You may have seen on the news lately the wise and all-knowing talking heads are coming down pretty hard on Barack Obama because he dared to put on a suit without an American flag pin on his lapel. 

It must have been a slow news day, for this thing blew up and he was finally forced to defend himself by saying that his actions display his patriotism far more than simply wearing a pin.

I found the whole thing pretty funny because it reminded me of the Seinfeld episode where Kramer took part in an Aids walk, but refused to wear the ribbon.  He ultimately got ganged up on by the other walkers and beaten up because he refused to wear the ribbon, even though he was actively taking part in the walk.  He finished the walk, by the way, though he had to drag himself across the finish line.

After 911, I think wearing the American flag pin proved to solidify one's own resolve in their patriotism; it served to reassure people in distressing times; and it simply made people feel better on the inside.  Somehow, however, as the years went by we started judging each other on if we wore a pin.  And, as is the unfortunate trend, we have now exploited the pin to a degree where if a high level politician is seen without it, it becomes the main topic of the day across the news.  The original purpose of the pin has been objectified and bent to serve ulterior motives, and I find that despicable.  In my mind, that pin serves as a metaphor for far greater issues taking place within our nation.

I'm not a particularly political person.  I don't vote straight Republican or Democrat.  I try to go with whoever seems most intelligent on the issues that I feel are important.  And one issue that is important to me is the fact so many of us, myself included, talk a big game but rarely take any true form of action.  We dream; we wish; we say what we're going to do; we brag about accomplishments yet to be executed; yet, when it comes time to actually tally the score, few of us find that we have lived up to our own talk.  And then, when people actually hold us accountable for failing to live up to our boasts, we take offense.

I worry that we've become a nation of talkers, not doers.  What's the point of wearing a flag if your actions don't display patriotism in the least?  What's the point of saying how awesome you are if you've never actually done anything?  We're becoming a culture that praises people who have no discernable accomplishments, and then we mock those that do.  This is troubling.

This is beginning to sound judgmental and harsh, and it's certainly not meant to.  I actually wanted this little essay to be motivating.  I wanted to encourage you to chase your dreams, to go out and make something special happen!  I wanted to get you psyched up not just to wear the pin, but also to actually do something that validates the pin!

So, what are you waiting for?  Get out there and take action!

Season Four of The Hills debuted last night and in some ways I feel like it has been going on forever. I feel that I have invested part of my formidable mid-twenties identifying with a group of girls that I will probably never meet. I sort of like that. I sort of like this voyeurism that has been engrained in me. Just give me three more episodes and my life will be surrounded by nothing but dreams of sugarplums and Heidi Montag dancing in my head.

But there’s always this argument of people who think they are better than me, and the rest of the millions of people, that tune in faithfully every Monday for a half hour to dissect this weeks actions. I feel persecuted in this way. Like it so much better to tune in to Lost and dissect the lives of these castaways and their polar bears and their unknown monsters. I never got into Lost because well I see it as Gilligan’s Island 2.0.

 I would rather have this nostalgic feeling of watching a city I grew up in transform into a city I didn’t know existed. The creator of The Hills has turned Hollywood into an island. They have made it seem to the outside world that this place is bigger than it actually is. Ad they made it seem beautiful. They’ve made it fake.

And we all know that. But it seems crazy that people are appalled that this show is fake. Maybe because their confusing reality television with reality. Reality television is a show that is staged unscripted, but it goes further than that. It is a show about nothing. In a whole season nothing really happens. The only thing is that more characters are introduced. The Hills is just on big case of nepotism. I just hope Justin Bobby has a brother.

But I am here to make a declaration. I think the Hills go where Seinfeld couldn’t. I here constantly that Seinfeld is a show about nothing. This isn’t true. Seinfeld was a show about something. It was a show about the human character that is in all of us. The asshole that tortures us and the friends that stick around. Where is with The Hills is a show about Lauren Conrad and her boring friends and boring lives and how money and beauty and an MTV contract can give you success. It is what the kids on The Real World were dying for.

We watch nothing because it is interested. This is what Jerry and George were pitching, but they just didn’t know yet. Maybe when Larry David first realized that the shows premise half the cast of The Hills hadn’t been born yet. See Elaine, George, Jerry, and Kramer had too much substance. In each of their seasons they had character arcs. The Hills have been milking the same conflict for over 20 episodes. And I watch.

And I think it just might have to do with the fact Spencer Pratt has made himself scarier and more evil than any monster on an unknown island.

From the moment Seinfeld started in July 1989 to its final episode in May 1998 fans have said television will never be the same again without Seinfeld.

Rediscover your favourite tv moments by getting every single Seinfeld episode ever Seasons 1 - 9, 180 episodes of your favourite tv characters: Jerry, George, Elaine & Kramer.

Catch all the classic Seinfeld moments on dvd.

Amazon says:
"they're some of the most hilariously watchable characters in television history"

The set is a two volume 32 disc with all 180 episodes.  Included is the "Official Coffee Table Book" which contains 226 pages of photos, quotes, trivia from every episode and personal reflections from the man himself Jerry Seinfeld.  As a bonus the book also includes "The Roundtable" a 60 minute discussion with the cast and Larry David.

One of the cleverest TV shows ever made now in one boxed set, Seinfeld - The Complete Series.

Screw the Olympics. They're garbage. There's no real test of physical prowess and mental tenacity that can match what took place in Finland over the weekend -- the 2008 Sauna World Championships.

A Fin, probably due to the home-sauna advantage, came away with the title this year. Bjarne Hermansson sat in a 230-degree sauna for 18 minutes and 15 seconds, which seems really low for a sauna championship. Then again, I don't spend a lot of time in a towel sweating with other men who are sweating in a towel, so I'm not exactly an expert on this.

I've never considered Finns weird. The Dutch? Sure. Wooden shoes are an open invitation to damn an entire culture. But according to this story, the Fins hold wife-carrying competitions. Unless you've murdered your wife and you're trying to dispose of her body, there's really no need to carry her over long distances. For example.

The chick who won the female category only stayed in the sauna for five minutes. Dude. Come on. It's like 230 degrees in Arizona all summer. You're telling me we can't ship Jennie Finch over there to take this thing home for the Americans?

I'll be holding the first Whirlpool Championships in my apartment in early 2009. Can you stand the heat? Can you stand the pruning? Can you avoid peeing in the warm water? Can you avoid the temptation to put your genitals up against the jet streams? Only the strong will survive my brutal test of sitting around.

]]> http://literaryaddict.wordpress.com/?p=186 Mon, 11 Aug 2008 15:56:51 +0000 thegirlcanwrite http://literaryaddict.wordpress.com/?p=186 I could spend blissful years stirring academic poetic discourse around a classroom, exchanging highlighted notes and chewing on turns of phrase, but I must keep a promise I once made. I vowed to never frighten a person away from poetry, which has few enough readers, and to let more readers discover its joy. And how could I possibly do so besides sharing my own work with ‘the people?’ Well, I refuse to get caught up in the delicious word-twisting discussions of poetry that render it squashed and meaningless to anyone born after 1857, in the end.

You know what I’m talking about. Pick up an expensive art magazine, for example. You’ll hear it in the way the writers talk about a giant painting of bubbles. “The lines of the painting vivisect at terminal vertical intervals suggesting the death and excavation of history’s muse. To grasp the brushstroke with this painterly torture in mind, one must submerge all faculties in the absence of the artist’s intention.” Then they cheerfully tell you the painting, which to you seems to be a joyous and colourful celebration of gardens or something or other spring, is about the holocaust or Central American hostage holding and it costs four point seven million dollars.

And while I wholeheartedly believe we would all do well to do a few literary gymnastics, to read some old poetry and a few classics, to brush up on what’s currently on the prize lists or new in Canadian verse, it’s best that we recover honest expressions of our impressions. Remember when Kramer embarrasses the whole group by telling the girl with the Cyrano nose that she’s as pretty as any New Yorker? She ‘just needs a nose job,’ he tells her plainly. In the end, who gets the girl?

The tightly knit academic circles will forever bustle in their wordy, toothy circles. Like a bunch of heart surgeons discussing various valve suturing techniques, they will never lend a hand to the lay public to give their passion a wider audience. I vowed to be more like Kramer, to read a book as a smart and lively girl, tell it if it needs a nose job, and praise the beauty it already possesses.

Now, any number of literature professors or old-school editors would ask what the decidedly un-poetic New York television show Seinfeld has to do with Canadian poet Erin Knight’s debut, The Sweet Fuels.

Nothing, if poetry is only a Donne and Milton and Coleridge and never about the sweet plums in the icebox or Bob Dylan or about how even the rain has such small hands.

If you listen carefully to Kramer’s script, he’s a poet in every episode. Like William Carlos Williams, the K-Man waxes especially poetic about fruits. There’s the cantaloupe, there’s the avocado, and there’s the Mackinaw peaches, only available for two weeks of the year.

“The Mackinaw peaches, Jerry… I waited all year for this. Oooh, this is fantastic. Makes your taste buds come alive. It's like having a circus in your mouth…Jerry, this is a miracle of nature that exists for a brief period. It's like the Aurora Borealis.”

Don’t always run away from poetry because you don’t know ‘how to read poetry’ or ‘don’t get it.’ Just pick up the peach and savour it.

In Diamond, Knight writes: “Why write only if? Why not write if sunlight/strikes the dust motes in the room, if a splinter/wedges beneath your nail, if you fall/in love, if you fall? Write the nub of graphite/in your palm, pure carbon, memory/of a long-ago word- so many of us have it/lodged beneath the skin…”

Listen:

“Take the small maps on your knees. Grasses
traced routes there as you took back your wind,
while backstory spin in the bicycle tires.
When you stand, can you still read the legend
creased in the skin, is this your quietest scar?”

Listen:

“There’s a gnosis in the undersides of leaves,
silver edges turned up before a storm.”

I have no doubt that Knight’s work will stand up to the scrutiny of the higher hallways. Imagery, metaphor, “continuous engagement with our points of reference.” Check, check, check. But more importantly, this is the kind of book that talks about making tea, about making bread, about leaving the prairies, about searching maps for clues of our past. It is the kind of book that can earn the trust of the pedestrian audience, let us giggle, let us cry, move our ordinary experiences into the divinity of that diamond dust mote.

It can keep a person going through the endless and trivial travails. It is delicious, tender, redolent, and fleeting- like those fabled Mackinaw peaches, sweet fuel.

The Sweet Fuels, by Erin Knight.Goose Lane Editions, 2007.

Visit writer Lorette C. Luzajic at www.thegirlcanwrite.net. She is the author of The Astronaut's Wife: Poems of Eros and Thanatos, a Handymaiden Edition, 2006. Look for it on Indigo or Amazon. Her poetry has also been published widely in journals like Spillway, Rattle, Modern Poetry, The Fiddlehead, Grain, Quarry, White Wall Review, and more.

Recorded 1984

By the time Shockabilly embarked on its first lengthy tour, guitarist Eugene Chadbourne had already traversed at least two distinct musical phases – one as a member of improvised jazz nebulae and one as a champion of mock-heroic country and western revalorizations.  His own guitar style matured, incorporating the elements of blues, bluegrass, lo-fi and (mostly acoustic) noise. 

Monumentally irreverent and scurrilous, the Shockabilly trio evolved out of the larger ensemble known as the Chadbournes.  Together with Lower East Side dwelling Mark Kramer and David Licht, Chadbourne was now ready to set his “free improvised C&W bebop” into a pastiche-bound, noisy power-trio.  Kramer was on the cusp of reaching temporary celebrity as a musician, producer and owner Shimmy Disc label.  David Licht accompanied him in some of the later adventures, not least in Ball. 

Surprisingly for a short-lived band famously doomed by personality clashes, the documents dish out astute, hyperreal covers, improvised snippets and seductively manipulated tapes.  Their brusque, pelean inroads into American song classics were often redemptive for syrupy, generic originals.  They remain excitatory and fresh a quarter of a century later. 

Pile Up All Architecture

A taped voice is telling us that this is – surprise - “a new Shockabilly record”.  Meaty electric guitar and hysterical falsetto crop up soaked in closed-space echo.  No sooner do we establish a set of expectations about the heavy rockin’ band when a pop parody intervenes with the piano, surrendering again to a grimy guitar assault and David Licht’s accents on small xylophone. 

Born on the Bayou

Californian John Fogerty wrote some awful pseudo-southern songs in the early 1970s and Chadbourne dissected one of them here, producing a simulacrum far worthier than the “original”.  It starts innocently with moronic story-telling (“when I was just a little boy”) turned into slapstick by the infantilized howl.  The ambiguously mixed-down trio trawls on, upstaging the yowing-zowing, elvis-ing, rockn’n’rolling vocal effects.  The archaic treatment ricochets against a freaking guitar and bludgeoned drums.  Before the track eventually disintegrates, Kramer throws in some muddy, looped tapes.

Your USA and My Face

This is most probably Chadbourne’s self-made electric rake – an instrument sounding like a cross between a tenor guitar and a taut A-string in a cello.  Ever scary sounds of neighing horses (remember Steve Moore’s “The Threshold of Liberty”?) play but an auxiliary role.  The song rocks despite its acoustic context, set against musique concrète canvassing.  The tapes are but an ornament, and fail to melt the structure of the song to follow the steps of John Fahey’s “Requia” nearly 20 years before.  But despite being merely a decorative element, these industrial sirens and animal whinnying do affect our capacity to discern the instrumental tone quality of the band. 

Iran into Tulsa

Oh, how topical.  From Persepolis to Oklahoma?  Dystopian, rumbling rhythm drowns out fatuously carefree beach vocal harmonizing.  Underlain, a metamorphic voice growls over a classic (pre-speed) punk ostinato and a single-channel guitar scream.  There is always an expectation of an actual melody line.  Instead only scraps fall. 

Vietnam

John Lee Hooker’s blues – slow, head-banging, delivered with clean drum work from  Licht, abrasive guitar screech and a multifaceted organ responsible for both bass line and harmonics.  Several voices bathe in angst-swamped proto-singing, illuminating regular guitar builds-ups redolent of Randy Holden’s anachronistic stylisms. 

Flying

What used to be a passable organ vignette in Lennon-McCartney’s original, flares up here on off-pastoral acoustic guitar, guiro and woodblocks.  An appropriately wavy electric guitar washes up 5 ascending chords.  Nonsensical tapes intersperse this alleged bliss with male voices and passing single engine planes.  Finally Chadbourne enters his trademark, hyper-active improvisation mode, abusing his acoustic guitar until the end. 

Paris

Kramer’s ratatouille begins with a call from an elderly dad.  It is closely followed by a largely inarticulate psych rock jam: a clangy “I don’t care if it fits” guitar, overdrive bass assorted rumble, plus sloughing organ.  All participants seem to just get a kick out of these non-sequiturs. 

Georgia in a Jug

After an irrelevant excerpt from a gig, Chadbourne intones a standardly country and western ballad: “I am going down to Mexico in a glass of tequila and then to Puerto Rico in a bottle of rum”.  The subtext could be considered comical – Chadbourne sings of travels as wide as a Georgian bloke could possibly fancy.  Kramer’s tapes speed up, all over up to an eruption of hysterical yell and heavy, booming rock.  Soon we are back to the country-rock territory and the drunken confession.  Chadbourne’s predilection for C&W themes always seemed tongue-in-cheek, but his syncretic, half-improvised style did attract following in the US South.  This song was penned by one Bobby Braddock, who is apparently considered as a Nashville institution. 

Lucifer Sam

This begins with a call from an aphasiac fan (?) who has trouble describing Shockabilly’s songs.  The instantly recognizable, vintage Syd Barrett’s guitar riff intro leads to sliding signifiers, light years away from the original.  The trace of Swinging London recurs only in a verse-ending whistle.  David Licht’s drumming sounds wonderfully ramshackle.  Shockabilly is here more of a futuristic jug band that a young Barrett could have ever imagined.  It gets perilously close to the edge of chaos.

Signed D.C.

An old ballad from Arthur Lee’s repertoire, reconfigured by Chadbourne into a wrestling acoustic guitar, plucked within the fringes of tonality.  Hand drums and wooden tapping on guitar body reverberate.  The production of this escapist, spacious folk pastiche is superb.  Were it not for the rather predictable chord progression, the echoes of worn-out squawk and guitar strings would presage some of Keiji Haino’s acoustic experiments in the following decade. 

Nicaragua

After a well-intentioned rant against “Jonathan and his cruise missile launchpad”, ex-Fugs legend Ed Sanders spills his 'anti-American' venom with all the pet obsessions of the era: “CIA surrounds Nicaragua and Reagan says yes to the death squads of El Salvador”.  It is amazing to hear Sanders’ doggerel on a record entitled “Vietnam”, with each verse accentuated by the frayed guitar.  Sanders remains a living monument of underground manifestos.  As much as I could never share the pro-Ortega naiveté of the mid-1980s, many years later I found myself chanting with Sanders “Impeach George Bush” in New York’s Knitting Factory when the Fugs returned with gusto at the beginning of the Iraqi War.  Times they are a-changin’. 

Shockabilly’s music survives.

***

SHOCKABILLY: “Dawn of Shockabilly” EP (1982)

SHOCKABILLY: “Earth vs Shockabilly” (1982)

SHOCKABILLY: “Colosseum” (1983)

SHOCKABILLY: “Greatest Hits” EP (1983)

SHOCKABILLY: “Vietnam” (1984)

SHOCKABILLY: “Heaven” (1985)

SHOCKABILLY: “Just Beautiful.  Live” (1982, 1984-85)

The last record contains the entire debut EP plus live recordings.  “Vietnam” and “Heaven” are my favorites.

Unless there is something entombed on elusive cassettes, the earliest Shockabilly can probably be found on Eugene Chadbourne’s double LP “LSD C&W”. 

The band’s recordings also appeared on several compilations.  Unique tracks were contained on “That’s the Way I Feel Now – Tribute to Thelonious Monk” and “Passed Normal vol.1”.

American Racism is so much better than anyone else’s racism. In America in 2008, if you are a racist, you actions are pretty much limited to mean words and the occasional symbol of hate like burning crosses, lynching nooses, and the like. We have a full range of mean spirited words but even some of those have been reclaimed by the race they’ve been aimed at and are now in use in pop culture.

Racism around the world makes our racism seem like brother’s fighting over the Xbox 360 Controller. Muslims hate Jews and blow up just about anything and anybody for well any reason. Sunnis hate Kurds and nobody but a relative can tell them apart. German racism costs millions and millions of lives. Pakistanis and Indians are like a shade different and would drop a nuclear bomb in a chimney if their daughter married one of the others.

Americans are so cool with one another that when a minor little racist event happens, something that elsewhere in the world isn’t even considered racism, cable news and the blogs kramer it into a front page story. Our freedoms here in America might get trampled on a little in the spirit of political correctness, but at least when we’re in line together at Wal-Mart buying pizza roles, if the person in front of you is fumbling through their pocketbook looking for lip gloss instead of paying the cashier, it doesn’t matter what their race is, they are an asshole and not a target of your rocket launcher.

And for the record, I am anti-racism of any kind anywhere for any reason.

A meal should fill one completely. Maybe breakfast is less about filling the tank and more about providing enough fuel for the initial spark that gets the engine going for the day.

If that’s the case, then let’s take a look at some of our favorites, and why they’re our favorite snack and/or brand of snack.

Cinnamon Toast Crunch. It’s easy. Pretty much everybody likes it. It’s a fantastic family cereal. Cereal, even with added sugar and corn syrup, is hard to beat for a meal, in-between snack or, as designed, for breakfast.

Odwalla Bar! Nourishing Food Bar. Huzzah! Four words: Eight grams of protein. An energy bar that tastes good and still packs a nutrient-rich punch. We like the chocolate chip peanut bar. This bar is also worthy of applause because it’s a natural product-line extension for the people known for being natural, energizing and body-friendly because their juices were rich, tasty, funky and minimally-processed before it was cool. (Available online from Amazon and many grocery stores.)

Pie or brownies. These unbranded little daisies are great vacation breakfast food that’s easy to eat, pleasing to the palate and full of quick energy, plus carbs. There’s a reason why pie is served at rest stops on long bicycle rides. We’ve already seen “breakfast” and “energy” cookies for on-the-go professionals and sportos. Heck, Snickers has an energy candy bar. So we think some smart food marketer should come up with breakfast brownie or pie that has health and energy benefits but plenty of sweetness!

got milk? It’s still a commodity, so we’re not going to lie and say anyone has done a good job of marketing their own brand (except maybe Borden, Shatto-two brands with whom we work-and a select group with an enduring brand, family focus or locally-grown point of differentiation.) But you gotta have the cold, creamy white stuff to complement the snacks we’ve covered above. As Cosmo Kramer would say, “Delicious. Nutritious. Outrageous!”

He's one of the lesser-known names on tomorrow's star-studded Rock the Bells lineup, but D.C. rapper Wale is quickly building buzz. The 23-year-old has been making fans, including folks like Jay-Z and Diddy, since the May release of "The Mixtape About Nothing," which was inspired by "Seinfeld."

The free, 19-track download - which you can hear at elitaste.com/blog - covers a lot of ground and includes a cameo from Julia Louis-Dreyfus. There's also a race-relations song called "The Kramer," which samples Michael Richards's controversial outburst at a comedy club last year.

Recently signed to friend and producer Mark Ronson's Interscope-distributed imprint Allido Records, Wale (né Olubowale Folarin) is hard at work on his proper debut with big-name producers like Just Blaze, Pharrell, and Ronson. After a whirlwind tour of the United Kingdom, we caught up with Wale this week by phone from New York, where he was preparing for the summer's baddest hip-hop tour.

Q: Why "Seinfeld"?

A: It was what I was feeling at the time. I was watching "Seinfeld" every night before I go to sleep or in the morning when I'm trying to get myself together, and there's so much stuff in the show that you can take and make bigger. There are so many big ideas in the small pieces of dialogue.

Q: What led you to putting together "The Kramer"?

A: It was really just something that everybody thinks about. I don't really push the envelope that much as far as subject matter, but that was a time I felt it was necessary because I don't condone what he did. By having "The Mixtape About Nothing," people probably assume that I condone it or I just turn the other cheek, and that's not the case.

Q: "Nothing" has plenty going on. You rhyme about everything from partying to the troops in Iraq to George Costanza to poverty in America. How do you approach your writing?

A: It's not planned out; it's just how my mind works. I try not to strategize.

Q: What can you tell us about what your debut is going to sound like?

A: It's going to be a complete body of work. A lot of the albums I look up to, like [Jay-Z's] "American Gangster" and [Kanye West's] "Graduation," they sound like a complete body of work.

Q: Are you looking to perform with anybody at Rock the Bells or maybe just pick their brain about the game?

A: You don't want anybody to say "ah, he's thirsty." Those people are highly respected, great, phenomenal artists who are proven, so all I want to do is maybe learn as much I can indirectly rather than asking people questions and walking around with a notebook. [laughs]

Q: Do you think it helps or hurts an artist's future sales to put out free mixtapes?

A: Right now "Mixtape About Nothing" is probably at about 100,000 downloads total. That means at least 300,000 people are aware of its existence, so it creates awareness. I couldn't drop an album [and sell that many copies]. I can't come out of no daggone D.C. trying to talk about "I'm a rapper." You have to put in work, get hot, and give away free music. If they really love me, like I'm hoping, maybe we can sell a couple.

Q: Now that you have some buzz, do you feel like Interscope will give you some creative latitude if you are also able to give them a radio hit?

A: Yeah, definitely. Just Blaze says making an album is like doing a Rubik's Cube, and that's the part I'm in right now. The yellows and the greens are lined up - now we just need the blues and the reds.

Those who are equally avid followers of the operations of government bureaucracy may not be surprised to find that elements within the government (in this case within the Department's of Energy (DoE) and Defense (DoD)) have been having this same circular conversation (cast in the role of Elaine) with the Congress and the citizenry for quite some time. The subject of this conversation, however, is the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW), which has raised the question of how much you can change a warhead and still call it the "same".

While the Senate voted not to fund the program on July 10th, the RRW is an issue which is perennially down, but never dead. This week there is to be a report about the possibility of using pits (the pit is a sphere of fissile material [plutonium or highly enriched uranium (HEU)] that is compressed by high explosive "lenses" to create a critical mass) from existing warheads inside the RRWs.

The crux of the argument, putting aside issues of economics for a moment, is that Article VI of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) says that nuclear weapon states will make good-faith efforts to disarm. While the US maintains a clear policy that its nuclear arsenal will be necessary for deterrence into the foreseeable future, a number of US behaviors can be called a good-faith efforts to move toward disarmament. These behaviors include a reduction of nuclear weapon missions (e.g. getting rid of tactical nuclear artillery, surface naval nuclear weapons, nuclear mines, etc.), a moratorium on fissile material production, a monotonic decrease in the number of fielded weapons over recent years, and, critically important for our purposes, a moratorium on the production of new weapon designs. With tensions running high among non-nuclear weapon states (NNWS) who feel that the regime is discriminatory and that the nuclear weapon states (NWS) are not doing their part either with respect to not hindering but rather assisting NNWSs, who are members of the NPT in good stead, to acquire peaceful nuclear technology or to disarm. After a completely unproductive 2005 NPT Review Conference, it is not a stretch to imagine an equally divisive 2010 Review Conference could lead to an exodus of NNWS parties from the NPT. Because of this potential for instability, virtually everyone realizes (including I suspect the RRW proponents at the DoE and DoD) that this is not a good time to backslide on the Article VI commitment. It should be noted that the British government has been fighting its own battles over ambiguous statements that initially led people to believe that there might be a modernization of their nuclear weapons (apparently they plan to update the weapon platforms [i.e. submarines], but not the actual warheads).

All of this has put proponents of the RRW in the position of making the tragicomic argument that the RRW is really the same warhead- only different. It is said to be the same in that it offers no new capabilities and is "largely" (what this means is unclear) built around the existing designs. In other words, the deviations from existing designs are just what are intended to make the weapon more reliable and robust. The increased reliability has a number of benefits, including potential benefits in the realm of nonproliferation. By having a more reliable warhead, one could argue that one will be able to further reduce numbers of deployed warheads because a small safety buffer would be required.

If the report shows that existing pits could be used, it could have several benefits for RRW supporters. The first is, obviously, an economic benefit. However, it might also give confidence that there would be a one - for -one exchange of RRWs. That is, if they are using common pits, and one warhead is built, then the old warhead that that that pit came out of is effectively decommissioned (this would certainly require verifiable destruction to count as a reduction for the purposes of other states.) It also might suggest that there really is very little design change. That is, if one can merely drop in such a major component as the plutonium or HEU core, then maybe there really isn't a major design change. If the existing pits cannot be used, perhaps the RRW will have passed through the ninth of its lives. Ultimately it will prove exceptionally difficult to prove that anything is the same... only different.

Op 14 juni j.l. is de cd "Cinco aňos de Amistad" gepresenteerd in theater de Omval. Op de cd staan nummers van de theateruitvoering Salud al Verano van afgelopen vijf jaar. Er doen 20 artiesten aan mee. De lengte van de cd bedraagt bijna 80 minuten en bevat 14 nummers. Het boekjes is full colour en bevat 20 pagina's met foto's en alle lyrics.

Inmiddels is de eerste persing uitverkocht en wordt de tweede oplage gedrukt. Voor meer informatie en bestellen kun je kijken op de site van Karindans.

Artiesten:
André Schoorlemmer, Bart Edel, Danny Dominguez, Dymphi Peeters, Edsart Udo de Haes, Frans Nottrot, Froukje Thijs, Harmanna Vandermaelen, Helena Pérez, Juan Penãs, Karin Dieters, Manoli Rubio, Mariska Roelofs, Michael Benedik, Onno Kramer, Ron van Holland, Rosa Cornejo, Suzanne Grünewald, Vasco Asturiano en Yarah Peeters

By all means marry. If you get a good wife you will become happy, and if you get a bad one you will become a philosopher.

- Socrates (BC 469-399), Greek Philosopher

Let the wife make the husband glad, and let him make her sorry to see him leave.

- Martin Luther (1483-1546), German Scholar

The best friend is likely to acquire the best wife, because a good marriage is based on talent of friendship.

-Friedrich Nietzche (1844-1900), German-Swiss Philosopher

A bride at her second marriage does not wear a veil. She wants to see what she is getting.

- Helen Rowland (1875-1950), American Journalist

Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, and half-shut afterwards.

- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), American Diplomat

Click to enlarge if you can't read it.

It is a real triumph for everyone at Aqualisa who has supported our ‘digital revolution’ over the last 10 years.

In another place we read:

What’s not to love about Axis Digital? Cool good looks and clever technology.

And the UK’s Intellectual Property Office reports:

In the meantime, the innovation team at Aqualisa is working on the next generation of electronic controls for showers, which will be able to give you a read-out of your carbon footprint, as well as playing music as an MP3.

That’s right; the next generation of showers. “Clever technology”, “digital revolution”, “innovation”, and “MP3” are not terms normally associated with showers. As a result of their different approach, Aqualisa has excelled in a typically commoditized field because of their ability to look beyond what the market is offering to what they’ll be able to create for their consumer-base. They are a design-led firm and that love of design, both in aesthetics and in functionality, has translated into beautiful and useful products for the bathroom

Though this seems like what most “innovative” companies try to do, it is what Aqualisa doesn’t do that is most impressive. Though we can see what the future holds for with the “next generation” product mentioned above, Aqualisa took a purposely iterative innovation approach toward preparing the market to be able to accept and embrace each successive technology. And, with this approach, they are able to make each step toward their eventual vision at the same time they are implementing and adapting to the needs of their customer-base. With this approach, Aqualisa can expect to continue to stay ahead of the competition without staying too far ahead of their customers’ needs.

(I couldn’t help but think of Kramer’s shower experience when I was thinking through Aqualisa’s approach).

*Gordon Brown categorized the “Queen’s Award winning companies” as the “standard-bearers for the very best of British business.” This and Rawlinson quote from: Press Release, accessed 16 July 2008

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Crimi è un cognome di non larga diffusione, presente soprattutto nell'Italia meridionale e in specie in Sicilia. Crimi, secondo l'etimo, è collegato al luogo d'origine e cioè la Crimea. In effetti, come segnala il professor Dan Shapiro del SOTA, Research Center for Turkistan and Azerbaijan, questo nome - di cui si registrano le varianti Krimi, Krym, Karaimi - significa semplicemente "persona che proviene dalla Crimea".

Varianti [modifica]

Italiano: Crimì

Francese: Crémieux

Inglese/Americano: Crimi

Tedesco: Kramer

Turco: Krimi, Krym, Karaimi

Ebraico: Qaraimi

Geografia e contesto storico di origine [modifica]

Il nome medesimo della Crimea deriva da un gruppo etnico tra i tatari, che ebbero largo influsso nell' VIII secolo, adottando la religione ebraica secondo l'adattamento a questa operato da Anan ben David, il principale esponente del Qaraismo. Questa dottrina accetta le regole base dei libri di Mosé (Decalogo e norme del Pentateuco), accoglie gli elementi di innovazione e di riforma introdotti dai profeti Gesù Cristo e Mohammed, respinge l'irrigidimento dogmatico dell'ebraismo talmudico e trova una linea di originalità nell'esortazione a ciascuno di studiare da sé le Sacre Scritture, cercando in esse la propria via per la Verità (anticipando le conquiste dell'Umanesimo e del Rinascimento).

Etimologia [modifica]

Il nome Crimi è un adattamento del termine Qaraimi, che deriva dalla radice Qara, la stessa da cui deriva la parola araba Corano (Qur-An), il cui significato è lettura (ripetizione, recitazione). Con lo stesso significato il termine ebraico Qaraim manifesta la sua radice nel termine קראים, lettori, recitatori, che valse a identificare questo gruppo etnico e culturale proprio per il loro attribuire valore esclusivamente alla lettura della Torah (id est: i libri di Mosè, raccolta chiamata in greco Pentateuco) e non anche al commentario rabbinico del Talmud.

La presenza in Italia [modifica]

La presenza in Italia di questo nome è da ascrivere al periodo della "reconquista" della Sicilia agli arabi, a partire dalla spedizione di Giorgio Maniace che, in funzione della volontà di Costantinopoli, aveva con sé un esercito composito, tra cui molti provenienti dalle zone Tatare e del Turkmenistan, tra cui, appunto, la Crimea. Ancora oggi esiste un luogo della Sicilia che ha nome Maniace, in ricordo della battaglia che ivi si combatté contro i musulmani intorno al 1040. E' da supporre che molti tra questi Qaraim rimasero in Sicilia, prendendo parte alla disputa che avrebbe poi coinvolto, oltre che Musulmani e Bizantini, anche i Normanni. Non a caso le principali comunità di origine dei Qaraim in Sicilia sono Centuripe e Randazzo, luoghi legati alle battaglie per la "reconquista".

Persone [modifica]

Da Randazzo proveniva in effetti il medico Iosué Bennacrimi, che fu l'ultimo Dayan Qelali (e ciè capo delle Alyama, le comunità ebraiche in Sicilia) intorno al 1490, alla vigilia del decreto di espulsione di Ferdinando il Cattolico e Isabella di Castiglia (e del loro famigerato consigliere Tommaso di Torquemada). Le fonti (si confronti Gli ebrei in Sicilia dal Tardoantico al Medioevo con il V Volume di Italia Judaica) dubitano se il nome debba essere interpretato come dipendente dalla radice Qaraim o meno (l'ipotesi favorevole scompone Bennacrimi in Ben Qaraimi, con Ben che assume il valore che ha in tedesco Von o lo scozzese Mac, o il nostro italiano Di; l'ipotesi avversa esclude la possibilità sostenendo che il nome deriva da Nachrim).

Figlio di un maestro di violino, don Gaetano Crimi ebbe 27 figli da tre mogli diverse. Fu lui ad introdurre la cosiddetta Opera dei Pupi nella Sicilia centro-orientale, soprattutto nel catanese (a Palermo la famiglia egemone era quella dei Greco). L'Opera consisteva nella rappresentazione mediante marionette accuratissime, delle storie che ruotano intorno alle gesta narrate nella epica Chanson de Roland, classico motivo della poesia cortese e associato - specie nelle rappresentazioni siciliane - al motivo della "reconquista".

Il nome di Giulio Crimi è legato alla musica lirica. Dopo il suo debutto, avvenuto il 30 novembre 1911 al "Bellini" di Catania in Cavalleria rusticana, Giulio acquistò fama internazionale con l'esibizione a Londra (Covent Garden, 1914) e al Teatro Metropolitan di New York (Radamés in Aida nel 1918). Negli States tra il 1918 e il 1924 registrò almeno 45 incisioni per Vocalion, finora solo parzialmente ripubblicate in microsolco per l'etichetta inglese RUBINI e l'italiana TIMA Club. Ha cantato nei teatri di Chicago, Buenos Aires, Milano e Roma. La sua ultima presenza scenica è avvenuta alla fine del 1927 con Francesca da Rimini al "Carlo Felice" di Genova.

Isaac Moïse Crémieux, più conosciuto come Adolfo (Adolphe) Crémieux (1796-1880), fu giurista e uomo di stato francese, di idee liberali rispetto alla libertà di parola e di stampa, per l'abolizione della pena di morte e per i diritti politici. Ebreo di nascita, dal 1834 e fino alla sua morte fu vice-presidente del "Consistoire Central des Israélites de France", l'agenzia amministrativa per tutti gli ebrei francesi. Più volte membro del governo nazionale, si impegnò per le libertà e i diritti civili dell'Algeria, al tempo sotto dominazione francese. Fu altresì fondatore della Universal Israelite Alliance in Paris (1860).

Samuel Noah Kramer (1897-1990). Nato in Ucraina, nel 1905 in seguito ai pogrom antisemiti voluti dallo Zar Nicola II di Russia, la sua famiglia emigra a Philadelphia (USA), dove suo padre fonda una scuola ebraica. Formatosi intellettualmente presso il Dipartimento di Studi Orientali dell'Università della Pennsylvania, ha lavorato a fianco di Ephraim Avigdor Speiser alla decifrazione di tavole cuneiformi assire. Tra le sue opere: The Sumerians: Their History, Culture and Character, (University of Chicago Press (1971) ISBN 0-226-45238-7); Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth, (con Diane Wolkstein - New York Harper & Row 1983 ISBN 0-06-090854-8); In the World of Sumer, An Autobiography (Wayne State University Press, ISBN 0-8143-1785-5)

Paul David Crimi vive ed opera nel Massachusett (USA). Pittore, incisore e scultore, si è formato presso il Boston Museum of Fine Arts, maturando nel tempo uno stile improntato al realismo magico che lo pone al limite del postmoderno, da cui si sottrae per la sua autonoma ricerca che lo ha portato a ripercorrere l'espressionismo e, soprattutto, l'astrattismo, trovando una propria via alla dimensione spirituale nell'arte. Molti dei suoi lavori sono stati utilizzati per illustrare riviste teologiche e d'ispirazione filosofica.

Antroponimi [modifica]

Progetto Antroponimi Wikipedia

(MAN)

(MAN)

Altro su Crimi [modifica]

sui Karaim

su Anan ben David e la dottrina karaita

sito ufficiale di SOTA

Opera dei Pupi

Isaac Crémieux

Samuel Noah Kramer Institute of Assyriology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies

Giulio Crimi, tenore (1885-1939)

Paul David Crimi, pittore

I may not lose often, but when I do, I lose graciously. Especially when the third man in the group can't even finish the race. We still love you Kramer.

Could not help but think of Kramer's quote, once I stepped into the gym's sauna. Would've been quite fun to actually say it out loud.

Thank you Kramer for coming over to play!

K. Austin Photography

www.kaustinphotography.com