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(ARA) ? Even in a volatile economy, homeowners are making home upkeep a priority. While the number of projects annually had been on the decline in recent years, a study from BuildFax, a resource for building, remodeling and repair information, found remodeling activity was up in 2011 over 2010. Additional data shows homeowners are opting to invest in what matters most with projects that benefit their wallets, personal comfort and the environment.
Know the facts
Before buying anything, shoppers are taking time to learn more about the products they put in their homes. For one in four consumers, knowing and understanding what makes up general household products is important. As options continue to increase, this attention to research is key to finding efficient products that offer maximum value. For instance, homeowners will find that a few newer home insulation products that help provide greater energy efficiency also boast new sustainable formulations. Owens Corning EcoTouch insulation is made from 99 percent natural materials, contains a minimum of 58 percent recycled content and is verified formaldehyde free.
Energy-efficient essentials
According to the 2010 Home Improvement Research Institute Trends Program Report, reducing household energy usage and bills through energy-efficient improvements continues to be the No. 1 reason homeowners make home improvements. That same report also indicated six out of 10 consumers need help identifying what they can do to be more environmentally conscious.
?Now is the right time to make efficiency improvements around the home because homeowners will see an immediate impact on their monthly utility bills, and will reap even greater benefits in the long term,? says Frank O?Brien-Bernini, chief sustainability officer at Owens Corning. ?According to the U.S. Department of Energy, buildings use more energy in the United States than either transportation or industry, accounting for the consumption of 40 percent of our nation?s energy resources. On a more granular level, the primary use of energy in a home is for heating and cooling. In many homes, excessive energy is wasted through poorly sealed and insulated attics, walls and ductwork ? all problems that can be solved by handy do-it-yourselfers or through experienced contractors.?
The Home Improvement Research Institute reports roughly one in three homeowners plans to purchase more energy-efficient doors, windows or HVAC systems in the coming year. Sealing all openings around doors and windows can help homeowners make the most of their investment. Air ducts should also be inspected to ensure they are clean, are free of leaks and holes and direct air to the right spaces.
Recycling 101
While recycled content is commonly focused on, recyclable materials are also important. Often with home improvement projects, old materials are thrown out and replaced with the new. What many homeowners may not know is that many building materials and appliances are recyclable. Recycling is a better solution for the environment, and may be less costly than taking material to a landfill.
?There are more recyclable materials on and in a home than you might first assume. Millions of tons of shingles torn off from roofs end up in our country?s landfills each year. Fortunately, the technology now exists for all those shingles to be recycled instead,? says O?Brien-Bernini. ?In 2009, Owens Corning Roofing and Asphalt, LLC formed an alliance with Heritage Environmental Services to create a Shingle Recycling Program with roofing contractors to make recycling convenient, cost-competitive and differentiating and have since recycled more than 90,000 tons of asphalt shingles.?
Homeowners looking for more information about shingle recycling and other types of recycling can turn to Earth911.com, with whom Owens Corning Roofing and Asphalt, LLC recently also formed an alliance. The site hosts the largest and most accurate recycling directory in North America and provides information about what materials can be recycled as well as lists of recyclers in local markets.
For more tips on efficient home improvements, visit www.OwensCorning.com.
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The advantages and disadvantages of these different kinds of operation table mode, mainly from the two perspectives of the customers and operators. As can be seen from the table, several operational mode distinctive PUSH mode, embedded mode and WAP mode is only advertising mobile media, mobile technology, did not highlight the interaction of mobile advertising, even if the interaction has only advertising messages interactive transactions, transaction authentication capabilities, advertising effectiveness testing is not a comprehensive e-commerce model interactive trading operations, with better transaction authentication function, the better the effect of mobile advertising, detect the effect of advertising more comprehensive, is the best way of mobile advertising.? cell phone jammer? is installed along each side.
Changsha Aeronautical Vocational and Technical College thesis mobile advertising applications, and pattern analysis of the advantages of operating mode customers customers voluntary customize both enjoy the fun brought by the mobile value-added services, and view useful information and news for business and life can always check your own spare time information of interest to browse to a useful advertising information, also receive a certain reward to browse ads mobile advertising content trading operators to operators of mobile advertising effect timely monitoring short period of time can gather a lot of customers, with the report content, and certification functions, users have enough business to join the simple behavior of each other to feel the action of this model, provider knowledge industry relative abundance of product information with trading power to require operators to conduct a lot more publicity activities to guide customers. It is the length of? cell phone jammer surrounding the top floor of the building.
Energy, interactive transactions early customer of the transaction have enough businesses to join, than the mode good to achieve the trust of the mobile phone-style advertising content to this model, using a variety of value-added business e-commerce mode but this mode requires long-term business, the effectiveness of the obvious short-term profitability is not high, the need for large-scale publicity and promotion. -12 ? Changsha Aeronautical Vocational and Technical College thesis mobile advertising model future development of mobile advertising model future development. The mobile advertising model to explore because of the unique advantages of mobile phones, broad market prospects are also generally optimistic about the.? cell phone jammer? is in conjunction with the directional antenna.
Mobile advertising like Internet advertising as a larger development, you need the sound of industry laws and regulations need to line of mobile advertising to establish a reasonable mode of operation, and promote the healthy development of the industry. Reasonable mode is the most important communications provider (with the communications resources and technology) combined with the advertising company (advertising, advertising information services) and integration of mobile communications resources, rules, and explore a mature mobile advertising communication channels for advertisers The main advertising information services, to provide targeted business information services to mobile users according to their needs. In general, the mobile advertising business chain, mainly related to the advertisers, the five parts of the maker of mobile advertising, mobile phone advertising communicators (media), mobile communications operators, suppliers, mobile phone users. The antenna of? cell phone jammer? is facing down.
The desired effect of advertising is to find the demand for products or services, and targeted dissemination of information. Demand to provide the necessary information services, and ultimately to promote the demand to take buying action. Advertising is a way of dissemination of information, to effectively reduce the cost of advertising, as well as a good advertising effect, we must try to reduce intermediate links, and information dissemination process, the less will lower the cost of advertising; targeted dissemination of information, would be more effective in disseminating functions. The ideal advertising business model, should try to reduce intermediate links, saving the cost of information dissemination. This model has the following advantages: First, the mobile advertising operators specialization. The antenna of?? cell phone jammer is pointing to the ground.
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[ [ [[' the 28-year-old neighborhood watchman who shot and killed', 4]], '28924649', '0' ], [ [['because I know God protects me', 14], ['Brian Snow was at a nearby credit union', 5]], '28811216', '0' ], [ [['The state news agency RIA-Novosti quoted Rosaviatsiya', 6]], '28805461', '0' ], [ [['measure all but certain to fail in the face of bipartisan', 4]], '28771014', '0' ], [ [['matter what you do in this case', 5]], '28759848', '0' ], [ [['presume laws are constitutional', 7]], '28747556', '0' ], [ [['has destroyed 15 to 25 houses', 7]], '28744868', '0' ], [ [['short answer is yes', 7]], '28746030', '0' ], [ [['opportunity to tell the real story', 7]], '28731764', '0' ], [ [['entirely respectable way to put off the searing constitutional controversy', 7]], '28723797', '0' ], [ [['point of my campaign is that big ideas matter', 9]], '28712293', '0' ], [ [['As the standoff dragged into a second day', 7]], '28687424', '0' ], [ [['French police stepped up the search', 17]], '28667224', '0' ], [ [['Seeking to elevate his candidacy back to a general', 8]], '28660934', '0' ], [ [['The tragic story of Trayvon Martin', 4]], '28647343', '0' ], [ [['Karzai will get a chance soon to express', 8]], '28630306', '0' ], [ [['powerful storms stretching', 8]], '28493546', '0' ], [ [['basic norm that death is private', 6]], '28413590', '0' ], [ [['songwriter also saw a surge in sales for her debut album', 6]], '28413590', '1', 'Watch music videos from Whitney Houston ', 'on Yahoo! Music', 'http://music.yahoo.com' ], [ [['keyword', 99999999999999999999999]], 'videoID', '1', 'overwrite-pre-description', 'overwrite-link-string', 'overwrite-link-url' ] ]
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Having a stalker is no fun, as Alec Baldwin recently learned when 40-year-old Canadian actress Genevieve Sabourin was arrested outside the 30 Rock star's New York City apartment Sunday. Sabourin was arraigned in New York City on Monday and charged with aggravated harassment and stalking. Although Sabourin was slapped with a restraining order preventing her from contacting Baldwin, she was released without bail. On Tuesday, Baldwin, 54, took to Twitter to share his feelings on the matter.
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Continue reading Allerta intros Pebble smartwatch, inPulse's attractive younger sibling
Allerta intros Pebble smartwatch, inPulse's attractive younger sibling originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 11 Apr 2012 10:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Home flippers buy dilapidated houses, fix them up, then sell them again as quickly as possible with the intention of making a tidy profit. ?Flipped houses look shiny and new inside, but what?s going on underneath all the new drywall, carpet, and paint?
Very few home buyers seem to trust flippers, and with the cheesy ?repairs? or ?cover-ups? done over the years, it?s easy to understand why. ?Most of the quick and dirty home flippers take the same shortcuts when flipping houses. Here are the tell-tale signs of a flipped house:
The interior of the home looks great. ?The kitchen has all new or re-painted cabinets, stainless steel appliances, granite counter tops, and a tiled floor. ?The first floor bathroom has been completely re-done, and a second floor bathroom was recently added, or possibly a basement bathroom. ?They look great. ?All new carpet, paint, light fixtures, outlets, and switches throughout the house. ?Possibly all new windows as well.
When looking at flipped houses, you might notice poorly designed kitchens (i.e., cabinet doors / drawers that are blocked by other cabinets), nail holes that aren?t filled, appliances installed without an outlet to plug them in to, and loose / unsecured countertops or base cabinets. ?Bathrooms will often have vanity cabinets that are way too small for the space because the flipper bought the ?special buy? vanity, top, and faucet combo on sale at whatever home improvement store that was nearby.
The handrails are new, but they might come right out of the wall if you pull on them.? Sometimes they are only attached to drywall.
There is a brand-new circuit breaker panel installed in the basement, which replaced the old 60-amp fuse panel. ?The new panel has a state electrical inspection sticker on it, and everything looks great. Actually, there aren?t many electrical problems on flipped houses. Even the worst home flippers usually know better than to mess with the electrical; they don?t want their houses to burn down.
The home has an old, unsafe heating system at the end of its life expectancy. ?The flipper has documentation from ?their guy,? saying the heating system is safe. ?You should be suspicious.? Many times, heating safety check forms aren?t worth the paper they were written on.? Furnaces and boilers can create high levels of carbon monoxide that the heating contractors say are fine.? Make sure you have the gas company do their own test on the systems.
Another possibility is that the heating system was completely replaced. ?If so, that?s great, but check the furnace?s blower fan for drywall dust. ?There?s a good chance that the flipper had the blower fan running while they were doing their drywall sanding, and the interior of the furnace is completely caked in drywall dust. ?The photo below shows a close-up view of a furnace?s blower fan blades covered in a thick layer of drywall dust.
If the home was originally heated with a boiler, the home flipper most likely pulled out all of the pipes and radiators and converted the system to forced air; this is usually far less expensive than repairing or replacing the existing system.
If the house is being sold during the winter, the AC is very old and may not be functional. ?If the house is being sold during the summer, the AC is brand new and keeps the house very comfortable.? There isn?t much in between those two extremes.
This is the item that home buyers are most concerned about, especially on a flipped house, but honestly, there aren?t more structural problems on flipped houses than with any other house.
The water distribution pipes will either be in acceptable condition or they?ll all have recently been replaced; no issues there. ?There will be major problems with the drains though; nobody has lived in the house yet, so nobody knows about the leaks and clogged drains. ?The old steel drain lines are often clogged at the kitchen sink, and possibly at other locations.
New plumbing fixtures often leak when they?re filled with water and then drained; it?s not unusual to find several leaking drains at flipped houses.
Sometimes floor drains, basement showers, or even basement sinks back up with water when the plumbing fixtures at the upper levels are filled and then drained. ?That?s exactly what was happening with this new basement bathroom sink at a flipped house (video below).
Tiled shower floors are also notorious leakers at flipped houses. Be aware.
The shingles on the roof are in bad shape. ?You?ll find patched sections of shingles or shingles that are badly deteriorated and at the end of their life expectancy. ? Replacing the roof covering is an expensive project, but it won?t make the house sell for any more money, so flippers leave the roof alone if it?s not leaking. ?I can?t say I blame them.
The insulation in the attic hasn?t been touched for a long time ? it might even be original, and it will need improvement. ?Flippers don?t get any return on their investment for new insulation, so don?t expect anything to be done here.
Shoddy workmanship abounds at the exterior. ?The original wood windows were replaced with vinyl inserts, but the old wood at the exterior is still rotting away and has been freshly painted, or someone did a quick and dirty job of wrapping the windows with aluminum and left a lot of rotted wood still exposed.
The basement windows have been replaced with whatever size window was close, ?and the flipper used clear pine or plywood to make up the difference in size. ?This is sloppy workmanship, at best.
Some of the siding repairs may even be comical; During a recent home inspection, we saw a hole in the siding that was repaired with a coffee can lid.
There is a thin layer of new wood chips surrounding the house, but nothing has been done to correct improperly pitched soils around the house that can lead to a wet basement. You?ll want to re-grade right away.
The chimney has a lot of missing mortar and cracks in the crown. ?You?ll need to hire someone to repair the chimney to help prevent the deterioration from getting worse.
If you just finished looking at a flipped house and you didn?t find any of these issues, buy the house! But, make sure to take a closer look. ?These are the defects often found at flipped houses, but keep in mind, these are broad generalizations. ?Some flipped houses aren?t in nearly this good of shape, while others are pristine. There are plenty of good contractors who do excellent work, but it?s the rest of ?em that give home flippers a bad name.
If you?re buying a flipped house, the items you should pay the most attention to should be the exterior, roof, insulation, and drains. ?Individual results will vary.
Related:
What Do Water Stains on Windows Mean?
Is Your Deck Safe?
How To Choose a Home Inspector
Reuben Saltzman, Structure Tech Home Inspections, Minneapolis, Minn., is a second-generation ASHI Certified Inspector whose experience with home remodeling and construction began at age four when he helped his father steam wallpaper. He has worked for Structure Tech since 1997 and joined ASHI in 2004. Visit his blog at www.structuretech1.com/blog/.
Note: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion or position of Zillow.
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Search. Like it. Pin it. Share it.? Women online are taking a range of actions that signal ?I need help? or ?I?m ready to craft my shopping list?. These actions present opportunities for brands to raise their profile with shoppers and possibly gain her dollar.
More than 87 million women in the US incorporate digital media into their daily routine.? This number probably isn?t so surprising anymore.? What?s more interesting is what these women are doing online. A recent Total Beauty Media Group study found women spending more than 20 minutes preparing for their shopping trips by flocking to the web to research products, read reviews, seek out the best value and connect with other women about their beauty product experiences. That?s a lot of time and your brand should be there. Here are 3 tips to incorporate into your brand plans to engage in her digital life and get in her shopping cart.
#1 Give consumers more ways to engage with your brand, especially curating reviews
Women are online seeking product reviews and advice. So much so that they are spending 50% more time with web content when related category advice or reviews are available to aid the research process.?? User reviews are the most trusted voice for consumers across the beauty category.? Be sure your brand is curating the best reviews and leveraging as a credential shoppers are looking for.
#2 Entice her with samples and other offers
32% of women report samples as a top influential touchpoint to her purchase decision according to 2011 Total Beauty Media Group sample research data.? Samples uncovered through her online beauty brand research process can elevate your brand?s profile and place your brand in her consideration set.? Beyond converting women through trial, we?ve uncovered many positive benefits from sampling.? We?ve found 84% of women recommend the brand while 80% will talk about the brand online. Both these actions are relevant to elevating your brand?s profile online among a consumer?s peers.
#3 Be relevant and engage her in the right context, across channels
Women are shopping across channels and screens. At the store shelf, at home while online as well as on the go via mobile devices.? Visit addtothecart.com to download more insights around how your brand can get added to her shopping cart while she?s researching products online.? At InnoCos USA in July, I?ll be sharing ways your brand can be relevant to her across channels, with an emphasis on how to engage with the mobile road warrior. She?s leveraging mobile throughout her entire day including while she?s in store. Your brand needs to be relevant during every step of her shopping journey to secure her transaction.
CONTACT:
Ethelbert Williams, Head of Marketing, Total Beauty Media Group
ewilliams@totalbeautymedia.com
www.totalbeautymedia.com
Want to hear more?? Visit?InnoCos?USA conference in New York, 11&12 of July 2012
Click?HERE to download InnoCos conference agenda
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BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian troops bombarded two restive cities on Tuesday, pursuing an assault on President Bashar al-Assad's foes instead of halting the use of big guns and leaving towns as promised under an international peace plan that now looks in peril.
The opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported heavy shelling in the Khalidiya area of Homs and said rebels had killed six soldiers in attacks on two checkpoints on a road near the eastern desert town of Marqada, south of the Turkish border.
The rebel Free Syrian Army has said it will cease fire only if convinced that Assad's forces have pulled back.
As the deadline for Damascus to implement the plan crafted by U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan ran down, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem demanded guarantees from the former United Nations chief that armed insurgents would honor a truce.
"We will not ask the terrorist groups, which are killing, kidnapping and destroying infrastructure, for guarantees. We want Annan to give us these guarantees," he said in Moscow.
China, which along with Russia, has blocked punitive U.N. Security Council action against Syria, said it hoped all sides would immediately obey a U.N.-backed ceasefire aimed at stopping a 13-month uprising from sliding into full-scale civil war.
Moscow and Beijing have both supported Annan's plan, which diplomats say still gives Assad until midnight in Syria (2100 GMT) to start withdrawing troops from urban areas.
Extra conditions set by Damascus have fuelled widespread doubts that the deadline for a full truce to start by 6 a.m. (0300 GMT) on Thursday, April 12, would be respected.
Moualem also said Annan had told him in a recent telephone call that the rebels would be disarmed after a ceasefire.
NO LET-UP IN CONFLICT
There was no respite from violence on the ground.
Syrian troops shelled Hama overnight and mortar bombs were crashing into parts of Homs on Tuesday morning, local opposition activists said. Tanks remained in both cities.
The Observatory, which collates reports from its contacts in Syria, said there was no clear sign of troop withdrawals. Rebels and troops clashed in Deraa, in southern Syria.
Government curbs on the media limit independent reporting from inside Syria.
Russia told Syria to act "more decisively" to implement the terms of Annan's plan but also urged foreign states to use their influence on opposition groups to stop shooting forthwith.
"We told our Syrian colleague ... we think their actions could be more active, more decisive in regard to the fulfillment of the points of the plan," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters after talks with his Syrian counterpart Moualem.
Lavrov said Moualem told him Damascus had begun implementing requirements regarding "the use of weapons" in urban areas.
Moualem told reporters in Moscow some troops had already been pulled back from cities in line with the peace plan, but he tied a full ceasefire to the entry of foreign monitors.
"An end of violence must be simultaneous with the arrival of the international observers," he said, adding that Syria wants a say in how the ceasefire monitoring team is composed.
The U.N. peacekeeping department sent an advance team to Damascus this month to discuss how to carry out Annan's plan for "an effective United Nations supervision mechanism".
An Arab League monitoring effort collapsed in January as intensifying violence made a mockery of an Arab ceasefire plan.
Assad's forces have killed more than 9,000 people in the past year, according to a U.N. estimate. The government says it has lost more than 2,500 soldiers and security personnel killed.
The violence has alarmed Syria's neighbors, especially Turkey which already hosts almost 25,000 Syrian refugees. At least five people, including two Turkish citizens, were wounded by cross-border fire into a refugee camp in Turkey on Monday.
"They are even shooting these fleeing people from behind," Anatolian news agency quoted Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan as saying in Beijing. "They are mercilessly shooting them, regardless of whether they are children or women."
Despite accepting Annan's plan, Assad was "continuing to kill 60, 70, 80, 100 every day," Erdogan said.
"What should Turkey do in the event of a border violation? Whatever other countries do according to international politics and international law, naturally Turkey will also do this in the end," he said without spelling out what action it might take.
Another neighbor, Lebanon, condemned the killing of a local journalist by Syrian soldiers firing over the border on Monday.
In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the incidents were another indication that Assad was unwilling to meet his commitments to Annan, saying the Syrian leader was simply trying to "stall for time."
"The world gave Assad a deadline," said opposition activist Mohammad Abdallah. "But he sees it as an opportunity."
Annan himself was due to visit refugee camps in Turkey, close to the border, on Tuesday. His deputy was to brief the U.N. Security Council on the fate of the peace plan later in the day. That meeting in New York is to start at 10 a.m. (2.00 p.m. GMT).
DIPLOMATIC IMPASSE
Failure to end the violence would highlight the diplomatic stalemate pitting Assad's Western and Arab critics against his friends in Russia, China and Iran. They all call for calm but differ sharply over how to achieve this or any political transition that could satisfy the warring parties in Syria.
Moscow and Beijing both mistrust what they see as a Western drive for U.N. intervention in member states on the basis of a "right to protect" that was invoked for Libya last year, when NATO airpower helped topple Muammar Gaddafi.
Popular uprisings have also ousted Arab autocrats Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen, but the conflict in Syria, at the volatile heart of the Middle East, could be longer and bloodier.
"For the time being the regime feels comfortable with the situation as it is. It wants more time to carry out its own approach to the popular challenge, in a military fashion," said Peter Harling, an analyst at the International Crisis Group.
Syria would rely on Russia, which sells it arms and has a naval base on the Syrian coast, as well as on Iran and China to help counter its Arab, Turkish and Western adversaries.
Beirut-based commentator Rami Khouri said much depended on how far "the Russians and the Chinese can withstand being identified with this regime which is carrying out such terrible deeds against its own unarmed people, for the most part".
(Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in Beijing, Jonathon Burch and Khaled Yacoub Oweis in Turkey, Louis Charbonneau and Michelle Nichols at the United Nations, Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva, Arshad Mohammed in Washington, Steve Gutterman in Moscow, Dominic Evans, Douglas Hamilton, Mariam Karouny and Erika Solomon in Beirut and Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman; Writing by Alistair Lyon; Editing by Alastair Macdonald)
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Lance Olsen is the author of more than 20 books of and about innovative fiction. He acts as Chair of the Board of Directors for the Fiction Collective 2 and teaches experimental narrative theory and practice at the University of Utah. What follows is a conversation with him about his newest book, Architectures of Possibility: After Innovative Writing.
Q: Would you talk a bit about the book in relation to its title? Why the words ?architectures? and ?possibility?? What about the phrase ?after innovative writing?? Are we now in a post-innovative literary world?
?
A:? Let me take your last two questions first, and argue that the history of writing (think Petronius? Satyricon, Sterne?s Tristram Shandy, Joyce?s Ulysses) has been, not one of dogging conventions, but of continuously undoing them, experimenting with and beyond them, continuously redefining them, exploring the boundaries of the writerly act, of how we might tell our narratives?and hence ourselves, our worlds?differently. So-called conventional acts of writing, then, are the uninteresting detritus of literary history. Innovation is where literary history takes place.
?
If that?s the case, then contemporary experimentalists are not only continuously in pursuit of the innovative, but are also always-already writing subsequent to it?writing, that is, in its long wake.? Hence my pun in the title on the word after.
?
And so to your initial question: for me, innovative writing represents a possibility space where everything can and should be attempted, challenged, thought, where every architecture should be explored.? In other words, we?re talking about the ideology of form here.? Another way of saying this: meaning suggests meaning, but structure suggests meaning as well. To structure one way rather than another is to convey, not simply aesthetic preference, a matter of taste, but a course of thinking, a way of being in the world, that privileges one approach to ?reality? over another. One of the jobs of the innovative is unceasingly to challenge the dominant cultures? narrativization of ?reality,? to remind us that there are always other ways to construct the text of our texts, the texts of our lives, always the possibility of effecting change in both.
?
To write within the innovative, then, is much more than a creative choice.? It?s an ethical imperative.
Q: The two ubiquitously used classroom texts by Janet Burroway, Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft and Imaginative Writing: The Elements of Craft, focus, as their titles suggest, on the craft of creative writing. Architectures of Possibility extends its reach past the craft of writing and the borders of the classroom to include topics such as publishing pragmatics, the literary marketplace, and what you term the ?tribal ecology? of contemporary writing communities. Would you please talk a bit about your decision to include such subject matter? What is the relationship between craft and community?
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A:? Architectures of Possibility isn?t interested, as Burroway?s books are, in perpetuating certain truisms about ?craft,? but rather problematizing them, theorizing and questioning the often unconscious assumptions behind them, troubling such traditional writing gestures as, say, temporality, scene, and characterization in an attempt to expand our notions of narrativity, ask ourselves what the consequences might be of writing one way rather than another.
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But, as you point out, Architectures of Possibility is also interested in a number of other things, including asking what it means to be an author in the 21st century.? Part of the answer is that here, now, there is no longer such a beast as the isolated writer. That species and the myopic Romantic myth that cultivated it have gone extinct.? (Of course it never really existed; all writing has always been collective: to set pen to paper is to engage with a tradition of genre, with authors throughout history who have shared or are sharing your obsessions, with the person who made your pen, the one who made your paper, etc.)
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Rather, to exist as an author is to exist as a literary activist?as someone who understands the corporate paradigm of composing-as-competition has been challenged by one celebrating collaboration and support. Distinctions between editor and writer, critic and poet, reviewer and novelist, academic and publisher, blogger, tweeter have become incrementally more fused and confused ? to wonderfully liberating effect.
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Now, an author is a person who authors, yes, surely?but she or he is also a person who does a tremendous amount more. An author in the 21st century is somebody who helps make literary culture happen. For the literary activist, writing is only one creative act among many that comprises his or her textual life. Others include editing and bringing out fellow writers? work in online and print journals and through book publishers, reading and reviewing that work, writing essays about it, teaching it, talking it up, urging others to launch journals and indie presses, running reading series, laboring in arts administration, coordinating innovative writing conferences, launching local writing groups, posting about authors and texts they love on their blogs or via other social networking media.
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Which is to say: in 2012, ask not what publishing can do for you; ask what you can do for publishing.
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And so we are talking about a new paradigm, which I call tribal ecology, where authors easily move among multifarious clans and loose coalitions based on various forms of aesthetic and existential kinship that attempt existing outside (and not infrequently in direct opposition to) the dominant cultures? models. The tribal ecology is intent on inventing possibility spaces for possibility spaces.
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Q: It seems like one of the big distinctions between Architectures of Possibility and more traditional writing manuals like Writing Fiction is the lack of a prescriptive language toward writing. In many ways this distinction is evident even in the titles: the idea of a possibility space versus that of a singular fiction which one ?masters? the ?craft? of. The latter is obviously problematic, yet many students seem to crave?maybe even require?its clarity and prescriptiveness. Would you describe some of the strategies you used to avoid prescriptive language and yet remain instructive?
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A: This goes back to my point above about the ideology of form. By speaking prescriptively about craft, Burroway leads students to believe there really are rules for writing, that those rules are quantifiable and articulable, and that they are somehow a-cultural and a-historical.? None of those assertions is the case.? My interests, in part, lie in disrupting the seeming stability of her position by asking about those assertions? underlying assumptions.
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For example, I spend one chapter talking about how conventional notions of characterization are essentially Freudian in nature in that they privilege the idea that past traumas account for present action.? They also therefore assume a unified identity through time.? And so on.? I begin the next chapter, however, by asking if it is conceivable, and, if so, how, to invent paths into character formations (and deformations) that make us feel more like (and thus help us think more about how) we feel on this side of the age of uncertainty: i.e., mediated, remediated, illegible, dispersed? Something closer, by way of illustration, not to Freudian interpretation, but Baudrillardian: schizoid selves as pure screens, switching stations for all the data networks flowing within us and without? What would such a ?character? look like on the page? What would the page on which ?he? or ?she? existed look like?? Would such a page necessarily be gendered?? Why?? Why not?
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I go on to talk about a number of texts that respond to this problematization of characterization, including Beckett?s astonishing Unnamable, the anti-narrative about that indeterminate, disembodied subject position (?character? is far too strong a word for he/she/it), uncertainly human, pulsing in and out of existence between gender and genderlessness, thereness and nowhere/nowhenness. Its modes of expression are hestitation, skepticism, and comma-spliced syntactic entropy. ?But enough of this cursed first person,? it announces at one point in its self-canceling word cascades, ?it is really too red a herring. . . . Bah, any old pronoun will do, provided one sees through it. Matter of habit.? And, later, almost an aside: ?I. Who might that be??
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Beckett?s limit text serves as a penetrating reminder, in a Nietzschean/Derridean vein, that the pronoun (the heart of the heart of character) is, at the end of the day, a sort of hoax foisted upon us by the culture?s language. That character, self, and identity are quantum fields rather than Newtonian nuggets. The rules of grammar, Beckett?s ?novel? undertakes to perform, have been repeatedly misunderstood by philosophy and fiction as a metaphysics.
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In other words, I don?t pose components of writing in prescriptive terms, but as a series of potentials and complications that I hope will challenge each writer to think about and answer in her or his own way.
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Q: Even in departments that champion innovative writing there seems to be this idea of a graduated pedagogical standard?sort of like in Scientology: there are the teachings and then there are the Teachings. In other words, you have to learn the Balzacian mode before you can unlearn it, or learn past it, whichever the case may be. Do you think this is necessary? Was Architectures of Possibility designed for introductory or more advanced fiction courses?
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A:? If one isn?t familiar with the literary tradition one is writing within or against, one is always in danger of repeating it, of simply and myopically reinventing the wheel.? So to a great degree I believe it important to understand as many modes of writing as possible?not only the Balzacian mode, of course, but also the Sternean, the Steinian, the Joycean, etc. That way one can begin to discover one?s own mode, can begin to become who one is, rather than believing that the only living writing is that which wants to be a film when it grows up.
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One should, I think, give one?s self over to the long conversation across time and space called literary history?not in order to embrace it, necessarily, but rather better to understand it and position oneself with respect to it.
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Architectures of Possibility is designed to function effectively (I hope) at either introductory or more advanced fiction courses, since it both lays out the basics of conventional narrativity and simultaneously brackets those basics.? The idea is that, when it comes to writing (not to mention living), answers are never as engaging or productive as well-placed, well-thought-out questions.
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Q: Architectures of Possibility includes at its end a list of 101 ?limit texts? that have influenced you to become the innovative writer you are today. By way of this list, you ask the reader to compose her own tenuous, ever-changing anti-canon of limit texts. In addition, Architectures includes an astounding number of interviews with contemporary innovative writers in places where one familiar with the standard creative writing textbook format would expect to find full-length excerpted examples of stories, poems, and essays. First, what is a limit text? And second, would you talk a bit about the decision to include interviews and a suggested reading list, rather than full-length examples of innovative writing?
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A:? A limit text is a variety of writing disturbance that carries various elements of narrativity to their brink so the reader can never quite think of them in the same terms again.
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Karl Jaspers coined the word Grenzsituationen (border/limit situations) to describe existential moments accompanied by anxiety in which the human mind is forced to confront the restrictions of its existing forms?moments, in other words, that make us abandon, fleetingly, the securities of our limitedness and enter new realms of self-consciousness. Death, for example.
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If we carry this notion of Grenzsituationen into the literary domain, we find ourselves thinking about the sorts of books that, once you?ve taken them down from the shelf, you?ll never be able to put back up again. They won?t leave you alone. They will continue to work on your imagination long after you?ve read them. Merely by being in the world, limit texts ask us to embrace possibility spaces, difficulty, freedom, radical skepticism. Which writings make up the category will, naturally, vary from reader to reader, depending on what that reader has already encountered by way of innovative projects, his or her background, assumptions, and so on.
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As far as building Architectures of Possibility as much around interviews (conducted in good part by my collaborator, Trevor Dodge) and suggested reading lists as chapters?that was essential to the vision of the project.? I wanted the interviews and lists to suggest by their very form that approaches to innovative writing comprise a conversation, not a monologue.? So there are more than forty interviews with innovative authors, editors, and publishers (Robert Coover, Lydia Davis, Brian Evenson, Shelley Jackson, Ben Marcus, Carole Maso, Scott McCloud, Steve Tomasula, Deb Olin Unferth, Joe Wenderoth, Lidia Yuknavitch, et al.) working in diverse media, all designed to present various perspectives, harmonies, and counterpoints to my own position(s).
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Again, the idea isn?t to speak from some magisterial space of the Teacher, but rather to generate a zone of opportunities, contentions, inspirations.
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Q: One of the things that keeps coming up on the threads devoted to experimental writing is the question of novelty, or newness. In The Higgs-Jameson Experimental Fiction Debate, for example, AD Jameson defines experimental fiction as ?that which takes unfamiliarity as its dominant?even to the point of schism.? One of the points in question then is whether or not methods such as the Cut-Up can still be thought of as experimental, given their familiarity in literary history. We?re wondering just how important newness is to innovative writing? Or perhaps another way of asking would be: what role does tradition play in the formation of innovative literatures?
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A:? The question of ?newness? is a terrifically complicated one. ?Newness,? after all, to whom, and when, and where?? Is there an aesthetic object that can exist as something wholly novel?? The idea strikes me as too simple by half.
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In certain ways, the issue of ?newness? is wrapped up with questions concerning the stability of identity and the problematics of historicity. What I mean is this: where and when one stands with respect to a so-called ?innovative? text will inform how one reads its ?innovation.? If one?s thirteen, for instance, and has never experienced Cut-Up before, then coming across Burroughs? Naked Lunch may well turn out to be a life-changing event. But surely one reads Naked Lunch differently at 13 than one does when one is 27, and differently again when one is 47.? This is because one is reading it through the lens of all the texts that have come in between all those years, all the lives, all those thoughts, all the geographies. In what sense can we even say the same person is reading the same book?? Such an assertion strikes me as a kind of grammatical mistake.
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Moreover, each time ?one? (and now I use the term increasingly loosely) reads Naked Lunch, presumably ?one? does so with an ever-increasing sense of literary history, of the novel?s own place within that history, which is composed, not only out of a series of disruptions, but also out of a series of continuities.? The ?newness? of Naked Lunch becomes less ?new? than ?one? originally assumed when ?one? discovers that writers like Eliot and Tzara were experimenting with versions of Cut-Up decades before Burroughs.? Does that change ?one?s? perspective on the topic?? Of course, but how?? Naked Lunch remains new, and not new, and not not new, all at once.? A complex sense of ?newness? exists as both present and absent in ?one?s? experience of the text.
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One more problem with respect to this question.? Let?s say that at some point in ?one?s? life ?one? stops reading Naked Lunch as a text somehow embodying ?newness.? Does that mean the technique that operates within it can no longer be perceived as ?new??? Of course not.? ?One? often experiences Cut-Up as ?new? when ?one? confronts it in a fresh context?in an unexpected moment, say, in Michael Mejia?s novel Forgetfulness, or in Kenneth Goldsmith?s reimagining for the technique in Soliloquy.
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Q: Chapter 19: Literary Activism and the Tribal Ecology offers readers an introduction to the importance and uses of literary community, from publishing to readings, writing reviews, and also giving interviews. Regarding the latter, you offer this advice: ?It isn?t a bad idea to approach each [interview] with several topics you would like to see discussed and to guide the interviewer toward them.? Is there anything we haven?t covered in this interview that you?d like to get off your chest?
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A: Just this quote by Nietzsche, which I have taped above my computer: ?In heaven all the interesting people are missing.
*****
Lance Olsen is the author of more than 20 books of and about innovative writing, including the novels Calendar of Regrets, Head in Flames, and Nietzsche?s Kisses. His short stories, essays, poems, and reviews have appeared in hundreds of journals and anthologies, such as Conjunctions, Black Warrior Review, Fiction International, Village Voice, BOMB, McSweeneys, and Best American Non-Required Reading. He serves as chair of FC2?s Board of Directors and teaches experimental narrative theory and practice at the University of Utah.
Nick Kimbro and Rachel Levy teach and study writing at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
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Job hunting, especially if you really need a job right away, can be very stressful. One of the mistakes that?s easy to make is to rush in (especially if you are desperate) and end up in a job that ultimately disappoints. To help avoid that, it?s a good idea to take a moment (and a few deep breaths) and define your goals before job hunting.
How do you do that? Let?s take a look at how to identify your goals, and how to specify them.
Putting Goals in the Driver?s Seat
First, try getting into the goal mindset. It?s been said that your goals should direct your job search, not the other way around. Sometimes, we take what we can get and then find ourselves building up a career we never really wanted and may not be qualified for ultimately. So put your goals in the driver?s seat and let them steer your job search.
Proactive, Not Reactive
Another component of the goal-setting mindset is to be proactive. If you wait for an employer to advertise his or her need for help, you may be waiting a while. Some sources suggest that the majority of job openings are not ever advertised to the public.
So a proactive approach is to search out the company or employer for whom you want to work rather than waiting for them to search for you. Get your mind in a proactive stance and get ready to search for employers that fit your criteria and will help you further your career goals, and contact them.
Now that you have the proper mindset, let?s look at some specific goals to help you on your way.
What Are Your Skills?
Take an honest look at your skills. Let this be an exercise that is not influenced by what you think an employer would want; you?re not filling out an application or writing a resume yet. This is intended for you to really see what you?re good at ? write down anything you are able to do, from childcare to cooking, writing to data entry. There are no ?right? skills here. You may even surprise yourself!
What?s Your Experience?
Now you can take a look at what experience you have. It doesn?t have to be job-related; raising a family, helping with community service, or organizing a church event are all relevant experiences. Write down a list of these experiences.
Connect
Now connect your skills with your experiences. You might see career ideas opening up that you hadn?t thought of. Is one of your skills cooking? Do you have experience preparing food for a community event? Maybe you could be a meal coordinator for a facility like a hospital or nursing home, or maybe you want to open a restaurant. Make connections between your skills and experience, and you will be well on your way toward defining your career goals and job hunting accordingly.
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ScienceDaily (Apr. 9, 2012) ? Researchers at the University of Central Florida have developed a novel technique that may give doctors a faster and more sensitive tool to detect pathogens associated with inflammatory bowel disease, including Crohn's disease.
The new nanoparticle-based technique also may be used for detection of other microbes that have challenged scientists for centuries because they hide deep in human tissue and are able to reprogram cells to successfully evade the immune system.
The microbes reappear years later and can cause serious health problems such as seen in tuberculosis cases. Current testing methods to find these hidden microbes exist, but require a long time to complete and often delay effective treatment for weeks or even months.
UCF Associate Professor J. Manuel Perez and Professor Saleh Naser and their research team have developed a method using nanoparticles coated with DNA markers specific to the elusive pathogens. The technique is effective and more accurate than current methods at picking up even small amounts of a pathogen. More important, it takes hours instead of weeks or months to deliver results, potentially giving doctors a quicker tool to help patients.
"Our new technique has surpassed traditional molecular and microbiological methods," said Naser, a professor at the UCF College of Medicine. "Without compromising specificity or sensitivity, the nano-method produced reliable and accurate results within hours compared to months."
The group's translational research works was recently published in the journal PLoS ONE.
The team created hybridizing magnetic relaxation nanosensors (hMRS) that can fish out and detect minuscule amounts of DNA from pathogens hiding within a patient's cells. The hair-thin hMRS are composed of a polymer-coated iron oxide nanoparticle and are chemically modified to specifically bind to a DNA marker that is unique to a particular pathogen.
When the hMRS bind to the pathogen's DNA, a magnetic resonance signal is detected, which is amplified by the water molecules that surround the nanoparticle. Then the researcher can read the change in the magnetic signature on a computer screen or portable electronic device, such as a smartphone, and determine whether the sample is infected with a particular pathogen.
The researchers used Mycobacterium avium spp. paratuberculosis (MAP), a pathogen that has been implicated in the cause of Johne's disease in cattle and Crohn's disease in humans, to test out their technique. They used a large number of blood and biopsy tissue samples from patients with Crohn's disease and meat samples from cattle with Johne's disease.
"It is all about giving medical professionals easy and reliable tools to better understand the spread of a disease, while helping people get treatment faster," said Perez, who works at UCF's Nanoscience Technology Center. "That's my goal. And that's where nanotechnology really has a lot to offer, particularly when the technology has been validated using clinical, food and environmental samples as is in our case."
The National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS), which is a part of the National Institutes of Health, and funded the research, said this kind of basic research can provide the foundation for medical breakthroughs.
"Just last year, Dr. Perez and his team unexpectedly discovered the DNA binding property of their magnetic nanosensors, and now they have shown that it may become the basis for a rapid, sensitive lab test for hard-to-measure bacteria and viruses in patient samples," said Janna Wehrle, Ph.D., of NIGMS. "This is a wonderful example of how quickly an advance can move from the research bench to meet an important clinical need."
Charalambos Kaittanis, who received his doctoral degree at UCF and worked as a postdoctoral Research Associate under Perez, has lead the experimental work in this study. Kaittanis is now a research fellow at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
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Google'?n mobil i?letim sistemi Android'in 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich s?r?m?n? kullanan Polaroid tablet g?n ?????na ??kt?.
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G?r?nt?l? konu?ma i?in kamera, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g ba?lant?s?, USB 2.0 portu ve HDMI portuyla donat?lan tabletin bataryas? 6000 mAh. Son olarak 1080p ??z?n?rl???nde videolar? oynatabildi?i belirtilen Polaroid tabletin Avrupa sat?? fiyat? 249 Euro.
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![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](http://www.eurekalert.org/images/back2e.gif){kind=small}
Public release date: 10-Apr-2012
Share ] Contact: Fan Yubo
yubofan@buaa.edu.cn
Science in China Press
The bio-mechanisms of the woodpecker's resistance to head impact injury are an interesting scientific question. Professor FAN Yubo and his group from the Key Laboratory for Biomechanics and Mechanobiology of the Ministry of Education, School of Biological Science and Medical Engineering, Beihang University, and the School of Materials Science and Engineering, Wuhan University of Technology, set out to study this problem. After 3 years of innovative research, they are making progress in uncovering the explanation for the avoidance of head impact injury by woodpeckers. Their work, entitled "Comparative study of the mechanical properties, micro-structure, and composition of the cranial and beak bones of the great spotted woodpecker and the lark bird", was published in SCIENCE CHINA Life Sciences, 2011, Vol. 54 (11).
Head injury, caused by a sudden impact or by a change in the linear or angular velocity of the head, is a leading cause of morbidity and death in both industrialized and developing countries. It is estimated that brain injuries account for 15% of the overall burden of fatalities and disabilities and are the leading cause of death in young adults. Woodpeckers clearly are adapted to managing impact forces, allowing them to peck rapidly without incurring brain or eye injury. This ability has attracted wide attention not only by ornithologists and biologists but also by researchers in the mechanical and electronic sciences. Previous studies suggested that impact injury to the brain might be avoided by powerful muscles, or by drilling behavior, or by a special orientation of the brain within the skull compared with humans. However, there have been few systematic analyses of the properties of woodpecker's skull. Therefore, to understand how woodpeckers are adapted to pecking at high-speeds and frequency, the group carried out a comparative study of the mechanical properties, microstructure and composition of the cranial bone and beak of this bird, which represent remarkable examples of nanofabrication and self-assembly, perfected by natural evolution over millions of years.
The ultimate strength of woodpecker's cranial bone was found to be markedly higher than that of the lark. In contrast, there was no significant difference between the two birds in the ultimate strengths of their beaks. More plate-like spongy bone was present in the cranial bone of the woodpecker, while the cranium of the lark contained more rod-like structures. It appears that the mechanical properties and microstructure are closely linked. The larger number of plate-like structures, greater thickness and numbers of trabeculae, and the closer spacing between individual trabeculae in the woodpecker cranial bone would tend to resist deformation during pecking, which would decrease the stress on the brain. Conversely, the greater quantity of rod-like structures and thinner trabeculae of the woodpecker's beak would lead to greater deformation during impact. As the impact load is absorbed and distributed primarily by the beak, its transmission to the brain would be decreased. Together these parameters combine to produce quite similar ultimate strengths of the beaks of the woodpecker and the lark.
It was concluded that, compared with the lark, the cranial bone of the woodpecker achieves a higher ultimate strength and resistance to impact injury as a result of its unique microstructure, including more plate-like trabecular bone, greater thickness, greater numbers and closer spacing of trabeculae, and a higher proportion of bone mineral. These distinctive mechanical and structural properties, and compositions, of the cranial and beak bones of the woodpecker provide excellent resistance to head impact injury at a high speed and deceleration. Such information may perhaps inspire the design and optimization of protective headgear for humans.
###
See the article: WANG L Z, ZHANG H Q, and FAN Y B. Comparative study of the mechanical properties, micro-structure, and composition of the cranial and beak bones of the great spotted woodpecker and the lark bird. SCI CHINA Life Sci, 2011, 54(11):1036-1041.
[ | E-mail | Share ] ?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Public release date: 10-Apr-2012 Share ] Contact: Fan Yubo
yubofan@buaa.edu.cn
Science in China Press
The bio-mechanisms of the woodpecker's resistance to head impact injury are an interesting scientific question. Professor FAN Yubo and his group from the Key Laboratory for Biomechanics and Mechanobiology of the Ministry of Education, School of Biological Science and Medical Engineering, Beihang University, and the School of Materials Science and Engineering, Wuhan University of Technology, set out to study this problem. After 3 years of innovative research, they are making progress in uncovering the explanation for the avoidance of head impact injury by woodpeckers. Their work, entitled "Comparative study of the mechanical properties, micro-structure, and composition of the cranial and beak bones of the great spotted woodpecker and the lark bird", was published in SCIENCE CHINA Life Sciences, 2011, Vol. 54 (11).
Head injury, caused by a sudden impact or by a change in the linear or angular velocity of the head, is a leading cause of morbidity and death in both industrialized and developing countries. It is estimated that brain injuries account for 15% of the overall burden of fatalities and disabilities and are the leading cause of death in young adults. Woodpeckers clearly are adapted to managing impact forces, allowing them to peck rapidly without incurring brain or eye injury. This ability has attracted wide attention not only by ornithologists and biologists but also by researchers in the mechanical and electronic sciences. Previous studies suggested that impact injury to the brain might be avoided by powerful muscles, or by drilling behavior, or by a special orientation of the brain within the skull compared with humans. However, there have been few systematic analyses of the properties of woodpecker's skull. Therefore, to understand how woodpeckers are adapted to pecking at high-speeds and frequency, the group carried out a comparative study of the mechanical properties, microstructure and composition of the cranial bone and beak of this bird, which represent remarkable examples of nanofabrication and self-assembly, perfected by natural evolution over millions of years.
The ultimate strength of woodpecker's cranial bone was found to be markedly higher than that of the lark. In contrast, there was no significant difference between the two birds in the ultimate strengths of their beaks. More plate-like spongy bone was present in the cranial bone of the woodpecker, while the cranium of the lark contained more rod-like structures. It appears that the mechanical properties and microstructure are closely linked. The larger number of plate-like structures, greater thickness and numbers of trabeculae, and the closer spacing between individual trabeculae in the woodpecker cranial bone would tend to resist deformation during pecking, which would decrease the stress on the brain. Conversely, the greater quantity of rod-like structures and thinner trabeculae of the woodpecker's beak would lead to greater deformation during impact. As the impact load is absorbed and distributed primarily by the beak, its transmission to the brain would be decreased. Together these parameters combine to produce quite similar ultimate strengths of the beaks of the woodpecker and the lark.
It was concluded that, compared with the lark, the cranial bone of the woodpecker achieves a higher ultimate strength and resistance to impact injury as a result of its unique microstructure, including more plate-like trabecular bone, greater thickness, greater numbers and closer spacing of trabeculae, and a higher proportion of bone mineral. These distinctive mechanical and structural properties, and compositions, of the cranial and beak bones of the woodpecker provide excellent resistance to head impact injury at a high speed and deceleration. Such information may perhaps inspire the design and optimization of protective headgear for humans.
###
See the article: WANG L Z, ZHANG H Q, and FAN Y B. Comparative study of the mechanical properties, micro-structure, and composition of the cranial and beak bones of the great spotted woodpecker and the lark bird. SCI CHINA Life Sci, 2011, 54(11):1036-1041.
[ | E-mail | Share ] ?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
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