If theres a lingering criticism to be made of Halt And Catch Fires storytelling going into this fourth and final season, its that the shows underlying schematics arent always gracefully integrated into the drama. Id say its programmatic, if youd allow a computer pun this early in the season. Still, in telling the interconnected stories of four characters who forge their identities through technology, perhaps thats less a bug than a feature. (Last pun, I promise.)

Cameron Howe, explaining why she wont allow the company to include instructions with her newest game, the immersive, enigmatic Pilgrim, exclaims, This isnt a game you play. Its a game you live. Back in California after nearly three years working on the game in Japan, she cant hide her contempt that all the recruited game-testers care about are the then-new blood and guts of Mortal Kombat. You cant even kill anything, whines one, frustrated at Pilgrims open-world exploration. (To be fair, the fact that solving one random puzzle sends you back to the beginning of the game is an example of Cameron pushing her game as life metaphor to the limits of gamers patience.) Cameron loves all kinds of games (Battle mode?, she asks Gordon after waking up to the sounds of him playing Mario Kart after sleeping on his living room floor), but her own games (Space Bike, Pilgrim) are acts of self-expression, and self-exploration.

Donna Emerson (ne Clark, now comfortably sharing custody with ex-husband Gordon while relishing the freedom of being in the drivers seat of an on-demand affair with a handsome lover) has solidified her corporate position, doling out (and cutting off) funding for teams of techies desperate for her largesse. Donna sought to break out of her traditional role as supportive wife and motherand den mother to Cameron and the unruly gang at now-defunct Mutiny. And she has, patterning her career path after successful friend-turned-peer Diane. We see the two women secretly mocking the new (male) hire promoted above them, and Donna, her morning smoothies concocted and served up by her eager and overqualified assistant Tanya (new cast addition Sasha Morfaw), crisply insists that those seeking funding wow her with the next big idea. I was really rooting for you guys, she says offhandedly before walking out of one meeting, leaving the flustered underachievers wondering if theyve just been cut off. (They have.) Donna was shunted into the responsible (or killjoy) role much of the time at Mutiny, but now she has the power to turn the faucet on or off. After theyre defunded, we see the tech team childishly lashing out at each other (Dont touch me!) in the background while Donna sits serenely inside her glass-fronted office. If shes to be the one in charge of bickering would-be computer geniuses, now she can simply dismiss them when they become too much trouble.

Gordon Clark remains the core groups functional fuckup. Having built up the company he, Joe, and Cameron embarked upon at the end of season three into a stable (if not thriving) internet provider concern, he seems at peace with his level of professional and personal success, much as weve seen him at various points in the series. When Gordon fails to recognize the need to risk security for the lighting-strike genius of Joes nascent idea of Google, essentially, Joe accuses Gordon of sleepwalking. Youre trying to convince yourself that its all right to stop, Joe tells him, further entreating, Youre a builder, you need to build. But Gordons gearhead brilliance has always sought to stall out somewhere comfortable, and here, throwing himself an over-lavish company party for his 40th birthday (complete with performance by the Blue Man Group, who messily use the body-condom-ed Gordon as a human paintbrush), he urges Joe to abandon his traditional head-in-the-clouds thinking in favor of helping their company (CalNect) fight off the encroaching tidal wave of free AOL discs that threatens to sweep smaller providers like them right out of town.

As for Joe MacMillan, getting his head back in those clouds means emerging from the CalNect basement, where hes been ensconced for the three years since we last saw everyone. Season four opens with a showily impressive eight-minute sequence revealing how the promise of the Joe-Cameron-Gordon team splintered almost immediately, with the pained Gordon watching helplessly (via tracking shots, sly dissolves, and gradual lighting and scenery changes) as Cameron returns to Japan (and husband Tom), leaving Joe and Gordon to work long-distance attempting to get their visionary browser Lodestar to market first. (They fail, beaten by real-life online pioneer Mosaic.) Confronting the returned Cameron in his Post-It-festooned workspace (Joes been meticulously tracking every new website he can by hand), he blames her distance (in every sense) for the failure, snapping, If we had worked on this, together, it could have been amazing.

And it could have beenGordon admits that Joe and poor Ryan had been right about the coming of the open internet, but pleads that Joe simply enjoy the benefits of having been right. Joe buys in for a while, allowing traces of his old, take-charge demeanor to emerge during a board meetingbefore uncharacteristically deferring to Gordon. But a stray parting thought from Cameron about the need to catalog the exponentially expanding number of websites sends Joes mind, again, spinning out into the realm of the possible. Despite the fact that first Gordon then Cameron describe his concept of mapping every available website in one directory as Like the Yellow Pages?, Joe has the old Joe MacMillan fire rekindle inside the shaggy, somewhat squirrely basement tech geek hes become over the intervening three years. And then, also like the old Joe, his enthusiasm spreads.

If Halt And Catch Fire too-readily allows its characters to define themselves in metaphor, thats because the characters are all, in their individual ways, defining failure and success that way. In the second episode, Signal To Noise, which picks up immediately after Joe learns via telephone that Cameron and Tom have split up, the pair slowly thaw toward each other as Camerons says of her seemingly random back to the beginning puzzle in Pilgrim, Maybe it means everything. Now you can approach the path youve taken in an entirely new way. But, effortful as the metaphor may be, it leads to the lovely, episode-long conceit that Joe and Cameron playfully allow their initially tentative telephone reunion to sprawl through one whole night and following day. (We see Joe swapping out one cordless phone for another when the battery runs low, and the two at one point adorably admit that they have had to pee for a long time.) Lee Pace and Mackenzie Davis make Joe and Camerons connection here deeply touching and funnyeven as we see how events outside their artificial, two-person world continue worrisomely without them.

While Joe and Cameron unplug themselves, both are willfully unaware of looming disaster. Cameron ignores a message from Atari, but a second knock at her hotel room door brings notice that her stubborn purity of vision has sent Pilgrim to an uncertain future in the form of an indefinite postponement. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Joe, CalNect is on the brink of sudden disaster, Gordons dream of mid-level success unraveling in a snarl of busy signals, angry customers, and Gordons realization that phone provider MCI has deliberately scuttled their bandwidth in preparation for an in-house ISP. Theyre a public utility! They cant play winners and losers!, exclaims one CalNect employee, but Gordons face, as it inevitably does at least once a season, registers the fact that, once again, hes watching his plans explode in his face. (The head of Donnas firm warily describes the internet at this time as frontierland, and Gordon realizes that he hasnt prepared himself or his company to survive there.)

The clich (that Ive helped disseminate) is that Halt And Catch Fire only became a good TV show (and then a great one) once it abandoned its Mad Men-cribbed blueprints. Like Joe and Gordon copying that IBM chip in season one, the product they came up with was counting on borrowed prestige to smooth over some clunky design. In So It Goes, when Donna tells one of her teams, You need to be pursuing your own vision, not aping somebody elses right?, it echoes the course correction creators Christopher Cantwell and Christopher C. Rogers made in their own, under-the-radar AMC workshop. As A.V. Clubber Eric Thurm writes at The Verge, the show had to let go of the single, great misunderstood genius trope so common to the modern creator narrative in order to both present a truer picture of the innovation process, and to become a richer show.

Joe MacMillans genius for inspiration and manipulation are still vital going forward, but its hisand the showsrecognition of the different skills of those around him that make the gathering electric storm of ideas gathering around Joes indexing concept so thrilling in Signal To Noises final minutes. Sadly for these characters, their skills and personalities clash as often as they are complementary. Witness Gordon and Donna, their gentle, affectionate sparring at a very civil exes dinner yet providing the seeds for the coming conflict over competing versions of Joes idea. Or, again, Joe and Camerons restorative phone marathon. Joe, hearing the sleeping Cameron fall silent, quietly tells her through the phone, Ill just keep talking because I think youre still there. Are you there? Im here, and its so exquisitely lovely it raises gooseflesh. But, as Gordoncaught again in the middleintuits, things between these two are anything but simple enough to be fixed with a phone call, of any length. Why do you keep putting yourself through this with her?, Gordon asks Joe during their much more cozy 40th birthday camping trip, similarly warning off Cameron when she crashes in his living room after the Blue Man Group party. Am I cruel?, Cameron asks, and Gordon brushes the idea away. (Its delicately heartwarming how these former antagonists have become buddies.) But, after Gordon realizes that Joe has become fixated on Cameron once more, he visits her at work and is interrupted before returning to the question. Gordon wants everyone to recognize things among this group of friends, lovers, exes, and coworkers need to be kept separate. (He refuses Bozs request for a loan because Diane and Donnas relationship makes everything too complicated.) But the characters of Halt And Catch Fire dont pull apart that easily. The series central tragedy is that these brilliant people will always be at the center of great technological advancesonly to lose out on the big prize in the end. Weve seen them essentially invent online gaming, social networking, the internet, and now Googlebut theyre doomed by their own humanity not to get the credit in the end.

Halt And Catch Fire has developed into a confident, fast-moving enterprise, and theres a lot to take in in these first two episodes. (I havent even mentioned the blessed return of Toby Huss Boz, here still uneasily with Diane, but bluffing his way through meetings with Donna, then Gordon, doing his old shitkickers storyteller schtick to conceal how desperately he needs cash to hide a bad investment from Diane.) But what the show reasserts with such fluidity here is that these people are inextricably bound by a shared belief that there are truths to be found in the unceasing evolution of technologyand the possibilities for self-expression and communication it represents. Donna, berating one tech team for looking backward (using the internet to compile dead data), tells them, Were in the future business here. Cameron sees her games as a place for people like her, who both need and fear human contact, to revel in a shared experience of discovery, and wonder. Speaking to Bos last season, she explained that the fact that theres no way to actually win at Space Bike is part of its beauty, and she tells a colleague that Pilgrim is for people who know that the journey is an end in itself. You have to trust the player, she explains. Joe tries to rope Gordon into his half-formed idea of an online index at least partly by appealing to the shared spark of inspiration that has made the two of them such a good, if combustible, team. Nobody remembers the power company, is Joes response to Gordons plea for him to come up out of that basement.

Its that connection that all these characters share that makes what could feel like a contrived restart feel more like an inevitable, if fraught, reunion. The pieces for this seasons plan to have the gangseparately and togetherrace toward the invention of something brilliant and essential all click into place seamlessly. They spark off of each other. Cameron sparks Joe, Joe works through it out loud to Gordon, Gordon inadvertently lays the groundwork for Donna to recognize the same idea when one of her teams makes a similar, last-ditch pitch. Gordon, saddled with younger daughter Haley after she gets caught skipping school, ruminates both on Joes heap of scribbled URLs and his daughters impressive, self-created personal web page. At its bestand this two-part premiere is very promising for this final season indeedHalt And Catch Fire welds character and inspiration into something exhilarating.

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Halt And Catch Fire returns with an assured, graceful two-part premiere - A.V. Club

I just returned from Romance Writers of America, which is a conference dedicated to all genres of romantic fiction. I love going to these events, because its a great way to connect with authors who are really kicking tires and lighting fires when it comes to book promotion. This group is made up of some of the savviest, most successful authors Ive ever known. And though their book marketing tactics may vary from author to author, there is a core set of beliefs and strategies that all successful authors adhere to regardless of the genre. You may not embrace every single one of these 14 habits right now, but its worth your time to adopt as many of them as you can, as soon as you can.

Being a successful author takes work. It takes patience and persistence and a strong focus on business. With 4,500 books published each day in the US, adopting these habits for success is no longer optional, its crucial to your success. So start digging in and working these areas and I promise youll quickly start to see a change in the trajectory of your book.

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14 Habits of Highly Successful Authors - HuffPost

Aug 20, 2017 at 8:30 am | Print View

Women and men will gather Saturday night, on Womens Equality Day, to add five more women to the ranks of those named Women of the Year.

The women, nominated by friends and co-workers, were chosen because of their commitment to improve the lives of area girls and women. Their names will be added to a list of more than 130 who have been honored by the Womens Equality Coalition of Linn County over the past four decades.

Women recognized in 2017 are:

Eden Wales Freedman

At Mount Mercy University, Dr. Wales Freedman serves as director of diversity studies and assistant professor of English. She is a well-known scholar who often speaks or writes on behalf of human rights issues important to women and minorities. She is a reader and reviewer for the interdisciplinary journal, Girls Studies, and a writing mentor of the Afghan Womens Writing Project, which helps Afghan women write and publish their experiences living under the Taliban.

These also are passions that she carries into her personal life where she is an active participant in movements and events intended to promote women and encourage equality for all people.

In recognition of her unwavering support of women and girls, it is only fitting that Eden Wales Freedman be recognized as Linn County Woman of the Year. Her investment in the eager young minds of her students and her little sister will pay dividends for years to come.

Monica Brown Challenger

An executive director of the Iowa Innovation Learning Center, Brown Challenger also is known for her work as the outreach and education coordinator for the Cedar Rapids Civil Rights Commission and as managing director at Diversity Focus.

Her nomination predominantly focuses on her volunteer efforts on behalf of the Open Minds, Open Doors conference, which encourages middle school girls to consider careers in science, technology, engineering and math. Brown Challenger has been a part of the event since 2000, and also has given her talents to the Black Inventors Camp, Kirkwood Community College Engineering Technology Academy, the 6th Judicial District Department of Corrections, United Way of East Central Iowa, and St. Lukes Womens and Childrens Center Patient and Family Advisory Council.

Monica sees a society that values equal opportunities and participation for women and girls, and works toward that vision daily.

Charrisse Cox

Cox was nominated primarily for her work on behalf of the Cedar Rapids-based Academy for Scholastic and Personal Success. She also is a long-standing educator in the Cedar Rapids Community School District, currently serving as the only teaching member of color at Johnson STEAM Academy. For the past 11 years, Cox has been a lead teacher at the academy.

Every day and in so many ways, Cox goes well beyond her assigned duties by providing added assistance and guidance to students dealing with barriers to education. She founded and leads a weekly after-school program during the school year known as The Expansion, which she works to populate with young people who would most benefit from its cultural focus.

Cox, an active member of Mount Zion Baptist Church, encourages young women and girls to realize their potential through education. She is aware of the economic inequities that continue to affect young women and girls of color and, according to those who work with her, begins nudging them toward success early in their academic lives. For many of these students, Cox has been the only woman in a position of community leadership who looks like them.

This is often demanding and thankless work, but Charrisse is one of too few who never give up on this task. Women, now grown, recognize and remember her influence.

Denise Bridges

Bridges is a staff member at the Area Substance Abuse Council who has worked within the school system to provide evidence-based education in relation to drugs and alcohol. It was perhaps that work that prompted her to help lead a large school supply drive for area families in need.

One young woman who was a part of a small group mentored by Bridges said she never thought higher education would be a part of her future until she began working with Bridges.

Bridges also has worked with the NAACP, Youth Think Tank, African American Preservation Society and a host of other community organizations that work toward equality in Linn County.

Four years ago, Bridges founded the annual Art of ACES event, which is held during child abuse awareness month and allows local youths to showcase artwork that has helped them to overcome trauma or mental illness.

She has formed long-lasting, trusting relationships with the girls and women she works with, serving as a mentor to many. She continuously models, encourages and provides them with strategies, resources and opportunities to promote positive life choices.

Barbara Chadwick

She has served on the Linn County Early Childhood Iowa board, and was president of the Iowa Public Health Association. As part of her current work with Linn County Public Health, Chadwick has advocated for equality through political action, and has especially sought to be a voice for underprivileged women. Co-workers say she leads her staff such that they are empowered to exhibit their strengths and reduce barriers for their clients.

Chadwick, once the local face of Planned Parenthood of East Central Iowa, leads by example, encourages others to access inner strengths and inspires those around her to improve their own or their neighbors life.

Barbara has a compassion and drive that improves the lives of women (and others) who are the most vulnerable in our communities.

Attendees of the equality celebration Saturday evening at Kirkwoods Linn County Regional Center in Hiawatha will have an opportunity to hear directly from the award winners, as well as from the young woman chosen to receive a college scholarship. Doors open at 6:15 p.m. and the program begins at 7 p.m. Local musical group Deep Dish Divas will provide entertainment and tell their own story.

l Comments: @LyndaIowa, (319) 339-3144, lynda.waddington@thegazette.com

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Equality coalition names five Women of the Year - The Gazette: Eastern Iowa Breaking News and Headlines (blog)

Photo: Esteban L. Hernandez / Hearst Connecticut Media

Connecticut DCF finds success in domestic violence program for fathers

NEW BRITAIN >> Wigberto George Ortizs godsend came on his birthday. It arrived at his feet like a shell washed ashore by the tide, he said. He should have seen it coming, but his mind had been too busy with the storm raging in his head.

For weeks he had lived in constant torment. His mind was a prison. It was fueled, he said, by a twisted mixture of depression, aggravation, alcoholism and anxiety over what came next. It was all due to what happened when he and his wife decided their marriage was over. Their union had been troublesome. A few months prior, it had escalated. Ortiz had been charged in a domestic violence incident involving his wife.

Everything you could think of, that was me, Ortiz said. I was lost. I didnt know where I was headed.

There was no going back. But he didnt know that yet.

On his 38th birthday, he saw his wife in town. She was with someone else. At that moment, he said, it became clear what he needed to do. Whatever life he had lived before, it was time to release it. Whatever fantasy he had built in his head dissipated.

I realized at that moment that it was going to be just me and the boys, Ortiz said, referring to his four young children.

But his new focus was further sharpened by a program called Fathers for Change, a unique and relatively new service offered through the state Department of Children and Families to a selected few. Its purpose is to provide men involved in domestic violence situations a chance to rehabilitate through therapy by improving communication between parents and their children, as well as helping to reduce aggression. The program is one of DCFs community-based behavioral health services.

The program itself landed on my lap, Ortiz said. It changed my life. It made me become a man.

A non-traditional approach

Select families participate in the six-month program. Though about one in five DCF cases involve intimate partner violence, DCF spokesman Gary Kleeblatt said about 100 fathers and their families have been served by the program after it was launched in 2015.

DCF has about 16,000 annual cases in the state. The Fathers for Change, program is also available to men who do not have a legal involvement.

Mary Painter, director of Intimate Partner Violence and Substance Use treatment and recovery at DCF, helps supervise the program and said it has received high satisfaction reviews from fathers. Families involved report lower numbers of children being removed from homes, Painter said.

This is non-traditional, Painter said. We only use this program for families when its considered to be safe. The idea behind is we keep the family together. Traditionally, response to intimate partner violence is getting perpetrators out of the home. This takes a different approach.

Kleeblatt said DCF employees dont directly provide services. Instead, theyre provided by private providers, usually therapists and masters-level clinicians.

Painter said the program offers individual therapy with men, with an emphasis on in-home sessions if its safe, to help them regulate their emotional state and learn how to handle feelings of hostility. The service can also be delivered in the traditional outpatient clinic setting. Painter said fathers receive therapy based on their families individual needs. DCF will also try to find other services that could benefit families.

In Ortizs case, the programs ultimate goal was unsuccessful. The family did not stay intact. But calling his case a failure would be inaccurate: Ortiz is a proud father of four boys who now live under his roof. The boys are Vitally, 7, Lorenzo, 6, Marcelo, 4, and Matteo, 1.

During a recent afternoon at his home in New Britain, Ortiz quite literally had his hands full wrangling the energetic quartet. He would speak to one son while trying to hold on to another. This summer, he usually got up around 7 a.m. to get the oldest boys ready for summer programs. The night before, he would lay out their clothing and have them in bed by 8 p.m. The oldest boys are on the autism spectrum and took classes to help develop their speech, physical therapy and social skills.

I pretty much do what I have to do, Ortiz said.

Ortiz said he originally planned to do the program with his wife before they separated. He had enrolled in the program in December, starting his first session at his home in January with James Geisler, from the Child Guidance Clinic for Central CT.

His first session helped formulate his game plan. Each time they spoke, they explored another road Ortiz had traveled to learn how he ended up there. Ortiz said the sessions explored his past, forcing him to face realities he couldnt face by himself. He would recall his childhood and things he witnessed growing up. These were things that led him to act out the way he did against his wife.

Painter said this is the kind psychoeducational approach the sessions take.

They really teach them about the cycle of violence, what it is, what a healthy relationship is, Painter said. Fathers for Change is different in its really looking (at) a man not only as a man who perpetuated domestic violence but as family members and fathers.

Behavior exhibited by domestic violence perpetrators can often be traced back to events they witnessed as children. What we know about it is that there is a pattern thats intergenerational, Painter said, adding that girls exposed to domestic violence have a higher chance of being victimized. Boys, in turn, are more likely to perpetuate domestic violence if exposed to it.

(When) helping a man become better, then the next generation is learning the same thing, Painter said.

Ortiz said he would usually leave the sessions feeling uncomfortable, but to him that meant he had a positive session. Digging into the root causes of his situation gave him clarity.

Everything started to fall into place, Ortiz said. He said he felt like after every session, another part of his life grew more and more stable. Before starting the program, Ortiz said he wasnt skeptical. When he started, he had felt like he was fighting for his marriage. He accepted the changes as the program progressed.

There were other changes. Mornings became different. He would wake up and clean messes he had long ignored.

Those days became beautiful days, Ortiz said. I wanted that change more than anything in my life.

Life as a single father

A divorce was granted in May. Inside a nearly empty courtroom, But Ortiz would then face a judge on May 26 for a different but related reason. With things falling into place, Ortiz had his sights on his next, perhaps most important, goal: Sole custody of his children. It was granted.

Ortiz said the judge told him it was the first time had ever rendered such a ruling for a man.

There was nobody in the room, Ortiz said. He said some very nice things. Theyre personal. I keep those to myself.

He looked at his kids and noted how hard he fought to change. He knew the reason for changing his life wasnt solely about himself.

I feel like this is my gift for the change, Ortiz said.

On that recent day, Ortiz would pause every so often to speak to one of the boys, sometimes turning his head between two or three of them. Sometimes the boys were being too loud, so Ortiz would quietly ask them to hush. Two of them had to be put on time out for them to calm down. He held Matteo in his arms nearly the entire time he spoke to his other children.

I dont think you ever get used to it, Ortiz said. I have to adapt every day. You get up and fall in love with your children.

Reach Esteban L. Hernandez at 203-680-9901

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Connecticut DCF finds success in domestic violence program for fathers - New Haven Register

Arsenal changed the game when they bought Mesut Ozil in 2013. Suddenly they were back in the modern transfer world and they announced their presence by shattering the club record on an internationally recognized superstar.

Thats some pretty cool stuff.

The problem, however, is still being taught to us on a daily basis. Because the problem lies in the formula that is required to achieve both personal success for Ozil and club success for Arsenal.

There is no denying what Mesut Ozil has. His silky smooth touch is unmatched. None can handle the ball better than him. And when it comes to brilliant, magician-like passes and creative flourishes, look no further than the German maestro.

But in case you havent been paying attention, there are some drawbacks to Ozils game, and those drawbacks all come down to one thing disappearing. There are simply games where Ozil disappears and in the infinitely disappointing game against Stoke City, that was the case.

He was the (negative) talk of the town after the match, other than Granit Xhaka of course, with renowned midfielder Steven Gerrard calling out the German for being a liability and a quitter (as quoted by the Metro).

Those are some pretty harsh words, but they really play into the unfortunate belief around Ozil, and thats that he is far more of a passenger than a driver, and I dont think that the Gunners are or have been equipped for what Ozil brings to the team.

The simple reality is that Ozil, in order to be at his absolute best, requires the absolute best around him. He needs to have superstars surrounding him in order to achieve the level of consistency that we want him to have because he simply does not have the ability to drive the team himself. We have tried. For four years we have tried, but he clearly does not have that gene.

And thats fine, not everyone does. But the Gunners do not have the supporting cast to really make Ozil pop and, until they do, this is the Ozil that we will get there some days, not on others.

There is plenty that makes Ozil special, but driving a team and being the primary force is not one of them. And I dont reckon that will change so long as this is the cast he has to work with.

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Arsenal simply not equipped for a man like Mesut Ozil - Pain In The Arsenal

By: Express News Service | Bhopal | Published:August 19, 2017 6:02 am External Affairs minister Sushma Swaraj addresses India-ASEAN Youth Summit in Bhopal on Friday. PTI photo

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Thursday said Buddhism and Ramayana connect members of Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) alliance, including Muslim-dominated Indonesia, to India.

Recalling her trip to Indonesia last year, Swaraj said the country is full of motifs from Ramayana and Mahabharata. She said every major road junction depicts the famous image from Gita of Arjun bowing before Krishna, the charioteer.

Speaking at the valedictory function of Indo-ASEAN Youth Summit here, Swaraj quoted Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and said that the former Prime Minister was surprised to find Muslim sculptors making what looked like idols of Hanuman during his visit to Indonesia as the External Affairs minister.

She said Vajpayees curiosity got better of him and he asked the sculptor what he was making. But you are a Muslim, he told the sculptor, only to be told, Hamne mazhab badla hai purkhe nahi (we have changed our religion, not ancestors), she said.

She asked Indian participants of the summit to visit these countries and see how India and these countries were embracing each other.

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Buddhism, Ramayana connect ASEAN to India, says Sushma Swaraj - The Indian Express

With all its morbid decadence, the richly-layered Gothic imagination and cosmic horror of Bloodborne tends to overshadow some of its more (post)modern influences. Bloodborne isnt a traditionalist, after all, but a punk: or to be more precise, a cyberpunk. It may not havesinister corporations or hackers, yet this sci-fi renegade still conjures the rebellious ghost in the machine.

Most obviously, theres the overpowering presence of that looming megalopolis Yharnam as dependent on monumental, almost brutalist architecture as any good futuristic urban sprawl. The social dynamics within Yharnam echo the politics of cyberpunk, the hegemonic power of the Healing Church pitted against the social outcasts roaming the grimy streets. Dangerous social experiments and unchecked technological advancements have led to a Victorian dystopia. There are even cyberspaces, simulated, subordinate worlds in the form of the Dreams, which can be accessed and even hacked by those who are privy to secret knowledge.

Yharnham:

Ridley Scott'sBlade Runner:

And just like cyberpunk, the world of Bloodborne is held captive by the promise of transhumanism the idea that humankind will, one day, be able to transcend our fleshlylimitations and become something more. Whether it is Deus Ex or Bloodborne, the tool for this quasi-religious endeavour is cutting edge research and technology. In Deus Ex, that means body modification through nanotech or even merging consciousnesses with an omnipresent AI. In Bloodborne, its the Healing Church and Byrgenwerth researching into the old ones and their blood that drives this change: aiming to transform humans, in theory, into celestial beings that have entirely discarded their humanity. Not unlike in Blade Runner, the eye becomes an omnipresent symbol of self-directed evolution and the dangerous knowledge necessary to pursue it.

However, Bloodborneisa punk that refuses to slavishly follow in the tracks of those that came before. The differences are the most fascinating thing here. The futuristic vision of transhumanism, whether it is presented as a utopian promise or a dystopian threat, is seen as an evolutionary culmination or perhaps even singularity that severs the umbilical cord that connects us to our evolutionary history. The human is a product of natural processes, distant cousin of the apes. The posthuman the product of transhumanism is something different (strangely, it is our human arrogance that leads to this fallacy of teleological evolution.)

Blade Runner

Eye of a Blood-Drunk Hunter

Bloodbornes idea of transhumanism is recognisable, but different. Its still a morally complex idea, both pursued by individuals and institutions while also causing societal upheaval, but its vector is in the opposite direction. The path to transcendence doesnt lead the inhabitants of Yharnam away from humankinds evolutionary history, but confronts it head-on in a retrogressive journey. The first enemies our hunter encounters are beastmen, many of them recognisably human but some, like the werewolves or Vicar Amelia, almost devoid of human characteristics. Theyre hairy and canine, clearly mammalian despite their deformities. So far, this is in keeping with stories like Robert Louis Stevensons The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde or H.P. Lovecrafts tales of human degeneracy, such as Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family, in which a British nobleman burns himself alive after discovering that one of his ancestors was an ape goddess from the Congo. These stories play with our post-Darwinian revulsion at being the offspring of mere animals.

But as you progress through Bloodborne, the hunter descends deeper down the evolutionary ladder. Soon, enemies resemble snakes, insects, arachnids. Later, they become more alien still, strange variations of squids, snails, slugs (that is, molluscs) or even fungi. They have names like Celestial Emissary, or Celestial Child and are closely related to the Great Ones, some of whom, like Ebrietas or Kos, share similarities with the games mollusc-like creatures. Bloodborne displays a special fascination with mushrooms and molluscs, as well as the creatures of the ocean (especially in The Old Hunters DLC). These creatures are associated with the primordial, the early origins of life on earth, and their strange forms, both beautiful and disturbing, gives them a semblance of otherworldliness. And since they dont seem to belong to this world, perhaps they originally visited earth from unknown regions of the cosmos?

Kos

Ebrietas, Daughter of the Cosmos

Celestial Child

Nudibranch, Nembrotha Kubaryana. Photo by Nick Hobgood

Nudibranch, Nembrotha Cristata. Photo by Chriswan Sungkono.

Nudibranch, Tritoniopsis Elegans. Photo by Sean Murray.

From this anthropocentric perspective, becoming like these creatures means getting closer to the miraculous origins of life, when the earth and the cosmos had yet to be disentangled. The transhumanism of Bloodborne thus turns the usual teleological view of human evolution on its head; the forces of evolution, whether natural or self-directed, will not bring humans closer to the gods, but have instead distanced them from the celestial spring of life. To fulfil their atavistic yearning to return to the lap of the cosmos, the inhabitants of Yharnam must regress to earlier evolutionary stages. The horror and tragedy of turning into wolf-like beasts, therefore, isnt just due to a revulsion to our animal ancestors or the destruction they cause, but the knowledge that those beastmen didnt regress far enough. If only they hadnt gotten lost in this evolutionary valley, they could have emerged on the other side as transcendental beings, as kin not of the earth, but the cosmos. At least, thats one way of looking at the complex picture Bloodborne paints.

The transcended hunter as slug-like Great One in Bloodbornes true ending

The beautiful thing about this is that it doesnt just fly in the face of transhumanism as it is usually understood, but the most problematic aspects of Lovecrafts work, too. The ugly concept of degeneracy, with all its overt racism, was an integral part of Lovecrafts fictional worlds. The ancient and unambiguously evil powers of the Great Old Ones is tied to primitives and mongrels, marginalised humans seen as genetically impure and degraded. They are easily manipulated by the old gods and worship them in the hidden and remote corners of the earth.

In Bloodborne, the blame of Yharnams ruin is dramatically shifted. The hidden corners of worship arent foreign jungles or secluded villages, but the sacred spaces of a church that is the backbone and centre of a sprawling megalopolis; the mysteries of the Great Ones are still secret knowledge, but secrets of a powerful, manipulative elite (as you would expect in the conspiracy-filled worlds of cyberpunk stories). But while this elites endeavours clearly lead to a horrific dystopia, the moral issues of this regressive transhumanism stay ambiguous throughout. The degenerate beastmen are hapless, unfortunate victims rather than villains. The experiment of transcendence through reverse evolution seems doomed to fail, but it is not at all clear whether that goal is inherently misguided. After all, the Great Ones seem amoral rather than evil (not unlike the people of Yharnam), and the hunter is no stranger to the allure these celestial beings exert through their disturbing kind of beauty. Perhaps their apparent darkness stems purely from the human minds failing to comprehend their true nature? Either way, Lovecrafts ideas of degeneracy doesnt entirely fit into Bloodbornes world.

Being kin to both the Lovecraftian as well as cyberpunk, Bloodborne, too, is a kind of mongrel. But this impurity is precisely what enables it to distinguish itself and comment meaningfully on its ancestral genres. It reshapes its influences by letting disparate ideas collide and creates something fresh from the wreckage. Its not unique in its subversion of transhumanist idealism or Lovecraftian racist tropes, but the way it combines these separate issues in a seamless if ambiguous whole is entirely original.

Bloodborne is both a cyberpunk dystopia in which the end point of self-directed evolution is not a disembodied mind, but a slug or a squid, as well as a tale of cosmic horror where that dubious degeneracy stems not from shady outsiders or social outcasts, but squarely from within organised mainstream religion and science. It shares with cyberpunk an awareness and distaste for the unequal power dynamics in a world governed by the amoral ambitions of hegemonies, but, like Lovecraft, looks backwards to our distant origins rather than to the future. And soBloodborne transcends its influences, and challenges us on new planes of existence.

The rest is here:
Bloodborne, Transhumanism and Cosmic Cyberpunk - Kotaku UK (blog)

Last week in TAC, Zoltan Istvan wrote about The Growing World of Libertarian Transhumanism linking the transhumanist movement with all of its featureslike cyborgs, human robots and designer babiesto the ideas of liberty. To say Mr. Istvan is mistaken in his assessment is an understatement. Transhumanism should be rejected by libertarians as an abomination of human evolution.

We begin with Mr. Istvans definition of transhumanism:

transhumanism is the international movement of using science and technology to radically change the human being and experience. Its primary goal is to deliver and embrace a utopian techno-optimistic worlda world that consists of biohackers, cyborgists, roboticists, life extension advocates, cryonicists, Singularitarians, and other science-devoted people.

The ultimate task, however, is nothing less than overcoming biological human death and to solve all humanitys problems. Throughout much of Mr. Istvans work on this issue, he seems to think these ideas are perfectly compatible with libertarianismself-evident evenso he doesnt care to elaborate for his befuddled readers.

While most advocates of liberty could be considered, as Matt Ridley coined it, rational optimistsmeaning that generally we are optimistic, but not dogmatic, about progressit is easy to get into a state in which everything that is produced by the market is good per se and every new technology is hailed as the next step on the path of progress. In this sense, these libertarians become what Rod Dreher has called Technological Men. For them, choice matters more than what is chosen. [The Technological Man] is not concerned with what he should desire; rather, he is preoccupied with how he can acquire or accomplish what he desires.

Transhumanists including Mr. Istvan are a case in point. In his TAC article he not only endorses such things as the defeat of death, but even robotic hearts, virtual reality sex, and telepathy via mind-reading headsets. Need more of his grand ideas? How about brain implants ectogenesis, artificial intelligence, exoskeleton suits, designer babies, gene editing tech? At no point he wonders if we should even strive for these technologies.

When he does acknowledge potential problems he has quick (and crazy) solutions at hand: For example, what would happen if people never die, while new ones are coming into the world in abundance? His solution to the fear of overpopulation: eugenics. It is here where we see how libertarian Mr. Istvan truly is. When his political philosophythe supposedly libertarian onecomes into conflict with his idea of transhumanism, he suddenly drops the former and argues in favor of state-controlled breeding (or, as he says, controlled breeding by non-profit organizations such as the WHO, which is, by the way, state financed). I cautiously endorse the idea of licensing parents, a process that would be little different than getting a drivers licence. Parents who pass a series of basic tests qualify and get the green light to get pregnant and raise children.

The most frustrating thing is how similar he sounds to communists and socialists in his arguments. In most articles you read by transhumanists, you can see the dream of human perfection. Mr. Istvan says so himself: Transhumanists want more guarantees than just death, consumerism, and offspring. Much More. They want to be better, smarter, strongerperhaps even perfect and immortal if science can make them that way.

Surely it is the goal of transhumanists that, in their world, the average human type will rise to the heights of an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Marx. You can just edit the genes of the embryo in the way that they are as intelligent as Aristotle, as poetic as Goethe, and as musically talented as Mozart. There are two problems, though: First, the world would become extremely boring, consisting only of perfect human beings who are masters at everything (which perhaps would make human cooperation superfluous). Second, that quote was famously uttered by the socialist Leon Trotsky.

As Ludwig von Mises wrote sarcastically, the socialist paradise will be the kingdom of perfection, populated by completely happy supermen. This has always been the mantra of socialists, starting with utopian thinkers like Charles Fourier, but also being embraced by the scientific ones like Marx, who derived his notion of history in which communism is the final stage of humanity from Hegel. Hegel himself believed in the man-godnot in the way that God became man through Jesus, but that man could become God one day. Intentionally or not, transhumanists sound dangerously similar to that. What they would actually create would be the New Soviet Man through bio-engineering and total environmental control as the highest social goal. In other words, you get inhuman ideological tyranny taken to a whole new level.

It should be noted that sometimes transhumanists recognize this themselvesbut if they do, their solutions only make things worse (much worse). Take Adam Zaretsky as example, who says that these new human beings shouldnt be perfect: Its important to make versions of transgenic human anatomy that are not based on idealism. But his solution is frightening: The idea is that you take a gene, say for pig noses, or ostrich anuses, or aardvark tongue, and you paste that into a human sperm, a human egg, a human zygote. A baby starts to form. And: We could let it flow into our anatomy, and these peoplewho yes, are humansshould be appreciated for who and what they are, after they are forced to be born in a really radically strange way. Its no surprise that Rod Dreher calls Mr. Zaretsky a sick monster, because he truly seems to be one when it comes to his transhumanist vision. He wants to create handicapped human beings on purpose.

If this were what libertarians think should happen, it would be sad (thankfully its mostly not). As Jeff Deist notes, it is important to remember that liberty is natural and organic and comports with human action. It doesnt require a new man. Transhumanists may say that the introduction of their idea is inevitable (in Istvans words, Whether people like it or not, transhumanism has arrived) but that is not true. And in this sense, it is time for libertarians to argue against the notion of extreme transhumanism. Yes, the market has brought it about and yes, the state shouldnt prohibit it (though giving your baby a pig nose could certainly be a violation of rights), but still, one shouldnt be relativist or even nihilist about such frightening developments. It would be a shame if the libertarian maxim of Everyone should be able to do whatever one wants to (as long as no one is hurt by it) becomes Everyone should do whatever one can do just because it is possible.

Finally, it comes as no surprise that transhumanists are largely, if not all, atheists (or as Mr. Istvan says: Im an atheist, therefore Im a transhumanist. This just proves what the classical liberal historian Lord Acton talked about when he said, Progress, the religion of those who have none. In the end, transhumanism is the final step to get God out of the way. It would be the continuation of what Richard Weaver wrote about in Ideas Have Consequences: Instead of seeing nature, the world and life overall as a means to get to know God, humans in the last centuries have become accustomed to seeing the world as something that is only there for humans to take and use for their own pleasures. Transhumanism would be the final step of this process: the conquest of death.

You dont have to be religious to find this abhorrent. As we have seen, it would be the end to all religion, to human cooperation overall, in all likelihood to liberty itself, and even the good-bye to humanity. It would be the starting point of the ultimate dystopia.

Kai Weiss is an International Relations student and works for the Austrian Economics Center and Hayek Institute, two libertarianthink tanks based in Vienna, Austria.

See the article here:
Transhumanism Is Not Libertarian, It's an Abomination - The American Conservative

I still remember the excitement of reading P.D. Ouspenskys Psychology of Mans Possible Evolution for the first time. It was my first spiritual book and every page was packed with insights into my psychology. Our studies must begin with our selves and not with the heavens. Ouspensky drove home the idea that in our present state we are machines, that we are a conglomeration of voices rather than a unified whole, that we react rather than do, and that we must observe our machines in order to change. According to Ouspensky:

Our aim is to become one, to have one permanent I. But in the beginning work means to become more and more divided. You must realize how far you are from being one, and only when you know all these fractions of yourself can work begin on one or some principal Is around which unity can be built. It would be wrong understanding to unify all the things you find in yourself now. The new I is something you do not know at present; it grows from something you can trust. At first, in separating false personality from you, try to divide yourself into what you can call reliable and what you find unreliable.

It is in P.D. Ouspenskys aim that his system falls short. While there is talk of becoming a unified whole, a man number 5,6, or 7, there is no evidence that even Ouspensky attained the goal. Ouspensky even said that a school must have two levels: where man number 1,2, and 3 learns to become man number 4 and where man number 4 learns to become man number 5. By that definition, his organization was not really a school, he said. I think Ouspensky is a good beginning, but not a complete system. He lays the foundation for studying our psychology and getting our lives in order, but doesnt venture into the true nature of the mind.

However, the teaching of Ouspensky and Gurdjieff was reportedly by word of mouth. I have only read the books and not studied with a school of this tradition, so I may be missing much data. Objective information on schools is scarce. Even the Gurdjieff Foundation states that there are many spurious groups and declines to provide any contact information. Remember to be wary of those demanding money. Anyone who really knew the Truth would laugh at the idea of charging for it.

GurdjieffClub.com: Links to many Fourth Way groups all over the world.

A reader commented, I enjoyed reading your reviews of the other spiritual teachers too, and particularly happy to see my P.D Ouspensky among them. When reading your thoughts on him, I was surprised to find no mention of his masterpiece, In Search of the Miraculous. Indeed, if you have not read it, I would like to state thatPsychology of Mans Possible Evolution can be considered a distillation of Gurdjieffs teaching, and In Search of the Miraculous its full exposition, running several hundred pages long.

Indeed, such is the case. In Search of the Miraculous covers the years 1915 to 1917 when Ouspensky first met Gurdjieff. It documents many conversations between the two, as well as Ouspenskys frank reactions to Gurdjieffs ideas. Another of Ouspenskys books, The Fourth Way, contains transcripts of Ouspenskys lectures and meetings after his split with Gurdjieff. All three books were published after his death in 1947.

Here is the only video footage Im aware of that shows G.I. Gurdjieff, P.D. Ouspenskys teacher:

See original here:
P.D. Ouspensky: We are machines - SpiritualTeachers.org

Web Delivery of the Continuing Education Regulatory Element Program

FINRA has transitioned the delivery of the Continuing Education (CE) Regulatory Element to an online format called the CE Online Program. The CE Online Program provides participants with the flexibility to satisfy their CE Regulatory Element requirement from a home or office computeranytime, anywhere.

Note: As of July 1, 2016, all Continuing Education (CE) Regulatory Element programs are no longer available at Pearson VUE or Prometric testing centers. For additional details, review Information Notice 5/16/16. Participants now need to satisfy their CE requirement exclusively via the CE Online Program, unless a disability that falls within the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) prevents them from doing so (review FINRA's CE Online Delivery Accommodation page for more information).

Participants completea computer-based session consisting of four modules, and must demonstrate proficiency in order to satisfy the CE requirement.

The formats of the S106, S201 and S901 programsincluding rollovers and resourceshave not changed.

The S101 Program has been restructured to include a personalized module that allows the participant to select one of six different topics (Institutional Sales, Trading, Operations, Retail Sales, Investment Banking and Research) that most closely resembles their job function. AnInformation Notice has been published for the S101 Personalization Program along with a related content outline.

Read more:
Continuing Education (CE) Online | FINRA.org