. They certainly never mentioned it to me and I was too ashamed and too intimidated by all those adult authority figures to share anything with them. I had no really close friends among my classmates either, until the middle of eighth grade. It contributed to a very rough three years before I transitioned to high school for tenth grade.
In junior high, I was never in an environment where I felt safe, or felt that the adults or the bulk of the kids I interacted with really cared about who I was, what really interested me, and what the challenges were in my life. Most of what I was expected to learn was not what engaged my real interests, so my school day became an exercise in going through the motions ? doing my best to listen to what I was told in class, and then on my own try to execute the tasks I was assigned by my teachers and accept their judgments rendered on my execution of those tasks. I completely surrendered any semblance of self-direction along with most of what little self-esteem I had left at the time. At best I would rely on receiving little bits of conditional self-esteem doled out by my teachers when I would get a good grade on an assignment or on my report card.
By ninth grade, I was so uncomfortable with and stressed by school that I would routinely get sick and end up staying home, sometimes for a week at a time, with my mom?s tacit consent.
Several years later, after completing junior high, my experience working in a youth theater group would teach me that, as a shy person, what worked for me was to be engaged in a project I really cared about, and have a defined role within my group of peers and adults collaborating on that project, a role that everyone understood and respected. Given the safety of having and being expected to play that prescribed and acknowledged role, I could overcome my anxiety, fully engage my self and my skills, and direct myself and even others as appropriate in my assigned role.
How much better those three years of junior high could have been if my school had been a real collaborative community of choice. A place where youth and adults were engaged together (as a respectful circle of equals), each day, in making the community work. It did not seem possible at the time, but I was soon to have very different experiences that would demonstrate that it was.
Junior Light Opera
The one teacher I really connected with in high school was a man named Michael Harrah, who taught a stagecraft class that I took in tenth grade (and I describe in more detail in my previous piece ?Stagecraft?). I connected with him immediately at a more personal level, since he is the only K-12 teacher I had for a second time (he had been a memorable substitute when my eight grade speech teacher had gone on medical leave).
Though Michael?s day job was as a public school teacher, his real love was launching and running a youth theater group, the like of which I have never encountered since. Described in more detail in my piece ?Unschooling in the Art of Theater?, the troupe at the time he recruited me to join was composed of two adults (Michael and the musical director Sue) and about 70 youth (ages five to the early twenties) and mounted about ten productions throughout the year.
The group?s true uniqueness was in its governance model. Michael functioned as the sort of CEO and artistic director, which included securing our venues for rehearsal and performance, making the final decision on the plays we would mount, and being present for virtually every rehearsal and performance. Sue recruited and conducted the youth orchestra for all our musical productions. What was the uniquely radical part, was that virtually every other role and function in the troupe, on stage and off, was performed by a youth.
So as just one example, when we staged the musical ?Oliver?, I (age 15) functioned as the producer (managing all the logistical elements of the rehearsals and performances) along with designing and supervising the building of the set by other youth in our troupe. The director was 17 and the choreographer just 14. The lighting and costume designers, stage and house managers were also teens. The program and tickets were set up and printed by a 15-year-old whose family owned a printing business. The show was rehearsed and staged using my high school?s extensive theater facilities. A typical weekday night rehearsal might include?
* Michael at the piano in a music room helping the leads with their musical numbers
* The 14-year-old choreographer teaching the younger youth playing Fagin?s kids their dance number in another music room
* Another teen managing the building of the set I designed in the scene shop backstage
* The teen costume designer coordinating another group of kids sewing costumes in yet another classroom, with maybe a mom or two recruited to teach the various kids how to use a sewing machine
* Other kids not at this moment engaged in an activity might be off in a corner somewhere trying to do their regular school homework
* And finally me, moving from room to room making sure that everything was going smoothly, plus organizing how to collect money from and buy food from McDonald?s for all 60 plus people participating in the night?s activities. (I could have an order with over 100 hamburgers plus copious French fries and drinks that I would call in and then pick up!)
I want you to appreciate how profoundly different this was than the regular school day at that same facility, where adults were basically in charge of everything, and us teens got their instructions and executed their assignments. JLO was a goldmine of opportunity for learning self-direction. We all had our opportunities to conceive, design and implement various aspects of a theatrical production, along with performing on stage and/or managing things backstage during a performance. We all had the occasion to lead, to follow, to partner, or to otherwise collaborate. We shared the bond of knowing that each one of us could figure out what needed to be done in any given circumstance and make it so. We had plenty of opportunities to try things, room to fail and learn lessons from that failure. We developed what I like to refer to as ?agency?. Here is a description of this concept from the Wikipedia article?
One?s agency is one?s independent capability or ability to act on one?s will. This ability is affected by the cognitive belief structure which one has formed through one?s experiences, and the perceptions held by the society and the individual, of the structures and circumstances of the environment one is in and the position they are born into. Disagreement on the extent of one?s agency often causes conflict between parties, e.g. parents and children. In contrast to the captivating immersion of the real-world activities of our JLO evening sessions, school seemed more and more like a daily grind, with interesting stuff occasionally but increasing time spent on curriculum that felt boring and pointless given my emerging self-directed developmental path forward. My chemistry class I found mind-numbingly boring, and I was lucky I did not flunk it altogether. That class inspired me to write a dystopian short story trying to vent my anxiety. High School Attendance
What was a developmental revelation in my senior year of high school was that my school did not appear to be taking attendance, or at least my mom was not being notified and my teachers were not challenging me if I missed a particular class. This policy was never explicitly announced as I recall, but there were also no instructions given to students about having to bring a note when you were absent from school or a particular class. It was an unheralded shift to more of a community college model, but a profound one for me after my growing academic discomfort in my junior year as reported above.
I started my incremental transition into increased self-direction of my school schedule by starting to routinely skip my fourth period study hall, which I had originally signed up for to lighten my class load and give me an hour to get homework done at school anticipating nightly rehearsals for JLO theater productions. Next was my third period International Relations class, which had sounded very interesting in the syllabus, but the teacher was hugely boring. But I discovered that if I read the textbook and just showed up for the tests and enough of the quizzes I could pass the class. First period Russian language class and second period English Literature could be missed about once a week without losing the learning thread of those two subjects, which were more engaging to me.
So along with the 30 minute lunch between third and fourth period, this gave me on most days at least a two-and-a-half hour period in the middle of the day when I could work in the theater wing or actually leave campus. With an old car at my disposal (inherited from my grandfather), I began to take more and more advantage of the latter option. My current best friend had the same third, fourth and fifth period classes, so we routinely collaborated on various ?excursions? during the day, either to his house (a ten-minute drive from school) or to the University of Michigan Graduate Library.
What would draw us back to school was our fifth and final class of the day, a shared Modern Russian History class taught by Mr. Peacock, a very interesting guy (literally a card-caring Trotsky-ite communist, he showed us that membership card when we challenged him) adept at telling lurid and gripping tales about the periods leading up to the assassination of Czar Alexander by an anarchist cell in 1881 and the October Revolution in 1917. The class had maybe a dozen students and was run very informally, with most of us sitting on rather than at random desks strewn around the room while Peacock paced the room ranting and rambling with his engaging tales.
Mr. Peacock?s class inspired most of the jaunts my friend and I took to the Graduate Library, as I document in my previous piece ?Anarchism and the Sub-Basement of the Graduate Library?. Between Peacock, trips to the Graduate Library he inspired, and my mom?s radical feminist friend Mary Jane, I was being exposed to intriguing radical critiques of society turning upside down much of the conventional wisdom of even the progressive liberalism of my hometown?s university milieu.
Most of the time my friend and I spent at his house during the school day involved pursuing our shared interest in military simulation board games, which rekindled a lifelong passion of mine for the study of war, logistics, and military history, documented in my piece ?Unschooling and the Art of War?.
But returning to the main point here, it was a simple change in a school attendance policy that led to a transformative experience for me, taking control of my school experience for the first time in my life after it having controlled me (mostly for the worse) for many years. Having had this positive proactive experience as an older youth, learning that it was doable, helped me continue this approach in college and beyond. It was decades later that I was inspired to take control of and transform my corporate employment to make it flexible enough to lead a balanced life and ?work to live? rather than ?live to work?.
European Solo Adventure
I had learned from my dad as a kid (when we took various day-trips) his practice of just jumping in the car and heading off in one direction or another, with money in the pocket for gas, lunch, snacks, miniature golf, bowling, or other activities and entertainment as encountered. I had also developed, as I described above, the agency to set out from my house on my own traversing my town by bicycle. For a still shy kid, these were important preparations for what followed.
After graduating from high school a year after me in June of 1973, two of my closest friends decided to backpack through Europe together that coming fall. I convinced them to let me come along, perfect for shy me to have two buddies to share this sort of adventure with. After completing my first year of college, I got my first real full-time job that summer as a janitor and chambermaid at a hotel in town to save money for the trip. My mom, always a big supporter of my self-directed activities, chipped in enough to pay for my plane ticket.
As circumstances played out, one of my two friends dropped out of the trip, but my other friend and I boarded our flight from Detroit to London in late September of 1973. After a week traveling in England (including a difficult first night at a seedy bedbug-ridden hotel in London) my second friend decided to drop out as well and return home. I was left with the decision to bail as well or stick it out on my own. With my pride somehow trumping my shyness and fear of traversing foreign lands on my own (my self-esteem being too tentative to countenance having to explain to people that I bailed on such an adventure), I decided to continue until my money ran out, which turned out to be no less than ten weeks later.
As I left London on my own by train headed for Munich Germany, my goal was to visit a couple my mom and I had met previously, but I had made no specific arrangements to meet them on a particular date, just a general indication I would ?look them up? in our exchanged letters before the trip. So for the first time in my life I was ?throwing myself in the deep end?, which has turned out to be a technique I have used several times since to overcome my shyness and push forward with developmental experiences.
As described more extensively in my previous piece, ?Unschooling in the Art of Travel?, my next ten weeks charting a course through Western Europe had many unexpected twists and turns including some very difficult days. At times I was tired and lonely, and it felt more like an ordeal than an adventure. But each time I set out from one locale to another, I scanned my maps and guidebooks, took the advice of fellow travelers I encountered, and pursued my own curiosity to decide where to go next. Much of that decision-making was spur of the moment, arriving at the train station intending to head in one direction, but then changing my mind and boarding a train in the opposite direction. (My student rail pass facilitated this improvisation since I did not have to buy any tickets but simply board any train and show my pass to the conductor.)
It was like a role-playing game or a reality show called ?Where Will He Go Next??, and was a revelation for me on how one could conduct at least certain segments of, if not ones whole life, acting on impulse, inspiration, or just ?going with the flow?. Every decision, including strategic ones on which country to head into next and tactical ones about who to strike up a conversation with, often had profound unplanned consequences. And when not traveling with a close friend to buffer everything with a refuge of familiarity, those experiences were that much more intense.
Throwing Myself in the Deep End in Los Angeles
Five years after setting out on my European adventure I graduated from the University of Michigan in my hometown of Ann Arbor with my undergraduate degree in Speech (with a concentration in television and film production). I really had little or no idea what to do next with my life or how I might leverage my degree to find a job and follow a path forward to a career.
The last four years I had spent taking college classes had been an engrossing intellectual exercise, but more of an entertaining and unfocused meander in the garden of knowledge than a well-planned preparation for next steps toward a targeted destination. Looking back, I was using it more as a means to avoid making the transition to adulthood than to facilitate that transition. At the time I just naively figured that once I got my degree the doors of opportunity would just somehow open for me, so I could continue just enjoying my friends and my hobbies, doing low-wage work to pay the rent, and living in genteel semi-poverty in my wonderful little Ann Arbor.
After twelve years divorced, my mom had remarried my dad and moved 200 miles south to live with him in Dayton Ohio, a place I had no desire to move to myself. I was still here in my hometown with no mentors or contacts that could help me get a job or otherwise assist me with a glide path into adulthood. The one exception was Michael Harrah, my onetime mentor as head of the Junior Light Opera theater group, who had recently moved to Los Angeles to manage young actors who were trying to break into the TV/film business. He couldn?t offer me a job, but he did at least have an extra bedroom where I could stay until I could find a job and somehow launch myself in ?Hollywood?. That was the one ?door? of opportunity (such as it was) that opened itself to me.
I was 23 and had had enough life experience to know that I was shy and generally reticent to take that next developmental step that would take me into uncharted territory. But I also knew that when I took that difficult step ? whether playing a key role in mounting or performing in a theatrical production or stepping on that train from London on my own with just my backpack ? the results had been very rewarding. Throwing myself in the deep end had become my main means of overcoming my natural reticence and allowing me to move forward with my life.
As detailed in my piece ?Saying Goodbye to Ann Arbor?, relying on just my own compass, and perhaps fearing that not taking the plunge was the only thing worse than taking it, in September 1978 I boarded a train with just my backpack and a suitcase, the first leg of a trip that found me arriving, a very small fish in the very big pond of the city of the angels. It had been a life of self-directed action, a young child exploring fantasy worlds of his own design, a youth navigating his real world on his bicycle, a teen realizing his imagination on stage, a young adult setting forth on his own to parts unknown, that had made this challenging transitional step into adulthood possible.
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