#2007 Canadian Nationals

[figureskatingcostumes]

Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir skating their original dance at the 2007 Canadian National Championships and, with a different flower, at the 2007 World Championships. Their music was Luis Bacalov's Assassination Tango.

(Sources: 1 and 2)

[aryburn-trains]

Amtrak P42DC #54 leads the eastbound Maple Leaf through Stuart Street Yard in Hamilton, ON. October 21, 2007

[fatehbaz]

hi i love your blog and the stuff you've shared has been really invaluable for me writing my dissertation right now! i was wondering if you've ever read anything interesting about police horses, or perhaps horses working for the state more generally? apologies if you've already made a post about this and i've missed it.

Nice. Don't know if your dissertation is specifically about horse histories; if so, then I'd imagine you already know much more than I do. So I don't know how much help I can be.

I've posted about the history of police horses in Australia before, which is just excerpts from Stephen Gapps and Mina Murray, in their "From colonial cavalry to mounted police: a short history of the Australian police horse" (The Conversation, 28 July 2021; "Horse Patrol" aka "Mounted Police" formally established 1825 after Wiradjuri war, used to round-up escaped laborers and attack Aboriginal communities as crucial force in colonial admin in 1830s culminating in Waterloo Creek Massacre.)

I've made some references to US participation in British campaigns of Boer War. (Apparently there was a micro-industry of the New Orleans port shipping 110,000 horses and 81,000 mules on 166 voyages via 65 British steamships for a cost of like hundreds of thousands USD per month for three years to help Britain.)

Similarly, Steve Hewitt and others write about Canadian mounted police and their role in national power in the Great Plains; twentieth-century counter-subversion; monitoring labor strikes and Indigenous/student dissent, etc.

"The Masculine Mountie: The Royal Canadian Mounted Police as a Male Institution, 1914-1939" (Hewitt, Journal of the Canadian Historical Association, 1996)

Riding to the Rescue: The Transformation of the RCMP in Alberta and Saskatchewan, 1914-1939 (Hewitt, 2006)

"Fashioning farmers: ideology, agricultural knowledge and the Manitoba farm movement, 1890-1925" (Hewitt, Journal of Canadian Studies, 1997)

"Canadianizing the West: The North-West Mounted Police as Agents of the National Policy, 1873-1905" (Mcleod, The Prairie West: Historical Readings, edited by Francis and Palmer, 1992)

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Guessing you've already considered this, but a relevant thing I've read might be Breeds of Empire: The 'Invention' of the Horse in Southeast Asia and Southern Africa 1500-1950 (Greg Bankoff and Sandra Swart, 2007), about "the 'invention' of specific breeds of horse in the context of imperial design and colonial trade routes" and "the historiographical and methodological problems with writing a more species or horse-centric history." There was an earlier influential paper about imperial use of horses by Swart, ""The World the Horses Made": A South African Case Study of Writing Animals into Social History" (International Review of Social History 55:2, 2010).

Last year I read Bellweather Histories: Animals, Humans, and US Environments in Crisis (edited by Susan Nance and Jennifer Marks, 2023), and there was an interesting chapter on horses by Marks: "Chicago's 1872 Equine Influenza Epizootic and the Evolution of Urban Transit Technology."

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Have you seen Jagjeet Lally's "Empires and Equines: The Horse in Art and Exchange in South Asia, ca. 1600-1850" (Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 35:1, 2015)? It covers Mughal state power and aristocratic prestige as tied to horses, but also refers to the later utility of horseback mobility in East India Company and British power consolidation.

I used to be in a Central Asia-specific program-type thing and there was a long list of academic writing, most if it not in English, about horses as essential for statecraft in Mongol, Persian, Mughal, Chinese, and Ottoman contexts. So I know that there's a huge amount of writing on the subject, but I did not retain much of it. Jagjeet Lally's bibliography here is helpful. This also brings to mind Alan Mikhail's work The Animal in Ottoman Egypt (2013) and Under Osman's Tree: The Ottoman Empire, Egypt, and Environmental History (2017). Though horses aren't the main focus, they're essentially about "animal labor/capital."

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I think I've seen that you've interacted with my old posts about Sujit Sivasundaram, Rohan Deb Roy, and Jonathan Saha on "interspecies empire"? Saha's most recent stuff includes writing in:

Biocultural Empire: New Histories of Imperial Lifeworlds (2024); Colonial Dimensions of the Global Wildlife Trade (2024); "A Historiography of Great Animal Massacres" (2024); "whiteness, masculinity, and ambivalent British Justice"; imperial use of elephants and "animal agency, undead capital, and imperial science" (2017); Subverting Empire: Deviance and Disorder in the British Colonial World (2015); imperial use of cattle and other livestock in "animals and the politics of colonial sensitibilites" (2015). Sivasundaram covers a lot of that (animality, criminality, imperial imaginaries) but also oceanic thinking.

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Also thinking of:

The Horse in the City: Living Machines in the Nineteenth Century (Clay McShane and Joel A. Tarr, 2011)

And The Herds Shot Round the World: Native Breeds and the British Empire, 1800-1900 (Rebecca JH Woods, 2017). Though its not really about horses (mostly about sheep and cattle for dairy/meat).

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But I know there are little niches:

(1) British frontier policing in Australia ("mounted patrols" in campaigns against Aboriginal peoples and keeping them on rangeland labor sites). (2) British metropolitan and urban settings (police horses in industrializing London, patrolling rural periphery during enclosure law era). (3) The settlement of the Great Plains of the US (especially origins of Rangers, the Fence Wars, and policing West Texas). (4) The Spanish colonization of Mexico and especially the Rio Grande Valley (horses in maintaining state power on the northern/desert frontiers; Spanish/Mexican states and Comanche/Apache mobility in southern Great Plains). (5) Argentina's state-building in the Chaco. (6) And then all of that material about Mughal, Mongol, Ottoman horses.

(Also, most recently, I did that annoying silly satirical retelling of horse-drawn sleighs as progenitor of vehicle and pedestrian laws in industrializing Amsterdam, and it alludes to how horse-drawn carriages were important affordances to wealthy aristocrats which shaped industrial urban space in Europe; I don't know much about it, but I know there's a fair amount of lit about both horses-as-vehicles and mounted police in early nineteenth-century Europe.)

Though I'm not really familiar with most of that. In trying to formulate thoughts about "carceral archipelagoes" and "frontiers," I've previously seen titles about the utility of telegraphs, railyards, and police for US power consolidation. But when horses/cattle get involved, I've been scared/disturbed by just how much of that literature seems to be directly produced by "police department museums," "police science" journals, or former police-superintendents-turned-pseudo-historians in their retirement years who study their own noble profession as a novel curiosity.

But I imagine you know better than me if this is true. So please put me back in my place if I've got the wrong impression!

It's my impression that, more recently, the advent of critical animal studies, multispecies ethnography, and critical geography has meant there's a lot of new stuff to check out.

[theresattrpgforthat]

Canada, Truth & Reconciliation, & Indigenous Games

Hello friends,

Today (September 30th) is the National Day of Truth & Reconciliation in Canada. It is a very recent holiday in this country, and it’s also very important to me. I want to spend some time today telling you about it, and then (since this is a ttrpg blog) directing you to some indigenous storytellers and designers that deserve a spotlight for various reasons.

I am not Indigenous. This information is a collection of knowledge that I have gained through university coursework, personal research I've undertaken, and relationships I've cultivated with indigenous friends who have taken pains to educate me and highlight how these issues have personally affected them. I am aware that the summary I'm providing is incomplete, and there may be elements that I don't fully understand the implications of.

If you are Indigenous, please keep in mind that this post may recall some painful and personal moments of history for you. Proceed with caution. The shout-outs to indigenous creators can be found after the heading “The Storytellers.”

The Truth.

Canada has been engaged in a cultural genocide of its indigenous peoples since European settlers started the colonization of the country. This genocide had many avenues, including the creation of the Indian Act, the relocation of many Indigenous peoples to restricted Reserves, and a disturbing trend of missing and murdered Indigenous women. For the purposes of today however, I’m going to stick to just talking about Residential Schools, and the impact they had on Indigenous families and their children.

Residential schools were designed to “kill the Indian” and “save the child”, in the words of John A Macdonald, the prime minister who authorized their creation. They were designed to sever Indigenous children from their culture and raise them in a Christian, colonial context. These residential schools were harsh, forbidding Indigenous children to speak their mother tongues, cutting their hair, and forcing them to learn skills considered “useful”, in the language of the colonizer, away from their parents. The schools were also hotbeds of abuse. Alarming numbers of children fell ill and died at these schools - the death toll to this day is unknown. From April 1, 1920 to some time in the 1990’s, residential school attendance was mandatory for Indigenous children from the ages of 7 to 16.

The Sixties’ Scoop is a reference to a mass kidnapping of Indigenous children in the 1950’s and 60’s, who were forcibly removed from their homes and “adopted” into non-Indigenous families. While the last residential school in Canada closed in 1997, Indigenous children still make up over 50% of all children in private foster care, despite only accounting for just over 7% of all children under age 15 in Canada.

The Reconciliation.

Reconciliation is a goal prompted by Indigenous groups and elders. It is a choice that promotes "balance and harmony," a way of life that encourages coexistence, according to the words of one residential school survivor, Hereditary Chief, Dr. Robert Joseph.

In 2007, The Indian Residential Schools Settlement came into effect, offering compensation to survivors of many residential schools.

In 2008, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada was officially launched, intended to be a guide for the Canadian government to help establish lasting reconciliation. This commission was a way to formalize a method of collecting data, and it also had the responsibility of developing a list of recommendations for the country of Canada to follow, in the goal of pursuing a relationship between the Indigenous peoples of Canada and the government of Canada.

In 2007, Cindy Blackstock, a First Nations (Gitxsan) activist launched a court case against the Canadian government, for under-funding social services provided to children living on First Nations reservations. This was in regards to Jordan’s Principle, a child-first Canadian policy that is meant to ensure that First Nations children have equal access to all government funded public services as other Canadian children. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission made the respect of Jordan’s Principle one of its 94 Calls to Action for the Canadian government.

The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal became involved in 2016, when they found more alleged breaches of the Canadian Human Rights Act in regards to Jordan’s Principle. As of September this year, the Federal Government is still attempting to dismiss human rights complaints regarding the use (or, in fact, neglect) of Jordan’s Principle.

Canada’s history of residential schools and use of the foster care system has grievously wounded Indigenous families and children. The disruption of family life and the forcible removal of children from their culture has created legacies of loneliness, pain, and suicide. Indigenous people today can trace their own familial wounds to the legacy of residential schools and the lack of resources provided to them from the government. The National Day of Truth and Reconciliation is a day to remember this legacy and provide a space for education, but it isn’t enough.

You can learn more about this day and the history behind it by visiting the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation Website.

You can also watch this 18-minute Youtube video about Residential Schools, or We Can’t Make the Same Mistake Twice, a free 2 & 1/2 hour documentary about Blackstock's continuous fight regarding caring for children using Jordan’s Principle.

I also recommend 21 Things You May Not Know About The Indian Act, by Mary-Ellen Kelm and Keith D. Smith, which breaks down some of the key elements of the Indian Act for everyday person.

So, how do we connect this to ttrpgs?

When it comes to the milestones that have been achieved in Canadian history, those milestones have been made because we listened to Indigenous voices. The recommendations made by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that have been followed are having real and positive effects for Indigenous peoples in Canada. Listening to the stories of Residential School survivors has been integral to the processes recommended and undertaken by the Canadian government.

We need Indigenous stories. We need Indigenous storytellers.

The Storytellers

Coyote & Crow.

Coyote & Crow Games is a tabletop games publisher, primarily focused on the tabletop roleplaying game, Coyote & Crow. This is a world and game whose design team is fully Indigenous, from various First Nations people groups across North America. Coyote & Crow is a futuristic game about a land untouched by colonization, a land changed by a series of climate events that have changed the geographical and social landscape. It involves supernatural powers, a completely unique form of civil organization, and a unique d12 dice pool system

In a recent update, Connor Alexander, as the face of Coyote & Crow, announced some business decisions that include a creation of a consultant branch of the company, to provide professional consultation services for other creative endeavours that are looking to include Indigenous Representation in games.

What I love most about Coyote and Crow is that it’s a world where Indigenous creators have been given full reign over the ways they are represented in the fiction, and it provides a unique social and political imagining of society that pulls from many First Nations cultures. It’s refreshing, it’s exciting, and it provides a lot of guidance for non-Indigenous players so that they can engage with the world in a way that’s respectful.

Wendigo Workshop

This is a small team based in Quebec, Canada. I’m not entirely sure whether the team is fully Indigenous, but there are Indigenous creators as part of the team.

Currently the Workshop is working on a number of different games, including… Anomaly Hunters; a monster hunting ttrpg built on the Breathless SRD. Arkelon Chronicles; a science-fantasy ttrpg surrounding the discovery of an Alien ruin. Last Hope; a Caltrop Core game about magical girls fighting to protect the world while balancing their student lives.

Bramble Wolf Games

@sahonithereadwolf is an Indigenous creator based in Appalachia looking to make games that mean something. I found out about him through his game Exceptionals, a game about community, activism and kinetic eye beams. It’s inspired heavily by X-Men, but instead of telling superhero stories, it’s more about the fostering of a community outside of the systems created and enforced by colonial governments.

Sahoni is also currently working on a game called Protect the Sacred, a game inspired by Indiana Jones, but focused on the protection and preservation of monsters and artifacts in the interests of the cultures that have been stolen from by colonial powers. The game is about your relationship to your culture, and resistance to fascism - and you can get sneak peeks to this game through Sahoni’s Patreon.

Both Protect the Sacred and Exceptionals involve character creation that requires players to answer questions about who they are, what they do, and how they affect the community around them. They both recognize the community around you as integral to your success, and I think that this point of view is such an important concept to consider when using games as an art form that can expand your social imagination.

Also...

There is a consultancy service in Alberta, Canada called Pe Matawe Consulting, which is not focused specifically on ttrpgs, but does provide consulting for various creative endeavours. They provide consulting services as well as workshops, with the goal of providing a broader understanding of Indigenous culture and folklore.

[unbfacts]

In 2007, Russia planted a titanium flag on the Arctic seabed beneath the North Pole to assert claims over potential natural resources, drawing criticism from other nations. Canadian Foreign Minister Peter MacKay commented, "This isn't the 15th century. You can't go around the world and just plant flags and say 'We're claiming this territory'."

[jeynearrynofthevale]

I was interested in the 4 Nations rosters and how much various draft classes were represented. So, I put some data in excel and checked.

There are 92 players on the rosters for the tournament. There is only one undrafted player participating, Kevin Lankinen (Finnish). The youngest player on any roster is Leo Carlsson (Swedish) who was drafted in 2023. The oldest player on any roster is Sidney Crosby (Canadian) who was drafted in 2005. So, there is an 18 year difference between the oldest and youngest player in the tournament.

The most represented draft class at this tournament, to the surprise of no one, is 2015. There are a whopping 16 players drafted in 2015 named to the tournament rosters. The only other draft class with double digits participants is 2014.

The 2007, 2021, 2022, and 2024 drafts are all unrepresented with 0 participants. And of course, no draft class prior to 2005 is represented.

Canada's most represented draft class is 2015 with 6 draftees on the roster.

Finland's most represented draft class is 2017 with 5 draftees on the roster.

Sweden's most represented draft class is 2014 with 4 draftees on the roster.

USA's most represented draft classes are 2014 and 2015 with 4 draftees from each class on the roster.

[cometomecosette]

The History of Angry Éponine

Since I'm listening to as many Les Mis recordings as possible in chronological order, trying to notice changes in characterization trends, this is a subject I'm curious about.

Angry portrayals of Éponine don't seem to have appeared until the musical was at least a few years old. Based on every clip I've seen and heard of Frances Ruffelle, she was definitely a sad, melancholic Éponine – not without spunk or street smarts, of course, but predominantly melancholy. And most of the other earliest Éponines were very much in her mold, acting like her, sounding like her, and even looking like her.

Around 1988 and '89, we start to hear fewer Frances imitators in the role, and get a taste of different characterizations, which sometimes include more feistiness. But in my personal listen-through, not until Lea Salonga in the 10th Anniversary Concert have I heard an Éponine whose core "thesis statement" seems to be "My love is unrequited and I'm angry about it."

Once, a long time ago, I read some comments about Lea Salonga from an older fan. They wrote that her angry characterization the concert was probably because she had been directed on Broadway by Richard Jay-Alexander, who was also the original director of the first three US tours and the first Canadian productions. This fan claimed that his productions always had angry Éponines.

Based on what I've now seen and heard of those productions, I can see some truth in that. For example, Jay-Alexander seems to have changed the blocking of the line "Little you know! Little you care!" so that instead of sadly singing it alone after Marius ran off, Éponine angrily blurted it out directly to Marius's face. Susan Tilson does this in the 1991 1st National Tour proshot, Debbie Gibson does it in a clip from her Broadway run, and every American Éponine I ever saw in person did it all the way through 2007.

I can also believe that Jay-Alexander might have made Éponine fiercer during "Attack on Rue Plumet." In the 1st National Tour proshot, she knees Thénardier in the nether regions!

But at the same time, in that 1991 video, Susan Tilson doesn't sing "On My Own" angrily. The few video clips I've found of Debbie Gibson's "On My Own" don't seem angry either.

Might I be correct in guessing that Richard Jay-Alexander encouraged his Éponines to bring more fierceness and anger to the role in general, but Lea Salonga was one of the first to bring anger into "On My Own"?

Are there any older fans who could share their own experience of how Éponine's portrayals and how the emotions conveyed in "On My Own" have evolved?

[yourdailyqueer]

Norval Morrisseau (deceased)

Gender: Male

Sexuality: Bisexual

DOB: 14 March 1932  

RIP: 4 December 2007

Ethnicity: First Nation (Ojibwe)

Nationality: Canadian

Occupation: Artist

Note: Widely regarded as the grandfather of contemporary Indigenous art in Canada

[favourite-canadian-polls]

Tumblr's Favourite Canadian: Round 1, Poll 16

Information below the cut.

Gord Downie (b. February 6, 1964) was a musician from Kingston, Ontario. In addition to his career as the frontman of the band The Tragically Hip, he was known for advocacy for environmentalist causes and First Nations peoples. Upon his 2017 death, he was widely mourned by practically the entire nation of Canada.

Sidney Crosby (b. August 7, 1987) is a hockey player from Halifax, Nova Scotia. He has played his entire career for the Pittsburgh Penguins, who drafted him in 2005 and gave him the captaincy in 2007, at the age of 20. He is considered one of the greatest hockey players of all time and has won an incredible amount of awards, including three Stanley Cups and two Olympic gold medals.

[rjzimmerman]

Good story from Yale Environment 360, without a paywall (I think), about beavers, public land, wildfires, endangered species, the largest beaver dam in the world, the degradation of that land and the large pond behind the dam due to the tar sands mining activity in the vicinity. In other words, a microcosm of all the bad stuff and good stuff intersecting in one place in Canada. Excerpt from this story:

Wood Buffalo National Park, the largest national park in Canada, covers an area the size of Switzerland and stretches from Northern Alberta into the Northwest Territories. Only one road enters it from Alberta, and one from the NWT. If not for people observing it from airplanes and helicopters, and satellites photographing it, little would be known about big parts of it. The park is a variety of landscapes — boreal swamps, fens, bogs, black spruce forests, salt flats, gypsum karst, permafrost islands, and prairies that extend the continent’s central plains to their northern limit. The wood buffalo in the park’s name are bison related to the Great Plains bison. In this remoteness, the buffalo descend from the original population, and the wolves that prey on them are also the wild originals. Millions of birds summer and breed here. The park holds one of the last remaining breeding grounds of the whooping crane.

Other superlatives and near-superlatives: the delta in the park’s southeast where the Peace River and the Athabasca River come together is one of the largest freshwater deltas in the world; last summer, some of Canada’s largest forest fires burned in the park and around it; and — just inside the park’s southern border — is the largest beaver dam in the world.

The dam is about a half-mile long and in the shape of an arc made of connected arcs, like a recurve bow. The media has known about it for 16 years, and in that time no bigger beaver dam has come to light, so it’s still known as the biggest, and scientists believe it almost certainly is. Animal technology created it, but human technology revealed it.

Many of the beavers that have reestablished themselves globally are descended from beavers that were planted by wildlife biologists. The thriving beaver population of Tierra del Fuego (another place Thie has studied) is descended from beavers brought to Argentina from Canada’s Saskatchewan River, who are themselves scions of beavers transplanted from upstate New York. No reintroduction of beavers was done in Wood Buffalo Park. Thie believes that the beavers who built the dam are of original stock. Like the wood buffalo and the wolves, they were too remote to be wiped out.

The park is suffering the worst drought in its history. Flows are down by half in many places, owing to climate change, water diversion, poor seasonal snowpack, and dams on the Peace River, upstream in British Columbia. A danger that seems inescapable comes from the oil sands that are being mined for crude-oil-containing bitumen, and from tailing ponds that hold trillions of liters of mine-contaminated water. The ponds are near the banks of the Athabasca River, just upstream from the park boundary. They are fatal to birds that land on them. Given the direction that water flows, conservationists and native people fear the tailings will pollute the park eventually. Toxic chemicals have already been found in McClelland Lake, just southeast of the park. Locals stopped taking their drinking water from the lake years ago.

Gillian Chow-Fraser, the boreal program manager for the Northern Alberta chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, in Edmonton, travels in the park often by helicopter, canoe, and foot. She has described the park’s environment as “super degraded.” When I spoke with her by phone not long ago, she talked about a recent tailing basin leak that was not reported to the First Nations downstream of it for nine months. In places that used to flood regularly but now don’t, the land is drying out and vegetation disappearing. Though she crisscrosses the park, she has never seen the world’s largest beaver dam, but she’s grateful that it’s there and bringing the park attention.

[figureskatingcostumes]

Emilie Demers Boutin and Stuart Chutter competing in the 2008 Junior Canadian Nationals, in the free skate.

(Source: Janet)

[damianstarastrology]

Neptune in Pisces – the "end times", fear mongering, and right-wing hysteria

Back in 2012, Neptune entered Pisces just in time for the 2012 phenomena; a cultural conspiracy movement which believed the world would come to an end in 2012. During the time of the 2007-2009 recession, the percentage of Americans who were unemployment doubled. Poor economic circumstances lead to more Americans attending church and we are seeing similar patterns today as inflation and rent prices continue to rise in the US.

Neptune is currently in the late degrees of pisces, and as Neptune closes out this cycle, we are collectively frustrated and disillusioned with our current systems. It is no surprise to me that with the rise in popularity of new age spirituality during the pandemic of the early 2020's came this movement of evangelicals as we are seeing today.

The homesteading community has sent my girlfriend and I straight down the conservative pipeline on both Tiktok and Instagram. With this has come a slue of videos outcrying about how we are in the end times -- a young man is close to tears as he describes a Canadian law that would "put Christians in jail for quoting the Bible" and that is was proof of the supposed end times. What this young man described was the proposed Bill C-367, "currently under review in the House of Commons, would repeal “religious exemption” in Section 319 of the Canadian Criminal Code, which critics say could open up Christians and other religious groups to “hate speech” charges over any comments or criticisms of the LGBT movement."

Jupiter and Uranus are currently conjunct in the sign of Taurus right now. The divide between the far left and the far right, the rich and the poor, and the privileged and underprivileged, has never been more palpable, and tensions are high. The two planets will exact one another around April 21st 2024, I expect some major world news/events to take place, perhaps an increase in protests.

Saturn is also in pisces. This week, the NYC governor declared a state of emergency and called in the national guard to patrol subway stations for vague and unclear reasons. This has lead many to speculate about what this could mean and understandably there is a lot of fear.

Overall: Loss of faith (neptune, pisces) in existing systems, structures and institutions (saturn) leading to belief in a higher power.

Confusing, vague circumstances surrounding security. Conspiracies surrounding homeland security. Our institutions and government systems (saturn) are lacking clear definitions and boundaries (pisces). Boundaryless authority (saturn pisces). Fear (saturn) of the unknown (pisces).

[dailyanarchistposts]

Footnotes Part I

[1] John Ralston Saul, Voltaire’s Bastards (New York: Vintage, 1992), 460.

[2] The World Wrestling Entertainment phenomenon is immense, both internationally and within the United States. WWE is consistently in the top ten daily searches globally on Yahoo’s Buzz Index and other search engines. The official site of World Wrestling Entertainment, http://www.wwe.com, receives within the United States alone a monthly average of 7.7 million unique visitors and a daily average of 517,000 unique visitors, according to a six-month survey done by Omniture SiteCatalyst from October 2006 to March 2007. Within the United States it had a monthly average of 214.4 million page views, a daily average of 7 million page views, a monthly average of 16.2 million video streams, and an average of 524,000 video streams per day. The WWE audience, according to a study conducted in May 2006 by Forrester Consulting, is 86 percent male, with an average age of twenty-four. Thirty-six percent are ages twelve to seventeen, and 40 percent are ages eighteen to thirty-four. Forty-one percent are students. Sixty-two percent of the males eighteen to thirty-four are employed full time. According to http://www.quantcast.com, 81 percent access wwe.com daily or several times a week. Fifty-seven percent have no college education. Twenty-six percent have an annual income of $30,000 or less, and another 30 percent make between $30,000 and $60,000. Fifty-one percent have children aged six to seventeen. Sixty-four percent are Caucasian, 14 percent African American, and 16 percent Hispanic.

[3] Neal Gabler, Life: The Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality (New York Vintage, 2000), 238.

[4] Paul A. Cantor, “Pro Wrestling and the End of History,” The Weekly Standard 5:3 (4 Oct. 1999): 17–22.

[5] Daniel J. Boorstin, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (New York: Atheneum, 1961), 240.

[6] Ibid., 198.

[7] Gabler, Life: The Movie, 4.

[8] James Bradley, Flags of Our Fathers (New York: Bantam Books, 2000), 518–519.

[9] Antonino D’Ambrosio, A Heartbeat and a Guitar: Johnny Cash and the Making of Bitter Tears (New York: Nation Books, 2009).

[10] William Deresiewicz, “The End of Solitude,” The Chronicle of Higher Education 55:21 (30 Jan. 2009): B6.

[11] Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm.

[12] C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1956), 74.

[13] Richard Hoggart, The Uses of Literacy (Transactions Publishers, London, 1957), 151.

[14] Chris Rojek, Celebrity (London: Reaktion Books, 2001), 33–34.

[15] Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (New York: Penguin, 1985), 80.

[16] Emily Eakin, “Greeting Big Brother with Open Arms,” New York Times, Jan. 17, 2004: B9.

[17] Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (New York: Vintage, 2001), 200–202.

[18] Ibid., 209.

[19] Ibid., 214.

[20] Ibid., 235–237.

[21] Cited in Gordon Burn, “Have I Broken Your Heart?” The Guardian, March 7 2009. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/mar/07/gordon-burn.

[22] My account of Jade Goody is informed by Burn, “Have I Broken Your Heart?” http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/mar/07/gordon-burn.

[23] Hannah Arendt, “The Crisis in Culture,” in Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought (New York: Penguin, 1993), 207.

[24] ABC News, Living in the Shadows: Illiteracy in America, Feb. 25, 2008.

[25] Statistics were obtained from the following sources: National Institute for Literacy, National Center for Adult Literacy, The Literacy Company, U.S. Census Bureau.

[26] “Canada’s Shame,” The National, Canadian Broadcasting Company, May 24, 2006.

[27] Cited in Frank Füredi, Where Have all the Intellectuals Gone? (New York: Continuum, 2004), 73.

[28] Benjamin DeMott, “Junk Politics: A Voter’s Guide to the Post-Literate Election,” Harper’s Magazine (November 2003): 36.

[29] Boorstin, The Image, 61.

[30] Ibid., 255.

[31] Gabler, Life: The Movie, 205.

[32] Boorstin, The Image, 36.

[33] Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion (New York: Free Press, 1997), 59.

[34] Cited in Gabler, Life: The Movie, 197.

[35] Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture (San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1977), 24.

[36] “The Directors,” Adult Video News (2005), 54.

[37] Gag Factor. http://www.gagfactor.com/gagfactordotcom.html, accessed, April 5, 2009.

[38] Postman, Amusing Ourselves, 3–4.

[39] Marc Cooper, The Last Honest Place in America (New York: Nation Books, 2004), 42.

[40] Robert Jensen, Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity (Cambridge, Mass.: South End Press, 2007), 126.

[41] Bill Margold, quoted in Robert J. Stoller and I.S. Levin, Coming Attractions: The Making of an X-Rated Video (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1993), 31.

[42] Gail Dines, “The White Man’s Burden: Gonzo Pornography and the Construction of Black Masculinity,” Yale Journal of Law and Feminism 18 (2006), 296–297.

[43] Ibid., 297.

[44] Scott Simon, host. “Promoting Healthcare for the Porn Industry,” Weekend Edition. National Public Radio, Dec. 8, 2007. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17044239.

[45] Lubben, Shelley, and Jersey Jaxin. “Jersey Jaxin on Why She Quit Porn,” YouTube. Accessed Aug. 12, 2007. Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACLK5ccKfM and Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1NObcJV8r0&feature=related.

[46] Theodor Adorno, “Education after Auschwitz” (http://grace.evergreen.edu/~arunc/texts/frankfurt/auschwitz/AdornoEducation.pdf), 10.

[47] Ibid., 6.

[48] Charles Ting, “The Dormitories at U.C. Berkeley.” in Nader, Laura, et al., Controlling Processes: Selected Essays, 1994–2005. The Kroeber Anthropological Society Papers 92/93 (2005): 197–229.

[49] Charles Schwartz, Home page. http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~schwrtz/.

[50] Schwartz, “Good Morning, Regents.” UniversityProbe.org. http://uni- versityprobe.org/2009/02/good-morning-regents/.

[51] Josh Keller, “For Berkeley’s Sports Endowment, a Goal of $1 Billion.” The Chronicle of Higher Education, Jan. 23, 2009. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v55/i20/20a01301.htm.

[52] Saul, Voltaire’s Bastards, 110.

[53] Saul, The Unconscious Civilization (New York: The Free Press, 1995), 47.

[54] Mills, The Power Elite, 321.

[55] Joseph A. Soares, The Power of Privilege: Yale and America’s Elite Universities (Stanford, Calf.: Stanford University Press, 2007), http://insidehighered.com/news/2007/04/11/soares; Daniel Golden, The Price of Admission: How America’s Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Colleges—and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates (New York: Random House, 2006), http://insidehigh- ered.com/news/2006/09/05/admit.

[56] Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961). This is the last line of the book. The original publication was in the Annalen der Naturphilosophie, 1921: “Woven man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen.”

[57] William Deresiewicz, “The Disadvantages of an Elite Education,” The American Scholar (Summer 2008). http://www.theamericanscholar.org/the-disadvantages of-an-elite-education.

[58] Richard Hoggart, The Uses of Literacy (London: Transaction Publishers, 1957), 229.

[59] Ibid., 230.

[60] Saul, Voltaire’s Bastards, 121.

[61] Cited in Hoggart, The Uses of Literacy, 230.

[62] Deresiewicz, “Disadvantages.”

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

FAST detected 90% circular polarization in a repeating fast radio burst

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are a kind of energetic cosmic radio burst. Though their duration is usually at millisecond scale, their energy (estimated isotropically) reaches 10^36 ～10^41 erg, equivalent to the energy release of the sun in minutes to months. Some FRB sources emit bursts repeatedly, releasing even more energy in total. Since the discovery in 2007, the physical mechanism for such bright radio emission has become atrending topic in astrophysics. The polarization of electromagnetic wave is usually thought to carry key information of the astrophysical sources, e.g. the linear polarization usually traces the geometric configuration of magnetic fields in the radiation zone and circular polarization probes both intrinsic radiation mechanisms and propagation effects. The “China Sky Eye” Five hundred meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) is the largest single dish radio telescope in the world. With its superb sensitivity and polarimetry precision, FAST has many important discoveries in the field of FRB observation.

FRB 20201124A is an FRB repeater discovered on 2020 November 24 by the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) telescope. During its first active episode in 2021 March-May, radio telescopes around the world including FAST achieved rich observational results. This FRB repeater entered another short but fierce active episode in late September 2021, during which the highest event rate recorded by FAST exceeded 500 bursts per hour.

Recently, the FAST key science project fast radio burst searches and multi-wavelength observations analyze the FAST data of the second active episode of FRB 20201124A in 2021 September, in which the scientists find a fast radio burst with 90% circular polarization. Such high degree of circular polarization is both unprecedented in FRB observations, and also unpredicted in theoretical models. In addition, rapid variation and jumps are also found in the observational data. These findings may provide new constraints and clues for the theoretical research on the radiative mechanism of FRBs. The research team have measured the polarization of more than 500 fast radio bursts in four FAST observation session between 2021 September 25 and 28. Among them, the average or peak circular polarization fraction of 32 bursts exceed 50%. The highest degree of circular polarization reaches 90.9%, which is the new record in FRB observation. Rapid variation in polarization fraction and position angle, sign reversal of circular polarization, and orthogonal jump of position angle due to orthogonal polarization modes (OPMs) are also found in the observation. These findings are recently published in National Science Review, with title “Ninety percent circular polarization detected in a repeating fast radio burst”. The corresponding authors are Prof Kejia Lee from Peking University, Prof. Weiwei Zhu from National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC, CAS) and Prof. Bing Zhang from University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). Jinchen Jiang and Jiarui Niu of NAOC and Jiangwei Xu of Peking university are the first authors.

There are currently two categories of emission mechanisms for FRB repeaters. The gamma-ray burst (GRB) like models presume that relativistic shocks from a compact central engine stimulate masers in the outer medium, while in the pulsar-like models the FRBs are generated in the pulsar magnetosphere. In the early days, the FRB observations generally show linearly polarization with constant direction, which can be explained by both kinds of models.

Thus, the two types of models cannot be tested. The polarization observational results of FRB 20201124A challenges both kinds of models. For GRB-like models, the high degree of circular polarization can only be observed at the edge of the emission beam generated by relativistic particles, where the emission should be fainter compared with the beam center.

However, such brightness difference is not significant in observation. The rapid variation of linear polarization is also difficult to explain under GRB-like models. It’s more convenient to explain the observation using pulsar-like models, though the observed circular polarization fraction curves also limit the geometric parameters of the magnetosphere.

IMAGE: Polarimetric results of a selected sample of bursts with high degrees of circular polarization or abrupt jumps in the linear polarization position angle. Credit ©Science China Press

[cypher2]

2023 Women's World Cup records

In addition to breaking numerous worldwide social media and viewing records, the 2023 Women's World Cup set and broke a number of unique tournament records as well. The players and teams that participated in this WWC should all feel extremely proud for the history they have made. Their performances continue to show the world that these athletes are capable of so much more than they are ever fully recognized for.

First team from their nation to qualify for a men’s or women’s senior FIFA tournament: Vietnam WNT 8 nations had their debuts for first time appearing in a FIFA women’s World Cup: Haiti, Portugal, Zambia, Vietnam, The Philippines, Republic of Ireland, Morocco, and Panama. Canadian midfielder Quinn starts for Canada and becomes the first non-binary athlete to play at a FIFA World Cup.

Christine Sinclair (Canada) and Marta (Brazil) become the 3rd and 4th players in history to appear in 6 World Cup competitions men or women, with Homare Sawa (Japan) and Onome Zeno (Nigeria) being the other two. The player with the record for most world cup appearances in history remains Brazil’s Formiga, the only player to compete in 7 world cups (men or women).

Kristine Lilly still holds the record for most WC appearances by men or women with 30 games played - a record set and held since 2007. Followed by Formiga with 27 as of 2019 and Lionel Messi with 26 as of 2022. Brazil’s Marta still holds the all time leading record for most goals scored across all World Cup competitions with 17 goals in 23 appearances across 6 tournaments.

Zambia’s Lushomo Mweemba scores the fastest goal of this year’s tournament in group stage at 2min 11 sec, also marking Zambia’s first ever world cup goal in their debut. The fastest goal in a FIFA Women’s World Cup has stood for over 30 years - it remains the goal scored by Lena Videkull of Sweden, who scored after just 30 seconds against Japan in the inaugural 1991 tournament. Zambia’s Barbra Banda scores the 1000th goal in WWC history. Nouhaila Benzina of Morocco becomes the first Women’s World Cup player to wear a hijab.

Ary Borges of Brazil scores a hat trick in her WWC debut and the first hat trick of the tournament. First Caribbean nation to reach the round of 16 in WWC history - Jamaica First Arab nation to qualify for a WWC and reach the round of 16 in WWC history - Morocco Of the eight debutants, Morocco was the only one to advance to the round of 16. Two teams reached the round of 16 having conceded no goals so far in the tournament- Japan and Jamaica.

First time four African nations have been represented at a WWC with three of them qualifying for the knock out stage at this years competition - South Africa, Morocco, and Nigeria. 3 of the 4 African nations appearing in this year’s WWC all finished 2nd in their groups (Morocco, South Africa, and Nigeria). The US suffered its earliest elimination in WWC history, getting knocked out in the round of 16. The U.S. has never finished below 3rd place in all previous editions of the competition. Sweden’s Zećira Mušović sets a new record for most saves in any WWC 2023 game with 11 saves vs the US in the round of 16.

First manager to lead two different nations to a World Cup final (Netherlands and England)- Sarina Wiegman First goalkeeper to take and convert a PK in a WWC penalty shootout - Alyssa Naeher

Golden ball (best overall player of the tournament) - Aitana Bonmatí Silver ball - Jenni Hermoso Bronze ball - Amanda Ilestedt Golden boot (most goals scored in the tournament) - Hinata Miyazawa (5 goals) Silver boot - Kadidiatou Diani Bronze boot - Alexandra Popp Golden glove (best goalkeeper of the tournament) - Mary Earps

FIFA young player award (best player of the tournament under 21 years old) - Salma Paralluelo FIFA fair play award (team with best record of fair play during the tournament) - Japan Best mascot of the tournament (unofficial) - Waru Longest penalty shootout in World Cup history (20 penalties taken) - Australia vs France quarter final

The 2023 competition was hosted by Australia and New Zealand, making it the first edition to be held in the Southern Hemisphere, the first Women's World Cup to be hosted by two countries, and the first FIFA senior competition for either men or women to be held across two confederations (Asia and Oceanic).

First edition of the women’s tournament to feature an expansion to 32 teams and 64 matches, and largest women’s sporting event in history with 32 teams and 736 players. Only team to play all matches (group stage + knockout) undefeated with a 6-0-0 record - England All 4 previous winner nations (US, Germany, Norway, and Japan) were eliminated before the semifinal stage, marking the first time this has happened in the competition’s history.

For the first time in its 32 year and 9 tournament history, the WWC has a new champion (Spain) and new runner up (England) in 2023, with both nations never having made it to the final stage before. Only the 2nd nation in history to win both a men’s and women’s World Cup - Spain Top scoring country at the 2023 WWC - Spain with 18 goals First time a senior English football team has made it to a WC final in 6 decades - England WNT

First time advancing past quarterfinals in their WWC history and first host nation to advance to semifinals in 20 years - Australia placed 4th place for best in all 8 WWC competitions they’ve participated in and broke attendance records through all stages of the tournament, with an overall stadium attendance across all matches at 1.978 million. More than 1.5 million tickets were sold for the WWC, surpassing the entire tournament’s projected target in the first 5 days alone.

Two attendance records were broken for both host nations on day one of the WWC - largest crowd ever for a men’s or women’s football game in New Zealand (42,137) and largest crowd ever for a women’s football game in Australia (75,784).

Brazil's opening match v Panama was simulcast live on TV Globo and SporTV, delivering a combined audience of 13.9 million viewers - higher than any audience in the territory during the 2007, 2011, and 2015 WWC. China v England produced the highest audience for a single match, reaching 53.9 million viewers, becoming the highest in any global market so far. 17.15 million people tuned into the Australia v England semifinal cumulatively across Channel 7, Optus Sport, venues, and live-sites, comprising approx 64% of the entire Australian population - the biggest television event not just in any sport in the country, but in Australia’s television history.

The record for highest single match attendance still remains the 1999 WWC final between the US and China with 90,185 in attendance - a number that hasn’t been reached since the men’s tournament at the 1994 WC final between Italy and Brazil at 94,194.

The largest 2023 attendances were at Stadium Australia in Sydney, which saw four capacity-crowd fixtures, including Australia's opening win over Republic of Ireland and the final between Spain and England. The crowd of 75,784 was a record home audience for a women's football match in Australia and the third largest individual crowd attendance in Women's World Cup history. Over 50% of all matches had near sell out or at stadium capacity with a total of 1,977,824 fans in attendance at the 64 games in total, setting a new record for highest overall attendance in Women’s World Cup history across all 9 editions of the tournament. Highest grossing Women’s World Cup in history with a revenue of over half a billion dollars ($570 million), surpassing the projected revenue estimate by $100 million.

[kimingyuslover]

YOU WERE (ARE) BEAUTIFUL

synopsis : their relationship getting harder to the point that they decided to break up for their own sakes, but fate have another plan, they met again after they debuted as idols.

profiles : ricky, when i catch you ricky (young and rich, tall and handsome, charisma boss baby + minions)

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@ rickyhater & @ traumaticrizzy a.k.a Ricky Shen : 04L, friends with riize's anton, TOZ's haruto, evnne's yunseo & seungeon, enhypen's jungwon

we call them, the minions.

the oldest minion is, of course, our lovely father Kim Jiwoong, who was born in 1998. He's an actor too, probably a vampire (@ sluttyman)

the second one is our beloved leader, Sung hanbin, who was born in 2001 and a social butterfly because he literally knows everyone (@ ddungjjungham)

third, he's one of the baby girlz members, Zhanghao, who's born in 2000, can play violin, piano, and he got a teacher certificate (@ sassymf)

fourth, we have Seok Matthew, who's born in 2002. He's the canadian buff man who is a gym bro but also a cutie patootie (@ gymbros)

fifth, another baby girlz member, Kim Taerae, who's born in 2002. he's the sassy church oppa, and he has that deep, sweet voice (@ mothertaeraesa)

sixth, Kim Gyuvin, who's born in 2004. he's basically ricky's bff but he won't admit it. Poor gyuv (@ mangopin)

seventh, Park Gunwook, who was born in 2005, the honorary member of baby girlz, he looks tough but inside he just a pookie (@ gunwookiepookie)

eighth, Han Yujin, who's born in 2007, the loveable maknae, nation's son!!! everybody wants him to be their child (@ ppoddori)

ఇ ◝‿◜ ఇ – ς(>‿<. ) – ఇ ◝‿◜ ఇ – ς(>‿<. ) – ఇ◝‿◜

taglist (open) : @kaynunu @vash-yuu @mimisamisasa @whippedforbeomgyu @xiaoquanquans @lonelyladyghost @s4turnb1tch @marvelfanatic4life @honeywonuu