Forty is a magical age. Dr. Spock doesnt list any milestones for this age but I can tell you its surprisingly enjoyable and free-ing to crest that hill and begin your leisurely roll down the other side. By far the best part of turning forty, is the perspective it gives you. But you cant rush it! Youve got to wait for it. You have to live all forty years before perspective is in your purview.

What do I mean by perspective? Well, maybe patterns is a better word. It takes the blessing of living and observing for forty years to recognize the patterns in the world, in people, in our spouses and in ourselves. Recognizing these patterns makes living much calmer.

When one is young, each new pattern may feel traumatic. Like it will last forever. The political party you dont support wins an election and it feels like theyll be in power for-frickin-ever. Your child enters a new, annoying phase of growing up and it feels like their snarky Whatevs phase will last forever. You get in a mood and it feels like itll last forever.

Turning forty helps you realize that life is cyclical and nothing lasts forever.

Around 250 BC, King Solomon penned these words in Ecclesiastes 1: 9 (KJV):

The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be;and that which is done is that which shall be done:and there is no new thing under the sun.

In the laste 1950s Pete Seeger made the concept more approachable when he penned the song Turn! Turn! Turn! made famous by the Byrds.

A time to be born, a time to dieA time to plant, a time to reapA time to kill, a time to healA time to laugh, a time to weep

It took turning forty to make me realize just how true this was, is and ever will be. Every season of darkness is pushed out by enlightenment. The Roman hedonism and debauchery was eventually replaced by Puritanism. What was seen as shocking in the 1960s is seen as quaint, almost prudish, sixty years later. Democrat follows Republican follows Democrat. Sworn enemies become allies. Enrons come and go. Nothing ever stays the same.

Life is like the weather. Here in Minnesota we say that if you dont like the weather, just wait five minutes. Itll change. Life is like that. Theres no reason to take each new fad or season or politician all that seriously. Just wait five minutes. Itll change.

One of the most interesting things about turning forty, is being able to recognize patterns in people, including yourself. Instead of being reactive and a slave to those patterns, one can say with a chuckle, Youre doing it again. Im doing it again. Calm the heck down!

My pattern, or rather weakness, is freaking out about things. When trauma is your normal and youve sloshed through life in a sea of cortisol and PTSD, freaking out comes naturally. I have a quarter century of practice at quietly freaking out. Im an expert!

Almost a decade of attacks and threats from family members, Michaels medical emergencies, unforeseen medical bills and domestic disasters have only heightened my trauma response. Even trivial things going wrong makes me feel like my world is crumbling round my ears. I overreact. I go into hyper-defense mode. I hit that problem head on like an M1A1 tank. Thats my pattern. I dont like it but identifying it was half the battle in fixing it.

Fixing it usually means holding very still and waiting for the storm to blow over. It always does.

Michael has his own pattern. In his world, the unthinkable always happens. Everyone hes ever loved has died or been snatched from his arms. The worst things that can happen in life have happened to him and thus he feels the worst things are not only possible, but probable.

He expects the worst to protect himself from ever being blindsided again. He might be admitted to hospital for something trivial, but hell loudly say he expects to be split from stem-to-stern for exploratory surgery. Thats silly, of course, but expecting the worst makes every other treatment easy for him to bear. Thats his pattern.

His pattern used to freak me out, but once I identified it, and stopped taking it so damn seriously, I could stay calm about it.

Being held against my will for so long, to me life became a Destination. I was in a holding pattern, hoping that Someday life would start for me. Life was a Goal much desired, never granted.

Then one day, all my dreams came true. But no one told my brain. I was stuck in Destination-Someday-Goal mode.

Turning forty is helping me to realize that Life is not a Destination. You never arrive. You are never done. It is a Journey. Being focused exclusively on a Destination robs you of the joy and pleasure of the Journey. And, spoiler alert, our final destination is Death. So youd better enjoy the journey, Honey Child! Dont save up all your living for Heaven. I know the world is a dangerous place but dare to do your living here too!

Everything you do today will have to be redone tomorrow, next week or next year. When you vacuum the carpet for the 1,497,268th time, that begins to sink in. Everything you wash today, will have to be washed again (including yourself!). The paperwork you fill out and file today will probably have to be done again. The house repairs you complete today are already under assault by the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, not to mention Murphys Law!

Actually, thats a gift. In Season 2 of Torchwood, Dr. Owen Harper dies and is brought back to life by the Resurrection Gauntlet. He can move and talk but technically hes still dead. No breath, no pulse, no blood, no eating, no drinking, no healing. Hes shown sadly throwing out all his toiletries, putting the contents of his refrigerator in the trash and bemoaning not being able to shag anymore.

That puts the monotony of re-doing everything weve already done into perspective. The need to re-do everything over and over means were alive and life is the greatest gift of all. Even the most boring, sedate life is full of small pleasures that, if you take the time to notice and savor them, are quite hedonistic! As Robert Louis Stevenson wrote, The world is so full of a number of things, Im sure we should all be as happy as kings.

If you or someone you love is dreading the Big Four-Oh, take heart! Life is actually better on the other side. Its calmer. You can wink at the ridiculousness of it all once you have the perspective of being forty and identifying all those cyclical (I was going to say silly) patterns.

Read more from the original source:

Turning 40 Gives the Gift of Perspective - PsychCentral.com

Reading Time: 12 minutesDrew Pavlou outside the Supreme Court of Queensland after contesting his expulsion by the University of Queensland PHOTO: AAP IMAGE DAN PELED

University of Queensland student activist and media sensation Drew Pavlou, who has been suspended by his institution until next year for what he claims to be retaliatory action against protesting against Chinese Communist Party who UQ are accused of having strong business ties and their violations of human rights.Drew opens up to The Catholic Weeklys David Ryan in an exclusive interview about what inspires his passion for human rights advocacy inspirations which find their origins in Catholic social teaching.

You were schooled at Villanova College, an Augustinian Catholic Boys College in Brisbane. Did that experience influence you in any meaningful way?

My Catholic schooling at Villanova focused heavily on human rights issues. Villanova has a really strong social justice tradition we were always encouraged to raise funds for Caritas and school expeditions to the Philippines to aid communities there. This strong social justice tradition influenced me greatly. I think throughout my life its not something I have been able to talk to the media much about because obviously in Australia there is an overwhelming emphasis on secular issues but I truly think my policies have been influenced by the Christian worldview. I was raised in the Orthodox Christian Tradition baptised Greek Orthodox and attended Catholic Schools all my life.

The Catholic focus on social justice has always been there. Studying religion in senior year, we focused on theology in Latin America, especially with regard to Oscar Romero.Honestly, I see Oscar Romero as a great political hero of mine. He was a warrior for justice and I do look to his example and others in the Church. Catholic Social teaching has influenced my politics. Certainly, there are issues where I diverge from the Church but I think the fundamental emphasis on human dignity thats something thats always stayed with me and shaped my entire political outlook.

2 So the Christian tradition is central to the notion of human dignity and social justice in modern society. Can you explain this in more detail?

I think one thing people really miss especially militant secular-atheists, often on the left is how much great social justice work there is in the Church and that the message of Christianity is to focus on the fragile and vulnerable. These are great progressive goals and its definitely influenced my social justice principles. Humanism comes from Christianity. Thats what many on the left forget: our humanist values derive from the Christian tradition. There have been times I have lapsed into agnosticism but in the last couple of months I have been getting much more in touch with my Orthodox Christian background. Ive sort-of been outside Christianity for a while, but I definitely feel thats changed in recent months.

For me the way it came is the notion of universal human rights which I believe in strongly. The question is how do you justify that belief? and I think you cannot just justify that belief from a piece of paper but rather what confers the notion of the dignity of the human person. I was reflecting on this in a philosophical sense and my Catholic friends would say Where do human rights come from if not from God? and I thought to myself We come to human rights through a rational position. But they would respond along the lines of So why cant we also come to a rational position on the social Darwinist Nietzschean notion that the strong dominate the weak?

our humanist values derive from the Christian tradition

At the time, I didnt have a response. But if we discard the Christian tradition then what stops us from becoming a society where the strong dominate the weak? Thats my great fear. And this is partly what we have at the moment. As we lose Christian traditions as a society we have moved towards a neoliberal dog-eat dog hyper-materialism.The strong dominate the weak and the weak suffer what a nightmare. If you lose the Christian humanist tradition whats to stop us from going down that path?

I think, honestly, if God took on human form and he died for the afflicted of the world thats the beautiful idea of Christianity. There is no more humane religion than the notion that someone as almighty as an Eternal God would die on the Cross for the beggars and sinners. Christianity is a religion that teaches us to show concern at a very fundamental level for the vulnerable because Christ died for the vulnerable. Thats what made me recover an understanding of Christianity. So I do understand the traditionalist Christian position because I, too, am opposed to the excess hedonism that comes with modern consumerism. I truly believe we find ourselves through family, community and social life.Our fundamental concern should be the social nature of life which is best seen through family and community.

3 For many student activists, Christianity is often associated with negative connotations (The Handmaids Tale, for example). How do you explain this and reconcile that view with your position as a student activist?

There is always this caricature. But a Christian society doesnt have to be a Handmaids Tale situation so often caricatured. I honestly think the sort of fear you could have a Christian Handmaids Tale dystopia in the West comes from Christianity especially in America and in a lot of places being already distorted to serve a dominant neo-liberal order, the Prosperity Gospel and things of that nature. In places like Latin America, where, there are often dictatorial regimes using Christianity to oppress. A regime like Pinochets in Chile comes to mind as an example: how could Pinochet be Christian when he was murdering unionists, leftists and ordinary civilians?

Thats why people often have the really fearful and hostile idea that a Christian society would be a nightmarish handmaidens tale, but I dont think thats [justified]. I genuinely believe its a distortion of Christianity. God took on human form and died like a beggar in the life of Christ. So I try to say this to other people often on the left who make the accusation that a Christian society means a Handmaids Tale.

No. I want a Christian society in the sense of a society where the poor, fragile and vulnerable are at the forefront of our concerns at all times. The idea that a Christian society lends itself to a totalitarian dystopia comes from distorted versions of Christianity. These so called Christian movements are often there to just serve the interests of the powerful, which is not at all what Christ had in mind. Christ turning out the money lenders in the temple that was the revolutionary nature of Christ. He wasnt in league with the powerful and their interests. No he put the human first and thats what Christian tradition is for me.

4 You advocate for a movement called Radical Democracy. It seems to advocate for small-scale subsidiarity and local representation. Whats it all about?

I guess the idea of radical democracy is that you are invested in the extension of democratic freedoms in all domains. Cornel West is a guy who is a great thinker of radical democracy and an inspiration of mine. One thing a lot of radical democrats like Cornel West say is that, yeah weve got democracy in government and politics but we dont often have democracy in the economic realm. Many people unfortunately go to work where bosses act as dictators. Work is for shareholders and workers suffer in unfair working environments. This affects families and children. So we still dont really have economic democracy and thats where leftist democratic economics come into play. You want to expand democracy so the workers have democratic control of their workplaces and their own economic activities.

5 Are you aware of the Churchs principles of economic justice such as the ideas expressed in the papal encyclical Rerum Novarum which talks about subsidiarity and workers representation?

Im very sympathetic to the distributionist economic model. Yes, I will say I am of the left, but I really reject popular Marxist strands of leftism because they often lend themselves to authoritarianism and materialism. So I end up at a sort-of distributionist perspective.I genuinely think that possibly may be the best way. The Marxist strands on the left are often hyper-materialist and so in that way also lend to human alienation. Sure, capitalist materialism lends itself to human alienation as is evident, but the materialism in the Marxist-Leninist system in China at the moment or under the old Soviet Union- fall into an authoritarian leftist model that also leads to human alienation.This is why I am a leftist critic of the Chinese Communist Party.

6 Your advocacy highlighting human rights abuses (of the Uyghurs, those occurring in Tibet and Hong Kong) perpetrated by the Chinese Communist Party touches on larger geopolitical tensions. Some of this has fuelled anti-Chinese sentiment at home. Is this fair for Chinese people? Is there a distinction between the CCP and the Chinese people?

I always try and emphasise in my activism that I am opposed to the CCP and not the Chinese people. I have a great respect for the Chinese people. They are my brothers and sisters. I come to my activism from the Christian belief that all human beings are equal in dignity and have the same value and worth. So I really empathise with those Chinese students caught in that difficult position, because unfortunately it can often veer into anti-Chinese racism in popular sentiment. I really deplore anti-Chinese racism.Yes, its a problem in Australia and we have to combat it. So I feel for those Chinese students who are the victims of that. Its horrible. We are fighting for their human dignity. They are our allies and should not be alienated. We dont want them to be targeted in ways like that, be it from the CCP or Australian xenophobes at home.

7 Do you hold other governments here and abroad to a similar standard of scrutiny of human rights records?

Of course. Thats one thing I really want to emphasise. Yes I am a critic of the CCP but that does not mean I am just a China-basher. I am also opposed to the Australian Governments human rights abuses. I am on the record opposing the Australian Governments terrible treatment towards refugees. So I am fundamentally opposed to all human rights abuses wherever they occur. If the Australian Government is perpetrating terrible human rights abuses especially toward refugees then I will be in the fight against that as well. But when the CCP says If youre opposed to China youre pro-America thats not at all true for me. I will be critical of the American Government and the atrocious way African Americans are treated in that country. For me, its fundamentally about fighting for human rights wherever they are violated. Its not about bashing China for the sake of China. Its about fighting for human dignity be it in Western countries, China or the developing world. Human dignity is at the centre of society. Pope Francis through his humanism teaches a very strong concern for human dignity and the environment which we must leave to future generations which I admire greatly,

8 You have received multiple and explicit death and other malicious threats from pro CCP activists. Does the life of people like Oscar Romero give you sustenance through such harrowing experiences?

Yes, I look to people like Oscar Romero and those who fought against very powerful forces. Romero died fighting for the poor and vulnerable so that is something that I try and remember when the going gets tough.

The Christian tradition teaches that we find God through loving one another

I know Im fighting for justice and theres strength in that, so Im willing to bear personal sacrifices. The Christian tradition teaches that we find God through loving one another. Theres basically no higher calling than loving your neighbour and loving other people so I think theres no higher calling for me than trying to fight for other people. Thats why Id be willing to face risk to myself because I truly believe there is a higher purpose.

9 What advice would you offer the young?

Please always put the vulnerable, the voiceless, the poor and the fragile, at the foremost in your concerns. Thats what I would really encourage people to do. Do everything you can to try your very best to speak out in their favour and demonstrate love and compassion.I implore people to recognise that and lend their voice to just causes for the voiceless who cannot do so. We want a world where human life is treated with dignity.

We want a world where human life is treated with dignity

Unfortunately we are losing the ability to debate things in society with things like cancel culture. You know, if someone takes the Catholic Churchs position on certain social issues they can be really ostracised. Sure, while I personally disagree with some of the Churchs positions I understand that its a matter of faith for those who do and thats an important thing we need to recognise and uphold.

Drew Pavlou hopes to enter federal politics in the future, with an emphasis on human rights.

Related Stories:

View original post here:

Rebel with a Cause: The Saint and the values that inspire Drew Pavlou - The Catholic Weekly

We will probably look back on 2016 to 2017 as the years in which the cultic quarantine of the Grateful Dead finally ended for good, and for the good. The bands legacy shed its love-hate binary and joined the grand buffet as just another long-running classic rock band that you are free to like a little or a lot, if you please, without giving your goddamned soul to it, or to loathing it.

The Deads reputation and cultural associations were so polarizing for so long,that it had kept many ordinary people from even liking songs like Brokedown Palace. Who in their right mind wouldnt like Brokedown Palace? Thats how bad it had gotten.

For decades, the Deads bottomless catalogue of good songs in multiple streams Bakersfield, electric ragtime, world fusion, psych-punk and, that rarest bird, a truly American take on prog-rock had been a no-fly zone for all but the most thick-skinned of hipsters. Those selfsame hipsters could revere Dylan, Neil or the Band without smudge, but for reasons not entirely musical, the Dead were denied their obvious place in that hip tradition and were instead stamped as the apotheosis of stoned hippie indulgence and fatuous West-Coast cultism.

Were the Dead a monomaniacal cult of zealots feverishly cataloguing live shows and taking over cities with a druggy and privileged trustafarian hedonism, dancing in certain very specific ways to music that, for all of its purported out-on-a-limb extemporaneity, could sound pretty lethargic from a distance, especially in those fatigued years the Eighties when their live popularity peaked? Imagine, as Jerry Garcia had to, waking up with very serious health issues at 45 to find that you were functionally Elvis. Scorceses recent six-part documentary does a fine job of documenting this tragic dimension of Jerrys story.

Certain sanguine hipsters (Elvis Costello comes to mind) were always unashamed and vocal in their affection for the Dead, but they were so rare in that sphere that I can hardly name another.

So what precipitated the change? Scorseses attention signaled that the culture at large was ready to drop its contempt for the Deads cultic singularity and to regard them as what they were: a great band in their way, a far-out narrative in a straight line of descent from the Beats, and a treasure chest of cool songs that share in the roots modernism of Dylan and Robbie Robertson.

For me, a more telling and much-less-publicized sea change arrived the year before: 2016sDay of the Dead, a massive 59-track tribute record released as the 25th compilation benefiting the Red Hot Organization, an international charity dedicated to raising funds and awareness for HIV and AIDS.

The Dead have hundreds of songs that can be easily extracted from their distinctive way of playing them. Theirs is an oeuvre ideal for looting and style play. What was shocking and what would have been all-but-impossible in the decades before was who was paying the tribute.

Day of the Deadwas forged (locally, in fact) under the artistic direction of Brooklyn producer (and former New Paltz resident) Josh Kaufman and brothers Aaron and Bryce Dessner from the Brooklyn-by-way-of-Ohio band the National, one of the few arena-grade bands that the Indie Decade produced. The tracks came, by and large, from their people: the hip people of the borough and its satellite scenes, from the War on Drugs and from Kurt Vile, from Jenny Lewis, Cass McCombs, the Walkmen, Real Estate. The record featured no fewer than three scintillating contributions from the who-knew Deadhead Will Oldham, also known as Bonnie Prince Billy. His daring choice of the Garcia solo epic Ruben and Cherise is one of the records highest highs.

It is certainly cool that so many of the hip artists of the Aughts were enthused by the project and undeterred by jam contamination (which is real), but therein also lies the friction. The Dead already had a vital, commercially humming downstream legacy. It is all the bands you hate, from Phish to String Cheese Incident, who did huge numbers at the gate and operated squarely in the Deads tradition of unscripted improvisation and fancentric bootleg values. These Balkanized jam states inherited the Dead scene seamlessly after Jerry died, and the party only got bigger in the Nineties.

And in the post-Jerry years, Bob and Phils touring projects raided that scene for replacement players, such as keyboardist Rob Barraco from the Dead tribute band Dark Star Orchestra and bassist Oteil Burbage and guitarist Jimmy Herring from jam-scene stalwarts Aquarium Rescue Unit.

Day of the Deadwas not completely free of association with the jam scene. Weir himself, of course, appears on the record, performing a savage and spot-on live rendition of the psych-rock masterpiece St. Stephen with Wilco, Tweedy as delightfully unsteady of voice as vintage Jerry and clearly loving it. Eighties era Dead celebrity keyboardist Bruce Hornsby delivers a stunning Modernist take on the late Garcia/Hunter heartbreaker Black Muddy River, and there are a few other artists represented with jam-world cred: My Morning Jackets Jim James, for example, and drummer Joe Russo.

The record and the current Dead reappraisal now under way expose an interesting and difficult dimension of the rescue and repair of reputations. It is a story in which the Grateful Dead are essentially airlifted like the Chili Peppers off the tarmac at Woodstock 99 out of the sprawling mess they made with their own hands.

Do the Dead even make sense plucked from the culture they birthed? Who owns what? Can we agree to share the Grateful Dead? Can this reappreciation and revisionism broaden everyones purview and perhaps temper the cruel belittlement and critical vitriol reserved, seemingly, for jam rock alone?

Probably not.

Read more installments of Village Voices by John Burdick.

See the original post:

Long live the Dead - Hudson Valley One

Jim Carrey (right) and co-author Dana Vachon Photo: Linda Fields Hill

The scenario sounds bleakly familiar. Holed up in his home, depressed and binge-watching Netflix while the apocalypse slowly gathers steam outside his door, Jim Carrey is spiraling.

At least, thats how we find Carrey at the start of the actors memoir-novel of sorts, Memoirs and Misinformation.

Its a likely story in the midst of the pandemic, but the difference is that the end-times in the book eventually come in the form of an alien invasion so, not exactly the same. And yet, much of the novel, which was co-written with novelist Dana Vachon, similarly appears as an absurdist fever dream whose satire of many things the end of the world, the evils of capitalism, the cult of celebrity suddenly doesnt feel like much of a satire anymore in these uncertain times.

Were being surprised by it on a daily basis, how prophetic it was, Carrey, 58, told The Chronicle in a recent video call, sitting next to Vachon as they quarantine together in an undisclosed location during their virtual press tour.

Most of the novel, which quickly became a New York Times bestseller after its release this month, is unequivocally fictional, but its underlying ideas speak to Carreys beliefs and, seemingly more with each passing day, to the upheavals of this year.

In the novel, Carrey is a self-spoofing caricature of himself, wrestling with the trials of fame and relevance: Should he do the the bombastic, Oscar-baiting Mao Zedong biopic (with Carrey as Mao) or the AI-scripted animated Disney film created to sell Hasbro toys? As he embarks on a quintessentially Hollywood journey that includes aliens and Rodney Dangerfield as a CGI hippo, all around him is hedonism, blind egomania and a certain insidious brand of American corporate gluttony.

Were all his victims victims of greed, Carrey says. Its this disease. Its the real pandemic thats going on greed is exacerbating everything else. Its making every issue we have in this country worse. The issues are there; theyre not about Trump.

Thoughtful and forthcoming, Carrey is much calmer than what one might reflexively associate with the actor whose megastar fame was built on hyperactive films such as Ace Ventura and The Mask. He is, in the earnest self-awareness he expresses at this point in his life, more akin to The Truman Show, the 1998 Peter Weir film he starred in that, in its premise of a man realizing his life is a program being filmed for others to consume, seemed to speak precisely to Carreys dizzying global fame at the time.

A long time ago I started seeing myself as a construct, Carrey says. Its not necessarily a negative thing. Its a natural thing for a human being to want to build walls around themselves that make them secure. You build a scaffolding of ideas around your fear and your desires for survival. Your survival mechanism does that. But at a certain point I saw it for what it was.

To consider Carrey simply through the lens of his filmic personae and stardom, then, is perhaps the very problem, and also the crux of Carreys struggle in the novel. Most of Memoirs and Misinformation plays with our cultures myopic and feverish view of celebrity, as an absurdist stream of movie stars constantly shuffles in and out of frame Tommy Lee Jones is a whiskey-soaked, Harvard s and Gwyneth Paltrow as much a computer hacker as she is Goop mogul.

The real-life Carrey is quick to acknowledge the good fortune and privileges of his success, but beyond the novels Hollywood bacchanal is a self-consuming tug-of-war with ego that applies to everyone, especially as capitalism has gradually dictated that our online presence be turned into personal brands and personas.

Jim is just in this incredibly unique position where he is on the mountaintop and can make some amazing observations about the cult of the self for everyone, Vachon says.

One of those observations is that the fixed self the brand or idea of Jim Carrey never really exists. It becomes sarcophagal. Im the guy that says alrighty then! and thats it, Carrey says. I dont have one cell in my body that is the same as when I did Ace Ventura.

When did Carrey realize that who he was existed outside of the construct? Almost yearly, he says.

After he played Andy Kaufman in Man on the Moon, obsessively absorbing himself into the role, he was left asking himself, Who was I again?

If I can enjoy losing myself in another persons character, then what am I? he says. Am I just that, too? Just another character being played?

In a sense, the book is the fullest portrait of Jim in showing this amazing thing he does, this Houdini act of escaping the last persona and rebirth, Vachon says. Hes an artist whos just uniquely adept at that.

The constant growth, the shedding of the fixed self, is what led to the novel. In recent years, Carrey has been, in his words, stepping through the Truman door to explore other forms of his artistry. He has painted prolifically, known perhaps most for his anti-Trump artwork, and spent some eight years writing the book with Vachon, in person and through Skype sessions.

Along the way, he seems to have deliberately entered a more tranquil place as a movie star. Spoofing the inner workings of the industry, the novel can be an act of talking back at the apparatus of contemporary Hollywood as it moves stars like money-making chess pieces to construct billion-dollar franchises.

You have to play to the audience sometimes, Carrey says. Theres pressure from the people who are guiding your career: Hey, we need some energy. We need to get you back out there. We need to do something thats popular. You always have to weigh those things out. I generally dont pick those things unless theres some good artistic reason for me to do them.

That includes his recent turn as the mustachioed villain in the recent blockbuster Sonic the Hedgehog, which was partially shot in San Francisco.

Sonic is a very prescient character to me, he says. Its not just funny it is funny, and its crazy and wonderful to be that insane but its also everything we fear right now, everything were dealing with. Are we going to be replaced by machines? Are we going to have a place when this place is entirely mechanized?

The same strain of questions courses through the novel, which in all its fantastical parody, he notes, revolves around the same deeply human truth: the fear of erasure the ego, again. In the novel, he fights to finally understand this when the world eventually crumbles around him and aliens overrun the planet. The real-life Carrey arrived at this understanding long ago, but he is also wise enough to know it never lasts.

Ill reach it once today, he says. People have this mistaken idea that they can get to an enlightened state and stay there. The fact is, if you have the understanding of what freedom is and how to get there, you can get there sometimes. But you cant get there and stay there.

Memoirs and MisinformationBy Jim Carrey and Dana VachonKnopf(272 pages; $27.95)

See the article here:

Jim Carrey explores the absurdities of life (and himself) in novel - San Francisco Chronicle

Experts have revealed which star sign will bring you the most money after NASA dropped a huge bombshell which changed many people's.

The star sign changes have been brought about by the reveal of a 13th sign - Ophiuchus - which has meant that the dates for all other signs have been altered.

Addressing the changes in star signs, a spokesperson for NASA said: "The line from Earth through the sun points to Virgo for 45 days, but it points to Scorpius for only seven days.

To make a tidy match with their 12-month calendar, the Babylonians ignored the fact the sun actually moves through 13 constellations, not 12.

And now, as well as finding out what your new star sign says about you, if you have switched, you could be in the money.

Researchers at AskTraders have revealed the most common star signs of the worlds richest people - and the results may surprise astrology fans!

According to the study, the most common star sign amongst the Rich List 2020 is Taurus - a sign known for stubbornness, but also for being something of a dark horse, sharing in the beauty, hedonism, artistry and love of luxury of their ruling planet, Venus.

Notable personalities who now fall under this star sign include: Sir Paul McCartney, worth 800 million from a career in music; Slavica Ecclestone, worth 730 million after a divorce from Formula Ones Bernie Ecclestone and Simon Fuller, worth 445 million from founding the Idol series (including Pop Idol.

The top star sign of the Rich List 2020 prior to the introduction of the 13th sign was Gemini and the news isn't too good for people who are now Ophiuchus as that is near the bottom.

The updated list according to AskTraders is:

Taurus

Gemini

Virgo

Pisces

Leo

Capricorn

Aries

Sagittarius

Cancer

Ophiuchus

Libra

Aquarius

Scorpio

Here is the original post:

Which star sign will make you rich? Experts reveal who will be in the money - Chronicle Live

In early July, a few of Londons nightlife spaces slowly began to creak open. The Glory, a queer performance pub in Haggerston, has opened its doors following a new set of unusual, but necessary, coronavirus guidelines set out by the government. Around England, table service is mandatory (unless its not possible), serving assistants are clad in face masks and surfaces are anti-bacced to an inch of their inanimate lives. Despite the quiet music, lack of bar service and the fact that punters arent able to sit near each other or dance, the pub experience is surprisingly more personal, and revelers (like myself) have appreciated the intimacy of sitting down. While pubs and bars have received the green light to reopen, nightclubs have not received the same amount of attention from officials. It is far more difficult to maintain social distancing on a dance floor, so for now, these spaces are closed for the foreseeable future.

Even aside from the challenges of reopening in the midst of a pandemic, Londons nightlife has a mountain to climb. Today, the hospitality industry has to face rising costs (rent, overheads, events, supplies) and a growing generation of punters that seem less interested in clubs. In 2015, the BBC reported that nearly half of the U.K.s nightclubs had shut their doors in the previous 10 years. Jonny Woo, a co-owner of The Glory, reminds us of that reality: Nightlife thrives on its underground scene and as clubs are forced to have ever more present security and prices for drinks go up because the overheads are so high; the wild, hedonistic nature of clubbing gets strangled.

The Glory

The Glory

There are other issues to consider, too. In 2016, Fabric one of Londons best-known and most beloved techno clubs was forced to close its doors following two drug-related deaths (although it has since reopened thanks to a petition appeal that attracted over 160,000 signatures). Its hard to avoid the feeling that the nightlife industry might just be having its last dance.

Such petitions show how important and powerful community spirit is to many pubs, bars and nightclubs. Josh Caffe, a seasoned member of the underground house and techno scene known for his nights with Love Child LDN, reminisces on nightlife not too long ago. Despite all the challenges and closures London nightlife was experiencing, people were out in full force to support the ones that were pushing on.

When the line-ups are more mixed the crowds are too, because if you look up and see someone on stage from a DJ to a dancer who looks like you, it lets you know its a place for you.

Woo also noted another critical component of the future of nightlife: the threat of gentrification. He says, Clubs are already at risk due to lack of space in central London, the proliferation of flat building which is turning non-residential areas into areas with high-density accommodation and rent prices going up. Clubs will be the last to open, and I worry that the spaces that are left may be in danger if they remain closed for too long.

Prior to the coronavirus outbreak, Londons nightlife especially in the LGBTQ+ scene was thriving. I think the queer scene in London is the best its been since I moved to London 15 years ago, says Steven Braines, co-founder of the international house and techno event series HE.SHE.THEY., a place without prejudice for people to be people. There is a camaraderie between nights that didnt exist when I first hit the scene. It was a lot more competitive than collaborative. There are a lot of people using their nights as agents for change within the queer community, they added in reference to collectives like BBZ, Pxssy Palace and Sink the Pink.

HE.SHE.THEYGemma Bell

HE.SHE.THEYGemma Bell

Pioneering collectives such as HE.SHE.THEY. and pubs like The Glory strive to provide a safe space, and showcase talent and creativity. Through this, they create a sense of community within LGBTQ+ culture as well as for other marginalized groups. HE.SHE.THEY. literally exists to break up the straight, white male-monopoly of most big clubs Even queer clubs are often gay, white male-dominated spaces. When the line-ups are more mixed the crowds are too, because if you look up and see someone on stage from a DJ to a dancer who looks like you, it lets you know its a place for you; that youre represented and welcomed in the space. Its very simple, say Braines and HE.SHE.THEY. co-founder Sophia Kearney.

All venues are a place for people to come together. In todays coronavirus climate, bringing people together takes place on Zoom, where the act has taken on a new form. Whereas nightclubs and pubs serve as a place for hedonism, Instagram Live streams and Google Hangouts have become the venues way of keeping its community feeling loved. This has been successful for many, such as Love Child LDN and its TALKS series that has truly helped its community.

Community is at the forefront of a good night. At a time when were arguably more connected than ever before thanks to social media, the likes of HE.SHE.THEY. are using platforms not just to reach out to people but for positive change. We like to amplify different voices, suggest people who are interesting to be followed, shed light on causes, protests, charities we like. Its a watershed moment for change with Black Lives Matter, the continuing transformative power of #MeToo and a push back against the erosion of LGBTQIA+ rights, especially for the trans community. Our community is a broad church and what we do is intrinsically political as it is ideological. House and techno are political at their roots, say Braines and Kearney.

Fold

Fold

Fold

FOLD, a venue built with artists and audiences at the forefront of everything, also has community at its core. FOLDs nights are compelling enough to make you come out [of their venue] with another view on things. David Conde, head of marketing and communications at FOLD, thinks the community is not just what is keeping venues afloat but will see them thrive hereafter. He says, We have a very strong community at FOLD, we have thankfully been able to stay connected through technology. Social media has allowed our community to stay united and active, through our live streams, releasing online content and spotlighting local talent. Streaming and online contact is crucial to keeping connected and providing for the communities we support until we can open back up and celebrate under one roof again.

Since the lockdown, the world has experienced an uprising in the Black and POC communities.Social uprising and recent events have encouraged people to educate themselves. Venues can, and are, doing the same. Speaking on behalf of FOLD, Conde says, Since its inception, FOLD has been built on fundamental policies and taken measures to ensure that POC, women, members of the LGBTQ+ community, as well as other minority groups, feel represented and safe whilst attending events. This message of inclusivity is exercised through training in inclusion and awareness. This is also maintained by FOLD being active members of the communities it represents. These are our people, adds Conde.

If theres one thing that weve learned from closures, its that once these venues go, they dont come back.

The pandemic might act as a reset for many venues. This is a moment for organizers to rethink their approach, or to regenerate an underground scene that goes against the bourgeoisie. Or, as Conde says, it could give people time to think about what is necessary and what isnt. FOLD, The Glory, Sink the Pink, HE.SHE.THEY. and more are intrinsic in queer culture (and arguably society as a whole, albeit for different reasons). Nightlife is necessary, so much of the magic and beauty of nightlife comes from being under one roof, sharing the space, and we cant wait to have that back, adds Conde. The time off has allowed those like Conde and FOLD to further connect with their audiences, expand upon its sense of community, and for many, realize the importance it plays in many peoples lives. The cultural and social importance of these places is invaluable, despite what developers and accountants say, says Caffe.

Josh Caffe By Matt Hass Photography

The so-called reset is what could save Londons nightlife. Nightlife venues alone cant address the fact that queer people of color feel pushed out of many spaces; theres more that everyone can do. In a recent HYPEBEAST article, many queer people of color, and other members of the LGBTQ+ scene, spoke about people being pushed out of a lot of venues queer-centric or not.

As venues reopen, they need to look at how their internal policies can better support everyone in the community that has in turn supported them. I think there needs to be more LGBTQ+ POC inclusion on line ups. It gets exhausting and frustrating still seeing all-white lineups especially for nights or clubs that center their music around house and techno, says Caffe. While venues like those listed above are positively promoting inclusivity, the same cannot be said for all clubs across the country.

The overarching theme in order to save Londons nightlife is community, inclusivity and awareness. In the same vein, many people also just want a traditional local pub to go to. We talk a lot about losing queer venues, but no one talks about the community pub thats been there for years and becomes a hipster pub or a gastropub. [It] presents in such a way and has price points too high, so they feel very unwelcoming to the long-term local residents, says Woo. Such places thrived off community, and as Caffe reminds us all, If theres one thing that weve learned from closures, its that once these venues go, they dont come back.

While London definitely isnt the night-time mecca it used to be, many believe there is a future after COVID-19. Despite Woos realistic attitude, hes confident that there will always be individuals and small groups who want to do things their way, and they will find spaces to do it in. And these places thrive off of community. Theyre just like FOLD, The Glory, HE.SHE.THEY. and more. Its about the people that are keeping not just these venues open, but spirits alive. As Conde says, Everyone coming together to show their support proves there is a future for independent nightlife spaces and, in fact, with backing, we will flourish.

Here is the original post:

Who Will Save Londons Nightlife? - HYPEBEAST

LifestyleTravelDo Not Disturb hotel review

Monday, 20th July 2020, 2:07 pm

For those keen to escape the lethargy of lockdown, an overnight stay at Edinburghs latest cocktail-bar-cum-hotel, House of Gods, is an immersive experience that you wont forget in a hurry.

Opened in September 2019, House of Gods is a 22-room boutique hotel and cocktail bar just off Edinburghs Royal Mile. The mix of OTT interiors, lavish furnishings and hand-finished details offer a wow-factor thats usually only seen in high end abodes. Years spent working in London opened the eyes of brothers and owners, Ross and Mike Baxter, to a world of unapologetic luxury which was dampened by industry exclusivity, financial barriers and blown up price points. Both felt that there was a real desire for something luxurious and unique but affordable, and after a move home to Edinburgh, House of Gods was born.

Speaking at the time of opening, Mike Baxter said: From spending weekends on the road to individually collect 20 antique Chiavari chairs before reupholstering each in House of Hackney fabrics, to storing a free-standing nickel-plated bathtub in my loft for the past eight years, weve built this place with zero compromise.

The whole ethos of House of Gods is total bonkers boutique luxury thats available for everyone. The price reflects this, ranging from 80-150 per room, with an in-room continental breakfast included.

The rooms, which range from cosy cabins through to four-poster classic rooms to spacious suites feature luxurious dark red velvet wall coverings, with private bars hidden behind antique mirrors and floor-to-ceiling marble in every oak-panelled en-suite. The inspiration for the room design is the old-world decadence of the original Orient Express cabins with the addition of mod cons such as flat-screen TVs and Nespresso machines. Tactile furnishings in more velvet and fake fur plus moody lighting give a rock and roll edge.

In the cabin or classic rooms the bathrooms are marble-clad shower rooms whereas the suite boasts an oak-panelled bathroom with freestanding Victorian tub. Each is complete with sweet-smelling Cole and Lewis toiletries.

In the rooms guests will find a wifi enabled butler button which they can use to call for prosecco, breakfast or milk and cookies all complimentary. There is also an option to have cocktails delivered from the bar to rooms, or made in the corridor in front of guests. Rooms are sanitised before the housekeeping staff arrive, so an in-depth clean is done daily.

At House of Gods theres only wining (although breakfast is available) at the Lounge Bar, which features huge panels of Gucci Heron wallpaper, neon signs and Rosso Levanto Red Marble bar tops. The refined dcor is juxtaposed with an overhanging giant disco ball. The bar is home to a bespoke cocktail menu inspired by rock and rolls Bohemian past, with drinks named after tales of hotel hedonism and debauchery. It has been renovated to create a socially distanced space for customers, with Victorian-style screens and drapery to separate areas theres no perspex here.

Worth getting out of bed for

Located in the Cowgate, just off the Grassmarket, Edinburgh Castle, Holyrood Palace and a range of restaurants are within walking distance. Its worth checking whats open and most restaurants and bars will be taking bookings at this time.

If you really want to immerse yourself in all the hotel has to offer, the treat me like Im f*****g famous package is ideal. Designed to include additions that would feature on riders of the rich and famous, the package includes unlimited prosecco, millionaire cocktails, a macaron platter, late checkout and an upgraded breakfast no request is too rocknroll here. The hotel has partnered with an Italian winery to bottle a House of Gods prosecco, which is available on request.

A novel and hedonistic nirvana in Edinburghs city centre, where more is always more. Custom built to pique your curiosity and immerse you in a world of luxury thats usually reserved for the worshipped.

Rooms from 80-150 per room, House of Gods, 139 Cowgate, Edinburgh, EH1 1JS (0131-230 0445, houseofgodshotel.com)

A message from the Editor:

Thank you for reading this story on our website. While I have your attention, I also have an important request to make of you.

With the coronavirus lockdown having a major impact on many of our advertisers - and consequently the revenue we receive - we are more reliant than ever on you taking out a digital subscription.

Subscribe to scotsman.com and enjoy unlimited access to Scottish news and information online and on our app. With a digital subscription, you can read more than 5 articles, see fewer ads, enjoy faster load times, and get access to exclusive newsletters and content. Visit https://www.scotsman.com/subscriptions now to sign up.

Our journalism costs money and we rely on advertising, print and digital revenues to help to support them. By supporting us, we are able to support you in providing trusted, fact-checked content for this website.

Read the original:

Scotland on Sunday Travel - House of Gods, Edinburgh - The Scotsman

Theres a clear similarity between the present situation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the collapse of the Alignment (Labor Party) in 1977. In the preceding years, the Alignment was subject to criticism and accusations of corruption and immorality, a result of too many years in power. And at the same time, the majority of his supporters remained loyal to him, claiming that it was impossible to place Israels security in the hands of Menachem Begin.

LISTEN: Protests, pandemics and Netanyahu's day of reckoningHaaretz

However, the Yom Kippur War diminished the aura of national security surrounding the Alignment. That opened the door to many other complaints, which had been sidelined due to the security halo.

Although Netanyahu has conducted three consecutive election campaigns while burdened with serious indictments, and asked for the citizens trust in a government that was tainted with clear signs of corruption, his supporters claimed that he shouldnt be replaced due to his successes in economic matters.

Something wrong? they said. Were buying, traveling abroad, the restaurants are full, people are enjoying themselves here. Today, when the economy is in tatters and the coronavirus pandemic is not being managed, Netanyahu looks like a leader who has lost his way. His unique advantage has become a total disadvantage. He is no longer immune.

To understand the extent to which his situation has worsened, we have to ask whether he would dare today to stand in the courtroom and revile the legal system, as he did on May 24. Of course not. At the time he was seen as a magician who had eliminated the coronavirus, and thats what he was relying on.

He has run out of credit. Netanyahu is failing at management constantly changing decisions, engaging in petty politics, such as excluding the defense establishment from managing the virus due to political and party-related motives. He has cooked his own goose.

The demonstrations against him are authentic. Some are effective but some are actually helping him, unwittingly. For example, I read, even in Haaretz, many words of praise for the exceptional energy of the young people in front of the the prime ministers Balfour Street residence, who are storming the place like they want to conquer the Bastille. Those who support every protest are demonstrating great disdain for those who are meticulous about petty issues and arent rising to the magnitude of the moment.

I dare to oppose the storming of the prime ministers residence by some of the demonstrators, and their willingness to clash with policemen. How will the opposition to the continuation of Netanyahus rule benefit from physical confrontation with policemen on the way to conquering the fortress? Any step that helps him by reinforcing his image as a victim is ineffective from the point of view of those who want to remove him from power.

Netanyahu is not falling due to the corruption, or the danger to democracy, the sickening import of Trumpism; he is falling due to failures that are harming every citizen. Those involved in this protest, which is socioeconomic in nature, are likely to bring down his government. At the same time, the collapse of the main foundation on which his rule was based the citizens sense of economic security has provided the opening for intensified criticism on the social networks and in the media over the corruption and hedonism of Netanyahu and his family.

Clearly Netanyahu is not to blame for the coronavirus outbreak. But his handling of the crisis attests to an inability, in terms of mentality and leadership qualities, to deal with genuine crisis situations, as opposed to imaginary crisis situations, some of which he created.

We've got more newsletters we think you'll find interesting.

Please try again later.

The email address you have provided is already registered.

It looks like 2020 is more dangerous for the nation and the country than 1977. But it is just this danger that may bring out the best people from among us, on the way to a change in the face of Israel.

More:

Throwback to the 1970s: Netanyahu is facing his own Yom Kippur War - Haaretz

The Business of Drugs is Netflixs new newsy docu-series, a six-episode investigative analysis of controlled substances and their place in international society. Our host is Amaryllis Fox, a former kid CIA agent she was recruited at age 21 who hopped the globe fighting the war on terror until 2010; in 2019, she wrote a book about her experiences, which will soon be an Apple TV+ series starring Brie Larson. Foxs voice gives The Business of Drugs a knowledgeable, engaging tone, making it more along the lines of Dirty Money journalism than Tiger King sensationalism.

Opening Shot: An overhead shot of a massive villa flanked by a fancy pool and palm trees, lit up at night.

The Gist: Episode one digs into the cocaine biz, and its glib before its serious: Once a mostly harmless leafy pick-me-up for the indigenous people of South America, the modern story of cocaine goes like so: Freud, Pablo Escobar, disco hedonism, Wall Street hedonism, crack, El Chapo, more Wall Street hedonism, Fox narrates. She briefly introduces herself before sitting down with a ski-masked Los Angeles drug dealer identified only as Roy; his dad dealt coke, and now he does too, in small quantities because if he gets busted, the charges arent as severe.

Fox interviews a doctor who explains the addictive properties of cocaine, and a Yale professor who breaks down some of the economic context of the drug trade. She goes to Colombia, the apex of coca plant growth thanks to swaths of unoccupied land and an ideal climate. Farmers grow and harvest the leaves, hand them off to labs in the middle of the jungle that mash them into a paste, which is then sold to cartels, who process it into powder, and take it to the massive Buenaventura port, where its hidden in exported goods. Fox hangs out with one middleman who crams packages of cocaine inside stuffed kittens inside kiddie backpacks, then hops into a tiny canoe and heads to a dropoff point; he risks his well-being to make a measly $300 for every drop. She also watches as military workers rip up coca plants in the jungle. At the port, others tackle the needle-in-a-haystack job, probing a few among hundreds of sacks of coffee; they find 56 kilos stuffed in a ships propeller compartment, worth $4.6 million in U.S. street value.

Oh, by the way, heres a statistic for you: the Colombian government spends a lot of money (how much exactly, the doc doesnt say) to seize five tons of coke annually, out of 1,400 tons distributed. Cartels sell $24 BILLION worth of cocaine every year just to the United States. As they say, LET THAT SINK IN. Fox heads to Mexico, where a couple guys hang out with a pallet stacked with $8 million worth of cocaine, then load it up for a trip to the border. Just south of El Paso, Texas, the tunnels distributors used to use to get the product across the border are obsolete. Now, theyre mixed in with other goods in trucks, sometimes without the drivers even knowing. Fox wraps it up, and I paraphrase: Legalization may seem extreme, but many lives are lost and a lot of money is spent as governments battle these black-market monopolies. What the hell are we doing?

Our Take: Curious, how the first episode of Business opens with that spiel about Freud and Wall Street and all that, then never bothers to elaborate on it, or even return to that arch, colorful tone. It quickly settles into the nitty-gritty of the ins and outs of the cocaine trade, tosses in a few op-ed assertions, a handful of whopper statistics and some fascinating firsthand accounts by individuals participating in low-level criminal activity, then gets out in an all-too-brief 45 minutes.

Foxs presence is strong, credible and down-to-earth qualities necessary for gaining access to men working on coca farms in Columbia, in drug safehouses in Mexico and on the streets of Compton. Director Matthew Heineman did similar things in gripping feature doc Cartel Land, but gave us a deeper and more palpable sense of being embedded smack in the middle of dangerous business.

Youll like Fox, but wish she was more assertive. The episode focuses on production and distribution aspects of the business, and relegates the effects of that business deaths, poverty to a few brief inferences. Its black market commerce, so of course it has detrimental effects on societys structure and people. The doc presents an outline chock-full of facts and a fair amount of heady analysis, but fails to flesh it out with any content about the effects of cocaine on humanity; its just a given that its bad, I guess, so it skips the heart and goes for the head. Fox makes a few tossed-off statements about legalization; notices how the area surrounding Buenaventura is horribly stricken with poverty but offers no data relating to it; and implies that the war on drugs is a fruitless enterprise perpetuated by wrongheaded governments. But she never really stirs up the moral outrage that would make her arguments more compelling.

Parting Shot: Roy walks down a dark, damp L.A. alley, presumably to resume his drug-dealing business.

Sleeper Star: How about every person crazy/brave enough to go on camera even with ski-mask on and voice altered and talk about the illegal stuff they do every day?

Most Pilot-y Line: Fox: Ive seen this kind of thing with the war on terror a ton of money spent with little effective result.

Our Call: I hesitate to say STREAM IT. The first episode of The Business of Drugs feels incomplete, and maybe a little wishy-washy. But youll learn something anyway, and future episodes addressing heroin, meth and opioids carry promise.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream The Business of Drugs on Netflix

See the article here:

Stream It Or Skip It: 'The Business of Drugs' on Netflix, a Documentary Series About the Ins and Outs of Controlled-Substance Trades - Decider

The first episode of the business of drugs takes us to the depiction of cocaine business and its slick before it becomes serious.Once a mostly harmless leafy pick-me-up for the indigenous people of South America, the modern story of cocaine goes like so: Freud, Pablo Escobar, disco hedonism, Wall Street hedonism, crack, El Chapo, more Wall Street hedonism, Fox narrates.We will also see Fox Interviewing a doctor who educates about the addiction of cocaine and a professor from Yale who breaks down the economic context of the drug trade.She moves to Columbia, the vertex for the growth of the Coca plant.Farmers are supposed to grow and gather the leaves, hand them off to labs which are located in the middle of the jungle. The labs then mash them into a paste, which is then sold to cartels, who process it into powder and deliver it to the giant Buenaventura port, where its illegally hidden in exported goods.

The Colombian government spends a lot of money to get its hands on five tons of coke annually, out of 1,400 tons distributed. Cartels sell $24 BILLION worth of cocaine every year only to the United States.

The business of drugs: Fox moves to Mexico, where a couple of guys hang out with a pallet stuffed with $8 million worth of cocaine, then load it up for a trip to the border. Just south of El Paso, Texas, the tunnels distributors used to utilize to get the product through the border are superannuated. Now, theyre shuffled with other goods in trucks, sometimes without the drivers even knowing what they are traveling with.

The episode portrays the production and distribution in terms of business and relegates the effects of that business deaths, poverty to a few brief inferences. Its black market trafficking, so of course, it has adverse and disastrous effects on society and people.Fox makes a few statements about legalization; observes how the area surrounding Buenaventura is awfully suffering with poverty but offers no data relating to it and implies that the war on drugs is a bootless enterprise preserved in the hands of hostile governments. However, she never really digs in the depth of the moral outrage that would make her arguments more engrossing.

Also Read: The World Bank has approved $750-million loan to increase flow of finance MSMEs in India

Original post:

The business of drugs- Heres everything you need to know before watching the new season - Finance Rewind

Ive been indulging in a lot of screen time recently. I know Im not alone in this. But it somehow seems odd to spend so much of my time passively watching as history is happening right before our eyes. For a multitude of reasons, this year may turn out to be the most consequential year in modern world history, certainly in American history; and that thought is stressing me out. So, in search of answers, I have begun watching and reading about how other people have responded to crises throughout history.

There is currently a 24-part lecture series on Prime TV entitled The Black Death, and yes, it is about the plague that originated in China, and beginning in 1347, it devastated not only half of the entire population of Europe, but also its ruling institutions, including feudalism and the Catholic Church. But what fascinated me were the first-hand accounts, in both writing and art, as told by those who were living in the midst of it. Those who cared for the sick and then succumbed themselves; those who turned to prayer and self-flagellation, those who turned to hedonism or violence, those who were scapegoated for being Jewish, and those who tried to restore order and government.

During the next ten years, 75 million people perished. That is a staggering number. But it doesnt tell us about the human story of that pandemic. We can only begin to understand the meaning of such events by opening ourselves to the accounts of those who lived and died or survived in such times.

Such traumatic experiences are not the only stories of interest to historians. Other stories, of a gentler sort, fascinate as well. Perhaps because they stand out in relief against the larger backdrop of social upheaval.

I recently watched Anne Frank: Parallel Stories, in which Helen Mirren reads from Annes diary, which is filled with what we might call the normal preoccupations of an adolescent girl in the 1940s. She writes freely and imaginatively of friendship, isolation, love, romance, having her first period and her desire to improve the world. Her death in a Nazi concentration camp at the sweet age of 15 is what makes her story so poignant and so tragic.

When such stories are intertwined with those of other victims and survivors, we feel the true significance of the Holocaust. The weight of those stories has helped to stiffen my own resolve to resist any movement toward a world in which such evil could ever exist again. Engaging with history and realizing that our own stories are part of the entire human experience can really help put things in perspective.

Today, we are living through our own historical moment facing a worldwide pandemic; political upheaval; social unrest; continued racial injustice toward our own species and man-made environmental catastrophes that threaten to extinguish life itself.

So, how are we dealing with all this?

We all have stories about the disease that is crippling our society, keeping us in isolation, with little or no employment, unable to attend school, unable to make new friends or to date. Are your relationships stressed? Has the Black Lives Matter movement made a difference to you? Did you participate in the protests? How has your world changed? Are you worried about your health or that of your loved ones? Do you watch a lot of news coverage like I do, or post more on social media? Do you feel that youre actively engaged and are trying to make a difference?

The most important question for me is, What will I tell my granddaughter when she grows up?

There are so many stories that when taken together will inform future generations, as well as scholars, about how we survived here on Vashon-Maury Island, while so many in other places did not.

Now is a good time to think about sharing your own experiences. The Vashon Heritage Museum, our island equivalent of the Smithsonian, has begun what it calls the Vashon COVID-19 Archive Project. A team led by historian Bruce Haulman has begun collecting such stories for a future exhibit. Working in collaboration with Voice of Vashon, they will be conducting video and audio interviews at several locations around Vashon-Maury throughout the month of July. Participants only need to be willing to share their stories, but artifacts such as masks and photos, even screenshots of social media posts may also be of interest.

For more information visit vashonheritagemuseum.org/covidarchive. Also, check Vashon Heritage Museums Facebook page for updates on the location for the interviews.

Be part of history.

Art Chippendale has lived on Vashon for 24 years with his wife Tania Kinnear. He has been active in community organizations and co-founded the group Unifying for Democracy.

Visit link:

What's your story? | Vashon-Maury Island Beachcomber - Vashon-Maury Island Beachcomber

Standing at the apex of popular culture is something you cant plan for: for Jarvis Cocker, this moment came in 1995 at Glastonbury during Pulps headlining set, the bands rendition of Common People one of the decades most spontaneously blissful experiences.

Despite the whiff of class tourism around their song about class tourism, and the fact that they were late subs replacing The Stone Roses, for five minutes at least the Sheffielders and their bony ringmaster were all of us, a temporary force of unification.

This Icarian chapter had fracturing results, as the subsequent album Different Class topped the charts but the stardom it afforded ultimately lead to the bands demise. Cocker then pivoted from ledge to ledge, finding settlement eventually with a radio show, and he has recently announced that a book is due at some point in 2020. But an invitation to play a festival in Helsinki from Sigur Rs led to one of those odd yet obvious epiphanies that he had plenty of new songs to air, but no band.

Having recruited Serafina Steer and her Bas Jan bandmate Emma Smith, the James Taylor Quartets Andrew McKinney, All Seeing Is Jason Buckle and Three Trapped Tigers Adam Betts, what would become the core of Beyond The Pale were songs road-tested in a number of unlikely locations, not least of which was a Derbyshire cave complex popularly known amongst the locals as The Devils Arse.

What emerges from a process which began semi-live is a record which similar to Baxter Drurys The Night Chancers is about dislocation, libido and growing older, one free from bitterness and observed as ever from the peculiar, perceptive view of a natural storyteller.

This bemusement at the modern world first breaks cover on MUST I EVOLVE?, six-minutes-plus of tantric jam and lyrical ruminations on where weve all come from, bearing confused witness to now and the futility of turning into anything else. Motorik and bafflingly good, its counterpoint is House Music All Night Long, a masterpiece of understated shuffling funk and MOR flourishes that sees club music stripped of all its abandonment, a Sorted For Es & Wizz with neither hedonism nor companionship.

The FOMO of sorts rears its head again on Am I Missing Something, the singer deadpanning: Is the next stage in human evolution/Happening on the outskirts of Luton, whilst a plaintive synth line taps sulkily. Opener Save The Whale takes its violin-led impetus from a more obvious source in Leonard Cohen whilst looking at how slogans decontextualise the issues theyre meant to represent.

Cocker is one of those obsessives who (rightly) believes that 99% of all music must be viewed through what he calls the pop prism. This means that Sometimes I Am Pharaoh the undoubted peak of an album so far from twenties pop that theyre not even dots on their respective horizons, with its charismatic, alt-dancefloor vibes will in his head be as much for mass consumption as the feeble autotuned jingles the painted children of now make.

Beyond The Pale isnt going to seat Jarvis Cocker back at the table from which fame is served, nothing could. But on this admirable new chapter he revels in the fact and the realisation that conformity kills both art and the soul.

If only Common People still got that too.

Just Published:

The rest is here:

Album Review: JARV IS Beyond The Pale - Live4ever

Love them, or loathe them, British tourists are back in Greece and Athens tourism minister has wasted no time in expressing his delight.

Greeks were very, very happy that Britons were finally returning, Harry Theoharis said. We always enjoy the company of our friends from the UK, he told Sky News as air links resumed on Wednesday. Flights had been suspended since March, although that didnt stop Boris Johnsons father, Stanley, travelling to his Aegean villa despite British nationals also having been advised to avoid all but essential international travel.

And it appears Theohariss feeling is reciprocated: within 24 hours of the flight ban being lifted, around 1,200 Britons had landed in Greece. By Friday, a reported 200 planes had flown from the UK to the countrys 18 regional airports.

On Zakynthos and other Ionian isles that rely almost exclusively on British tourism, the relief is almost palpable. At this time of year tales of drunken debauchery and misbehaving Britons have usually eclipsed the local news and exhausted those who must handle the fallout in the travel industry.

Today, we cant wait to have them, said Charalambos Varvarigos, the vice-mayor of Laganas, the Zakynthian resort often associated with youthful hedonism. We have always had a big soft spot for the English even if some of them do drink. Only 60% of our hotels are open but they are beginning to come, he said.

Britons are Greeces most lucrative European market, with more than 3.5 million visiting last year. Their absence would cost 2.56bn for an industry that, at close to 25% of GDP, is the nations biggest.

With one in five Greeks reliant on tourism-related work, the sight of Britons signals a return to normality. But their arrival is also being treated with trepidation.

The spectre of people arriving from a country with so many cases and so many deaths, in the words of Greek health officials, has stoked fears of imported incidents and unease on islands that had so far remained remarkably coronavirus-free. As a result, UK holidaymakers are having to undergo mass testing in airport lounges nationwide.

Local media reports suggest up to 6,000 visitors from the UK will be tested this week, with soldiers being deployed to specially assembled health units on islands to administer swabs.

The result of the mass testing will determine if Greek borders remain open or not to Britain, the leading Greek daily, Protothema, wrote. If the number and percentage of those found to be positive is low, and is limited to under 30 to 40 cases, then with constant inspections and epidemiological oversight, the British tourist market will remain open.

If not, the centre-right government would not hesitate to shut the borders again calculating that the cost of the risk of the coronavirus spreading is much more important than any benefits to tourism in a year that is considered largely lost.

There has been a significant rise in infections since Greece reopened its borders on 1 July with officials reporting more than 500 cases, and hospital admissions rising from 41 to 83 in less than two weeks.

In a country that has recorded fewer than 4,000 cases and 193 deaths to date, epidemiologists are expressing their concern.

If there are a lot who test positive from Britain I would not rule out scientists proposing that the borders close again to people [coming in] from the UK, said Dr Andreas Mentis, the head of the Hellenic Pasteur Institute who sits on the expert committee that advises the government. Too high a percentage would endanger the Greek population, and tourism more generally and we couldnt accept that.

Continue reading here:

Greece offers British tourists a wary welcome back - The Guardian

By Live4ever -Posted on 17 Jul 2020 at 4:42am

Jarvis Cocker has released his debut album with the JARV IS collective today have listen on New Music Friday.

Beyond The Pale is released after Cocker first began performing under this slightly adjusted guise back in 2017 with Serafina Steer, Emma Smith, Andrew McKinney, Jason Buckle and Adam Betts; indeed, the records bare bones are recordings of live performances which have taken place since that introduction at Sigur Ros Norur og Niur festival in Iceland.

What emerges from a process which began semi-live is a record which similar to Baxter Drurys The Night Chancers is about dislocation, libido and growing older, one free from bitterness and observed as ever from the peculiar, perceptive view of a natural storyteller, our 8/10 review reads.

This bemusement at the modern world first breaks cover on MUST I EVOLVE?, six-minutes-plus of tantric jam and lyrical ruminations on where weve all come from, bearing confused witness to now and the futility of turning into anything else. Motorik and bafflingly good, its counterpoint is House Music All Night Long, a masterpiece of understated shuffling funk and MOR flourishes that sees club music stripped of all its abandonment, a Sorted For Es & Wizz with neither hedonism nor companionship.

Just Published:

See the rest here:

New Music Friday: JARV IS Beyond The Pale - Live4ever

Increasing stress levels related to urbanisation and global instabilities like the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic have awakened a strong need for well-being.

With the stress of the COVID-19 pandemic, physical and mental well-being have become a priority for consumers. Products that are able to create moments of relaxation and well-being are on-trend, leading to what we have defined as mindful hedonism, said Ben Webb, Givaudans regional head of fragrances, APAC.

At the same time, the consumers notion of well-being is evolving and becoming more complex, he added.

People are more and more aware of the importance of their holistic well-being, and especially the emotional side of well-being. The majority of them are more likely to buy products and services from companies that effectively engage in well-being.

Webb noted that our sense of smell played a significant role in well-being as it has direct access to the emotion and memory processing regions of the brain.

This enables fragrances to create a rich and vivid representation in your mind, more than just a chemical or molecular representation. Attractive odours or odours associated with positive memories can immediately influence a person's emotional state and this is why fragrance has a significant and positive influence on an individual's mood and well-being.

As such, fragrances are becoming more crucial into manufactures looking to forge an emotional connection between its products and the consumers.

Asia Pacific is going through several stages of poised growth as the next economic global powerhouse which entails urbanisation and a more sophisticated way of life. This has created more expectation from their daily use of personal care products and more interest in leisure and well-being, said Webb.

With the COVID-19 outbreak, these trends are set to accelerate swiftly and remain long even after the crisis blows over.

Frustrated by several weeks of lockdown, consumers will luxuriate in simple joys of product and treatment, using beauty for escapism. This desire for feel good products consumption will last even after the crisis, said Webb.

To mark Global Wellness day, Givaudan announced that it has developed Vivascentz, a tool to help guide developers to develop fragrances with well-being benefits scientifically.

The technology was developed by Givaudans Health and Well-being Centre of Excellence in Ashford in collaboration with a renowned research academic partner.

The technology leverages on the Swiss firms 30 years of expertise in neuroscience to build a metric that measures overall well-being, covering the psychological, physiological and social dimensions in a fragrance context

The tool was validated by rigorous tests carried out by more than 2,000 consumers, which concluded that it was possible to demonstrate that fragrances created with the VivaScentz technology were able to positively impact the users overall state of well-being

Thanks to VivaScentz technology, our perfumers have the knowledge to create tailor made fragrances and Oral Care flavours that delight consumers while enhancing their well-being, covering a wide range of olfactive areas, said Webb.

See the rest here:

Fragrance set to play a more powerful role in personal care as well-being comes to forefront - CosmeticsDesign-Asia.com

Ive been indulging in a lot of screen time recently. I know Im not alone in this. But it somehow seems odd to spend so much of my time passively watching as history is happening right before our eyes. For a multitude of reasons, this year may turn out to be the most consequential year in modern world history, certainly in American history; and that thought is stressing me out. So, in search of answers, I have begun watching and reading about how other people have responded to crises throughout history.

There is currently a 24-part lecture series on Prime TV entitled The Black Death, and yes, it is about the plague that originated in China, and beginning in 1347, it devastated not only half of the entire population of Europe, but also its ruling institutions, including feudalism and the Catholic Church. But what fascinated me were the first-hand accounts, in both writing and art, as told by those who were living in the midst of it. Those who cared for the sick and then succumbed themselves; those who turned to prayer and self-flagellation, those who turned to hedonism or violence, those who were scapegoated for being Jewish, and those who tried to restore order and government.

During the next ten years, 75 million people perished. That is a staggering number. But it doesnt tell us about the human story of that pandemic. We can only begin to understand the meaning of such events by opening ourselves to the accounts of those who lived and died or survived in such times.

Such traumatic experiences are not the only stories of interest to historians. Other stories, of a gentler sort, fascinate as well. Perhaps because they stand out in relief against the larger backdrop of social upheaval.

I recently watched Anne Frank: Parallel Stories, in which Helen Mirren reads from Annes diary, which is filled with what we might call the normal preoccupations of an adolescent girl in the 1940s. She writes freely and imaginatively of friendship, isolation, love, romance, having her first period and her desire to improve the world. Her death in a Nazi concentration camp at the sweet age of 15 is what makes her story so poignant and so tragic.

When such stories are intertwined with those of other victims and survivors, we feel the true significance of the Holocaust. The weight of those stories has helped to stiffen my own resolve to resist any movement toward a world in which such evil could ever exist again. Engaging with history and realizing that our own stories are part of the entire human experience can really help put things in perspective.

Today, we are living through our own historical moment facing a worldwide pandemic; political upheaval; social unrest; continued racial injustice toward our own species and man-made environmental catastrophes that threaten to extinguish life itself.

So, how are we dealing with all this?

We all have stories about the disease that is crippling our society, keeping us in isolation, with little or no employment, unable to attend school, unable to make new friends or to date. Are your relationships stressed? Has the Black Lives Matter movement made a difference to you? Did you participate in the protests? How has your world changed? Are you worried about your health or that of your loved ones? Do you watch a lot of news coverage like I do, or post more on social media? Do you feel that youre actively engaged and are trying to make a difference?

The most important question for me is, What will I tell my granddaughter when she grows up?

There are so many stories that when taken together will inform future generations, as well as scholars, about how we survived here on Vashon-Maury Island, while so many in other places did not.

Now is a good time to think about sharing your own experiences. The Vashon Heritage Museum, our island equivalent of the Smithsonian, has begun what it calls the Vashon COVID-19 Archive Project. A team led by historian Bruce Haulman has begun collecting such stories for a future exhibit. Working in collaboration with Voice of Vashon, they will be conducting video and audio interviews at several locations around Vashon-Maury throughout the month of July. Participants only need to be willing to share their stories, but artifacts such as masks and photos, even screenshots of social media posts may also be of interest.

For more information visit vashonheritagemuseum.org/covidarchive. Also, check Vashon Heritage Museums Facebook page for updates on the location for the interviews.

Be part of history.

Art Chippendale has lived on Vashon for 24 years with his wife Tania Kinnear. He has been active in community organizations and co-founded the group Unifying for Democracy.

Go here to see the original:

What's your story? - Vashon-Maury Island Beachcomber

Agoston Haraszthy didnt hesitate to wear masks. A Hungarian immigrant, he became San Diegos first sheriff by portraying himself as a military colonel. Then, he sold himself as a metallurgist to win a top job at the San Franciscos first U.S. Mint office. He billed himself as royaltyCount Haraszthywhen he established the Buena Vista Winery in Sonoma.

Joe Mathews

Opinion

By 1864, The Count was in trouble. The Civil War and mounting debts strained his wine business. Hed planted the vines too close together, and his attempt to create a sparkling California champagne literally fizzled. To stay afloat, he sold off pieces of the estate.

Despite all these troubles, County Haraszthy hosted a lavish Masquerade Ball, touted as the first in California history. The costumes and wine technologies drew enough of a crowd for the event to endure. It was held most recently in 2019.

Todays Californians, so wary of face coverings, might consider what The Count knew: Masks are about fun and finding light in darkness. What better time to don a mask than when your whole world is falling down around you?

Californias scolds, who use shame to force mask compliance, miss this point. They tell us, with considerable scientific justification, that we must wear masks to be good. But the true virtue of masks is that they allow us to be bad.

Behind masks, we cant be easily shamed. We can try on new identities and deviate from the norms of good citizenship. In this cultural moment, when we are surrounded by so much coerced and performative goodness, might more people want to wear masks if we emphasized their darker and more subversive appeal? Instead of framing face-coverings as solemn obligation, might the public health be better protected if we reimagined this moment as a lavish, statewide masquerade?

A man with a face mask reading COVID 19 waits at the airport in Frankfurt, Germany, Wednesday, May 27, 2020. (AP Photo/Michael Probst)

The current, highly polarized debate over masks is much too dumb and dull when you consider the history of our use of masks. Our modern conception of masking owes a debt to the Republic of Venice, where a mask-wearing culture endured for centuries. The Venetian devotion to masks was rooted in desirefor hedonism and equality. With identities shielded, people could do as they wished. Without faces, all had voices.

In the 18th century, the Venetian passion reached America. Of course, in this Puritan country, mask-wearing produced backlashes, with moralists claiming that masquerades were a foreign and immoral influence. By the second half of the 19th century and through the 1960s, major California municipalities from Los Angeles to San Francisco had laws barring public disguise and cross-dressing. Scholars have described those discriminatory ordinances as forerunners of todays so-called bathroom bills that target the transgendered.

Fortunately, the transgressive act of masking has won the cultural warFreddy Krueger has the box office receipts to prove it. Masquerade in California, from costume superstores to Comic-Con, is now big business. In L.A., the Labyrinth Masquerade Ball, first held in 1997, has thousands of attendees and an ongoing story line with newly invented characters and mythologies. Shawn Strider, its host, told me the balls are great levelers in status-conscious L.A., with regular Angelenos and A-list stars attending together, without learning each others true identities.

The appeal of masks in an age such as ours isnt hard to see. When everyone wants you to pick a side, the masquerade offers glorious ambiguity. When people are reduced to their political or racial identities, and digital surveillance seems all, masks provide anonymity, and the possibility of being our full selves.

For all these reasons, it makes little sense to turn masks into a symbol of compliance in the pandemic. Itd be wiser to use COVID to celebrate masks. Instead of enforcement, let government strike teams give out cash prizes for the most beautiful, funny or inventive masks that they see. Public kiosks outside grocery stores and food banks could help Californians make their own masks. And if people must gather, lets hold small, outdoor, socially distanced masquerades.

In other words, lets find ways to savor a difficult time as best we canlike Count Haraszthy did. Just two years after his 1864 masquerade, he was fired from his own wine company for extravagance and unfaithfulness. He declared bankruptcy and escaped to Nicaragua.

But one day in 1869, he disappeared, forever, into a river full of reptiles, leaving behind a lasting lesson. Wear all the masks you canbecause you never know when the alligators will swallow you whole.

About the Author

Joe Mathews writes the Connecting California column for Zcalo Public Square.

See more here:

We're Doing This COVID-19 Mask Thing All Wrong - gvwire.com

By SETH BORENSTEIN AP Science WriterActs of kindness may not be that random after all. Science says being kind pays off.Research shows that acts of kindness make us feel better and healthier. Kindness is also key to how we evolved and survived as a species, scientists say. We are hard-wired to be kind.Kindness is as bred in our bones as our anger or our lust or our grief or as our desire for revenge, said University of California San Diego psychologist Michael McCullough, author of the forthcoming book Kindness of Strangers. Its also, he said, the main feature we take for granted.Scientific research is booming into human kindness and what scientists have found so far speaks well of us.Kindness is much older than religion. It does seem to be universal, said University of Oxford anthropologist Oliver Curry, research director at Kindlab. The basic reason why people are kind is that we are social animals.We prize kindness over any other value. When psychologists lumped values into ten categories and asked people what was more important, benevolence or kindness, comes out on top, beating hedonism, having an exciting life, creativity, ambition, tradition, security, obedience, seeking social justice and seeking power, said University of London psychologist Anat Bardi, who studies value systems.Were kind because under the right circumstances we all benefit from kindness, Oxfords Curry said.When it comes to a species survival kindness pays, friendliness pays, said Duke University evolutionary anthropologist Brian Hare, author of the new book Survival of the Friendliest.Kindness and cooperation work for many species, whether its bacteria, flowers or our fellow primate bonobos. The more friends you have, the more individuals you help, the more successful you are, Hare said.For example, Hare, who studies bonobos and other primates, compares aggressive chimpanzees, which attack outsiders, to bonobos where the animals dont kill but help out strangers. Male bonobos are far more successful at mating than their male chimp counterparts, Hare said.McCullough sees bonobos as more the exceptions. Most animals arent kind or helpful to strangers, just close relatives so in that way it is one of the traits that separate us from other species, he said. And that, he said, is because of the human ability to reason.Humans realize that theres not much difference between our close relatives and strangers and that someday strangers can help us if we are kind to them, McCullough said.Reasoning is the secret ingredient, which is why we donate blood when there are disasters and why most industrialized nations spend at least 20% of their money on social programs, such as housing and education, McCullough said.Dukes Hare also points to mama bears to understand the evolution and biology of kindness and its aggressive nasty flip side. He said studies point to certain areas of the brain, the medial prefrontal cortex, temporal parietal junction and other spots as either activated or dampened by emotional activity. The same places give us the ability to nurture and love, but also dehumanize and exclude, he said.When mother bears are feeding and nurturing their cubs, these areas in the brain are activated and it allows them to be generous and loving, Hare said. But if someone comes near the mother bear at that time, it sets of the brains threat mechanisms in the same places. The same bear becomes its most aggressive and dangerous.Hare said he sees this in humans. Some of the same people who are generous to family and close friends, when they feel threatened by outsiders become angrier. He points to the current polarization of the world.More isolated groups are more likely to be feel threatened by others and they are more likely to morally exclude, dehumanize, Hare said. And that opens the door to cruelty.But overall our bodies arent just programmed to be nice, they reward us for being kind, scientists said.Doing kindness makes you happier and being happier makes you do kind acts, said labor economist Richard Layard, who studies happiness at the London School of Economics and wrote the new book Can We Be Happier?University of California Riverside psychology professor Sonja Lyubomirsky has put that concept to the test in numerous experiments over 20 years and repeatedly found that people feel better when they are kind to others, even more than when they are kind to themselves.Acts of kindness are very powerful, Lyubomirsky said.In one experiment, she asked subjects to do an extra three acts of kindness for other people a week and asked a different group to do three acts of self-kindness. They could be small, like opening a door for someone, or big. But the people who were kind to others became happier and felt more connected to the world.The same occurred with money, using it to help others versus helping yourself. Lyubomirsky said she thinks it is because people spend too much time thinking and worrying about themselves and when they think of others while doing acts of kindness, it redirects them away from their own problems.Oxfords Curry analyzed peer-reviewed research like Lyubomirskys and found at least 27 studies showing the same thing: Being kind makes people feel better emotionally.But its not just emotional. Its physical.Lyubomirsky said a study of people with multiple sclerosis and found they felt better physically when helping others. She also found that in people doing more acts of kindness that the genes that trigger inflammation were turned down more than in people who dont.And she said in upcoming studies, shes found more antiviral genes in people who performed acts of kindness.___Follow Seth Borenstein on Twitter at @borenbears .___The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institutes Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.___Associated Press religion coverage receives support from the Lilly Endowment through the Religion News Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Here is the original post:

Not so random acts: Science finds that being kind pays off |870 AM 97.7FM News Talk WHCU - whcuradio.com

Day 4 of Synetic Theaters series of short pieces devised by members of the companys roster of artists shows much of the same agility and demonstrable translation into forms of physical theater from a classic text that marks the Synetic style. One has to ask, however, whether the individuals are really going as deeply into text as they might to find what has special resonance for todays audience and the current situation.

The Decameron is not, I would argue, simply a string of olios or short diversions. Underneath, it is a test of a group of friends staying isolated and socially distanced to survive a terrifying plague and a time to examine peoples values and what is of importance. Theres a lot of meat in the original text. Some of these short works, however, stay more as showcases for the language of stage combat, dance, and mime without much real attention to the emotional depth of Boccaccios intentions.

When seen live, the scores of resident composer Constantine Lortkipanidze blare at you, nailing you into the back of your seat. Whether you like his electronic pop/techno compositions or not, they are part of the immersive experience. Two of todays pieces incorporate his music and the scores feel more like sketches without helping advance the story in true music-theatre fashion.

Joshua Cole Lucas is a relatively new member of Synetic but has already shown his clown and mimetic abilities in a work like The Tempest, where he played the part of Trinculo. He chose well a scenario for his piece, based on Day 6, Story 4. It reads like a clown act with just enough scenario to create a conflict, reversal, and resolution without getting bogged down in complicated plot or character.

A cook, Chichibo, prepares a dinner for his master of a fine rare fowl his master has shot. The first scene update shows Lucas in conventional mime white face, assembling a chicken to roast, but the chicken prop seems to have other ideas. A quite amusing scene, Lucas wrestles with the fowl and tucks around the bird, made-vertical, potatoes and rosemary sprigs in its armpits. Almost immediately, however we have a continuity problem. The bird being delivered from the oven is on its side, and Voila! no rosemary. If that were not enough, in comes another figure and looks longingly at the succulent bird and demands a leg, which, reluctantly, Chichibo carves for him. But not before the two characters pass this roasting pan, presumably scalding hot from the oven, back and forth sans oven mitts.

Lucas plays not only Chichibo but the other two characters in the story, the eater of the chicken leg (who is another servant in the household although this is not made entirely clear; I thought maybe they were lovers or spouses,) and the lord of the manor. The filmed action deals cleverly enough with the triple casting, by having the three walking into and exiting the frame. But the punchline never did anything more than fizzle. Boccaccios biting retort in the original had the wily Chichibo supposedly convincing his master that birds, like the crane, only have one leg. Whatever might have been shown about the more serious relationship about the unequal power between master and servant went unexplored.

Nutsa Tediashvili took her inspiration from Day 7, Story 9, where, we are told, a woman takes control and embraces her own desire. I like that she poses the work as a question she wanted to explore: what is left then in the aftermath? This comes closer to current day needs to examine our own (often selfish) actions and the hurt we cause in our boredom and headlong rush of hedonism.

Tediashvili titles her piece I Did Things for Love. She is a beautiful and expressive performer on the small screen. Using her face in close-up, her relationship with the camera seduces us. As the woman who takes and takes, she is flanked in her performance by company members Phillip Fletcher and Alex Mills. Her husband is less decrepit than in Boccaccios story: hes more of a couch potato, more interested in whatever hes glued to on the small screen than his wifes insatiable appetites.Tediashvili also includes some nice cinematic elements to tell the story, including a scene shot in violet light where the physical action in silhouette gets quite stylized.

However, playing an old husband as a cuckolded fool may have been screamingly funny in 1347, and indeed was the stuff of many a commedia delArte scenario, but watching the young woman pull from her husbands mouth a perfectly good tooth, pulling out his beard, and grabbing his necklace (a bandana,) was torturous.

My favorite scene in the short film is a tango to Lortkipanidzes techno score. Complete with the triangle involving the sharing and devouring of a pear, it may not be quite the mouth-watering eating scene from Tom Jones the film, but it comes close. But Tediashvilis film abruptly ends, and I feel cheated; the piece never deals satisfactorily with its premise: what is the aftermath?

Karen Morales-Chacana has taken on one of the most complex and plot-driven stories in Boccaccios The Decameron. It is both a revenge tale and one that features gender switching.

Morales-Chacana has created a dual-language tale and that at first grabbed my attention. The setup of a wager was cleverly translated into a contemporary boozy deal made over a billiard table. In helping to further the story, Morales-Chacana uses repeatedly a gift box in close up, first delivered to the husband that reveals Frederick of Hollywood-style lingerie. (However, Im not sure if most viewers would get that a womans personal things serves as evidence to the husband that his wife has cheated on him unless one has read Boccaccio.)

I got a little befuddled trying to follow how Morales-Chacana handled the shifting plot points. I am not sure why the creator didnt follow the trail of that more interesting aspect of how this character, to escape her jealous and dangerous husband and on the run for six years, lived as a man. I also did not get the tone attempted in the subtitle, Revenge is truly a tastier plate when served cool.

Why do I continue to have trouble when Synetic actors speak? No me mat. Dont kill me. suddenly takes us into cinematic melodrama. Take your clothes off. I need all your clothes devolves the piece further and really isnt necessary. We see what is happening through the action in the film. Besides in such a short piece, with unisex fashion being ubiquitous, the scene doesnt tell us anything about her dramatic transformation. Shortly thereafter, the story jumps four years, and just when I might have re-engaged, as I said, where the character lives in a new society as a man, I get instead the banality, An invitation from the king. Wow!

Cut to movie music that sounds like Hitchcock, and were back on track, I think, with a nail-biting psycho-horror-and-revenge drama. But by the end, the whole thing devolves to reconciliation through spoken word, with the husband saying Forgive me, my love, Ill never doubt you again. Here was a magnificent opportunity, much like the character Paulinas bringing back to life the queen in Shakespeares The Winters Tale, to confront a jealous husband through tableaux vivants and pull off a tale of forgiveness and moral largesse (both of which we are much in need of today.) Its there in Boccaccio.

Day 4 of Synetics buffet-on-Boccaccio reminds us of the companys strength in movement-styled silent storytelling. Dealing with text demands rigor and serious time to excavate as the company has done in its best works.

Day 4 of Synetic Theaters The Decameron debuted July 13, 2020.

Tickets to watch The Decameronseries start at just $10 and are available now.

DCTS reviewsThe Decameron

See original here:

Review: Synetic Theater's The Decameron, Day 4. - DC Theatre Scene

Considering the times we're living in, it's hard to imagine Beavis and Butt-Head appealing to anyone outside of nostalgic Gen-Xers.

The idiotic cartoon, Beavis and Butt-Head, featuring the titular teenagers engaging in various jackass antics and providing their, uh, unique perspectives on music videos, is returning. Comedy Central and Mike Judge are giving Gen X the '90s nostalgia it craves. But considering the times we're living in, it's unlikely Gen Z, or anyone else for that matter, will relate to these gas-huffing, chronically chuckling air guitarists from Texas.

Pre-9/11 America was vastly different from society today. A detached and ironic take on life, exemplified by Gen X, prevailed. It was cool to not care. People were so sarcastic so often, it was hard to tell when they were being serious. Nighttime talk-show hosts like David Letterman and Conan O'Brien epitomized this attitude. Society was more carefree but, as became clear later, the country had its head in the sand. Nirvana famously attacked this clueless American hedonism and chauvinism by eviscerating glam metal, racism and homophobia. Beavis and Butt-Head, however, were largely a reflection of this period with their fartknocker and bunghole jokes.

RELATED:Beavis and Butt-Head Returns With New Seasons, Spinoffs

They were best known for their commentary on MTV music videos, pointing out what they did or did not like about a song or a musician's appearance (e.g., "This guy looks like a cheerleader," when discussing the frontman of the band Cinderella). But since the internet brought about the age of streaming and independent artists and labels have proliferated, music videos are no longer the staple they once were.

Though Gen Xers might still enjoy having Beavis and Butt-Head walk them through a Lana Del Rey or Ed Sheeren video, it's hard to see Gen Z, who grew up on candid and rather earnest YouTube videos and shows like Bob's Burgers, would find their observations nearly as amusing. Even if they did, the show already ran for eight seasons and was turned into a movie, making it hard to imagine what else could be done with this formula.

Apathy and disaffection also seem inappropriate when much of the country is dissatisfied with the current leadership, and movements like Black Lives Matter and #MeToo are still at the forefront of discussion. Immature comments about Trump's hair, which already abound, would add nothing to the conversation.

Unless Judge has plans to make the duo more outspoken and subversive, and less patently irreverent, an indifferent or even tone deaf take on modern issues by two white teenagers would not be well received in the current climate of cancel culture. It's also hard to say whether anyone would laugh these days at Beavis and Butt-Head playing frog baseball or putting balloons in dolphin holes.Animal-rights activists would not be happy, to say the least.

RELATED: 10 Guest Stars We Forgot Were On Beavis and Butt-Head

Many recently resurrected TV shows and movies, such as Twin Peaks and Pet Sematary, have received somewhat tepid reviews, which is not to say all remakes are unsuccessful. However, a show like Beavis and Butt-Head, which is so specific to a particular point in time, will most likely have difficulty bringing anything fresh to the table. Plus, ongoing shows like South Park already have the market in inappropriate cartoon antics cornered and have been commenting on current topics for a long time, so bringing Beavis and Butt-Head back seems unnecessary.

There's no doubt the new seasons of Beavis and Butt-Head will draw an audience of sentimental Gen Xers. Those wanting to escape the seriousness of current times may also be converted. But if the show is going to be worth revisiting, the disaffected tone will need to updated in order for its social commentary to translate to modern times.

KEEP READING: Without Beavis and Butt-Head, There Would Be No Rick and Morty or South Park

Community: 'Advanced Dungeons & Dragons' Shouldn't Have Been Pulled From Streaming

John Shin is a freelance editor and writer based in Seattle. A graduate of the University of Washington and Rutgers University, he has worked in publishing for over 15 years. His writing has appeared in various newspapers and the book One Word: Contemporary Writers on the Words They Love or Loathe.

The rest is here:

Beavis and Butt-Head Are Quintessentially '90s & Don't Need Revisiting - CBR - Comic Book Resources