Have a Good NEWS

[[[When Will There Be Good News?: A Novel]]]

Discription : On a hot summer day, Joanna Mason's family slowly wanders home along a country lane. A moment later, Joanna's life is changed forever...

On a dark night thirty years later, ex-detective Jackson Brodie finds himself on a train that is both crowded and late. Lost in his thoughts, he suddenly hears a shocking sound...

At the end of a long day, 16-year-old Reggie is looking forward to watching a little TV. Then a terrifying noise shatters her peaceful evening. Luckily, Reggie makes it a point to be prepared for an emergency...

These three lives come together in unexpected and deeply thrilling ways in the latest novel from Kate Atkinson, the critically acclaimed author who Harlan Coben calls "an absolute must-read."


More review coming soon.

Atkinson 's third detective novel, as a function of jaded ex-cop Jackson Brodie delivers the goods with her signature wit, keen sense of potential matches, managing to keep the reader in a rage at his feet to unravel and predict when the next missing piece would be consistent.

Unlike some novels in the crime genre, Atkinson takes time to develop her characters. This is already very much evident in the shocking prologue,which was effectively haunting because the reader already develops a relationship with characters when something pivotal happens to them. As the novel progresses, it picks up on the failed but unresolved relationship between Brodie and tough-as-nails Inspector Louise Munroe, and it also introduces the endearing 16-year old Reggie, a fiercely loyal nanny with a painful backstory. At the centre of the story, a successful GP, Dr Joanna Hunter, suddenly goes missing and ties all these separate personalities together in the most surprising way.

Perhaps my reluctance to be overgenerous in my praise for this novel has to do with the author's seeming over-ambitious attention to detail, ironically. It felt to this reader that when the climax came, Atkinson had to account for the fates and stories of too many characters, which stretched the moment a little too thin and diminished the otherwise thrilling story.


Browse ...

I find that I must agree with mystery/suspense author Harlan Coban when he says that Kate Atkinson is a "must read" author. When Will There Be Good News? is Kate Atkinson's newest mystery. The story begins with a horrible life altering crime that occurred to a family over 30 years ago. The results of this crime unfold throughout the span of the story. Kate Atkinson has the amazing ability to allow individual pieces of the lives of her characters to connect and intermix and even unravel in a mesmerizing fast paced way. I fully intended to read this book in a calm and normal manner but once the story began to unfold...I literally attacked the book and could not resume normal activities until I arrived at the last page. I also have to admit the last 50 pages were read nearly breathlessly...I could not have stopped reading if I had wanted to. I literally did not want the story to end even while I was speed reading to the finale.

There are fascinating characters in this book. They range from Jackson Brodie, a former police officer now turned private investigator whom we first met in Kate Atkinson's earlier works Case Histories and One Good Turn. There is Louise Munroe, a police investigator who shares a history with Jackson Brodie. There is Dr. Joanna Hunter, who has a very strong and compelling connection with the 30 year old crime that begins this book. There is Reggie, Dr. Hunter's "mother's help" who is firmly convinced in a uniquely comedic way...that very bad things seem to gather around her even as she remains a light hearted, charmingly funny, sad and important character. There is Neil Hunter, Dr. Joanna Hunter's sort of mysterious underhanded husband. There is Billy, Reggie's brother. Billy just happens to be a drug dealing small time amoralistic thug. There is Ms. McDonald, a seemingly harmless innocent and even innocuous character who is a part of Reggie's life and who also is one of the reasons for a huge plot twist in the story. There are also characters within this story who are key players without us even meeting them...Tessa, Jackson Brodie's wife, and Marlee his daughter and Andrew Decker who has an immense connection to the original crime and the novel's breathtaking beginning. Even Scout and Sadie, the dogs in the story, are essential to the way Kate Atkinson unfolds each character and relationship.

I can only state again that this book is deep with complex character relationships and yet it is very readable. It is not the kind of complexity wherein you must go back and reread and reread again. The characters and their unfolding relationships to each other become a part of you. You will yearn for everyone to end their lives happy and unscarred even as quite horrible actions and events unfold all over Edinborough. Kate Atkinson's newest book is not a quiet ride...it is a roller coaster of surprises and thrills and chills that will leave you feeling a bit breathless as you read its final chapter.


I really enjoyed this book, staying up until 1:00 am reading it. There is a mystery entwined in the story - what happened to Dr. Hunter? But it's really about the characters and relationships. The four main characters are well defined and interesting. One of them, Reggie, is a 16-year-old orphan who has the determination to make it even though everything seems to be against her. This sentence sums up her current state of affairs, "Reggie got off the bus and turned the corner of the street to find that the all-too-familiar calling cards of catastrophe were waiting for her - three fire engines, an ambulance, two police cars, some kind of incident van, and a knot of bystanders - all muddled up in the street outside her flat. Reggie's heart sank, it seemed inevitable that they would be there for her." Flashes of wit and humor brighten the story and Atkinson's descriptive writing will make her characters linger in your mind.



Buy Here (for discount) When Will There Be Good News?: A Novel

08/25/2010 Football played under the influence

Plus: Can players really hang in the air? Which teams have kept identical appearances? And which clubs' nicknames have been selected by poll? Send your questions and answers to knowledge@guardian.co.uk

"In 1984, the American baseball player Dock Ellis famously admitted that his 1970 no-hitter occurred while high on LSD ('Richard Nixon was the home plate umpire, and I was pitching to Jimi Hendrix, who was holding a guitar ...')," noted Anton Dolicek, in a recent instalment of the Knowledge. "His pitches were, not surprisingly, a little wild, but no batter got a hit. Can anyone relate a similarly groovy football story?"

Former Manchester United and Aston Villa hero Paul McGrath's drink problems are well documented, not least in his harrowing autobiography Back From The Brink.

While doing the rounds publicising the aforementioned tome, the Irish national treasure provided some insight into the experience of playing top class professional football while drunk, in a chat with the Guardian. "The fact is that when you've been, let's say, mischievous with alcohol, it actually heightens your will to do well because you don't want to let the other players down," he told Paul Doyle in 2006. "You know that they know you're not clever. So you try to be ultra-sharp, even though you've blunted yourself during the build-up. You want to win every tackle and every header and all that sort of stuff. But make no mistake, there were certainly days when I drank and it didn't work, and I ended up playing like a total idiot, getting 'megged and everything."

Meanwhile Martin Laplace writes in from Argentina, with a tale of how a pre-match drinking session can actually be performance-enhancing. "There's a really famous story about René Houseman, 1978 World Cup champion and Huracán player, nicknamed El Loco," he writes, adding yet another South American footballer nicknamed El Loco to the Knowledge's vast collection. "He was a huge drunkard and himself tells the tale (apologies, my translation ain't perfect): 'In 1974 I turned up once completely drunk to play Huracán v River Plate. The night before I had a birthday. My team-mates gave me like 20 showers and a lot of coffee, but it was of no use. I couldn't start the game and went in during the second half with the game tied 0-0. I got the ball, dribbled past three defenders, the goalkeeper and kicked the ball in. My team-mates tell me that I fell on the floor and started laughing. I then proceeded to fake an injury, got subbed and went home to sleep. I don't remember nothing of that.'"

Not to worry, René. Luckily somebody was on hand to record the goal for you to admire when you came round. If the man was that good drunk as a monkey, what must he have been like sober?

We've dealt previously with the case of German referee Wolf-Dieter Ahlenfelder who, in 1975, admitted to admitted having "several Maltesers" (a schnaps) before a match he officiated, before adding: "We are men â€" we don't drink Fanta." The Knowledge also knows of one footballer, who probably wouldn't appreciate being named because he once told us he played a top-flight League of Ireland match for a well known Irish club while being heavily under the influence of weed. While he didn't report being booked by Michael Flatley or shooting from distance at a giant Leprechaun, we can report that he was even more lethargic than usual and was first into the dressing room at half-time to gobble up all the biscuits.

By the way, if you haven't seen No Mas's animated story of Dock Ellis's LSD-inspired game, it's well worth watching.

CAN PLAYERS HANG IN THE AIR?

\\ "Just finished watching the match of the day and something struck me one scientist 's comments," begins Pieter Nicholls. "Arsenal's Marouane Chamakh was described as 'hanging in the air' before heading a corner at goal. It's something that's often said of footballers, but is it actually possible?"

The Knowledge dropped one of its closest chums an email and, hey presto: "Once a player has jumped, in the absence of wings or any other means of generating a thrust, then the centre of gravity must be decelerating due to gravity at all times during the jump," explains Dr Tony Weidberg of St John's College. "The centre of gravity is initially going up, slows down and then starts coming down. So I have two possible explanations:

1) around the time in which the velocity of the centre of mass in the vertical direction goes through 0, the velocity will be very low. So there might be a short period of time in which the eye can not resolve any vertical motion.

2) The force of gravity only requires that the centre of mass is decelerating but if the player is also rotating, it would be possible for the centre of mass to be falling but the head might be held at constant height for a period of time. If the eye was focussing on the head, this would generate an illusion of the player floating.

I do not t 'really know if one of these explanations is right and all this may be just an illusion ... "

Best get a second opinion. Here's Alan Barr, lecturer in particle physics in the University of Oxford's department of physics. "Tony is quite right that (leaving rocket boosters, wings and wires aside) the centre of gravity of the player - loosely speaking the 'average' position of his or her body - has to continually accelerate downwards. Galileo and Newton told us that a long time ago, and that physics hasn't changed.

"But that necessarily doesn't mean that the floating has to be an illusion. If you watch the 'floating' player, you'll often find that towards the top of his jump he forces his arms and legs down hard. Why does he do this? The limbs are not used to hit the ball â€" but in fact as any coach will tell you, they are still very important in the action. If the player can make these 'extraneous' limbs move down fast, then the average position of his body will accelerate downwards (as demanded by friend Newton), while the important bits for the header â€" his trunk and head â€" hang in the air.

"So the arms and legs play an important role in moving the rest of the body during headers â€" as a bit of slow-mo replay will show. In fact the other noticeable movement of the arms â€" from 'in front' of to 'behind' the player â€" is there for a similar reason. By pulling his arms backwards his trunk and head moves forwards, and his head hits the ball harder. If you go through the motions of a header yourself and you'll probably find that you naturally move your arms fast from an up-and-forward position to a down-and-backward one. Physics tells us why this makes sense, but to the average player it's just a natural movement."

WHEN PLAYERS DO FASHION

\\ "Seeing Newcastle 's mustache-TP-they-quartet win reminded me of Romania' s bleached hair 1998 FIFA World Cup squad," mused Simon Thomas in last week's Knowledge. "Are there any other instances of players opting for an appearance style en masse?"

There are indeed, Simon, although our first example contains two conspicuous absentees from trips to the barber shop for very different, but equally sensible reasons. "At the close of the 2000-01 season, all of Leeds United's squad decided to participate in a mass head-shaving," writes Andy Brook. "The notable exceptions were Ian Harte, who was getting married the following weekend, and Lee Bowyer, who was maintaining a respectable appearance due to a certain infamous 'out-of-stadium' appearance … at Hull crown court."

Kjetil Njoten writes in with the story of SK Brann, who "scraped through the first round of the cup against amateur side Voss in 1988. Norwegian journalist Davy Wathne said in a scathing match report he would walk from Bergen to Oslo, 600 miles away, if Brann made it down to the last two. In response to the had-to-be-read-to-be-believed slaughtering he handed out to the shambolic side, the team vowed en masse not to shave until they got knocked out of the cup. Fast forward five months and the hairiest first XI since the viking era lost 2-0 to Rosenborg in a replay. In a heart-warming gesture Davy Wathne proved as good as his word and did indeed walk to the game, raising over £100,000 for a cancer charity."

KNOWLEDGE ARCHIVE

"The origins of Sunderland's Black Cats nickname makes me wonder if there are any other clubs with a similarly official nickname that resulted from some kind of formalised poll," wondered Mark Goodge in 2009.

There certainly were, in fact one of them was confirmed in 2008. Fans of Sydney FC in Australia were invited to submit their own suggestions for a new club nickname at the end of 2007, before team officials named the "best" one as winner early in 2008. You can draw your own conclusions about the quality of submissions received from the fact they settled for Sky Blues. "No one has used it since," insisted reader Adoni Patrikios.

Closer to home, Richard Haughey wrote in to tell us Welling United held a similar competition before settling on their nickname "The Wings".

For thousands more questions and answers take a trip through the Knowledge archive.

CAN YOU HELP?

"After Daniel Agger's admirable performance against Arsenal last weekend after being knocked on the head, it made me wonder: what's the most memorable performance by a player who couldn't remember it?" enquires Bill Maclachlan.

"In the wake of Nicolas Anelka burning yet another bridge with the FFF by calling its members 'clowns', has any footballer left more clubs/national associations in acrimonious circumstances?" asks Nick Barrionuevo. "My mates and I are thinking possibly Craig Bellamy but would like confirmation."

"Has there been a recorded instance where a player ever been sold to a rival club, kept on the payroll by his former employers and deliberately undermined his new club, either by causing dressing-room unrest or playing rubbishly?" wonders Craig Fawcett.

"John Ashdown, in his excellent recent blog on Burton, stated that their run of 11 successive seasons of improvement (with one aberration) might be a record. Surely it can't be?" sniffs Andrew Pechey.

"We all know about Chelsea fans throwing celery, La Liga fans waving their white handkerchiefs as a sign of surrender to a superior team, and huge numbers of them unwrapping their tin-foiled bocadillo sandwiches at half-time, but are there any other bizarre or quirky traditions or idiosyncrasies that fans across Europe tend to do while watching their teams from the stands?" muses James Reynolds. "Aside from the obvious 'Ultras' hooliganism."

"Berlin currently has no representative in the German Bundesliga," notes Stephen Glennon. "What's the longest period of time that a capital city has had no team in the corresponding country's first league?"

"Robbie Fowler recently signed for Perth Glory in the A-League and, as a resident of Perth, will be required to make frequent offerings to the Giant Squid which lurks in the mighty Swan River," writes Dan Osborn. "Have any other players had to fulfil similar obligations after changing clubs?"

Send your questions and answers to knowledge@guardian.co.uk.

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08/29/2010 The autumn hot list 2010

From the hip-hop artist who scares Kanye West to the funniest teens on the telly and the launch of Tom Ford's must-have womenswear label, here are 20 highlights for the next season

1. Celebrity offspring

It's easy to be envious of second-generation celebrities. Not only do their genes mean that without even trying they look vaguely famous, but they also get an unfair leg-up when it comes to money and contacts. While most of them squander their good luck, there's a batch of famous names who are annoyingly impressive. Though both Julia and Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld, children of French Vogue editor Carine, have done the obligatory modelling stint, they've both now struck out on their own. Vladimir, 28, has launched Feedback, a company that stages pop-up art shows, big sister Julia, meanwhile, works as a consultant art director. Elsewhere, Holly Branson has dropped out of medical school to work as publisher on entertainment magazine Maverick for dad, Richard. Max Minghella, 24-year-old son of Anthony, is co-starring in David Fincher's film The Social Network, The founder of Facebook. David Bowie 'son Duncan Jones caused a stir with his directorial debut, The Moon , and his latest film, Source Code, is out next year. Connected and gifted. There really is nothing to like about these people.

2. Life in modern homes

Holiday lettings company Living Architecture allows people to experience what it is like to live, eat and sleep in a space designed by an outstanding architectural practice. Created by Alain de Botton, author of The Architecture of Happiness, the non-profit foundation has commissioned some of Europe's leading architects to design five houses in Suffolk, Kent, Norfolk and Devon, which will be available to rent year-round, with prices starting from £20 per person per night. The company sees itself as "an educational body, dedicated to enhancing the appreciation of architecture". The first two properties (both sleeping eight and available to rent from October) are the Balancing Barn in Suffolk and the Shingle House in Dungeness.

• living-architecture.co.uk

3. Daniel Sloss

Most teenagers spend their time making sure their mates don't laugh at them, but Daniel Sloss started his comedy career at 16. Four years on, the Fife prodigy, whose material riffs on computer games and teen angst, has just had his own TV pilot on BBC3. Now a festival regular from Latitude to Edinburgh, he's also performing a series of solo shows this September in London, Nottingham and Glasgow, as well as appearing on The Rob Brydon Show and Michael McIntyre's Comedy Roadshow â€" expect to see a lot more of him.

• Daniel Sloss is at the Soho Theatre, London, from 20-25 September (danielsloss.co.uk)

4. Rory Kinnear

His features may not scream "leading man", but 32-year-old Rory Kinnear has been the worst-kept secret in acting for the past couple of years (the 2009 Olivier award really blew his cover) and his Hamlet at the National Theatre this October is set to be the hottest ticket since… well, since David Tennant was Hamlet. If you don't get to see him on stage, you'll scarcely be able to miss him on the box in the coming months: as well as his current role in Vexed, he's set to star in the BBC's new adaptation of Women in Love and also Mark Gatiss's comedy drama, First Men in the Moon.

• Hamlet is at the National Theatre from 1 October (nationaltheatre.org.uk)

5. Collected letters

The letter may not be the most cutting-edge of literary forms, but this autumn there is a triple reminder of the nosy pleasure of being able to read the epistles of others. Next month, Under the Sun: The Letters of Bruce Chatwin (Jonathan Cape, £25) is published. Then, in October, we have Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica (Faber, £22.50), a collection of the poet's missives to his lover of 40 years. And in November there's Saul Bellow: Letters (Viking, £22), featuring the master's correspondences with a range of fellow writers, from Faulkner to Amis.

6. Truly local food

Call it the Noma effect: the impact on luxury restaurants everywhere of the success of Copenhagen's Noma, This year called the world 'best . Its commitment to use only ingredients from within its region has forced ambitious chefs to rethink what "local" really means. Witness this year's biggest opening, Dinner by Heston Blumenthal at London's Mandarin Oriental Hotel. Food at his flagship restaurant, the Fat Duck, is littered with international ingredients, but his new venture will concentrate on British dishes "celebrating the very best of British produce".

• Dinner at Heston Blumenthal in the Mandarin Oriental Hotel , London, opens on 1 December

7. Bee keeping

Keeping chickens just isn't enough of a challenge any more: for back-garden farmers it's all about bees now. We're already coveting Omlet's beautiful Beehaus, and considering one of Zootrain's one-day introduction courses to beekeeping this September. Then there's Gloria Havenhand's book, Honey, to tell us how to plant a bee-friendly garden… But it's mostly so we can put on our best Eddie Izzard voice and yell: "I'm covered in bees!"

• Omlet.co.uk; zootrain.com; Honey by Gloria Havenhand (Kyle Cathie, £12.99)

8. Nicki Minaj

Kanye West is so in awe of fellow rapper Nicki Minaj's potential that he called the 25-year-old New Yorker "the scariest artist right now". A graduate of the performing arts school immortalised in Fame, Minaj has an outrageous sense of theatre that has made her stand out in a hip-hop world short on female artists offering more than straight sex appeal. Having stolen the show with guest spots on tracks by Mariah Carey, Usher and Christina Aguilera, she steps into the spotlight this autumn with her own much-anticipated debut album, Pink Friday.

• Pink Friday is released on 23 November

9. Tom Ford Women's Wear

10. Back to School "style

Knee socks with brogues, pleated woollen skirts and chunky cardis. Blazers and berets, duffle coats and prim Princess coats… Fashion's idea of school does seem to be based upon a model last seen in the 1960s, nonetheless it's charming. The easiest way into it? Buy a satchel.

• Satchel, £ 98, from Urban Outfitters (urbanoutfitters.co.uk )

11. The Inbetweeners

If you've never seen The Inbetweeners, you can get the gist from the two-and-a-half-minute catch-up film on E4's website. Four gawky schoolboys sit around a drab sixth-form common room talking about what they did in the summer holidays. Gangly dimwit Neil nearly cheated on his "wank girlfriend", Hayden Panettiere, with Fearne Cotton; cocky fantasist Jay claims to have been at a Thai kickboxing camp (but was actually at his nan's); lovestruck Simon is still mooning over the unattainable Carli; and posh nerd Will is worried about his exams, as last time he sat one he shat his pants. And no, not metaphorically.

This is the level of humour at which writers Iain Morris and Damon Beesley's very loosely autobiographical hit series operates. Nob jokes, bollock jokes, poo jokes, gay jokes and hitherto-unknown-to-us "clunge" jokes. It's not particularly sophisticated, but then nor are 17-year-old boys, or the predicaments they get into â€" projectile vomiting over a love interest's little brother, buying shoes off a tramp to get into a nightclub, being cuckolded by a French exchange student. It may be extreme, but as a show that conveys the mundanity, inanity and routine humiliation of teenage life â€" as opposed to the melodrama and perfect complexions in Skins â€" it couldn't be more painfully accurate.

The show has become such a success â€" it won the audience award at this year's TV Baftas and Bird picked up best actor at the 2009 British Comedy Awards â€" that a film version was almost inevitable (the funding is in place, Bird confirms, the organisation less so). In the meantime there's the third series that starts on E4 in September and, with the boys in the last year of school, the stakes are higher than ever. Will Simon pull Carli? Can Jay stop fibbing? Will Neil betray Hayden? Can Will get through his exams without changing his trousers? If you haven't seen The Inbetweeners, it could be time to take the clunge.

12. Shcherbaty smile

The sort of delightfully wonky smiles that make American dentists shudder have become fashion's most coveted accessory. While Georgia May Jagger graced her first Vogue cover this year, and Vanessa Paradis had her biggest cinema hit for years with Heartbreaker, some of the most-influential fashion houses have also fallen for the charm of the gap-toothed model. Lara Stone Dutch supermodel and wife of David Walliams, is the face of Calvin Klein this season; Australian Abbey Lee Kershaw stars in both Chanel and Mulberry ads; and American model Lindsey Wixson does the honours for Miu Miu.

13. Gaming Heaven

All the major video game consoles began intriguing additions in the next 6 months. First up PlayStation Move the controller motion sensor games similar to Nintendo Wii, from September this year. November sees the launch Kinect for Xbox 360 , which lets gamers do away with a controller altogether, playing solely through gestures and spoken commands. You'll have to wait until March 2011 for the Nintendo 3DS, but this new portable console promises 3D effects without the need for special glasses. Nintendogs will never be the same again.

14. Jaime Hayon's wire chair

Hayon has long been the superstar of industrial design, but this September sees the launch of his first complete furniture range for the UK-based Sé (se-london.com). Witty and unusual â€" but not too witty or unusual â€" our favourite is his wiry armchair.

15. Sarah Silverman

At age 2, Sarah Silverman makes her family laugh by saying the word "to fuck". It 's been funny for almost 40 years, but it' s only now, after the publication of her autobiography, bedwetter, and its main role in the film, Sarah Polley 'Take this waltz that Britain is really ready to pay attention .

To recap, Silverman's the lady who dresses like a teenage boy and does jokes such as: "I don't care if you think I'm a racist. I just want you to think I'm thin." She's the comedian whose sitcom, the Sarah Silverman Program, featured her awkward one-night stand with God. She's the woman who, as a bedwetting teenager suffered depression so bad she dropped out of school for a year and took 16 Xanax a day. "It happened as fast as a cloud covering the sun," she writes in The Bedwetter. At 13, as she sat in her therapist's waiting room, his colleague rushed in screaming that he'd hanged himself. "There needs to be some protocol for how we tell depressed teenage girls that their shrinks have killed themselves," she says. At 22, she wrote for US show Saturday Night Live. At 26, she was acting in Seinfeld. In 2008, her musical video message for then-boyfriend, talkshow host Jimmy Kimmel, went viral. And with "I'm Fucking Matt Damon", suddenly, she was famous.

Her humour unwraps taboos using indie guitar and comments about her beloved Jewish family. She's become one of the most successful comedians in America. And this autumn, she'll finally make her mark over here.

Bedwetter: Stories of courage, redemption and the Pea is out next week. Take This Waltz (which Silverman opens with the line, "I look in the mirror, and I wanna fuck myself") opens early next year

16. Electric family cars

This Wednesday, online ordering starts for the Nissan Leaf, one of the most radical developments in motoring in recent years. The car will cost £23,990 and production is set to begin in November in Sunderland. From the outside it may not look particularly futuristic, but what lies beneath is truly ground-breaking â€" it is the world's first mass-production all-electric family car. An eight-hour charge will give you about 100 miles of motoring and a top speed of 90mph, but there's no tax, no fuel, no emissions, no sound and virtually no cost.

17. Camouflage nails

As nail-watchers know, where Chanel leads other varnishes follow. This autumn, it's producing a limited-edition collection of camouflage shades. Star manicurist Sophy Robson will be creating camo designs at the Chanel store for Vogue's Fashion's Night Out, and sees the trend exploding in time for winter. "I guess it's all part of the 90s revival," she says.

• Fashion's Night Out is on 8 September (sophyrobson.com)

18. Futuristic hotels in Rajasthan

"We are seeing Indian hotels experimenting with some really exciting modern architecture," says Mandy Nickerson of Bales Worldwide. There 'hotel Devi Ratn in Jaipur (deviresorts.in / deviratn ); Mihirgarh in the desert near Jodhpur (mihirgarh.com ); and the Raas, situated within the city walls of Jodhpur (raasjodhpur.com), which is plush new build designed to resemble forts. "They're a far cry from the old-school colonial hotels of yesteryear," she says.

19. A Sauvage

The buzz around 27-year-old tailor Adrien Sauvage started back in February when GQ magazine started tweeting about him. This autumn sees the launch of his label, A Sauvage, with debut collection "This is Not a Suit" â€" it's full of unfussy, beautifully cut suits and blazers. His designs bear out the idea behind the collection: this is not a suit, it's a way of life.

• A Sauvage from matchesfashion.com

20. Bill Granger

He's the poster boy for brunch and the man the New York Times christened the "egg master of Sydney". But for a long time restaurateur and food writer Bill Granger was someone we Brits could only admire from his luscious home-style cookbooks, with their pleasingly achievable recipes. But now he's over here, living in London, with his wife and business partner, Natalie, and their three girls, Edie, Ines and Bunny.

So why the big move? "I think it was a bit of a midlife crisis thing," says Granger. "Most people with growing families move to the country â€" we decided to move to one of the busiest cities in the world." He also counts London's booming foodie scene as a reason: "It feels like a really exciting time for restaurants, particularly in the capital, and food producers in the UK. I wanted to spend some time here and get a real feeling of what was happening before I strode in and started doing my own thing."

Granger feels he is turning over a new leaf with the move. "I've tried to reconnect with my creative side," he says. "I've been cooking more instinctively again." His new book, Bill's Basics, is a reflection of this. It's a one-stop manual of all the unfussy, much-loved recipes he has become famous for. He is also making a TV series and has plans to open his own restaurant in London soon.

With this last project he wants to go back to basics, too. "I'd like to open a little kitchen and dining room, somewhere that's very pared down and not over-designed. I want that excitement of opening somewhere that's close to my heart again, somewhere I feel really passionate about." He couldn't have chosen a better place to do it.

• Bill's Basics(Quadrille, £ 25), on September 3, Bill Granger 'new show will be at the Good Food Channel in the autumn

Have a Good NEWS

[[[Kathy Mattea Good News Christmas (piano, vocals / guitar Songbook Artist)]]]

Discription : Ten top Christmas favorites from country superstar Kathy Mattea. Includes: Christ Child's Lullabye * Emmanuel * Good News * Mary Did You Know * What a Wonderful Beginning * and more.


More review soon.









Buy Here (for discount) Mattea Kathy Good News Christmas (Piano/Vocal/Guitar Artist Songbook)

[[[Inkadinkado Clear Stamps 4-Inch by 8-Inch Sheet, Good News]]]

Discription : INKADINKADO-Clear brand. Clear Stamps will cling to your uniquely designed clear stamping blocks, no glue (block not included). They cut the contour and easily positions on your project. Their modern design will bring a fresh view of any project! Dimensions, shape and number of stamps in the package varies depending on the topic. Import.


More review coming soon.









Buy Here (for discount) Inkadinkado Clear Stamps 4-Inch by 8-Inch Sheet, Good News

[[[Scout Lil' Slim Laptop Sleeve for 15-Inch Laptops (Good News)]]]

Discription :


More review coming soon.

We bought this for our daughter's Notebook. The sleeve fits in her school bag and because of it is made of a slick material, it is very easy for her to tuck it in and pull it out of her bag. Plus, she really liked the outside design!







Buy Here (for discount) Scout Lil' Slim Laptop Sleeve for 15-Inch Laptops (Good News)

06/23/2010

In resorting to swaggering rhetoric about being 'tough on crime', Labour underestimated the public's appetite for rehabilitation

It's fair to say that the probation service in England and Wales has undergone a few changes since the days when the Church of England Temperance Society's "police court missionaries" offered salvation to persistent drunks. Community-spirited volunteers had been offering their services as guardians for people passing through the courts since about 1841. Probation supervision was given formal footing by the reforming Liberal government of 1906, with the Probation of Offenders Act. It was the officers' duty to "advise, assist and befriend", and though those words are now almost profanities, the principle is still observed by plenty of probation officers today.

The early ethos was an outreach, welfare-oriented one, viewing crime as a problem of disadvantaged individuals and communities in need of support. With government interest came change at an ever-increasing pace, challenging the fundamental principles of the organisation. Many in probation still strongly value its traditional "social work" culture, which seems to jar with the "offender management" language of recent years. The implication of the current discourse is that those we work with are first and foremost sets of risk factors to be monitored, rather than people to support through the process of changing their lives. Good probation work balances these approaches on a case-by-case basis, but press coverage is often unsubtle, framing the criminal justice debate in terms of a need to pick a side. Perpetrators or victims? Callous criminals or decent, law-abiding citizens?

When Labour came to power in 1997, after promising to be "tough on the causes of crime", a nuanced approach to criminal justice might have been expected. Instead, the swaggering rhetoric was of being "tough on crime" â€" and on criminals. The probation service was at best a source of confusion for the administration, which preferred to steer clear of the topic. It remains the case that when probation does get a mention from those in power, it's mostly in terms of community service, while the supervisory aspect is ignored.

Public Works - re-branding of unpaid work, or community payback - has also undergone social transformation of their image, has, as it requires punishment, not rehabilitation project. Louise Casey 's Cabinet report of 2008, Engaging Communities in Fighting Crime, suggested that fluorescent bibs to identify "offenders" on community service could enhance public confidence in community sentences. Criminologists Shadd Maruna and Anna King pointed out how portraying such sentences as strongly punitive can end up backfiring: if those subject to community penalties need and deserve harsh, "tough" treatment, even humiliation, surely prison is the best place to dole it out?

Reviewing research on public attitudes, Maruna and King argued that the public are better disposed to rehabilitative efforts than shifts in policy designed to appease their supposedly punitive sensibilities would suggest.

Typically, this coincides with my own experience as a probation officer. This is home to me most vividly when I piloted the failure of the test information in a large crown court 's open day. It was about a week after the murder of John Monckton by Damien Hanson and Elliot White in 2006, when Hanson was on probation following his release from prison. I was expecting some unpleasantness. Admittedly the police dogs, free Trading Standards frisbees and opportunities to be handcuffed and locked in cells were drawing slightly bigger crowds, but I had the pleasure of talking to a steady stream of curious people with a lot of questions, a lot of compassion, and a heartening acceptance of the possibility of change. Some of them eagerly instigated role plays, casting themselves as hardbitten old lag or young tearaway and bringing humanity and understanding to the roles behind the overt comedic stereotyping.

I think part of the trouble with probation and the media (aside from the fact that a person doing absolutely nothing of note to the general public is a resounding success for us), is that terms like "supervision", "licence" and "offender management" are thrown around without comment on what they actually mean, leaving them to each viewer's interpretation.

In the furore following the 2006 Panorama special on probation hostels, it appeared that many interpreted "supervision" as meaning constant surveillance. How can there be meaningful debate about probation practice if there's such a dearth of information about it for a general audience? As Andrew Bridges, then chief inspector of the probation service, said in 2008, we need to talk about "mundane truths" rather than "exciting fallacies". I'd suggest that people might even find some of the truths about probation inspiring rather than mundane.

Where is probation going under the coalition government, then? Changing Lives â€" An Oral History of ProbationPublished by Napo

As home affairs spokesman Clegg concluded by telling Napo "... it is crucial that the unglamorous, painstaking, yet hugely important work of the service is cherished, not undermined, by both government and opposition parties." We shall see.

Have a Good NEWS

[[[New York Yankees 2009 MLB League Championship Locker Room Cap]]]

Discription : Official Locker Room Cap for the 2009 League Championship Series. The Neo - a stretch fit 39Thirty 100% Cotton cap from New Era. Made in the team's primary home color. Designed with a special League Championship Series Logo on the front that incorporates the Team's primary logo.


More review coming soon.

This cap completes my collection of Yankees World Series Champions. It's displayed along with other caps and memorabilias.







Buy Here (for discount) New York Yankees 2009 MLB League Championship Locker Room Cap

07/21/2010 10 new revelations about Labour

Andrew Sparrow on the revelations from a new book by Deborah Mattinson, who participated in the polling and research focus groups to work for 25 years

The Times reportedly paid £350,000 to serialise Lord Mandelson's book.My budget for the book serialisations is more modest - but I still managed to scrounge a copy of the book Deborah Mattinson ', in a conversation with a brick wall, and 's definitely worth a blog.

Mattinson was involved in polling and focus group research for Labour for 25 years, and describes herself on the dustjacket as "chief pollster to Gordon Brown", although the book reveals that they fell out before the 2010 election.

It's not the best book on New Labour, but it contains more insight and less bile than many memoirs and probably deserves more attention than it has received.

The Sunday Times has published an extract, about Brown's decision not to have an election in 2007 (paywall), and the Mail on Sunday has extracted a story about how Brown's aides tried to make him appear more human. But there are other titbits worth mentioning, and here are 10 of them:

1. Gordon Brown came close to announcing a graduate tax and community national service. Mattinson says that in 2004, when Brown expected to replace Tony Blair as prime minister, she was asked to research with a focus group the reaction to a statement that he might make when taking over.

It said that 'we made a mistake by introducing tuition fees, and that this would be ended, replaced by a graduate tax'. It observed that 'we need to give young people the discipline and responsibility gained after the second world war by taking part in national service' and that 'I will introduce a new community national service â€" a gap year where all young people, not just the well off, can become involved in community projects at home ... learning new skills and a new sense of purpose'.

Reaction was very favourable. Mattinson does not explain why Brown dropped these ideas when he did eventually become prime minister.

2. Brown ignored focus group evidence when he cut income tax by 2p in the 2007 budget. Mattinson researched this option before the budget and found voters thought it was "too good to be true".

She says the research showed that cutting inheritance tax would be more popular. Brown ignored her findings, reduced income tax and did not cut inheritance tax. "It was a rare example from that period of GB ignoring focus group feedback," she says. After the budget, voters responded badly and Brown achieved his first ever negative rating as chancellor.

3. Brown was obsessed with slogans. "GB loved slogans and believed them to be imbued with a mystical power capable of persuading the most intransigent voter," Mattinson writes. "No matter how many times he was told that words must be matched by actions if they were to persuade, still he searched tirelessly for the perfect summation of his position."

4. Labour's 2010 election slogan â€" "a future fair for all" â€" was confusing. "Voters misunderstood, thinking that this might refer to some sort of futuristic theme park â€" a 'future fair'," Mattinson writes.

5. Brown experienced a passage referring to his old school moto (\\ "I will try my best") before using it in his speech when he became prime minister in 2007.

6. Brown commissioned focus group research in 1996 into putting up taxes on those earning more than £100,000 because he did not trust the research carried out for Blair saying this would be unpopular. Mattinson has convened several focus groups, but they showed that the research Blair (carrried from Philip Gould) is correct. "The results were surprising and somewhat disappointing GB team," Mattinson says.

7. Alan Milburn was not told when Blair agreed that Brown would replace him as head of the 2005 election campaign. "The first that Alan Milburn knew was when GB's team appeared, unannounced, to take charge of the 8.30 strategy meeting that Monday," Mattinson says.

8. Labour considered offering free tickets to the Dome as a reward for people joining the party. Mattinson was asked to conduct research into how members would respond to having free Dome tickets, or vouchers for other attractions, included as part of the membership package. "Party members ... were frankly outraged by what they saw as attempts to 'bribe' them," she writes.

9. Mattinson thinks politicians now have to be likeable to be successful.

10. Research in the 1980s concluded Labour party members were "a bit weird". Mattinson says that she commissioned a study to enable the party to learn more about its membership. The woman who conducted the research spoke to party members all around Britain and made a worrying discovery. This is what she told Mattinson:

In principle, they are all a little strange. I mean that they have common features t was not their political beliefs - they cover the entire spectrum, from left center to extreme left - they weren t ', united by an ideology or political beliefs.
No, it was that they were all slightly strange people ... strange personally, I mean. They were people who really did want to spend their evenings sitting in church halls or community centres agonising over quite arcane points of detail.
And they weren't just doing it that night, but every night â€" the committee for this, the committee for that, the council, whatever. They were sort of lonely and socially odd.

Have a Good NEWS

[[[Good News]]]

Discription : "Good News" won the 1994 Grammy Award South Gospel, Gospel, Country or Bluegrass Gospel Album. Format: Audio CD Publisher: ISBN Mercury Nashville: 731451805929Tracks: 1. What Wonderful Beginning 3:51 2. There, with a New Kid in town 4:06 3. Brightest and best 3:34 4. Mary, did you know? 3:15 5. Star 3:53 June. Emmanuel 2:57 7. Somebody Talkin about Jesus 2:25 8. Anything but child's 4:10 9. Christ child Lullabye 4:29 10. 5:38 Good News


A detailed review soon.

I love the songs on this album, and her voice is perfect for them. Just enough of a country feel to add to an eclectic Christmas music collection.

Great vocals and instrumentation. The product also arrived in a prompt and well packaged fashion!

After reading the other reviews, I didn't think another was necessary-but I have had to share my thoughts anyway.

Before Christmas albums became so commonplace, I believe you saw a lot of country artists give homage to the Christmas Season, mostly of a sacred persuasion, via a seasonal recording for fans. Country artists back in the 60's and 70's tended to have the most stable fan bases and,mind you,I cut my teeth in radio at country stations-though I would have preferred to be playing pop and rock. Johnny Cash,Elvis Presley, and Amy Grant's Christmas recordings affected me the most-until this one. Kathy has created a veritable genre defying gem of a Christmas album-and in an era of "Praise and Worship" recordings it is astonishing. Focusing on the Nativity, Kathy brings the awe and wonder of the season into sharp focus. Not a prolific writer, but a great interpreter of song, Kathy's voice and her humilty and faith shine through on this Christmas Classic. Put on the recording, light the tree-or candles- and push aside the cares of the day. Listen to the lyrics and the wonderful arrangements that permeate this recording. You cannot help but be moved to welcome the King of Glory into the world and into your heart.

I admit I am prejudiced-but I prefer Kathy's "Mary Did You Know" to anyone's interp. And anyone who purchases this recording for that one song will be blessed many times over. In a time when Christian artists Christmas offerings have become more secular and commercial, here's a gem of rustic beauty that is as close to a Nativity Worship Project that you will find. If you like "Good News" you will need to find a copy of "Joy for Christmas Day". I prefer "Good News" to "Joy"-but "JOy" is a worthy recording, too.

If you are looking to add one good holiday recording to your library and do not have "Good News" -your collection is not complete-and you are missing a truly heart-warming Christmas experience. And-by the way-if you go to Kathy's official site, get the Good News Live concert DVD if it is still available-a live concert of the best of both Christmas projects that is a great family holiday experience.


Kathy Mattea's lovely, strong vocals, coupled with uplifting arrangements, make Good News an especially rich and deep spiritual testament. "There's a New Kid in Town" is the highpoint of this 1993 outing, but "Christ Child's Lullaby" and the title track really showcase the soulful and smart Mattea. In time, this might prove to be a seasonal country classic. - Martin Keller
Amazon.com
Buy Here (for discount) Good News

08/23/2010 New social housing may be fire risk

Fires at flats built using a central timber frame have a greater average spread than those in traditionally built homes

The most popular way of building new social housing in Britain is a potential fire risk, the state statistics reported as a fire safety experts have warned that thousands of people will be living in unsafe houses.

According to a senior figure at one leading insurer, it could be "when, not if" a blaze in a block built using a central timber frame causes significant loss of life.

The experts point to a series of incidents where a relatively minor blaze in a flat has spread to the building's central core, often without residents or fire crews knowing until flames erupt elsewhere.

Timber-frame construction, in which a traditional-looking block is erected around a wooden skeleton, now accounts for 60% of all new social housing. Once reserved primarily for individual houses, the method â€" cheaper, faster to build and more environmentally friendly than masonry or steel and concrete â€" is now used for blocks of up to six or seven storeys.

The timber-frame industry insists its buildings are fully fire safe because combustible cavities are surrounded by fireproof walls. However, a number of fire brigades and fire experts say that while this method works in tests, too many timber-frame blocks are poorly constructed or else modified by residents. Even mounting a flat-screen TV without proper tools can punch holes in a fire-resistant internal wall, potentially allowing fire to spread into a common cavity, they say.

In one case in December investigators believe a major blaze at flats in Salford happened when a workman soldered a tiny exterior overflow pipe. Builders had neglected to fit fireproofing behind the pipe, allowing flames to spread. Residents were evacuated but the entire block had to be demolished at a cost of about £2m.

These worries are now backed by official data. Statistics released by the Department of Communities and Local Government (CLG) show fires in timber-frame dwellings have a greater average spread than those in traditionally built homes. While the number of blazes involved is relatively small, "the differences in proportions observed are unlikely to be the result of chance variation", statisticians conclude.

The common advice that residents should stay in their homes if a fire breaks out elsewhere in the building, on the assumption that it will be contained, might need to be changed, he added: "If fires are going to behave in extraordinary ways then we need to start looking at evacuation procedures."

"There are dangers in a design if it assumes that the people who live in it are perfect," said Ian Cox, head of the Royal Berkshire Fire & Rescue Service and director of fire protection at the Chief Fire Officers' Association (CFOA). "With a building like this you need more active management to keep things safe. We are not against this type of building if it is done properly. But we think we need more testing."

Another concern is that it is often impossible even for firefighters to tell whether a building has a timber frame. Peter Holland, vice-president of the CFOA and Lancashire's chief fire officer, said: "It can be a real worry if you get to a fire and you don't know what you're going to be facing. You could think you're tackling a fire in a single room and then suddenly the roof is on fire."

The UK Timber Frame Association said it would examine the new statistics. "It's the first time we've been shown evidence like this and we will engage with the CLG over it," said its managing director, Joe Martoccia. "But it does involve a small number of fires, so we should be cautious [not to] read too much into it immediately."

The fire minister, Bob Neill, said: "We take fire safety very seriously and are aware of the questions raised about timber-framed buildings. The new government is listening to the public's concerns carefully and will tackle them head-on."

He added: "However, I also want to reassure people that on the whole we have a very good record in this country of making our buildings safe and reducing fire deaths."

Early warning

In September 1999, a government-commissioned test saw a six-storey timber-frame block of flats constructed at Cardington, near Bedford, before the living room of a third-floor apartment was deliberately set ablaze.

The results seemed impressive. While temperatures inside the flat soon reached 900C, when the fire was extinguished more than an hour later there was no sign of it having spread to other parts of the building. The firefighters and scientists went home.

But just before midnight, fire crews were called back after flames unexpectedly erupted again. Unknown to the testers, the fire had spread to a central timber cavity and then upwards.

He took fire 5:00 to bring the flames under control. "If this were real people building would be moved back and played with their children, read books, watch TV and went to sleep," Sam Webb, the architect and fire safety expert, wrote in an article about this incident .

It was nonetheless declared a success. "The compartment fire test met the stated objectives of the programme," said the report. The company who led the experiment insists there was no cover-up; it was just that the test was considered to be over when the initial fire was put out.

Have a Good NEWS

07/23/2010 Friday quiz: the eminent historians | Michael Tomasky

As a young man, I briefly toyed with the notion that I might get myself a nice Ph.D. in history. I was a fairly unaggressive student as an undergraduate, but the one category of classes I really did enjoy, in which I actually even tended to do the reading, was history. My first class on the French Revolution opened my eyes and set my mind ablaze, and I will always remember fondly my professor, Dennis O'Brien. An extremely witty man, gay though not exactly open about it (though also not exactly closeted either), quite self-consciously campy, he would half-jokingly profess himself a great admirer of the monarchy and a believer in enlightened despotism as the highest form of rule. I called him "Citoyen de Brienne" once in class, and he took very histrionic umbrage.

He loved a line he attributed to Frederick the Great. The emperor was touring the prisons and pointed at a prisoner. He asked what that man was in for. The guard replied nervously that it was for having sex with horses. "Well," bellowed Frederick. "Get that man out of this prison and put him in the infantry!"

I remember on the first day of class he asked for a show of hands on the question, "How many of you think people are basically good and usually do the right thing?" About half raised their hands (I didn't). In mock sadness he smiled ruefully and said, perhaps thinking of what he would later tell us about Saint-Just and other notables, "Well, I'm afraid you might have kind of a tough time with this class."

I never got that Ph.D., but I have read me some history, as I suspect all of you have, and so today we visit the subject of great works of history. There are of course so many to choose from. In fact there are so many that today's quiz has 12 questions. Eight concern Americans and four Brits. Thinking caps on? Let's do it.

1. Perhaps the first great work of history in the Enlightenment was Edward Gibbon, and in six volumes is described:
a. The Greco-Roman wars
b. The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire
c. The "Mohametan" conquest of Iberia

2. Whose history of the French Revolution recounts Robespierre's death thus: "The Gendarmes point their swords at him, to show the people which is he. A woman springs on the Tumbril; clutching the side of it with one hand, waving the other Sibyl-like; and exclaims: "The death of thee gladdens my very heart, m'enivre de joi"; Robespierre opened his eyes; "Scélérat, go down to Hell, with the curses of all wives and mothers!" -- At the foot of the scaffold, they stretched him on the ground till his turn came. Lifted aloft, his eyes again opened; caught the bloody axe. Samson wrenched the coat off him; wrenched the dirty linen from his jaw: the jaw fell powerless, there burst from him a cry; -- hideous to hear and see. Samson, thou canst not be too quick!"
a. J.M. Thompson
b. Thomas Carlyle
c. Georges Lefebvre

3. Charles Beard turned historiography of the American Constitution on its head in 1913 with a work that offered what novel examination of the Constitution:
A. Economic Interpretation
B. An analysis from the perspective of the peasants
c. A slaveholder's understanding

4. This British historian who explored the rise and decline of world cultures and societies was so celebrated as to make the cover of Time magazine in 1947, in between volumes six and seven of his A Study of History:
a. Hugh Trevor-Roper
b. Oswald Spengler
C. Arnold Toynbee

5. This is the most well-known historian of the American frontier developed the thesis that the westward expansion and the constant Taming the wilderness to prepare the American character wholly separate from any other national identity:
a. William Dean Howells
b. Frederick Jackson Turner
c. Richard Hofstadter

6. A 29-year-old Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. won a Pulitzer Prize for his still-admired 1945 history of what early American president?
a. Andrew Jackson
b. John Quincy Adams
c. Thomas Jefferson

7. This American historian brought a literary style to his critique of war, especially in his The Great War in Modern Memory, which Joseph Heller called "the best book I know of" about World War I.
a. John Keegan
B. Taylor
C. Paul Fussell

8. Who wrote of his masterful working-class history that he was "seeking to rescue the poor stockinger, the Luddite cropper, the 'obsolete' hand-loom weaver, the 'Utopian' artisan, and even the deluded follower of Joanna Southcott, from the enormous condescension of posterity"?
a. Victor Kiernan
b. Ralph Miliband
c. E.P. Thompson

9. Martin Luther King called the book that the historian "historic Bible" civil rights movement:
a. C. Vann Woodward's The Strange Career of Jim Crow
B. John Hope Franklin 's From Slavery to Freedom
c. James McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom

10. Though not a trained historian, her seminal 1970 work The Dialectic of Sex brought together and critiqued the works of Freud, Marx, de Beauvoir and others to offer a radical feminist interpretation of history and politics:
a. Shulamith Firestone
b. Elizabeth Fox-Genovese
c. Ellen Willis

11. This American historian who wrote a landmark history of slavery Roll, Jordan, Roll, was a rather strict Marxist, a young man, and (it 'u still alive), and the harsh neo-conservatives, as older 1.
a. Russell Jacoby
b. Eugene Genovese
c. Sidney Hook

12. David Levering Lewis is the first author to win back-to-back Pulitzer Prizes for his two-volume biography (1994 and 2001) on what important figure in African American history?
A. Marcus Garvey
b. Frederick Douglass
c. W.E.B. Du Bois

Let's go below the fold.

Answers: 1-b, 2-b, 3-and 4-c, 5-b, 6-a, 7, 8-c, 9-a, 10 a, 11-b 12-c.

I'm guessing this was maybe a little tougher than usual. My fake answers tend to be plausible on this one, so in many cases you just had to know the right answer. I did this intentionally just to see how things would turn out today. Even with that said, I expect strong results from you lot.

Notes:
1. If you do not t 'get this one you have to stop here and now.
2. Fun fact: Carlyle had finished about half of the book (I think, about 200 thousand words) and loaned it to his friend John Stuart Mill. Mill House 'burned, and the manuscript Carlisle' with him. He rewrote it all and, apparently, Mill bore no ill will.
3. Seminal book for people on the left in particular, and arguably way ahead of its time.
4. Especially easy to Britons, but I do not think the teeth nor the Yankees.
5. Reverse of above.
6. One of those you had to know.
7. What a stunning book, one whose reading was a really memorable experience.
8. Tough fake answers, as they were all, so to speak, comrades. Kiernan, incidentally, once wrote a sort of Marxist history of Tobacco that I thought was wonderful.
9. Maybe the toughest of the bunch because the fakes are so plausible.
10. Really great book of its time that has led many women in the study of history.
11. The old moving-left-to-right-without-really-changing-ones-temperament story.
12. Another one you had to know. Two Pulitzers, fairly impressive eh?

Now, as usual, tell us not only how you did, but share with the rest of us some historians and histories you love.

Have a Good NEWS

[[[Star Wars Episode IV - A New Hope (1977 & 2004 Versions, 2-Disc Widescreen Edition)]]]

Discription : For the first time ever and for a limited time only, the enhanced versions of the Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope, Star Wars: Episode V The Empire Strikes Back and Star Wars: Episode VI Return of the Jedi will be available individually on DVD. Plus, these 2-Disc DVD's will feature a bonus disc that includes, for the first time ever on DVD, the original films as seen in theaters in 1977, 1980 and 1983.


More review coming soon.

Why do you people keep crying that this is the laserdisk version for one thing the laser disk version was a re-release and it clearly said a new hope in the crawl this one does not so end of story the only thing you can complain about is it isn't the 16:9 ratio but hell i have a 2005 sdtv and it looks good to me so no bithing from me just wanted to clear this up because some people need to get their facts straight before they claim to no it all or claim to be real fans

Speaking of hope, hopefully the same care that was given THX remastered version of the VHS [at least] could be given to the transfer to DVD.

-help us, Lucas, you're only hope. . .

I think nostalgia is clouding your judgement... Do you really think that the aliens in the cantina for example look more realistic than the Navi in Avatar or that Bespin looks more realistic than Minis Tirith in Lord of the Rings?

It all boils down to how the effects are used. That has not changed a bit since the original "Star Wars". There was a hell lot of movies in the seventies and eighties in a brutal special effects done in practice. Just as there are a lot of movies today is a terrible effect in digital form.

Do you think those old movies with stop motion dinosaurs looked more realistic than the T-Rex in Jurassic Park? That those old Titanic movies that sunk a model boat looked more realistic than the sinking in James Cameron's movie? That 'The Sands Of Iwo Jima' had more a realistic looking war than 'Letters From Iwo Jima'?

"I'm sure you can think of some, like the new King Kong or Spiderman Trilogy, if anyone thinks that crap looked real you need your vision checked."

Yeah, because the stop motion puppet in the 1933 King Kong and Superman hanging by wires in front of a green screen were sooooo much more realistic.

The problem is not with modern effects. The problem is that now that anything can be done easily and simply using CGI they have a tendency to go way overboard to the point where it doesnt look real anymore. When they were doing things practically they were forced by necessity to keep things grounded.


The 2006 limited-edition two-disc release of George Lucas's epic space fantasy Star Wars is not only the first time the movie has been officially available by itself on DVD. It marks the first-ever DVD release of Star Warsas it originally played in theaters in 1977. What does this mean exactly? Well, for starters, the initial scan the title proclaims, it is simply Star wars And not Episode IV, A New Hope

What do you lose by watching the 1977 version? Dolby Digital 5.1 EX sound, for one thing (only 2.0 Surround here). Digital cleanup for another--Tatooine looks like it's been coated with an additional layer of sand cloud. But for home-theater owners, the biggest frustration will be from the non-anamorphic picture. On a widescreen TV, an anamorphically enhanced (16x9) picture at a 2.35:1 aspect ratio will fill the screen with the exception of small black bars on the top and bottom. The original edition of Star Wars

Yes, it's true that serious home-theater lovers who want spectacular sound and anamorphically enhanced picture can always watch the 2004 version of the movie also included in this set. But chances are good that they already picked up the trilogy edition of all three films, so their decision to buy the 2006 two-disc edition depends on how much they want the original film. The official LucasFilm stance is that this is an individual release of the 2004 version of Star Wars: Episode IV, A New Hope, and the 1977 version of the film is merely a "bonus feature." Common speculation is that the only reason the original versions are seeing the official light of day at all is to undercut the booming black market for the laserdisc version. Star Wars fans will have to decide for themselves if that's worth the purchase. --David Horiuchi
Amazon.com
Buy here (at discount) Star Wars Episode IV - A New Hope "(1977 and 2004 versions, 2-Disc Widescreen Edition)

07/03/2010 Tories out in force for Gay Pride

• Gay policing minister Nick Herbert to address the crowd
• Cut-price Home Office float to have Moulin Rouge theme

When the Conservatives last had their hands on the tiller of power, none of their MPs would admit to being homosexual, they voted against lowering the age of consent for gay sex, and invented a law which made it illegal for schools to mention homosexuality.

How things change: tomorrow, eight years after Alan Duncan became the first Tory MP to come out of his own volition, Nick Herbert, the openly gay Conservative policing minister, will give a speech at Pride London about "how the Tories have come a helluva long way".

And that's not all. His department, the Home Office, has chartered a float at this year's event, which will wind its way down Oxford Street and Regent Street towards Trafalgar Square from 1pm.

theme "Pride 'at this year" Paint City Ruby Red ", dedicated to the 40-anniversary of the Gay Liberation Front, which was formed after the Stonewall riots, when police confronted with a gay demonstrators in New York.

The Guardian can reveal that the Home Office float, officially commandeered by Spectrum â€" the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transexual (LGBT) support group within the department â€" will be going with a Moulin Rouge theme this year.

Sadly, this does not mean the million people lining the streets will catch a glimpse of Theresa May in a saucy bustier and feather boa as well as her trademark kitten heels: the Home Secretary is not attending, and anyway, the float is only for civil servants in the Home Office, UK Border Agency, Criminal Records Bureau and Identity and Passport Service.

Herbert said he wouldn't be following the sartorial lead of Boris Johnson, who famously wore a pink stetson when leading Pride two years ago, and will march again on Saturday. "I'm not telling you what I'll be wearing," said Herbert, preferring to talk about how seriously the government was taking the reporting of homophobia as a hate crime.

Last year Spectrum's effort was voted "the best float in the history of Pride", said Paul Bradley, Spectrum's chair. "We went for a Shakespearean theme â€" because many people think that he might have been bisexual â€" and I was Oberon from A Midsummer Night's Dream, sitting on a real rope swing. There was a also balcony with Romeo and Juliet on it, plus a fully working fountain."

This year, disappointingly, the Spectrum float will be an altogether more muted affair. "We have to be sensitive to the public purse," said Bradley. "We're going for a make-do-and-mend approach, so some people might recognise elements from last year's float," explaining that no one on the float had any desire to end up in the Daily Mail as an example of government profligacy in a time of crisis. Colm Howard-Lloyd, one of Pride's organisers, said he was surprised how keen the new government was to get involved with Pride: "They were falling over themselves to make sure senior people like Nick Herbert and equalities minister Lynne Featherstone were there".

James Asser, co-chair of Labour's LGBT group, notes that despite Tory enthusiasm for attending the event, they have been less keen to fund it: "Boris Johnson has cancelled the annual Pride reception at City Hall, which Ken Livingstone always used to have," he said.

Nonetheless, it is a marked contrast to the previous administration, said Howard-Lloyd. "I think the surprising thing is that Labour put out a lot of great legislation but they were much more reluctant to support [Pride] on a personal level. We had very few senior politicians come along â€" in 2008, just a few days before the event, we still didn't have anyone at all confirmed from the government, and at the last minute they sent Harriet Harman."

Labour MP Chris Bryant, a veteran of "at least" 20 London Prides, said it was "utter drivel" to suggest Labour hadn't supported Pride, and asked why there were no cabinet ministers speaking this year. "Why isn't the home secretary there? Why are there just junior ministers? This will be the first time in five years that there hasn't been a cabinet office speaker at Pride." Another Labour spokesperson said: "As a Government and party we have consistently supported Pride events and last year Sarah Brown and Harriet Harman attended. We think introducing progressive legislation [on civil partnerships, allowing gay couples to adopt and repealing Section 28] â€" often in the face of Tory opposition â€" is what we will be judged on."

The coalition is so pro-gay that not only have they has set up a cross-government programme of work addressing LGBT policy, but they have promised "additional action for transgender equality" - exactly the sort of initiative the Tories used to mock Harriet Harman for daring to suggest when she held the equalities brief. To return to the Home Office float's Shakespearean theme of yore: "The wheel is come full circle."

The road to rights

1967 Sexual Offences Act decriminalises homosexual acts between two men over 21 years of age "in private" in England and Wales.

1972 First UK Gay Pride Rally held in London.

1984 Chris Smith, MP for Islington South in London, becomes the first MP to come out while in office

1989 The campaign group Stonewall UK is set up to oppose Section 28 and other barriers to equality.

1994 Parliament votes to reduce the gay male age of consent to 18. However, an amendment to reduce it to 16, on a par with heterosexual sex, is defeated.

1997 Angela Eagle, Labour MP for Wallasey, becomes the first MP to come out voluntarily as a lesbian.

2000 Labour government scraps the policy of barring homosexuals from the armed forces.

2001 Age of consent reduced to 16.

2002 Same-sex couples are granted equal rights to adopt; Alan Duncan becomes the first Tory MP to admit being gay without being pushed.

2003 Section 28, which banned councils and schools from intentionally promoting homosexuality, is repealed.

2005 Civil Partnership Act comes into force, giving same-sex couples the same rights and responsibilities as married heterosexual couples.

2007 The Equality Act makes discrimination against lesbians and gay men in the provision of goods and services illegal. Holly Bentley

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[[[Gangs of New York (Two-Disc Collector's Edition)]]]

Discription :


More review coming soon.


4.5 / 5

Historical accuracy is not the strong suit of this movie. I understand the need for dramatic license to drive a compelling story but what aggravated me about this film is that it dishonors the memory of the overwhelming majority of 19th century New Yorkers, both natives and immigrants, who worked thier behinds off in legitimate trades and professions. In reality this city was built by extremely hard working people that lived decent lives grounded in faith. They don't exist in this film. Of course plenty of crime & corruption existed but the vast majority of people struggled honestly to improve their lot. Faith was a crucial component of the difficult lives of most and yet we get the obligatory Hollywood gratuitous slander. Throw the Bible in the river. Tell the the benign pastor when he mentions the church service to "go to hell". I'm tired of this distorted and cynical revisionist "history" we've been relentlessly fed by so many of these directors that came of age (roughly) in the 1960's. Aside from the factual distortion, strictly on its dramatic merits, this is a mediocre film at best and certainly Scorsese's worst.

I thought the movie was a good pick up. The price was right and this film is pretty good. So if you have a Ps3 or a blu-ray player and are looking for films at a low price then pick it up.

Gangs of New York may achieve greatness with the passage of time. Mixed reviews were inevitable for a production this grand (and this troubled behind the scenes), but it's as distinguished as any of director Martin Scorsese's more celebrated New York stories. From its astonishing 1846 prologue to the city's infernal draft riots of 1863, the film aspires to erase the decorum of textbooks and chronicle 19th-century New York as a cauldron of street warfare. The hostility is embodied in a tale of primal vengeance between Irish American son Amsterdam Vallon (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his father's ruthless killer and "Nativist" gang leader Bill "the Butcher" Cutting (Daniel Day-Lewis, brutally inspired), so named for his lethal talent with knives. Vallon's vengeance is only marginally compelling; DiCaprio is arguably miscast, and Cameron Diaz (as Vallon's pickpocket lover) is adrift in a film with little use for women. Despite these weaknesses, Scorsese's mastery blossoms in his expert melding of personal and political trajectories; this is American history written in blood, unflinching, authentic, and utterly spectacular. --Jeff Shannon
Amazon.com
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07/20/2010 G. Discussion Megrahi release in the U.S.

Questions over release of Libyan threaten to overshadow first official US visit as Clinton calls for review of decision

David Cameron has agreed to meet four US senators who have been calling for an inquiry into how BP lobbied the British government for a prisoner transfer agreement ahead of the release of the Lockerbie bomber.

The British embassy had initially said Cameron's two-day schedule in Washington was too crowded to meet the senators, but on arriving in the US capital last night the prime minister rapidly changed his mind, saying he wished to show respect to the families of the Lockerbie victims.

Fresh advice suggested that a rejection of the meeting might overshadow Cameron's first formal bilateral talks with Barack Obama today.

The change of heart came as it was revealed that Hillary Clinton has asked the British government to review the decision to release Abelbaset al-Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence agent.

In her reply to a letter from the senators, the US secretary of state said she had asked both her opposite number, William Hague, and the Scottish executive "to review again the underlying facts and circumstances leading to the release of [Abdelbaset] al-Megrahi and to consider any new information that has come to light since his release".

"That Megrahi is living out his remaining days outside of Scottish custody is an affront to the victims' families, the memories of those killed in the Lockerbie bombing, and to all of those who worked tirelessly to ensure justice was served," she wrote.

Before the trip, Cameron said that he never agreed to release Megrahi, a Scottish Government, saying that is absolutely wrong.

The call to see Cameron arose from the decision by the senate foreign relations committee to hold hearings on 29 July over the circumstances surrounding the release last August of Megrahi. The Libyan had served eight years of a life sentence for his role in the December 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland, which killed 270 people, mostly Americans.

Democratic senators Charles Schumer, Kirsten Gillibrand, Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez, writes Cameron yesterday with a request to meet with him to discuss the case.

The senators said they hoped to discuss "what we can all do to provide greater transparency into the circumstances surrounding the release, address the injustice and ensure that a similar mistake is not repeated".

Specifically, the senators have been demanding to know what role BP played in lobbying for a prisoner transfer agreement that Britain and Libya concluded in December 2007. The senators have said they want to explore possible links between Megrahi's release and BP's eagerness to win Libyan ratification of an offshore oil deal company officials have said could be worth $20bn (£13bn).

Cameron also said the decision to release Megrahi was not taken by BP â€" it was a decision taken by Scottish ministers.

He added that he was sure BP would do everything necessary to cap the oil well, clear up the spill and pay compensation. "I have spoken to BP and they know they want to do that and they will."

In an unexpected twist David Miliband, the foreign secretary at the time, also criticised the release of Megrahi. He told the Glasgow Herald today: "It was clearly wrong because it was done on the basis he had less than three months to live and it's now 11 months on.

"The decision was made in accordance with our constitution and so it was a decision for the Scottish minister to make.

"Megrahi was released on compassionate grounds and, as I understand it, that depends on him having less than three months to live, so something has gone badly wrong."

Miliband acknowledges the Scottish justice secretary Kenny MacAskill made his decision in good faith .

In a Commons statement in October, Miliband pointed out that British interests "would be damaged, perhaps badly, if Megrahi were to die in a Scottish prison rather than Libya".

Miliband admitted that there had been a national interest in signing the transfer agreement. There had never been an explicit statement that the Megrahi release would flow from the agreement, but few doubted that it would apply to him. With Megrahi in a Scottish jail, the Scottish nationalist government rejected the transfer agreement on the grounds that the then prime minister, Tony Blair, had done a dirty deal in the desert with the Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi.

In a BBC television interview yesterday, Cameron said he had strongly opposed the bomber's release at the time. "As leader of the opposition, I couldn't have been more clear that I thought the decision to release Megrahi was completely and utterly wrong," he said.

Regarding BP's role, he said: "I have no idea what BP did. I am not responsible for BP."

British sources stressed that it was unlikely that any British figure would be asked to give evidence to the senate inquiry, but there is concern that it will become another stick with which to beat the oil company already under fire over the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. BP has insisted that its lobbying was limited to the transfer agreement, and did not include pressure for Megrahi's release.

Libyan officials, including a son of Gaddafi, have said Libya made clear to Britain that if Megrahi was not included in the transfer agreement, lucrative oil deals for UK companies would not be approved.

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[[[Good Evening New York City: Deluxe Edition (2 CD & 2 DVD)]]]

Discription : The deluxe edition includes two CDs and two DVDs featuring the complete concert plus exclusive footage on the bonus DVD. The bonus DVD includes Paul's performance on the Late Night with David Letterman, plus additional features.

Track listing:

2 CD & DVD (All Regions)

1. Intro

2. Drive My Car

3. Jet

4. Only Mama Knows

5. Flaming Pie

6. Got To Get You Into My Life

7. Let Me Roll It

8. Highway

9. Lone White Sail

10. My Love

11. Blackbird

12. Here today

13. Dance Tonight

14. Calico Skies

15. Mrs Vandebilt

16. Eleanor Rigby

17. Sing The Changes

18. Band On The Run

19. Back In The USSR

20. I 'm Down

21. Something

22. I've Got A Feeling

23. Paperback Writer

24. A Day In The Life / Give Peace A Chance

25. Let It Be

26. Live And Let Die

27. Hey Jude

28. Day Tripper

29. Lady Madonna

30. I Saw Her Standing There

31. Yesterday

32. Helter Skelter

33. Get Back

34. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band / The End


More review coming soon.

This concert was excellent and Paul sang alot of Beatle songs that were never performed in concert which was a real treat. The concert footage was great Paul never failed to show what a great guitarist he is and his voice is still true.

I put this on my favorites list shortly after viewing the TV special. Too bad the supplier or Amazon canceled the availability of this Deluxe Edition, because it's worth the money. I ended up purchasing it from a private seller for slightly more than Amazon was asking. If you love the Beatles and you enjoy watching a musician who truely enjoys his work, and like Paul McCartney, buy this!! You will not be disappointed!

The deluxe, four disc set is fantastic. The packaging, a hard back book with pictures, and the discs at the front and back is beautiful and practical. There are holes in the disc envelopes so you can get the discs out, unlike with the Beatles re-mastered boxed set cardboard disc envelopes.
Sounds amazing on both CDs and DVS. DVD is perfect for a full concert experience, to feel like you 're there, as it includes most of his jokes with the audience. Drives great, if you want to rent interrupted music.
My only wish is that there had been extra material from the other concerts in the same tour. I saw him in Halifax weeks before the New York concert, and while the set list was almost the same, in Halifax we also got Mull of Kyntire, and saw a girl get her arm signed on stage...so as a souvenir for someone at a similar concert it falls a bit short. Still, you certainly get your money's worth!



Buy Here (for discount) Good Evening New York City: Deluxe Edition (2 CD & 2 DVD)

08/11/2010 US-backed Iraqis defect to al-Qaida

American allies the Sons of Iraq being offered more money by alâ€"Qaida to switch sides

Al-Qaida is attempting to make a comeback in Iraq by enticing scores of former Sunni allies to rejoin the terrorist group by paying them more than the monthly salary they currently receive from the government, two key US-backed militia leaders have told the Guardian.

They said al-Qaida leaders were exploiting the imminent departure of US fighting troops to ramp up a membership drive, in an attempt to show that they are still a powerful force in the country after seven years of war.

Al-Qaida is also thought to be moving to take advantage of a power vacuum created by continuing political instability in Iraq, which remains without a functional government more than five months after a general election.

Sheikh Sabah al-Janabi, leader of the Awakening Council - also known as Sons of Iraq - is based in Hill, 60 miles south of Baghdad, said the Guardian, that 100 out of 1800 ordinary members do not meet their salary for the last two months: a clear sign, He believes that they are now taking money from their former enemies.

"Al-Qaida has made a big comeback here," he said. "This is my neighbourhood and I know every single person living here. And I know where their allegiances lie now."

The Sons of Iraq grew out of a series of mini-rebellions against militants associated with al-Qaida that started in late 2006. They soon grew into a success story in Iraq, which was capitalised on by the then commanding US general, David Petraeus, who agreed to pay each member a $300 monthly salary and used the rebels as a tool to quell the boiling insurgency.

The US handed over control of the Sons of Iraq to the Iraqi government in late-2008. The programme since has been plagued by complaints about distrust and delays in paying salaries, as well as almost daily bombings or shootings targeting Awakening Council leaders and members across Iraq this year, which have troubled US commanders as their combat troops steadily leave the country.

Sheikh al-Janabi's cousin, Malik Yassin al-Janabi, a joint leader in Hila, became the latest victim today when he was killed by gunmen who shot him dead while he was driving, also wounding two of his guards.

A second Awakening Council leader, Sheikh Moustafa al-Jabouri, said disaffection among his ranks had reached breaking point as US combat forces increasingly depart, with most of his men not having been paid for up to three months and now facing a relentless recruitment drive by local al-Qaida members.

\\ "My people are offered more money. This happened in Arabi Jabour and Dora," he said of the southern suburbs of Baghdad in February that he controls.

"I warned the Americans and the Iraqi government that if they continue neglecting us, the Awakening Council will become even more desperate and will look for other ways to make money.

"So it is an easy market for al-Qaida now. The Iraqi government has disappointed them and it is an easy choice to rejoin the terrorists."

He said approaches to his rank-and-file membership had become commonplace over the last month.

"They are trying every means they know, by threatening or offering money. Many members have no money or salaries and are living in difficult circumstances."

The director of the Awakening Council project inside the national Reconciliation Commission, Zuheir Chalabi, today dismissed claims that members were defecting in large numbers.

"I think this issue is fabricated and politicised by people who are against the government and are pro-Ba'athist," he said. "We have no indications that large numbers of Sons of Iraq have left their jobs. We are seeing [defections] of around four in 1,000."

However, Sheikh al-Janabi said he would give a list of names of the alleged defectors to both American and Iraqi officials. "He needs to accept the facts," he said.

Two long-term members of the Sons of Iraq revealed to the Guardian that they had been approached in recent weeks by local men whom they knew to be al-Qaida leaders and told they would be paid more to defect.

Both admitted to be entertaining the notion, largely because they feared what would happen if they did not.

Mohammed Hussein al-Jumaili, 25, of Dora, said: "My salary is very low - about $ 300 a month, and sometimes delayed paying me for two months or more.

"Ten days ago, I was in a cafe with another person from my neighbourhood. He was working with us also. Two people came to me. I knew them. They were from my area. They said: 'You know the Sons of Iraq experiment has failed and they will be slaughtered one after the other.

\\ "If you work with us, we will support you. We will give you a good salary, and you can do whatever operation you want to do. You will receive extra money for everything you do, who beat the American, or Iraqi armed forces. "

The second member, Sabah al-Nouri, 32, from west Baghdad, said he too had been approached by Sons of Iraq members who were acting as double agents.

"I am responsible for leading a group in al-Haswa district in Abu Ghraib," he said. "Two months ago, al-Qaida contacted me through people who worked with me. They gave me a good offer, a reward for each operation and a pledge to support me and protect me.

"They said they would give me a weapon, a licence to carry one. There were a lot of promises. They said I would have more authority than I have now. They said: 'We have not hurt you, why are you working against us?' "

Major Mudher al-Mowla, who is in charge of the Sons of Iraq inside the Iraqi reconciliation ministry, said the government had recently learned of the cash offers and coercion. "We have learned about this, especially in Adhamiyeh [in West Baghdad] and we have started investigating. We are waiting for the results."

The US government has granted visas to many Sons of Iraq members and claims that future applications to emigrate to the US from Sons of Iraq leaders would be well received. Both the Pentagon and White House have hailed the Sons of Iraq experience as a triumph during seven difficult years of war.

Some commanders believe the sons of the leaders of Iraq's overstating al-Qaeda coup, because they are afraid of the unknown after the Americans leave. But they remain warm in praise of the people they claim to have helped pave the way for their release.

"The Sons of Iraq have displayed personal and physical courage on behalf of their country," said Lieutenant Colonel Bob Owen, chief of the media operations centre at the US embassy in Baghdad. "When they partnered with the government of Iraq to counter the insurgency, they played a pivotal role in disrupting al-Qaida and reducing Iraqi civilian deaths.

"The people of Iraq and Iraqi leaders at every level of government are grateful for the courage and personal sacrifices the Sons of Iraq have made and continue to make for the safety, security and future success and prosperity of the country."

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