Published in Mint Lounge as Going round in circles…

She could throw a whirling dervish out of whirl. I cannot get this line out of my head and to my complete dismay, I find myself mentally humming the rest of the song as I watch the four Mevlevi spin in front of me. I mean, here I am at a performance I have been dreaming of, ever since I planned the Turkey trip and I am thinking about Maria and her whirling and whistling abilities?

A secret turning in us,
Makes the universe turn.
Head unaware of feet,
And feet, head.
Neither cares.
They keep turning.

(‘The Essential Rumi’ – translated by Coleman Barks)

This describes the dancers perfectly, as they whirl and whirl and whirl, white skirts billowing gently, feet never once faltering, attention never once diverted, even by the sudden and harsh light of a forbidden flash camera. Just to put things in context, I read somewhere that initial training for a Sema performer includes standing on a wooden plank one square meter large, with a nail in the middle and learning to turn his foot so that the nail is between his big toe and second toe. Those taking part in this ceremony are traditionally called ‘Mevlevi’ – followers of Mevlana (meaning ‘our guide’) Jelaluddin Rumi.

The entire ritual is based on symbolism, the dancer departing from his ego and turning towards truth and spiritual perfection. The English speaking guide explains the significance of each element of the performance but his voice fades away from my consciousness as the musicians begin playing in the background. The initial segment is a eulogy to the Prophet Mohammed and the sound of the flute (known as the ney, thought to breathe life into all creatures) is especially mesmeric.

After a few minutes, the four dancers enter the room dressed in the traditional long, black coats and the tall conical fez on their heads and greet each other formally three times. As they begin moving, the first step is to remove their cloaks, symbolizing the shedding of the ego, or falsehood. The dancer’s arms are open, the right hand directed to the skies, seeking god’s benefaction and the left hand facing the ground, passing this blessing on to all things around him. The whirling of the dervishes is supposed to replicate the movement of planets revolving around the sun (in this case, God), each rotating on his own axis, while slowly circling around the room. The whirling is anti-clockwise, the minds of the spinning men on meditation mode; Let yourself be silently drawn, by the stronger pull of what you really love (Rumi).

A local friend later says dismissively, “If it was the genuine religious thing, you would not have been allowed there”. Ah, well, the real McCoy or not, I am captivated by it all – the solemn ritual, the haunting music and hymns, the serene expression on their faces. In the 1920s, Kemal Ataturk, the revolutionary Turkish leader in his zeal to modernize Turkey and make it more European, banned the Mevlevi sect as being backward, traditional and just too ‘Islamic’ (the list of things banned by Ataturk is long and includes the traditional fez and the native Turkish script). Later in the 1950s, the government legalized the Mevlevi order as a cultural (non-political) organization and allowed the whirling dervishes to perform annually in Konya on December 17, the anniversary of Rumi’s death (celebrated as his union with his beloved god).

Today the whirling dervish is one of the most visible and popular icons within Turkey, found everywhere from fridge magnets to tea coasters and ceramic bowls. While weekend performances are popular within Istanbul, the annual ceremony at Konya is on another scale altogether and attracts thousands of Sufi followers from across the world. The lodge where Rumi lived is now a museum and the entire town is a silent and enduring homage to the philosopher-poet.

And Maria, Mother Superior, don’t take this personally, but you just cannot throw a whirling dervish out of whirl.

General Information

In Istanbul, Sema performances (the more authentic ones – avoid the ones in restaurants) take place regularly at the Galata Mevlevihanesi, the hall for the Mevlevi at the Southern end of Istiklal Caddesi in the throbbing Beyoglu shopping district. You can also catch performances at the atmospheric Sirkeci station, the old railway station where the Orient Express used to end its long run from Paris. I booked my performance at the Cemberlitas Press Museum in advance on email (galatamevlevi@gmail.com) through this website (http://www.rumimevlevi.com/en/index.php)

The Whirling Dervish Festival at Konya is held between the 10th and 17th December each year. Konya is connected with Istanbul by bus (roughly 10 hours), train and flight (Turkish Airlines has daily flights) though during the festival period, it is advisable to book travel and stay well in advance.

I am thrilled to announce that the book “Nothing Between Us” by Wendy Barker PhD has been published!  The significance is that the author selected my painting “Straight On ‘Till Morning” as the cover image.

Get your copy here:

http://www.amazon.com/Nothing-Between-Us-Wendy-Barker/dp/193483209X

Be sure to attend the hockey calendar release PARTY this Friday December 4th 6pm. Teton County Fair Building, Jackson, Wyoming. Silent auction of 18 original calendar prints, drinks, food, live music. Everyone welcome.

View and download the full article here: http://www.planetjh.com/news/pdf_download.aspx

Cover photo by Heather Erson. Story by Robyn Vincent. Design by Danny Haworth.

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Club Penguin realed some updates on the game Dance Contest!Check out this picture i took:

Its in a grid formation!
Please follow me on twitter!Twitter.com/zerosk8der
-Zerosk8der,Secret Penguin Cheats Owner

I can’t imagine why I haven’t shared this with you before now but, for whatever reason, I haven’t.  Some of you may recall that in the middle of last year I had the super duper fortune to meet one of the wonderful masterminds behind Lomo.  Another gift given to me from pmk, meine Lieblings Klub in Tirol.  Anyway, a friendship & sponsorship bloomed and I was invited to become a Lomo Amigo along with a laundry list of radical people like Elijah Wood, Dave Ortiz of Dave’s Quality Meat, Beirut, David Arquette, John Vonderslice, Bruce Lee and many others.  What an honor, right?  I know!!

Like Christmas in April the complete Diana F+ arrived with every bell & whistle you can think of along with a heap of fun, fun film and my task was to set out into the world and make photos.  Pretty much my dream job.  And so I did….  From the desert of Arizona to the beaches of Florida’s Gulf Coast to the high peaks of Austria’s Tyrolean Alps and the on to China, Russia and Mongolia I carried Diana, Holga and my beloved Seagull with me.  After some months of capturing my careful days I shipped all the film to Vienna for perfect Lomo processing.

Click here to see the original interview on Lomo’s website

Take a look at Photographer Beana Bern’s excursions in China with the lovely Diana F+ and the Diana 35mm Back+. Be struck with inspiration for all those wanderlust trips as Beana Bern takes you on an exhilarating photo tour!

REAL NAME: Kristina “Beana” Bern Schreibman
COUNTRY: USA

How long have you been a Lomographer (or are you new to this whole thing)?
Beana Bern: I got my Holga in 2006…my Seagull in 2007 and my Diana F+ in 2008. i guess, in the scheme of things, that makes me new to the game. the list of lomos i still need to try is long so i imagine that this is just the beginning of what has already become a beautiful friendship. next up is the Horizon if i have my way…

Describe the Diana F+ in five words.
BB: Liberation-onal. fun-ifying. textur-ific. nostalgi-tastic. deep-ilicious. not just 5 words but 5 specially invented words born out of a love of lomo. seriously, these cameras are very cool.

The strangest, funniest, or hands-down greatest photographic/Lomographic encounter that you have ever had.
BB: Opening my first roll of film a couple days after i bought my Holga was memorable and perhaps the story that I should tell but i’m going to tell you about something else. traveling through mongolia some months ago i was shooting a portrait of a herdsman named Baatar somewhere south of the Russian border. he was totally enamored with the seagull and wanted to try it out. i gave him the camera and watched him turn a full 365 degrees to try and get me in the frame. the reverse image, which confuses me too sometimes, had Baatar going in circles and we both ended up laughing hysterically. we couldn’t communicate with language but bonded over photography and had wonderful fun…

Trans-Mongolian Railway - Diana F+

If your photos shown here could have a soundtrack of three songs, what would they be (song title & artist please).
BB:

• Pink Eye (on my leg) by Ween
• Into the Universe by Chris Harford & the Band of Changes
• The Woods by Portugal. The Man

The one person (living or deceased) who you would most like to photograph.
BB: Hard hard hard question. there are SO many people that i would love to photograph both alive and dead but if i have to choose one i think it would have to be Benjamin Franklin . . . or maybe Hunter S. Thompson. I think it’s a tie

Your advice to future Diana F+ shooters.
BB: I guess i would say be fearless and bring your camera along for the ride.

If you could take your Diana F+ and a bag of film anywhere in the world right now, where would you go and why?
BB: I’d like to fly into Port Moresby and trek out into the jungle of Papua New Guinea to shoot the cannibals and beautiful, vibrant indigenous life that thrives there. i spend the majority of my time in the modern world, connected to the internet and spinning my wheels in a static bubble. stepping out into the ‘real world’ where water, food, shelter and community are still the key elements keeps me connected to the world and feeling alive. indigenous cultures, dance, clothing, food, art, language and traditions inspire me in tremendous ways and i feel like southeast asia is next on my list. if im too delicious to hang with cannibals then i would say Tanzania would be a good second choice though I read that white people are too salty for them so I should be okay.

Do you have any tips for would be traveling Lomographers and their camera?
BB: I made the mistake of bringing too many parts for Diana on some legs of my trip and, as a result, ended up not shooting so much because i was always tinkering. i would recommend that, for a given outing anyway, that you commit to one or two set-ups and explore with them. the gearhead in me is always tempted to bring it all but the beauty of the lomo is complex results with simple tools….do more with less.

Three Camel Lodge - South Gobi, Mongolia - Diana F+ 35mm Back

Tell us more about your inspiring trip. Is China a place you have always wanted to explore and if so, why?
BB: I have always suffered from chronic wanderlust so yeah, China has been on my list of must-see’s for a long time. The East has a kind of mystic or mythic draw for me and it was joyful to be able to wander around Peking for days and then to see some rural countryside on my way through Inner Mongolia towards the Gobi. I was curious to experience the Nationalism first hand and hear from Chinese people about their government, their politics, their future and their stand on topics like Tibet or the Olympics. What struck me was how totally dynamic Bejing felt…like it is changing before your eyes. The brick dust in the air represented a city being torn down and built up simultaneously and it is disorienting but also exciting. The kind of massive and fast transition that the country is undergoing is bound to have a big impact on the people that live there and it was excellent to experience that. Oddly enough, shortly after I returned from China and Mongolia I got word that I would be moving to Hong Kong and in October I go. I am already scouting my map of Southeast Asia and looking forward to a lot more exploration (and lomography!) in the Far East.

Which of the photos is your favorite? Please tell us why and what it mans to you.
BB: I’m still digesting all of the images and it’s hard to pick a favorite since each one of them takes me back to the moment when I made it…The dreamy quality of the images shot from the top of Khongoryn Els, the massive Gobi sand dunes, makes me warm and fuzzy. It was such an intense climb to get up there and then to see the steppe from the top, the windless dunes, the enormous pink sun setting over the desert, to hear the ‘song’ of the Singing Dunes and the far off cries of baby camels….life-altering would be the only way to describe that place and the hazy, blurry way the images came out seems like the only way to do such a magic place justice. Leaving the lines between what was real and what was imagined blurred so the memory can be as big as I make it and not confined by the razor sharp lines of my DSLR is liberating  Some other favorites are the double exposure of the women fan dancing in Ritan Park, the BW portrait of Baatar sitting by his yak and the totally unrelated BW landscape of my trip to Cinque Terra, Italy which I shot a couple weeks before heading east.

Please, describe yourself to us. Are you wanderlust and can’t stay in one place too long? Do you have any further travel plans for the future?
BB: I always ‘tag’ myself the same in the context of Bio’s and things like this…..Photographer. Traveler. Eternal Optimist. I am a believer that we can make our own luck and are only limited by our own imagination, desire and determination. I am loyal to my roots and desire a nest somewhere that I can call home but, at the moment, I am enjoying my freedom tremendously and letting the wind blow me as far and fast as it will. A friend of mine once told me that “luck is the residue of design” so I suppose I have to take some credit in forging such an interesting path for myself though, in my wildest dreams, I did not imagine how awesome my story would become. What lies ahead in Hong Kong remains to be seen and my eventual return to New York City, tentatively planned for sometime in 2011 give me enough of a safety net to hoist my sails and see where I find myself between now and then. I can be certain that there are still a lot of surprises on the horizon and many, many adventures to be had.

Great Wall - China Seagull TLR

If you go read the original interview you can browse through 2 big slideshows of images that Lomo liked the best.  Many of these have not yet found their way to my online archive so check ‘em out.  To see a little more of my analog work using my beloved Lomos, click here for HOLGA, DIANA, or SEAGULL.

There is some 120mm freshly loaded in the Seagull as we speak and I hope it wont be long before I can share some new work with you.  Hope you enjoyed the interview & images…I sure did

I  was asked to comment on this area – and ended up getting published.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has published results showing a fall in the gap between the average pay of a man and a woman in a full time job.

According to the findings, the “gender gap” has fallen from 17.4 per cent in 1997, to 12.2 per cent.

But the gender gap in full and part-time work still stands at 22 per cent.

The reports, published in the Independent also show that women’s pay and job opportunities in the recession have suffered less than those of men.

Despite these figures, some women still believe they are at a disadvantage in the world of work.

Earlier this year, actress Zoe Wannamaker said: “Women are always at the bottom as far as pay is concerned- the equal pay business is a big struggle.”

My story ‘Some men talk too much‘ got published on Negative Suck in their first, ‘The Virgin Issue’. I am very happy.

negative suck is for writers who don’t suck and who write things that don’t suck.

And one piece I wrote got published there. How cool is that?! Very cool!

Please check out all the ten pieces – flash fiction, poems and art. Neither of them sucks, so to say, and they hang together quite well.

DON'T MOVE: In light of recent budget cuts, Jamie Foxx explains the new minimum security prison policy

Published in the 01/12/09 edition of The Student

Picked up by the Officially Unofficial Gerard Butler dot Net

It’s such a boring name for a movie isn’t it? Considering a man is killed using a circular saw and a Caribbean puffer fish, well that’s surely got to have broken at least a couple of laws. Right?

It’s also quite misleading. Engineer and family man Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler) is a law abiding citizen for all of about 40 seconds before two psychopaths bust into his home and murder his wife and daughter. Unfortunately due to a bungled forensic investigation and the egotism of smart-ass prosecutor Nick “would-rather-go-to-a-deathrow-execution-that-his-own-daughter’s-cello-recital” Rice (Jamie Foxx), only one of the killers is brought to justice. So begins the lament of Clyde.

That is until ten years pass and Clyde begins targeting those involved in the botched trial in some of the most orchestrated and elaborate murders I have ever seen (had I never seen Saw. Or Dexter. Or Death Wish. Or next year’s Saw).

Law Abiding Citizen drifts between the genres in a haphazard fashion. It’s like letting my Gran drive; the changes are clumsy and forced but we are moving ahead at such speed that you can’t help but look forward to see what happens next.

At times you are watching a gripping legal thriller. Clyde, who is imprisoned but never convicted, uses his extensive knowledge of criminal law to gently tug at the strings of the legal system tying Nick and his team up in knots. Ah ha, you think, he’s using the law as his weapon. But just as you think the battle will be fought in court, Clyde bizarrely orders a medium-rare T-bone steak and decrees that if it is not served at exactly one o’clock, a high-profile lawyer will die. And just like that we are catapulted back into the bloated ‘puffer fish’ territory of Saw.

At its heart though, Law Abiding Citizen is a cat-and-mouse chase between Nick and Clyde. It’s the tension between the two, with Clyde always two moves ahead, that keeps the film interesting. That said there isn’t much in the way of chemistry between Gerard Butler and Jamie Foxx. While it’s nice to see Butler in a non-Persian-punting role, Foxx’s performance is flat by comparison. I continued disliking the smart-ass prosecutor way past the point where I should have been routing for him. Any number of actors spring to mind who would suit the role better but I guess Denzel must have been busy or something.

Clyde promises early on that things are going to “get biblical”. To be fair the appearance of a number of plot holes and inconsistencies strike me as more farcical than biblical. Specifically the origin of Clyde’s tactical prowess and explanation of how he kills while imprisoned. But these quirks come late enough in the movie so  to be forgiven completely.

Law Abiding Citizen took a chance by mixing genres and it paid off. The tension and drama are ratcheted right up there and the seemingly odd changes keep the plot unpredictable and enthralling. I just wish they’d given it a better name.

Before I even listen to this album, there are a few things I can say about it.  Rivers Cuomo went off the deep end with 2005’s notoriously awful Make Believe, and despite the popularity of the pretty devoid of humor video for their song “Pork And Beans,” (“Internet references!  We’re so hip!”), The Red Album was about as musically interesting as a bag of dicks going through a trash compactor, if not less so.  Fine, that would be somewhat interesting, but my point is that The Red Album was an awful album.  Now I don’t hate Weezer.  They had four good to great albums, really.  The Blue Album, Pinkerton, The Green Album, and Maladroit were all at least solid.  Hell, Pinkerton was inspired.  Suddenly, Rivers Cuomo writes a non-ironic song about wanting to live as a celebrity in Beverly Hills.  I suspect that the implications behind this song pretty much represent why he has gone so marvelously insane.

The admittedly catchy “Beverly Hills” represented an artist realizing that he probably deserved to be recognized by a then-uncaring public.  Think of the story of one of my heroes, Paul Westerberg, for a second.  In 1984, Paul Westerberg realized that he had the potential to take The Replacements to become one of the best bands of all time.  I think he accomplished that, but he desired celebrity.  In 1989, he threw down the expertly-crafted Don’t Tell A Soul down to the public in hopes that songs like “I’ll Be You”, “Achin’ To Be”, and “Back To Back” would gain airplay.  The populace proceeded to not really give a damn, and Paul Westerberg’s ego was crushed into oblivion, leaving him to create the most depressingly un-ambitious but musically genius solo albums that you’ve ever–who am I kidding?–never heard.  Musicians have tended to stray from the amazingly catastrophic Paul Westerberg approach, but Rivers Cuomo soldiers on, not really giving a care.

So when Rivers Cuomo tried appealing to the public, it worked, but was he recognized as a genius?  Oh, whoops, looks like he forgot to present himself as intelligent.  The man went to Harvard and Beverly Hills is where he wants to be.  How cute.  The Red Album tried to bring back the clever nerdiness of albums past, but at the point everyone just realized that Rivers was a silly, silly little man.  To the general person, he’s not cool-nerdy like David Byrne or Buddy Holly.  He’s foolishly nerdy like, man, I can’t even finish that comparison.  Rivers Cuomo sure is silly!

Enter Raditude.  Whoa, what on earth is that name?  Are you kidding me?  That sounds like something that Dwight Schrute would come up with after doing something amazing, probably involving bears.  Okay, you’ve seen the title, take it all in.  Okay, get out your computer and Google Image “Raditude”.  Are you sitting down?  Yikes, right?  That’s patently ridiculous.  Notice I haven’t talked about the album yet.  The idea of Raditude is so much more interesting than the actual album, which at this point in the article I have not yet heard.  Now here is where things get galactically absurd.  Look at the song titles.  “I’m Your Daddy”.  “The Girl Got Hot”.  “Can’t Stop Partying”.  What on earth?  Also, that last one features Lil Wayne.  I like Lil Wayne, but if you’re making a rock album and you want to feature a rapper in the most surreal way possible, you’re going to give that man a call.  Before I even hear Raditude, I have a feeling that this is the apex of Rivers Cuomo’s startling descent into insanity that no other artist that I can think of has exhibited.  Now to actually listen to what is sure to be a swirling vortex of confusion.

Okay, I just listened to Raditude.  That was the most preposterous experience of my life, and this one time I heard Michael Bay give himself a compliment.  It starts out pretty tolerable.  No, really!  “If You’re Wondering If I Want You To (I Want You To)” isn’t exciting by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s, uh, competent.  On “Can’t Stop Partying”, the album’s smartest moment happens during Lil Wayne’s twenty-second appearance.  “Don’t shoot me down, I’m an endangered species”.  Heh, that’s probably a joke rejected from Tha Carter IV.  Bye, Weezy.

“I stepped to the floor with Jill/And tried to thicken the plot/The thing I finally found with these others girls in town/She got hot, they did not” is basically what these lyrics look like on average.  I mean, sure, it’s an album about partying, but what’s a good party if the music sucks and the kids are lame?  Oh, by the way, the deluxe edition ends with a medley that includes Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face”.  Yeah, I don’t even know what to say about that one.

Raditude is a lot like junior high.  You’re tolerable for about three minutes, your stupidity is annoying no matter how little you try to make that matter, and all of your music sucks.

D

The following album is available for free on the artist’s website at http://www.carbonsiliconinc.com/mp3.aspx

In 2002, my hero, Joe Strummer, died of a congenital heart defect.  Though I didn’t hear about this back when I was a sixth grader getting ready for Christmas, the death would impact me when I discovered my now-favorite band The Clash in May of 2008.  I’m not sure why my copy of London Calling changed my life so much.  I certainly wasn’t at a rebellious stage in my life.  I was finally allowing myself to mature, actually at around that point.  Maybe that’s what it was.  The Clash was a band that grew and matured so quickly that its 1982 collapse was nearly inevitable.  The band’s combination of sarcastic honesty and sincere empathy made them not only relevant, but also likeable, which is more than one can say for most bands that even try to write about politics.  Joe Strummer was the honest half of The Clash.  The empathetic half was Mick Jones.

In 2002, Mick Jones formed a band with Generation X punk rock guitarist Tony James.  Together they formed the band Carbon/Silicon, whose main mission was awfully relevant for a bunch of old fogeys: They believed in “M.P.Free”, which combined a mockery of their British accents with the idea that combinations of ones and zeroes should be free.  In 2007, they released their first studio album, The Last Post.  With political rants (“Oil Well”), complaints about airport security (“The Magic Suitcase”), and songs that are as empathetic as Mick Jones classics “Lost In The Supermarket” and “Stay Free” (“The National Anthem”), The Last Post was the most politically relevant album dropped in a long time.

On November 14, Carbon/Silicon released their follow-up album, The Carbon Bubble, for free on their website. Where The Last Post begins with the repeated “Good morning, here’s the news, and all of it is good!  And the weather’s good!” The Carbon Bubble starts off far weaker.  “Everyday could be New Year’s Day”.  What?  I mean, that sentiment isn’t even original.  Mick Jones could even sing “Achy Breaky Heart” and make it sound important and heartfelt, so this isn’t a large problem to me, but I miss the sarcasm of The Last Post.   It seems that along the way, they’ve lost what keeps punk alive and thriving: relevance.

Notable songs include a hard rocker called “Make It Alright”, where Mick shreds on his guitar and repeats two separate lines ad absurdum: “I want you to make it alright” and “You’ve got to keep the devil at bay anyway you can”.  Mick Jones is the only person on the planet who could get away with that, do you hear me?  It remains my favorite song on the album, because what it does musically to two little lines is phenomenal.  On the ninth track, “Don’t Tazer Me Bro”, Mick Jones writes a silly number about how when someone decides to speak their opinion or what have you, they’ll just get shot down.  Kind of cliché, yeah, but Mick sounds like he’s being electrocuted while he’s singing it, which keeps it interesting.   And hey, it’s pretty funny.  For anyone who’s heard The Clash’s eponymous 1977 debut, this song equates to “Protex Blue”, a song about condom use that would make sense to anyone in 1977 England.  “Don’t Tazer Me Bro” is a near-throwaway to the same extent.  In three years, what the hell will that mean to people?

The ending sucks.  On The Last Post’s “Why Do Men Fight”, we have a mockery of The Divine Right Of Kings with the line “Now when I talked to God, I knew he’d understand”.  On this one we just have real stinker of a repeated line that goes on for nearly eight minutes.  “Believe or leave/Believe or leave/’Cause I know we will achieve/Our goal”.  I don’t need to tell you why that doesn’t work.

I’m not saying that The Carbon Bubble is a bad album.  It’s musically interesting enough to merit repeated listens, but after Jonesey’s 2007 comeback to relevance, it’s crushingly disappointing.  How disappointing, you ask?  Imagine how Paul McCartney fans must have felt whenever Wings released an album.

B

My sixth piece of silliness, Bear Necessities, is up at Every Day Poets today.

Some days I am in despair at the depths to which I will plummet when I get it in my head to rhyme words.  Other days, all I can do is giggle.

Check out the adventures of teddy-loving munchkin,  Sarah Blaine,  if you have the chance.  Let me know what you think.

the site of the day – bulk newsletter php software.

Do you know that can originate RSS feed for your static website? But first, let’ try to be aware why you demand have an RSS board.

RSS is the shortening payment Really Simple Syndicationn. In the gone and forgotten, there is no way for a web visitor to get the latest content from a website. instance, you positive that a blog publishes new content on regularly basis. you are not when the gratification drive be published since there is no fixed publication heyday line. If you want to be aware if experimental gladden is being published, you will have to bookmark the position and revisit the site manually to checck for updates.

Obviously, checking for updates manually is very much unfit. By the time you have a word with the purport, it may already be obsolete . Of course, you can always depend on search engines benefit of latest content. But even search engines have a diary towards crawling sites. In otheer words, you motionlessly won’t be getting real nonetheless updates.

To ovvercome this problem, RSS is developed. RSS is content that is organized in XML format. That means instead of having your contennt displayed in HTML (which is for the duration of web browsers), links, page titles and summaries are published in a established format – the XML format. This format is very different from HTML. It doesn’t bother with presentation. It’s primary function is to deliver links. So if you have an RSS feed on your website, that means anyone can grab your feed, and be updated on the latest links as soon as it becomes available.

RSS ffeeds are displayed in feed display aggregators. You will need if you want the content a provide for to make sense to you. With an RSS aggregator, you can subscribe to any wine that you come across. As soon as there is an update, you will see the changes in your feed aggregator. You can configure your aggregator to check for changes in regular intervals. This works to a great extent much the same as your email software. For example, you configure your email software to check for new mails every 5 minutes.

Now that you understand how feed works, you can advertise a feed on your own website to reap the benefiits. How do you do that?

The quickest way to publish a feed is to use a CMS with built-in RSS feature. For as it happens, if you setup a website with WordPress, your neighbourhood will have a board automatically. You may then publicize your RSS feed on the Internet.

However, if you are not using any CMS, you will have to depend on feed builder tools to publish XML feeds. Fortunately, there are free RSS builder tools online. Here is how it woorks.

Enter the URL your static website into the RSS builder. You wishes then be asked to selecct the links that will be included in your feed. Once you are exultant the vernissage, you can generate the feed. You may then promote the feed URL on your own website.

Today, I had a new opinions piece run in the Red and Black. Of all the pieces I’ve written, this one took the longest. It is short, it’s sweet, and boy, did it almost kill me.

See, I’ve had it sitting in pieces on my laptop for almost two months now. I was bound and determined to write something completely different from the other works I’ve done this semester – something I’ve never done before. So I went for that meaningless, yet all so important, tiny observation, sweet, fluffy filler piece. One of those things you can hold onto for awhile. I finally got it put together after days of listening to happy music and sleeping in. I just had to be in the right mindset.

But overall, I’m very happy I did. It has gone over well. The head of parking services contacted me so he could give my subject a commendation, which is a good feeling. I’m glad that I took the chance to mix it up and do something I’m not comfortable with, something that took a lot of effort. I feel like I’ve begun to expand myself, to try new things, and that is really the important lesson here.

Issue 10 of A Thousand Faces, the quarterly journal of super- human fiction, is out today and it contains my story, A Son of the Night.

I’m sort of pumped about this one for a couple of reasons.

First, it’s been a long time coming, even though it’s the first SF story I sold that is longer than flash length. Editor Frank Byrnes bought it last October — October 2008 — and now it’s found it’s way into the magazine.

Second, it’s being presented online and in print. I love to see my work on the Internet. But there’s something special about ink & paper. Don’t you just love the smell of laser-jet ink in the morning?

Third, a story by one of my online friends, Erin Kinch — Dinner for Three — is also in the magazine. WTG, Erin! Another notch in the pistol for both of us.

And finally, it’s just a heck of a good story. Rory Mathersby, a graphic novelist, wants so much to be a superhero, just like his creation, Swath. Rory has the money and the determination to pull it off — if the realities of life would just stop interferring.

You can check it out online at A Son of the Night, until Issue 11 comes out. Or you can buy a paper copy of the magazine at Lulu and keep it forever. Either way, I hope you enjoy Rory’s story.

Sinagouge of Satan using Wikipedia to spread “Cult-Like” activities and edit all skewed to their thought process of Cult Satanism.

I have noticed the ever prescient of Sinagouge of Satan membership base within Wikipedia, I suggest that one understand that the theories of Mike and Knife are deluded, this comes from open admissions of drug use to several members of the Satanic Community including myself and much respected High Mage Wynter of The Black Moon Society.

I have and so have others attempted to comment on Satanism and due to the “editorial staff which comprises of people in the Occult World being tilted in favor of the Cult Sinagouge of Satan no information can or will appear.

I have continued to post elsewhere and provide information to the “Cult Status” of the Sinagouge of Satan which I will reveal more inside information in the days ahead I have people leaving the ranks of the Sinagouge of Satan and becoming Temples of Satan affiliates.

More Coming
Grand Magister Blackwood

Short feature I wrote.
Published originally in the Independent Weekly Nov. 25, 2009 issue.

Durham
The Phantom of the Opera
Durham Performing Arts Center—The Phantom of the Opera is here, for 32 performances in 25 days, starting on America’s day of giving thanks. As Broadway’s longest-running musical, The Phantom of the Opera hits the Triangle as part of a U.S. tour that’s been running since 1992. Based on the French novel Le Fantôme de l’Opéra by Gaston Leroux, the musical has garnered more than $5 billion worldwide and spawned a film adaptation, international productions in more than 20 countries and even a forthcoming sequel, Phantom: Love Never Dies. This love story about a disfigured composer who falls for a beautiful opera singer is a sight to see, not only for its lavish costumes and sets but also for its grand musical numbers that mix traditional opera arias with a classical score. The show runs through Dec. 20 with tickets ranging from $25 to $82. Visit www.dpacnc.com. —Belem Destefani

Short feature I wrote.
Published originally in the Independent Weekly Nov. 18, 2009 issue.

Chapel Hill
UNC Glee Clubs
Hill Hall Auditorium, UNC Campus—With the success of Fox’s hit TV show Glee, it is once again cool not only to be a part of a glee club but also to watch glee club members perform. Glee clubs originated in England in the late 18th century and typically consisted of all-male trios or quartets that performed short a cappella songs, or glees. Nowadays, glee clubs include women, and the groups tackle a repertoire of wide-ranging songs. UNC will be hosting their finest male and female glee clubs at 4 p.m. for free. Call 962-1039. —Belem Destefani

By Jaclyn Desforges

A recent proposal to deregulate tuition and ancillary fees at the University of Toronto (U of T) was met by overwhelming opposition from students last week.

In a campus-wide vote, over 93 percent of U of T students voted against the proposal, which called for the provincial government to grant the university the power to control its own fees.

U of T’s proposal to deregulate tuition is part of its Towards 2030 report, which was approved by the school’s governing council on Oct. 23.

The document, which addresses the future of the university, recommends that the institution be given the power to regulate its own tuition fees in order to provide a quality of education that would be impossible to sustain from provincial funding alone. Smaller class sizes and better facilities are just some of what the report describes as possible benefits of the plan.

The proposed changes are modelled after public universities in the United States, some of which charge as much as $25,000 per year in tuition fees.

Some student groups are already concerned about the impact of rising tuition levels on public access to university. However, the Towards 2030 report states that student initiatives to lower tuition may actually be detrimental to access to a quality education.

According to the document, tuition freezes and rollbacks are doubly regressive, providing benefits only to those who can already afford to pay tuition fees, even as they compromise the pool of tuition-derived bursary funds available to help those in need of assistance.

York Federation of Students (YFS) president Hamid Osman said that this is a myth.

“Even with the tuition fees now, we’re seeing more and more potential students not going to university because of how much it costs. If we allow a deregulation of tuition fees, we will only allow universities for the rich and not for all,” Osman said.

Student groups point to rising tuition levels as barriers to accessing a university education and have called repeatedly for tuition freezes or reductions. Within the present fiscal framework, however, and looking forward to 2030, a tuition freeze would have a profoundly detrimental impact on the quality of education and student experience available at the University of Toronto, the document added.

Some York students are wary of the U of T proposal, fearing that a similar situation could arise here. The proposal is particularly controversial in light of the Nov. 5 provincial “Day of Action” against rising tuition fees.

“I would rather have bigger class sizes than more debt,” said Carmen Lee, a fourth-year communications major.

Similarly, York students are unsure as to whether the benefits of deregulation would outweigh the costs.

“I would only agree to pay more tuition if there were more benefits to students than just smaller classes and better facilities,” said Kathleen Calder, a third-year student.

“I’m a theatre major, so our classes are already small and the facilities are great”.

- With files from David Ros

Published in The Excalibur on Nov. 5, 2008.

By Jaclyn Desforges

I recently watched Sir Ken Robinson’s talk on the education system, in which he argues that public school is designed to squash children’s natural creativity. Instead of focusing on each child’s particular talents, the education system wants them all to fit the same mold, ultimately producing well-trained university students.

Sir Ken is a great speaker, charismatic and witty to boot. But is school really to blame for the loss of children’s creativity? And do unstructured classrooms really make children more creative than traditional ones?

Back in my day, we sat quietly. Sure, drawings occasionally made it to the fridge, but we’d be in big trouble if we got caught doodling in our math books instead of memorizing multiplication tables. And dancing around just wouldn’t fly during reading time. There was routine. Kids were quiet. And if we disobeyed, we went to go see the principal, not the therapist.

It was a simpler time in the early 90s. Nowadays, in an attempt to protect little Andy’s self-esteem and innate creativity, Mom and Dad seem to have forgotten that kids should learn to follow the rules.

The school system I grew up in might have been a little oppressive, but we made up for it by playing our own games, imagining things, and reading books. During class time, yeah, we sat in our seats, but we explored nature once school was out. And on family road trips, we looked out the car window and explored the scenery, instead of passively watching DVDs on the road.

These days, toys are so educational that kids don’t get the chance to be creative. You can buy a toy exercise bike that hooks up to the TV, so that your kid never has to face the danger and dirt of the great outdoors. Children no longer have to struggle to read—books are now read aloud by their favourite Disney characters. Does the secret to unlocking kids’ creativity really lie within the school system? Or is it leisure time that needs restructuring?

Maybe the public school system does need a bit of an update, but before we start writing angry letters, let’s stop and think. Who’s in charge of raising kids? The education system, or the parents? Whatever the answer, we’d better come up with a solution soon, or this creativity crisis will lead to slim pickings at the Faculty of Fine Arts.

Published in the November 2008 issue of Macmedia Magazine, volume 14, issue 2.